What an “INTERSTING” island - Sibu Island

I do not know from where or which media suggesting that Sibu Island is as beautiful as a germ in the middle of the sea and fun yet not as commercial as Redang, so we should be able to enjoy the exclusiveness and serenity… but we forgot the challenges before “happily ever after” in every fairy tale.

We departed around 12 noon, from map, we thought we might the slowest can reach the island in 5 hours time. So, we were taking our own sweet time, stopped over Malacca for banana leaf (luckily we did, reason will be reveal later).

Around 3.30pm, one of the reception from Sibu Island Resort called us, asking for our location and told us the last boat transfer to the island is at 4pm… what?!?! How could they missed out this important information to their guest? There’s no way for us to reach the jetty in another half an hour time, so, after ding ding dong dong discussion, they offer us chartered boat @ RM250, well, what to do? Or the payment that we made to the resort, RM, will be burnt…

We kept driving, driving, following the road sign, took wrong turning, called resort… ding ding dong dong again… we reached the jetty at 8pm!!! 8 HOURS JOURNEY!!!

3 princesses in their CHARTERED boat!!! Anna, Serrea and me

Because of all the calling, discussion and questioning, our names were immediately becoming very famous among all the staffs in the resort.

As dinner was not included in the package, we ordered a la carte – Fish & Chip (my favourite dish when I travel to beaches or island), mushroom soup and seafood pizza.

Mushroom soup and fish & chip were fine, not delicious, but good enough to compensate our tired souls and starving stomachs, but come to the pizza… tasteless… it’s absolutely a surprise how the outlook presented so differently from the taste. So, we asked for chilli flakes, but, the waiter has no idea what were we asking, and we were giving chilli powder… tasteless chilli powder… another surprise.

We were told the activity of the night was bon fire… we went there, I saw one of the staffs was playing a guitar and sing with 4-5 visitors clapping hands to show support… ahhhhhh, we were not interested.

We went in to the karaoke room, Anna & Serrea ordered a can of beer for each, we thought since there wasn’t anybody in the room, we can sing until our lungs out, but, the staffs were slotting their songs with ours… ahhhhhh, boring… end up we rather drink the wine that we brought in our room.

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Since there’s nothing much we can do in the island, we decided to sleep as much as we want, woke up just on time to take our complimentary breakfast.

tada~~~, girls can eat and drink! We were too exhausted the night before, we only manage to drink half of the bottle, so, we finished the other half during breakfast!

What can we do in the island? 1. Animal feeding. There are a lot of deer, goats and peacock.

2. People and scenery watching, shell animal bullying. I have no idea how these foreigner ended up in such an “interesting” island, there are so many other islands which have better scenery, better beaches, better service, more activities, e.g. snorkelling, diving

3. Continue drinking, reading (pretending only, sunlight is too bright for reading), camwhoring…

4. Napping & swimming

At last come to dinner time, we are trying to order simpler food and at least some dishes which are Malay specialty (the chef is a Malay), so they won’t go too wrong. We ordered a salad, satay, nasi goreng kampong and seafood spaghetti, phew~ the food is much nicer than the night before.

One of the highlight for the dinner was the live band, they were very professional and sing really good. Instead of having our wine and beer in room, we spent the night chatting & enjoying live band in the restaurant.

p/s: if you notice, we skipped the lunch, we had very heavy breakfast and had only beer, chips and ice-cream for lunch!

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Avoiding the mistake that we made on the 1st day, we checked ferry time and were trying to catch earlier boat back to the mainland, we wouldn’t want to be home late night, yet we were so sick by just thinking about spending another 8 hours of road trip in car.

Our room in the island

Beautiful island from far

The beautiful and most romantic KFC outlet that I ever see. But what bordering us was the road trip back home and petrol volume in the car tank, we worried that with the what we have in the car can’t last us to the nearest petrol station. Luckily we were able to get the staff from the island to bring us to a local convenient store which sell petrol.

Moral of the story: If you are trying to be adventurous, and planning to explore a place which non of your friend has come across, it’s best to do a thorough check up.

Water Rafting @ Gopeng (29.10.11)

At first, I was a little hesitate about the trip, because I’m not an adventurous person, sports never like to befriend me and I seldom put myself in danger, therefore, no matter how much I admire people who has the courage to do bungee jump, or sky diving, I won’t! Water rafting isn’t as “dangerous” (some only think that these activities are high risk, they do not agree that they are dangerous because all of them do measure the risk and they have all sort of safety precautions to protect the participant), but still this is a game which need you to sign a consent to forego any claiming rights in times of severe injury or death, in another words, you have to be responsible for everything.

We, went in a group of 9, was separated into 3 groups, because only 4-6 people + guide can fit in a raft. Me and Heng Lee in a group, joining a Chinese couple and a Malay girl, 3 guys (Heng Lee’s friends) joining some people from a big group (if not mistaken, the group is from Coway, they are probably having their staff team building) and the remaining 4 (Shin Yen, Seok Bing, Seok Bing’s sister and brother in law) in a raft.

