I was triggered to write this post because one sunny and very hot afternoon in the height of the Coronavirus pandemic, Yea Ji texted saying "Is it weird that I miss CnR Chinatown's laksa even though I'm in Malaysia now?".

At first, I went "Hmm CnR? Sounds familiar..." But I couldn't really put my finger on which restaurant this was. So I google maps it (turns out it's the one in one of Chinatown's side alleys), and the map of London on my screen brought up floods of fond memories. Sadly, these memories were hazy, half forgotten, and I knew that more would be lost to time. That's why after 5 years I decided to blog about London, maybe mostly about food, because I am a glutton.

CnR... CnR.... I doubt I have any photos of that place, as most of the Asian restaurants in London are kinda dinghy and frankly not photo worthy. After scavenging through my harddrive however, I do have a photo of the famous Four Seasons where they serve you a plate of what I call "fuck off oranges" together with the bill when you've finished dinner and they want you to get out fast so the next customer can come take your table. You know London, rent ain't cheap so the restaurants are mostly teeny tiny. And Four Seasons is always packed since it's one of the most famous Chinese restaurants.

Typical hanging chicken/duck/pork at glass window setup.

But when it comes to rudeness, there is no other than the notorious Wong Kei. I remember going there a lot with Weng Hoe in my first year since the food was cheap and portion was big, but boy did the waiters have attitudes. I think there was once where I wasn't confident reading out my order in Chinese so I just pointed on the menu and got chided for that. Food was meh but when you're a poor student craving some Asian food, Wong Kei is the cheapest option. Well either this or Misato. Misato also served nice generous portions of katsu curry chicken, I use to eat only half and then pack the other half for my lunch the next day. Hmm I don't seem to have any pictures of Misato either. I probably didn't take too many photos back in those days especially with my laggy Samsung phone. First year was a not a good time since we were all adjusting to life in London. I remember Oondy went into some sort of depression or something close to that. When we first arrived in London I used to go over to Hughes' Perry quite a bit to hang out with her. The shopping centre near her place was called The Brunswick and it had an amazing huge Waitrose which I loved. Used to buy all my Tyrells and Gu there since they had a large selection. Oh and some Waitrose instant meals from time to time. There was also this burger chain there called GBK and I had a lot of that since they had a decent student discount, like 30% off or something. I remember bringing Joanne there when she came over.

Fast forward to my second year and my dining experience got much better since the shock of having to pay in Pounds had worn off and I got my Petronas scholarship so financially I had more room to breathe. No more GBK, no more Wong Kei, no more Misato. This girl was moving up in life. I think it was then that we discovered Eat Tokyo, and I can say it became my favourite restaurant all the way to my fourth year, me loving Japanese food as it is. Sadly, once again I don't think I have any pictures of Eat Tokyo. We went so often it was like a norm. Their variety was great and the food quality and portion was decent for the price. It was the restaurant we (BS3 gang) went to on Christmas Eve after we came back from Austria, tired after a long journey. Since it was Christmas Eve, we even got presents in the form of chopsticks that night. I also remember the head chef in their Holborn branch looked like dad. When I go back to London I will definitely pay a visit there, just for old times' sake.

Second year was also the time Sara and I got into cupcakes. Hummingbird Bakery was a bit too sweet for us, but we loved Primrose Bakery, even though it was on the other side of Regent's Park, in a really quaint neighbourhood. I remember long walks and Barclays' bicycle trips to get there, but it was worth the effort.

Ahh Primrose, I do miss you.

I don't think I had Lola's more than a few times. It was alright.

Sara got these from Bea's for my birthday :)

Since I started this post with CnR, I need also mention my favourite Malaysian restaurant in London, Roti King. Their food was as Malaysian as you can get in London (CnR is good too!) but it has a special place in my heart since they have a dude making fresh roti canai there in front of the diners. Can you imagine being 10,000 km away from home and then seeing something like this? Watching him made me homesick yet slightly warm and fuzzy all at the same time. You brought joy to me, you really did. :)

My third and fourth years were a lot of takeaway Wasabi, Nandos and Pret as we laboured over our design and research projects. Fourth year was the best since that was the time I shared Lizman House with Sara, Joolin and Eujin. All of them were great cooks and tidy people, still the best housemates ever. We cooked so many dinners together and had so many great conversations over dinner. There was one late spring/early summer night during the height of the Pokemon Go fever where we spotted Mr Mime on our maps but it was on the other side of Euston Road. So we slip on jackets over our pajamas and scrambled across Euston Road in our slippers to catch some Mr Mime. Fourth year was also the time I finally let myself loose a little, joining dance together with Sara and Wenying, watching a tango performance in Borough market, exploring fancier food places, one of which I have pictures of is Brasserie Zedel. To be honest, I don't think the food was anything that special (or did I order the wrong thing?) but I remember the restaurant being...grand... magnificent... fancy schmancy.

