Posts Tagged With: tourist

Day 12 Vietnam: Hue

Posted on July 7, 2024 by Mel

The little kids here are obsessed with B and it’s hilarious. They all wave and say hello and then every now and then we get a brave one who comes over and wants to talk to him. They are way less interested in me.

Our new guide (Mr Hung) agreed to a sleep in today before we were off to explore the ancient architecture Hue is known for. We visited the Imperial Citadel in Hue. Our wandering (in absolutely insane heat and humidity) included the Flag Tower, Ngo Mon Gate, Nine Dynastic Urns, Nine Holy Cannons, Thai Hoa Palace and Forbidden Purple City (Tu Cam Thanh). It’s a large area to explore and really interesting – the history of the kings and the French occupation is particularly fascinating. It is also quite different to what we have seen elsewhere in Vietnam! You will notice I look a bit damp in some of the pictures…I literally dumped a bottle of water over my head to try and regulate my temperature 😂 it didn’t work haha.

We also took a dragon boat upstream on the Perfume River to the Thien Mu Pagoda (means the “Heavenly Lady”) which was built lt in 1601. Thien Mu Pagoda is one of the oldest religious buildings in the country.

We came back to the hotel a bit earlier than planned as I have very swollen and puffy feet currently. Poor me. I did manage to make it across the road to have some roast pork rice noodles for $2.50 AUD though!

From here, we had a free afternoon/evening. After resting my feet a bit more we went off to explore Hue at night! Our hotel is very central so we walked 10 mins away to the Trang Tien bridge which was designed and built by Gustave Eiffel in 1899.

From here we walked another few minutes to the start of walking street. We followed a restaurant suggestion from both the guide and hotel staff to try out Madame Thu which was really tasty. B got to knock another Hue specialty off the list with Bun Bo Hue. He also got stalked by a school group of 5-6 year olds who desperately wanted to be his best friend 😂

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Day 3: Vietnam – Ho Chi Minh City / Saigon Walking Street Food Tour

Posted on June 28, 2024 by Mel

Today we had another day mostly to ourselves so more pool time for me as tourist adventuring starts tomorrow. We were recommended to eat at Den Long restaurant by our local guide which is a short walk from the hotel.

We had rice paper rolls, beef spicy noodle soup and some delicious fruit drinks! Well worth a visit.

In the evening we went on a street food tour! We chose one which was a walking one as I’m not confident at all on the back of a motorbike. We went with Street Food Man who comes highly recommended both online and by people we know https://streetfoodman.com/private-street-food-evening-walking-tour-in-ho-chi-minh-city. The cost is quite high for Vietnamese food at $49 USDpp but you’re paying for the experience and guide as well.

Our local guide picked us up at 5:30pm at our hotel by Grab car. We started our food adventure in a non-tourist district tasting ‘Bánh Xèo” and “Bánh Khọt” – The Central, and South’s Rice Pancake with a lot of fresh Vietnamese vegetables and herbs.

We then walked along a street known for its barbecue seafood vendors and headed to a local-favorite restaurant to taste the best “Bò Lá Lốt” (Beef in Wild Betel Leaves). 

We then walked down alleys of food in the heart of street food district (district 3) and sample a tasty “Bột Chiên”, Pan – Fried Rice Cakes with egg and spring onions which is cooked by a local chef with over 25 years experience We also tried sugar cane juice mixed with a little orange – delicious!

We also had to try the tasty Banh Mi – Saigon Baguette!

We kept walking into the centre of district 3 where Nguyen Thien Thuat is – the old appartments now home to dozens of famous Vietnamese street food vendors. On the corner of Seafood alley, we sat with locals and had delicious BBQ seafood (I am allergic to prawns, so some of ours was replaced by BBQ meat)…our menu here was scallops, beef noodles and chicken wings We also tried homemade Forest Banana Sticky Rice Wine which is brewed in a clay pot by Street Food Man owner Vinny and is 40% alcohol!

We finished off the street food walking tour at the night flower market by enjoying an amazing dessert of icecream and folding down the petals of a lotus flower to get it to bloom.

