Amazing Ipoh trip(reads food)...

So, last week was just another quick week, so quick that I can really remember much of it...

So, I'll start with the amazing Friday dinner (project dinner, cum the farewell dinner of a number of us), at Jogoya @ Starhill.

The food choices were amazing, with soo much seafood that I can't name them here. Scallops, oyster, clams, squid, salmon, crabs, shrimps, grouper, cod... many more... the highlight of the buffet was the coconut drink. Crazy, I had 7 coconuts for the night. I'll try to put up some photos later, and you guys will see for yourself. Sorry if you are expecting photos of every single dishes, like what I posted in my post of Penang food trip, but I sucked in my photoblogging this time, probably I was too hungry to care much, and hence, I only have like few photos of the food at Jogoya. Sorry again!

So, 18 of us were there eating and chatting and chilling til about 10.30pm and we left as some of us needed to catch train and whatnot. So, reached home at about 11.20pm, (thanks Ryan), and packed my bag for tomorrow's Ipoh trip and went to bed at about 1am.

Saturday

So...woke up this morning slightly after 7am, and got up ... alright...
will update this later...
alright... so, i think i'll just cut & paste it from the email I wrote to the MM-Daily groupies...

" Hey all,

I'm writing so much that I'm running out of title. So, it's me again, the more-often-than
weekly email.

So, last weekend, it was insanely good and insanely fattening, i'm pretty sure I gained
at least 1kg over the week, not only did i consume much more than normal, I missed my
weekly run again.

So, i did consume much more than normal, why did I do that??

It was Friday, and I was told to organize a project dinner. So, after being given the
greenlight and was told the budget, I started searching for a great buffet, and found
Jogoya @ Starhill, a high-end Japanese buffet chain from Taiwan!

The food was AMAZING. The range of fresh seafood available is more than the type of fish
you can name from the top of ur mind. Yup. I know u guys can't really name any, other
than Poh yi, and probably Putt, I'm challenging Phua, Keng Yang, Mel, and Eric and others
to try to name like 10 type of fish :)... oh yar, no googling pls...

And the fresh raw oyster was as big as my palm, and the selection of sushis... and what
not... also, they got unlimited supply of fresh coconut... it was soo goood that I had 7
coconut that night... also, even the ice-cream was soo good... Movenpick (with 2 dots on
top of the O)...

and also, the selection of cakes and cookies as dessert... i had sooooo much that i can't
sit down comfortably. :)

So, if you got the dol to spend, and also the appetite, definitely, go for Jogoya, it's
definitely one of the best buffet in Malaysia, (chia chye, go for the shrimps before its
extinction due to our over-consumption)

On Saturday, the bunch of 5 (Mel, Kai - the Seremban clan, and May Ying, Jin Ye and I -
the KL clan) terrorized our way to Ipoh. :)
We reached Ipoh at about 1 in the afternoon. The Seremban clan was like 15 minutes
behind. Met Putt, or should be start calling him Ah Wai, like his mom does... ;p, which
he already bought us nice soya bean milk... so, 5 + 1 of us packed into his gold Honda
City...

as Putt was known for his quick hands, and feet, and hence, the car too, those at the
back, were swinging from side-to-side, luckily it wasn't a leather seat back, or else, we
would be sliding from left to right, to left, and back to right again. :) Joyride eh...

So, first stop, we went to get the Gai Si Hor Fun, also Custard as dessert. The Gai Si
Hor Fun was great... the soup, the noodle... nice. And the dessert, a bit jelat after the
whole thing, i think it would be great if it's only half portion of it. But well, it was
reall good.

The CUSTARD....

Mel & Jin Ye enjoying savoring the custard... Look at Mel's and Jin Ye's expression... worth a million dollar man...
And of course, the infamous Ipoh's Kai Si Hor Fun...

The next stop, was the Kaya bun and the kaya rice... The kaya was amazing as well.
Personally, I like it a lot because it was very fragrant, but it wasn't too sweet...
Here's the Kaya bun and the Kaya glutinous rice... :)

And then, the amazing Chee Chueng Fun... we waited for an hour, at least, and but, it was worth every second of the long wait... really... the noodle was soooooo fulled of the shrimp aroma, that, crap, just writing this made me wanna eat it again....


Then, if I remember correctly, we went to get Tau Foo Fa... This was also another unique
experience because, there's actually a drive-thru Tau Foo Fa in Ipoh... lol... it's at
Funny Mountain (the name of the place/stall). Will get the pix up soon. And, back to the
tau foo fa, it's smooth, where u can actually feel it sliding down ur tongue, down ur
throat, the smooth and warm feeling down the throat was just different from any other tau
foo fa i've tried, OK, probably not, but it was good... :)Told ya... it's a drive-thru tau foo fa stall...

After the Tau Foo Fa, we bought a steam-boiled salted chicken... and after a decent
'joyride', we reached ah Putt, aka ah Wai's HUT... it was ginormous for a HUT, and after
settling down, we set our fingers on the poor chicken, with Mel leading the pack on
stripping it buck-naked (it was packed with a layer of wax-paper first), and then, May
Ying and Jin Ye joined in, and well, don't want to miss out on any of the action, Kai and
I participated in spreading and tearing the chicken too... :)

The herb taste of the chicken was great, and it wasn't too salty, and it was juicy
throughout, even the breast meat, which was the easiest to get dry and tasteless was
smooth and nice...

