Winter Sights in Hokkaido, Japan

The family and I have just returned from a trip to Hokkaido, Japan. It was our first time stepping on Japan soil and also the first time the children and I experienced real snow.

We all had mixed feelings about the winter we were experiencing. The children were no doubt very happy to be jumping into the soft snow formed on the ground and having snowball fights. It was exceptionally beautiful and magical to look at, especially when you are having a hot cup of coffee indoors and watching the snow fall onto the ground. It was surreal. However, whenever we had to take a short hike at the park, or even along the roadside, it was hardly any fun as our eyes were mostly peeled on the ground. That's because the road can be slippery and we had to watch our footing. Wearing layers of clothings also hindered a lot of movement and this was not something we enjoyed.

Because of the inconvenience, I got pretty lazy to take out my camera to take photos. It would mean I have to take off my gloves each time I wanted to snap a photo and I wore the gloves back when I was done at each shoot because I didn't want to get bitten by frost! So I am thankful for my trusty iphone, that I had used to take photos throughout most of the trip. It has not disappointed me!

Here are some beautiful winter sights that caught my eye in Hokkaido. I hope you will enjoy viewing them, as much as we enjoyed being there.

Lake Toya, Hokkaido.

Ninja Village, Hokkaido

Ninja Village, Hokkaido

Taken with Olympus Pen.

Sapporo. Taken with Olympus Pen.

Otaru, Hokkaido

Till the next post, have a wonderful day!

Sights and Tastes in Penang

Photo taken with my iphone 4S, from the room balcony. As we watched how the ship was skillfully docked.

We just got back from a little vacation in a cruise ship with friends and docked off at our first stop in Penang. The time spent in Penang was barely 5 hours but it didn't stop us from going out to explore George Town! Well, in fact, we were just being typical Singaporean foodies and yearned to chomp down some good local food!

An interesting nostalgic sight for me to capture on my camera.

We were lucky that one of our travel companions, originates from Penang so he knew his way around. It was about an hours' walk from the pier (with a short detour to get some tau sah piah and a stop to poke our noses into a local chocolate museum) when we arrived at this old school coffee shop located at Libuh Keng Kwee lane, that was famous for their char kway teow. We were so darn lucky that we managed to order the last 6 plates for the day, before they turned everyone else away! And it was only 5pm.

The infamous char kway teow lady boss in action. I was told she is a fierce one!

What we came here for... mmmm I can still imagine the taste lingering in my mouth! Extremely worth the walk!

 Within the coffeeshop,  there was also the mouth-watering Assam Laksa.

Oh man! Look at that "hae gor" (fermented shrimp sauce). Still drooling.

And also the lor bak! 

Last but not least, we also sampled the chendol, sold at a roadside stall - which was apparently as famous. Very simple ingredients of the green jelly and red bean but thirst quenching and yummy nonetheless.

Satisfied Singaporeans.

Right after the meal, we headed back to the ship. Yep. We were that hardcore for the local food!

Captured this image along the way back.

And learned that Jimmy Choo originates from Penang as well!

Albeit the short hours in Penang, we felt our food hunting mission was completed. 

I shall be sharing what we did in Phuket, in another post. Stay tuned to find out what you can achieve in Phuket with the older children in one day. Guaranteed to make them really happy.

  Till the next post, have a blessed week!

Food Glorious Food! Only in Bangkok

The family went for a short trip to Bangkok over the March school term break. Having not been there for more than 6 years and since the  hubs had mileage points to claim from his frequent travels, we headed out to the land of smiles!

Here are pictures taken from the gastronomic point of view. No less. For your drooling pleasure.

We had 2 of our meals in Chinatown. Great seafood at cheap rates! First time I tried barbequed blood cockles! I don't like those that are boiled but this one is different. Bottom right is birds nest with gingko net for dessert!

The hubs had pad thai at the food court in Mabukong shopping centre.

I had beef noodle soup which was too salty that I couldn't eat it halfway. I could literally feel my blood pressure rising to my head! maybe that's what the sugar bowl is there for... duh.

Oyster omelette! Oh we went to heaven and back while eating this. :p

Last but not least, my favourite mango sticky rice for desserts. They are the best of the best.

Three things I regretted not having time to indulge were their thai steamboat,  fishcakes and fried crickets! I didn't see any fishcake stall holders along the roadside this round and I so wanted to challenge myself to try the fried crickets to take myself up a notch in my gastronomy adventures. But I chickened out.

Oh well. I'd just have to make another trip to Bangkok soon, right?

  Till the next post, have a blessed week!

Linking up with : 

[Family Vacation] Sydney -> Blue Mountains -> Sydney

This will be my finale post!    Yah!! It seems like eternity since we came back from our vacation... and I am still covering it in my blog posts! None too pleased with my efficiency. Pffffffpt!   SO! Anyway... in the previous post, I blogged about our tour experience at Hunter Valley. And finally, we got to stay in Sydney the next two nights! This was the 4th day of our tour and it was supposed to be free and easy. However, since our trip didn't cover Blue Mountains, our tour leader decided to plan this route out for us (super expensive to get there at an extra AUD$120 per person... never felt so broke!) - with a special request to stop by the infamous Sydney fish market first!   

We had oysters and sashimi at 8am. Bliss!

Then we took another long bus ride to Blue Mountains just to see  'The Three Sisters'.

Breathtaking view together with some of our fellow tour mates! Weather was awesome up there!

 

We took the scenic cable ride across the ravines at 270m high! The coolest part of the cable was that the floor board was see through! Not for the faint hearted!

