Gong Xi Fa Cai - CNY 2016!

Happy Chinese New Year everyone! It's the Fire Monkey year and I don't know what that means. :P 

Every year, I will google snake's fortune for that year, so if you're a snake, here you go! 

• Master Tsai stated that according to Chinese horoscopes, Snake is in the Fire group and Monkey is in the Metal group. Metal is afraid of Fire. Therefore, Monkey will respect Snake, listen and follow to Snake's requests. 
• Career: got a bit of trouble, but will be worth it in the end. 
• Money: stable income and investment.
• Love: single, will find love (males higher chance than females). Not single, will maintain.
• Health: shit.
• General fortune: buay pai (Eng: not bad). 

Don't know lah, I checked one website only. All Master Tsai say one. 

But I'm very confused lor. So many people shared articles on facebook on zodiac fortune predictions for 2016, and snake's fortune always ranked in the first half. Then I bought 8 days, and snake's fortune is LAST. Walao, so like that which one to believe? 

I think the 8 days one more accurate actually. I bought toto and usually I will match 1 or 2 numbers, but this time I have ZERO matching numbers. Goodness gracious. I don't want to play mahjong already this year!!! 

First celebration was with Kengyang's family. We had dinner at Long Beach (Dempsey). 

I don't know why my face like this. 

But the others nice can liao, so post. 

Chinatown was packed to the brim, as usual. 

Then I fell sick on Chinese New Year Day 1. ZZZ. I woke up with 39+°C fever and I felt like shit the entire day. Needless to say, I didn't leave my room at all that day and so I missed day 1 拜年-ing. 

My mom, Kengyang and I left for Pontianak on Chinese New Year Day 2. I think my popo likes Kengyang so the trip was a great one. The scary thing was my popo's sisters and friends. Once they knew I was visiting with my boyfriend, they kept calling her to check if both of us were at home so that they could come and visit and see him. LOL. Luckily not the full group came. Only about 7 of them came to kaypoh a bit. 

Last photo that I took with my popo and mom before Kengyang and I flew back to Singapore.

The journey back was another adventure. Our itinerary was Pontianak-Jakarta, then Jakarta-Singapore, and we had around 2+ hours of transit time.

1 hour before we boarded the flight to Jakarta, it started raining heavily. Confirm will have flooding type of rain. So the flight was delayed for an hour. Should be okay right? Since our transit time was 2+ hours?

Not really.

Really ah, sometimes when you suay, you just suay all the way.

Boarding time for the next flight to Singapore was 13:55. At 13:15, we were still inside the first airplane. People moved SO SLOWLY. We had to take a bus from the plane to the terminal. Just nice, the first bus was full when it was our turn to board the bus, so okay must wait for the second bus. DAMN SLOW. Don't know waiting for what. zz. At 13:30, we reached the terminal, and we were searching frantically for the Jetstar counter to get our boarding passes. Wah just nice again lah, the Jetstar counter was all the way at the end, and we were all the way at the opposite end. RUN AH RUN!! When we reached the counter, passengers were already queueing up for the next flight. WHO CARES! I cut the queue and immediately talked to the nice Jetstar lady in Bahasa Indonesia. She was very nice, immediately printed our boarding passes for us and directed us to the immigration area. We ran all the way to the boarding gate and made it into the plane at exactly 13:55.

I was so hungry and tired. I knocked out on the plane and had a McDonalds upsized meal at Changi Airport. :D

Ok, back to itinerary in Pontianak. haha. 

My mom brought us to Martha Tilaar Salon Day Spa, and was really very cheap. Kengyang and I both had full body massage and my mom had leg massage, leg waxing, haircut and hair treatment, and total was less than S$90. 

Not dodgy type of massage parlour hor. Legit one. Martha Tilaar is one of the most successful brands in Indonesia. 

Then we visited the new shipping office. I practically grew up in the old office (always there after school doing my homework and watching TV), so I wasn't used to this new office.

