Lisa and Tony's Big Adventure – Page 8 – Lisa and Tony's Big Adventure in 2010-2011

Sipadan-Kapalai Resort – Kapalai Island, Malaysia

Post author By lisaandtony
Post date July 25, 2010
1 Comment on Sipadan-Kapalai Resort – Kapalai Island, Malaysia

Total Miles Traveled: 30,384

I (Lisa) have been waiting for this experience for 20 years (since I found out that such places existed)… where your bungalow is built on the ocean – with clear blue water for as far as the eye can see and where the fish swim under and around you.

Kapalai Resort is built on a sandbar off of Malaysian Borneo’s east coast in the middle of the Sulawesi Sea. It is NOT easy to get here. From the US, you would need to take a 15 hour plane ride to Kuala Lumpur (in peninsular Malaysia), followed by another 2.5 hour flight to Tawau, Malaysia (on Borneo). Once in Tawau, you take a 90 minute bus ride, followed by a 45 minute boat ride to the resort.

Within in our first few minutes of arriving in our room and looking out on our private balcony (and from the bathtub), we saw barracuda, trumpet fish, sting rays and (my favorite) sea turtles. But don’t let the beautiful view fool you. This is no 5 star resort. With no aircon and a very porous structure that lets in noises from both sea and human creatures, we felt like we were ‘glamping’. But being woken up at 5am with the clanky clanks of the diving tanks didn’t bother us. We were here to dive. And dive we did… 4 times a day for 3 days!

Check out our slideshow from the resort (below). Coming up next – photos from our dives.

[flickrslideshow acct_name=”tony-chen” id=”72157624498011087″ width=”640″ height=”480″ border_width=”1″ border_style=”solid” border_color=”#000000″]

Malaysia

Mari Mari Cultural Village, Kota Kinabalu

Post author By lisaandtony
Post date July 24, 2010
No Comments on Mari Mari Cultural Village, Kota Kinabalu

Yes, we’re in Asia, so we have to “FOB” out our photos. That means, doing the peace sign in all your photos.

Mari Mari Cultural Village is a recreation of tribal life in Borneo – similar to cultural/dancing shows you’d find in Hawaii or Disneyworld. Yeah, it’s a bit cheesy for sure, but still educational and fun. We (and by ‘we’ it’s really Tony) got to do things like:

Trampoline Jumping – two guys jump on the bamboo trampoline while the third times it so that the platform slings him up high enough so he can touch the ornament up at the top of the photo.

Here’s my attempt… not enough air… gotta lose a few lbs.

Blowguns – it actually works, scarily well. You don’t have to blow very hard at all for the bamboo dart to come out and hit the target.

Mud Tattoos – these are basically henna tattoos. I really liked Tony’s

Cooking in Bamboo – You basically choose your raw ingredients like chicken, ginger, chili, garlic, etc. and then put them in a palm leaf lined bamboo. The bamboo sticks are placed on a fire while they cook (think of it like steaming in aluminum foil).

Dancing between moving bamboo poles – The music starts slow but quickly builds up speed so you have to (literally) stay on your toes or else get whacked by the bamboo pole.

Touring Long Houses – multiple families lived in these longhouses

And we’ll end with a couple of more photos we liked:

And this last one is of our little friend we called “McNugget.” He was fattening himself up on fried rice flour noodles. That’s how chicken mcnuggets are made you know… j/k.

For all the photos, go to our Flickr slideshow: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tony-chen/sets/72157624573900268/show/

Malaysia

Diving Tunku Abdul Rahman Park in Kota Kinabalu

Post author By lisaandtony
Post date July 22, 2010
No Comments on Diving Tunku Abdul Rahman Park in Kota Kinabalu

20100722-IMG_4485 — LOOK OUT!!! SHARRRRRK!

In a few days, we’re headed to Sipadan, purported to be one of the top dive sites in the world. I can imagine why, because only 120 divers can visit the island per day. Since we hadn’t been diving in almost 2 years, we decided to get in a few dives at the TARP right off the coast of Kota Kinabalu.

Side note to divers reading this: We used Sabah Divers, which was cheaper than Dive Down Under and included equipment ($200RM for 3 dives), but it’s budget. Don’t expect a lot of hand holding from the divemaster if you’re not comfortable with your gear, and you better know how to put it all together and know when something isn’t right.

