What to eat in a Ramadhan Markets in Malaysia

It's the season of the year where you'll find Ramadhan Pasars mushrooming around KL, Selangor and just anywhere-lah. The one that I've been frequenting is the Taman Tun Dr. Ismail (TTDI). By frequent I mean three times, two weekends in a row. 

By now I can tell you which stalls sells the best ayam perchik or grilled chicken with satay (one small stall tucked somewhere in the centre of the bazaar). This dish is sort of the highlight in a Ramadhan markets, at least for me. The chicken must be grilled to perfection or at least cooked (the stall I went charred their chicken slightly but at least they're cooked) and the peanuts sauce must be a tad spicy. Apparently my two friends with low tolerance towards spicy food found it too spicy. Spicy food lovers will find the level of spiciness rather meh. Like this also cannot handle meh aiyoyo.

So that's the #1 dish I would definitely recommend. 

Next on the list at #2 is lamb kebab seasoned with herbs! So my friend found a stall selling kebab and decided to tapau and share them with me. Had the OMFG moment trying the soft, juicy meat so much that we tapau-ed more in our next visits.

#3 Putu bambu is a favorite discovery, made of grated coconut steam in cylindrical metal and filled with sugar. Simple and yummy! I find the cooking process rather interesting. 

#4 Buy bags of colorful juices to share with friends and family! I tried a few but mangoes and pineapple gotta be my favorite! Expect most of them to be so generously sweetened you cannot believe sugar price just went up.

#5 Try other kuihs a.k.a bites size snacks or desserts such as kuih cara manis (with Malacca sugar in the center) or berlauk (with chillies and anchovies sambal), putu piring (which is rather similar to putu bambu in taste), tepung pelita, karipap or popiah. The list goes on! You can find dozens of stores selling assorted or a single type of kuih at TTDI's bazaar. While you can buy like a few pieces of each type, you can also choose to buy only one of each, mostly at 60 or 70 cents each. 

#6 Eat fried tofu with SPICY soy sauce while checking out the food. Amelia started it, she couldn't wait to start omnomnom-ing!

#7 Tapau an entire meal! From tomato rice, briyani rice, to Kerabu rice (blue rice, yo!) and Malay-style dishes or even Koey teow and laksa! I know, its impossible to try everything in one go! 

#8 Buy colorful jelly and relief good younger days. Cause my parents always buy me jelly when I was younger.

#9 Grilled clams, this isn't my favorite because kerangs have some sort of bloody taste do it, almost like chicken livers which I can't stand. 

#10 Beef, lamb or chicken satay. Almost similar to ayam perchik albeit smaller size of meat on the stick. They are served with the same peanut sauce.

And those are some of the few food you want to get your hands on in TTDI Ramadhan market. These markets are usually until the eve of Hari Raya Aidilfitri so you have about two weeks to visit one!

Dyed my hair myself! A Review of Liese Creamy Bubble color in Antique Rose & Classic Brown

This gotta be the most colorful year for my hair after my abstaining from dyeing my hair for the past years! As you've guessed, I decided to do it myself after the brown pink part of my hair faded into bright, bleached blonde which I didn't quite like. I was opting to go back to the saloon but decided it's a waste of money and that I may not enjoy being disappointed when the color fades even if I don't wash my hair often!

Then I was considering colored shampoo but not getting positive views about using colored shampoo to color the bleached part. Shampoo with dye are meant to bring out your dyed hair and not to color hair so the Internet says. And then it occurred to me, why not try Liese? I've used this years-s-s back (even reviewed about them) and now, they have a selection of new colors so it is quite exciting!

This is the now available selection of Liese Creamy Bubble hair dyes available almost everywhere in Malaysia.

