Chap Goh Meh 2011

Last February 18 was a public holiday in Thailand. Yet the day before was Chap Goh Meh, also known as Yuen Xiao, the last day of the Chinese New Year. Yes, CNY is celebrated for 15 days. Anyways, I am not going to explain all the significance and what the Chinese do on each day here but I want to tell you that Hobbit and I had a mini two-some celebration at Wan Chai HK Cafe located at Ekamai Road.

Every Chap Goh Meh, my family would have a small sit together to eat tang yuen aka. boiled glutinous rice balls which looked like this:

picture courtesy of lezx's blog

My mom would either buy the ready made dough or just make them herself. I remembered the many years I helped her roll the dough and boil them with ginger and rock sugar. Sometimes we even added some red bean paste into the balls so it wouldn't be just plain flour that we were eating. Back to Wan Chai HK Cafe, we were given two vouchers to try out their food there. So this was the best time to go since my mom insisted that we eat some tang yuen.

Wan Chai HK Cafe has a good ambiance. The place looks elegant and hi-so but the food and drinks they serve are at affordable price. I ordered two dishes. One was beef porridge and the other one was some Singapore noodles, I forgot the exact name. Hobbit ordered grilled chicken with pasta. Both of my orders were good, there were hints of authentic taste yet for the pasta that Hobbit ordered, nothing is great about it. It was bland and I thought that it was a wrong place to eat pasta since they specialized mostly on Asian food. When time for dessert, I looked at the tang yuen and thought "goodness...punya mahal, saya pun boleh buat!" (goodness...too expensive, I can make them too!) Gladly we ordered mixed lychee shaved ice instead. It was good, you should try it. When we left the place, we only paid 6B since we had the vouchers. We were bloated and were satisfied even without eating tang yuen. Before we left from home, we stopped by Max Vallu to buy vitamins for weight loss to send to one of my friend overseas. :)