Kaname Performance : Cosmania Philippines

I used to attend cosplay conventions when I was still in the Philippines. Through this conventions, I  met (fangirl, not personally 😚) some of the well-known cosplayers in the world. One of my idols is Kaname (official fbpage) from Japan. Guess what? Not only is he a great cosplayer, but he can SING as well! OMG! I was so jealous when I received this video from my sister. 😆

Video credit to my sister: Clare

Enjoy fan-mates! 😘

Lego Land: Malaysia

During our trip to Singapore, we included a day trip to Legoland in our itinerary. Lego land is located in Johor Baruh Malaysia, which is around 1-hour bus ride away from SG. 

Here is the route that we took to get to Legoland

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Guide from (https://m.justgola.com/blog/how-to-travel-to-legoland-from-singapore-233)

At Jurong East Bus Exchange:

• Get on CW3 or CW4 bus (S$ 4) to get through the Tuas Checkpoint. Then, get off at the CIQ interlink. Operating hours: 7:10 am – 11:45 pm (Mon-Fri), and 7:30 am – 11:45 pm on weekends.

When you reach CIQ Interlink, get to another bus: 

• Bus JP02 (RM6 / S$ 2.50) for weekdays. Operating our: every three hours only at 8:30 am, 11:30 am, 2:30 pm, and 5:30 pm.

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We didn’t bother to pre purchase our tickets online because we expected that there won’t be a lot of people in the park. It’s a Tuesday around the month of October. So we anticipated that most of the children are still in school. 😉

Upon arrival, we purchase our tickets. As you can see, no people around! We even thought that it’s closed. We did check their website before leaving SG and there is nothing indicated about the park being closed that day. 

So, we were able to visit the park, get to all the rides and take tons of pictures without photobombers. 😁

Chinatown : Sydney NSW

Hi all!

I want to share an edited video for the Chinese New Year Celebration here in Sydney. For this event, I was with my friend Cyrl, hence, the video title (ft. Cyrl).

It is actually a month long event with scheduled performances every weekend. We specifically went on a Saturday for the lion/dragon dance and the evening fireworks display.

Special thanks to Ate Cy for accompanying me to different events! 😘

AN: This is another late post. At least it didn't take me a year to post it this time. 😉

AAN: If you are wondering why I've been posting videos lately instead of the usual pictures, the answer is: 

I am too lazy to sort out and edit thousands of pictures. I find it easier to edit the videos, just have to drag and drop in iMovie and cut some of them. Also, most of the videos are already on youtube. I just posted them as private before. 😅

Nando’s : Malaysia

Whenever I go to Malaysia, I always make sure to eat at least once in Nandos. I just love their lemon and herb marinated chicken with mild peri-peri sauce! Also, prices are significantly cheaper compared to SG and other countries. Individual platter with ¼ chicken and 2 side dishes is around 21RM (250 PHP/6 AUD). I frequently order the ¼ lemon and herb chicken with chips, veggie salad, and iced tea. Since we are already in Malaysia for our trip to Legoland, we decided to have our 👍dinner  in here before catching the bus to SG. 

AN: I don’t know why but I think that the food in Nando’s Malaysia tastes different from the one you can get in the Philippines and Australia. They are all under Nando’s but different taste. Is that possible? 😅

Rating (out of 5)

Price: 5

Very affordable!

Ambiance: 4 

Instagram worthy 😉

Service: 5 

Very fast. In my knowledge, they cook/prepare the food once orders are made. It took around 15-20 minutes for our food to arrive. Also, for all the times that I've been here (two location, Nandos KLCC and City Square JB) I didn't have to wait before we were seated. There is always a seat available! 😁

Food: 5

I love it! Chicken was cooked well. You can really taste the flavors and marinate. Special mention for their salad dressing. I forgot what it is called but I think its the best dressing I've tasted.

