Jul & Aug highlights

I've been neglecting this space! Working life, once again, has robbed me of time and ability to daydream and blog. Not that I can't find time to write, it's just that I don't have time to do anything interesting that's blog-worthy! Perhaps I'm exaggerating a little here...haha! But I do think back on those bumming days in self-envy.

Anyway, a couple of interesting things happened over the past 2 months. The first was dear Ms To's wedding. Really happy for her and tyre. They have dated for as long as I have, and finally they have made the bold move to tie the knot. Us jie meis treated the lovely bride to a champagne sparty (spa+party) at Lush @ The Singapore Polo Club. It was a truly pampering experience and I would love to go back again someday.

Beautifully presented canapes and champagne to complete the sparty experience!

Love this dessert - hot espresso drenched over vanilla ice-cream and tongue biscuit. Shall endeavour to make this someday.

We rounded off the evening with drinking and partying at Overeasy and Zouk. The bride got herself pissed drunk, but one really can't blame as jiemeis as she was the cause of her own downfall! K even had to ask the waiters to disregard her orders as she was out of control, that girl!

Love the fireworks we sighted at Fullerton.

Some pictures of the actual day highlights. Suan-tian-ku-la challenge for the brothers!

Love the jiemeis' colourful dresses. Très chic!

Congrats Mr and Mrs Lim :)

The morning after the Lim's wedding banquet, the Vongs and us flew to HK, land of shopping and eating. Our trip coincided with the Great HK sale...needless to say, all of us bought and ate excessively. My friends also bought me a celebratory birthday dinner at Tai Woo cantonese restaurant at TST but it ended disastrously with 3 out of 4 of us having food poisoning. Bummer! Still, am thankful for friends who still put in the effort to celebrate my bday with me year after year :)

The Vongs waiting patiently while I made my selection at YSL, Harbour City.

My indulgent purchase. I vow to keep off bags for the rest of this year!

Shortly after HK, and just as I was settling in at work again, my annual BKK trip came up! We had the usual suspects, Mr J, G, Stef, Lu and me but this trip was even more special than the last as AHL, Dean, and SER who flew in from HK, joined us! 8 of us had an awesome time shopping and pigging out together. My favourites are Tawandang, T&K Seafood and Taling Pling. All yummy Thai food @ great prices. This time, we finally succeeded in going clubbing on one of the nights, at none other than the infamous DJ Station!

J and I have been talking about Hua Hin for the longest time, and so, after the rest had flown home, we hopped onto our hired taxi bound for Hua Hin. The trip was 2.5 hours away and we had to endure the B.O. of our driver throughout the entire journey! We did all we could think of - wet tissues and medicated oil to mask the odour!

The journey was worth it. Look at our pretty boutique hotel (Let's Sea Resort)! Every room has an attached patio that leads into this inviting pool. Very private and cool!

J & I couldn't resist getting these floats at the night market, after we saw our neighbour on one. Only S$10 but the enjoyment was worth 10 times more!

The breakfasts at Let's Sea were fab. There was a wide selection to choose from and everything was prepared with such care and precision. To me, this beats the buffets you can expect from chain hotels, even the luxury ones.

Hua Hin is still relatively undeveloped so there was hardly anything to do at the city centre. There's a huge Swensens ice-cream parlour there though, and this is us getting fat on ice-cream that costs double the price back home.

Would definitely love to return to Hua Hin again!

Boomerang

The girls were so sweet to celebrate my belated birthday over Sunday brunch at Boomerang, Robertson Quay. Initially, the plan was to go to Epicurious but a long queue had already formed when we got there, and truth be told, we found the chill factor missing. So we headed over to the Aussie-run Boomerang instead, which was a stark contrast to Epicurious in terms of their clientele. Over at Epicurious, we saw lots of locals but at Boomerang, the crowd was predominantly ang mohs. In Lei's words, "it didn't feel like Singapore".

I liked the ambience at Boomerang. It was stylish yet casual - great place for friends to catch up over some brunch and wine. What I didn't like, however, was the obvious superior service rendered by the predominantly Filipino waitresses to their preferred clientele, the AMs. We sat there for a good 10 minutes with no one bothering to hand us a menu. In strolls Jamie Ong (she is so gorgeous) and AM friends, and they were served iced water and given the menu pronto.

Food wise, nothing to boast about. The Wagyu burger was dry and not that tasty.

The Aussie breakfast plate (I forget its name now) was pretty good, I loved the thick beef sausage and you can never go wrong with bacon!

But the best item had to be the thick, spongy pancakes that were so so yummy!

