Sunday, November 29, 2009

The End is Here

Hong Kong was the last and final leg of our holidays :( Our three days here went by really quickly but we were able to see and catch up with good friends and family along the way. Hank's aunt from Paris was here to visit too! Not too much else to report on about HK...all we did was eat, eat and eat some more. What else is new? :)


Hank & big brother Ben :)

Wennnnnyyyyy!

Priscillia & her new baby girl Gabrielle

Us with Auntie Josephine @ afternoon tea


Found the hing dai BBQ house Den! BBQ goose on rice :)

Dim Sum with Hank's relatives

Hot Pot :)

The perfect way to end our honeymoon...at Honeymoon Dessert! YUMMY!

Thanks for following our Asia trip these last three weeks...see you guys back home soon :)

Friday, November 27, 2009

The Motherland

My parents were born in Hanoi so we were really excited to visit the capital city to see where they grew up & stuff. We only had one day there so we booked our hotel in the Old Quarter so we could walk to popular sites like Sword Lake, The Opera House and St. Joseph's Cathedral.


Before we left Vancouver, mom wrote down her address on a pamphlet some where and of course, I forgot to bring it! We tried to email home prior to arriving in Hanoi but no response :( I knew they lived near the lake and the Opera House so we roamed around the neighbourhoods and tried to guess where they lived. We walked through alleys and small streets and tried to take as many photos as we could hoping that they could recognize the area...we were SO off and this was how we found out:

After walking to the cathedral, Hank wanted to walk back to the hotel because he really needed to go pee. The only problem was that we were far....like REALLY far so I suggested that we walk into another hotel down the street. He hesitated for a second and decided to go in and ask. Hotels in the Old Quarter are super small and nothing like North American hotels where you could just go in and use their facilities without staff noticing. Sure enough, they didn't have a problem so he did his thing and back we went onto the streets of Hanoi.

As we approached a new intersection, we decided to pull out our map to figure out which route to take. We were both studying it when we heard somebody yell, "Linnnnnaaa?!?" We looked at each other for a split second then looked around to see who was calling my name. To our immediate surprise, it was my cousin from Guangzhou, China who was with her mom and my other aunt and uncle...from LA, California! What were the chances!?! To think that if Hank didn't need to pee or make that pitstop, we could've missed them all together!

After a nice dinner with all of them (our second dinner btw), my 2 aunts led the way and walked us back towards Sword Lake and showed us where they really lived! The 9 siblings and my grandparents lived in the top 3 floors of a yellow building right next door to the Water Puppet Theatre. Hank and I were on the opposite side of the lake! No where close eh?

We split up soon after they showed us a few more iconic places like where mom and dad used to go on dates and which ice cream parlors they'd hang out at. So cute! My aunt from Cali kept saying that she wasn`t able to recognize a lot of the city but luckily, these places were still around :)

When we got back to the hotel, we rested for a bit and I remembered that dad wanted me to call his childhood friend who I've never met before. Using broken Vietnamese, we carried on a decent conversation and before we knew it, he insisted on meeting in person and mumbled something and hung up. Five minutes later, we received a phone call and we were told that our somebody was waiting for us downstairs in the lobby! Hank and I basically went downstairs and followed some random stranger into a cab and took off. Pretty smart huh?

Luckily, we learned pretty quickly that the guy we followed was my dad's friend's son, Tuan. When we got out of the cab, he took us around the neighbourhood and showed us where my parents lived after they got married. Tuan then showed us the way to his home where we met the rest of his family. They are the sweetest people on earth - especially his 18 month old baby :) They shared a ton of stories about their past and showed us old pictures of their long friendship with my parents over a nice pot of Vietnamese tea. I wished mom and dad were with us so they could reminisce with them!

What turned out to be a really great night didn't end there...they didn't take no for an answer so the whole family took us out to eat late night dinner...it was our 3rd meal of the evening! Too bad our stay was really short in Hanoi but for sure we'll be back :)


Thursday, November 26, 2009

Hoi An

Hoi An is a small little town in central Vietnam where tourists typically go to hang out at Cua Dai Beach or like us, go on serious shopping sprees! Majority of the shops that line the famous marketplace were very talented tailors who wanted our business. Since supply was higher than demand, there was a lot room to bargain...then bargain some more...and some more after that!

The process was relatively easy:
  1. Sit down.
  2. Decide what you want made either by bringing your own pictures or by going through their catalogues.
  3. Pick your fabrics.
  4. Get measured.
  5. The tailor provides you with an estimate.
  6. You say, "What?!!?"
  7. Tailor asks what you want to pay.
  8. Low ball them like no tomorrow.
  9. Tailor says, "Noooo."
  10. Threaten to leave.
  11. Tailor tries to negotiate.
  12. Low ball some more.
  13. Tailor says, "What?!!?"
  14. And repeat from point number 10 until both parties come to a realization that there's no more budging involved.
We got quite a bit made between the two of us...let's just say we had to buy another suitcase to bring everything home!

