A Trip to Bangkok

At least once a year, I make the trip to Bangkok.  This would be my fourth visit to Bangkok.  It’s a fascinating city, i love to explore it, but I always feel not relaxed.

The trip did not started off well, first I forgot to ask for receipt for the travel adapter and magazines at the airport, then the taxi salesgirl could not understand where i want to go.  Their English is really poor, I need to learn foreign language I guess.  Oh ya, while filling out the immigration card, a group of Malaysians, asked me for help on filling out the card (in Cantonese!).  My kindergarten Cantonese kinda got me through.  But what i wanted to tell you was they tell me that they don’t need to fill in the departure section because they are not leaving Bangkok. ??? Did I understand correctly?  I wonder…

After the runaround to find Mission Hospital (they pronounced it Mitchan, but when i say it, they still don’t understand…i must record myself next time…i wonder what accent i have…hmmm…

Got to hospital, got the guest room…errr…ok…maybe not a good idea?  it reminded me of 1950’s hotel… Time to get food, oh dear, went to the Commissary, it says close at 20:00, oh dear, the time is already 8:20pm, what to do….wait a minute!, it’s one hour behind, let’s buy some food!  Selection was interesting, they have more items then our Commissary.  More interesting items too, maybe this is just a tourist viewpoint…hahaha… I guess no hot food tonight, bought cereal and soybean milk, So Good! yeah, my favorite soybean milk from Sanitarium.  I wonder why Malaysia we cannot get this stuff, but you can in Bangkok and Singapore…

That’s it, time to call it a night.  At this the satellite television provided some distraction.  Watch World War Two documentary on Hitler…good preparation for tomorrow’s meeting?  hahaha…i think not.  Good nite…

The next morning, woke up 5:30am….wahhhh…going to be a sleepy day :8

Grab my cereal breakfast, and it was full of ants!  Yikes!  But since I was hungry, I patiently sieved out some of the ants and put soymilk in it and ate it.  Yummmy! 

After meeting, rush to airport, pleasantly surprise (for once!) the taxi driver was willing to use the meter (and without negotiation!)  When I got there, the counter was at the other end of the building…aidoh…believe me, the airport building is much bigger than KLIA.

Got there, the plane is delayed 20 minutes…haha…AirAsia is keeping a record of some sort, being continuously late? The queue to check in took 30 minutes, there were masses of people checking in.  Note to self: do not try to cut it too fine next time.  After check-in, the international gate is at the other end of the building (where I was dropped off)…my legs are starting to hurt.

After another 20 minutes of queueing for immigration clearance, i got in and check for my gate…guess what?  it’s at the other end of the building!  Did someone decided I need the walking… :@

I was soooo hungry I went looking for food.  Bought a chicken croissant, guess how much?  equivalent of RM16.50!  Boy, this trip is getting interesting isn’t it? 

The flight was supposed to be 20 minutes late, it took another 20 minutes before we flew.  Flight was uneventful until one of those scariest moments in flying, turbulence!  just before we land at Penang. 

There you go…one of the most exhausting trip I have taken this year.  Oh yeah, I did not get a good sleep.  One of those mattresses that did not agree with me.

I’m so look forward to sleep in my own mattress tonight!  Yeah!

A Visit to America 3

The sleeping pill kinda work (took 2 instead of 3 as directed, will have to take 3 tonight for full effect), woke up once a 2am, then 6:30am.  The sunrise was so beautiful, i hopped out of bed, grab the camera and out to the streets within 10 mins!

After a lovely morning of watching people jogged and cycled (apparently there’s a bike around the city event, there were so many of them!), photographed quite a few boats and ships, found out about the war ship museums, aquarium, and more museums (this is a historical city, mind you), had breakfast at one of my favorite place, Panera Bread…ah, must buy their stock liao :P, headed back to hotel via CVS, a 24 hours pharmacy/convenient stores, found lots of goodies, bought instant noodles (most important!), and came back. 

Decided to look at the program, and realize I’m suppose to be on a bus to visit a Planetree Designated hospital in 30 minutes!  Man, do i get mixed up with appointments/events this trip, soooo dangerous. 

Although with a bit of negative thought on the hospital visit, it was soon proved to be valuable once we got there (another definitive word, it took 1.5 hours!!), literally into another state!

A Visit to America 2

Touchdown in America!  Well, what do we get? A blanket of white mist, it’s not haze! 

Decided to have McDonald’s for lunch!  Very healthy Classic Grilled Chicken Sandwich…[ picture to follow]  The french fries has too much salt, i was given six pieces of napkins too.  Differences noted.  alamak! the price really hurts, USD$7.27 = RM25.45!!!

