Spontaneous Travel On A Discount

Woot!
I just booked a flight to Krabi, Thailand for January 2015.
Looking forward to enjoy 4 days of rock climbing and lazing on the beach.

For this trip, I will be booking my hotel via a new mobile app called HotelQuickly. This mobile app gives it's users an average of 28% discount on hotel bookings. The catch is that you are only allowed to book your hotel a day in advance!

In a study done by HotelQuickly, the average occupancy rate of a hotel is 63%. Meaning that 37% of rooms are unused every night. In an attempt to create opportunity, HotelQuickly connects hoteliers to last minute travellers, offering discounts of 28% off room rates (average - can be more, can be less).

All hotels are hand-picked by the HotelQuickly team and the best-rated 3, 4, and 5 star hotels are listed on this app. Only the top 10 best deals will be shown to users on their chosen night, based on hotel ratings and highest discount rates, saving you the time of scrolling through hundreds of hotels.

I'm typically NOT your average tech savvy geek chic, but the possibility of travelling and staying at decent hotels on super discounted rates excite me, hence I'm sharing this mobile app with you guys here.

Download this app and get RM70 hotel credits on your first booking using my promo code below! :)

The only slight drawback to this mobile app is that it is only available in Asia Pacific (Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Philippines, Vietnam, Myanmar, Macau, Cambodia, Laos, Macau, Australia and New Zealand). And you have to be comfortable in booking your hotel one day before your actual trip.

Having said that, they do have pretty decent 3 - 5 star hotels listed on their app, so I wouldn't be too worried about not getting a decent hotel.

Happy travelling everyone!

And as usual, if you are looking for an awesome bikini for your next beach vacation, look no further than here: www.liquido.com.my

XOXO

Back in the Liquido Headquarters

Among others, one of the purposes of my trip to Brazil was to pay a visit to the boss of Liquido and to check out their new collection.

So here I am finding myself back in the office that I have visited so many times in the past 2 years. (Wow. Has it really been 2 years already?!!)

Liquido wall which contains some of their magazine covers from 2001

Liquido Hall of fame. Fotos of the celebrities that they have worked with

Their warehouse which I have spent HOURS AND HOURS shopping and wondering which stocks to bring back to be introduced in Malaysia & Singapore. Most people have no clue of the amount of work that goes behind the scenes of running an online clothing store.

More shelves of their worldwide popular funky leggings

Of course all work and no play makes Nadia a really dull girl. Below are some photos which shows me at play :)

Did you know that Brazil is full of Italian immigrants? As a result, they have some really fantastic Italian restaurants and some of the best pizza outside Italy. Some Brazilians even swear that pizza in Sao Paulo is better than pizza in Italy. It's hard to refute - pizza in Sao Paulo is PRETTY FRIGGIN GOOD. The photo above was taken at a really chic Italian Restaurant, close to the centre of Sao Paulo. 

Biking at Ibirapuare Park on a sunny Sunday morning. Ibirapuara Park is beautiful. And biking through Sao Paulo on Sundays is delightful. 

Sunday afternoon BBQ!

Nom nom nom

Finally. Just wanted to share this photo because I thought it was ironic. This photo was taken the weekend before the World Cup 2014 started. The host cities were all busy preparing, which includes placing relevant signs to the football stadiums at the Metro (subway) stations. 

The poster above is a map of how to get to the football stadium by metro (subway). In the middle of this poster, you can see a small red sticker (obviously placed by a protestor) which reads 'Nao via ter Copa'. Translated from Portuguese to English, it means "There won't be a world cup".

Unless you have been living in a cave that has no internet access and you do not have access to cable tv or radio, you must be (at the very, very least) vaguely aware that a majority of the Brazilian population was against Brazil hosting the World Cup. 

This has been the most expensive World Cup ever, due to the fact that 12 cities are hosting this event. 12 different stadiums had to be either refurbished or totally built from scratch. 2 out of the 12 cities do not even have a local football team and the stadium will become a giant white elephant once the World Cup is over. All this when Brazil is lacking the basic necessities such as public schools, adequate public transportation and hospitals. 

Riots were going on until the DAY OF the World Cup.

Even though I never ran into any of the riots personally while I was there, you can sense the lack of excitement with most Brazilians. 

