Sarang by the Brook at Kuala Kubu Bahru

How appealing would it be to have a cozy stay in a colorful tinted container amidst the jungle not too far away from the city?  With the birds chirping away and a cute little salt water pool?
That’s exactly what we experienced a couple of months back.

We booked a night stay at the Sarang by the Brook at Kuala Kubu Bahru and it was one of the most perfect stays ever.

 

We were not headed there from KL but Gerik, so we only managed to check in at 3.30pm. The check-in was rather smooth. The staffs were really helpful and quick. The parking slots within the gated compound are limited, but there are more parking slots just right outside the gated compound and it is safe.

We were there on a weekend, so it was already crowded with a group of college kids and a couple of other families by the time we checked in. A smooth and simple check in later, we were given the back most room, where its balcony was facing the jungle. We weren’t really in favor with it in the beginning. Obviously, who prefers to have nothing but jungle as their staycation view, but later we realized that gave us the most privacy. So thankful for that!

The room was not fancy or anything of such. But it was so cozy and comfortable. The rooms come with an attached bathroom as well. Clean room with comfy bed and fluffy pillows! And lucky for us, our balcony was facing the forest and its the closest to the forest too!  We could hear the sound of the waterfall the whole night. It was just perfect.

We had our dinner and dessert at the tiny balcony with the sound of the waterfall.  Ahhh...Bliss! Exactly what we need. Away from the hustles and bustles of the city!

The initial plan was to go for a night trek but it was raining that night. So we dropped the plan. We didn't go to the pool either because it was crowded with a bunch of college kids. Which were totally fine about. We were more than happy to have spent our night gazing away from our tiny balcony.

The next day, we were up all early to a beautiful misty morning. I still remember the beautiful sight I woke up to that morning.

 

We decided to go on a search towards the sound of the waterfall we heard the whole night long. We trekked for about 5 minutes, hoping that we could find the waterfall only to learn from one of the staffs, the waterfall requires quite a bit of trekking. He told us that the in house caretakers can provide us with the guides for the trek. Sounded great but we were running late and were super hungry, so… ABORT MISSION. Maybe the next time around, we shall continue the search.


              

So anyway the stay was inclusive of breakfast. They provided us with a packet nasi lemak each.  It was neatly kept in a clear container with the guest name. Such a cute presentation!  We were served with some bread and coffee and tea as well.

 

The guests can use their kitchen if they wish to cook their own meals. It is quite well equipped. But got to be sure to wash and clean up after using the utensils.

What's next after breakfast? The salt water pool!! We jumped straight into the pool. Was the pool salty? Yes, it was!! LOL! And the pool is open all day and night! There was this huge unicorn float to just chill on. We spent the whole morning swimming away and we had the whole pool to ourselves. It was a perfect morning swim.

The check out time is at 12 pm. We left the place in the afternoon with huge smiles on our faces! A perfect quick getaway to rejuvenate the mind and soul!

Additional info
You can rent a bbq pit and apparatus to have barbeque dinner.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have any time to get the raw items to marinate in time for the barbeque, so we opted for Chinese dinner in the nearby KKB town. There are some good restaurants in the nearby town and for dessert, there is Secret Recipe in the town as well. So there are no worries about the food.

This is not a sponsored post. A genuine review from me.

COLUMNAR BASALT BALUNG COCOS, TAWAU

Do you know we have our very own columnar basalt ?? Malaysia homes a columnar basalt!! YESSS we do!!

That’s exactly how excited I got when I read about in Google! And what got me even more excited was the fact that it is in Sabah, Borneo Island right between Tawau and Semporna! YEAYYY! 

Okay, all excitements aside.

So if don’t know what's columnar basalt already, its formation of rocks due to contraction during the cooling of lava on land from the eruption of a volcano.If you noticed in the pictures, the stone formations are in hexagonal and heptagonal in shape. Apparently, that’s how its formations are by nature. How cool!!

