WANDERLUST & WONTONS
Follow your favorite multicultural couple, Andrew and Sabrina, on their real-life adventures wherever they happen to be! Imagine, you are at party and have just met us for the first time. We are having a chat…a banter of whatever comes to mind that is sexy & cool, hilarious, controversial or just plain entertaining! “Wanderlust and Wontons” serves up spontaneous laughter, friendship & love and curious insights guaranteed to perk up your day!
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WANDERLUST & WONTONS
Our Unforgettable 3 Month Honeymoon!!!
Imagine kicking off a dream honeymoon with a serene week only to embark on a whirlwind of global adventures that leaves you breathless yet craving more. Our journey began in the serene artist enclave of Ubud, Bali before our Indian escapade unfolded with a nerve-wracking late-night taxi ride through New Delhi's hustle. The thrill of spotting tigers in Ranthambore, feeling the pulse of Rajasthan's culture, and the awe of witnessing the Taj Mahal at dawn are just a glimpse of our travel tales that promise excitement and unpredictability at every turn.
As if our travels through India weren't enough, the call of the adventure led us to the colorful streets of Brazil; from the lively rhythms of Rio de Janeiro to the colonial allure of Paraty. Revel in the culinary delights of São Paulo, the majestic Iguazu Falls, and Brazil's crown jewel of Fernando de Noronha, where snorkeling with giant turtles beneath crystal-clear waters created moments we'll never forget. Join us, as we weave together stories of wanderlust and cultural wonders, inviting you to explore a world of breathtaking beauty and culinary bliss.
Welcome to Wanderlust and Wontons, the real-life adventures of Andrew and Sabrina.
Speaker 2:Imagine you're at a party and you've just met us for the first time and we're having a chat, a banter or whatever comes to mind. That is cool and interesting.
Speaker 1:We've both lived in many countries for good lengths of time. I'm Asian and overall I've lived a third of my life in North America, a third in Europe, a third in Asia-Australia. I've enjoyed my boarding school years in Dublin, ireland. I enjoyed my single and party life in New York City and there isn't a more amazing city beach than Bondi Beach. Australia. And of course, we love Hong Kong and dim sum.
Speaker 2:I was born and raised in Munich, germany, till the age of 21, when I decided it was time to explore the world, and have since been on a crazy adventure all over the world, from South America to New York and Asia. You will learn more about us over many podcast episodes, but for now, come along and let's dive straight in what should we tell the listeners about today, sabrina? Lately I've been reminiscing about our honeymoon in india. How about that?
Speaker 1:yeah, absolutely more than india. Our three-month honeymoon. We were lucky enough to have a three month honeymoon because I was moving from one job to another job and had a three month window to take, so it's totally awesome. So after the wedding in uluwatu, we thought we would spend a week in ubud just to chill out before we went for the rest of the honeymoon, and ubud was just kind of perfect for it. It was the artist capital of bali, so there's a more of a mellow scene and there is a lot of fun temples like the Elephant Temple and Sites to See. There's this great food scene as well, because a lot of foreigners who wanted to reside in Bali ended up living in Ubud and creating a community there. So there are Asians like Japanese and Korean and creating a community there. So there are Asians like Japanese and Korean, there are Europeans like French and German and Swedish and Swiss. You have Americans, you have Australians, british as well, and so you have a lot of international people and a vibe there. What are some of your favorite restaurants in Ubud?
Speaker 2:We quite like Loka Wara, which is a Dutch founder, and his indonesian sidekick, his partner, and it's basically source fresh produce from from the region and transform it almost into like gourmet food, like michelin worthy food absolutely like a nine cost degustation meal.
Speaker 1:Right that would. That would be on par with some of the best restaurants in the world. I think it won best restaurant in asia on the san pellegrino list at one point, actually, and they're just super inventive with their cuisine and they're just two great founders.
