Anticipating

There are 2 more weeks before my maternity leaves official starts. However I am not sure if I need to be off so early but that's what the labour's law says. So let's see. I am taking off 2 days to recuperate. So I am sitting here right at home playing jigsaw puzzle in live messenger with my sister. I have been putting up some gifts from friends over the months for our little sunshine so it's not fair if I do not post this up. This is a gift from my buddy Suet Yin that can fit the baby at later stage. A little to big for him at the moment. :D Thank you very much.

Merry Christmas 2011 !

I spent Christmas at home sick. I am already sick for a week and my cough doesn't seem to get any better yet. I cough until my lungs almost drop and baby keep juggling inside. My legs are also pain from standing. So I need to do everything very quickly.

So I got help from santarina aka hubby to prepare today's dinner. I cooked yee mee for lunch today so for dinner I want to opt for western style of meal.

I have salmon from Jusco yesterday but I do not have lemon (again). So what I did is to make use of orange I have in the fridge. I googled and found orange-honey glazed salmon recipe. Perfect. I did not use the recipe totally but kind of use it as inspiration.


Baked orange-honey glazed salmon
Ingredients
1 piece of salmon about 250g
parsley flakes
salt
pepper
1/2 orange -make zest
1/2 orange -make juice
1 tablespoon honey
1 slice of orange

1. Assemble all the ingredients together and place the slice of orange on top of salmon. Everything goes on a piece of aluminium foil
2. Prepare oven at 220 celcius and bake over 20 minutes
3. Heat up oven for 3 minutes before placing the tray of salmon into oven


Garlic butter rice
1. Heat up 30 g butter in pan, add in 4 cloves of chopped garlic and 1/3 of chicken bouillon cube
2. Add rice and water
3. Let cook for about 2 minutes
4. Transfer everything into rice cooker and cook as your rice cooker instruction

We used bean sprout and carrot for the sides. Cook as you like ;) We stir-fried bean sprout in garlic and salt and blanched carrot and sprinkled some basil on top of them later on.




Merry Christmas !!! Hope you having a great dinner now ;) We just completed ours.

Chicken rice by him

Q4'11 Teambuilding

I haven't been posting anything related to my work for quite some time for now. Here it is, the latest team building which just held yesterday at Hydro Hotel, Batu Feringghi. There are a lot photos but I will just upload this one piece which has everyone in it. It was fun and we had a lot laughters. I was so tired from laughing, for real...

Long bean rice

I have been lazy to update my blog for quite some time and tired too. Anyway, this is something that I make from time to time, not very often but not too little too. Roughly once every 1.5 to 2 months? It is the long bean rice. It has the fragrance of dried shrimp, shitake mushroom, garlic and pork belly ;) All the ingredients are cooked in wok first with the rice before being transferred into rice cooker.



Simple but appetizing dinner for today.

Toys

I was trying to search for some toys for the little one and everything seems so pricey. Anyway, I got him a flexi ball. Before this I bought a cloths book (fluffy chicks) and lamaze learning block from someone at work place. The condition of the 2 are still good and I washed them throughly and now are ready for the little one.



Here is the super big toy for him from Rachel ah-yi! He can only play this when he is older and I will keep it nicely until then :) thank you thank you.

Cute pieces from friends

We received a few more gifts from some friends for our little one who is coming soon. I took this when I was playing with my new phone retro effect apps, the terry bath towel with 4 washcloth from uncle Yee Seng.



A few sets of clothes from Ai Chee and Chun in US. It is so kind of them to have to pass the gift to me through their friend who was on business trip to US recently



I purposely snap this romper because it's so cute. See the butt piece? Piak piak!



Thank you my friends

Yong Tau Foo

It is a very exhausting day for me. I woke up in the morning to the market and came back with lots of ingredients and nicely packed and keep in fridge then to prepare the ingredients for yong tau foo. I had to quickly have my breakfast nasi lemak before I proceed to wash my room's curtains today too and hang them back to the curtain rod because that's where the sun will be every day. I told the aunty in the market that I want taukee for yong tau foo. She thought that I want to cook those soup yong tao foo which I never like at all and recommend me the fried taukee she had made. I didn't want. I want to stuff them my own. The fried one was so hard and "fried". How am I going to fry it again. She never understand what I want and I gave up with her.

