Brisbane (Australia Travelogue Part 2) - {Day 4: University of Queensland x Queen Street Farmers Market} & {Day 5: Jan Power's Farmers Market x Night Noodle Markets} & {Day 6: The Street Food Depot x Guzman Y Gomez} & {Day 7: Road Trip x Sunnybank x Sirromet Winery}

Compared to Part I, 

Part 2 would be a little dull because I spent most of it accompanying william to his classes #bestGFawardplz. 

On the last day of this post, we rented a car which marks the start of our road trip to a nearby winery as we were going to spend the last remaining days (in Part 3) exploring Gold Coast (1 hour drive via car from Brisbane) & the other scenic roads.

DAY 4

UQ is really big, and you can spot many students lying down or sleeping on the lawn. The grass on the ground in Australia is so clean and green there compared to Singapore. Which makes it a good place to take ootd for me hahaha.

"Can you not"

Brisbane Square in the morning,  it hosts different Queen Street Brisbane Markets weekly right in front of the Treasury Casino!

Brisbane markets bring country to city - farmers' produce and hot foods from all around Australia!

Days when we got sick of western food or dining out, we will head down to Coles/Woolsworth - big players in Australia's supermarket industry to buy some ingredients to whip up our dinner. Experts at cooking pasta now, especially carbonara.

Rdmly adding beef and other ingredients, accompanied by bottles of wine / moscato we got from BWG all dayyy

DAY 5

Willy brought this annoying puff to his school once again

Back at the same area - Brisbane Square, located on George Street at the top end of Queen Street Mall. 

The Jan Powers Farmers Market which is here Every Wednesday from 8am - 6pm.

Got some Spicy Knackwurst in a baguette topped with onions and mustard/bbq sauce. I had both.

A Falafel Pocket which tasted too healthy for me.

Headed to South Bank area later that night.

Night Noodle Market

As part of Good Food Month in Brisbane, the Night Noodle Market returns to South Bank with the popular restaurant street food stalls, bars and nightly entertainment. 

I was super privileged to be in Brisbane when the annual (random dates) famous asian hawker night market which showcases delicious new food offerings were in town that month! The vibes here were incredible under the stars. This random occupier of the South Bank Parklands were definitely worth the hype and crowd.

the queues here were rly long and unbelievable.

Hoy Pinoy which offers Filipino BBQ skewers

Bao Stop from Sydney offering some asian street treats like "Man Tou", Chinese buns with chinese fillings.

We ordered the Peking Duck Fries from Bao Stop. A unique creation but it would've tasted alot better if they were more generous in drenching our fries with the peking duck sauce & have given us more duck meat.

Finally tried the much raved about Raindrop Cake from Harajuku Gyoza, price was a little on the step side (cause australia) but it was quite worth it to at least try this watery-like textured jelly 'cake' served with condensed milk, kinako and crushed peanuts.

Okonomiyaki Soba

Last but not least, we managed to try the super famous Black Star Pastry from Sydney as well!

They were the first to create the world-famous Strawberry Watermelon Cake, do trust me on this because I've tried, I know whats the hype totally about!!!

This creation apparently gave their bakery instant fame. 

The cake is basically this super instagram worthy cake tastes like a Strawberry Shortcake, just 100x better because they added a jelly & strawberry layer on the top and a watermelon slice between the cake's layers!!! 

It might be one of the best cakes I've ever had.

Basically a good night market for foodies but because I'm asian and I grew up eating real asian delicacies, I felt that the desserts here were more impressive to me than the mains.

mandatory ootd with my bf's bape sweater as the view of south bank behind was great that night ^^

DAY 6

Another day after school & The Street Food Depot was the vendor of Brisbane Square that day!

Had this super good ice-cream from Yummi Fruit Ice-creamery thats worth mentioning. I saw the woman blending real fruits with ice-cream for my soft serve right in front of my eyes!

barefaced glutton~

Guzman Y Gomez 

A Mexican "fast food" chain found commonly all over Australia, we have it in Singapore as well but not as commonly found thus I didn't hear of this until we were in Australia. 

Prolly one of the places we repeatedly visited and my bf would often head there once as there's a branch near his apartment too!

The spiciest sauces and dips you can ever get or find in the western country.

My favourite go-to at GYG has got to be their Burrito Bowl with rice, a meat of your choice, cheese, black beans, taco chips and salsa.

Had spicy pulled pork (one of my bf's favourite meat choice) and I love the guacamole topping they serve. We would always top up our meals with extra guacamole! 

They also have this ongoing set meal promo there which includes 

- a bowl of chips (taco, comes with the guacamole dip)

-Burrito (we had spicy chicken) basically it is like the Burrito Bowl as the ingredients is similar but in wrapped form.

- and a canned drink of choice!

Yummyyyy we will always pour the super spicy sauce they provide in our food which goes super well but please be prepared to chuck down some water.

Went to Brisbane's renowned summit lookout - Mount Coot-tha Lookout later that night too to try catch some meteor shower, but I think the scenic view would have been better for us if we went there before sunset!

DAY 7

Finally - day 7 marks the start of our short road trip to Gold Coast. We explored the areas around the city which is more accessible to get to with a car for the day before driving down to gold coast on day 8!

Car Rental

We rented an auto car from Europcar from this website called Vroom Vroom Vroom.

