I had my first English Breakfast (AKA Full English, Fry-Up, or Full Monty) while visiting Ipoh, Malaysia. We were staying at the M Boutique Hotel for 2 weeks and breakfast was included in the price of the room. The hotel was very stylish and we loved our visit there. We’d definitely recommend it to others.

For breakfast we had two restaurants to choose from, we alternated between them every day. One of the restaurants served “Western Food”, which is a catch-all descriptor that you often see when visiting Southeast Asia. As an American this never fails to baffle. I can’t help but wonder, what exactly is “Western Food”? It’s roughly equivalent to seeing an “Asian Food” restaurant in the US. That’s pretty broad. In this case, it tends to mean pasta, pizza, hamburgers, sandwiches, English Breakfasts, sometimes all of the above. Rarely, is it a good representation of anything I’d order back home. In general, we avoid these restaurants like the plague.

Anyway, back to my original story… Continue reading A REAL Full English →

Call us crazy, but after spending 6 months in Southeast Asia, we were looking forward to the London weather… even in October. I’m sure being from Portland, Oregon helped. We aren’t fazed by a little rain or overcast skies. In fact, it feels refreshingly like home.

We arrived at our rental apartment around 10pm, after a 12 hour flight from Bangkok. We were exhausted and it was dark, so we put off exploring our new neighborhood until the next day, which with the time change meant 3am London time. Still too early and dark to do much sightseeing, but we had some breakfast and then made ourselves comfy in front of the fire while we waited for daylight.

Continue reading Our First Day in London →