Impulse Trip Booking to Bangkok for the Weekend

So I was having a craving for some Tom Yum Soup for lunch rather randomly today and Tikki, my Thai girl friend, said hi to me on Facebook and we started chatting away. Within minutes, I was clicking away online looking for flights from Phnom Penh to Bangkok. And less than an hour later, ta-dah!

Flights booked, Accommodation checked, Fun Ensues

It was rather expensive I would say, considering its AirAsia, and I probably would be paying just 30 dollars more for a proper airline like Bangkok Airways, but timing wise it was perfect and I could head for the airport right after work, and then return to Phnom Penh on Sunday afternoon.

So anyway, right after that booking made was made, I suddenly realised that I have an upcoming work trip to HK which will happen within these few weeks.

Had my fingers (and eyes too: see below) crossed for a few days that these two trips wouldn't clash.

Apparently I had my toes crossed as well and that kinda worked. The aforesaid HK trip was scheduled quite last-minutely for 26th-29th May, exactly a week before my BKK trip - happy days.

Looking forward, to both trips. =]

Kobe Restaurant, Phnom Penh

Phnom Penh has, surprisingly, more Japanese restaurants than I first thought it had.

Was hectic at work these weeks preparing for the meeting with the M&S guys who are here in Phnom Penh for a couple of days. Was so exciting meeting them and getting to know them better was kinda a big plus point. Who are we kidding!? Best part of course would be the dinner following the big meeting LOL.

So we headed for Kobe, quite a famous Japanese restaurant in Phnom Penh which is located at Le President Hotel. Whilst we were in the car, my gastric juices were already having a great party with my stomach walls and I was trying my best not to think of food - to no avail. Well you see, I've always wanted to head to Kobe as I heard they have really good sashimi and the teppanyaki is awesome - and of course the price tag is highly awesome too. LOL. So imagine my excitement when I knew we were all heading there on company expenses. Happy days. =]

After finally getting over the traffic jam, we arrived at about 7:30pm, about 30 minutes later than our scheduled reservations. Kim ordered a feast. Well not exactly a feast if it isn't 500 cows worth of steak, but you get what I mean.

I've not managed to snap any photos of the sashimi boat nor the shrimp tempura that we ordered because they were snatched up in a matter of seconds. 

The beef roll with asparagus and Cod fish.

She appears to be doing a magic show with the scallops in butter.

Doesn't this look familiar?

Photo from www.colourbox.com

Teriyaki Chicken in the making

Rating: 4.5/5

You can tell how delicious this squid was from the fact that I only remembered to take photos of it after the majority of it was destroyed by me.



Rating: 3.5/5

Prawns were fresh and nicely cooked.

Thats all for the photos. To be honest we had heaps more but I was too busy eating to be really taking photos of the food. Also, I don't really want to be too rude snapping too much away in front of the M&S peeps as they are still our guests afterall - nor look as if I've never seen chefs cooking in front of me, or am seeing food for the first time in my life. =]

Totally looking forward to the next pig-out M&S meeting.

Kobe Japanese Restaurant

680 Kampuchea Krom, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Le President Hotel
Kobe Japanese Restaurant Website

Luna D'Autunno Italian Restaurant Phnom Penh

Luna D' Autunno which literally means 'Autumn Moon' is a Italian restaurant in the city of Phnom Penh. Though Italian food is not something that comes to your mind when you think of Cambodia, you’d be surprised at the amount of Italian restaurants that can be found around Phnom Penh.

If you’re looking for a nice little corner in the hustle and bustle in the city, Luna D’Autunno might be the place you would want to check out. I was recommended it by a work mate a month ago, when I told her I was yearning for some lamb.

So on a hot sunny Sunday afternoon, I headed there with Kenneth. The place has an outdoor seating area and an indoor one. As we were already sweating when we reached the restaurant in a tuktuk, I opted we opted for the indoor one so that my make-up wouldn't decide to melt itself.

The waiter’s English was limited, but that’s what you’d expect in Cambodia, so we couldn't ask for any recommendations on their better dishes. They have a good range of selection of wines (there’s this air-conditioned room where they keep all their wines, although I’m not sure if the temperature is set correctly – but anything is better than leaving wines out in a tropical country).

We decided to fill our tummies with Ravioli in Gorgonzola sauce, a seafood spaghetti and a breaded Lamb Rack(which was my main purpose of heading there anyway), and also ordered a Barbera d’Asti, medium body according to the menu.

Ravioli was good, seafood spaghetti was normal just you know, pasta, but the lamb was yummy. It was cooked just right, albeit a little too salty for my liking, but the unsalted potatoes on the side kind of balanced it out.

Remember I said that it was a hot sunny Sunday afternoon? Well, it started pouring down when we were almost finishing our meal and there was no way we could get to a tuktuk without getting ourselves soaked, so we stupidly happily waited an hour for the rain to mellow down a little before heading out. And to my pleasant surprise, the wonderful staff there sheltered us out in a hugeass umbrella! Apparently the word 'umbrella' didn't come to my mind after stuffing myself silly with food wtf.

Update: I went there 4 more times after that day, and my second visit was less wonderful than my first. They have since changed their menu and I don't see that lamb on that menu anymore. Also, the quality seemed to have fallen a little, although I'd still head back if I wanted a fuss free dinner in a peaceful outdoor setting (bring your mosquito repellent if you don't want to feed whilst getting fed).


