Food photo dump from spring and summer 2025

by   •   Food
 

Today is the last day of astronomical summer, with the autumnal equinox happening tomorrow during the late morning in my local Las Vegas time zone; I felt like this was a good milestone to share some of the miscellaneous food photographs I’ve taken over the past handful of months.

During the last two seasons, I dined in at quite a few restaurants that I thought were blog-worthy: Stubborn Seed Las Vegas, ikigai, Sushi by Scratch Beverly Hills, Bello by Sandro Nardone, Kase Sake and Sushi, The X Pot, Peacock Alley, Petrossian Bar, Sparrow + Wolf, A Different Beast, and Kabuto Edomae Sushi. For the restaurants that I thought didn’t warrant their own dedicated blog post, here is a round-up photo dump with everything else.

 
While in Los Angeles County housesitting for a friend, I met up with another friend to help her do some furniture shopping. We sat on several different couches from a bunch of different stores, and I concluded that all of them felt nearly identical. Then, I sat on the last couch on her list of couches to test out and realized that it was about 20 times better than every other couch, and that we probably should’ve just started with that one to begin with.

After successfully debossing our butt prints on many different couches, we got sushi for lunch at Mills Alley in Pasadena, California. Here is my chirashi bowl and tako wasabi.

During one of my trips in spring, I flew transcontinentally with JetBlue Mint on one of their new Airbus A321neos configured to allow all Mint passengers to have direct aisle access (as opposed to the older Airbus A321s that have “throne” seats in the even-numbered rows and a 2-2 configuration in the odd-numbered rows).

I don’t know if this has always been the case, but I found it enjoyable that they gave me a bottle of Saratoga Water, considering the recent Ashton Hall Saratoga Water meme.

While waiting for the flight attendants to prepare all the meals, I received a glass of Diet Coke and their signature zero-proof “Mint (Under One) Condition” with seltzer, ginger, lime, cucumber, and mint. I also got a small brass snack bowl of what I think was vegan rinds, potentially made out of rice.

I always like to sit in the last row of lie-flat first class and business class cabins because they offer the most privacy; in this case, I was in seat 8F. This meant I would be the last one to receive my meal, but I don’t mind; I feel like receiving your meal deeper into your flight helps partition out the journey a bit better so that you’re not done with your food right away and left with a bored mouth for the rest of the flight.

For my meal, I got some shrimp, lasagna, and a chicken salad. I think this is literally the most dry chicken I have ever tasted in my entire life. The food was incredibly disappointing, and I think the bread was probably the only decent thing they served for dinner.

For dessert, I got this wild-looking fruit and nut ice cream. This was significantly better than the meal, though I don’t know if I thought that because it was actually decent ice cream, or if I had been so let down by dinner that this only tasted incredible in comparison.

One of my friends recently visited me in Las Vegas for a bit. She was craving some late night sushi, so we tried out Japaniero Asian Fusion in the southwest Las Vegas Valley. We were pleasantly surprised at how high-quality the fish was. We enjoyed some sashimi and ceviche, but my favorite dish was the rock shrimp with spicy yuzu creme.

Back on a plane—this time with American Airlines.

Although my cholesterol levels are no longer as dangerously high as they used to be, I am still mindful of my health and try to eat fish and birds whenever possible to maintain heart health and avoid hereditary-prone disorders and diseases. Thus, I requested grilled salmon with vegetables, pita bread with hummus, and a side salad for my in-flight meal.

The person sitting next to me, though? He requested nothing, because he completely knocked out right after boarding the flight. He didn’t regain consciousness until I was more than halfway finished with my meal, but after he woke up and realized that everyone else had either received or was in the process of getting their food, he looked around in panic as if he was too late and he would not get dinner that day.

The guy was young, and he seemed genuinely concerned, so eventually, I told him something along the lines of “don’t worry, you’re in first class, they will come back and give you food after they’re done serving everyone else.” Lo and behold, when the flight attendants were finished fulfilling everyone else’s requests that had already been put in, they asked my next-seat neighbor what he wanted for dinner. I think he picked some kind of pasta meal.

In addition to the regular portion of the meal, in-flight meals also usually have a “from the bakery” section where the flight attendant will walk around with a basket of fresh bread and allow you to select what kind of bread you would like to have to go along with your meal. They brought the bread basket to the guy next to me, and he picked a roll. He then proceeded to jab at every single dish, literally not eat any of it, then eat only the bread with a gigantic portion of butter.

When he had the chance, he flagged down the flight attendant and asked for some more bread and butter. He then proceeded to eat only the bread and butter again, and not eat anything else. This was so funny to me that I felt I had to take a picture. I didn’t want to make it obvious so the framing is a bit weird and I just barely got his tray in the shot with the wide angle mode on my phone’s camera, but you can see the comical stack of butter wrappers atop the rest of his uneaten food.