 That also means, we actually had active volcanoes thousands of years ago! Our one and only columnar basalt is a result of the eruption of Mount Maria about 27000 years ago.  The volcano is not active anymore for sure. And the mountain is not accessible for the public.

A couple of weeks ago, I made a quick trip to visit the place from my little coastal town, Semporna.

I google mapped my way there, but let me highlight here, if you are going to google map the place, be sure to search for

COLUMNAR BASALT BALUNG COCOS (SUNGAI GIRAM)

 

DO NOT, let me repeat, DO NOT map to BALUNG COCOS BATU BERSUSUN.  Because if you google map to Batu Bersusun, it's going to take you to the longer route with the badly maintained road. Never ending road. So save the hassle, map yourself to COLUMNAR BASALT BALUNG COCOS (SUNGAI GIRAM).

The junction to Kampung Balung Cocos situated at the Tawau Semporna main road. At the entrance of the junction, you will be greeted with a white welcome board, stated " SELAMAT DATANG KE KAMPUNG BALUNG COCOS". 

Just drive further in the small beautiful village, and you will come across a tiny wooden board on your left that’s written “columnar basalt”. Turn into that narrow road that looks almost non-existence in between a purple house and a pink house.

Continue driving up the road, you will come across an empty land with palm trees.  Just drive down the road, and you will come to an end road with a huge open space with a wooden house on your left. And that’s the parking site before heading to the columnar basalt.

There’s a very reasonable entrance fee, RM2 per pax, and there you go! Just walk straight down for about 10 minutes and you shall be rewarded with a BEAUTIFUL view!

Do note that this is in a private space owned by a teacher and he maintains it apparently. So be respectful when you are there.

It’s a beautiful place to unwind and relax with a couple of friends. Families with children can even have a picnic there, but please keep this place clean. It is still untouched and not heavily commercialized. Let's just keep its virginity! In fact, when I asked my fellow colleagues about this place, none of them were even aware of the existence of such a place. A beautiful secret spot that is slowly gaining its popularity.

 

 

 

There's a river flowing from the mountain nearby. The current heavily depends on the rainfall. When I was there, it was rather hot, so it was of medium flow. On the days with heavy current, the local kids do river tubing. HOW FUN??

Another fun fact, this place, Balung COCOS is named after the COCOS ISLAND of Australia! There's a whole of a story behind it. You may want to google about it. Its interesting to learn about!

If you are planning a trip there, here's a tip or two you can learn from my mistakes.

1) Wear adequate sunblock or get an umbrella or hat or cap, just anything at all to protect your skin from the brutal heat. The path down to the river is open and there's no shade. And Tawau is a coastal town and its extremely hot! Save your skin from patchy sunburns and heat rashes. 

2) There are no stalls selling any sort of drinks or snacks nearby. It’s a residential area. So bring your water, you will be thirsty!

3) No toilet!!!!! And most places are too open to do your business in nature like cavemen. Just so you know. But there’s a tiny wooden hut for clothes change if you wish to change.

Lastly, enjoy your trip! Enlighten yourself with nature and its astonishing formations!! 

What to eat in Tawau, Sabah.

24-hour food trail of Tawau's must-eats!

TAWAU, one of the many coastal towns of our beautiful  Sabah.

If you ask the locals, what's the one thing to do in Tawau? The immediate answer would be “makan bah… sedap sedap boss”. Tawau is renowned for its delicious food!

So the one weekend where Dhasa was down in Semporna, we took an hour drive to Tawau to do what we do the best! FOOD HUNT! 

Here is the list of food we managed to try in 24 hours. Just some of the many foods we wished to try.

Kedai kopi Yuan Yuan

This little coffee shop is known for its mee Soto. The seafood balls are freshly homemade. Especially the prawn ball. The fish pieces are fresh and sweet. You can choose the dried noodles or soup. Both are equally delicious. Be sure to go there early because the restaurant can get pretty packed and they usually sell out by late mornings.