Look at my face of awe.



I also finally went to a Michellin star restaurant - Yauatcha, with my coursemates (I can't remember whether this was in my second or third year). The dim sum was very good I guess, but I don't really know what makes a restaurant star-worthy. I don't even have any photos of the dim sum, only of the desserts. Hah, you can see where my priorities lie.



My love for Mexican food was also discovered during this time. There's not as many Mexican places in London as there are in the states, but I did have my fair share of Chipotle (Guac!) and Wahaca. I'm not sure why Joanne dislikes Chipotle. Thinking of coriander and lime rice with shredded chicken and black beans topped with a generous amount of guac is making me hungry. I'm pretty sad Chipotle hasn't come to Malaysia, but I don't think many Malaysians know how to appreciate Mexican food. I don't remember what Wahaca's food was like, but I remember its restaurant was bright and very colourful. Again, frustrated at myself for not having pictures.

One of the places that I frequented especially in my fourth year when I threw most of my concept of money out of the window was a tiny place (I think there was a total of 3 or 4 tables) near Finchley Road called Lanka. It's a Japanese-French cafe run by a Japanese that originally attracted me because it had a number of pretty decent green tea desserts. Actually, the green tea taste of their cakes were not as strong as I would have liked them to be, but overall their stuff were solid and this place slowly overtook Primrose to became my favourite dessert place in London. I still follow them on Facebook til this day, and have been craving their Green Tea Tart to the point where I considered trying to bake it myself. In the end I chickened out since I can't even get my brownies to taste the way I want them to. Another place to re-visit when I get to London.

Clockwise: Green Tea Chocolate Gateau, I-can't-remember-what-this-was, Earl Grey Creme Brulee, Green Tea Roll Cake. The Earl Grey Creme Brulee was especially heavenly when I shared it with Amanda and Rae, but another time I had a whole Creme Brulee to myself and felt ill after that because it was so rich. The downfalls of gluttony.

I think I will end my post here on a sweet note with Lanka. :) After this pandemic, Europe will definitely be on my travel list.

First, I will preface this by saying I don't think I want to hike Fuji anymore after this. It was an arduous journey with no decent pay-off at the end. I don't necessarily regret my decision, since it was still an interesting experience, I just wouldn't do it again.

The day before the hike, my hiking buddy Nabil and I stayed at this simple but comfy inn in Kawaguchiko called the Fujizakura after taking the bus from Shinjuku. We picked Fujizakura because it is close to the train and bus station, but that side of town is really boring. Still much nicer than South-East Asian villages I guess, but the small shops and businesses dotted along the main road are all spaced out so we had to walk about 800 metres to the nearest viable food option for dinner, a tempura shop next to the train and bus station. Honestly this tempura shop is probably the best place to eat this side of town if you can't afford the more expensive restaurants. And it's next to the train station! Little did I know this place would save our lives the following day...

Good ol' Fujizakura

Shots of our fav Kawaguchiko eating spot

The tempura master in his element

Good tempura, paired with beer, is like a matchmake in heaven

Ooh, I should probably mention about the Takegawa udon in the picture above, which is supposed to be a local speciality. I prefer the standard broth with Sanuki udon to be honest, but then again I didn't go to a proper udon restaurant in Kawaguchiko (there's quite a few around), pretty sure this tempura place ain't got any strength when it comes to udon, so I'll reserve my judgement till the day I visit a proper Takegawa udon restaurant. Anyway we slept early after watching some tennis on Japanese TV (I think Naomi Osaka was playing? Gosh my memory sucks). Woke up the next day and took a late morning bus from the train and bus station (which was really crowded, hiking season I guess) to Fuji-Subaru 5th Station where we had a proper lunch before starting our hike.

The 5th Station was swarming with tourists too. Mostly tourists who did not intend to hike, judging from their attire. If you ask me, I really doubt there's any point in coming to the 5th Station if you don't want to hike, because this place is just a couple of souvenir shops and a shrine... unless there's some amazing scenic area I don't know about. The weather was quite erratic IIRC, when we first arrived it was kinda misty with a slight drizzle, slightly chilly, and then after that the sun came out and burned all the mists to nothing, but then the mist and drizzle came back again and so on...

