Wednesday, August 13, 2014

39 Hours In The East Coast

I was in the East Coast during the weekend. Took half-day leave on Friday and drove to Cherating. We reached The Legend Resort Cherating after three hours and fifteen minutes on the road (including a fifteen-minute break at Temerloh rest area). The highway was thankfully clear with the occasional heavy vehicles which stuck to their left lane. We checked in and after showering and freshening ourselves up, we walked along the beach until it turned dusk before checking out the hotel surroundings. My last visit was some four years ago, just weeks before Mummy’s passing.

After evening prayers, we drove out to find dinner. We eventually settled on a restaurant across the street from the mosque about a km away. We returned at almost 10 and spent the evening playing Scrabble before retiring just after midnight.

On Saturday, we woke up to catch the sunrise before returning to our room to resume our Scrabble game. As a result, we left quite late and had a late breakfast of nasi dagang at Tropika Café en route to Kemaman. We found a parking and walked to Kemaman Centre Point and the block of shops behind. I spotted a shop that provided blood cupping services and we went to check it out. So glad we did because it only cost RM60 for females! And to think I paid RM200 for the service in Kota Kinabalu!!! We were told not to partake any heavy meal for at least an hour after the treatment.

We went back to Kemaman Centre Point and wandered around. It was disappointing to say the least. We didn’t spend long here and walked to the mosque to perform prayers. We then drove and parked outside A&W and had a rootbeer double-scoop float each. We then drove to check out the food court near the Geliga bus station but they were mainly selling rice and we’d already had that for our late breakfast. Spotting a turn for Kuala Kemaman, we took the turn and found some stalls selling keropok lekor, otak-otak and satar. We bought some to bring back to the hotel.

We drove back to Cherating and even stopped by Cherating Beach. It was too hot however to venture too far so we turned back and drove back to our hotel to have our late lunch of keropok lekor, satar and otak-otak. I must say I was disappointed with the keropok lekor though. The heat made us drowsy and exhausted so we had an afternoon nap before venturing out to the beach just before sunset.

That evening, we drove out to check the local night market. There were not many traders – I’m not sure if it’s because it was almost 9 pm or if the traders still hadn’t started trading after the Eid break. We had dinner at the same restaurant we ate the evening before but my meal tasted a lot more spicier and nowhere as good.

We returned to the hotel and spent the rest of the evening playing Scrabble. Both of us had really awful crappy tiles though.

On Sunday, we checked out and left the hotel just before 9 a.m. Neither of us liked driving when the sun is already up and the day is already too hot. We had a late breakfast at Temerloh rest area and I decided to try some patin fish cooked in tempoyak gravy. It was somewhat spicy but the fish tasted really good so I didn’t mind the spiciness.

We drove on and reached KL at 1245. Oh I had a bad case of insect/bug bites especially on my left leg that left patches of angry red spots all over. They were very itchy and the unbearable itchiness even woke me up on Sunday night. I decided not to scratch them even though the itch was so unbearable that I wanted to cry out from having to control myself.

Hope you had a good weekend too that didn’t end up with you feeling itchy (except for any travel bug itch...!)

~~~~~~~


Arsenal beat Nasri and co on Sunday in the Community Shield. Woohoo! Santi and Rambo scored in the first half with Sanogo involved in both build-up, and Giroud scored a screamer in the second half. And our World Cup German trio winners are finally back too.