This Chinese New Year is like any other CNY. I went back to my hometown, reunion with hometown friends and family. Everything is joy for the one whole week at hometown except for the very limited internet connection. Been missing all the blogs updates.

My only option to online is by using Digi gprs signal. There’s no broadband signal. Imagine the speed of the connection… It’s just 113 kbps! Oh god!

Let’s start a New Year post with something good! Upon arriving at Taipei we were greeted by cool breeze as it’s winter and it was getting dark although it’s around 5pm. We were already starving after check in to Dandy Hotel.

Since Xi Men Ding is just 10 mins away from our hotel, we decided to go to Xi Men Ding to explore the food!

Upon arriving, my aunt is so excited to see white bitter gourd juice which tasted bitter with a hint of honey taste. Very good for cooling body heat but I don’t like it as I don’t fancy bitter food.  :P

Ah Zhong Mian Xian (Ah Zhong Mee Suah) – one of the very famous food among Taiwan local people and tourist. I never expect to eat the mee suah in this way. Everyone is just standing in front of the shop eating their bowl of mee suah. There are so many people patronizing this shop.

Ah Zhong Mian Xian was founded since 1975 which is 35 years ago. The mee suah is pre-cooked in a big pot where the worker just scoop into a bowl and it’s ready to serve.

My bowl of mee suah with some pig intestine served together.

The seasoning (garlic oil, vinegar and chili oil) is placed in a nearby small counter where everyone help themselves with it. You can add the seasoning base on your liking.

Beware of the chili oil, just a small amount is enough to bring the spiciness.

Ah Zhong Mian Xian taste very different from our Shilin Oyster Mee Suah. Firstly there’s no oyster in Ah Zhong Mian Xian. Secondly the mian xian tasted very fragrant, I guess thanks to the pig’s intestine.

Refer to below picture for Ah Zhong Mian Xian business hour and price.

My trip to Taiwan last month was a great one! We fly to Taipei with Air Asia and landed at Taoyuan Airport. It was on early Dec, therefore the weather is cooling (minimum temperature during our trip was 12 Deg C).

One of the food that make my family members screamed for is Yilan Spring Onion Pancake (Cong You Bing). Yilan is famous for cultivating spring onion, therefore you can imagine how fresh the spring onion can be.

Our driver recommended us this stall for the Cong You Bing; “San Xing“.

Cong You Bing is actually a delicacy which lots of chopped spring onions with some minced meat wrapped underneath a thin layer of dough.

See those freshly chopped spring onions…

The Cong You Bing is then fried on a pan.

And if you want your cong you bing to be spicy, they will sprinkle some chili powder on top of it. Just like the Shilin Crispy Chicken.

A bite into the Cong You Bing reveals a thin layer of crispy and spicy skin with juicy and fragrant spring onions flavoured with minced meat. It tasted awesome!

Although I don’t really like spring onion, but I too got addicted to this cong you bing.

A closer look for you to guess. There are a variety of fruits, some fish balls, bean curd, etc. How are we suppose to eat this? Just eat it the way it is? That’s not interesting enough!

Let’s take a look at the variety of fruits and food before we proceed to eat it.

Umbra, bean curd, star fruits. Btw, what do we call ‘umbra’ in english?

Tomatoes, octopus, pineapples, guava and wax guava.

Carrots, mangoes, fish balls, cucumbers and turnips.

Quail eggs.

All these are to be eaten with rojak sauce. The way of eating this is to dip the fruits into the rojak sauce which is served in a common bowl. Some of us might not be able to accept this way of eating due to hygiene issue.

But this is one of the stall with the good rojak sauce. The spicy one is really spicy with lots of grounded peanuts.

It’s a drizzling morning on our 3rd day at Siem Reap. Our tour guide brought us to a coffee shop which serve famous Cambodia food.

Upon seated, we saw a few delicacies ready served on the table. Those delicacies looks like our dim sum. At first I thought those are free. But then only I found out that it’s not.

It’s like our local fried fritters (yau char kwai).

This is one of the famous dish in Cambodia, beef noodle soup. The soup base is extremely sweet to my liking. It’s like a mug of sugar was used to cook the soup.

Cambodia curry to go with baguette. The curry doesn’t taste spicy.

This is one of the famous dish in this Cambodia restaurant; roasted duck noodle. The soup base is too sweet (from seasoning I guess) to my liking.

Seems like all the soup base noodle in Cambodia tasted more to the sweet side.

The bean sprout was served aside, so it’s a good option for those who don’t like it.

We woke up at 4am local time and depart at 5am for the sunrise viewing at Angkor Wat. We bought the 3 days Angkor Ticket for USD 40 / pax. On the ticket, there’s our picture printed on it to prevent fraud I guess.

The ticket counter.

Upon arriving Angkor Wat, we were disappointed as we saw thick cloud. Anyway, we still continue shooting despite the bad weather. We waited for the sun until 8am, and it can’t be seen still. We’ve given up then and decided to go for breakfast.

No sun and no blue sky were seen.

The wall surrounding Angkor Wat Temple.

Our tour guide suggested that we just have our breakfast at Angkor Wat to avoid wasting time in travelling. So we just went to nearby stall for some food.

Toasted baguette with 2 sunny side up. The baguette was crispy on the outer layer and soft underneath. We’ve tasted a hard and chewy one the day before.

I was back from a trip to Siem Reap 2 weeks ago. It was a good experiece to be able to see the ancient temples of Angkor and also the lifestyle of the people of Siem Reap.

