VIII
And Happy Chinese New Year, too!
And Happy Chinese New Year, too!
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(0)Following on from a meme featuring on this site and this site, here’s a list of cities and towns I’ve passed through over the last year. Unfortunately, the remainder of 2006 will be significantly less itinerant.
Beijing, China*
Harbin, China
Singapore*
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia*
Genting Highlands, Malaysia†
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Luang Prabang, Laos
Vientiane, Laos
Hanoi, Vietnam
Halong Bay, Vietnam
Hué, Vietnam
Hoi An, Vietnam
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Phnom Penh, Vietnam
Siem Reap, Vietnam
Bangkok, Thailand
Dubai, UAE
Vienna, Austria†
Prague, Czech Republic
Bratislava, Slovakia
Budapest, Hungary
Sighisoara, Romania
Bucharest, Romania
Sofia, Bulgaria*
Athens, Greece
Mykonos, Greece
Thessalonica, Greece†
Washington, DC
New York, NY
Boston, MA
Cambridge, MA†
Montréal, Canada
Québec City, Canada
Toronto, Canada
Niagara Falls, Canada†
Chicago, IL
San Francisco, CA*
Las Vegas, NV*
Grand Canyon, AZ
Vancouver, Canada*
Whistler, Canada
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Brussels, Belgium
Venice, Italy
Florence, Italy
Pisa, Italy†
Rome, Italy
Naples, Italy†
Pompei, Italy†
Hong Kong, China
Macau, China†
Shenzhen, China†
All places had overnight visits, unless marked with †.
* Multiple entries, non-consecutive days.
† Daytrip only.
Once again Singapore Airlines’ flights have been the nicest to fly on… on the Rome-Singapore flight last week I plodded through Transporter 2, Fantastic Four, Lord of War and The Constant Gardener.
Transporter 2 was fun. Fantastic Four was definitely missable.
I really, really liked Lord of War, definitely recommend watching it when it gets released in the cinemas. It takes a very interesting look into the world of arms-trading, told in an easy-to-watch style which at the same time pulls no punches. The Constant Gardener had a different tone to Lord of War – slower, more serious – but sort of felt the same in that they both delve into the issue that is Africa (an issue that has been quite prominent over the last year), specifically its problems with war and poverty. I’d also recommend this movie.
Had an absolute blast in HK!! Will try and do a writeup on the plane tomorrow.
Although I complained about prices in the last post, there is one staple that hasn’t changed in price – ice cream! If you look in the right places, you can pay as little as 1.25 and get three large scoops of excellent ice cream. You can’t even buy one scoop in Sydney for that price.
Caught up with Harold for dinner yesterday who’s on his way up with Tal to Venice. Leaving tomorrow for HK where I can finally dispense with this damn heavy winter jacket. Should hit Gold level on my KrisFlyer account then too! :) Extra 20kg luggage allowance!
I just have to say that Rome is horrendously expensive compared to when I was here five years ago. That’s what conversion to the Euro does, I suppose… makes everything 60% more expensive for an Aussie. Ouch.
Happy New Year and welcome to 2006! Looking back, a lot of stuff happened in 2005… 2006 is going to be very different, but still exciting!
The trip is going well, although I am suffering from a dramatic sunlight deficiency. Every single day, except for two in Arizona, has been completely overcast, if not raining as well. Contrast this to the 44 degree Sydney bushfire weather. Winter in the northern hemisphere sucks. Quick roundup follows (not many photos sorry, I’m a bit lazy when it comes to posting them!).
Vegas
We took a break from the glitz of Vegas and took a roadtrip to Arizona to check out the Grand Canyon and stopping at the Hoover Dam along the way (which sits across the Nevada-Arizona state border). Warmish weather, beautiful landscapes, good music and a reliable GPS unit made the 11 hour journey a great roadtrip.
The Canyon is much more impressive and larger in real life than appears in photos. The Colorado River winds through the bottom of a canyon comprising many different layers of bedrock, the lowest of which are dated in excess of a billion years old. When the sun peeps over the canyon wall during sunrise, its light strikes certain layers, vibrantly lighting them up in various hues of vermillion and orange and throwing long, sharp shadows across the canyon floor and walls.
