Thailand 2012: Day 2

My favorite soft serve! Hokkaido Greentea yum!
Woke up and grabbed breakfast from Emporium buffet downstairs then explored Emporium mall a bit. Honestly, after you finish checking out all the tourist places in Thailand, there are only a few things to do here: Eat, Shop, massage!
I like that unlike American malls which tend to all be kind of the same, the malls in Thailand are very different from each others. Emporium feels more like the usual US malls with big brand name stores. There are so many cute things at B-trend in the department stores. Cute things from Korea, japan, US, and thailand. Right next to it, there is an art supply section. I was going crazy haha. The art that I see makes me want to draw, but I’d get too tired to draw by the time I get back to my room at night. I really enjoy exploring the food court though :p



Pailin and I went to meet up with Kaew and Gem at "OK Shabu" for lunch. It’s very different than "MK suki". I really like the flavor of the sauce too. It feels more like japanese Shabu shabu with more vegetables, than Thai sukiyaki. They also had this amazing Watermelon Lychee blended drink. Now that's a good combination.

Then we went to "Bann Ice" for shaved ice that is kind of like "Block Heads" in the USA. I like that they had Sala flavor, but I think the texture of the ice cream is still much better at "Blockheads" at Sawtelle in So Cal. The girls enjoying their shaved ice. Dinner was at a Japanese Yakiniku place with my sister and her husband. It was also super good.


They give you a bib.
This is how you grill!
Hmm I've been eating a lot of Japanese food. By the way, when I was a kid living in Thailand, there were Banana Milk by Foremost that was sooooo good. After that, I've never tried any good banana milk again. Quick made them in the U.S., but it tasted terrible. It was waay too sweet.

That said, this banana milk from hokkaido milk is actually quite good. Hokkaido Banana Milk but this Banana Milk from the Grocery store on the top floor of Emporium mall is even better! Korean Banana Milk

Thailand 2012: Day 1

First stop! Thai boat noodles from "Doong Deng Dai"
My sister's poor driver was waiting for me for 2 hours though. Anyways, I finally got to my sister's place around 4 am. Then napped for about an hour and a half. By 6am every one was up to go "Tak Baht" which is kind of like a morning offering to the monks. Thai monks walk bare feet early in the morning for their food for the day. People would line up in the morning to give them offerings including food, flowers, etc.

After that, I ate... and ate... and ate... OMG!!! I had Yentafo (pink noodle soup), Kaomungai (Hainanese chicken rice), and a lot of other stuff lol. Lunch was at "Doong Deng Dai" which is a Thai noodle house. The name is an alliteration to something bouncy which probably refers to the meatballs. They have australian imported Beef which was super tasty.
Doong Deng Dai Spicy!! (already)
Then, we stopped by Swenson for Icecream. I love Mango Icecream from Swenson, but they only have that during the summer. boo~

Swenson
After that, I went to check in at my hotel, and took a shower. I needed that. Check out my super cool room at Emporium Suite which is directly connected to the BTS sky train. My room


Dinner was at a japanese restaurant called Miyabi. I think the Uni and the Amaebi here tasted great. I usually don’t even like amaebi, but this place had very very good amaebi :). They had fresh wasabi! Something that's quite hard to get in the US. Yummy!
Back to the room, figured out how to call mom and got facetime to work. Then flopped.

Thailand 2012: Boarding!

Thai money always reminds me of Monopoly money. So colorful!
Decided on a last minute trip to Thailand. Well, my mom's friend who is also very dear to me contacted us saying that he will be in Thailand. He lives in Italy and usually whenever we go to Italy, we would stay at his place. He's really one of the most awesome person that I know. So my task for this trip is to take care of his group and pick up my left over plush toys for my shop.

I took EVA air for the first time this time. It's a Taiwanese airline and it is quite nice. Although since I just came from James' wedding, I've been hearing chinese for days now lol. I sat next to two young guys from US that were going to Taiwan. One lives in Arcadia and the other lives in Torrance. They were very friendly and we chatted a bit. It took about 14 hours to Taiwan. I didn't watch that many movies this time. I watched Frankenweeny, Paranorman, ooh Samurai X (Kenshin movie.. i'm such a nerd), and another Japanese movie about a dog that I thought would be like Marley and Me but it was kinda bad lol. Then I switch plane there to go to Thailand. On the new plane, I sat near an elder lady. She is Thai and was so talkative. She kept talking about her daughter. It's quite cute that she's so excited that she's about to go see her daughter. She kept saying how beautiful her daughter is and that she was an idol, but now is an air hostess and so many people were hitting on her lol. Mothers are so cute, right? She showed me pictures and her daughter is very very pretty indeed. She was a wheelchair passenger, so when we landed, I walked with her out. She told me she owns a Thai restaurant in orange county and that I should go visit her sometimes :).

Onward to my Thailand trip! woo hoo~ I can't wait to see my little Nephew <3
Reef & Polo

Caravaggio @ LACMA

crazy monkeys artists
After our oil painting class, Kevin had a brilliant idea that we all should go to LACMA for the Caravaggio show. Javiar, Jose, and Amina also joined us. Javiar and Jose just came from Spain a month ago and they will only be here for 3 months. It's also my first time hanging out with Amina outside of class. I'm so glad that we all could go together. There were so many people since it's the first day of the show. I think Kevin was a little sad because he thought there would be more Caravaggio artworks, but it seems like most of the artworks were by his students or the other classical artists that he'd inspired. The artworks were still beautiful though. I also learnt that Caravaggio's first name is Michelangelo! I didn't know that before XD. It's been a while that I got to hang out with a big group of people, so it was a lot of fun too. Thanks to Kevin! yay! As usual, we weren't allowed to take most of the pictures inside. There were some exceptions, but of course the "no photo" signs were next to the ones I really like :(.
There were also some other areas, but we ran out of time. In the american art section, I thought this was cool. I want one! lol
very cool drawers design.