Hoi An amazingly enough hasn't converted into another touristy city yet despite the fact that it attracts tons of Australian and European tourists all year round. (We only crossed paths with one other Canadian couple from Calgary by the way!) It's a nice change to visit a small town that's truly authentic and not Americanized...yet! In about five years or so, we're sure a McDonald's or KFC will appear on a corner some where.


Speaking of restaurants, the cuisine here was just as authentic as the town was! Every meal was like a feast...it's really inexpensive to eat in Hoi An. Our meals that included 3-4 dishes of food and beer & fresh fruit shakes ranged any where between $6-$10CAD all together.

Our most memorable dinner was when we dined at a restaurant across the street from our hotel. Lots of storefronts in Hoi An are basically the first floor of the residents' homes...so basically, it's very common that the locals are running a restaurant with their own kitchen! It's quite amazing to witness the whole operation.

It just so happened that this one restaurant we went to became super busy so of course, the food took a really long time to prepare. The owner was so cute. Like so so cute. She felt super bad that everybody was starving so the first thing she did was she walked out of her kitchen with a tray full of shot glasses that were filled with homemade rice wine. Everybody cheered and clapped and she told everybody that she was really grateful that we were all dining in her home. As much as we appreciated the kind gesture, I took a quick whiff at it and it smelled like isopropyl
rubbing alcohol...clearly, the most logical thing to do was to pass!

Then, the owner went from table to table explaining to us that she was going to sing for us! Again, in appreciation of our patience, she wanted to provide us with free entertainment. Seriously, North American restaurant owners should adapt to some of these gestures! hehe. First, she sang (in English) a verse from the theme song of her favourite movie Titanic. Next, she explained to us that she never went to school to learn any English and she sang that song based on pure memory. Impressive! Then, she sang a popular Vietnamese love song about a guy who cut some other guy`s grass and at the end, the girl chose the new guy. For a second there, I thought it was kinda weird that we were on our honeymoon!

Monday, November 23, 2009

Vinpearl Land

Flying into Nha Trang seemed to be one of the best experiences yet. The flight was less than an hour from Saigon and we were greeted by some hotel staff who presented us with a flower bouquet, cold refreshing towels and bottled water! The transfer itself was about 40 minutes and as we were approaching what we thought was our hotel, it turned out to be the "mainland" office.

Apparently, this was the hub where all their speedboats, ferries and cable cars existed to take their guests across a very big body of water (clearly, we don't know what it's called) to the actual hotel! We opted to take the cable cars across the sea despite Hank's phobia of heights. How could we not?! According to our pamphlet, it stretches 3320 metres, has a total of 9 Eiffel-Tower-like pillars that light up at night, is on average 40 metres above sea level (60m is the highest point), it can function normally & withstand typhoon level 7 and it only takes 12 minutes to get across :)

Ok...it was a bit frightening at times as we were faced with major overcast, strong winds and some rain while riding the damn thing but what mattered was that we made it in one piece!

Once we checked in, we were told that we had to carry our room keys every where we went...we understood why quite quickly. To sum it up, this resort was more or less a combination of PNE, Splashdown Park, Oakridge Mall and the Vancouver Aquarium. On top of all that, it's lined with a long Mayan-Riviera-like-beach from Mexico!

The system they have in place was quite sophisticated...you'd have to wait for their "tuk tuk" or shuttle bus to take you to each attraction. Once you arrive at the gates, you insert your room key into the machine at the turnstile thingy and your picture appears on their screen. (We were wondering why they borrowed our passports!) There's no cheating here! It's easy though as there are no additional costs to go on rides, play arcade games, enter the aquarium etc. - it's all included in your room rates :)

What was also included was all of our meals. Seeing that you're in a VERY remote destination, you have to eat at this hotel! Breakfast, lunch and dinner was AYCE...sigh...there's no way of describing the experience but to mention that we are running low on tums :( Food was fab as expected - lots of Vietnamese, Asian and international cuisines to suit everybody's preferences!


The package we found for this hotel also included 2 foot massages, private fine dining experience at the beachfront restaurant and a photography tour around the resort. Wish we stayed here for an extra day - we had no idea the extent of how big this place really was and didn't have that much time to enjoy everything!


