a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
We got up early on Monday morning to take the ferry to Rottnest Island, and spent most of the day there on Salmon Beach. It was another sweltering day in Perth (41 °C/ 105 °F) but a good ten degrees Celsius cooler on the island.
We drove down to the seaside city of Mandurah (say ‘MAN-duh-rah’) on Saturday (the day after Christmas, called ‘Boxing Day’ here), about an hour’s drive south of Perth. The Peel-Harvey estuary is heavily used for recreational boating and fishing. It is now mostly salt-water, after the construction in 1994 of a channel that let seawater push in with the tides. Still, the estuary is home to the blue swimmer crab, the western king prawn and fish such as black bream and cobbler, and is even visited occasionally by dolphins.
We went to the Perth Zoo on Christmas Day, and here are my favorite pictures.
The Bell Tower is touted as Perth’s top tourist attraction (think: Seattle’s Space Needle), and so I had to go check it out. The surrounding area is still a major construction zone though : the $400 million Perth waterfront redevelopment project has been three years in the making and is now at least two years behind schedule. (Mmm. Seems very similar to the Bertha tunnel boring machine & waterfront development project’s delays in Seattle!).
My brother and I made a jaunt into downtown Perth with the Transperth* train on Wednesday. Downtown is a mix of old and new buildings, with the tallest ones belonging to the giant multinational mining companies such as Rio Tinto Group and BHP Billiton. (Iron ore is the country’s largest export earner, and lost 43 per cent in market price this year as low-cost miners such as Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton pressed ahead with production to defend their market share).
*Part of the Perth public transportation network of trains, buses and ferries.
We visited a local beach called South Beach on Tuesday, and I went in for a dip in the Atlantic Ocean (the water temperature was very pleasant). The beach is south of the city of Perth, in Fremantle.
I traveled due south from Hong Kong for 7 hours to arrive in Perth late on Monday night. It is warm here : last night is was 27 °C (80 °F) at the late hour of 11 pm.
I made it into Hong Kong airport late on Sunday night. My layover is so long (16 hours!) that I could leave the airport to go to the Novotel Citygate hotel nearby for some sleep before the fourth and final segment of my travels to Perth, Australia.
Here are more pictures of my Tokyo experience from Friday and Saturday.
My Marriott Courtyard hotel is tucked into the 4th floor of a building just outside the upscale shopping area of Tokyo, the Ginza district. Here are some pictures of my walkabout there last night.
My flight to Tokyo went without incident, and the airline staff were super helpful and friendly. It was 7.30 pm Tokyo time when we had arrived, and commuters were still leaving the office, so the monorail train from Haneda airport got crowded a few stops down. But that got me to the nearest metro station, and I could get to Tokyo Station from there. (My Marriott Courtyard hotel is close to Tokyo Station). Of course, the station is very big, so I could not find the hotel immediately. Tired and with two bags in tow, I went for Plan B : got into a taxi to take me there. The cabby’s English was poor (and my Japanese non-existent), but I could tell he was taking me to the wrong Courtyard (there is one in Ginza as well) .. so I just called the right Courtyard Hotel and asked them to give him directions .. and hey! I have a bed to sleep in.
Alaska Airlines made me sweat a little by being 30 mins late with the short hop up to Vancouver. (Can we leave already? How about NOW?). Our Bombardier arrived late, and then there was a snafu with transmitting the load balancing numbers to the pilot. (It was printed and brought out to the plane). But the Canadian customs process and baggage claim was very efficient (they have scanning machines now for the customs declaration for US passport holders), and I even had a little time to spare to catch my flight out to Tokyo.
Today was my last workday
for 2015. I am heading out on my end-of-year trip in the morning : down south to the Land of Oz (Australia). It is going to start with a short hop up to Vancouver to catch a flight to Tokyo. I will spend two days there before continuing on to Perth with a stop in Hong Kong.
I drove back to Sacramento airport on Thursday, taking Highway 99 (it runs through Chico). I would have loved to spend more time walking around Chico, or even to stop in Sacramento, but there just was no time for that. The airport is north of the city of Sacramento, so I did not get to see any of the California capital. Maybe next time!
We walked by the substation to the Substation to get a sandwich for lunch today. Inside they played ’80s music : Come On Eileen (Dexy’s Midnight Runners, 1983) and Tainted Love (Soft Cell, 1981). The guy behind the counter inquired ‘Which part of the Empire are you from?’ as soon as I placed my order. I should have said the Galactic Empire* but instead said ‘South Africa, but I now live in Seattle‘. Ah, and you speak Afrikaner (sic)?. Yes yes, I said, my native language is Afrikaans.
*A Star Wars reference
We had a very long day at work, but made time afterwards to stop by the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company here in Chico for some brewski and a bite to eat.
Here are some pictures of my arrival at Sacramento airport. The airport is not nearly as big as San Francisco International or the sprawling LAX (Los Angeles) airport, but I the Terminal B where I had arrived is practically brand-spanking new (it opened in 2011). The $1 billion terminal contains $6 million of public art. Its construction created some 2,400 jobs over 2 1/2 years during a recession that had left state and regional unemployment hovering around 12 percent.
I drove out to the airport in pouring rain today : a cats-and-dogs rain at times ! The rain had cleared up somewhat by the time I got to the airport.
I had a late night flight out of Seattle to San Francisco on Sunday night. Freezing fog conditions made for an even later departure, though. Our scheduled departure was pushed back so much that it was 1.15 am by the time I picked up the rental car at San Francisco airport. Luckily the little ‘air train’ out to Hertz still runs at that time, and the rental car facility operates around the clock. And hey : there is almost no traffic on the Bay Bridge in the dead of night.
I think all travelers – and especially those of us traveling internationally – are scratching our heads a little, as to what to make of the ‘Worldwide Travel Alert’, issued on Monday by the US State Department. I am more or less always careful when I travel overseas, and I don’t advertise my nationality. (But make no mistake : I am sure I do stick out like a sore thumb with my gigantic Canon camera and its frequent use to take pictures, when I travel. Ah well). I have been fortunate in that the worst that has happened over many years of travel is the surreptitious stealing of my wallet from my backpack in Hong Kong. On a different occasion a customs agent in Lagos airport that took my passport, and then could not find it when returned as instructed with my luggage, to get it back. (They found my passport after 20 mins in a desk drawer).