Speaker 2:A really nice vibe in the restaurant yeah, and in general, I feel like it's always been quite like health focused wellness foods, as as I called it, like nourishing, good-for-you foods.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But really tasty at the same time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a big raw food scene which you really like, right.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm really into these raw cakes which are made from unrefined ingredients and nuts and dates for sweetness.
Speaker 1:They're probably still pretty caloric, but, oh man, they're really delicious yeah, raw foods means you just use raw product and you don't use, you don't cook it at all. No processed foods, um, and it's just super healthy for you and they make it taste so great, yeah, so we had a great food time in ubud for our first week of our honeymoon we had some good tourist activities to go into the gajah temple, the elephant temple or the monkey forest right, and then we just had some sexy time for ourselves just to chill out after the wedding, and then we stayed at the chedi actually which has been around forever at ubud and it's got a really expansive grounds and nice villas and I just thought for honeymooners it's a really great place to spend some time.
Speaker 2:You know what I remember about the chatty. It was mostly having this butler, our personal butler, and having full access to the mini bar.
Speaker 1:That's what I remember Sabrina and her Asian snacks Exactly. And I'm a happy girl Exactly, she's just adopted the Asian snacking habit Full on, and so, after Ubud, we then started our journey into three months of honeymoon, and Sabrina wanted to visit.
Speaker 2:India.
Speaker 1:India.
Speaker 2:I've been on my bucket list for a while, exactly, so that was our first stop.
Speaker 1:We planned to spend somewhere between two or three weeks to do the Rajasthan circuit and also the Tiger Safari in Rambanthore. But as all our journeys, it always starts with a bit of an adventure and a lot of interesting events along the way, and some good and some interesting, let's just say right. So what happened when we first arrived?
Speaker 2:So we landed in Delhi. Yes, so we landed in Delhi and we took this taxi and it was, I think, pretty dark already. It must have been like late night. Yeah, it was nighttime already, it was nighttime and usually when we travel we do a mixture of like cheap hotels, especially if we're going to only stay for one night, and then a bit more upscale.
Speaker 1:We thought, new Delhi being the capital, we'd just rock up and get the local taxi from the airport. But no, I think what we should have done is booked a car driver, which is what people tell you now that you should do. But back then, you know, local cab was a pretty old cab, you know, nicely painted, but old, no air conditioning.
Speaker 2:Yes, it was damn hot, damn hot.
Speaker 1:So, anyway, then we were racing down the highway with fresh air, the breeze in our hair. Correct, exactly, and we had booked a hotel from Lonely Planet actually not a fancy one, because we were only there for one night before we were gonna go and book our tour and interestingly enough, so we told the taxi driver the hotel name was called Hotel Vivek.
Speaker 1:Yes and wow, that guy had a story for the tellers so supposedly this hotel was famous in not a good way. He said oh yeah, this hotel is famous, so it is where one of the 9-11 terrorists had stayed before he committed that act of terror. I was like, okay, I don't, this is already starting on the wrong note. I don't really need to know this information and as we went down that street, clearly there were a lot of backpacker hostels down the street and this was just a little bit further up.
Speaker 2:But the street wasn't even paved.
Speaker 1:I mean, it was literally just a dirt road leading up to the hotel, not even that I think they were going through a massive construction and renovation around the area of the main of those roads. So there's just literally rubble. He was just driving on rubble at one point, right you know. So I was like, wow, I'm not sure this is a road that will lead to the hotel, but let's see where it goes. We ended up there and you know, yeah, the hotel was there. We got our room well, there was.
Speaker 2:I remember walking up I think must have been on the second or first floor and there was no railing on the stair, like the stairs leading up to the room. Okay, okay, not the safest.
Speaker 1:You wouldn't want to come out late at night without a torch because you're gonna fall off like not drunk or anything. Yeah, for several stories, several stories. So we thought, ah, one night, that's an experience for us. I'm very curious whether it's still around, that's true. So the next day we went off to book our tour, the Rajasthan tour. And so, again reading Lonely Planet, we figured go to the tourist information office, right, the one that's actually run by the government.
Speaker 2:Right, book your tour there.