Despite the mediocre service and average food, nothing could dampen our spirits on a cool, breezy Sunday!

xoxo

Honest juice from Cold Storage, Taka. The labels are so nice, makes me feel like trying them all!

Seriously creamy ice cream, also from Cold Storage, Taka.

Shawn & YJ's pre-wedding celebrations!

My experience with the G9 has been pretty good so far. Only problem are night shots. Without flash, they turn out reasonably well if my hands are perfectly still. With flash, pictures always look glazed and unnatural? Perhaps it's time for me to get a tripod!

So, the only 2 photos from dinner last night at The Wine Company will have to suffice.





Seriously Jason, I don't get the "I'm on the phone" pose at all!!!

Margarita's

Found a fellow Mexican food lover in Luci! It was the first time us girls hung out together on a weekday in Singapore, I think! Usually, it's lunch at the boring Raffles Place area - at Fion's favourite high-class Killiney.

We headed to the Dempsey area and chose Margarita's, a Mexican restaurant. It's been a while since I've dined at a proper Mexican restaurant. The last time was donkey years ago at this Mexican joint at the Siglap area. Think it was for food tasting with Stef? Anyway, most of the time, I satisfy my penchant for Mexican food with quesadillas from Taco Bell and Dorito nacho chips (yea I know, how sad is that).

We had a tough time deciding what to order as I don't eat lamb, Luci, lamb, pork and mussels and Fion, beef. So we compromised and ordered chicken & shrimp fajitas, pork carnitas and nachos. For drinks, we went alcoholic with sangria.

The food was really good! The nachos were a lil' soft and unlike the crisp Dorito ones but I'm not sure if they're supposed to taste like that. They came heaped with jalapenos, sour cream and cheese and tasted so good! The shrimps and pork were darn tasty but the chicken was tough. And the sangria, ooh it was definitely strong. Luci and I took turns to go red! :)

Ambience was nice, though I would have liked to sit out on the verandah. I'm really keen to go back again and also to try Cafe Iguana that Luci suggested! Yeah!

The LV Fan

Shopping with my guy friend, J, was a very interesting experience. First up, J is the biggest and not to mention well informed LV fan I know. He carries an epi leather LV bag that he claims only connoisseurs of LV would recognise. His belt is, you guessed right, of LV descent and it has a flashy LV buckle you won't miss.

This boy got a LV toiletries bag for his birthday and wanted to exchange it for something else. So J, me and 2 other friends trotted into the LV boutique at Takashimaya in search of the worthy replacement(s).

I was so amused with this friend of mine. From the noisy bantering with the salesgirl, loud rejections of certain "piratable" models and proclamations that LV is "recession-proof", he broke down the reserve of the aloof salesgirl and made her laugh.

He finally settled on a LV ring but expressed his genuine concern as to when he would wear it as he's got flashier and more expensive diamond rings in his possession that would beat this palladium one flat. Anyway dear, I wiki-ed palladium and here are certain excerpts that may be of interest to you:

"Palladium, along with platinum, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium and osmium form a group of elements referred to as the platinum group metals (PGMs)."

"Palladium is also tarnish resistant, electrically stable and resistant to chemical erosion as well as intense heat."

I love J's honesty and candid outbursts! He is true to himself and doesn't try to be someone whom he's not. He's sincere and would never hesitate to go all out to help his friends (he even helps friends wrap presents if they are hopeless at it and he claims he can do it in one-tenth of their time). He's the eternal optimist. At times, he can be so brutally frank, but never malicious, that it's funny.

As I grow older, I realise that surrounding myself with positive people like J makes me forget my incessant grievances and grouses about life (albeit temporarily) and slows down the "getting-jaded" process. Thank you my friend :)

Mt Fuji & Hakone

Day 7: Mt Fuji & Kawaguchi-ko

Getting to Lake Kawaguchi was no easy feat. From Osaka, we had to transfer trains twice to get to Kawaguchi-ko station and then another hour by bus to our hotel. The journey took 6.5 hours, and by the time we got to the hotel, it was already late afternoon. Here's the beautiful view that greeted us from our hotel, Konansou.