But hey! Great view from my uncle's large but empty room.

I was very shocked when I saw Gereja Katedral St. Yoseph. Why renovate until so European-looking?? I used to come here when I was young, and in primary 3, we had Christmas sing-along session here.

Too pretty already.

My popo is very proud of her garden.

We also have mango, papaya, coconut, jambu, rambutan, jackfruit trees, so no need to buy fruits already lah like that!

Food photos! Because how can I go to Pontianak and not take photos of the delicious food??

This is my ultimate favourite Pontianak food - Nyam Kway Teow. I can easily devour 2 packets on my own. SO SO GOOD.

Then, it was my turn to visit Kengyang's relatives in Malaysia! :)

I think his relatives more chill than mine haha. But good lah, they all know where Pontianak is ("oh, kun dian! kun dian!").

Ending this post with this photo. Your eyes will thank me. 

My two favourite Chinese actors. Oh my gosh, how come can so charming and handsome one??? 

I sent this photo to Kengyang via whatsapp, and told him I crushed on these 2 guys for soooo long already. 

His reply:

"Ya, after me." 

Bangkok 2016

Flying out of the country again, just a day into the second week of the new year. I always plan my holidays way ahead of the actual travelling period, but this time, it was on the spur of the moment. He bought the tickets and I booked the accommodation just 2 weeks before. It's something out of the ordinary and I don't think I can do this last-minute thing without getting stressed out in the process. 

But well, yes, it's time for me to venture out to Bangkok with my boyfriend. He has a work thing the week after in Bangkok, so it's good that we're spending some time together first. 

I finally adorned (yeah just let me use this word lah, my skin is in a terrible state now) my face with this pair of shades from Cotton On. Got it for only S$4 during an online sale a long time ago! Whilst digging up this pair, I realised there were many other pairs that were stuck in shades box and never made their way out of my house. I think that's reminiscent of many other such "boxes" in my room. For example, my nailpolish box - I don't even wear nailpolish anymore! I need to start up my nailpolish engine man. How about my exploding wardrobe? I have tried to put aside some items that I want to sell on Carousell, but that's where they have been all this while - on the side. Bah what's wrong with me??

Okay, I will take photos and sell some on Carousell after this post!!

I think the shades looks good on me, no? A good dosage of mei tu xiu xiu was also used to get this photo looking good. What to do~

I bought myself a giant purple donut/doughnut (whichever's your party) cushion. It was S$14 and expensive by Bangkok's standards, but hey it has been very functional, especially when I'm trying to watch Netflix on my phone. So yes to a good buy!

In all the times I've been to Bangkok, I've never dared to eat at the zhi-char stalls by the roadside near Central World. Call me pretentious, but I didn't want to risk a diarrhea on the FIRST night of my vacation. Also, every time I go back to Indonesia and turn into a glutton, I always get tummy problems. I don't blame the food from the roadside stalls, I blame the rabbit food diet that I force myself into in Singapore, making my digestive organs pompous and clean-freaks.

But when Kengyang told me to have dinner there, I just went, "okay, let's go". My brain works strangely sometimes.

He took this photo of me. Very nice right?

And to return the favour, I took this blurry photo of him. I feel very bad, even till now. Taking blurry photos is a no-no and a huge sin in my books and I actually committed the sin. ZZZ.

Luckily he's okay with it. I chose a great great man. :')

Verdict: DAMN SCRUMPTIOUS. Servings were huge and we couldn't finish the tom yum soup. I paid for this dinner (I think it was 700 baht, that's almost 30 dollars!) and I think the girl added some extra bahts into the bill. But whatever lah, the food was good so I was okay with paying a little bit more that stated in the menu.

We lunched at Platinum Mall's food court and it was okay. Good enough to fill our hungry tummies.