We can’t say we’d recommend diving here unless you’re really in to small critters and low visibility types of diving – we had only 10 feet visibility and the sensor on our camera is starting to go bad, but here are some photos we captured:

20100722-IMG_4497 — Nasty looking eel in the sand

Here’s the full set of photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tony-chen/sets/72157624447734083/show/

Next, we head to the island of Kapalai and dive Sipadan, purported to be one of the top dives sites in the world.

Malaysia

Kota Kinabalu – It’s All About the Food

Post author By lisaandtony
Post date July 21, 2010
No Comments on Kota Kinabalu – It’s All About the Food

map_kotakinabalu — Hong Kong to Kota Kinabalu

Total Miles Traveled: 30,130 (we passed the 30k mark!)

Kota Kinabalu is the largest city on the Borneo side of Malaysia. While it’s located on the coast, it’s not a city you go to for the sights – it’s a bit of a concrete jungle that happens to be next to the water. It is, however, a great jumping off point for a lot of different activities: some of the best diving in the world, wildlife spotting in the jungle, orangutans… AND the best part of all, it has great food.

So let’s start off with some food and drink, shall we? The most fun we had was at Ocean Seafood Restaurant, where the menu is a bunch of aquariums from which you choose your prey and then the waiters tell you how you can have it prepared. Here’s what we picked to eat, prior to it being cooked:

And, here they are cooked:

Spanner Crab with Chili Sauce… mmm. Large chunks of slightly sweet, delicate meat (worth the effort!). Delicious.

Deep-fried Mantis Prawn with Roe. Sweet meat much like a lobster.

Steamed Red Grouper. The most expensive dish, steamed with green onion, ginger, and a bit of soy sauce. Super delicate and mild… awesome.

Kedai Kopi Fatt Kee

This open-air Chinese restaurant is always packed, even when we showed up at 9pm one night for a late dinner. We got winter melon soup (with mushrooms, chicken feet), sauteed sayur manis with garlic (a.k.a. sabah veggie, which is a jungle weed kind of like a cross between broccoli and spinach), and sauteed fish with ginger and onion. Total cost? $8. Love it.

Sri Melaka

This restaurant featured nyongyan or Straits Chinese food. Here’s a dish called Watan Ho, which is flat noodles with whitefish, squid, prawn, egg, bok choy, and a bunch of goo.

A close up of sayur manis, this time with dried shrimps:

And Mee Hai Law – a noodle dish with seafood:

The Kota Kinabalu Night Market is a happening place, featuring fresh groceries, seafood, and tons of hawker stalls with a variety of grilled seafood, satay, and other stuff. Here are some photos:

So, you’ve seen all the food photos – what about drinks? Well, they don’t make for very interesting photos, but the one interesting thing we’ve noticed is that all the drinks are super sugary and there are no diet sodas to be found anywhere. However, Malaysia has some wonderful fruits (it’s a hot, humid tropical climate). Nearly every restaurant or cafe will offer fresh juices – watermelon, mango, pineapple and really fresh coconut water straight from the source!

Kota Kinabalu – the city

For those who are interested in how Kota Kinabalu actually looks, here are some photos:

The fishing wharf at Kota Kinabalu — Fishing wharf

Dried goods at the Central Market — Dried goods (lots of seafood) at the market

Central Market, Kota Kinabalu — Central market, Kota Kinabalu

Buying chicken by the kilo — Buy your chicken by the pound

Finally for the fun photos:

What this is supposed to mean, we don’t know…

And, finally, you just might know the next Supermodel and Man Hunk of Sabah… 😉

For all of our photos in Kota Kinabalu, check out the Flickr slideshow:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tony-chen/sets/72157624447525673/show/

Next up, some photos from our scuba diving in Kota Kinabalu and a visit to the Mari Mari cultural village where we did things like blow darts out of a blow gun, jump on a wooden trampoline, and get mud tattooes.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong: Food Porn, Funky Fashion, and Fun Photos

Post author By lisaandtony
Post date July 19, 2010
4 Comments on Hong Kong: Food Porn, Funky Fashion, and Fun Photos

Let’s be honest, food was probably the thing we were most looking forward to in Hong Kong. The city is a melting pot of different kinds of Asian and western cuisines, some of which isn’t easy to find in the States.

We were fortunate enough to have friends in Hong Kong (thanks Alvin, Mike, Christine, and Erica!) who guided us to great restaurants. Alvin (pictured above), Lisa’s friend from business school, spent a day showing us the essence of Hong Kong city and took us to City Hall Maxim’s Palace dim sum restaurant. We owe Alvin a BIG thank you for showing us around! In fact, he was such a great host, that Lisa was very tempted to pimp him out when 2 Korean tourists approached us as Alvin was explaining the significance of a local landmark. If ever you find yourself in HK, you should look up Alvin!

But let’s get back to the food… Tasty treats were brought out, cart after cart:

"Superior Soup" with Wonton, Shark Fin, and Dried Scallop — "Superior Soup" with Wonton, Dried Scallop, and Shark Fin

Deep fried squid — Deep-fried Squid Tentacles

Fried fish (tasted like fries!) — Some kind of fried fish

This is pretty cool – a dim sum cart with a built in TV demo’ing how to make barbecued pork bun. Mmmmm…

Here’s a prawn stir-fry dish from Lei’s Garden in the IFC Mall:

20100718-P1010923 — Stir-fried Shrimp with Sugar Snap Peas, Honey Button Mushrooms, Red Bell Pepper

On Mike and Erica’s suggestion, we visited Yung Kee in Lan Kwai Fong for some roasted goose and preserved egg. We ended up getting much more with a set dinner for 2:

Hundred Year-Old Egg with Pickled Ginger at Yung Kee Restaurant, Hong Kong — Preserved thousand-year old egg with pickled ginger

Roasted Duck with Sliced Sausage — Roasted goose and sausage slices

Steamed Garupa — Steamed Garoupa (Grouper) with Chinese broccoli and mushrooms

Mango Pudding, Yung Kee Restaurant — Mango Pudding for Dessert

Speaking of Lan Kwai Fong, as part of the beer fest, they had a lot of special promotions, including this massive burger, which was probably mostly for show, but impressive nonetheless. It has to be at LEAST 5 lbs:

Another thing to try is the egg custard/tart. This treat is best had hot when the custard is bordering between jelly and gooey:

Funky Fashion

There is definitely a distinct fashion sense in Hong Kong. The young hipsters seem to prefer 70s style glasses and threads (not yet 80s like in the states), but there are a couple of other standouts. Here’s cougar fashion in Hong Kong – yes, it attracts a lot of attention and something tells me that’s what she wants:

Here’s the equivalent, but 50 years younger. Not sure who she’s influenced by, but this girl likes to match her spongy pink high tops with her pink tote.

Fun Photos

Here are some fun photos I took in Hong Kong. This little girl was having a blast at the Toy Story 3 promotion in the mall:

Here’s a Disney knockoff product we found in the Ladies Market. “but he hac on outside his pants!!” – what the…? “hac” probably should be “had”, but the whole thing still doesn’t make sense, does it?

This photo is called “Seeing eye to eye” for obvious reasons…

Here’s Lisa pretending to be Asian. Not bad, not bad.

I liked this shot of a building in Central:

Last but not least, this was seen in the Temple Street night market – a “Sexy Shrilling Lady”? Who buys this stuff?!? and behind that a “Shrilling Dolphin”? Panda anyone?

Hope you enjoyed the pics. For all of our Hong Kong photos, check out the slideshow on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tony-chen/sets/72157624537062572/show/

Hong Kong

Hong Kong: Crowds, Consumption, and Cuisine

Post author By lisaandtony
Post date July 16, 2010
2 Comments on Hong Kong: Crowds, Consumption, and Cuisine

Total Miles Traveled: 29,002

Ask Lisa what she thinks about Hong Kong. (Lisa: I love Hong Kong!!)

For those who haven’t been, Hong Kong is a bit like New York but in Asia – it’s a melting pot of people from Asia and the western world. You can find many different types of cuisine including delicious Asian food, high-end shopping featuring all of the top brands you’ve heard of (and ones you haven’t), nd its super crowded – every square inch of land that can support a building is claimed, and it’s unusual to find a building less than 20 stories tall. In fact, over the years, Hong Kong has expanded, but not up the steep hillsides it’s built on – it’s expanded in to the water, yes, the water, on artificial (aka reclaimed) land. No worries about earthquakes here though, there are none. Phew, right?

To start, take a look at the view from Victoria’s peak, a required (and worthwhile) tourist stop for a visit to Hong Kong.

So when we asked ourselves how do we describe Hong Kong? We came up with a few words: crowds, consumption, and cuisine.

Maybe it was because we were there on a weekend and everyone was out and about, but there are a TON of people in Hong Kong. I guess since homes are so small, it just feels good to get out, much like it works in New York. Here’s the crush of people going in and out of the Times Square Building in Causeway Bay.

