Wong Kei Restaurant, Chinatown London

You can try to search Wong Kei London online and I bet the most words you’re going to see is ‘Upstairs! Upstairs!” Widely known as the famous Chinese restaurant that serves cheap authentic Hong Kong style food in Chinatown, they’re also famous for its staffs’ arrogance and attitudes. You’re most likely to be greeted with “Upstairs!” instead of “Hi” when you stepped in. The meaning is plain – go upstairs to find your seats or I’ll kick you out!

Such were the comments that I got from web, but my friend insisted that I should try Wong Kei, as part of the Chinatown experience. Gulp! OK.

You can imagine how sheepish we were, standing 4 feets away from Wong Kei entrance, summoning the courage to step in. “You walk in front,” I told CS but he retorted, “No, lady’s first!” Oh ya *rolleyes*, since when ‘lady’s first’ became CS’s life motto? I don’t remember him saying that when we’re digging in Baskin Robbin tub.

Then, a guy walked in. Like an automatic robot, a staff pointed down and guy A descend the stairs. A guy B came, and we quickly followed behind him. The same signal happened and we got to lower ground. Hey, we got a ‘Downstairs! instead of “Upstairs!”

As it’s only 6 pm, the place was barely full. An elderly Chinese man attended to us and surprisingly, no rudeness, no attitude. As my friend recommended, I ordered a beef fried hor fun and CS (still longing for authentic HK wanton noodles) ordered wanton noodles soup.

Oh Boy, my beef fried hor fun was huge! A taste at the hor fun, there's no doubt it was cooked with a good dose of 'wok hei'. There's not a single piece of hor fun that was overcooked, became 'melty' and stick together. While my photo didn't show it clearly, that's generous amount of beef in it but they're a little overcooked for me.

On the other hand, wanton noodle soup is okay la, but you’re going to be disappointed if you’re looking for the exact quality as in Hong Kong. 

All things considered, Wong Kei is a good place for cheap food or when you’re craving for Chinese food after days of English bread. Afterall, the quality are not bad. Our meal only costs us around 7 pounds, the cheapest meal we had in UK.

Address : 41-43 Wardour Street, Soho, London, W1D 6PY

UK & Paris Trip Part 2

I opened my eyes, it’s 4 am. I wondered why would I be awake at this time, not that I had nightmares or I haven’t got a good sleep. Oh yeah, I was in London. By Malaysia time, it should be 10 am already and I was hungry. I finished up tomato and herbs macaroni I bought from supermarket the previous night and went for CS’s mayo shrimp sandwiches while he’s sleeping like a dead log.

That’s how I started my day 2 in London, with CS grumpy that I ate up his breakfast. I appeased him with the promise of good breakfast at Little Portland Café later.

My day 2 was designed to be a shopping day with plan to explore the long stretch of Bond Street and Oxford Street where all fashion shops flocked together. It’s a Monday, yet the crowds were nerve-racking. Summer sales were everywhere, that explained it.

My first stop was a 3 storey (or 4 storey?) Topshop building. Maybe the fashion shops in UK don’t usually stock up small sizes like 6 or 8, I found it hard to find clothes for my size except for new arrivals.

I was too naïve to think that I can finished these fashion streets with mere 6 hours. My legs gave way to tiredness and with our last strength, we dragged ourselves to British Museum. It will be a shame if we didn’t go to at least two museums in UK, as most of them are free of charge. I’m sorry as I could not provide a direction here. In UK, we stumbled here and there most of the time before getting to our destinations. Truth was, we had difficulty reading their street maps.

The way leading to British Museum – Museum Street.

British Museum is not big (in comparison to de Louvre) but well organized so we can find our ways around systematically and easily. Who needs a map that would cost 1 pounds each?

As I pointed out earlier, British Museum has more mummies compared to de Louvre - at least 6 from a few different eras – some nicely man-preserved like a wrapped gift while some are exposed that the mummy’s blank eyes are staring directly at me, the reason I didn’t take any picture of them. The cute part? They even have mummified cows and pets!

British Museum also has a good collection of antique clocks that made my grandfather’s 80 years old clock looks like youngster.

By 6 pm most of the attractions/shops are close or preparing to close, so we headed to Covent Garden.

The biggest crowd at the Jugglers.

