meanwhile..

People seem to be a bit down about the slosh finally hitting town after a gruelling long winter. Some hope is also in the air as the first bicyclers are out and about. I'll be putting together a helsinki-guide of my favorite streets during the next couple of months, so stay tuned if you're planning to visit this coming summer. I'll leave you with some pics of a Diesel Be Stupid video shoot I had a lot of fun doing with great people!

belly happy :)

I visited Hong Kong first time ever last november and became infatuated instantly. Coming back this january to confirm my love and yes, I have a new favorite among many others!

The friendly people, great shopping, breathtaking sceneries both in town and up the hills make you feel instantly at home but the most pleasing thing about this new acquaintance was that good food was everywhere!

We stumbled upon restaurants where we'd be the only westeners among 300 locals, ordering whatever smelled and looked good. Finding hip lunchtime hangouts to share with the stylish saturday shoppers and indulged in long dinners in the most comfortable restaurants I've ever visited.

Since this was a holiday and I do enjoy the long wine and dine way without counting the calories I'll let you in on my favorite way of ending the day here.

You need to work up an appetite for what's coming so i'd recommend a brisk day with activities. We decided to do what every tourist in Hong Kong should do and went to see the Tin Tan buddha. It's a very touristy- though excellently run- industry around it with the ngong ping 360 in front. One can also take a hike up the hill to the monastery and buddha but we spent some dollars to get us up with the cable car -it's still a fair walk from the end station to the statue.

In my opinion it was great. The view was beautiful and the statue itself very mesmerizing, go see for yourself.

A lively afternoon of shopping and wondering around hong kong island and kowloon side beats the rest of the energy out of your body so it's time to feast!

We started the night with drinks and nibbles at Tivo, a cozy and warm bar-restaurant run by an international aqua-group. i find it great to come across a place that belongs to a restaurant group and yet doesn't seem like it at all. Being dispirited by the poor quality of Helsinki's chain restaurants I might be overly excited by this one, but nevertheless I liked it. The cocktails were well made, delicious and served by friendly staff. The barsnacks fresh and tasty and by the looks of the plates at next table the dinner menu is also worth a taste.

But we dragged ourselves away from the cool drinks and navigated just few blocks down to Bistecca, an italian-style steakhouse with lots of great beef. The decor is rustic buthershop with taste and I must say lots of heavy food is better enjoyed seated on sturdy furniture without having to worry if something's gonna tip over.

The service was very attentive and the open kitchen kept customers entertained while savoring the delicious courses. We had ricotta meatballs, linguini with clams, steak, rosemary potatoes, gorgonzola salad and mouthwatering homemade sorbet with fresh cookies. Along with a bottle of wine, perrier, coffees and limoncello the bill was just a bit over 200€ and worth every penny!

The restaurant doesn't seem to have a website of it's own but you can see the menu here :)

meats on display at Bistecca

underwater malapascua

Malapascua is famous for its diving and a load of people -me incuded- are here for lots if it.

You can find reputable diveshops lined next to each other on the beach offering courses for all levels. We did quite a bit of research among them before settling with the malapascua beach divers. They have a few boats with great crew and inhouse divemaster Erwin along with his old classmate Felix are sure to find you all the best spots and the most to see. They were both born on the island and having previously worked as boat crew and now already years as divemasters know these waters inside out.

I felt comfortable and safe diving with them and they had great stories to tell afterwards about the spots visited.

Tresher sharks are the celebrities of the island's divesites and one can spot them almost on every dive made near to their cleaning station, about 30 minutes boatride from the beach. Most of the dives are made dropping out to the big blue along a bouy-line, working your way around the divesite and coming back the same way. Some of the more shallow sites you can dive in no particulardirection and get the boat to pick you up when you surface.

For getting most out of diving here, I recommend completing the Advanced Open Water course either in advance or on the island because the most interesting sites are well below the OWD-licensed 18 meters. You also need some experience in entering the sites in between tides, when the currents can be quite strong. I really enjoyed some of the rougher rides when you flap like a flag on the line and then it's calm and beautiful down below.

There are great sites around the island, my favourites are Bantique with its seahorses and Deep Rock where schools of batfish and sometimes squids keep you company on the safety stop on the line. We also made daytrips to Gato island, about a 70 minute ride from malapascua with reefsharks sleeping under overhangs and a nice swim-through on the east side of it.

For a bit of safe extra excitement try out the sunset dive -a shallow dive just a bit off the beach where you can see mandarin fishes mating and so many seahorses you can't count. I'm also a big nudibranch fan and saw a huge variety in size, shape and color around this site.

Calaggaman island a bit further (about 2 hours by boat) is a paradise of its own. A corgeous atoll (someone with the correct technical term may correct me..) protruding from the sea with a breath-taking beach and amazing diving. Calaggaman is one of the trips i'd recommend to everyone. The corals start shallow enough for snorkelers to enjoy them as well and the beach is safe for the little ones of the family to have a great time too. You can pre-order a beach barbeque lunch prepared during your first dive so you come up to have some delicious fish or anything else, spend your surface interwall exploring the island and hop back to water. The coral garden on top of the atoll starts at about 4-5 meters and on the edge droppes to a straight wall going down to apparently a few hundred meters so divers with any level of experience can enjoy it all the same.

