A week before Uee's wedding, our team organised a day trip to Ipoh for our half yearly F2F trip, initially we were going to Genting but final plans ended up being Ipoh - that's fine for me coz I still get to spend time with my bf who's working in Ipoh :)
So the plan goes like this: We leave for Ipoh early Saturday morning, returning the same night itself. As for myself, sinc emy bf has booked for a night's stay at Genting on Sunday, so I will stay over at his place on Saturday night, and we'll drive ourselves up Genting on Sunday, returning to Penang on Monday morning.
Alright! Morning came and after picking me up and getting some take away breakfast near Pulau Tikus, we went and picked up Ronald - and were all screaming in awe at his 3-storey custom-built mansion!!!!! Gosh how can ANYBODY be as rich as that; AND working with us at the same time???? Just doesn't make sense to us.
Anyway, after reaching there, Andy met us up in another car and we went for nice Ipoh dim sum at Youk Fouk Moon (my recommendation) as they have really nice dim sums.... after everyone had their stomachs filled up, off we went to the famous 'Sam Poh Tong ' (Sam Poh cave), and was I foresighted enough to bring my mobile fan there :D coz i knew it's gonna be soooooooooooo hot there
Some of the pics I took there....................
This is an interesting couple statue where you can aim your coin into their palms and you will have good romance luck (that's what the board says)... that's Andrew's hand having a go at it:-
We saw these 2 huge fishes at one of the man made pond there as well... I actually felt sorry for the fishes as the water looked very murky and the pond was obviously not big enough for them...
Next we all went ahead for pomeloes and most of them bought a handful except myself - coz I had to go Genting the next day still and won't be returning to Penang til Monday, after that we went to another Ipoh cave attraction - 'Kek Lok Tong' cave
I've actually been to Sam Poh Tong before but not Kek Lok Tong... I liked Kek Lok Tong a lot more coz it's much cleaner, calmer and the atmosphere is just very soothing and mind calming...
Kek Lok Tong's name in Chinese..
Overview of the cave...
Big Kuan Yim Statue...
Walking inside....
Looking up...........
After walking up the stairs, this is the view looking back to where we came from:-
Continue walking.......
These are all the various Gods for people to pray on....
There's a koi pond with what looks like a pair of smooching fishes... how romantic.................
After we reach the very end, this is the breathtaking view that welcomed us:-
I couldn't emphasize more on the whole serenity of this atmosphere.. breeze sweeping your face.... it's just so calming to my soul.... I can imagine myself sitting here gazing through the horizon of green lush... forget that the rest of the world had ever existed..
When we walk down the stairs towards the lake, more greeneries came into view......
The lake...
There are cute li'l leaves surrounding the lake as well...
After this, we were pretty much starving and under Andy's poor navigation and a bit of time spent circling around, finally we found the famous Under the Tree eating place!
The famous Fried Yong Tao Foo.....
Curry Mee (this is a good one)
Laksa (nah... nothing compared to those we have back in Penang)
And we ordered the mix fruit juice that Andy recommended... boy luckily he warned us on the size of the drink - and I shared this with Suchi.... they pour in chunks of dragon fruit, longans, mangoes, oranges, etc.... Not bad!
And finally I get to have my egg pudding that I've been craving for a looooooooong time... but the ones they have here just tasted normal... I'd like to have those famous ones from specialised eateries...
After the late lunch we went to Jusco and there was this Gatsby fair going on at the outdoor car park and we all headed there; andrew, ronald and boss had their hair re-styled by the stylists there... and there were some cool cars on displays and plenty of models there for picture-taking as well! Were they popular like hot cakes... coz all of us took photos with them too haha!
This trio is the one I liked best coz they're so kawaiiiiiii ~~
After Jusco we had the famous Ipoh bean sprout chicken at Lou Wong, and this has got to be better than Onn Kei's, refer this post - Day 4
My bf then came to pick me up as a handover from my colleagues to him and we brought me to Ipoh Parade for some window shopping.... how sweet! Afterwhich he was a bit hungry so we went for Yoelde English, one of the nice western eateries in Ipoh...
My bf had a mushroom chicken while I sampled their tom yam soup.
The mushroom chicken was good but not the tom yam... the sour-ness was a bit too overpowering... didn't like it that much.
Afterwhich we went back to his place, where I can finally have my shower and head to bed for some much needed rest.
