Celebrating Lai Cheng's birthday

16th Feb 2010

Ming Kok Restaurant Seremban

For the first time in over 20 years I managed to come back to Seremban for Chinese New Year and as luck would have it, I also celebrated my 55th birthday on the 13th Feb.  My lovely friends especially Zip and Koon Koon looked after me splendidly, ferrying me around and taking me to all our favourite eating places like Yong Tau Foo, Beef Noodles, Rojak and chendol and Koon even treated me to the best durian in town.  We had a pre CNY dinner when Kim Fui returned from Singapore at a restaurant which offered Nga Poe squirrel..which we all declined.  The fish head noodles was interesting so was the roast pig forelegs but the best dish was the raw fish which was mixed with fruit instead of vegetables.  Zip hatched the idea of going to a joint specialising in the dish "Buddha leapt over a wall" to celebrate my birthday but after some investigations decided it was not worth it at $240 a head!!!  So we decided to go to a regular restaurant like Ming Kok and from a small intended gathering, we ended up with 24 persons on the night. Unfortunately our dinner coincided with the lion dances as well as an adjoining function.  So the volume of noise was such that conversation was impossible at times.  The food was excellent though, more raw fish salad together with all the usual courses.  As you can see from the group photo,  Angie, Denise and Wing Kwong came from KL and Kim and Sally were also present having come back to see their relatives in Rantau.  We had a lovely birthday cake for desert with the Happy Birthday song adding to the general noise level.  We adjourned to a Bar somewhere? and spent another couple of hours catching up on old times.   Thank you everyone who organised and came to the dinner. It was one of the best birthday celebrations I've ever had. Zip hatched one more treat for me, this time we decided to go to KL and enjoy the hospitality of Wing kwong, Angie, Casey and Kam Onn.  Tiew Seng, Annie, Kim Fui, Zip and I set of at mid day for what turned out to be an eating marathon.  Since we were late leaving, we started with Hakka noodles in Seremban.  Next stop Morib where we had the most fantastic seafood especially the crab mei fun and the steamed fish.(be warned though, the restaurant had very basic toilet facilities even by Malaysian standards ie wee on the floor in the bathroom and whoosh it away with water!) After stuffing ourselves (thank you very much Tiew Seng) we headed off to Wing Kwong's new home where we could'nt resist snacking on prawn crackers.  Next stop was a Hakka restaurant in Cheras, more stuffing with delicious seafood including abalone supplied by Kim Fui.  The boys contributed 6 bottles of whiskey which they proceeded to slowly demolish.  After dinner, Kam Onn had the great idea of Karaoke at a bar in town.  The ladies were a little hesitant to enter the threshold of a rather seedy looking wine bar but once we settled down it was hilariously good fun.  My mental image of Casey doing the twist and belting out old sixties numbers will forever make me smile.  Zip and I made very good backing groupies and I never knew Wing Kwong could sing so well.  Even Tiew Seng grabbed the mike and sang some Chinese songs. This was my first ever visit to a Karaoke bar and I was not disappointed, although the selection of songs could be a lot better. By 2.30am we had worked through the whole catalogue so we decided to head for home but not before the last feeding session.  We headed back to KL for Bak Kut Teh and ?garlic oil rice plus other goodies.  Finally we said our good byes and thank yous to the KL guys for treating us to such a good time, headed for home, arriving in the early hours totally worn out and sated. Many, many thanks again to all my lovely friends, it was so great to be home, can I have a repeat in 2 years' time? Lai Cheng