Speaker 1:So we flagged down a taxi and said listen, can you take us to the tourist information agency? We showed him the book, you know run by the government and off he went. So he went down a bunch of roads and he took us to what looks like a relatively nice series of commercial retail shops not part of a big mall or whatever and there was a travel agency there and it had a sticker that said Tourist Intervention Government of India.
Speaker 2:Suggesting it was endorsed by the government.
Speaker 1:That's right. So we went in and obviously we met two smooth-talking owners of the agency. We chatted with them. They showed us a bunch of options for the tour. We talked pricing and you know, pricing seemed fine and so we, you know, decided to kind of go ahead and book it In the end, just so you know, it turned out all fine and we'll run you through the kind of our Indian adventure. But it turns out later, at the end of the journey, we had figured out that that actually wasn't the tourist information office endorsed by the government. All he had is he had a sticker that he had faked and he had stuck it on the window, which looked totally legit, by the way.
Speaker 2:Definitely fooled us.
Speaker 1:Definitely fooled us. But anyway, it all worked out fine and we got a really great driver called Sanjay. He was like very friendly, very nice, spoke great English obviously, and he drove us around in his small little Tata. Yeah, small little Tata. Tata is like the local vehicle manufacturer in India, and when I say small, it's small, it's basically like you know it's like a Mini Cooper, like a.
Speaker 1:Mini Cooper size, exactly right. And then me and Sabrina were at the back. So you know, there we were in our little Tata, zooming across India to see these sites in Rajasthan. The sites themselves were stunning, right yeah, absolutely. India has amazing history and rajasthan has its royal history around all the cities, and so we saw, obviously, the cities that you would know if you're on the circuit, and they go by color by color.
Speaker 1:Actually, you're right. Yeah, so that's jaipur we went to, which is a pink city, where we saw the amber fort, we saw the hawa mahal and all the vibrant bazaars. We went to Udaipur, which is this beautiful city with a lake, I think they filmed the James Bond movie there, and we were actually lucky enough to see and be part of a local wedding.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, we were dancing on the streets.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah they were dancing on the streets All the guests and the bride and the bridegroom as well. They actually were so friendly and invited us to join their festivities. Then we were wedding crashers in Udaipur, right, and then we went to the city of Jaisalmer, which is called the Golden City. We wandered through the Jaisalmer Fort and, if you remember, we had a beautiful dinner on top of a terrace looking into the desert and into the fort. We actually did this camel safari right In the far desert.
Speaker 2:I remember that.
Speaker 1:In fact, I didn't know where Sanjay was taking us. He just said oh, here's your guide, you know?
Speaker 2:your camel safari. Just hop on the back of this camel.
Speaker 1:Just hop on the back of this camel. So we were like, okay, fine, let's do it.
Speaker 2:I think we stayed overnight in the desert actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, we stayed overnight in the desert, so they brought us out on the camel into the desert. It was a pretty wow crazy experience, right, Because we were the only ones there with a guide.
Speaker 2:I mean I just love it because you have the sky above you and you see the stars. I mean it's just a huge, huge experience, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And then they just plonked like a mattress.
Speaker 2:We didn't even have a tent. We just slept under the stars.
Speaker 1:We didn't even have a tent, you're right, it was pretty low-key actually, but it turned out fine because we were just young and adventurous. But it was kind of an unexpected experience that we didn't know we were going to do and I guess we just went with the flow. And which is called Jodhpur. That's where we met, at the Merange Fort, this pretty interesting local gentleman who was the Gentleman is the right word.
Speaker 2:He was so polite, very cute, very endearing.
Speaker 1:He was one of the guides, right, and we were asking him some questions and he responded to us as if he was a knight of the English court in medieval times. What did he say to us? As if he was, you know, a knight of the English court, right in medieval times.
Speaker 2:So what did? He say to you that's my moral duty to lead you around and explain that to you and just show you the scenery and the sights. And, yeah, very cute.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he certainly made an impression on us and he wanted to do his job well. After we had traveled many, many kilometers with Sanjay and our little Tata, we finally ended up at the Rambanthore National Park, which we wanted to go to see the tigers.
