Roast Duck, Crystal Jade, Bangkok

Again, Crystal Jade in Siam Paragon seems to be the best Crystal Jade I have ever tried for KL, Singapore and Hong Kong.

1. Roast Duck - it's amazing good and I can say it's even better than Yung Kee. It's crispy outside and very juicy and warm with the meat inside. It's the best roast duck I have tried too. 2. Stir Fried Honey Bean with various mushroom - a very good quick frying technique and it's not gravy at all. Cantonese style quick stir frying technique is high heat with super quick stir with a light gravy to seal the ingredients. This is the essence of stir frying. This dish simply tells. Perfect!

3. Deep fried squid with spicy salt - also very lovely. The oil for this deep frying is quite good and the chef finalise the last step of deep frying by turning to ultra heat to squeeze the oil out. This is the important part as it will make the fried stuff less greasy and more crispy. 4. Spare Rib in "king tao" sauce - though it's a bit heavier in taste, it is still very nice. Not hard to chew and the sauce can cover the ribs without leaving too much sauce on the plate.

5. double boiled chicken with sea shell soup - this soup saved me from my heavy flu last time when I got in Bangkok; so it will be my regular soup every time I visit this shop. 6. Sticky rice dumpling - unexpectedly good and the lotus leaf is clean enough that it will not stick the dumpling. Besides, the Chef used quite a lot of peeled green bean and most important at all - the tie-up of the dumpling is really tight. It's a very important step for rice dumpling. The Chef used 2 dried scallop and the price is just B198 (HK$45). If we get this similar size with the same ingredients, it will cost more than HK$100.

Breakfast at Mandarin Oriental Bangkok

Lately highly recommended someone to try Oriental Bangkok and the breakfast is the best I have ever had. So I recalled I only took one photo of the breakfast back to the summer of 2006 and actually it's not on the breakfast but rather on Jason, carrying a plate of food with much care. However, you would notice how the juice variety is. The photo only showed part of the juice jars and there are more than 10 varieties of fresh juices. We spent almost 3 hours for breakfast!

Jomtien to Pattaya

From Eravana (southern Jomtien) to Central Pattaya it takes about 20 min. taxi (actually it's a truck) ride. The weather in Thailand can change so drastically. When I was on that truck, there was some sand hitting on my face and back and we were at least 30-40 feet away from the beach.

1. see how rough the sea was. 2. and how the trees got blown wildly.

3. This can be the landmark for you to know you are about to enter Jomtien beach area. 4. I have been to Pattaya 4 times but every time the road is under construction. It's like a muddy place to me.

5. Mata Hari - a restaurant TC recommended but I didn't go there because it's quite isolated in between Jomtien and Pattaya, and that I wanna have Buddhi Belly (that I found there is one in Central Festival) after the dinner.

Sounds like Sizzler, sounds like fun

Back in the mid 90's, I used to watch a very lively and tempting commercial with scampi [a new American term for shrimp (usually meaning unshelled shrimp) I ever learned] bouncing on a sizzling hot plate and there went the slogan "sounds like Sizzler, sounds like fun". Whenever I passed by this Sizzler in Thailand, this slogan rang up again in my brain. Lots of American restaurants I often think of - IHOP(International House of Pancake), Denny's, Carl's Jr., Panda Express....etc.

1. The Thai version Iced Tea is of course sweeter than any other iced tea I have tried. 2. Beef fillet and pork loin with wild rice. I remember my friend used to have a very wild face for ordering wild rice. The meal is just average but I don't mind going to Sizzler as it offers a nice salad bar.

Eravana, Jomtien beach, Thailand

I have been told quite several times by my local Thai friends that there have been more and more nice resorts and hotels in the southern part of Jomtien beach (south next to Pattaya main beach). Actually Pattaya was the first place I touched down on my first trip to Thailand in May 1997, on my way back from Rome and Milan. My friend chose a very interesting hotel (and actually he is much into Wong Kai Wai) and that hotel is filled with everything in rusty red (literally calling) but I can't complain about it because the room rate is just THB400. At that time, I was thinking if I would run into Jack Nicholson in the lobby with a typewriter typing "life is boring" repeatedly for a million times on thousands of papers on the ground (part of the renowned horror movie "Shining" if no one knows what I refer to). So Pattaya was such a contrast to me right after a 10 hour flight from a historical and nice city as Rome. Then I went to Pattaya for the second time in 2000 and stayed at a resort called Woodland, and in fact that was the first time TC brought me for checking on hotels and resorts in Pattaya. My impression about Pattaya was much changed. At least it had something nice though it's still a place with many "red" things and I can see most of the professional ladies wearing t-shirts "welcome US navy". Then on the 3rd time, my friends and I stayed in another nice mid-class resort in north Pattaya called Naklua. This time we chose to stay in the southern end of Jomtien and found this interesting resort called Eravana and the website showed the sensual healing as Six"th" sense. Some of my friends thought it's another outlet of the famous Six Senses group. :) In general, paying THB6,xxx for a big suite with a private pool inside is quite ok. We checked even with those 1+1 free room rate, this one is still the lowest one considering a private pool villa. The resort is called as eco-friendly. Their air-conditioner is with the water heater together. That means if you turn on the air-conditioner, the heat part of the air-con. would heat the water in the water tank; so that you would have hot water from the shower and bath tub. The only thing I would complain about this resort is that they closed the restaurant in the lunch time because of the low occupancy; so we needed to go to downtown for dinners.

1/2 a very spacious room inside and the good thing about it is that you can go in and out of the rooms in many of the window doors. Great for the kids to play hide and seek.

3. the pool and sun deck area. 4. the entrance is with lots of green.

5/6. the pool is with jacuzzi.

7/8. the bath tub - so big that I can stretch myself flat.

9/10. open bathroom and shower.

11/12. view to the pool from the patio table.

13/14. the other rooms.

15. the resort has around 10-15 private pool villas. 16. entrance to our villa.

17/18. the common swimming pool area.

19/20. another view to the pool and resting area.

19/20. the garden outside the restaurant.

21. the shower in common area. 22. the restaurant.


23/24. Coffee and toast served at breakfast.

25. orange juice. 26. egg and ham with salad - a bit too over-cooked.

Central Festival, Pattaya

Read a magazine and wrote this new shopping mall in Central Pattaya is the biggest mall in Asia. When I went check for it, it's like any Central complex in BKK, not even to be compared to Central World or Siam Paragon. Overall, it's quite a nice mall in Pattaya with all those standard things like Fuji, Zen, Sizzler, MK, 8 Ramen...etc.

1. the look. 2. inside the mall.

3. the mall taking a view to the west Pattaya. 4. the front patio outside the mall.

5/6. another view to the front patio.

7/8. water fountain

Oriental Cafe, Emporium, Bangkok

I guess I have often spoken highly on Oriental Bangkok this or that. This time is another story.

1. Frozen Cappuccino - when I had a sip of it, it is actually mocha. As the taste is good, I didn't complain about it. 2. the bread basket - no complaint about this one and I took them all.

3. Lobster Bisque - not as good as it used to be. It lacked the sweet and fresh taste of lobster. 4. This is the most exciting part - green curry chicken. We found a worm in it, and then told the captain about it. Anyway, the good thing is almost every staff coming to me for overwhelming apologies. They even asked if we want some cakes or desserts but when we checked the bill, this curry chicken wasn't counted. I realised they tried to offer the dessert for free probably.

5. Khao Pad (fried rice) - this one is quite nice and the portion is really big.