Our local guide then took a Grab car back to our accommodation with us to ensure we got home safely around 9:30pm. We paid in cash at the end and made sure to tip the guide as well – so $49 USD each for the tour and an extra $10 USD to the guide.

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Phuket Days 1- 3: Poolside room, day trip with driver and food glorious food

Posted on November 15, 2023 by Mel

Since we have been here quite a few times now I’m consolidating my posts. There’s also only so many photos of me relaxing I can share haha. I will say this has been a well earned trip after an extremely busy year!

Day 1 and 2: travel, eat, pool!

We did a 6am flight from Perth this time via Singapore which was a lot better than the 1am one. Our 4hr Changi stopover was spent at the rooftop pool in terminal 1 airside (follow signs for transit hotel) which was lovely. Costs $27 SGD to enter but a really good way to spend a few hours on a longer stopover. We only brought carry on this trip (one bag life!) so just made sure we had a dry bag to put weather bathers in after a swim – they give you a towel.

We arrived in Phuket at 5:15pm local time and our pre booked Phuket Shuttle transfer had us at the hotel by 7pm. We have once again stayed at Burasari in Patong due to it hitting everything we want in a relaxing trip: pool, close to the beach, walkable to many food markets and they make great drinks. This time I spent a bit more and got a pool access room though with private entry point. Aaaaaaaah bliss.

Day 1 dinner was at Chino Yard which is a 2 min walk away facing the beach. We had pad Thai and a pineapple smoothie.

Day 2 was spent doing relaxing Patong Beach things. Sleeping in. Eating the included buffet breakfast. Swimming. Poolside reading. Food. Drinks. Dinner was at the attached restaurant to the hotel (Kantok) as they have a buffet, charcoal grill and Thai dancing on Friday nights.

Day 3 started with breakfast where I have made friends with a Deaf server at the hotel named Suu…and she gave us sign names! Sign names are a big deal in the Deaf community and are not something you just make up, someone who is Deaf has to give it to you. So we both now have one! Mine is an M/E mix in thai sign language and then an L. Bs is the Thai sign for bread haha…amazing because our niece calls him Uncle Bread-Bread.

On Day 3 we booked a 4hr half day trip with Phuket Day Trip. This meant we had a private driver and were able to work with them to build an itinerary of where we wanted to visit which was all sorted out via whatsapp. I spent ages researching this because I didn’t want a group driving tour and there are certain things I wanted to avoid – island trips are out due to Bs motion sickness and I won’t engage with any of the unethical animal programs. I knew I wanted to see a few things (the big Buddha, promthep viewpoint) but let the driver make some other suggestions as well. I specifically chose this company as the driver was also a guide – I read a lot reviews where they were only a driver and people were left to their own devices.

We started with Big Buddha. This was about an hour drive from Patong and the roads are nuts, I was very nauseous by the end. You also drive past Tiger park and an elephant camp where there is a baby elephant on display – I found it distressing so just a heads up.

We then went to Wat Chalong temple which is beautiful and learnt some history about the monks.

After this we stopped at 2 view points on the way back – promthep cape and Karon viewpoint. Both had wonderful views of different areas of the coastline.

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Perth, WA: The Bell Tower

Posted on January 2, 2022 by Mel

Well – it’s been awhile! Long story short Covid 19 has obviously put a stop to pretty much all interstate and international travel. In the midst of border closures and changing quarantine requirements across Australia in 2021 we moved back to Perth (from the ACT) and have settled back here permanently. Hooray! We also lost one of our beloved furry family member Jet to cancer and later adopted a new furry baby named Sasha (pictured below).

On to the touristy blog post….for Christmas in 2021, Bs nana gave us tickets to visit the bell tower in Perth. She particularly wanted us to visit the Anzac Bell which has a lot of significance to her. i had never seen the bell as it was only installed in 2018 and I do think it’s kinda cool she was there the day they installed it and got to give it a hug and have photos with it.

For those who don’t know what the bell tower is….it’s basically a giant tower filled with bells which was built by the government when I was in primary school. I haven’t been to visit it since my first year of high school when entry used to be free! So more than twenty years ago now.

