Audrey Things to Do Tips by Audrey118

VT meet with Cokes from South Africa

VTer Cokes aka Collin was on a 3 week trip around SEAsia - he came with a fren and was planning to travel around Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. One thing for sure, he is very impressed with prices of everything in Malaysia - including competitive prices for diamonds...and this coming from some one who hails from a large diamond producing country in the world.

It was a fun meet - we have some new faces and of course the regulars. It was nice to catch up with the regulars - many coming back from trips - Jenniferchin was back from her annual haunt to Europe - this time to attend a wedding of a VTer - woohoo... and Chiabh with Diana was just back from ChiangRai and SiemReap - yayaa - i need those tips for my Sreap trip come Sep - altho was a bit disheartened to find out that it is wet wet season - now how wet is wet???

We also had visitng Vters from Indonesia - Didibeachbum who was here for a series of meeting, and her pal MimiBlack. They joined us for drinks and it was nice to get lots of tips for Bandung - which many of the attendees will be going including meself!!
I think Cokes will catch up with the Indon girls when he gets there.... how coool...they will have VT meets!

Among other attendees were
kenboy - Terence - whom weshare a same passion - running altho i cannot heck any competitive race...
yurijade aka Lily and brother - stromrider aka Andrew
lukluk_wajan - Zue whom i gave such a short notice (sorreelah - but really nice to see you again - next time bring Jimmy and his gadgets
kishore and muddybok-

Address: Little Penang Cafe KLCC 4th floor

Another meet with Tattugran

I have met Tattugran from Brissie several times. Once we met in KL, early 2005, and then late last year, my husband and I were planning for a short trip to his hometown up north, and it coincided with Tattugran holiday trip to Penang.

This time around, Tattugran wanted to feast on crabs. And immediately she settled in at their hotel room, she called to confirm out night out. I called p_yenyen who was having some guests from HK Disney, and we decided to have one grand night out for crabs. Venue was long decided.... my favourite hang out - Greenview in Petaling Jaya. I gave all the address, and told Tattugran to pay no more than 20 ringgit for cab ride.... but they surely were slaughtered by our infamous notorious taxi drivers... cost them 40 ringgit to get there form city centre :(

We ordered a variety of food; fried rice with Chinese sausage, tofu with some gourd, a special vege dish consisting of 4 varieties - okra, egg plant, long beans and asparagus cooked with dried shrimp and shrimp paste, pork chop, honey crispy squid, and crabs... we had 2 crabs cooked butter style, 2 crabs sweet and sour, and as if that was not enough, we had another 1 crab cooked dry style with curry leaves, dried shrimps etc.

Everyone was really pleased with the variety - it was very fun eating with our fingers.... we were really relaxed and shamelessly tucked in - of course yakking loudly away!!!

pic was borrowed from p_yenyen page - with Tattugran (VIcky) and hubbie Verne, and mom Phyliss, of course p_yenyen (Patricia) and myself and my husband.

KL meet up with Loisl

This was indeed a refreshing VT meet - i have not met many of them since late last year.... so it was nice meet up with old chums.

Loisl (Peter) comes often to KL and Spore for work - he usually make some time to catch up with some local VTers - I am really envious of the Spore crowd - there will be 3 VT meets during his short stay in Spore!!! wow

We (pat and I) met up at KLCC, at the popular Madam Kwan restaurant. Kishore, Nizman and Mary were already there.. I was starving and indulge on a shaved ice dessert... finished in a jiffy before my main course arrived.

Other VTers started to roll in - kenboy, Kaynisa together with Wardatul (Kay introduced Wardatul to VT!!! - they were colleagues before), and came siblings yurijade and stromrider, and travelkaki was the last to arrive.

I was surprised by the number of chicken chop dinner ordered - never had that at Madam Kwan. The favourites at this hang out are nasi lemak (like Peter said - order Number one on the menu!!!), and another hot fav is char kuey teow and of course nasi bojari. I wanted something lighter late in the evening and shared with Pat stir fried vege and otak. To my amusement our guest from Switzerland could tuck in very well the spicy nasi lemak...he loves the coconut rice (OK - next time we take you to proper nasi lemak hang out)....

