Ah Kong’s Birthday 2026

My father turns 84 on THIS day, 19 August!

We celebrated last weekend with a Chinese course meal at Oriental Pavilion.

Now what's this? Baby back ribs with preserved plum tomatoes

Food was overall good.  Though the 'cod fish' was served fried in batter and the 'Australian scallop' was mixed like fish-paste - why waste premium ingredients?  Unless they weren't premium to begin with.... hmmmm.  

Dessert of herbal 'turtles' in mango cream

Is there enough space on the cake for the candles?  Oh yes enough haha.

84 times happy birthday!

6 grandkids - 1 has gone off to university

With everyone

My father is having some health issues which don't have clear causes and thus no clear remedies.  Docs are mainly writing it off to 'old age' at this point.  Praying this will improve.  We very much want him around for a long time to come.

Food at malls

Right after our Yunnan trip, I started a new 1-year assignment which entailed going to the client office daily.  After over 3 years of hybrid WFH/office, I could hardly believe having to fight traffic jams daily!  Driving takes up a total of 2.5 hours.  And of course I can't be surfing the net while sitting with other humans!  The work is not my cup of tea either, which is making me seriously think of retirement.  Luckily I managed to get a day of WFH a week for now. 

On to a more enjoyable topic, FOOD.  All these are at malls which win for easy parking, food variety and availability of other shops.  

Father's day lunch (yes this was over a month ago, but refer to my comment that I can't be surfing the net now in the office hehe).  A note that my sis completely misunderstood where to meet and missed this. 

Nong Geng Ji (Chinese): Overall not bad, worth repeat visits

Red Kettle: Dutch baby for me, pork buns/mantao for SE

Chica Bonita(Mexican): Corn looked better than it tasted

Aftermeal: Shaved ice dessert, hojicha flavour

Tea count

Every trip we have been, JE requests to get bubble tea or similar beverage which could have bought one a square meal.  Decided to do a formal count.  We didn't come across any tea shops for 2 days so this started the night of Day 3.

1. Day 3: 'A Cup of Dali' is the name of the shop.  JE says this is local to Dali.  Fine, trying local brands while on holiday makes complete sense. 

This one tastes like Chagee

2. Day 4: JE spotted 'Auntea Jenny' which we also have back home.  JE said something about there being options only available in China.  Well fine then.

 

This one I don't quite like

3. Later that night - she followed Google map to the Chagee shop.  Apparently this drink was only available in China.  

Chagee is the bomb!

4. Day 6: In Xizhou, another Chagee.  I had lost track of the drink names, all are tea of some sort with milk.

Another Chagee

5. Day 7: In Kunming - someone is obviously holding tea.  I had also lost track of the shop name by now.

One more tea

Total of FIVE cups.  This is already with me suddenly becoming deaf whenever she started talking about the possibility of tea shops nearby.

Day7 Kunming

On our last day, the weather turned cool.  So much more pleasant to be strolling around (check out the more smiley faces in this post compared to the previous ones!).  We went back to the Golden Horse archway area.

Us at the Archway

I liked these little baos, delicious and only RMB12/MYR7 for the lot.

Little pan-fried pork baos 

JE's favourite was this halal beef pancake - very good too and cheap at RMB6/MYR3.6.

This beef pancake is the bomb

For lunch we went for simple yet different.  This stall at the food court sold steaming hot bowls of food - you request the seller to put your selections onto your tray then bring it to the cashier.  We picked only a few since we were pretty full.  RMB38/MYR22 for 4 bowls and 2 rice - tasty stuff.

Spicy chicken, pork patties, steamed egg, corn with capsicum

All right, that's all we had time for!  It was a smooth metro ride to the airport.

Try some giant fresh figs first

And a smooth journey back home.

Our loot from China

Yes we did enjoy our trip despite the hot weather.  Green light to visit more places in China in the future. :)

Day 6 - Xizhou

Last day in Dali already.  Took a Didi to Xizhou on the west side of Erhai lake.  I did wonder if I'd input the correct destination as I was expecting something more cultural with people involved in activities other than selling things to tourists.

Another ancient town?

Everything good/Hao

Oh well, it was nice wandering around and the wares on sale were different.

Old building

Finally crossed off the last item on our list - Xizhou Baba, a traditional bread with savoury or sweet filling.  We tried both - a freshly baked savoury one with meat and green onions, then a sweet one with the rose jam common in this area - and preferred the savoury.

Babas come to us

Quite scenic ya?

Also this 

Headed back to Dali and had lunch near our hotel.  SE now has fond memories of the 'milk potato' dish (which I remember trying hard to finish heh).

