Pulau Aur is one of the Southern most diving destination in Malaysia, as a result, the island is probably more popular to Singaporean than the average Malaysian. Which explains why Gab, who used to work in Singapore helped organize this trip right after our Redang Project AWARE dive trip last September.
The operator was FWS, and we stayed at Pulau Aur Diver’s Lodge.
the journey to Pulau Aur via Mersing
Racheal who missed the Redang trip due to illness was able to join us on the last dive of the season with her boo Norman. Terence, Gab, Irene, Horng, and myself fit into 2 cars and started our journey to Pulau Aur on Thursday evening, taking advantage of the holiday on Friday (Deepavali.)
While the road journey is only some 360 KM, the east-west bit was through old trunk roads and thus it took a good 4.5 hours to get there while driving relatively speedy. This is evident from Irene’s constant exploit of the poor IKEA soft toy to cover her face over the windier part of the track.
Port Cafe by Mersing Jetty
We arrived at Mersing just before midnight, parked the car and took care of supper in the TSH (tourist slaughter house) looking restaurant that is the Port Cafe. As it turned out, food wasn’t all too expensive at less than RM 10 per plate, and the nasi goreng Cina was exceptionally tasty too!
slave style boat transfer from Mersing to Pulau Aur
The boat to Aur left Mersing just past midnight. There wasn’t any real seating space on this boat, there were 2 “decks” of sleeping space instead. If you’re like us and got on the boat late, all there’s left would be the rear upper deck that has about 3cm headroom.
The experience was a bit like sleeping in a coffin, except there’s an additional falling hazard and the aircond was too cold. It was still fun though, I slept through most part of the boat ride, bliss!
the resort at night, we arrived before day break
We reached the resort before sunrise. Being ushered down the boat onto another platform in the middle of water while still super woozy was certainly an experience. The resort wasn’t even really in sight at night, it felt like we were on set for Pirates of the Pulau Aur or something, that sorta woke me up.
Pulau Aur Diver’s Lodge does look a lot more inviting in daylight
This is the view of the resort taken from the small jetty that’s only good enough to park a sampan (shallow water). The seating area’s for moonlight BBQ dinner, with Narcosis bar on the left. There are altogether 18 rooms in 9 different semi-d chalet.
Our rooms were located on the 2nd level and it was already too high to climb after exhausting dives. I’d appreciate an escalator around here, but the view is fantastic though.
breathing compressed air – bliss!
Diving is done from the very same boat that we took from Mersing. We set up our gears and left them on the big boat, but going to and from the diving boat to resort had to be done via the sampan. A bit of a hassle but we weren’t really complaining.
nudibranches at Pulau Aur
There were 9 dives scheduled in 2 days, I did 8 and skipped the last night dive mainly due to exhaustion. Over here there was no time to do anything else, it was dive, eat, dive, eat, dive, eat, dive, eat, and with some naps in between.
This was really a proper diving trip, there weren’t any activities for snorkelers.
we take a sampan to the bigger boat before each dive
Besides the platform, Pulau Aur Diver’s Lodge does not really have a beach. There were, however, two very short stretch of beaches at each side of the resort accessible via the very poorly maintained wooden bridge (one of which already completely destroyed). The resort owner explained that maintenance of these bridges/walkways are done by the Malaysian government…
tranquilizing seascape
Since it was the last dive trip before season ends, the water condition was not exactly the greatest. We were in fact pretty lucky to not have to deal with any thunderstorm or crazy huge waves when we had to be under or on the ocean.
Visibility, as a result, wasn’t too great either, and most dive sites had mild to strong current, not particularly friendly to beginners.
Terence with his new gear, weird sea creature, color-coordinated Racheal
That said, we still had pretty decent dives that could have been even better if not for the fact that our Dive Master somehow always think that fighting the current head on is such a great idea.
There were the usual suspects under the sea – several types of nudibranches, bat fish, cleaner fish, clown fish, baby baraccuda, puffer fish, angel fish, and so on. Horng even spotted a cuttlefish!
Our hope of swimming with a whale sharks though, will have to wait for future trips.
awesome food at Pulau Aur Diver’s Lodge
The food at Diver’s Lodge was really way better than our expectations. We had moon light buffer dinner the first night, and really awesome BBQ dinner the second night. There were unlimited grilled prawns, beef, squid, cuttle fish, and so on. I still miss the sliced fried potato there.
