Since we knew so little about the East Coast, we kept our plan simple -
get on the highway, head east until we can't go any further, head north.
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Aunty, cousin Jean, Xuan, Qi and team Big Big Planet. |
| The highway to the east coast takes us pass Lanchang, the turn off to the Kuala Gandah Elephant Sanctuary (about 20 minutes drive in). It's more of an elephant torture camp, really. They chained about 4 elephants to a concrete floor and sell tickets to tourists. We fed them some bananas and moved on. |
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Most of the restaurants were closed by the time we got to Kuantan. Somebody on Twitter suggested one row of beachside restaurants near Tanjung Lumpur but they looked pretty quiet when we got there. We passed by this wedding kenduri and was half-serious about eating there for free. We ended up eating at the next lively place we found - a malay kampung restaurant. |
| We took a few pictures of the kampung. |
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Salted fish, I think. |
We originally planned to stay the night in Kuantan but since we didn't know what to do here, we decided to push on to Kuala Terengganu and appoint Aunty as tour guide. If I had paid attention in Geography class, I should have realised that Terengganu was a very long state and we were about to drive, more or less, through the length of it.
We didn't go back to the highway the way we came, which we later suspected would have joined up with the east coast highway, but followed the old road (all the blue signs) towards Kuala Terengganu. This took us through what felt like a hundred traffic light junctions before we got out of Kuantan.
| Our next door neighbour used to travel to the East Coast frequently and never missed the chance to stop at the famous Hai Peng coffee shop in Kemaman, so we decided to check out the hype. The place was really packed! |
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Between us, we tried their Hai Peng milo 'O' (tastes just like ordinary Milo 'O'), Hai Peng Teh 'C' (ordinary Teh 'C'), hot milk (like what you get at Starbucks which was too sweet for Max), lime crush (Xuan didn't like it), and cinnamon milk with honey (which everybody liked). They butter their toast with Planta (a sort of sweetened margerine) instead of butter, so their kaya toast was different.
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See Ming, Aunty and Jean were also adventurous enough to try this, their tapai (fermented glutinous rice). This was described as a glutinous rice with a sweet wine taste. 3 servings of these are neatly wrapped in one tapioca branch (which always has 3 big leaves). |
| A group of important-looking people in batik shirts were having tea there as well. |
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The road took us pass Kerteh where, out of nowhere, a gas plant appeared with humongous buildings on both sides of the road side. It looked like something out of the Mad Max movies. |
We arrived at Kuala Terengganu around 8pm for dinner at Tian Kee restaurant (the next block after the Grand Continental Hotel,
on the same side of the road, and hidden behind a row of shops). The food was decent.
At about 9:30pm, we checked into the Grand Continental, thanks to a recommendation by Luxen