It was a day of touristy things today as we made the long drive up to Genting Highlands, which (if you've ever read more than two posts on my blog) you'd know during my last trip we actually stayed up there in the resort.
This time however, the theme park of Genting Highlands is gone. Like really, gone.
They've currently closed the theme park to renovate and expand it for the Fox movie dealership. Meaning no rides for a while.
But there's still plenty to look at around Genting, without the outdoor theme park.
For one, we visited the Genting Strawberry Park where you can see all sorts of produce grow - like strawberries, lavender, passionfruit and even mushrooms in weird little bag things.
And of course, there's still the rest of the Genting Highlands resort to look around, with all the food places and a few shops and more food places.
The big event of the night was our trip to the buffet at Coffee Terrace, inside one of the hotels. Can I suggest that if you're planning to go for a buffet for dinner, don't have a big lunch at 2pm because that is really not enough time to recover and rebuild your hunger levels. We walked around for ages, trying to get our hunger levels up - only to just feel super tired in the end.
There are a couple of ways you can approach a buffet, no matter what part of the world you may be in. But the ultimate strategy of a buffet is to get enough of a feed that you get your money's worth.
Buffets are usually a great place to try all sorts of ethnic foods. At Coffee Terrace, you can get your pick of Malaysian, Chinese, Japanese, Western and West Asian, and then followed by a dessert bar. If you have this many ethnic foods at your reach, make a plan as to how you're going to conquer your meals beforehand.
Don't do what I did and start off with a salad. Salad slows you down - even though it was really delicious.
Instead, set the task of trying something out of every cuisine, even if it's just a little bit of chicken - because that still counts. Don't do bread - that's too filling. And only take a bit of soup, because you don't want to load up too much too soon.
Also, be careful about spicy foods. Too spicy and you'll fill up valuable food space with heat-cleansing water.
Then of course, there's my strategy where you eat your mandatory one plate of savoury, then load in on all the dessert. Had I not badly planned on salad and a plate of prawn crackers beforehand, I probably could have demolished a 5 scoop of every ice cream flavour. But instead, I tasted through all the jellies and got down an ice cream trio of butterscotch, yam, and peppermint.
Yam/taro ice cream is really quite delicious, and purple.
It's been a long time that I've been that full after that much eating. But truly go in with a buffet strategy before you eat. Because you can never divide and conquer the buffet table unless you have a plan, and a decent appetite.
Meal of the day:
