FLIP + CHING

Michael Cheung’s First US Open

Posted on May 11, 2026 by Ching under Pickleball, Travel.

On Friday, April 17, we spent most of the day at the Franklin US Open tournament until it was time to pick our friend Michael Cheung up from the airport. Brian took the opportunity to get some stretching done at the Healix booth.

After picking up Michael from the airport and a quick check in (he stayed at the same hotel that we were staying at), the three of us went for early supper at LowBrow. We first discovered this pizza place in 2022, and returned in 2023 with mom and dad. This is our third visit here. We tried another pizza place earlier in the week but LowBrow is definitely our favorite.

They added this giant chair out front for photo ops which wasn’t there three years ago. Naturally, I had to get a pic of Michael in it.

Here are some pictures of our food.

Michael decided to order the wings, on top of getting pizza. They were fantastic but we had entirely too much food.

Michael got the Cortez the Killer, while Brian and I split the Meatfest. The wings made us full, though. At the end of the evening, we still had a whole pizza to take home between the two different pizzas.

BTW, I forgot to mention that, because Michael is a Globalist with Hyatt Rewards, they practically rolled out the red carpet for him. When we first checked in earlier in the week, this lady in front of us was asking for an upgrade and they flat out told her no. When Michael checked in, he got upgraded to a suite (despite having booked the same room as Brian and I using points) without even asking. Follow this link for a tour of his fancy room if you want to see it. They also gave him a couple bottles of water, coupons to the restaurant, and all sorts of free goodies. However, the best perk of all and the one that matters most is the free parking. Brian and I had to pay $29 per day for self-parking and Globalists like Michael get it for free. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let us transfer the car over to Michael for the last couple of days so we had to pay $29 for every single day of our stay (including our departure day, which was kind of a rip off but Brian and I just accepted our fate without complaint).

The next day, we went to the tournament early so Michael could check out vendor village before we played.

We also got to take in some games at the Zing Zang Championship Court. PRO TIP: It’s free to get in to Zing Zang in the mornings, if you want to save some money. Just get there early and stay there.

We didn’t medal but I got a pic of Michael with the podium backdrop, which had to be rebranded this year because of the change in title sponsor.

Michael and I played in our matching Lunar shirts. Thank you to Matt Nola for mine. He gave it to me when I bought my Lunar Laban paddle.

Click here for highlights from our last day at the Franklin US Open. Hands down my favorite part of our last day was getting to be part of the iconic US Open flag ceremony. We had to wait in line a long time before the flag ceremony but it was worth it. Would totally do it again next year.

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Oakes Farms – Seed to Table

Posted on May 11, 2026 by Ching under Food and Drink, Travel.

I never thought going to a supermarket would be one of our trip highlights, yet here we are. Our friend Laurie suggested we check out the Oakes Farms Seed to Table market at the suggestion of a couple of other friends of ours so we decided to go there for dinner one evening.

This was, hands down, the wildest supermarket experience I’d ever had. I don’t even know where to begin y’all. I guess let’s just start with the parking lot. We went on a Wednesday night and there was absolutely no parking. This place was packed like Armageddon was coming and everyone was stocking up for an apocalypse, except they brought their fancy Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and Bentleys — to the grocery store. Laurie told us that this was apparently THE grocery store for single ladies to hang out and meet rich dudes. So the meat section is quite literally a “meat market” – LOL.

The inside reminds me of Gucci Dillons (for the unfamiliar, Gucci Dillons is what we call the Dillons Marketplace at Central and Rock – it is the fanciest Dillons in Wichita – probably fancier than Whole Foods, even) but on steroids. I don’t even know how to describe it. They had multiple restaurants INSIDE the grocery store and they had a live band playing music — on a Wednesday night. Unique is an understatement. It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve never had a supermarket experience quite like this one.

We explored the store for a bit to take it all in. Obviously, we had to, before settling for having dinner at one of the restaurants on the upper level.