Well, this was during the first week of the World Cup. I flew back to Malaysia within the first week. Now that Brazilian football team has made it into the quarter finals, seems like Brazilians have forgotten that they were against the World Cup in the first place. 

Altho the Brazilian football team's performance has been fairly unimpressive, I am rooting for them. Most of us don't think that Brazil will win the World Cup this year, but there has been a lot of surprises, so you never know. 

I think the funniest comment to come out from the World Cup to date is "You are more likely to be bitten by Suarez than to be bitten by a shark". LOL ! According to this article published in The Metro, this is proven to be statistically true: http://metro.co.uk/2014/06/26/its-official-youre-more-likely-to-be-bitten-by-luis-suarez-than-a-shark-4776523/

DOUBLE LOL! 

And that's all for today folks! <3

First week of the World Cup 2014 (In São Paulo)

I was in Brazil for the first week of the World Cup, and I said that I would write a blog post every single day that I was there. However, I got so caught up with all the on-goings there that I never got round to doing so.

In the end, I didn't end up watching a game at the stadium because my trip was kinda last minute and football wasn't the main purpose of my trip. By the time I even considered watching a game at the stadium all the tickets were sold out and impossible to get. Boo :(

So I went to Vila Magdalena (which is a really cool neighbourhood with lots of bars, restaurants and beautiful, young people) to watch the opening match with my fiancé, Thiago.

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, so I´ll let the pictures (and the video) speak for themselves.

The Havaianas store on Oscar Freire, selling flip flops according to the teams that qualitifed :)

A couple walking their dogs. Very festive indeed :)

 

Thiago and I at Vila Madgalena, moments before the World Cup 2014 opening ceremony began

 

The opening match started at 4pm and people were already hitting the bars decked out in their green and yellow from noon.

 

 A random Brazil fan

In a bar at Vila Magdalena

 

Here is a video which shows the reaction of the Brazilians when their team scored a goal

Street party at Vila Magdalena after Brazil won the opening match against Croatia (3-1)

 

Cool graffiti at Vila Magdalena

Travelling to the FIFA World Cup 2014, Brazil

As mentioned in my previous blog post, I will be travelling to São Paulo for a quick vacation and to catch the opening match of the World Cup 2014.

I was honestly feeling so lazy about the whole thing just yesterday (it's a frigging 24-hour journey from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to São Paulo, Brazik) and plus - I HATE PACKING. One day I'm gonna be rich enough to not have to pack and just travel from one city to the next and buy everything I need when I arrived at my destination... Or hopefully in the near future, a bunch of smart people will invent a suitcase that can pack itself :D Haha.

Managed to get my lazy ass to prop open a suitcase and threw a bunch of random stuff in, which I think should be sufficient for my 7 days in São Paulo. 

I TOTALLY got lucky with the weather for this trip. It's winter in SP and got down to as low as 9 C last week. When I checked the weather for the entire week that I'll be in SP, I was pleasantly, pleasantly surprised:

Sunny with a highs of 33 C and lows of 20 C. The weather is perfecttttttttttt. Simply perfect! I already have plans to do the cyclofaixa and chill out at Ibirapuera Park tomorrow (Sunday).

A friend was surprised that is can get so warm in winter - São Paulo is like that. We get the occasional warm weeks during winter and sometimes we get the occasional chilly weeks during summer.

From the bits that I heard in the media and read on the local dailies, 'Folha de São Paulo', the city is one big mess. Well, São Paulo ALWAYS has been a mess, so I suppose nothing has changed much. The airports are not ready for the influx of tourist that is about to bombard the city, the stadiums are not ready, there are rumours that they have printed tickets for seats that do not exists and the São Paulo Metro (Subway) is on strike, yet again. Happy days.

I probably would't be surprised if I run into a couple of riots - and as a tourist myself this time round, I'll probably do what any tourist will do - TAKE LOTS OF PHOTOS! Hah! And try to stay out of trouble, because I want to go back to Kuala Lumpur alive.

My friend Emmanuel posted this photo with a really cute caption yesterday "Even the bread is World Cup ready".

I can't wait to be there and to soak up the atmosphere. This trip is so random and spontaneous but such a great idea :) 

It occurred to me that there are actually people that read my random ramblings. I'll be in São Paulo from 7 - 13 June. If there are other travellers out there who will be making trips here and need advice about anything, feel free to drop me an email about your questions/ concerns/ queries here: nadia@liquido.com.my. I will only have access to my emails in WiFi zones, and will respond once a day. 

