Oh My Janey

Archives for October 2014

Kaleidoscope of Colors at Cao Dai Temple, Vietnam

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On our second day in Vietnam, we went out of Ho Chi Minh City for a day trip to Cao Dai Temple and Cu Chi Tunnels.

Instead of booking the tour from our hostel, we inquired at other travel agencies in Pham Ngu Lao and got a deal two-dollar cheaper. It’s only two dollars, but hey, that’s already worth a meal in HCM!

Our guide picked us up from the hostel at around 8AM and joined a small tour group of Filipinos, Japanese and Europeans. One of the Filipinos is also an Elbi graduate and our batchmate! But we didn’t really bond, heh.

We traveled two hours to reach the Cao Dai Temple in Tay Ninh, a province in southwestern Vietnam. On our way, our tour guide John introduced us to the religion Caodaism, which was started in the province. According to Wikipedia (not John because I forgot many of what he said haha), Caodaism is a monotheistic religion and its full name means “The Great Faith Third Universal Redemption.” The symbol of the faith is the Left Eye. This reminds of KALK, a sect in the Philippines. There’s a temple near our house and they also have the eye as their symbol. Anyway.

The faith has influences from the Christianity, Taoism, Buddhism, and even from historical figures like Van Gogh and Marco Polo. True enough, we saw symbols and images from the said religious groups in the temple. [Read more…]

One Fine Day in Ho Chi Minh City

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Ho Chi Minh, where you can see a coffee shop in almost every corner. Ho Chi Minh, where there are more motorcycles and bicycles than cars. Ho Chi Minh, the city where half of the people you meet are foreigners. Then again, that’s probably because we stayed in the backpacker’s district.

For our first day in the city, we decided to roam the city by ourselves. We wanted to book a tour with Saigon Hotpot, a student organization who offers city tours for free, but they didn’t have a free time for the dates we booked. It’s really too bad since my friends who’ve tried touring with them recommend it a lot!

Good thing our hostel host gave us a map of the city with all the routes to the landmarks marked. We weren’t sure if they’re all within walking distance, but we decided to try anyway. [Read more…]

Korean BBQ at Go! Kizip in Malate

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Instead of going to our usual choice of Korean restaurant, we tried Go! Kizip in Malate for our impromptu family dinner last week.

There seems to be a new Korean restaurant in Malate every month, and Go! Kizip is relatively new. My sister tried it before and highly recommended so we tried it last week. And I love it!

I don’t think I’m a reliable food critic because just give me grilled pork or beef and I’ll instantly love it. It’s either really good, good, or meh for me. Never bad because I’m a big fan of meat. This is also the main reason why I gained a lot of weight after college. Hehe. Anyway.

In my book, Go! Kizip excels in service. Seriously. I’ll give them 20 out of 10 starts for such an amazing service and generosity in banchan (side dishes!). As for the bulgogi and samgyupsal, I really loved those as well!

It’s cute how it’s written in Korean as 고기집, which directly translates to “Meat House” but can also mean a restaurant that specializes in meat. Then they named it Go! Kizip which sounds a bit like 고기집. I don’t think I’m making sense, lol. [Read more…]

September Book Haul

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September is the happiest month for bookworms.

First, the Manila International Book Fair is held annually in the first Ber month. And second, bookstores tend to have sales during this period as well. For example, Powerbooks had a sale a week before the MIBF, and National Bookstore offered discounts on the same week of MIBF.

You guess it right, I went on a book shopping spree last month. Heh heh. This is the second time this year that I splurged on books! I try to only hoard books once a year and saved all the splurging on September for the book fair period. But the unprecedented National Bookstore Warehouse Sale caught me off guard and there I was hoarding more books than I could read in a lifetime.

Anyhoo, I went to a lot of book sales last month. I am a happy banana. [Read more…]

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