California - February 2006

Friday
Ryan and I took the afternoon off to toodle around and get to the airport on time. We had lunch with friends, and then drove home to make sure we had packed everything for our trip. Our flight left at 5:00 EST and was due to land in SFO for 12::30AM PST. The flight there was okay. The first leg of the flight almost didn't take off due to problems at Chicago (goddamn that airport), and we ended up leaving YUL (Montreal, Dorval) an hour late. We just made our connection to SFO and landed an hour late in SFO. We got to the Budget counter to find one guy there trying to service 20 other customers. We piled our stuff into the red Saturn Vue that we ended up with, and drove off to my aunt's place, falling into bed at 4AM.

Saturday
After waking up at noon, we had a quick snack and said hello to Ann-si and Shu (her husband). Then we took off to see Pat and eat at our favourite Laotian/Thai place on Shattuck (Dara) that we discovered a couple years from our first trip together to Berkeley. All three of us went straight to the nearest Fry's and ogled the electronics for the rest of the day until dinner with my aunt and uncle.

Sunday
Woke up at a more reasonable hour (10AM) and worked on Ann-si's new G4, which was interesting. My first time working on OSX. Accessing programs is done directly through the drive, there are interesting options that are not as intuitive to me as through Windows, so switching will definitely take some work. I'd like to - those new MacBooks are really sexy.

My aunt presented me with a beautiful jade necklace that was given to her years ago. It's a buddhist prayer necklace with 108 beads on it. It's in pale green Burmese jade. She's an avid jade collector, and owns some really beautiful necklaces. One in lavender jade, which I've never seen before, and another in brown jade, which had been buried for over 100 years. It was originally green jade, and still has some green in it, but it's mostly this clearish brown colour, like dirt.

We left at about noon to get to a huge family dim sum at a seafood restaurant that's a chain from Hong Kong. Amazing food, and great company. There were about 20 of us there, and I saw a lot of people I hadn't seen in years. It was wonderful to see them again.

Growing up with my Chinese side of the family, my mother's generation and older would always be auntie or uncle and my generation would always be cousin, even if they weren't actually my direct aunt or uncle. So I call all my second cousins uncle/auntie and the same with my third cousins. Needless to say, this makes connecting the relationships hard. If I spoke Chinese, then I would be calling them by their birth order (number 6 uncle or something), which would make it more complex. Anyways, keeping tabs on my gigantic Chinese family is hard.

We got back from our lunch richer by a CD, bride book & massage deck (courtesy of my real cousins), and went out for a bit of shopping at one of the Emeryville malls there (can't remember the name). This mall had an Apple Store, Abercrombie & Fitch, movie theatre, Barnes & Nobles, everything. Very neat concept - like a shopping boulevard with integrated parking. So the stores were not interconnected, but rather set up like boutiques along a central avenue.

Dinner was with Ryan's friend Pat, where we ended up at this great vegetarian Indian place on Shattuck. Excellent food, dingy atmosphere. We were stuffed so silly we could barely eat afterwards. :)

...to be continued....

Amsterdam - Oct 2005

So last October, I went to Amsterdam and Brussels for a week with my brother and father. I have been very lazy about putting up a blog entry for this, so this is really going to end up as a rambling mess of what I remember, what I enjoyed....

I landed in Amsterdam at about 6am on a Sunday, so everything was closed. Having been there before twice, I had a hazy memory of how the tram system worked, but couldn't work out how to get to the hostel! I ended up wandering around in crazy cold weather only to finally give up and hail a cab. The whole time, Dad and I were texting back and forth about where/when to meet and so on. He had the ING Diabetes Marathon that day, which was why we were there. The cab driver didn't know where the place was and ended up going a couple blocks in the wrong direction. Of course, the cab was a Mercedes and extremely expensive. I arrived at the hostel, managed to cram my stuff in the closet and run out to meet up with Dad and Aaron (brother).