Kedai  kopi Khun Lok

This coffee shop has been around for decades. And the locals swear by the Mongolian chicken rice. The chicken rice is best eaten with the anchovies sambal. It didn’t taste like ordinary chicken rice because of the anchovies sambal but its tad bit salty for my liking.  They serve pork as well.  We ordered one plate of pork as well. Give it a go, you might like it. Oh, they have dim sum as well. We tried one set of siew mai. 

Kedai makanan dan minuman Taman Emas

The best pork wotie ever!!  Slightly crispy on the out, so soft on the inside. It was just too good. It came with sides to enjoy with it. Sides of vinegar seaweed and garlic. I loved the combination of wotie with the vinegar seaweed. Thumbs up! The stall closes at 5pm and sells out way before that. So if you are planning to go, be sure to give a call in advance to book your yummy wotie! Got to thank Dhasa's colleague for this recommendation. This store also sells fresh coconuts and satays.

Indo Café

Famous for their pisang goreng cheese and mango sago drink. We decided to forego the mango sago and try their pisang goring @ banana fritters. We ordered pisang goreng cheese and pisang goreng chocolate.  The banana fritters were fried to perfection. It was crispy and served hot. I personally enjoyed the chocolate topping over the cheese toppings.  Imagine eating hot, crispy banana fritters with drizzled chocolate with peanuts! I LOVE chocolate, this pisang goreng chocolate made me so happy! If I were to order one thing from here, pisang goreng chocolate it will be.

Olive Bistro

Been hearing good reviews about this place from lots of people. We decided to try it ourselves. The first thing that caught us was how beautiful the interior of this place is. There's a wide range of Italian and western food to choose from. We were too full to try anything too fancy, we opted for a simple dinner. We ordered seafood aglio olio, lime cream, salmon pasta, and Caesar salad.  The spaghetti has fresh seafood and tasted delicious. The Caesar salad was fresh and tasted great as well. The salmon spaghetti, on the other hand, didn’t really fancy me. This place also serves some wine and its suitable for celebrations.

Kedai kopi Yun Lee Fat

We saw how most of their customers walk in just to take away the boas.  There was this one guy who walked out with three bags full of baos! We knew what to order the moment we saw that. Bao! It was selling off like hot cake! They have this huge bao filled with pork and egg. We had one of that, and the mee basah. Nothing great about their mee. The star of the show was that baooooo! Ahhh still craving! Fluffy hot bao!  They have baos of different filling to choose from.  And they are very cheap!

 

Kedai kopi Keong Sang

Dhasa wanted to try the dim sums here, so we went here to have some dim sum. This is an ideal place to have breakfast, you will be spoilt for choices. Unfortunately or fortunately, I was too full from all the food I've been stuffing into my tum tums!  I wanted to try the red bean porridge, as it was on almost everyone's table. But nope, tummy didn’t want to cooperate. Too much food.  Hopefully, I can go back here just to try the porridge!

Dubai Beriyani Hub

We came across this well-litted restaurant while driving around.  Being the Indians who love our spices a bit too much, we decided to try this place. We both wanted prawns briyani, so we ordered only one set.  The briyani was not the best I've eaten, but it definitely passes off the expectation. It was spicy and just nice with juicy prawns. The potion is enough for two. Served with papadoms and acars.

Wangi chicken rice

This was nearby our hotel and it looked nice. So we decided to try here. We ordered on set and shared the meal. Like any other chicken rice restaurants, you can choose the chicken parts and how you wish to have it. We ordered roasted chicken breast piece with rice and a vegetable dish as an add on. The chicken rice was served with a bowl of soup, the usual chili and ginger paste.  It was alright, we have definitely eaten better chicken rice elsewhere. The vegetable, kangkung belacan was finger licking good! We loved the kangkung more than the chicken rice itself.  I can eat the kangkung belacan by itself.

