Valentino

Bar Counter

View of private dining area

We had lunch at one of our favorite Italian restaurant in Singapore. Valentino.The entire family is now based in Singapore and have moved to a bigger premises at Turf City. I have been visiting their restaurant for the last many years. hahaha.

Salad with pine nuts

Mixed Mushrooms

We had salad with pine nuts and mixed mushroom today for appetizers followed by one of my favorite grilled Octopus leg. Yummy.

Grilled Octopus Leg

For main course, we had lobster linguine, Oglio oglio prawns and pork chops in wine sauce and they tasted delicious. These are courses that are usually not on the menu.

Oglio Oglio Prawns

Lobster in pink sauce

Pork chop in wine sauce

We had a Chianti Classico today to go with the dishes. A light classic wine from the Tuscany region.

Chianti Classico

My kids had Panecotta for dessert but i dont have a sweet tooth. This is the Italian "豆花" but cost many times more?!

Dessert

The owners treated us to a nicely decorated Limoncello to end the meal. This is the Italian way to end the meal. A sweet lemon flavored wine.

Limoncello

Our family will be there about once or twice a month. You can catch us there one day :).

Siem Reap - ATV Countryside Tour

We decided to be more adventurous on the second day and took the kids to experience the "real Cambodia" to explore the country side and its paddy fields. The rainy season caused the roads to be extremely muddy so don't expect this to be 'clean' fun if you intend to take this tour.

ATV Countryside Tour

In case you don't know what "ATV" stands for, it means "All-Terrain Vehicles". So basically it is a 4 wheel drive vehicle which you drive along muddy roads besides the paddy fields.

The path towards to countryside

We set off from the hotel towards the countryside. I have to warned that the journey to-and-from the hotel is actually the most dangerous part. If you are not used to driving on the main roads in an unfamiliar vehicle, then my suggestion is not to do this tour unless you are confident of handing the machine or that the tour starts and ends in the country side.

A lot of mud puddles along the way

You can see how muddy the road is and thankfully, we are on the vehicles.We cross a wooden bridge and you can see the paddy fields from afar.

A wooden bridge across the river

We drove past some make-shift stores. It was an 'eye opener' for the kids.Not sure if you dare to buy food and water from them though.

Make shift stalls. 

We drove past some farmers with their cows on their way to work.

Farmer and his cows

We drove past many children and this two kids were probably too playful to go school this morning.

2 playful kids waddling in the pool

Anchanh Primary School

There are probably a dozen of kids missing from school and playing in the fields or pools. Maybe it is the canteen break?

School lessons over?

Future Ronaldos in the making

The school boys in action on the make-shift soccer fields and the ball flew all over the place. Look at the nice paddy fields from afar. The rice served in Cambodia is actually quite fragrant. Similar to those found in Thailand.

A banana kick resulted in the ball going into water

Water buffalo

Even the water buffalo can take a break today! It was a happy day for all...

Siem Reap - Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat

This is Angkor Wat from afar. It is best to visit this during the late afternoon so that your photos will turn out nice as the sun will be behind you as you walk towards the temple. Angkor Wat is a world UNESCO heritage site and for obvious reasons, it has an old history and heritage.

It is surrounded by a moat and you will have to cross a bridge to get across to the temple.

Entrance to Angkor Wat

I am not a "temple person", so one full day of temple is more than adequate. It is like checking off the "to do list"on the things you need to see before you "die". hahaha. But as i said, i prefer Bayon Temple over this but unfortunately, it is not as famous as Ankor Wat.

There are many tourists during off peak!

There are more than enough tourists during the so-called "off peak"season. I can't imagine how it will be during the peak period though.

Angkor Wat during the wet season

It was a blessing in disguise to go during their wet season. There are enough downpours to create nice puddles of water everywhere to create a nice "mirror image" of Angkor Wat being reflected.

Guardians of the temple

Stairways to heaven

There was a steep stairway that will lead you right to the top of Angkor Wat but it is only restricted to adults. As such, we decided to give it a miss as the steps is really steep and shallow....and we didn't want to leave our kids with the guide.

Carvings on the wall

Overall, we spent about 2 hours here. The tour guide was frankly not engaging and became quite painful to follow him after a while. We had a personal guide from the hotel but of course, if you want cheaper alternatives, just google or get from tripadvisor. I didn't had time to do my own research, thus was plain lazy in getting a guide from the hotel (which will obviously cost more)....

Siem Reap - Angkor Thom & Bayon Temple

This morning we visited the temples of Angkor Thom. It was the rainy season but the good thing about visiting during October is that there are less tourists and less chance of you getting a heat stroke. I can imagine how hot it can get during the peak season.  The showers came in quick burst but wasn't bad enough to rain throughout the day (at least not when we were there).

Angkor Thom

The figurines on the bridge symbolize the fight between the good and the bad (if i still remember what the guide says). I will not elaborate further since i can't remember much of what the guide said but the figurines were pulling a long snake. It is unfortunate that the snake has "crumbled" but you can imagine how majestic it looked like during the hey days on the main bridge across the river.