Here are some shots that give you an idea of how big and how crowded some of the shopping centers were – shop till you drop baby! Just about every brand you know is in every mall. How this is sustainable, I have no idea. Sorry Hong Kong friends, it feels like a bubble just waiting to burst to the lay visitor.

You don’t have to be shopping to find a crowd though. On Sundays in the Central business district, you’ll find crowds of (mostly) Filipino women sitting in groups on the floor anywhere there is shade provided by the concrete jungle. During the week, they help Hong Kong families cook and clean and on the weekends, this is the way they relax. Below is a photo of women sitting in the middle of what is normally a busy street on a weekday, taking advantage of every inch of shade available and the natural breeze cause by the gap in between the tall buildings.

Fortunately, even though Hong Kong is a crowded city, the public transportation system is awesome, modern and efficient (one of the reasons why Lisa is in love with HK.) In fact, they have what might be the world’s longest escalator that carries people up the hill in to a residential area called the “Mid Levels”. Streets with bars, restaurants, and stores intersperse each escalator segment which makes for fun exploration.

And if shopping during the day wasn’t enough, there’s the Temple Street night market where you can find knockoff brands like “Praga” and “Goach” and straight-up (bad) counterfeits of D&G and Jimmy Choo.

Then, to grab a drink, you head over to Lan Kwai Fong (pictured below) or SoHo to hang out and mix with the locals as well as ex-pats, of which there are many. Here’s a beerfest celebration:

Next up, we’ll get to the food and other fun photos — sorry you’re just going to have to wait!

For now, good night from Hong Kong:

Hong Kong

The L&T’s Big Adventure Season 2: Asia

Post author By lisaandtony
Post date July 15, 2010
No Comments on The L&T’s Big Adventure Season 2: Asia

And we’re off again! Today, we’re flying to Hong Kong to begin the second – and longest leg – of our adventure, through Asia.

Here are a couple of pics that we secretly snapped (shh!) upon takeoff from LAX – Cathay Pacific installed a frontal view camera below the plane behind the wheel well. Neato.

For those of you who are cruising by our travel blog for the first time, welcome! You can catch up on our whereabouts by diving in and out of some of what we’ve done to date – here are some bookmarks in chronological order :

Now that you’re caught up, here’s what we are planning for the next couple of months. After Hong Kong, we’ll be exploring Malaysia from the east to the west, starting in Kota Kinabalu on the island of Borneo, then south to north on peninsular Malaysia crossing over in to Thailand.

Most of these travels will be new to us and very different from what we’ve seen so far. We’ll be relying mostly on English and a bit of Mandarin. It will be hot and humid with loads of mosquitoes, BUT, there will be beautiful beaches and delicious (and odd) food.

Anyway, we welcome you to follow along, send us a note from time to time, or look us up on Skype (tony_d_chen or leastpond). We’d love to hear what’s going on with you!

Stay tuned to hear about our time in Hong Kong!

U.S.

San Diego in July

Total Miles Traveled: 21,655

After a few weeks in Houston, we visited Ommy and Dudley, Lisa’s parents, in Encinitas, north of San Diego, just in time for several birthdays – Ommy and Dudley both have July birthdays and then of course, there was July 4th. Here’s Ommy with her birthday cake!

We went to the Del Mar Fair to see the fireworks (above) where I got a chance to use my new camera remote control. It lets you capture interesting images (some call it painting with light) – the one below is a bungee ride, where a pod goes up and down between the two poles and rotates. You can’t see the pod here, only the lights on the pod itself at various times in the ride.

We also celebrated with Kim, Kraig and their kids, where we tried out the Argentine empanadas recipe we learned in Buenos Aires. Here’s the filling… mmmm…

Here are the kids rolling out the dough:

And after they wrapped up the filling, here’s the final product. They actually tasted pretty good despite removing a lot of fat from the recipe. Makes us kind of wonder how bad the empanadas we had in Argentina were. heh heh.

And the trip to San Diego would not be complete without the requisite puppy photos. Mambo’s tearing up a sing-a-long birthday card for Ommy – one of his favorite activities.

And here’s Cha Cha posing for a pic

U.S.

The Texas Hill Country and Fredericksburg

Post author By lisaandtony
Post date June 22, 2010
2 Comments on The Texas Hill Country and Fredericksburg

Total Miles Traveled: 20,355

After having dinner with our friend Bryan at Perla’s on South Congress in Austin, we headed out the next day to check out Lake Travis (above) and had lunch at Iguana Grill. We could see this place getting busy, especially with the bands that play there on weekends. There are lots of beautiful houses out there on Lake Travis. We saw several water skiers and jet skis so we can imagine it’s a great weekend destination.

