Weekend Getaway: Ocean Spring Resort in Zhuhai, China

We're just back from an unforgettable weekend getaway to celebrate J's birthday. We were planning on going last weekend but by the time we wanted to book the hotel, it was fully booked! A 1000-room hotel fully booked on a regular weekend?! Yes, nothing unusual in China. 

We've been to the Ocean Spring Resort in Zhuhai, famous for its hot springs. Zhuhai is the city in mainland China bordering Macau, and to go from Hong Kong you only need to take a 70 minutes-long ferry ride. The resort had three hotels: an inn, a 4 star hotel, and a 5 star hotel {ours!}. I loved our huge business room with sea view. The resort is famous for its hot springs but it also has a very decent amusement park! 

We spent our Saturday afternoon in the hot springs and both of us LOVED it. They are really worth a visit. My first {and until this trip, only} experience with hot springs was in South Korea in January 2011, where the outside temperature was below zero, so you can imagine the adventure for a first time at the hot springs... This time in Zhuhai has been completely different. The weather here was more like a sunny autumn day than a winter one, with pleasant temperatures above 20 degrees Celcius. I never imagined the hot springs at Ocean Spring Resort would be as amazing as they actually are. I was very positively surprised by many things. First, the hot springs were not crowded as I had feared {this is China after all!}. Second, there were many many different spaces to explore: Turkish style, European, Chinese, etc. And third and my favorite: there was an area with about 20 pools in which each of them had a different herb or substance inside {chrysanthemum, mint, tangerine peel, ginseng, green tea, thousand Chinese herbs, milk, coffee, red wine, etc.}, with a description explaining what that herb or substance was good for and the benefits it had on your body. I guess the total number of pools was around a hundred, most of them outdoors but some indoors as well. I obviously couldn't bring my Canon camera inside, but here is a pic I snapped with my iPhone!

After the hot springs both J and I agreed our bodys felt great and our skin even softer than usual! That's saying a lot, because J and I are naturally soft :D After the hot springs we watched a nice 80 minute acrobatic show called "Memory of the Sea", performed by Russian and Chinese actors.

Today we took some pictures around the resort and then spent a while in the amusement park, where unfortunately most of the amusement rides were closed :(

Have you ever been to hot springs? Isn't it just awesome? :)

Hot Pot: a thousand-year-old Chinese tradition

I'm happy I finally get to write about hot pot, I've been wanting to introduce you to the hot pot culture for quite a long time now, but I always had other posts I ended up gaving preference to. But finally here it is, a post on one of China's most popular dishes: hot pot. The reason why I never found the appropriate moment to post about it is simply because I don't like hot pot. But hey, that I don't like something doesn't mean millions of Chinese haven't been raging about it for more than a thousand years! So here is a post that will give you a glimpse on what hot pot is, in case you never heard about it before!

The principle of hot pot is very simple: it consists of a pot with simmering broth placed in the middle the table, where sliced meat, vegetables, mushrooms, tofu, dumplings, noodles, seafood or fish skin are thrown in uncooked to be boiled. The most typical broths are the clear and the spicy one (in the pictures), but other flavors like satay or tomato are also available.

Hot pot is one of J's favorite meals, and last saturday for his birthday we went to China for it. There's plenty of hot pot restaurants in Hong Kong, but he always says the best of the best is Little Sheep from mainland China. Founded in 1999 in Inner Mongolia, Little Sheep currently has 300 branches worldwide, most of them in mainland China, but also in Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, South Korea, Canada and the United States (a branch in NY and a branch in California!). I didn't take the camera with me this time but I had taken pictures of another branch in Guangzhou a couple of months ago, so here they are!

It's typical for hot pot to be accompanied with soy sauce and other condiments but Little Sheep won't give any to its customers. They claim their food is so tasty, dipping it in sauce would ruin its amazing flavor. Even though beef is probably the most common meat for hot pot, the most popular one at Little Sheep is obviously... lamb {dah!}.

Have you ever had hot pot? How did you like it?