Speaker 2:And I tell you what an experience that was, an experience right.
Speaker 1:It was also, like Sabrina said, summertime in India, so it was really really hot. It's probably, I would say, the hottest I've ever been, except for our recent trip to the pyramids in Egypt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it was even hotter. You reckon it was hotter? Yeah, it was even hotter, but thankfully it was this really dry heat, but it felt like because we sat on the back of this jeep yeah, like just as an open air jeep and it felt like when we drove, like hot air was blowing your face, like literally, you're facing an hair dryer yeah, exactly, I mean, it's 40 degree heat, yeah, like you know, the whole day.
Speaker 1:That's right. The one bonus, though, of going to see the tigers at this time of the year and it wasn't pixie, because it was too hot, really was that you almost guaranteed to see the tiger, because they will come to the well, they come in and um to the water source I guess, and it's also like not as lush and green right, so it's quite easy to spot them correct.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but they always come to drink water, so the tractors will know what time of day the tigers are coming to drink water and you for sure will see the tiger.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you just rock up in the water source and pretty much a safe bet they come out at some stage.
Speaker 1:How did you feel when you saw the tiger cross our path?
Speaker 2:It's not funny because I always kept thinking how great can it be? But it's such a different experience to facing them in the zoo when you know exactly what to expect.
Speaker 1:But when?
Speaker 2:you're out there in the wild and the tiger is quite close to you. It's such a different experience.
Speaker 1:You feel very small and vulnerable, but, yeah, at the top of the food chain. So the king of the jungle, right, the tigers in in asia and they're, these massive beasts, two or three hundred kilograms in weight and it was beautiful, orange fur and stripes, and they wander across, they're more saunter across as like they own the place, which they do really.
Speaker 1:Uh, and because it was so hot, they're taking their time to get to the water source. And then, you know, after they drink some water, they wander off into like a little shaded area and just go off for their like nap, just have a snooze, yeah yeah. So that was, you know, pretty amazing experience. I've been to african safaris in tanzania and kenya. I've seen the gorillas in uganda as well, which we'll, you know, put in one some episode later.
Speaker 2:Um, I'll rank that right up there did you get like, did you get as close?
Speaker 1:yeah, just as close. Yeah, I mean the gorillas. Actually, we had to trek into the jungle to see the gorillas in Uganda and they were, like you know, two arms length away, wow so, and if you go and see the big five in the Serengeti, the lions in Africa are, you know, not far away. Both these two big cats are in different geographic regions of the world, but majestic in their own right right, that's for sure.
Speaker 1:Our last and final icon that we saw was the famous taj mahal yes, oh, my god, so cool yeah, and we, we take this photo which we've, which we sat down, pretty much like the photo that princess diana took right on this bench on the bench right with the taj mahal on the background and both of us side by side staring into the Taj Mahal. So you only see our backs right and we're hanging in our bedroom and people always ask wow, did you go to Taj Mahal?
Speaker 2:That's amazing.
Speaker 1:It's like nobody there, and that was true, because what time did we have to go?
Speaker 2:We basically went as soon as it opened.
Speaker 1:We were like guest number three. At that point there was another Spanish couple, there was another couple in the distance as well, but that was pretty much it, because it was summer, so you want to go before it gets hot, pretty much at the crack of dawn. You rock up in the morning and you go straight out and you know you can see the sunrise at the Taj Mahal and you do get this amazing photo because you can see the sunrise at the.
Speaker 1:Taj Mahal and you do get this amazing photo because you have no other guests in the background.
Speaker 2:So, listeners, you want to stay in Agra and be the first one to rock up there, because later during the day the trains are right from Delhi. That's when it gets really crowded.
