Peru is famous for its corn or choclo.  Many things can be made from corn but the most infamous has to be the corn-based beer, chicha.  Chicha is peru’s local beer.  Like it or hate it, you have to at least try it if you are in Peru. There are 2 kind of Chicha: Chicha Morado is the purple, sweat, [...]

After 7 hours of driving through heavy rain from Samana, navigating through 100’s of pot holes, the road slowly turned into beautiful 4 lanes highway passing through sugar cane plantations as we get closer to Punta Cana.  Based on the more developed highway infrastructure, we can feel that we were approaching an area of mass tourism.  After spending the past [...]

There comes a point, during the trip to the secluded Playa Rincón, where you wonder if it’s going to be worth it. After all, you drove 4 hrs from Puerto Plata or 7 hrs from Punta Cana to the remote Samana Peninsula to make sure you didn’t miss this beach.  You battled terrible roads, pot holes, blew out a tire, [...]

Puerto Plata area is one of the popular destinations in the Dominican Republic.  Located in the North coast, Puerto Plata is surrounded by mostly lush green coconut forest and tannish/gray sand beaches. The lush green coconut forest leaning into the beaches make for some great tropical paradise photos.  Most tourists come to Puerto Plata to stay at the beach around [...]

If you are trying to go to Yosemite during the summer months, often times you will have a hard time finding cheap accommodations INSIDE the park.   During the summer, Yosemite hotels and lodging are very limited and quite expensive (often $200-$500 as of 2012).  Most lodgings are fully booked 3-6 months in advance.  Most last minutes traveler often have to [...]

Yosemite is stunning and there are many things to do.  Here are our top picks   1. Sunrise or Sunset at Glacier point –One of the best view of the Yosemite Valley and Half Dome is from Glacier Point, and no better time to do it than during Sunrise/Sunset.   Only 100 meters from the parking lot, the area is well [...]

One of the easiest hike and best view of Yosemite is Taft Point and Sentinel Dome.  Each are 2 miles round trip, 1-2 hours each to complete, with parking lot right off Glacier Point road.  Kids as young as 5 years old and senior in their early 70’s should be able to do these hikes.    Of course you can just [...]

After we arrived to Yosemite and got our lodging, we decided to spend the afternoon hiking the trails around Mariposa Grove, which offers view of the giant Sequoia trees and one of the world’s largest trees, the Grizzly Giant.  Mariposa Grove is right next to the park’s South Entrance (near Highway 41 to Fresno; 36 miles south of Yosemite Valley [...]

There are many ways to get to Woodlands Train Station from Singapore to catch the train to Kuala Lumpur or other area of Malaysia.  Ofcourse, you can pay for the expensive taxi ride, but the easiest and fastest public transportation is to use the following buses noted below.   Note that all bus heading to Johor Bahru will have to go [...]

Raffle Hotel I took a short taxi ride from the Casino to Raffle Hotel (SG$4).  Raffle Hotel is a colonial-style hotel build back in 1887 and is one of the world’s most famous hotels.  Tourists flock to the Long Bar in the Raffles Hotel to sample the original Singapore Sling, a sickly sweet pink mix of pineapple juice, gin and [...]