Reporting from the US of A. I had two Chinese meals on the first two days.
Honestly, they were good. A 9.1 out of 10 good. Maybe it’s because they weren’t very cheap meals.
The crabs were huge! One crab could feed 6 persons, seriously! The lobsters weren’t as fantastic but still good.
Funny thing is, the vegetables here aren’t really chopped up nicely. I feel like I’m eating a bonsai sometimes.
Hungry for more? Check out my other #FoodFri.
I’ve been assigned to group with a bunch of Taiwanese journalists. Lucky me, I speak good Mandarin and they are a bunch of great people.
Today, we were sent off on a tour of San Francisco with a Taiwanese tour guide. The 60-year-old-looking tour guide was from Taiwan and has guided some famous Chinese government official.
He was supposed to bring us to Stanford then to San Francisco. However, when he drove past Apple’s HQ, the whole van of tech journalists begged him to let us go down to take a peek.
The TV reporter decided that she need to take a short reel of the campus for work. The cameraman who came along was setting up the videos and suddenly (really, within one minute) a patrol car stopped next to him.
The security started asking questions: who, what, when, where, why, how. They took down notes, talked on walkie-talkie.
Later, two other patrol cars came. The lady reporter had to explain for about 20 mintues before they let her off. She then took a few time to film her piece.
To be honest, I expected Apple’s HQ to be a lot more futuristic. Heck, even Oracle has an amazing building.
The address however is damn cool. “1 Infinite Loop”. Wow!
I take my hat off to the lady reporter because she has to come up with her lines on the spot. Plan her walking routes, put on makeup, talk to the camera and all that ASAP!
PS The only reason this piece is on my “travel” blog is because I’m travelling. See you guys later this Sunday!
All guide books seem to have a line about how asking, “Do you know the way to San Jose?” would lead to stinkeye from the locals.
Anyway, by the time this post is lived, I will be on the 18-hour flight from Singapore to San Francisco. (OK, a 1 hour 45 minute stop in Tokyo Narita in between.)
It will be a week of work in San Jose, covering a very cheem (Singlish lesson: cheem=profound) event, then a week of being a tourist in San Francisco.
You know what will be the first thing I do after I toss my luggage into my room? Toiletries shopping!
Anyway, since this is really a work trip, most of my time in San Jose will see me stationed at the convention center and my hotel room, busily taking interview notes and typing out–what I hope is–brilliant articles that would make Hemingway proud.
But since this is a travel blog, I’ll share some of the interesting San Jose sites which hopefully I would get to visit after typing out the brilliant articles mentioned above.
Official site: http://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/ (Creepy music on the site. Blah.)
Nice tour room-by-room description: http://mysteryhouseguide.com/
When I first saw the house in a TV program about scary places, I was very intrigued. Doors that lead to nowhere? Wealthy widow who keeps on building her house so spirits will be pleased?! WOW.
But then it’s not really that haunted so I’m not very impressed. I think I should get this off my list on Day 1.
Also, I’m really disappointed that I won’t be able to go on the Flashlight Tour which happens only on every Friday the 13th and on Halloween. Imagine a night tour of the mansion!
Official site: Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum & Planetarium
Ancient Egypt has been a fascinating topic for me, although I haven’t read as much of their legends as I do Ancient Greek stories.
But a chance to see artifacts from that time period means a “must go” on my list.
Unfortunately, a lot of the Yelp reviews of the museum are negative.
Official site: http://www.thetech.org/
My hotel is really near the Tech Museum. Think it’s a must-drop by since I am working in tech (sort of).
Official site: http://www.sjmusart.org/
I’m a fan of old art more than modern art. If I have time, I might drop by.
Ok, a premium shopping outlet is not supposed to be even on the indie traveller’s list. But it’s been recommended by a lot of my work acquaintances who, come to think of it, probably earns 5 times my salary.
Even though it’s on my list, the place is very out of the way. I’ll have to change trains and everything. Plus, I need to visit here before heading to San Francisco or else I’ll need to put in 4 hours of return trip and $52 for the Greyhound bus.
Yucks! (Maybe I should get the bags at the airport.)
This will be my first trip to the US and I’m not very sure what to expect. Too much TV makes me think that I actually know the place and the people.
I’ll need to do a couple of American things while there:
–eat burgers at McDonald
–eat hotdogs from hot dog stands
–run for cover while super aliens destroy the city
–drink soda (what flavor is it?)
–buy Old Spice
–watch Mad Men on TV
–watch Game of Thrones on TV
–drink lemonade
On today’s menu, it’s the Asakusa silk pudding which can be found near the famous Asakusa Temple.
The store is located in a pedestrian lane, far enough from the main street for us to enjoy the quietness.
The store front was plain–a display fridge, two round tables outside. There were two bins by the wall, telling customers to recycle its glass bottle and plastic cap and spoon.
The pudding, like its name, tasted silky and the caramel tasted slightly burnt. I’m not sure if it’s deliberately like that to contrast the sweetness of the custard or if it was fluke.
Anyway, mom and I polished the glass bottles clean. Yum!
Here’s a Google Map of the place if you happen to be in Asakusa.
FlightLover is an Apple iOS app that checks for cheap air tickets of budget airlines. It’s available for different countries of origin–Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan.