Speaker 1:Gets really packed exactly. So that was our Indian adventure, right Two to three weeks to kick off our honeymoon. And then where did we move on to next? Brazil, predominantly Brazil, and we landed in Rio. To start with, we got a lovely little apartment in Leblon. So there's Leblon and there's Copacabana, which are like connected beaches, and I remember having dinner at Sushi Leblon cabana, which are like connected beaches, and I remember having dinner at sushi. Leblanc spent jogging along leblanc beach along copacabana as well. Rio is a beautiful city from a natural beauty it kind of reminds me of sydney a bit.
Speaker 2:You know you have your city beach there and like the hustle and bustle around it and yeah, and you have, except you have the mountains there as well that's true.
Speaker 1:So one thing that sydney doesn't have is the mountains, whereas I think r you have the mountains there as well. That's true. So one thing that Sydney doesn't have is the mountains, whereas I think Rio has the mountains around it and it has the beautiful beaches as well. But, for sure, the Brazilians love their outdoor life and they love the beaches. So now you see so many Brazilians, Argentinians, who come and live in Sydney, and they all live around Bondi Beach as well. After a week of partying in Rio, we took a bus and we went to this beautiful seaside town called Paraty.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and I remember we had a lot of caipirinhas there.
Speaker 1:And this seafood shoe called moqueca, and it's lovely there, these old colonial buildings, some converted into hotels, and a big, big town, but just a lovely little place, picturesque and cobblestone and just colonial buildings around. Yeah, I don't know if you remember, we actually took this boat ride and we saw these different islands which were not inhabited, and there are different kinds of animals. I think the one famous one was the one with the golden monkey.
Speaker 1:And then from there we traveled to Sao Paulo, the capital of Brazil, and we met some of my friends there who live in Sao Paulo. We had some lovely dinners in some fancy restaurants. From there we moved on to Iguazu.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, the waterfalls.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what were your thoughts of Iguazu?
Speaker 2:I mean, I loved it. I mean, I've been to Niagara Falls as well, but this one was much more widespread. You could walk along the edges from the Brazilian side, which was pretty cool You're going through this forest and then you could also go up to the Argentinian side and you could have this wooden walk path, almost.
Speaker 1:Where you almost go into the waterfall they had some interesting animals around there as well.
Speaker 2:I can't remember what they were called, but they were like native to that region.
Speaker 1:If you're going to a waterfall destination, I would rent Iguazu as one of the cool ones. Actually, I went to Angel Falls in Venezuela.
Speaker 2:It's like the highest waterfall in the world, and that was pretty cool too.
Speaker 1:You had to take a boat all the way in there, and then you can actually swim in some of the pools that get collected along the way.
Speaker 2:So that's a pretty interesting experience.
Speaker 1:I remember taking a boat in the Niagara Falls as well and getting quite wet, so that was really great, and the little town that we stayed in in our zoo was pretty cool as well. We had probably the best river fish that this platter of fish and when they gave you a platter of fish that was a lot of fish.
Speaker 1:I think it was like eight fillets of fish, but from different parts of the area. Most of them are river fish. I mean names I've never heard of right. I mean the man was explaining it, giving us all the names and the condiments, and the condiments that go with it. It was just a great experience, I thought.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I still remember that meal. It was amazing.
Speaker 1:Then we flew all the way up north to Natal Because we wanted to visit the jewel of Brazil, which is a series of islands called Fernando de Noronha, which is all the way up on the north coastline of Brazil. So you fly into Natal and we stayed there two, there two nights right, and it was really lovely as well. We ended up having at one of the restaurants the best prawns I've ever had.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's humongous yeah so this restaurant we went to only served shrimp actually, and you get various versions of shrimp in all kinds of you know condiments and flavors, coating, you know. So you had this massive plate of shrimp with 30, 40 shrimp on it, already pre-peeled with whatever condiments with this.
Speaker 2:Uh, shredded coconut, yeah. Oh, that was nice, the shredded coconut, right yeah and I had my plate.
Speaker 1:In asia, you typically have shrimp or prawns, along with other foods like rice, and then you have your vegetables, and then you mix it up or you have it with noodles, but that's like wow this is just entirely just shrimp, but super tasty.