Also, if you’re wondering about the discrepancy between my photograph here in seat 1A and the statement I made earlier about preferring the final row of the first class cabin, my last-row preference only applies to lie-flat seats that have direct aisle access. For United States domestic first class in a 2-2 configuration, I always try to grab the bulkhead window seat if I can so that I can go in and out to the bathroom without my seat neighbor needing to move, and also so I can sleep without my neighbor bothering me to go to the bathroom.

Anyway, this was my dessert. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but I do recall it being pretty good, albeit a bit too sweet.

Back in Las Vegas, I had a tasting menu dinner reservation with one of my friends one day, but we had a few hours to kill before our time slot. We were on the Strip, so I figured it would be a good opportunity to visit the Coca-Cola store on the Las Vegas Strip.

For the longest time, I’ve wanted to do the “Around the World” beverage tasting experience but never got around to it until now.

I’m glad that I brought my friend along for this, because the portion size for the drinks was actually more than I expected. Even though the plastic cups look small, the liquid adds up pretty quickly, so it was helpful to have her help drink some of this.

It was definitely interesting, but still probably just a one-time-only kind of activity for me. My conclusion after trying all 14 beverages was that plain old regular Diet Coke and Coca-Cola Zero Sugar are still my preferred Coca-Cola soft drinks, and my all-time favorite is still Coca-Cola Zero Sugar out of a Coca-Cola Freestyle dispenser with either lime or peach syrup mixed in.

I don’t know where this was from because I was with a group of friends after dinner, one person picked a place in walking distance to go to for dessert, and I basically blindly followed her to the restaurant’s front door. We picked two desserts to share amongst ourselves, and this strawberry ice cream dessert was my selection; I thought it was very good.

Anime Expo happened over the summer, and I had some friends visit Los Angeles from out of town for the convention. I also happened to be in Los Angeles County at that time (though not for Anime Expo), and I took the opportunity to meet up with some friends who I hadn’t seen for a while.

With one of my friends, I went to Shinkai Sushi Japanese Fusion in Alhambra, California. My friend told me that she’s not really a sushi expert, so to spare her from the decision-making, I decided to order two different combo plates of sashimi along with a side of sushi rice. The fish was high-quality and cut satisfyingly thick.

In the evening of the final day of Anime Expo, I joined one of my friends and her group of convention-goers for dinner at Hanu K-BBQ. While at the restaurant, I happened to run into someone else I know, so I went over to chat with her at her table while I was waiting for food to come out. Apparently, Hanu K-BBQ has very fast service, because by the time I was back at my table, the waitress was already done cooking our first batch of meat.

The quality of the meat was great, but we ordered a comically small portion of food considering the number of people who were in our group, so I left hungry. This restaurant is one of the rare spots in Koreatown that has plentiful parking, so if I’m in the area again, this is definitely a place I’d be willing to try again (but order a more reasonable amount of food).

Now we teleport to the San Francisco Bay Area, to which I traveled for Open Sauce 2025. I had a travel companion as a +1 for my trip, and on the day that we arrived, we walked over to a nearby strip mall to get some food and buy some filtered drinking water and snacks.

For lunch, we dined in at Otoko Sushi in Redwood City and ordered a chirashi bowl and “treasure box” off their sushi combo menu. Both of these were pretty mediocre, and I found the market price on the treasure box to be fairly overpriced compared to what we got (though I don’t remember exactly how much it was; I just remember that it was too expensive).

This was such a funny moment for me that I felt like I had to share it, and I figured that its relation to food is close enough that it would make sense to tell the story here.

After our sushi lunch at Otoko, we walked to the nearby Nob Hill Foods to buy a gallon of spring water and some protein bars. My friend initially picked a KIND bar, but then she remembered that she had an app on her phone where she could scan grocery store barcodes and be told how healthy an item is.

She then proceeded to scan literally 30+ different items from the shelves in an attempt to find the healthiest protein bar, periodically expressing comical frustration and confusion at how unhealthy so many of these options were. At one point, she was so bewildered that we decided to fact-check her app by scanning the barcode on our drinking water… to which the app declared that it was 100% healthy. Now more confident in the app, she proceeded to squat back down and scan even more items.

We weren’t in a rush because our next scheduled obligation was quite a bit later on in the night, so I stood there in pleasant amusement while doing curls with the gallon jug of water in an attempt to make more efficient use of my time and get a light workout in.

The best part: she ended up just buying the original KIND bar that she had first picked anyway.

For lunch during one of our San Francisco days, we went to Echigo Home Cook. For our beverage, we ordered an iced coconut hojicha. The flavor profile on this was very unique and distinct, and I think this might have been the most delicious tea I have ever had in my entire life.

