It was a spur-of-the-moment decision to visit, and it’s been only a couple of years since I came to Bintan, but who'll turn down a beach holiday? I’m excited to come anytime. It's the tail-end of the monsoon season, and we arrived before peak tourist season begun.  We stayed at The Sanchaya on my previous visit, which we simply adored our stay. It was a pleasant surprise to see that Four Points by Sheraton shares the same beachfront,...

I was planning to write something pithy for this recipe that I first posted back in 2016, but I was taken aback by the date of that post. How has it been 10 years already?There are other surprises - more pleasant ones - from reviewing those old photos which I'd taken while I was in university. I’m still using the Cuisinart ice cream machine, which I picked up for AU$50, and is working just as well in its twelfth year as it did when brand new. Cuisinart...

Smoke ring (pink) along the circumference of the meatMy desire to buy a Weber Barbecue Grill was met with general befuddlement. There was some skepticism that I would use it. My dad told me that it's tedious to cook with charcoals and to clean up (he was not wrong). My mom said that charcoal-grilled food wasn’t healthy and that'll probably put me off using it (she was not wrong). My wife pointed out that every time that I was invited to a barbecue,...

I like watching videos of other people embarking on ambitious projects, but it isn’t always the energy that I can spare for my hobbies. Once in a blue moon, I get inspired to create a 4-part chocolate entremet to serve after dinner, but more often, I want something that is effortlessly doable. Life isn’t an ASMR video, and we have lives - and daily tasks! - to compete for our attention. I stepped away from baking for a year or so, and baking’s one...

Sun rise, Mt MerapiDoes a holiday include waking up at 3am every day? Well it does when you're in Yogyakarta. By a quirk, dawn starts at 5 in the morning and night falls by 5 in the evening. To catch the sunrises, we set off at 4 o'clock every morning. The outdoor sites are most beautiful at sunrise, but more importantly, in Southeast Asia, the weather warms up rapidly after sunrise.  Yogyakarta after 8am becomes oppressively, intolerably...