tea-smoked.

cold-hearted city chick.

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Best ending to a super fun weekend with my fave girl gang in Da Nang: bánh bèo (steamed rice cakes with chopped dried shrimp and special shrimp sauce with a generous serving of chilli fish sauce) and Vietnamese iced milk coffee for breakfast before everyone took me to the airport to say our goodbyes. See you again very very soon, fave girl gang!

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Afternoon tea at Ava Chocolate & Tea Room in Da Nang with my fave Hội Bạn Gái Sống Ảo - a Vietnamese phrase that indicates a group of girls who spend a lot of time curating and editing their lives for social media, of which I’m the Creative Director. :> My colleagues also gave me a beautiful scrapbook as a goodbye present on my last day. Thank you for the memories, bestest colleagues ever. We shall meet again. :>

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Beach camping for our team-building trip. Vietnam’s Central Coast is a magical place sometimes.

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Last team-building camping trip. The thing about working at a beach resort is you just do your team-building on the home turf, no need to go anywhere. Team-building included: an Amazing Race around the resort (my team was so good we won first place!), climbing across a rock outcrop, a basket boat race across the sea to reach the neighbouring beach, and a duck-catching competition. By the evening, we were sprawled all over the beach unable to move. I got the tent closest to the waters and had a most memorable night of star-gazing and tropical downpours. Woke up the next morning, so glad we hadn’t got swept away by the sea. But then I made the mistake of joining the beach yoga session, and every single muscle on my body hurt for the next 3 days. I’ll miss you, central coastline.

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Part 2 of the forgotten Saigon Cafe Tour from 2 months ago.

Katinat: best location best balcony view on Dong Khoi street. I love its blue tone and how casual it is. Perfect place for people watching.

Ollie Cafe: new fave hideout for a pot of tea and some quiet downtime. It’s so tiny and hidden away that you’ll more than often have the whole place/room to yourself, making it feel like your own living room. I loved the chic light blue cushions.

The Morning Cafe: also so hidden down a tiny alley in an old apartment building, but surprisingly popular. Sadly there’s nothing that really stands out.

Hurom Juice Cafe: here for the delish melon bingsu, because sometimes it’s fun to be a teenage couple on an after-school date.

Gong Cha: new milk tea obsession - Alisan Gong Cha tea with salted milk foam and white pearls, 70% sugar 50% ice.

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I’ve just realised I completely forgot to post about my Saigon cafe tour... 2 months ago. On a fine May day, I finally managed to climb my way up the infamous hipster cafe central - the old apartment building at 42 Nguyen Hue.

The Maker Concept - 3rd floor. Airy, bright open space. Good for a quick shopping break with friends or just working on your own.

Saigon Ơi - 5th floor. A bit gimmicky but cute. Too overrun by the selfie crowd for any kind of peace though.

Buihaus - 7th floor. Tiny but quiet with a great balcony. 

I did walk around and peek into all the other cafes, but in conclusion, I don’t think any of them would make a repeat on my list. The building has a great concentration of cafes, yes, but they lack a certain flair and the kind of calm I seek in my favourite haunts. Perhaps the problem is they all feel a bit too young for me.

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Chilling and waiting for sunset at An Bang Beach Bar. Who needs the Greek islands when you have this?

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For something a little different in my latest Hoi An weekend getaway, we tried out An Bang Beach Bungalows. The beautiful spacious house, made from stone and wood, was a very short walk from An Bang beach with tons of cool beach bars and restaurants around. We were lucky to have the whole house to ourselves during our stay, and we had so much fun eating all the luscious mangoes from the garden and playing drinking games on the balcony late into the summer night. The housekeeper lady was super nice, letting us help ourselves to all the coconuts in the garden and making us sumptuous breakfast of cao lầu noodles and bánh mì and iced coffee. It was an amazing summer getaway and I wish it could have gone on longer. Thank you, Hoi An, I’ll miss you. :3

[newyorker]

What if we could all mute our phones on the weekends, let our laptops gather dust during vacation, never again feel a buzzing in our pockets just as the appetizer arrives? Would we? And, if we did, would we be happier?

