Madeira, Portugal: Lovely Little Island Paradise (for Oldies and Old-Adjacents)by Randi / November 5, 2018
As discussed in the previous post, Madeira, the little Portuguese island off the coast of West Africa, is an amazing little paradise of mountains, gardens, and overall pleasantness. In this post, we are getting down to what matters: the vegan food, and the hotels. Although the remote location means the extreme vegan ballerness of mainland European cities hasn’t reached Funchal yet, there are still lots of good options and cute restaurants to check out. And as far as lodging goes, we stayed in THREE different hotels over this trip! Okay, one was in London and one was not planned, but you’ll see! We had an incredible time in Madeira and you can read about all the sights and stuff to do here.
yep this was taken during a break in barfing. (‘oh it’s pronounced bar-fay’)
My top restaurant recommendation is Coracao (pretend it’s a squiggly c!) Vegano, which has been around, and vegan, since 1973! Amazing job guys. The food took a minute but we had just flown in and we were super hungry so it probably seemed longer than it really was. Before we share the food, look how adorable the restaurant itself is!
Since like I said we were so hungry, we did our usual thing of ordering too much food. We ordered a wrap, a thing called Vegan Lust, and sushi. So yeah, the offerings are eclectic, like lots of vegan cafes, without one clear vision or cuisine. But who cares!
First up, the vegan plate of lust. It contained crispy chicken slabs (is slabs not a good word for food?), bacon slabs (again I ask but what is a better way to describe it?), and salad. It was fine! I love salad and the various vegan slabs were fun.
Next up, the wrap. There’s only one wrap option, the Crispy Wrap, and it has crispy vegan chicken with veggies and salad inside. I loved the filling and wish the wrap itself was sturdier; it fell victim to the disease that kills most wraps – sogginess. Ugh I love wraps so much but haaaate when the wrapping gets too soggy I might dry heave just thinking about it. There is nothing else in the world where suuuuuch a tiny change in status makes me go from loving it to literally barfaying from it. But anyway, it wasn’t as soggy as other wraps I’ve seen in my day, so it was pretty good.
Lastly, sushi! Or what they call Shingen Zushi! It’s a fried tempeh roll and it was DERN GOOD. Man I love tempeh sushi. I want this again! So the food overall at Coracao (squiggly!) is decent, but it’s a must go because it’s kind of a Funchal vegan institution. And it’s rare to find an all-vegan place! I think this is the only one in Funchal, actually. And I adore that they are not shying away from announcing themselves as such or wimping out with referring to some ‘plant-based’ bullshit. Look at the entrance!
Just in case ‘vegano’ in the name wasn’t enough! Love it.
The next restaurant we tried that is worth sharing was called Copaki, which is a little farther down the coast, closer to the Contemporary Art Museum. They aren’t vegetarian but they have a veggie/vegan menu that is really great. Unfortunately, I ordered the wrong thing, like I can’t even believe I ordered it. I had the choice between deep fried aubergine (eggplant), braised tofu (omg want), lasagna (what!!), or fajitas, and like a G-D MORON I chose fajitas, momentarily forgetting that the main component in veggie fajitas are bell peppers and I FORKING HATE bell peppers! What was I thinking? I think I was distracted by the prospect of guacamole. Ughhh I had to eat so many red peppers and they make me nauseous.
first of all that’s not fajitas
Best (not) of all was that the ‘side of vegetables’ was more bell peppers. I mean. So don’t be like me, because I think if you ordered something that there’s a chance of you actually enjoying (e.g. not your least favorite veggie??) then we are all good at Copaki. Still can’t believe it. Luckily, I had some other dishes and they were great. Hard to mess up, but great.
Including:
BRUSCHETTA! I love bruschetta hard. I love it even more when people pronounce it right. (Hot tip: You’re probably doing it wrong.)
Including:
BRUSCHETTA! I love bruschetta hard. I love it even more when people pronounce it right. (Hot tip: You’re probably doing it wrong.)
Ours had mushrooms on top! Approved!
Next, we shared a bowl of soup. I honestly forget what kind of soup this was, but it was a pureed light colored vegetable (there aren’t that many so just you decide) and it was good.
Next, we shared a bowl of soup. I honestly forget what kind of soup this was, but it was a pureed light colored vegetable (there aren’t that many so just you decide) and it was good.
what brand of soup are you
But guess what else! They had a nice vegan dessert, can you believe it? I was expecting nothing more than fruit plates or fruit sorbets, but here they had a vegan puddingy flan type thing with candied puffed wheat bits on top. NICE!
Overall, it was a nice meal, and Copaki is a little more upscale than Corasquiggle if you are looking for a date night or something.
We also stopped by Gigi Sumos one day, a juice bar chain that is on HappyCow and says it has vegan bagels and salads too. Well, they don’t really. They can make a salad vegan by removing all the stuff in it, and they don’t have vegan salad dressings! I asked the staff, but you say you offer vegan salads; how can you do that if you don’t have vegan salad dressings? And you know what they did? They offered me MUSTARD or SWEET CHILI SAUCE. Like, both condiments straight from their bottles, undoctored to be palatable as salad dressings. I mean I chose the sweet chili but DAYUM.
even with avocado it’s sad! and look more bell peppers
Luckily, after that unfortunate stop, we went to the MOST BEAUTIFUL land of produce – Mercado dos Lavradores! This famous market is a must-do for tourists. It’s a giant building full of food vendors. The main hall is vegetables and fruit and nuts and spices and dried fruit and all kinds of good stuff, and there are restaurants and hot food vendors all along the sides. Because it’s so touristed, the produce is expensive, but you can get INSANE stuff. This is where I found my most favorite avocado of all time. You ready? She ready.
Look at those gorgeous things! Do you see the giant avocado? We bought that one that is standing upright – it was bigger than my face. Luckily our travel was intra-EU so we got to bring it home! It made a lot of guacamole. Okay so because it was so big it was kind of bland, but I don’t care, it’s so cool. If it were a rocking chair it would be a stop on a long-drive through the American West.
I don’t have a picture of the next coolest find we made in the Mercado, but I remember it vividly. A few vendors stopped us and made us try pieces of a special Madeiran hybrid fruit called – I shit you not – ‘ADAM’S RIB’. Making things even more interesting, it’s a hybrid of pineapple and banana. And against all odds it sort of reminded me of custard apple! It was more fun than delicious but it still was good enough for us to buy a few. SO FUN.
