Saturday, February 28, 2015

Taiwan 2014: Day 4 - Nanya Rock Formation, Golden Waterfalls, Jiu Fen, Shi Fen

It's almost two months since my last update on our Taiwan trip. I'm setting my KPI to finish all our 8 days journey by end of next month. Finger cross :P

After our stop at Yehliu Geopark, our driver brought us to Keelung MiaoKou Night Market for an early lunch. Our driver said that he will try to fetch his customers to this place if the timing permits because such a good night market would be gone if there's no customers. He's such a good-hearted person.

This MiaoKou Night Maket is also opens during lunch time - but not all the stores are open. It's located along a street outside the temple. Do be careful when you're walking at this place as motorbikes can zoom along the food street since it's located along a road for vehicles to pass by. As for the food, it's more focus towards seafood since this area is located near the sea. We agree with our driver that the food here is different from those in Taipei city.

We quickly hunt for a few shops and bought their food to try - we only made a quick 30 minutes stop here since we are rushing to go to other places too.

This is the oyster omelette. Quite different from those in the city as the oyster here is fresh and big.



There's a lot of people queuing up for it too. 



Then, we tried this Glutinous Crab Meat Rice and Fin Soup after noticing that a few shops are selling this. Probably this is their local specialty here. When you walk towards the shop, you'll smell a strong crabby smell. Haha.

You'll see a mountain full of crab goodness rice on the tray along the this food street.

If you are looking for a washroom, do walk into the nearest 7-11 or Mcd for it. 

Next, we continue our journey to Jiu Fen and along the way, we made a few pit stops! First is to see the Nanya Peculiar  Stone! The weather was not good that day as it was drizzling whole day. It was a unique stone with different shades of colour due to the oxidation on the stone itself.


Our driver taught pig to stand on the smaller stab stone on this giant rock for a snapshot!! It was very dangerous and a wrong step might cause your life. Here's pig in action under the drizzling rain.




The infamous + giant + colourful stone looks like this.. The picture is blur a bit because it was captured using my phone under the rain.






And the sea tide is strong too! If you're wearing a cap, your cap might be gone due to the strong wind. 






Enjoy the beauty of mother nature below. This place is a must-visit when you're in Taiwan!









We did stop by to see the Yin Yang sea too but can't really see it as the tide was too strong :(  Till next time..

Then, we made a few minutes stop at the Golden Waterfalls (it's very near Jiu Fen).



The view was magnificent that it looks just like on those scenery paintings. 





And we arrived at Jiu Fen! There's a long history about this village on top of the mountain and the 'Spirit Away' movie was inspired from this place too. Too bad that it was raining badly when we were here :(

Our driver dropped us at the top entrance and we just need to walk downstairs (instead of upstairs) to see the whole shopping street.
Jiu Fen Old Street Entrance.

When you're here, do try the ice-cream wrapped with popiah skin! There's some parsley and ground peanuts in it too. It's delicious and parsley compliments well with the ice-cream too. What a surprise.



There's lots of shops sells mochi, souviners, biscuits, etc... And we did bought a lot of stuff from here too. And must buy the nougat wrapped with 2 cookies. Forgot the shop name but there's only one store selling this - thus it's easy to spot them. 


More food hunting under the rain with us badly soaked.



This one is a so-called dumpling with skin made of starch and there's meat inside...


Taro ball lovers, enjoy your quota to the max here at Jiu Fen. 



Since it was raining heavily, we quickly walk and eat and end our journey at Jiu Fen. It would be good if we come here on a day with good weather. Till next time..

Then, we went to Shi Fen, another beautiful village and famous for sky lantern. We came here just to release a sky lantern :P Sky lanterns are very commercial here and all shops here only sell sky lantern. It comes in different colours symbolizes different meaning. For us, we just picked the white one - for 'all'. 

Pig in action.

The staff here are quite diligent in their work. Once you're done with writing your wishes, you'll ask you to stand on the track, position you with your sky lantern and asked for your phone or camera to help you capture the lovely moments. And they took quite a number of shots too.



Bye lantern! Enjoy these pictures took by the staff with our phone :P Some are a bit blur though.







Then, we went to see the bridge at Shi Fen. Didn't explore further as it was raining. 


Bye Shi Fen.

That's how we spend our rainy day at Jiu Fen and Shi Fen. Definitely gonna be back next time on a non-rainy day! Our driver drove us back to Taipei and drop us at Hotel Puri Ximending .

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Nuffnang Premiere Screening: Never Lose Focus

Catch Will Smith in action in his latest movie; Never Lose Focus!
Source: Nuffnang
Thanks to Nuffnang Malaysia and Warner Bros. Pictures Malaysia, I was invited to attend the Nuffnang Premiere Screening of Never Lose Focus at TGV 1 Utama few days ago. As pig is not free, went to the preview screening with Jason. :)



Unlike the other action movie such as I am Legend, After Earth and the infamous Men-in-Black, this movie shows a different side of Will Smith. This movie is more of a romance + crime genre.

'Never Lose Focus' follows Nicky (Will Smith); a super intelligent + successful conman who gets romantically involved with a new female friend; Jess (Margot Robbie) who is also a con artist.

I've got some snapshot from the trailer and here's some interesting highlights from the movie:


The starting point of the movie? Jess uses a lonely guy (Nicky) at a restaurant to act as her partner while she escapes from being 'up in the room' with another guy whom she is trying to steal an expensive watch from. 


