Pre-honeymoon Honeymoon

So it’s not our real honeymoon.  We actually got this treat from the wedding we had last December.  Included in the package was a honeymoon 4-day/3-night stay at their selected hotels.  We chose Shangri-La’s Boracay Resort and Spa.  Here is the low-down on our stay…

Shangri-La’s Boracay Resport and Spa

The rooms are oh so lovely! But oh so expensive as well! Cheapest rooms cost around 20k PhP per night (good thing our stay was free).  They feature L’Occitane toiletries and provide fresh fruits everyday.  They also clean your room 3 times a day, I guess they must have realized beach-goers have a tendency to make rooms messier than usual.  Sand sand sand everywhere.  

This is the view from the balcony in our room…

While this is the view of the beach during the afternoon…

This is the second beach.  Looks pretty but there are quite a few small rocks on the shore.

Beach is nice but admittedly just so-so, at least for Boracay-level.  Shangri-La has 2 private beaches.  The perks are (1) lifeguard on duty - good for nonswimmers like us :) (2) very attentive staff that offer towels, water, and whatever you may need (3) privacy! noone will be bothering to sell you snorkeling, diving, massages, hair-braiding, etc etc! The only bad thing is the beach itself, the sand is not as powder-fine nor as white as the one at station 1 and 2.  It’s actually made up of small pebbles and ground-up seashells.  There tend to be a few bits and pieces of big rocks, so better watch your footing.  Boracay is also known for its long stretches of shallow shores.  Shangri-La’s shore is quite steep. Anyway, the good thing is that if you don’t like their beach, there is an assortment of pools nearby.

Location is not so good.  This hotel is quite far from the main area (d’mall), definitely NOT walking-distance.  Not unless you are uber-rich that you can afford to spend for every meal, you certainly have to go to the main area every now and then. There is a shuttle service that runs every hour during the day and every thirty minutes during the night.  The whole trip takes about 15 minutes.  However, I don’t think its frequent enough.  During the day, imagine if you miss the bus for a few minutes you may have to wait for a whole hour for the next one again.

In summary… did we enjoy? Certainly yes! Repeatable? Probably not.  Next time we would want to stay somewhere at station 1 instead.

2 weeks ago  /  1 note

年 年 有 鱼!

Being chinese doesn’t necessarily mean one would know all the chinese tradition and rituals.  Come to think of it, by the sheer number of Chinese population in the world, plus the fact that the Chinese people has been spread all over the globe… there is bound to be tons of variations one would not know about!

Case in point… Lo Hei, a tradition only Singapore and Malaysian Chinese know of.  Lo Hei is a special appetizer during the Chinese new year period. It usually consists of strips of salmon, mixed with shredded vegetables and a variety of sauces and condiments, among other ingredients. We eat this during the Chinese new year simply because it symbolizes prosperity and abundance.

Here is the cool part… we get to play with the food! The correct way to go about it is to ‘toss in’ the New Year. Toss high, toss loud and toss messily – not that you will be able to help it. Each diner is equipped with a pair of chopsticks that are used to mix everything together in the large communal dish. The mess can be lessened (a little) if you aim towards the middle – and this is also the way to ensure that good fortune is being distributed throughout the group. The words lo hei are chanted for luck when tossing. 

Of course it’s not just the Lo Hei we get to eat.  We also get the full 10-course Chinese banquet. 

Old Hong Kong restaurant at Raffles City

Standard Chartered Celebration Lunch

2 weeks ago  /  0 notes

What’s In My Bag?

Cosmo has this segment in their website where they (supposedly) grab girls from the street and inspect the contents of their bags.  Now I am left to wonder if this is if at all staged.  Did they really randomly pick these girls right from the street?  Were the girls given time to prepare what contents they wanna divulge to the public?  (What if they have something really embarrassing like a tampon or something?)  I wonder because it seems to me like these girls are awfully neat.  Too neat maybe.  And they have waaaay to much makeup in their bags.  Or maybe it’s just me that’s the odd one out…

So here we go, I share to you the contents of my bag.

In the “trash” category we have the following…

For “things that keep me (in)sane” we have…

For “Opps, I had no time to fix myself before leaving the house” category…

As per “SG survival kit”, we have…

For our “duh, of course” category, we have…

Sans the compact case and lip gloss, it seems that my list might pass as a boy’s bag contents.  I think I need to stock up more on cute things…

1 month ago  /  0 notes

Happy New Year!!

Since I have a brand-spanking new griller for Christmas, I decided to try it out for the New Year… 

And to cap off the evening, the countdown goes… 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…

… CHEERS!!!

1 month ago  /  3 notes