The Cube

Like many others, Colombo is the first stop of many entering to Sri Lanka. We pretty much travelled the whole of Saturday (out of Melbourne in the morning, transit in KL and finally reached Sri Lanka just before midnight). There was no plan, except to get a train ticket from Colombo Fort to Habarana (which for some reason I kept on typing or reading it as Habanara, maybe I am craving for some habanero chillies at all times.)

Note: Taxi from Colombo airport to accommodation LKR 3,100 including tol of LKR 300

We stayed in Ocean Studios Apartment, which was a rather interesting place. It started off with the taxi driver not quite knowing where it was... to some kind Samaritans helping us to get the attention of the person who held the keys to the apartment, and me having a little jolt on the finger when I pressed on the door bell.

 The set up was little funny, it was an apartment with a staircase leading up the entrance. There wasn't any proper reception but the person who took care of the apartment lived across the road, on the first floor. So some kind Sri Lankan helped us to shout to the man from the roadside. As there were no response initially and I saw a door bell by the side, naturally I decided to press on the door bell to see if I could get the attention of the apartment keeper. Ha! The door bell actually gave a mini electric shock. Anyways, all ended well - the apartment keeper came, we had a whole apartment complete with a room each, a kitchenette and a lounge area for 2 nights.

We started the day with a good breakfast - breakfast for champions (lol) of rice and fish curry. It was excellent breakfast but I can't tell you which shop as we just picked one along the road.
Note: In Sri Lanka, curry always comes in a few dishes of vegetables curry even if you ordered for chicken or fish curry.

Fish curry and a selection of vegetables curry, with papadum

We then flagged down a tuk-tuk to get us Colombo Fort for the only errand for the day. Reserved seats tickets were all sold out but we could get non reserved seats tickets the next day. We decided that we need more food thereafter and made our way to Cinnamon Grand for their brunch buffet (we were there on a Sunday). The spread of food was excellent, and well worth the cost of LKR3,635 (~AUD 33). Price including tax and ala-carte drinks we ordered.







I had a photo of some of the staffs as they requested for it after seeing me carrying my camera around.


I thoroughly enjoyed the lunch and totally recommend this if you are looking for a relaxing way to enjoy Colombo. I've seen the reviews of this before visiting and it also came as a recommendation from S's Sri Lankan friend.

Balance of the day was spent at a gem stone shop, granted not my kind of shopping but I didn't mind it and learned something new of course. Anything about gem I learned is new as I have zero knowledge on this. In fact, I didn't even know that Sri Lanka is famous for its gemstone.

From there, we walked over to Galle Face Green which is technically a park for people watching. There were many people with successful kite flying and we sat around till the sun just set.



Dinner? Nah - we were so full from lunch that the food pretty much lasted us till the next day, else I would've suggested we had some chilli crabs!

That - was our super relaxing day in Colombo ;)


Side note: I'm such an Asian, I miss rice...

1. Sri Lanka is very popular among the Chinese (as in China's citizens). It was a surprise to me. It started off with S and I sitting in the waiting gate for departure and about 90% of the people there were Chinese. I almost thought we were sitting at the wrong waiting area. Upon reaching Colombo airport, we found that there were even sim package tailored to make calls back to China.

M = morning, A = afternoon, E = evening

Please meet Briont - the happy crossover of brioche and croissant. Brioche by itself is already yummy, so is croissant. Naturally briont is excellent. I bought a loaf from Brioche by Philip.

I first found out about this bakery even before I moved to Melbourne. I was on a business trip from Sydney at that time and stumbled upon their shop on Queen Street. I still remember I bought their blueberry brioche and it was absolutely fantastic.


Besides brioche, I've now also taken a liking to their briont, bronut (brioche + donut) and matcha latte from their Little Collins Street outlet. They do good coffees too. ;)

Most of it I had it either plain, with butter or jam but decided to jazz things up and went along with Melbourne's brunch concept and made this with the last 2 slices.


Yup - my fat breakfast consisted of 2 slices of toasted briont, cheddar cheese, bacon and egg, sprinkled with cayenne pepper powder.

I concluded that this bakery is dangerous but the good thing is my office isn't near any of their branches. Lucky for me. Grin.


Side note: Not too long for a break from work now... ;)

Bono gifted by Little P and family. They went to Japan and very generously gave me a whole big box but as per the title, I am left with the last one. To make it last longer (and longer), I took a few photos! Haha.


Side note: Bono.. yumm... 

I've been put at a different hotel at this stage every time I travel for work to Sydney, not too many times but at count number 4 at this stage. This is my favourite hotel but I don't have any good pictures to show. I would like to think this is because it was only a night's stay and not because I was busy stuffing myself with food. Ahem.

Swissotel Sydney is at an absolute strategic location on Market Street, a very short stroll to Pitt Street Mall and Queen Victoria Building (QVB), ok - and work too. Lol.

Walking in front from door

Olympics on TV

The white cupboard is the fridge

Retro feel tiles. Shower stall on the left so can't fit in the photo

Guess what? This hotel has a swimming pool!