 

Taipei Taiwan Travel Video

Hello hello! 😀

I'm too lazy to sort out and edit pictures from my recent travel ( I got around 1000+) right now. For the mean time, I decided to just post a video. I was planning on showing a short snippet for each place I visited. However, I found out that I was not able to take video in some places. 😂

I'll try to find some motivation and battle my laziness in order to sort/edit pictures and write the actual blog post.

I put "ft. Bro Bear" in the video because he was my companion for the duration of this trip.

Places we visited:

• Shifen
• Jiufen
• Shilin Night Market
• Taipei Zoo
• Maokong
• Zhinan Temple
• Dazhi Bridge
• Raohe Night Market
• Taipei 101
• Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall
• Ximending

AN: I am LOVING the emoji feature right now. If you notice from my recent posts, I'm now using EMOJIs! 😉

Minato Box Opening Video

Here is another video that had been rotting in my draft for years. I finally had the time/motivation to edit and upload a box opening video for one of my dolls. I purchase him from Alice's collection when they still offer dolls from Illusion Spirit. During that time they also offered a 15% discount for doll purchased, free face up and free international shipping for purchases over $300. 😁

BJD's are mostly pre-ordered. This means that I had to wait for about 30 days for production and face-up (make-up) plus additional days for the actual shipping. Luckily, Alice's Collection used FedEx for doll shipping and it was a door-to-door delivery. (AN: Sometimes they use local international post for shipping that takes about 30 days to arrive and I had to go to the post office to pick-up the items)

Unfortunately, I had to pay the customs duty upon receiving the items which amounted to around P2,800. When you check the receipt, customs fee is only around P1,000. The other fees were charged by FedEx for processing everything (customs pick-up and answering the forms).

Along with My Zhuyin doll, I also purchased some clothes, shoes, and wig.  

Excuse the surroundings, I filmed the box opening in my Brother's room because we had some visitors that day. My parents let them use my room to rest 😅. I was so excited to film and didn't want to wait for them to leave. I did have the chance to get my other dolls and transfer them to my brother's room. 😉

Batam Island: Indonesia

Batam island is just an hour boat ride away from Singapore. It cost around 50 SGD (P1650) for a round trip boat ticket. Their currency is Indonesian Rupiah which is equivalent to 0.0038 PHP. For our pocket money (this was only a day trip. We just need money for lunch, snack, and souvenir.) we exchange P2700 pesos (for 4 people) which were converted to around 720,000 Rupiah. WOW! Almost a million! 😏 The boat fare was more expensive!

What were we able to buy for 720,000 rupiah or 2,700 pesos? Since I can’t remember the exact breakdown, I’ll just enumerate everything that we bought.

• Lunch at a restaurant located on the 3rd floor of Mega Mall Batam Centre. Meal + fruit shake (for 4 people).
• Food as pasalubong “souvenirs” from Mega Mall supermarket (5 big packs of dried jackfruit, a couple packs of cookies, 2 sweet potato chips and a bottle of mineral water)
• A box of coffee roti bread (10 packs) - the roti actually cost 100,000. That’s 10,000 each!
• Four grande frappuccinos (different flavors) from Starbucks Indonesia. 

We had to spend all the money, or at least leave minimal amount because unlike other currencies, Indonesian rupiah expires. So even if we do have a plan to return, we’re not sure if they will still accept the money.

Note: We didn’t have any rupiah when we left SG. We did forex when we arrived in Batam because my cousin said the exchange rate there is more favorable than in SG.

Bugis Street : Singapore

If you are looking for affordable Asian fashion in Singapore, go to Bugis Street! It’s a whole street with shops selling clothes, shoes, and accessories following the latest Asian fashion trend. 

The styles available really suit my taste. The best part? You get the items at a bargain price. You can even haggle for some of them. I think I bought my graduation dress along with one sleeveless blouse for SGD 18 (PHP 594 or AUD 15). I bought a few more items such as “skorts” (skirt+shorts) and more office blouses. I’ll try to post them all below. 😀

Oh! There were also fruit shake shops which offer fresh and cheap fruit shakes. They have a long queue as well. 😉

Chinatown : Singapore

Chinatown SG is popular for cheap restaurants and souvenirs. Our main purpose for going here, however, is the latter. My siblings wish to buy a few souvenirs (by few I mean everyone they know) for their friends. 

