After a short plane journey from Sydney I found myself transported to a wilder, wintry place, with rolling hills, low-rise development dotted with historic buildings and a low-key, country meets city feel. We checked into the Grand Mercure on Murray Street, a typical business traveller kind of hotel – non-descript, but really comfortable and centrally located. We were on the edge of the CBD closest to the waterfront and Salamanca Place, the perfect base for exploring Hobart on foot. For a dose of maritime Hobart, you can walk along the waterfront past fishing boats laden with traditional basket traps, and stop at one of the floating seafood shacks for some local sea scallops and chips. Along the way, you can drop into photography exhibitions or sample small batch spirits at the Lark Distillery.

Salamanca Place

Down at Salamanca Place (rows of sandstone warehouse buildings converted to shops, restaurants, cafes and galleries) it’s a little ‘touristy’ as you’d expect, but along with a few too many places featuring carved Huon pine are some wonderful finds, like the tucked away Tricycle Cafe with delicious shakshuka and Five Senses Coffee (hint – best coffee we had in Hobart), and Spacebar Gallery, a well-curated shop featuring (non-tacky) Tasmanian made jewellery, clothing, art prints and design objects. For take-home artisan produce, duck into A Common Ground, a tiny gourmet food purveyor tucked under a staircase, owned by Matthew Evans of Gourmet Farmer fame. Make sure you venture upstairs to the excellent art gallery to see what’s on.

Jack Greene Bar was my pick of the bars and restaurants at Salamanca Place, with the most extensive list of craft beers (Tassie and international) and a great gourmet burger menu. It has an atmospheric, old-world pub-style atmosphere, and you can head upstairs for drinks in what resembles an old-school gentleman’s lounge. The Salamanca Markets are held every Saturday and are widely touted as a must-do, but if you’re visiting Hobart from a major city and are used to cool markets you may be disappointed. While some independent Tasmanian producers and designers have interesting stalls there, they’re interspersed with a lot of mass-produced junk. The best shopping in Hobart can be found in the small boutiques dotting the town.

Shops

My absolute favourite shop in Hobart was Love & Clutter, a small shop packed with brightly coloured objects from kids toys to fimo beads to fun finds like terrariums. I wanted to whisk everything off the shelves but held it together enough to zero in on a necklace, a confectionery coloured concoction by local label ‘I wish I had a little shop’. The girl working at Love & Clutter was an amazing source of local knowledge and her passion for Hobart and its independent design scene was infectious. She insisted on writing down recommendations of other cool places for us, and our taxi driver into the city was also almost excited to point things out to us and show Hobart off. It really feels like Hobart is this cool, arty, interesting little place that still feels slightly off the radar, MONA attention aside. Store & Co. was another favourite shop in the city (all of this is so close together by the way – it was so refreshing being somewhere were most places were within walking distance!). It was packed with design and decor books, homewares, jewellery, cushions, clothes – another place where you want to take everything home.

Food & Drink

At the top of our Hobart eatery list was Garagistes, the city’s most lauded restaurant. Anticipating Sydney-like hype and queues we headed there super early on a Friday night and were surprised it was virtually empty. It filled up as we were there though, so it was worthwhile (you can’t book). With a sleek, minimalist, industrial-style fitout and communal tables, Garagistes manages to pull off being stylish yet casual all the same. You end up sitting so close to other diners you can’t help but start chatting (you can’t exactly have a private conversation!). There are two fixed menus at $55 a head for three courses or $85 a pop for five. We opted for the five-course, which had a local seafood emphasis. One of the best dishes was the delicate bay trumpeter sashimi with tomatillo and chervil, though the menu is seasonal and ever-changing, so check their website just before going for the latest. Afterwards we headed to Sidecar, the small bar owned by the same crew as Garagistes and a short walk away. It was tiny and had an NYC Lower East Side feel. There was even a vintage-looking meat slicer on the counter for their house-cured meats. If I lived in Hobart, I think I’d live at Sidecar!

A more homestyle meal was had at Solicit in North Hobart the next night. This had an entirely different vibe to Garagistes (warm and homely, set in a restored old house divided into rooms). We tried local wallaby and a seafood curry, and the obligatory Tasmanian oysters, cheese and wine (Hobart’s holy trinity). My other pick of the Hobart restaurants was Ethos Eat Drink, but we unfortunately couldn’t get a booking. So for future trips this will be top of the agenda. It features innovative dishes using local produce, dished up in a historic building dotted with lots of succulent plants. If it’s possible to recommend a place without actually eating there, this is it. My other pick for a great coffee besides Tricycle Cafe is Yellow Bernard in the heart of the CBD, for excellent coffee and a macaron fix.

