New and improved

Dress: Romwe (Similar here) | Shoes: ASOS (Similar here) | Bag: Charles & Keith (Similar here) | Ring: Twentyeight Lane

My aunt and I hit up the Sephora sale a while back and I was treated to a few new things. I’m not a huge makeup/beauty junkie like my friends, but I appreciate a good product so I thought I’d share my views on my stuff with you! 

When I was doing a bit of modelling, a makeup artist used the Shu Uemura eyelash curler on me, and it seemed really effective – a couple of squeezes and my puny eyelashes were curled upwards towards the heavens. After years of using my cheap Manicare curler, I thought I would give this a go, and OMG I AM SO IMPRESSED. I know, it’s just an eyelash curler, not exactly life changing, but it is just SO GOOD. It curls way faster than my Manicare one, and with some much more ease. I don’t even need to squeeze hard, just 3 gentle squeezes and it’s done, shaving some seconds of the makeup routine. It might not seem like much but every second counts when you're a busy career woman lol. And the curl is really quite dramatic, even for short and sparse lashes like mine. For S$30, I highly recommend this! 

Urban DecayB6 vitamin infused prep spray was a purchase my aunt made while standing in line, you know how smart Sephora is, they leave little sample sized stuff around the queue so as you wait, you end up picking up more stuff. Just like how we did. Anyway, I had no idea what it did, and to be honest, I still don’t. But reading the reviews, sounds like it’s for reducing oil, getting rid of redness, smoothing the face for better makeup application, cooling and moisturizing and probably more, but I’m bored of reading the reviews. Anyway, I’ve just started using it and since I don’t really have problem skin anymore, I haven’t noticed a drastic change, but if I suddenly start glowing, I will let you know. 

Mousie recommended both the Beauty Blender sponge and its solid cleansing soap to me. She told me that since using the beauty blender, she’s had several comments on her good skin and she says it’s because of how smoothly her makeup is applied. All makeup junkies are obsessed with this sponge (it’s even spawned a strange meme), but sorry makeup junkies, I still think it’s just an expensive sponge. I don’t really do much blending though so that could be why. But the cleanser, now that shizz it dope. It’s meant for the beauty blender, wet it up and swipe the sponge in a circular motion and then rub out the makeup on the palm of your hand, but I also use it for my brushes. I clean my brushes every fortnight because I get breakouts if I use dirty brushes. 

Ok, enough bragging for now. Thanks for reading!

Bali ballin' part 2

Remaining true to the aesthetic of Alex Wears Stuff, here’s a bunch of stuff I wore while in Bali. And also some food that I ate in Bali. And before you think ‘these two things are completely random and unconnected’, I was wearing these clothes while eating (clothes cover the swelling food baby tummy) so that’s how they complement one another. 

Rip Curl Bikini - Float not included

Again, a disclaimer: most of these photos were taken using my crappy phone camera hence the poor quality. My friend Mims’ Samsung Edge 7 phone camera is crazy good and makes everyone look like they have excellent skin. I really should look into that. 

Every morning, when we awoke, the villa staff would prepare some glorious western breakfast for us, complete with eggs (style of your preference), tomatoes, sautéed mushrooms, sausages, bacon, toasted bread, an assortment of spreads (but we bought Nutella so obvs I went with that. So happy!) and a large plate of tropical fruit. I’d take my normal coffee with it although my friend Jakie made what he called pangsai (poop) juice (which tastes better than it sounds). He would take whatever fruit was available, and blend it with some fruit juice and some other stuff and make a super fruit juice which I guess would lead to pangsai-ing.  This is basically a perfect breakfast to me and they say breakfast is the most important meal of the day so I totally made sure I respected its importance by eating a lot.

We ordered lunch in from this awesome crispy duck place and this was delightful in every way. That crispy duck lived up to its name and was hella crispy. It should have been called hella-crispy-and-deliciously-tasty-duck because that’s totally what it was. My friend Mellie who normally doesn’t like duck loved this meal. One gripe was that the portion was kind of small, should have ordered double the amount! I don’t eat chili but the chili provided was apparently mad spicy and wonderful, and my chili-lover friends were very pleased.