Everything is in package, 4,5 or 10 for $10. Keyrings, bag, shirt and etc. The pictures that I got were all stolen photos because we were trying to bargain with the prices and we didn’t want to show the seller that we can afford expensive phones and cameras. 

Although now that I thought about it, it probably wouldn’t have an effect even if they saw them. They still know that we were tourist… 😅

Summer Matsuri : Tokyo Disneyland

Another Video from my Japan Trip. This one is the Summer Matsuri. I already have a post about my Tokyo Disneyland Trip . If you haven't read it yet just click the link. 😀

Ajisen Ramen : Singapore

We finally had the chance to try Ajisen Ramen in Changi Point Singapore. 😆

Once you are seated, you can order using the Ipad mini in your table. The Ipad mini is very convenient because then, there is no need to hurry choosing your meal and you can even mix and match the products without confusing the waiter. You can choose from their ala carte to set meals. 

The price is shown on the iPad and a total will be computed. However, this total excludes the service charge of around 10%. You’ll only see the service charge when you see the receipt before payment. Budget is around 80 SGD (P2600) for four people. 

The serving size is quite big for Asian standards. Because there are four of us, we decided to order different side dishes, this way we get to taste more dishes! 

And the Taste test begins… 

The ramen was great. It’s like eating ramen when we were in Japan. The only difference was that they put sweet corn in their ramen. This makes the soup taste a little sweet when you take the soup with the corn. As for the side dishes, we had chicken karaage, tonkatsu, baby octopus and takoyaki. We didn’t like the baby octopus. I can’t actually describe how it taste, but I do know that we didn’t like it. 😅

Rating (out of 5)

Price: 5

Very affordable!

Ambiance: 4 

Instagram worthy 😉

Service: 5 

Very fast and convenient. I think it's mostly due to the iPad provided. 😁

Food: 4

I love it! I've always been fond of Japanese food. I can probably eat ramen and sushi every day! If it wasn't for the baby octopus, I'd definitely give this a rating of 5. 😏  

Durmstrang Institute vs Beauxbaton Academy of Magic

As promised, here is the video for the exhibition match between Durmstrang Institute and Beauxbaton Academy of Magic. I thought I lost the video that's why I did not include it in the original post. Imagine how happy I was when I saw it included in my "Private" videos on youtube. I might have uploaded it there while doing back-up for my phone. 😆

Performance from Universal Studio Osaka Japan.

Excuse our commentary. We were just too excited! 😅

Chili’s : Singapore

Hello Hello!

Just decided to share some pictures from Chili’s Singapore.

During one of my visits in SG, My cousin took me for dinner at Chili’s. She recommends that I try their unlimited Nachos and Fajita. My response, “why not?!”. And there starts our adventure to Chili’s Tanglin Mall.

We decided to go after work, which is around 9 PM. However, it being a Friday evening, it was packed with people. We had to wait for about 20 minutes before we were seated. There was only the two of us so we can’t really order a lot. As my cousin had recommended Nachos and Fajita, of course, we ordered those two! Along with bottomless coke and a burger for sharing. Nope! No beer or alcoholic drinks for us. My cousin has to work the following morning and I don’t really drink 😓.   I think we did about 3 refills for the nachos, 3 for coke and the most awesome part? We had addition refill of Nachos for take-out (take-away, to go). How cool was that? We paid around 80 SGD for two people (P2640). Might be a little expensive. 😉

BTW: I went to SG  nearing the Christmas season that’s why there were Christmas decorations everywhere. 

Rating (out of 5) 

Price: 3 
A little pricey just for 2 people.

Ambiance: 4 
Instagram worthy 😉 (note: They serve alcoholic drinks so expect that there will be people drinking and catching up. I may be a little noisy.) 

Service: 3 
I'm giving a 3 (overall) just because we had to wait before we were able to find a seat. It was so busy! However, I'll give a 5 for their waiters/attendants because they really make sure that the customers are satisfied.  😁 

Food: 4 
Food is great.