Okay, that’s it for food in this post. Sadly, we didn’t get to what many say is the best restaurant in Madeira for vegans, Restaurant Olives, but maybe next time. And there’s some happy news: the next Madeira post will be a fancy restaurant review, a part of the Vegan Michelin series!
LODGING
Funchal is the kind of place where you really will want a baller resort to stay in. Without sandy beaches, you’ll want to swim in a nice pool. Also, this isn’t the kind of city like Paris or London where you want to spend as many seconds as possible seeing all the sights because there’s never enough time to see it all (‘there’s no time! there’s NEVER ANY TIME!’). That’s not the vibe here. You’ll see some stuff like I shared in the previous post but you’re gonna want to relax in the hotel. Also, the hotels get the most beautiful beachfront so the views are amazing. We did a lot of research trying to find the nicest place that was still a value for money, and we decided on the Porto Bay resort. Porto Bay actually is three different resorts, and if you stay in one you have access to the amenities (restaurants, gyms, pools, tennis courts, kids clubs (so many families), mini golf, &c) in all three, so it was a great decision. They have the Cliff Bay (which I think is the most expensive), the Porto Santa Maria, and the Porto Mare. We chose the latter. And we liked it, and we loved it.
one of many sun bed areas
This was the view from inside our room.
What’s out there, you ask? Let’s go see!
Oh it’s just one of the FIVE pools at the Porto Mare alone! While I of course swam in this one just to have done it, it wasn’t super hot to make it my regular pool. Luckily, some of those five are indoor. If you know me, you know I love an indoor pool, like to a weird degree. Look how beautiful these options were!
That one was so big it snaked its way to be part outdoor pool. SO FUN.
There were also jacuzzis and steam rooms all over the place. And while the gym was a little hard to get to (down to the basement and then up again sort of?) it was a pretty good gym! My only sadness about this stay is that there were tennis courts literally outside our wing but we didn’t play.
The food at Porto Mare was pretty good too. As with all hotel buffet breakfasts, there was tons of cereal and fruit but nothing great on the hot food side. But, they had Alpro yogurt! So it was overall a win.
Now I bet right now you are thinking, if you loved this place so much why did you say you stayed at a different place? Well, Madeira can get crazy winds, and so it wasn’t a huge surprise that our flight home to London was cancelled because of them. EasyJet transported our entire flight from the airport to a hotel that was much, much better than I expected of EasyJet (I expected a trash motel). It was called the Pestana Ocean Bay.
It’s that green bit. Not the nicest place, but still pretty good. Checking in the entire flight took hours, sadly, as the hotel was not ready for such a madhouse. We were originally given a basement room but it had ants (omg maybe it was a trash motel and I forgot) so I went back to reception and demanded we be moved, and we got a much nicer room on the top floor! Awesome.
We were all given tokens for the dinner buffet, which was fine. Nothing special but they had enough dishes out in the giant buffet that were veg. We talked to some fellow passengers (ack) and wondered when we’d be notified about our rescheduled flight. The email came late that night: they were putting us on a flight the next night/morning at 1 AM!!! ONE. AM. And since this is Madeira, most of the people were supes old! This sucked. We’d get in to London at what, 3-4 am? And back home no earlier than 5am and have to go to work? No no NO this will not stand! Luckily, they offered money back if you chose not to accept their shitastic rescheduling, so we refused and booked a NORMAL HUMAN TIMED flight with British Airways. We still had another whole morning to explore though, so we walked along the beach and the caves near this end of Funchal.
Okay so that’s two hotels; what’s this talk about a third? Well our flight out of London was at 7am, so we decided that rather than getting up at 3 or 4 am beforehand and hating the world on our first day in Madeira, we’d sleep at the airport and only dislike the world on our first day. We stayed at the YotelAir in Gatwick Airport and you know what? It was super fun and comfy. It’s a pod hotel, meaning the rooms are tiny little compartments and you feel like you’re on a submarine or something. (Or an overnight train!!) But it was clean and comfy and even though everything was a weird purple haze, it was great! Nice bed too.
ahhh so similar to our train journeys!
There are buttons to bring the bed down for sleeping!
The check-in process was so smooth, maybe the smoothest at any hotel ever. The staff was super nice. And it was weirdly fun to be able to change into pajamas and then go out and shop at the airport Boots and stuff!
So except for the aforementioned fancy dinner, that’s it for Madeira! I hope you consider it for a future vacay, especially if you are old or have kids. I hope to go back someday! Oh and here is a look at my favorite Funchal graffiti:
Send it to your friends named Sam and have a good day!
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Vegan in Jamaica? Yah Mon!
Don’t worry, I’m not gonna pull a Tom-Hanks’-least-fave-child and say anything else patois. Recently, we escaped the dreary dullness of a London winter and went to WEPA JAMAICA (that’s how I referred to it the whole time, in the style of In the Heights when everyone shouts “Wepa! Vanessa!” but I said Jamaica instead, it does not make sense no but I heard it in my heart) for a wedding. I know the known thing is like ‘people have destination weddings if they don’t really want you to come’ but hell no were we missing our best excuse for a trip to Jamaica! We stayed at the famous Round Hill resort in Montego Bay, but we also made sure to visit the actual city and its vegan food options, which were prettayyy great, mon.
So let’s learn about Jamaica real fast! Jamaica is an island mon! You knew that! In the Caribbean! You know what’s weird, everyone says ‘Caribbean’ with the accent on ‘RIB’ BUT whenever anyone says Pirates of the Caribbean they put the accent on BE isn’t that something. Columbus happened upon in in 1494 and so he said ‘The Spanish own you now!’ and the Spanish killed a lot of native people either the old fashioned way or by bringing new diseases to them. Fun fact: Columbus is in the Bad Place because of all the raping, slave trade, and genocide!
After some more shit, the English conquered it, named it Jamaica mon, made it into a leading sugar exporter (more slave trade), yada yada yada, it became independent in 1962, though it is still a Commonwealth country (so Lizzie Dos is their queen). Jamaica is a wee small island with international fame and influence much greater than you’d expect for a wee small, considering the spread of Rastafarian culture, reggae music, and their bobsled team.