Service was personalized in this hotel. We had an obahsan taking care of our every needs. She brewed green tea for us when we arrived, showed us where the yukatas (Japanese robes) and futons were kept, got our dinner ready in a private room and even gave us a call to remind us about dinner. As I was the one who made the hotel booking, my last name was neatly transcripted onto this reservation slip.
We decided not to venture too far from our hotel as we didn't have much time before dinner. All voted in favour of the Mt. Kachi Kachi ropeway which will bring us to the top of a hill for a view of Mt. Fuji, if we were lucky enough. We did catch a glimpse of the elusive Mt. Fuji but the photo's nothing to brag about.
Bird's eye view of Lake Kawaguchi.
At the top of the hill, there was a heart-shaped metal structure with a bell in the middle. We weren't quite sure of the story behind this but all couples were already busy posing for photos...so who cares? I suppose it's a sort of good-luck love charm - if you take a photo here, you will be bestowed with eternal love and happiness. That's my version :)
Posing with the Kachi-kachi friends.
View of Lake Kawaguchi. The swan boats are available for rental to paddle around Lake Kawaguchi. As it was getting dark and cold, we gave this a pass.

Evening view of Lake Kawaguchi.
Dinner time! Us gals all dressed up in yukata. Don't we look the part of sweet, demure Japanese schoolgirls?
Can't say the same for the guys though...the one on the left looks gangster-ish, the one on the right seems to be picking at his food, and the one in the middle just escaped from Disneyland (check out his Mickey mouse ears)!
This was the kaiseki dinner we had. From top left clockwise: steaming udon in crab soup, grilled steak with mushroom and asparagus, curried pork, assorted sashimi, a tiny marinated sardine, tofu and an appetiser dish (made up of a tiny perfectly-shaped octopus, raw fish and Japanese escargot?). Verdict? Only the udon, steak and sashimi were palatable. The curried pork, according to my friends, tasted like dog food. And the rest just tasted weird.
Day 8: Picturesque Hakone

We had breakfast at Konansou the next morning. Breakfast was similar to dinner, we were given a tray filled with an assortment of small and "interesting" dishes. Sadly, the food looked better than it tasted and we were disappointed. What really turned us off was a small cockroach running around in our dining room! We hurriedly finished the edible stuff and got ready to set off for Hakone.

Like Mt. Fuji, Hakone wasn't easy to get to. We had to take a bus from Kawaguchi-ko station to Gotemba station, and then another bus to get to Lodge Fujimien, our hotel in Hakone. The view from our room really wowed us, enough for us to momentarily forget the stale/stinky smell in our room. But I thought the hotel was decent.

Our initial plan was to go to Yunnesun, a hot spring theme park in Hakone. But the owner of Lodge Fujimien, Mrs. R Abe (who spoke impeccable English, by the way) dissuaded us from going. So we ended up whiling our time away grabbing lunch at Togendai (near Lake Ashi), strolling around and soaking in the fresh air and beautiful scenery.

My G9 was on auto mode but it just couldn't capture all of us in the air together. Mr Lee was undoubtedly the best jumper in our group! The worst 2 were Ms Vong, who was too hungry to jump and Tyre, who was supposed to count down to each jump but not a single photo captured him in the air. Definitely not a multi-tasker, this boy.I love these shots of us standing around in a staggered fashion - gives the photo depth!
This is the 2nd series of the "wedding" style photos. The grass was so green and inviting! Here's Ms To and tyre in the "we're-more-than-just friends" pose.
The Vongs in the "we're-so-kawaii" pose.
And Mr Lee and I in the "we-have-long-legs" pose.
One of the very rare group photos that we have. We shared a private joke about bedroom habits here (Hahaha).
After lunch, someone (I can't remember who) suggested going to Lawson (chain convenience store in Japan) which we glimpsed from the bus on the way to our hotel. We decided to try walking there as we desperately wanted to load up on beer (to avoid a sleepless night) and snacks (we weren't expecting to get filled up by our 2nd kaiseki dinner, obviously).
The 6 of us walked from Togendai in search of Lawson. We walked...and walked...and walked...but Lawson was no where to be seen. By this time, we had walked for about an hour I reckon and a few members of our troop had started to show signs of fatigue and wanted to drop out of the search. Mr Lee and I decided to persist, despite the threatening dark clouds weighing heavy on us.
YES! We found Lawson 20 minutes after our friends deserted us! I insisted on taking a picture of it to remind ourselves that we made it there! Boy were we exhausted!
2nd kaiseki dinner @ Lodge Fujimien. Again, we didn't enjoy the dinner too much. The plum wine was darn good though!
And of course, the instant noodles, snacks and beer came in useful!