One thing I notice, the escalators and travellators operates at a much slower speed than in Asia, wonder why?

If someone ask me what are some of the differences of Asia and US, i would say there’s a lot of emphasis on public safety, sometimes over the top…I’ll find an example.  There’s sign of don’t do this, don’t do that, all over the place.

Nearly miss the plane as I was in the toilet and announcement made, i was practically the last one.

The plane was small! one seat plus 2 seats, like Konsortium bus :)  When we got to the runway, the weather really moved in and we were stuck on the runway for 30 minutes.  It was interesting to watch all the planes line up and wait.  Big planes, small planes, all different types of airlines.

The ascend was amazing and scary, since we could not see anything.  Finally when we broke clear, we saw amazing cloud formation.  Alas, i did not have my camera with me, finally took some shots with  my BB, but the most spectacular clouds were over.

The descend was greeted by beautiful Baltimore, full of greeneries and rolling hills. The bay was nearby.  I was excited.

The first sight of baggage claim sank my heart – again! The same wheel that was missing last trip, it HAPPENED again.  :@  so many trips to Singapore, nothing happen. It always happen from JFK airport to another city.  Should I avoid JFK next time?  hmmm

Got the rental car without any trouble, drove out of the facility and nearly turned into the wrong lane….boy, left hand drive is dangerous!

reached the hotel, turn the wrong turn and made a big round before finally figuring out what happen.  I keyed in 800 instead of 700 for the street number!  And here I was ready to blame the GPS!

Reach the hotel room, lie down on the bed and promptly went to sleep.  Hey, give me a break, that was 37 hours since leaving home!

Good nite…

A Visit to America

A trip to America.  How does that sound? It’s interesting to get the reaction from colleagues, friends and family members.  The reaction ranges from “wow! you must be very excited” to “why are you travelling again?!”

I’m starting this blog in Frankfurt – a very strange land.  I’m also the only one not wearing a jacket or a coat!  Am I the only one who doesn’t think it’s cold? :-|

Highlights so far:-

- first time i used Terminal 3 at Changi, what amazing architecture!

- had an hour between flight so I did not get to see much, must come back!

- initial impression of my seat mates was WOW! No offense intended here, but they are so big, I could only use half my seat space.  And initially I did not know how long the flight was going to be, but when I found it it’s 12 hours, boy was I stressed out.

- i eat everything the stewardess offer, since I was very hungry, slept on and off, watch 2 movies, slept some more.

- the last 3 hours was more bearable as i started talking to my seat mates, actually it’s always recommended to start a conversation, because it helps pass the time so much faster, but an introvert like me would have used up enormous amount of energy…

- we ended the journey exchanging cards and promised to look each other up if we ever in town [so they could be reading this! so no more details for you…hohohoh…]

 

Well, at the point in time, that’s all I have to say….to be continued…

 

hmmm…forgot to bring my card reader…so no pictures for now :-|

Topic series (New!)

Just in case you are wondering what the previouis blog title was all about, I borrowed an idea from Tom Peters blog (check it out - www.tompeters.com).

I had the idea while in Singapore, I'm gonna start a couple of series in my travel blog. The first to get started is the Burger Tales, since I look for burgers when I travel. My focus will be fast food chain burgers, the burgers in restaurants is totally out of budget...sorry.

The second series will start next trip, coz I forgot to take a picture! It's called Hotel Hot Shower Rating. Why? Because one of the most important amenity when you check into a hotel is how the hot/cold tap work, I have seen brillant idea where you get the right temperature everytime to idiotic implementation where you never know what to expect! Wait for this... ;)

A third series that I'm comtemplating is toiletry containers. I always appreciate nice design, and my wife loves to collect them -- yup! the cupboard is full of them!

As usual, feedback are welcome...

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Burger Tales #1

This happen one week ago.

One of the highlight of travelling is to try new food. Me being not so adventurous type, will try new franchise fast food chain food.

Today I tried MOS burger. Compare against the industry standard, McD (ok, ok, some of you are going to differ, but really, the result is the same), 100% healthier! Except...except...look at the size of it! 50% smaller, I think 100% smaller than a Carl's Jr (btw, my current favourite).

So here's my rating:
Healthiness: 4 out of 5
Presentation: 3.5 out of 5
Value for Money: 4.5 out of 5

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5

(I'm still working on the rating components and categories, I welcome any suggestions ya)

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Taxi in

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Dinner with JoJo

Josiah and his spaghetti!
Dinner with Jennie & Matthew at Tomo, Marina Square.

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Day 4 in Singapore

A wet and rainy to start the day. Too bad about the solar eclipse...at least the world is still intact...there goes another proclamation about the end of the world...