Kingston is the capital and the largest city, but tourists tend not to go there because it has some violence. Tourists, especially from the UK, will likely fly into Kingston, however, and unless you get a connection to MoBay (that’s how the cool kids say Montego Bay), it’s a 2.5 hour drive at least. Luckily for us, we were coming from Philadelphia so it’s an easy flight to MoBay. I’m gonna tell you all this up front before you get to the beautiful resort stuff and fun vegan food jawn: the Montego Bay airport is a nightmare. It’s an absolute zoo, and after you get off the plane you will wait in a sea of endless people pretending to be some semblance of a line until you get to immigration hours later. HOURS. And this entire route, snaking from the gates to immigration, have no toilets. (Obviously I weasled my way through all the halls to the front of the mess somehow to find the bathroom but then went back to Z.) Immigration has kiosks where you enter your info, it prints out a document, and then you take it to a person at a desk. It’s a MADHOUSE. The only funny thing is that tourism is such an enormous part of the economy that the short list of ‘reasons to be in Jamaica’ that you have to answer – the normal options being ‘business or travel’ – also includes ‘for a wedding’.
Also baggage took FOREVER to arrive. You might be like ‘oh that’s fine I always just use a carry-on’ but our flight was ‘overcrowded’ and made everyone check their carry-ons too…and then all the overhead bins were empty, completely empty. The people in front of us on the plane were carry-on people and they were LIVID. See sometimes it’s good to overpack!
Alright you did it you made it through the nonsense. And now:
The Round Hill is lovely, refined resort that seemed perfect for the calmer crowd that does not go clubbing every night (like us!) (although tell that to the gaggle of divorced blondes who arrived on our last day and WERE SO LOUD). It was honestly one of the most ridiculous places I’ve ever seen in real life. Not for regular tourists like us who stayed in the main hotel (it was nice but regular), but for bigwigs staying in the luxury villas on the outer grounds. If you are supes loaded and want to go to Jamaica, THIS is where you stay. One of them was a favorite vacation spot for JFK and Jackie, and one is owned by Ralph Lauren (who is on the Round Hill board). If you are really eager to waste a bunch of your time today, go to the Round Hill website and take video tours of each of the 28 luxury villas. It’s like watching the (amazing) Netflix show The World’s Most Extraordinary Homes but somehow more upsetting. The posher of the wedding guests stayed in villas, so I visited and took some sneaky photos (shared anon).
We stayed in the main hotel since we are Not Royalty, with a really nice room that we got for half price with the wedding rate. Honestly, I cannot believe that people pay twice TWICE as much as we did for the basic rooms. It was nice but man alive that’s some crazy talk. And NB this is NOT an all-inclusive resort; in fact, we felt quite nickel-and-dimed by how exorbitant the cost for food &c turned out to be. We definitely had snobbish attitudes in the past about all-inclusive resorts being like lower class or something STUPID like that, but after experiencing this ridiculously expensive place where you get like a $20 salad and you’re like ‘ugh that was mediocre but we knew it would be expensive’ but then you get the bill and there’s already 20% service included which fine that’s fine waiters deserve it but then there’s also like an extra tax fee and then a separate service charge and you’re like wait how is that different from the other service fee but you don’t want to make a fuss don’t make a fuss and then somehow there’s also a random $5 like resort fee or something that is inexplicable so if you ever order a drink it will not be $8 it will be $25 which is why I only drink water, we are so ready to board the all-inclusive train (not that we have ever done a resort vacay before or plan to in the near future, you know us and our penchant for difficult travel!).
The resort comprises endless standalone buildings spread throughout the expansive grounds (most of it unseen by the regular guests, with the grounds uphill from the beach reserved for villas), with the public areas – the restaurants, the reception, the main block of rooms, the gym, the pool – along the beach in a semi-circle. The entrance to the hotel room building was surprisingly drab compared to the rest of the place – you entered from a very industrial-looking side with all the giant tanks and AC units on your doors’ front stoops (all rooms entered from the outside). Weird but inside was a beautiful room.
I love a hotel bed and this was a pretty good one! Not in my top 5 of all-time hotel beds but probably in my top 10! I loved the little sitting area by the balcony; you can’t see in this photo but against the right-side wall is a daybed (“Janet! Fetch my dizzy couch!”). Here’s the view from our balcony:
The weird thing about that unfinished-seeming entrance to the hotel block meant that the resort staff worked like right up against our windows and we could hear everything they did and said whenever we were in the bathroom. It was awkward! There were also like bags full of linens and towels on our front stoop at all times (and not for me to use!). So that was weird.
Here are the pics I promised from inside one of the villas – not even one of the “fancy” ones.
This is their private pool – every villa has a private pool so they don’t have to hobnob with the poors. It’s about the same size as the main one!
We used the main hotel pool every day, and it was super lovely. During the weekdays, it wasn’t too crowded at any point, but on the weekend it was a bit. The infinity pool stretching over the ocean was so beautifully designed. I was just surprised that it was a little small (and that there was no other public pool on the grounds like for lap swimming (I brought my googles!)). I guess most people are using their private pools!
One day we had the pool to ourselves at sunset and it was the most magical thing ever.
Round Hill has a great gym (included in the room rate thank goodness) that I super enjoyed, although it’s about a 15 minute walk around the beach from the main hotel block (and you have to pass the restaurant, so I’d see people I knew having breakfast and I’d be all sweaty). They also have a yoga pavilion next to the gym – which sounds amazing, right? Except the yoga classes are around $25 and it’s more like hot yoga since pavilions are outdoor structures. I was okay sticking to the gym.
The whole fitness center complex also had a deluxe spa, which I did not use (cannot imagine how expensive the massages are) but I used the bathrooms during the wedding and they were super nice.
Admission: I didn’t actually go to the beach here. Eeeek. I mean I walked in it and put my foot in just to have done that, but when faced with a beach and a pool/the chance to be sandy vs not sandy, I’m always going to pick pool. I should have had at least one beach day, I know. OOPSIE.
So as you can see, the Round Hill was pretty paradisical. The only drawback was that I was SUPER excited to play tennis every day and…I just couldn’t. It was too hot. I was shocked that the courts were always empty, but then the staff and Jamaican friends were like, uh yeah? People only play before the sun is up, otherwise YOU WILL DIE. I even had a lesson booked and everything but had to cancel because it was 1000 degrees. So sad! (And they were like oh thank god.) Aside from that, we had an amazing time, even though we aren’t really sit-by-the-side-of-the-pool-for-days-and-don’t-see-anything-of-the-land-you’re-in kinds of travelers. And we weren’t! We were the only guests to venture downtown into Montego Bay, even though we were told pretty much that “tourists stay in their resorts.” I must admit, everyone downtown was staring at us, with faces like WHAT are you doing, you lost? But the people we actually spoke to/who fed us seemed happy to see us out and about. And we had to go, not only to see the real Jamaica and not just a resort, but to find the good vegan food.
