Malacca Makan Trip

The advantage of going to Malacca on a weekday is that there are lesser cars on the road and parking is readily available. What a joy!

We were very hungry by the time we reached Malacca, and headed straight to Yong Moh Coffee Shop after reading good reviews on the dim sum sold here. The shop has been opened for 60+ years (according to the friendly lady boss) and is now managed by the 3rd generation in the family. Yong Moh Coffee Shop is located along Jalan Tukang Emas (Blacksmith Street), adjacent to Jonker Walk and opposite Kampung Kling Mosque.

They are famous for their meat paus and simple and good dim sum fare (don't expect a huge variety like what you get in dim sum shops in JB and KL, Yong Moh serves the basic dim sum range but what we tried all taste good). We ordered the meat pau (of course), stuff beancurd, and various other dim sums. More pictures here:

The famous Yong Moh Meat Paus. They are THE most delicious and MOST value for money meat paus hubby and I have tasted so far!. The meat is very well marinated, so so juicy and succulent, and the pau is packed full of this juicy goodness. Be prepared for a burst of gravy as you take your first bite into the pau. Am sure you can tell from the pictures above how juicy the pau is. And ladies, the meat is pretty lean, so just enjoy yourselves! Oh and did I mention that the meat pau is only RM2 each?! We ended up da-baoing 6 more back to share with family.

We also tried the otah flavoured meat balls and steamed glutinous chicken rice (Loh Mai Kai). The meat balls looks unappealing but we were pleasantly surprise by the springy meat balls and the once again very well marinated otah flavoured filings. Definitely worth ordering if you are there. Hubby find the Loh Mai Kai passable, but not great. But I personally enjoyed it as I like that the Loh Mai Kai is not oily.

I like the dim sum here as I find that they do a very good job in marinating their dim sum filings. All of the dim sum we tried are juicy and tender. Taste test pass!

 

Price list of the paus and dim sum sold in Yong Moh. Very reasonable isn't it!

What is a trip to Malacca without the famous Malacca Chendol. We stopped over at Jonker 88 to quench our thirst and to satisfy the chendol craving. Jonker 88 offers 8 different varieties of chendol among which the Durian baba chendol (RM3) is my personal favourite. We decided to try this "Eight Treasure Chendol" (RM3) this time. The chendol is drizzled with a thick gula melaka syrup, coupled with very fragrant coconut milk and finely shaved ice. This is complimented with a generous serving of kidney beans, corn, chendol, atap seeds and my personal favourite - nugmet strips and crunchy peanuts! All the different flavours and textures in this one bowl.

Next up - Lunch at Nancy's Kitchen. One of the best Nyonya restaurant in Malacca (in our opinion). Nancy's Kitchen is located at Jalan Hang Lekir, off Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock. Be sure to reach there early as the restaurant will be fully packed during meal times. Oh, and the prices are very reasonable and the servings are quite large by our standard.

Spring Roll (Popiah) RM3 each - steamed spring roll served with turnips, cucumber, fresh bean sprouts, coriander leaves, eggs, garlic and others. A very popular starter before meal (actually I think this would goes very well with rice as well) and is a must try. Hubby tried one and immediately said this is very good.

 

Pork Rib with Black Nut (Bak Buah Keluak) RM10 for small bowl (which is actually quite big) - A Peranakan classic dish, a must order in any Peranakan restaurant. Buah Keluak refers to the black nuts in the dish above, originally from Indonesia (and supposedly tastes like truffle). The nut is cut opened so that the interaction of the spiced gravy and the nuts will produce a sweet spicy and sourish taste. We both love this dish very much and would probably have both polished off the huge bowl of rice given if not for the fact that we are on low carbo diet (I know, we had probably load in more carbo than anyone in this trip =p).  Well, we were suppose to scrape out the nut paste in the buah keluak and eat it with the dish but we both fall into the category that "love the dish, but not the nut". I personally prefer this dish over Babi Pongteh aka Pork with Bean Paste, another classic Peranakan meat dish. Though both goes very well with rice.

 

Fried Egg Cincalok (Cincalok Telur) RM6 for small - Egg is nicely fried but we couldn't really taste the cincalok inside.

 

Nyonya Mixed Vegetables (Nyonya Chap Cai) RM8 for small - This is another classic Peranakan dish where cabbage, lily buds, black fungus, glass noodles, bean curd sheet are cooked with fermented soya bean. I like this very much as the vegetables are cooked till they are soft and soaked with the sweetness of all the flavours all blended into one. Would say this would be a favourite among all age groups, especially those who prefers the natural sweetness of vegetables rather than spiciness in some belacan or assam based Peranakan dishes.

