#majik bistro

[orphancookie69]

Now Traveling: Lake Havasu City, AZ

It is that time of year again. Work is slowing down and I am ready for a vacation. Is there a purpose this time? (Do I need one?) Yes, holiday shenanigans ya know?

Friday:

Drive up was relatively quick, 4 hours or so. Stop by Oatman,CA. I have been by Oatman before, but it was my sister's first time. The donkey's are so cute. There was a scavenger hunt there at night but I was the only one that wanted to go. After we stopped by Bunker Bar. It was 3 miles off the road. We went off roading in a Cadillac. We were supposed to stop by walmart for supplies but the day ran real long. We went to Javelina's Cantina and had nachos for dinner. The christmas lights out there are wonderful. The weather? Cold AF. We watched, A Boy Called Christmas, on Netflix and it wasn't bad.

Saturday:

We got an early appointment with our family friend/Hair magician at Secrets of Beauty! It always does my heart and soul so much good to see her. We came back, stopped by College Street for lunch. We went to Walmart for some supplies. We had dinner at Angelina's. Seriously some of the best pasta ever, like not including from Italy directly. A big part of the trip was supposed to be the 2023 Lake Havasu City Boat Parade of Lights, but I am telling you-people were camping at the channel to watch it in the evening as early as 10 am. It was really cold outside, besides a high of 60/low of 40-there was a wind factor. So we watched from our balcony. We played some Farkle and I won no money.

Sunday:

We woke up and got some breakfast at Makai's. Me and my sister love that diner. My grandma was supposed to practice at the shooting range and we made plans to go Axe throwing, but when she heard about our plans she cancelled hers. So we tried to have lunch at a new Mediterranean place called Majik Bistro, but it was closed. We tried an italian deli that just opened up called Marisa's Italian Deli. The food was so good, they also sell pasta and coffee imported from Italy. I got chocolate lavazza coffee. We got a shake at Dutch Bros, has anyone looked at that menu? It is so massive. I got a Pink Flamingo Frost. We watched a couple of movies: The Secret Dare To Dream and Wind River. The Secret: Dare to Dream was a romantic movie based on the book-better than it should of been. Wind River was a crime movie based on a true story. We went to Yosemite Axe Throwing Havasu. That was way funner than that should of been. We looked at our family friends house being built and its coming along, new houses and construction is everywhere it seems. We tried to go to an arcade bar but decided to save that for next time. We played some farkle before getting ready to go home the next day.

Monday:

We left early, on top of the fact that AZ is an hour ahead, to head home. Drive home took about 4.5 hours. The worst part of the drive is always the california traffic.

Good trip, some old things some new things. Definitely not enough sleep and way too cold. But it was a nice way to round off the year as December just mulls us all over. I for one can't wait to find a local place to go axe throwing.

[hangryandlazy]

la + hawaii apr 19

back again at our favorite place! :) 

although we didn’t manage to cross all of the to do’s off of our lists, this turned out to be one of the best trips we’ve ever had. when it’s just alan and me on a trip, we tend to take the easy route. :P we play it safe and after exploring the city we chill out at the hotel room and milk it for what it’s worth hahaha.

soooo...alan and i had a night alone in LA before ada arrived. our first dinner was at a restaurant called sage plant-based bistro. i can’t remember which location we visited, but the cauliflower wings were BOMB af. also delicious were the avocado jackfruit carnitas and the baked eggplant farmesan. (see video for foodie pics)

the next day, we met up right at this restaurant called met her at a bar. it wasn’t a vegan restaurant although they offered many healthy plant-based options. we got buffalo cauliflower wings again, salads, burgers and french toast and waffles. (see video for pics again!)

this time round, we made our way up to the japanese garden up in van nuy. i was expecting it to be much bigger, it takes you about 20-30 minutes to walk around the entire park. it was stunning, although you can also catch a view of the sewage factory next door.

it was quite a relaxing visit anyway. :)

of course i had to make a pit stop at sip matcha to support the youtubers i’d been watching since high school! a bit too sweet for my taste, but i’d also forgotten to ask them to take it easy on the sugar levels, so that’s my bad. it was delicious regardless!

ada had been raving about this salad place called sweetgreen for years now, so of course we ended up ordering seamless that night! the pics aren’t that great so i’m leaving them out of this post, but damn that’s some good salad. 