Covent Garden is a place that should be in “places to visit while one is in London” but I bet it already is. P.S : There’s a big Apple store in Convent Garden that techies can drown themselves in there.

At night, the best way to end our day is by strolling on Westminster Bridge, admiring Big Ben and London Eye.

London Eye before total sunset.

Totally light up London Eye.

Breakfast at Little Portland Cafe, London

A trip to UK trip won’t be complete without 2 food – an English Full Breakfast and a Fish & Chips.

Hence, our first mission in London was to seek out this place, highly recommended by webbies for our breakfast. Just a few strolls away from the famous Oxford St., it’s a good place to start our day before we lost ourselves in shopping frenzy.

Their breakfast sets are not the cheapest in town but they’re reasonably priced at RM5.20 for big breakfast set and RM3.95 for small breakfast, both came with free coffee or tea. Just by looking at the dozens of food on the menu, I wished I could spend my lunch and dinner time at here too, just to sample each and every of it.

Their coffee didn’t meet our expectation, being nice smelling but bland. Not their fault because a few days later, we generally don't like the coffee in UK, be it Illy, Costa or Nero.

Small breakfast; 2 pieces of toast + bacon + sausage + sunny side up + baked beans. The toasts are perfect, the bacon, ham and sausage are without a fault and even the normally disgusting bake beans became my new friend.

CS’s big breakfast is different from mine by having extra bacons, sunny side up, hash brown plus grilled mushrooms which are second to none.

Address:
15 Little Portland Street, Mayfair, London W1W 8BW
Nearest tube station : Oxford Circus.

Paris & UK Trip Part 1

A quote from Gossip Girl season 4 – “Just as every summer ends, all tourists come home, all dreamers wake up.” That’s the case with me. I finally picked up my laptop and started blogging again.

And where had I been missing? I was in UK and France for a 10 days trip, something that took me one whole year to plan. It started out naively when I mentioned to my friends that I wanted to visit them in UK without knowing how much money will be needed. I even asked them whether RM3000 will be enough, lol! After a meticulous calculation, I set the budget at RM5K per person and everyone (literally, everyone) told me it’s impossible. But you know me.. I like to challenge a tight budget.

Of course, I had been warned, Paris is nothing like we imagined but still, it’s in my list of ‘places to go before I die’. I decided to brave whatever that’s in store Paris for me. Especially after watching 4th season of Gossip Girl, lovely.

My posts for this trip are going to be lengthy, since I wanted to give as much information (and directions) as possible for anyone who wants to go there, something that I wished before the trip.

After a long 14 hours nightmarish flight, we finally landed in Orly Aiport, Paris. We took the ride in Oryval and changed to RER B at Antony. If anyone must know the condition of their metro (their version of subway/train) I would say, horrible. No air cons, dirty, loads of graffiti and homeless guys. The metro stations are basically their homes and toilets, so you can imagine how’s the smell. No escalator or lift but luckily we only had one luggage to drag.

We had our first stop at Gare du Nord, the main train station of Paris serving many train lines including the Eurostar and TGV. The station is so big, complicated and we couldn’t find the paid lockers. The simple French that Iearnt before the trip proved to be handy. To get to the lockers, walk to one of the end of the station, passing by a few cafes and sandwich stores on left. Look out for the sign ‘conciergee’ or a symbol of luggage, go down an escalator at the end and you’ll reach the lockers. We were required to pass through tight security scanner (like those in airports) but thank god, no body search. Everything were self serviced here. Just choose the size of locker you’ll need – small, medium or large. All the available lockers are open so you can try and error to decide which size is the best for you. Once decided, just put your stuffs in and pay shillings via the machine by keying in the locker number. Remember to keep the receipt as you’ll need the PIN to open the locker later.

Finally we got out of Gare du Nord and took a short walk to Gare d’Lest for metro to Opera area. There’s no sign on how to get to Gare d’lest, so walk out Gare du Nord onto the street in front of station. Turn left along the front of the station, keep straight ahead up the Rue de Dunkerque until tracks leading into the Gare de L'est stop you going any further. turn right into the Rue d'Alsace along the tracks, descend long flight of pedestrian steps to the side entrance of the Gare de L'est. From there we took line 7 to Opera and there’s the Paris that I wanted to see – extravagant opera building in the midst of nicely preserved pre-war buildings, gargoyles, statues, and fountains.

