Sunday, May 31, 2009

Galley by the Straits + Bottle Tree Night

To celebrate Maz’s belated birthday, we met up for dinner last Friday at an interesting location – SAF Yacht Club off Sembawang.

The restaurant is sea-facing, a stone throw away is our northern neighbours. As i did not bring my tripod along, i did not capture any proper night shot, hence will not bother with posting the lousy pictures up. But you can take a look at their website here.

Galley by the Straits, hidden behind lines and lines of yachts.

The restaurant warm orange lightings was made warmer by their in-house singer who made our night a lot more ‘lively’. So much so that we have to speak at the top of our voices, falling short of shouting.

Tough choice making our selection

The talented Ang Moh who kept singing for 80% of the time we were there, even entertaining diners song requests. Makes us wonder what songs he can’t play/sing. We decided not to quiz him with tough newly released songs…

The volume was loud lah…

Having our appetisers while waiting for the arrival of Old Mother – Huifen. Stomachs already starting their orchestra…

Luckily she arrived when we were almost done with our starters. It was another long wait before our dishes were served as (according to the waitress) there was only 2 chefs preparing western food (which most of us order), hence the torture.

After dinner, we pondered a while on where to head to next before Ash suggested Bottle Tree Village where we could do some prawn-ing. Been a long while since we did our convoys.

Riding into the long night

It’s different when you ride together.

Shortly after one wrong turn, we made our way into the Bottle Tree Village, where Ash was fascinated by the ancient weighing machine.

“Can i have a volunteer please?”

We are to keep Huifen’s weight a secret, luckily its within the weighing machine’s limit of 500kg.

Seeing the mini-prawning crowd, we did the next most logical thing…

Presenting… Zech the Fisherman.

Starting with 2 rods for 1hr, we eventually extended it to 2.5hrs due to the overwhelming excitement of catching the prawns. And also a friendly rivalry from the prawning teams of NIE – MAE – NBS.

Maz amazed everyone by getting a catch within 2 minutes of lowering his rod. Kampung power lah!

The momentum sort of slowed a little, before their quick change of rod, and the MAE boys are back in business.

Huda is just getting started with her prawning spree, you should have seen how she man-handled (or lady-handled) our prawns.

No Mercy!

The crowded pool. Makes us wonder if there were enough prawns for everyone. Somehow our catch always look smaller than those that we caught opposite us.

Nonetheless, patience is the way to go.

Our trophies for the night being prep for our dinner table. Not the prettiest of sight.

Catching the prawns with their bare-hands seems harder than using the rod.

While the boys are busying with getting the prawns onto the stick, the ladies are manning our grill… while I’m just snapping pictures.

A nice orange glow from our tasty prawns

While most of us would be happy with our prawns cooked, Ash has other ideas. He decided to have it raw, as fresh as it could be.

As he demonstrated how it should be eaten, we were all busy taking pictures & videos of his Bear Grylls act.

Savage Ash

Just for Ash: Next time, try to have your prawns eaten when they are orange in colour, not grey.

See how nice they look!

Just looking at them makes your mouth waters. Not to mention the slightly charred smell.

The Mae Boys with their big prawns

Digging in our 14 cooked prawns. Good supper after a looooooong night.

And a parting shot before we bid farewell to Bottle Tree Village…

For more pictures, do check this out.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Club Meet

Greetings!

Hope you're all satisfied and happy with your exam results. It's been a long time since we had an official club meet. Here's something totally different from our usual prata or teh meets at ktm.

Date: 29 May
Time: 6.45pm
Where to: Galley by the Straits
Meeting point: Pavement of Woodlands Civic Centre (we'll ride to the restaurant together)

Thanks to Ash for this wonderful suggestion. It's waterfront dining man. Check the restaurant out at http://www.galleysgourmet.com/ Sorry for the last minute notification. Hope to see you there!