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When I was a kid sitting at the back of the car, whenever my dad took a wrong turn or was lost – which was rare in itself – I’d feel this happiness and excitement swelling up inside of me, for reasons I’m not too clear about. Maybe there was a sense of adventure in that, in venturing into places unbeknownst to us, stopping locals to ask for directions, detouring out of a monotonous street that I may have seen far too many times – I may be born an adventurer.

I’ve always enjoyed doing spots of exploration, to find the unknown and experience the unravelled places – heck as I grew up through lower secondary school, I’ve cycled with my friends a couple of times first uncovering every single Goodyear Court apartments in our neighbourhood (it was fun as a bespectacled nerdy kid who yearned for a sense of adventure), taking note the various exotic names of every block of building and jotting them down or something as a game among ourselves. Seeing new buildings and new names was our – or my – idea of fun; I got kicks out of it.

The adventure continued when my mum essentially loosened her grip on my freedom, and I began to take it far on my trusty two wheels. At the end of the day I’d have cycled to areas like USJ 1 or SS19 or Putra Heights (cycling up to Purple Hill nearly every other week was insanely fun, we would stop by at this coconut stall on the way up or down and god was it bloody refreshing), and as a 14 or 15 year old, that was some kind of an achievement. I was exhilarated. I was yearning for more. The danger and venture into the unknown excites me – so much so that I was envious whenever Jon went on his cycling trips to even crazier places to Klang. There was a plan between RB and me to cycle all the way to Port Dickson, but I don’t need to explain how that turned out. ;)

Cycling was my way of exploring the world a step at a time, beginning with my neighbourhood, and I relished every moment of it.

My way of satisfying this growing hunger for adventure in me is to backpack. Nha Trang, Vietnam was extremely memorable because Siew, Kazz and I were on our motorbikes (scooter for me) exploring the area without using a map when we happened to stumble upon this amazingly quiet beach where there were only locals fishing. =) (Nha Trang’s beaches were mostly populated by foreigners, so yeah.) The road leading up to our mystery beach had nary a soul, save for the occasional local, and.. it was one of those things that I don’t think I’d ever forget even if I have Alzheimer’s or something.

So what am I leading on to?

With a GPS module in my phone, my chances of getting lost are now severely minimised – hence I won’t be getting my adventurous kicks anytime soon. I know it’s a stupid thing to say considering that crazy incident when I got lost from Ikano all the way to KL which I hardly enjoyed at all, but if I’m not on a time constraint, getting lost wouldn’t be too bad.

I drove to Klang on Monday night by myself right after my Chinese class, had to restart my phone for a bit to get the GPS working (I was already running late), and let the GPS system guide me to Klang.. until my phone decided to lose its GPS signal and I had to stop by at a Petronas station to see if I could get the signal again. It didn’t.

I phoned Matt for further instructions and as I was sorta near to his apartment already, he told me that he’d ‘rescue’ me hahaha. I then stepped out of my vehicle and a few seconds later, lo and behold signal full bar wtf and I had to call Matt again to tell him that he didn’t need to come.

A few minutes later I arrived at Matt’s place, and in two cars (mine and Albert’s) we went to Restoran Laut Sungai Yu which Matt recommended, that was purportedly famous for its ‘mango chicken’. GPS location and picture can be found here.

But I’m including the GPS location of this place anyway:

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Speaking of which, anyone with a GPS-enabled phone or GPS unit interested in collaborating with me on a food project? Pinning GPS tags on Google Maps for the best food in town or the worst diner people have to avoid like the plague. Buzz me if you’re interested. :)

Anyway! It was great meeting up with Matt and Albert again, my two Bangkok partners, who were there as well with Vena (whom we also met in Bangkok) and whom I found out also stay in my neighbourhood wtf, Belinda (whom I haven’t met before) and Albert’s girlfriend.

The food was good – some items were reasonably priced (at an average of RM15 per dish), but things like the coconut tomyam was a little overpriced. BBQed stingray was great; the mango chicken was just nice for me although I didn’t find it that special – it was just slices of mango on top of chopped up blocks of chicken. In the end we paid about RM19 per person for the 6 of us.

At about 9.45pm we were finally done, and I had to decline Matt’s offer to play Wii at his place ‘cause I had a movie date with Esther and Kai Tzin at my house. The drive back home was a little relaxing and pretty uneventful except that I lost my GPS signal again -__- and stopped by the roadside for a while before I realised that the turning to the highway was just a kilometre or so ahead of me and I went on my way.

The three of us watched The Love of Siam, the Director’s Cut version (which I burned) with an extra 30 minutes worth of scenes that made it an almost 3-hour movie. Solid acting, great story albeit depressing (no, no one died – the main characters at least), with a beautiful and mesmerising soundtrack accompanying it throughout the show (cheesy lyrics, I thought, but I loved it all the same) – it deserves its numerous awards it has won.

Quite a misleading poster as it features romance between two guys with a very important plot of a family – the director was quoted as saying that it was intentionally marketed that way to reach a wider audience or something lmao.

I didn’t know I’d be this affected till I realise that over the next few days I was a little depressed, especially when I reviewed its scenes again in Youtube or listen to the Thai songs. =(

Hello Mario.