Category Archives: Culture

Cebu: the land of rich culture, delicious food (like lechon!), and beautiful beaches

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Before we came to the Philippines, the only things I knew about Cebu were that a) it was known for its delicious lechon (roasted suckling pig!), b) it has gorgeous beaches and is good for swimming, snorkeling/diving, and c) one of the Filipino nannies in our building is originally from here. When Kaia had a nanny, this nanny and I got acquainted, and so we’re friendly and have small talk when we see each other. When Chris booked this trip, I told her about it, and she immediately got excited that we were going to her homeland.

“There’s such good food in Cebu!” she exclaimed. “You will eat very well there!”

Before I started researching Cebu, I just imagined it being like Boracay, that it was some small island where you’d have water activities and the related to do. But this baseless assumption (that I… just made up in my head for no good reason) was quickly squashed once I looked at it on the map: Boracay is about 3.985 square miles; Cebu is 121.6 square miles. Boracay’s total population is about 38,000 people; Cebu province’s total population is over 5.1 million people, with about 1 million of those residents living in Cebu City, a very urbanized city (and where our hotel for this leg of the trip is). The Cebu metropolitan area or Metro Cebu is the second largest metropolitan area in the Philippines (after Metro Manila). So in Cebu, you could have a mixed holiday with both urban fun and sun, beaches, and water. You could also do nature activities like hikes to see some famous waterfalls. You could easily just spend your entire time here exploring the metro area for all its urban glory, or you could forgo the city completely and hang out at the beaches, maybe even go to Mactan Island to visit some of the most famous beaches in Cebu. The strangest thing, though, that we were not expecting is that Ayala Center Cebu Mall would be listed as the number one place to visit while in Cebu City.

After we got situated at our hotel in Cebu City yesterday, we walked a couple blocks to Ayala Center Cebu to see what the hype was about. It was an interesting experience for us not only because we live in New York City and rarely go to malls, but also because of the types of stores they had. I had no idea Garmin brick and mortar stores existed? I saw a Sperry shoe store (when I always thought they were sold only online or at major department stores?). Individual brands had their own little shops throughout the mall. We also noticed that there were apartments/condos built on top of the malls, so I suppose that’s just very easy shopping access for the residents in this relatively wealthy area? A fun thing we saw for Kaia (that she immediately made a beeline for) was a huge outdoor play area that was covered. It had several large slides, plenty of areas for tactile climbing, plus spinny rides that the kids were getting very feisty over. They also had parents/caregivers in mind when they designed this space, as there was plenty of seating and benches for us to comfortably watch over our kids.

The mall has several floors of individual restaurants, so we randomly picked a spot called Gerry’s Grill yesterday. There, we had a sizzling plate of kang kong (morning glory/water spinach – another thing I learned is that this vegetable is also very popular here!) with shrimpy sambal, pork sisig, inihaw bangus (grilled milkfish), and garlic rice, with a pitcher of sagot gulaman. Sagot gulaman was also new to us: it’s a sweet Filipino beverage made from brown sugar syrup, with tapioca pearls and almond jelly. Everything we had was so delicious and absurdly cheap for the quality of food. Kaia also enjoyed all the food, and she’s been really loving her morning glory while here (another bonus is that we don’t have to worry about her not getting enough vegetables, as in some destinations, it can be challenging to find decent vegetable dishes to regularly order).

Today, we visited Carbon Market, which is considered the main market for all of Cebu and where most of the food and goods comes through. I quickly realized why it wasn’t really listed on most tourist guides – it’s very much a local, locals market. There’s little about it that would scream out to tourists that they should come visit: it’s not pretty or flashy, nor does it have beautiful displays of produce or products. Everything there just has practical value in that it needs to be bought and sold – no frills here whatsoever. I loved seeing the endless piles of teeny tiny calamansis, all priced the same at 80 PHP/kilo ($1.35 USD/2.2 lb). The pineapples are also so small here, just like we saw in Manila Chinatown: the largest of the tiny pineapples were just a tad bigger than my fist!

I usually don’t mind this and enjoy the locals’ markets, but I will be honest and say that of all the markets we’ve visited thus far around the world, Carbon Market was likely the least pleasant. There were many sections of this market we walked through where the smells were a combination of rotting fish to heated rubbish. Kaia, who over the last six months, has become increasingly aware and knowledgable of unpleasant odors, immediately started yelling out, “It smells! It smells!”, indicating that she wanted to leave as soon as possible to be free of said foul odors. Her face looked so distressed. And frankly, I couldn’t really blame her. She yelled this out several times, and at one moment, it was right when Chris identified where the fish market was. This was also when we noticed how wet the floors were in there, and thought the fish market smells would likely not be too fun for any of us. So we decided not to go in and instead to wander around the streets of the market instead.

