Beauty Review: Chanel Mousse Exfoliante Pureté

So all my Thailand pictures have escaped my computer... when I get them back, I'll update with the rest of the pics from my spring break. Until then, here's a beauty review.

During my travels in Thailand, I definitely did a little shopping in the duty free store. Bangkok's duty free is pretty nice with a wide selection of cosmetics and skincare. I think they have a lot of great fashion brands as well.

I bought this Chanel Mousse Exfoliante Pureté, which is a foaming cleanser designed to clean pore, give a healthy glow and control oils for combination-to-oily skin.

$45 at Chanel.com

Original price is $45, but I bought for around $40 at the Bangkok airport. The price is reasonable because it's a good-sized bottle and you only need a pea-size amount each time so it will last you awhile. It's perfect for my skin because it doesn't dry out the normal areas of the skin, yet it still rids of the oil on my oily areas, specifically my T-zone. It's gentle enough to use both morning and night. I use it religiously, twice a day, and it doesn't dry out your skin at all. 

Like I said earlier, you only need a pea-sized amount because it foams up. After you use this, your face feels so refreshed and literally it is squeaky clean. 

It's a great cleanser, but if you're looking for something with drastic benefits, this isn't it. My skin does have a healthier glow and feels overall much cleaner, but it didn't do drastically improve my hormonal blemishes. I did have some kind of a blemish-like thing on my nose that was in the process of becoming a scar, and this cleanser helped get rid of it completely. The cleanser also helped with the blackheads on my nose

Rating: 4.5/5

It's a great product, but I will only give a 5 to a product that can pretty much be considered magical. 

I may repurchase this again when I run out, or I might try the other Chanel cleansers.

Side note: I'm thinking about starting a website of reviews of all restaurants, shopping, sightseeing, and nightlife of Shanghai -- directed towards young people like me, especially fashionistas who read this blog. I was thinking about doing it on blogger, but realized that blogger cannot be access in China without a VPN, so I'll open a website instead. Look forward to this sometime this summer!

Thailand travel diary: day 3

Day 3 of Thailand was packed. We went on a organized safari tour and explored all the sights of Ko Samui.

Our first stop was Grandmother & Grandfather Rocks. These rocks are shaped like female and male genitalia and apparently are the only rocks in the world shaped like this. I really don't know how these rocks became shaped this way, but it was interesting to see.

 

Then we saw some monkeys in coconut trees, a temple, and went to an elephant show. These elephants did tricks, played soccer, and ate bananas from our hands!

We then saw the famous Big Buddha. It's literally HUGE! It was raining that day and you must take off your shoes to go up the steps so my feet got wet and gross =(

After lunch at the top of a mountain, we headed home and saw a nice view on the way down. 

As Shanghai is winding down, I'm realizing I still need to visit a lot of places! Finally visited Taikang Lu yesterday. It's a very nice area with tons of local stores, great cafes, and art. It's quite a hipster-ish place, but anyone can enjoy it. I also visited the expo last week so I will give an update about that later!

Thailand travel diary: days 1 & 2

Hello! It's been awhile huh? I'm finally back from my spring break Thailand trip. To update you all about my vacation, the next several posts will be a travel diary about what I've done in Thailand with pictures to share (:

Day 1
Not having slept a bit the night before, I was knocked out for the entire plane ride from Shanghai to Bangkok. Originally we had about an hour layover time before our next flight from Bangkok to Ko Samui, but our plane arrived late so we only had about 30 minutes. A short Thailand travel agent man greeted us at the gate and we rushed through immigration and check-in and barely made our next flight. The flight to Ko Samui was less than an hour. When we arrived, the first thing that surprised me was the airport. Ko Samui does not have an ordinary airport. It looks more like a large tropical shack, which I thought was so cute!

Ko Samui Airport

The night started badly as I lost my debit card at the airport and our luggage was delayed. =(

Thankfully our hostel was only a short ride away. My expectations for the hostel were low, but it was quite nice. Although there are no fancy decorations, room service, or comfortable amenities, it was very clean. The guesthouse managers were super super nice. The husband was an American while the wife was Thai. They helped us book tours, told us the best places to eat, told us how not to get ripped off, etc etc. They were so helpful! 

We were too tired to explore the nightlife so we just walked around on the Chaweng Beach street and ate at a nice Italian restaurant called rice. The food was good, except the weather was so hot! The restaurant was open-styled so the heat made the dinner a bit less enjoyable. Speaking of weather, it took a bit while to get used to the humid air with temperatures reaching almost 100 degrees fahrenheit. 

The rest of the night consisted of just initial exploring as we were too tired to do anything that required energy. 

Day 2

Excited for our first full day in Thailand, we started the day by eating lunch at Chaba resort's restaurant. The great thing about most of the restaurants on Chaweng Beach street is that they are all beach-front. So we ate Thai food while enjoying the beautiful view of the beach. 

Chaweng Beach - it's much nicer on a brighter day

Afterwards, we got a Thai massage, also right on the beach. The thing about Thai massages are that they really do stretch you out! Depending on the person, you will be twisted and stretched out like you've never been before. They're also only less than $10USD. After the massage, we discovered this great place called Ark Bar, where they have tons of wooden beach chairs on the sand so you can enjoy the beach while eating, drinking, and smoking hookah. 

Ark Bar on Chaweng Beach

We spent several hours at Ark Bar, reading books, drinking and eating. When it got dark, we decided to walk on the Chaweng Beach street and stopped at Mambo bar for a snack and happy hour. That night, we went out to Green Mango club, one of the supposedly best clubs in the area. It's full of tourists of course, but I liked that it was quite big and the top is open so there is no ceiling. Clubs/bars in Samui offer drinks in buckets for about $12USD. A bucket sounds huge, but it's actually smaller than I originally thought. Imagine a child's sand bucket filled with alcohol. It's still a good amount though, although ours was quite weak. 

That's it for the first two days of Thailand! Keep reading to see how the rest of my spring break was! :)