June 2005 Archives

What is it with San Francisco people?

Alledgedly, San Francisco people are the most edu-ma-cated according to various polls and worthless surveys.

Yet when it comes to reading, they dun do it! The excuses are myriad, such as "I was too busy because I was: (surfing porn, cutting my toenails, windows, eating) while "trying" to read the blog.

Like reading this takes a lot of friggin' effort?!?

I've been online with frens from disparate places such as New York City, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore who read and appreciate this! Kanna tell me that they have lots of spare time to spare!

San Francisco, compared to these cities, is a sleepy burb. So enough with the excuses already! That's why the title of the blog has been changed.

Just a little...

MUHUHAHAHAHAAHAAAA!

So on the way back from the Headlands (see previous entry), there was a gently curving road that was fun until we hit this red light.

Read that sign underneath the signal. FIVE MINUTE LIGHT?!? And no countdown signal or anything!

But it's there for a good reason since the tunnel right after the light has ONE lane. Period.

But it still can use a countdown timer at that friggin' five-minute light...

Went for a ride on my motorbike last weekend. It was a fun jaunt through Marin ending at the Marin Headlands (at the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge).

This is the obligatory artsy shot.

The Headlands was pretty high and the bridge is really big.

At the other end of the Headlands is Point Bonita. There's been a lighthouse there for a billion years.

But nowadays, the modern solution is radar and electronically controlled foghorns.

They're close to each other.

See?

I went to PacBell SBC Park to see a Giants game. We won, yay!

Anyway, PacBell SBC Park is known for having expensive food, which it does. It also has expensive beer. All kinds of beer. Bud is US$5.00 and everything else ("premimum") beer is US$7.50.

They even had this:

But check out the price!

Now that's just plain WRONG! And the US$4.25 is for the bag o'nuts you see there in the pic.

US$7.50 for Pabst Blue Ribbon? Chi Sin!

I've heard of multinational companies, but this is absurd! Check out my bag of potstickers.

Pretty straightforward, right? Now check out the name of the company that makes these taste treats...

Yup. A company from Southern California (City of Industry) with an Irish sounding name that makes chinese food.

The mind wobbles...

So baseball has spring training, football has pre-season and I've got the "it's not raining anymore so let's haul out the Weber" season.

Ergo, it's the first BBQ of the season! We all decided to BBQ some chicken parts (Ivan), angus steak (me) and, erm, a Pork Log (Andy).

Toward the end of my last stay in Tokyo, I wound up helping an American serviceman find his way to Ueno and the Keisei Skyliner while we were on the Yamanote (The Skyliner is a waaay cheaper way to get to Tokyo from Narita, best if u dun have an expense account or a JR Pass).

He was a bit flustered as he ran in the car (getting his arm caught in the door in the process). Seems that he was trying to get to Narita and got the JR (Japan Rail) and the Tokyo Metro mixed up.

The JR usually runs above ground. The Yamanote and the Chuo are JR Lines.

The Tokyo Metro generally runs underground, although as you head further away from the Yamanote, some Metro lines become elevated. To make things even more confusing, the majority of the Metro lines were once part of the Eidan, a privately run subway system. The remainder were Toei Lines, which was owned by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. All these lines are known as the "Tokyo Metro", but the fare structures are slightly different between the two subsystems.

Transferring about can be a challenge if you're not competely familiar with the city (as I'm not, at least not yet!). I found this link for a site run by Tokyo Metro that helps you transfer between the two subway systems.

Neat, wish I knew about this site before I left!

Hat tip to Mari for the Tokyo Subway Transfer link!

Just the daily scrum on the MTR lah!

Here's a neat page about the Sanja Matsuri I checked out.

Kind of a Lost in Translation moment (or at least the DVD menu).

Writing from the Signet Lounge at Tokyo Narita, connecting to my flight back to SFO (groan)

Possibly one of the brighter (and very simple) ideas for seatback tables. There’s a hole in the table! Whatever for?

It’s a cup holder, Waaaaaaaaaah!

Especially useful when the ride gets bumpy. I’ve worn Diet Coke (erm Pepsi) before on SWA and UAL when we hit turbulance. Eeeeee-splash.

This is the first time I’ve ever had dim sum on the plane. Granted, it was just two pieces each of siu mai and har gau and a baby joong along with the ANA standard issue cold soba and salad. Kanna imagine a full dim sum service on a plane? Hella cool!!

And oh yah, my flight NRT-SFO is booked solid in steerage. So I reluctantly accepted being bumped...

to BUSINESS CLASS AGAIN!

Wah! I think I love this airline! Ya dun here ppl saying that about UAL, do ya? =P

The last thing you see before you enter the confines of the Airport.

When you arrive at Hong Kong Station (Airport Express), you will need money. There’s a Citibank on the first mall floor (IFC 1) which is in the same building. Get your money there.