Once we finally hooked up, Dad ran off to the ING Direct Marathon, and Aaron and I took off to explore the city some more. Aaron and I promptly got high and wandered about the city. I found it very hard to be wandering around high (I got paranoid), so I decided to keep the smoking up for the evenings. We managed to check out the markets and some art that day (it's all a little hazy). We discovered this great soup place called Soup enzo, which we went to about 6 times while we were there. They had an amazing selection of soups, from light to heavy, in small to large sizes. Freshly baked bread, salads and fresh Brazilian fruit smoothies rounded it out. The smoothies and bread were excellent. We met up with Dad at the hostel, who was about 2.5h late from the time he said he'd be there. Finally we grabbed dinner at a nearby restaurant.

Food in Amsterdam was good. We ate at an excellent soup/noodle joint that did Asian-style food. They had an excellent miso ramen that we really loved. On one of our nights, we went for riztaffel, which ended up a bit mediocre. I had a much better one the last time I was there. Then we went out for Indian, which pretty good. Comparing Montreal's restos with the restaurants here, I'd say that Amsterdam really was better in the soup/stew department, but the selection there was not the same. I would really need to explore more of the restaurants, but I don't remember anything being amazing outside of the soup places.

The architecture of Amsterdam was really on these classic lines. Romanesque buildings, very very narrow townhouses with really high ceilings, tiny spiral staircases and each building had a solid steel beam and hook at the top of it. They have to get the furniture in through the window. The small walking bridges that go across the canals, the impossibly narrow streets, the amazing doors. Plus Amsterdam's silly SPQA (or something like that) insignia which is everywhere, in imitation of the SPQR that was all over Rome.

I have about 20 pictures of doors to put up on Flickr. I saw very pretty buildings, restaurants, shopping districts and boutiques, with businesses cleverly hidden within residential buildings that I would have automatically dismissed as houses. I didn't see any mills, buildings, factories, distilleries... I need to check out that area of town the next time I go there.

I was using Style City: Amsterdam in order to give myself ideas about where to shop, and Aaron and I ended up discovering the Jordaan. This section had some great little shops, cafes and bars scattered all over it. I could not believe that one of the corner grocers had fresh porcini mushrooms, which I had never seen raw before. We stopped at a really nice cafe which had a lamp completely covered with people's notes in many different languages and drawings that had been added to over time. Really special place.

Dad and I checked out the Van Gogh museum, which was pretty interesting and tragic. Starting at the top of the museum, you get a timeline of Van Gogh's paintings, within some context of his life. Really interesting to see his life and his paintings evolve, and how he suffered through so much tragedy, which only made his art better. When he was happy, his paintings weren't so great, but when he was suffering in some way - that's when his art really shined. It's wierd how art tends to come out at horribly tragic or maddening times - I understand that it's how the artist expresses their anguish.... But it's still sad that some people really needed that in order to express their true genius. You wonder what that person's life would have been like without that tragedy. Would Schubert have been great without his suffering? Would Van Gogh?

A couple of days after arriving in Amsterdam, Aaron, Dad and I took the train to Brussels. In Brussels, we stayed with an old family friend, Sarah. I wanted to check out the main shopping area first thing, so we did a bit of a walking tour around the large commercial district until it closed, then walked back home.

The next day, we checked out the main square. Aaron slept in, while Dad checked out the art galleries and I went shopping. The goods in Brussels were pretty much the same as the stuff to find here, but with some stuff cheaper than at home. Brussels also has a great bookstore which hosts events with local authors, readings and so on. I stopped by there, and of course went into Teuscher (the famous Brussels chocolate shop). I met up with Dad in one of the old shopping arcades, and we hit Longchamp for a gift for his fiancé plus some late birthday gifts for me. Next day, I did more shopping around a more eclectic quarter.

We cooked dinner for Sarah and she cooked for us. At different times during our stay, we all sat around her scarred oak kitchen table talking about our lives, and giving advice. Brussels was very relaxing, just chilling out with our family friends.

After Brussels, Dad went onto Paris and Aaron and I returned to Amsterdam. We spent the rest of time exploring around. Aaron would draw things while I was shopping, and we'd just walk around the city, taking pictures and talking about things. I discovered an amazing silver jewellry shop called iruka, which had great designs. At night, we'd get high and wander around the parks, talking about life and giving advice.