This bowl of beef noodle though. It was fire in a bowl. I thought I could eat spicy stuff. I thought wrong. This was just too much. Kengyang didn't know that the actual broth was already freaking spicy, so he added another heap of dried seasoned chilli. Fireworks!

Off to Chatuchak we go! We also went to Union Mall for a good hour (it was one MRT stop away from Chatuchak Park MRT station). I'm officially way too old for these places. I only bought 2 bags for myself. That's all. I should be happy because I didn't spend much, but I wasn't happy because I was there to spend some moolah!

Kengyang had a smashing time though. I think this shopping trip was more fruitful for him. He even got himself a damn good pair of leather Onitsukas! Triple grade A replica of course, but for 750baht?? Great buy indeed and he looked good in them.

I didn't have any luck with footwear though. Not even a pair of slippers to replace my dying Rubi ones.

At least I got to eat my coconut ice cream!

This was also the day I experienced the mighty drying powers of roaccutane. I had layers of concealer and powder on my face, but when I was back in the hotel room (a good 11-12 hours later), I was not oily AT ALL. My gosh.

I'm going to write another post regarding my accutane update when I hit the one-month mark. It's day 16 today and so far the initial breakouts have slowed down and my face is slowly turning into a desert. Flaky skin galore! Not complaining though~

Dinner was at Somtam Nua and it was a great experience, as always. This was my third time dining here and the standard has always been very up there. I hope that persists!

Can you believe that I've never been to the Victory Monument?

So I went!

But that was more of a convenient stopover because the goal was to find this boat noodles shop near the Victory Monument.

We found it and we had SO MANY BOWLS of tiny servings of noodles and fried stuff.

Each bowl was only 12baht, and according to Kengyang, he could finish one bowl in one gulp, so no need to feel guilty about the next photo.

Okay.

What do you do after eating so much noodles?

You eat some more!!

We wanted to just walk around Siam, but I had a sudden recollection that there was an After You cafe in one of the Siam shopping malls, and yeah we ate again. But this was dessert, and you know the thing people say about having separate stomach for desserts? It's a fact.

My boyfriend with a pikachu visor they handed out at the mall's entrance.

Apparently, a Thai cable channel is going to broadcast the latest season of pokemon soon? Or something like that lah, I'm always misinformed about such things.

We went to the train night market on the last night!

This was a funny story.

The group that opened the original train night market opened another branch nearer to the city centre. but I read online that it was a smaller one. So, naturally I wanted to go to the larger one and I've been there before and I liked it. I asked the hotel frontdesk about the taxi situation in getting us to the further, original market, and she said no taxis would start their meter for that and they would quote at least 300 baht because it was so far away.

I was disappointed but we decided to go ahead with our plans. So, we got a taxi just outside of Pratunam market and the taxi driver quoted us 150 baht. Wow? We were pleasantly surprised and got on the taxi.

The taxi driver drove for a good 10-12 minutes and then stopped by the roadside and said we have reached. Both Kengyang and I stared at each other and we thought of the same thing - we have been conned. Some more this taxi driver so aggressive one. When I asked him if this is the train night market location, he kept saying yes and after that he told me very fiercely to get out and that he would show me the way. I got scared already lah, so I just got out and followed him.

Actually, he did bring us to the train night market, but it was the newer branch. LOL.

And to be honest, I really did enjoy my time there! The atmosphere was amazing and the shopping was great too. So, it turned out to be a great night.

Sorry taxi uncle for doubting you!

Getting back to the hotel was also a problem. No taxi wants to go to the Pratunam area for less than 200baht. ZZZ.

A taxi pulled up and it was a woman driver. I told Kengyang that this taxi confirm will bring us back to Pratunam, and I was right. She even started her meter! What a great lady.

Was that a sexist paragraph? Hmmmmm. But she was a really nice lady. She chatted with us (mostly with Kengyang lah because I was really tired and dozing off) and showed us a photo of her son.

That was the end of our vacation. The next day, we headed out to Kengyang's business hotel and then I left for Singapore. Sad face emoji.

