My Very First Blog

I love horror movies! And so when I heard that there’s a new Thai horror movie in town, I was excited!

I have a friend who is a big horror movie fan like me, so I quickly called her up and see if she would join me for this movie. As luck would have it, she was free so we booked the tickets. What the heck, even if she’s not free, I know she will make herself free!

Now before I go any further, I would like to mention that both me and my friend are die-hard horror movie fans, meaning, if the movie ain’t scary, we ain’t gonna enjoy it! Our standards are so high that of all horror movies shown in the past ten years, only a handful made it into our list of horror movies worth watching!

When I talk about horror movies, I’m not talking about those movies about a mindless slasher who kills during Halloween, or some killer who knew what the hell you did last summer.

Nope. My definition of horror movie is movie about ghosts, ghouls, vampires, possession or about the supernatural and the paranormal, if you like.

The movie we went to watch is called “The Coffin” directed by Ekachai Uekrongtham who also directed “The Beautiful Boxer” and the amazingly successful “Chang and Eng” musical which was staged in Istana Budaya a few years back. By the way did you see this musical? It remains one of my top favourite musicals to this day. You can read the review at Kakiseni website.

I had high expectation for this movie after watching the trailer. The fact that it opened at No.1 at the Thai box office also made me very eager to watch it.



What I find interesting is that this movie is actually inspired by a controversial but real Thai ritual organised by at a temple in northeast Thailand where close to 10,000 people turned up to lie in coffins in the belief that this could take away their bad luck and prolong their lives. This event was even recorded in the Guiness Book Of Records!

Very briefly, the movie is about two central characters. One is Chris (played by Ananda Everingham), a claustrophobic architect who decides to go through the ritual to save his fiancee, Mariko who is in a coma. The other is Sue (played by Karen Mok), a nutritionist from Hong Kong who goes through the same ritual to save herself from brain tumour one week before her wedding.

After the ritual, both of them experience miracles. Chris’ fiancee Mariko wakes up from her coma, and Sue’s cancer amazingly disappears. But as expected, strange and terrifying things start to happen.

If you have not seen the movie yet, please do not read further as spoilers abound. You may however, watch the trailer below.



I like the opening where the girl in the coffin explains about the ritual. And the scene where we see hundreds of coffins arranged in a circle around a gigantic Buddha must surely be the most impressive and memorable scene. A really great opening to what is to come.

Unfortunately, and I’m really sad to say, the movie goes downhill from there. I mean, there were some scary moments, but the story unfolded too slowly for me, and I kept hoping for some unexpected surprises but there were none. In fact, I could figure out the whole story halfway through the movie.

The only surprise I got from this movie was that most of the dialogues were in English! I did not expect that. So I guess there is no need for any remake by Hollywood, unless they want to feature different actors and actresses.


Ananda Everingham in a scene from The Coffin

During the movie, I could hear a girl behind me kept saying “Oh my god, oh my god” and was clearly terrified. There were also some guys who screamed at some shocking scenes, and then laughed it off. And I was like, oh come on, do they need to react like that? It was not that scary, at least not to me and my friend. We looked at each other and just smiled at the audiences’ reactions. I guess as far as horror movies are concerned, we were both pretty hard to please.

Despite that, I won’t say the movie is bad. It’s quite entertaining, but certainly not in the same level as movies like “The Eye” and “Shutter” which incidentally also starred Ananda in the lead actor role. I can tell you, after watching “The Eye”, I was terrified for a few days after, but “The Coffin” did not give me the same effect.

I guess the saving grace is the actors themselves. Both Ananda Everingham and Karen Mok gave very good performances, especially Karen Mok. She brought out her character’s vulnerability very well and I love it!


Karen Mok in a scene from The Coffin

I also like the way director Ekachai filmed some of the scenes and I would say the creepy atmosphere was excellent in the movie. I also like that scene where Karen Mok’s character Sue learns in the hospital that her cancer is gone and then they showed the window where we could see flashes of lightning to indicate a storm coming up, as if to prepare us for some scary moments. Brilliant!


Director Ekachai Uekrongtham and actor Ananda Everingham

This movie has a moral story behind it. It is based on the belief that we cannot change what is meant to be. Because there’s this thing called karma. When Sue recovers from her cancer after the ritual, she changes what is meant to be, but as a result her boyfriend dies instead.

But what I find unfair is when Sue tries to reverse this later by undergoing the reversal ritual. She got her cancer back, but her boyfriend remains dead! Now, how can that be? Did her boyfriend just die for nothing? And it’s not even his fault! Well, I guess you can’t make a dead person come back alive, can you, unless you did what Stephen King did with his characters in Pet Sematary.

So here’s my rating for “The Coffin”

Scariness 5/10
Story 5/10
Atmosphere 8/10
Acting 9/10

Compare that with “The Eye” , my all time favourite horror movie.

Scariness 9/10
Story 8/10
Atmosphere 8/10
Acting 9/10

Last Sunday, I went to Yuen Steamboat in Sunway Mentari for a buffet steamboat. It was my first time there, after friends and my own brother had countlessly gushed praises on the food there.