We managed to grab some cheap air ticket from Air Asia to Siem Reap, but departure was from KL. We are lucky as we are able to grab some zero fare ticket to KL too which just cost us RM 60/pax for a 2-way trip. As for the 2-way ticket from KL – Siem Reap, it cost us RM 277 / pax.

Since we have a few hours transit at LCCT, we’ve booked Tune Hotel which is located just a few minutes away from LCCT. Since we booked the hotel during a promo period, it just cost us RM 14.00. The room is really small, just less than 1 feet distance away from the queen size bed which is located at the center of the room. But it’s a pretty good place to sleep for a few hours waiting for our flight tomorrow morning at 7am.

There’s a free bus shuttle from LCCT to Tune Hotel or you can opt for a van shuttle which cost RM 1 / pax.

The flight to Siem Reap take around 2 hours.

We rented a hostel near Old Market Area named I Lodge. USD 13 / night consider acceptable to us. There are a few types of rooms available. A standard room with a queen size bed or a room with 3 single beds. Both rooms are attached to a bathroom with water heater and are air-conditoned.

We arrived Siem Reap at 8am on 29/07/09. It took around 30 mins to reach our hostel from Siem Reap International Airport. The hostel guy picked us up with the hotel van.

The room is pretty spacious.

After we settled down at our hostel, we headed to hunt for our lunch. Our tour guide brought us to a nearby restaurant; LYLY Restaurant. The price for the food is pretty standard which is USD 2.00 for a plate of rice or a bowl of noodle.

Lok Lak Beef Rice – a local famous dish. It’s actually stir fried beef served with fried rice. My bf like the beef, but I find it a bit too raw and tad bland. The fried rice was pretty fragrant. I really like the texture of the rice in Cambodia, it has a smooth and slightly chewy texture which is pretty similar to glutinous rice texture.

Chicken rice which was pretty similar to the one we get here in Malaysia. But the chicken meat texture was quite dry and there’s no soup being served.

We ordered Pork Chop Bun (Chu Pa Pau) and Wantan soup as appetizer. Afterall, Macau is famous for it’s pork chop bun rite? I don’t really like the pork chop bun. The bread is too hard and tasted too plain. Basically it’s a french loaf with a piece of pork chop in the middle of it. The pork chop only tasted salty to me. There’s bone in the pork chop. So weird leh… Shouldn’t it be boneless?

Wantan soup. This is good. Big piece of fresh shrimps can be found inside the wantan. Forget the name. But it’s something like shrimp paste mee. See the powder like thing on top of the mee. It’s actually powdered shrimp I guess as a very heavy taste of shrimp when you taste it. I don’t like this. :-p
Mace Ball noodles. The mace ball is springly but taste slightly fishy for me. I’m quite sensitive to fishy smell.
Dumplings noodle. Taste not bad.
Spicy and sour mee. This one taste good. Spicy and sour soup with some minced meat in it.
This shop is pretty famous in Macau.

We ventured our way at Mongkok and came across this small char chan teng (????) selling varieties of porridge and varieties of fried ‘dim sum’.

We ordered theng jai chuk (???). The porridge is very smooth but the taste is so so. In the porridge, some octopus can be found. This is different from what I ate at KL. The one I tasted before consist of some roasted peanuts and fried anchovies in it. This makes the porridge more fragrant. This one tasted quite plain.

Char leung – something very special to me. The yau char kuai is wrapped with plain chee cheung fun. Some soy sauce as seasoning. You can eat this with peanut butter sauce or sweet sauce too.

Steam raddish cake. This one tasted too plain for me.
Yau char kuai. Yummy. The yau char kuai there is quite long. Very crispy with fluffy dough inside. I am a fan of yau char kuai anyway…

I forgot what’s the name of this ler. This one is quite similar with yau char kuai except the filling inside is more compact. I like this too.

What a perfect breakfast with a cup of warm soya bean.

There’s a similar shop located at Singapore. This shop is open by a friend of the HK shop owner. According to the SG shop owner, then HK shop owner share his receipe with him.

The SG shop name is ????, located at Marseling, Woodlands.

We took lunch at Ngong Ping Garden Restaurant. It’s a set meal for 4 pax which we bought the voucher at the cable car ticket counter. There’s a 20% discount entitled for the meal when we bought it together with the cable car ticket.

Char Siew and roasted duck. Both tasted good. The roasted duck skin is very crispy.

Chicken. Eh… but I forgot the name of it. Taste wise… pretty normal.

Kai Lan. Very normal.
Steam Egg with minced pork. A very normal dish. But I like it, maybe because I like to eat egg. Soup. It’s ABC soup. Taste wise – pretty salty.
What a nice pumpkin soup bowl.
Overall a pretty normal lunch which cost HKD 320. Quite expensive huh? Afterall it’s a tourist spot.

As we strolled along Goldfish market, we spotted a few restaurants selling roasted goose. But this shop attracted us most.

The main dish – roasted goose (1/2 goose). This goose is hot from the oven. It tasted like duck to me. Anyway, it taste good with crispy skin. HKD 110 for 1/2 goose.

Char Siew again. Wow! I really luv HK char siew. It’s so thick and the meat is so tender.

See, it’s so juicy. Yum yum…
Vege with oyster sauce. The oyster sauce is serve separately from the vege. As in Msia, the oyster sauce is mix with the vege. Taste too salty if we dip the sauce with the vege, but taste too tasteless if we didn’t dip with any sauce. OMG. What am I talking about… hehe…

This is our lunch at Goldfish Market.