Camarillo and Ventura

Last weekend was our first weekend at Pasadena Gateway Villas (our "permanent" home) so we decided to stay in on Saturday and enjoy the pool and jacuzzi. We bought Lucas some "swimming pampers" (the things they have here!) and he had a great time in the pool - I think he is going to enjoy swimming, he already does a pretty good dog paddle.

On Sunday we then went our most ambitious outing to date - a full 8 hours trip to Camarillo outlet mall and Ventura beach. After trying to live frugally on $50 a day for the last 3 weeks, we kind of went crazy and spent about $800 in one day - of which $600 were gifts and a suitcase to put them in. Our rationale for this was that everything we bought was so much cheaper than in KL, especially things like dinner sets and childrens clothing.

We're finding that goods are very competitively priced compared to Malaysia, as per the following list (admittedly most of these are considered "luxury goods" in Malaysia):

Item	LA price	KL price
Tropicana Pure Orange Juice 1.9L	$3	$5
Haagen Dasz Ice Cream 473ml	$2.50	$8
Local beer per can	$0.50	$1.20
Import beer per bottle	$1	$3
Villeroy&Boch 16 piece dinner set	$100	$300?
Toyota Camry 3L engine	$17K	$45K (2.4L engine)

Unfortunately, what happens is we end up spending more because we drink a lot more OJ and beer and eat a lot more ice cream compared to when we are in KL!

The flip side of the above is of course the high price of services here compared to KL, e.g. eating out at restaurants or getting a haircut is 3-4 times the cost in KL. So you will see that our hair is growing wild here...

Anyway, back to Camarillo - it seems there are people who actually fly from Europe and Asia just to come to Camarillo and stock up on reasonably priced branded goods, to the extent that they "save" more than their airfare and hotel costs. Spend to save! It was a very pleasant shopping experience and definitely a place to take our visitors (if we get any) to!



From Camarillo it was a short 20 minute drive to Ventura beach. The 3rd beach we've checked out and all three have such a different character - Santa Monica was a typical holiday beach which good clean family fun activities at the pier and upmarket hotels and restaurants, Venice was edgy and trendy with tattoo and piercing parlours and lots of street vendors, and Ventura beach was pretty deserted for a Sunday afternoon. This is a purist's beach, no shops and restaurants to distract from the sand and waves. We also went to the harbour which is very pretty and we went for our first "posh" dinner at a restaurant since arriving in LA - we had a lobster dinner at a seafood place by the harbour, and Lucas allowed us to enjoy it!