MONA

Hobart’s drawcard MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) deserves it’s own allocated day on a Hobart holiday. First, you board their camoflauge-print boat, complete with graffiti art interior and an on-board cafe (and can even get tickets to the ‘posh pit’ for champagne and priority service in a separate section of the boat, if you’re so inclined. I wasn’t.) The journey along the Derwent River to MONA, which is on a little headland on the city’s outskirts, is picturesque and charming, and also provides a kind of theatrical sense of anticipation for what awaits.

Afterwards there’s more – the food and wine part, where you can dine on upmarket local produce at the Source, head to the wine bar for lunch (the food is delicious – like the smoked ocean trout – and the wines are by the onsite winery, Moorilla Estate), or lounge on a hot pink beanbag on a sprawling lawn while being entertained by a jazz band. It’s an all out assault on the senses and the best kind of day trip imaginable.

MONA itself is a mindblowing structure carved into the ground. You enter via a mirrored-walled building flanked by a tennis court, and descend by lift into the building’s bowels. It’s all a bit Alice in Wonderland-ish and then the discoveries continue with an exploration of MONA’s many rooms and eclectic collection of art, from the ancient to the new. The wildly varying art at MONA is what makes it so interesting. One minute you’re watching a video installation, then visiting the eerie ‘death gallery’, examining ancient artefacts then venturing into the slightly nausea-inducing room housing a machine which replicates the human digestive system. Yes, it creates poo. Along the way, you have your own personal iPod-like device called ‘the O’ where you can read further information about each exhibit, listen to an audio guide and even record whether you liked each artwork or not, and discover the stats on what other visitors thought.

Overall Hobart exceeded my expectations. It doesn’t have the rush of Sydney or Melbourne, but a low-key buzz with a strong emphasis on local food and drinks, and handmade design. I’ve never experienced a place in Australia with such a strong, almost fierce, allegiance to all things locally produced. I kind of get the whole Tassie pride thing now, like Australia’s underdog has come into its own, and knows what it has even surpasses what can be found in the rest of the country. The food, the wine, the beer, the cheese are all outstanding, and the local designers give Salamanca Place and the boutiques found in the city an ‘Etsy store come to life’ feel. MONA is like the cultural icing on the cake in a city full of the unique, whimsical and proudly homegrown.

Update: Solicit and Love and Clutter have since (sadly) closed.

Inside Mai Fish

Cha gio at Mai Fish

Bun thit nuong

First published on Travelwire Asia, 16 January 2013

By Liz Ledden

THE historic Vietnamese coastal town of Hoi An has long been regarded a food-lovers’ hotspot. A wealth of fresh, local ingredients fuses with centuries of foreign influence, from traders to colonialists to modern-day expats, to form a truly dynamic eating scene.

Hoi An’s UNESCO World Heritage-listed Old Town is awash with excellent eateries from the simplest of street food stalls to sophisticated small bars and trendy restaurants. Local delicacies like cao lau and white rose grace many a menu, and the fresh local seafood is a must. Here are a few places to sample Hoi An’s memorable cuisine:

Mai Fish
The latest restaurant from Duc and the crew from Latino/Vietnamese fusion restaurants Mango Rooms and Mango Mango, Mai Fish opened in late-2012 as a nod to the owner’s Vietnamese heritage. The menu here offers a round-up of classic Vietnamese dishes, albeit prepared and presented with attention to detail a notch above most local eateries. There’s an open kitchen, several rooms featuring vintage Asian décor, and a pervading sense of style. The cha gio are light and crispy, and the bun thit nuong (pork with rice vermicelli noodles) is flawless.
45 Nguyen Thi Minh Khai

Hai Scout Café
A stalwart of the Hoi An dining scene, and for good reason, Hai’s has a welcoming, casual atmosphere with outdoor seating in an enclosed courtyard. The menu features the greatest hits of local cuisine from grilled meats to soups to spring rolls, with some Western standards thrown in for good measure. A standout is the freshly grilled bo la lot, or beef wrapped in lot leaves, prepared on the restaurant’s outdoor barbeque.