But they had one warning for me. Be there early or risk queuing up outside the restaurant. And being early means I must be there at 5.30pm when it opens.

Together with my three other friends, we reached there slightly later than 5pm and already we could see that the three storey restaurant was full of customers inside. We were led to our table for four on the highest floor.

I quickly did a scan of the various food available. Not bad! Besides the different varieties of seafood and vegetables, there were fried rice, fried noodles, fruits, kueh, jelly, chicken wings and ice cream!

Unlike other steamboats, this one offered us a choice of clear soup or tom yam soup or both in the same hotpot which was separated into two compartments. We opted for both.



I did not find the tom yam soup that nice. It's not the spicy and sour type that I like. Or maybe I simply no longer like Malaysian tom yam after having tasted Thai tom yam while in Bangkok. This was like a huge letdown for me.

There were lots of mussels, clams, lala, and even snails or should I say, escargots? I didn't really like the snails. I don't know, maybe they were not that fresh?



All the seafood photos I took were raw ones, that is before I put them into the hotpot to cook. After they were cooked, I did not bother to take photos anymore as I just could not wait to eat them!

There were a lot of fishes, prawns and octopuses. I am not a fan of octopuses, but I took the fishes and prawns by the truckloads!



They had a large variety of balls - fishballs, beefballs, but no porkballs. I guess it's a halal restaurant although I did not see any Malay or Muslim diners.



There were also the usual yong tau foo stuffs which I took once only and did not really eat them because you can eat these outside.



Oh, the ones I like were the bluish looking crabs. Yes, you can eat unlimited amount of crabs here! I took plates after plates of these crabs. Look, aren't they beautiful?



I would also like to relate a special dish at this restaurant that seemed to bring out the uncivilised characteristics of Malaysians. I am talking about their fried chicken wings! Or was it grilled chicken wings? Or braised? And was it honey chicken wings? Or teriyaki? Or coca cola chicken wings? I really don't know, but they tasted sweet and unique.

I tell you, these chicken wings were so popularly high in demand that once they were taken out from the kitchen, everyone would be rushing to grab it. And believe it or not, these people were so uncivilised they practically fight with one another just to grab their piece of the chickens!

I could not believe that in the commotion, some chicken wings actually ended up on the floor! What a mess! And what a waste of food! Looking at how they fight over the chickens, you would have thought they had not eaten for days!

And believe it or not, once the tray containing the chickens that came out from the kitchen were placed on the table, the chickens would be completely gone within 10 seconds! I swear it's true because I actually timed it!

I gave up after three times failing to grab my share. But as the saying goes, if you can't beat them, join them! I sure as hell was not going to miss the popular chicken wings by giving in to these people! Well, at least I need to taste the chickens once so that I would be able to understand why they were so popular. So we just watched and observed how the "successful" uncivilised people grabbed the chickens. And boy, did we learn fast!

So here's the technique we learnt. Oh gosh, maybe I should not reveal the secret here. Otherwise, I would have to really put in a fight the next time I go there! But on second thoughts, why not? Everyone should be given a chance to taste those chickens! Now you can say anything bad about me, but you will never ever say I'm not generous, will you?

So here's what you need to do to successfully outwit, outplay and outlast everyone else. Oops! Watched too much Survivor here. Haha! We actually noticed that the fried chickens would be brought out from the kitchen every 30 minutes or so. And the "veterans" who already knew would be lining up or should I say gather at the table 10 minutes beforehand! So plan your attack early!

Get ready 2 big empty plates. Hold one plate on each hand and gather at the table 5 minutes before the chickens arrive. No need to be there 10 minutes beforehand as you don't want to look like a desperado. Or a loser. I don't know which is worse.

When the lady carrying the chickens place the tray on the table, cut through the crowd mercilessly with the two plates in front of you. Then go for the attack! Lunge yourself forward and scoop the chickens with your two big plates! Take in as many chickens as you could possibly manage and get your butt out immediately leaving those losers to fight among themselves! Brilliant, no?

Anyway, we were so eager to taste the chicken wings we forgot to take photos! So, I only managed to take this photo of whatever chickens remaining on the plate.



I did not bother to take any photos of the fried rice, kueh, fruits and jelly as they were just the usual stuffs that can be found outside this restaurant. In fact, I did not eat very much of them.

As for the ice cream, I found their sago honeydew ice cream delicious! But when I went for a second helping, it was gone! So I settled for other flavours which was nothing much to shout about.

Overall, I would say that the steamboat was not particularly special or good, but there were certainly lots of varieties of seafood and vegetables. And the fried chicken we fought hard for was pretty good too.

The total bill was RM87.35 which came up to about RM22 per person. Not bad! Pretty cheap considering the amount of fishes, crabs and prawns we ate! Maybe that's why it was so popular. As we left the restaurant at about 8pm, we could see a long line of people queuing outside!

Oh, by the way, I do not know why my friends who recommended me this place did not advise me to make bookings beforehand. You can do that to avoid ending up queuing outside, which is most likely what you will do if you arrive at the restaurant after 6pm especially during weekends.