Archive for the ‘travels’ Category
from sydney with love
Blargh. This week has been ROUGH. All you can do is power through, dust yourself off, say a prayer, hope for the best, and stare at the pretty pictures you bought in Australia last week.
As always I have no respect for chronological order and am doing my posts in a timeless disarray. There’s a point though. These pretty pictures are bringing some peace and contentment to a rocky week. For all yous peeps out there suffering from the ugh-what-else-is-gonna-suck-this-week blues, my heart and my wombat go out to you.
I had most of Saturday to myself in Sydney last week. Since I was going in a completely different direction on a different airline, my flight times were way off of the homies. After they all went California-bound, I had 7 hours all to myself to mosey around and see Sydney before my own jet plane took off towards the equator. I roamed Darling Harbour, checked out the Sydney Aquarium, and then continued on my quest for art.
malaysian airlines, sin to syd
I’m back from Sydney and taking all of Sunday to recuperate from the fun times and the red eye flight. I came home to a super clean apartment courtesy of the parents and aunt who visited last week (we both left last Monday – them to the Philippines and me to Sydney). It was so nice of them to tidy up my lil’ crib.
Sadly, I only have a few Sydney posts (one of which is not food related) lined up. Certainly less than what I had thought I would come back with, but it was a fun trip nonetheless.
Let’s start off with the flights, yes? I took Malaysian Airlines because they had a deal for Singapore to Sydney for SGD600 – even less than the budget airlines.
My first impression of MH (the airline code for Malaysian Airlines) was ho-hum. They flew a small Boeing from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur which was quite old. All of the seats were different colors – orange, blue, red, green. The result was more fiesta than anything else.
travel cafe philippines, greenbelt 5
I am so fatchin’ tired. There are about 80 other things I should be doing – cleaning my house, paying my cable bill, ironing some clothes, sleeping since it’s well past midnight – but here we are blogging. Yay for messed up priorities.
I just got back from a few days in the Philippines and unlike most of my trips I got to actually stay in Manila for awhile. My dreams of moving to Manila to work have slipped off the radar since I moved to Singapore but were sorta kinda resurrected by the 3 days I spent exploring and enjoying the city life rather than the usual weekend of hanging out in the bahay kubo all up in the province.
In the middle of what I like to refer to as Meeting Marathon Tuesday (not to be confused with Meeting Fun Times Monday), Lianne and I had time to grab a real lunch at Greenbelt 5.
Lianne let me pick between Travel Cafe Philippines and another Spanish restaurant whose name escapes me. TCP won because we found it first and because I was not feeling the urge to revisit my people’s colonial oppression. Kidding. I was also wearing 3 inch heels and carrying my stupidly heavy laptop so really finding it first meant sitting down sooner which was the idea overall.
zaytoons, dublin
Okay where were we with the Dublin food? Wednesday?
By Wednesday the homies were both in town so we wandered around the City Centre browsing menus until we found something tasty. Our original plan was to hit up Elephant & Castle but they were packed to the brim with no open tables until 10pm.
Zaytoons was good. I had the beef barg which was a giant flatbread with beef, onions, yogurt sauce, lettuce, and some red chili sauce something or other. Basically lots of my favorite things all on one plate plus french fries. Heaven.
gruel, dublin
Joann meet bangers and mash. Bangers and mash meet Joann.
This is the post where we have some bangers and some mash.
ely wine bar, dublin
I took Joao’s team up on their offer for dinner and joined them at nearby Ely’s for some fancy pub style food.
The night started with Bulmers which is a sweet, lovely Irish pear cider and ended with pannacotta. In between was the main course and some good conversation whereby my work brain got full to the very very brim.
yay! we’re in dublin!
I’m using the royal WE so you can live vicariously through me.
This is your Dublin intro post. A leisurely walk through my first few days in the Dubs. It involves the mall, French stuff, and fried fish.
I landed around midday in Dublin so I had to power through and stay up until atleast 8pm to try and shake off the jetlag. To make sure those hours melted away as fast as can be I headed to the mall (shocking) where I rifled throug the H&M racks and acquainted myself with Penney’s. I also indulged in some mall food.
Pizza, of course. Toppings were ok, the crust was meh. At least the cheese wasn’t weird like it often is in Asian pizzas. Cheese is not a strong point for Southeast Asia. Sorry.
Since I was doing so good whippin’ jet lag’ butt, I treated myself to some pistachio ice cream from an Aussie chain. It was alright but not particularly memorable.
klm, singapore to amsterdam
I’ve been on a lot of airplanes lately. I’m pretending to be a jetsetter and maintaining the charade takes a lot of work.
I have a few Dublin posts coming up but to get to those, we need to get to Dublin first. KLM had decently priced tickets that didn’t have 20+ hour flight times, so I booked ‘em and had my first ever trip with the Dutch.
First up, dinner time.
one bánh for the road
Have you ever been more confused by a plate of food in your entire life? There is a lot going on here. This food is a speciality of Hue in central Vietnam.
This is the last of the HCMC series. Bánh, bánh and more bánh!
tân hoàng ty, hcmc
I wrote this post awhile back and scheduled it for delivery tonight but wanted to put a plug in for folks who want to help the people of the Philippines. To find ways to help or track down more information visit Google’s Typhoon Ondoy page.
Hooray! More Vietnamese food in Vietnam!
My last meal in Vietnam was bánh canh (erm I think that’s what it was called) at Tân Hoàng Ty. Plates of boiled pork, pickled veggies, cucumber, crepes, and crazy heaping piles of unknown herbs.
Heaping piles. No lie. So heaping that for the first time ever I’m gonna show my face up on this blog just so you have some context.
Feed your reader! 