For our main entrées, we got one deluxe chirashi bowl and one uni-toro-kani rice bowl. My friend also added on a creamy scallop hand roll, which is not pictured here.

The fish quality was unbelievably high. The food here was very pricey, but the quality was also up there to match. The salmon roe in the chirashi bowl was unlike any I had ever had before—it tasted almost like it was a more naturally watered-down version of the roe, but only to the perfect level such that it reduced some of the more intense saltiness you expect from ikura so that the flavor profile comes out a bit more pure and clean. I also remember it having an unusual citrusy freshness to it. It’s almost as if each roe was individually injected with a tiny portion of yuzu juice and then resealed.

Jumping back to Las Vegas, here’s an octopus appetizer I had at Javier’s in the Aria Resort and Casino. I also ate the fish of the day as my main entrée, but I forgot to take a picture of that.

And finally, to wrap up the photo dump, here are some photos from a seafood restaurant. I don’t remember where this is from because I was conveniently chauffeured there by my friends. As you can see, we ended up ordering a lot of dishes. The portion sizes were smaller than we had hoped, but overall, the food ranged between decent and solid.

And that, along with the individual dedicated blog posts that I linked above, concludes my past two seasons of food adventures. I’ve had more to share recently than I usually do because I’ve been traveling together with friends more often lately, which encourages me to go out and try local restaurants’ dine-in experiences (as opposed to there being a higher likelihood while traveling alone of just ordering a simple chicken or fish dish for takeout and eating it in my hotel room while working or watching YouTube).

 

—§—

 

Hello, Zoox Explorer at Resorts World Las Vegas in Nevada

by   •   Face, Las Vegas
 

I haven’t been as diligent about keeping up with new technology as I was when I was a kid. Young Adam used to be pretty dedicated to reading tech news and trying to adopt as much of it into his life as quickly as possible, but current Adam only notices these things if they are either locally relevant or have advanced to a stage of development where it’s about to have a big impact on society.

Self-driving cars have hit both of those metrics.

With Tesla and Elon Musk having local ties to Nevada and Las Vegas, I’ve noticed them as one of the pioneers of self-driving technology. I’ve never really liked Tesla ever since around 2017 when I took a ride in my aunt and uncle’s Model X and realized how poorly it was built. Although I have not been particularly vocal about my dislike of Tesla ever since Elon Musk’s involvement in politics because I don’t want to be mistaken as some leftist Democrat who is just jumping on the Elon Musk hate bandwagon, my opinions of Tesla are still generally the same. I’ve always thought that Tesla should’ve just been a technology company and not a car manufacturer. With that being said, to my understanding, the work that Tesla conducts in Las Vegas is heavily focused on that technology aspect, which I think is a good thing.

Other companies, like Waymo, have joined in on developing self-driving technology and have outpaced Tesla. When I took a trip to the Phoenix Metropolitan Area in Arizona, I rode around exclusively in Waymos instead of using human-driven rideshare services. This is obviously a big change to society.

I am looking forward to self-driving technology becoming good enough to the point where people won’t have to drive their own vehicles anymore. I still drive my 2018 GMC Canyon gasoline pickup truck; once that breaks down or otherwise becomes inoperable, I expect to buy an electric pickup truck to replace it. I anticipate that to be the last vehicle I buy that I need to drive myself; I think that if I keep my Canyon for a handful more years and then drive my new EV for a decade and a half, self-driving cars should probably be the norm that far into the future.

With all that context in mind, along with knowing that I am optimistic about the future of self-driving vehicles, I’m sure it’s not surprising to hear that I was one of the first people to join the Zoox Explorer program as part of their partnership with Resorts World Las Vegas. Zoox is a company that is also working on self-driving technology like Waymo, and they are at a phase of development where they’re able to test their vehicles on public roads. For the past few years, I have seen quite a few supervised Zoox vehicles driving around Las Vegas for testing; I was excited to hear that they were now ready to be tested fully autonomously.

Zoox had a little booth set up in front of the southern entrance off Goh Tong Way. From here, people who were interested in taking a ride in a Zoox were able to scan a QR code, register for an account, and join the waitlist.

Right around 20 minutes after my friend and I signed up for a demo ride, a Zoox arrived to pick us up. As you can tell from the photographs, the interior of these vehicles are designed to not have a driver at all. There is no driver’s seat or front passenger’s seat; there are just four seats for occupants.

They also don’t look like a normal vehicle with a tapered hood area that encases either the engine in gasoline vehicles or a front trunk in electric vehicles; instead, they are basically just rectangular prisms (which I imagine might not be the best for aerodynamics).

