I’m still tuning to get back my normal routine of blog writing, but it seems like I could really only start writing a good post after a long long break. Yeah,  since I’ve done my house moving thing, everything settle, and life back to normal routine.

Just the last week, I went to Brunei twice, once up to Bandar and the other day we went up to Seria only. Whenever there’s friends and relatives visit from far, we surely bring them to Brunei for a short trip. Nonetheless, Excapade Sushi would be in the list.

The nearest town to Miri is Kuala Belait, which our friend En keep pronounce it as Kuala Be-Li-At. So we had our Sushi at 2pm and we continue to drive around Brunei. They did not plan to go up to Gadong as they still have more station to go after this.  Hence we drive along to Seria.

Seriously, I think this is my 1st visit to Seria, really don’t have much impression on this little town. Looking at the building and the street, its really quiet and classic. Which does not bring any much attention to us, the passerby. While we are hunting for an ATM machine, we passby this “kopitiam”. The thing that caught our attention ain’t the shop, but the young ladies sitting inside.

To our curiousity, why young girls love to hangout at this old coffee shop, also at the same time for the guys to “wash eyes” so we decided to park aside the car and have  a tea break in this shop.

This shop is actually just located on the main streets, which Seria only have that few row of shops it won’t be hard to notice. It is just the same row as the Maybank or Opposite of HSBC.

It was just about 3 pm, but the shop is crowded with customers.  From young to old folks. Enjoying the afternoon tea time with friends and family.

As for me, I found this Universal Cafe is quite interesting.
It gave me the 60’s feel, very classical feel.

This is their kitchen, where bread and drinks were out from this station.

Their specialties, toast, roti bakar, all about bread.

I get the waitress to get me the best of the best, so she introduce me cheese toast, and roti bakar with kaya .

Somehow by the time we sat down, the girls left. Look at their disappointed faces. So so so handsome

For 3 glass of drinks and few pieces of Roti Bakar, it cost around BND 5.60.  It’s cheap if it’s not converted to RM.  If you have chance to drop by, then do try out their roti bakar. You gonna love the classic feel!

Day 4 of my China Trip.

It also recorded the day of I’m not able to login to FB and also days of running nose. Achooo! Luckily, Mr Sunshine seems to protect me in Su Zhou.

The weather has turn better, roughly around 15′c daily. So we’ve actually took down a few layers of clothing, and look less bulkier from now on.

The Liverpool hotel does give a better standard of breakfast compared to previous. Seems like our hotels are getting better day by day.

Although we have a tour guide with us, somehow when we reach to Su Zhou, the tour agent arrange another local tour guide to bring us around. Met Xiao Liang, which I think he is quite professional. He actually brief us a lot of Local Cultures, the place where he grown up.

The first stop that we visited was the 耦园 , Couple’s retreat garden. Sounds cool right?  Personally I love this garden compare to the next one.

All these are so movie scene, isn’t it?

There’s a lot of flowers and rocks inside the garden. So just take as much photo as I could. :p

We were actually too happy to see the sunshine, it makes the whole garden lighten up! So do our mood!

We spent about 30 mins in this garden.  We took a boat ride back to the main entrance. It’s purposely arrange by the tour guide, he says he want us to experience their cultural. The old nanny will sing us some oldies, such as Teresa’s song and we will give some tips for her hard-work.

The boat ride was intent to be short, is just giving us a chance to take a look of the river view. There’s also a nice sakura inside this garden. This is the 1st time in my life to see sakura too!

The next garden we’re heading , would be 狮子林 Lion Grove Garden.  Sounds like a zoo more than a garden to me.

This place is over crowded compare to the previous garden. Maybe it’s smaller, and its located near to town area so there’s more visitor going into this garden. There’s a lot of street hawker trying to sell us some preserved fruits. Basically they are targeting tourist,  and they will sell you the fruits at a ridiculous price as if you have never seen fruit before.

So what to see inside this Lion Grove? It is famous for its large and labyrinthine grotto of taihu rock at the garden’s center as cited from Wiki. For me, personally, due to the crowd, seriously I can’t find any good spot to observes the rock. So , forget about it. Just take a few photos for remembrance.