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Penang Road...in Singapore!

Nothing like being homesick when u travel, and I was just been away for a mere 10 hours...hmmm

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Looking out the taxi window #1

One of my favorite past time when travelling is looking out of taxi windows and watch the world go by. The other passionate past time is to look for interesting juxtaposition of different signboard and advertising board.

This morning while travelling down the Federal Highway, I observed something interesting. I have drove by this place a few times but never saw it.

Avon has their headquarters at PJ alongside the Federal Highway, and like all good companies, they rent out unused office space. The company? - Huntsman. Why is it so funny? Avon has a tagline beneath their logo, the company for woman. So you have Avon: the company for woman, Huntsman...

I rest my case...
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Nana’s Birthday Trip

The big weekend finally arrived. We have been planning this for 6 weeks.

The trip down was interesting. With grandma fretting endlessly that Daddy cannot cope with 3 young ladies in the car! Why would she think that?!

As it turn out, a relatively uneventful trip except for a few funny moments. The most interesting one was when the girls starting saying what Chinese zodiac sign they are. Arielle insisted that she like to be a pig, even when the rest of the occupants in the car told her she’s a chicken. She said “I like pig!’ with such finality that there will be no discussion. Then Abigail started saying that she was born in Kuching, and I said that Nana also. Arielle suddenly piped up and says that she was born ‘all by myself’!!! That cracked the whole car for 5 minutes. It was another memorable moment. :)

A few weird thing happened. One of the most dreaded thing for long car trips is toilet breaks. As it turned out, Daddy had to go 3x, the rest once, and Nana did not go for 7 hours! I had no idea why, because she did drink water in the car!

A trip that started out from the hospital at 1pm, ended at Bukit Tinggi at 7:15pm, and finally reached our room at 8pm. Then I had to perform superman effort to bring the luggage down to the room….shucks!….no lifts! Have to walk down 6 flights of stairs, and 5 trips in all….

Berjaya vacation club facilities is getting worse all the time…each time we use our entitlements, it’s another confirmation that we made the wrong choice :( Meranti Park Suite was pretty ordinary, the aircon controller was missing, there were no extra pillows in the closet, bathroom was moldy, hot water was not hot, the corridors were full of dead insects, as since it rained, the walkway were muddy and sandy. Oh ya, having to wait 45 minutes to get the room key was no fun either, since we arrived after 7pm, we had to go to Tropicale Colmar to get the key.

My verdict: unless there’s no other option, like this trip, take this one. The only consolation is it’s a home resort. Frankly all the home resort are pretty pathetic, like KL Plaza.

Good nite!

Please see http://raisingourgirls.livejournal.com/6484.html for the rest of the story.

Koh Samui Escapade - Part 5

Day 2

Next morning...a bright new day. Not sure what to do, but will have breakfast first. Very healthy breakfast (did not take a picture of it on the first day). See next day's posting.

In taking this picture, I discovered that my DSLR's battery was flat! Oh no, what a bummer, no spare battery, no charger. Good planning save the day. This picture was taken with my Pentax compact camera - the rest of the pictures was taken with the Pentax.

This lady was painstakingly gently putting flower petals on top of the water. We were so impressed we asked to have a picture taken with her. This is a second pose as I had to go back to the room to get the backup camera.

Eventually we decided on rental a car from the hotel desk after checking out a couple of freelance shop across the road, but nobody was home! The rental was B1000 per day, not a bad deal we decided. Pumping petrol was an experience in itself.

Orientation of the island was still terrible for me, we decided to head in one direction and hope for the best outcome, not an ideal situation for me since I don't do serendipity outings well if not alone...urghhh....

On Photos Above.

1. Our first sight of town - Nathon.

2. Something familiar! Tesco! Bought some snacks for the day. Prices are comparable to Penang.

3. The rustic feel of the street walk was truly touristy! Although the picture does not suggest it, it was very dusty, we won't think of buying any of the fruit on display.

Ahhh...shopping for shoes...exquisite, plenty of choices, but have to bargain rabidly...not my favorite activity...but what an experience to roam to shops and check things out...

There were general grocery stores, but mostly shops catering to tourists such as clothes, shoes, bags, souvenir shops etc.

oh yes, we did have lunch. What a nice place to have lunch, but it took us walking up and down the entire stretch of the town to find it. And yes, I think we got killed on the price. Nice noodles though...

After this, we did some more walking, this time along the pier where lots of cruise boats going to the neighboring islands.

But then we treat ourselves to a two hour massage, very painful but very cheap...hahaha...B800 for two person for two hours.

It was a good day so far, and so good that I had to go to the ATM to get another B1000, not enough cash for the rest of the trip.

More to come....