Tong Sun Kedai Kopi...we call it the 1.30 place

This happened a few weeks back. Ian introduced us a place to go for supper. This kedai kopi is situated along Perak Road just opposite the Dentist center and behind a bus stop. The shop only opens at 1.30 am onwards and sells only chinese food which has already been cooked (Economy style). Now where can you find chinese food at 1.30am in the morning. It's usually mamak only.

We arrived here at 1.15am. The shop door was still closed but there were people inside setting up the place. We thought we could actually sit first and order a drink while waiting for the food....but NO....strict owner with a grumpy voice said "no no! Drink people not here yet. No drinks and no sit yet. We only open at 1.30am."

Oh bummer, so we stood outside the shop and eventually sat our ass down at the near by bus stop waiting. We looked like some gangsters lepaking there.

At 1.30am we finally got a table to sit, and to our surprise there were alot of people already lining up waiting to take their food. Even had those "finish party" people with red faces coming to have supper here.

Food variety was alot. They had fish curry to chicken curry to prawn curry, all sort of vegetables, fried fish, stuffed fish, steamed pork, char pork, siew bak, squid, tofu and etc. What was good here was their prawn fritters and their huge tiger prawns cooked in curry. Not a bad place to go one day if your tummy's rumbling at 1.30 am. However do take note, by 2.30 - 3.00 am, there's no more food.

Tong Sun Kedai Kopi along Perak Road, we call it The 1.30 place

Sitting at the bus stop. Don't they look like Gangsters

More dishes on table behind this
Prawn Fritters

See the huge prawn

Dishes we took

A blurred picture of a plate with more dishesSee the people lining up

Alot more about Manila....

There's alot more to blog about Manila which I will posts soon. Kinda itchy to post on other things for now. Since the Manila trip, I have been keeping alot of pictures for this blog which is accumulating day by day. So I better start posting it first before I forget everything.

So hold on first on more updates of our Manila trip.

Back to Manila

After a nice Christmas celebration in Zamboanga, we left the place on Boxing Day and headed back to Manila for more sight seeing.

Reached the hotel, rested for awhile and headed out around the hotel area to search for food. We went to a place just around the corner which was selling burgers. This was Ed’s second trip there as previously he went at night once while I was asleep in the room. Hmmmppphhh….

Burger Machine along the road

The Burger

The burger place was called Burger Machine. It’s actually like a booth shop just along the road with chairs for you to sit and enjoy your burger. The placed sold all sorts of burger and hot dogs. Let me just name a few, cheese dog, bacon dog, BBQ burger, chili dog, classic roast beef burger, chicken burger, cheese steak burger and many more. One may be hard to decide which to choose from. But since we were too early, the guy only had one type of burger which was the Jumbo Burger. So okla we ordered that.

The Menu

Sat in front of the guy cooking the burger. To my surprise the burger patty was like the homemade style which I made once….but only this one was much thinner. Burger is then served together with coleslaw which is put on top of the patty. Taste wise, Ed liked it, but for me, it did not have that ‘kick’. Ramlee burger in Penang still the best.

The road where burger machine was located

Shopping for today we headed to Makati area. It is one of the main towns in Manila. There was a huge shopping mall here and one thing cool about the architecture, the mall consist of a few buildings which were connected together with a balcony like walkway. Didn’t shop here for clothes but ended buying RM 200 plus worth of groceries. I went mad. Here grocery is so cheap and you can find so much things which Penang doesn’t have for instant Kraft cheese dips which has various flavours or Bacon flavoured mayonnaise. My top priority was to buy back the vinegar. Bought myself 3 bottles of vinegar, cane vinegar, spice vinegar and coconut vinegar. Then bought tons of dried mango packets about 30 packets to bring back to Penang. Then bought this cracker which was called Skyflakes which was absolutely good. Then cheese dips, chocolates and mango juice drinks. Oh boy…..how was I going to pack all back to penang. Well when there’s a will there’s a way…..I manage to carry everything back home safely without being confiscated by the customs, although during the bag scanning time, the security thought I was carrying back a lot of cigarette…..but you know what was that, the skyflakes as it looked like cigarette boxes in the x ray scanning thingy.

Skyflakes byt Onion and Chives flavor

See the amount of groceries bought. Waiting for the Taxi

For dinner, we stopped by the food court. Plenty of food stalls and all serving pork. I couldn’t decide what to buy so ended up taking Ed’s food which he orders extra. It was Pork ribs with rice and taugeh. Ed on the other hand also had pork and fried rice. Then I ordered this nachos and fries from Jolibee (a famous fastfood rest seen at every corner in Philippines). It’s something like how we have the nachos and cheese served in restaurants in Penang. It was so so la only. Then I ordered as a side dish which was deep fried baby crabs. This really caught my eyes as the baby crabs looked so cute. You dip it in vinegar and crunch it all the way down your throat…hahahahha at times while eating I did get abit geli…..but muahahhaha being the pig I whacked all. As desert, we had our halo halo again and I ordered a cream caramel which was once extremely sweet.

Small Baby crabbies

Have no mercy!! Crunchy indeed

Dinner

Pictures of Makati town

Seafood Anyone?

