Planning a trip to Saigon

This idea just came in last minute after we decided to go back to Indonesia. Hubby said maybe we should go to Vietnam. You know..it's like you go to Disneyland, you might as well pay a bit more and check out Disney's California Adventure. It's just in the neighborhood.

But Vietnam is still a very foreign country to us. Luckily it has become a very popular destination among Indonesian tourists. By searching the Jalansutra mailing list at Google groups I found a lot of articles on recent trips to that country. Travel books like Frommer's or Lonely Planet are only useful up to a certain degree. Those places recommended there would most likely be very touristy by now. I took down a few names just for back up while looking for any new recommendation by other travellers online.

Surprisingly Wikitravel has good up to date information on Ho Chi Minh City. (http://wikitravel.org/en/Ho_Chi_Minh_City). Another good resource was http://www.virtualtourist.com/. And for good places to chow I like to check out blogs. Better coverage and more pictures.

We'll only be there for 2 days and 2 nights so I limit the area to be around Saigon aka Ho Chi Minh City. Hubby is not really into doing tourists thing like visiting Cu Chi Tunnel or visit Mekong Delta. To be honest I'm not really into crawling in a tiny space like the tunnel either. So I totally agreed with him on that. But hey..crossing those two spots out, I don't see anything else around that area. For now, I left that option open and see what we can find out when we reached there.

We already got our tickets through Tiger Airways. I roughly know which hotel we wanted to get through Agoda. All I need to do right now is to pack my suitcase.. :)

The Immortals - Evermore

First time I saw this book in Costco and it got me curious. Part of the title said " The Immortals". So not having the continuation of the Twilight series I thought this book could fill in the gap. I'm the cheapo type. I don't buy my book if I could get it from the library. So I did the search and reserve it. While waiting for it, I looked for the reviews on Amazon. It wasn't that good. Most of them mentioned the similarity between The Immortals and The Twilight. That didn't stop me from actually reading it. Because The Twilight series didn't get all 5 stars across the board from the reviewers either. Everybody has their own opinions. Some of them we may not agree at all.

I got my book last Monday and started reading it. The main character is Ever Bloom who is around 17 years old. Her family died in a car accident along with their family dog, Buttercup. She felt guilty because she was convinced that she caused the accident. That the accident won't happen if she didn't whine to her dad to turn around and get her sweater. She then moved to a new school because she had to live with her aunt. One day came a new student, Damen Auguste. Damen can move so fast that it's almost a blur. Hmm..sounds familiar ? Yeah..I couldn't blame the other readers saying there's too much similarity between those two series.

I'm waiting to read the second book. I'm still open to see if for some reason or whatever that might happen in the second book could change my mind at all about this series.

Funny commercial

Funny shiny suds commercial. Watch those bubbles. They're hilarious.

Villa 08- Mountain View

When we called for the lunch price, we were told that it's $16.99. By the time we got there, there was a huge sign : Lunch $9.99, Dinner $14.99. When we entered, the lady there asked us in Mandarin how many people. And then when she knew that we understood Mandarin, she explained to us that if we pay cash, it's going to be $15.99 - $1 discount per person. We agreed on that and we were ushered to our seats. She also told us that they had lobster and turkey today. Awesome !

I passed the first station because they look like all salad. And I saw a bunch people were attacking just one particular dish. Intrigued, I went closer to take a look. Apparently they just took out a new batch of lobster. Looking yummy, I jumped in pushed a few people aside and took a few pieces as well. ha..ha..

The hot and sour soup was actually good. Spicy and tangy. Too bad got too much starch.

I like the dimsum station. They just stacked all the bamboo steamers there and let you pick whatever you want. You basically pick up the whole steamer and stack it on your plate to avoid dripping water. The selection was good too. Shumai, chicken feet, tripe, pork ribs, buns, sticky rice, rice in bamboo wrap, etc.


The dimsum tripe was soo good. I love tripe and its texture. But seriously no MSG ?? Come on, that's a bit stretchy there. Yet as soon as I walked in, I saw this big sign. Look below.
Everything was good. And me and hubby were ready to give them like 3 stars. Very bright stars. Until hubby came back with a plate of desserts and we went through each of them one by one. The yellow tiny cake was very sweet and the color was too bright too NOT be artificial. The round shiny bun actually had something that look like charsiu (barbecue pork). Huh ?? I thought that was bad until I tried the egg custard. Wow..first impression..hmm..it's kinda dry and crispy instead of flaky. But then I swallowed it and I tasted the rancid taste. It's old. Really old.

