It’s been a long day of travel but I’m in the Marriott Courtyard in the Ginza district, ready to settle in and get some rest. Narita airport was very, very busy. It took 40 mins to get through customs and another 30 in line just to buy a ticket to Tokyo on the Narita Express. I found a baggage storage facility at the airport that took the unwieldy one of my two big suitcases off my hands. They will store it for me for $5 a day until I return to go on to Seattle : a lifesaver. I cannot use the trains and the Tokyo subway with two big bags!
Here’s my Japanese lunch (naturally, since I am on All Nippon Airlines). They do offer a Western lunch, but then I would not have jellyfish salad (top left), orange fish eggs, pink-and-white lotus root, smoked eel and some other items I did not recognize!A countryside scene that flashed by while we were on the Narita Express shinkansen (bullet train).The white bullet had stopped at Tokyo station, and you have to get your get up and go. The train stops for only two minutes.Eek! It’s going to be WARM tomorrow. That 34 C for Tokyo is 93 F.Taxis in the Ginza district.It’s Wednesday night, so the streets are not very busy. This is the Matsuya department store, glowing with pink lines.
Yes, I know I was there just Sunday. The van picked me at the Dameisha hotel today and brought me to the Hong Kong Marriott Skycity : making its way across the border, and the two bridges to Lantau island where the airport is. I am making my way back to Seattle but stopping over for two days in Tokyo. Might as well, I thought : it’s on the way, and I want to go check out the Skytree (tall antenna tower for digital transmissions, newly open to the public), and go to the Akhihabara electronics and toy store. I love that store, bought a beautiful Seiko watch there a previous time (which I could have ordered on Amazon but hey! feels nice to say ‘I bought this in Tokyo’ and it brings the happy memories back). I just think it’s going to be warm there, but I should be OK. Not like I’m not used to warm humid weather coming from Hong Kong and Shenzhen !
Crossing into Hong Kong after a stop at the mainland border. I had to open my suitcases this time for a quick check by customs!You have to be quick to catch this glimpse of Victoria Harbor and Hong Kong island : it lasts only a minute or so while crossing over to Lantau island.And here is the backseat view of the suspension of the Tsing Ma Bridge to Lantau Island.
It was my last weekend for awhile here in the Hong Kong area. So I felt I had to go there one more time to go to my favorite places and walk around.
This is the Shatoujiao Port crossing in the Yantian district. A little quicker than the Luohu crossing with fewer people, but one can only take a bus from here to Hong Kong on the other side – and depending on the bus schedule you could wait up to 45 mins for the next bus.My timing turned out well : I waited only 5 mins for the next bus to depart. We’re now in Hong Kong and the high-rise buildings are starting to flash by. ‘Do not eat on the bus’ and ‘Fasten your Seat Belt’ says the signage in the window.A ‘Find the Willem’ picture from the Staurbucks in iSquare in Tsim Tsa Tsui.This is right next to the iSquare biulding, just a lot of colorful street signs. I think (I hope) the red banner sign with the shark on says that the store is NOT selling shark fin products.This bus with the display advertisement that says ‘The Hilfigers Love Hong Kong/ on Nathan Road TST’ is ACTUALLY on Nathan Rd in Tsim Tsa Tsui as well !This is in Central district. (I have no idea if real people actually aspire to buying Gucci clothes. I guess they do).Bus in Central District decked out with a cure picture. I like the stethoscope .. but that syringe, ouch!Now I’m heading back .. this is the classic industrial design of the Hung Hom train station roof. Lots of natural light comes in through the window panes in the wavy roof.And here is another classic : the view as you walk out onto the plaza at Luohu station after arriving from Hong Kong, and you turn around. This is around 7 pm.
After checking out of the Shangri-La, I knew I had to go directly back to Dameisha : the little beach resort town gets a crush of visitors from Shenzhen on summer weekends that makes for bad traffic jams. A rainstorm on Sunday afternoon made the traffic situation even worse, but luckily I was in the Dameisha hotel by then.
The driver in the taxi cab across from ours buys a bottled drink from a street vendor at a traffic light.I like the ‘auspicious’ turquoise color of this deluxe Wuzhulong bound bus!We’re winding our way through the little port town of Yantian, trying to get around the traffic jam on the S30 freeway.I’m in my Dameisha hotel room looking down at the main entrance.And here are the gray colors of the rainstorm. It is the view from my hotel room looking out over Da Peng Bay with Dameisha beach and the Dameisha beach tower on the left.