Round Hill catered fine to my veganism, and I had some nice quinoa stir-fries and veggie stews. Also, if you are in the market for a destination wedding, their buffet at this wedding was incredible, and super vegan-friendly (and also really, really not) (you know what I mean, think Jason Segel in Forgetting Sarah Marshall when he cries on the beach). But as I said, the food was supes expensive, and Montego Bay had several exciting vegan joints to check out anyway.
It’s annoying to get downtown, because you probably aren’t renting a car (if you do you are nuts in that traffic and all-around lawlessness re traffic laws), and the resorts charge an arm and a leg to take you downtown, but that’s the way you have to do it. It’s such a racket. We planned on getting our own cabs once we were downtown, but we literally could not. Every single taxi we saw was a route taxi, meaning they fill up with lots of people and operate like a small bus. They weren’t taking us to our specific destinations, let alone back to the resort! So that’s just one annoyance you have to suck up.
One morning, we had to go downtown anyway for the BEST MOST RIDICULOUS experience (with dogs) of all time, which will be its own (next) post. After that morning experience, we went straight to Millennium Victory, a vegan Rastafarian restaurant. It was THE BEST.
There’s a long history of vegetarianism in Rastafari culture. It’s called Ital food in the Rastafari tradition, derived from the word ‘vital’ but with no ‘v’, emphasizing the ‘I’ as it emphasizes the unity of each individual with nature. (Thanks wikipeeds.) It means food that’s natural, pure, and from the earth. Ital food aims to increase “livity”, the life energy in all people. (That’s why that vegan raw dessert market stall in London is called Organic Livity, I am just now realizing; and yes the people who run it are Rasta.) Rastafari commonly believe that everything you put in your body should enhance livity and not reduce it. That means there’s no chemicals or additives. It also can sometimes mean no salt, which is yikes (but often especially means no salt treated with iodine, which is yay for me), but this food was seasoned well and delicious. I would LOVE to go back here.
We asked the staff to decide for us, as everything on their big board menu sounded excellent. So they brought us two big plates of their best stuff, and everything was indeed excellent. We had jerk tofu (omg), roasted plantains and veg, all in amazing sauces. There were huge chunks of homemade seitan and sauteed ackee, the famous Jamaican fruit that whips up somehow just like eggs. AMAZING. I don’t remember everything else so just ask them to decide for you if you go, which you def should if in MB.
UGH IT WAS SO GOOD. We also got a melon skin juice, which was ace. There was a really friendly man eating at the table next to us who was like ‘this melon skin juice is the best, you need to try it’ and we were like ‘we’re okay thanks though’ and he was like ‘no I insist, I’ll order it for you’ and we were like ‘ok thanks man!’ and he really did just mean order it, not pay for it, it sounded like he was going to pay for it, but then the staff was like you need to pay for your juice, it was funny and also a Larry David moment. We also got Jamaican patties (like pasties/hand pies but not flaky crusted, which is amazing for me because I don’t like buttery flaky things (I do know that this is weird)) filled with veggies to take away to have the next day.
The best part of any hotel room is a fridge that’s empty (not full of minibar crap you don’t want (or worse the kind of minibar where it charges you if you MOVE something? LET ME USE THE DAMN FRIDGE ASSHOLE)), and since we had one in our room, we went to a giant supermarket called Progressive, in a downtown mall, so we could stock up on snacks, fruit, breakfast foods, and drinks.
I forking love this supermarket. They had SO much vegan stuff, like an entire enormous aisle of non-dairy milks, a war chest of strange vegan meats that I’ve never seen before even in Chinese groceries, a juice/smoothie bar, all kinds of great stuff.
what meat is batonette 
all kinds of vegan whats 
this is vegan corned beef WHAT 
whole new to me vegan burger brand 
the label says ‘Golden Vegan Balls’ hehe balls 
did not buy because rum 
did buy but didn’t try yet 
we got chocolate almond milk to make oatmeal with it’s my best trick 
i love ginger cookies but these aren’t very sweet honestly the Ikea ones are the best I’m serious
I had two ultimate favorite items from this shopping trip: one for its hilarious packaging that still makes me laugh, and one because it is g-d delicious.
The funny one:
wat
(and has protein!)
The next restaurant we tried wasn’t vegetarian or vegan, but it had tons of vegan options. It was the kind of cafe you would find on every block in Malibu or something, with an extensive trendy menu, lots of green smoothies, and a yoga-studio vibe. I obviously loved it. DLE Cafe is right around the order from the Progressive market, btw.
I could tell you how extensive DLE Cafe’s menu was but I’m just going to show you so you can appreciate how difficult my decision was.
I don’t remember which green smoothie I got but obviously I got one, and it was great! I was annoyed to get a plastic cup since I drank it there, but I did have it while I was waiting for them to make the rest of my order which was takeaway so I guess that’s a good reason and prob my fault. The straw was paper though, which is good in theory but they disintegrate super fast.
Here’s just one of the food menu pages ugh I still can’t decide and I’m not even there. There’s a feeling long-time vegans know well, when you are used to not having much decision-making power and then you’re faced with a menu with so many options and you are like NO STOP IS TOO MUCH.
I decided on the ackee wrap because you must eat as much ackee as possible when in Jamaica it is a MAGIC fruit and I don’t understand why jackfruit blew up as pork and ackee hasn’t as eggs? Someone sell it! I also got the vegan mac & cheese because I’m a mac & cheese fanatic and also look at that menu it says “hands down this is probably the best mac you will ever have” and I was like “excuse me is it ‘hands down’ or is it ‘probably’ you can’t have it both ways this is like how my brother and I for some reason say ‘poss def’ all the time and no one gets it and for good reason! Anyway the mac was just okay. No pics because it was takeaway and the pictures I took were sad.
Lastly, poss def my favorite, was the Chabad Kosher Hot Spot. You say Chabad, you say Kosher, I hear hummus and I come running.
