SS D'Sampan Seafood Restaurant - Sg Nibong Penang

Lately if you take express bus to Penang Sungai Nibong Bus Terminal at night, you might be attracted to  a restaurant with colourful lighting that exactly opposite the main gate of the bus terminal.

Sungai Nibong Express Bus Terminal

The nicely decorated Malay restaurant is named as the SS D'Sampan Seafood.

SS D'Sampan Seafood (Front View)

SS D'Sampan Seafood (Side View)

Since the first day I noticed this restaurant, I am so attracted by the colourful lighting everyday when I pass by. Although being plan to give it a visit but we keep on delaying until to the end of January, when we would like to take dinner before watch the movie in Queensbay Mall. 

We drove to this restaurant and found that there is a free parking space ready for the customers. I'm not sure whether this parking space is specially developed for D'Sampan customer or it is open to public that visited the shops at that area. Just in case the parking space is full, then you might consider to stop your car at the road side, but definitely not on the main road.

Parking Space

This restaurant is quite unique because they do have few chalets for customers who preferred to enjoy themselves privately. Initially we want to experience in taking dinner in the chalet, but later we change our mind because the chalets are at the road side. We just wondering the dust and exhausted gas from vehicle might going to contaminate our food. However, after we had our seat and made order, then we noticed that another side of the restaurant also have few chalets, but it was too late and we were lazy to make a move.

Beautiful Chalets

Anyway, it was not bad to sit inside the restaurant as I had a chance to take some photos of its interior design.

SS D'Sampan Seafood Restaurant

SS D'Sampan Seafood Restaurant

After we took our seats, a friendly waitress was giving us a menu for reference. The small booklet which is the A la carte menu clearly stated the dish offered together with the price except for those seafood that depend on the market price. You could choose the dish size from small to medium to large. But this menu is not including those fried item such as fried noodle or fried rice, even though they do have it. We got to known about this fried item when the customers next table made an order to the waitress. Meanwhile, this restaurant had grill seafood service where you could choose the seafood by yourself and ask the staff to grill it for you.

In the past two visits, we had tried out few dish which include:

1) Pattaya Fried Rice

Pattaya Fried Rice (RM5/plate)

In order to ensure our stomach was filled with some carbohydrate, we get ourselves a plate of Pattaya Fried Rice. For those who don't know what is Pattaya Fried Rice, it is a Malay style fried rice that being stuffed into an omelette. It is tasty!!

2) Tom-yam Seafood Soup 

Tom-yam Seafood Soup (RM5 - small)

As expected, the tom-yam soup was sour and spicy, but just within our acceptance level. Surprisingly the RM5 seafood soup was came along with prawn, squid and some chicken slice, worth for money!!

3) Paprik Chicken

Paprik Chicken (RM5 - small)

Paprik Chicken is quite common in Malay food menu where the chicken slice is cooked together with various vegetables. The taste is in between sweet and salty!

4) Omelette (Telur Dadar)

Omelette (Telur Dadar - RM1.00)

Omelette or more accurate to call it as Telur Dadar in Malay, is a simple fried egg with some vegetable contained inside it. The vege could be the onion, chilli, chives, etc. The telur dadar served by this restaurant was having crispy taste. Nice!

5) Spinach with Shrimp Paste (Kangkung Belacan)

Spinach with Shrimp Paste (Kangkung Belacan - RM3.50)

Spinach is one of my favourite vegetable but it must be cooked together with shrimp paste. Although this dish is bit dull without other ingredients, but the it is surprisingly tasty. Good!

6) Grilled Fish

We did tried out the grilled fish but could not recall why no photo being taken, perhaps it had been served half way after we started our dinner. Anyway, just to share a bit on this grilled item. The stingray fish was selected by us on the counter and later being weight by the staff before it being process. When the fish was served, the physical look was nice. However, the taste was bit 'special' to us if to compare with the Chinese style grilled fish. I don't know how to describe the taste but it was still acceptable. The grilled fish was at RM11, it was relatively cheaper than Chinese stall where you would be easily charged RM15-18 for the same size of the fish. 

7) Iced Milk Tea

Iced Milk Tea (RM1.50/glass)

Whenever I have my meal in Malay restaurant, iced milk tea is always my standard drink because I believe the milk tea by our Malay friend is the best. But over here, the iced milk tea was below my expectation.