Even the lunch/tea time food were pretty good, fried chicken, fish, and of course, that awesome homemade donut with Hershey’s chocolate sauce.
earth is 70% water, don’t always be land bound 
I think I’m done with diving for 2010, next year we’ll get the girls to learn diving too! Kerol, Kim, Haze, Diana and more (and also the return of Gareth), can’t wait!
A couple Fridays ago my buddies Terence and Horng made a trip down to KL and bought me birthday lunch. Since it was a little too early for the best roast pork at Wong Meng Kee (they only start serving at 12:30pm sharp), Terence suggested that we head to Thim Kee Steamed Fish, a place with the best Tilapia, according to Mr. Goh.
Thim Kee Steamed Fish at Pudu
As with anywhere in Pudu, parking is always a challenge, Pudu plaza car park is an option since the stall is situated just directly opposite the old mall. The hawker shack itself isn’t exactly the most comfortable of all dining places, but it’s largely sheltered, and relatively clean.
The three of us were joined by Sean, so four of us ordered up a total of four dishes to share.
delicious deep fried tilapia
First to come was their famous deep fried tilapia that was so crispy on the outside but still has its meat fresh tasting and tender (must be fried with really high temperature, check out the gas canisters on top collage). The fish is served on top of a sauce that carries a hint of sweetness and fermented bean flavor, unique and in a very good way.
This is a definite must order, I’ve never tasted tilapia so good, it’s even better than Sister Lan’s tilapia at Rawang.
butter squid, herbal steamed tilapia, fried chicken
The butter squid here is served in a clay pot and comes with butter in liquid state, which results in soft and tender squid but one that doesn’t get as much flavor from the butter/spice/curry leave. Still a dish worth ordering though.
Herbal steamed tilapia is another fish we ordered, since this place is famous for tilapia, so why not? I couldn’t find any fault from this dish except for the fact that there’s only so much you can get out of tilapia, I think this would taste much better if only it was a siakap (barramundi) or pomphret.
Fried chicken is another must-order dish. This tastes like a cross between Vietnamese style lemen grass chicken and traditional Malay pandan chicken but deep fried. The sauce that came with the chicken was sweet+spicy and definitely flavorful. I wanna have the whole chicken drumstick by myself next time!
note: GPS should be 3.136585, 101.713824
As with most hawker stalls at Pudu, price is rather reasonable. The total bill for four of us came to some RM 60+, we left with really satisfied stomachs. Will definitely return, thank you guys for treating!
p/s: By the way, do call and make a reservation to make sure fish and more importantly, seats are available!
Address:
Thim Kee Steamed Fish
Jalan 1/77c, Off Jalan Pudu,
55100 Kuala Lumpur
GPS: 3.136585, 101.713824
Tel: 03-3986 3097
Stuffed crab is one of those dishes that is so good you wonder why they only have it in the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia. My best guess is that we don’t have enough very kind and toothless aunties here in KL to separate crab meat from the seafood, that or there was an agreement for that during the formation of Malaya to protect the eastern states’ interests..
After all, aren’t our government known for setting up special agreements and policies to protect interests of certain groups all the time?
restaurant Tong Juan at Chukai, Kemaman
The first time I had stuffed crab was only earlier this year at a pretty busy Pak Su seafood restaurant near Kuantan. The experience was rather good and I have been thinking of a repeat for this dish since.
So when the opportunity to have it again arises while on the way back from our previous trip to Redang last weekend, we naturally took it. This time we went to Tong Juan at Kemaman, located at the ideal spot that is just about half way point between KL and Kuala Terengganu.
stuffed crab, this is what we’re here for
14 of us went in and Terence did the ordering, and for the first (and probably the last) time, the dude did not over order.
We had stuffed crab for everyone, grilled tiger prawns, spicy squid, vegetable, fish ball soup, and fried rice. This was for lunch on a Sunday (a working day in Kemaman, feed your parking machine)
grilled prawns, spicy squid
While those super health conscious might complain that the stuffed crab at Tong Juan is a little too oily, I had no problem with it. The crabs were good! With plenty of crab meat plus finely chopped onion and who knows what else in it. This is definitely a must-order.
