The Lobby, Alila Cha Am

In entering Alila Cha Am, you would feel like you are walking into another world.

Video - pool villa, Alila Cha Am

The above are on the room before we moved.

Pool Villa, Alila Cha Am

Alila Ubud, Uluwatu and Soori have gained various names for their respective outstanding design, especially in their use of water, and even gained some award from it. However, my personal preference to Thai resort drove me to try Alila Cha Am instead. Cha Am is located about 30 minute drive to Hua Hin, in between Hua Hin and Bangkok.

1. The Villa is about 390 sq. meter with a big living room, dinning room, working room, bed room, 2 bathroom, 2 toilet and a big pool. 2. This is the bath room of the living room.

3/4. The working room.

5/6. the dining room.

7/8. the bed room.

9. the toilet of the bed room. 10. the bath room

11. This rain shower is super big, and the hole next to it is a water flow to the bath tub.

13/14. Spacious bath room and quite interesting design.

15/16. See these are more than enough for the guests.

17. Things are put in a very simple but distinctive way. 18. See how good the lighting is.

19. The staff here are pretty well trained, including the front and PR managers. They came to greet the guests by themselves. As I expressed there is some natural smell, immediately I was offered for changing to another villa on the sea front (to be reported...). 20. dinning room at night time.

21/22. coffee and tea making facilities. There is even a coffee maker for freshly brewed coffee, with some tea leaves (not tea bags) to serve. To be continued....

望夫石 (A stoned wife), Shatin, HK

In our primary school text book, this one is the symbolic figure in Shatin. A tale behind it is about a wife carrying her baby and went up to the hill for longing for her husband's return. She was so determined without moving an inch day and night. She then became a stone (a real stone, not meaning she got hypnotized or drunk).

Red bean sweet and my childhood, Forum Restaurant (Ah Yat Abalone), Ramada Menam Riverside BKK

A full review will be done later on this superb restaurant on the riverside of BKK. Why this red bean sweet is singled out. These few nights I came to think about the various ways of making this all-time Cantonese dessert. When my friend wanna complain "oh, this red bean sweet is boiled with some burnt-smelling.". I immediately took it over like I found a new land. I almost forgot this one. One of the nostalgic cooking of red bean sweet. In the old time, my mother and grand mom often boil soup or red bean sweet in clay pot. So there will be some dried out bean-paste on the inner side of the pot. That delivered a nice aromatic flavour in the sweet. So when I tasted it again in this restaurant, the childhood memory was brought back. The old kitchen where my mother, grand mom and aunt were so busy in it. This came to me out of the blue, and so fondly. I even recall them to use some orange peel to cook red bean sweet. My mom used cane sugar bar to make it even more aromatic. The kitchen was a laboratory to me.

After a while, it's not surprising for this restaurant to have this nostalgic red bean sweet since Ah Yat strongly recommend cooking food (e.g. his renowned abalone) in clay pot. That's the key and that's the thing we often miss, in today's "xxx outer-space titanium" or "100 year durable non-scratchy stain-proof xxxx non-sticky" cooking ware. Unfortunately this restaurant used some poor red bean that it didn't deliver the "refined bean paste" texture.

Xi Yue (八月芳), Cantonese restaurant, Taikoo Place, Quarry Bay, HK

Maxim's group has diversified their restaurants into quite a no. of branches. A good strategy to target various clientele, esp. this branch to catch some higher spending consumers in the prime commercial hub of Eastern HK. When this Xi Yue was announced to replace the old Shanghai restaurant in Taikoo Place, I was really looking forward to it as it's claimed to be authentic Cantonese cuisine, but....

1/2. the table setting. This restaurant offers some special flower tea to make it a difference from the conventional Chinese tea. Pretty good.

