Where to eat in Da Nang, Vietnam

Da Nang is a very nice place to be, unfortunately it was monsoon season when I went so I was forced to stay indoors. This gave me the perfect opportunity to discover different eateries around Da Nang and I'm really excited to share them with you. 

Quirky Café - Cong Caphe

A popular café in town that is communist themed, a must-go if you are planning to visit Da Nang. Decorated with army-green hues and bright red floral prints, Cong Caphe really creates the communist, dingy atmosphere, very unique. Don’t forgot to try their coconut cream coffee, it’s really refreshing!

Address: 96-98 Bạch Đằng, Hải Châu 1, Q. Hải Châu, Đà Nẵng 550000, Vietnam

Authentic local cuisine - Ba Duong

We found this place on TripAdvisor as it claimed to have the best Bahn Xeo (sizzling crepe). Bahn Xeo is basically a rice crepe with pork, shrimps, bean sprouts added to it. You eat it by creating a wrap with Vietnamese rice paper, lettuce, pork skewers, and other vegetables/herbs. You then dip it in this fragrant satay-like sauce and just eat the whole thing in one bite. It’s kind of a mess to assemble but, trust me, it’s worth the hassle (the lady had to demonstrate it once for us). Personally, the Bahn Xeo itself didn’t really stand out for me, but the pork skewers combined with the herbs and sauce was THE BOMB. There are plenty of Bahn Xeo places around town, we just happened to go to this one, so you can have a look around.

Address: 280/23 Hoàng Diệu, Bình Hiên, Q. Hải Châu, Đà Nẵng 550000, Vietnam

Quality food and great atmosphere - Madame Lan

A proper restaurant you can put on your list if you want to try authentic Vietnamese food but is a bit skeptical about eating at hawker stalls. It’s nicely decorated and has a wide range of food choices (you know you won’t have an upset stomach after this). Although it's a proper restaurant, prices are still considerably low. I was a bit more adventurous with my choices (with hygiene not being an issue) and discovered my love for Banh It Tran (sticky rice dumplings). It’s chewy and has so much flavour from the minced pork and beans inside… and that garlic-infused oil/sauce on top. Mmmmm, I’m salivating just thinking about it because, to this day, I have not seen it in any Vietnamese restaurants. You have to give this a try!

Address: 4 Bạch Đằng, Thạch Thang, Hải Châu, Thạch Thang Hải Châu Đà Nẵng 550000, Vietnam

A nice place to chillax - Golem Coffee Da Nang

This was actually an unexpected find. The entrance is a narrow alley, which leads into a half-open space that feels like your own backyard. We weren’t hungry at the time so just ordered coffee. The café takes on a rustic, industrial vibe, repurposing wooden doors as coffee tables and armchairs, barrows as stools and benches into hanging chairs. It’s definitely a good place to chat and just appreciate the creativity put into the café.

Address: 27 Trần Quốc Toản, Hải Châu 1, Hải Châu, Đà Nẵng 550000, Vietnam

How can you ‘pho-get’ - Pho Stall

You have to stop by a pho stall and try Pho in Vietnam.  See how it’s different from pho in your own country. The pho place I went to had pho with a raw egg in it and both raw and cooked beef. It was a good experience.

Address: Q. Hải Châu, 62 Ngô Gia Tự, Q. Hải Châu, Đà Nẵng, Vietnam

I'm planning to go travel back to Da Nang and Hoi An again (not during monsoon season), let me know if you have any recommendations, I would love to try!

Hope you are well.

Love,

Vivien

Melbourne getaway

Greetings from Australia! Coming into the Brisbane winters, there aren’t a lot of rainy days but luckily there’s always Melbourne winters! I was fortunate to be down at Melbourne recently on an overcast and slightly dreary weekend. Perfect for shopping. 

We made our way to the Chadstone Shopping Centre located at Malvern East, Victoria; one of the biggest shopping centres in Australia to peruse the local goods. 

First stop: the Aldi Australia Special Buys section for a pair of $17 gumboots (to be featured in another post). We then marvelled our way through the rest of the shopping centre, feeling like we were in a futuristic city completely cut off from earth. We passed by the Legoland Discovery Centre, Zara, Uniqlo and stopped by at the newly renovated Apple Store, complete with it’s own mini forest. Chadstone Shopping Centre is a full day, so be prepared ladies. 