The one big win of going to the market, other than seeing some nice views of the city through the top floors, was running into some jackfruit vendors along the streets. We’re lucky in that we are visiting during jackfruit season (though it seems we were five months off from peak durian season, unfortunately), so I asked a vendor how much she charged for hers. She said 150 PHP/kilo (that’s about $2.54 USD for 2.2 pounds of fruit!). I chose a pre-cut chunk of jackfruit that was about 250 PHP, and she agreed to slice all the jackfruit pockets out for me (there was no way I was going to do this work on my own!). We ate some right away, and even Kaia got into it and kept asking for more. I love watching her really get into our favorite foods. Unfortunately, she did not have the same reaction to trying the mangosteen I bought in Manila Chinatown. But given that we already had so little flesh in those, it was fine that just Chris and I ate it.

We’re all sleeping early tonight despite it being New Year’s Eve so that we can wake up bright and early for an island hopping and snorkeling adventure tomorrow. Chris said it reminded him of our New Year’s Eve in Indonesia in 2019, when we were in Yogyakarta and had to wake up before sunrise to see Borobudur Temple. I have a feeling this will be even more exciting because this will involve not only a boat, but being in deep water (which will be Pookster’s first time!).

One day eating in Manila

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Manila, the capital of the Philippines and the country’s largest metro area, is one of those places that you rarely hear about international tourists visiting unless they are either originally from there, are visiting family, or simply transiting through to get to more (internationally) popular places like Boracay or Palawan. With a population of over 14 million people, Metro Manila is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. It is also known for its chaotic traffic, which I was quite wary of before we arrived. Manila to the Philippines is kind of like Jakarta to Indonesia from an international traveler’s standpoint: it’s a capital city that people either transit through or manage to avoid entirely because most international travelers prefer more buzzy destinations, like Palawan, Cebu, or Boracay in the Philippines, or for Indonesia, the most obvious destination of Bali.

Manila is a strange city in that its large skyscrapers are not all concentrated in one section of the city. It actually has several very disparate parts of the city that are very spread out, each with their own concrete jungles! I noticed this when we were landing at the airport and thought about how unusual this was. We split our one day in Manila yesterday between the historic neighborhood and its Chinatown, also known as Binondo, which is supposed to be the oldest Chinatown in the world. It was established in 1594 as a permanent settlement for Chinese-Catholic immigrants. One thing I didn’t realize before coming to Manila and reading about it is that there’s actually a distinctive fusion cuisine for Chinese-Filipino food. One of the examples we got to try today was the Binondo-style fresh lumpia. This is not lumpia as in the Filipino fried egg rolls you may be familiar with, but rather a freshly packed spring roll stuffed with various vegetables, minced pork, crushed peanuts, brown sugar, seaweed, and crispy fried vermicelli noodles. To be honest, this was a bit sweet for us, but it did emphasize how Filipinos do like their foods on the sweeter side.

Siomai (or shu mai/shao mai/siu mai) is wildly popular here: you see endless street vendors selling these, and pretty much all the restaurants have different versions of them. They are huge, plump, fat, and brimming with pork. These are far larger than the ones you’d get at the average Chinese spot, whether it was for takeout or at a dim sum/tea house. We got some at a noodle shop we visited, and they were multiple mouthfuls big! The ones I am used to eating in Cantonese restaurants and dim sum houses typically have a mix of pork and shrimp, but these had pork only.

One interesting thing I liked seeing were the Lunar New Year decorations already up and being sold on the streets. The wreath that stood out to me the most was a true fusion of Chinese and Filipino cultures: a round wreath of calamansis all around, framing a teeny tiny fist-sized pineapple, then wrapped with a red bow, with red and gold tassels dangling down. That’s probably the best Lunar New Year decoration I’ve ever seen — ever. I would love to hang that in my house (and have unlimited access to calamansis!).

I also love that little calamansis are served with pretty much all your dishes to add a little sour/tart flair to your food. This came with pretty much everything, whether it was dry noodles, soup noodles, or sizzling meat plates. While I didn’t always add this to my dishes, I did either suck them up myself or have Kaia eat them. Kaia enjoyed chewing them down to pulp! These tiny suckers have so many seeds for how small they are! Kaia did NOT enjoy all the seeds, though.

