Penang (Day 2 Part 2) - Jemputree

C was very considerate towards princess who didn't take too well to street food. Thus she suggested this place in town where it will be an awesome experience for the child and the child is us to dine on a treetop. It was a wonderful choice, not just for the experience, but also for the delicious food. The nasi lemak is to die for, and all the sedap sambal and rendang gravy, yum yum. The rice was the best I've ever tasted.

Hubby opted for an equally fiery Tom Yum seafood soup to go with plain rice.

This young coconut juice was for him to counteract the spiciness of the soup. Hehe.

C ordered an Ikan Bakar, which means bbq or grilled fish to share.

Cucur Ikan Bilis, anchovies fried in flour is one of their specialties and we all loved this dish. It was totally addictive. We (baby and kid included) just couldn't stop eating them. :)

Hubby loved this cucur pisang which we ordered two portions of.

Unfortunately we were more interested in eating than taking photos, so we do not have pictures of the place. You can check it out here for some.

Penang (Day 2 Part 2) - Penang Hill

Following our very heavy lunch, we made our way to Penang Hill. Tickets were bought beforehand for the 3pm trip up the funicular railway. This was the highlight of this trip for Princess as she had read about it in her book.

We got there a half hour too early for our timeslot and tried to get on the earlier trains but they were filled to the brim. I really wasn't looking forward to this trip but hubby reminded me that that was what princess wanted to do, and that it's boring for her to go round the malls, as much as it was for me to ride on this train. Oh well.

This is what it typically looks like in the cabins, with passengers squashed in to each other. There were only a few seats in the cabins and they were mostly given up for the elderly and the young children. The ascend up the hill felt longer than it should have due to the discomfort of having people squash you in, left, right and centre. And not to mention the heat. There was no ventilation whatsoever. I do look forward to next Feb when they close to make huge renovations to the railway. Apparently when it's done, the air-conditioned cabins can take up to 150 people per trip and there will be more seats in them.

Scenes along the way...

Are we there yet?

Finally, views from the top.

That's Penang Bridge in the background... awesome piece of architecture.

There was a lady up the hill who sold these grasshoppers for RM$1 each. We got two of those. Aren't they pretty?

Coming down the hill, we were cramped in the cabins for over 15mins with no signs of the train moving. For whatever reason, I have no idea. Verdict after the trip uphill... Me to hubby & princess: 'So now, which was more enjoyable? The trip up the hill or the mall?'. Their answers, 'The Mall'. I rest my case.

Our Penang Trip (Day 2 Part 1) - New World Park

We stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel, Penang, which was only opened in September this year. The Beatles were with us everywhere we went, from the lobby to the headboard in our room and everywhere else in the hotel. The funpool was the best part of the hotel, entertaining the kids with the water slides, etc. Princess and hubby spent an entire day at the hotel on our second last day there, playing in the pool as well as in the special rooms dedicated to the kids, where there were pool tables, xbox & Wii game consoles and even a drumset to play on. As the hotel provides buffet breakfast each morning, we tended to eat before we went out.

This was what we had for breakfast at the hotel. They offered a wide buffet selection but I did not take any pictures of those. The freshly-cooked omelette was my favourite part of the buffet and the saute mushrooms were a favourite with lots of guests.

C had it all planned out on where to take us. She was a wonderful host who couldn’t wait to share with us all the yummy food of her hometown. We weren’t that great with eating too much thus we took it slow. Even so, we went straight off to lunch after our breakfast and I thought we didn’t do too badly that day. She drove us to New World Park where you will find a very nice and modern food centre somewhat like our East Coast Lagoon. There you get a wide choice of food items. There are also a few eateries in that compound, namely Old Town Coffee, a Peranakan cafe and I can’t recall what else I saw.

This is the huge array of food that we had for lunch... (I think only big photos can do justice to the delicious food). ;)

Prawn Noodles or Hae Mee

Fishball Noodles or Mee Tng

Lor Bak or what we would call Ngoh Hiang here in Singapore.

Otah

Chee Cheong Fun

Steamed Yam Cake

Glutinous Rice Dumpling or Bak Chang

Our Penang Trip (Day 1)

Our holidays began on 18th Nov as we boarded a Jetstar flight to visit our friends in Penang. Prior to that, dear princess was suffering an entire week at home due to a serious bout of I don’t know what till this day. It started with a very high fever on the Monday before school closed and it took her a week to recover, during which time she suffered from tummy pain, serious loss of appetite, flu & cough. Poor child had to forgo her fun post-exam activities which she was very much looking forward to. Who’s to know that I caught some of her virus and ended up sick 2 days before we were due to fly. I had a fever the night before we took off and I took panadol, slept very early and was very well-rested. By Wednesday the fever was gone, and just as well since we had to go through a thermal scan at Penang. I didn’t wish to get deported.