In overall, I'm satisfy with the food, service and environment of the SS D'Sampan Seafood Restaurant. For those who taking express bus at Sungai Nibong Bus Terminal, or someone stay in the budget hotel opposite the terminal, perhaps you could have your dinner here. Enjoy!

SS D'Sampan Seafood Restaurant
Opposite Sungai Nibong Bus Terminal
or Tapak Pesta Pulau Pinang

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Sea Pearl Lagoon Cafe (海珠屿海鲜) - Tanjong Tokong Penang

Nowadays in Penang Island, no matter where you are, you could easily find a seafood restaurant around your area. However, most of the restaurants located in tourist focus area are not really favour by the locals due to these restaurants are grandly renovated to serve the tourists and businessmen that able to spend for higher cost. Although lately having seafood dinner in Penang Island is no longer to be cheap, but the locals is always look for the simple restaurant that able to serve the tasty seafood while charge them with reasonable price. If you are within the Tanjung Bungah area, perhaps you could consider the Sea Pearl Lagoon Cafe (海珠屿海鲜) which located at Tanjung Tokong, somewhere near to the Tesco Tanjung Pinang. 

Sea Pearl Lagoon Cafe

I'm not sure whether the current Sea Pearl Lagoon Cafe is the same restaurant I visited during I was a kid, but the location of that restaurant was same where Sea Pearl Lagoon located. At the past, Tanjung Bungah and Gurney were the areas that famous with seafood restaurants, Batu Muang and Teluk Kumbar at that time still not really being recognized and developed.

If you are visitor and not really follow the travel guide or website information, I believe it is very hard for you to discover this Sea Pearl Lagoon Cafe because it is not located at road side yet you need to drive or walk in some distances from the main road. But if you are taking the cab, by showing driver the name or photo of the restaurant, I believe they could bring you to the destination.

Sea Pearl Lagoon Cafe is located at seaside and stand side by side with the Chinese temple named as Tua Peh Kong Temple.  You could have a nice sea view and clean beach before proceed to have your dinner.

Seaside where Sea Pearl Lagoon Cafe Located

If not at raining day, customers used to sit at the open space to enjoy the sea view and breeze.

Sea Pearl Lagoon Cafe

During my recent trip, I just discovered that this cafe is consisted of few stalls that offering you with different kind of food/seafood. In total we had made order with 5 stalls that serving us with the oyster omelette, fried clam, satay, fried noodles, baked prawn and baked crabs.

Oyster Omelette or Fried Oyster

The first item being served was the oyster omelette or we called it as 'o-chien' in Hokkien. Although the portion was bit small but the taste was good. However, the size of oyster was relatively small as compare to some food stalls that offered you with oyster with size as 20 cent's coin.

After the oyster omelette, the fried clam was on its way to our table.

Fried Clam

Not like some restaurants, this fried clam was not really spicy and it is suitable to be taken by the kids. It is tasty too. Besides, the satay and fried noodles were also being served at the same time but unfortunately we forgot to take the photo. Satay is a skewered grilled meat that serve together with spicy peanut sauce. The satay here was having common taste and no surprise. As for the fried noodles, sorry to say that it was totally tasteless, some more single plate of this noodles cost us at RM15. Some one informed us that normally the fried noodles is taste good, but don't know what happen to that day where the taste become like that.

Finally, the baked prawn and crabs were then being served.

Baked Prawn

By looking at the prawn, I was quite sure that it was caught from the sea and not by breeding. Hence, simple salt-baked (I guess) had making the prawn to be so tasty until I couldn't stop to take it. I strongly recommend you to try out this baked prawn. Fresh & tasty!!

Baked Crabs

Although we had made appointment with the restaurant in afternoon, but the crabs were in such high demand where the egg crabs had been fully booked. We just managed to get the meat crabs on that day. Anyway, the baked crabs were still so attractive and delicious. Thumbs up! If I'm not mistaken, customers that came around 8pm were being informed that the crabs had been sold out. Hence, please be there as earlier as possible or make an appointment with the restaurant, if you don't want to miss out the famous baked prawn and crabs!!

In overall, we were very satisfy with the dinner in Sea Pearl Lagoon Cafe except for the fried noodles. I couldn't tell you how much we spent for the dinner because we were being treated. Anyway, I would still conclude that the price would be cheaper then those restaurants in the tourist hot spot. Enjoy!