Hiking up Trilha da Pedra da Gávea

Did I ever tell you guys that I absolutely LOVE Rio de Janeiro?

Ipanema beach on an easy Sunday morning

I must have told you about a million times already :)

The pic above and the pic below were taken on my very last trip to Rio de Janeiro, on the very last day in March 2013. I relocated back to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in June 2013.

Surprisingly, today's post isn't gonna be about beaches or hot Brazilian women clad in bikinis. (I can SO hear some of my guy friends groaning!)

Aside from the beaches that Rio is famous for, they also have some awesome hiking trails. My buddies and I did the 'Pedra da Gávea' trail on this very trip back in March 2013. Pedra da Gávea is one of the most popular hiking trails in Rio de Janeiro because this hill is located by the coast. Upon making your way to the top, you will be rewarded with stunning views of some of Rio's most beautiful beaches (Barra da Tijuca, São Conrado & Ipanema).

The picture below is of my boyfriend Thiago, standing at the foot of the hiking trail. Notice that he is still smiling because we had NO CLUE what we were getting ourselves into.

If you can see the board in the picture above, it states the following:
Altitude: 844m
Distance (to the top): 1670m
Hiking time: 2.30 hours (each way, btw)
Level: DIFFICULT (!!!)

Naturally, we completely dismissed the 'Level: Difficult' sign because we assumed that we were superheroes.

As we started our hike, we soon realized that we weren't exactly hiking our way to the top... we were pretty much climbing our way to the top. About 60% of the trail looks like something in this picture below.

After an hour of hiking, we were presented with our first clearing and view of the other hills.

That's me at the clearing wearing my favourite Liquido long workout top.

About half an hour later, you are rewarded with your first views of the gorgeous beaches of Barra da Tijuca.

It was a rather cloudy day, but at least we had some views... and thank god it wasn't raining either.
Faisal lived in Barra da Tijuca, so here's a pic of him showing us exactly where his apartment was located. LOL!

There is an apparent inscription carved into the rockface, which appears to be some sort of Semitic language. There are some theories, but no one really knows for sure the origin or the purpose of this inscription (below). 

After 2.5 hours of hiking, we reached the 'Carrasqueira'. I later learnt from Thiago that carrasqueira loosely meant 'execution point'. And it wasn't difficult to figure out why...

We had reached the steepest point of the trail, where we had to scale up these rocks to get to the peak. None of us knew that we had to bring ropes, so we had to climb those rocks without a safety rope. And if we slipped and fell, it could potentially spell death.

Thiago managed to take a good picture of Faisal and I standing at the foot of the carrasqueira. What you cannot see in this below photo were our ultimate 'what the f*ck' expressions.

What you CAN see in the next picture is me looking not too happy... and Faisal looking pretty excited.

After hiking for 3 hours, we didn't exactly want to turn back without reaching the top, so we bit the bullet and climbed.

Faisal was the first to pass the carrasqueira, and this photo was taken from his Iphone.

The video below shows a group of friends at the carrasqueira. It's 2 minutes but you don't need to watch the whole thing. The intent of this video is just to show you the extent of how dangerous this section is.

When we finally reached the top, we should have been rewarded with views such as these:

Instead, it was a cloudy day, so we were greeted with views like these:

I suppose we were all happy that we were still ALIVE after the carrasqueira experience and proud that we made it to the top, so the lack of views didn't damped our moods too much.

So in a nutshell, it was a satisfying climb, and one that I would certainly recommend. It took us about 7 hours to hike up and back down, which includes the one hour we spent at the top, just chilling. We all plan to do this again, next time on a good sunny day with clear skies, if the opportunity ever presents itself again in the near future :)

Brazilians of Japanese Descent

Pedro's in town!

Pedro is a colleague from the São Paulo, Brazil office and also a friend. Here is a picture of him at Batu Caves:

Some of you are probably scratching your heads and wondering... 'Where's the Brazilian? All I see is this chinese guy standing in the middle of the photo'. LOL!

Today's post is gonna be about Brazilian culture and history. Did you know that Brazil has the largest population of Japanese that are living outside Japan? The Brazilian Institute of Statistics recorded that there are 1.4 million Japanese living in Brazil in 2010! Fascinating, isn't it?