In just our first day in the Philippines, we already got our ube fix: in the morning, we shared a mango topped ube cheesecake shake; Kaia requested an ube swirl bun from a little bakery in the historical neighborhood. There, I saw a six-pack of ube cheese pandesal for just 120 PHP – that’s about $2 USD. I was tempted to get it, but I thought that my head was getting a bit too ahead of my belly, so I resisted. In the afternoon at Divisoria Mall, we shared a mango smoothie, plus our first halo halo topped with a huge scoop of ube ice cream. I wasn’t sure what Kaia liked more – the ube ice cream or all the colorful jellies mixed into the shaved ice.

We ended the day in Bonifacio Global City (BGC), a neighborhood that seemed a world away from Chinatown and the historical neighborhood, and ate a delicious meal of kare kare beef stew, lechon kawali, and garlic rice, with fresh calamansi and dalandan (a Filipino citrus) juices. If there was one thing to be certain about the Philippines, it is that I was pretty darn sure we would eat well here. And after just a day, I can say I was definitely right in that assumption.

Matcha Kobo in Melbourne CBD

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Every time we come back to San Francisco and Melbourne since they are our original homes, it’s always a trade-off on what places we love that we’ll revisit on a given trip versus new, interesting places that have opened that are on our list. Both city lists have hundreds of different food spots bookmarked, and so each outing always feels like a difficult choice. But I told Chris that the one new place I absolutely wanted to visit this trip was Matcha Kobo in Melbourne CBD. It opened around June of this year, and the reason it intrigued me so much was that this cafe is so serious about matcha that they actually grind their matcha leaves in-house. They have four ishu usu (stone mills) in the center of their large cafe. These were all imported from the Aichi Prefecture in Japan and cost $20,000 each; they are the only matcha stone mills in Australia. A small handful of these stone mills exist outside of Japan, so this is a true rarity to experience. The mills grind the tea leaves into matcha powder at a very slow pace, with each mill taking 24 hours to produce one kilogram of freshly ground matcha. One kilogram of match is enough to make about 300 cups of matcha. All the matcha used at the cafe is milled on-site, with fresh batches harvested twice daily.Once the powder runs out – that’s it. Stone-grinding fresh keeps the matcha from oxidizing, which means the flavor is fresher, smoother, and far lower in bitterness. On top of their expertly crafted drinks, they also have the most beautiful pastries that look like works of art, all under the direction of a very talented pastry chef of Asian decent who used to work for Adriana Zumbo Patisserie and Koko Black.

Given how particular and exacting this whole process is, plus the enormous cost of the stone mills, I just assumed the matcha would be quite expensive. But given all these intricacies and business costs, the matcha drinks cost just a tiny bit more than the average matcha or freshly made tea beverage you can order out. And with a stronger U.S. dollar against the Aussie dollar, it worked out to be quite a deal for us. We went to Matcha Kobo as our first stop in CBD today along with Chris’s parents, and for four freshly whisked and made matcha/hojicha drinks, a double scoop of vivid green matcha gelato, and a gorgeous, artfully made hojicha chestnut tart that was almost too pretty to eat, the total cost was $39.30 USD. It felt like such a bargain for such a fresh, delicious, gourmet experience.

The cafe itself is so airy and spacious — it’s supposed to seat 90 people and even has a traditional tatami mat seating area where you sit on the floor and are required to remove your shoes. It would be a very comfortable and relaxing place to have a catch up with a friend, while also enjoying amazing tea drinks and treats. I MUST come back. I want this to be an every-year visit!

20% Azelaic acid in the U.S. vs. Australia

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I learned about azelaic acid for skincare a few years ago, as a low percentage of it was in a face toner I bought meant for helping with hyperpigmentation and fading sun spots. The toner didn’t do anything for my skin, so I stopped buying it. But the ingredient kept coming up in conversation with my esthetician, who highly recommended it for treating and preventing sun spots. Azelaic acid has been heavily researched in recent years and has been demonstrated to diminish skin blemishes and help fade sun spots and post-acne marks, refine skin’s surface, and help to fight inflammation.

In November when I went for a dermatology visit, the dermatologist suggested I use a 20 percent azelaic acid cream that would require a prescription. She warned me ahead of time that my insurance would unlikely cover it given it is for cosmetic reasons. So when I went to CVS just to ask how much it cost, the pharmacist looked up the product and actually laughed out loud as she responded, “A tube for a one month supply would be $648 (USD).” I gasped.