I only used a few ingredients for the yong tau foo because if I use more ingredients, the whole bunch of the stuff will be really a lot. I chose 8 lady's finger, 1 medium egg plant, 100g tauhu pok and a few pieces tau kee. The stuffing is made of fish meat where I mixed with minced pork because fish is really very expensive. I mixed them well with salt, starch, soy sauce and pepper.

After washing and cutting the yong tau foo ingredients, I began stuffing them then fried them in hot oil. It took me so long to fry because I did them a few pieces a time to avoid the stuffing from coming out.



Then, the fried ingredients will be used for cooking. The sauce is made of water, tau chiu, salt, pepper and oyster sauce. I thicken the sauce using starch mixture. It took me around 3 hours for the preparation and cooking process but I like the end product. Satisfying lunch!



Tired, but still sitting here typing after cooking dinner for hubby and have to rush to get ready for wedding dinner tonight. Chao!

Photos gone..

I have a new android phone and I used the sync feature to sync everything from my google into the new phone because I uploaded my old phone's contact to google's contact. I didn't know that the auto sync will also sync my photos online into my phone. I have this blog for around 6 years and the photos I had uploaded all the while accumulated up to 2700++. When I saw the photos in my phone gallery, I was thinking what the heck, 2000 plus photos gonna eat up all my phone memory pretty fast. So what I did without thinking is to DELETE all the photos since I have them in my blog. How much would I know that these photos are exactly the same copies in my blog. A few seconds after I press the delete button, my mind was jumping like crazy, heart beating so fast. I quickly logged into my blog and see.. wwwwwwwwooooaaah, all the photos including my banner's all gone. I was deep depressed due to the lost. Any how, I manage to find some latest photos and uploaded them back into the latest posts. The rest, I have no idea when to find them. So, please be careful next time with your phone auto-sync feature. No more next time.

Chicken porridge

Yesterday I was telling 2 friends that I want to cook chicken porridge today. I want to make silky smooth porridge like what normally seen in dim sum restaurant. All my previous porridges were all not like that. One of my friend told me to buy ready-made rice which is finely crushed to achieve this kind of smooth porridge and she also said I can crush the rice myself using the back of knife. Anyway I do not want to use this option because it will take time to crush the rice and I don't want to hit or knock anything right now. The ready finely crushed rice is more expensive and I still have 10kg rice in my repository. So no way I am going to restock any rice at any moment now.

I opted for other method I found more towards my style. Since I am cooking rice for dinner yesterday, I cooked extra one more portion. Then I add just enough water into a pot with the cooked rice and start boiling. The rice will turn into porridge quicker this way since the rice is already cooked and I do not have much time to waste at night on a normal working day. After about 15 minutes, I managed to get concentrated porridge. I added just enough water so that it's not watery but is able to turn soft.

I let the porridge cool down a little and took my potato masher and mashed the porridge. When it's mashed and cool down completely, I kept the pot into fridge for today's cooking.

I came back from work and started working on the ingredients. I have salted chicken left from last week. I had already harvested the left over and shredded it into tiny strips. I also had a chicken leg from chicken corn soup that I cooked 2 days ago which I shredded too and kept in container. This is the main recipe for today's meal.

I added like 3 bowls of chicken broth into the pot with mashed porridge in it and boil the mixture. When it started boiling, lower the heat to the lowest, add a handful of groundnuts, all the shredded chicken, chopped carrot, 2 tablespoon of sesame oil and simmer for 30 minutes. Add water when you see it's drying up. Stir often. Add salt towards the end, and taste.

Serve hot, add some pepper on top and garnish with spring onions. It makes a great warm dinner on rainy day like this. I achieved the silky smooth texture that I want!

Sambal fried rice

Left over food is gem :) I always like to use the left-over and mix into rice to make all sort of fried rice.

This time I had left over sambal from Sunday lunch nasi lemak and the spicy marinated pork from dinner. What I need to do is just mix both of the left-overs with overnight rice, chopped carrot and egg, add a little soy sauce and there you go, sambal nasi lemak!