Wedding Wednesday: Save the Date Props

So... my second entry on my Wedding Wednesday series is here! After having taken our proposal reenactment pics, the next big thing to plan for is our save the date photoshoot. I'm going crazy looking for save the date props. There are so many of them, yet I can't seem to find the one. I need your help here giving me some advice, because I'm dying to tell you our wedding date! The obvious place to look for save the date props is Etsy, where hundreds of cute options are available:

Some people just take a nice picture and then type in a Save the Date message with photoshop, but I-oh-so-want my save the date props!!! Here is a list I've come up with for save the date ideas that hopefully will help me make up my mind:

1. Date banners

Image via Amy and Amy

2. Framed chalkboards

Image thanks to my friend Amanda, who got engaged a couple of moths before I did!

3. Heart-shaped chalkboards

Image via Pinterest

4. A sign with our names and date

Image via Pinterest

5. Signs with messages (He asked... / And she said yes; Soon to be her Mr. / Soon to be his Mrs.; etc.)

Image via Pinterest

6. Balloons

Image via Pinterest

7. Studio shot: a heart on the wall

Image via Pinterest

Of course the possibilities are endless. There's even those who go wild and take the classrom chalkboard to the street...

Image via Pinterest

Which one do you think is the cutest way to announce our wedding date? Help needed!

I'm loving BB Cream, and so will you!

I found out about this beauty miracle called BB cream when I moved to Asia four years ago. Back then, no one in Europe that I know had ever heard of BB cream, but in Asia every girl was raging about it. It didn't took me long before I gave it a go too. I LOVED IT. I still kept my foundation, which I planned to use for special occasions when more coverage was needed, but little by little I stopped using my foundation at all. It's not only that I love how my face looks with BB cream, is that I can feel my skin loves it too. I think my skin got better after using BB Cream for a while, which is why I never had to go for the deep coverage of foundations anymore. My skin is far from flawless but I believe BB Cream has improved it a lot {or at least stopped damaging it as foundations used to do!}. Foundations usually clog your pores making the skin become dull and full of blackheads. The great thing about BB Cream is it's so light it can't possibly clog your pores!

But... what exactly is BB Cream? BB Cream stands for Blemish Balm Cream, and it originated in Korea. Well, strictly speaking, it was first developed in German laboratories to heal the skin after surgery, but the formula was adapted by the Koreans and turned into BB cream, an instant hit among Korean women that spread rapidly throughout Asia. BB Cream is an all-in-one cosmetic replacing serum, primer, moisturizer, foundation and sun-block. This basically means that BB Cream is all you need to apply to your face in the morning before doing your makeup (eye-shadow, eye-liner, blush, etc.). I personally prefer to use moisturizer before applying my BB Cream because it blends way more easily and my skin feels more hydrated, but most of my friends don't. There are hundreds of BB Cream brands, specially since western brands discovered this secret weapon and started manufacturing their own. There are also thousands of BB Cream styles, with different functions and coverage levels. What suits me will not necessarily suit you, so I encourage you to do some research on different BB Creams and see which one could benefit your skin the most.

As for me, when in Taipei last July, I bought Dr Wu's Extreme Hydrate BB Cream because I tried it on in the store and it looked gorgeous. Dr Wu is a Taiwanese brand, but their BB Creams are manufactured in Korea. Before this I was already using Dr Wu's Perfect Cover BB Cream and I was happy about it but it was not my perfect cup of tea. Now after having been using Dr Wu's Extreme Hydrate BB Cream for almost half a year, I can tell you I'm a big big fan. It does to my skin exactly what BB Creams are supposed to do: give you a natural, no-makeup look while still covering minor imperfections. 

So tell me girls, are you going to give BB Cream a try?

Happy birthday, my fiancé

Yesterday was my fiancé's birthday. This is the third birthday I get to celebrate with him, and all I wish for is to be next to him for all his birthdays to come. For the next one, he will already be my husband... He is my soulmate and best friend, the one who I can always count on, the one that makes me smile, my reason to move forward even when things seem difficult, my happiness, my joy, my everything. We were born more than ten thousand kilometers away, yet we managed to find each other and promise to love each other in good times and in bad, when life seems easy and when it seems hard. Our love is written in the stars. I love you J.