Lauren Collins, “The French Counterstrike Against Work E-mail” (via newyorker)

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Hoi An Roastery now has 3 branches in old town already, damn. I originally dismissed it as hipster coffee shop catering to Western tourists when it first opened, and it is, but it’s still a good place to get your flat whites and French press if you’re in the mood. The staff are super nice.

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I really wish you all the best for your next adventure. It takes a lot of courage to pass on a dream yet stable job and pursue what your heart is really after. It has been a hectic week for me but seeing your post at places eases my mind. Thank you! :)

Thank you so much! Your words came at such a timely moment, and I’m excited for the open road ahead. I’ve made a lot of questionable life choices over the years, but looking back, I don’t regret any of them. Do the things that scare you the most. :>

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New haunt in town: The Hill Station, Hoi An branch. They have quite a good selection of cheese, charcuterie, and craft beer, including the Pasteur Street Brewing Company IPA. Lovely, quiet place to chill (as it’s a bit far away from old town’s centre). I wish I’d had time to be back in the late afternoon for cocktails and cheese. :c

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Breakfast of bánh mì and tea in the 200-year-old dining room of Vinh Hung Heritage Hotel. This was when I made a huge discovery. When I asked for soy sauce for my scrambled egg and banh mi, the waitress said she’d bring me soy sauce mixed together with chilli sauce. I was a bit ?? but went with it. When I put it on the warm crispy banh mi, my eyes went wide. It’s the Hoi An banh mi’s secret sauce!! I’ve eaten it so many times but never quite grasped what the sauce was. Guys, trust me, try it now. Mix Maggi/soy sauce with sriracha and put it on everything ever. It’s pure liquid gold.

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weekly reads

The History of Pho - Andrea Nguyen

Rice is the dutiful wife you can rely on, we say. Pho is the flirty mistress you slip away to visit.

How ‘Foodie’ Culture Survived The Recession - Matthew Sedacca

Maybe Just Don’t Drink Coffee - Matt Buchanan

How to Rank the Restaurant Rankings - Jay Cheshes

Delusions at the Gastropub - Heather Havrilesky

The Science of Chilling a Drink - Dave Arnold

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Arch Enemies - Megan Garber

If heels can finally be made walkable [...] then that changes their politics. The high heel is a mutable object—it is something that we simply assign meaning to. And if you can take the hobble out of the heel, that in some sense reverses the meaning that hundreds of years worth of history have assigned: heels as symbols, essentially, of a woman’s copious capacity—and, indeed, a woman’s willingness—to bear pain.

How Do We Define Success - Man Repeller

You think you’re doing fine until you come across someone who is doing so much better, and you wonder, “Should I be doing better?”

The Parlance of Pilots & In Flight - Mark Vanhoenacker

There is a sphere of English, too, that sits as simply as air around the whole planet. Planes and words move quickly through it, above all the places where people wake up in the morning and speak Tagalog or Finnish or Hausa without any reason to think of the language above them.

The Existentialism of GPS - Geoff Manaugh

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The room at Vinh Hung Heritage Hotel, Hoi An. I had to walk around very lightly because as an old wooden house, it creaked with every step. :>

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I finally got to try Vinh Hung Heritage Hotel in my latest Hoi An weekend getaway! I’ve always wanted to experience this place because it is unique as the only hotel converted from an old traditional house right in the centre of old town. More than 200 years old, it used to belong to a Chinese merchant, as evident in the style and structure. I loved hanging out on the balcony, watching the old town and the world below drift by.

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Some of my favourite things about Hoi An are the little treats while wandering in old town at night.

Tofu pudding with ginger syrup and coconut milk at a street cart. I noticed a white guy at the hipster coffee shop opposite the street taking picture of the scene/me so I took a photo of him/the coffee shop, too.

Boulevard - the best gelato in Vietnam - now has a tiny branch in Hoi An!! Their rich, decadent salted caramel flavour is a dream. Bonus: the girl at the counter is very cute.

It was too hot to live, so I grabbed a glass of ice cold herbal lemongrass lime tea (decorated with a lovely lotus petal) and retreated to my hotel’s balcony. Don’t miss this delicious refreshing treat when you’re in the old town.

Actually my favourite thing is old town after 10:30pm when most people have gone home and shops have closed for the day. Perfect time to wander the peaceful empty streets and chill with a cool drink at the chic Q Bar.