Villa Bali

Heard so much about this place called Villa Bali and finally I'm going to go and take a look at the place.

Let's see...they have an indoor and outdoor section. And they have individual huts where you have to spend a certain amount before occupying one. As there are only 3 of us and the only option given by the waitress was indoor, there isn't much choice.

So we settled for a spot in the air-conditioned area, seats are pretty comfy although i hoped for more sofa-like chairs (the bigger tables have huge comfy-looking sofas and cushions as well)

We ordered this white wine from Chile - Limari Valley. It was lovely and sweet aftertaste. We were served this tapioca snack which has a strong lard taste in it. Yucks.

The overall atmosphere of the place is pretty cosy and nice.

Rude Neighbour

I had an unpleasant encounter yesterday and just wanted to get it off my chest. Both hubby and I returned home from my in-law's place last night and after parking our car at the basement of our place, we walked towards the door to the lift.

There was this mother with her son who was walking to the same block as us. I went in first and waited for Hubby while Hubby held the door for them to come in. The mother didn't even say thank you. Never mind....they stood in front of the lift and never even push the button for the lift so I had to push the button myself.

When the lift opened, they just stood at the back of the lift. Hubby then asked which floor they are going and pushed the button for them. Again, no thank you. I was getting really pissed.

Then when we were out of the lift before them, they also didn't want to push the close button but just stood there and waited for the lift to close.

What the @*^*(@*(&%#)%*().&#^&%^&6!!!

I know one should never expect any returns for kindness rendered but to ignore kindness given is simply uncalled for.

Congrats Jeri

I was glad to be part of this wonderful event as we witnessed the exchange of vows between the lovely couple. Frankly, it's the first time I saw the groom (seen his pic a couple of years ago but everyone was so small in that pic) but I knew Jeri will be well-taken care of.

Hubby and I were talking about the wedding later in the day and realised we both felt exactly the same way about Jeri's wedding. We were sharing about how long we have known her (about 11 years I think). Her whimsical ways caught my attention then in NUS where we were studying on the benches outside the Terminal Rooms, going for dinner together when we were mugging for exams and I remembered she was always so jovial.

We had fun times together even after graduation...going on picnics and even clubbing together.

Through the years we have seen her "grow" and have witnessed the things and relationships that she had gone through. And finally yesterday, we seen her moving on to another stage of her life. To me, I felt as if I am marrying my daughter...felt so happy and proud for her.

I'm truly happy for you, girl. May you always be surrounded with love.

(No pics as I realised I looked terrible in the pics I took with my camera phone...hahahaha)

Most Embarassing Moment

I had my most embarassing moment last evening. I was in a shop trying on a new dress. The zip refused to go down when I tried to remove the dress. So I was like struggling inside for a long while before I smsed my hubby to come in to the fitting room. He tried hard and still can't get it to move so eventually he called in the sales person.

She can't get it to move as well and called for another sales person to help. So there I was half naked with 2 sales ladies trying to unzip me. The thing was the zip did not catch on any part of the dress but it just refused to move.

In the end, the sales lady had to destroy the dress by cutting the part with the zip. I felt so bad that they had to destroy the dress that I bought the dress ( a new one ). And I was the last customer in the shop. They closed at 10pm and I was there till 10.25pm. They had very good service attitude though, I didn't want to try on the other dress as it was already late but the lady said it's ok and even helped me with the new dress. Thumbs up for the service which is ever so needed in the retail business of Singapore.

Last but not least, the shop is called Club Marc at Vivocity. Cheers for the good service.

Carnivore Night Out

Had a sudden craving for meat so decided to head down to the Carnivore Brazilian restaurant in VivoCity. Ala carte menu only available from 6pm - 7pm so we had to settle for the buffet dinner which costed us $34+++ per pax. Wanted to have Japanese food actually but Hubby going for Jap dinner this evening with his colleagues so decided to have meat instead..heehee

The salad buffet was not bad, like the spicy eggplant, the pasta and vegetables. We were waiting so long for the meat to appear that we had to ask the waiter to get the "meat" man to come..hahaha.