As usual, things lead to the room which makes this movie rated 18+. Don't lose focus by judging from the picture, there's a lie which Jess made here :P Thus, it also leads to the starting of this story.



Jess was impressed with Nicky's skill in misdirection - getting another party's focus on him while he steals away their items without them knowing. Jess wanted to learn from Nicky and she was shown a few examples from Nicky. However, Jess wanted to join Nicky's team and she later found him at a hotel's restaurant after checking out a few hotels. Then, Jess was introduced to Nicky's team and was taught on how to steal/con people. Oh, well she passed the test.

They both got closer to each other and he got Jess a pair of VIP tickets to watch a match.

Source: Nuffnang

Another con scheme happens here at the game. It's interesting :)
Source: Nuffnang

In the conman's world, it says  " There's no room for heart in this game".. and Nicky left Jess ..

Till they meet again 3 years later.. and the con scheme continues. This time, the game involves both of them and their job ties into the game as well.

And this is their reaction during their moment of truth after a few lies overlaps on one another between them.



We laughed throughout the movie at those moment of truth :) and of course the romantic moments between Nicky and Jess! It's more about the romance there on screen and the con scheme drives the storyline.

Get into this romantic feeling with Will Smith today on how love affects his con scheme and go through a journey of him securing his love in the end. Never Lose Focus is now available for viewing at our local cinemas.


                                            

Monday, February 23, 2015

Valentine's Day and Chinese New Year Special Set, Nosh Bangsar.

It's Monday again! How's your Chinese New Year celebration last week? I'm sure your whole week was full of gathering, festive food and huge celebrations. I think good time passes really fast and that CNY is already over.

We had our early Valentine's Day celebration at Nosh, Bangsar recently and the good news is that their special Valentine's and Chinese New Year set is available until 15 March 2015. Therefore, even if Chinese New Year is already over for real; you still can be in the festive mood at Nosh, Bangsar.



You can either choose a Set A at RM48/pax or a Set B at RM78/pax. Both sets are two courses meal with an appetizer and a main. Drinks are not included in the set meal. Our main mission the other day was to have their special dessert as part of our Valentine's Day celebration. Thus, we saved this festive set for our next visit.

Festive set at Nosh, Bangsar.

In conjunction with Valentine's Day, Nosh introduces 5 limited time desserts namely "Ai", "LOVE", "Amour", "Ti Amo" and "Cinta". Each dessert's plating is planned with great details. I actually saw their dessert planning on their FB account and tempted me to try them :)



We actually planned to have our dessert at Nosh after our Valentine's celebration dinner. However, since the restaurant which we wanted to go was fully booked (on Valentine's eve huh!); we thought why not have dinner at Nosh instead since it's been ages since we dine here. And the lighting here is good for selfies :)






Each table was lighted up with a little candle in a glass filled with red dyed rice.



If you're here, do try their fresh Strawberry Juice. Yes, it's freshly juiced; not the strawberry flavored syrup. Love it. Gonna buy boxes of strawberries when they are on sale and juiced them at home.



Pig would usually busy entertaining his smart phone when we wait for our food to be served. Since there was a glass of red dyed rice on our table, here's what he did while waiting for his food to be served. Thanks to his itchy fingers, he created this lovely masterpiece :)



Finally, the food arrived. Pig had the Grilled Lamb Rack served with cheesy portobello mushroom and salad. The lamb was good and I love that giant cheesy mushroom. It was crispy outside and the inner part was still juicy!   



I'm a pesto lover so I had their pesto penne with grilled chicken. As you can see from the picture below, it comes with sufficient amount of pine nuts that you can taste their presence in every bites.



After the mains, we were very happy that it was dessert time. We ordered the "LOVE" special dessert to share. It comes with about 7 scopes of ice-creams and topped with nuts, chocolate sauce, chocolate wafer and some raspberry + strawberry. The most important is that there's a "LOVE U" note on the plate which makes it just like a Valentine's Day dessert! Unfortunately, our special letters was covered with some of the nuts when it was served :( They should have put the letters on the other corner or dessert to be put placed on the center of the plate instead. But the ice-cream was delicious. When you scope them with your dessert spoon; there's frozen raspberries inside the ice-creams. It's like you are digging for treasure inside the ice-creams.



A selfie is a must when you have a plate of art.

That was our Valentine's Day dinner at Nosh, Bangsar. We plan to taste all the 5 types of dessert but since we had a cake at home; we'll save the other 4 types for our next visit.


You have till 15 March 2015 to try their Special festive set or Valentine's Day Special desserts.Their dessert is absolutely delicious. I've noticed that you can order their normal dessert and add in the 'LOVE U' note too. If you would like to follow up on their latest menu or special dessert, do have a look on their FB page once in a while.


Nosh
No. 7 Jalan Telawi 3,
Bangsar Baru,
59100 Kuala Lumpur.
- See more at: http://nosh.my/happening-promotions_oct2014.php#sthash.bYlbAtnA.dpuf
No.3, Jalan Telawi 3,
Bangsar Baru,
59100 Kuala Lumpur. 

No. 7 Jalan Telawi 3,
Bangsar Baru,
59100 Kuala Lumpur.
- See more at: http://nosh.my/happening-promotions_oct2014.php#sthash.bYlbAtnA.dpuf
No. 7 Jalan Telawi 3,
Bangsar Baru,
59100 Kuala Lumpur.
- See more at: http://nosh.my/happening-promotions_oct2014.php#sthash.bYlbAtnA.dpuf