Wow. That was like paying rent. I told her that I’d pass on it, and I immediately started researching other ways to either source this product, or to get a slightly lower dosage. Chris suggested I look it up in Australia, as a quick Google search revealed that this product did not require a prescription there. So we went to Chemist Warehouse today, where I asked the pharmacist. He confirmed to me that it did not require a prescription here, but it was behind the counter. He grabbed a tube for me and said it was just one unit per customer (and then Chris went to request a second tube). The cost for this tube: $18.99 AUD ($12.54 USD). So, $648 vs. $12.54 it was. That is beyond crazy to me! The price wasn’t even remotely in the same ballpark! Well, it’s clear there are massive benefits to having access to behind-the-counter pharmacy items in two different countries — and especially outside of the U.S.

Lack of comfort discussing the elimination of bodily wastes, and Poop and Fart Bingo games!

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Since Kaia was born, Chris and I have had an ongoing discussion about her poops and pees. Pediatricians and all healthcare professionals recommend it for parents to do for their babies since it’s the only way to know what actually went in (because… what goes in must also come out!). This is especially crucial if you are breastfeeding and especially nursing, since with direct breastfeeding, there is no other way to truly measure what the baby consumed. We used to keep a paper log, then a Google spreadsheet log. And then once Kaia turned 14 months of age, we would just have a verbal back and forth about it throughout the day or week. For us, we’re just trying to be good parents and track our child’s inputs and outputs, so we don’t see this being peculiar at all. We never saw it as something we liked or didn’t like to discuss; for us, it seemed like the responsible parent thing to do to ensure our child’s good health.

One funny thing I’ve noticed over the last four years now is that Chris’s parents are very, very uncomfortable with conversations around… the elimination of bodily wastes. It doesn’t matter if it’s pooping, peeing, or farting — they immediately look awkward and embarrassed, and his dad usually tries his best to quickly divert the conversation in another direction. He would shift in his seat, look another way where no one was to avert eye contact, and act as though no poop/pee conversation were happening at all. A number of times, his mom has gotten exasperated by the constant bodily waste conversation that she has exclaimed in many different ways, “My goodness! So much talk about poo and pee all the time! Will you still be keeping tabs on this for Kaia when she’s in her teens and 20s?”

Chris’s and my parents’ generation obviously had very different newborn/child-rearing advice than Chris and I’ve had. Things change and evolve over time, and I think on the surface, they do recognize this and try to follow our lead with most things we do for Kaia. With the poop/pee talk, there’s zero chance they could try to get us to stop it even if they wanted to because we’ll do what we need to do to ensure our child is healthy, nourished, and having the appropriate outputs in a day. It’s more just amusing to me how some people are so uncomfortable with actions that need to be done by all of us every single day, multiple times a day. It’s true that none of us really needs an audience there when we’re on the toilet or farting. But with child rearing, the conversation does need to be had. It gets even more hilarious because Chris and I comment now on how big and stinky her poops can be (this is physical proof that she eats a varied, well-rounded diet!) as well as how long her pees are, and his parents think we’re a little crazy about this. We also tell them how she loves to see her poops and peer closely into the toilet bowl after. And she loves to get reactions from me yelling out in Chinese, “What a big poop!” Sometimes, she even insists that I come over to see it when Chris is in charge of wiping her and going through the hand-washing motion together.

I thought about his parents’ lack of comfort around all things toilet related when we were browsing a shop along Chapel Street in South Yarra today, and we came across these games called “Poop Bingo and “Fart Bingo.” The Bingos are geared for playing with kids, and they are exactly what you expect them to be: they show you caricatures of animals and their different types of poop, as well as… what may come out of an animal’s anus when they fart (apparently, those potential… things that can come out are not technically poop!). I jokingly suggested to Chris that we buy them to play with his parents, and he chuckled and thought it could be funny. The better (and cheaper) side of me decided not to get it because the amusement would be short-lived, and they might play it once or twice with us and then stop. That probably would not be the greatest ROI (return on investment) on a gift.

My once-a-year catch-up with an Instagram friend in Melbourne

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After we returned from Wellington this afternoon, I went to go meet an Instagram friend for dinner at a popular Italian restaurant near Chris’s parents’ house. Chris’s parents had already been, and they said that an Italian client of Chris’s dad, originally from Rome, declared that it was one of the best Italian restaurants in the area. So that just added to my expectations for how good this place was going to be (not to mention that my Instagram friend is a huge foodie, so I figured she would have good judgment in choosing a spot!).