Last meal in Bangkok! It was in a cafe near the hotel (called "Buttercup" I think) and wow the food was good. The toast dessert was surprisingly delicious - on par with After You!

For those who are looking for an affordable boutique hotel in Bangkok, you can try Budacco Hotel. We stayed there for 3 nights and we loved it. Not a lush hotel, but the room had everything that we needed and it was very clean. The service was top-notch too!

A great trip with my pikachu-loving boyfriend. Till the next one! :)

Travel Skincare

Someone asked me before not long ago,"What skincare products do you bring when you travel?". So it's time to answer that question now. 

In the past, I don't really care about what I brought because I thought bringing what you normally apply on a daily basis would be sufficient. Super wrong mentality. That was why my skin always looked clogged and dull after every overseas trip. 

My current skincare problem is not acne (can we get an amen!) but clogged pores and bumpy skin texture. I also sometimes get dry patches, especially on areas with acne scars. 

Cleansing

• Makeup removal with Biore makeup wipes. 
• Double cleanse with Avene Cleanance Gel and SKII Gentle Facial Cleanser. I only double cleanse at night. 

Mask

• Wash-off masks: Caudalie Instant Detox Mask, Origins Out of Trouble Mask and Origins Clear Improvement Mask. 
• Sheet masks: Innisfree It's Real Squeeze Masks in Tea Tree and Bija (not in picture, they were all hidden in my luggage).
• I make sure to apply the Instant Detox Mask at least once every 3 days, and then apply both Origin masks (one after another) daily on specific areas. It may seem excessive, but using them daily improves my skin condition instead of drying it out. If I feel like my skin is feeling a little bit thirsty after all these wash-off masks, I will nourish it with a sheet mask. I apply one sheet mask every night before I go to sleep when travelling. 

Toning

• When I was in Copenhagen, I tried out a new toner from my beauty salon. It's called Pink Astringent Lotion and supposedly very good for clogged pores. It did nothing much to my skin. No breakouts and no improvement either. 
• I always make sure to bring a toner because I find that my skin absorbs moisturiser better after toning. 

Treatment

• Alpha-H Liquid Gold. This has been a great discovery! It's not a miracle product, but it's a slowly-but-surely product. I have used this for 3 months and my acne scars have faded significantly. The problem is I seem to always have new scars because I get breakouts once in a while also HAHA. Ohwell~ Hormonal acne is a tough opponent! 
• Do take note that if you're trying out Alpha-H Liquid Gold, you need to use it once every alternate evening. And also, don't use any products with salicylic acid before applying the Liquid Gold because apparently that reduces the effectiveness of the products in Liquid Gold. 

Moisturiser

• The Body Shop Tea Tree Skin Clearing Lotion. This is an oldie but a goodie. I have used this for the past 2 years and I'm still going to continue using because my skin loves tea tree. I'm not so fond of the night cream version though - it's quite heavy and I think it was one product that clogged my skin. 
• Etude House AC Clinic Daily Gel Lotion. I always double up on moisturiser because having oily skin does not mean that I don't need moisturising! On the contrary, I have to moisturise diligently with the correct type of moisturisers so that my skin doesn't produce more oil. Very ma fan one, but still must do. 

Spot treatment

• In case of sudden appearance of unwanted characters like zits, I use Simple Rapid Action Spot Zapper. 

Eye treatment

• This is also not in photo but I always have a lot of eye cream samples. For this Copenhagen trip, I used Laneige Time Freeze Eye Serum, and wah the sample was so generous! I used that for more than 18 applications and still left A LOT. A bit heart pain when I had to throw it away because it was really nice! 

So I guess the next question people ask is "why are your skincare products so huge when you are travelling?"

This is because I had a check-in luggage. Can check in 30kg what, why I need to specially buy travel sized ones right? If all I had was a carry-on, then I'll be more selective in my skincare products. :)