I still this from their website.

After my lament about hotels not having a pool, I had to fit in time to use it... and there really isn't much space in my eating schedule. My guilt conscience must be strong because I woke up at an ungodly hour of 5:30 am and braced myself in an outdoor pool. Heated but still outdoor on a winter morning. After a short splashing of water, I went for breakfast at about 7:00 am, which is also rare because I usually don't eat breakfast that early. Food comes after maybe 2 rounds of coffee and in the form of grazing throughout the day on a non weekends.

Anyway, all went according to plan. I finished breakfast, checked out and presented myself at work by 8:30 am. Not bad huh. So, back to Swissotel, if your accommodation budget allows for a stay in Swissotel, do book yourself a room there. Absolutely recommended! (... though this is not in my budget for my own self sponsored leisure travel.. sigh)


Side note: How do I know if it is cold or hay fever? Tsk

I wrote about how i missed a photo opportunity where another plane was at sight but I was busy eating before grabbing my camera. Well I saw it again but this was already getting pretty close to Sydney Airport so... but if I don't say it, it isn't obvious from up above is it? Grin.

I was back in Sydney quite unexpectedly. Well, to me, I didn't see any pressing issues for the need to fly but obviously I am not the bosses. It was a short trip, only 2 full days - flying in on a Wednesday morning and out Thursday evening... and that gave me 1 breakfast, 2 lunches and 1 dinner. Not too bad.

What did I managed to squeeze in the 2 days (aside from full day working, of course)? 3 separate catch ups with friends and a lot of food.

One of the regular ex-colleague I that always catch up with when I find myself in Sydney brought me to this Korean restaurant- Danjee. It was introduced to her by a Korean and I am convinced it is good stuff, completed by a lane way entrance on Albion Place. Both of us had the standard lunch box special which set us back $16 (actually set my friend back $32 as she very kindly shouted me lunch). I personally think it is good value as you can see the amount of food, complete with a bowl of seaweed soup.


After lunch, we crossed over to 580 George Street to Alice's Makan to grab some kuih as dessert or afternoon tea. By the time we got there, only kuih lapis were left on the shop counter. Seri muka were sold out, only a sign indicating seri muka were available was left.


Of course we went back to work thereafter. I met up with another friend after logging off work at 5 PM. As she is a model wife and needing to get home to cook for her husband, it was a quick catch up over hot chocolate. We just went to a cafe in Westfield's food court, just because they were still trading at that time.

I checked myself in for the accommodation (will write about that in the next post) and unload my things before making my way towards Central station area. We had Thai food this round, instead of our usual Japanese meals. This is another restaurant that I haven't been prior to this - Green Peppercorn. All photos are courtesy of E.

Durian shake ($7.50).. must be stated that they added coconut milk in these... not good as it meant it diluted the durian taste.

Spring rolls ($9.90) and charcoal satay skewers ($10.90)

Chicken feet salad ($13.90) - I did try to be adventurous and tried the chicken feet.. not my cup of 'feet'

Pad Thai ($25.90)

Fried ice-cream ($14)

It didn't end here, we then walked over to Koi and got ourselves some cakes. Lol. There were some very nice description but I could only remember something something lemon and something something matcha. Haha.



The lemon cake was exceptionally delicate, by the time I walked back to the hotel the lemon chantilly cream has fallen off the cake = ="

After all the calories input, I decided to pretend to be healthier and woke up for a little swim the next morning. A little swim worked out my hunger so I walked to Surry Hills and had breakfast. :P

Mmm.. ok, I'll come clean. For some strange reason I had cravings to eat HK egg waffle. It is strange because I have never taste it before... so it doesn't really make sense why I had cravings for egg waffle. Anyways, to appease the cravings I rocked up to Haven and had this.

I was trying to do a quick snap and didn't realised that I was actually focusing on the wrong thing... but well, at least now I have a photo of the background eh.. haha.

Must have coffee - Macchiato. The day is better with coffee.

I was indecisive between black sesame or red bean/green tea but decided will go with the black sesame. So "Sexy Me" it was - black sesame cream mochi, black sesame sauce, sesame chips, vanilla bean ice-cream, lemon zest, mint, classic plain waffle.

Lunch time plan was to grab more cakes! In the ideal world, I would grab some cakes from BlackStar Pastry (now that they are in Kinokuniya!) and had ramen at Ippudo but I left work for lunch late so there was a queue outside Ippudo :(

These are cheat photos of the cakes because I didn't have time to. The cakes had to endure some rough handling and by the time I reached Sydney, cakes had turned into a lumpy mess. I sent some crying stickers over LINE to E and S and they very kindly send me their copy of photos! Hahaa.

The famous Strawberry Watermelon Cake

Raspberry Lychee Cake

Lunch? I just bought a couple of sushi rolls as lunch. So that was how I ate my way around Sydney ;)


Side note: 如果他总为别人撑伞, 你何苦非得为他等在雨中