Usually, I am a bit wary of Italian restaurants because so many just have generic offerings, but given it’s a popular and “neutral” cuisine, the prices are always jacked up. This spot, Cucina & Co., was anything but generic. We shared a pear, rocket (arugula), and grana padano salad; eggplant parmigiana; spaghetti ai fruitti de mare (seafood spaghetti); the zucotta pizza (mashed pumpkin, buffalo mozzarella, sausage, thyme). We ended with a scoop each of gelato — she had chocolate while I had pistachio. And every single thing we got was just amazing. The pear and rocket salad was so fresh it seemed like everything was picked just before we ordered it; the spaghetti Napoli sauce was so addictive that I almost wanted to lick the plate, plus the seafood was perfectly cooked and fresh. The pizza was delicious as expected, but what shocked me the most was the eggplant parmigiana starter. Eggplant parmigiana has always felt hit or miss (mostly miss) to me. Most of the time, the eggplant layers are too thick, and the tomato sauce tastes bland. But this rendition had super thin layers of eggplant that pretty much just melted in your mouth. This was the best eggplant parmigiana I’d ever had in my life — I can say this for certain! And the ending of pistachio gelato was so rich, thick, and decadent: it tasted like loads of toasted and pureed pistachios mixed in with cream, milk, and sugar. All of that, plus two lemon and lime bitters drinks, and we spent only $45 USD each — what a bargain; that would never happen in New York City.

I met this Instagram friend during the pandemic when we each had our respective food channels on YouTube, and we were trying to build our Instagram presence. I messaged her out of the blue because I saw she was based in Melbourne, and we just started messaging on and off and clicked. We both love food (duh) and travel; she was married to a Sri Lankan while I was married to another brown guy with origins in India. 🙂 She’s a year younger than me, and after we started chatting, she gave birth in June 2021 to her baby boy. Kaia was born six months after that. So it felt like even though we were from very different parts of the world leading different lives that we had a lot in common. Since December 2022 when we came back post-pandemic, we met up with our babies; then in December 2023, we met at a children’s play museum with our kids, but given it was a museum, it was hard to have a real adult conversation since we were chasing our kids around everywhere. In December 2024, we had a Greek dinner catch up, and now we’ve met again for the fourth year in a row, also sans kids. We both get along really well and have a lot of opinions in common. She’s the kind of friend who, if we lived closer to each other, I’d imagine myself seeing fairly regularly. And of course, it helps that she loves to eat (and cook)!

I love having a friend down here I can meet up with that is separate from Chris’s people. I also love that I’ve made a couple friends through Instagram over the years. I have another Instagram “friend” who is based in Sydney. She doesn’t get out of Sydney much, but she told me that if I’m ever up there for a side trip that she’d love to have a meal with me. If we go back to Sydney, I’d definitely want to take her up on her offer because she does all the “project” cooking that I wish I had more time to do!

Martinborough wine and pizza and Putangirua Pinnacles Scenic Reserve

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Today, we drove about an hour northeast of Wellington to the famous Martinborough wine region of New Zealand. While globally, Marlborough in the South Island is renowned for its sauvignon blanc, which is the region’s most famous export (and it’s pretty darn delicious — it really is just as vibrant, zesty, and crisp as it is described to be!), Martinborough in the North Island is known for its pinot noir. But the region also produces delicious and notable chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, pinot gris, and syrah. We visited the Nga Waka Winery, where we tasted some local pinot noirs and chardonnays, and also enjoyed their Napoletana style “Roving Pizza.”

We chose their pizza special of the day, which was mortadella, fior di latte mozzarella (‘flower of the milk” variety that is made using cow’s milk in the same style as buffalo mozzarella), crushed pistachios, lots of garlic, and fresh basil. We pretty much inhaled that pizza — it had the perfect crust, perfect cheese, a ton of intense garlic which I loved, and almost had an addictive quality. When I have pizzas like this that are unquestionably incredible and perfect, it always reminds me of how people love to make absolute statements like, “the best pizza in the world is in New York/New Jersey/Connecticut/Italy.” I think if those people had this pizza at Nga Waka Winery that they would be lying if they said they could get better pizza in any of those places than this. I left this winery wondering if we’d have even just an “okay” level meal while in New Zealand this time around, and so far after five out of six days, i would say that the answer to that is negative.