I highly recommend this website because it compared all of the car rental company prices in Australia and shows you the best prices at the intending dates of booking and car pickup locations. 

The car rental companies in Australia includes: Avis, Budget, Europcar, Hertz and more.

People would usually choose to pickup their car straight from the airport and return there as well, but for us, we were already staying in town so we picked up our car from Europcar's outlet in Fortitude Valley.

We set the pick up time at 10 am and return time at 10 am after three full days, as I was going to return back to SG and William was going to send me back to Gold Coast Airport then return the car at Fortitude Alley so that he wouldn't have to take the long tedious train ride alone again LOL.

Cost

Forgot the exact cost but Australia has got to be the cheapest country for car rental!

The longer duration (amount of days) you rent the car, the cheaper the cost per day too! 

The car cost us around 70 AUD per day. 

The only con is that for car rentals in Australia, they will implement a surcharge per day for drivers under age 25 and William was 23 years old in 2016. 

Claiming him as the only driving driver for the car (cause I'm even younger lol), his surcharge was 16.50 AUD per day.

So 70 AUD + 16.50 AUD = 86.50 AUD 

(x3 days = 259.50 AUD /= 260 AUD)

Cost us around 130 AUD each for three days. 

Imagine if you have another three friends to spilt this?!

I recently came back from Hokkaido and our car cost us around 1.2k (SGD) for ten days. 120 SGD per day? okay la maybe that car more luxurious but still... LOL.

Anyway, buying a car might be more worth it since a car and the petrol in Australia is sooooo cheap hehe.

Finally he gets to driveeee

kinda excited about finally not taking public transport or walking around thus (major warning of neverending selfies!!!)

Drove to Sunnybank to have our lunch!!! 

Sunnybank is a suburb in Brisbane which is like an asian district similar to Chinatown in Singapore and in other countries!

Cha Kee

11/261 Warrigal Rd, Eight Mile Plains QLD 4113, Australia

Some of William's HK friends in aussie highly recommended this Hong Kong restaurant at Sunnybank so we had to try it haha hk people recommend hk food eh.

Hk Milk tea!!!

My cutiepie

I ordered this Sichuan Udon which is like udon noodles but in the sour and spicy sticky broth. I missed my asian noodle fix so much by day 7!!

Portions in Australia is always large but the ones at Cha Kee was extra large in size!!! Comparing my hand to my udon bowl.

William had their Seafood Fried Rice in XO sauce which was good as well!

I'm rly a glutton because my bf says I eat as much as him and he eats ALOT.

Glutton in action.

Enroute to Sirromet Winery, a family owned winery which takes a 30 -4 0 min drive from Brisbane City.

Singing songs and disturbing Bf's peaceful drive in the car

Sirromet Wines

850-938 Mount Cotton Rd, Mount Cotton QLD 4165, Australia

View from this high level lookout point the stairs lead us to

Decided to head over to Tuscan Terrace in Sirromet Wines to chill and have some wine and desserts before our wine tour started!

A cuppa white wine & ordered a Meringue - with fresh berries, banana, passionfruit, chantilly cream and shaved white chocolate toppings.

view and weather was refreshing.

We booked their Tour and Tasting package at 20 AUD each on their website.

http://www.sirromet.com/tour-tasting-bookings/w1/i1003963/

I highly recommend you guys to sign up prior to making your bookings because we paid then sign up (the lazy way) then we received a newsletter in the email which gave us a one-for-one tour promo code means we could have saved 20 bucks LOL.

Lesson learnt for me before I make any online purchases.

Overall, the tour was quite worth it if you enjoy listening to how wine was made, and there was a tasting session too.

I think I liked the tasting part the best, we got to try a huge variety of wines brewed by Sirromet Winery from the affordable to the more costly ones. And some were really good, haha the more expensive range were really one of the better and smoothest wine I ever had. Prices indeed makes a difference!

Drove to some rural roadsides near the winery to take more pictures ^^

hahaha mandatory road trip + "your car" wefies

Love the dress I was wearing~

After the winery, we randomly googled for places nearby to catch the sunset at as Aussie really have many of these different kinds of chill out and lookout spots.

Wellington Point

2A Main Rd, Wellington Point QLD 4160, Australia

Wellington Point is a great hidden spot to catch the sunset or watch the views across the bay whilst walking along the bridge. It is a 20 km drive from Brisbane!

The natural sunset coloured skies is always so beautiful over there in Aussie!

Back at Eat Street Markets the second time as promised in the previous post, (my fav market in Brisbane) since it was so easily accessible via car and they had free parking.

William's favourite BBQ beef rib steak from My Latin Kitchen he had to order them again.

Phunky Dory's fried seafood which tasted normal and paying monies to get dipping sauces feels like a trap.

Best dessert at Eat Street has got to be from The Chocolate Komberry, overheard heard people talking about how good it's cronut/conut were while walking towards the direction of Eat Street Market too hahaha.

Salted Caramel x Chocolate Soft Serve Cronut Cone (12 AUD)

Imagine a croissant-donut pastry as your cone topped with soft serve and chocolate sauce...... best thing ever?!??! I'm guessing it will be brought to Singapore in no time.

Ending this post with a apt picture of us with the beautiful backdrop found at Eat Street. 

Literally describes our relationship in one word haahahaha

Throwback to some photos William took of me when he forced me out of the casino after I lost some money and he refuse to let me recoup back my losses HAHAHAHA #grumpyAF