Executive Sky Lounge, MGallary Hotel Des Arts Saigon, HCM City, Vietnam

Now, I am back to HCM City, Vietnam, as my annual routine trip.  Guess I mentioned last year, now you can find traffic signals here and there.  I.e., until a couple years ago, they do not need it but they can manage by their own paces.  It is very surprised but when walking down the street of very central of HCM City, even pedestrian has many motorcycles so that the capacity of traffic infrastructure might be reaching to limit, or more than capacity of motorcycles run around in the city.  Wow, urbanisation! 

For my fixed point observation (?), since last year my regular hotel staying is moved to MGallary Hotel Des Arts Saigon.  After their soft opening last year, now their operations are very stable, but friendly and more on the clients side.  And big change since last stay in a year ago is having executive lounge at 22nd floor.  Renovated southern side of rooms into a single lounge, very comfortable space is now welcoming you.

And, of course, you should expect their breakfast.  Maybe thanks to strategy by Accord group, even at executive lounge, they give us their menu for our selection.  From American to British, Chinese and local ones, you can feel more customer friendly lounge experiences there.

As for omelet, the theme here, this time I put two shots, one above is my second day: I asked "plain omelet" and this is the outcome, and the lower one is my first morning breakfast, with all their stuff, bacon, mashroom, ham, etc., inside.  The above one might be called "scramble egg", if you are American (or Japanese) so you may feel more relaxed to call it as omelet.  But in either case, egg tastes so fresh and well cooked.  Enjoy!

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HerBage, Hotel Epinard Nasu, Nasu Kogen, Tochigi, Japan

This year seems a year of domestic travel for me.  While I am now waiting for my routine trip to South-east Asia in the coming month of October, I travelled to other sides of Japan for relaxing.

In my younger days, I rather travelled without reservation of hotels but driving car down towards our destinations so we stayed different hotels or Japanese ryokans every night.  But nowadays, I am getting easier to stay at a single hotel, with various facilities, as if that hotel is my one and only destination, but to be honest, it is indeed easy and relaxed!

This time, we stayed in Nasu Kogen, a highland in Tochigi prefecture near Nikko, for summer break but just over weekend.  It has various attraction, including tennis court that I love to play at, swimming pools, etc., so despite of gorgeous set-up, it is welcoming more family visitors, hence your dinner might be so noisy around, if you come just two of you to enjoy some romantic night with your partner.  This is where it is for family, not for lovers.

But, their main dining has one principal, use neighbour farmers productions.  Very fresh,  but no need to say anything else to explain.  Fresh vegis from farms picked in the morning, live stocks too, and our favourite eggs too!

And, chiefs are young but well trained.  So dishes are not as cheap as ones you might underestimate from nightly rates and customers you see around.  They fully utilise potentiality inside stuff so, even buffet style, while you should see some live cook performance here and there, I can predict you should be surprised its quality of cuisine, even at your choice of taste and style from western to Japanese, Chinese etc. (as far as available on your day), so you can also be satisfied with quantity.

And, breakfast omelet is no exception.  Well-shaped, i.e., with seamless rugby football shaped omelet is cooked lively in front of you.  With fresh eggs picked up in that morning, taste is so nice, no wonder.  Sometimes you may be told to have fresher dishes to go there for local production, this is it.  Enjoy!

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