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Peninsula Trip Part 2 – Introduction
Day 1: Kuala Lipis, Gua Musang
This is already the third post of the Peninsula Trip Part 2 travelogue, and I’m still writing on day 1. Wah … don’t know when only I’ll be finish writing for the whole trip :p
After about 20 minutes of photography session with Gua Musang limestone hills as background, we departed at 2.11:41pm, heading to Kota Bharu, which is a journey of 182 km. By the way, there’s a KTM train station at Gua Musang; Micol is interested to take a train journey to northern east coast of Peninsula Malaysia.
The route from Gua Musang to Kuala Krai (the mid-way town that we were passing by before reaching Kota Bharu) before the Kelantan River has a few hot landslide spots. Better watch out if driving through this route during year end or early of the year, when the rainfall density is high.
According to our plan, the first activity at Kota Bharu is to visit Wat Pracacinaram (or Wat Prachacinaram) for herbal steam bath. However, none of us was sure about the availability of this service, and we didn’t have any idea about its operating hour as well. All we had was a phone number.
At Kuala Krai, I dialed 019-9812441, contact number of Wat Pracacinaram in-charge that we got from Internet.
Me: 哈喽！请问可以讲华语吗? (halo! Can I speak in Mandarin?)
Siamese: #$#$#$#$#$ (sorry but I couldn’t understand what he was talking)
Me: may I speak in English?
Siamese: #$#$#$#$#$ …. lak diam lak diam (though I was sweating the first part as well, but this time, I caught the last few words – “lak diam lak diam”, which means “6 o’clock 6 o’clock” in Hokkien. Ok now I know, he can speak a bit of Hokkien)
Me: hi! qia meng zi keng si sin beui bo? (Hi! Is this a temple?)
Siamese: si si… (yes yes…)
Me: wu hang zang zui eh si bo? (Can take shower there right?)
Siamese: si si… sauna (yes yes… sauna)
Siamese: lak diam lak diam (6 o’clock 6 o’clock)
(ok… now I can confirm that this temple is, as what we understand, provides steam bath or some sort of sauna facility. And it closes at 6pm)
Me: OK kam siah kam siah (OK thank you thank you)
Kota Bharu, Kelantan
It was almost 5pm when we reached Kota Bharu. Surprisingly, there was quite a heavy traffic in Kota Bharu town. We were stuck in the jam for about 10 minutes, at a route of only 800m long.
OK now, before I write further about our Kota Bharu experience, I have an important guest to introduce here – Ah Fai (or Fai siew). Ah Fai is Paullie’s friend, a Kelantanese. He is very kind to offer us 1-night stay at his bungalow, for all the 14 of us! Wah lao.. not a small gang of us you know.
After meeting up with Ah Fai at the Shell petrol station opposite KB Mall, we crossed Kelantan River from the Kota Bharu new town and proceeded to Wat Pracacinaram (or Wat Prachacinaram) located at Wakaf Bharu.
Along the way, we passed by the new and very first hypermarket in Kota Bharu – Tesco. Chinese has a saying “enter a village and follow its custom” (入乡随俗). In Kelantan, the FrenchBritish-owned Tesco also has its name written in Jawi to comply with local state governance.
Wat Pracacinaram
Wat Pracacinaram is located within a village surrounded by abundant of tall coconut trees. There are also 3 famous Thai food restaurants there – Chiang Mai Restaurant, Bangkok Restaurant and Baan Thai Restaurant.
Being so excited to experience the herbal steam bath at Wat Pracacinaram, I quickly walked to the wood fire steamer area to confirm the facility availability, and went back to George’s truck to bring out my towel.
“ee.. where’s my towel?”
“cannot be.. I should have brought my towel!”
“oh damn~~~ I have really forgotten to bring my towel for this trip.. ah doi!”
Thanks to Ah Fai. Just within not more than 30 minutes meeting him, I’ve already brought him troubles, pai seh pai seh :p He fetched us to a mini market to get my towel.
Well, since I did not make it for the herbal steam bath, I have no word to describe the experience. Following is George’s comment quoted from MakanTrip.com:
There is basically a steamer being heated by wood fire, the boiling water in it is then added with herbs, ginger, onions and garlic by the monk there. The steam is then release into a steam room. Before entering the steam room, there are lockers provided to store your valuables and showers are available. The steam bath is quite cool, firstly, of course you almost sweat like mad instantly, this is to help your body release all the toxic in you, especially us city slickers. I like the herbal and strong ginger scent in the steam and even after coming out and taking a shower, the nice fragrant is stucked with you for a while
Careless mistake aside; at Wat Pracacinaram, we were greeted with fascinating halo effect in the sky, in front of the holy place of worship. See the above picture, I describe it as “dragon in the sky”. It takes a very thin probability odd chance to meet such an attractive halo effect scene in the sky. Moreover, I was having my camera.