I wanted to walk through the red light district, which was something that I missed the last times I had been. And what is Amsterdam known for if not the legalized prostitution (and marijuana)? Sad, but true. We North Americans get so focussed on such things, it's sad. Being in the red light district made me feel uncomfortable and out of place. Uncomfortable because they weren't really catering to me (where were the men?) and out of place because this was obviously a place for men to find women, and not for women to find men. And I'm not exactly available. Of course, I would have been uncomfortable to have men selling themselves to me too. I don't know, maybe I have some puritanical leanings. Definitely something to explore with my therapist.

We found some interesting ads that had been doctored by students at one of the universities. There was an ad with CAD pictures of some new university buildings that were set to go up, and some students had put together word bubbles for most of the people in them. Those were hilarious. We hit the soup place a few more times, and Rembrandt's house.

Rembrandt's house was pretty funny, since the guy had only lived there for a few years and had defaulted on his lease pretty soon after moving in there. Seemed like the guy really liked to live lavishly. He had a large collection of curios in a room completely devoted to them. All these Roman busts, exotic weapons, stuffed animals, some drawings, old and valuable books.... Just seemed as though he was not concerned with spending money the whole time, even though he got kicked out for non-payment of rent. The collection of etchings, drawings and paintings were incredible. The people who put the exhibit together clearly indicated how his style evolved, and the different artistic techniques he was using in his work. Plus his characterization of people was really amazing. It looked as if those people were actually alive and animated in his works. That was incredible.

I stopped by the duty free for some absinthe and cigarillos and flew on home. The trip felt like it was some kind of surreal dream-time outside of work, and not actually something that I did.

NYC - Canadian Thanksgiving/Columbus Day

Ryan and I finally went to NYC together to celebrate our 5 year anniversary (of dating). Everyone says that the dating part doesn't count, but I think it does. In all our years dating, we never once got to NYC together. I love that city.

Friday
I was amazed at how smooth the roads were. The drive was very scenic since we drove during the day. We found parking on Manhattan near our budget hotel (West End Studios). We dropped off our stuff at the hideously small and grubby looking (but cheap!) room and took a walk around the Upper West Side, SoHo and Greenwich Village. Did a bit of shopping too. :)

We tried to get into Pastis which had a hideously long line. Some girl in the line recommended Trattoria del Sole, which had great Italian food. I had fresh porcini mushrooms for the first time in my life. For about 1 hour after, I could still taste it. Incredible.

Saturday
Had breakfast at Picnic on Broadway, which was a great little French-style cafe. Creme Brulee for breakfast was a great decadent treat. We took off to the Natural History Museum, which was great. Made a wrong choice by deciding to see the underwater IMAX movie, which sucked. After seeing Blue Planet, your standards are impossibly (and rightly!) high. Checked out the dinos, which were great! Lots of pics of Ryan and I near the T. Rex & Triceratops! Had lunch in the insanely busy museum cafeteria. Then, armed with my Lucky Shopping Guide to NYC, we hit the shops in the pouring rain. We stopped by a really nice Mexican cafe/resto on the way and shopped at Kenneth Cole, Scharffen Burger, and a myriad of other recommended shops. We stopped by the hotel to freshen up.

We decided to take a taxi to our romantic dinner of the weekend at "One if by Land, Two if by Sea". That turned out to be a disaster. It was pouring cold rain, the taxi was stuck in traffic and we ended up leaving our taxi for the speedy subway. We ended up an hour later at the resto (thank God I called) and had a wonderfully romantic meal in this 'townhouse'-style resto. We each had the tasting menu. Ryan had Steak Wellington (the steak in the puff pastry) and I had some fish dish. The food was excellent, but not incredible. The service and ambience were top notch.

Sunday
We woke up, had breakfast at Picnic again (this time for the cheesecake, which they were out of). Then we left for the Bronx Zoo! What a great place. We checked out the nocturnal animal pavilion, the tigers, the predatory birds, the monkeys, the polar bears, the gorilla forest, the giraffes, the peacocks (who were strutting all over), the emus and ostriches. It's surrounded by a park, which makes it even nicer. We had a small lunch there and kept exploring until 5pm, when they closed.