98 Nguyen Thai Hoc

The Central Market
Hoi An’s Central Market has been revitalised in recent years to offer a more hygienic, orderly take on street food classics than most local markets. Easy to navigate, each stall has a clearly marked sign with the name of the dish and the price, with most around the 20,000 dong mark. Sample crispy banh xeo (two for 20,000 dong/US$1) – a delicious pancake wrapped around pork, prawns, beansprouts and fresh herbs, doused in condiments of your choice.
Tran Quy Cap

Lien Thao food stall
A string of humble food stalls can be found across the river from the Old Town, grouped under an awning. At Lien Thao, the calamari with lemongrass wrapped in banana leaf is a taste sensation, at a fraction of the price of most of Hoi An’s restaurants. On the night we visited the atmosphere was low-key, with mostly Vietnamese patrons grabbing a quick bite to eat on their way home from work. Expect friendly and prompt service, and delicious dishes best eaten communally.
Nguyen Phuc Chu Street

Le Banyan
Hoi An’s restaurant scene is not only centred around the Old Town – its beaches feature some of the town’s best cuisine. An Bang Beach offers a chilled out alternative to busier Cua Dai Beach. Its row of beach shack eateries are a mix of Vietnamese seafood restaurants and foreign-owned offerings, from an Italian pizzeria to some laidback French places that attract a loyal following from Hoi An’s expat crowd. The paradisical Le Banyan offers tapas-style dishes combining French and Vietnamese influences, with some of the best using delicious local seafood. There’s a green grassy lawn overlooking the beach, a pool table by the well-stocked bar, and bamboo daybeds that lend themselves to lounging. Be sure to order the grilled scallops and the excellent chorizo.
Far left, An Bang Beach

Other more boutique-style offerings which have sprung up since I last visited Hoi An are Metiseko, a fashion store using beautiful, organic fabrics with a Japanese bent, and avAna, a chic ode to the fashionable wanderer, with Vietnamese, Indian and Arabic influences and lots of resorty, floaty ware and chunky silver jewellery (shopping regret no. 2 – a pair of silver snakeskin-look ballet shoes on the nothing over $10 shelf. Because I somehow can’t recognise a bargain when it slaps me in the face). For general homewares, textiles, gifts and jewellery, a longstanding favourite is the feelgood Reaching Out Fair Trade Store & Workshop. Alot of the items are handmade onsite by disabled locals, and you can even pop out the back and see the artisans in action. Which brings me to shopping regret no. 3 – a stunning sterling silver chain with a leaf-shaped silver pendant. Would have been perfect with, well, everything.

But for everything I didn’t buy there was something I did! One of my favourite purchases were some brightly coloured fabric lanterns, handmade by a sweet couple who run a stall just around the corner from delicious eatery Mango Mango, on the ‘other’ side of the river from the old town. Our five lanterns were less than US$10, the perfect things to adorn our back deck for a colourful Christmas with a touch of Asia nostalgia.

P.S. If you’re heading to Hoi An and do decide to go down the tailor shop route, here are a few tips from my old blog that may help!

First published on Travelwire Asia in conjunction with Tourism Malaysia, 4 October 2012

By Liz Ledden

THE cuisines on offer in Malaysia’s beautiful tea country, the Cameron Highlands, runs the gamut from Malay, Indian and Chinese to British-influenced high tea and an array of Western eateries. The best of the bunch inject a sense of authenticity, incorporating fresh, locally grown produce. Here are some eating options to refuel pre- or post-jungle trek, or before an exploration of the area’s many plantations and farms:

Chinese-Malay steamboat
Steamboat is a Chinese-Malay style of dining and has been adopted as a specialty of the area. At a steamboat restaurant you essentially cook your own dinner, adding everything from prawns to tofu to local vegetables into a flavoursome broth boiling away in the centre of your table. It’s lots of fun with a group, and is not only novel but a healthy eating option too.

Mayflower in Tanah Rata is a popular place to try your hand at creating your own steamboat concoction. For something a little less bustling, Glory 78 can be found on the road connecting Tanah Rata and Brinchang. Its meals are halal, and are fresh and tasty.

While some steamboat restaurants have reverted to using gas to power the individual burners, others still use the traditional charcoal method, which is said to impart better flavour into the food. Restoran Highlands in Brinchang is one place still using charcoal, or you can try and taste the difference at the excellent Cameron Organic Produce, a restaurant in Brinchang featuring organically grown produce from their farm of the same name. Seafood is on offer here, but the vegetarian soup alone is fresh, pure and makes great use of seasonal ingredients. Most steamboat places charge around RM 20 per person – about AU$6.

