Sam Tam Ramblings: Long weekend from the 10th May

The weekend of 10th May turned out to be one of the longest that I have had for sometime. I had starting preparing for it almost a week ago. I had a couple of guests coming to Malaysia. Pham Phan and wife were arriving on 10th May, landing in KLIA at 10.50am. This was their first visit to Malaysia. I have been meeting up with Pham all over Asia in the course of our work. Pham had been absolutely helpful in helping to raise the technical capability of the Support teams in Asia Pacific. And I have known him for uncountable years!! So when I heard that he was making a trip here, I offered to take him around for the weekend.

Upon their arrival, I whisked them off to One World hotel next to 1 Utama.

After checking in, my family (wife and Alex) joined in for lunch - local Malacca food. Then It was off to Ipoh. My intentions were to show them a little bit of rural Malaysia. I turned off the highway at Tapah, took the trunk roads all the way to Ipoh. Along the way, we stopped at Gua Tempurung as I was looking for information to plan an outing there.

Main objective of the Ipoh trip was to visit the Sam Poh Tong caves. But we arrived late (5.30pm) and the darn temples along that stretch were all closed!! What a wasted journey. We ended up buying pomeloes and tidbits at the pomelo stalls just outside of the temple caves. Luckily my uncle lives in Ipoh. So I brought my guests (unannounced) to his house to show them how a relatively well off family lived. Being Americans of Vietnamese descent, they were in 2 minds. On the one hand, the American in them says you don't show up unannounced at anyone's home. On the other hand, the Asian in them knows that this is an accepted practice. In any case, my Uncle and Aunt were at home and welcomed them.

We had dinner in a restaurant recommended by my uncle (Sun Marpoh Restaurant - look for the captain - Ah Yew and say Dr. Tham asked me to go there!!) Good food and even better prices!! Took less than 1.5 hours to get them from Ipoh back to the hotel. It was also an opportunity to test my new Camry. Regular town driving so far had been 8.6km/ lit. The journey to Ipoh and back saw my consumption improve to 11.8km/ lit ((about 16.3 sen per km). But Saturday 10th May was not very productive.

Sunday 11th May - told them to wait at 10am in the hotel.

Showed up on time and first stop was Selangor Pewter in Setapak.

Then I took them to my former landlady's house (unannounced again) to show them how the average Joe lived. From there, we visited the Hot Spring in Setapak

before moving onto Batu Caves.

After that it was Thean Hou temple and then to my house. All that completed by 2.30pm.

At 3pm, we left my house to go back to the hotel. They needed a breather and I needed to catch up with my second guest - Angela Ong who was suppose to arrive at One World before 3pm. Her flight was delayed and she ended up checking in around 4pm.

The night ended with a trip to Ijok to the New Beggar Chicken Restaurant. I was supposed to have 7 people for the meal. One of my other guest was my E-pal (like a pen pal, except that we had been communicating via the Internet) Alex Bunny. Unfortunately she had been having digestive problems and could not make it. Most people in the office declined the invitation due to Mother's Day. One who did accept did an FFK on me at the last minute as she went back to Malacca and could not make it back in time. SO we ended up with 5 - Pham and Wife, Angela, Ian Sik and me!

The food was worth it.

I had to reserve the table and at least 3 of the main courses almost ONE week before the planned event. Right after we were seated, a wheelbarrow was pushed near to our table and the baked clayey thing lifted out. A couple ofworkers started the process of

removing the clay covering and then serving the dishes to us.