KSL Hotel & Resort

KSL Hotel and Resort is conveniently located inside KSL Shopping Mall in Taman Century. KSL offers modern rooms with cosy settings. Accommodation are separated into Tower 1 & 2 and we were directed to Tower 1.

KSL Hotel & Resort

Hotel Tower 1

Having booked their Deluxe Room for our Weekends getaway, I would say that their room was relatively modern and well kept. Luckily, for us we were entitled to early check in, a few hours before the stated timing.

Bedroom

View to the door

Room size is 27 m²  with facilities including City View, Telephone, Air Conditioning, Desk, Minifridge, Wardrobe, rain shower, hairdryer, free toiletries, slippers, electric kettle,a flat screen TV, tea/coffee capsule machine, a personal safe and wake up service.

City View from my hotel room

City View from my hotel room

View from the lift

Room was rather spacious and comes with 1 large comfortable king bed. The short fall we had for the room was perhaps the presence of West sun in the afternoon which had the room generally warmed up by a little. Fret not, they have thick curtains to shield you away from the glaring sun and satisfiable air conditioning to cool the room.

Toilet Basin

Toiletries

Hand Soap

Toilet

Mounted Hairdryer

UserID and password for Wifi will be given upon checking in. As a blogger, Wifi is essential on every hotel visit especially when it aids in discovering the surroundings for places of interests as well as food. Free Wifi is available in our room and its only limited to 2 devices per session. The speed of Wifi was quite disappointing as it was quite slower than expectation (slower than 3g network).

Hotel Key

Main Control

Amenities was decent throughout our stay and everything was pleasant. If you are lucky, you may get to see people putting up fireworks in the night time over the city view.

Mini Arcade

Gym

Pool Table

Having been to KSL Mall many times, I would say KSL Hotel is recommendable for Families with kids as there is a Dinosaur Theme Swimming Pool. It is also perfect for a short weekend getaway if you are expecting nothing much. If you want to forgo about driving around, KSL mall can be reach by steps in less than 5 minutes. On a side note, the mall carpark is also the hotel's. For guests that are driving, you can claim the free parking card from the reception.

Theme Park

Pool front view

Another View of the Pool

KSL Hotel & Resort
Location: 33 Jalan Seladang, Taman Abad, 80250 Johor Bahru, Malaysia

Ah Huat Cafe

Upon hearing there was a revamp in Bukit Batok Home Team NS, we marked it as one of the places to visit. There was a food places in Home Team NS, namely Ah Huat Cafe,KFC, Saizerya, Milk & Honey Etc and they are still expanding.

Ah Huat Cafe

Ah Huat Menu

Buzzer

 At this point of time, I guess Ah Huat needs no introduction as most of us has a fair bit of memories from Ah Huat's TV advertisement and its iconic grandpa mascot. From sachets of Ah Huat's White Coffee, its quite obvious they have ventured their business a step further into casual dining just like Old Town White Coffee and Owl Cafe.

Interior

Macaroni Chicken has a subtle sweetness in its broth and was rather decent. Macaroni were cooked to my ideal texture and softness. It's best to have a bowl of it on a cold day, warming the stomach.

Macaroni Chicken - $5.50

Close up on Macaroni Chicken

My dining partner tried out its Curry Chicken and it was quite "lemak". Curry was thick but still bringing the flavors out from all curry spices. Chicken and potatoes were surprisingly softer than our ususal expectations.

Curry Chicken Rice - $6.90

Tender Chicken

Though famous for their coffee, we did not have their staple white coffee and instead we order the Ice Kopi C. Pretty Average!

Ice Kopi C - $2.50

Environment was brightly lighted by down lights and we were all seen sweating after the meal even on a cool day.
Rating: 3 / 5

Ah Huat Cafe
Location: Home Team NS, 2 Bukit Batok West Avenue 7 Singapore 659003
Website

Milk & Honey Cafe [Closed]

Lately the "Honey" craze had been bugging me and it makes me all over confused with the business name like "Honeycomb",  "Milk & Honey", "Honeycreme" etc.

Having spotted Milk & Honey in Home Team NS Bukit Batok, we decided to check it out their Gelato after our meals.