Once inside, there was a message on the control screen welcoming us to the ride and briefing us on the estimated length of our demo ride. Shortly thereafter, a button popped up that allowed us to begin the ride.

There is a little screen next to each occupant from which the climate control and music can be adjusted.

People sometimes ask me (presumably as a joke) how I can prove that I went somewhere or did something if I take pictures of things around me, but not of myself. Well, here is a remarkably low-quality picture of myself sitting in the Zoox.

There were two demo rides available—a short one just around Resorts World Las Vegas, and a long one all the way up the Las Vegas Strip. Interestingly, our Zoox decided to have a mind of its own and not follow the mapped route; instead, it took us all the way out to Koval Lane. Here is a photograph of the MGM Grand at the intersection of Tropicana Avenue.

When I mentioned this detour to a Zoox staff member after the conclusion of the ride, he said that the system sometimes takes different routes to avoid construction if it knows that it will be stuck in congestion.

Eventually, it found its way back onto Las Vegas Boulevard. The vehicle has a dual-pane sunroof, which acted as a convenient window through which we could see the lights of the Strip.

After about half an hour, the Zoox completed its loop and returned us back to Resorts World.

I found most of the ride to be not too different from what I experienced in a Waymo. However, there were two things that were significantly worse.

First, the headrest is extremely hard. It feels like it is an insanely dense block of foam or something. Not only does it jut out a bit so it feels like your head is leaning forward the entire time, but it is so solid that, if the Zoox ever has to brake hard and your head gets thrown back, it will impact with the foam and probably give you a pretty bad headache. In Waymos, I liked that the headrest was basically just a regular vehicle headrest that was firm enough to give proper support but still soft enough to be comfortable.

Second, the seats do not recline at all. This is a problem for someone like me who gets easily car sick. In Waymos, I’m able to sit in the front passenger seat and recline the seat back pretty far so that I’m in a relaxed, leaned position and my motion sickness is mitigated. However, in the Zoox, I had to sit upright the entire time, and my motion sickness got bad enough near the end that it almost felt like I had to vomit.

Overall, I thought this was a great experience, and I’m glad I was able to participate in the program and volunteer some of my time to test out a new autonomous vehicle. To be clear, I did not get compensated to write this blog post, and I didn’t even receive a special private invitation or anything; I just saw that this was a thing and tried it out along with the rest of the general public.

I don’t know how long this testing phase will stay open, but if you’re on or around the Las Vegas Strip and want to check it out, I think it would serve as a fun way to spend half an hour.

I think this would be especially compelling if you’ve never ridden in a Waymo before. This wasn’t as novel of an experience for me as it could have been because of my plethora of Waymo rides from Phoenix, but I’ve heard from people who have never been in a fully self-driving car before that their first time was pretty surreal.

I mentioned earlier in this blog post that I’m looking to buy an electric pickup truck as my next vehicle. I decided to save this photo for last because it’s not fully relevant to Zoox (apart from the Zoox vehicles also being electric), but I drove a Ford F-150 Lightning as my rental vehicle while I was in Las Vegas.

(For those wondering, the reason I had a rental and didn’t just drive my own personal pickup truck is because I recently flew from Hà Nội to Los Angeles and had a small window of time to head back home to Las Vegas before needing to return to Los Angeles again to attend an event, so instead of driving to Las Vegas, I parked my truck at my friend’s home and flew.)

When I rent vehicles, I always select the pickup truck class because I’m used to driving pickup trucks and feel more comfortable in taller vehicles with better visibility. Luckily for me, apparently Avis just classes all full-size pickup trucks together, regardless of whether they are a basic trim or an EV. I figured this was a good opportunity to test out a Ford F-150 Lightning for the first time, so I specifically asked for it when I went to the rental counter, and the customer service representative gladly fulfilled my request.

The charging infrastructure in the Las Vegas Valley isn’t the best if you don’t have access to the Tesla Supercharger network (which I did not, because the F-150 Lightning rental did not come with a proper adapter to allow me to plug in a Tesla Charging Connector into the currently more common CCS connector for non-Tesla EVs). I ended up having to drive down to the Shell Recharge south of South Point for fast charging, as a majority of other locations I found only had ~7 kW charging rate instead of the full ~180 kW DC. Unfortunately, the price there was pretty expensive, and considering the kilowatt-hours per mile used by the F-150 Lightning, it was barely any cheaper than if I had a gasoline F-150 with an EcoBoost engine.

With that being said, I heard that Tesla is working on making their facilities more universal and friendly to other non-Tesla vehicles as well, and they will allegedly retrofit their stations to have built-in adapters. On top of that, charging technology is only going to get better, so in a handful of years when I’m ready to buy a new pickup truck, I imagine that charging will no longer be much of an issue.