In between meals, we savored some dessert as well. You can never be too full for deserts, can you?

London frozen yogurt

Spotted this place earlier in the day whilst driving around. So after dinner, we drove there. Made there in time. Just 5 minutes before the store closes. I have an irrational love for frozen yogurts.  So, this place is love!! I loved it! I got the original flavored yogurt with some oreo toppings! And their tiny store is definitely instagramable!

Grand Papa bubble tea

Dhasa wanted something like a bubble tea for his dessert. So went to another dessert store, Grand papa, not too far away from the London frozen yogurt. He got this chocolate and cheese I think. Tasted good as well. Not too sweet, just the right amount of everything.  Grand papa has its own cute merchandise. We couldn’t get anything because we went in late, we had to walk out right after getting the drink.

Abang Burger stall

We meet a local friend in Tawau, and he claimed that this burger is the best burger in the whole of Tawau! We confirmed this with a few random locals as well. We wanted this for supper, but they were closed. So we got this then the next day before driving back to Semporna at 2.30pm. There were already many people waiting for their orders before us. We ordered one ayam cheeseburger and were quite excited to try the burger. Butttt, let's be honest alright, it tasted just like any other ramli burgers! I honestly can't tell what the hype was all about. 
This stall is in the shop lots right opposite Check-in Hotel. Might give it a go again, judging straight away is not right after all. 

Ding Tea

One for the road! Got this right before driving back to Semporna! Like a driving snack, but just not a snack. It has all the unusual flavors and I loved it! We got the Jasmin taro milk tea and red bean milk tea. And we choose our drinks to be off 50% sweetness and it was still sweet. It was not overpowering though.

So that's the end of our 24-hour food trail in Tawau. We had many other places that we wanted to give a try, but with 24 hours, there's so much we can stuff into our tummy.

The next time around, we shall.

A HARD ROCK staycation by the beach!

The two of us in our BACKPACKS at the lobby of Hard Rock Hotel Batu Feringghi, checking into our room in a fancy hotel with some welcome drinks! HAHAHAH!! Always the light packers! 

Finallyyyy, making the dream of my younger self come so true!! Yeayyyy!

I’ve always wanted to stay in Hard Rock Hotels. Just any of it.  Just wanted to stay and do nothing at all. I’ve always fancied a stay where we do nothing at all, just stay idle but that never happened. I always end up planning too many things to do and never have had any truly relaxing stay anywhere. NEVER! I always loved the rush but this time it was a completely different stay.

Impromptu stay it was!

But,

we still found so many things to do within the hotel compound.

There’s always something that can be found to do regardless of the age.

Enjoy the sunset view in the evening.
That’s what we exactly did on that evening, we came here to do nothing at all. So we did just that. We got ourselves a couple of drinks, sat by the balcony and just enjoyed the view and the environment with some music.

Go for a walk around Hard Rock
YUP, you can! We just wanted to have a look around the hotel and figure out the paths. So we walked around wherever any paths led us to. It was fun. It was rather a small compound, so there’s no way you going to find yourself lost. Just walk around, figure out paths. And the sea breeze? Cheery toppings!!

Book yourself a spa session
Right after entering the room, I dived onto my bed and opened the spa menu card. Haha! It was a leisure trip and we had nothing planned. We thought a good full body aromatherapy massage at the Rock Spa would do the aching knots on our shoulder some favor. We initially booked their outdoor spa at 8pm, but we had to change it when we reached there because it's too late for an outdoor spa. The staffs apologized for misinformation and offered us the indoor spa! The indoor spa setting is no less attractive either. A huge spa room hot shower. We had our amaaazing spa indoors.

Have a coffee break nearby
Okay, this was not in Hard Rock, but it was not too far away either. There's a lot of coffee shops in Batu Ferringhi that you can choose to spend your evening. We chose to go somewhere I've been wanting to go in the longest time, ever since uni days, Ferringhi Gardens. The ambiance of this place is beautiful. We decided to have something light. We ordered a waffle, a whiskey coffee, and a chocolate drink. And let's not forget how friendly the restaurant waiters and waitresses are! 5/5 for the customer service!!