After our tasting and pizza/calamari lunch, we headed towards Putangirua Pinnacles Scenic Reserve for a hike. Putangirua Pinnacles are some of the best earth pillar formations in New Zealand. The last time we saw earth pillar formations, also known as hoodoos, was at Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, back in the U.S. Bryce Canyon is known for having the largest collection of hoodoos in the world; this scenic reserve would not have the largest collection or the tallest hoodoos, but they’d still be fascinating to visit, and we’d also get some exercise on the way there! The history behind these hoodoos is that about seven million years ago, the Aorangi Range was an island. As the mountains eroded, gravel was washed down to the coast, where they formed a sedimentary layer. Over the last 120,000 years, the Putangirua Stream exposed this ancient layer of gravel to the erosive forces of rain and floods. Some of the sediments stayed concreted together, while others washed away. The result is the Putangirua Pinnacles, often called “an amazing collection of hoodoos.” This area was used as a filming location for the “Paths of the Dead” scene in Return of the King, the third movie in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Somehow, we managed to get Kaia to hike the entire two-hour round-trip hike without much whining and whinging at all. The only times she had to be carried by Chris were when we had to cross little streams on rocks, and she was afraid she would fall in. She did amazingly well, and even when she stumbled a few times and fell, she still kept soldiering on, despite a lot of uneven terrain and a lot of uphill steps and climbing. We were so proud of her when we all made it up to the top, and even more so when she went all the way down and still did it independently without demanding.to stop and be carried.

This is our third time to New Zealand together, and I felt a little sad as we came to the end of today, which is our last full day here before we fly back to Melbourne tomorrow afternoon. New Zealand is this beautiful country made of volcanic islands that seems like there’s always so much to see and so little time. But I guess that just means that there is always next time. And since I paid the $100 NZD conservation fee (Chris and Pookster didn’t have to pay since they have Australian passports) on top of my nominal ETA fee, which lasts two years, maybe we should come back again soon!

Day trip to Nelson in the South Island, New Zealand

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Today, we took a quick 40-minute flight from the lower tip of the North Island in Wellington down to the northern tip of the South Island in Nelson. Kaia is very into all modes of transport, but she especially gets excited when we tell her we’re going to get on a plane. Now, she asks deeper questions, like what type of plane are we on? Granted, she’s not necessarily looking for answers like Airbus A380 or the Boeing 787 (aka the Dreamliner), but she does want to know if she’s on a small plane, a medium plane, or a big plane. She insists, as usual, that “I want the big one!” because she wants her own luxurious seat with her own TV and headset. Those are top concerns while flying for the Kaia Pookie now. In this specific case, she was not particularly pleased that we would be on a “small plane” and that she’d have no TV. Boo hoo.

Once again, we didn’t have to go through any security in the Wellington domestic terminal to board our quick flight to Nelson. Given it was a day trip, we also didn’t have much with us other than my purse and a canvas bag. When we arrived, Chris’s cousin came to greet and pick us up at the airport, and off we went on a full day’s itinerary lovingly planned by her.

We started our Nelson day trip at Pic’s Peanut Butter World. I always enjoyed peanut butter, but my love for peanut butter only came about once I discovered Massachusetts’s based Teddie Peanut Butter while I was in college in that state. In my opinion, their peanut butter is the best peanut butter I’ve ever had — the peanuts have a really well rounded flavor, and it has (what I consider to be) the perfect amount of salt — not too much, not too little, but just right! So when I heard Chris’s cousin and husband raving about Pic’s, of course I was intrigued, but I was also skeptical. I’d never been on a peanut butter factory tour, and obviously I’d welcome the opportunity. So we went altogether today with his cousin, her husband, and their baby, and we had the full experience. This included a guided tour, seeing the peanut butter factory line in action, and reading a lot of fun facts about both Pic’s and peanut butter in general. The tour ended with a tasting of a selection of their peanut butters and honey. And when we finally tasted the standard peanut butter with 0.5% salt (that’s their default), I tasted it… and I came to the quick conclusion that Teddie was still my number one peanut butter. There was no way Pic’s was going to dethrone Teddie for me. Since Chris’s cousin got us a family pass, it included two jars of peanut butter (styles of our choice out of three). So I definitely was going to take them home and eventually eat them. But even after this, I have yet to taste better peanut butter in the world than my beloved Teddie. That is all.

We stopped for some views and coffee in Mapua, then headed over to Moutere Hills Cellar Door for a winery lunch his cousins had booked us. We enjoyed a really delicious slow cooked New Zealand lamb shoulder with seasonal vegetables (New Zealand lamb in New Zealand was definitely on the to-do list while here!), and Chris enjoyed his glass of local reserve chardonnay so much that he decided to buy a bottle to bring back to Melbourne.

Then we had a real treat and surprise I was not expecting: Chris’s cousin organized a private berry picking experience for us. The usual berry farm they go to had shut down, but she wanted us to have the full local Nelson experience with berry picking given our trip was timed during the short window when the berries would be ripening. Unfortunately, the place she found said they wouldn’t be opening for another five days. She direct messaged the business on Instagram, telling them she had family visiting from New York City who would really, really enjoy a local New Zealand berry picking experience. Incredibly days later, the owner responded and said we could all come! But she noted that since we’d be about a week early, there wouldn’t be as much ripe fruit as we’d like. Chris’s cousin took that chance, and we went!