Potatoes and pork ribs

Dali was definitely worth the trip!  After that it was back to Kunming via the high speed rail.  

Day 5 Erhai Lake

Itinerary for the day was the east shores of Erhai lake.  While photos on the internet looked good, AI kept warning that our first destination of Lixiangbang (the China 'Santorini) wasn't 'authentic'.   When we got there.... OHH the place is basically just photo set ups, like what we have back home in Sekinchan.  The modus operandi was, buy expensive drinks/food to enter an establishment with props for photo-taking.  Without that, there were limited photo opportunities.

Without paying 

We wandered around a bit. SE was against going into any establishment.  I thought, well we had come all this way.  SE remained adamant - she argued we could just take some photos around and leave.  I decided to insist we go for it.  A coffee cost RMB68/RM40. 

  

Ah much better

Kiddos weren't in the mood to take photos.  Somewhere between the stress of dealing with my teens and the beauty of that place, I missed hubby intensely.  Sigh.  You can't quite see it in the picture above, but SE is holding Captain Hook who has been along on all our trips.  

It was an uncomfortably hot day.  The coffee arrived as a half cup hehe.

With the RM40 coffee

I think the pizza fared better for CNY118/RM70.  Too bad it was loaded with fresh capsicum which the girls dislike.

Exorbitant coffee and pizza

The view WAS gorgeous - blue skies, the lake.  The props weren't bad actually, only thing we weren't optimising the angles (plus I had grumpy models).  Below were the best photos.

Sky and water

Platform

Violin

Sofa

Swing

Next destination was Xiaoputao or 'Little potato island'.

Island behind with temple on it

Better picture of island

Pomegranates again

Nothing too much to see so we Didi-ed to our last destination of Shuang Lang.  This was much bigger and more interesting.

More shops here

Struck off another to-do item on our list - 'Cross bridge noodles'.  The 'bridge' here had many small toppings which you drop into the hot stone bowls filled with steaming soup, together with the noodles.  We requested one spicy soup and one no-spicy.

Cross bridge noodles for lunch

After lunch, we wandered around the ancient town.  At one time I thought we had covered all of it, but eventually discovered that it was much larger.  

Skies and water again

Sunset here was special due to the combination of Cangshan moutains behind, clouds lit from below, all reflected by the lake.  It was nice to just sit, wait and experience.

Sunset

After that we were ready to leave. But we walked for ages before we could exit the ancient town area!  So relieved when we finally reached the edge and could get a Didi.    

Day 4 - Cangshan mountain

Breakfast at our lovely hotel... was exactly the same every morning hahaha.  Noodle soup, steamed sweet potato and sweetcorn, orange and coffee/milk.  It was filling and delicious, but a change would have been welcome! 

Just our usual breakfast

Our agenda today was Changshan mountain. Took a Didi to the Gantong cableway.  Cost was  CNY380/RM228 for the 3 of us including the 'scenic spot' fee.  This, and also the entrance fee for the Stone Forest is steep for China so I guess this is the fee for foreigners - my dad mentioned that years ago he was in Beijing and just paid the lower fee for locals.  Well unlike him I have kindergarten-level Chinese and cannot pass for a local to save my life!  I was already delighted at having successfully purchased tickets HAHAHA. 

Successfully in the cable car 

This is quite scenic

You should move there, oh Grandmaster

We were planning to walk on the Jade Belt Path, which was a supposedly easy, mostly-flat trail.  Hmm then what the heck was this...

Looks quite high

.... and this?  

Yes still going up 

Steep steps went on for quite a distance.  Then somehow, the route became like this...

Aha yes it is flat now

We could have hit the path earlier, except I was looking for literally 'Jade Belt Path' when the signs showed 'Yudai Trail' - YUDAI is 'Jade Belt' in Chinese.  Oh well, we did see more and survive to tell the tale.  The path was repetitive after a while and the girls wanted to leave.

Some chinese writing 

So we walked back, climbed down, took the cable car and then a Didi.  It was 3pm by the time we reversed the whole journey.  I picked a random restaurant out of the many near our hotel, just because I noticed a table of people still eating.  And this turned out to be a very good meal!  For only CNY88/RM50 we got so much food!  Sliced meats of various types, pork-stuffed mushrooms, onion rings into which eggs were cracked, taiwanese sausage, various veggies, rice and even two sweet pastries.  Everything was cooked on the hot plate (which did make us rather hot as well!).  A staff helped us initially, then left once we had gotten the hang of it. 

A veritable feast!

This was the start of our 'lunners' (lunch + dinner).  Since we ate so much and so late, we could skip having a proper dinner and were hence free to eat anything we liked the rest of the day.  

Like grilled oysters

And meat pastries