More info here: https://www.thebelltower.com.au

The bell tower is located on the recently rebuilt Elizabeth quay area (right in the middle) which is pretty fly looking these days. We enjoyed a drink and a little wander along the river before heading in with our prepaid $10 general entry tickets. Masks are mandatory here at the moment so as you can see, we were all masked up.

The bell tower has 6 levels. We walked up the stairs but there is a small lift. A few of the levels have some interesting info about bells, time and the tower to read and learn.

We walked up each level and spent some time on the observation deck at the top.

Not my best photo ever! It was 40C and I was struggling in the heat

The Anzac bell only rings at a specific time (midday) on 4 days of the week. We moved on to level 4 about 10 mins beforehand to get a good spot. It rang for around 1 min and it was impressive to watch.

After visiting the bell tower (which took an hour in total) we walked about a kilometre up the road and had Tony Roma’s for lunch. Yum!

Things to be aware of:

  • There is a cost to enter starting from $10 and going up to $50 ish for tours
  • We went on a day it wasn’t busy, I can imagine it gets quite crowded in there and holy crap was it hot! Worth being aware of before you go
  • The bells only ring at certain times on certain days, check the website before visiting
  • There are lots of places to eat, have a drink and sit on the river nearby
Categories: perth, western australia | Tags: , , | 2 Comments

Japan 2020 day 8: day trip to Mt Fuji, Hakone and Lake Ashii

Posted on January 13, 2020 by Mel

Today we went on a pre-booked day trip to Mt Fuji and surround with Viator. I did look into doing this on our own but without a car it’s almost impossible to do. This is the link to the specific tour we took: https://www.viator.com/tours/Tokyo/Mt-Fuji-Lake-Ashi-and-Bullet-Train-Day-Trip-from-Tokyo/d334-2142TYO_F800_F820. Make sure to read the terms and conditions carefully – if weather is shit, it still goes ahead and you will see NOTHING. We were very lucky we fluked good weather.

We used the metro to make our way to the Ginza pick up which was easy to find. We were picked up early and it turned out very awkwardly there was another person with the exact same first and last name as me – that caused a lot of confusion. We hopped on a 40 seater bus and did a few more pick ups before heading to our first stop – Mt Fuji.

Our bus was mostly Americans with some French and a few other nationalities thrown in. Usually I avoid Viator tours for this reason – the travellers on these sorts of things can be very entitled. This group was pretty good though. Our guide was Yabe-San and he did a great job explaining local history and telling us about the area we were driving through.

After about 2.5hrs driving from Tokyo we arrived at Mount Fuji fourth station. There was hardly any traffic going out of Tokyo it up the mountain as today was a government holiday – we paid the return price of that on the way out though!! We couldn’t go up to the highest accessible point by vehicle (fifth station) as it had snowed and the roads weren’t clear. We hopped out here for half an hour and looked at the gorgeous view of the southern alps. I also appropriated a rock….now I have one from Mt Vesuvius and Mt Fuji for my collection!

From here we drove for another hour (lots of bus time on this trip but we were prepared for that) to a Kawagachi lakeside lunch. It was a traditional hot pot style and it was really good, I was happy I paid a bit extra for it to be included.

We then drove for another hour (yep, lots of bus time haha) to go on a Lake Ashi boat cruise. This was only a short cruise of 15 mins but it was really pretty and it got us to the base station for the ropeway.

At Mount Komagatake ropeway we climbed into a cable car and everyone squished in like little sardines. I picked the wrong side so didn’t get a view of Mt Fuji going up.

Once we arrived at the top we realised the fog and clouds had started to come in and unfortunately this meant we couldn’t see Mt Fuji from the look out! Noooooo. Time for cute selfies instead.

We traipsed around a bit at the top and then instead of going up to the shrine, we elected to be first in line to come back down the ropeway to try and get good shots of Mt Fuji that way. Success!

Yabe-san then told us it would be 40 mins to the Odaware Shinkansen station where they dropped us to get a 40 min bullet train back into Tokyo rather than spending 2+ hrs on the bus. Unfortunately 40 mins turned into 90mins as the traffic coming down the mountain was super busy. We eventually got back into Tokyo at 7pm and then had dinner at the same place as last night because the ramen was just so freaking good

Viator trip rating: 3.5/5 the service was excellent but there is SO MUCH driving and you are so rushed in some parts but then in others your wandering around a gift shop for 45 mins. If you want to see Mt Fuji and you can manage 6-7hrs on a bus or train with minimal effort….it’s a winner. I did a lot of research on this tour as I was determined to get out there on my own and it really is just about impossible without a vehicle.

