Trip to Mauritius

The sunset view from my room

Last week, on the 3rd of Jun, I had the chance to travel to Mauritius for a short meeting with some Indian travel agents. The trip itself is short, just 3 days but the journey was a long one.

I travel with Eddie, and we book our flight from KLIA to Mauritius via Singapore. In total, the journey is about 9 hours; including a very short transit in Changi.

We landed in Mauritius around 4pm local time. They are 4 hours behind us, so you can imagine the time difference created havoc with our system. We practically had our lunch around 5pm (M'sian time) and dinner starts around 1am!

Mauritius is a very small island in the Indian Ocean, near to Madagascar. It's not quite developed and apart from the capital Port Louis, practically there are no high buildings. Even the capitol has no skyscraper, just a few buildings that's more than 30 storey high. From what I understand, the Mauritian are quite lazy. They work until 4 ~ 4:30pm and then go home and do nothing. In my short stay, I couldn't even find a place that sells souvenirs!

It was said that Mauritius will come alive during the weekends only......

Well, what did we do then? For a start, upon our arrival, we rushed to the safari park. Name only la! What safari when there's only a few lions and a few cheetahs.... in cages! I was hugely disappointed. Saw some ducks and a lone tiger. That's all! Then back to hotel to freshen up and dinner with the agents.

The second day was totally pointless. Eddie and the Indian agents had a meeting with the Mauritius Tourism Board and Mauritius Air when me and 2 other guys went loitering at the Waterfront shopping mall. Nothing to shop since we can get those stuffs here and much more cheaper. The meeting according to Eddie it pointless too!

3rd day is the most hectic, when we did hotel inspections. The hotels were very classy and nice and when you combine good hotels with nice ocean views, it makes a very good honeymoon destination. The food at the hotels are good too.

All in all, it was a tiring trip. We met with our Indian partners, talked about our business and then head straight back. Long trip but worth while.

Hope this trip can bring in business... soon!

Weekend Steamboat

Simmering waiting for us to dig in

Nice big succulent prawns

Some of the food on the table. The chili is the best!

The gang enjoying the steamboat

Last Saturday, we went to Claudia's place for a steamboat dinner. When we reached there Janet, Maggie and CK were already there. I assume they reached there early to help out and prepare since Claudia is good at eating only! Hahaha!Well, we are good at eating too to be fair. Did nothing basically, just switch on the pot and voila! We only contributed 2 bottles of wine....

The soup base was delicious and wholesome. All prepared by Maggie. She even went to pasar earlier in the morning to buy the fishballs and stuffs but the best is the prawns. Big, fresh and succulent. Just too bad I don't dare to eat since takut gatal-gatal la.... Another worthy mention is the chili sauce prepared specially for this dinner by CK's mom. The best sauce! Thumbs up!

We started the dinner while waiting for Eddie and his family to come by. They were late because his daughter has got some class to attend to. Anyway, there are plenty of food to go by, since I think Maggie thought the whole kampung is dropping by. Just too much to eat and we tapau some when we went home.

Everyone had fun, talking, drinking, chit-chatting.... Even my sons had fun running around the house. At the end of the day, we went back home full to the brim and tired. Both my boys slept in the car while on our way home. When we want to have another steamboat, Maggie's soup and CK's chili will be the 1st on our list.

A Visit To The Sky Bridge

View from the top

KLCC park

Yesterday, out of the blue, I had the urge to queue up at KLCC to get tickets for the Sky Bridge visit. I reached the ticket counter around 9:00a.m and there were already some people; mostly tourists standing in front of me. The queue was not long and its very orderly. When my turn comes for the tickets, I was allocated the 3:45p.m slot. I asked for 5 tickets and they promptly issued it to me.

So, after lunch, told Debbie that I had some tickets to the Sky Bridge. Together with Claudia, Maggie and Janet, 5 of us "sneaked out" from the office around 3:15p.m. Claudia drove us there and parked at KLCC.

Once we made our way there, we were ushered to a mini 3-D theater. We wore our "cool" glasses and wait for a 7 minutes long documentary about Petronas' contributions and field of work. Quite informative if you understand English. The 3-D effect is not spectacular though.

Right after the show, come the highlight of our visit. We returned the 3-D glasses and queue up at the security check point to have our bags and stuffs scanned. No drama there and we were directed into a high speed lift. Claudia commented the lift resembles the one 富贵山庄 uses! Scary! Well, it took us around 41 seconds to reach the lower deck; perched high up at 41st floor. Only this floor is open to the public while the upper deck is reserved for staffs and emergency. We were given 10minutes by the in house guide to snap photos. 10 minutes might seem short but it's just nice since we got no where to go. Took some photos while the girls clowned around.

The Girls at the Sky Bridge

10minutes of photo time is up and all of us made our way down using the same elevator. Once we reached 1st floor, we passed by a small gallery where some exhibit were on show. Got some brain teasers which is quite interesting. Then, I got my height measured at one of the exhibits and it showed how many times the KLCC, Sear Towers or Jin Mao (Shanghai) is taller than me. Cool!

We made our way back right after this. Don't have time to shop at Suria. We sneaked out, remember? On the way back we stop by at a makan stall at Pudu. Bought some nasi lemak, bubur cha-cha and some Taiwanese pudding for our tea break. The food is as nice as our visit to the Tallest and Longest sky bridge in the world. Malaysia Boleh!