The farm was ripe with boysenberries and raspberries, and we managed to fill two punnets of both of these delicious berries. Boysenberries were particularly a treat for us: even though they are a hybrid berry originally created in the U.S. (it’s a blackberry, raspberry, dewberry, and a loganberry!), boysenberries are pretty much unheard of and unseen there unless you are lucky and manage to find a boysenberry jam jar. You see it more often in jams and ice creams in Australia and New Zealand, though, and I got so excited that we were actually going to pick these berries today! The owner came out and gave us a mini lesson on boysenberries: they need to be super dark reddish purple, almost black to be ripe and sweet. For these, you’d know if they were ready for sure if they came off easy when you pull them off. The red ones were NOT ready to be picked and would be too tart. Kaia had a field day eating endless berries right off the bushes and helping us fill the punnets. I loved seeing how excited she was, eagerly plucking the berries off the bushes and greedily shoveling them into her mouth. And she got an even bigger treat at the end: this farm specializes in “fresh fruit ice cream,” so soft serve with the fresh farm fruit blended in, so she got to have a cone of boysenberry fresh fruit ice cream — it was so creamy, fruity, and utterly delicious. We also picked raspberries, but this was slower given far less berries were ready: most of the ripe raspberries were higher up on the shrubs and a bit harder to reach (especially for Kaia). I was actually surprised when comparing the raspberries to the boysenberries. I initially just assumed both berries were just as delicate as each other. Yet somehow after picking so many of each, I quickly realized that boysenberries were definitely far more delicate and easier to break/get squished. I guess that’s why boysenberries are usually used in jams and pies, and not easily sold in grocery stores or supermarkets.

We ended the day with a visit to Chris’s cousins’ home before being whisked back to the airport to catch our flight back to Wellington. Kaia enjoyed her time with her little baby cousin, and because Chris’s cousin packed us our freshly picked berries, she also has more fruits of her labor to enjoy the next few days. It was so fun to have a day trip fully planned and coordinated by Chris’s cousin, inclusive of transportation! It really was a treat to see how beautiful the northern tip of the South Island is — the view from their deck was so beautiful and serene. It was the complete opposite of the view from our windows in our Upper West Side high-rise apartment, where all you see is a concrete jungle with endless traffic below you.

Third time in one of the most beautiful countries on earth – New Zealand

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In December 2013 on my second visit to Australia, Chris and I took a side trip to Queenstown and Christchurch, New Zealand, in the South Island, visiting spectacular places in between, and we did a day trip to Milford Sound. Four years later in September 2017, we did a second trip to New Zealand together, but this time to the North Island, and visited Auckland, Rotorua, and the surrounds. That was as a side trip to Hamilton Island up in Queensland, Australia, for his cousin’s wedding. And today, we flew into Wellington on the southern tip of the North Island, to explore this area, with a planned day trip to Nelson in the South Island on Tuesday to visit his cousin, her husband, and their baby. I feel lucky to have visited this gorgeous country three times now. We’ve been lucky and privileged to visit a lot of beautiful places in the world, but no matter where else we go, New Zealand is always on top of the list for one of the most beautiful places on earth to me. It has this combination of stunning mountains, pristine, almost electric blue waters, and bright, colorful flora that just make almost everywhere you go outside of major urban areas feel like they could all be postcard snapshots. While I enjoyed our Auckland/Rotorua trip, our first trip here to Queenstown and Christchurch in the South Island remains the most picturesque visit in my memory. I couldn’t get over the color of the water, the varying shades of deep purple of my favorite mountain-esque lupine flowers, and the mountains covered in show — all against endless bright green.

Many of the places that I think to be the most beautiful on earth are marred by being very volcanic… and thus susceptible to earthquakes given they exist on fault lines. I still remember the chills I felt when we visited Christchurch in December 2013 and saw all the damage that still remained from the 2011 earthquakes that hit them. One hundred eighty five people died in that earthquake, and many important buildings were destroyed and became a bunch of rubble. I remember this indoor theater that went down to the ground… but the entire seating area was exposed to the air. Crumbled cement was still everywhere and in massive piles.