The F-150 Lighting was probably the most stable and smooth ride I’ve ever felt in a pickup truck. I love that the heavy batteries bring the center of gravity down low, so it significantly reduces the chances of a dangerous rollover in the case of a collision, and it overall just makes the vehicle feel more firm and solid. I felt like I could easily take curves faster than my smaller mid-size pickup truck and still not have as much of a sensation of inertia from centripetal force.

If a car rental company has an F-150 Lightning available, I am definitely asking for it again in the future. Once you get the hang of it, charging at a fast charge station isn’t too bad—you plug it into the charger, get back in the vehicle, turn on the air conditioning or heat to stay comfortable (without needing to idle the engine like you would with a gasoline vehicle), plug your laptop into the household outlet that F-150s have, and treat the truck like a little mobile office.

As for Zoox, I’m looking forward to seeing how they iterate on the interior design of their vehicles. Hopefully they implement some more comfort features in the cabin so that I can consider using them on a routine basis without needing to be worried about motion sickness.

 

—§—

 

Hello, “Glam Menagerie: Surrealist Summer” at the Bellagio Conservatory on the Las Vegas Strip

by   •   Las Vegas
 

I’ve sort of made it a seasonal tradition at this point to go to the Bellagio Conservatory & Botanical Gardens to capture and upload pictures of their latest installment. Earlier this year, I posted about “Lunar New Year 2025: Year of the Snake” in the winter and “The Birds and the B’s” during the spring.

The Bellagio’s summer installation this year is called “Glam Menagerie: A Surrealist Summer.” I took a quick look at it back in June and July when I had friends visiting Las Vegas, but I didn’t have an opportunity to go through and thoroughly photograph everything until earlier today. I managed to get my visit in with only a day to spare—the installation is closing down at the end of the day tomorrow and will be entering its dark dates for a week while they transition to the autumn collection.

 

—§—

 

Hello, EVA Air flights 398 and 12 from Hanoi to Taoyuan to Los Angeles

by   •   Flights, Highlights
 

My time in Hà Nội, Việt Nam has come to an end. I gave some more context about the trip in my blog post reviewing my EVA Air flights outbound from Los Angeles to Hanoi, but long story short, this was a good opportunity for me to go be a tourist in Asia for the first time while also overlapping it with checking out “Catch the Cash” by PK Gaming, the very first community-run in-person esports event for my company Tempo’s video game The Bazaar.

I’ve published several blog posts during my trip showing some of what I’ve been doing—learning about Vietnamese history at the Ho Chi Minh Museum, petting animals at the Baby Elephant Animal Park, looking at art in the Vincom Center for Contemporary Art, immersing myself in the lights of the HLC Starry Sky Art Museum, walking around inside the Vincom Mega Mall Royal City, and taking a serene stroll through the JW Marriott Lakeside Gardens, to name a handful. I also did some general sightseeing in the Ba Đình and West Lake Districts of Hanoi.

Although I’m usually a spontaneous and unstructured one-way flight kind of traveler, I booked a round-trip flight for this itinerary, not only because my Vietnamese travel visa prompted me for return flight details, but also because international round-trips end up algorithmically costing materially less than the identical flights booked as two one-ways. Because of that, I had my flights out of Hanoi already set—EVA Air flight 398 from Nội Bài International Airport in Hanoi to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport servicing the Greater Taipei Area, and then EVA Air flight 12 from Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport to Los Angeles International Airport—the exact mirror flights that I took on my way to Hanoi.

Thanks to the concierge team at the JW Marriott Hotel Hanoi, I had a transport car waiting for me the morning of my day of departure. I had generally just used Grab to call rideshare services throughout my stay in Hanoi, but I figured I wanted to be extra safe in case there were issues with Grab (I had read some horror stories online of people trying to call a ride but having drivers chain-cancel on them), so that I wouldn’t miss my flight, be stranded in Vietnam, and accidentally overstay my visa. After about 40 minutes, we made it to Nội Bài International Airport and I was dropped off at departures.

After a very smooth, quick, and uneventful check-in and security process, I walked into the terminal and went upstairs to enter the SH Premium Lounge. Apparently the “SH” used to stand for Sông Hồng, which means “Red River” in Vietnamese, but at some point, they changed it to stand for “Service from the Heart” instead. … I think I like Sông Hồng better.

As boarding time approached and I was about to leave the lounge, I saw a sign by the exit saying that EVA Air flight 398 was delayed by about an hour. However, when I checked the EVA Air website, there was no such update posted online. In my paranoid fear of somehow missing my flight and being stranded in Vietnam on a visa expiring that same day, I still made my way downstairs to the gate to make absolute certain that I would not be left behind. Once I got there, I was able to confirm that my flight was indeed delayed.