That has been very kind of the tour guide, for arranging us to both of UNESCO garden of Su Zhou.

Before he ended the tour of Su Zhou, we were introduced to the Silk Factory. They said, this is government run organisation, so that the tourist should not have worry about purchasing their product.  The silk product that was being introduced by the tour guide does sounds so good somehow the quality of the product could only be justify after a few years of using it.

Again, the whole group, only the elderly couple bought a few products.

So cut the crap, let’s go to Can Ting. Anything wrong? Ya, it’s call 餐厅.   That was the pinyin translate.  Hmm, or why don’t they name it Canteen, it’s more similar to the translation.  Anyhow, the meal from here are consider good. Not too oily, which is more suitable to our taste bud.

Look at that huge pork leg, oh… that’s William’s favourite.

This conclude our Su Zhou, garden tour in the morning.  I will update more on shopping is Su Zhou in my next post

This is the first time I visit to Hang Zhou 杭州 , China. Like I mention in my previous post, by judging it’s Airport Terminal, I’ve already have some high expectations over the development of this city.

Our tour guide, Xiao Yuan tells us some great stories of china. I cited up here one of  the Chinese sayings, 生在苏州, 活在杭州, 吃在广州, 死在柳州.  I roughly translate it, born in Su Zhou, Live in Hang Zhou, Eat in Guang Zhou, Die in Liu Zhou. So why is that live in Hang Zhou? That’s because Hang Zhou is popular of its beautiful scenery. A lot of them find it peaceful to stay here compare to other developed city. In fact, they are very proud to be part of Hang Zhou.

The main tourist attractions in Hang Zhou would be the Westlake 西湖。It’s not only attracted tourist but during the public holidays and weekends the locals would get around. The city is build around the lake, which is around 600 hectares and there’s a lot of scenic place around which are worth for visits.

Our 1st destination of the day will be taking a boat ride around Westlake. It’s around 4′c and everyone of us were challenging the coldness with the rain!

The lake itself is very big, but by taking the boat, we can view up all the scenic spots and the tour guide will give us a little knowledge of the love legend of Westlake.  Seriously, I can’t recall of what I’ve heard.

By walking distance, we reach another attractions, 雷峰塔  , a pagoda which is built along the Westlake. There’s of course another historical story of this pagoda, but cut the crap, we are taking the lift and going up to the 4th floor. The great scenic view of the lake  was really awesome.

Shortly, it reach lunch time. I’m a bit worry of the food in China. You know, there’s always article saying that food in china were processed by unknown materials. We shouldn’t bother much, and I have faith with the travel agent they don’t dare to play fishy here. Isn’t it?

We were brought to this restaurant which is also located by the lake. The eating hall looks grand, but dishes ain’t giving good appetite.  Maybe this is our first meal in China, we haven’t get used to the food.

1. It’s too salty

2.It’s too oily

3. Food ingredients are weird

4. The portion are damn HUGE

5. Their fish has a lot of BONES

Out of the above, actually we do enjoy the meal. Every meal, we would have at least 8 dishes on the table. Non of the meal we could finish up the whole portions.

Let’s continue our Westlake journey to the long bridge 长桥. According to Xiao Yuan, this is a lover’s bridge. So he advise us to cross the bridge by holding our partner’s hand tightly. Sweet & Romantic right? Not only that, it was still raining, we were walking under the rain and crossing the bridge. <3

After the heavy lunch, Xiao Yuan told us that the afternoon programs were mostly by foot and there’s a hill to climb.  What? In such cold weather, you expect us to climb hills?  He must be kidding right?

We did take a 40 mins walk around the lake, surrounded with beautiful peach blossoms.. I’ve almost forgotten the cold. Do you like the flowers? Let’s have a closer look

Hope you like it

The whole group of us refuse to go up to the hill, in fact we ask the tour guide, what could we see from the hill? He answered us, “West lake”. Enough, we had enough of westlake. So just take a photo at the entrance and we proceed to other places. At least we’ve been here, Gu Shan 孤山。

The next destination would be the “岳王庙” , the Temple of Yue Fei.
There’s some old folks story, but I’m totally blank of these. Alex knows better, he’s interested with all the historical stories.

