Happy Chinese New Year!

Our family did not go back Kuching for Chinese New Year celebration this year. We are celebrating Chinese New Year here at our home.

 

Today is the first day of Chinese New Year. We woke up early and take our bath. After the tradition of wishing well to each others and Ang Pow giving by Alvin to the children, we went out for our breakfast and activity.

 

It is a bit quite celebrating Chinese New Year here in the city, all of the Chinese hawkers or eatery places are closed for at least a week for this holiday seasons, except all those huge Chinese Restaurants. Thus, there are not much choices except we go for Malay or Indian food, or the fast food in the shopping malls.

 

We were planning to go visit the renowned Chinese New Year lantern festival at Fo Guang Shan (FGS) Dong Zen Temple in Jenjarom later in the evening. Thus, we decided to be around Klang area so that about the time, we would able to travel to Jenjarom without any traffic jam.

We headed to the Aeon Mall Bukit Raja Klang. We were among the first batch of visitors there. Alvin bought the movie tickets of “The Black Panther” and we had our brunch at the Subway, before we went for the movie.

 

The children were so excited with all those rides machines for the toddlers in the shopping mall. Owh… I feel so funny looking at them, but how time flies they have grown up so much.

We window shopped for a while, then Alvin drove us towards to Jenjarom. It tool us almost 1 and half hour to reach to Dong Zen Temple. It was just nice that we parked our car at the road side, and by that time the area was getting crowded with cars and visitors.

We rested for a while in the car till 6.00pm. We visited the Dong Zen Temple Art Gallery with artefacts exhibition and a calligraphy hall, tea house, and strolling the Zen Garden.

There was a huge temporary tent set up to allow for the thousands of visitors for the delicious food stalls which were setting up for the fund raising event at the same time. We would have to satisfied with our food and just standing at the road side for our dinner.

After the quick bites, the timing is just right and the whole compound areas had been lighted up. It was beautiful. And again, very crowded and packed with people!

Dog takes center stage this year in conjunction with the Year of Dog. Dog is a loyal friend of man. Hence a giant lantern in the shape of dog at a height of 30 feet rotating at 360 degrees is the highlight of the festival.

A swan musical fountain at the entrance of the temple is another highlight not to be missed. Four giant lanterns signify Four Great Bodhisattva resembling compassion, wisdom, great vows and actions are at the fountain.

While Sichuan is famous for the "face changing" show, the facial masks are presented in another set of lanterns here.

 

Children's attention will invariably be caught by Disney World lanterns. Lanterns in the shapes of Dalmatian dogs, Winnie the Pooh are here to celebrate Chinese New Year too!

Our families spent around 2 hours and we left the temple around 8.00pm. There were still a lot of cars drove into the temple area and people keep coming in!

 

Well, I guess this would be the most people going for night to see the lantern festival in this prosperous and joyful seasons of Chinese New Year.

2017 Year End Day Out

We went to Sunway Pyramid Shopping Mall today. There were so many shoppers on this really end of the year, everywhere were crowded with people.

       

Initially, our plan was to watch a movie, but the cinema bookings were almost full, then we decided to go for a meal.

       

We walked in to a Wong Kok restaurant and ordered our meals. We had enjoyed the day together as a family and it is really a day that we spent well together!

Good Bye, Saigon! 17 Nov 2017

We had a really good rest and sleep last night as today we are leaving Saigon. We woke up around 8.00am, and opted to have our breakfast out from the hotel. We walked into alley again, as Alvin and I were thinking of wanting to have a delicious Bún Thịt Nướng before we fly back to Malaysia.

The food stall which we tried the other day was not open, and we ended up with another food stall and seems selling quite the same thing. We ordered Bún Chả Giò.The difference between Bún Thịt Nướng, and Bún Chả Giò, is that the latter version includes a deep fried spring roll on top but the earlier includes grilled pork.

Chả Giò is minced pork, herbs, and spices rolled up in rice paper then deep fried. Recently, cooks have been trading in their rice paper for a wheat based wrapper similar to egg rolls. They are easier to fry and stay crispy longer. The traditional Vietnamese way uses rice paper, which gets soggy after a while, but has a consistency that is much different than the egg roll type wrappers.

In this dish, the Chả Giò is cut up and placed over vermicelli rice noodles, herbs, pickled daikon and carrot, and some greens. It is similar to Bún Thịt Nướng. Not only does the Chả Giò add an extra flavour to the already delicious dish, but it also gives some crunchy texture to the soft noodles and other ingredients.