It was very spicy due to too many dried chillies used when I was making sambal but so divine. The outlook is nothing much difference from other fried rice because of the common ingredients used but with a little garnishing with cut spring onions. It makes a great lunch alone food :)

Spicy marinated pork belly

I was looking at this dwaeji bulgogi, korean spicy marinated pork and salivating. I do not have all sort of Korean's cooking ingredients in my kitchen so I figured out I will just sort of use the idea but incorporate what is available in my humble kitchen pantry.

I used thin slinces of pork belly and cut into 1x1 inch in size. I marinated the pork in fridge for about 6 hours using the below ingredients:

2 cloves of garlic, chopped
small piece of ginger, finger size, chopped
1 stalk scallion, cut thinly. I keep the upper part of the leaves for garnishing
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon korean chilli oil
1 teaspoon chili paste (cili boh)
1 tablespoon chinese rice wine
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon sesame oil


Cooking is fairly simple. Heat up a little oil in wok. Pour the pork in and stir in medium heat. When the pork is cooked, stir in higher heat until you see the edge of the pork is caramelizing. Scoop and serve hot. Garnish with scallion.

Spaghetti with Roasted Salmon and Garlic

Earlier in the week, I mentioned that I purchased 2 salmon steaks. I used one to make salmon teriyaki, it means I have one more left in freezer. Simple maths.

I tried google in the morning on some pasta recipe I can make with salmon and I failed to find any that I like. Most of them are using cream sauce which I dislike because I can never finish the second half of the cream pasta. I felt sick with the cream when I was at the half plate.

I came home and took about 5-10 minutes flipping my pasta cookbook. There is one recipe which I fairly interested in, by roasting salmon and garlic. I didn't use the recipe from the book but just used the idea of roasted salmon and garlic. This is how I made it.

Preparation of salmon:
1.Preheat oven to 200 celcius
2.Clean and dry salmon
3.Place salmon on a piece of aluminium foil
4.Brush some olive oil to the surface of salmon, sprinkle salt and parsley flakes.
5.Cut 2 cloves of garlic into very thin slices and arrange on top of salmon
6.Bake for 15 minutes


Ingredients for the sauce:
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 carrot, chopped into tiny pieces similar to onion
6 cherry tomatoes
oregano flakes
tomato puree
1/2 teaspoon sugar and 1/4 teaspoon salt

1. Boil a pot of water, add a little salt and cook spaghetti al dente according to the packet's instruction.
2. Heat some oil in pan and slightly brown the garlic
3. Add onion, carrot and tomatoes in and stir till fragrance
4. Pour in tomato puree and add 1 can of water by filling the puree's can
5. Stir and let it boil for a while, add sugar and salt
6. Add oregano as much as you like and ground pepper then simmer for 10 minutes
7. By this time spaghetti should be already done, drain and toss into sauce, stir well
8. Take the salmon out of oven and flake it. Remove any bones
9. Mix roasted salmon flakes and garlic into spaghetti and do not forget to pour in any juice on the aluminium foil. That juice contains the real fish oil top with omega-3.


Serves 2
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time when all baking, cooking pasta and sauce are done at the same time: 20 minutes.


Note: There are a lot pot/pan to wash later :p




I asked WL if he wanted to have soup with the pasta and he said YES! So I requested him to help me open the can of campbell mushroom soup but he got away after pouring everything in a pot and ask me to stir the soup when it's boiling. That's the reason I didn't manage to debone the salmon properly. I was stirring soup and deboning salmon at the same time. There were some bones left in the salmon flakes but who cares, we are not kids. :p We could take it out while eating. The roasted garlic mixed into the spaghetti really well too. The taste is just perfect, something different from the usual minced pork spaghetti that I make. He started dinner without waiting for me when I was still in kitchen washing cooking utensils and I can hear him chanting "hao chi!hao chi!". This normally happen when I cooked something new for him. Bliss

Be healthy and see you!

