The compact 4 door sedan market in Malaysia is pretty much dominated by 2 Japanese models: Toyota Vios and Honda City. Both cars are priced at around RM 70-90k range, with decent space, and around 1.5 liter engine capacity. From outside looking in, you have the Naza Bestari 206 with 1.4 liter engine, as well as Suzuki Swift, 1.5 liter engine but slightly smaller built.
Ford Fiesta – 1.5 liter hot hatch from Ford
Enter Ford Fiesta, this is actually the 6th generation of Fiesta that was originally debuted in 1976. The hatch definitely poses very impressive specs with price rumored to be in direct competition with other B segment cars like the above mentioned Vios and City.
Engine: 1.6 liter Ti-VCT with 120 PS at 6,500 rpm and 152 Nm of torque at 4,500 rpm
Transmission: 6 speed Powershift dual clutch
Airbags: Dual SRS
Wheels: 16″ alloy rims
0-100 km/h: 9.9s
Top Speed: 193 km/h
There’s even optional electronic traction control that’s usually only found in high end cars. This Ford certainly has the spec to match it’s aggressive looks. We’ll see ho well the Malaysian market embrace it.
I for one surely hope there’s some competition to the current duopoly in B segment cars.
A trip to the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia is never complete without having keropok lekor, and when it comes to this particular wholesome snack, Terengganu is usually regarded as the best place to have them.
Keropok Lekor Zahela Embong, as recommended by Ed
Traditional keropok lekor is made of fish meat, sago, and a bit of salt, there are some that uses flour in addition or instead of sago too. The concoction is then made into unsightly phallic shape that is then boiled and optionally fried.
The keropok is usually served with chili sauce. Here in Klang Valley, you usually get some mass produced chili sauce like Kimball, but in Terengganu, it’s often some home made goodness instead.
Keropok Lekor with chili sauce, yum max!
The keropok lekor stall of Zaleha Embong is conveniently located in between the town of Kuala Terengganu and Merang, the jetty for departing to Redang Island.
Our dive guide Ed, who’s been to Redang more often than just about anyone I know, swears on this stall, and I do agree that the keropok lekor here was really awesome. It was delicious, slightly salty and tasted like an offspring of fish cake and prawn fritters. Don’t miss this one if you find ourself heading to Merang Jetty.
Terence, FA, Horng, Kim, Kerol, Haze, and KY
The same stall sells other local products like dried cuttle fish with sugar, salted fish (wet and dried version), and various other prepacked keropok too. I spent RM20 on those other nonsense in making my colleagues in KL happy, they loved it too!
Address: Keropok Lekor Zaleha Embong
near Kg. Merabang Likar
21020 Kuala Terengganu GPS: 5.457598,103.034248 Tel: 09-669 4762
As the previous Redang island post mentioned, we arrived at Kuala Terengganu 2 hours too early for our boat ride to the island. To kill time and satisfy our stomach, we head to Chinatown, a road aptly called Jalan Kampung Cina at KT for some breakfast.
duck noodle at coffee shop just next to the Chinatown gate
Even at this primarily Muslim dominated state, Chinese food is actually pretty easy to get, and there’s a local taste to it too. Most Chinese in Terengganu speaks either Hokkien with a very Penang like accent, or Mandarin. Cantonese is spoken here too but quite a lot less prevalent.
All these basically means that you shouldn’t have any problem ordering food. Unlike the hawker scene in KL that’s dominated by foreigners whom you just don’t know what language to start with when trying to converse with them.
KY and Kim enjoying some roast duck noodle as breakfast
The duck noodle stall offers wantan noodle, roast pork, char siu, and of course, roast duck. Kim and I both ordered the roast duck with wantan noodle (RM 4-6). The meat was very fragrant, tender, and juicy, and I love the abundance of lighter sauce on the noodle with the thicker roast duck sauce on the meat. There’s a bowl of pork wantan soup accompanying the dish.
I wouldn’t mind stopping here for breakfast again if I find myself at KT. Yums!
Before earlier this year at Sipadan and Mabul islands, my previous diving trip was Redang, way back in 2005. After the very first dive at Mabul island, I realized how much I actually missed diving and promised that I would do it perhaps 4 times this year.
I guess I over achieved, it is June and I’ve went on 4 diving trips already. This time at Redang island, it was a trip organized by Terence to con our buddy Horng in getting his PADI Open Water certification.