Sea Pearl Lagoon Cafe (海珠屿海鲜)
Address: Jalan Tokong Thai Pak Koong,
              Tanjung Tokong, Tanjung Bungah,
              Penang.
Phone No. : 04-899 0375.
Business Hour: 11am to 10pm

Driving Direction:
If you come from Georgetown, follow the way to Tesco Tanjung Pinang. When you come to the traffic light where Tesco is at your right, don't stop but keep moving and look for the next traffic light. When you reach that traffic light, you would see flat or apartment at your right. Take a right turn and get into the small road. Follow the road until to the small junction, take the road at the right and continue moving until to the end where you would reach the seaside where Sea Pearl Lagoon Cafe and Tua Pek Kong Temple located. Please take note that the parking space is very limited and you will be charged RM1 for parking fees.

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Penang Dim Sum - Red Tea House (红茶馆)

Earlier on I did share about House of Dim Sum (点心之家) which located in Anson Road, Georgetown that offering various type of dim sum and noodles. This round I would like to bring your attention to another dim sum restaurant, named as Red Tea House (红茶馆) that located at Lengkok Nipah, Bayan Lepas. 

The Red Tea House is within the Pan Palace Plaza, but you could easily notice it due to the tables are arranged at the corridor and the restaurant is always full house especially during weekends. If you stay at Vistana Hotel, you could take a 8 minutes walk to reach here.

Pan Palace Plaza

Red Tea House at Pan Palace Plaza

If you are driving here, don't worry as here have a free parking space. But please try to be early or the car park might getting full especially around 8.30am to 9.30am. In case the parking space is full, then you might want to consider the road side.

Parking Space

From far, you could see the small banner with big red Mandarin word '红茶馆' which means Red Tea House.

Banner with '红茶馆'

Due to this housing area is commonly known as Lip Sin Garden, so the actual name for this dim sum restaurant is 'Restaurant Lip Sin Red Tea House'.

Restaurant Lip Sin Red Tea House

As usual, after we got our table, we requested for a pot of 'Kuk Po' tea, meaning the tea was mixed between Chrysanthemum & Pu Er. The unique part for this restaurant is they still practise to arrange the staff to bring along the dim sum and asking around the customers who interested on that particular item. So as customer, we could just sit on the chair and waiting for the favourite dim sum to come. Of course we could directly go to the self service counter to collect the dim sum if we are in the rush.

The dim sum offered in this restaurant is also in lot of varieties. It could be as common as 'Har Gao' and 'Siu Mai', or as special as dumpling with fish meat. Let's screen the items that we taken within recent two visits.

Red Tea House_Har Gau

Red Tea House_Siu Mai

Red Tea House_ Fishball

Red Tea House_Dumpling with Chives

Red Tea House_Dumpling with Filament Stick 

Red Tea House_Fresh Prawn Dumpling

Red Tea House_Chicken with Cabbage

Red Tea House_Dumpling with Fish Meat

I could not describe the taste of the dim sum one by one. But for various dumplings, beside the special topping, it is filled with fresh pork meat and prawn. For those unique item, you could even get whole fresh prawn, but please be ready to pay for bit higher price.

Red Tea House_Bacon Dumpling

Another special dim sum is the bacon dumpling. The bacon's smell was quite attractive. When I had my first bite, the taste of bacon together with the pork meat make me feel so satisfy. Could you notice from the picture above, 2 pcs of the dumplings were gone before I took out my camera? Perhaps you could imagine how attractive of this item.

Red Tea House_Pork Ribs

Pork ribs is always a dim sum that I would never miss. Over here, the taste of Pork ribs was quite delicious but I would say that the similar item offered by House of Dim Sum is even better.

We had also got ourselves with an item called Xiao Long Bao '小笼包'. This special dumpling is one of the famous item by Restaurant Dragon-I. Since the day we tested this Xiao Long Bao in Dragon-I, we really love it very much. So when the staff in Red Tea House offered us with this item, by instinct we just took it.

Red Tea House_Xiao Long Bao

However, after we took it then we feel bit disappointed. The Xiao Long Bao by Dragon-I is having some soup inside the dumpling whereas  the one in Red Tea House had no soup at all.

Besides the steamed items, we were also tried out the deep fried dumpling call Deep Fried Wan Tan. This dim sum was quite tasty but nothing special.

Red Tea House_Deep Fried Wan Tan

In order to ensure our stomach was fully filled, we did place order for Chicken Sticky Rice and Red Bean Bun.

