Our Miri holiday.........Day 1

This will not be like the epic of a holiday that was KK (7 days worth of blogging was NOT fun)- this holiday only lasted 3 days but it was more than enough! Not that I didn't absolutely love every minute of it but it was damn good to be back home.

So true.....

We basically dedicated two days to Lambir Hills National Park and Niah Caves and one day to mooch around Miri town centre.

Day 1 therefore consisted of us mooching around. It is about 3 hours total from leaving the house, driving to Miri and getting to the centre so we thought we'd chill out today. We drove to the Seahorse Lighthouse to watch the sunset. I am in love with the sunsets in this part of the world- mostly because I don't think I ever saw one in the UK with all the cloud cover! They are just so dramatic and beautiful. The photos don't do them justice.

After taking lots of pictures of sunsets and silhouettes we met up with our friend Simi and her brother and daughter (who were also holidaying in Miri) at the seafood restaurant at the Seahorse lighthouse. They had a huge selection of fish, lobsters and prawns- fresh from the tank! Simi decided to order a giant lobster (can't remember the actual name but trust me it was HUUUUUUUGE!). It was quite a sight when the waiter bought out the platter! Beautifully presented, no?

Literally spilled its guts..........

The meat was DELICIOUS- absolute heaven and the sauce complimented it so well. Probably the best place in the world when it comes to seafood.

This pose reminded me of Aliens.........minus the colour

Simi had also ordered oysters. We had never had oysters and after getting a mini tutorial we felt brave enough and thought why not??

It was an interesting experience in that you don't really feel/taste much........just the lemon (which I put tons of so was spluttering all over the place at the end) but at least I can now say I have tried oysters!

And that was Day 1!

The time we tried making sushi..........

Not content with buying extremely cheap sushi at Excapade Sushi, Zaheer decided we try and make it ourselves at home. Being the loving, supporting wife I am I thought why not? (whilst inwardly crying I wasn't gonna get any Excapade Sushi). After doing a bit of research online we found out we needed sushi grade fish. Had no idea what this was so after lots more searches (google is brilliant) we found a shop in Gadong (situated underneath Excapade Sushi!!! I was being tortured) that sold sushi grade fish and loads more other sushi ingredients. They had ran out of salmon as we went near closing time but they did have this gorgeous tuna at a very cheap price so we bought that instead.

Also all the other ingredients needed for sushi making: bamboo mat, wasabi, sushi rice, rice vinegar and seaweed paper.

After watching a few youtube videos on how to make sushi we started!

Boiling the rice.............

We sliced the tuna and cucumber. Then spread a layer of rice on the seaweed, put tuna, cucumber and crème cheese in the middle and started rolling. This was Zaheers attempt.

I was quite impressed so thought how hard can it be? Started rolling.......

and rolling.........

and ended up with this!!! OVERFLOWING RICE!! I turned it around for Zaheer to take the picture but he wouldn't unless he took a picture of my not-so-great-looking one compared to his perfection as he knew I was gonna be posting this on the blog!

We got this in the end (these are all from Zaheer's batch- mine looked a mess):

They were monster sushi rolls, like 4 times the size of a normal one! And more rice and less fish.

Overall it was a really fun experience and next time I think we'll put less rice on and maybe use more rice vinegar as it was slightly bland. Can't wait to make these with salmon!

What we have been up to....

A general update:

1. Zaheer took part in a badminton tournament for high school teachers in Brunei. Bless them they tried very hard but the competition was just so good. I was surprised they weren't professionals. The standard was very high. But we had a lot of fun cheering the Jerudong International School team on and Zaheer really enjoyed himself.

In action:

2. Yusuf got to bring home Pablo the bear from school. He absolutley loves this bear. He comes with a book that you fill in with pictures of what Pablo got up to- some of the entries are very funny. Yusuf wanted these pictures taken for the book:

(Pablo eating roti- and waving to the camera)

(Pablo making a lego car- and waving)

(Family portrait- and waving)

3. Yusuf took part in the Swimming Gala at school. The cutest thing was that while swimming if Oscar (his best friend in the pictures) dropped behind, Yusuf would slow down for him and if Yusuf lagged behind then Oscar would slow down so that they reached the sides together. It was sooo cute!

4. Taking pictures of the sunset whilst sitting in a traffic jam. Beautiful. Nothing can get you down in this country!

5. and watching this:

soooooooooooooo funny!!