Place to Rest

Recently we became more conscious to bring our business to local and small shops around our city as our tiny contribution to support them. And it often led to pleasant surprises as we ventured out of what we are more familiar with and started checking out new places.

Drinking in Hanoi

It’s hard not to hit a few spots for coffee whilst in Hanoi – after all the country is famous for its coffee partly thanks to the French colonial influence, plus cafes are always a perfect sanctuary to hide away from the unbearable heat during the day for much of the summer season.

A Few More Food Stops

We made a few food stops in Wakayama on our last day of the journey as we made our way back to the airport for the late evening flight home. After the morning hike along the Kumano Kodo trail, we picked up our car and headed west on Route 311, another scenic driving route through the forests, rivers and tunnels. Along the way, we made a stop at a roadside restaurant called Kawayoshi near Tanabe.

In Between Meals

I am not exaggerating when I said we have been eating non-stop whilst in Macau for a quick 36 hours. As soon as we got off the ferry and checked in to our hotel, we quickly met up with our friend E (of @e_for_eat) who’s settling in with her job in Macau for a morning mini food crawl.

Morning in Old Town Macau

When our friend J (of Chicken Scrawlings) offered to organize a mini Macau food crawl for the group including lunch at her husband's restaurant which has just been awarded with a second Michelin star, it's something hard to pass up. And I figure we may as well turn that into an overnight stay in Macau to make it a "stay-cation" so we can try out more new places at a more leisurely pace.

Food Crawl in Omotesando

Over the past few months a number of new restaurants have opened up near the shopping district of Omotesando, which justified my spending one afternoon just to do some serious food crawling in the area.

Tai O Staycation

Even I myself felt we had too much of vacation time in March and April - not that I am complaining. After the Easter long weekend, we headed off to Tai O on Lantau for an overnight "staycation" in this quiet fishing village on quite literally the western end of Hong Kong.

I made room reservation at the Tai O Heritage Hotel a few months back (it's really hard to book and must book well in advance), which I totally forgot until they called to confirm the booking in early March. Since by then it has passed the cancellation deadline, I figure we might as well take another break even we just had our weeklong vacation to the land of the rising sun. Anyway, the hotel, which opened in 2012, used to be the old Tai O police station built in 1902 and have been in use until a few years ago. Since then the building, now recognized as a heritage site, was completely renovated and converted into a boutique hotel as part of the government preservation effort, with 9 guest rooms plus a restaurant. They tried to preserve the original structure as much as possible, and any additional construction (for example, the elevators) was actually removable so the overall architecture was not altered - that included the restaurant, which was built above the original building with the sun-roof providing lighting from natural source during day time. We had dessert after dinner and then breakfast the next day at this lovely restaurant and we enjoyed it much.