We left for Chinatown to have a cheap dinner at Great NY Noodletown, which was excellent. I had the congee, Ryan had the noodle soup and we split some soft-shell crab. All for under $20! We were so thrilled. Did some shopping at a food store, picked up some chinese tea and tea caddies. Then we had a massage near Greenwich Village and went to the Comedy Cellar's 11PM show. They packed us in there like crazy and we had a great time. The comedians were excellent.

Monday
Checked out of the hotel at 10AM and had our last breakfast at a crazy greasy spoon around the corner. Then we went to SoHo for my shopping fix. I had to leave The Apple Store before I bought something. The Swiss Army store had a nice shirt but didn't suit my figure. Laila Rowe had some nice jewellry so I picked up a gift and some earrings. The Jack Spade store was a must for me and I bought a bag. We wandered around a bit more, and then decided to get hot dogs at the famous hot dog stand which sells smoothies and very cheap hot dogs (can't remember the name). This place was okay, but I'm not one for hot dogs.

We took the train to Central Park and Ryan proposed! What a surprise for me. Still getting used to the idea and starting to get excited/scared about the planning side of things. Wedding won't be for a while, but I'm still freaked out. Just an example of how life goes on - we had to go home after that, and we drove home, with silly grinning and feelings of excitement and fear in us.... Ah, existence! The log is the one Ryan proposed to me on.

Pictures

Yes! The pictures are finally here. Ryan has graciously compiled a beautiful album complete with captions here: Sliph's AsiaAlbum

Enjoy

Koh Samui - Latter Days

So Michelle and I took our spa day at Tamarind Springs Spa, which was great. They had a hot herbal steam bath with a cooling-off pool which we used first. It was so hot in there it made the outside seem cool. Then it was off to the massage and facial. We did the Top to Toe massage with facial in the communal sala (an open-air room which has a roof and a floor, but no walls). There were fans along the walls which provided a gentle breeze. It took something like 3.5h total - we had breakfast at about 7am and started our massage day at 11:30. By the time we were finished, we were starving. We had some great food there - Michelle had the brown rice stir-fry and I had the chili-pesto pasta with their Popeye soup (cream of spinach). While we were at the spa, Ryan and Adam went fishing and caught something like 18lbs of fish: one grouper and one treveley. We got a local restaurant to grill it up and tried to eat as much as we could.

Next day was snorkeling and scuba diving with Captain Caveman Diving, which meant an early-morning pick-up at 7am. Our driver came knocking at 6:50 and we weren't even close to ready. We left at 7am, he picked up some more people and we made our way to the beach. We hopped onto a medium motorboat with 2 250hp motors hooked up to the back. There were something like 12ppl on the boat, with a bunch of gear stashed all over. We started on the beach at Koh Tao, which is famous for the diving. Ryan and I had our Discover Scuba Diving session. It was my first time diving and it was incredible! So cool to be swimming under so much water, with the coral and fish. I was able to depressurize my ears with my jaw. Very cool. The water was clear and we saw lots of stuff - sea urchins, sea cucumbers, coral, clownfish, christmas worms, that fish that lives with the shrimp, some schools of fish, parrot fish, a trigger fish. Very cool. Snorkeling was fun after the diving, too. Talk about exhausting though. I passed out on the boat after. We went out to Lamai's main strip for dinner and drinks, and I was a complete crab that evening.

We took a 'day off' on our last day there (Thursday) and relaxed a bit, with a couple trips into Lamai to do some last-minute shopping before our evening flight out of there. We stopped by the expat used bookstore called Island Books. Bought some snacks and then took off on our flight.

The taxis in Samui were just insane. They were supposed to be metered taxis, but none of them had meters. They had different rates at different times of the day, and would try to charge 'per person'. One morning, a trip from Lamai to Chaweng was 300 bhat. That very night, it was 200. The buses were much better - you could negotiate and get the same distance for 30 bhat. But the best was renting your own scooter, which is 250 bhat a day. That allowed you the best deal with the best freedom, but then you would have to drive. The driving was something else. Winding roads with coastline just next to the ocean, blind turns, steep curves, driving on the left (hard for a Canadian) and all the trucks and such. We ended up giving up on the scooter and just taking the bus and taxi.

