: : Dimsum ~ Chinese Breakfast : :

After a harrowing plane landing and a beautiful dinner, had to wake up early to catch my breakfast meet with some old kiddy friends. Why the harrowing plane ride? It’s because the Miri airstrip is so short that pilots have to break VERY HARD just to prevent the entire plane from overshooting the runway. Very scary to see the overhead compartments shaking like mad. Also, the pilots must have this pantang (superstition) on braking so that there is no need to turn the plane around at the end of the runway to get to the airport. One of these days, the wings will break off.

Anyway, back to breakfast in the morning. Woke up very early at 7 am which was an amazing feat considering I’m a nite owl. Met up with Chipmunk and Mike who I haven’t seen since my last trip back to home. We have been meeting for dimsum breakfast for years now. Well, mostly when I’m back in Miri, that is.

As Mike was late, Chipmunk and I started off with breakfast i.e. dimsum. The meeting place was a coffee shop called Wawasan 2020. It’s always crowded and finding a place to sit down can be quite tough. There are 3 shoplots and more tables outside as well. Unfortunately, not halal.

Dimsum is actually the Chinese breakfast dish taken in the morning (obviously ;p). It comprises of many many MANY snacks in small dishes and can be quite expensive overall.

This is the chee chong fan which is actually just kwayteow noodles wrapped around some chopped char siew (sweetened roasted pork). This was the only version available at Wawasan 2020. Other versions include prawn and chicken fillings. How is it made? Well, the batter is poured over a thin cotten towel which is later spread over a steamer to be cooked. The chopped char siew was added to one side of the batter. Once the batter has been cooked, the towel is removed and the cooked kway teow is rolled until a long rectangular shape with the char siew filling in the middle. Sweetened soy sauce is then poured over the dish.

Next was the deep fried yam paste with charsiew. Didn’t taste that good that day because the yam paste was a tad bit too salty. Oh well. At least the one at the Han Palace tasted a lot better (that’s another posting for another day).

Siew mai (pork dumpling) is the most common of all the dimsum dishes available. Simple to do and always tasty. Yum.

Dish on the top was minced pork roll with fish skin on the outside. The red sauce is just plain tomatoe sauce : very sweet. Bottom part of the picture shows some pork ribs that were steamed.

Oh man! My favourite : hakkau @ steamed prawn. It’s very hard to find very good hakkau in Kuching. Usually the skin is too thick and the prawn too small. This one was just nite. Very tasty too. Worth every penny of it. Chipmunk thinks I’m a crazy dimsum addict. No denial from my side.

Wawasan 2020 is located at the Pelita Commerical Area where there are a lot of shophouses nearby. You can’t miss it. It’s the only coffeeshop with loads of tables outside. You can find other food and dimsum dishes there as well. There were a lot of other dimsum dishes like chicken feet and other varieties of siew mai as well as fishballs.

Well, that’s all for now. Tomorrow nite’s posting is the family dinner.

: : Suggestions for visit to New York : :

Am planning to go over to visit my sister in Denton, Texas in December. Have a stopover in New York.

Any suggestions on budget hotels and day tours in New York? Please provide links!!! Just drop them in the comments box.

Thanks.