To apologize for the delay, a staff member brought over a ton of complimentary meal kits to distribute to the affected passengers. I had just finished eating a meal and a half’s worth of free food at the airport lounge, so I passed on the meal and just accepted a bottle of water, in hopes that a different, extra hungry person would be able to take two meals instead. In my past decade of very frequent travel, I have never seen a United States airline do this, so it was a very pleasant surprise seeing this gesture from EVA Air.

The delay was extended by a bit and I ended up having to wait at the gate for about an hour and a half, but eventually, our Boeing 777-300ER aircraft arrived and was ready for boarding.

I mentioned this in the blog post that I wrote about my outbound flight, but I feel the need to mention this again. Yes, I flew business class for these flights. However, I paid out-of-pocket for my business class ticket. Even though I went to an event related to Tempo, I am not going on luxury trips and expensing the cost of them to Tempo. The company’s revenue is being reinvested back into further development of The Bazaar.

I settled into seat 11K in the final row of the business class cabin, which I selected because I think that it’s the seat that gives the most peace and privacy.

Because this was a relatively shorter flight, meal service started relatively promptly. As my hors d’oeuvre, I received a smoked duck, fruit, and vegetable salad.

For my main entrée, I opted for wok-fried Nile perch topped with crispy garlic and capsicums prepared Hong Kong style, with a side of rice and vegetables.

I picked two beverages to go along with my meal. From their mocktail menu, I ordered a non-alcoholic Amber Dream, made from apple juice, ginger ale, and cranberry juice. I also got a glass of Vigor Dong Shih (VDS) mixed carrot and fruit juice.

One thing I liked about Vietnam was that their juice selection includes a lot of options that are not available in the United States. I was glad to see that the trend continued into Taiwan; this carrot and fruit juice was probably one of the best juices I’ve ever had.

As a palate cleanser after my fish entrée, I received a cup of fresh fruit.

Finally, for dessert, the flight attendants distributed chocolate apricot cake.

After finishing my meal, I put in my earbuds so I could listen to music and relax for the remainder of the flight.

After a little over two and a half hours of travel time, we arrived at our gate at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.

Because this is the same airport in which I had my previous layover, I was more familiar with the layout and didn’t walk around aimlessly in circles this time. I went straight upstairs to the lounge area, passing by the Oriental Club Lounge that I was previously in on my way to Hanoi. To be clear, there was nothing bad about the Oriental Club Lounge; I just wanted to try a different lounge this time to expand the breadth of my experiences.

Because my flight from Hanoi to Taoyuan was delayed, my layover wasn’t quite as long as it would have been, but I still had about an hour to relax and get some snacks in the EVA Air: The Infinity lounge.

With about half an hour to spare before departure, I made my way downstairs to the gate. After a smooth and uneventful boarding process, I sat down in seat 11A, again in the last row of the business class cabin.

The sun had already set over an hour prior to the departure of this flight; it was on the tail end of astronomical twilight, and was already pretty dark outside. Presumably to match the outdoors, the cabin lights were dimmed for takeoff, showing the sparkling ceiling lights resembling a starry night sky.

For my meal, I picked the “celebrity chef’s banquet,” a multi-course tasting menu designed by Wen-Kuang Hsu, an executive chef with a Michelin guide recommendation.

The prelude came with two small bites: a spicy sausage and mushroom tomato tart, and smoked salmon with avocado mousse.

The starter consisted of lotus root and okra with Sichuan pepper sauce, scallop and vegetables with passion fruit sauce, and Chaozhou-style crab aspic.

Next up was chicken soup with apple, dried scallop, and white jelly ear.

The first of the main course was braised abalone with shiitake mushroom in soy and oyster sauce.

The second plate of the main course was steamed lotus leaf rice with braised pork belly and preserved mustard greens.

For the sweets course (which is different than dessert), I was served a sakura blossom encased in Aiyu jelly.

And finally, for dessert, I got some ice cream. The menu said that this was Häagen-Dazs, but it was served in its own miniature glass bowl, so I guess I technically can’t fully confirm what brand it was.

After this hearty and filling meal, I reclined back in my lie-flat seat, replied to some emails and messages (because, by this point, it was already the morning in the Pacific time zone and people were waking up in the United States), and got a solid seven and a half hours of surprisingly restful sleep.

As I was about to complete my eighth hour of sleep, the cabin lights gently illuminated with an orange, red, and blue hue of colors that I imagine were designed to emulate a natural sunrise. This was actually quite pleasant, and I appreciated EVA Air’s nice touch to try and encourage passengers’ bodies to find a new circadian rhythm for the new continent.

