An Unexpected Taste of Asia

I've started a routine here. Weekdays are mainly made up of working, looking for accomodation and the odd one or two grocery stops. On the weekends, I usually find at least two things to explore in London.

This morning I hadn't planned anything for the weekend and asked for suggestions via facebook. I had many great suggestions and hope to do them all eventually but one of my colleagues suggested to go to the Tower of London. I researched it and discovered that they have so many things for you to see and do all in the one place! I was very excited by this and chose this as my one of two weekend explorations.

So with the intention of going to the Tower of London, I had to change from the Central Line to the District Line in order to get to my destination. Little did I know that there would engineering works and therefore the line would be cancelled. They had buses in place but I didn't want to take a bus in case it dropped me off somewhere I didn't know. I like to plan ahead :) So I decided to go shopping in Oxford Street instead. Even though I didn't really need to buy anything, at least I knew the tube line to get there was working.

It was past lunchtime and my tummy was telling me I needed to eat. While walking up Oxford Street, I turned down an alley way that had little cafes and shops. So I walked down the street, didn't see a cafe that I liked so turned and walked down another street. I continued to walk down different streets for about 40mins (it didnt feel that long) looking at the different shops and for a good cafe until I saw red laterns hanging, lots of asian people and chinese writing on the shops. Yep, I had found myself in China Town!

I was so excited when I stumbled across Rasa Sayang, a malaysian and singaporean restaurant. It had all the traditional hawker foods like char kuay teow, beef rendang with roti, haianese chicken rice etc. I felt like I was in Malaysia! I ordered nasi lemak, as I had a craving for rice, and teh tarik. I made friends with the waitress who I thought had an Australian accent but as she spoke to me more, I realised she was English. She was born in Ipoh but moved to London when she was very young.



Not only was China Town great for decent asian food but they also had my some of my favourite asian desserts and sweets!

Mine and dad's favourite, ondeh ondeh - the green balls covered in coconut.

Dragon's beard candy - the bunch of thin white hair-like strands with peanut sugar in the middle

Pandan cake - the big fluffy green cake

So although I didn't make it to the Tower of London, that will definitely be on my itinerary for next weekend! :) For tomorrow, I will be putting on my dancing shoes (literally) to explore how Londoners do the salsa! I've been wanting to take up dancing again for so long and found a place just off Oxford Street, called Danceworks. Hopefully I'll make some new friends there! :)