A photo I managed to snap when the mist disappeared

Gotta thank the gods for keeping me safe during this hike

Obligatory commemorative photo

After lunch we finally started our hike up. No fear at all about getting lost here, there are sufficient trail markers and hordes of people to follow. We weren't in any rush because we booked our rooms at Toyokan, which is only about half way up Fuji, about 3-4 hours away from the 5th Station. Even though that meant we had to hike at least another 4 hours to get to the summit from Toyokan, the reason for Toyokan rather than a hut closer to the summit was because after looking through tonnes of Fuji mountain huts photos and comments, it became pretty clear that Toyokan definitely had the best rooms. Fuji mountain huts in general are known for being expensive, dingy and spartan, so we were pretty happy to be able to get a booking at the best place Fuji could offer.

There's nothing spectacular on the way up, it's just rocks and more rocks really. And it was drizzling sporadically, but nothing too extreme. Reached Toyokan way before sunset, the friendly hostess briefed us on the house rules in perfect English and we had an early dinner of hamburger (Japanese style, no bread) and rice before heading off to our beds, uhh I mean sleeping bags, around 7 pm, because we had to wake up around midnight to continue if we wanted to catch the sunrise. Yup on Mount Fuji even money can only get you a sleeping bad in a small claustrophobia-inducing partitioned area in a room shared by 20-30 others.

I didn't sleep very well. Honestly I don't think I have ever slept at 7 pm before in my life (jetlag situations aside). A comfy mattress with feather pillows would have definitely helped, but ain't no one bringing those up to Fuji, so we had to contend ourselves with the sleeping bags. I wanted to make good use of my 10,000 yen though, and I knew I needed some rest if I wanted to hike another 4 hours to the top and then another 4-5 hours for the descend. so I squeezed my eyes shut and forced my brain to shutdown. Guessed it did work because I woke up a few hours later. So after a few sessions of fitful sleeping and waking, it was finally time for us to wake up for good and start hiking in the dark to the summit to catch the sunrise.

Ahh, the very beginning

The way up is a lot of this

And this

There's a lot of clouds too I guess

This is what 10,000 yen can get you

This second part of the journey was something of a torture. The path up is steep, especially the part just after Toyokan. The rain was also heavier now compared to during the day, pelting mercilessly at the steady stream of hikers going up towards the summit in the night. Although my Eddie Bauer jacket was good enough to keep my upper body warm and dry, my pants, socks and shoes were not waterproof so I got soaked pretty fast. Hiking in the dark is also a completely different animal from its day counterpart because visibility is so poor that one has to pay extra attention and tread very carefully if one does not want to break his/her neck or go crashing down into the people below. There was definitely no fear of getting lost though, because everyone wants to catch the sunrise so it almost feels more like a moving queue up to the summit, especially nearer to the top. The going was very very slow indeed, but it's not like I could have gone any faster anyway. I was shivering from the cold and wet and exhausted from the physical exertion and lack of sleep. I'm pretty sure Nabil felt the same way too. It got so bad, we gave up on catching the sunrise and decided instead to take a short break at Goraikoukan, the hut closest to the summit. This short break consisted of sipping hot chocolate while shivering violently and pitifully inside the hut. It was still raining and at one point we almost decided to pay another 10,000 yen to screw the entire thing and sleep till our hearts content at Goraikoukan instead. I don't know how and why we pushed on.

We were already too late for the sunrise when we finally reached the summit, and although the rain finally let up, it was still freezing cold up there (I think it was about 5 deg C). Unfortunately, due to the weather, there was no view to be had at all, just loads of mists blocking our view of the valley bellow. So you see, after about 8 hours of hiking in total, getting soaked to the bone and shivering our asses off for the last 4 hours or so, we couldn't even get a good view from the top. Fuji just basically gave us a big "Fuck You" haha. Sadly I took a total of 3 photos on the summit because photo-taking becomes a lesser priority when you're trying not to die from hypothermia.

Thanks for being a champ Nabil! We did it!

I think we basically did only 2 things before starting our descent:
1. Huddle inside a small cafe hut to warm ourselves up. Not very effective because the cafe's huge entrance way was kept open for customers to shuffle in and out. Also, I happily ordered corn sup to warm myself up and received... canned corn sup. In a drinking can, like the type you drink soda from. It tasted absolutely disgusting. Took a sip and then after that I used the can to warm my hands. When there was no more heat left to absorb I chucked it away (sorry).
2. Huddle inside a stinking public toilet to warm ourselves up. It was smelly, it was dirty, but oh we were so reluctant to leave because it was considerably warmer inside. Never in my life would I have imagined that I would choose to hang out in a stinking toilet under any circumstances.