I have not been talking much here about my feeling for the coming little one in our family. Some how maybe I should jot down a few lines so I can remember this joyful moment in any future. I am almost at the end of second trimester where people claimed is the most comfortable time during pregnancy. I feel the first trimester is the best :p

For the past few weeks, I have been experiencing a lot of little actions in my belly. He has been a footballer, swimmer and gymnast. Yesterday I tried to hold the little gymnast and wanted to let him know how much I wish to cuddle him right then. I caught him right on the fist or the feet, I don't know. Today we did a lot of high-five together. I had never feel this happy before for being kicked inside me. There are times where he surprised me with a stronger kick that makes me stood up all of sudden or woke me up from my usual nappy work hour. It is a miracle to think that I have a little man inside me and he is growing stronger and bigger everyday. I am loving this little gymnast everyday even more and can't wait to say hi to him. I look at the stuff we bought for him along the months everyday and feel happiness surrounding all over me.

Happiness still top over all other small uncomfortable things that I experience along the journey. I try swimming to relieve my back ache but it does not help much. We got a massage pillow to relax my back muscle 3 minutes every night but everytime I sit back again on the chair or couch, the back ache just came back. I started to feel the ache since week 15 or so, pretty early in the pregnancy period. It is affecting my outing time too like I cannot be walking in shopping mall for more than 2 hours or else I feel like my back is going to collapse if I don't lay down right away. After 4pm everyday is off hour for me. I do not want to sit in office anymore. Anyway, I still have to commit to certain occasions that required my attendance but to reject some of them which I think I can be absent to. So I hope friends will understand why I just can't attend some of the activities that they organized.

Other than the backache, it is the hugging a basketball to sleep feeling that makes me sleep light every night nowadays. I just cannot sleep sideways which I am forcing myself to right now or I will be pressed to a breathless point by the little gymnast and all the extra weight. So I spend longer time in bed to compensate for the missing sleep hours in the night.

Despite all these, I am still very happy. Both husband and I really enjoy having this little companion-to-be in our everyday life. So be healthy and see you!

Chicken rice

Yesterday when I mentioned to WL that I want to cook chicken rice on Monday, first thing he reminded me was that he wants coriander with the chicken. Okay, I hate the smell of coriander and I don't eat it. Then he gave me another option, how about scallion? Hmmm, I don't have any of the 2 vegetables he requested. This means that I have to make a trip to hypermarket on my way back from work today. So I packed my bag earlier before my normal off hour and dropped by the hypermarket on my way home. I looked at the basket of coriander and I was so glad that they were all either turned yellow, black or not fresh. yay! No need to eat coriander and I don't have to stand the smell of it! :P I searched for scallion and found a pack with 3 stalks for RM2.99. It's pricey for such a small vege and it's not going to be any main dish, just for garnishing but no choice, I have to buy it for the exchange of smelly coriander. I also grabbed a Japanese cucumber for the green later

I came home and started poaching the chicken when the rain started to fall. I felt so relieved that I am already at home admiring my kitchen.

Chicken preparation:
1. Clean 2 chicken legs and cut off excess fat and save for later use.
2. Fill water into pot with a teaspoon of salt , amount enough just to cover the chicken and start the fire
3. When it's almost at the boiling point, put the chicken in the pot and let it simmer. Control the heat so that the water does not boil. We just want to poach it for about 45 minutes.
4. Prepare a small bowl of salt mix with sesame oil and a brush for applying the mixture to chicken later
5. At the end of 45 minutes, take the chicken out from the hot water and place it directly into cold water to stop the cooking process. Save the chicken broth
6. Brush the salt and sesame oil mixture onto all sides of chicken
7. Cut into desired size and apply the left over salt and sesame oil mixture onto the chicken pieces.
8. Pour about 1 tablespoon of soy sauce and sprinkle some pepper on the chicken. Garnish with a lot of cut scallion

Rice preparation
1. Wash rice for 4 and set aside
2. Heat up the chicken fat that you saved earlier in wok until the oil is generated from the fat.
3. Saute chopped garlic (2 cloves) and ginger (small piece)in the chicken oil
4. Mix the rice into the wok and cook for a while maybe about 2 minutes
5. Scoop the rice into rice cooker
6. Scoop the oil layer from the chicken broth into rice cooker. Add the broth until desired water level required to cook the rice according to your rice cooker instruction
7. Sprinkle some salt and pepper into the rice cooker and start cooking
8. Serve rice with slices of cucumber on side

Soup preparation
1. Start boiling up the left over chicken broth
2. Put in slices of carrot as much as you like and some fish balls into the broth and let simmer for 5-10 minutes
3. Add salt and pepper
4. Garnish with scallion





Serves 2 with chicken but with 2 extra bowls of rice saved for tommorrow :p faint..