Upon our 5am departure (via the speedboat this time), they gave us two breakfast boxes so we wouldn't starve and presented us with a farewell gift! We totally thought they would just show us the digital proofs from the photo tour we did, but they actually printed them up, placed them in a really nice album and gave us a CD of all the shots. We love this place! Definitely two thumbs up and would recommend it to anybody visiting Nha Trang. (Don't worry, they didn't pay us to say that!)

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Good Morning Vietnam!

We stopped by Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) before catching a flight to Nha Trang the following day. Even though our time here was short, we can tell you that this city is INSANELY busy! 10 million people, 6 million scooters. The traffic is chaos every second of the day and to add to it, we don't think there are any rules as to how folks drive around here! Amazingly enough, drivers are pretty good at dodging scooters, bicycles, motorcycles, trucks, pedestrians and other cars when driving across 4-5 lanes of traffic!

Early morning traffic that wasn't bad at all; night before, completely saturated with 10x the number of vehicles (would've taken a picture but didn't want to get run over!)

The neighbourhood we hung out in for the day

Food was good in Saigon too of course...and the price was even better! We found a Vietnamese rice noodle chain restaurant called Pho 24...Hank got a decent sized bowl of chicken pho, springrolls and a coke for $4! We went back the next morning for some more before we left for the airport :)

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Dinner at The Barge

We walked down the street the other night to check out another resort's restaurant called The Barge. It was such a beautiful setting - our table was right on the beach!

vegetables in crispy flower cups

duck & lychee curry, pad thai noodles stuffed in egg omlette, honey chicken in banana leaves

us getting ready to stuff our faces :)

You know you're too full when you have to pop some tums in the middle of the night! Post again soon, on route to Vietnam :)

Island Safari Day

We ventured off one day and signed up for an island safari tour. The jeep arrived promptly at our hotel lobby at 9am and we climbed our way onto the back seats and hung on for dear life due to the lack of seatbelts! The tourist destination was about a 35 minute drive through the city and a few turns later, we entered a jungle...a very green one that was lined with LOTS of coconut trees and filled with animals we wanted to see!


Our first stop was to visit the baby elephants...they're so adorable. I paid 50 bahts (just over $1 CAD) for a basketful of bananas and got a chance to feed them! I laid the banana on the palm of my hand and they'd use their trunks to sniff it out...kind of a weird feeling at first! They're skin isn't exactly the softest in the world and they'd wrap their li'l wet snouty trunks around the yellow fruit and would just toss it in their mouths like how we'd pop tic tacs. They're also quite greedy...and tricky! If you're trying to feed another elephant, the other one will just non-chalantly try to reach over and grab more bananas from your basket with its trunk! Bad elephant!


During the monkey show, we learned that aside from playing, eating and sleeping, they also climb coconut trees every day to help the locals collect coconuts. Thanks to their help, Samui exports an average of 3 million coconuts to the rest of Thailand on a monthly basis!


After watching a Thai boxing match, it was our turn to go elephant trekking. Back in the day, this was how their kings and royalty travelled around town! During the ride, our driver presented us with some jewelery he made as he was steering the elephant. He weaved two rings and a bracelet out of one long green leaf. Impressive...but even more so was how the rings fit our fingers perfectly!



Our day trip ended with a long drive to their famous waterfall. We were expecting something spectacular but instead, it appeared to be similar to the falls we can find hiking through Lynn Valley and unfortunately, nothing like the Niagra! We also took part in a canoe ride down a private river....which in fact was really just a hot pink blow-up rafty thing - nothing near an actual canoe at all but was still fun :)

Overall, our day was really eventful but we did question the reality of how our animal friends were being treated at this tourist attraction. After all the shows were performed, it made us very sad to see them chained or tied up to trees or their cages. We even witnessed some trainers whacking them on the head & tugging on their ears to obey their commands. We left feeling really bad and hope that the animals behind these gates are better off than we think...tourist's remorse is what we're calling it for now! xoxo safari friends!

Monday, November 16, 2009

Our day-to-day

Some more pictures of where we're spending a lot of our time in Samui:

Bhundari's entrance

another view of the lobby

swimming pools #3 & 4

swimming pool #5 with a bar

Our days here have been pretty routine now. We wake up early, enjoy a breakfast buffet, go out and find our tanning chairs, go for a swim, tan, play in the water again, grab lunch & snacks, tan a bit more then end our day in the jacuzzi before eating & drinking again :)

drinks, breakfast, canapes, thai fried rice, pad thai (it is brown here!), mango & banana spring rolls with ice cream


One day, we decided to indulge ourselves and enjoy a day at the resort's spa. We chose the couple's package which took up 4 whole hours!
  • steam therapy
  • detoxifying scrub/sea champagne body wrap
  • orange blossom milk bath
  • deep tissue/aromatherapy massage
  • facial treatments

Yup...one of the best 4 hours ever!