another reason why we’d ordered in that night was because we had to head out early the next day to make our flight to big island. so *long story short* we had some misunderstandings and ended up having to fly to big island to transfer to honolulu. i’d been dreading the layover from the moment that we got our tickets issued, and we both ended up hating sitting around in that small outdoor airport for several hours (they had a power outage so the ice cream in the freezer was melting) that we bought one-way tickets immediately from honolulu back to los angeles to secure seats on a direct flight for when we head back a few days later. it was miserable! (yeah i know i’m a spoiled, high maintenance bish lolll)

when we finally landed in honolulu and picked up our rental car, it was about the same time that ada was supposed to land, so we headed back to the hotel together. we stayed at the modern honolulu together. alan and i had stayed there as well when we had visited 2 years ago, and we both loved the deco/aesthetic as it was (like its name suggests) much younger and more modern than the other hotels down the strip. the location was also quite nice because it’s right at the beginning of the strip, so we’re not stuck in the middle of a sea of tourists, but right on the edge of tourist city and local life.

we ordered in that night because we were pooped from traveling all day long, and we just wanted some comfort food and veg out in front of the tv before our big day the next day. what did we have in store for ourselves? WELL, we only had to wake up a tad bit earlier to drive over to the north shore to join a shark dive!!! we joined the one ocean diving team’s free diving expedition. i don’t think our program is really considered free diving, since we had snorkeling gear on, but it sure sounds a hell of a lot cooler than shark snorkeling, so i’m going to call it diving from this point onwards (although, if you look closely in the photo below, you’ll definitely notice that we don’t have diving tanks strapped to us and we’re just using flimsy snorkelling gear and flippers.

i was so proud of myself for taking the plunge and diving in right alongside everyone else. the waves were pretty rough, and i’m not familiar with using a snorkel, so it was actually quite confusing to me for a while. i had already warned ada and alan back in hong kong, before we’d even flown over, that there’d be a big chance i’d chicken out of the entire dive altogether. 

i ended up staying in water the longest! i almost didn’t want to leave. (i mean, it did take me a while to muster up the guts to even get in at all lol) it was such a thrilling experience, i’m so glad i went through with it.

when we got back to shore, we treated ourselves to smoothie bowls from haleiwa bowls. i’d been wanting to try this place out for ages, but the last time we were in hawaii we didn’t rent a car, so we didn’t want to venture out an hour north of the honolulu on an uber... turned out it was just a couple minutes walk from the shark snorkeling registration area, woohoo!

we got 3 bowls to share between the 3 of us (obviously more to share between me and ada lollll) we got a hapa bowl (acai/nana/strawbs/blueb smoothie with granola, fresh nanas, coconut flakes and hawaiian honey), a paniolo bowl (nana + pb + dates topped with granola, nanas, strawbs, cacao nibs and hawaiian honey), and also a blue majik spirulina chia pudding. honestly, they were delicious. not sure if it was because everything was hawaiian and fresh, or if it was because i’d seen their bowls on ig so many times before, or maybe we were just starved from all the adrenaline and excitement. 

we went hiking the second day, and as aesthetically pleasing this piña colada combo looks, they tasted pretty bleh. not refreshing or anything..

this was the diamond head lookout trail, although it was paved and quite easy so i’m not really sure at what point these pictures were taken. :p we stopped at a couple spots along the way.

before we headed off! (we threw away the fruits after the photo :p i know, a waste :( but no one wanted to lug them around on the hike)

on another day, we rented a jeep and drove up to the ho'omaluhia botanical garden to take some jurassic park themed photos :)

after we scouted out this spot and took a bunch of pictures here, other cars started to line up to make use of the backdrop as well hehehehe

we flew back to la to spend the rest of our holiday! for 420, we went to by chloe for vegan fast food (YUM) and then went off to universal studios. i didn’t realize until much much later that alan didn’t want to spend his 420 there, no clue why he didn’t just let us know sooner! i was pretty stoked that i won 2 toys at universal hehe.

our other best friend crystal was also in town, so of course we met up with her and ate more good food :P

(those are her hands grabbing the truffle pizza! haha)

and that concludes my la/hawaii trip! it was one of the best trips i’d ever been on, hands down! (even though it took me uhhhh 8 months to finally post about it hahahaha)