Here are Saturday’s pictures of being out and about in a very hot and hazy Shenzhen. You can only walk outside for so long before it was almost necessary to go inside a shopping mall or store to get into some air-conditioned environment. My colleague is new to Shenzhen and so we made the classic stops at the Shenzhen electronics market, the Civic Center plaza and concert hall, and finally went to the McCauly’s pub in Futian district to check out the expats and drink a beer.
Here is the view from my 10th floor room in the Shangri-La hotel towards the Hong Kong-mainland border. The green hill in the background is in Hong Kong. The Chinese building is the customs building.Here is a map from inside the Luohu metro station. Its sister station across the border is called LoWu. The regional train station with trains to Guangzhou is right here as well.This giant mechanical clock in located in the middle at the bottom of the first picture. The seconds hand sweeps around and around, so the on-lookers and those posing for a picture are about as close as they should get !Scooters and high heels at the electronics market off Huaqiang Road, the main street with buildings that house vendors and stores from the Shenzhen electronics market.This store sells iPhone and iPad covers, buttons, battery packs and related knick knacks.This is inside the 10 story SEG building, each floor filled with cubicles or enclosed little stores that sell electronics components and products.Just a colorful picture at a vendor’s cubicle that advertises a shoot-em-up game, that drew my attention.These are little LED lights for sale. They are used by hobbyists that build their own gadgets with electronic circuits and switches, and then the little light indicates an ON/ OFF or ACTIVE/ INACTIVE status.This is the gigantic wavy roof on the Shenzhen museum viewed from the plaza that we emerged onto from the underground metro station called Civic Center. The kids in the foreground are roller blading. We’ve now gone up the steps and stand almost under the roof, and this is the view looking back. The sky was very hazy – I left the grays in this picture as the camera captured it (without auto-adjusting the colors with Photoshop). The black item in the foreground in an umbrella.Now looking back at the roof with the plaza on the other side. I adjusted the colors in this picture to make the red and yellow pillars stand out a little more.These street musicians are doing a great job. I couldn’t understand a word, but they sang a beautiful song.These golden beams that support a ‘spider web’ of rafters are from the lobby of the Shenzhen concert hall nearby.This is the outside of the Shenzhen library. The photographer is using a gold reflector to light up (or warm up the colors) on his ‘subject’. He actually needs an assistant to hold the reflector at the right angle.This is around 9pm on Saturday night and we have just emerged from the Shopping Park station in Futian district. The expat Irish pub/ watering hole called McCauly’s is right there.And this is the night view of the Shangri-La hotel as I approached it after arriving at the Luohu train stop right there at the hotel.There is a big mirror in the lobby of the Shangri-la hotel that allowed me to take a picture of myself.
I hopped in a taxi and came to the city of Shenzhen just for the weekend, just to get out of Dameisha for a night or two and save on the taxi rides back and forth.
This is the Kingkey 100 building at night : impossible to miss with its gigantic scrolling letters. Each letter is 6 stories tall ! It is near the Grand Theatre train station, named after the theatre in the foreground. But there was no event and no theatre goers at the theatre on Friday night.This is a bus stop nearby. The bicycle at the bottom right is a policeman’s.
Typhoon Vicente had passed by Hong Kong by the time I arrived late Tue night, but left a lot of turmoil in its wake. We left Tokyo an hour late, circled before landing at Hong Kong for an hour, then waited on the tarmac for almost an hour. So by the time I cleared customs and had my luggage it was 1.30 am. The van scheduled for my pick-up several hours earlier had left. The airport hotels were all full .. I got a hotel room downtown, but the line at the taxi stand had 200 people, and the airport train was no longer running. One option remained : the airport’s night buses running every 30 mins. That got me to the hotel at 4 am. Quite an adventure.
