little green field book

Honolulu | Back to Waikiki Beach

Posted on May 2, 2016

Three Countries, nine hours, and a 17 hour layover later, I finally arrived in Honolulu. Since I sent my carry-on ahead with Sly, and since I was literally the only person on my flight who was not Chinese, I sailed right through immigration and customs. As I passed from one side of immigration to the other, the person stamping my passport said, “welcome home,” and I felt like my heart was going to burst for the tiniest of moments. After living overseas those words held even more meaning. I don’t think of Hawaii as my “home” in the states, but I definitely felt a feeling of ‘home’ being back in the U.S. for the first time in nearly eight months.

Now, to find Sly without the aid of any sort of communication device.

The Layover | Beijing in Less than 24 hours

Posted on April 21, 2016

Welcome to the beginning of Hawaii week(s)! I’m just getting around to blogging about our trip to Hawaii last year. But before arriving in Hawaii I had a looooonnng layover in Beijing. 17 hours to give or take. At that point, who’s counting?

Sly took a different, direct (work) flight to Oahu which meant that I flew solo, on a potentially sketchy Chinese airline. It was the cheapest flight that I could find at the time, given that it was peak summer season.

Since airports are kind of like mini cities these days, the idea of a long layover didn’t sound too off-putting. I initially planned to wait it out at the airport, maybe find a lounge, read a book, grab a bite to eat, and keep it simple. In the process of researching airport amenities at PEK (and discovering that there weren’t many), I realized that I could obtain a FREE 72 hour transit visa compared to the ridiculous $140 visa fee to visit mainland China.

A free visa?

My wheels began to turn.

DAEGU KOREA

Daegu | Suseong Lake Date Night

Posted on April 14, 2016

Korea in the spring. Thai food. Short sleeves and sandals. A gentle stroll around the lake. A bench to watch the sun as it slipped behind the mountains. The sound of a street busker who set up a small concert at the edge of the lake, strumming his guitar and singing his heart out. The last of the blossoms clinging to branches and swirling around us like tiny butterflies. Sipping on local craft beers in an indoor/outdoor bar. Continue Reading

DAEGU FOOD

Daegu Eats | Thai Food at Ruen Thai

Posted on April 13, 2016

tofu pad thai

I don’t think we ordered enough

I don’t know how many times we have driven by Ruen Thai, located beside nearby Suseong Lake, recently. “Thai and Vietnamese Food?” We would exclaim, “I wonder if it’s any good.” Every single time. We finally decided to stop wondering and give it a try.

The best Thai food I have ever eaten was from a food cart temporarily stationed in a convenience store parking lot off the side of a dusty road in Thailand. The lady-vendor made one thing and one thing only: papaya salad. For less than a dollar we ordered some freshly made salad, packed for us to go in a plastic sandwich bag, and hurried back to our car where we greedily ate every last morsel. I cannot even begin to describe how delicious, how fresh, how subtly complex, and how flavorful that plastic bag of salad tasted.

In general I feel like the best Asian food originates from a food stand, a night market, or hunched over a low table while squatting on a plastic red stool. Ruen Thai is anything but. From the outside, the restaurant looked a bit fancy and modern, the antithesis of what I expected a legit Thai restaurant to look like. Or at least an authentic Thai restaurant.

JAPAN KYOTO

Sakura in Japan | Cherry Blossoms in Kyoto

Posted on April 12, 2016

I’m going a bit all over the place with posts from Japan. I have a bunch of other posts I want to tackle before I get to blogging about our most recent trip, but before the seasons changed yet again I wanted to post a few cherry blossom photos taken in Japan.

Sakura, or cherry blossoms, in Japan was one of those bucket list sort of things that I don’t think I ever really planned on checking. As much as I love blossoms, I do not enjoy crowds of tourists taking photos of said blossoms. We didn’t plan our trip with the expectation of viewing blossoms. It was still early Spring and blossoms tend to bloom towards the end of March/early April. I guess we got lucky. After a few wonderfully warm days of sunny short-sleeves-and-sandals sort of weather the cherry blossoms came to life.

When we first arrived in Kyoto only a few trees had buds. By the time we left, pretty much every single one began to burst with fluffy pink balls. Continue Reading

DAEGU FOOD

DAEGU EATS | Japanese Ramen at Asara Ichidai (아사라 이찌다이)

Posted on April 7, 2016

Just above our local grocery store and below a towering high-rise apartment building are a cropping of restaurants, shops, and cafes practically hidden from plain view. After a morning of grocery shopping we usually pop upstairs to one of the local restaurants for a bite to eat. One place in particular always catches our eye: Asara Ichidai, a Japanese style ramen restaurant.