3/4. Three chilled (HK$108) - Abalone, cucumber and jelly fish. After I finish the abalone and some jelly fish, some cucumber were found. It turned out 3 cups of cucumber. The chef shouldn't make it this way since the middle is not one of the features when the other 2 also are cucumber. This is a very careless mistake and we were talking about "authentic" Cantonese cuisine. They should put other preserved veggie like celery, carrot, turnip, cabbage, black fungas...etc. So many to choose. One more careless mistake - it's the mustard. It's bitter. As when I asked the waiter to give me some white vinegar, his reply "our kitchen doesn't have white vinegar. What about red one?". I simply handed him the mustard and relayed to him "your kitchen didn't put enough vinegar in it and it's quite bitter. The red vinegar can't go in it.". So a kitchen without white vinegar and it's a HK Cantonese restaurant? Then what would they use for some dishes like sweet and sour pork? Only tomato sauce??

5. The menu titled it as 精選時菜炒手切牛肉 (Selected seasonal veggie stir fried with hand-cut beef). That's really "painting a leg on a snake". I don't even talk about "authentic", any Cantonese kitchen needs to train their chef to cut meat and other ingredients in practice for years. However, someone may be misled to think of this dish as something special. 6. Egg white with tomato. A very wrong cooking. The egg white was overcooked and it's like "tree peel". Besides, they peel the tomato. This is so wrong. Tomato peel has its nice aroma. Some restaurants often think tomato peel is useless and not good to chew, but they often miss this important point. Without it, it's just something very bland and most of all, they put too much sugar in it.

7. Half baby suckling pig (HK$118). When it was served, I asked the captain "where is the leg?". Then he replied "oh, our BB pig doesn't have legs.". I got stunned "har, a pig without legs? Good that it has head then!". Regardless of the legs, it's not good and they should simply send someone to go check East Ocean on how they make this one. 8. The irritating part is that they use some low class seafood sauce to be thicken with cornstarch and spread heavily on the inside of it. It turned out a muddy seafood sauce is in your mouth!

9. So what attracts the customers are this kind of deco. 10. the Entrance and as you can see on the top right "original taste". Really interesting.

*In conclusion, my friend wondered why I stayed silent after all these. Like I posted earlier in http://whispalms.blogspot.com/2010/07/claiming-horse-as-deer-peking-garden.html . I did write to the HK Consumers' council and in fact they have coordinated with me to the PR head of Maxim's group. Anyway, the back-and-forth discussions were on my main point for not misleading some innocent customers, esp. tourists. My main points to them "Maxim's is an established brand in HK and grows with most HK people. I really don't want to see some ridiculous things like these going on and to mislead our next generation.". I further indicated each Maxim's outlet has done different things wrong respectively. So it turned out it's not a single incident. The PR and I kept in communication. Anyway, I am still in touch with them on various things and for sure I'll include this one on my discussion agenda.

It's me

Some little things but big enough to catch my eyes

We have spoken too much on the general things about this legend by the Chaophrya river. Now let's take a look at some little things they do but big to catch my attention.

1. Handy and real temperature level control of the air-conditioning system. The amazing part is that you wouldn't feel some strong flow of air at certain parts of the room, but you can feel evenly at any corner at the temperature set as you desire. 2. Even the cables are covered by a leather cover roll.

3. This time I noticed their mirror were cleaned nicely without a trace of small lines. Another amazing part is that they came to make up the room every time we left the room and even replacing the towel, almost 4 times a day. They do their work without being to tell "I have services", or let the guests to keep calling for some basic things, not even to mention services. 4. These are not tea bags. They are tea pouches by ML. Very refined tea with more variety of choices like camomile citron, ginger twist to the basic Darjeeling, Jasmine and Earl Grey.

5. Nowadays, we need to have more variety of AV capability to have HDMI. 6. This hotel was originally built in a very good design. We don't talk about service again, but at least the hardware won the other 5-6 star hotels/resorts. They have a ventilator in the cabinet. So your clothes won't have any unnecessary smell from the previous guests. Besides, it keeps your clothes drier. BTW, the plastic hangers are mine as I normally pack my clothes with hangers to the hanging clothing bag to save my folding time. MO has even more hangers as compared to other hotels.