Up early in Phoenix, Arizona, for a 380-mile drive to Yoma Myanmar-Thai Restaurant in Monterey Park, California. Our first stop in California was just across the street at Shwe Minthamee, where we picked up some desperately needed Burmese ingredients for making salads that we fell in love with back when Little Rangoon was open in Scottsdale. Now well stocked, it was time for lunch. First up, we split a Lahpet Thoke. Laphet is the most famous salad ingredient in Burma (now Myanmar); it is pickled (fermented) green tea leaves. When these tea leaves are mixed with shredded cabbage, tomato, egg, and a mix of crunchy bits – including peanuts, roasted garlic, sesame seeds, and roasted yellow peas, we have the perfect salad – in our book. We had a couple of other items, but it was the salad that made our drive worthwhile.

For dessert, we visited Beard Papa’s, obviously very popular with L.A.’s Asian population. Beard Papa’s serves up “Fresh’N Natural Cream Puffs,” claimed to be the world’s best.

Next stop was Little Tokyo in downtown Los Angeles. This was our first goofing-off mini-vacation this year, as I had to cancel any pleasure trips in order to focus on writing my book. The first shop, and really the only stop we were interested in, was the bookstore upstairs in this photo. It is called Kinokuniya, and rarely do we leave this place without spending a quick $100.

Caroline spent a good hour looking through fibercraft books in Japanese – it is a Japanese bookstore, after all. Afterward, we took our time to walk around Little Tokyo.

Coming out of Phoenix with our drab, conformist, and generic urban areas, it is always nice to visit a vibrant city center. We are looking at one of the corners of Little Tokyo; also in front of us is the L.A. City Hall in the distant background. A mile north is Chinatown, and adjacent to that is the Old Barrio of L.A. – where Los Angeles got its start. A few miles west is Korea Town, Little Saigon is over in Orange County, Little India is in Artesia, and Thai Town is over near Hollywood. Throughout the greater Los Angeles area, funky enclaves of culture thrive and give Caroline and me wonderful choices to choose from for entertainment and food compared to strip malls and drug stores on every corner out in the desert we live in. If you are wondering why I can complain about Phoenix while extolling L.A., we would live here in the City of Angels, except the cost of living would probably keep us as economic slaves to trying to maintain a small apartment.

Time to head west and check into our motel, one of our favorite motels anywhere – The Wilshire Motel. This tiny spot on Wilshire Boulevard on the way to Santa Monica is a cluster of cozy and clean bungalows just a few miles from the beach. The lady who operates the Wilshire always remembers us, even if it has been a couple of years between visits, although I don’t think we’ve ever gone that long between returns.

With our lodging taken care of, we raced to the ocean and headed south through Venice to Marina Del Rey for a sunset walk on the beach. It was almost too late when we arrived as the sun had just dipped below the horizon, but we still had a short while to walk in the water and enjoy the late-day golden glow of the setting sun.

Heading back towards our motel and about a mile roughly east is another Los Angeles favorite – Ramenya. Since our first visit when the line was outside the door, this small ramen shop has since gotten some serious competition, but we are still loyal and enjoy the variety of ramen on offer.

This somewhat unappetizing view (I will not claim to be an exceptional or even mediocre food photographer) is a bowl of seaweed and tofu ramen. I opted for the spicy curry ramen. This ended our perfect day in Los Angeles after waking up at 5:00 in the morning over in Phoenix. It’s amazing what one can do with a little effort to get out and have some fun.