Back in Vegas, we saw a performance by David Copperfield, who is pretty much the greatest illusionist alive (if not ever). An absolutely amazing show, the man is a genuine genius. I find it amusing how people try to deconstruct and figure out the trick behind each illusion after the show. Apparently it takes about two years to plan and design each illusion. Trying to figure out how a person at the very top of his trade has done his tricks in the hour after a show would be analogous to attempting to reconstruct the maths behind one of Einstein’s papers after reading only its conclusion. Some of his tricks were: the prediction of lottery numbers chosen by the audience (where the prediction was in a locked box on an audio tape and on a scrap of paper), making a car appear on stage out of nothing and most impressively, “teleporting” to an island in the Philippines (shown via a live video feed). As a presenter, Copperfield is smooooth. I’m pretty sure he could have had any girl in the audience that night, taken or not. One girl would have gone ahead and touched a scorpion after he told her to, had he not stopped her at the last minute…
Random observation:
– We bought a bag of Pork Rinds with an expiry date of December 3005 (packaged December 2005).
Vancouver
True to its reputation, when we arrived in Vancouver it was raining. Despite the weather, it’s easy to see why Vancouver is consistently rated as one of the world’s most livable cities and why it attracts such large quantities of migrants. (Vancouver has a huge Asian population – more than a whopping 30%!) It’s bordered by a decent harbour one one side, and mountains and forests on the other. North Vancouver residents live virtually at the foot of several ski fields. Being in British Columbia, it also lies at the doorstep of a wide variety of ecologies. Lots of outdoor activities here! And it has the added bonus of not being as cold as other Canadian provinces.
Christmas night saw people coming in from Singapore, Paris, Milwaukee, Dallas and of course Sydney. Someone drew up a large 30-person Secret Santa list beforehand, and when the time came to distribute them from around the Christmas tree, it was great fun. I scored a baseball cap and a set of poker chips that I wanted, and finally learnt how to play Texas Hold-em from Wai Ken, who plays poker professionally. I was then soundly trounced in a game with Gerald, Shelley and Wai Ken. There was also mahjong upstairs, snooker downstairs, and the well-used hottub out the back.
Wah Kit, Steven, Rebecca, Brian: Watching the opening of presents
On Boxing Day, the Soos held a lunch at their penthouse with some very schmick views of Vancouver. Then we went for a walk in the woods during the afternoon, trying to visit a Salmon hatchery along the way only to find it had closed five minutes before we had arrived. During the evening, Brian, Steven and I hung out at Gerald’s very nice apartment for the night (heated bathroom floor tiles!). I came third out of seven in poker – getting better, but I should know better than to go “all in” in a head-to-head with a pro!
View from North Vancouver
The Cole family (minus Gerald and Shelley)
Whistler slopes
Random observations:
– North Americans do not understand “How are you going?” or “How’s it going?” as a way of asking “How are you?” (“How are you doing?” on the other hand, is perfectly comprehendable.) It’s interesting noting that the French ça va literally means, “It’s going?”
– Lasik only costs a couple hundred dollars per eye here. That makes it cheaper for Australians to fly to Vancouver to get Lasik done than doing it back home!
Amsterdam
It was actually snowing fairly heavily when we arrived in Amsterdam. There was snow everywhere on the streets. Very pretty to look at, but not very nice to walk through with luggage. I took a wrong turn coming out of the train station so we ended up walking way further than we should have to the hotel. It wasn’t so bad for me as I was lugging my backpack, but my poor parents had to drag their trolley-bags through a thick layer of footpath snow.
Amsterdam is nice enough, but nothing amazing. Maybe it’s because its character is so well known that I was jaded before I even got there. I mean there’s what you expect: tonnes of canals and bridges, the smell of pot wafting out of the ubiquitous coffeeshops, the obligatory red light district visit with women strutting their stuff behind windows underneath UV lights, the long queue into Anne Frank Huis, and Rembrandt’s famous The Night Watch at the excellent Rijksmuseum (the painting is reproduced in a 3D sculpture at Rembrandtplein, so tourists can stand alongside a metal statue of Captain Frans Banning Cocq). The Indonesian food is good here, and I think the Rice Table (rijstaffel) is a Dutch thing which is sort of like a large smorgasboard of Indonesian dishes. Some Indonesian restaurants in Sydney should “import” this idea.
