well.

its hot in texas, just like singapore though i don't know whats the temperature. christine thinks it is hotter. but i thought it was fine, especially when we have no luggage with us and cannot afford to wear a few layers of clothes as needed in cold states.

so i might get darker when i come back. haha =)

even though houston is supposed to be the 4th largest city in the united states, there doesnt really seem much to do here, except for museums. okay i am not really for museums, so maybe thats why i find it boring. well there's still lots of shopping, especially at Galleria, this big shopping mall with like dunno how many outlets, maybe 200?

there are many parks here, especially greenery. the hostel setting here is super nice, unlike the ones in singapore. also many fountains! i luv fountains.

we went to their Chinatown the 2nd day we were here, and it was huge. its not like street stalls in Singapore, probably because they had too much land. i missed singapore food once i stepped into the grocery stores, because there were just so much chinese food to choose from. the area could be as big as city hall area. i am not kidding.

we had our 1st chinese meal there. it was a big portion that cost ard 5 usd. pork chop with rice, veg, lu dan and some kimchi. together with milk tea cause its a tea house, so decided to try tt.

we also had our 1st jap meal in us in houston. went with christine's friend. nice but relatively expensive. well, expected tt price for jap food here. its a jap restaurant too. the restaurants in US generally don't have service charge, but they need tipping of about 15%. on top of the 8.25% tax they have, so its quite a huge bill when you calculate the total.

we also had spanish food the 1st night we were here in rice village, a village near the university, something like holland village. i tried their saffron rice croquettes, which was super filling even though the serving was super small. the atmosphere was good in there, with many people dancing in the restaurant. spanish music and dance. swee

before that, we had gone to downtown houston, where its like the cbd area. there's like a super long tunnel mall (similar to citylink) that links like 6 major buildings together, and is supposed to have many retailers but we found nothing much, so stepped outside soon after. there's like the skyline district, theatre district. we even stepped into their public library, which is like the old national library.

still have around 5 days to spend here, so might drive up to another city to take a look. got to start driving starting next week because i am flying over to colorado on sunday.