Before coming here, I had plans of sending a postcard from the post office on top of Fuji, walking around... exploring... but I completely forgotten about those plans due to my sufferings. I just wanted to get down from there and huddle up in someplace warm. So after getting my souvenir wooden pole stamped in the shrine (yes there's a shrine), we descended the mountain. Descending was even duller. Imagine just circling round and round the mountain for hours and hours with this being your only view:



I was thinking miserably about how walking round and round like that forever with no end could potentially be some form of eternal damnation. It even started raining again when we were close to the bottom. Still, finally the reddish soil part ended and we found ourselves back on the path that we trekked up the day before, only now we were in the opposite direction. I was so thankful when the buildings of the 5th Station finally came into view.

While it was definitely a memorable experience hiking Fuji, but I think I'll just leave it as a once in a lifetime thing. Some things are better from afar:

From a distance... Fuji is all beauty and grace

Omake: When we finally got back to Kawaguchiko station, we were extremely exhausted and still soaking wet. Although we wanted to check into the swanky hotel we booked and crash into bed immediately, we thought it better to grab a quick bite first. Thanks to the tempura shop from the day before, we didn't have to walk any further. I traipsed water everywhere, made the chair I sat on wet and the tempura doesn't taste that great when you're cold and tired, but I am still extremely grateful for the presence of that little tempura shop. Ah, what would we have done without you?

Finally after all the bother of moving to Kuantan followed by a great 2 weeks in the States (which I will hopefully find time to write about at some later date), I got a laidback weekend with barely any plans so that I can just sit back and do some reflection… and also clean the house. The latter is still in progress and while I’m taking a break, I thought I would write about the hiking I did at the Tiger Leaping Gorge last September with Thamarai. This trip is monumental for me because it’s the first time I’ve ever done some serious hiking. Before this I had only hiked some small hill (name forgotten) in Sungai Petani with Anas and Maya. There was also that failed attempt in Switzerland (IIRC on one of the mountains near Lucern) where mum, dad, Anne and I started on a hike to some lake but quickly gave up less than 10 minutes in and turned back after we realized we were just not cut out for it what with the lack of gear and the sweltering Swiss summer sun (alliteration!).

Before we actually got to the Tiger Leaping Gorge we were in Kunming for slightly more than a day and Lijiang for another few. Kunming’s dull really, it’s just another grey and unremarkable big city. The stone forest about an hour away is pretty, true, but very touristy. I guess the only memorable part was when Thamarai and I were trying to find one of those motels where you could rent a room for just a few hours rather than an entire night. The story being our train only left in the night and we had to check out of our previous room at Holiday Inn by noon, so we wanted somewhere to shower before boarding the train. I did my research and found one near the train station but they didn’t accept non-local guests (racist!) so we were out on the streets trying to find another place with about an hour before our train was scheduled to depart. This lady on the street (there’s tonnes of people just hovering on the streets, not sure why) told us she could help us find one and started making all these calls. I don’t know why we didn’t walk away then. Then she asked us to follow her and let us to this 2-star looking business hotel. I was relieved because I was expecting something dodgier. Little did I know we were about to experience the epitome of dodgy. She led us straight past the front desk to the lifts to go up, and by that time both of us were beginning to sense something amiss, so we started to refuse and balk, but she and her guy partner who met us outside the lifts insisted that they were a legit travel company (my ass). The room they showed us was uncleaned but empty, and they told us to be quick about the shower. I guessed it either belonged to some poor hotel guest who was outside at that time oblivious to the hijacking or it was a room whose occupant had already left but was yet to be cleaned. Either way we should have just declined, and I did try albeit weakly, but between their insistence and my own tractability, coupled with our desire to shower before getting on an overnight train… we just gave in. Stupidest idea ever. To think of what could have had happened to us if they were also evil in addition to greedy. We took turns showering, one of us keeping watch at the door while the other was in the bathroom. It costs us about 70 yuan I think, my most expensive shower to date. But I’m just grateful that all they wanted was some extra cash and that we got out unscathed.

Lijiang is full of traditional buildings, whether original or built for tourism purposes I’m not too sure…. My guess would be original but refurbished since it’s a UNESCO heritage site. Being there makes you feel like you’ve been transported back to one of the dynasties of ancient China, if you can overlook the people walking around in T-shirt and jeans and your own phone beeping away in your pocket. 90% of the shops there sell either one of the following:
1. Freshly roasted rose tea
2. Rose pastries (a Yunnan speciality)
3. Souvenirs (that they all got from the same supplier)
4. Pu Er tea
5. Yak-made products

So yeah it was really touristy, but as a tourist I enjoyed it. And touristy and commercialized it may be, there is no denying its beauty and history.