It’s almost 5pm. Near to closing time.

Before we proceed to Dinner, we have a little street walk again by the lake.  The whole day program was totally all about the West Lake. There’s nothing much here, just crossing some streets, and take some pictures. Our dinner were somewhere nearby, so around 6pm we proceed to have dinner.

This time, the restaurant looks a bit classy. It’s on the 2nd floor inside a building.

As what we’ve been told, the signature dish in Hang Zhou are the dong po rou 东坡肉 and Jiao Hua Ji 叫花鸡。 However,  Xiao Yuan says that tonight they are unable to provide us, I don’t know what’s the reason behind. What to do, just eat what is provided. The size of the prawn are really pitiful. In Sarawak, we don’t eat such a small prawn, we’ll put it into dishes as side ingredients.

After dinner, we were given self activities hour. Of course it’s shopping time.

I did not get myself anything, I don’t know why, perhaps its just not my shopping mood?

We were back to Hotel around 8.30pm. The night is still young, but someone will grow older over this night.

We celebrated Robert’s birthday in his hotel room. It was suppose to be a birthday surprise, but so sorry, I spoiled their initiatives :p

Nvm, as long as everyone is happy, we did enjoy the moment!

Lastly, a closing to this post.

Our late night supper. This is is a Muslim Beef Ramen shop. Unbelievable that we found out Muslim shops in China.

We’re going to visit the most popular Long Jin Tea 龙井茶 factory tomorrow. See ya!

It was supposedly a test.my.car day. So the 4 of us has decided to go test drive using the best road nearest to us. “Brunei Darussalam”. So, I gave a call to my friend, Nee, she invited us to visit her work place in Kiulap.

Honestly, this is my first time there. I really have no idea where is Kiulap, only know that it is part of Brunei and it is located near Gadong. Nee showed us the direction, and we successfully reach this little eatery place.

Country Patch Cafe.

My dearest friend, Ms. Kong or Chef Mini

It has been quite some time that I say I will visit her some day, and as usual the some day will become infinity, zzz.  And since today is the day, so let’s try out what my Chef Mini ’s cooking.

The ambient of this cafe looks great, suits its name, Country style. I can see that the entrepreneur put lots of efforts in decorating the cafe, to make it looks more comfy. It does make me feel like my ideal home.

So let’s enter with a Happy Heart. I’m sure the combination of food and environment will make it a pleasure meal~!

From the front entrance, there’s some non-air conditioned dining place.

Equipped with tv for entertainment, and also the outlet’s newspaper review.  Oh ya, there’s free Wi-Fi also~

The decorations were collected by their entrepreneur from all over the world.
The hibiscus paint is very eye catching. She carried all the way back from Thailand.

The welcome drink, a glass of warm water which is very heart warming.

Forks and spoons were served appropriately inside a small tray.

We tried out some juices, which it looks quite tempting to us.
This is red velvet, which taste of blackcurrant.

And this,  this should be POP juice.

We have fries as our finger food. At the back,  So sour – combination of green apples and other fruits juice

I had Beef Spaghetti Carbonara

Spagethi Marinara. Fresh Seafood.  Thumbs up says Alex.

Lamb Chop for MuhHwa

Chicken Chop with Rice for ahLong

What about some Cheese Cake for appetizer?

We enter with a happy heart, and dine with a happy heart too. Laughters is the best medicine. 

It is because their staffs and Ms. Elyn, the entrepreneur are always friendly.
Let’s  take a look at the surrounding.

It’s full of customers although its almost 3pm.

Everyone seems so enjoying…

and chit chatting after food..

Alex and I do likes the food very much too!

MooMooland and gangs are here too

Dino also here… watching over the Tea Boxes

and the Teddy sitting there celebrating life..

Country Patch open daily from 7.30 am to 9.30 pm.
Well, its worth to try out and i know you’ll love it too.
For reservation: +673 2232368

*This is not an advert, I post this for my friend, Mee Nee. We enjoyed the meal so much. Thank you very much!