He-yo guys!

Here I am posting a new blogpost about my recent escape mission from hell holiday in April (Yeah i know it's more than one month late already, but just let me share this pretty please? 😅). It was only 3 days - 2 nights trip to Semarang with my office mate, a literal weekend getaway.

So, actually this holiday was suddenly planned just because my friend had a wedding invitation there, and asked me if would like to go as well for a short-getaway. She only told me about 2 weeks before the day, and i was thinking like “oh that may be nice, as there is a public holiday and i still have a lot of leave that i can use.” Hence, we bought the flight tickets, booked the hotel, prepared the itinerary, and off we went to Semarang! ✈️

Me and one of my office mate were catching our flight early in the morning, and she was running late. So as i waited for her, i bought my must-buy-item: Starbuck’s Java-chip frappe! Since there’s not much customer, the barrister was like talking to me, and wrote, well you could say "pretty words" (slash ‘gombalan’ in Indonesian) on my cup with his commercial smile (definitely a business like smile, 100% sure! LOL)


After some time waiting, my friend finally showed up and we went to the boarding gate. It was only a short flight,  taking up an hour to reach Semarang from Surabaya. We reached Semarang at 9am, and met up with the other mates. Were super hungry at that time, so we all reached the consensus to eat the legendary Mie Siang Kie before we go to the other destinations!


Mie Siang Kie
📍Gang Lombok no. 10, Semarang Tengah

Don’t expect a fancy restaurant Place when you go to Mie Siang Kie, cause actually it is located in a small street (aka gang), with a really minimalist section for eating. If you dont like heat and easily ramble when it is hot, then this place is not for you since it is placed near street and definitely without air-con. Since the place was really cramped, we need to wait for several minutes just to be seated.

As the name stated, the most favorite food there is the noodle. So we all ordered the same menu, Mie Komplit that consists of a bunch of toppings, such as egg, pork, kekian (crispy fish meatball), and dumplings.

 

The overall taste of the noodle was actually so-so, but the toppings were quite good and abundant (believe me, I can’t even finish my own meal 😅). As I really fond of savory dishes, the kekian really hits the place! It was sho good, that even i was already full, i can't let myself left the poor kekian uneaten.

The price itself was also quite affordable, and literally has the value for money 💰 Just imagine, all those toppings in one bowl only cost me like IDR 32k, quite a great deal isn't it?


Lumpia Gang Lombok
📍 Gang Lombok no. 11, Semarang Tengah

It is located just beside Mie Siang Kie. Semarang is popular for its spring roll, and the most famous place to buy it is this Lumpia Gang Lombok. Known with the fresh bamboo shoots inside it, you will definitely miss the chance to try it if you arrived there in the afternoon. There are 2 kinds of spring rolls that they sell, the wet one, or the fried one. As we all was actually already full, but must not miss this menu, we bought 2 fried spring rolls for sharing. Although we came and ordered in the morning, we still needed to wait for 20 minutes just to wait for the other orders. Fortunately, we could wait that long since we were still sitting in the Mie Siang Kie’s place while eating slowly (enjoying the noodles, of course!). And after some time, the food was finally ready!



We were surprised when the food was out, as the spring rolls were quite big and full. Since it was freshly made and fried, the taste was really good. Even for a person like me who doesn't like bamboo shoots (and all other veggies actually 😅), it didn’t taste that bad. They also had a (slimy) sauce that tasted somewhat sweet and weird for me (and honestly i didn't really like it), but it’s still an okay if you only eat the spring rolls by themselves.

After we filled up our tummy, we went onward with our next destination: Lawang Sewu!


Lawang Sewu
📍 Jalan Pemuda, Semarang

This place was actually the remaining of a Dutch station office from the colonial period. Was called Lawang Sewu because there are a lot of doors inside this building (in Javanese Lawang means door, and Sewu means thousand). To get in this place, you only need to pay IDR 10k for the ticket, and you can explore most of the corners of this huge building.

There are a lot of photos of local stations inside the building. A miniature of the building, the blueprints of the stations, and also part of the trains are shown inside the area. The western-like architecture could definitely be seen. With a lot of classy corners here, you can definitely make an instagramable profile picture (as long as you're patient enough to wait for the tourists to leave your photo spot, or just kick them out from your frame using photographic technique, or maybe just tell them directly that they are disrupting your photo #nooffense). Basically, this place will be well suited for people who likes to sightseeing and photo-capturing.

Sam Poo Kong
📍 Jalan Demak no 380, Semarang

Semarang is also known for a city with a bunch of pagodas, and one of them is Sam Poo Kong. The place itself is divided into two areas, the outer area (with a lot of stalls and a stage), and the inner area (place for praying, and trust me, it's definitely prettier than the outer area). To get into the inner area, you will need to pay for an additional ticket admission, but you can refund the ticket fee if you come there to pray. I paid the total of IDR 28k for the admission ticket (8k for the outer area, and 20k for inner area). Check the pictures below to see the inner area of Sam Poo Kong.





Toko "Oen"
📍 Jalan Pemuda no 52, Semarang

Since it was really hot that day, we decided to chill out a bit in another Semarang's famous eating place called Toko "Oen", which has the classic atmosphere for the exterior and interior with the colonial touches. Even with the colonial feel, this place was really homey and cozy. We spent quite some time in this place only to chill and enjoy the time. Toko "Oen" is well-known for the patisserie and ice cream, so here we were ordering some of their best signature





Asem-asem Koh Liem
📍 Jalan Karang Anyar no 28-C4, Semarang Tengah

After spending some time to chill, we continued our (food) adventure to Asem-asem Koh Liem. The street to reach there was quite cramped, and so it is quite hard to park your car there. The place is like a small street restaurant, and in front of your table there are a lot of side dishes that you can pick to complete your meal. This place is famous for the Asem-asem Daging (sour meat soup), so my friends chose that same menu for our next dish. As I was already full (from our previous foodies journey), I didn't order the menu and just stole out someone else's. Hence because it wasn't mine, I could not take a proper picture of it :')