Milk & Honey offers artisanal homemade Gelato, freshly brew coffee as well as crispy waffles. What's interesting about the shop in Home Team was that kitchen concept was rather open and you can see what's going on at the walkways.

Milk and Honey

Environment was modern industrial team with concrete flooring and metallic tables. Patrons can leave their sticky notes hanging on the grills that was mounted perpendicular to the wall.

Dining Environment

Even though it was weekends, the cafe was rather empty, not even with students studying in the area. However, the atmosphere was spice up by the background music played by the cafe.

Wall

Decorations

Interesting name from the Gelato! We have the "Konni Tea Wa" scooped over the Shy Green Nut. The word "tea" and its bright green color had given hints that it was actually made of matcha tea but as the description writes "Its not your usual matcha Ice Cream". 

As for the Shy Green Nut, it was made up of pistachio, Belgium bittersweet chocolate bits, an enhanced version from a usual chocolate chip ice cream to me. 

The ice creams were very creamy and on the sweet side which lead me to thirstiness after few mouthful of it.

Shy Green Nut and Kooniteawa  - $9.50

As an overview and comparing them to the usual ice cream cafe, I'm quite concern about its pricing from a consumer point of view as they were a tad expensive. If you know the area well, there is a pocket friendly Ice Cream Shop (Beans & Creams) in just a few bus stops away. However if you want better options like light meals and Ice Cream, Milk & Honey Cafe is still the better option between these two.


Rating: 3 / 5

Milk & Honey Cafe
Location: Bukit Batok HomeTeamNS Clubhouse, 2 Bukit Batok West Ave 7 #01-01/02/03 Singapore 659003

Penang Culture

Penang Culture Restaurant, sister company of Gurney Drive, offers a range of tantalizing Penang hawker food freshly prepared by their reowned chef who lived half of their life there.

Menu

Utensils

Having Soursop Ice Blended as an alternative to their Ampla Ice Blended as the latter had been sold out.

Soursop Ice Blended - $5.95

Crispy-thin homemade beancurd sheets were rolled up, wrapping the marinated chicken. The dish was served with their homemade sweet sauce and chilli sauce.

Penang Chicken Roll -  $4.95

Cross Section of Penang Chicken Roll

Chewy cuttlefish paired with crunchy kangkong, topped with sweet peanut sauce.

Penang Cuttlefish Kangkong - $5.65

The soup consists of chicken meat balls, fish balls as well as Fu Zhou Fish Balls with glass noodles int their light and tasty soup. However do note that the glass noodles is of a little serving.

Penang Specialty Soup - $6.65

The stir-fried glass noodle was rather ordinary, with prawns, squid and egg. It was stated as spicy on its menu and being one of the healthier choice options.

Fried Glass Noodle - $7.65

Overall, the place was quite decent and food was on the average side, lacking the punch of its cuisine somehow. One point to note that plain water costs 30 cents a cup and it's non-refillable. Payment process is different from the rest of the restaurant and has to be made at ordering counter immediately after placing your orders.

Last but not least, Penang Culture is Halal Certified, suitable for our Muslims pals. 

Rating: 3 / 5

Penang Culture
Location: Jem, 50 Jurong Gateway Road #04-27 Singapore 608549
Operating Hours: 11am - 10pm
Website

Putu Piring

What's Putu Piring? Why is it that everyone is raving about it when the topic comes to Haig Road Market and Cooked Food Centre. Having its unit memorized from the Internet, we went finding the stall in the Food Centre. Here it is!

As expected, there was a queue line up and at a closer look, I saw little white rice cakes hidden under the metal cups. Perhaps Putu Piring is what they call in Malay and in the Chinese version, we call it Tu Tu Kueh but wait, there are some slight differences. Read on to find out more!

Stall of Putu Piring

Double steamed rice flour, featuring its fluffiness with molten Gula Melaka (Palm Sugar) in its core,  these little stuff were infused with aroma from the cut pandan leaves as well as grated coconut.

Putu Piring - $2

This style is of different league when compared to the Tu Tu Kueh. Just imagine having this gula Melaka oozing out of the rice cake especially when it is piping hot. It's best to be consumed when its hot. Despite being so, there was no utensils to handle these hot "rice cakes", I guess the trick to have it served in its best timing is by using the given pandan leaves to lift itself up and the grated coconut too.