Ending note : this place is good but stay away from the dessert and you'll be fine.

Villa 08 * 895 Villa StMountain View, CA 94041 * (650) 964-2222
http://www.villa08restaurant.com/

Christmas shopping deals don't start on Black Friday anymore

Not having much to do on Thanksgiving Day, I went and check my emails to see what kind of deals available on my inbox. Having sign up on certain website and also shopped online in the past, I get emails every now and then (or almost one every other day). :)

These are just a few samples of deals I found today :

Just a few points to remember :

- When you shop online, set up an email account just for the purpose of shopping online. So you won't get bombarded with too many emails that you don't want filling up your main email account.

- Check your emails for any deals - don't just delete them.

- Compare deals for almost similar items. Some place may offer discount, some may offer both discount and free shipping. :)

Happy THanksGiVing and HaPpy SHopPing !

Pho Nguyen - Milpitas

Our comfort food for cold day is a bowl of hot noodle soup. Well, actually it's more than just cold day, on any day in fact. ha..ha.. But of course it's always best when it's cold outside. So last Saturday when it was freezing we all lined up at Pho Nguyen to get a table. That's the only time we ever had to wait. I guessed everybody love hot noodle soup on cold day.

I decided on Hu Tieu My Tho and hubby on seafood pho. I'm curious as to the difference between those two. And of course we always like a spring roll (goi cuon) on the side.

Spring roll at Pho Nguyen is actually the biggest we ever had at any pho stores. I think they charged like $4.50 but the spring roll portion is huge. Four full rolls with really decent size prawns. You can see the prawns behind the translucent rice paper wrap. The sauce was also good, thick and not runny with chopped peanuts on top.

It turned out that my hu tieu my tho is almost the same as seafood pho except for slices of pork and a few quail eggs. So hu tieu my tho has prawns, squid, slices of pork, minced pork. While seafood pho has prawns, squid, imitation crab and fish cake.

-Hu tieu my tho-

-Seafood pho with sriracha sauce on top-

- A 'dressed up' hu tieu my tho ready to be slurped-

Pho Nguyen * 275 W Calaveras BlvdMilpitas, CA 95035 * (408) 945-5909

Sonny's Cafe - San Jose

After a long walk on Sunday, we were craving for bowl of noodle soup. Vowing to always look for a new place to slurp noodle soup, I then went on yelp. The chosen business this time was Sonny's Cafe. We jumped in the car and off we went on our adventure.

The location of the business was in a mall on Cottle Road, sharing space with OSH, Baskin Robbins and other businesses. When we walked in, there was only a table occupied. We were seated immediately and I noticed two tables were not cleared yet. As soon as we placed our order, a family of five came in, followed by a family of three.
Our appetizer, goi cuon (spring roll) came out in like ten minutes. Two decent size roll cut into four pieces with peanut sauce on the side. One bite into it I noticed the roll was cold and the bean sprout looked like frozen. It was quite a cold day but I don't think that was the reason. I think the roll was premade earlier and kept in the refrigerator. The rice paper skin was extra thick and chewy to bite. Not good eats.

Not long then our bowl of noodles came. Mine was combination noodle soup with rice noodle, beef meat ball, bits of chicken meat, imitation crab and two prawns. Too bad the fried garlic they put in the soup was burnt. They should probably leave it out since it was burnt. Most customers would rather not have fried garlic then bitter burnt garlic. I ended removing those garlic anyway. The soup was a bit bland, no MSG.

Hubby's bowl was good 'ol pho with rare meat and meat ball (tai bo vien). Too bad the rare meat wasn't rare at all, it tasted a bit dry. Soup was okay with a stronger smell of star anise. After a while, hubby complaint about the soup being too peppery. It takes about half a bowl before the peppery soup started to built up.

The best part was the meat ball. They tasted like home made, just a bit chewy and not much taste of flour. Very homely taste.

The other table seemed to enjoy their sandwich just fine. From what we heard, the other two tables ordered egg roll for appetizer. I guess their egg rolls were more popular. We should have ordered that. If we ever go back there, we'd probably try the sandwiches instead.

Sonny's Cafe * 5643 Cottle Rd San Jose, CA 95123 * (408) 281-7899