So, after the chicken experience, we watched the video of ah Putt, aka ah Wai, skydiving
experience... lol... well, it's hard for me to put it down in words, you just have to see
it... :) One thing for sure, I'm so excited after watching the video that I've decided
that I would definitely go on a skydiving/bungee jumping if there's a chance... trust
me... :) (i've even put aside some money for these stuffs for my next trip...)

Next up, after some resting and all of us but Mel having taken a shower, we set off for
dinner, with Putt't, i mean Wai's family. OK, now I know why others from Northern
Malaysia, always complain about the food in KL being expensive, especially seafood... So,
9 of us, had a 9 course dinner... yup... (no pics here because it was like a sit-down
dinner, with Wai's family, a bit out of place for a camera to be flashing when everytime
food's serve) So, no camera there... but the food was great... let me list them down:
Fish porridge, salted egg shrimps, steamed crab, claypot crab rice, stir-fried brinjal
aka eggplant, intestines(wai's favorite), fishballs, another vege, and the last but not
least, i forgot, someone might be able to recall the ninth dish. :)

So, after the dinner, we went to get dessert again... got a variety of it, and it was
good. Not much to talk about...

As we were all filled to the top by then, we decided to chill out for a moment, before
continuing to our next itinerary, i mean food stop, soo, we went for a movie at Kinta
City, and we decided on watching The Break-up, starring Vince Vaughn (the Weddings
crasher joker) and the all-so-meat-eating-beautiful Jennifer Aniston... :) it was a good
laugh, but not really that good, but in the movie, they did mention Ann Arbor and the
wolverines... :)

Came out, at about 1.30am, wanted to go for the famous Ipoh Bean sprouts and Chicken, but
well, when we reached there, we saw no chicken hanging at the stall, NO CHICKEN!!!, and
the workers were starting to clean up the place... crap, most probably, because of the
7th month of the lunar calendar, in chinese belief, the ghost festival thingy...

So, we were all so tired when we reached the HUT at about 2am, initially planning to wake
up at 6 something next morning for the infamous Fu Shan dim sum... but well, waking up at
6 something, that's impossible than impossible itself, sooo, well, i woke up at 6.15am,
well, it was all too dark, and others were still sleeping away, i rested my eyes, and
woke up again at 6.55am, and well, others were still sleeping, i sms-ed putt and he was
awake, he replied... but others were still sleeping, so, i went back to sleep as well,
and woke up around 7.30am again, and then this time, i was just nesting in the bed, doing
nothing, while waiting for others to come into senses... Kai was there sms-ing too... :)

finally, ppl starting to wake up at 8am... and then, after brushing up and all, we set
off for dim sum and bid goodbye to Wai's HUT and Mel's sis, ooops, i mean Putt's mom... :)

(oh yar, there was an on-going joke, more like observations, that Mel's very lady-like...
lady-like as in auntie-like :), the way she holds a plastic bag, or her handbag... and
her hairstyle... :) kekeke... ) sorry Mel, just have to say this...

So, the dim sum was great.. we waited for about good 20 minutes before getting an empty
table... the shrimps in the Har Kao was huge, and succulent... and many other kinda dim
sum was just great... those waitresses, old but mighty, in their cute uniform was also a
'sight'... keke....

Some of the dimsums, before I got tooooo consumed by consuming the dim sum...

After dim sum, we went for noodle, which was also very good... :)

And then, we went around getting food stuffs to bring home... Sak Kei Ma, Kacang tumbuk,
kaya puffs, and ...

and our last stop before heading to the Perhentian Medan Gopeng, was to go to a Cave, Kek
Lok Tong (Mel, again, it's not edible...when ah Wai first proposed to bring us to the Kek
Lok Tong, and Sam Poh Tong... caves, Mel thought it was some Ipoh delicacies... :))
Beautiful lotus flower... :)
Not as beautiful lake... :)
Kek Lok Tong is a limestone cave.
Koi and all in the pond...
A nice man made (i think) waterfall... :)

The caves was great... we took our one and only group photo there... attached it is... :)

So, we boarded our bus, heading south back to KL and Seremban respectively, at about 3pm
and 2.30pm accordingly... and well, reached home abt 6ish...
Many thanks to PUTT...

Oh yar, the entire trip, with transportation and all, also, all the foodstuffs we bought
for family, cost us about RM150 each... which was amazingly cheap, according to Mel, she
couldn't believe that it was that cheap, only 50% of her budget... she was bugging me
yesterday asking, did you count this? that? and also that?? and what else?? NO NO NO...
you haven't, u still owe like RM 999,999,999.99... that's 1 cent to a billion ringgit...
:)

That's about it, for our trip up to Ipoh...
Again, pics will be up on my blog soon... can't do it here, because for some good reasons
(yeah rite), flickr is flagged as sites containing 'nudity', how i wish no!?!?!


In a nutshell(did go to Menglembu, but didn't get the groundnuts there), it was an
amazing weekend... amazingly short, but amazingly good... :)

Not sure, if this email was hitting the 10kb mark... but hopefully it does... ;)
How about others' weekend??"