The Hot Spot is an Israeli food joint right across the main road from Margaritaville (which apparently is the hottest place to party, even for locals, on a Tuesday night…or maybe it was Thursday…I don’t know because I didn’t go obvs but ask a local). We called in an order before our flight home so we could get it en route to the airport (smort!). The number on the website…is not the one to call. Somehow, when we called to place an order for HUMMUS, we heard “this is Rabbi x…?” THE RABBI PICKED UP. HAHAHAHHAHA. We apologized and were like sorry we were trying to reach the restaurant? and he was like ‘oh sure here’s their number!’ It’s all connected, the Chabad org and the restaurant, see all these Jews in Jamaica just want to make sure everyone who wants hummus can get the hummus, THAT’S ALL THEY WANT SO BE NICE.
We did get our hummus, which was excellent, and our amazing flatbread, and Israeli salad and a jerk falafel wrap (that’s right) so yeah DEFFO a must in MoBay. Again, I’m not going to share takeaway pictures because yeesh and oh no. But trust me that everything was great! What a great find! When we told our driver where we wanted to stop, he was like ‘oh yeah I’ve heard of that place!’ and seemed excited so I hope he went and liked it.
At the airport, leaving is much saner than arriving, and they have giant water bottles at most vendors! Huzzah! (Small water bottles are the devil’s playthings.) There’s also plenty of recognizable food outlets. I had my hummus and falafel but I did buy one non-water airport treat, a packet of moringa powder. You know I’m a sucker for all things superfood and apparently moringa is big in Jamaica. I had to buy it because a) it’s a Jamaican variety so that’s cool and b) the brand?? do you see the brand name? LOL. (Shavuot is a Jewish holiday.)
So that’s my time in Jamaica, my babies. I leave you with a Jamaican proverb, just one of the many such cards that housekeeping left on our pillows every night – literally the best part of the trip.
Yangshuo, China: The Best Boat Ride, Pretty Landscape, and Adventures in the Town
After weeks of hustling around China on crappy trains, we made it to the ‘relaxation’ portion of our 5+ weeks in this country – four days in Yangshuo, on the Li River. The area is quiet, a make-your-own-adventure sort of place, with incredible natural beauty both on and away from the river. I prefer water beauty, so the boat ride from Guilin to Yangshuo down the Li was my absolute favorite (abfav) part, which is a slight shame considering it barely counts as the beginning of this section. It only gets worse from here! No it was all fiiine. We’ll get there. The journey takes about four hours, and despite the chaos of the boat station (it cannot be called a marina or a ship terminal; the typical Chinese chaos makes it a boat station), the boats themselves were sleek and nice – with the usual full-volume phone noises and screaming children (and adults), naturally.
Our hotel/teahouse (it’s hard to tell what’s a hotel or hostel here; nice places are like, teahouses) in Yangshuo booked our boat tickets for us and had a bus (full of other tourists and other pickups, naturally) pick us up at our Guilin teahouse (the Traveling With, loveyou4eva) and take us all to the overflowing boat station, where a nice lady gave us all our tickets. Thanks to the Tea Cozy, our Yangshuo digs, we had Second Floor tickets and not just measly First Floor. Supposedly that means a better view, quieter/well behaved crowd, and an overall better, ‘upper floor’ experience. I think it definitely is worth it for the views – that’s what this boat ride is about! – but I laugh at you if you think elevation helps crowds of Chinese people behave civilly. Yes this trip is making me intolerant! Make it stop!
We were seated in a comfy chair section of 6 (all the floors on all the boats look like this, pretty surprising) with two Chinese couples, one with a child who was, let’s just say, not well behaved, as per uzh. At this point in our trip, Z was ill. He will downplay it now, in hindsight, but it was quite flu-ish and awful, so he just wanted to sleep, but this kid sitting with us wouldn’t let that happen. Actually no one onboard would let that happen. We took turns going out to the deck for pictures and fresh air (haha no that’s where everyone smokes there’s no fresh air in this country) (I guess we just went out for sunburn then, and lots of it (I’ve never been so tan I hate it)). At one particularly nice stretch of scenery early on, I asked Z if he wanted to go take a look for pictures and he said “I might go out just to throw a Chinese kid overboard.” We learned soon after that the parents sitting with us had just returned from a year at Oxford…so…oops. Unclear if they heard it, but they definitely speak English. But hey, your kid’s obnoxious.
There were so many other screamy kids that soon it all balanced out with noise coming from all angles, so it was okay? Is that how it works here? I especially loved this little girl who was wearing a shirt covered with PICTURES OF KRYSTEN RITTER. WHAT??? Whoooo do the parents think it is? Is she big here? I mean I hear Jessica Jones is great and I quite enjoyed Don’t Trust the B**** in Apartment 23 but on a toddler’s t-shirt? In China?! Such random shit here.
probably the best thing I’ve seen in all of Asia
The boat ticket includes lunch, but of course this being a lawless, orderless land, there’s no way to get a specific sort of meal, like, say, vegetarian. Everyone gets the same tray, and that tray includes stuck-together rice (not sticky rice, that’s different, just poorly cooked rice), frozen peas and corn, a section of breaded crayfish I think, and a section of breaded chicken strips. Cool. Cool cool cool cool. At least I had peas and corn and rice. I hated wasting the other food and it was frustrating that they didn’t have the option of not wasting it in the first place. The bar downstairs sold chicken nuggets and watermelon in addition to the regular soft drinks and potato chips so I had watermelon. Isn’t that so interesting.
Aside from the overall minor noise and the food issues though, this boat was so amazing. As usual, the signage was great; I got a few of the goods. The second picture is blursula so check the captions.
this sign says ‘Fallinto the Water Carefully” I mean if you say so
I think I would love a cruise through scenery like this, I guess they do them down the Yangtze. But then again it might be like just a loooong wavy version of the train journeys so far so maybe not. Dammit other people ruining everything. Well they didn’t ruin this. It was too beautiful!
It really was incredibly sunny, as you can see from my trademarked Sun Face.
have you ever seen a forehead so SHINAYYYY like a treasure from a sunken pirate wreck scrub the deck and make it look SHINAYYY
pretties!
water buffalo!