New Year’s Eve fireworks were okay, but the display in Sydney undoubtedly was better (as seen on CNN!). The Dutch also have a habit of tossing really noisy firecrackers and sparklers out onto footpaths – right into the path of passers-by. Pretty annoying.
Random observation:
– Pay TV shows that Australia is only known in this part of the world for fireworks, bushfires and Kerry Packer. (Kerry Packer died?!)
Brussels
I really like Brussels. It has character. Its narrow cobblestone streets are sometimes not easy to navigate, but at least there aren’t bicycles zooming around like in Amsterdam. The grand place is impressive. One major tourist photo spot is the Manneken Pis, a famous (but tiny) statue/fountain of a little boy taking a piss. The Belgians cutely dress him in different outfits throughout the year. While Manneken Pis is swarming with tourists, the little known Jeanneken Pis is hidden down the side of a dead-end alley a few hundred metres away. This shows a little girl in a not-so-elegant squatting pose pissing into a pool. Unfortunately, the water was turned off and the statue was behind a locked grille when I visited. I managed to get a photo through the grille, but felt like a pervert doing it.
The food is brilliant. Steaming bowls of moules et frites (mussels and chips, which surprisingly go together quite well), gauffres (thick Belgian waffles, smothered in whipped cream, syrup and whatever else you want on them), and of course, chocolat. Pralines and truffles. I bought over 3 kilos of the stuff today. They also have a lot of good beer here, but I wouldn’t know anything about that :P.
Random observation:
– Although Belgium is roughly split into a Dutch speaking and French speaking populace, its capital is officially bilingual. Most people also speak English too (and I’m sure some do German as well). Nothing like a city full of trilinguals to make you feel really inadequate.
One of my relative’s relatives has an empty apartment in Whistler, so I’m up here with my cousins Brian and Steven for two all too short days of skiing. Well, actually I rented a snowboard for the first time and took lessons today. It’s pretty fun, but since I only have one more day here, I’m going to switch back to skis to explore the mountain tomorrow – Blackcomb and Whistler are pretty huge!
From what I gather about British Columbia, it’s all very outdoorsy and picturesque. This part of Canada is really quite beautiful and it helps that this Christmas season is one of the warmest (if not the warmest) on record. Whistler is only two hours’ drive from Vancouver and it makes me wish that Australia had some decent ski fields. But Australia is such an old continent in geological terms so it’s flat as a tack. I guess the flipside is that the sea has had time to grind up the sand to make some really great beaches. Oh well, can’t have it all I guess.
Merry Christmas everyone! Christmas is such a different experience in the Northern Hemisphere… much better atmosphere. It’s cold outside, but inside it’s cosy, with a nice roaring fireplace and a real pine tree! And Vancouver is really beautiful (when it’s not raining). More later…
Christmas night at the Cole household
Strangely enough, I think I’m still a little jetlagged. Even though I’ve been going to bed at around midnight (give or take a couple hours), my body has been getting me up at 5 or 6am. Then I lie in bed, awake, until I get bored and a more sane hour arrives. This is only annoying because I get pretty tired around dinner time, and it doesn’t help that dusk starts falling before 5pm here.
Anyway, we’ve met up in Vegas with my cousin and uncle. We’re hiring a car this morning and are driving out to the Grand Canyon, staying one night there to catch the sunset and sunrise. Then it’s back to Vegas to see David Copperfield perform, before setting off to the colder climes of Vancouver in time for Christmas Eve!
It’s safe to say that Vegas is a unique place in the world. Las Vegas Boulevard, better known as “The Strip”, is lined with a whole array of hotels and hispanics passing out fistfuls of cards advertising how carnal pleasures are only a phone call away (they continually slap the cards together to make a characteristic “I have sex cards!” sound, presumably so potential clients can still find them when the Vegas footpaths get too crowded).
It’s all flashy on the outside, especially at night when all the neon, blinking coloured lights and video displays are switched on. Lots of themed hotels, such as the Paris, which has a scaled down version of the Eiffel Tower sticking out the top of it and the Luxor which is done up as a black pyramid with a massive lightbulb at its apex shooting out a shaft of light into the sky. Very tacky, but strangely enough, not in a lame sort of way. The fountain display at the Bellagio is quite impressive, being much, much larger than Ocean’s Eleven would lead you to believe.