As I understand it, in the early 20th century, coffee was the main export product for Brazil. Brazilian farmers needed labor to work in the coffee plantations and in 1907, a treaty was signed between Brazil and Japan, permitting Japanese to migrate to Brazil.

The beginning of World War I in 1914 started a boom in Japanese migration to Brazil; such that between 1917 and 1940 over 164,000 Japanese came to Brazil, 75% of them going to São Paulo, where most of the coffee plantations were located.

If you like to learn more, do check out this web page on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Brazilian. This is really interesting stuff.

During my time in São Paulo, I've made friends with some very cool people who are Brazilian of Japanese descent. Here is a picture of Marcela (far right) and me, with Natalia.

 And here's us with Eduardo (far right).

Most of these young working adults are 3rd Generation Brazilian of Japanese descent. All of them are as Brazilian as can be and most of them can't speak Japanese. They love their Brazilian chopp, picanha, beaches and samba. They wait eagerly every year for Carnival, where they dance like nobody is watching and party like rock stars :)

The Japanese have now assimilated well into Brazil and hold some notable positions in Brazilian politics and in the business world. There are even some famous celebrities such as Sabrina Sato, a Brazilian comedian and tv personality.

She's half Japanese, 1/4 Swiss, 1/4 Lebanese and 100% Brazilian. And she is gorgeous!

Something that I've noticed but never mentioned on my blog before is that São Paulo is truly a melting pot of the world. The economy is booming and thus, has attracted people from all over. I've met people from as far as China & Korea to Lebanon & Iran, Mexico & Germany who are all living and working there. And there are so many inter-marriages going on that you can find some really exotic looking people there. Like Sabrina Sato.

Well, that's all for culture and history today. And if you want to know where you can find sexy Brazilian bikinis for sale, like the one that Sabrina Sato is wearing above, look no further than here: www.liquido.com.my

Have a great day, folks!

Reverse Retail Theraphy in Langkawi

This weekend I headed to Langkawi for some 'reverse retail theraphy'.

Instead of BUYING something from retail, my business partner and I sought out to SELL something to these retail stores.

More specifically, we visited every 5-star and 6-star resort in Langkawi. We headed to the gift store or boutique of these hotel lobbies, with some bikini samples to show, and discussed the possibility and their interest in carrying Liquido bikinis in their store.

We visited about 6 resorts. The resort with the most jaw dropping factor has got to be Four Seasons Langkawi, cuz the hotel was stunningly beautiful.

Anything I say or write will never do justice to how stunning the place way, so I will let the pictures do the talking.

The front entrance

The view as you enter

First Courtyard

The torches and coal will be lit up once darkness falls

Heading towards the reception

Front desk and check in

I feel like I'm in a mediterranean palace!

Once past the reception and check-in counter, you will reach the hotel grounds which (again) looks like part of an incredibly wealthy, mediterranean Sultan's palace.

Reception Area

Also part of the reception area

The gift store which will be a prefect place for Liquido Bikinis!

The hotel gardens just before the beach

View of the main building from the gardens

One of the many courtyards

Off to the beach we go!

Private dining for two

The picture above is interesting. You can make special arrangements to have a private dinner for 2 on the beach. The price per person is RM650++. For that price, you get a personal, private, full-service crew (Waiter, Chef & Assistant) and an extensive menu which includes lobster.

Below are the pictures of the breath takingly beautiful beach of the Four Seasons Langkawi, which faces the Andaman Sea.

Close to the spot of the private dinner for 2 is a private BBQ pit. This BBQ is part of the dinner for 2. After your dinner, you are ushered to the BBQ pit, where you will be served hot drinks and given marshmallows to cook, while you and your partner chat/ cuddle and enjoy your time together, facing the Andaman sea.

Private BBQ for two

It was quite impressive. Chua and I discussed if RM650++ per person was worth the experience of dinner on the beach with a full service crew and the exceptional menu. I came down to the conclusion that it probably was... Heck, if you could afford it, why not.

Below is a picture of me. I look drunk... probably drunk off the beauty of my surroundings!

Happy Nadz :)

We decided to just spend more time walking along the beach and soaking up our surroundings.

The sand and sea between my toes

Hotel dining

 We stumbled upon the adult pool area...

It had an infinity pool which faces the sea...

 So we decided to stay for a bit and watch the sunset..

One word. GORGEOUS!