I almost didn’t want the gorgeous ride to end, but I was excited to get to our boutique teahouse in the countryside of Yangshuo for four days of relaxation, swimming, hiking, biking, climbing, kayaking, whatever. Z chose the Tea Cozy Hotel, which had a very nice room with an amazing view from the balcony (which was too hot to go out on, but still, what a view).
apparently i just share pictures of toilets now on the reg
view of the balcony from the bed
view from the balcony
The biggest problem was the same problem that plagues all of China – despite many official ‘no smoking’ signs, the staff didn’t bat an eyelash at the many, many Chinese men (I don’t even think they were all guests, just like random taxi drivers and who knows who) who would smoke in the lobby and throughout the main floor, PLUS for a few nights our next door neighbors were smoking in the room, which is REALLY not allowed. Even the staff got the teensiest bit upset that someone was smoking in a room, but there was ‘no way of figuring out who it was’ apparently and while we had this conversation 4 different men were smoking near us in the lobby. FFS CHINA. (And yes, it was billed as a non-smoking hotel when we booked online.)
Another main drawback was that it didn’t have a pool, and like, the #1 activity in these parts is seriously ‘having a pool’. The staff had promised us months ago that we could use the pool at their sister property 1 kilometer away anytime we wanted, and that they’d take us there. That’s not the most convenient but hey it’s better than nothing! Of course, of course, this being wild west China, the pool at the resort had to be emptied the day we arrived for some reason, and this being a land of low-to-no technology, it took more than 3 days to fill it. So despite asking every day ‘can I please go swimming now?’, I was repeatedly told that, sorry, the pool only has a foot of water in it/two feet/three feet/red fish/blue fish. Only on our very last day was I able to go, and only because the sister property’s guests had apparently had enough and they were swimming even though the water STILL wasn’t up to the proper level! So the other staff told my staff ‘sure send her over there are people swimming anyway so who cares anymore.’ Thanks! It was a pretty nice pool, kind of cold and…I don’t think chlorinated? Also it wasn’t until I was leaving after my swimming time that someone decided oh right we should be constantly filling this pool to get it back up to normal and then stuck a hose in. I mean. Get your shit together.
pretty decent pool huh
This sister prop had really nice grounds (ours was just a single building) and apparently had a gym too, so I was a little disappointed at first that we didn’t choose this one, but like, I think I’d be even more pissed off if we chose the place that had a pool and paid for that amenity and then COULDN’T use the pool for three out of four days. If I were the guests there I’d be demanding money back.
So, our staff of apparent teenagers? felt bad? about how I couldn’t go swimming? and about the smoke? no I don’t think they did I think they just sensed my rage and didn’t want me to hulk out, so they gave us teacups as presents. Now, that’s a very nice gesture, don’t get me wrong, but you’ve heard about the state of our backpacks. We now have bubble-wrapped orbs sticking out of them, taking up valuable peanut butter space. I hate living out of a backpack.
We had all these high hopes for exploring the Yangshuo countryside, but Z’s illness got worse, or at least didn’t get better, which sucked for him, so one day we asked the staff if someone could drive us into town to a pharmacy we saw one night. They got a driver to take us TO A WITCH DOCTOR. We wanted to go to a regular (for China) pharmacy in the town where we could try to find recognizable stuff. Instead, we were driven to a dusty garage area where an old man stood at a dusty brown counter in front of a wall of hundreds of brown dusty bottles that an old woman sorted through for the small line of patients. It was, shall we say, not trustworthy. It was kind of frightening. But we couldn’t communicate what we actually wanted because the driver didn’t speak English, so we just went ahead with this freakshow. When it was our turn at the shack opening, we handed the witch doctor the list of symptoms that the hotel lady had written down for us. Then the old man and woman started sorting through no less than 18 different bottles of pills and sorting combinations of 18 pills into 7 different hastily folded little paper corners to hold them. Z was like ‘…this isn’t all for me, right? I have a bad cold maybe.’ But no, all those pills were for him. They communicated to take one combination of all 18 pills THREE TIMES A DAY. That is a LOT OF SHIT for what might just be a horrible cold and even for what could be the flu. TOO MUCH WITCH DOCTORING. Z was like…um…okay…sure…and then the witch doctor was like oh wait stop, and ALSO take two of these other pills that are in a regular foil pouch morning and night. We looked up the characters on the foil later and it was amoxicillin. Pretty sure he didn’t need that but whaaat. All of this medicine cost 18 yuan, or like, $2.75, so at least it wasn’t expensive to tempt fate like that.
Z did indeed take the pills a few times. I know! The next day, after 3 or 4 epic pill-swallowing sessions (SO F-ING MANY), he looked at me and was like WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING TAKING THIS I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS! I went into town and got him regular cough medicine (children’s, I think, best I could do).
Unfortunately, because of Z’s sickness, it hindered what we could do with these four days meant for exploring nature and being all outdoorsy and stuff. I mean, most importantly, poor Z was sick, yes that’s what I meant first. Further down the oh no list is how it affected my vacation of course. He just slept all day every day, pretty much. So I had that one day of swimming, I worked out a lot, we watched the one channel on the TV that had English movies (cut by ads at worse times than they do in the UK, which is quite a feat, like midsentence instead of the UK’s preferred right-as-a-sentence-ends-but-before-you-hear-the-enunciated-end-of-the-syllable-so-it’s-crazy-abrupt cuts), I went into the town by myself and had a shittonne of bubble tea, I went to a wacky expat’s wellness center for a yoga class (we’ll talk about that later). I should have done more myself, but a) I would have gotten so lost you can’t even believe, b) I probably would have gotten injured, knowing me, and then been injured AND lost, and c) it was a nice bed, so, we were lazy and it was nice. At least we still got to enjoy the incredible karst scenery from the nice bed. The karst scenery is the kind of limestone landscape that got eroded into cray cray bananapants shapes like caves and grassy hills and overall mountainous terrain that juts out of nowhere, so it seems, and surrounds the village with peaks that seem completely alien to what should be there, like they were dropped in from nowhere to make the area look like a foreign planet with huge peaks and valleys of green. It’s pretty awesome, and I guess I should have explored more by just like walking around it, but again, see above a, b, and c. The village our hotel was in was still the dusty dilapidated sort, and the town was only a slight improvement on that, so I think seeing the view from the balcony (from the bed) was probably the nicest way to enjoy the area. Or at least that’s the story I’m sticking to for my benefit.
Yangshuo town! Cute!