Still, the main event of our trip was the Tiger Leaping Gorge hike and it was by far the best part of the journey for me. We took a bus from Lijiang and arrived at the starting point – the town of Qiaotou around 11 am and after dumping our luggage at Jane’s Guest House, we embarked on our journey, this block here indicating the start of the trail:



It all quickly became very disappointing because I didn’t realize that the first one hour of our hike would consist of walking along an asphalt road dodging huge trucks and their toxic exhaust fumes.

We had to suffer through this for an hour.

Sure, there was a nice valley view (albeit slightly marred by the huge amount of construction going on) but in the pictures online everyone was hiking through greenery and mountains and there we were walking alongside a village road with noisy and dusty trucks. I was starting to wonder if we had come too late, that human development had reduced the Tiger Leaping Gorge trail into this travesty, when we came upon the actual starting point, a gap in the fence bordering the mountains in the midst of some houses. The trail went steeply up into the mountains, littered with lots of what I presumed to be horse dung and it was about noon at this point so we were sweating profusely, but finally it was soil and grass beneath our shoes instead of asphalt and I was glad to be finally hiking in nature.


When we decided to go hiking here I was kinda worried we would get lost along the way, especially since my sense of direction is non-existent, but I needn't have worried, because throughout the trail there were these blue signs every now and then guiding us forward. There were also writings on the rock by the various guest houses indicating the direction to their establishments, which even though was a bit of an eyesore, gave me comfort that we were going the right way:


Occasionally there were well-meaning yet horribly translated signs on the dangers of forest fire.

I think we were about an hour or so into our uphill hike when we came upon one of the mountain natives with his horse. He asked us if we would like a ride since it would be a challenging hike but we declined politely. I didn’t come all this way just to sit on a horse and let it carry me to my destination. In the case of hiking, the journey is what defines and makes the experience memorable no? It was around this time also that we bumped into some other hikers – a local Chinese couple, which made me feel better cause I was starting to wonder if we were the only two souls around in this place. I’d read that from the start of the trail, getting to the next main stop - Naxi Guest House would take around 3 hours, but we took around 4 hours I think, which could be partially due to our physique not being as great as those writers I guess. More significantly though, when we were about half an hour away from the village where the Naxi Guest House was located, we met the local village doctor who told us that we had to make a detour because a lone elderly Australian hiker had passed away on the trail not too long ago. Then he took us and the Chinese couple on a detour through almost half an hour of corn fields after which we finally reached Naxi’s, where I had the best scrambled eggs and tomatoes in my life and a pretty darn good fried rice too. My own eggs and tomatoes are just inedible by comparison. I will also be adding the fried rice at Naxi’s to my list of acceptable fried rice, now of which only contains Hong Kong famous boat restaurant Jumbo’s.

After much ascension, we finally stumbled into a valley and came upon the first major village.


Best. Fried. Rice. Ever.

The lady boss of the Naxi Guest House is a sweetheart.

The sky was a tad bit dark when we were about to depart Naxi’s at around 4:30 p.m. and we heard a loud clap of thunder once. Another hiking group emerged at Naxi’s saying they turned back since it seemed like it was going to rain, and the Chinese couple also said they were gonna stay at Naxi’s for the night despite having bookings at the next guesthouse, the Tea Horse, because they weren’t confident that they could tackle the next stretch – the infamous 28 Bends, which is supposed to be the hardest part of the journey, and make it to the guesthouse by sunset. I didn’t really want to stay the night at Naxi’s because it would mean that we would have a lot more trail to cover the next day. Besides, I had already booked rooms at the Tea Horse and most visitors agreed that they had the best rooms in the Tiger Leaping Gorge. So Thamarai and I decided to go ahead and tackle the 28 Bends even though we didn’t have flashlights just in case we had to hike in the dark. We had just started out when we heard the jingle of bells and spotted one of those mountain natives and his horses behind us. The trail was still continuing upwards and we had ample self-awareness of how slow we were going, so we told horse guy to go ahead but he declined. That was smart of him and horrible for us. As he was on a horse he was moving much faster than we could have ever hope to, he was constantly hovering behind us, like an annoying fly. It made me, the person at the front, stressed out as I felt like I had to move faster and faster so that he wouldn’t be caught up behind us. Thamarai said she felt stressed too as the horses kept having to stop since they were moving faster than us, and they were also literally breathing down her back. We tried telling horse guy to go ahead again, but he claimed he was fine following behind. He said that we would never make it to the Tea Horse before sunset, and that the 28 Bends were perilous, that many other groups rode his horses to get across, that he was our only hope so how about we just hop on his horses? Well, his fear-mongering was starting to really get to me, and I almost gave him my backpack to carry not because I couldn’t carry it but rather because I just wanted to get rid of him. Thank goodness Thamarai didn’t let me do that. We tried again to tell him no thank you, we didn’t want to ride his horses and not to waste his time on us. I said he could give us his number and we’ll call him if anything. This time, after an annoyed “If I go back to my village I’m not coming back out to get you girls!”, he left for good. After that the hike was much more enjoyable for the both of us. Honestly, in spite of its reputation, I don’t really think the 28 Bends was that difficult to hike. If anything, I thought the stretch before Naxi’s was worse. The path was windy as it followed the side of the mountain, but I’m not sure what’s considered a bend and hence I can’t say if there were really 28 of them. The view of the mountain range across the canyon was just spectacular, and the clouds feel impossibly close by.