Simply love the sensation as it crumbles in my mouth with Gula Melaka. Awwww. I feel like heading back now!

Putu Piring

Rating: 3.5 / 5

Putu Piring
Location: 14 Haig Road, #01-08 Haig Road Food Centre

Pranakorn Noodle Restaurant

With online raving about the Boat Noodle near Victory Monument in Bangkok, we began our search for them near the alley where we can find a number of stalls selling Boat Noodles. Boat Noodle is actually a noodle based soup dish that had gotten its name from being served off the boats in river and canals of Thailand.

Landmark of the boat noodles place

The place is situated near bus terminals where most of the Thai will take this new Year holiday as an opportunity to return to their hometown. Therefore it took us quite sometimes to squeeze through the crowd in order to get to this landmark - restaurant beside a river / canal. Unfortunately, the Boat Noodle place was closed. We were indeed very disappointed, imagine the journey we traveled and taking the pain going through the crowded areas and learnt that it was closed for a few days.

While on our way back, we spotted Pranakorn Noodle Restaurant and decided to give it a try as they were selling Boat Noodles too. Crowd in the restaurant and the cohort of staff in purple gave us no reason to turn such a similar deal off, moreover they are located next to the river too.

Preparing Boat Noodles

Preparing Boat Noodles

Pranakorn Noodle Restaurant has an army of staff and everyone has its dedicated tasks. There were a few counters preparing Boat Noodle and a stall preparing my favourite fishballs.

Fishballs / Meatballs - 10 Baht

Menu was laminated and was tourist friendly in English as well as pictures for illustrations. It was a simple menu with 5 dishes and the choice of noodles.

Menu

Turn over the menu and you can enjoy ordering their sides or even Thai desserts.

Menu

Cups of ice were place on the table in steel cups. Being a non-local we were rather stunned as we did not order any drinks but after a while we realized that these cups are for.

Ice

And finally the first bowl of boat noodles came. Just like what everyone was talking about, the bowl comes with few strands of noodles, easily gobble down in a mouth or two. It is quite common to see tables with stacks of empty bowls due to such small servings. 

Dry Noodle without soup was tasty with spinach, meat balls and lean meat, loaded with grated peanuts, chilli flakes. Soon after I finished my serving,the fiery sensation took effect.

Dry Noodle without Soup (Rice Vermicelli)

The thicken Soup tasted not too far from the dry noodle and had its on traits. Noodles was moistened by the thickened soup. Portion of the soup was not too much till the extent of covering up the noodles. The soup has coarse particles in it and add on to the burning tongue.

Thicken Soup with pork

Meat was tender for pork as well as beef slices. We ordered the Egg Noodles for the beef with thickened soup. Even though chilli has overshot my threshold of spiciness, I would say that having Boat Noodles in Bangkok really gave a challenge to my limits.

Thicken Soup with Beef (Egg Noodle)

Besides having boat noodles, I totally swept off by their meat balls. They came in a stick of four with sweet & spicy chilli coated. These meatballs were springy and were big differences to what I had in Singapore.

Meatballs

Looks like the portion was too small for our appetite? Despite the spiciness, we ordered another recommended item on the menu.

Menu for Fish Meat - 50 Baht

We can every get such cheap deal in Singapore for a plate of fish at about $2 SGD. This is really a steal! Fish slices were boiled and you can sense the freshness as well as tenderness from it. The dish was accompanied by loads of vegetables, including shredded cabbages and carrots. Bored of going plain with the fish? Why not dip them into the given chilli sauce with fish paste, this just won't go wrong!

Boiled Fish Meat - 50 Baht

The burning hot sensation on the tongue not only brought tears to the eyes and we ended up cooling the spice with a cup of Thai Ice Tea. Don't get me wrong, even though it was real spicy leting tears out, I'm still in love with their boat noodles.

Thai Milk Tea

Pranakorn Noodle Restaurant

Location: Phahonyothin Alley Samsen Nai, Phaya Thai, Bangkok, Thailand