WL came back with a box of salted chicken in his hand and said it's from his colleague's baby fullmoon and he wanted to ring me to tell me not to cook so we can eat the salted chicken. But he also said my cell was switched off. There is a phone at home, and he forgot we have another phone that he can reach me. I switched on my cell and saw his misscall at 6.52pm. Hello husband, at 6.52pm, the chicken is already cooked. Can you not call me at 6.52pm and tell me no need to cook? Hahaha... Anyway, the salted chicken has to sit in the fridge until 2 or 3 days later because I do not want to eat chicken everyday :p

Salmon teriyaki

Yesterday I purchased 2 salmon steaks again from Jusco. I am eating salmon too often but I have not yet bored of the taste and I love the texture a lot. This morning when I was planning on Sunday's meal, I have breakfast, lunch and dinner in mind but suddenly I felt disaapointed because I forgot to get lemon yesterday. There goes my usual baked salmon with lemon. I have butter, but it's so boring to use butter. Teriyaki! Yes, that's it salmon teriyaki! I wanted to have salmon teriyaki for so long but everytimeI look at the price of salmon teriyaki in restaurant, I gave up. But the problem is I do not have teriyaki sauce too. :p Afraid not, I quickly went online and searched for teriyaki sauce recipe. Oh mine, it is so easy to make one.

Teriyaki sauce:
3 tablespoon mirin. I substituded with chinese rice wine because I don't have mirin.
3 tablespoon soy sauce
sugar/ brown sugar/ honey , as sweet as you like. I used 1.5 tablespoon of honey which is perfect to my liking.
1 clove garlic and 1 small piece of ginger choppped

Combine everything in a pan and cook till everything dissolved and mixed together. Set aside until it cool down before use.


Marinate salmon in the teriyaki sauce and refrigerate. Turn the salmon over in the half period of your marination time. I marinated since 10am and used it at 6.30pm. So I turned the salmon over in the marinade at around 3pm. I do not want to pan grill the salmon. I prefer oven as usual. Pour all the teriyaki sauce you used to marinate the salmon in the aluminium foil you folded with the salmon. Heat up oven for about 5min at 200 celcius and bake for 15 minutes





Perfect to serve with white rice! Yummy

Fried rice with green vege

I know fried rice is boring. The reason why I posted this is because it is the first time I fry rice with adding green vegetable.

See the ingredients? I have salted fish, carrot, "chai xin", chinese sausage, egg, onions and of course rice.




It turned out to soooo good, I even want to finish the other plate which belongs to WL.

DIY pin cushion

I have some left over small pieces of fabric and I am in need of a pin cushion. It was very inconvenient to keep the pins in plastic bag and keep pulling out one when I need to use and put back into the plastic bag everytime to avoid losing them and fall off somewhere where I accidently sit or step on them later on.

I came across a super simple design of pin cushion sometime ago.

If Hong, you are reading this, maybe you are wondering what I was going to do when I pulled out the filling from the old mashimaro at home and brought them back with me?

Here it is the pictures one 2 different sides of the cushion


It is not the most beautiful pin cushion but is enough for my usage.

Crochet baby booties

Initially I purchased the yarn to make side table cloth but when I searched around, I saw a quite easy crochet baby booties instruction.

I just followed through the whole 4 part of instructions in youtube and made this pair. I did one side before my finger infect became worst and the other side last night. What do you think?

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7TCpHbNPCs

Stew pork rib, my way

I lost idea what to cook. I have pork rib but I just don't have the ingredients to make soup so I was thinking to make stew out of it. I threw some vegetables from my fridge and ingredients into stew pot and simmer it for 1.5 hours for today's dinner.