Sunday, November 15, 2009

2nd Leg: Koh Samui, Thailand

After a five hour plane ride to Hong Kong and then another 3 hour flight to Koh Samui...we finally made it to Thailand! Our resort was less than 10 minutes away from the airport (thank goodness!) and it appeared even nicer than what we saw on the Internet when we were booking our holidays :)

Here is where we're hanging out:

Bhundari Spa Resort, our bedroom, our balcony, our bathroom

our view from the balcony

our lobby

one of our favourite swimming pools

another pool & jacuzzi underneath our favourite swimming pool

Time to go tan on the other side of the resort now so we'll post again later!


Saturday, November 14, 2009

Two-seventy...Again!

We decided our last dinner in Japan should be back at the 270 yen restaurant. They had a wide range of variety and there was so much more we wanted to try! Funnily enough, we had a different host seat us that night...he tried to explain to us that their menus weren't in English. Hank steps in and was all, "Don't worry! We know!" As he hesitantly sat us down, we quickly worked the touch-screen system pretty well and must've blown him away :)

Our dinner consisted of:

Slices of toast baked in cream cheese, tobiko & mayo on a hot plate of grilled cheese, calamari, more tako balls, deep fried octopus & tuna tartare with quail's egg


Potato salad with tobiko & toast, unknown fish sushi, and at the time & a very questionable dessert!


This was what we ordered for my sweet tooth:



Doesn't it look nice and fluffy? Maybe coconut-like or perhaps ice cream? I slowly unwrapped what looked like two sheets of wet Bounty paper towels and tried it anyways!


......it was good! I thought it was cold whipped cream cheese that was sweetened! (Hank just thought it was whipped cream!) The li'l dish of red sauce was still a mystery though. It definitely looked like chili sauce but was thinner in consistency...and it didn't taste like anything! Oh well, at least we tried it and had another fab experience at 270 :)


We 'Heart' Crepes

Crepes are EVERYWHERE in Tokyo. Small mom & pop shops, big chain shops, even small little stalls at the end of a street exist. It's too yummy not to write about! The variety seems endless and lots of food vendors tend to make plastic versions of their dishes and display it by their front doors to make your mouth water. How does one decide?!

You can order cold ones, hot ones, sweet ones, salty ones, spicy ones...whatever! They make it all :) I had one once a day. Wait. Let me rephrase...I stuffed my face with one once a day. Flavour of choice: fresh bananas, custard and hot caramel. YUM! In the photo below, Hank had one with lettuce, tuna, a hot dog weiner and corn! (Sounds a bit odd we know, but it was really good!)


So seriously, how do you go wrong with them? It's made in front of your eyes, it's fast, inexpensive and super duper yummmmy!

Hellllllo Kitty!

I should start this blog off with...Hank's the bestest husband ever! Somewhere along the way he agreed to go to Sanrio Puroland with me. Think Disneyland but smaller scale and with Sanrio characters like Hello Kitty, Pekkle, My Melody, Little Twin Stars, Keroppi, etc. How excited was I?!? Poor Hank was more...'oh dear, what did I get myself into'! Not to worry, he made the best out of it and survived!

When we got off the train station, it was literally Hello Kitty town. Check out the maps and signage in the middle of the streets!


As expected, it was uber cute when we stepped foot into Puroland. First stop was what I thought was the most adorable boat ride ever - kinda romantic too! Hank's thoughts: "This is creepy!" So there were moving life-sized toys talking to us...I thought it was so cute! I wish my coworker Kiran was with us, she would've agreed that it was the best attraction yet!


We also got to walk through Hello Kitty's house. Yup, that's right! She had her own house in there that we toured! In case you're wondering, Hank was bowing to what appeared to be either Grampa Kitty, or Papa Kitty who picked up the real video phone!


The rest of our trip there consisted of watching a cool 3D movie, meeting little (like literally) Sanrio characters, checking out the other attractions, mini factories, shopped the largest Sanrio shop ever and took pictures with Kitty!


Clearly, this tourist attraction is highly recommended by me...and probably not so much by Hank! :)

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Efficiency 101

The Japanese are all about efficiency - we love it! Here's a very common way to order breakfast, lunch or dinner:


Step 1. View menu on the restaurant's vending machine.


Step 2. Insert money and select your meal.


Step 3. Get your change and bring the dispensed vouchers to the worker who's collecting them.



Step 4. Pick up your food from a window or sit down and your food will arrive.
[silver fish & egg on rice with miso soup]



Step 5. Enjoy!
[curry on rice with coleslaw and vegetable soup]


Timing: less than 5 minutes!