Terence chasing the green turtle
Together with Haze, Kim, Kerol, FA, Joe (went to Tenggol with), and dive instructor Edvin from OceanXplorer, we started our journey just after midnight from KL to Kuala Terengganu on Friday.
The drive took a little less than 7 hours, which proved to be a bit of a mistake in scheduling. As our boat does not leave till past 9 am, we ended up having to spend over 2 hours at Kuala Terengganu for breakfast. Should have left at perhaps 1:30am instead to optimize the journey and catch more sleep prior.
Haze, Kerol, FA, and Kim. bottom rigth: 2 vagabonds found on the boat
In contrast with the departure point to Tenggol at Dungun where there were perhaps half a dozen people heading to the island, Merang Jetty was absolutely packed. There were tourists representing all continents, a cacophony of foreign languages and various local accents served as white noise while we board our relatively comfortable boat.
A little less than an hour later, we arrived at Redang.
KY & Haze, Joe, Horng getting his PADI certification by Edvin
While Tenggol was a hidden paradise, Redang felt more like a well oiled machine all prep up for tourists.
Boat load of people being herded to the resort registration counter like sheep by hounds, tractors hauling your luggage, loud PA system announcing snorkeling time, and huge dining area not entirely unlike school canteen.
freaking lucky Horng, Eagle Ray on his first ever dive
Having said that, while I don’t particularly like the commercialization of the island, it does have advantages some can’t live without.
There’s projector with Astro showing world cup, convenient store, pub by the beach with dance floor and all sorts of alcohol, and even eateries offering pretty awesome Cantonese noodle and lor mai kai (glutinous rice with chicken).
Terence, Horng, KY, Joe, diving at Redang on 2nd day
I did 5 dives at Redang, the first was the shore dive in conjunction with Horng’s very first compressed air breathing experience in the ocean. We saw a magnificent spotted eagle ray!
puffer fish, nemo’s cousin, and cleaner fish on my fins
The second dive we did was with the resort’s dive operator at the site just a couple minutes from the beach. The dive turned out to be pretty forgettable, not a whole lot to see and a tad too many divers at the same time. I did manage to get some cleaner fish to service my fins though 😀
Luckily quite a lot of people left the island on Sunday (our 2nd day). The lesser crowd was a blessing, and though not related, the diving was much better too.
blue coral fish, moray eel, more nemo, blue spotted sting ray
Our second dive at Tanjung Tokong dive site had the best visibility I’ve ever experienced, we could see well over 30 meters. It was like diving in 1080p HD quality.
We ended up visiting a lot of nemo in our 5 dives. There were other usual suspects like moray eel, trigger fish, cleaner fish, shrimp, puffer, porcupine fish, green turtle, and blue spotted sting ray. There weren’t a lot of nudibranch though.
Unfortunately, there were also some signs of coral bleaching due to the warm ocean temperature, hopefully that will reverse itself in due time.
another eel, ikan kembong?, cleaner shrimp, porcupine fish
While the diving weren’t superb, they were still pretty enjoyable. The excellent vis at Tg. Tokong was a savior, and of course the feeling of being in water with total freedom and almost total quietness was always something I love.
Kim and Kerol did a discovery dive with Ed and totally loved it, I think there’s probably more certified divers in #porkgang next year. As it stands, all the guys are certified divers, and none of the girls are. Lets change that soon guys!
In the early 1990s, the Japanese car makers offer quite a good lineup of pretty affordable sports cars. Cars that were geared towards enthusiasts who aren’t necessarily fixing their midlife crisis.
Mitsubishi had two models that fit into the category, the GTO (and Dodge Stealth), and the little brother, the FTO.
FTO stands for “Fresh Touring Origination”, and it is really a sleek little car that is rather capable. Equipped with a 2.0 liter MIVEC V6 engine with 24 valve. The car produces up to 200ps at 7500 rpm without an aid of a turbo. Quite impressive.
The 0-100 km/h speed is in the mid to high 6s mark, not quite as impressive as its closest rival, the Toyota MR2, but would still beat over 80% of the cars out there with it’s NA engine in FF configuration.
The second (or third of many hand) FTOs are now trading in Malaysia for about RM 40-50k region. Since FTO was produced only from 1994 to 2000. There aren’t many of them around anymore, so if you can get your hands on one in awesome condition, I’m sure you won’t regret it.
After all, how many cars were in Jackie Chan’s movie Thunderbolt (1995)as one of the main characters? Check out the video below for some old time classic!