Wizarding World of Harry Potter (Universal Studio Osaka Japan)

Day 5: Universal Studio Osaka

And I finally have the time to share these pictures from Universal Studio Osaka! After n’th years right?! 

As I have mentioned before, I LOVE HARRY POTTER. I’ve read the books, watched the movies and even read tons of fanfiction while waiting for the movies to come out. I’ve been a fan since I was in High school. Potterhead right? I ship "parings" depending on my mood, mix and match them, etc. During our planning, my travel buddies didn’t want to go to Osaka because they said that we don’t have enough time. We were only supposed to go for a 4-day trip but I insisted that we extend it and go to Universal Studio. They were saying that I’ve been to USS (Singapore) tons of time so what else will I need to see there? I was like, “but there’s Harry Potter World in Osaka”. After successfully convincing them, we decided to extend the trip to 6 days and include Osaka and USJ to our itinerary.

Initial reaction upon reaching USJ? With my eyes looking everywhere, “can we please go to HP World now?!” 😍

Unfortunately, due to the huge number of visitors, USJ had a specific entry policy for the Wizarding World of  Harry Potter (WWoHP). They will only allow a specific number of people to enter at a time. This would mean that you can’t enter the park anytime you want. The entry interval is every 30 minutes and once they reach the maximum number of people, they will stop distributing the tickets. There is no limit on how long you can stay inside the WWoHP, as long as you enter on your scheduled time. Better come early to have more time inside WWoHP. 😉

We stayed there the longest! We just love this set! 

I joined the queue and ordered three (3) Butterbeer for our celebratory toast! Cheers to finally being a part of the Wizarding World! 😆

We went to Madam Malkin’s to buy our school robes. Then to Ollivanders to get our wands. Of Course, we didn’t forget to buy our wizarding snack (chocolate frogs, every flavor bean, and pumpkin juice) from Honeydukes. ^_^

Kidding aside, there are 2 main rides in  WWoHP. The Flight of the Hippogriff and the HP Forbidden Journey. The Queue was so long! Minimum waiting time was approximately 120 minutes. That’s 2 hours of waiting! Heck! Since we’re already here, might as well join the queue…

And the waiting begins… I’m so glad that I always bring my Aveen spray with me. It actually helped lessen the heat while we were waiting. Keeps my brother cool and lower his temper as well. 💦

Unfortunately, we had to budget our time hence we agreed to forgo riding the Flight of the Hippogriff. We were very curious about the ride “HP Forbidden Journey” and I say we made the right decision on this one. It was so Worth it! We love it! If it weren’t for the long queue, we would have ridden it again. 

After the ride, we were just on time for the exhibition between Durmstrang and Beauxbaton  We love their performance! I was fascinated with their acting and I really enjoyed listening to the MC speak in English then translate the lines in Japanese. I was like “OMG! Ang galing ni Ate mag Japanese!”. I’ll share the performance video later in a separate post. 😀

AN: I really commend Universal Studio for having such great performers. I’ve been to two (2) of their theme park and I always enjoy watching their scheduled live performances.  

As much as I’d like to stay in WWoHP the whole day, I have to consider my travel companions and agreed to leave to visit the other attractions/rides. Just because my brother is so excited to buy a “minions” popcorn storage. And so, the search for the minion booth happened. It actually took us about an hour before we found it and bro-bear had to join the queue again. 😅

BTW: USJ also have their own version of Character Parade. It is usually at the evening an hour before the theme park close.

Seizeriya : Singapore

Because Kopitiam doesn’t count as a restaurant. I can say that Seizeriya “is my favorite restaurant in SG!” I always eat here whenever I visit SG. The food tastes good, their staff are friendly and the price is affordable. They also have big servings so you can do sharing. The Budget is about 60SGD for 4 people (P1980). That’s for set meals including salad and drinks. Here are the dishes that we always order. 

Photos were compiled from a couple (or more) of times that we’ve eaten there.