Dinner at Orchard Garden
At first, when we were drafting our itinerary, we planned to have our dinner at Chiang Mai Restaurant in Wakaf Bharu. However, we were disappointed when inquiring about advanced reservation via phone call days before our departure, as it was already fully booked on 17th May for a wedding function. What a waste!
As an alternative, Ah Fai brought us to Orchard Garden Seafood Restaurant in Kampung Brinjal, Chabang Empat.
Even though we convoy in group of about 10 to 15 makan kakis, but we never order 10-course meal; this dinner was an exception. We had tomyam seafood (sluuuuurp! my mouth is watering now), curry prawns, thai steamed siakap fish, fried eels, deep fried pork knuckle, fried bees and etc, totaling up to RM 352 for the bill (3 fish dishes).
To me, the dishes were just satifying; “ok la” type of comment from me as there wasn’t any surprisingly and exceptionally very good one.
Of all, fried eels is the most dissatisfied dish. The muddy smell is quite strong, and I really didn’t enjoy it. On the other hand, fried bees is the most talk-about dish! We’ve seen how much objection some of us had towards the fried bees, and we’ve also witnessed how much enjoyment some of us (especially Edwin hahaha) had with the crunchy bees :p With exception to its physical appearance, eating the fried bees was like eating fried shrimps. The dish wasn’t a disgusting one, as all the bees served were small ones. So, just take a spoon full of them, and crunch in your mouth for slightly salty taste.
Alcoholic Drinks are allowed in Kelantan with Conditions
Blame the mainstream media! Most of the non-Kelantanese Malaysians prototype Kelantan as:
- male and female are separated in public places, such as cashier line-up
- alcohol is banned all together
My experience told me that, the above 2 assumptions were all wrong. Firstly, when I was buying my towel, there were about 6 lanes of cashiers, and none was having a clean line-up of a particular gender. There was mixing of males and females at the lane I was queuing as well.
Secondly, according to our local guide Ah Fai, alcohol is not completely banned. The state government doesn’t allow any shop to exist by just selling alcohol. But, non-Halal dining restaurants are allowed to sell alcoholic drinks in addition to serving food.
Hidden “Gems”
Hehe.. so do you think that hidden pubs exist in Kota Bharu?? Yes, there are!
Hidden as in, there’s no signage outside the premise and their locations are not easily noticeable.
When Ah Fai led us to a row of shop lots behind the main road, I was stoned for a moment and wondering.
“Why are we coming here??”
The whole row of shops was appearing closed, and it didn’t look like there was anything for us to make a stop.
Ah Fai responded “got la.. else why do you think there are so many cars here”
“wah.. true also wo..”
So, there we were, ended up with one of the hidden pubs in Kota Bharu. Among all the shops with their shuttle closed, there was only one shop lot with a small dark glass door. There were also a few pots of flowers to enhance the “camouflage” effect hehe.
Well, the pub that we visited was quite a healthy one with exception of the English tea beer. The young patrons were there to sing a few titles at the shared karaoke system.
Kelantan Laksam and Lakso
After the hunt for Kota Bharu hidden pub, Ah Fai brought us for supper – Kelantan laksam and lakso at a road-side mamak. Aaahi~ I didn’t switch on my GPS that time to check out its location :p
Kelantan lakso is a local version of laksa served with herbs, noodles and coconut milk (santan), enriched with minced fish meats.
On the other hand, laksam is served with the same gravy as lakso, but different noodle. It uses rolled-up flat white noodles (looks like chee cheong fun, but thicker in diameter).
Only one word to describe them – excellent!
Thanks to Ah Fai’s hospitality. All of us had a good sleep after the long tiring day.
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ah sky… tesco is british based la… not french… hehehe… haiyo… ya lor, I couldn’t believe it when you told me you forgot to bring your hotel, I mean you were the gung-ho one in the car saying must do the steam bath then when you reached there, no towel *pengsan*
really too bad I had to fell sick that night, otherwise I could have tried laksam and lakso, sounds very good *hungry already*!!!
ya lo.. i also couldn’t believe that I’ve forgotten to bring the towel. I have a stuff-to-bring check list, but still can leave towel at home *speechless*
Not bad you can figure out what the siamese talking.