So about that yoga class…
There are two HappyCow places in Yangshuo town, a vegetarian Chinese restaurant we went to twice, called Lotus, and a Western hippie’s wellness center + cafe called Mood Food Energy Cafe, with juice, smoothies, salads, and other western health food like tahini sunflower burgers, plus massages, meditation, yoga and other classes. I was eager to try their yoga classes, and maybe get a massage or try the ‘tourmaline sauna’ that the owner had raved about when I visited the first day just to gather information. When I went back for yoga, my first of what I hoped would be daily classes, I went in assuming, because the owner was an English-speaking man and all the staff i’d seen so far were white, that it would be in English. Fair guess, right? Everyone was white! I was the first student to arrive so I made myself comfortable and stretched on a mat. It was a pretty nice studio. Then an older lady walked in. I pointed to the mat set up at the front of the room for the instructor and then pointed to her, asking ‘are you the instructor?’ She smiled and went over to that mat and lay down on her back and started doing scissor stretches with her legs and arms. So I copied her. For like five minutes. We just laid there kicking one leg up then the other just chilling and getting warmed up, I assumed. This is a lot of assuming that has happened by now. And then, three other people came in, plus a younger Chinese lady who said something to the older lady which I’m gonna guess is, “hey that’s my mat, I’m the instructor and that’s where I go”, and took her rightful place at the front. So I had spent five minutes following some random old lady’s old lady stretches because I thought she was the instructor, and she apparently thought I had said, ‘hey I got a mat out for you and put it at the front of the room, lady I don’t know and didn’t know was coming!’ So I was already deathly embarrassed before we even started.
There are two HappyCow places in Yangshuo town, a vegetarian Chinese restaurant we went to twice, called Lotus, and a Western hippie’s wellness center + cafe called Mood Food Energy Cafe, with juice, smoothies, salads, and other western health food like tahini sunflower burgers, plus massages, meditation, yoga and other classes. I was eager to try their yoga classes, and maybe get a massage or try the ‘tourmaline sauna’ that the owner had raved about when I visited the first day just to gather information. When I went back for yoga, my first of what I hoped would be daily classes, I went in assuming, because the owner was an English-speaking man and all the staff i’d seen so far were white, that it would be in English. Fair guess, right? Everyone was white! I was the first student to arrive so I made myself comfortable and stretched on a mat. It was a pretty nice studio. Then an older lady walked in. I pointed to the mat set up at the front of the room for the instructor and then pointed to her, asking ‘are you the instructor?’ She smiled and went over to that mat and lay down on her back and started doing scissor stretches with her legs and arms. So I copied her. For like five minutes. We just laid there kicking one leg up then the other just chilling and getting warmed up, I assumed. This is a lot of assuming that has happened by now. And then, three other people came in, plus a younger Chinese lady who said something to the older lady which I’m gonna guess is, “hey that’s my mat, I’m the instructor and that’s where I go”, and took her rightful place at the front. So I had spent five minutes following some random old lady’s old lady stretches because I thought she was the instructor, and she apparently thought I had said, ‘hey I got a mat out for you and put it at the front of the room, lady I don’t know and didn’t know was coming!’ So I was already deathly embarrassed before we even started.
And then it started, and it was in Chinese. The instructor spoke English and tried her best to repeat everything for me after she’d explained to the others, but there’s only so much time in a day so I’d hear like 3 minutes of Chinese explanation of a pose and its benefits or whatever, and then in English she’d simply say ‘reach your shoulders like this.’ So I didn’t get the maximum benefit, I imagine.
It would be fine, not knowing the language of instruction, if it were a yoga class like any I’d ever done before. And I’ve done yoga since I was like, 17. That’s a whole lot. But it wasn’t a flow or anything familiar, and she didn’t say the sanskrit names for poses. Because it wasn’t really a ‘doing poses’ kind of yoga! It was so herky jerky and random. Like, we did a few sun salutations to warm up, that was great and familiar. But after those two minutes, we all got belts, and she wrapped them around our shoulders and we reached overhead for like, 15 minutes. It hurt! I have extremely tight shoulders and upper back, which has only worsened this trip with the backpack, and she was not happy about that. So instead of being like every other yoga professional in the world and gently offering ways to improve or stretch in a certain way to safely expand on this movement, she hoisted the belt back and up so hard that she almost dislocated my shoulder, and I was screaming in pain and she kept pulling my arms up and up where they clearly would not and could not go, until I looked at her and said ‘stop!’ Like, are you kidding me? What kind of yoga is this! Is it just because you can’t sue for anything in China so they’re like screw safe practices?!
After we tore our shoulders apart, she had us wrap the belts around our thighs and do variations on chair pose for 20 minutes. I didn’t understand what kind of baby squat they were all doing until after she did her Chinese shpiel and then said to me, simply, ‘like chair pose.’ Thanks, finally! That was intense, obviously when held that long, and everyone was laughing through the pain but like, is this yoga? So strange. For this, since she kept wanting to pick on me for everything, she realized she hated my feet, like, a lot, and she tried to pull my big toes out to make them straight. I’ve told you before, I have bad bunions, so like, pulling my big toes to make them straight REQUIRES SURGERY, woman. After I realized what she was doing I was said ‘clearly they aren’t going to do what you want them to do, fake podiatrist!’ It was ridiculous! Was she trying to break bones to see if the center could heal them with crystals or something after? Or was she just an idiot? Needless to say, despite the great thigh DOMS I got later, I did not return as I had originally planned. What a shame! I was so excited for a real yoga class with other people after all these months of travel and then I find one with a crazy lady literally trying to break all my bones. If anything though, this kind of made me want to get certified as an instructor JUST SO I could balance out her awfulness in the instructor universe with my normal-yoga-doingness-that-doesn’t-lead-to-broken-bones.
After this super random class, I went downstairs and had dinner in the cafe. I was so excited for a big salad and other health food-y stuff, but honestly I have to say, while I liked the food okay, the service was abysmal. The friendly owner I had met days before wasn’t there, and it was full of all these women who were kind of glaring at me the whole time. There was an office-type room full of white women working on computers – I think getting massage training? according to some signs in the room? – and they just kept staring and giving me resting bitch face and I was like duuuuudeeeee what is wrong I changed my sweaty clothes what am I doing wrong? Despite how awkward it’s been for us as the only white people in a lot of these parts of China that we have trouble understanding and grasping, THIS was the most uncomfortable I’d felt in weeks – surrounded by other white women.
NOOCH SALAD!