Malay
Delicious Malaysian cuisine is readily available in the Cameron Highlands, from spicy laksa to sweet kaya toast. At the Night Market (Brinchang Pasar Malam) stop and sample a fantastic array of local snacks, from fried sweet potato balls to chocolate dipped strawberries. Head to Restoran Ferm Nyonya for a beautiful meal of Nyonya or Peranakan cuisine, a traditional blend of Chinese and Malay cooking techniques and ingredients. A jack of all trades, they also feature Western dishes on the menu and offer steamboat too. The sambal beans are excellent, and their fish dishes are a specialty. Uncle Chow’s Kopitiam is another must-visit restaurant in the Cameron Highlands for a nasi lemak or curry laksa, or for one of their dessert offerings served up in a friendly, family-run old-style coffee shop.

British
Remnants of British cuisine remain in the area’s restaurant and cafés, with tea and scones or wintry British classics evoking nostalgia, or at least widening the area’s eating options. For some traditional British fare head to the Smoke House, a restaurant within a charming hotel of the same name. Here you can dine on dishes like beef Wellington, cod and chips or chicken Maryland. You can also settle in with a drink in their bar, complete with fireplace. This is one of the many places serving traditional English style afternoon tea or ‘high tea’ in the highlands, though at the pricier end of the scale.

Other destinations for local tea and freshly made scones include The Lord’s Café (ex-T Café), where the strawberry scones are a must-try. To sample locally grown strawberries in many guises, head to the wonderful Strawberry Moment Dessert Café, which features strawberry crepes, waffles, chocolate dipped strawberries, the lusciously stacked strawberry strudel and even a chocolate ‘steamboat’ for dipping your own strawberries in, Malaysian style.

Indian
Indian eateries are prevalent in the Cameron Highlands, and many feature delicious (and very affordable) rotis in all their guises. Restoran Sri Brinchang features delicious chicken tikka, paper thin dosais with tasty accompaniments and fresh and flavoursome thali plates. Most dishes are around the RM 6.50 (AU$2) mark, offering amazing value. Restoran Kumar’s in Tanah Rata is another excellent option, with brilliant curries served on banana leaf and some of the freshest and best naan bread in the area. The tandoori chicken here is wonderful too.

Be sure to sample a variety of the cuisines on offer in the Cameron Highlands – its restaurants reflect Malaysia’s multiculturalism and diversity. And look past the restaurants for street snacks, particularly at the night market, where you can experience some of the freshest and most ingenious ways of trying the flavoursome local produce.

First published on Travelwire Asia in conjunction with Tourism Malaysia, 4 October 2012

By Liz Ledden

THE Cameron Highlands is to Malaysia what Darjeeling is to India, or Nuwira Eliya is to Sri Lanka – a hilly, lush, green region in the country’s interior that grows premium quality tea, with cooler weather offering welcome relief from the otherwise steamy climate.

With the towns of Tanah Rata and Brinchang at its core, the Cameron Highlands is one of Malaysia’s most fertile areas. Here, steamy tropical rainforest gives way to a temperate climate, with rolling hills and glossy green tea plantations at every turn. Tea aside, the area is dotted with butterfly gardens, waterfalls, vegetable farms and strawberry plantations, offering many places to visit and sample fresh produce. The former British hill station has a decidedly cooler climate than the rest of the country, and remains a popular holiday spot for Malaysians escaping the city, as well as visitors seeking an alternative or additional destination to Malaysia’s much-loved coastal and heritage towns.

A trip to Malaysia’s interior
After a fun-filled introduction to Malaysia via the bright lights and delicious eats of Kuala Lumpur, I was looking forward to seeing more of what the country had to offer. The beautiful turquoise beaches of Langkawi and the Perhentian Islands I was aware of, and the historic buildings and delicious cuisine in Penang was also on my radar, yet the Cameron Highlands was a part of Malaysia I previously knew little about. All was about to be revealed after an easy bus ride from the country’s capital to its agricultural heartland.

My first impressions were that it was lush, green, fertile and beautiful. I found the Cameron Highlands charming, with its occasional architectural nod to its colonial heyday adding character, and enjoyed the proliferation of places to stop, eat at and explore. As a tea lover, I was particularly enamoured with the first tea plantations I’d ever seen.

Where to go and what to expect
One of the biggest plantations is BOH Plantations, a company established in the 1920s that has several large plantations in the area. BOH Sungai Palas Tea Estate is one of the most popular and accessible to visit, located a short drive from the town of Brinchang. The stunning views of the rolling plantations alone are worth the visit, but for tea aficionados the estate offers a solid introduction to how tea is grown and processed, with an educational tour of the factory and lots of information to peruse. Afterwards you can sample some of the freshest tea on the planet in the onsite café.