1 onion, cut
3 cloves garlic
1 carrot cut into chunks
2 baby corns
2 tablespoons groundnuts
2 chinese mushrooms, quartered
2 tablespoons red wine
1/2 tablespoon sesame oil
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon dark soy sauce
2 tablespoon oyster sauce
1.5 bowl water

Baby blanket

This is the project I have been working on for the past 3 weeks and I completed it today. My ring finger swollen so badly that it hurts all the times now. I suspected it's caused by fabric cutting using the metal scissors. I can't sleep last night due to the pain. I know it sounded a bit exaggerate but it's true.

This picture was taken when I was half way doing the hexagon stitching , hand sewn.



The size of this blanket is approximately 36X40. It can last until baby is around 4-5 years old. :D Other than the top piece, the rest of it were sewed using sewing machine but I used invisible stitch (hand) to close up the hole that left to turn the fabric to it's right side after sewing the pieces together.




This is the back of the blanket. I actually sewed a layer of thick flannel in sandwiched between the top and backing. It is weird to get a batting here in Malaysia since the weather is not as cooling so I just inserted a flannel it there. I washed the flannel before sewing to reduce the possiblity it will shrink after washing.

1st gift for him!

This is his first gift from a colleague in US!



The green and white rompers both have some cute wordings
I <3 MOM
born handsome (like dad)

Daddy wins 2-1 because we have another romper at home says : "If you think I am handsome, you should see my daddy"

Thanks .. Love Osh Kosh

Kimchi stew

After having Korean food with ex-coursemates on Friday, I am craving for kimchi stew. So I looked for the recipe in Beyond Kimchee again and this blog never dissapoint me. I do not have any Korean chili flakes so I was thinking to make my own one which I think doesn't really the real chili flakes the Korean used in making the stew or kimchee and etc... But after all, it worked too after my body felt burning here and there because I kept scratching my legs and arms when I was deseeding dried chilies. Here, for my warm sunny Sunday afternoon lunch..

Kimchi fried rice

This is fairly easy food to make, kimchi fried rice. I bought a packet of cut kimchi just enough for fried rice to feed two.

Ingredients needed: cut kimchi, pork cubes from loin, 2 eggs, 2 bowls of overnight rice and chopped spring onions.


Stir fry pork cubes which are marinated earlier using cornstarch, soy sauce and sesame oil. Cook your scrambled egg and set aside.

Heat up oil and saute the cut kimchi for a while, pour in rice and mix. Add soy sauce, sesame oil and mix. Cook until everything seems to be mixed nicely and looked red in colour, add in scrambled eggs and pork. Stir again , after adding in pepper. Lastly pour in chopped spring onion and let it sit in a while on the hot wok.

Scoop and serve hot!

Tofu patties

Today I wasn't feeling very well. My head felt heavier than normal days, visual blur than usual, I was seeing a lot of light patches on my laptop screen. Although there is much more work to finish by the day end, I can't seem to concentrate too well. I sneezed, nose stuffed, and shivered. So I browsed through one of my favourite recipe site and saw this tofu patties in Beyond Kimchee .

My mind ventured into finding ingredients in my fridge. I saw tofu (tao chiam) that I bought on Saturday, chicken fillets and spring onions. okay, that's it. That's what I am making today for dinner, tofu patties! My head started to think of what's written in the blog, and what I can omit, what I can use to make it a perfect dish.


Here is the ingredients I use for the patties
2 firm tofu (smashed using potato masher)
2 pieces minced chicken
2 tablespooons chopped spring onions
1 tablespoon sesame oil
2 tablespoon cooking wine
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 egg yolk
salt & pepper

For frying
flour
1 egg, beaten

Chop chicken and smash tofu
Mix all the ingredients together
Divide mixture into 2 portion and build a log on each of the 2 aluminium foil
Roll the foil up and secure both ends.
Steam the logs for 10 minutes
Slice the steamed logs
Coat the with flour, and then egg
Fry until both sides turn golden brown
Serve with rice


In photo from top right clockwise, mince the chicken, mixture of ingredients, steam the logs, fry in pan




Feeling very tired but happy with the end product!