When I bought Liese Creamy Bubbles in Antique Rose, I simply wanted a dark brown color that would totally cover my bleached-color mane hair. I super love the entire selection under "Warm Brown" especially Rose Tea Brown and Black Tea Brown from "Natural Brown". Maybe I'll try rose tea next

I wanted a otona/mature kinda brown without losing the fun, so Antique Rose it is! Which is kinda surprising considering I have been against browns with red/orange/yellow base. They don't look that nice on me and appear... everywhere in the street LOL. Just very common-lah. Partly, I'm feeling adventurous of late, even when it comes to my hair color also must be adventurous.

Back to Liese Creamy Bubble (ShopeeMY | Amazon), if you want to try Liese for the first time, you can't go straight to dyeing your hair _ performing the allergy test is a must, at least 30 minutes to 48 hours prior! I'm lazy so I did a quick test LOL. You also need to have an old tee or towel to keep your shirt spotless, hair clips to section your hair for better result if you rajin, moisturizer on your skin to prevent the dye getting on (I skipped this), music on and a large mirror in from of you. Don't forget to do this in a ventilated room, the smell of the chemical is really strong!

Since I am only dyeing the top of my crown, I made sure to tie the bottom section and just divided the hair to left and right parting before further dividing into three without using hair clips but when applying the color. After I made sure to rub the color in at all sections of the hair only I did add more foam and massage before leaving them for 15 minutes. The instructions mention thirty but I was pretty sure I spent more than 20 minutes only applying on my hair.

Plus, my scalp was feeling itchy which is normal when dyeing your hair since the chemical 'burn' your scalp. When I say 'burn', it really is not as bad as it sound. If it hurts, then it IS a sign to wash off! Happened to me once in a saloon. Once the time's up, I washed the color off and then applied the treatment (this step is essential!).

Speaking of Liese's hair treatment, if Liese is ever going to launch hair treatment, I'm oh-so-o-o going to buy bottles and bottles of them! It smells so sweet and one-time application felt like 1-month's worth of hair treatment. My hair is super crazy soft after using this!

Tips for proper coloring:

1) Rub the color into your hair, just like how stylists at saloon does it. While it may sound unnecessary since the hair dye is foamy, just think of this as a step to get more even colors at all lengths of your hair and 

2) Pay attention to the roots, especially more near your ears or the top of the forehead. Fringes too!

3) Focus on the back of your crown too.

4) Purchase two boxes if you have long, below the shoulder-length hair. While I noticed I have more that enough this round, it's good to have just in case you ran out of the dye.

Let me just get straight into the result!

First, here's the before selfie. I told you it's bad.

After coloring~~

I purposely waited a week before I post this review to check if the color faded and it did fade. The red hint of color was not visible aftre the first week, and by the end of the third week, my hair is back to my bleach color. I really do think this is due to tme bleaching my hair and I'm starting to hate that. On the other hand, my originally brown-from-black hair still have some brown but I don't know which shade is this, it's definitely not in reddish hue. I came to a conclusion this whole Liese hair color  experiment is sort of a failure because there's no way of me telling if the formula do stay if my hair were black.

The Verdict _ for one it is cheap - I got mine for RM24 from Guardian (NP RM40-ish) and application is easy-peasy! Color is close to what is shown in packaging at least for the next few days to a week and unique. I can tell you for sure the color DON'T stay on bleached hair with daily washing using hair color protecting shampoo...

The other good side is the hair treatment provided is amazing! I will want to try the same color again when my bleached hair's grown out.

~♡~

Less than two weeks later the color faded. I really do think bleached hair don't hold colors well. Because I still dislike walking around with my head bleached blond *roll eyes* I went ahead and bought another Liese Creamy Bubble in Classic Brown this time.

I dyed my hair the morning before attending my friend, Nicole's wedding cause I wanna look good vain lol. Only after I washed my hair I noticed instead of brown I got dark gray hair.... Shocking cause I know when it fades I'll get granny hair sigh..

Hair color the first few and second day after dyeing (which is really just past weekend). Thankfully, the color turned out more brownish than gray pheww

Day 1

Day 2

This is the hair color a week later (last weekend).

IMO darker shade held on longer albeit still fading... At this point I simply can't wait for the bleached part of my hair to grow out.