An alternative to BOH is a plantation run by Bharat, who produce the Cameron Valley brand of tea. They have several plantations with teahouses along the main road just outside Tanah Rata that can easily be visited, though at peak times they can get crowded. The CameronValley tea house is perched over the vibrant green plantations, and if you’ve had your fill of plain black tea, it offers some more exciting takes on the world’s second most popular beverage. The masala chai and cardamom tea is fragrant and flavoursome, while the teas infused with fresh lemongrass or mint are highly recommended. There’s a café with lots of sweet offerings here too (think brownies, cheesecake and ice cream).

From crop to cup
A tea plantation visit offers interesting insights into the tea growing, sorting and fermenting process, though for some people, the amazing views over the plantations and the tea sampling itself end up being the highlights of their visit. Particularly if the tea is consumed in a spectacular tea house extending up and over the plantation grounds, where you can easily end up sitting for an hour or two.

By visiting some of the plantations in the highlands, I discovered a new appreciation for the hard work that goes into producing tea. Labourers picking tea leaves by hand out in the sun is something you don’t often think of while indulging in your daily caffeine boost. A trip to your tea’s source makes you realise the hard work that goes into not only growing and cultivating tea, but transforming the leaves into something palatable and ready for consumption. The plantations offer many wonderful photographic opportunities too, for a quintessential shot of the Cameron Highlands’ endless, rich green hills. Jungle treks and food forays aside, a tea plantation visit is definitely something well worth doing in the beautiful Cameron Highlands.

I’m just a little bit excited about an upcoming trip to my old home, Saigon. Though it will be for a fleeting few days, I can’t wait to:

+ catch up with friends remaining in Saigon
+ visit my old local coffee shop, home-away-from home and adopted Vietnamese family, who have since expanded with no less than three new babies in the past twelve months(!)
+ eat, eat and eat some more at a combination of old favourites and new finds
+ drink copious amounts of cafe sua da
+ barhop and try not to drink copious amounts of cocktails
+ foot massage, body massage, manicure, pedicure, hairwash/massage/blowdry, foot scraping and maybe even fish foot massage (i.e. have fish eat dead skin from my feet…if I can bear it)
+ shop. Alot.
+ walk, explore, watch, meet, talk, dream and be inspired by the colour, smells, light, sounds and energy of the city.

Ok, now I’m officially excited!

The Christmas and New Year period feels like it’s fast becoming a fading memory of copious amounts of delicious food, wine, champers and catchups with family and friends from near and far. I think our holiday season this year was one of the best ever, perhaps made more special by the fact we stayed in Sydney and did the tourist thing, discovering more amazing places on our own doorstep instead of hightailing it elsewhere in search of adventure. Here are some highlights of our Sydney staycation:

Sydney’s Little Bay

The beach

Little Bay is officially my new favourite beach. Located in Sydney’s southeastern suburbs (think below Maroubra) it has a hideaway factor with few visitors and no roads directly surrounding it. You access Little Bay via a short walk through a golf course and down a steep staircase, where there’s conveniently a new looking bathroom and shower facility. The beach itself is actually a sheltered bay surrounded by dramatic cliffs and rock formations, with white sand and crystal clear, calm water. You definitely feel far removed from civilisation while swimming here.

The eats

A chance discovery and new favourite post-beach pitstop is Croquembouche Patisserie, a French-run patisserie and cafe in the unassuming location of Botany Road, Botany. We stopped here after swimming at Little Bay and were surpised to discover coffee and sweets rivalling the best of those found in cooler locales, with macarons to rival Zumbo’s. Highly recommended is the jaffa macaron and the luscious salted caramel variety. The coffee’s good too.

The daytrip

We decided to check out the Grand Pacific Drive, a picturesque stretch of road weaving south through the Royal National Park leading to a stunning ocean vista at Stanwell Tops. The road then hugs a curve of coastline enroute to the surfing villages between Sydney’s south and Wollongong, like Thirroul and Bulli (cue holiday house envy), and eventually ends in Nowra. To say it was beautiful was an understatement – think blue sky, sunshine and sparkly sea. Future staycation possibilities are endless… but the daytrip in particular gave us a newfound appreciation of living back in Australia, and the family fun that is ‘the roadtrip’ – our holiday style of choice at the next opportunity!