There’s one thing you need to know about me. I am very stingy and it is very rare that I will pay for an app unless it is really useful.
I downloaded the app a long long time ago, hoping it would help me score cheap flights. Unfortunately, I haven’t bought any cheap flights using the app but I do have other purposes for it.
I use it mainly to check how low flights can go. I also use it to help friends double check if there are cheap flights around the period they want to travel.
The app will be useful for the casual bargain air ticket hunter (I’m among a semi-hardcore bargain hunter while a friend of mine is Level-999 in cheap airticket hunting.)
When you open the app, it gives a list of the destinations in its database as well as the cheapest flights. I love how the cover photos are changed from time to time, for example, the highlighted destination today is Sydney.
For this demo, I chose Kuala Lumpur as my destination as it’s one of the cheapest destinations.
I’m able to slide the slider (duh) to indicate how many days I want to travel. Please note that it includes the day you fly. For example, if a flight leaves the airport at 11pm, it counts as a day.
The return time is actually the hour you return to your country of origin. That is helpful for those who don’t want to guess when they reach home. For me, I would prefer the timing of the flight back instead so I can see how many hours I can still have fun.
You can also select the date range you want which is helpful to zoom in the long weekend dates. The little red triangle on the upper right of the price shows that the trip involves a weekend–super!
After you’ve selected the best price, head into the date and it’ll show you the details of the flight as well as the checkin time (so considerate of them!)
The “Book” button only helps you call the airline while the “Share with friends” lets you tweet/Facebook/e-mail others about the cheap price.
The app also has a neat “Beep” mode which will alert you of deals that have dropped below the price you’ve indicated.
Everyday, around 9am, it will deliver a message alert if the tickets have fallen below the price you like.
Even thought I’ve switched this function on, I always feel annoyed when it reminds me of a cheap flight because I can’t go on a holiday now
The design of the interface is really clean and beautiful. There is an airplane flying in circles when it loads a page. A sad emoticon appears when there is no connection.
The companion Web site has the same functionality but with limited travel dates. The app can be found on the App Store.
“Borrowing”148apps.com’s review format:
FlightLover Singapore
Developer: Handstand (The folks who brought you gothere.sg)
Price: S$2.99
Version Reviewed: 1.27
Device Reviewed On: iPhone 4
iPhone Integration Rating: 3 out of 5 stars (Not integrated into Twitter–iOS 5 functionality)
User Interface Rating: 4 out of 5
Re-use Value Rating: 5 out of 5
Overall Rating: 4 out of 5
I’ve only stayed at Tune Hotel once before the Ipoh Tune Hotel stay. It was in Kelantan and the twin bed room wasn’t too bad. My parents who have stayed at Tune Hotel KLIA-LCCT complained that their room was too tiny they can’t even open their luggage.
Tune Hotel Ipoh opened in March 2012. They had a sale in mid-January and I snatched up two RM39 double-bed rooms.
Similar to AirAsia’s tickets, the bare price only includes the minimum “comforts”, so I had to pay an extra RM15 to buy a package of 12-hour air conditioning, rental towel and “free essentials toiletries kit”. All together, it was RM61.14 for the room, with service charge.
The hotel is in the “new town” side of the river. The location is not too bad as it’s within walking distance to a lot of the famous eateries nearby.
Continue reading “Stay: Ipoh Tune Hotel review”
Today’s #FoodFri is the giant profiterole found at The French Stall.
Vanilla ice cream sandwiched between two croissant-like buns with liberal doze of chocolate syrup.
I first had French food at The French Stall in Singapore. It was supposed to be an outing for NUS Francophile but there only three people went–two from the committe.
The French Stall is located at 544 Serangoon Rd. It closes on Monday though.
I spent last weekend in Ipoh and scratched Perak off of my Visit Malaysia project.
Well, I didn’t know much about Ipoh before heading there. The most common thing I’ve heard when people talk about Ipoh is its food–hor fun (white flat noodles) and white coffee.
I tried doing research on sites in Ipoh but the four-pages of description in guide books made me underestimate the place. I didn’t even bother jotting down sites to see (except Kellie’s Castle). Luckily, Lilian did her research and informed me of some interesting places.
Instead of a travel guide book, I brought along a food guide instead. (Typical YQ.)
The guide was helpful not only as a food map but for me to coordinate myself on the grid. Sometimes my human compass skill fails me and Lilian would step in and ask for directions. (I am still allergic to asking for directions. Problem of being an ISFP?)
Continue reading “Glutton in Ipoh”
For the Indonesia trip, we did a daring thing and booked only one hotel for the whole trip. This worked well for Indonesia but I don’t recommend you do this for expensive cities where cheap rooms run out really quick.
We stayed in different types of accomodation–five different places to be exact. The ones which we booked on the spot was done after much consultation with the Internet and Lonely Planet (most of it was LP’s help, take that guidebook scorners).
Among the room, two of them had resident cockroaches which I killed with a shoe and a water scoop respectively. One was extra posh, another reasonably comfortable. Only three had hot water while the other two were cold showers. Continue reading “S$11 to S$100, rooming in Java”
It’s my birthday today!
Today’s #FoodFri is a selection of pastry I found in a the windows of a bakery in Barcelona.
I was too shy to go in so I snapped photos instead.
YQtravelling 
