A Weekend of Food and Fiesta

Last Saturday our farmyard members decided to host an early birthday celebration for TW. Of course it was just an excuse to get together and stuff ourselves silly again. We had a nice dinner at Tong Tong, a restaurant just of 5 minutes walk from my place and after that we had a nice homemade mango ice cream (by yours truly of course) and a cake cutting session :)

That's us trying to blow the candle together
(though I really looked like I was about to suck in the cake)

Sunday it was Father's Day... and this time we thought we'd have a steamboat session, something we haven't done for quite a long time. From the morning I started to prepare the tomyam soup and porridge. Mom got the fresh ingredients from the market while I got the frozen stuff from Giant supermarket. WL on the other hand bought his favourite pork slices from the non-halal section at Tesco Extra.

The table ready for our steamboat session

Everything seemed to be in order at first. I had the table nicely set, we had plenty of food to put into the 2 pots, one for porridge and one for tomyam soup. I had an induction cooker that we could use and mom had another. We were happily getting ready to start when mom's cooker started beeping non-stop and giving funny error codes on the screen.

No matter what we did, the cooker would not stop beeping, and wouldn't even heat up. *sigh* In the end we had to make do with just one cooker and swapped the two pots whenever the other reached the boiling stage. After the dinner we had some durians by TW's family...and some pineapple from Ophie's family.

Halfway through the dinner I had to take a photo ...cheeezzze

There were also a plenty of leftovers. I had porridge enough to feed 3 persons and half a pot of tom yam soup. Fortunately for me, that'll be my breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next 2 days :P

Accounts cleared!

Prague - Salzburg - Vienna - Krakow - Budapest - Madrid - Salamanca - Seville - Cadiz

Spent several hours today compiling my expenditure for the trip and guess what, I only exceeded about 7% of what was budgeted. Not bad, huh? And that excess was purely due to unforeseen circumstances such as change of flights (thanks to Ryanair*) and overindulgence on food :P

On an average, our spending was as follows:

RM75 per day per person on accommodation (approx. USD21 or EUR15)
RM85 per day per person on food (approx. USD24 or EUR17)
RM120 per day per person on local tours/inland transportation (approx. USD34 or EUR24)

This was based on the fact that we managed to stay in a 3 star hotel towards the end of the trip, and indulged in restaurants every now and then (mostly in Spain). Also we did not join tour in every city. Most of the time we did our own exploring, and just paid for the train/bus tickets. And the cost above also include cheap opera tickets, entrance fees to various museums/cathedrals/castles and even a spa session! ;)

So yes, it IS possible to travel on a shoestring budget. There really isn't a need to spend so much on the food if you aren't picky. There are plenty of cheap local delights available if you keep an eye out for them. And if you don't mind having a snoring roommate, sharing rooms in a hostel isn't too bad an idea. More good news - most of the cities provide FREE use of bicycles for at least an hour, which means you can save time, $$$ and energy moving around in a big city.

So much for now, will post more details about my trip soon.

Jet lag??? What jet lag???

Lucky for me, I'm immune to the change of time zones. I can fall asleep practically anywhere, anytime, given an opportunity. Last night we arrived at about 9pm, and after a quick Hokkien mee supper, it was home sweet home.

A nice scrub in the shower then went straight to bed and slept like a log. This morning I was up at 9:30am and back to my normal routine. I know. Many are envious, but I just can't help it :P

Got about 10,000 photos to upload. Be patient.

We are coming home!

Can't believe it's the end of our trip already. It's time to squeeze everything back into our two tiny luggages. What a nightmare. :(

Our flight departs Seville at 21:15 and arrives London at 23:00. Then we have to rush to the check-in gate again for our flight back to Malaysia at 01:25 tomorrow. Hope there's no delay!!!!

Hasta muy pronto!

@ Budapest Airport

We are at the Ferihegy Terminal 1 waiting to board our flight W6 269 to Madrid. At least they provide free Wifi at the airport, this ought to keep me busy until the battery runs out. :P Will try to upload some photos.

Already the 4th stop

I can't believe we are already at the 4th stop - Krakow. We arrived here this morning by a night train (my first on a sleeper coach). Exciting.

Sorry I haven't been quite active with my blog, but its quite difficult when there's so much that I want to write about and yet so little time and very much limited internet access. I'll try to post some of my offline drafts soon.

And yes, we ARE enjoying ourselves here... try not to be too jealous, ok? ;) At least you won't be as broke as we are when we get home...

Till then...miss all of you back home... HUGSSss..

A day in Prague

It's always like this for me, only updating my blog days or weeks later, only to forget to mention about all the exciting stuff that happened.

We arrived Prague on Monday morning, decided to avoid all the hassle of taking public transport to our hostel and chose the shuttle service instead, which costs us 480CZK (approx. RM90). It was probably slightly more expensive than taking the public transport but cheaper than taxi. Most important was it got us straight to the doorstep of our hostel. If you are a group of 4, shuttle is the most convenient and economical choice because you'll pay the same amount whether you are 2 or 4.

Airport Shuttle service price list

We were greeted by Mirek at Hostel One that morning. He provided us with a map and gave us information on how to move about in the city. While waiting for our room to be ready, we decided to look at some of the brochures at the reception. There was this "Ultimate Prague Tour" for 1200 CZK per person (approx USD60) which was highly recommended. It included a walking tour, river cruise, lunch and a complimentary Ghost tour in the evening. Since we only have approximately 2 days to visit the city, we decided to give it a go. Frankly, we were not disappointed.

The tour was booked for the next day, so that morning we decided to just casually stroll in the city, and (ehem!) shop for souvenirs in case we didn't have time tomorrow. Also we had to find our way to the train station to get tickets to Salzburg. The main train station was only about 3 tram stops away from the hostel, but we just walked. It was a beautiful morning! How could we waste that? ;)

Praha main train station

Just about 20 minutes of walk from the hostel we arrived at Wenceslas Square. And the first thing I saw was.....MCDONALD'S!!! Seriously I ought to have taken photo of every single McD I find in all the cities and I would have been able to compile a thick album! :P Of course the Chinese didn't lose out either, throughout our trip, Chinese restaurants are just as easy to find as McD, if not easier :)

It was then we spotted our very first meal in Prague.... hot dogs! LOL! The street was lined with fast food kiosks selling a selection of sausages, long, short, big and small :D

"Which one should I eat first???"

While walking towards the Old Town quarter, we passed by many souvenir shops. Most of the similar souvenirs are sold at a standard price. So if you see something you like, it is not quite necessary to hop from one to another trying to get a better bargain. Unless of course you want to look for a bigger variety of items.

Not too far from the Old Town quarter is a market, selling handcrafted items, puppets, chocolates, vegetables, flowers and many more. I enjoyed looking at all the puppets that are hung at the stalls, some were cute, while some were scary.

Different types of puppets that can be found at the market

More Prague updates soon - our Hostel, the Marionnete show and the Ultimate Prague Tour