First up: chicken hearts...not my favourite but I tried. It tasted better if I ate it with other vegs. Second was roast beef...a lot of fats but it was tender. Then came another beef (I can't catch what the guy was saying), it's not bad too. Then it was lamb which I didn't like. Then chicken followed by some pineapple, then chicken breast in bacon, tenderloin in bacon and lastly we had beef ribs.

It was nice but it was too filling ....

New Baby....

Was told that my friend had just given birth to a baby boy this morning and visited her during lunch just now.

It was an emergency caesarean as the blood sugar in my friend's body is quite high and the doctor was worried it might affect the baby. Thank God the baby is healthy and well. The baby weighs 2.88kg and is so small. I was so worried when I was carrying him just now.

Chocolate Fondue...Yum Yum

I have been saying I wanted to try the chocolate fondue from Haagen Dazs for quite some time and finally did it last evening.

We went to the outlet at Anchor Point and the place was empty. I was really happy when the fondue came as I have always like chocolates...heehee.

We didn't finish everything as we were really bloated and full mid-way through the thing and taking more will cause diminishing returns...but it was a good experience although I felt that it will be better for 3 people to share the fondue.

Groovy Baby....

Had a really rushed dinner with a friend on Friday night. Why did I say it was rushed? Because we literally met up for dinner and say byes after that. I was quite pissed about it actually. Initially, we wanted to meet for movie and some drinks.

Then it was changed to dinner only....then the venue changed...then he said he can't make it when I reached our meeting place...then he said he can make it and then he chose the place for dinner without asking for my opinion and then he finished his dinner by gobbling down his food and then he just walked off in the direction towards his place and said good bye.

How rude was that? I don't think I will want to go out with him anymore. He only looked for me when he fell out of love everytime. The only difference this time is he is currently attached.Because his girlfriend is in Sydney now, he wanted to rush back and chat with her online.

Enough said about the pathetic guy...so I went to meet hubby after the dinner and it turned out that they were arranging to go to St. James and I offered to join them.Hahaha.

Went home..took a shower and change of clothes and we are ready to hit the town....

We reached there about 11.40pm and 2 other friends who were supposed to join us were no where to be found. It turned out one of the guys had to wait till his daughter fell asleep before coming out. I can't remember when they finally turned up.

Anyway, we decided to go to Movida but there was a long queue.Clement (one of the guys) went and signed up for a membership so we could get in faster. We went around several places before settling in Movida.

My friend, Alex met a friend of his there and we managed to share the table with them...hee

So it was dancing and drinking and more dancing and more drinking. Deryk (another friend) used to drink but stopped after having alcohol poison some time back so I think he had fruit punch or something.

As the night went past and more drinking, Alex became really high and started babbling. It was so funny. We eventually left the place around 5am and it took us quite a while to get to the carpark as we had never been there at this time of the night (or should I say at this time of the day?)

When we got into the car, Alex was like "concussed"...we handed him a plastic bag just in case he needed to puke. Hubby asked me to drive as he felt a little bit giddy as well. So I had to bring both the guys back home.

By the time we reached home, it was already about 6am. Took a shower and fell asleep shortly after. What a night. Yah, I saw my friend, David there as well. Nice to see you, David...it's been more than 2 years since I last saw him.

LAYS Potato Chips - Mori Seaweed

Accidentally stumbled upon this particular flavour of Lays Potato Chips in Krabi 7-eleven. There was a promotion going on with 2 packets selling for 49baht which is about S$2.13 for 2 packs.

And I brought back 6 packets and my friend brought back 10 packets. I tried searching for this flavour in Singapore but couldn't find it.

I really like this flavour as it tasted different from the rest with the tiny weeny bits of seaweed on the chips. It wasn't as salty as most potato chips.

Hopefully Lays will bring it in to Singapore.

IT Show 2007

Went to the IT show last evening and the place was packed as usual.

Saw a lot of people carrying the Sony Paperbags with VAIO inside....makes me wonder if there is any cheap sale going on as I didn't go to the Sony booth.

