3 gals and a road trip

Way back in the Uni days, I rented a house in Kajang. I shared a room with my coursemate and good friend, Curly*. Living under the same roof with us are Blonde* and Specky*. Us 3 gals and Specky got along very well. In living under the same roof for 2 years, shared many adventures and memories...

Some of the adventures are.....watching 'The Ring' at night on Curly's PC and screaming our lungs out, arguments with other members of the 'household', cooking dinners in the kitchen although aunty landlady said 'no cooking', doing household chores, shopping at pasar malam, countless mamak sessions, bombarding Specky with tips on how to 'kau lui' (courting gals), bombarding Specky with advises and nonsense jokes when he failed to 'kau lui'...we are so bad, Specky installing 'virus' into our computers where the picture and screaming sound of 'The Exorcist' will appear into our computer screen whilst we were playing solitaire.....and so many many more adventures......

After graduating, Specky went back to Johor to start his career, while the 3 of us started work at various parts in KL. The last time we all saw Specky is when he visited us during our graduation ceremony. That's 5 years ago.

Suddenly, 2 weeks ago, Specky sms us. Inviting us to his wedding in Batu Pahat, his hometown on 13th May. Woo-hoo.....Specky's getting married....woo-hoo we get to have a road trip to Batu Pahat.

The plan is that the 3 of us gals would drive down to Batu Pahat town, reach there around 1-2pm. Specky will meet up with us, we will find and place to eat eat and talk talk and catch up. Then Specky will have to head to a hotel where he needs to get ready for the dinner and we'll go to the dinner place with him.

So, Specky drew out a map to guide us to the Batu Pahat town, scanned it and sent to us via e-mail. Before I even opened the map, the other 2 gals already complaining.....the map is too blur ! ....poor Specky said we haven't even see him, already start bullying him again..hehe...so, he drew another map, this time on Microsoft Word, and sent to us again. This time, the map met our ISO1234 standards and we approved of it.

Early that morning, I was at Curly's place. Upon arriving at Curly's place only I remembered that I left the printed out 'clear' map at my house ! I asked Curly if she has printed out the map, she said she only have the 'blur' map....furthermore, she was playing around with the rotate function of the printer, and the 'blur' map was printed out upside down. Pening ! Now you think that upside down map, we can read it by turning it upside down again right ?...no....it's not upside down that way. The only way for us to read the map correctly is to have a mirror to the map and look at the mirror to read the map ! We were already late, so we headed off to pick up Blonde. She's worse, printed the maps and left all of them in her office ! So, not only gals don't know how to read map.....they also leave them in the office, apartments and prints them upside down !

Nvm, Blonde has been to Batu Pahat once on business trip, hopefully she still remembers the way. After 3 hours of driving and yakking in the car....we exited the Yong Peng tol and headed to Batu Pahat through the trunk road.

We called Specky and he said to look for the Summit supermarket, somewhere in the Batu Pahat town center and he'll meet us there. We didn't dare to tell Specky that we only have a upside down + 'blur' map, so, we just blindly figured how to go to Summit supermarket. Later, we passed a 3 storey building resembling some sort of supermarket, Curly quickly u-turn and headed towards that building. Once there, we told Specky that we reach Summit already. But upon nearer inspection, the building is actually another supermarket called Wira Court and not Summit...... pening ! Anyhow, we were hungry already, so we decided to stop for lunch at the nearby coffeeshops. And guess what we spied a few shops away from the coffeeshop......boutiques ! Clothes boutiques !....3 of them ! .....woo-hoo....and we though there's nothing to do in Batu Pahat.

During lunch around 1pm, Specky called us and dropped the bomb on us, he told us he's not able to meet up with us as he need to go to the Crystal Inn for his and his wife's make up session. His makeup session starts at 3pm and it'll take him around 1/2 hour from his house to reach the hotel, which is also at Batu Pahat town center. He said he's arrange for his sister to meet with us and bring us back to his house. And we were like....'you are guy le, what you make up for 3 hours for ha?'. Anyway, we came up with a better plan. We told Specky that we'll have lunch and then go shopping at those 3 boutiques, until around 3pm then we'll go to the Crystal Inn to meet up with him. Brilliant....

So, we shop shop shop and shop! I tell you, only in a trip with gals will this kind of thing happen. Who knew Batu Pahat had some really nice boutiques.....but the clothes are not cheap ! .....still we managed to each spend around RM100 ! There goes Specky's angpau money.

After shopping, it's time to meet Specky in Crystal Inn, we got some directions and off we went. See, gals will ask for directions and gals will make lots of u-turns to where we want to go. Finally, we met up with Specky....we talked and got to reminicing about the 'old days', we had a great time. We also decided that no one has changed, we still had the same laugh and demeanor and still look as young as ever... :)

Later it's time for Specky's makeup session, after his bride's done. His makeup session, super fast .....just spray some hair gel...2 strokes of the comb and done...haha

We got ready too, and at 6 pm we headed to the dinner place together. The dinner place..wow...imagine a big big community hall, but inside it's very nicely decorated and renovated. There were 2 more weddings going on that evening.

Specky got us seated at our table and he went about greeting his guests. Since it's still early, we were the only 3 seated at our table and we were sooo hungry then, we walloped the whole plate of crackers (biskut bantal - 'cham tau peng'??) at the table, after finishing that, we asked the waitress for refill and walloped everything again. Then, Specky came over and seated us at another table, which also was empty and we walloped that table's crackers too !

By the time dinner started, we were actually a bit full from all the crackers. The food in Batu Pahat a bit different from what's served in KL. First the cold plate came and each of the dishes in the cold plate is quite special, there's otak-otak, 'char kuih', siu mai and others...totally different and very special. No photos of the food le, I shy, don't want people to think 'from which kampung this girl come from arr??'.....

Next dish is usually the shark's fin soup (we didn't know what was to be served because they didn't have the 'menu' shown). But when it came, it was in individual bowls. Blonde mention 'wah, the shark's fin soup here come indivually arr', I jokingly said 'maybe it's 'buddha jump over the wall' soup...yumyum'. And guess what, it was ! It was 'Buddha jump over the wall' soup. Wow ! ...this is a first for me, the soup was delicious. In fact everything served that night was very nice. Later on, we had chicken with winter chestnut and peanut, steamed talapia fish, braised broccoli with mushroon, scallops, sea cucumber and a bunch of seafood stuff. There's also 'nestum' prawns and mantau with 'tung po yuk'. All were yummilicious....We agreed that coming all the way from KL to Batu Pahat just for this meal itself was very very well worth it.

After dinner at 9.30pm, we bid Specky goodbye and made our way back to KL again. We didn't want to stay overnight as to avoid the jam on Sunday, since Sunday is the end of a 3 weekend holiday. On the way back, we chit chat again. I talked so much the whole day that by this time, my voice was cracking and my throat was sore.

By the time I reached home, it's almost 2 am. Very tiring trip and I had a little migraine in the afternoon too, but after taking panadols it's ok. But it's all worth it. It's such an adventure for the 3 of us gals to go on this road trip. To go to this place and get lost and have fun. And it's so great to catch up with old friends and talk about the 'good old days'.

* Names has been change to protect whatever it's suppose to protect.....