Rating (out of 5)

Price: 5

Very affordable! They also have a set menu. This includes the main dish, salad and drinks.

Ambiance: 5 

Instagram worthy 😉

Service: 5 

Very fast. Everything is cooked once orders are made. Serving time is around 15-20 minutes. 😁

Food: 5

Yummy! 

Ilmi Korean Restaurant : Pampanga

My sister needs to drop by her University to get a few documents for med-school. When she finished, we decided to go to Ilmi Korean Restaurant for lunch. My sister said that they often go there whenever they crave for Korean food.

Ilmi is a restaurant located in Angeles, Pampanga. They offer a variety of Korean dishes including bibimbap, spicy soup and (of course the reason for our trip) unlimited samgyupsal. You can choose between pork or beef.  We opted for their unlimited Pork (because I don’t eat much pork in Australia). Unlimited side dish and ice tea are included as well. All for just P270 each! 😆

Location and Parking: It is located on a busy road with limited parking space (5-6 cars). Luckily we came early!

Price: P270 each. Very cheap for unlimited pork, side dish, and drinks.

Ambiance: When you look outside it doesn’t look appealing. The restaurant only has its name printed in a tarpaulin and located on top of the building. Inside, you can see normal wooden tables with space for the charcoal grill. No exhaust fan as well, get ready to smell like grilled meat after eating. 😅

Taste: I love it! I’ve always loved eating samgyupsal. Korean food really suits my taste. I especially love their baby potato salad and kimchi. ^_^

Service: The service was very fast. There were only a few tables occupied when we arrived and we were seated and served our food immediately. Also, the servers were very attentive. They were very prompt on refilling our pork samgyupsal when we asked for it. 

Note: We went during lunch time on a weekday, that may be the reason why there aren’t a lot of people. 

After 3 refills of pork, 4 for lettuce and 3 for side dish, we left the restaurant with a full stomach and an experience to remember. 

The experience + the price makes this a right choose for lunch. If you’re around the area, do drop by and try their unlimited samgyupsal. You can also choose unlimited beef for P330. 😉

Samgyupsal King : Pampanga

One day while doing some errands, we decided to try Samgyupsal King in San Fernando Pampanga. It’s located along the Highway with enough parking space for customers. Unfortunately, they only offer a limited choice of Korean dishes. Their Menu includes Bibimbap, Ramen, and grilled marinated meat (spicy and honey). Each order of meat comes with an unlimited side dish (kimchi, veggie salad, lettuce, egg salad, marble potato salad and a pot of steamed egg). What did we order? Two servings of marinated meat (1 honey and 1 spicy), 1 pot of Ramen and 1 pork bibimbap. Total bill was P789 for 3 people. BTW, they offer free ice tea as well! 😀

If you want to taste basic Korean food at an affordable price, you can try Samgyupsal King in San Fernando, Pampanga. 😉 

Tokyo Disney Land

It’s the Happiest Place on Earth! Tokyo Disneyland! Yay! 😆

When we booked our accommodation for this trip, we decided to go for hotels near our point of interest. For Tokyo, our hotel is located one train station away from the Disneyland (just because we love Disney). After getting ready and having our breakfast, we went directly to the park to experience a whole day of being a kid again and enjoying the day with our favorite Disney characters. Hey! No one and nothing is allowed to destroy our happy mood. Not the heat, not the crowd and not even the expensive merchandise 😉. “Kuya (older brother) let’s go to the castle”, “Ate (cousin) let’s go ride the teacups”, “OMG! That’s Tinkerbell!”. There was even a summer matsuri where Mickey and friends are dancing and playing with water. If you are seated in front, be prepared to get WET! Until now, I still don’t know how to describe how happy I was on that day. I was like “dreams do come true” and like “thank you fairy godmother (my mom) for allowing us to go to Japan”.

Our favorite ride? “Treasure hunt”. It was a long queue but when it was finally our turn to experience the ride, it was all worth it! (Note: You’ll probably see the same lines when I post Universal Studios Osaka just because I was able to go to Wizarding World of Harry Potter and I’m a Potterhead 😉)

Aside from my usual photo dump/gallery, I’ll be posting the video for the "summer matsuri" parade.