More later....

Back

So now we're back. We were supposed to leave Sunday at 7:00 am Bangkok time, but we forgot the passports in the hotel room. Ryan and I realized this after arriving at the airport with all our bags. With Ryan at the airport to mind the bags, I took my most expensive cab ride in Bangkok to date (800 Bhat). My driver was speeding at 140 kph on the highways and running some red lights with some crazy shortcuts inbetween. Even with all that, I didn't get back until 6:30 am. And we had some luggage at the counter in another terminal. As public liaison officer, I went to deal with the United rep who told us she could put us on tomorrow's 6:45 am flight for only 100 USD extra.

So we decided to stay our extra day in Bangkok at a ritzy hotel (the Landmark Hotel) instead of our usual guesthouse (Rambuttri Village Inn). We checked out the Pantip Plaza again where we just about died from gadget heaven again and bought some mini speakers for the iPod. Then we went to Chinatown and ate streetfood while browsing the toyshops and getting lost in the narrow lanes. The next morning we woke up at 3:30am for the second day in a row to get to the airport really early this time. Once bitten, twice shy.

This time, our itinerary was the pits.

06:45 - 15:00 was Bangkok to Tokyo
17:55 - 11:05 was Tokyo to San Francisco
14:00 - 20:02 was San Fran to Chicago
20:45 - 00:01 was Chicago to Montreal

Thankfully, we got exit row the whole way and our nice long layover on Narita airport meant udon, manga, yukata and cheap(er) scarves. We finally got in the door at 01:15, checked e-mails and went to bed.

We didn't see any thai boxing, we didn't check out Vietnam's DMZ, we didn't go to the Viet tunnels around Hue....

We didn't check out Thailand's Phuket beach, we didn't go to the full moon party, we didn't check out Chiang Mai....

We didn't go to Phnom Penh, we didn't go off the beaten path around Siem Reap....

Ultimately, there was just so much to do and so little time.

We really wanted to go out and check out Tokyo, but that wasn't an option either. And my friend Noah in Shanghai didn't get a visit either. But now we know where to go back to. I definitely want to spend more time in Bangkok touring about and generally having a good time. The shopping there was excellent.

So now I'm faced with our massive bags of stuff to go through and our 600 digital photos to post up, and our piles of mail (work e-mail and home snail mail). And I wouldn't give it up for anything!

More on the rest of the trip (Koh Samui and our second hit of Bangkok) in the next post. Until then, I'm hitting the sack.

In Koh Samui

The heat...it just makes you sleep for 10h straight and feel tired again. It's insane here. I know it's still cold there, but I kinda miss that right now. And it's hard to apply sunblock when you're sweating like crazy. Which reminds me. I've been kicking myself for not bringing perfume. I finally completed my quest for perfume at the Bangkok airport: Light by Isse Miyake, which has the cheeziest pamphlet ever. The heat, the sweat, the stink...not good. There. You should be happy it's still cool over there!! :-D

One thing I'm missing about Hue is the ice cream. They have these vendors who play their boom boxes (horrible music), and they push around a little cart with a freezer. The ice cream they pull out of their cart is so good (I couldn't work out the flavour), and the cones are just the right thickness - not too thick and crunchy and not too thin and soggy. And they put chocolate sauce and crunchy cone bits on top. Mmmm.

The street food over in Vietnam is incredible, and incredibly cheap. You just have to be willing to 'risk' a little stomach trouble. We didn't have any problem. People set up these little kid's picnic tables and stools on the sidewalks, in alleys, in courtyards, and serve their stuff. You get to sit (practically squat) on the stools and eat your soup as the traffic passes by. We got looks from the Vietnamese passing by and one of the 'stalls' gave us free boiled peanuts and tea.

