Motormouth From Ipoh – Malaysian Food & Travel

Mekong Delta Tour; a half day journey to the southwest of Vietnam

I am not going to hide anything. Yes, I have been contemplating and delaying the series so much, the minor details have started to escape me. The Flavours of Saigon series (click for the previous chapters) started after I was back from Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam sometime in August 2012.

Close to 8 months on, the remnants of the trip are still but haunting me. I owe everyone a conclusion to the series, and I promise that there will be a befitting end to it.

The bee farm, the boat ride, the coconut candy plant and the monkeys eating watermelon?!

Just that ….. by the time I am back in action (should be in May) I hope to have gathered more travel bits from Ho Chi Minh City. Yes folks, I am going back there in a week’s time.

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Continued from Serenity @ Day Trip Around Dalat …

Breakfast by the streets of Saigon – A random stall about 300 metres from our hotel (Saigon Mini 6) that serves wanton noodle soup and chicken porridge with you tiao (yau char kwai/Chinese crullers). Oh yeah, and also durians if you fancy them for breakfast!

Let’s do a really mechanical post for today. Woke up an hour late (!) and rushed off to work in record time. Started the day on adrenaline rush with nary a moment to breathe in between, right until dinner hours. So allow me to let off some steam (or whatever that’s left of it) before a long week back in IPOH! (Get them napkins off the shelf and ready for the onslaught of reviews?)

Cu Chi Tunnel – Climbing down a hole smaller than the average burly guy’s size (don’t get stuck and Instagrammed, please), trekking on level grounds and bearing witness to how cruel contraptions worked back in the warring days ….

On a more sombre note, let’s see what we did at Cu Chi (pronounced ‘koo-chee’); a bitter battleground for many years during the Vietnam war.

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Wow. It felt like forever since the last chapter of Flavours of Saigon back in September! Blame it on procrastination, sheer laziness and the numerous Travel Ideas posts in between, plus the undercurrent of another paradigm shift from a career POV. Since it’s a Sunday, bloody beautiful Sunday, let’s skip the crap and dive in.

*Here are the previous chapters to jog your memory: Tips & Rants, Ben Thanh Market & Journey to Dalat

Van Hanh Monastery, Dalat

As always, here’s a summary of where we are now.

Day 3 started off with a local street side breakfast of Bun Rieu (crab noodle soup flavoured with tomatoes and pork) and Banh Mi (the ubiquitous Vietnamese baguette sandwich), then a walk around Dalat Market where you should not miss the magnificent sights of fresh strawberries, avocados and artichokes.

For the second half of the day? We went day-tripping to pagodas, temples, flower gardens, waterfalls, church and more. Read the rest of this entry »

“Previously … on Motormouth From Ipoh ….”

Flavours of Saigon – Motormouth’s Priceless Tips & Rants!
Day 1 – Ben Thanh Market & Around Saigon
Day 2 – The Journey to Dalat

A gloomy morning @ Dalat; waking up to almost complete stillness … saved for the gentle roar of a few bikes. You can see the town from afar; separated by a canal lined with a beautifully landscaped garden and trees.

And it’s finally Saturday! Talk about survival skills. Been a few weeks since I last had a full 5 days week, hence the past week was every bit of a chore than how the boring weekdays have already been notoriously branded as. Yeah, and that day trip to Batu Pahat in between kicked things up a notch; partially thanks to the local rendition of Wantan Mee tossed in a spicy and sour sauce; almost ketchup-like condiment.

Enough about that, let’s embrace the weekend with open arms! Saigon stories continue with an alluring morning recap of the Dalat market experience. More captions than actual writings (it’s the weekend after all!), and we’re good to go ….

Buffet breakfast; consisting of more or less generic buffet spread combining local items as well as the regular sausages, bacons etc. Oh, and do grab a cup of the artichoke tea; a Dalat-only special.

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*The full story of my Saigon trip HERE>>>

The 8 hours ride from Saigon to Da Lat was rendered considerably more bearable with sleeper buses departing almost every hour from Ho Chi Minh City; price at around VND210,000 (USD10/RM32) per pax.

On our second day, we checked out of Saigon Mini Hotel 6 and decided to embark upon an excursion out of Ho Chi Minh city. How far out of town, you wonder?

About 8 hours worth of bus ride away, to the highlands of Dalat situated 4900 ft above sea level. Slightly more than 300km away, if I am not mistaken. Yet, there is no expressway or fast lane. Thankfully, the ride was a relatively comfortable one since we picked the sleeper bus; hence most of the 8 hours were spent dozing off in individual cabins.

Grilled pork rice and Braised pork with Mustard Greens; at a random restaurant stopover about 2 hours away from reaching Dalat.

Ready for the ride to a cooling town with average temperature of 18-25 degrees Celcius, a man-made lake named Xuan Huong Lake in the middle of the town, and various French colonial theme-inspired villas and resorts to sweeten that honeymoon experience? Read the rest of this entry »

A close resemblance to our “Chicken Fish” (read my Teo Chiew Restaurant post for another shot and more information on this peculiar fish with an identity crisis!); this grilled fish dish at Hoa Su Restaurant was simply brilliant.

And finally we come to Day One of the Ho Chi Minh trip (let’s call this Saigon for short). After a good two weeks of delay, I figure that let’s get this over and done with, before my memory cells dissipate into oblivion and I cannot tell apart the street food from one another!

Have your toilet break. Or light up and go fog some mosquitoes out from the bushes. This can get a bit …. elaborate. Ready? Let’s jump into the thick of action then. Read the rest of this entry »

Four days of holidays here in Malaysia came and gone in a flash. Have you had enough of rest or fun? Surely there will be that hovering evil thought of extending the holidays by calling in sick, throwing excuses like ‘tayar pancit’ (more like ‘perut buncit’?!), ‘anak sakit’, etc.

I mean, you don’t see unity presented in a more unanimous fashion in Malaysia than during the public holidays. Open house fiesta, shopping malls, touching TV ads, traffic pileup buildup on the expressways and barrage of Facebook updates/posts on gatherings and homecomings.

Proud to be Malaysian. Really.

1. The Incredibly-Tough-to-Cross Streets of Saigon – If you thought that Hanoi’s omnipresent motorcycles (the locals call them cyclo’s, or you can also refer to them as sicko’s if you want) criss-crossing their ways around Old Quarters was bad, think again. Imagine roads stretching 3-4 lanes, encircling a roundabout with NO traffic lights in sight. And you need to make it over to the other side! No, literally speaking of course. No chicken-crossing-the-road jokes, please.

The trick is once again … DO NOT hesitate halfway through. Or fashionably walk at an uneven pace (ie : run then walk then stroll then run). If you’re still having the chills or stunted by the sheer number of bikes on the road, eat the humble pie and look for the Tourist Police dressed in green. They will be able to help you cross the major roads, especially around Ben Thanh Market. For the smaller streets, lanes and alleys …. Good luck!

More tips, rants and nonsense after the jump ….. Read the rest of this entry »