Indonesia Trip 2010
The last leg of my March travel was Indonesia. I went to Jakarta to see my parents, and then I took them to Bangka Island, to visit the birthplace of my mum. The pictures above were all taken on the island.
I felt a certain disconnect to the rest of the world when I was in Bangka Island. Perhaps it’s because I didn’t use the Internet at all, but then again, most of the locals I talked to didn’t give a jack about world news, social media, or anything else online that occupies our lives these days. It was quite refreshing.
Other than visiting some distant relatives I didn’t know about and some of mum’s childhood friends, I also had a chance to visit a semi-traditional factory producing fish and prawn crackers, to check out their machinery and to learn about their distribution system. It’s pretty awesome that that little factory had their products exported to several countries, including Australia.
After returning to Jakarta for a few days before finishing the trip, I just had to tick off the items on my TOEAT list. These were my most favourite food in the world, highly recommended!
The first one was fried wonton from Bakmi GM. My offer still stands, if they open a restaurant in Melbourne, I will have my lunch there everyday for two months in a row.
The next one was Padang food, probably one of the tastiest food on earth. The cow brain curry was not for the faint hearted :p.
And last but not least, the simplistic nasi goreng, my all time favourite. There must be tens of different types of nasi goreng in Indonesia, love them all.
So that ended my travel in March, ten flights (can’t wait for Star Trek transporter), four countries (stayed in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on four separate days for connecting flights), a pair of sore legs (for obvious reasons), and one great journey.
Xin Wang Restaurant Shanghai
Warning, fifteen images on this blog post. I know it’s too many for non-thumbnails, but I just have to show you how nice the food looked. All pictures were taken by Latte Girl.
Xin Wang restaurant was only 30 seconds away from the place where I stayed while I was in Shanghai. I passed this place several times before realising that it was a restaurant. At least it wasn’t immediately obvious to me who couldn’t read Chinese characters, who would’ve thunked? I thought it was a garage door-style entrance to a car dealership.
After that, I had to take an escalator downstairs to find the restaurant.
The interior was nicely decorated, I liked it.
Here’s what we had for lunch:
The food were really that damn good, the best I had in China. It was that good that we decided to return for dinner:
If you ever visited Shanghai, I highly recommend you to to visit this restaurant and try out some of their delicious food.
How to get there
Take Line 10 on the Shanghai Metro (map). After exiting the station, you’ll find the intersection of Wujin Road and Sichuan North Road nearby. Xin Wang restaurant is right across the intersection.
And oh, by the way…
I didn’t notice this sign at all until I left the restaurant on the second visit. I guess we were not allowed to take any picture inside the restaurant? Sorry :p.
Most of the food in China were absolutely delicious, they put Melbourne’s Chinatown restaurants to shame. And the best part? The most expensive dish was 40 Chinese Yuan =~ 6.37 Australian Dollars, I could only get 3 mediocre sushi rolls for about the same amount of money in Melbourne. The perk of being a tourist sometime.
You Know You Grew Up Eating Indonesian Food When…
your guests ask why you have various types of sambal (chilli sauce) in your home.
Left to right: sambal terasi, sambal Lampung, sambal Dua Belibis, sambal ABC, dodgy chilli oil, Chiu Chow chilli oil.
When I first moved to Australia, I didn’t realise that Indonesians’ affinity with chilli is unusual. It wasn’t until a Singaporean friend said to me “Wow, you Indos sure put chilli in everything,” before I poured a large amount of sambal Lampung on my slices of pizza.