 By the time we arrived back to Sydney, it was in the late afternoon. Since it was free and easy, we walked around the shopping area where our hotel was, settled dinner with some of our tour mates (yes! we had sushi on the belt!) before settling in for the night. As it was our last night there and our next day's flight is in the early evening, we still had morning to go and explore Sydney on our own!

We left the hotel early after breakfast to visit Darling Harbor.

We walked through 'Market City' where there was a weekend flea market. It reminded me of our pasar malam here so I didn't quite bother to shop around. These days, souvenirs seem very cheesy to me.

I am personally impressed that we could cover Sydney Aquarium and Madame Tussard's within 2 hours while we were at Darling Habor. Here are just some photos we took!

The aquarium is very much like our Underwater World in Sentosa - except maybe 3 times bigger!

Some 'sampat' photos we took! Love this place. Can you spot my best friend? We share the same bad hair day everyday.

And that wraps up our trip to Sydney! We do hope to be back again in the near future - next time, we will explore the place on our own.

  Till the next post, have a blessed week!

[Family Vacation] Hunter Valley -> Sydney

This is part 3 of my travel journal! :)  So far, I've covered the first 2 days of our trip HERE and HERE.

At the last stop, we stayed over at Hunter Valley for the night. Upon our checkout the next morning, we were scheduled to head out to the vineyard for some wine tasting!

 

No I didn't have that much to drink! But I am glad I finished up a glass that was offered to us while we walked around the vineyard and were shown where they aged their wines. I still like dessert wine, if you have to know.

 After which, we were brought to have some cheese tasting! It's just too bad, we were all not really into cheese and couldn't really appreciate what was given to us at the table to try. And for the record, I.don't.like.blue.cheese.

Shortly after the cheesy break, we headed to the infamous Storybook Garden in Hunter Valley! The landscaping was beautiful but going there with the blaring hot noon sun deterred us from exploring much of the garden. 

 

Where nursery rhyme characters come to life!

No, those are not my children who came tumbling down the hill!

Snippets of the beautiful garden (and 2 lovely girls!).

We were off to a late lunch after the walk at the garden. We had MORE ang moh food... see what I mean below :

Don't get me wrong. The quality and quantity of food served were very good. But as a Singaporean Chinese, I think I cannot tahan having western cuisine everyday! And look at the dessert here... who would have thought the scoop of "vanilla ice cream" turned out to be butter! I wonder if they scooped out from the wrong tub!

After lunch, we continued our bus journey back to Sydney. It was at least a 3 hour ride! Didn't particularly enjoy this bus journey back because it was too long in quite a crampy bus without much leg room to stretch out. But one thing for sure, we were all looking forward to a sumptuous Chinese dinner in Sydney! Yes!! It was REALLY exciting!

Look at our "hungry hands" and all aimed for the roast chicken we know best! This particular day of the tour happened to be my husband's birthday and the tour leader was sooooooooo sweet to get him a birthday cake to celebrate with the group! It also happened that Nat, the other girl whom Megan had so much fun socializing with during the trip -  was also celebrating her birthday the next day so they both shared the birthday cake-cutting. So nice right? (The tour leader appears behind our family photo here, in blue tee)

After our dinner, we checked into the hotel located within the city. And since the night was still young, we decided to walk around the vicinity! However, the shops there closes early on most days so bummer... didn't get to shop at all.

There was a formal event at the museum which we walked past thus the lighted designs on the building. We also stopped a while to watch some Christmas caroling outside Queen Victoria building.

And there ends our 3rd day in this beautiful country! Stay tuned for my coming post on our 4th day tour! We headed to Blue Mountains!

  Till the next post, have a blessed week!

{Family Vacation} Port Stephens -> Hunter Valley

I'm continuing my journal on our recent family trip to Sydney.  If you were not following my previous post on our trip, the part 1 can be found HERE.

This is day 2 in Port Stephens - we visited the Australian Shark and Ray Centre where "those who want to" can be in close contact with the sea creatures! In the end, only the kids were "brave" enough to go down the waters. They got to touch and feed the fishes!  And note, there were sharks in the waters!

Proud that the kids were not afraid of the sharks and sting rays. I guess, as a parent, as long as you don't instill fear in children, they are really not afraid of anything. :)

After spending about an hour at the above centre, we proceeded to a 4WD sand dunes tour where we could try out sandboarding!  

The wind was UTTERLY strong at the sand dunes - as you could probably see from the photo.  It was so strong that our tour leader's contact lens were blown off from one of his eye! So you could imagine sand into the eyes and mouth. Yucks! I ate em' sand a lot... very crunchy. And as I observed the group, we never were so happy to get back to the bus!

Though of course, the experience was a unique one for the kids. So they enjoyed themselves!

You could imagine, we were so happy to see our 4WD bus coming over to pick us up before we all end up buried in the "sahara desert".  The anticipation of going to the next stop was one of the highlight of our trip! We went for a dolphin watch cruise!

On board the cruise, we were served buffet lunch before we headed out to sea. There's Megan with a friend she made on the trip! And you could see that we spotted wild dolphins!!

Thanks to another friend I made on the trip, who helped to take this photo of us. Love it!

 After about 1.5 hours out at sea, we continued our journey to Hunter Valley to spend the night. Hunter Valley is well known for its wine and we were very excited to be staying at a resort amidst the vine yards. By the time we arrived and settled in, it was in the late evening.

The view just outside our room. It was really nice watching the setting sun and catching glimpse of wild kangaroos roaming in the area!

There ends our 2nd official day in NSW! Time really flies when you are having fun!  

In my upcoming post, I would be sharing day 3 of our vacation. I hope you'll stick around and come drop in my blog again to see what else we did there!

  Till the next post, have a blessed week!