Hermès scarf on display at one of Narita airports luxury stores. (Hermes was an Olympian god in Greek religion and mythology, son of Zeus and the Pleiade Maia).This head of this ‘solar’ samurai in a toy store bobs back and forth. There is a little solar panel in the base.An ATM in Narita airport. Looks like 7-11 is in the banking business in Japan as well.That’s Mt Fuji on the wall of this Narita airport restaurant.Look for the wolf in this elaborate Red Riding Hood origami display, from a store that sells all kinds of origami kits.Oh no! McDonalds has infiltrated Japan as well. (That’s a Big Mac). ¥670 for the Big Mac meal is about US$9 : expensive compared to elsewhere in the world.We’re on the way to Hong Kong.The wasabi-flavored rice snacks are very very tasty.This is midnight on Tue night and I spotted this Hong Kong Airlines plane as I stepped off from ours. We are about to board a bus that will take us to the arrivals lounge.Waiting to check out of the hotel Wed morning, and checking out the offerings in the little souvenir shop. These Chinese zodiac characters are the Tiger (for 2010), the Rabbit (for 2011) and the Dragon (for 2012).SpongeBob Squarepants and I are on the way to Dameisha. (SpongeBob is not mine! belongs to the van driver).And here’s the obligatory border crossing picture as we entered the mainland, leaving the Hong Kong area.
Here we are about two hours from Tokyo, as seen on the flight tracker on the United flight. It was an OLD Boeing 777-200 we were on.
We arrived at Narita airport in the Tokyo area. The layover is 4 hours, which is totally fine given that the more time I spend here the better the weather in Hong Kong will be at our arrival. The typhoon has actually made landfall and is now moving westwards, away from Hong Kong.
I am Hong Kong bound again, this time on United Airlines to Tokyo (9 hrs) and then on All Nippon Airlines to Hong Kong (4 hrs). There is trouble brewing in the form of tropical storm Vicente in the Hong Kong area, though. I might have to wait at Tokyo’s Narita airport for a few hours – or even stay over for a night.
This picture is from Flightaware.com. That is Lantau island where Hong Kong International Airport is located, with little airplanes departing from it. So far the departure delay is only 30 mins.And here is Hong Kong observatory’s projected track of tropical cyclone Vicente, threatening to turn into a typhoon before it makes landfall.
It is turning into a long day : the 3 hrs to Seoul and 9 hours to Seattle disappeared into thin air. I arrived in Seattle on Saturday 15 minutes ‘earlier’ than my Saturday departure time in Hong Kong.
This limerick in honor of Einsten’s Theory of Relativity has been around a long time, but it still makes me smile : There once was a girl named Bright/ Whose speed was much faster than light./ She set out one day/ In a relative way/And returned on the previous night.
Here’s the Hong Kong ground crew checking us out as we taxi by. My plane looks like the one on the right, Asiana Airlines.This is looking back after 5 minutes or so. The brownish diamond shaped island is Lantau island, some of it reclaimed from the sea to build Hong Kong International Airport on.And here is the roosting place of the skyblue Korean Air birds. We have just landed at Incheon airport in Seoul, and are taxiing toward the gate.
My flight on Asiana Airlines to Seattle with my usual connection in Seoul, is on Saturday. Check out the Friday night sunset view from the 15th floor of the Marriott Skycity hotel at Hong Kong airport. (See the plane that is about to land?).
That’s what we told our audience after today’s presentation (a proposal for a new project). We’re up against three firms with proposals. From what we could tell, it went well. (The presentation was in Chinese, as were the questions from the audience, but they were translated for us). It has been a hectic three days since Tuesday : three nights and in and out of three hotels.
This is Wednesday night’s hot pot dinner. You pick a hot pot (mine is mushroom, you also get ones with a fish base, hot and spicy base, beef, and so on). Then they bring all kinds of goodies to the table that you cook in your pot. It could be veggies, thinly sliced meat, or tofu.On the way to the presentation. I’m in a taxi, checking out a different kind of taxi.The presentation venue was a Thai-styled hotel. (The elephants are the tip-off that it’s Thai).Done, and now we’re headed to Beijing airport. Check out the cool traditional architecture of the toll gate.This is the new Terminal 3 at Beijing Capital airport. As you step into it, the ceiling patterns is very striking. Very nicely done.And I loved this dragon from an airport gift shop. I wanted to take it home with me, but I had too much stuff to take care of already.These are my other favorite type of Chinese art – made of an ancient type of colored glass called ‘iuli’. The prices are in yuan, so divide by about 6 to get to US dollar.I’m on the way back to Shenzhen, sitting in an Air China plane similar to the one I see through the window.
