Dining around Asia with the AsiaRooms.com Year End Sale (YES)

We all love travelling and when we travel, we are always looking for food to eat and great and comfortable places to stay. My wife and I love to travel and we have travelled to Beijing, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne, Penang, Sydney in the last 15 months.We also had a few staycations in Singapore.

In our quest to eat around the cities, we like to stay at somewhere comfortable and hope to get discounts on it. Hotel rooms usually take up a great portion of our expenditure for holidays. You would be glad to know that AsiaRooms.com (which is part of TUI Travel PLC, headquartered in UK) is having its inaugural annual Year End Sale (YES).




This annual sale offers quite a huge savings (up to 65 per cent) on hotels in popular destinations across Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea as well as Singapore and Hong Kong.

From 4 October 2012 to 27 November 2012, AsiaRooms.com will feature popular hotel accommodations in key Asian cities and regional beach holiday destinations in a series of six 24 and 48-hour sales, where customers can expect red-hot time limited offers.

“The destinations chosen for the inaugural AsiaRooms.com Year End Sale are hot spots for many holidaymakers during this time of the year, especially families and those looking for a short getaway during the year end season,” says Mr Clarence Lin, Brand Development Lead. “We believe the Year End Sale will be highly anticipated by travellers as it presents exceptional value for many popular hotels in top destinations across Asia.”

The Year End Sale and its specific details will be communicated via newspapers and on several websites in Singapore. Customers who wish to stay ahead of the competition in securing the Year End Sale offerings before they are fully booked, can do so by staying connected to AsiaRooms.com.

To receive notifications when the Year End Sale offerings go ‘live’ during 24 October to 27 November 2012, customers can stay connected with AsiaRooms.com through Facebook, Google+, Twitter and via its mailing list:

·         Twitter fans can follow at http://twitter.com/AsiaRooms

·         Facebook fans can visit http://www.facebook.com/Asiarooms

·         Google+ fans can follow at http://gplus.to/AsiaRooms

·         Visit the AsiaRooms website and subscribe to the mailing list at http://www.asiarooms.com


The year end is almost here and those who have yet to book rooms for their holidays, you can get excellent prices during this YES. After settling your room, it's time to look for places to eat!

Oh yes, it's also fun to book a room in Singapore and have a staycation here!

Vote for us at the Bosch Dream Kitchen Cookoff.

Hi readers,

My sis and I have a small favour to ask from you all. Out of curiosity and tempted by the prize, we participated in the Bosch Dream Kitchen Cookoff. We got happier when we got called up for an audition! Oh the cameras and lighting and all sorts of equipments that they have! They filmed us, asked us questions and we thought we might not make it for we were overwhelmed during the audition!

Tada! Suddenly, we got surprised that we even got into the 10 Semi-Finalists. It was a super WAH! moment for us!

Now, we got a little problem though. We need more votes to be in the Top 4. Only the Top 4 groups with the most votes gets to continue in the contest. Will you help us?

If you go to http://boschdreamkitchen.com/ you will see something like the screenshot below.
We are TEAM 8 - Philip Lim and Jaime Lim.



Click on our faces, and you will see a page showing a video that the organisers did when we were auditioned. It's a little silly we know. We were quite surprised they came out with something so fast!

There is a VOTE NOW button in red on that page, click on it and fill up the form.
That's it, you have voted for us. Please make sure it's Team 8!


Oh, the contest also is giving away a Bosch Filtrino Hot Water Dispenser to voters like you.
I sincerely hope you take 1 minute to vote for us!
We hope you win the voters prize too!


Thank YOU!

Black Pepper Crabs @ Eng Seng Restaurant

Two weeks ago, we met up with a friend who recently moved to Joo Chiat from KL. When we visit KL, he used to take us around to 'makan' there. Since he's based here now, it's our turn to bring him around.

Staying near to Eng Seng, he passes the shop daily on his way to work and back. As a workaholic who leaves early for work and comes back late at night, he probably did not realise the crowd during the opening hours.

It's difficult to dine alone there, so we met up with him on a weekend with other common friends to have some delicious black pepper crabs!

If you read about this place, you got to 'book' your crabs (can't book tables by the way). The dear wife was a bit 'kiasu' and called them up 3 days in advance to book crabs. She was told off! If you are coming on Saturday, please only call after 3 pm on Saturday! We booked our crabs after 3 pm as told.

Oh well, our plans that day changed and we were going around eating that day. Around 4:30pm, everyone felt hungry and decided we should just have an early dinner instead. Lo and behold, when you are there early, there were no crowds! The big glass tank is full of crabs, you can choose your own crabs too!

(Hint, go early! Around 5 to 5.30 pm, you don't need to bother call to book anything!)


Fried You Tiao with Sotong Meat. ($8)

If you are having dinner there, you would realise that 90% of the people here have the same dishes! During dinner, we look around and saw same dishes on almost all tables!

For those who love some fried food, the fried dough fritter was nice. Crispy and crunchy with some soft cuttlefish meat stuffed in it.  Some of us thought the mayo was a bit too much on top. They should have served the mayo on the sides instead of dribbling all over it.



Hong Kong Kai Lan ($10)

The veggies were nicely stir fried, cooked and yet still crunchy. We found it a tad too salty though.




Mee Goreng ($7)

Oh, the Mee Goreng is another dish that almost every table orders.. It's delicious. Not too wet, nor too dry, it will probably suits most people's taste buds. Spicy but not too hot, it smells so good when it was served to our table. Prawns were bouncy and there was quite a few of it too.

(Looking at the prices now while blogging, it's more worth it to eat the Mee Goreng than the vegetables which is very little in quantity and not as satisfying as the spicy carbo noodles. LOL)



Black Pepper Crabs ($90)

We had 5 of us, and we ordered 3 crabs to share. If you are a super crab lover, you probably can have 1 each. The crabs that day was medium in size. It was enough for us as it was already the 5th meal for the day!

Ahh... the crabs here are as tasty as we last tried it. Peppery, sweetish, sticky! Many people rank the black pepper crabs here as the best on this island. The sauce was so addictive. It's nice with the You Tiao too by the way!




One of our friend was such a neat eater! She flipped over the big crab shell and slowly filled it with the other smaller bits as she ate. If you eat your crabs slow and eat every bit of it, there's very little leftover shells! When it's all done, she covered it up with another shell. So cute, that I have to take a photo of it!

The food is served rather quickly after ordering which is good. Would love to go back for more black pepper crabs and mee goreng.  The person on the phone might not be very courteous, but the chubby lady who goes around the table taking order is a very nice lady!

There's GST payable here, you will notice it in the bill. Our whole meal was $116.50 with the taxes included.  Eng Seng is the name of the coffeeshop. The stall selling the crabs etc is called First Grade Seafood Palace. What a nice name eh!


First Grade Seafood Palace
Eng Seng Restaurant
247-249 Joo Chiat Place
(Near to Malacca Hotel)
Singapore 427935

Tel: 6440 5560

Hours: around 4.30 to around 8.00 pm (earlier when the crabs are sold out)