Bali 2011

This trip was planned a year back, so we didn't know what kind of work schedule we might be facing. There was a lot to plan, backup and find coverage because I had so much leftover work that was half done and critical milestone so coincidently pushed till my vacation time. Bali will be our final vacation before we rest for quite sometime until we can go for next one.

We had a 6 days 5 nights Bali vacation. Though 6 days sounds like very long, the real time we spent touring and visiting was only 4 days. The first and last day were merely for departure and arrival only. We reached Bali at around 9pm on first day and met our driver Made. He was supposed to be Wayan! and they just exchanged the driver like that without telling us upfront. Anyway Made didn't talk much and we like him that way. To say the truth I prefer to rest and not talk much if we are travelling in car because I have car sickness most of the time. In Bali, everyone of Hindu descendent was born and given a standard name. If you are a boy and the first child, your name is Wayan. Second boy, Made. Third boy, Nyoman and the fourth boy, Ketut. Just shout Wayan on the street, there might 100 people respond to your call. We like Made because he helped us buy domestic entrance fee for GWK park which was only half the price for foreigner and told us to tell the restaurant in Jimbaran to give us 10% discount. So we gave him quite a sum of tips when we left Bali on the last day.

We stayed in Ubud for the first 3 nights because most of the attraction that we planned to sightseeing is around this area at the east-north of Bali.

We started out next day by visiting Tegalalang rice terrace in Ubud. It was a short sightseeing with just a couple of photos because there are nothing else there. I bought a sarong for quite expensive price RP40k because I didn't know the price yet. Later when we visited the market, I realised I can probably got it at RP10k :) Anyway, it's fine since RP40k translated to RM is around RM15. Just for your information, anything in Bali , bargain the price down to 30% of the original price they quote you! If the opening price is RP100k, buy only if it's reduced to RP30k.



After this we went to Kintamani and had lunch in one of the restaurant facing Mt Batur, the volcanic mountain in Bali. The lunch buffet priced at RP60k per pax excluding drinks. Bear in mind that all the restaurant in Bali will charge 15% tax on top of your total bill. At the hill road, there are guards that will stop you and ask you to pay some kind of entrance fee. They charged us RP25k which I think is kind of expensive because when I read in internet about this, some people mentioned that the guard charged them for RP3.5k per pax. Anyway, I don't trust the price in the internet anymore because all the entrace fee is increased now. Those are price for 2 years back.



The weather is cooling in Ubud, compared to Kuta and Nusa Dua feel something like in Cameron Highland. I like. After lunch we visited temples! Yes temples, Bali has so many temples and every Hindu home has a temple as well.

We went to Tirta Empul, this is the place where you can bath in the pool of holy water. Entrace fee is RP15k per pax. I think it's a waste for ladies to visit Bali if they are having period because they cannot enter all the temples.



They have this kind of door everywhere in Ubud.






After that we visited Gunung Kawi, entrance fee RP15k per pax. I don't like this place because we have to walk so much of stairs and it was the most tiring places I ever been to Bali before we can see this. Luckily I brought along my pink umbrella I got from Taiwan to Bali, the sun was pretty strong in the afternoon. I think I will get sun stroke and bad sun burn without umbrella and sun lotion.



The next place was Goa Gajah, the worst place and need to pay entrance fee RP15k. There was basically nothing in the this Goa Gajah , just a wall of some statues. We didn't even take picture with the wall. :p I feel that Bali is over rated because it is swarmed by all westerners.



Before dinner time we didn't have anything to do so we requested Made to stop at paddy field for us to take some photos. There are so many paddy fields in Ubud, they are everywhere.



Dinner time! We were back near the place where we stayed. The famous Bebek Begil Dirty Duck Diner is just 5 minutes walk from our hotel so we told Made to just drop us there and we will walk back hotel by ourselves afterward.


Some night photo taken by Weeliem when we were walking back hotel after dinner.