Wellington is the capital of New Zealand, the third largest city by population in the country. It’s often nicknamed as “Windy Welly” because it’s the windiest major city in the world. It’s located in the “Roaring Forties,” right in the pathway of the strong, consistent westerly winds found in the Southern Hemisphere, and the funneling effect of the Cook Strait; it experiences average wind speeds of 22 km/h (17 mph). We experienced the crazy gusty wind already within a day: we’ve had some close calls with losing our hats amongst all three of us! There’s a reason people say that when you coming to Wellington, you may want to leave your umbrellas and hats behind.

Wellington is also considered a cultural capital of New Zealand because of its eclectic dining scene and strong cafe culture. The quality of their coffee is often compared to Melbourne’s, which is widely known for making very good coffee. Wellington also has a lot of notable breweries and is just an hour-plus drive from Martinborough, a famous wine region in the North Island particularly known for pinot noir. Our first meal here was at a Vietnamese restaurant, where we had a really delicious Hanoi-style pho (the beef is marinated and cooked separately, then dunked into the hot broth, unlike southern style pho, where the meats are mostly raw and unseasoned, then added to the broth to be cooked), a duck stuffed banh xeo (highly unusual to have duck in a banh xeo, but very welcome!), bo luc lac (Vietnamese shaking beef – likely one of the best versions we’ve ever had). We also had a Vietnamese iced coffee and an egg coffee, which so super indulgent, thick, and rich that it was pretty much like a caffeinated dessert.

After our first meal here and first caffeine, I had a feeling that this segment of our trip is going to be particularly delicious. But then it got even better because after lunch, we went to Kaffee Eis for a gelato stop, where we shared a cup of feijoa and Black Doris plum sorbet! Black Doris plum is a local plum to New Zealand, and while that was delicious, for me the real star of the show was feijoa. Feijoa is also known as a pineapple guava and is New Zealand’s unofficial national fruit. It’s native to South America, where we’ve had it, and so it was funny when we found out how beloved it was here. It’s not easily available in markets, and we heard that most people just grow it in their backyards! The flavor is very much like guava but with hints of pineapple, hence it also being called a pineapple guava. The outside of the fruit is smooth and green like a guava, and the inside is an off-white, beige-like color with lots of seeds. The pulp is almost like jelly. This feijoa sorbet was just like the fruit, just blended with some sugar added to it. It was like pure frozen blended exotic feijoa bliss.

Security in Australia and New Zealand vs. the U.S.

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I’ve only ever lived in the U.S. across three different cities. i had only one flight before 9/11, which means that the idea of not going through a security checkpoint before reaching an airport gate is a pretty foreign or unknown concept to me. When we went to Thursday night’s Wankernomics show at Hamer Hall, which is the largest indoor venue at the Arts Centre Melbourne, I felt a little bit weird entering the concert hall and not going through any kind of security whatsoever. There was no line to get in. There were no metal detectors or security guards to pat you down or go through your purses and bags. There were people selling refreshments at the food stands, and of course employees checking tickets when you entered the actual performance area. But that was it.

Chris went to go buy some drinks for us, and I just stood there in amazement, watching dozens and dozens of people entering this huge concert hall — chatting, laughing, eating, sipping drinks — completely carefree. They have no idea how lucky they are to just assume that they will be safe, that there’s no reason to have a metal detector or a security check to enter the facility, that no one could come in with a deadly weapon. I even commented on this to Chris, and he kind of chuckled and just said, “Yeah, we’re not in the U.S. There aren’t guns here.”

It also made me think of doing domestic flights within Australia. Every time we’ve done this, I always have to remind myself that I don’t need to obsess about liquid bottles being under 100ml, which also means that if we are traveling to a popular wine region, we can actually buy and bring back to Melbourne a bottle of wine or two, all in our carry-on luggage. There are no liquid limits. When we enter the airport in Australia for domestic travel, there is a security check, but in New Zealand, you can just walk on in to the gate, and you’re pretty much all set to just show your boarding pass and walk on the plane! People just wait right at the gate to greet their loved ones! That is like the U.S. pre-9/11!

Everyone’s “normal” is very different. My “normal” of going to a U.S. airport for a domestic flight is very different vs. an Australian or New Zealander boarding a domestic flight in their respective countries. My experience of entering a major performing arts venue will also be very different than theirs. I kind of laughed in my head at my surprise/shock of going through Hamer Hall and not dealing with security… because it made me realize how American I am, how I just assume that society in general is low-trust, and that doing a metal detector/security check should probably just be done. But that experience is the only experience I’ve known to date (since the Wankernomics performance is the only show I’ve been to outside of the U.S. that I can recall), and once again, you know what you know, and you don”t know what you are not yet exposed to.