The apperance of a rainbow gave us so much needed hope and strength.

After a while, the trail started to go more down than up, and Thamarai and I picked up our pace. We finally made it to the Tea Horse at around 7:20 p.m., 10 minutes before sunset. Two middle fingers up to annoying horse guy. There, we proved you wrong. The family-run Tea Horse felt a bit like heaven after a long day’s hike with a pesky horse guy, even more so with its location tucked high up in the mountains. As we had our dinner in the guest house’s restaurant with its huge glass windows overlooking the mountains, our surroundings were already dark, and we could hear the wind howling incessantly through the mountains. Boy was I glad we were quick enough to arrive before it got dark. We got a room in the renovated wing, and for a mountain guest house I got to say it was a really great room. New, cosy, comfortable and with a slight vintage vibe. No wonder the reviews online said it was the best guest house in the Gorge.


Taken in poor lighting and does not do the room justice at all.

The next morning after breakfast we continued our journey. This part of the hike was very pleasant, we were basically walking on a narrow trail along the side of the mountain, with villages and the river below us. Not much ascent or decline so it was relatively easy. It wasn’t scary either cause it was just a gentle grassy slope to the side so no worries if you tripped or fell off the trail.



We arrived at the Halfway Guest House in time for a lunch of pancakes. The dining area faces the mountains so I had a great view while devouring my pancakes. It was also over here that we met a very cool Malaysian couple, but more on them later. The Halfway is also famous for its toilets with a great view so of course I had to try them out. As with all the other toilets up here, there is so separate cubicles, you’re separated from other occupants by a chest-high wall, and everyone pees or poops into this common drain so things can get a bit awkward. Thank goodness there was no one there when I entered. I didn’t take a picture but I guess it was definitely the best view I ever had while peeing.


The trail after Halfway was similar, but scarier in the sense that rather than a grassy slope, to our side was a much steeper, rocky cliff. The path was rockier and there were openings in the mountain wall that we had to passed through. There was one point where a whole herd of goats was coming from the other direction and Thamarai and I had to stand aside to let them pass cause the trail was only wide enough for one. This happened a second time but with horses instead. I think I almost got smacked in the face by one of the horse’s tails. We also had to ford two or three waterfalls during this part of the trail. It was slow going because the rocks were wet and slippery and a wrong step could spell the end of you.



The final, descending part of the trail was boring. It was a red mud road, and the scenery was relatively dull after all the beauty and wonder of the trail before it. We arrived at the end of the trail which was by the side of Tina’s Guest House:


This was where the Malaysian couple from before caught up with us. While checking with the lady at Tina’s (Could she be Tina?) on transportation back to Kunming, she also told us that we should visit the Middle Leaping Gorge, which is basically hiking and climbing down the rockface to this big rock in the middle of the raging river where a tiger was said to have leapt across the gorge to escape from hunters, hence the name Tiger Leaping Gorge yada yada. Well, the thing is we really wanted to go but couldn’t as we would have to pay the natives because they claimed to be the ones who developed the trail without any help from the government and built a tiny rickety bridge from the edge of the gorge to the rock, and we didn’t have enough cash, especially since we had to put aside some money for the next day’s long trip to Kunming. So feeling rather bummed, we continued walking by the side of the main road to reach our lodgings - the Tibetan Guest House. Along the way though, there was a signboard claiming to have a good viewing point overlooking the Middle Leaping Gorge for a payment of only 5 yuan per person.

The signboard and collection box.

The disappointment from not being able to hike down to the Middle Leaping Gorge still stung, so we decided to go for this one instead. The trail went through a farm before going steeply down through wild thickets, it took us about 15 minutes to reach the viewing platform and I was pretty tired by that time. The viewing platform was exactly what it claimed to be and nothing more, a stretch overlooking the famous rock with some barriers by the side to alleviate slightly the fear of falling over the edge and becoming fish food.