The Texas Hill Country and the Texas Wine Trail

The Texas Hill Country is a name given to the area west of Austin and San Antonio, characterized by rolling hills and a more laid back, small town, country way of living (or at least that was our impression).

One of the attractions in the area is wine. Yes, wine. You probably didn’t know this, but there are 24 wineries in the central Texas region, producing all kinds of varietals. Here’s a look at the Windrose winery a few miles out of Fredericksburg.

So, what was our impression of Texas wines? Well, we only tried four places (Windrose, Becker, Torre di Pietra, and Grape Creek), but we still STRONGLY prefer California wines, probably because we’re used to them and prefer their taste. While the reds didn’t suit our taste, the whites are not half bad. Maybe some white varietals do better in that climate? Maybe it was just really hot and the cold whites cooled us down? We don’t know for sure.

If we were to pick one winery that we liked the best, it would probably be Grape Creek Vineyards. They’re the oldest winery in the area, having been there for over 20 years, and their whites tasted the best in our opinion.

The River Road Ranch Resort, Fredericksburg, Texas

One of the best surprises in the Texas Hill Country was the River Road Ranch Resort – the B&B we stayed in for a night. We found out about the place through Tripadvisor and we’re glad we booked with them (if you want to book, try contacting them directly to save on 3rd party booking fees).

The proprietors have transformed their land in to what looks like an old western town, complete with gas station, general store, feed store, and grain silo. There are antiques abound and the whole place looks like you’re on a movie set or on some ride at Disneyland. Very well done!

Here’s our room for the night – the “Feed Mill” on the right.

And here’s what it looks like on the inside – old fashioned, but with modern amenities like a flat screen TV, sound system, A/C, microwaves, a two person hot tub!, etc.

Lisa liked this sign in the kitchen -so we had to take a picture… the only thing is, I’m not rich. Doh.

Here’s an old school ice box which is now storage for cleaning supplies and an old telephone attached to the wall.

Here are some shots from the owner’s workshop. He loves antiques and restoring old cars and other things.

There’s a lot of clutter everywhere, but it all just “works” to create the atmosphere. Some of the stuff is actually usable though – here’s the wood shop:

We wouldn’t be in Texas if you didn’t see a Texas longhorn cow roaming around:

In fact, the owners have rescued a lot of animals which are all domesticated and roam the grounds freely. So, it’s sort of a petting zoo in addition to B&B – would be great for kids to visit. Here’s Lisa feeding the “mama llama”.

Here’s the dog named “Boots” who followed us around everywhere on the ranch. She was the runt of the litter who was rescued by the owners.

Here’s the baby llama named Mae:

A few lambs…

… and donkeys that came up to the cart, nudging me for food…

A horse named “Patches”:

Tony made some friends while riding around in the cart …

Fredericksburg

Downtown Fredericksburg is lined with restaurants and antique and art shops – great for those who are looking for rustic or kitcsh home furnishings.

We stopped at Rathskeller for lunch – it’s a restaurant in the basement of an old converted hospital.

Outside of town, there were peach stands alongside the road everywhere. If you’re here in summer, you have to pick up some fresh peaches – delicious.

So, that was our trip to the Texas Hill Country. We returned back to Houston for a few more days, and then we’re off to San Diego to visit Lisa’s folks.

Here’s the link to see all the photos from the trip:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tony-chen/sets/72157624410816586/show/

U.S.

San Antonio’s River Walk

Total Miles Traveled: 20,017

San Antonio is best known (at least to Tony) for the Alamo (pictured above), site of a historic battle for freedom from Mexico, and the River Walk (below), which is a planned commercial area in downtown featuring a canal lined with restaurants, bars, shops, hotels, apartments and nicely landscaped shady areas.

Check this out, a restaurant called “Dolores del Rio”, translated “Pains of the River”, featuring Italian food, jazz music… hmmm… and belly dancing? Such an odd combination we almost have to go next time we’re in town.

It’s really a nice relaxing place to visit for an afternoon. We grabbed a Corona by the river while watching people stroll by.

Next, we head to Austin where we meet up with our friend Bryan and then check out Lake Travis before heading out to the Texas Hill Country for Texas wines and some R&R.

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