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Genting trip!!!!
Morning came and my bf brought me to a nice curry mee place... we added some Seo Bak (roasted pork) to our curry mee and it was delicious indeed... the seo bak was really good, considering it's just an additional side to the main curry mee..
I ordered white cofee (Ipoh famous maaa) at the coffee shop as well and surprisingly, it was very good! Nice, thick and full of aroma that a white coffee is supposed to have, minus the bitterness of it... just nice!
Having full stomachs, Genting, Genting here we come!!!
We were expecting Genting to be pretty chilly as it's end of the lunar year now, but wasn't expecting it to turn out like this!
See how even the car park is full of mist? The normally dry car park platform all slippery, and all the cars are blurred out with a layer of mist as well, and the wind kept on blowing at our faces! Brrrrrrrrrrr~!
Even the outdoor theme park is drowned by the mist! Luckily we had no plans for outdoor activities :)
After checking in, we rested a while and headed off for some walking around, saw some Chinese New Year decorations and nice lightings....
We settled for Hainan Kitchen for lunch coz I was still craving for their Shanghai Siu Long Pao (dumpling paos), unfortunately they don't have those anymore as it was a seasonal offering.
My bf ordered a Hainan Chicken Rice...
while I had a supposedly Fried Beef Hor Fun... that turned out to be very gravy-yyyy :)
The chicken rice was not bad, though I didn't really liked the Fried hor fun, the gravy/stew was not too bad though... haha
Then we went off to rake in some money from the casino..... :)
but didn't manage to make any significant winnings, suddenly my bf wanted some raisin chocolates coz he thinks he's Chow Yun Fatt the God of Gambler who loves to eat chocolates *eyes rolled* so we bought some....
After that we went for dinner break at our usual place - Mr. Teppanyaki at the food court
We had such a huge feast there, ordering their sets - 1 chicken set and 1 seafood set, check out the stuff they throw into their sets!
Main chicken set:-
Main seafood set:-
California roll and soup that comes with each set:-
Drink and dessert that comes with each set:-
It was value for money indeed, and we were so full after that....
After more rounds of gambling...............
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we finally dragged our tired feet and drained mind (who says gambling is relaxing?) back to our room by 2am.... and this was what we ended up with for the night..
Not bad, coz it's a win :D (for my bf - we'll talk about myself later *grinz*)
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The next morning we woke up freaking early for the buffet breakfast that came with our stay but was very very disappointed to find that they only offered us like 6 things to choose from - this is the worst buffet I had so far.... imagine I sacrificed my sleep for that kind of buffet.. baaahhhhh!
As we were making our way back to our room to pack up our stuff, we noticed this mobile phone charger booth... that offers all types of charger head for any type of mobile phone you can possibly think of.. I didn't get a clos eup picture of it coz as you can see, these 2 girls were figuring out how to charge their Nokia 7610 (same as mine)... cool isn't it?
After that, we headed for a final round of money raking and my bf striked on the spot in one Tai Sai (Big-Small) game by putting all his bet on 1-2-4, 1-2-3-4 and Small....! How genius! However, he lost back some of it in Bacarrat tables and in the end, he still won compared to the principal he brought, just won a little less compared to last night that's all; as for myself, I lost all my principal.... :) but it's ok.. coz my bf treated me to a nice meal at Hou Yao Kei's... we wanted to go to Ming Ren - the restaurant where Cody treated us for dinner the last trip here; but it was still under reno and not yet completed... but they had this nice bird cage deco outside...
At Hou Yao Kei, we ordered their signature dish - long beans with minced meat; followed with roasted pork and an asparagus with prawns... All of them were delicious except for the long beans which tasted much better when I last had it with my family (that was like 3 years ago)... both of us loved the roasted pork coz the skin was so crunchy!!!
Finally.... time for us to leave Genting..... When we got to the carpark the mist got worse compared to yesterday....
The winding road down had poor visibility as well and it wasn't even raining... it's all mist!
Just after our car went past the first 10% of the road, the sky cleared up and sun's shining.... how odd...
And this is the bridging thingy that Genting custom built for road users.... kinda scary thinking that our car came from there just now :S
So all in all, we had a nice trip.... though I lost all my money, but it's ok... So long as we know we are not addictive gamblers that's all.... Next time, I shall practice patience while at the casino :P