Whereas the outsides are varied, the insides of all the hotels are numbingly similar – rows and rows of slot machines, tables and tables of roulette, blackjack, 3-card poker, craps and other usual suspects. Lots of shoddy carpet.
Obviously an essential stop for a Trekkie like me, I took the monorail to the Hilton today to see their Star Trek: The Experience attraction. Half price tickets are available at the Tix4Tonight discount booths, which I picked up earlier in the day. STTE basically consists of two “rides” and an exhibit. The exhibit features a very cool timeline of the Trek franchise (recently extensively refurbished due to the heretical insertion of the Enterprise series into Trek canon) along with numerous display cases featuring props which were actually used in the filming of Trek (most humourously, the Mac used in Star Trek IV which Scotty tries to talk to… “Hello, computer!”).
The first ride I went on was a relatively new one called “Borg Invasion”. It was abysmal. It features an insipid movie which you watch with stereoscopic glasses while sitting in an “interactive chair”. It’s essentially a tiltable massage chair with the capacity to occasionally blast moist air into your face to vaguely simulate what’s happening on the movie screen. During the part where you supposedly get injected with Borg nanoprobes, I almost leapt out of my seat after I received an instant anal probe from several massage chair-style rollers which some sadistic designer had decided to strategically place in the seat bottom. I wandered out of the ride somewhat traumatised.
The second ride was “Klingon Encounter”, which although older, was decidedly better. Nonetheless, you still have to put up with actors running around delivering corny dialogue and trying to give an unenthusiastic crowd a Trek “experience” (“remember, the human spirit can never be assimilated!”).
If that was all there was, I would have felt ripped off, even though the ticket price was only $18. However, I paid another $20 to get the “backstage tour”, which is an informal 90-120 minute tour behind the scenes of the $70 million STTE facility. The tour was conducted by a genial guide called Gretchen who had previously worked at Second City, so she made the tour very interesting and humourous, but most importantly, without being the least bit patronising. You get to learn about the mechanics behind the rides, see actors moving between sets in the back corridors, discover how the facility was designed and even get to examine Okudagrams up close (including those in-jokes the Trek crew like to insert onto signage). Along the way, I picked up lots of new pieces of Trek-related trivia which – with my goldfish memory – I’ve unfortunately now seemed to have mostly forgotten (eg, the Bajoran nose piece changed between TNG and DS9 due to practical make-up concerns – the eyebrow ridges in TNG kept coming unglued due to how frequently actors move their eyebrows in making facial expressions).
The backstage tour made the visit quite worthwhile for me in the end – if you go, don’t bother going unless you do the tour as well. However, I would still say that you’d have to be a Trekkie to really get your money’s worth.
In San Fran again. Rainy, but otherwise not so cold.
Words that mean their opposites: sanction, cleave, liege. More contronyms.
I grew up reading a lot of Asterix (and Tintin) comics in primary school. Whenever there was a library period, there’d be a mad dash for the comic book shelf and a bunch of ten year old boys would engage in a violent free for all for any book with more pictures than words. Knowing that Goscinny and Uderzo did not write Asterix in English, I always was curious at how translations were done so as to create the puns we read in English surrounding characters’ names (eg, Potbellix, Alcoholix, Monotonus). Adults always told me how reading mindless comics like Asterix which were “devoid of any intellectual merit” would rot my brain but as the years past, I also began to realise that there were a lot of in-jokes and historical references in it. However, not knowing anything about European history nor being able to read any of the many Latin phrases sprinkled in the comics, I was left to wonder about it all. I just stumbled on the excellent site, The Asterix Annotations which shows just how rich in references Asterix is. I have a few Asterix omnibus volumes and it’s pretty fun going through it all.
I’m quite looking forward to Brussels. Mainly because they sell a lot of these things. They have a lot of other good food (Asterix in Belgium suddenly makes a lot more sense) and other famous things, but… I’m really there for the pralines!
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2:45pm (GMT +8.00) tomorrow from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