Here are my pictures from today’s trip to Beijing. The flight from Shenzhen to Beijing is almost three hours to the north, but that did not make much difference in the weather : Beijing seems to be as warm as Shenzhen is this time of the year.
I love the gigantic red characters etched out against the blue blue sky.I traveled with a colleague but I may have been the only lao wei (foreigner) on the plane. I didn’t spot any others while we were boarding.At the top of the steps and I am about to step into the Boeing 737-700.This is at Beijing airport, on the way to baggage claim and to get a taxi to the city.Beijing has SIX ring roads (freeways) around it. Other cities that I know of may have two or three.We’re heading to Chaoyang district in the city where my firm’s Beijing office is.Some interesting architecture on the way to the city.And this is the spectacular China Central Television (CCTV) Headquarters building in the city.
It is very warm here. We’re at the bottom of the lower red blob; just outside of it right on the coast. So we’re not quite up to (35°C/ 95°F), but almost.
Two colleagues and I took a taxi out to Shenzhen late morning for some shopping at Luohu Commercial Center and the Coco Park mall. We encountered heavy traffic on the way back : it’s weekend and the Dameisha streets and beaches were overflowing with Shenzhen city-zens that wanted to enjoy the hot summer weather.
The concierge still hands us get-back-to-the-hotel-cards to hand to taxi drivers, which we appreciate! The writing at the top left says ‘Luohu Commercial Center’ and at the top right ‘Coco Park Shopping Mall’ : our two destinations in Shenzhen.This is the Port of Luohu building with the Hong Kong-Shenzhen pedestrian border crossing inside. We’re about to go into the optometrist store to buy some glasses.The optometrist store. Look for my reflection in one of the Oakley glasses’ lens. I just bought some reading glasses, but in a great titanium Ray Ban frame that feels very comfortable.These are for Cat Woman! Check out the peace sign hidden in the engravings on the top.We had lunch at a restaurant called Kitchen Futian; this is in the Futian district and the mall across the street is Coco Park.This is from the Jusco department/ grocery store inside Coco Park. Not too hard to name all the world city landmarks on the coffee creamer lids, right? I will help out with the Chinese one : the Temple of Heaven in Beijing.This keg of German beer is filled with Veldensteiner. (We didn’t buy one!). ‘Brautradition im zeichen der burg’ translates to ‘Brewing tradition in the character of the castle’.Now we’re headed back east out of the city to Dameisha. Lot of tall apartment buildings, as in Hong Koog.More interesting buildings. I don’t know the names of these.I don’t know the name of this building, either. But I am sure those air-conditioners mounted on the outside are appreciated at this time of the year by the office workers!Right about here is where we came to a complete standstill with all the traffic headed out to Dameisha. We already left the freeway and now attempted to use the coastal road marked ‘360’ to get to Dameisha. The road eventually opened up and it turned out to be the right call to leave the clogged freeway. We felt gave the driver a nice tip for his efforts (tipping is not expected and not the custom in China).
Someone’s ‘happy clapper’ from work. You grab the orange handle and shake it up and down.The front view of the Sheraton Dameisha. It has been raining on and off this week, but when the clouds give way the sky is a beautiful blue.
.. and that means some of our colleagues go back to Beijing and Shanghai – and those of us ‘left behind’ get to walk to the Dameisha Sheraton to make our bellies happy with a beer and a burger, or British-style fish and chips. The lobby was quiet this time except for the band downstairs that we could hear. They billed themselves as ‘Taste of Thai’ but nonetheless sang the John Denver classic ‘Country Roads (Take Me Home)’. Aw. For me it is one more week before I get to check up on my home and my friends, and the summer that Seattle has been having while I have been away.
Three colleagues and I finally – after all this time in the area! – went to check out the retired Russian aircraft carrier, the Minsk. It is a stone’s throw away from Dameisha, in the Yantian port area.
From Wikipedia : Named after the capital city of Belarus, the Minsk was laid down in 1972, launched on 30 September 1975, completed on 27 September 1978, and decommissioned on 30 June 1993. The Minsk operated with the Pacific Fleet. She was retired as a result of a major accident (details not known) which required the facilities at the Chernomorskiy yard, in Mykolayiv, located in the newly-independent Ukraine (the reasons for not attempting a repair are not known). In 1995 she was sold to a South Korean businessman, and later resold to Shenzhen Minsk Aircraft Carrier Industry Company Limited, a Chinese company.