Kyoto & Osaka

After a 3-hour train ride, we set foot in Kyoto station, hip hip hooray! The magnificent Kyoto tower beckoned to us as we exited from the train station. I must say that the train ride was one of the most enjoyable I have taken. Japanese long distance trains are clean, spacious and best of all, you can have your dinner comfortably in the train as every seat comes equipped with a tray in front, like in an airplane.
We made our way to Kyoto White Hotel, which was a short 10 minutes walk from Kyoto station. I had forewarned my friends earlier not to expect too much of this hotel, as it was the cheapest hotel which came with an attached bath that Ms To and I could find. We knew that the hotel wasn't going to be great before we even got to it as it was located in a small dark alley which we almost missed. Here's what greeted us at the entrance....we had to leave our shoes there and wear the red bedroom slippers provided. Very homely indeed!
As soon as we dumped our stuff in the room (which was clean but not inviting enough for us to stay longer), we headed out into the chilly Kyoto night in search of....you got it right....SUPPER!
At a local ramen shop. When we got in, we tried to shift the tables but got a loud tut-tut from the owner. What's worse was when he commanded Ms To and I to move to another table which faced the wall. We suspected he did that because there were 6 of us but we ordered only 3 bowls of ramen.
Day 5: Temple hopping

Fresh new morning: Again, Kyoto tower greeted us as we stepped out of our hotel (or should I say guesthouse). I had a really bad night sleeping on the futon - not comfortable at all plus a certain red dot of light above me was very disturbing.
After a simple but delicious breakfast at Kyoto station, we were ready to set off to our first destination - Kinkakuji or golden pavilion, by bus! Taking buses in Kyoto was a relatively simple process. Just get a 1 or 2 day bus pass which will give you unlimited rides in Kyoto and it comes with a comprehensive bus guide!

Pretty pavilion. If I had taken this photo from another angle, I think I could have captured its reflection. Oh well!
A vending machine that dispenses oracles. As a true supporter of "all-things-inane-but-fascinating", Mr Lee paid some money to get his very own oracle. If you get a bad oracle, you are supposed to tie it into a knot at a designated place. Luckily for Lee, his was a "Very Good" fortune!
We had lunch at a pretty cafe serving hamburgers and pastas. Everything we ordered - spicy cod roe pasta, hamburger with brown sauce, etc was good! Next, we went to the Kiyomizudera temple (water temple), set atop a hill. The walk up was arduous but there were lots of shops selling food, candies and other niceties to distract us.
At the entrance of the water temple. We had difficulty taking a decent photo as there were many visitors and tour groups.
The pavilion below, I think, is the water temple. We didn't manage to get to it as it was quite a long walk from the entrance and we were all so tired from walking....

Such pretty nooks and crannies are aplenty in Kyoto. Here, we tried to take some "wedding" style photos. Ms To and Tyre doing the "I'm-coy-and-you're-macho" thing.
Mr Lee and I doing the "we're-in-our-rosy-little-world" pose. I kept sifting through my photos to find a decent shot of the Vongs but ended up laughing so much 'cuz the poses were very unnatural...haha.
This is something that we are very fond of doing wherever we go. Taking our own reflection in the mirror.
Day 6: Himeji castle and Shinsaibashi shopping in Osaka

All too quickly, we had to leave Kyoto. I wish we had more time in Kyoto as I love the place for its serenity and quaintness. The next time I go, I'll be sure not to stinge on hotels - I'll go all out and stay at the Granvia Kyoto!

Our next destination was to Himeji castle. On our way there, I spotted this cute retro bus! This made me happy :)
Every photo you take in Himeji is postcard material - it's that scenic.

Himeji castle in its finest glory.

Cute little ice-cream parlor. On our way back to the train station, we passed a 100-yen shop and though we were running late, we refused to pass the shop up. So in we went, shopped frantically and had to run all the way to the train station to catch the train to Osaka (truth be told, we did a lot of running on this trip chasing trains). Thank goodness we made it.
By the time we checked into Comfort Inn @ Osaka, it was already getting late. We went our separate ways to do some last minute shopping and reconvened at Shinsaibashi to have our dinner!
Dinner degustation menu

Crabs in various styles - sashimi, cold and grilled. All tasted divine!

Takoyaki. We asked the guy what's in the ball and he did a really comical "octopus" action. Apparently, the taco-pachi we find in Singapore are variations of the real thing as "taco" means octopus.

Ramen in tonkotsu soup. Delicious with a sprinkling of chopped garlic!


Day 7: Universal Studios

Coincidentally, the Halloween theme was on at Universal Studios. The good people at Disneyland ran the same theme when I was in the US 2 years ago!
The Halloween float parade!

The cool couple with their vintage cars.

I could never understand why people are so fascinated with the carousel. I used to like it as a kid, but I grew out of it as I got older. So it caught me by surprise when all my friends wanted to go on it. Choosing the "animal" to ride on was fun though. There was this sweet little girl riding alone on a unicorn next to me. We were amazed that her parents let her ride alone as she can't be older than 2 years!