Celebrate a special occasion.
We were there for leisure purpose. We didn’t do anything fancy. But If you are there to celebrate a special occasion, I would recommend booking a sunset dinner. They have tiny huts by the pool on beach sands and coconut trees in the premise will not let you down. Having dinner with a table filled with rose petals and wine, I'm sure it will make for a memorable dining experience.

Dinner at the Hard Rock Café
Note that the café can get pretty crowded on weekends because its open not just for the in house guests, but for the walk-in customers as well. So be sure to reserve in advance. We weren’t aware of how crowded it can get, we just walked in instead and had to wait approximately 30 minutes. But you can just leave your mobile number and carry on about doing your thing. The host will call you once the seats are empty for you.
We had their burger, spaghetti, and the starter platter. The spaghetti and the platter were delicious but nothing much to shout about. The burger, on the other hand, was exceptional!!

Just the bar
They have live band performances, so be sure to get yourself a drink and watch the live band. We didn’t get much of the live band that night, because there was a football match going on. Everyone was engrossed in the match. Just joined the night in spite of not being the biggest fan of football.

Break the fast
Now, Hard rock didn’t have that biggest breakfast spread that I've seen in hotels. But I'm convinced enough to say that everyone can find something that they like.  The have spreads of western, Asians and local breakfast. Their nasi lemak was good! Oh, and let's give a moment of appreciation to egg bar! Always my favorites at any hotels! Just go to the egg bar, choose whatever you want and get dear self a beautiful omelet. After all, a big fat hearty breakfast is always a good idea.

Beach walk
If you walk a little further from their swimming pool, there's a tiny gate that leads to the beach. It is very easily accessible from the hotel and it's their private land. We walked along the waves, spotted tiny crabs and seashells. Exactly what we needed in a peaceful morning. If you are feeling a bit adventurous, try their water sports! There's a bunch of men out there that are advertising their business with their huge signboards. You will be able to spot them. Even if you don't, they will definitely come over to approach you.

Take a dip in the pool
You cannot miss this!! Imagine just swimming away with some nice music? You get just that! Both adults and kids. There’s a colorful kiddy pool for the kids as well. Be sure to get your wrist band from the tiny towel kiosk at the corner of the pool to have an uninterrupted swimming session. We didn’t get the band. We jumped right into the pool after the beach walk. That got one of the guards to approach us to know if we are in house guests or outsiders. He thought we trespassed! Well,  can't blame him because we had no wrist bands on. But he approached us in the kindest possible manner. So dhasa volunteered to get that from the tiny kiosk. Just tell them your room number, and you will be given the band and a towel. Enjoy your swim!

Take a bite while swimming
How about some nice prawns pizza in between your swims? Haha! There's this tiny pool bar called THE SHACK. They have inbuilt pool chairs! How cool! They have a decent menu that you can choose your food and drinks from. We had beers and prawns pizza! That was our informal lunch by the pool..or brunch?? The pizza… let me take a second to relive the moment, please! It was ohhmaaiigod! Okay if you are going to Hard Rock Penang and planning to swim and get a pizza, and not allergic to seafood, get that prawns pizza!!! You can thank me later :P

Souvenirs?
Right at the end of the stay, after checking out, you can check out the Hard Rock apparels. In our case, we just browsed through the store haha! We didn’t buy anything from there. I should have bought that Hard Rock ducky!! Shall get em duckies the next time. TOOOO CUTEEEE!!!

And then came the end of the stay.

Before we knew it, we had to check out. The check out was a breeze. There’s free parking inside the premise for the in house guests. You can park your car in a safeguarded area for the night.

It was a good stay! We left for home the happiest!!

Disclaimer: this is not a sponsored review. It's from our hard earned cash and a genuine post!