I did get my big salad though, and guys, it was covered in nooch! Nooch! It’s been so long, I’d forgotten how much I loved it! Yay! It was a really good vegan health food store take on a Caesar, so, in fact, nothing at all like a Caesar, but just how I like it, a lot of lettuce and tofu and nooch. I also got salad rolls (so much salad!) that were fine, if needing a little more substance inside. I got that tahini-sunflower burger to go for Z plus a pita and hummus plate, which they wrapped up HILARIOUSLY with the hummus and other dips in those tiny tiny little plastic bags, like thumb-sized. Not enough hummus for your prices, guys! But clever packaging, I guess! The burger was decent (of course I ended up eating it the next day, Z’s first desired solid food in days was not going to be yoga center health concoctions) but the dips were weird. I wanted to try all the vegan desserts and smoothies and stuff but the service really was bad and honestly, despite seeming on the surface like a place tailor-made for me, I couldn’t get out of their fast enough. Kind of sad. But what an experience!
take out container pictures you love it
lolol it’s like they repurposed the tiny plastic bags that extra buttons on a Gap sweater come in and put hummus inside
A much better food experience awaited at Lotus Vegetarian, on the happening pedestrian West Street, near plenty of clubs and coffee bars and, a new fave, a place called Mango, where they specialize in mango smoothies of various sorts. I know! Amazing! We went to Lotus a few times and tried so much that was all pretty good, some great. They also bring you a dish of watermelon and a little set of peanuts, corn, and pickles right when you sit.
Above, we have my standard big ole plate of broccoli order, this time coming with black fungus (fun mushrooms) and noodles (because why not just throw noodles in everything); next is the Homestyle Tofu, which was very good; and then it’s the Guilin-style stir-fried bean noodles, tofu skin, and mixed vegetables. Loved this dish! It combines all my favorite things – vegetables, tofu skin, and beans in noodle form! Good stuff.
Above we have a huge plate of bok choy and mushrooms, most of which I put in our room fridge and had cold the next day, and then a really good black noodle dish with MORE bok choy (GIVE ME ANOTHER VEGETABLE MAYBE ONE DAY) and spicy tofu that was so spicy that I didn’t even realize at first that it was STINKY! It wasn’t TOO stinky so it was still good, but yeesh! China luuurves its stinky tofu!
Finally, we have this stupid hot (temperature! wasn’t spicy and also spicy is never stupid) fluffy tofu and vegetable claypot sort of jawn that was delicious, and probably my favorite dish from Lotus, the Kung Pao Chicken mockery. I tried to bring most of this on the train the day after ordering it; NB, bringing leftover Chinese food on a train is a bad idea. Eating all this stuff in a restaurant when it is cooked is a great idea though!
I only had one meal at the hotel, because the food was fine, but some of the staff members really put me off. Like they commented on how much food we ordered when it was literally like a salad, a tofu, and dumplings. That’s a normal amount of food for one hungry person, let alone two. Shut up. Anyway, the food was just okay. The tofu was really good but the dumplings were not. And guess what kind of salad it wassssss yes you know it.
that’s right
Dinner at the hotel was really only worth it because the other tables were occupied by a group of Italians, which led Z to make THE DAD JOKE TO BEAT THEM ALL: “What’s an Italian’s favorite Chinese food? CIAO MEIN.” oh my god it still hurts.
Lest you think Yangshuo town is all food fun and no drink fun, I must admit that my favorite part of this entire four day stay was my drinkage. I went to the aforementioned Mango a few times – there are outposts of various sizes on literally EVERY block – and got the regular mango smoothie (most others have milk) and a cup of plain mango. Each time, I tried a different bubble topping because as we know by now I am obsessed with the bubble tea bubbles. Mango has a CRAZY bubble/pearl menu. The first time I went, I didn’t realize that their offerings weren’t just the regular tapioca balls, and I was HORRIFIED when I bit into one and it was the juice-squirting kind. SO GROSS. I do not want a little thin-skinned ball full of fruit juice; I want chewy weirdness! Luckily my second attempt was a total win. For some reason I pointed to the pearl option that said sweet potato – I guess I was just super curious. Lo and behold, the little thin skin of the pearl ball gave way to an inside of cooked sweet potato! WHAT. Just tiny little droppings of cooked sweet potato inside the bubble ball pearl dot. Can you EVEN. Because I COULD NOT. I am so obsessed! WHO MAKES THESE.
Wonderful smoothie, GROSS BUBBLES
Good mango, AMAZING bubbles
But you know what’s coming. Obviously I saved the best for last. Right up the block from where our hotel’s shuttle (regular car and driver who I think only drove me around the whole week) picked up and dropped off was a GONG CHA! My favorite of the bubble tea chains! Now, I’m pretty sure that this is one of the fake, copyright-infringing imposter Gong Chas that Jojo warned me about, BUT, I think I actually liked it more than the real! I KNOW BUT HEAR ME OUT. What are my main requirements for good bubble tea? A menu with English translations that I can point to, with a section for adding bubbles, and a sugar level chart so I can get low-to-zero sugar. CHECK, CHECK, CHECK. And, unlike all the others, they actually listened and didn’t make my drinks diabetes in a cup like all the others. And what’s my favorite thing about bubble tea? THE BUBBLES. And this amazing imposter Gong Cha gave more bubbles than any other place! Like, to the point where I was STRUGGLING to catch them all after I’d finished the liquid. It was so great. I love that stupid fake shoppe.
One time we forgot to pay – we each thought the other had paid and the worker didn’t seem to notice – and we didn’t realize until we were at dinner later! Luckily we were still downtown, so we just went back after dinner and saw the guy and were like, we didn’t pay! And it wasn’t until we took money out of our wallets that it clicked for him and he was like ahhhhh you didn’t pay but I didn’t even realize you didn’t pay! Good thing too or we would be in a some scary Chinese jail. Where I doubt they give you bubble tea.
Given that the town had my favorite tea shop, a lot of mango smoothies, good vegetarian food, fun yoga adventures, and a decent overall vibe, I think I enjoyed my time there more than I did out at the remote teahouse – the complete opposite of what was supposed to happen. It’s just that Yangshuo is meant for nature-tourism, and aside from looking at the beautiful scenery, I didn’t actually do that. Maybe I squandered my time in the end, but I enjoyed myself in my own way. Also I slept a decent amount, which has been seriously lacking this summer so hooray! Despite its issues, we were able to relax at the Tea Cozy as intended and enjoy that view. So cool. Here’s one last piece of karst for you!