Sooo crispy and delicious

Post food lounging with monster manman in the background. Dress from Asos, sandals from Yesstyle.

We definitely overdid it during dinner the first night when we went to Hog Wild, which was formerly known as Naughty Nuri’s. Our table of 6 (we had to split into 2 tables because we were a fairly large group and they wouldn’t take an online reservation for so large a group apparently) ordered SO MUCH FOOD. 4 plates of pork ribs, 2 plates of beef ribs = 6 plates of deliciousness, then we added corn on the cob for all, fries, chicken wings, grilled vegetables and finally a meh banana split and a terrible brownie with ice cream (I repeat, it is awful). Overall it was a good experience except for the dessert, and also except for the person who had to voms after overeating (it wasn’t me).

Someone's had too much to drink

Look ma, I'm flyiiiiing

 

Pork ribs hidden by long flowy dress from Shein.com

MORE FOOD. We ordered boxes of babi guling which is pork and this meal was disappointing because the pork was tough to eat. Good thing I wasn’t hungry because I had gone crazy at breakfast. Also probably still dreaming of the crispy duck here. Also, those paper balls look like hamburgers but they're actually the rice wrapped up.

Dress from Shein, hat from H&M

We went to Merah Putih on Saturday evening, and it’s a fancy pants looking Indonesian restaurant with lots of Caucasian patrons, and with Indonesian cuisine done fancy style – fancy plating and serving. While fancy, the food was decent, but not mind-blowing, this made it a bit of a disappointment since we actually ended up paying quite a large bill for the tasting menu and 2 bottles of red wine. I think my favourite dish of the lot was the soup which was just really salty and yummy but in such small serving it could have just been a gravy to pour onto the next dish for all I know.

Clearly fancy

Indoor trees. Legit fancy.

Old dress from Guess

We gave babi guling another try but this time in the form of a whole pig. The meat was tender, while the skin was crispy and fresh. We enjoyed it much more, and combined with the villa’s chef’s vegetables and soup, this meal totally redeemed the previous babi guling experience. The soup was peppery and porky but really quite delicious, albeit a little salty. 

That'll be all, pig

To push our meal to the edge, we also made a special order to get Revolver Coffee delivered to our villa. This is some hipster coffee joint that's really pretty and cool looking, and serves really good coffee. Best to go in person but since we'd dropped in the day before, we were craving it the following day so we got the villa staff to get it for us like the truly indulgent lazy butts that we are.

Caaaaawwwfeeeee

Just one part of the cafe but the cutest part!

Once again, we overdid it. We had a BBQ in the villa and I don’t know why we ended up ordering SO MUCH MEAT which the villa staff helpfully grilled up for us. We had steak, 2 kinds of sausages, pork, chicken chop, chicken wings, corned beef hash, pasta, corn on the cob, salad, and pork soup. We were so full and I don’t think we even managed to eat half of what we ordered so we shared it with the villa staff and I really truly hope they shared it with the rest of the Canggu village because there was just SO MUCH FOOD.

Goodbye diet.

Dress from Nasty Gal

All in all, a truly degen weekend where over-indulgence was the name of the game. Time to HIIT even harder.

I don't wanna leave!! *wails*

Thanks for reading!

Bali ballin' part 1

First, a note: The pictures taken are not in chronological order and they're also really bad because I took most with my phone. Sorrrrrry. I need a new phone. And maybe some photography talent.

A couple of months back, the ladies in our group of friends were talking about a vacation, having done a group trip to Rawa a while back, and we thought it was time for a refresher. We settled on Bali and then we waited... And waited... And waited... Until FINALLY the 19th of May arrived and we were all packed and ready to hit up Bali in a big way!

With our SQ tickets (good deal!), our Villa Mandalay Bali booked, and our bikinis/swim shorts purchased, we took the 2 hour evening flight from Singapore to Bali lugging 12 bottles of alcohol because it's apparently really expensive to buy booze in Bali.

Upon arrival and just beyond the immigration and luggage carousels, we emerged to the arrival area where there were basically crazy buttloads of drivers holding up signs to take their various registered visitors to the various villas. We managed to find our dude and a bunch of porters assisted us to bring our luggage to the bus - MISTAKE! We didn't realise that this wasn't a part of the service so they kind of expected cash. Note for future trips!