We also tried some of the kuihs in the restaurant, they taste good, though not absolutely fantastic.

 

Kuih Ku

Onde - Onde (Kuih Gula Melaka)

 

Next, we headed over to Nadeje Pateserie (located at Taman Melaka Raya - the rows of shop houses besides Newton Foodcourt and Mahkota shopping centre) for the famous mille crepe (a cake made up of 20 layers of paper thin crepe, with a light and smooth vanilla flavoured creme in between each crepe layer). The crepe cake is very light and fluffy, and isn't it very visually enticing just looking at the cake layers.

We were so stuffed by the time we left Malacca that we could only managed this plate of Guo Tie (which btw is very good as well) as dinner in JB before heading back over the causeway.

The end of my makan trip. Am going to stick to light meals for the rest of the week haha.

Lunch at Sungai Rengit

We were very hungry by the time we finished the fruit farm tour. A quick check with the guide points us towards Sungai Rengit, which is famous for their seafood.

So off we drove again the the direction of Sungai Rengit, which is about 35km away from Desaru, and ended up here

 

Jade Garden Seafood Corner, one of the best seafood restaurant in Sungai Rengit. We were there on a Saturday afternoon close to 3.30pm, I guess everyone have had their lunch by then as the place was quite empty (which is good for us). I'm sure this is a super duper popular restaurant as again there were lots of photos of celebrities pasted on the walls.

There were only 4 of us and after polishing up 4 packs of fruits from the fruit farm on the way to Sungei Rengit, our hunger level decreased. Hence we only ordered these

 

Stir-fry Lala with Ginger and Spring Onions

 

Stir-fry Veg

 

Tofu with Assorted Veg - This is one of their "chef recommendation" and tastes really good.

 

Steam Fish - Simple but so yummilicious! So good that only the bones were left!

Desaru Fruit Farm II

More pictures on Desaru Fruit Farm

Clockwise from top left: Intro to jumbu (I didn't know its called waterapple), budding flowers, withered flowers (or soon to be jumbu), finally JUMBU!

Clockwise from top left: Mulberry, Coffee seeds, Bitter gourd, Mini bitter gourd

 

Left: Papayas? Mangoes? Papayas? Mangoes? Its Papayas!! I wonder why this tree is so "botak"

Right: Rolls of normal (non-botak) papaya trees

 

I don't know the name of this flower, but I love its colour, and its dainty look. 

 

Huge beetle

Now, on to the mini zoo =), am only showing some of the animals

This is the pack of fruits each of us get at the end of the tour

Desaru Fruit Farm I

We continued our drive and soon reached the fruit farm.

Entrance to the fruit farm. Photo taken from inside the car as we drove straight into the main building.

 

Entrance fees...

The first thing that greats you

Photos of celebrities who had visited the farm plastered on the shop window.

We bought tickets for the farm tour and started on the tour. Each group (min 4 to form a group) will be assigned a guide. This is the "truck" that brought us to the starting point of the tour.

Unfortunately our guide told us that the fruiting seasons are usually between April - June and November - December each year, so we would not be able to see fruits on some of the plants. Nonetheless, we saw and learned a great deal.

Here are some of the plants / trees we saw

Left: Dragonfruit

Right: Dragonfruit flower

Left: Gigantic Jackfruit

Right: Tree full of jackfruits of all sizes. Some young jackfruits withered early and didn't have a chance to grow up.

Left: Breadfruit Tree. Breadfruit is a flowering free from the mulberry family (same family as jackfruit). It has both male and female fruits on the same tree but only the female flower grows into fruit.

Right: My favourite plant in the whole plantation because I love the name - Buah Long Long!!! The fruit of the buahlonglong plant is small and oval shaped, is a little bit sourish and tastes absolutely fantastic with plum powder! Can anyone tell me where to get buahlonglong in Singapore??

 

Left: Variety of bananas with a flower that points upwards (most banana flower points downwards), unfortunately the flower is blocked in this photo.

Middle: Rare banana tree with 2 bunches of bananas (I never know most, if not all banana trees only give a single bunch of bananas per tree, so this is unusual)

Right: Very rare banana tree with 3 bunches of bananas.