Leaving...If you have a morning flight, splurge on the cab ride to the AeX station. It’s only about HK$40 (US$5.00, give or take) and it will save you a lot of effort. Traffic doesn’t really begin to suck until 0800 or so, if you’re earlier that should be fine.

In-Town check in: the greatest boon to travellers since frequent flyer points. Use it. Then you can putter around the airport, relatively stress free, once you get to your terminal building. Speaking of that:

Once you get to the Airport, make all due haste to get to the correct building. If your gate is a higher numbered one, you’ll have to take a shuttle and walk a bit. Maybe about 10 minutes added to your journey.

Just some things to keep in mind should you arrive here all flustered and confused.

This is the famous Kosmo Coffee on Wellington Street in Lan Kwai Fong.

They make coffee and tea and they have snacks. They’re also down the street from California Fitness.
Now what makes them worth an entry? They are the only other place (aside from Zambra Coffee in Wan Chai) I’ve found in Hong Kong that has FREE Wi-Fi. Buy a drink or a snack and park your butt. Their internet is pretty fast too.

When the British took possession of the New Territories, there was an Qing outpost there called the Kowloon Walled City. Although it was abandoned in 1899, there was still no real arrangement on who had jurisidiction over it. Over the years, tenements and slums grew up around it. Read here for more.

Anyhoo, it became a health hazard so the HK Government (with approval from the mainland), razed it and made it into an award winning park with history inside.

Looks so serene inside, right? There’s a neat garden too.

This is how it looks outside.

eeeeeeee

Has to be the Chi Lin Nunnery in Kowloon City (near Diamond Hill MTR). It’s one of the more easily accessible of HKG’s attractions. Walk into the mall from the MTR and through the Marks and Spencer. Hang a right and go up a block. 5 minutes max. However, if there’s heat and humidity, your time may vary.

The nunnery was rebuilt in 1998 with the actual temple parts (the ones with the various Buddhas housed) made of wood and in the Tan’g Dynasty style of construction.

The gardens and foundations (there’s a garage underneath) are of course, modern stone and concrete.

It’s amazingly quiet and comfortable inside the compound. Like I wrote in the title of this post, it’s chill. Despite the fact that the Nunnery is surrounded by housing blocks, a big mall and an expressway, you don’t really feel or hear much of it.

Unless you look up...

Let me see...passport, got it. Money? Dollars, baht, RMB, yen? Hong Kong, yah, dollars. SIM Card...Hong Kong, New World.

Now THAT's a life!

You know when people that live in humid, icky areas (not California) keep saying that "you'll get used to it", etc etc etc?

It's usually crap, because as they stand there in a full suit and tie, totally dry, I'm in sandals, shorts and a t-shirt, dripping sweat by the litre.

On the way in to HKG this AM (EARLY this AM), the pilot made his usual happy talk once we got to cruising altitude.

"Hong Kong is rainy with a high of 28 degrees". I then said to myself, "a cool day, eh?"

AGGGGGGGHHH!

Of course, let me preface this with the fact that I've been in BKK for the past 3 days, where it's usually 32-4 degrees with buckets of humidity...

But that's a bit freaky, dun you agree? I think I'm going to freeze my ass off when I get back to SFO.

Yup, that's me. Because I had to roll out of bed at 0445 to get to a check in counter for a 0645 flight back to HKG. I got in from BKK around 2330 and was updating the blog and talking on the phone until 0100. Then shower and shave and pack. Bedtime: 0200. Bleagh!

The A/C in the wing of the transit hotel where my room was was working backwards (blowing humidity instead of dry air). Because of that, my A/C in the room was also blowing cool humidity too.

If I could take that room and turn it into a walk-in humidor, that would have been perfect.

Then to add to my crankiness, my flight to HKG was on UAL. I ran into a "flight attendant" at the McDonald's near the gate. Apparently she's not too fond of the inflight food either?

It was a typical UAL flight. Screaming babies, indifferent service and crowded. I was sooo tired.

I ate what passed for "breakfast", had some coffee, slipped into superhero mode (sleep mask) and passed out for 2 hours.

Of course the movie on the big screen was "National Treasure"; that may have had something to do with it...

So the flight went off without a hitch.

Nice new Airbasi jet. Seats made outta cow. Nice service (better than Southworst) and decent prices.

So I've landed at Changi and am stuck at the airport. Boo hoo. There's actually a lot to do here.

There's free internet terminals everywhere, rest areas with reclining chairs, a spa that has massage, a gym, showers and snacks and napping areas, the transit hotel that rents rooms for six hour blocks and TV everywhere!

Oh yah, for a certain reader, the shopping is pretty cool too, I think. Gotta pump money into the Singapore economy, right?

Maybe, but not tonight! =P All the shops of interest close at 0000 and reopen at 0600. Feh.