Speaker 1:And from there then we flew on to Ferrando de Noronha, which is truly, truly, truly beautiful. They have an ecotourism policy there where they only allow a certain number of tourists per day and you have to book it, and so we had to book and pay a tax to be on it to visit the island.
Speaker 2:I think it was a daily tax.
Speaker 1:But it's cute because it's all local posadas, which means all local bread and breakfasts or local inns. There's no foreign hotel chains, no cars, no cars right. There's no Hyatt hotel or Marriott. It's all just very, very local, um, and we like that actually.
Speaker 2:I mean it was fantastic and you could swim with the turtles, you could go snorkeling yeah, the turtles were just huge, huge.
Speaker 1:I've never seen a turtle this big yeah in fact, all I needed to do was hold your hand and we just snorkeled in the water and followed the turtle right and you could see quite a few turtles in the water just through snorkeling. You didn't have to go very deep at all. Right, In fact, they had a turtle hatchery as well, where they made sure that the eggs were able to hatch properly and go back into the wild, etc. But you know, was that the first time you saw a turtle?
Speaker 2:No, I've seen turtles before, but the first time probably seeing such a large turtle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:And being able to swim with a turtle.
Speaker 1:I remember seeing turtles in Malaysia when I was a young boy off the east coast during turtle hatching season. Oh cute, it was pretty cool. They actually came onto the beach and laid their eggs there and I was a six-year-old boy looking at them and like stroking the shell. And the turtle eggs are kind of interesting in texture. They're like round and like slippery, slimy.
Speaker 2:It's not like a bird's egg.
Speaker 1:It's like a ping pong ball, basically, but soft, obviously, right.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that. I thought they were like hard shell or like semi-hard, like a chicken egg. Yeah, not that hard at all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and they lay like hundreds of them in this big sandy hole and then the mother covers it up and then they go back into the water Interesting. So it's more like a tissue rather than like a soft membrane, not like a chicken egg, which is hard already.
Speaker 2:That's so interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. We saw these massive turtles in Fernando, but we also saw the great wildlife, so there were these massive birds. Remember we actually fed them.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, we had a piece of raw fish and put it on a stick and they would come down, dive down and just grab it from you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know and they're so strong and you want to make sure they don't actually try and grab your finger or your hand off, but the locals were showing us how to do it. Yeah, right. So they gave us a stick with the fish and we held it up high in the sky and these birds would swoop down you can feel the wind from the massive speed right and just you know, take that, take the fish right out of the stick yeah, that was pretty cool.
Speaker 1:And then we had lovely days wandering through all the beaches in Fernando, and they're regularly rated as some of the most beautiful beaches in Brazil, and rightfully so, because they really are kind of lost to nature. And we met some local Brazilian couples, some on their honeymoon as well actually they're on a holiday and were quite young and kind of very. And then we found um, our favorite caperunia bar, which had just opened up by these two fairly young guys just by the pier near the turtle.
Speaker 2:They had caperunias yeah, yeah, with a passion fruit yeah, and what did we do every sunset? We just used to go there and sip on our caipirinhas, and they had a great dish as well. It was raw salmon with mango and balsamic reduction oh man, that was so good. Yeah, simple, I tried to replicate it a few times but it just doesn't taste the same.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's what we did every sunset, right? So we really had a fantastic time in Brazil, and if you want to go and have a really unique time in Brazil, I suggest you spend some time in Florando da Noronha. It's truly a paradise that is stunning, so that was fun. Right To recount what we did for our honeymoon, I think it's always a healthy exercise for couples and lovers to spend some time just recounting what happened on some of the best moments of their life, savor again the moments of young love and adventure, and to be grateful for these moments that we've had in the past and strive to keep this feeling alive each day.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I feel like we should have a bunch of caperinhas tonight.
Speaker 1:Absolutely right now. We will continue to share all our adventures. Me and Sabrina. Join us on every episode, and we'll see you soon.
Speaker 2:Auf Wiedersehen, thank you.