Borough delights,

My wise friends often advise me to travel out of London as much as possible - posing as an excellent springboard to Europe. As much as I agreed with that, after my humble share of travelling during the first few months, I realized that the true beauty of London could only be experienced by living there like a true Londoner. Newspaper strewn neatly on the tube (sorely tempted to place a picture of the tube but I won't), friendly grocers, overly friendly Portuguese guys watching soccer at a nearby cafe or even that deranged woman at the back of the bus stabbing a chicken. There's certainly an unpredictable charm about the city that I would love to go back to one day ♥

 One of the many places which I returned to countless times during my stay there was Borough market, you can't go wrong treating those gastronomical taste buds of yours! Needless to say, I've been having huge cravings since I left because Singapore doesn't really have much food markets like such.

Good food to look out for: Banoffee pie, an English dessert pie with cream, bananas and caramel (sells out pretty fast in the day). The duck confit burger station has entertaining vendors who were ever ready for a picture when I whipped out my camera, love their burgers and their crispy bits within the meat. Another favourite of mine is the pulled pork burger, in which the meat is slow cooked for hours and full of flavour when served. R swears by the raclette...., unfortunately I'm not really a fan of the dish but it's an amazing dish if you adore cheese. A creature of habit especially when it comes to eating, I didn't dive into the oysters even though they are clearly quite famous amongst my friends - but these ones are fresh and the tobasco/lemon/onion dips by the side are starting to make me change my mind about oysters (to R's delight of course!) Other treats to look out for that were quite popular when bringing my friends around: owl biscuits, home grown tea flavours, exotic meat burgers (think kangaroo, camel, ostrich or crocodile meat), mulled wine and mushroom pâté. Stay away from the cold croissants, paella by the church steps and the Bristol chicken pies, they weren't worth the stomach capacity the last time I tried ^^

It's always such a joy to roam around food markets, have fun exploring - ciao!

Rider's cafe,

Rider's cafe is still one of my favourite cafés on this sunny island of Singapore, because its rather secluded location gives a quaint countryside feel. If you're lucky, the stable gates are open and you can take your time exploring the vicinity and even catch a glimpse of horses strolling around for their morning walks. I've been there a couple of times but posted about it vaguely once here two years before. To my displeasure, the food standard seems to have dropped though (and my standard honestly isn't very high when it comes to food haha) We ordered the Breakfast platter and Scones set - the scones were too dry and tasted pretty stale...

Lovin' the peaceful atmosphere, with the lush greenery and occasional trotting horse on the open fields. Despite the slight rainfall, we explored around with our film cameras ^^ The area used to be the old Turf Club (which has since shifted to Bukit Timah) which explains the large areas of empty abandoned land. Being there kinda brings back fond (or not so fond) memories of Cross country training and mixing up the two Turf Clubs - only to end up at the wrong place for training and making my coach extremely worried. Good ole times indeed.

Rider's Cafe
51 Fairways Drive
Singapore 286965

Film: Kodak max GC (ISO 200)

Camera: Canon SLR EOS 650 (2nd hand)

Taiwan captured on film (Part II),

A continuation from my previous film post, here are another batch of film pictures which I took during my trip to Taiwan two months back. I really enjoyed snapping these shots, so hope you enjoy getting a glimpse of the rolls I've developed too ♥ 

Formosan Aborginal culture village (Nantou county, 南投縣)

  

Ruei Suei Veteran farm (Hualien, 花蓮市)

Rail along the East Coast (From Taroko, 太魯閣)

Night markets around Taiwan (夜市)

They say money can't buy happiness, that still stands true....that is before you enter the food and shopping paradise of Taiwan. What's going to Taiwan without the shopping and food districts/markets right? Hopped around from Taitung night market (台東夜市), Shinkuchan shopping district (新堀江商圈), Feng Jia night market(逢甲夜市), Shihlin night market (士林夜市) and Taipei 101 shopping mall (台北101) just to name a few. They're all bustling and extremely vibrant even late at night! (when it's really quite skin-biting cold when the breeze comes in brrr) And an amazing discovery would be the hot ice milk bubble tea with pearls (热珍珠奶茶), the perfect beverage to be holding whilst walking down the cold roads - armed with street snacks like sweet potato balls (地瓜球) which are simply little drops of heaven I simply adore! Will share a bit more next time when I upload the digital prints. Missing the good food over there already, gosh there were a couple of nights where we skipped dinner just to try a small portion of everything which was a great experience so you should try it when you're there :)

 

Till my next post, ciao!

Film: Kodak max GC (ISO 400)
Camera: Canon SLR EOS 650 (2nd hand)