Bought a 2GB Kingston SD card for S$34.50 and a 2GB imation swivel cap thumbdrive for S$38.90.

The printers are quite cheap too....saw one epson all-in-1 printer which has scan-copy-print function, a 2" LCD screen and built-in card reader for only S$178. It was sold out when we enquired about it.

Anyway, IT shows/fairs looked the same to me every year but the strange thing is I will still go every year..hahaha.

Happy Women's Day

For all you lovely ladies out there....

Wishing you a day as special just like you!

Be proud to be a woman!

People who think multi-tasking is done by computers alone...

Certainly Need to meet a Women like you!

Here's wishing you a day that's just like you...

Simply WOW!

Hot and Sunny Krabi

An exchange of msn chat with my friend a few weeks back and we made a decision to go to Krabi...

Booked the tigerairways flight to Krabi on a promotion, 40% off if you pay by Visa. So we made the booking for 3 - me, my sister and my JC friend.

I fell sick 2 days prior to the trip and was so worried that I can't get to go. My temperature was soaring to 38.2deg celsius. Thank God the temperature went down on Thursday morning.

My flight was at 7.30am and I set my alarm clock at 5.15am, in the end I only woke up at 5.40am. Reached the airport at 6.30am and checked in....and guess what??? I took the wrong passport. I took my hubby's passport!!!!

I quickly asked my hubby who was on the way back to take my camera (was a real sotong, I charged my camera's battery but forgot to bring it out) to take my passport.

The counter had closed for Krabi and I was so worried that we couldn't get to Krabi...Finally, hubby came back with the passport at 7.05am and I quickly checked in and went through the immigration. We ran all the way to the plane and were the last ones to board the plane.

What a start to our vacation....

It was quite a shock to when we arrived in Krabi airport, there was practically nothing there. No taxi stand and we had to book a taxi from the counter for 600baht. That was pretty expensive for a 25mins drive to our Hotel.

We stayed in Vogue Pranang Bay Resort and Spa. The service at the Hotel was pretty good. We arrived around 9am at the hotel and checked in but the room won't be ready till 2.30pm so we decided to head out to the beach.

We opened our luggage, took our bikinis out and changed into more comfortable clothings and took a beach towel each and off we went to the beach. No...we stopped to have some food at McDonald's which is just next door to our Hotel.

The beach is pretty disappointing..it's dirty and the sand is coarse. We tried to find some spot under a tree and laid our towels on the sand. Saw a lot of nude babes walking and sun-bathing. I dared not sleep under the tree as I saw a leaf full of big red ants dangling on the tree above me.

After lying there for a few hours, we decided to try this massage place near the beach. It was pretty cheap...200baht for oil massage. And you get to lie under a shelter facing the sea...cool.

After the massage, we walked back to the Hotel and our luggage were already in the room. The room was pretty alright and there was a balcony of quite a good size as well.

We took shower and laid around the room watching some movie on HBO (it's an old movie and my sister said she watched it before...she seemed to watch a lot of TV...hahahaha). We decided to go to the Krabi town to take a look and the hotel's transport costed us 1000baht for to and fro. Super duper expensive but we were too lazy to walk out to look for other transport.

Krabi Town was a huge disappointment. There's only a shopping center there, a night market with nothing much and no restaurants in sight. We eventually ended up eating the noodle soup from a street vendor. It's pretty tasty, I must say. We saw a queue for pancakes and decided to give it a try. It was superb. Very much like prata with bananas inside and topped with sugar, condensed milk and choco fudge. We ordered another 3 more, first one came and then it was a long wait, we decided to give up and walked away.

We only spent like at most 1.5 hours at the town and went back to the Hotel. Tried calling the hotel to get in touch with the driver from a public phone. Didn't know how to operate the public phones and had to ask a passer-by for help.

So that pretty much conclude our first day at Krabi. Looking forward to the next day where we will be going island hopping.

Started the next day early around 7am as the transport will be picking us up at 8.30am to the pier. Breakfast was pretty normal with nothing to shout about.