The huge grilled tiger prawns were another awesome dish. They were easily the size of my palm and grilled with a bit of stuffed garlic at the back, a nice variation, delicious.
stuffed crab, fish ball soup, vegetable, fried rice
Fried rice was pretty good as well, but I didn’t think the fish ball worth a repeat, they were pretty life less and uninspiring, if not a tad too salty too. Vegetable’s just to satisfy vitamin C quota and for color matching, nothing to report.
The bill came to about RM 27 or 28 per person including drinks, while not cheap, I think it is still reasonable and definitely worth going there again on my next east-coast trip.
Address:
Tong Juan restaurant
K-117 Jalan Sulaiman,
24000 Kemaman, Terengganu
GPS: 4.231314, 103.428383
Tel: 09-859 1346
Just got back from Redang island for Project AWARE + diving trip. 2010 is now officially a diving year for me since this has turned out to be the 5th diving trip of the year after Sipadan/Mabul, 2 trips to Tenggol, and a previous trip to Redang in June.
Haze, Joel, Wan Czin, Yuki, Horng, Ian, Irene, Vinn, Zess, Gabriel, Terence, KY
Project AWARE is also known by the less glamourous name of International Cleanup Day whereby beach enthusiasts all over the world come together and basically spend a morning clearing up a section of beach from things that shouldn’t be there.
Our group managed to picked up some 500+ cigarette buds from just one small stretch of beach in front of a resort, and there were 5 other teams that picked up similar amount of ciggy buds and other junks too. One other interesting thing we picked up, among ropes/bottle caps/slippers/etc was a piece of soiled underwear :S
Project AWARE is usually partly sponsored by the resort, and hence we also scored 3 dives at a reduced rate. However, the visibility weren’t great, and our instructor too were reluctant to take us to some of the more interesting/challenging sites due to the larger amount of divers on each trip. This was actually my 2nd participation of Project AWARE, with the previous one all the way back in 2004 at Redang, my 2nd dive trip.
After this trip, I now logged 45 dives in total, with 31 of them from this year and 14 from 2004.
Since this is a space is sorta known as a food blog, I shall also introduce the best 3 layer tea from this side of Malaysia – the little kopitiam at Redang Beach Resort manned by an uncle. The blend of evaporated milk, tea, and palm sugar’s perfect! The lor mai kai (steamed glutinous chicken rice) is pretty awesome too!
As for accommodation, we stayed at Pelangi resort, which in my opinion is a bit better than Redang Beach resort. There’s attached toilet on each room instead of communal hostel style arrangement, for example. Food wise they’re both similarly sad though.
There’ll be a bit more on this trip in the coming post(s), but in the mean time, please help complete the survey on Shark’s fin on the side bar on your right. I need the information for an upcoming post, thanks!
This is the last food post from the Redang trip last month. After stopping by for keropok lekor, our last item on schedule before heading back to KL was naturally, lunch.
Ed again served as the guide and this time he brought us to Restaurant Golden Dragon in Chinatown
a very straight to the point “non halal” sign
I knew that it had to be at least a pretty decent place soon as we arrived. The restaurant was absolutely packed even on a Monday, and we had to wait for a table. There was a big group of middle aged ladies with “I love Redang” t-shirts, which doesn’t bear any significance to anything but I just felt like mentioning.
long beans, eggplant, salted fish, roast pork and BBQ pork
Ed ordered a large portion of roast pork and BBQ pork, and I made orders of several other pre-prepared dishes to go with steamed rice. We had long beans, eggplant, omelet, bitter gourd, and some soup too.
Though the BBQ pork (char siu) was ordinary, the roast pork (siu yoke) was actually rather good. We actually ordered a second serving of roast pork to make up for going 3 days porkless on the island.
bitter gourd, omelet, soup, rice
While the other dishes were commendable, my favorite had to go to the salted fish fillets. The aroma and taste was just so “right” I used it to replace soya sauce. Omelet with salted fish, roast pork with salted fish, bitter gourd with salted fish, egg plant with salted fish, they were all awesome!
Terence, Kim, FA, Ed, Horng, KY & Joe, Kerol & Haze
Including drinks, we only had to pay RM 8 per person for the meal. It was really cheap considering the amount of items we ordered. I’ve read that they serve pretty good “tai chau” during dinner time too.
Address:
198 Jalan Kampung Cina
Kuala Terengganu, Terengganu
GPS: 5.333684, 103.132921
Tel: 09-622 3034
