Stoj, David, Bien, Huy, Nghia and myself headed up to Mt Buller this morning. We were all excited as it was the first trip of the season. The season only officially started last weekend but there has been very little to no snowfall. Luckily, enough snow fell in last couple of days (together with man made snow) for us to head up for some snowboarding.

Only the Bourke St run was open but that was enough to satisfy our snowboarding cravings especially since the conditions were so clear and beautiful. We couldn’t have hoped for a better day.

Here are some of the photos from today. The last two were taken at Mansfield where we had a pizza for dinner. Between the six of us we managed to down a total of 3 large and 3 medium pizzas!

While Xuan and I were at Emerald Lake we stumbled across these little red mushrooms. We were both fascinated by them and ended up spending quite some time taking photographs. They kind of reminded me of the mushroom houses in the 1980s cartoon The Smurfs.

The proper name for this species of mushroom or fungus to be correct is Amanita muscaria but they are apparently commonly known as fly agaric or fly Amanita. The mushrooms are poisonous and are said to have hallucinogenic effects if consumed. The photos below taken today show the mushrooms in various stages of growth.

Xuan and I headed to Emerald Lake Park today which is located in Melbourne’s outer east, about 50 km from the city. The park has two lakes, Lake Treganowan and Nobelious and offers barbecue facilities, paddle boats, walking tracks, fishing and the famous Puffing Billy heritage railway.

We spent the afternoon walking on the tracks and taking photos along the way. A lot of our time was spent taking photos of cute little red mushrooms we discovered scattered around the park. After some research I found out that they are called Amanita muscaria and are poisonous.

I had dinner at Ha Long Bay restaurant tonight. They are located on 82 Victoria Street in Richmond and specialise in Vietnamese cuisine but they also have Chinese dishes as well.

Tonight I opted for com tam (cơm tấm) which is Vietnamese for broken rice. It was served with a grilled pork chop, thinly shredded pork and pork skin (bì), fried egg, pork meat loaf, picked carrot and sliced cucumber. It wasn’t the best com tam I’ve had but it wasn’t too bad either especially since it only set me back AUD$8.50 (about USD$8.13). With the soaring food prices in Australia it’s getting harder and harder to find a decent meal under AUD$10.00 these days.

I had Chinese fried rice noodles (aka chow fun and kway teow) for dinner tonight which are stir fried rice noodles served in a meat sauce with beef, fish, prawns, fried fish cake and Asian vegetables. Usually, thick rice noodles are used for this dish but this time thinner noodles similar to those used in the Vietnamese pho noodle soup were used instead.

This particular rice noodle dish is of Chinese origin but rice noodles are common to many South East Asian dishes.