Blue Lake (Tikitapu), Rotorua

One of our highlight on New Year's eve was going to the Blue Lake at Rotorua. It is about 10 minutes drive from the Rotorua town centre.

Noel and Abel had a blast before playing in the water.

 

 

They goofed around and laughed so much, they didn't realise how cold the water was.

Te Puke - Kiwi Country

 

We came here when Noel was 13 months with Shin when she came to visit us. 4 years and a bit, we came again with Abel.  The boys went all the way up the giant kiwi fruit and then they run and roll on the grass.


Showed the boys the kiwi fruit vines.

They checked out the kiwifruit toys before eating the kiwifruit icecream in the outdoor area under the shade of the kiwfruit vines.

 

Kiwi fruit close up.

Lunch time at Tauranga (31.12.12)

We stopped by Tauranga for lunch.  It is by the Strand.  I really like this table and chair. It can probably sit 10 easily.   It is  made from macrocrapa and it looks like it will last many years! I don't mind having one for my backyard 

Here's our fish and chips, there's quite a few different type of fish, cods, snapper etc...

Run Abel Run...

This is one of the last pic of Abel with his chubby cheeks. He seems to have lost that now :( 

Waihi part 2

 
Main street

The Cornish Pumphouse - this structure had been shifted from its original location to where it is now.

 

 

We could walk right to the edge of the mine.

31.12.12 At waihi

We were at Waihi for a couple hours on our way to Rotorua and Taupo. Waihi was first discovered for its gold and the gold mine is still operating.

We visited the museum and check out this mighty tyre! 


The boys played dressing up in their little kid's corner.

 

Some exhibits from the olden days

The museum was laid out very nicely. Lots of information are child-friendly and presented at child's height.

 

 

The museum has daily tours but we did not stay for those.

新年蒙恩

六合夜市 (Liuhe Night Market), KaoHsiung

 

 

I didn't eat much that night. I was suffering from indigestion, and I think I only had a few bites of "Oh-Jien" (Oyster Pancake) - top pic.

I remembered drinking the papaya milk from one of the stall, and the night market is not as crowded as Fengjia at Tainan but it had large numbers of Chinese Mainlanders (from PRC). When I asked how much things were, the seller would also give me the price in RMB instead of NT$.

We retired early to rest in the hotel as I was feeling a little sick all night.

Anping Part 2

Next thing, we walked around looking for this Grandpa's Winter Melon drink shop.  It wasn't very hard to find given the number of crowd outside the shop. 

The menu to give you an idea. But we bought the 'original' winter melon. It's very refreshing on a warm autumn afternoon.

 

There were families, children, teenagers around the Anping fort area.  We found lots of kids on these machine. THere were lots of the 'tikam' type game and I time traveled to the 80s while I was there.

Jake trying some crunchy oysters.

Finally, jake bought lots of keropok to bring home. They tasted very different from the Mukah ones.

安平 Fort

Happy New Year everyone. After a long hiatus, I am back blogging. 
After my trip in October, I had to rolecover at work so blogging was put on hold.
Now I am really far behind with my travel postings. 

After Taichung, we went on a day trip to Tainan. Particularly, we visited the Anping fort well, the markets surrounding the Fort.

Jake brought me to this little eating shop.  He had came here in his last trip.  It was very crowded and basically had to wait to be seated. We were pretty lucky to have found the seats without much waiting.

This is the taro cake.

This one's a fish  羹 (read as geng1) and is thick and smooth soup cooked with starch.

This one's similar to Sibu's Dian Miang Ngu but the soup is not thick.

The famous 'Coffin' bread 棺材板 (read as Guan Chai Ban).  It's a famous Taiwanese snack and can be widely found in all the Taiwanese night market.

 

This is something that everyone orders so we followed suit and ordered some too. Again, I am trying hard to recall what it was called.

 

This one's a type of meat roll thingie. Sorry after 3 months, I forgot what it was.

 

S is for strawberry

I picked these strawberries from my only surviving strawberry plant today. Tastes pretty good.

Noel's minion cake

叔叔promised Noel he would bake him a minion cake from Despicable me since Noel had been a fan of that movie for quite some time.

Check out his look when he saw the cake. Priceless.

Noel's first day at school

Noel turned 5 and yesterday was his first day at school.

My, felt like he had just started kindy.

Last week was so busy for me as I was preparing for his 5th birthday party. He had a great time at school yesterday. He sang many songs and no homework so far.