The next morning, around 6.30am we woke up and walked back to the same restaurant because it was facing paddy fields as well and took some sunrise photos. Sun rises around 6.30am to 7am in Bali. By 8am, the sun is already too strong for nice photos.



Around 11am, Made picked us up and we went to do some shopping in the market opposite Ubud Palace. I like this market because things that are sold here are more customized in everyshop, like a shop which only sells painting, a shop which only sells woven product etc. It is not like one shop which sells all sort of product from all kind of suppliers. We bought some souvenirs from here and luckily we got something because in the last 2 days Weeliem had food poisoning and we didn't go out much anymore.

We had the famous Ibu Oka babi guling for lunch just opposite the other side of Ubud palace.


Then we went to visit Pura Taman Ayun at Mengwi. Pura means temple.


We negotiated with Made to bring us to GitGit Twin Waterfall because he insisted of charging us extra RP100k if we want to go there. Entrance fee RP5k per pax Almost all westerners took off their clothes and threw themselves with bikini into the waterfall because the water is so cooling. Too bad, we didn't plan for dipping.


The last place we went before ending the day trip was Ulu Danu at Lake Beratan in Bedugul. Entrance fee RP10k per pax. It is a very picturesque place for photography. Weeliem didn't waste the time when sunlight peep ofrom the cloud and took some beautiful photos.


We asked Made to stop again on the way back to Ubud and took some nice paddy field photos during sunset, around 6pm.


We had pork rib dinner at Nuri's Warung.

The next morning we went to Sukawati for another round of shopping but as I said prefer the market opposite Ubud Palace. Sukawati is just a place where they have 100+ of stalls seling the same thing every stall and the people keep pulling you although you are not interested to see anything. I only bought a simple dress from here.

The best hotel we stayed in Bali in Courtyard by Marriott at Nusa Dua. We checked in after had Jawa food for lunch in Kuta. Too bad we only can stay here for one night. Weeliem redeemed this from his Marriott points, just like how I redeemed my 3 days in Marriott hotel in Singapore last year.


The security is very tight in Nusa Dua because there are so many foreigners staying there and the hotel rate is expensive. There are dogs to sniff our car and we have to scan all our bags and body before entering the hotel. After some wow and wows in the hotel, we proceed with our sightseeing activity. We went to Dreamland the new Kuta beach which is popular for surfing.


Later we visited Uluwatu, the temple on the cliff. Entrance fee at RP3k per pax.




I really hate this place because there are so many monkeys around trying to steal things. I think they are trained by the local to steal tourist's belonging and help them to get back by paying RP5k. Weeliem's glasses was stolen when he was busy snapping photos. We didn't know where the monkey ran to so we cannot get the glasses back. Pity him that he cannot see well after that. I gave my glasses to him so he can wear the next day until we are back to Malaysia. I hold a stick on my hand but one of the monkey came and tried to pull my flipflop from my right foot when I was standing! I used all my strength to pull back my flipflop and I took my stick and scared the monkey away. My scream alerted many tourists there but they didn't know what made me scream because my things are all intact :P

We watched the Kecak dance in Uluwatu as well priced at RP70k per pax.

We asked Made to drove us to Jimbaran for grilled seafood dinner on the beach. The food was good and we got our 10% discount. Everything was great until we were back to hotel. Weeliem had diarrhea and bad abdomen cramping and he even had fever. We gave him paracetamol, drank a glass of eno and chinese traditional diarrhea medicine that we brought along to our vacation. Luckily we have the practice to always bring medicine when we go for holiday. His fever wasn't subdue the next day so we asked Made to stop at pharmacy and we got some real diarrhea medicines and hydration salt.

So the last trip day we only managed to visit 2 places, which is the Garuda Wisnu Kencana park after we checked in to another hotel in Kuta which is basically has nothing in there except for a garuda and wishnu statue. Fee needed RP50k.

Later on we visited Tanah Lot and that concluded our Bali vacation!


Forgot to mention that I threw up the spot we stop in front of Tanah Lot entrance because the ride to there was so tough. The road, the sudden stop, the traffic... horrible.

The next day we were so relieved that we are flying home. I miss home so much and my home cooked food.