We played Saboteur and Monopoly Deal until dawn before we decided to call it a day. It was a great night with a lot of laughter!
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| As nobody took picture of him, he took it himself. :) |
The next morning I did not do my duty to call everybody up. Instead, Pink called my room. Five of us would fly back to Jakarta at 11:00 am while the remaining four would take 4:20 pm flight.
So, we hugged and thanked each other for the wonderful holiday that we had. No one believed that three days passed in a blink of an eye. No one. I was so sad to call this holiday an end but I knew there would be many more to come.
After watching their backs disappearing in the corner, I went back to my room to get prepared. I planned to go to the famous temple in Manado before proceeding to the airport.
Ban Hin Kiong Temple.
Ban Hin Kiong Temple is located at Jalan D.I. Panjaitan. Ban Hin Kiong means Palace Full of Blessings. This place was built back in 1819 which made it the oldest in Manado. In 1970, Ban Hin Kiong Temple was set on fire by certain racist party. Since then, it went through renovation to be what it is now.
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| The famous Kelenteng Ban Hin Kiong |
Nearby this temple, there is one restaurant called Yit Hien. Erland told me that the Chinese pork bun was nice. When I told bf, he could not resist to have another pork time. So, there we were having our breakfast.
It was almost 11:00 am when we reached there and the restaurant had started serving lunch. When we told the waitress that we only wanted to have breakfast, she seemed so puzzled. Maybe Manado people never had brunch?
We looked at the menu. One biapong (or Chinese bun) costs IDR 9000 (SGD1). I felt that it was expensive. However, we were already there, so we ordered one biapong ba biasa (normal Chinese pork bun) and one biapong ba spesial (special Chinese pork bun) for bf and one biapong timo (Chinese green bean bun) for me.
And to my surprise, when the buns came. They were extremely huge and heavy!
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| Can you see that they are bigger than my face???? |
After filling ourselves with the giant buns, we walked to Kelenteng Ban Hin Kiong to pray. This temple reminded me to the oldest temple in Palembang (which I will talk about in another post sometime later). The different thing is that Ban Hin Kiong has three floors while the one in Palembang only has one floor.
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| Kelenteng Chandra Nadi in Palembang. Similar, huh? |
We finished praying and headed back to the hotel to pick the two lovebirds and hopped back on to the car for lunch. Initially we asked Erland where to go and he suggested Raja Oci Restaurant or Rajawali Restaurant which were located in city centre.
To experience something different, we asked the driver to bring us to Malalayang area. The driver straight away recommended Ria-Rio Restaurant. We said we would like to take a look before deciding.
So he drove us there. Malalayang is located south of Manado. When we entered Malalayang, we could see the sparkling sea and row of bamboo huts selling foods. It does not need to be expensive to enjoy great view in Manado. After the row of bamboo huts, we could start seeing restaurants. I don't know whether it was because of convenience, we just stopped at Ria-Rio Restaurant, looked at the menu, and decided to try it.
Ria-Rio Restaurant is a seafood restaurant where you could pick your fresh seafood and it would be cooked according to what you want. I asked whether they sold ikan tude (mackerel) without any intention. The waiter told me that they did not have that but if we wanted to eat that, we could go next door. I was stunned. Who on earth recommend their customer to the competitor????? Only in Manado.
So we order hotplate kangkung (water morning glory cooked in hot plate), ikan kerapu bakar rica (grilled garoupa with rica spices), and udang goreng sereal (cereal fried prawn). We chose 800 grams of fish and 500 grams of prawns.
Then we patiently waited for our food while taking pictures and having some chats.
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| Selfie always comes first |
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| Ohmygosh my face looks so big here. Where's the selfie stick???? |
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| The view from our table. Who doesn't want to eat with this great view? |
To be honest, the service in this restaurant was very slow. After waiting for endless hours, the rice and the kangkung came. A few moment after that the fish came. We started eating. We stopped halfway to wait for our prawns but it never came.
So bf got up to ask. When he came back, he told us that the waiter just said that they had run out of cereals!!! He asked bf whether we wanted to cancel the order or change the order. All of us burst into big laugh, cancelled the order, and continued eating whatever left.
I never met this kind of service before but this restaurant made it kinda cute. Usually the waiter would rush to the customers to inform any glitch and inquire whether they would like to change to another menu. But this one just did not care. Only after we asked, the waiter asked us back.
To cure our disappointment, we ordered a dessert-drink, which was Es Kelabir (young coconut ice).
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| Es Kelabir. Young coconut with jelly, avocado, tropical fruits, and pink-color syrup. Our cure. |
We realized we have spent quite some time here and we needed to rush to the airport. We proceeded to the cashier to pay and realized that it was quite cheap in terms of food quality. We spent about IDR 200000 (SGD 22) for four people.
Then we asked the driver to rush us to the airport. We arrived at Sam Ratulangi International Airport less than one hour before the flight, resulted in a very bad seating arrangement. We were not sitting together.Oh Gosh.
After collecting our klapertaart, we proceeded to the waiting room and said bye to Manado. We had a wonderful journey and we hoped that we would meet again someday!
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| The most comfortable airport chair ever. It's a big couch! |
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| Saw the wonderful clouds before going back to the high rise buildings |
Manado Trip - Fin
Love is in the air,
Little Feet
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