Steps today: only 2382! Lots of sitting on my ass haha

Japanese food eaten: hot pot, Sashimi, katsu sardines, pickles, ramen, revolting sour lollies, pocky

Categories: Japan Snow Trip | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

Woohoo, Phuket booked for Jan 2019

Posted on September 10, 2018 by Mel

We are going to Phuket in Jan 2019 just before school goes back! Super excited to have a week of relaxation after the stress that will be family Christmas ❤️

We will be staying in a mood suite at the Burasari Resort which looks something like the pics below. Needless to say, having my own jacuzzi has me ridiculous levels of happy.

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Fiji Day 3: adventures around the western side of the island!

Posted on July 10, 2018 by Mel

Today was a great adventuring day which started very early. We are our complimentary breakfast and then headed out on a half day trip with Valentine’s Tours (booked through Viator). The tour collection for us was at 8am and then we headed to the Sri Siva Subramaniya temple, which is the largest Hindu temple in Nadi. I had to wear a sarong (so did B) and we had to be barefoot, no head coverings and no photos were allowed inside.

After the temple, we went to a tourist store in Nadi (I bought all my Australian school students Fiji pencils) and then on to visit the local fruit and veg market. I loved the COLOURS that we could see there! It all looked so tasty.

From the market, we went to visit a local school where we dropped off some donations of books, pencils, writing paper etc and the kindy kids sung “twinkle twinkle little star” for us. It was a bit cute.

After the school visit it was off to a traditional village named Viseisei (the first official Fijian village, estimated to have been settled over 3500 years ago) where we had a tour and learnt about traditional village life. I found this bit a little uncomfortable…while I respect local customs and culture, it is quite an oppressive society for women to live in. B really enjoyed learning all the history stuff and checking out the chiefs house though.

After the village visit we trekked further out for the Garden of the Sleeping Giant which is basically a formerly private garden owned by a famous TV star (I think it was the guy who played Perry Mason?) and is now a popular tourist attraction with over 2000 orchid species present.

While the sheer range of flowers was cool, I’m not sure if I would have gone there on my own without a tour.

From the gardens we went to my FAVOURITE part of the day trip – the mud bath! Now, I had done a lot of reading for this beforehand so was able to prep B for it so there would be no surprises. If you decide to visit the Sabeto Mud Baths (which we highly recommend!) you need to be prepared that this is owned and operated by villagers. It is not a fancy day spa.

Basically – you follow these steps:

  1. Arrive, pay entry fee if not on a tour (around $20 FJD + another $5 FJD if you need to hire a towel)
  2. Put your bathers on. Even if you’re a bigger lass like me, you will want to go in a bikini or for guys shirtless.
  3. The mud has been collected from near the source pool and is in a bucket. You slather it on.
  4. You wash it off in the mud pool. This was the hardest part for me as I have sensory issues and the pool of the mud bath is sponge like and muddy. I had to mentally prep myself a fair bit beforehand to be able to step in!
  5. You go into the thermal springs and laze around. It’s glorious.
  6. There are 2 men’s showers and 2 women’s but both run cold water. You will want to rinse your bathers out in full (so much mud!!) so bring a change of clothing including undies

From the mud baths we returned to the resort for another quick shower and a change of clothes before taking part in a Sunset Dinner Cruise on Captain Cook Cruises.

The sunset was spectacular and the food, drinks and dancing were also good. Due to the fact our hotel was a fair way out than everyone else’s – we got a private transfer instead of the same bus! Score! Patrick the platypus had a great time on the cruise and drank way too many cocktails.

Categories: Fiji | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Things that Mel does in Japanese supermarkets….

Posted on January 5, 2014 by Mel

Last week I discovered these amazingly cute and tasty biscuits. So today we went and bought more and I wore my matching leggings to show them to you guys hehe.

B was a bit annoyed he couldn’t eat them while I took photos 🙂

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