I had dinner tonight at Hao Phong, a restaurant specialising in Vietnamese and Chinese cuisine located at 136 Hopkins Street in Footscray.

I ordered the sugarcane prawn (bún chạo tôm) which is a Vietnamese dish of grilled prawn paste wrapped around sugarcane with rice vermicelli. It was served with bean sprouts, shredded carrot and lettuce, mint and crushed peanuts all dressed in fish sauce (nước mắm). Compared to sugarcane prawn I’ve had at other restaurants in the past, I would rate this one as a bit ordinary.

David, Bien, Huy and I headed to Mt Hotham early last Friday morning for a fun filled weekend of snowboarding. Tu and Nghia couldn’t take time off work so they headed up later that evening. We were all very excited as snow reports forecasted excellent snow coverage and conditions for the weekend.

We hit the slopes about lunchtime on Friday and man, the conditions were just fantastic! It was the best snow I had ever experienced. It was just so beautifully soft and dry which made for excellent snowboarding. Plus the sun was out all day long and visibility was great.

Saturday was ok. The conditions weren’t as good as the day before but they were still good. The boys headed out early for a full day of snowboarding. I was a little tired and sore from the previous day so I headed out after lunch.

Sunday arrived and it was time to get ready to head home. It snowed during the night so there was fresh snow everywhere. We had a few hours before we had to check out of our apartment so we decided to head out for some snow play. It was just so beautiful with snow falling ever so gently. I had never experienced such calm snowfall so it was just so amazing. It made for the perfect end to my best ever weekend of snowboarding so far.

As part of our weekend in Tasmania Xuan and I drove about 70 kilometres out of Hobart to the Huon Valley to experience the Tahune Forest AirWalk which is a 597 metre walk 20 metres above the ground. The highlight of the walk is the cantilever which protrudes out from the main walk structure giving amazing views of the surrounding forest and the junction of the Picton and Huon Rivers. It was a little scary though as the cantilever swayed in the wind and bounced while you walked.

We also did the Huon Pine Walk which took us across two suspension bridges over the Picton and Huon Rivers. You’re supposed to leave a 10 metre gap between walkers for safety while crossing the bridges. The bridges bounced and swayed heaps as you walked on them. Now that was a pretty amazing experience.

Xuan and I headed to headed down to Hobart, Tasmania for the weekend. Neither of us had been there before so we were both quite excited. Our flight arrived late Friday afternoon and we made our way straight to the Barilla Bay Restaurant (1388 Tasman Hwy, Cambridge) for dinner. We shared the oyster platter which was absolutely amazing. About 34 oysters served in about 7 different styles. They were definitely the best oysters I’ve ever eaten.

Our trip was only a short one (our return flight was on Sunday morning) so we didn’t get to visit as many places as we would’ve liked. Some of the places we did visit included the Salamanca Market, Tahune Forest AirWalk in the Huon Valley and Port Arthur. We got to Port Arthur quite late so we didn’t get the chance to do any tours of the historic sites. We’ll have to save that for next time. There are also so many other places in Tasmania that I still want to visit so we’ll be definitely heading back there sometime in the future.

I spent last weekend at the Grampians (officially the Grampians National Park in Victoria, Australia) with my mum’s side of the family which was a lot of fun. There were around 16 of us and we all stayed at the cosy Mt Zero Log Cabins.

On Sunday we made our way to Mt Stapylton to tackle the 2 hour walk. We were told the walk would be a little challenging but we had no idea it would be as involving as it was (I found out later on that travel guides graded the walk as either moderate or hard). There were many slippery rock surfaces and certain areas required some rock hopping and rock scrambling which would have been a little too dangerous for my youngest cousin and some of the older folks in the group. There weren’t any guard rails either so it wouldn’t have taken much for someone to accidentally slip and fall off a rock ledge.

In the end about half of us made it all the way to the summit. The views were quite spectacular. I especially liked the numerous rock pools scattered around the summit area which you can see in photos below.