This feels soooo weird. Waiting at the gate and not at a lounge. Of course, that really wouldn’t help me on this leg of the trip because I’m not on an Star Alliance airline.

Still, just weird. There are three farangs who pulled the trash bin between them and are chowing down on KFC. Funny, the further away from the states, the more it seems like home.

Disturbing. And many of the farangs are fat slobs too.

Sooo after taking an inventory of my wallet, I’ve got 80 baht left. Not bad. I took out 3000 baht for the three days I was here mucking and eating about.

If you’re not doing “farang friendly” things, you can save a lotta money cuz generally things here are cheap.

Examples: A bottle of water, 9 baht. Lunch with a Coke at a local place: 55 baht. One day pass on the BTS Skytrain: 100 baht.

80 baht sounds like a lot. Nope. US$2.00. Not even worth exchanging. Looks cool though.

I found out something cool today. I took the Skytrain to the Mo Chit terminus. Then hopped a cab. Took about 40 minutes total from Pholen Chit Skytrain station. Best of all, the cab ride was only 100 baht from Mo Chit to the Airport!

So in total, it was 135 baht. 35 more than what the hella slow airport basi would have cost, but saved a LOT of time.
Now with all that time on my hands (I got to the Airport 6 hours early!), I decided to check out the Royal Thai Air Force Museum that is supposed to be, according to Time Out Bangkok, “right behind the airport”.

Proof that these travel guides are great for general reference and they usually get the facts straight, but in this case, it seems that the writer just looked at a map and wrote about it. Because...
it was 10 clicks away! That’s 75 baht in a cab folks! Once I got there though, it was pretty cool. The museum looks like it’s in an old air base and the airplanes are parked all around so you can check them out up close and personal.

Curtiss Helldiver

They have old old planes and a lot of planes from the Vietnam War era inside.

Basically all the planes I made models of at one point in my youth.

There was also a Mark XIX Spitfire. Hella cool!

Got stuck in the beginning of rush hour as I was trying to get back to the airport. That ride took 95 baht because of that. Grrrr.
If I knew just how distant this was, I would have just hung out in the air con airport!

Next stop: Changi!

was Sukumvit Soi 1. It turns into a river when it rains hard.

It’s full of hawkers plying their wares near open sewer grates on really small sidewalks so you’re forced to walk in the street.
But on Soi 1 is the Number 1 Guesthouse, Bar, Internet Cafe. Take your pick, it’s all the same place. Check out the journey to my room.

I've had four days here and I've been able to scratch the surface here. BKK is big and sprawly but the sights are all mostly downtown and easily navigated.

Transit, food (as long it's local) and lodging can be cheap! Hella cheep! However, the same rule re: expats applies (expat friendly = wallet unfriendly).

People here have been friendly and helpful. But I've been hearing the same thing over and over: "if you wanna see Thailand, get outta BKK".

So I was thinking...you can fly directly into Chiang Mai and then rent a motorcycle...

Watch this space in a few months for more..! =P

I begin the long haul back home today. I fly outta BKK back to SIN and then tomorrow AM, fly back to HKG.

Then on Tuesday, I catch my transpacific flight back to SFO. That flight's gonna be rough. At least there's a stopover in NRT.

Or what I saw walking around.

Is there a Sam here? Works for Royal Fashions?
Anyone? Buelllller?

Yet another in the "police bikes of the world" series.

This is a 125cc buzz bomb that the local cops here use. It's just like the 125cc buzz bombs that everyone else rides here.

You usually think: Police bike = big. It looks kinda odd when they're riding. But they are usualy not riding. They're usually dismounted and trying to rein in BKK's horrible traffic.

With a particle mask to combat the pollution.

OK, not terror. I just thought that it would sound exciting.

Actually, it was hella fun! After spending the end part of the evening hanging out at the Suan-Lum Night Bazaar (the BKK version of Mong Kok’s night markets) walking past embassies and the most expensive, formal English Pub that I’ve ever seen, we decided to take a tuk-tuk back.

Basically, these are long wheelbase motortrikes that have no doors or panels. It’s pretty close to the same sensation of riding a motorbike except you’re sitting on a proper seat. I mean, when I’m getting this kind of speed sensation with the wind, I’m usually in leather along with a nice fitting Shoei helmet.

It’s exciting, especially when the driver is whipping through traffic. Did I mention, cheap? These are not metered like cabs so you gotta negotiate a fare before you get in.

Wanna see how it looks inside one as it whips a u-turn? Right click here and save it to desktop (21MB,AVI format).

I'd normally say something like "wanna see some Thai food?" Except here they just call it "food".

Apparently this is the beginning of the rainy season here in BKK. Which means massive huge ass big thunderstorms that turn streets into rivers.

Monsoon season. Wanna see a movie? Right Click here and save it to your desktop. (20 seconds, 13.3mb, AVI format).