A little short walk brought us to the Fragonard Musee (Perfume Museum) at Rue de Scribe. We tried to enter the museum but was told by a tourist guide (who was bringing his group of tourist from India) that this museum is not open to public. We found out he lied and went in, not before giving him dirty looks. The museum itself was interesting, showing us the development of perfumes from early France till now but it was very small and we only spent 15 minutes in there.

Next we walked to Galleries le Fayette, the biggest luxury shopping arena in Paris only to find it closed on Sunday. Although lonely and crowd-less, our leisurely walk in this area was enjoyable.

Musee de Louvre

Music performance outside de Louvre.

Cafes opposite of de Louvre and these 'Mat Salleh' really loves sunshine, don't they?

People modelling in front of de Louvre building.

In de Louvre's courtyard.

As it was the first Sunday of the month, entrance to a few museums are free in Paris, including Musee de Louvre. I know, I know, everyone is going to say IMPOSSIBLE because the queue will be the longest we had ever set eyes upon. That was very true. Disappointed, we walked to Jardin Tuileries, only to discover an easier way to enter De Louvre via Portes de Lion. There wasn’t a sign that says it’s an entrance to De Louvre. We thought it was another small museum around because there’s no queue at all. Realization only came to us when we saw the sign “This way to Mona Lisa”!

Porte des lion entrance, our 'secret passage' into de Louvre.

De Louvre is a humungous maze. In order to really appreciate all the arts and artifacts, one would have to come back another day. I am not into religious and medieval painting so we skipped to Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo and took a whole one hour looking for the Egyptian section, only to be disappointed with only one or two mummies. British Museum has more (and better) mummies than De Louvre. Finally we took another one hour just to figure out how to get out of De Louvre!

I might as well add a tip here; buy bottled waters (notice the plural?) before you even get to de Louvre area. Bottle waters are super expensive in this area and even worst in the museum itself. We learnt this the hard way when we had to pay 2.60 Euro for a 400ml distilled water! If you’re thinking fountain or tap water, the answer is no. There’s no water dispenser/fountain here and the queue to the washroom is crazily long. Worst come to worst, buy waters from the street vendors which will cost you 1 Euro, pricier than other places but better than inside the museum.

By 6 pm, we were back at Gare Du Nord. We had to wait for another 2 hours before we can check in to Eurostar for departure to London. There’s no free public toilet in Gare du Nord and we can’t get into the washroom in Eurostar area yet. I ended up paying 1.70 Euro (about RM5.50) for a paid washroom. CS cracked a joke by suggesting that I might as well go for ‘big business’ instead of ‘small’ one to make my money worth it! That, earned a glare from me.

By 8pm, we filled up the Visa card for UK and queue for Eurostar. UK immigration enter point is at Gare du Nord, so travelers can disembarked right away once reached London. That’s when I started to worry. What will the UK immigration officers asked? What if they don’t believe that we’re going to UK for holiday? What if we get deported? There’s no other Asian around, and we stood out like sore thumbs.

P:S

Finally, it was CS turn. The officer looked at him and me, signaled for me to come forward too.

Officer : What are you here for?
Me : Holiday.
Officer : For how long will you be in UK?
Me : 5 days.
Officer : Where will you stay in UK?
Me : Tune Hotel at Westminster Bridge Road.
Officer : Where will you be hereafter?
Me : We’ll be back to Paris on day 6.
Officer : You’re a Parisian?
(Do I look like Parisian?)
Me : No, we’re departing from Orly airport back to Malaysia.

PASSED!! That wasn’t too bad.

After the stress, I totally forgot how did I got onto Eurostar train. For me, I would consider Eurostar as the best way to get from Paris to UK and vice versa. It’s so fast that it shorten a 10 hours journey to only 2 hours plus. Both main station is situated right in the smack of the busy cities with extensive metro/tube line to other places, not to mention we don’t have to worry about baggage limit. Plus points ; the scenery is good too.

Do you 'pek si ham?

Do you pek si ham? That's my favourite activity but highly hazardous to health and dangerous. Pek si ham is from hokkien dialect which means opening cockles. Hazardous because of cholesterol level it'll boost and dangerous? You run the risk of your cockles flying to other people's lap when doing that, lol! My favourite pek si ham spot is Fend ikan bakar in Kelana Jaya, serving quite fresh ones grilled with hot sambal!

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