They both come with nuoc cham, a sweetened fish sauce that can be used as a dip or spooned into the bowl. This sauce shouldn't be forgotten. Its sweet and sourness balances out the flavours. Our bowl includes also with Chả Lụa and pieces of Banh Mi in it.

Chả Lụa is the most popular kind of chả. Lụa means silk in Vietnamese. It is made with very lean cuts of pork, potato or tapioca starch, and usually contains some garlic and fish sauce. The meat is tightly sealed in a banana leaf and steamed.

All of us had a really hearty breakfast and yummy too!

We checked out the hotel around 11.30am and headed to the Tan Son Nhat International Airport. We arrived around 12.45pm. We just hanging around in the airport and waited for our flight to depart.

It was quite an interesting and yummy experiences we had in Saigon! Good Bye, Saigon! And, hope to come back to visit again soon!

Saigon Street Food by Night VII 16 Nov 2017

After our visit from the Reunification Palace and the Fine Arts Museum, we walked back to our hotel as the Fine Arts Museum located very near to the Benh Tham Market and it is walking distance from where we stayed.

We passed by the streets and noticed that, there were a lot of Vespa motorcycles parking along the pedestrian walkways. Then only I got to know, those motorcycles can be hired for a full day or half day.

The motorcyclists can bring you to tour around the Saigon city to visit places of attractions or food trip. It would not be economical for us as we are family of 4 and need 4 motorcycles instead. Anyhow, it must be a great experience and explore the city in the bikes!

Both Issac and Annabelle took rest back in the hotel, whereby both Alvin and I walked into the alleys again to look for more.

To experience the best of Saigon, there is no better place to do this than in the tangled network of narrow alleyways that fill in the gaps between the city’s major roads.

Saigon’s thousands of alleyways – sometimes no more than a few feet wide – are where the majority of Vietnamese live, and it is here that you will find the ‘real’ Saigon.

What is more, the alleyways offer far more charm and interest than the central area of District 1, where most travellers spend their time.

Getting lost on foot in the web of alleyways brings you into contact with friendly local people, great street food, intriguing architecture, and, best of all, local life. And this particular ‘attraction’ is free!

One of the best places to eat delicious food in Vietnam is down alleys or deep into markets. We were again walking down a side street, and exploring all sorts of tasty foods.

We just satisfying with the Bun Thit Nuong and Com Suon for our late lunch! We bought and took away Annabelle and Issac late lunch back to hotel.

It was almost 6.00pm evening after all of us have a good nap in the afternoon. We decided to go back to the Asiana Food Town in the Sense Market Shopping Center for our dinner.

There were still some of the food that we have yet to try out. And Bot Chien is one of those. Bot Chien is the Vietnamese version of fried rice flour cakes. It is similar to the carrot cake or the Singapore or Malaysian of Chai Tow Kway.

The rice cakes are made from rice flour and tapioca starch, and Malaysian or Singapore Chinese and some other southeast Asian versions include daikon radish in the cakes, but I think they are normally just rice in Vietnam.

The cakes are sliced into bite sized pieces, then fried, normally on a hot skillet in lots of lard, along with some light seasonings, until crispy and golden brown on the edges. Once cooked, the rice cakes are topped with an egg and a handful of green onions before being served.

The result of Bot Chien are little bite sized nuggets of crispy sticky rice flour, but smooth and creamy on the inside, and slightly sticky. The egg, coated each nugget of rice cakes, and with a nice smoky flavour that I could really taste the green onions, and the fresh green papaya on top.

The Bot Chien was served on a plate, along with a side sauce which I think was a mostly soy sauce and vinegar that had a sweet tinge to it. The dark sauce was very mellow, not too strong, but just slightly sweet, salty, and sour, all three flavors almost even and balanced.

If you are looking for something tasty and comforting when you are in Vietnam, stop at the next stall you see serving Bot Chien.

Another type of Vietnamese snacks which we found is called Banh Trang Tron, which Banh Trang is the thin rice paper.

Banh Trang Tron is a snack of shredded rice paper, seasoned with a chili sauce, and filled with herbs like Vietnamese coriander and basil and supplemented with pieces of squid, salty fish, and quail eggs. There are probably about ten more ingredients I am forgetting to mention in the mix as well.

It is basically a snack or junk food, and often available at parks and public places, and nearly always served in a plastic bag. Just this time around, we found it in the Asiana Food Town. It is quite nice and I can just munch and munch the whole bag of this!

Well, finally we managed to eat all the famous street foods that in our bucket lists on the last night in Saigon and we were quite happy about it!