Red Tea House_Chicken Sticky Rice

Nowadays the chicken sticky rice become more expensive yet the ingredients allocated had being reduced. However, the chicken sticky rice sell by Red Tea House was still served with many ingredients, although it was cost us at RM3 per unit.

Red Tea House_Red Bean Bun

As for the red bean bun, don't expect too much as it is still a common red bean bun! haha...Besides those items listed above, Red Tea House also selling various noodles that we yet to try. When our stomach was fully filled then only we noticed that they do sell the roasted pork. We shall try it out during our next visit.

Red Tea House

In overall, the dim sum offered in Red Tea House is meet to our expectation. In terms of the price, I would consider it as standard price. We had spent almost RM65 for those items above within 2 visits.

Restaurant Lip Sin Red Tea House
Pan Palace Plaza
Lengkok Nipah, Gelugor, Penang
Business Hour: Early morning to afternoon, daily

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Dining & Shopping in Bangkok Don Mueang Airport

Due to our return trip from Bangkok was fall on lunch hour, we planned to have our early lunch in airport. However Don Mueang Airport was strange to us, so we made our preparation by surveyed the restaurants in airport. After reading some blogs, we found out there are several restaurants serving various kind of foods. Hence, we made up our mind to take the lunch there.

On that day, by taking the A1 bus from Mo Chit BTS station, we arrived the Don Mueang Airport slightly early than expected. Initially we tried to look for the restaurants in the public areas but only 2 or 3 restaurants includes The Noodle, Meefann and Silom Village which offers the rice and noodles in Thai or Chinese style. Since we had did our homework and knew that there were few more restaurants in the airport, hence we decided to check in and expected the other restaurants are in the awaiting area. We were making right decision.

Upon entering the restricted area which linked to the international flight departure hall, we were seeing two rows of shop and restaurant nicely arrange in our left and right side.

Shops on my left

Shops on my right

Since our stomach had started to make noise, so we were looking around to hunt for good food. Among the restaurant or fast food or coffee house that we observed include Piri-Piri Flaming Chicken, Subway, McDonald, S& P, etc.

Restaurants in Don Mueang Airprot

After trying various local foods for few days, we were missing our favourite Japanese food, hence we finally chosen Fuji Restaurant as our lunch venue.

Fuji Restaurant Don Mueang Airport

Among the Japanese food, sashimi is always my favourite. When I noticed that there was a sashimi set with reasonable price, I had made my order instantly without screen through the whole menu. Would like to know what are the items in the sashimi set?? Let's check it out in photo below.

Sashimi Set

Beside the sashimi and rice, there was also a small piece of chicken, vegetable, miso soup, and also jelly as dessert. My stomach is totally full after finished off this whole set of meal.

Beside this sashimi set, we also ordered a bowl of salmon porridge. It was very delicious because we could taste the freshness of the salmon. Furthermore, there was also salmon egg being added to enhance the taste.

Salmon Porridge

However, I'm not sure whether this item is still available because I could not find it in the recent Fuji on line menu. If we have chance to revisit Fuji restaurant, we will definitely place an order on this salmon porridge, provided it is still available.

In terms of the drinks, we got ourselves a bottle of green tea and a glass of coconut frost. The green tea is slightly sweet in taste but nothing special. However, the coconut frost is very tasty, especially for those who love the coconut milk.

Coconut Frost

Fuji Restaurant

If I remember correctly, the lunch only cost me not more than RM60. Just imagine we were taking lunch in airport, some more in Japanese Restaurant. The price was definitely reasonable than my expectation.

After treated our stomach, we went for window shopping. For those duty free shops, nothing surprising where the items offered include tobacco, wine & liqueur, perfumes and chocolate. But there was a shop that making us so excited, which is the NaRaYa.

NaRaYa in Don Mueang Airport 

For those who love the NaRaYa products, I believe shopping had almost being done in Bangkok city. We never aware that inside the Don Mueang Airport we could find this shop again. Initially we just went for window shopping, but later we found that the products offered at this shop had not being seen in other branches while the item price was also similar. As you could imagine, another round of shopping was done in this NaRaYa shop before we board into the plane.

Initially I thought that Don Mueang Airport is just an old airport with limited facility. But this round of experience making me putting different view on this airport. I believe I'll be landing on this airport again soon!

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