Picture from Wikipedia : An aerial port beam view of the Soviet Kiev class aircraft carrier Minsk underway.The retired Minsk today, in Yantian port here in the Shenzhen area.That’s me posing in front of the middle of the port side of the ship. The gangway to the ship behind me is rusty and creaky!The layout of the ship. The take-off and landing strip is at the bottom, so not even the entire length of the ship.This is a torpedo. The ship has 10 × 533 mm torpedo tubes.This is one of 2 × twin SA-N-3 Shtorm SAM launchers. The ship could carry 72 missiles.I just liked this sign :).This is the view out over the sea on the starboard side of the ship, looking east.This is probably a Kamov Ka-25 or Ka-27 helicopter. The ship could carry 20 of these. The ship also carried 12 Yak-38M fighter aircraft.I am sitting in the captain’s seat on the main deck.Just some controls with the original Russian labeling.This is a table with a glass top in the ship .. I was interested in the picture of the ship while it was in service.You can even arrange to have your wedding ceremony and reception on the ship ! (Hmm, not so sure about that!)This is below the main deck, probably a Yak-38M fighter aircraft, with all its bombs laid out.We were lucky to catch this 6-man squad .. they did a march and a present-arms routine for us.Don’t be push-y? Don’t be push-ed? Both!This is a collection of mini-coats of arms in a display case on the ship. Those were the days of the Cold War and the USSR vs. the USA. The lines were drawn clearly and the colors (now faded) were black, bright blue and bright red.The year on this one is 1988, so this was barely a year or two before the break-up of the Soviet Union.This is a picture from the ship when it was filled with young sailors, these evidently in a friendly tug-of-war on the deck of the ship.
The pictures are from Johannesburg’s Oliver Tambo airport.
The airport stores are well-stocked with African handicraft and souvenir items, and seemed to be doing a brisk business even though it’s winter time and not the tourist season.
Our Airbus A340-300 was filled to capacity. The number 4 engine did not start properly, though, and we went back to the gate for a check-up.
Take your time, technicians, I thought .. make sure everything is A-OK. All was resolved after 30 minutes, and we were on our way.
This wire frame-and-beads Nelson Mandela is outside the ‘Out of Africa’ store that is filled with locally made handicraft and artwork.It’s not too late to buy a bronze vuvuzela and go make some noise at the Euro 2012 soccer!The stuffed monkeys must be vervet monkeys – they have black face with a white fringe of hair, and are overall grey.This is the last few hours of the long flight out to Hong Kong from Johannesburg. We have just completed flying over Viet Nam.
I am at Cape Town airport. It’s a 2-hour hop to Johannesburg and then onto a direct flight of 13 hrs to Hong Kong from there. I resisted buying any more Afrikaans books (already bought 4), t-shirts or bottles of South African olive oil that are shaped like Table Mountain !
Cape Town to Johannesburg is 2 hrs. Johannesburg to Hong Kong is 13 hrs.I found the ‘donkey with pajamas’ (as we sometimes call zebra here in South Africa) at the lounge entrance. Zebras are good subjects for black-and-white pictures. 🙂Check out the items on the South African Alphabet book’s cover. Among others : Aardvark, Braai (barbecue), Koeksister (syrupy twisted doughnut), Leeu (lion), Mahem (crowned crane), Miskruier (dung beetle), Nelson Mandela, Protea (the national flower), Rondawel (Africa-style hut), Taxi (minibus taxi)Olive oil in a bottle shaped like Table Mountain (on its side).
Thursday was overcast and cool which made for good picture-taking weather. All the buildings are from the central area of Stellenbosch.
The ‘old main building’ of the University of Stellenbosch was completed in 1886 and recently renovated. It is built in a style that could be called Cape classical.This is the Sasol Art Museum is on Ryneveld Street in a beautiful red Dutch Neo-Classical building dating back to 1907. The building was previously home to the Bloemhof school.This is Crozier House in Victoria street.This is Van der Stel liquor store on Andringa street, a simple building but I love the roof arches and the Victorian style trim.This church is called the ‘Mother Church’ and this building and tower were consecrated in 1863. The style is neo-gothic, built from plans from Carl Otto Hager, a German master builder and architect from Dresden.