It was so busy that night, we barely got a table.

Here are some pics of our food.

The food was sooo good. I would totally return on our next trip to Naples. Also, I forgot to mention that the store also had multiple bars scattered throughout like this one. This place is something else entirely.

If you’ve been to Oakes Farms Seed to Table Market before, let us know about your experience in the comments.

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Naples Dinners

Posted on May 8, 2026 by Ching under Food and Drink.

First of all, let me preface this post by saying Naples is a pretty bougie area where cheap dinners are hard to come by. After spending over $100 on our dinner at K-Rico, we needed to find a way to eat more cheaply because spending $100 every single day for dinner was not going to be sustainable. Since our Go Cats on the Water tour guide JT lives in Naples, we asked him where do the locals eat because everything around us was just too darn expensive. JT explained the further you go East, the more reasonable prices get. The more you go West, the more expensive things get. This makes sense. West is kind of the water side. Everything on the water is expensive. East is more inland.

This led Brian and I to Mel’s Diner for dinner one night. This was probably the cheapest meal we had of the entire trip but the food was decent. Actually, Brian said his onion rings were really good.

I took a page from Brian’s playbook and got the chicken tendies.

Dinner was good overall but it was a little creepy in that everyone in there was old. It seemed like their target demographic was Florida retirees and they absolutely nailed it. I joked to Brian that he fit right in. LOL.

The next night, we went back on the tourist trail, and walked to Pinchers at Tin City. We actually ate here with some friends a few years ago and enjoyed it so we didn’t mind going back.

It’s not cheap by any means but they do have the BOGO happy hour drink specials to make up for it.

Brian took advantage of the BOGO drinks.

I had a pina colada which was not part of the BOGO deal, unfortunately.

After perusing the menu, Brian decided to order his usual chicken tendies.

I got some shrimp tacos.

We had a lovely dinner over all and enjoyed walking around and checking out the Tin City shops, after which we walked back to our hotel.

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Our Go Cats on the Water Boat Tour

Posted on May 7, 2026 by Ching under Travel.

I mentioned JT and Go Cats on the Water in the previous blog so I thought I would talk about that adventure now. We were walking around our hotel on Sunday morning when we came across JT who was prepping these two-person catamarans for a tour. He asked if we were part of his group that morning and we told him no but were very curious about it. He gave us some info, along with their brochure. It seemed like a fun thing to do so Brian and I booked an excursion for Tuesday.

I actually found this same tour on Trip Advisor and Viator but the tour was going for around $180 per person. When I went to the website that JT told us (which was also listed on the brochure), they had a different booking platform that listed the same tour we wanted for only $155. I think I also found a $10 off coupon so our excursion only came out to $145 per person before taxes and fees. Even with the $50 gratuity, we were still well under the Trip Advisor/Viator price. I was really proud of myself for that. Anyway, that’s the first tip I’m going to share about this – try booking directly through the tour operator’s website (rather than using a third party like Trip Advisor or Viator) because you’ll probably get a better deal since you’re avoiding middleman fees.

Our excursion that morning was so much fun. Not only was JT he friendly and accommodating, but he also took the time to stop at several spots to tell us about the area, animals, etc. He was very informative. While we didn’t get to see any manatees, we did find some dolphins which we followed around for a bit. It was amazing! One of the best parts about our excursion was that it was only Brian and I booked that day so we got one-on-one attention from our tour guide. I feel like if there’s a line of catamarans, it’s hard for the guide to spend time with every single person. This leads me to my second tip – booking on a weekday is probably better because it’s going to be less busy than a weekend. You could get lucky like we did and turn a group tour into a personal tour without the extra up-charge.

Here are some of my favorite pics from the excursion:

Brian did a great job of following JT through all the twists and turns as we were going through the mangroves.

We stopped at a private island and explored for a bit.