Our one-day Halong Bay tour and evening runabout in Hanoi was the last bit of Vietnam. Hanoi was a really neat city with lots of interesting French architecture and bakeries (their moka cakes were great). It was there that I finally realized the best way not to get bothered is to just ignore the people trying to sell you stuff. Halong Bay was beautiful. We only managed to see one cave and one grotto, which of course contained some interesting phallic formations. The best part of the caves was the fact that they were cool. We got a delicious lunch on the boat with these crazy shrimp/lobster things that looked disgusting but were actually very tasty. And there were people there trying to sell us stuff on the boat too (I had to get some pearls). For the evening runabout, I wandered around the streets near our hotel just to get a feel for the place with one of our friends. We found a Café Dung, which I have a picture of. Ryan and the other friend were both sick with stomach flu. I left Vietnam with 110 VND and now I can't exchange any of it, so I'll just have to keep it as a souvenir. They have plastic money!!

I finally finished Catfish and Mandala in the Bangkok airport. What an amazing book. Very interesting (taught me a lot about the Viet-kieu and the Vietnamese), but also so depressing. I'm currently on the lighter stuff: Distraction (Bruce Sterling), Ludlum and the huge Strange & Norrel (Susanna Clarke) book that's been in the fantasy section lately.

For those of you who have been thinking that my vacation hasn't been much of a vacation at all, Koh Samui is for you. And for me. After all that trucking around with no longer than 3 days in any one city, we have finally 'settled down' and are staying on the big island of Koh Samui for a grand total of 4.5 days. :)

Koh Samui is one of the three islands sheltered by the Southern tip of Thailand, which is renouned for its beautiful beaches, coral reefs, and many resorts. It's the most touristy, but we're lucky at the moment since it's off-season and it shows. It's still hot and humid here, but not as bad as Bangkok. The people here are much more laid back and not as 'on' as the other places we've been to (which is a welcome change).

The beach is really nice and the water is fantastic. There are blowfish, octopus, all kinds of other marine life here, which makes the snorkelling really fun. Ryan got one of the blowfish to get big, and harrassed an octopus into changing colour. He found a huge snail on the ground and stuck it on our friends doorknob - that was priceless. :)

Yesterday we explored a bit and rented a scooter (verrry interesting driving - esp on the left). Koh Samui has roads all long the outer perimeter which go up and down and twist and turn, and the driving becomes very scary when you're going down a twisting curve right next to a cliff going down to the beach. We discovered a bunch of expats at a local bookstore (I managed to get some books for only $6 that are currently selling for $30) and we found out that you can live here for $1000 CDN a month. I know you can live in Montreal for that, but really. The same price, but for much better weather - tropical /all/ year around. I got my eyebrows plucked for the first time, which was really painful. And we went to a fancy restaurant here, which had a guitarist and a singer and I ended up singing a bit there. ;)

We are going to be completely spoiled when we get back. The fruits are incredible, the shakes are great, the curries are awesome, and everything's very cheap. The fancy restaurant was only $30 a head.

Today I went snorkelling with Ryan in the noonday sun and we both got burned for it, lounged about and then walked over to our beach's main drag (Lamui Beach) to get some pants taken in. Then I took the 'bus' into Chaweng (the main drag of the entire island) and scoped out the stores. The bus here is actually a modified pickup truck with two benches along the edges of the back. It's actually a nice trip. I had the whole thing to myself on the way up, it was raining and there was a rainbow (tried to get a pic, but ended up with some power lines instead). They have Boots pharmacy here, so I picked up some stuff (last time I was in a Boots pharmacy was back in 1998).

Tomorrow it's off to one of the many spas (there have to be over 20 here), while the boys go fishing. On Wednesday, Ryan and I are going scuba diving and our friends are going snorkelling. Thursday is relaxation day followed by an evening flight to Bangkok (probably do some cooking class here). Once we get to Bangkok, we're going on a crocodile farm/elephant ride tour package for one day, and then we're going to head over to the main market for some bargains and souvenirs to take home. Finally, we leave on Saturday, at which point I will have to resist the very strong urge to 'miss' my connecting flight from Narita airport and spend time in Tokyo.

I'll write more long e-mails as I can. Until then, I'll see you when I see you.