Sadly, I purchased nothing further as I had a 7kg limit to my flight home.

The next day we headed to the South Melbourne Market located at the corner of Coventry and Cecil Streets, South Melbourne, to satisfy my deep love of markets. We found pastries galore including things I had never seen before like laksa croissants and pandan croissants. 

South Melbourne Market is great place to go eat some breakfast (proceed to the Food Hall), to buy fresh produce and to just check out random knick-knacks The South Melbourne Market is open Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday and the best way to get there from the city is to catch the tram (via tram line 1 from Stop 10 at Bourke Street Mall/Swanston Street, towards Melbourne Beach). 

(For those interested getting around in Melbourne and exploring further places, I’ll do a blog post dedicated to this later.)

Shortly after we headed back to Melbourne CBD (on the same tram line), to walk around Melbourne Central where I had been awaiting eagerly for the renowned lobster ramen. That’s right, lobster ramen. To be found at Unabara Lobster & Oyster Bar. You will never be short of great food in Melbourne. 

As to whether I’d recommend it to others, I would say that I much preferred the complimentary dessert (which comes free when you review the restaurant on Zomata and write 140 characters). 

Hoping those in balmy, warmer weathers are nicely refreshed and those who are stuck in cooler weathers (like me) are snuggled up. 

Love from J. 

Weekend Explorer

Living in the city can sometimes be quite overwhelming, especially when I have to travel daily on crowded public transport. It's very common to want to stay home and just chill on my day-offs. Fortunately, a friend came back to Hong Kong and we met up on a date. She had always been the one that would convince me to venture out and be spontaneous. 

So under her influence, we decided to go for a picnic at Repulse Bay, a beach that had recently been developed into the new 'it' place. To my surprise, it was a lot more stylish and hip than I had expected. There was a new mall, The Pulse, with the daintiest restaurants, cafes and cupcake shops you would ever had imagined. 

Italy 2015 || VLOG || Voyage Diaries

I have to stop repeating myself here, but it really has been a LONG while (6 months) since my last post.  A lot had happened in my life in the past 6 months. I am now officially done with university (Yay for me!). I had been busy with academic work and life in general, and I feel like I can never create entertaining material when there is so much at stake. Do you guys feel that way? When your brain feels like its stuffed with fluff (feels like nothing, but takes up space for some reason)?

Anyhow, now that I am a free soul again *squeak*, I took the chance to travel around Europe before diving into the workforce. I will be updating you constantly on the blog with my travelling experiences (and I mean it, so stay tuned). 

The first stop of my voyage was the long anticipated ITALIA!!! (the word choice was deliberate) I had seen so many people head to Italy across Instagram, blogs, and Facebook; the scenery and architecture fascinated me. So when I actually stood there (in front of the colosseum, Cinque Terre, duomo, you name it!), I was truly mesmerised. I simply could not believe that I was physically looking at the places I had screenshotted for my bucket list (with no exaggeration). 

Since this trip had been so highly anticipated, I decided to commemorate this journey in motion, hoping to capture every moment of my experience (which was fairly hard, and may have failed slightly). With much efforts, I present to you, MY FIRST VLOG. 

To be very honest, I was skeptical in making vlogs, but I then I thought 'Hey, a video's the most straightforward way to show what I saw'. So here it is...

I hope you enjoy the video :) I put a lot of effort into this (treated it as a baby) and so I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. 

Thé Series Vol. 1: Earl Grey Chiffon Cake

For volume 1 of Thé Series, I thought I would do some baking with tea. Incorporating tea leaves or infusing tea flavours into pastries and cakes had been very popular in recent years. I've had Matcha green tea cakes, earl grey cookies etc. 

I'm not exactly a baker, as a matter of fact, I have never baked alone before (have always baked with friends), but was in the mood to bake so I decided to make use of some of the Earl Grey tea bags. I used the recipe from the Happy Home Baking blog. The recipe was quite simple (I specifically chose this recipe without using cream of tartar and other stuff I didn't have), and was quite easy to follow. I poured the tea leaves/ powder directly into the batter (as the recipe called for), but other recipes used Earl Grey infused milk. I would imagine that actual tea leaves would give a stronger tea taste, so decided to go with this.