Reached the pier about 8.50am and was told we will only depart at 9am so we decided to visit the loo. The toilet was right at the back of a shop and it was damn dirty and smelly.

On board our speed boat for the island transfer, we had a swedish couple (I think they just got married recently), a finnish guy, a mature couple from bangkok, a group of thai girls and the 3 of us. We passed by some really nice limestone caves and there was this place called the viking cave where there was a viking inside but now it's been used to collect the bird's nest.

We stopped at a bay for some snokerlling. 3 of us were the first to jump into the water but my sister was so frightened that she held on to my hand so tight. Her life-jacket was too big for her so she felt insecure with the life-jacket. I had to bring her back up on to the boat as she kept screaming and refused to move around at all.

Saw a couple of parrot fishes and some other small fishes. The corals weren't colourful though. We stopped by the Maya Bay where the film "The Beach" was shot. It was a really nice beach but very small stretch of sand only. We saw this really really cute caucasian baby girl.

Next we stopped at Phi Phi Island for lunch and the guide told us about the 10m wave that swept off his bar on the island. The next snokerlling site was pretty much the same as the first one so we didn't go down. Thank God we didn't as one of the thai gal got her foot stunk by a sea urchin. I took a look at the sea and saw a lot of sea urchins.
The guide tried to remove the pricks from her foot but every one of them broke. Then they tried to pee to get rid of the toxins. In the end, they docked the boat near one of the bay and brought her off the boat (don't know what they did but the rest of us waited on the boat). She came back a short while later and she seemed to feel better.

Then is off to our final destination in the open sea. This is the best spot as there are more fishes and deeper. I think I saw NEMO...heeheee. The day ended about 4.30pm and we went back to the hotel, tired, burnt but satisfied.

After shower, we walked to other side of the beach and had dinner in this first and oldest thai chinese restaurant on the beach. Dinner was pretty good although the portion was a bit small for each dish. We ordered tom yum goong, fried sotong, fried vegetables, chicken, fried rice with crab meat and ao nang fried rice with drinks for about 500baht. Doesn't taste too bad.

Initially we wanted to go kayaking the next day but we were so tired that we decided to opt for a less strenous activity and booked ourselves on an elephant trekking trail.

The elephant we sat on is 41 years old already and they retired at the age of 50. Along the way, some of the other elephants were quite naughty, stopping to drink water, eat the leaves etc.

There was one that even stopped to pee and poo. We took turns sitting on the elephant itself and it was pretty fun. The elephant was really tame and docile. We bought bananas at the end of the trail and fed them to the elephant we sat on.

After the trekking, we went to visit one limestone cave, dated 37,000 - 40,000 years ago. Nothing much in the cave actually. We were brought back to our Hotel and we went in search of a place for lunch. We had lunch in one of the thai restaurant, the food was more expensive and tasted ok only.

Then it was more shopping...I bought some t-shirts and shorts for me and hubby. Dinner was at this place called Eden's and we had seafood basket which consisted of 2 flower crabs (which were tiny), one whole fish, mussels, 3 king prawns and one giant squid. This seafood basket costed us 1600baht and frankly, without the accompanying dipping sauce, it won't taste nice. Tried looking for cab along the street to the airport tomorrow as the hotel charged us 800baht. We managed to find one for 390baht (but we ended up giving him 400baht at the airport) And that concludes our third day in Krabi. And we exhausted all our thai baht and had to exchange for more thai baht over there.

We decided to take it easy on our last day, decided to go for massage after breakfast. Took a leisure walk along the streets to the beach where the massage place is. My friend decided to have a 2 hour session so my sister and I went off first after the massage and walked back to the Hotel for a dip at the pool. When we reached the pool, it was so hot and full of people that we decided to just laze around back in the hotel room.

After checking out, we went over to the restaurant opposite the hotel and had lunch. This was by far the best lunch we had. The portion was big and the food tasted good. It was just opposite our Hotel and we didn't even bother to go there and try on the first day. After lunch, we went to the McDonald's for some air-conditioning and bought some nuggets to eat later before boarding the plane.

So it's bye bye Krabi and back to Singapore.