You can spy the famous Middle Leaping Gorge rock at the bottom right hand side.

The Tibetan Guest House was nestled in the area known as Walnut Garden about 2 km away from Tina’s, a family run establishment owned by a friendly elderly man. The man and his son were the only two people running the whole show from check-in to cooking meals. I think they mentioned that the chef was on maternity or something. The rooms were old and run down if compared to the luxury (going by mountain lodge standards) we had at the Tea Horse, and hot water was limited as well, but still, it felt cosy and homey, and had a great mountain view as well.



The Malaysian couple we met at Halfway were having dinner at the dining room and asked us to join them. Turns out they were not really hardcore hikers but enjoyed travelling and went on trips about 3-4 times per year. I had a great time talking to them, only wished I had asked for their Facebook or something, because trying to stalk the guy based on the name card I got has been a complete failure thus far.

The next day we took a bus back to Lijiang. Nothing much here except I guess for the part when we were getting our suitcases back from Jane’s and hauling them on to the bus that would take us back to Lijiang. All the other tourists had hiking packs or reasonably sized luggage, the locals had small briefcases and handbags only, and then in waltz Thamarai and I with our super duper gigantic suitcases and everyone just flat out stared at us. The Malaysian couple even started laughing. Oh well guys, we can’t help it, we pampered princesses need all our skincare and clothes and makeup ya know?

I've been bumming around for more than 6 months and never bothered to blog even once throughout the entire period but now that I've (finally) started working, I decided to write/type again. Yup, that sounds like me alright. I have a thousand and one rants about my entire job situation but since it's dangerous to bitch about work, I have decided to talk about Final Fantasy XV because I just finished it last week before my induction started and it's also much easier talking about a game than it is talking about my feelings. And goodness knows when we'll be getting another major Final Fantasy title, they spent 10 years on XV, might be another 10 or more before XVI comes out.

Spoilers abound, naturally.

The game has been on a mind a lot because the ending was so (unnecessarily) tragic. Throughout the whole game, I, as Noctis, was motivated by the desire to destroy my bitter and vengeful ancestor Ardyn as well as all the daemons and restore light to my awesome kingdom of Lucis. Seriously, pre-daemon infestation Lucis is such a beautiful place, if it were a real country the main industry would be tourism and and it would beat Switzerland in terms of annual number of tourists. Just look at the scenery!




To be fair, Altissa is really gorgeous too, it's like Venice but even better. Except it's still a rip-off of Venice so Lucis is better.



(Looted from ulric-nyx's tumblr)

Really big kudos to the design team for designing such a beautiful world. Anyway back to the issue at hand. I was so pumped up because I thought in the end Noctis would be able to save his people, reclaim his throne (that's one of the game's taglines isn't it?) and marry the girl of his dreams, Luna. But I completely forgot that the FF team luuuuuurves tragic endings now not only does dream girl Luna die before Noct gets to meet her (And they haven't met for 12 years goddamit!), Noct had to sacrifice himself to bring down Ardyn so guess what? No more Oracle and Lucis Caelum bloodline. Great. So Lucis is gonna be a republic now? I was mad enough because I was shipping Noct and Luna so hard and not only do they kill her, they kill her OFFSCREEN ("Oh, her body just disappeared in the waves!" or some nonsense) after so little screentime. Romance in real life is frustrating enough, can we not have the star-crossed lovers theme for once? You know, at least in Westworld even though Dolores and Will were star-crossed lovers they were still together for a short period of time, but we're not even given that small satisfaction in this game. Noct and Luna just... never properly meet, unless you count looking at each other through a crowd of people as meeting. Sigh, they just wanted to get into each other's pants, but Square Enix is cold and heartless. It's also a lot of wasted potential, because Luna was such a strong female character. She went through a lot just to make sure Noctis became king and without her Noctis couldn't have defeated Leviathan. Seriously, taking down a boss monster together? #relationshipgoals enough said. I was quite upset when Luna died and the scene with the blue flowers was heart-breaking, but there are people on Reddit saying that they felt more emotional when Ignis went blind because they didn't really know Luna. So, Square Enix, Episode Luna as DLC please, if you would be so kind.