For dessert - Peter brought us some chewy scrumptious Swiss biscuity cake - which had a nice aniseed and cinnamon and lots of chopped dried fruits - it was almost like Xmas!!!!

after dinner, we played musical chairs and swapped seats to meet out the large crowd.
Peter shared a lot of cross training (my fav topic now) and also his guests adventures to ski for their first time in Switzerland...

some of the boys adjourned for drinks at KLCC, while most of us had to bid adios before we turned to pumpkin!!!

Nov 19 in Phuket

Later in the afternoon, we went for a spa massage around Raiwa, it was really relaxing. I had an aromatheraphy and foot massage which took up 2 hours of our time, and then we had to rush off to our Phuket VT blast - at Shanti Lodge.

Pic 1 - clockwise
myself in blue, jenniferchin, peerapa from Bangkok, Shelly6622 from Singapore, roongrott99 from Bangkok, Jack001449 from Penang, Quero from Phuket, campy012 from Los Angeles, and his cousin Debbie from Vancouver, and p_yenyen from Kuala Lumpur. Later in the evening, Sam_i_m joined in...

Pic 2 - after the meal at Shanti Lodge

Pic 3 - Nov 20 last minute tour of Phuket -
Phromthep Cape is the southern-most point of Phuket; and it is such a beautiful sigh of the Andaman sea from here.

Pic 4 - the LIghthouse

Pic 5 the last minute decision - a noodle soup - very similar to Penang prawn (hokkieen) mee, and also with fish balls lukchin !! yummmmm

Nov Meet in Phuket

On Nov 18th, several KL VTers took a flight to Phuket to catch up with our other VTer buddies, Quero and Sam_i_m, who have now made Phuket their new home.

On Nov 18

This is one of the shortest meet up I ever had...
with Tina-Perth...20 mins!!!

On pic 1 - here the KL gang posing with Tina-Perth at VTer Quero's home in Phuket...
p_yenyen, jenniferchin, Quero, Tina's fren , Tina-Perth, mizzzzthanggg, myself

Pic 2 - the girls continued to lounge around the pool side

Pic 3 - we decided to chill off .... it was a sea water pool - my first experience...and it surely not stinging the eye like the normal pool

pic 4 - the gang at Friendship Beach - together with Vter campy012 from LAx

pic 5 - on NOv 19, we decided to check out Quero favourite beach, Naiharn Beach, Phuket

September in Penang

My husband and I together with VTer pehsan and her fren Eddie, decided to take an earlier flight to Penang to meet up with Brisbane folks - Tattugran and Grump. This is not our first meet out... we have met only 9 months back in KL.... and they are back to Malaysia...surely love our country.

Of course we had to have a fried kuew teow meet at Pulau Tikus.
and then we adjourn to Botanical Garden and to the War Museum, ice kacang and fried prawn fritters at Swatow Lane before a dip dip (lok lok) dinner.

September in Penang

We decided to take an earlier flight to Penang to meet up with Brisbane folks - Tattugran and Grump. This is not our first meet out... we have met only 9 months back in KL.... and they are back to Malaysia...surely love our country.

Of course we had to have a fried kuew teow meet at Pulau Tikus.
and then we adjourn to Botanical Garden and to the War Museum, ice kacang and fried prawn fritters at Swatow Lane before a dip dip (lok lok) dinner.