To help me wake up, my flight attendant delivered a caffè latte with a crystallized brown sugar stick. I don’t get affected by caffeine so this didn’t quite work as she intended, but I was already pretty well-rested from my session of sleep anyway, and it was a nice warm beverage to sip on while meal service was being prepared.

For breakfast, I was served Chinese plain congee with wok-fried diced chicken and cashew nuts, green bean frittata, and other traditional delicatessens.

To wrap up my meal, I was served a plate of fresh fruit.

After about twelve and a half hours, we approached Los Angeles County. We were approaching eastbound, but our runway faced westbound, so we did a loop around the airport first; during the loop out, I looked out my window and snapped a photograph of the Sawtelle, Westwood, and Century City areas.

We landed about half an hour later than scheduled due to the flight path we had to take over the Pacific Ocean, but I obviously didn’t mind the delay, considering the relative comfort of business class seats.

Overall, I’d consider my trip to Vietnam to be pretty successful. I had originally been hesitant to travel by myself to a country where English is not spoken as the primary language. However, things went a lot more smoothly than I expected, and the language barrier didn’t really cause much of an issue. All the staff in my hotel spoke English, which obviously made things easier, but another major factor that helped a lot was just the advancement of technology. With mobile apps for rideshare and translation, I felt like I was able to handle pretty much any situation, albeit with a little bit of patience.

I had been eyeing a trip to Japan and Singapore at some point in the future, but I did not seize my latest opportunity to go to Japan because I wanted to wait until I was able to travel together with someone reliable, and preferably someone who spoke at least some amount of Japanese, who I could depend on if something were to go wrong. However, considering how well my solo trip to Vietnam went, basically all of my reservations have been relieved and I am far more inclined to take more spontaneous international trips now.

And with that, here is my updated travel map:

I made this map somewhere around a decade ago now, and as you can probably clearly tell, it was designed specifically to keep track of how many states I’ve been to in my home country of the United States of America. I obviously need to update this framework at some point, but until I find a chance to do that, I guess this will have to suffice.

 

—§—

 

Hello, Lakeside Gardens at the JW Marriott Hotel Hanoi in Vietnam

by   •   Tourism
 

Although those who know me well will have been able to easily guess which hotel that I, a Marriott loyalist, stayed at during my trip to Hà Nội, Việt Nam, I still didn’t want to “confirm” it on my blog until the end of my trip, considering that there was a lot of other stuff for me to post about anyway, and no matter how low the security risk might be, it’s still considered within best practices to not disclose your exact location.

Now that it is safer to do so, I can verify that I did indeed select the JW Marriott Hotel Hanoi for my time in Vietnam. I heard that they had a reputation for offering excellent service; considering that I am a foreigner who was traveling for the very first time to a country that does not speak English as their primary language, I figured I could take advantage of and lean on the hotel staff to help get me through my stay if anything were to come up. (Luckily, I didn’t have anything go wrong throughout my entire trip, but it was still good peace of mind to know that the staff was there to help whenever needed.)

The hotel overall was fantastic, and I especially appreciated the executive lounge where I was able to get free meals, snacks, beverages, and filtered water all day. Another thing I liked about the hotel was the Lakeside Gardens, a serene and well-manicured garden on the hotel property.

Here are some photographs I took in and around the Lakeside Gardens:

During my walk, I noticed that the staff brought out boxes of documents at some point and began throwing them into a fire pit. I suspect that this was their equivalent of when people shred confidential documents in the United States.

Within the gardens, there was a special section called the Herb Garden. I saw on the JW Marriott website that they had cooking classes that took place in the Herb Garden, with the curriculum focusing on different kinds of herbs and the roles they play in Vietnamese cuisine. I considered trying it but ended up never getting around to it because it was very rainy and humid most of the days of my stay, and on the sunnier days, I went off-property to be a tourist out in the city.

Here are some more photographs from in and around the Lakeside Gardens:

After walking all the paths of the Lakeside Gardens, I circled around to the front and side of the hotel.

This was the view that I had from my hotel room’s window; it overlooked the Lakeside Gardens, as well as the lake and a portion of the Hanoi skyline.

I figured this was also probably one of the most relevant blog posts for me to share pictures of my room as well. I just had a regular guest room, but it was very nice and exceeded the quality of many other hotels’ higher-end suites. It was very spacious, and the design was a nice balance of minimalistic simplicity and elegant comfort. My favorite part about it was the floor-to-ceiling windows, which allowed me to let in plenty of sunlight during the daytime and enjoy the sparkling city lights during the night.

The pricing during my stay was surprisingly affordable—around US$150.00 per night on average. It was still very expensive relative to Vietnam’s cost of living, but if you compare it to hotel prices in the United States, $150 a night is basically just a regular hotel, and high-end resorts under Marriott’s luxury brands (like the JW, Ritz-Carlton, and St. Regis) will be at least several hundred (if not over a thousand) dollars per night.

