Author: La Vie Partagée
Hotel Review: Mercure Phu Quoc Resort Hotel (Phu Quoc, Vietnam)
Mercure Phu Quoc Resort Hotel Editor’s Revision on 7/9/2015: Mercure Phu Quoc Resort Hotel is part of the Accor Hotels Group. We originally listed it as part of the Novotel Brand. Address: To 1 Ap Duong To Xa Duong To, Huyen Phu Quoc, 95000 TINH KIEN GIANG, Vietnam For our weekend trip to Phu Quoc, we decided to stay at the newest resort with a private beach, away from the crowds. The Mercure Hotel on Phu Quoc Island was the perfect choice. It just opened in November 2014. The boutique resort is located 10 minutes from the airport and about 20 minutes away from town. It offers the exclusivity of a boutique luxury resort but goes easier on your wallet. The resort is even expanding with further construction that will continue through next year. PROS: The breakfast buffet is a great deal! The breakfast buffet offer an incredible array of food (Phu Quoc’s specialties and the standard Western hot and cold buffets). Breakfast is served until 10:30am. We got there at 10am to secure a table in …
Big Box Scout: Summer Patio Basics
We decided to do some scouting to show you what is actually available in some of the most popular big box stores. In all honesty, I was surprised to find items exhibiting similarly bright colors and designs. So, for furniture, I would say, let price drive your decision aside from the additional expense of some accent tables. For pillows, here are a few options for you to try along with some other great finds at the following stores: 1) Cost Plus World Market With solid, bigger pieces of furniture, just add some pillows. How about this fun print for this fabric? It goes great with natural wood colors and bright ones too. There are more fun patterns, full of color. We found full color metal stools and/or side tables. Here is this classic design in red, blue and brown. We even found a picnic table! My favorite find in this store was this wooden cooler; it definitely makes those ugly plastic cases a thing of the past. 2) Marshalls You need luck and the …
Bò Né (Vietnamese Steak and Eggs Breakfast)
Every culture has its own spin on steak and eggs. I remember running off to school with some pocket money for breakfast which would include banh mi, steamed sticky rice, soy milk and many other wonderful dishes. Bò né is one of my favorite breakfast dishes. Who can resist a skillet of marinated beef flank with butter and sunny side up eggs served with a crusty french baguette? Bò né literally translates into dodge beef. I think this has to do with having to “dodge” the splatter of oil on a hot skillet when you add beef to it. The trick to tasty bò né is to marinate the beef the night before. This is ideal for Sunday brunch. Ingredients: 1 lb of flank steak 1 teaspoon of fish sauce 1-2 stalks of scallions diced Onion garlic butter 4 eggs (2 per person) ½ teaspoon of sesame oil 1 teaspoon of oyster sauce 1 teaspoon of sugar 1 teaspoon of pepper a pinch of 5 spice seasoning Directions Marinate: Trim fat off of …
Words for Thought
Weekend Unexplored: Backpacking through Yosemite
Wanting to explore Yosemite National Park without the crowds, some friends and I decided to do a 3-day hike with The Wildland Trekking Company along the less traversed trails of the Valley. None of us were experienced backpackers and owned little to none of the camping gear necessary for the trip. Booking a backpacking trip with Wildland provided us with an experienced, thoughtful guide, and all of the gear necessary to make for a stress-free journey through arguably California’s most beautiful state park. The most important factor of enjoying the trip was the physical stamina to carry all of the necessary weight. Each of our packs would have to fit a sleeping bag, sleeping pad, tent, rain gear, toiletries, and bear canisters storing food. Knowing that I would have to carry a 30Ib. pack over the course of three days, I trained a month before–climbing up and down stairs with weights and doing day hikes with a 15-20 Ib. pack. I quickly learned that my backpack and trekking poles were the best assets I had …
Design Knockoffs: Reading Nook/Guest Bed
Many people have a small room that is often inefficiently used, but that room can be so much more. We can see an example of this in this transformative design of a room in the back of a house that turned into an extraordinary reading nook. In today’s post, I will recreate a reading nook for a weekend house that can also double as a “guest” room. It will come in handy when you have too many people in the house and not enough bedrooms to house them. The goal of this series is to use big box stores that our readers can easily access via online or brick and mortar stores. The budget will be approximately $1,000 for the bones of the room. The inspiration for this room is a clean and bright country home. Let’s start with the daybed. There are many options out there with various prices. I wanted a backless daybed which looks more like a seating sofa than a bed and infinitely more chic. This is an option from Wayfair. This …
Phu Quoc’s Grilled Shellfish with Herbs and Crushed Peanuts
Vietnam is surrounded by seas and filled with rivers bringing with it an abundance of freshwater and saltwater seafood. Last week, Thai-Anh took you on her weekend in Phu Quoc where seafood is cooked in its most simplistic form to highlight the freshness and taste of the sea. One of the easiest dishes to make that she had while staying in Phu Quoc was grilled clams with herbs. Like most Vietnamese cuisine, this simple dish has a melodic combination of herbs, crunchiness and of course, chewy clams. Here is our recreation of this classic and very easy dish from Phu Quoc. Ingredients Shellfish: 2 pounds of any type of large shellfish (clams and oysters). Use the larger variety if you are putting them directly on the grill. Toppings: 1 cup of culantro finely chopped (Culantro has long, serrated leaves and is used often in Caribbean, Mexican and Asian cooking.) 1 cup of cilantro finely chopped 1 cup of Thai basil finely chopped (i.e. Asian basil. It is a variety of sweet basil commonly used …
Words for Thought
It’s all in how you deal with difficulties…
Weekend Unexplored: Phu Quoc Island (Vietnam) – Part II
Editor’s Revision on 7/9/2015: Mercure Phu Quoc Resort Hotel is part of the Accor Hotels Group. We made the correction to this post as we originally wrote “Novotel” instead of “Mercure” in our post. We spent our Saturday exploring Phu Quoc island by boat and enjoying the island view from the ocean. We will now start exploring the unique offerings of the island on our trusty moped. On Sunday, we headed to Mercure Phu Quoc Resort Hotel’s breakfast buffet before exploring the other sites. We were wowed by the selection and quality of food at the buffet. There is an abundant of fresh fruits, local selections as well as continental breakfast. The only drawback we saw were the pastries. They just did not taste like they were freshly baked. This is an ongoing observation for most of the hotels that I have been to in Vietnam. The best fish sauce in Vietnam comes from Phu Quoc Island so it was mandatory to tour the local fish sauce factory. The distillery of Nuoc Mam Hung Thanh …
La Vie Partagée 