Luna D’Autunno Italian Restaurant
6C Street 29
Phnom Penh, Cambodia

KTV with Colleagues: Wai Ye, Gigi & Carrie

The 4 of us decided to hone our singing skills whilst filling our tummies, so we decided to go for a KTV Buffet Dinner, which is basically just having an array of buffet food outside the room, where you can take whatever food you like within the paid hours of the singing session. =]

No pictures of the food here, as I was busy singing(ahem!) and snapping away.

Somewhere somehow, somebody would always manage to ruin some pictures.

Cheung Chau Island

Cheung Chau is one of the most populous out-lying islands of Hong Kong and it is a very famous destination for short get-aways as well. People usually go to Cheung Chau during festivals, to offer prayers to their ancestors who are buried in the mountains there and even for seafood, beach and random hikes.

Of course, like in anywhere in HK, there are great food places there too! I personally love this fishball stall and although they are considered quite pricey at HK$10 per 4 fishballs (usual price in hk is about $6 for 5), they are totally worth the price as I, as a teochew, can tell REAL fish and FAKE flour apart. They use REAL FISH! Yay!

Here are some photos I took, including the famous fish ball stall!

'Kum Wing Tai' fish-balls stall. (The expressions of the trio have nothing to do with the taste of the product, its purely coincidental I must say.)

Singaporeans believe, that anything with a queue must be good, so it's highly recommended that you join a queue whenever you see one:

Photo: Ben Stansall / AFP / Getty Images via www.taylorherring.com

New Room, New Flatmates, New Start!

After a month of searching for a new place to move into, I finally found a place on gumtree hk!
They are 3 nice ladies and 1 of them was gonna move out and leave the place and hence the other two had to rent out the room that she was taking, and they found me! Yay!

My new place to sleep in

That window, I later found out, was where the previous owner of the house jumped out from.

Just Kidding! Hahah but that window is where all the traffic noises came in at night and it was super annoying I had to keep it closed most of the time.

The other door you see is the shared toilet which Lisa & I shared. Lauren has her own en-suite toilet in her bedroom.

That room at the end is Lauren's Bedroom, twice as big as my mini room!

This is our living room, and they said they saw fireworks from the living room during Chinese New Year.

And thats the main door, with my shoes right next to it.

Favourite Noodles in Hong Kong

'Tam Zai' yun nan noodles is a chain noodle shop that is ever popular regardless of age in Hong Kong.
How I got to know about this fabulous gift from the universe, is from my ex colleagues when I was working near Cheung Sha Wan. They used to call up the stall and mass order lunch for everyone, and then we'd walk down to the stall to collect our noodles by ourselves as this chain yunnan noodle shop does not offer delivery services.

It is so popular that it is always crowded (depending on location), and the one I first went to was always full of people lining up, holding numbered tickets waiting for their turn.

It serves a range of about 15 ingredients which you can choose randomly and they'll cook them in your choice of soup base. For people who can't take spicy foods, theres only 1 soup base to choose from, no prizes for guessing what it is, but yes it is Clear Savoury Soup. How boring. =] And there comes the choices for spicy food lovers, and they are Level 10, L5, L4, L3, L2, Mild Spicy, Medium Spicy, Big Spicy and finally SUPER spicy, with L10 being the mildest. Of course there is also the Hot & Sour version which is basically L10+preserved sour vegetables, so it's an option for people who like sour  soup bases.

I started out with a L5 spiciness in 2008, and slowly upgraded to L4. They are pretty spicy even for L5 and L4, so I remained in that level, until recently, Sep 2011, I upgraded my spiciness level to a L3 and found myself having to search for tissues to stop the uncontrollable mucus from dripping. Eww, yes I know. It is such an addictive dish that I'm almost certain they must have added in some addictive ingredients that made me wanna have them almost every 3 days. Of course, there are people who do not understand what's so delicious about this bowl of noodles, so I guess the addictive doesn't work on everyone. =]

I always choose 竹生  (pronounced 'chok sang'), which is some kinda porous, crunchy bamboo shoot of some kind, which absorbs all the flavour of the soup and really juicy when you chew on it, paired up with either chicken or pork slices and that meal would be a definite satisfying one.

A bowl of those two ingredients plus the spicy soup base costs around HK$28-$30 (S$4.50-$5) depending on the location of the noodle shop.

So far no other soup noodles that I've tried managed to take over the place of Tam Zai in my heart, or tummy for that matter. Either that, or I've been eating Tam Zai for so long, that I don't even wanna try other similar types of noodles (this type of noodles is totally different from the wanton noodles type nor the prawn mee type btw).

Photo time!

Number on the screen is 53. =]

My number is 57! 4 more yay! The second line says for 1 person.

Menu for new customers to decide what to eat before sitting in. For me, I always know what I wanted even before I reach the shop. =]

Level of monstrosity! Hahaha I once saw someone eating the SUPER spicy and his face was as red as a monster. So is the soup.

$5 extra if you wanna have a drink with your noodles.

Yummy Iced Lemon Tea!

I'm feeling like having it right now whilst typing.

Finito.