All aboard!

Anyhoodle, the drive to Canggu where our villa is located was about 30 minutes journey but we stopped at a grocery store to load up on more food and drinks.

And FINALLY. We arrived! Villa Mandalay Bali is part of the Elite Haven group and it's a villa with 7 bedrooms (2 of which are ginormous and have baths), a main lounge/dining area, a lap pool, a kitchen, a front yard, a TV room, a sauna, and a mini golf course. With 13 of us, it perfectly suited our needs (the needs of lazy people who need to eat, sleep, swim and repeat that).

We arrived to smiling staff who placed floral wreaths around our necks and brought us welcome drinks (which was some ginger juice so obvs I gagged and didn't drink it), and also sounded a gong when we walked through the main courtyard (I now want a gong for every time I come home). We raced around choosing our rooms (which were all lovely and well kept so really no issue although we had trouble locating the seventh room which was situated near the golf course) and then we settled down for the main event of the evening - FOOD.

Main dining hall filled with greedy people

Oh Mandalay, thank you for feeding us

And because we're rule breakers and never listen to what our mommas tell us, we immediately went swimming right after eating. Swimming = lazing about in the water and drinking beer.

For the Lord of the Light - GoT for the win

They lit 3 fires for us which I thought was weird initially but then I realised that it was really nice to stand next to after a dip in the water, because I started getting cold, and there was minimal lighting around the pool. Also, good for making ritual sacrifices if you're into that sorta thing.

Anyway, you probably don't really care about what I'm saying so here we go with all the villa photos so you can see just how awesome the villa is/was.

Walk through the front yard

Greetings by really tall statues

The pool view standing just after the main lounge/dining area

The main lounge/dining area front view - 2 rooms to the left and 2 to the right

Mad lounging action took place here

TV room is at the mezzanine level above the bar - quaint and cozy

The golf course area

A close up of the paddy fields next to the course

 More pool but made better with pretzel and donut

Honestly, 2 floats wasn't enough so we ended up buying another 4 I think. Note for future trips!

Bali is pretty hot this time of year, so I really loaded up on the sunblock and also insect repellent because there ain't nothing you can do about tropical countries' mosquitoes. We even brought our own electric mozzie zapper but the villa is quite dimly lit at night so it was tough to see and catch mozzies, and the mosquito coils seemed a little ineffective. The villa even provides spray on mozzie repellent. Something I wasn't prepared for were sand-flies. While not many, I did get about 10 bites over the course of my 4 day trip. I'm pretty susceptible to their bites though, and the boo only seems to have one so yeah, I'm lame. 

Because I'm all about the TREAT YOSELF movement, I had two 2-hour long oil massages! While it's not exactly like the best massage I've ever had (Como Phuket hands down), it was decent and relaxing and I fell asleep right on those deck chairs. It cost 300,000 rupiah per 2-hour massage which is about 30 SGD... That is CRAZY affordable! 

MASSSSSSAAAAAGE

Anyway, after long and humid days, it was nice to head back to the cool air-conditioned room (mine was one next to the pool) where I could take a nice warm shower (they provided soap, shampoo and conditioner) in their super spacious bathroom, and then lay on the bay window, or sit on the chairs, or best, just lie in their large clean bed. 

Toilet on the left, shower to the right

zzzzzz

TV in the cupboard which I never watched + bay window for chilling in an emo way

High ceilings for a super roomy spacious feel

What I really like about Mandalay, and maybe what I like about Bali in general, is the hospitality and level of customer service accorded to us. The staff are always so helpful and warm, and they seem really happy to help provide us with whatever we needed, while always thinking to go the extra mile. I asked for a yoga mat and they brought me THREE plus a yoga block and stretchy thing (I honestly don't know what it was). Disclaimer: Mat was a bit thin and smelly - I washed it prior to use.

Anyway, it's getting late and I'm getting sleepy after seeing that picture of the bed. So I'm going to turn in now, and wish I could still be in Bali. Part 2 on the food and such stuff to follow at a later date.

Thanks for reading!