The water is neither calm or too rapid on that day, last rain was 2 days before our session. Yet, there’s a  part whereby Seok Bing’s brother in law fell into the water and hit a rock in one of the falls. My raft was in front of them, right after that fall when we reached the calm part, I looked back the witness his fall into the water, it was so scary, because he fell and I saw his head hit the rock and disappeared in the water. Luckily he was alright and saved by a guide… no serious injury, got a little cut on one of his eyelid and bruises. phew~

Our raft has 5 participants and a guide.

(Our actual guide was holding the camera, the Malay guy in the picture is the guide leader)

Half journey break

Yeah! we managed to complete the journey successfully! Total time spent was about 4 hours.

End of the journey – floating (as shown in the picture) back to the shore. 

This was my 2nd time joining this white water rafting, 1st time was years back in Kota Kinabalu (KK). I personally like this experience better than the KK one. And if you ask me whether I will do it again… this time, I will say YES!!! It’s fun.

Show Off Time!!!

Show off! Show off! Show off! I don’t remember I have a lot of birthday treats before my 30s, last year I had 3, but this year I have 1, 2, 3, 4… In short, I had a whole month celebration!

1st celebration: with my cute and pretty colleagues, Anna & Serrea, @ Chili’s Grill & Bar, Mid Valley. We ordered my favourite Triple Play! Yum…

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2nd celebration: with ex-colleagues, 3 October babies birthday celebration @ a porridge steamboat house opposite Maluri Jaya Jusco, Woon Ching, my 1st superior in life made us a blueberry cheese cake too… the cake is really nice, nobody gonna believe that the cake was made using a rice cooker.

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3rd celebration: with little “brother/ son”, Jeff Wan, @ La Bodega, Pavilion. This time I got to give him a big credit, I was really surprise when he suggested this restaurant. I ordered my favourite seafood Paella. This silly boy surprised me further by asking the waiter to prepare the cake for me, they were holding the cake and sang me birthday song out loud in the restaurant… .

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4th celebration: with one of my best girl friend, QiaoYi @ Dae Jang Geum Korean Restaurant, SS14. We both ordered a soup, chicken and pork belly BBQ, of course with a lot of complimentary side dishes/ starters too. This is my best celebration of all, the food might not the best, but she do. I really appreciate that I have so many good friends, QiaoYi is one of them who can really care and take her precious time off to spend time with me (I’m actually taking some parenting time from her to be with her beloved son). Thanks girl.

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5th celebration: with another good friend of mine @ Morganfield’s, Pavilion. We have been spending more than 3 years celebrating each other birthdays together! We always like to try out new restaurant in town during our birthdays. Although both of us, most of the time live a different lives (I hardly can think of many things that we share in common), but we care for each other. I wish, even if in the future, we have a busier lives, have already had a family or partner, we still can celebrate each birthday like that.  

Oh, not to miss out the food part, the portion is very big, especially the chicken, I think the chicken was overcook but nice sauce, of course no doubt, their signature dish, the sticky bones, is one of the best rib in town and I love the clam bowl too, it is to go with bread, but I love salty food, I can eat it just like that.

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6th celebration: with Avan @ a Japanese restaurant, Leisure Mall (I forgot the name of the restaurant d). Been eating everything in town already, how can I miss out Japanese? Probably like what doctor said I was too stressed or tired, or probably due to something like flu virus enter the stomach and cause infection (if I understand him correctly), or the food was not very clean, I had gastric for few days after this. I never had such serious gastric before, it’s so painful that caused me “diet” the whole next day and a day after too. However, I had a nice night out with this friend, too much to catch with him d!!!

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7th celebration: with college friends aka A33 siao za bo @ Bread Basket Bakery, Kota Kemuning. They actually already celebrated my birthday early of the month, this was just another excuse for us to meet up and gossip again. This bakery is running by one of the za bo, Joanne’s family, I always order the same old 2 no matter how much time I spend by going through the menu. Fried rice with chicken cooked with special sauce and mango lychee cake. For the rice, I requested steamed broccoli add on… look at the colour combination… so attractive! 

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8th celebration: with another best girl friend, Stephanie @ Ciccio Ristorante Bar Pizzeria, Changkat Bukit Bintang. I was craving for pizza, but Steph insisted we should eat something better than Pizza Hut… lol, so after going through the Malaysia Italian Restaurant Directory booklet (I’ve no idea where and how I get this booklet), I finally picked this.

I ordered a pizza and she ordered a Caesar salad, I ordered the starter – bruschetta and she ordered a dessert – tiramisu, what a best combination and best mate we are! We were too greedy, we need to pack half of the pizza to go end of the day.

I like the salad and bruschetta, the pizza is very authentic too, but I’m a bit, erm… dislike about the taste of rocket leaves spread on the pizza. After all, this was still one of the best meal I had.

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9th celebration: a casual celebration with Chris, my predecessor in work, @ Secret Recipe, we girls always meet up for lunch and gossip, celebration was just a smoke screen for us to continue lepak… lol