It was here where we encountered another couple who arrived at the island via jet ski but their jet ski was stuck so they were having troubles trying to leave. Brian was a good Samaritan and help push the jet ski into the water so they could take off.

This is us cruising past our hotel at the tail end of our adventure.

Hands down, this was probably our favorite part of our trip to Naples this year. We really enjoyed having some down time to explore and be tourists instead of spending all of our time at the tournament (which we did quite a bit of as well). I’m looking forward to returning to Naples again next year and checking off some more items from our list.

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Hyatt House – Naples

Posted on May 6, 2026 by Ching under Travel.

We really enjoyed our stay at Hyatt House last month. It’s a much better (1,000 percent) than the La Quinta that we stayed at down the street from it when we were at the US Open four years ago. We were grateful to have enough points to cover our hotel stay because this place isn’t cheap. It’s around $250 a night, before taxes and fees. Even so, our stay wasn’t completely free. We had to pay $29 per day for parking. After eating dinner at the onsite restaurant one night and our parking fees, we got out of there paying a little over $300, which I thought was pretty good. It cost way less than our stay at La Quinta and that place was terrible.

Here’s the location of the La Quinta that we stayed at in 2022 relative to Hyatt House. They’re literally down the street from one another. There’s also a Holiday Inn Express next to the La Quinta, which also probably would have been better. The entire time we were at the La Quinta we were wishing we were at either Hyatt House or Naples Bay — or literally at any of the other hotels nearby. It’s soo freakin’ expensive to stay there, though, specially in April and specifically during the month of the US Open.

Brian, who is bougie as bougie can be, hated the La Quinta and practically banned me from choosing a hotel on my own from then on. But, since we were staying for like 8 or 9 days, I had to find a reasonably priced hotel. We really would have been better off staying at an AirBnB but Brian was super anti-AirBnBs back then. So a cheap hotel was my only option. I remember being proud of myself for finding a hotel that was around $85 a night (after staying there, we now know why). Even so, it was only that price because I booked it almost a year in advance. I looked at the price of the hotel per night during the week of our stay and they wanted almost $200 per night. It would have really chaffed by ass to pay that much for such a crappy room/hotel because it hurt my heart to even pay $85. Friends, it was not great. We vowed never to stay there again.

The following year in 2023, Brian and I got a 2 bedroom and 2 bath AirBnB near East Naples Community Park. It was actually really nice. We split the cost with mom and dad so it ended up coming out to be about the same as the La Quinta but the accommodations were way better.

Brian still prefers hotels to AirBnBs though, so for our most recent trip last month, we were back to staying in a hotel. We chose a much better one this time and we used credit card points to help cover the cost of our stay, which kept our lodging expense more manageable.

The pool at Hyatt House was way nice than the one at La Quinta and the view was so much better. We were next to the marina and, while our room only had a street view, at least we could enjoy views of the bay when hanging out at the common spaces of our hotel. There was no view whatsoever at the La Quinta.

There was also a boardwalk on the back of the hotel which led to the marina next door. We really enjoyed walking around the property.

The hotel breakfast (included) was also decent. So we saved a bit by eating breakfast at the hotel each morning (except on departure day because we had to be at the airport super early).

Latitude 26, the onsite restaurant, was not cheap but it was convenient. We ate there one night when we didn’t feel like walking or driving to dinner. They also have live music on some nights which was quite nice.

Here are some pics of our dinner.

I had crab cakes, which were fantastic (some of the better ones I’ve had – definitely way better than any I’ve had in Wichita), and Brian had a flatbread pizza.

Here’s a pic of Brian at dinner.

The other thing we liked about our hotel is that it’s the home base for Go Cats on the Water in Naples. We found this out while walking around one morning. We ended up booking a tour, which was amazing and definitely a highlight of this trip. More on that next time. Bottom line – we really enjoyed our stay at Hyatt House, even if we didn’t get VIP treatment like our friend Michael Cheung. More on that next time as well.