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. 

Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building : Japan

Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building is one of the tourist destination that closes very late. It's open from 9:30 am to 11:30 pm and offers free admission. From here you can get a panoramic view of Tokyo and you might even get a glimpse of Mt Fuji. Unfortunately, because of our tight schedule, we visited the building in the evening. Day or night, I think you'll still get a spectacular view. 

Diver City : Tokyo Japan

I'm Back! To relieve some stress, I decided to write again. I'm still paying for the domain name so might as well update the blog right? Anyway, the last time I updated allaboutlouie8, I posted about my trip to Japan. It was supposed to be a series of updates but life suddenly became so busy that I wasn't able to post them. They have been rotting in my draft for almost a year now! I'm hoping that I'll be able to finish writing the whole Japan Trip this week and schedule the update every week. Let's see how it goes. ^_^   

Back to the main post then...

Every Gundam fan must go to Diver City to see the giant Gundam! It's located a bit far from the main city and you will need to do a few transfers before you reach it. But I tell you, it was all worth it. We're so excited upon seeing it! Can't contain out happiness. Before reaching the Gundam, you'll have to pass through the mall. Here you can find lots of Japanese and international stores. Of course, there's a Sanrio store.  😄

Look at all those people! Hello Kitty is so popular.

There it is! Gundam!

Shibuya Crossing : Japan

Two months before one of my planned vacation to the Philippines, Cebu Pacific Air had a promo fare for routes Manila - Tokyo and Osaka, Japan. Since I'll be on an 8-hour flight from Sydney to Manila and be on vacation for 18 days, why not take a side trip to Japan?! ^_^

Visiting Japan had been one of my childhood dreams. This originated from my LOVE for animes and the Japanese Culture. I asked my brother to accompany me for this trip and my cousin from SG decided to tag along. (coz I need to travel with someone who can take my picture! lol.) Unfortunately, we're only there for 6 days because my cousin is not allowed to take long vacation leave. 

We decided to visit 

(1) Tokyo 

(2) Kyoto

(3) Osaka

FIRST STOP: Shibuya Crossing

<View from Shibuya Station>