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Friday, May 04, 2012

A Day Trip to Sekinchan on Labour's Day


Map of Sekinchan
On Labour’s Day May 1, 2012, my wife Soh Ai, second son Wai Jen and I joined a day trip to Sekinchan, Selangor by coach, organized by Soh Ai’s SGM member Wendy Ho’s eldest brother Mr. Ho (何征砝), a freelance tour guide. The fare is RM 98.00 per pax for the cost of transport and dinner (breakfast and lunch on our own account).

Klang bak-kut-teh restaurant
We left from home at 6.00 am by car to the pick-up point at Bandar Mahkota Cheras. Wendy Ho, her hubby Tony Lim and 2 sons also joined the trip. The coach came at about 6.30 am to pick us up and proceeded to Jalan Kucai Lama / Kucai Entrepreneur Park areas to pick up the rest of the passengers including Mr. Ho and his family. The entire group consisted of 40 persons, mostly elderly people.
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Our first stop was Klang where we had our bak-kut-teh breakfast at about 8.00 am. After that we proceeded to Sekinchan, which in Chinese means the ‘village suitable for plantation’ (适耕庄) and is well known as one of the major rice producing areas of Malaysia. Sekinchan is also a fishing village in the Sabak Bernam district of Selangor.

Scenic paddy field viewed from the bus

Our luxurious coach

We stopped at “9th emperor” temple located in the middle of the paddy field for a rest. The wide green view of paddy field is really scenic. We then visited a rice mill to buy rice. I bought 2 packets of 2 kg ‘Japanese rice’ (珍珠米), 2 packets of 2 kg ‘brown rice’ (糙米), and 3 x 3 'sovenir' packets (100 g each) of rice all for RM 76.00.

Rice mill

Sovenir packets of rice

2 kg Japanese Rice and Brown Rice


Fish-selling shop
The next place we went was a fishing village where we bought fish balls, fish cakes, stuffed tofu and the like.

Restaurant for lunch


About 1.15pm, we had our simple lunch at a restaurant. I took ‘lo mai kai’ (steamed sticky rice with chicken in lotus leaf wrap) and Soh Ai took noodle and a vege pau while Wai Jen just took milo drink only. Our appetite then was no good, due to the hot weather and that we had taken some fish cakes before this.



Visiting Malawati Hill of Kuala Selangor

Tram ride
After lunch, we proceeded to Kuala Selangor and visited Bukit Malawati, a historical hill and one of Kuala Selangor's most popular tourist attractions during the day.

Most of us took the tram ride for RM 3.00 each and stopped at a view point in front of the Altingsburg light house. This particular point of the peak is a famous tourist feeding ground (mainly with long beans) for the free-roaming monkeys known as Silver Leaf and Long Tail Macaques.




Monkey being fed with long beans



Monkeys all over the trees
Wai Jen in white shirt, refused to be taken direct photo as usual

The blogger in front of the Historical Museum of Kuala Selangor
I also visited Kuala Selangor Historical Museum and had the one and only one photo of myself taken in front of it.

Soh Ai

叫化八宝饭
We left Kuala Selangor at about 4.00 pm and proceeded to the estate town of Ijok for dinner at a restaurant called New Beggar’s Delicious Restaurant (新家乡美味叫化鸡).

叫化鸡
The dinner was really sumptuous, yummy and heavy.  There were all together 10-courses of dishes including: (1) 叫化八宝饭(RM37) Glutinous Rice with sliced Chinese mushrooms, dried shrimps and 8 salted egg yolks scattered around the rice; (2) 叫化鸡(RM47) Beggar’s Chicken stuffed with Chinese herbs like wolfberries or kei chi, dong sheng, dong guai and etc and wrapped in silver foil; (3) 瓦煲咖哩石斑鱼头Claypot Fish Head Curry creamy with coconut milk; (4) 叫化猪手(RM50) Pig's Trotters with Chinese mushrooms; (5) 叫化鸭(RM48) Beggar’s Duck stuffed with Chinese herbs; (6) 叫化五宝汤(RM38) Claypot Pork Stomach with pieces of abalone and mushrooms in a peppery boiling hot soup; (7) 明虾Tiger Prawns cooked in sweetish black soya sauce; (8) 螃蟹Crabs; (9) 油Vegetable and (10) 蜜瓜(RM10) Honeydew fruit.  It was said to cost around RM 400.00 per table and Mr. Ho also sponsored a bottle of 2009 red wine for each table.

最后一道菜--螃蟹

The Restaurant
After dinner, we returned to Kuala Lumpur amid heavy rain. We were caught in a very bad traffic jam along the Federal Highway due to flash flood for about 45 minutes with complete stand-still.  We arrived at home and concluded a pleasant trip at about 9.30 pm.