Planning on coming back for “Tokyo Disney Sea”.

BTW: While planning this trip, we agreed that this will be a budget trip and that we will try to save as much as we can on hotels and airfare. This does not include shopping and food trip though. We love trying new food and we have no self-control when it comes to shopping (especially if the price is way cheaper compared to the price in the Philippines). Hello Uniqlo!

Dotonbori : Osaka Japan

Next destination? Dotonbori! 

It was actually easier if we took a taxi, but because we love adventure (and being cheapskate), we opted to take the local train/subway. If you have taken the subway to the Dotonbori, you can probably guess what happened (wink). Yeah, you’re correct! We got lost again. Lol. We went down on the correct station but went out on the wrong exit. By the time we reached the place, it was already time for lunch. Yay to another food trip right? Not! Why you ask? Because the street food market was not yet open. We forgot the tiny detail that most of the street market opens in the evening. What did we do then? Luckily, there were a few restaurants that are open. We went to the first restaurant near the entrance of the street and ordered Okonomiyaki, Yakisoba, and Gyoza. It was superb! Taste better that the one we order in the Philippines. It was also very cheap.

The very confusing MAP -_-

On our way...

Osaka Castle

We didn’t really plan to visit other destinations in Osaka aside from the Universal Studios. This is because we know that we didn’t have enough time left in our itinerary. Day 5 is dedicated to a whole day in universal studios and Day 6 evening is our flight back to the Philippines. 

Day 6: After eating breakfast and checking out of our hotel, we again left our luggage to the hotel’s storage and decided to take a last minute trip to Osaka Castle and Dotonbori. Our hotel is located about 15 minutes walk from the Castle, hence, another walk-a-ton happened. o_o 

Unlike Tokyo castle where you need to schedule your visit, the Osaka Castle Park is a public area giving visitors the chance to get a closer look of the castle.

Nope! It's not COLD. It was actually very HOT. The reason why we're wearing jackets is because the sun really hurts our skin. Ate Haydn and I were wearing Uniqlo UV jackets from UniqloPH. 

Side note: We went gaga over Uniqlo Japan. It's very cheap! Like a dress for 1,250 PHP can be bought for 1,250 YEN. If you're a Uniqlo fan like us, make sure to have extra money for shopping. 😘

The park

🎶🎶And alas I see the castle 🎶🎶

Floral Set

I actually bought the matching coat and short in Chemistry SM San Lazaro during their Christmas sale. Got the set for about P500. I usually don't wear the set together. Most of the time I pair the shorts with Plain top and vise versa.

Coat and Short Set from Chemistry

Inner Cami from Uniqlo

Accessories from The Landmark

Heels from B-Club

Kyoto : Japan

From Tokyo, we decided to take the bus to Osaka. We pre-booked our bus tickets from Willers Express and opted for the night trip. We rode the bus in Willers Tokyo bus station at 10:30 pm and arrived in Osaka Station at 6:30 am. The actual check-in time for the hotel is at 2:00 pm. Fortunately, the hotel has their luggage storage room for the guest. After leaving our luggage to them, we took the train from Osaka Central to Kyoto. The train ride is supposed to be around 45 minutes only. However, we were so tired by this time that we (3 of us) feel asleep and missed our stop. After a few transfers and additional 30 minutes ride, we finally reach KYOTO. 

If I haven’t mentioned it before, we had the unfortunate timing of taking this trip during Japan’s Summer season. Let me tell you, it’s 100% hotter that Philippines Tag-init/Summer. We "almost" gave up roaming the place and wanted to just stay in the hotel. "Almost" being the key word. In the end, we gathered our energy (like how they do it in animes <wink>) and was able to successfully do temple-run in Kyoto under the scorching heat of their summer season. =p

Kyoto is famous for its Temples. They are literally just a few meters away from each other. It's like there is a temple in every street.