 

Left: I was so caught by surprise by this variety of banana. Its called the "Thousand Fingers" banana. As the name implied, this variety can produce up to 1000 bananas, and will continue to produce fruits until the stalk reaches the ground. According to the guide, the fruit is not edible.

Right: Another variety of banana.

Left: Pomelo plant

Right: Mini guava waiting to grow up. Guava leaves are very sweet smiling.

to be continued......

Desaru Crocodile Farm

This and the following 3 posts are long overdue posts that I've meant to put up but didn't get to doing.

I was in a "enjoying nature" mood couple of months back. So after visiting Zhengxin Organic Farm, I was looking out for other "nature vegetation" to visit. If you live in Singapore, and is a avid listener of radio station 95.8 (well my mum is, not me), you would probably have heard waves of publicity on Desaru Fruit Farm. Finally decided to make a day trip up after hearing so much about it.

We were driving along the road to Desaru when we saw a sign on the right that points to a crocodile farm. Out of curiosity, we turn into the side road. After driving for 10-15min along a deserted road through what seemed like a huge palm oil plantation (we also passed by a huge palm processing plant and saw trucks of palm coming straight out of the plantation), following signs set up along the way (and wondering if the crocodile farm exist at all...), we finally arrived at this place

 

We were sooooo relieved when we finally reached! At least we didn't turn off the main road in vain!

Now the next question is, are there really crocodiles in this place? Well, it says on the signboard at the entrance that they have more than 1000 crocodiles.... We went into the place and were vastly disappointed. The whole place was so empty, even the small shop (souvenir shop??) in front had its shutter pulled down. There were only this roll of crocodile skulls (I think) displayed on a table

Did we traveled all the way here to look that this?! We must have looked really disappointed, cos a kind old man signaled us to what look like water containers by the side of the shop. And we saw this

Baby crocodiles! Aren't they cute haha. And this marks the beginning of an interesting (and most importantly, free) tour of the crocodile farm. We went further in and saw these, just to show a few

A cluster (is that how you group them?) of crocodiles lazing around in their huge pool

This fellow was basking under shade

This crocodile "keeper" deliberately "played" with a pool of huge crocodiles to spice things up a little for us

 

Now this crocodile is unique. Did you notice his body is almost black? His spikes on his tail look so sharp and piercing, trust me, you wouldn't want to mess with him.

On our way back to the main road, we spotted this

The building of a mega structure! This huge bridge (I don't know where the bridge links and have no idea what the bridge is called) is almost complete, save for the small part in the middle. Call me ignorant, but I have seriously not seen an uncompleted bridge and hence got all excited. If anyone know what the name of this bridge is and where does it connect, please let me know.

Trip to Kluang and Zenxing Organic Farm - Part II

Went back to Zenxin Organic Park hopping to catch the 10.30am free guided tour.

We were waiting for the free guided tour but was told they were short-handled and could only conduct a guided tour for the group of school kids, and that they were going to pick Kang Kong first. As we didn't want to join the kids (picking veg can take a lonngg time), we decided to rent bicycle and roam around ourselves.

We were so excited and started on our bicycle ride. But it lasted less than 20min, the weather was sooo hot and the paths are sooo bumpy that we decided to just walk.


With the pumpkin, I have no idea what Hubby is trying to portray in this photo:

(Left:) Chili Plant - Can you see the green chilies which are camouflage?
(Right) Lady's Finger - The flower is so pretty!

(Left) Long Beans - I didn't know they always grow in pairs!
(Right) Roselle Flower 洛神花 - We usually only see the dried ones.

(Left) Dragon Fruit
(Right) I cannot remember what plant this is but I like the pic which Hubby took.

I don't know what this plant is, but the guide said touching the fruit would bring good luck and immediately everyone rushes to touch it ha!

There are lots of other herbs and vegetation and its impossible to post all here. If you are interested to see more, make a trip down to Zenxin Organic Park!

We were very tired after the tour and the weather is scorching hot. Its also time for lunch, so off we go to the restaurant for some organic goodness!

These were what we ordered:

Fried pumpkin with sesame (Small: RM9)

Mixed Vegetable Soup (RM8), I only remember to take photo after each of us has had a bowl of soup.

Samsui Chicken (about RM18). The chicken is nice with the chili sauce and garlic paste. We asked for extra chili and garlic.

Fish Soup Bee Hoon (RM7). Doesn't seem impressive in this photo but there is lots of organic vegetables in this bowl, and the serving is huge!

Had a tiring but enjoyable trip, wouldn't mind going again =)