I'm sure the diving in Malapascua is nothing like it used to be 10 years ago, and still the bangs of dynamite fishing interrupt your dive from time to time. I just hope the local government would realise the importance of preservance before it's way too late.

I have recently learned that the owners of beach divers have decided to let the divemasters Felix and Erwin to go and diveshop manager Gregory Maciejowski has resigned due to professional disputes. In future references i recommend googling their names to see where they work and Greg said he's looking into putting up his own shop. :)

Pahuway!

If lying in the sun, taking strolls around the island and feeding yourself well on regular

interwalls isn't relaxing enough try out the malapascuan speciality massage. The Malapascuan massage lady assosiation consists of 25 self-employed women who've trained in massage and practise on thebeach or come to your habitat. the full body swedish-style massage takes just a bit more than an hour and gets you relaxed from head to toe.

An added bonus is the sand -that on Malapascua beach is
so fine it gets everywhere- in between your skin and the lady's hands so you get a gentle all-body
scrub for the same price and if you prefer to smell delicious for the following day get the
coconut oil instead of unscented baby-oil (my boyfriend said i smelled of fresh waffles, not necessarily bad..) My prescription would be 2-3 times a week, at the sunset before dinner. Wash all the activities ofthe day away, get your sunburned skin soothed and wake up an hour later as a new you.
And if that isn't pampering enough, get one of the manicure ladies to join. She'll co-work with
your masseure and voila -manirure and pedicure done at the same time! Just remember to pick the color of the nailpolish before dozing off :)




At the moment the going rate for both services seemed to
linger around 300 pesos each. I got the massage and pedicure for 450p total, but i believe in the
heat of the high season the prices could be 50p or so more.
Anyway, a great massage, nails done, bodyscrub and a relaxed holiday mood for less than 10 euros is more than worth the money. The women are also a fun bunch to hang out with, they taught me to play cards and some words of cebuano. Talking about families and life in general, meeting the kidsand sometimes the husbands. I talked to some of the tourists also about how great this system is. To my surprise someseemed to feel embarrased to get a treatment and felt that they're demeaning the women by making them work.
People! these are professionals, trained in their skills and want to make money of it. They work for themselves,keep the money they make and are independent women with good jobs. The best you can do is consumethe services provided and enjoy while at it.
Pahuway-just relax!

Malapascuan style

Malapascua, the island of beautiful beaches and great diving. All that is true but having traveled quite extensively in asia, I must describe Malapascua as the island of warmth -both in temperature and in peoples' behavior.

I met a couple who said it hasn't changed a lot in 10 years, which is a true miracle during todays tourist industry that has turned places like Koh Samui, Phuket and Bali into something quite different from a decade ago.
that is not to say that the local teenagers don't entertain the quirks of todays fashion and global music scene but the feeling all around is still true Malapascuan.



One can find all the necessities in life on the island. There's a bakery, clothes shops, convenience stores, lodging for all budgets and good restaurants and diveshops all over. The only thing lacking is medical services alltogether so stock up on everything you might need in that area. I usually travel with at least some basic painkillers and antibiotics and already a pack of penisilin has saved us a day-long trip to Cebu.


It's also fun and interesting getting to know the people. Everyone is generally friendly and don't seem to mind sharing a few moments answering questions. The kids I spent some time with during a celebratory lunch among neighbours are eager to learn about everything and already know a good deal - the education system here is great and at least the 12-yr olds seem to know a lot more about life than I did at that age.


More info coming up soon about this lovely place, so start plannig your trip!

Yummy Mums..

New giveaway glossy-paper Mums was released in Finland yesterday night.

The swedish magazine continues a pathway laid by Vice putting a new exciting spin to it.

Launch party in Helsinki took place in the Diesel store in the heart of the city. The party crowd was entertained by a quirky musical act and bondage mermaids that were cruising the area tied up in various ways were a huge hit.

Chief editor Petter Mollenberg and fashion editor Martin Bergström seemed to enjoy the night meeting helsinki fashion-goers and sipping away at the launch and the afterparty held at Siltanen restaurant whose restaurant manager Richard McCormick was spinning the records at the party.

It's great to see new things being put together by enthusiastic people and although swedish isn't my mother tongue the articles are an easy read and it's never a bad thing to brush up :)

como te llamas?

Finally a new, exciting bar emerged in Helsinki city center. It has been long awaited since the Kallio area has admittedly taken over as the hippest place to be in town. Lots of great places there, but it's lovely to have somewhere in between home and work where the atmosphere folds you in the warmth again.

Llama Bar is a pleasant surprise. A cluster of of furniture and decor creates a bazaar feeling yet leaves space for activity around the small premises. They'll be serving lunch starting next week but already you can find sorts of little eatables.

A bar serving snails cooked in herbs as a snack can't have the wrong idea what this town needs. Only time will tell wether it's going to be the new favorite of everyone or claim its place in the row of punavuori's classics.