Figurines on the bridge leading into Angkor Thom

To me, the more interesting temple in Angkor Thom (or Siem Reap for the matter) was the Bayon Temple. You can see many interesting faces being carved out of the stones. Personally i prefer the Bayon Temple over the Angkor Wat ruins.

Bayon Temple from afar

For the kids in you, there are elephant rides that circled the Bayon Temple but no elephant rides for me this time. I had enough of those in Phuket. The rainfall have created nice puddles of water for a nice photo shot. You will probably not get this shot during the dry and hot season.

Intricate carvings on the walls

It was interesting how the temples switched hands between Hinduism and Buddhism during the different periods in history. To me, Bayon was interesting because of the head carvings on the rocks. There are 3 levels and you can find the heads carvings at the highest level. The unfortunate thing was that some locals dressed themselves in historical and cultural costumes and hoped to take photos with you for a fee at the most strategic head carving at the top level. hahaha. So those heads you see below are the less beautiful ones.

Heads being carved from stones

This head is still in relatively good shape

Intricate stone head carvings

Field where the "parade" took place.

Just outside Bayon Temples, there are other ruins. The above was one where the parade used to take place and there are elephants on parade. If you have only 2 temples to visit, this will be one and Angkor being the other since it is such a world UNESCO heritage site. Visit this temple in the morning and Angkor Wat in the afternoon for a good photo shoot as the sun will be shining in your favor. The temple one day pass will cost you US$20.

USD works perfectly fine in Cambodia, thus you wouldn't need the local currencies.

Food Review - Heritage Suites, Siem Reap

Menu

From my earlier post, you would know that we stayed in Heritage Suites in Siem Reap for 3 nights. We had dinner there on the first and last night. Here is a quick review on the food we had. We had the tasting menu on the first night. (The menu on the bottom right below).

Tasting Menu

Detailed menu

 Bread with real garlic and butter!

The garlic bread came with real garlic and butter which you then "mashed" together to spread on the bread. It was really delicious.

I always "judged" a restaurant by how good the bread is. If the restaurant serves good bread, you can be pretty assured of a certain level of standard for the food.

Linguine Carbonara with egg

My kids ordered a plate of Linguine Carbonara. It was pretty tasty and usually you can't go wrong ordering this even though it is not my favourite. The seemingly raw egg blends nicely with the bacon and pasta and tasted good. I am not a fan of this dish but it does look and taste good.

Tuna with mango

The first dish of the tasting menu is the tuna with mango infused into it. If the dishes looked "fusion" to you, i don't think you are wrong. The taste does blend well with the tuna and mango melting in your mouth.

Foie Gras cambodian style

The Foie Gras tasted fine as well but not as exquisite

Jazz night

It was Jazz night when we were there and things can get rowdy and noisy. It is a form of gathering for the 'expatriates' working in Siem Reap and many came to network every thursday. If you cannot 'tahan' loud music, then my suggestion is to avoid this place during Thursdays.

Grilled Mekong "Lobster"

I am not sure why they call this a "lobster". It looked very much and tasted very much like a prawn. It must have been a busy Thursday night as the prawn was a tad over-cooked and once prawn is overcooked, the texture becomes more rubbery

Beef tenderloin

The beef tenderloin tasted much better than the "lobster" and the portion is just right and goes really well with a glass of red.

Exotic Gratin

The exotic food is actually a "Dragon eye fruit" in Chinese. hahaha can't remember the English name for this. I gave it a miss.

Breakfast at Hotel

The breakfast at the hotel is "ala-carte" buffet style where you can eat as much as you like but order only what you like to have. I find this arrangement much better than buffet style.

Omelette with sausages and bacon

My kids love the Omelette while we prefer ours the sunny side up with a runny egg yolk waiting to ooze out.I will take the egg and put it into my noodles.

Sunny side up

Bee Hoon Chicken

I had the bee hoon for 3 mornings in a roll. It was that good and tasted heavenly with a dash of lime. The chicken blends better than the pork and beef as it is less hard.

Ala carte Dinner

Italian Barolo

We had dinner on the last night here as well. We ordered some similar dishes from the tasting menu and had a bottle of red Italian wine.  (I will not repost the same dishes we had here).

We shared some soup (can't remember what exactly) haha..scallop carparccio salad and lamb rack. The meal we had was good and the lady serving us was excellent. She is really an outstanding waitress who make sure we are well taken care of and provided excellent service. (I must remember to take their pictures next time).

Soup

Salad

Lamb rack

My intention of this blog is to build up the pages slowly overtime so that it can actually help 'archive' some of the nice memories we had and provide reference materials to fellow travellers who share the same passion as me.. I still have tons of pictures which is in my hard drive and i will share them slowly whenever time permits (such as when the market is in a doldrums) haha... but somehow at the rate at which we love to travel, i think i will have a difficult time catching up... :-P

Happy travelling.