VT meet with Lisboa folks

I arrived late, as my frens found out I was at KLCC, gave me some wild goose chase errands - then I had umpteen missed calls from Chiabh reminding me of the venue ! panthing away...i got up to the highest level of KLCC, and this was my 1st time to Rain Nuddles... I had this great impression it as one of those large bowl waggamama type of noddle bar...turned out to be pleasantly surprised it was a Thai place... of course to live up its name, there was varieties of noddle offering.
As soon i sat down, Peter came in. I obviously grabbed the seat next to our visiting guests... Tere1 plus her 2 kids.
Peter had a very very odd vegetarian green curry...which guess what - it only had eggplant and green curry sauce. So I lamented on his behalf but to me surprise he said this is heaven to what is to be expected for his meals over the next month when you roam around Kenya etc etc etc!!!
I on DIET decided to order something light... thai seafood glass noddle salad which was sumptuous but geez those bird chillies nearly killed me...i had to drown myself with tonnes of evian after that!!!
after quickly slurping our meals, we played musical chairs n checked out the others on the very loooong table. I hopped over to the other end,... chatted with this ultra informative person, a2lopes (antonio) who incidentally also hail from Lisboa, but now on a short term lecturing trip at Islamic Uni. Tell you - this person knows everything in depth!!! he studied chemical engineering, pschology blablab bla....this list goes on.
Peter joined us... and then the conversation changed topic to encapsuling flavours..too techinical for me...so chop chop... when to the otherside of table back to Tere1...and plannned my trip to Lisboa next year. She introduced me some reading books since my trip to Santiago de Compostela...thanks...and i will be seeing you in Lisboa next year...
And we learned that Lisboa folks love to smoke..so our obligaing hostess (Diana) kept walking them out to some smoking zone??? for their puffs.

Directions: we had planned to have lunch the flwg day - but too bad MO had a fire drill and Tere1 was running out of last minute shopping!!!
New faces to me this meet included
dfactor (dennisg) and also Dar76 -lest hope to see you guys more often at KL VT meets.

Aug 13 - Farewell To Quero and Sam_1_am

Quero (Marcia) and Sam_i_am are considered KL VTers - they are not Malaysians, but are expats from US and Brazil, having made KL their home for many years. Marcia and Sam were one of the attendees for the first big KL VT meet we had on October 2003. Subsequently Marcia and Sam, together with James WTC joined banditleader's hiking trip to Truang and it was Sam idea to have a regular FF (First Friday) meet for the KL gang....

August 2005 came - and they confirmed they will leave KL for their new homes in Bkk and Phuket...and a huge crowd of us gathered at Passage Thru India to bid our Adios...
Sam chose the venue - considering we had several vegetarian guests.

Getting there was one helluva fun...not far from this restaurant was an international chained Indian restaurant - Bombay Palace. we had 2 VTers calling me to confirm the venue.

Another joke was, most of us had the impression the reservation was made under VT - but the restaurant had made it under MR ONG.....the best bit was most of us did not know Sam was MR ONG!!! and the restaurant manager made a not so smart remark - How come your guests do not know your name!!!

The food was sumptuous. - we had spinach cooked with grilled cubed cottage cheese, tandoori chicken, some lamb, and mixed vege, and lots of bread and rice.

On the same evening we celebrated VTer kenyneo birthday.

Directions: on the pic -
Audrey118, p_yenyen, Deibbie (kaplan guest), kaplan, kaynisa, dragontml, masonwong, JamesWTC, kenyneo, Petertktan, jenniferchin, Quero, Diana (chiabh guest), Sam_i_am, chiabh, yurijade...

photoman was strom_rider... not in pic

Late May meet in Melbourne

I had booked a cheeep tik to Melbourne...was planning to stay with my frens in Kew...she ended up having to go for a out of town techinical session...i ended up babysitting her dogs - and mucked around town with her husband and her sister. It was a hectic meet...becos when my fren came back from a woob woob meet...she clipped her fingers onto the bonnet and ouch - we had to go to the hospital daily to do her dressing and put in some wire to hold the broken finger up!!!

nevertheless in her absent - i got out of the house and got on a tram to the sort of notorious part of town to share an evening with the Melbourne gang.

VTer ATXtraveller and his partner, saraheg77 had just moved into the city, and decided to meet up with the locals. It was rather a surprise meet up, we had people from different part of Victoria...all the way from Hepburn Spring - which incidentally one of my favourite retreat place while I get to Victoria.

Those I met were
Anne12 - Anne from Hepburn Springs

AussieJenn - Jenn from Melton

Ray_D - Ray From Malta via Elwood, AU
made this awesome birthday card - go check out Suzie page...

Rosie235 - Rosie from Melbourne

Suzyq40 - Suzie from Melbourne
whose hubbie knows my frens' colleagues in Melb!! the world is really small.
And Ray was such a sweetie to bring a cake, champers to celebrate her bday.

ATX Traveller - Mark from US now in Melb
saraheg77 - Sarah - Mark's wife