Overall, the JW Marriott Hotel Hanoi fulfilled everything I could have possibly wanted from my lodging in Vietnam. It was a tranquil retreat away from the bustling city, and it had enough amenities that someone could theoretically never leave the property and have plenty of food and activities to last them an entire two-week vacation.

 

—§—

 

Hello, West Lake District in Hanoi, Vietnam

by   •   Travel
 

I think one of the best ways to experience a new city is to just go outside and walk around in a densely-populated area. I applied that philosophy during my trip to Hà Nội, Việt Nam by one day heading over to the Tây Hồ District, which translates to the West Lake District, and going for a leisurely stroll around the touristy area.

… It didn’t exactly stay leisurely, but at least it started pretty peacefully.

I started my day at Double B’s Specialty Coffee and Brunch. It is right on Hồ Tây, which translates to West Lake; here is the view of the lake from the restaurant.

While deciding what to eat, I ordered some of their “must-try” signature juice. The juice was very unique and unlike most juices in the United States. It wasn’t too sweet, which allowed the rich flavors of the fruits and vegetables come out. The flavor combination was also interesting and gave the beverage a multi-faceted element to it.

The banana bread was relatively mild compared to what I usually have in the United States, which I actually preferred. I often see banana bread made closer to being a thicker cake, but this banana bread at Double B’s was special in that the outside was denser and thicker like banana bread, but the center was much softer and more supple in texture.

I also sipped on some egg coffee. To be clear, this isn’t regular coffee with an egg cracked into it or anything; I believe the significance of the “egg” is closer to what eggnog would be, as this was a very rich, creamy, and custardy coffee.

This is what the front of the restaurant looked like. The idiot sitting on the bench in the covered patio started smoking a cigarette while I was eating, so although I enjoyed my brunch, I ended my meal with a horrific headache.

Afterwards, I started walking southwest on a pedestrian walkway in Phường Yên Hoa, which translates to the Peace Blossom Ward.

I approached Chùa Trấn Quốc, which translates to the Tran Quoc Pagoda; unfortunately, they appeared to be closed due to some parades and celebrations that were happening for Cách mạng tháng Tám và Quốc khánh nước Cộng hòa Xã hội chủ nghĩa Việt Nam, which is the August Revolution and the National Day of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

I crossed over Đường Thanh Niên and took some more photographs of the buildings surrounding West Lake.

Đền Thủy Trung Tiên was also closed, but I managed to peek inside through the spaces in the door. I believe that name roughly translates to the Temple of the Fairy in the Middle of the Water.

I believe this was the Nhà Hàng Bánh Tôm Hồ Tây, which roughly translates to West Lake Shrimp Cake Restaurant. There was a dog randomly roaming around.

Here is Nhà Ga Thủy Phi Cơ Hồ Tây, or the West Lake Seaplane Terminal.

I eventually made my way over to Vườn hoa Mai Xuân Thưởng. In the center, there was a statue of Mai Xuân Thưởng, the man after whom the flower garden is named. He was known as a leader of Phong trào Cần Vương, a movement that roughly translates to “Support the King” which aimed to expel French colonial forces from Vietnam.

Here is the đài phun nước bông sen, or the lotus fountain, inside the aforementioned flower garden.

At this point, more and more roads were closing in preparation for the parade and celebration. I wanted to make my way back to my hotel soon, so I slowly started walking away from the busy area and tried to find a decent spot to get picked up by a Grab driver.

Unfortunately, the more I walked, the more I realized that the scope and breadth of the road closures was a lot greater than what I expected.

Comically, I would find a spot on my Grab app that was available for pick-up, so I would walk over there, but by the time I made it over to that location, the road closures had expanded even more and Grab no longer permitted pick-ups from that area anymore.

Eventually, after over five kilometers of walking, I made it far enough away from the busy area that I was able to call a Grab driver.

It obviously wasn’t the most pleasant experience having to trek a long distance in the heat and humidity, but I actually really enjoyed my walk through and around the West Lake District. It also made my shower feel extra refreshing after getting back to my hotel.

I feel like having all these road closures and celebration preparations greatly enhanced my day of sightseeing, and it allowed me to get a much more genuine and special Hanoi experience. I didn’t stick around for long enough to actually see the parade’s dress rehearsal or anything else that was happening that evening, but I did have an opportunity to see some helicopters flying overhead, presumably carrying some important government figures.

The scale of this parade seemed astronomically large. I’m glad I was lucky enough to have the timing line up with my trip, because I’m pretty sure I would not have been able to see anything quite like this in the United States.

 

—§—