Omg Luna whyyyy *dries eyes* (Looted from mistress-light's tumblr)

Ok, if you want to kill Luna off, fine, did you have to kill Noctis too? Why couldn't he have survived and gotten together with Iris and have beautiful Lucis Caelum babies who continue to rule over Lucis? Joanne calls Iris a homewrecker because she's constantly fangirling over Noctis even though he's engaged to Luna and all but honestly, what girl wouldn't go crazy over him? If I were Iris I would pick up sewing and stitch moogle plushies for Noct-oniichan too. Heck, my ovaries would never be calm in his company. I say cut Iris some slack. Speaking of Iris, we never actually get to see her after the 10 years time skip, nor Cindy nor Aranea nor Cid. Hey Square, how about cutting some budget from the Cindy car washing scenes and channeling them into a few minutes of screentime for post-time skip Iris and Cindy? It sucks to hear Talcott (who's totally legal now, ladies) speak of how they have become strong, successful women but never actually get to see them in person. Oh it's not only the good guys who get shafted, besides Ardyn all the "bad guys" combined get even less screentime than Iris. I didn't know that this ugly bat-like daemon was the emperor Iedolas until I read Reddit:

I think a lot of people must have been clueless too, because the developers added a sidestory where you play as Gladiolus and finally showed Iedolas becoming a daemon in the latest patch. Ravus's downfall was really disappointing too. When Gladiolus got his ass handed to him by Ravus early on in the game, I was so certain that Ravus would be a major baddie, like the second-in-command to Ardyn, and that I would have to face him again in the future. Well, face him again I did, but he was weakened by Ardyn already (something they only revealed in the patch, not in the original game) and I defeated him so easily, the battle was kinda anticlimactic. It could be because I was like more than 15 levels above the recommended level at that point though haha. Still, I really don't know anything about Ravus other than he's Luna's brother and is actually a good guy? And I'm not even sure about the latter.

Yes, anticlimactic is the perfect word to describe FFXV's story, especially the ending. At the end I was just like "Is that it? I worked so hard and Noctis died?". It makes it hard to finish all the side quests and to play the upcoming DLCs because I already know that in the end Noctis is going to die. The rest of my boyband Ignis, Prompto and Gladiolus might all be dead too, for all I know, it's never explicitly stated in the game so it's all speculation. I really loved the boys' interactions, it was probably one of the best things about the game. Not much backstory nor character development was given to any of them except Noctis (No I did not watch the anime), but I still ended up liking all of them through their banters and quirks ("I came up with a new recipe!"). Which brings me to another gripe of mine. So Noctis disappears for 10 years before returning, and none of his friends are mad at him for being ditched? I would get mad if my good friend didn't reply to my Facebook message within a few days and the remaining 3 are so chill when Noctis finally turns up. I was expecting more drama, like some "WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN!!?" and tears and abandonment issues, but everyone acts like they've been expecting me. Did they manage to find another Oracle while Noct was gone that predicted his return? As consolation, there was a campfire scene before the final boss fight that was really poignant. I think Noctis' seiyuu and the animators did a pretty good job capturing the emotions of the character in that situation.

It's more than I can take too, Noct :'(


At the end, when Noctis said "俺 …お前らのこと好きだわ!", ahhh it was like being hit by a truc... eh not really, maybe a car. The truck came with the wedding scene: Ok, make that 2 trucks. (Looted from kousuisetsu's tumblr)
Noctis is so dreamily handsome here. :') (Looted from kousuisetsu's tumblr)
Sometimes the development team handles emotional scenes so well, and sometimes they suck so bad. I'm so confused.

Anyway so the storytelling in FFXV is flawed, but the plot is actually pretty easy to follow, unlike Type 0, which was so confusing, although the tragic ending worked quite well in that game, and also FFVII, which is the most famous game in the series right? Well I never played the original, but I've read about the plot numerous times and I still find it incredibly difficult to understand. I probably play less than 5 games per year so I don't think I'll be much good at commenting on the gameplay and battle system, I will just say that it was fun enough for me most of the time. The Leviathan boss battle was the most epic (well the second part, because in the first part Noctis was close to useless), especially with Apocalypsis Aquarius playing in the background (My favourite song from the game hands down) and Noctis going all god-mode on Leviathan, I think I was close to spazzing. The only small letdown was that I was just mashing the O button 90% of the time during the fight, unlike in normal fights where I usually warp and defend and do teamwork stuff with my boys Ignis, Prompto and Gladiolus.

Eh, am I done already? Somehow I remembered having crazy lots of things to rant about FFXV. It sounds like I didn't like the game, but I actually really did, despite its flaws especially in the storytelling department. I do think that 10 years of development time is too long though, and with that much time, an even better game should have been produced compared to the one we actually got. The game is depressing enough as it is, so I'll end this post with a happier picture: Genius! (Screenshot from achromatic-cai's tumblr)

Ok now that I've express all my thoughts and emotions, I hope I can move on and focus on work. I have to move outstation sometime later this month, feeling extremely apprehensive about the whole thing. :(