One will go crazy here. This is a market in Manila selling all fresh seafood. The variety here is super duper good. And what more, the seafood all all fresh.....the prawns here were still alive. I was amazed to see the prawn legs still moving in the ice. Lobsters and crabs here were humongous. Even had some wierd looking sea creatures which I have never seen or eaten before.
What is special here is that you buy your seafood all fresh and walk over to the restaurants to cook. Restaurants here charge RM 10 for every KG. I think that's quite reasonable.

The Seafood Market

Prawn Variety

Lobster

Huge crab

Fish

Oysters?

Eels

Looks like Prawn Mantis

The restaurants next to the market

Christmas Day Zamboanga Part 3

Christmas morning after a good sleep we all woke up feeling refreshed. We were all pretty deprived of sleep from all the traveling. Today we were going to the beach for a picnic. All gathered at the family house for breakfast first. We took a Tricycle there. So fun. Tricyles here are extremely colourfull as the owners can colour and decorate their tricycles however they want it. Something like how Penang Trishaw owners do too.

The tricycle

Ed in the tricycle. I'm sitting in front of him

Breakfast we had fried banana, pan de sal and steamed banana.

This is the fried banana which we had. It's fried in oil with no batter like how we do our Goreng Pisang. Then you eat it together with the sugar provided. A bite with a dip of sugar. I loved it coming from a no banana fan. It's good when you eat it still hot and crispy. Then the steamed banana which I did not take a pic. It's the whole banana with the skin they steam it first before serving. So the banana when you peel it open is all soft and cooked like. I didn't try this as was abit banana-fied from the fried bananas I ate.

Fried banana 'brito saging' (left) and the Pan de Sal bun (right)

Then there was the ever famous Pan De Sal bun. This bun according to the aunty is the main bun which every home here in the Philippines will have for breakfast. The bun has a very rich butter taste and is hard on the outside and soft inside. You can eat the bun with anything but this morning we ate it plain. Ed's favourite. I do not know how many buns he took.

After breakfast we hired a jeepney to take the whole family to the beach. I love sitting in these jeepneys as its something you will never get in Penang. These Jeepneys can carry up to 15 people on time. Where do the rest go, well they stand behind holding on a half their body is in and the other half hanging outside. There's also some jeepney which I saw which had people sitting on the roof top. My gosh aint that dangerous. Jeepneys here are crazy drivers as they roam the streets driving fast and cutting to the opposite site. But the weird thing is that even if you drive the opposite direction, the vehicles all give way. They have somekind of understanding here. Not like here in Penang, where no one will give way and show you the finger straight away or give a loud honk. Also accident here rarely happens too.

The Jeepney backside where you enter in

Me in the jeepney

Ed in the Jeepney

The journey to the beach, we passed by some houses along the roads which had really poor people staying. There were some areas which I saw like a community of people staying together just like a small kampung area. Then there was a stretch of houses that were right at the beach area. Houses were in the shape like those orang Asli houses you find on the way up to Cameron Highlands. Different in it's own way.

When we reached the beach, I instantly fell in love with the beach. The water was so clear and it was so beautiful. But i'm sure there's other beaches better but this was my first experience in seeing such a clear water beach. The tide was low so there were alot of seaweed growing at the shore of the beach. Then there was a group of small boys catching something in the water, so we went to buat kaypo. They were actually catching puffer fish. For what reason, I think to sell and eat. I guess the locals here living by the beach knows how to each this fish without getting poisoned. Then later on saw another lady squatting down peeling something which had the water around turn red. Went to buat kaypo again. She was actually catching something like oyster here. I was so amazed! It was so easy for them to find it under the rock and all. And it's all at the shore. I went in for a swim. Couldn't resist the water. You could actually walk really far in and the water level stays up till my below chest. Oohh lovely. Water was all cold and clear....we rented a tyre and went floating around in the water. If it wasn't for the hot sun, we would have just kept floating till evening.

The Beach

The green seaweed and alga

The boys looking for the puffer fish

The captured puffer fish which we touched

The people swimming in the beach

The water. Tide coming in

Me in the water standing on a rock

Ed and his uncle standing on the rock

Clear water. See my feet!!!!!

The beach shore side

The 'oyster' like creature which lady was catching

She slaughters it. Cuts it open

And this is what the lady takes to eat

Lunch on the other hand was extremely good. We rented a little hut to sit, eat and enjoy the beach. I took pictures of the food but sadly it is some elses camera which I forgot to ask to upload the pics for me. So I only manage to get the snap shot of this fish dish below.

The hut we rented by the beach

This is called the 'Kinilaw'. It's the Philippines style of sashimi. It's actually raw fish mixed with vinegar, lime, chilly, lotsa ginger and onions and abit of santan. At first when I was offered this dish I did not know that it was raw fish. My first few bites I loved this dish as it was nice and sour. Then later on one of the uncles told me it's raw fish....wHAT!!!!! I never ever had raw fish before. But I guess that's why no one told me before I ate it so that I would taste how it is. I fell in love with this dish even though it was raw fish. But come to think of it, with the amount of vinegar used to wash the fish and mix it together, the flesh is probably already half cooked.

Kinilaw. The raw fish dish

Besides this dish we had my ever favourite stuffed squid which was humongous, BBQ fish, anchovies fried in batter to a cucur type like, left over lechon from last nights dinner which they make it into the bak kut teh like dish and rice. Food was so good!

What was leftover after eating.
Remember I mentioned Zamboanga not so save, this was one of the road blocks we crossed on the way to the beach. It's guarded by the military who are armed with guns.