I don’t know how many times we walked by the unassuming and somewhat hidden Asara Ichidai, peering into the windows out of curiosity, mentioning to the other that we should try it one of these days. To be honest, we weren’t exactly optimistic about the ramen. For one, it’s hard to find decent bowl of ramen outside of Japan (or outside of major cities with Japanese ramen chains) and second, Korean restaurants have a tendency to “Korean-ize” foreign cuisine so that it’s more suited to Korean palates.

One cold and rainy early afternoon we walked upstairs in search of coffee and instead found ourselves in Asara Ichidai, anxiously awaiting two hot, steaming bowls of ramen.

FOOD MEMENTOS

Birthday Twins

Posted on April 5, 2016

Well, they aren’t really birthday twins in the sense that they weren’t born on the same day. Birth-month Twins, then?

We kept saying “Birthday Twins’ anyway, and was the main reason why we were all in Japan for a good amount of time. I met up with my sister earlier in the month to celebrate her bday and to embark on a sisters trip around the Kansai region of Japan. Sly, whose birthday was at the end of March, wasn’t able to fly out until later, at the very tail end of my sister’s trip. At least there was a little bit of overlap.

To celebrate the March birthday boy/girl, we splurged on a fancy Matsusaka beef dinner at Matsuzakagyu Yakiniku M in Osaka.

considered as the art of meat…gets its tasty reputation and virgin status from the special treatment the cattle is given… For several years all cattle is managed with the highest degree of quality and care…all cows are fed beer to create a healthy appetite, and given a body massage with a mixture of shochu. This particular treatment creates a smooth blood circulation throughout the body of our cows.”

In short, probably the best slices of beef we have ever eaten.

After the main course, our hostess surprised us with a slice of Mille Crêpe cake for the “Birthday Twins.” The cake, like the rest of the meal, was delicious.

JAPAN TRAVEL

While in Japan

Posted on March 31, 2016

photo by my sister, via GIPHY

I had grand plans before leaving for Japan for a couple weeks, even going so far as to attempt to “schedule posts” while I was away, but as you may have noticed, that never happened. I lost track of time somewhere in between Sly leaving for another work trip and me finishing up the last-minute planning of our trip. And then there was the last-minute packing made that much more difficult because I knew we would be doing both city and outdoors-y stuff, and because early spring weather would be iffy at best.

Long story short, the to-do list of unchecked items leaked into my trip to Japan where I planned on writing/sketching in my journal (when will I ever give up on this dream?), writing postcards AND sending them from Japan (instead of hoarding them and sending them from Korea months later), finishing my book club book, and most laughable, updating my blog with real-time posts.

None of the above happened.

What did happen: lots (LOTS) of walking, on average 10 miles a day, late-night visits to the supermarket and 7-11, eating pretty much everything in sight, temples and shrines and even more temples and shrines, watching bad Japanese TV, cherry blossoms(!), nonstop getting lost, taking the wrong train, and losing things, and a whole lot of sister time. Sigh.

Some day I hope to blog all about it. Sooner rather than later.

FOOD SEOUL

Seoul | Palsaek Samgyeopsal (팔색삼겹살) Pork Belly BBQ

Posted on March 8, 2016

A tip on finding restaurants in Korea via other people’s somewhat outdated blog posts: Make sure to double-check said restaurant is still in existence before spending an hour roaming around in the freezing cold, growing increasingly pissy as hunger sets in, while hopelessly searching for a place that has long since closed its doors.

For once we had a plan. We found a restaurant that we both agreed on and we even had directions, which we followed to a T. How could we go wrong? We walked confidently to our desired location — a spicy chicken restaurant — passing up landmark after landmark and mentally checking them off in our heads. Finally we arrived at the restaurant…. except … where was it?

How many times in our lives were we going to reenact the exact same scene of getting lost trying to find a restaurant in Korea?

Older Posts

Newer Posts

PyeongChang 2018 | We Went to the Olympics!

Snapshots of January

Khao Lak | Thai Street Food

Khao Lak | MaMa’s Greeting Bar & Restaurant

Khao Lak | Bang Niang, Outdoor Market, & Tropical Fruit

Khao Lak | Hiking Trail to Ton Chong Fa Waterfall

Khao Lak | Ao Thong Beach Bungalows

Phuket | Weekend Night Market (Naka Market)

Phuket | Monkey Cave Temple | Wat Tham Suwan Khuha

Phuket | Phang Nga Bay & James Bond Island