Our flight departed from Changi Airport Terminal 1 which only had one runway in operation. It wasn’t even peak period and yet we had to wait in line for half an hour before we took to the skies. Flight time was great. Before we knew it, we were there. C met up with us at the airport with her little princess. What an adorable child, she won all our hearts especially those of hubby’s & princess’. However, it was more difficult to win her over to our side hehe.

C whisked us off to the first 100yen outlet to have a look. It was a tiny place and there wasn’t much on offer there. However, 2 doors away was a kitchen wares place and I found something for a friend of mine who will be getting them for Christmas, thus not able to share photos of those here. :P That was a great find and I’m very pleased with them.

She was very eager to feed us, but we disappointed her as we turned out to be small eaters. :) Added to that, the fact that I was ill and didn’t have much appetite throughout the trip. That really dampened the spirit. :(

On our way to pick up her hubby, we stopped by a pancake shop to have a bite of one of the ‘must eat’ food items on our list. We had to wait a whole 15mins for the guy to get the pancake mould heated, and meanwhile we had to go through a mind-boggling list of what flavours to order. There were too many to choose from.

That first night in Penang, we were taken to the street stalls where we had duck egg char kuay teow, assam laksa, kuay teow tng & satay. However, maybe I wasn’t feeling that well, or maybe just out of sheer laziness, I didn’t take photos of the things we ate. What a waste, as we didn’t get to re-visit those same foods again. They are stored in my memory bank for my own reference.

Oreo Cheesecake

I had a good cheesecake recipe years ago, but haven't had any luck since then to come across any that I liked, till now. Have been itching to bake a cheesecake, so I searched for a simple one that wouldn't take up too much of my time, and at the same time, didn't require too many packs of cream cheese. I found this website which has a lovely collection of recipes, and I'll have to make time to try out some of them. This particular cheesecake recipe was taken from there. I'm sorry it took me so long, S.

I know it looks kind of weird, like some steamed egg with century egg bits, but this is yummy stuff! I substituted the full fat cream cheese with Kraft cream cheese light, which made it not so sinful.

Pardon me

Yes, I am aware of the ugly photobucket thingy all over my blog, but I can't repair it, so have to wait till hubby's free to fix it. Do bear with it. Thanks. :)

New toys

I have some new toys today, so that spurred me on to make a bento this evening. To tell the truth, we didn't spend the entire day doing revision. It started off with some online homework and some written ones given by the Chinese teacher. But what got me off to a bad start this morning was that the minute my eyes were open, I was greeted with a 'I can't find my planner!', and that got me out of bed pretty quickly. Found the hubby digging everything out of the school bag. Here I am stressing like, oh no, what are we going to do now. The userid & url are all written in a note in there. While I was fussing and nagging, the two of them nicely settled themselves down in the computer room and logged in. So what was all that fuss when the girl could remember her passwords etc, I don't know. Anyway, a classmate's mum suggested that she might have left the planner in school so I'm hoping she's right. Even though it's the end of the school year, we do want to keep that, and fingers crossed it didn't go missing. All the memories of her first year in a primary school are in there. I'm a sentimental person, so yes, I will keep such things.

After her e-learning work was done, we made a trip to Orchard. We had a simple lunch there and picked up some stuff. Then it was home again for the start of mummy's work. Hehe. I'm taking a break now after dinner and giving her a bit of tv time as she's been doing quite a few tests since the afternoon.

My friend told me to expect a package in the post this week so when I got home this afternoon, I had to stop by the mailbox and was elated to find it waiting there for me. Little girl couldn't wait to open it so I let her do the honours. There was a whole bunch of stuff in there, but the one I was most eagerly waiting for were the emoticon picks as shown in the bento above. I did not just use one. I had to use at least 3! Haha. I thought the patterned pick made a very cute hair do for the yellow face. The diecut HK bento is super cute.

Knowing that I'd be tired after a few hours out, I thought we'd just have hotdogs for dinner. For her bento, I cut up a hotdog bun in half, slathered it with pizza sauce, and sliced up the sausages and topped that with some cheese, and baked them to make submarine pizzas. Of course that was not all she had for dinner. She had a whole hotdog bun on the side. The jelly was made by a friend's mum for her, so that went in the bento. There was half a tomato, some strawberries & some mini Easter eggs. There is also some ketchup in the little HK container with the spoon.