Category: Travel

It’s past midnight Monday night here but I made it in.  We made an unscheduled stop at Anchorage airport in Alaska to off-load a sick passenger (couldn’t find out what ailed him .. apparently these was no doctor on the flight, either).  The first picture is of Anchorage airport through the airplane window.  Snowy and icy on the ground but the weather was clear.   So from Anchorage we flew over Alaska, the Kamchatka peninsula and Japan.    I was so happy to see my driver still there at Hong Kong airport, this is now three hours after our scheduled arrival time.   Without him there – I could have A. taken the train to the border and hope to get a taxi in Shenzhen at 11pm : a dicey proposition.  B.  The easier one : walk into the Regal Airport hotel right there and arrange a pick-up in the morning.    The final picture shows the exit point from Hong Kong territory.   I am in a van similar to the one on the right in the picture.   Right after the picture was taken we tried our luck and used the ‘Hong Kong Residents’ lane, and hey, they let us through.

There was a full-body scanner in my security line this morning, but they stopped using it before I got to the front, which was a relief for me.     (It’s the radiation that I don’t like).     Anyway, here I am waiting for the flight to San Francisco, and I am sure I will sleep since I had to get up at 3.45am.

I had dinner last night with my friends Bill Dave and Meredith in the Seattle neighborhood of Ballard – a restaurant called The Hi-Life located in the historic Firehouse No. 18 built in 1911 (picture below).  It serves up American food and I had pot roast, carrots and mashed potatoes with beer.   Very nice!    And today Steve and Ken treated us to pork, sauerkraut, spaetzle, greens and a special corn bread : a feast.

But alas, my time home is over and I’m taking off for Hong Kong early in the morning via San Francisco.  We don’t have snow at the airports here on the West coast, so that’s a good thing!  And now I have to go and finish up with my packing.

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

I’m home ! !   Yes, it’s still Saturday, since we crossed the International Dateline from east to west.  As I sat here on my couch woozy from the flying it was hard to believe it was ‘this morning’ that the tall apartment buildings in Hong Kong flashed by driving out to the airport where I snapped the cute Canon printer billboard.   We left a little late (the flight path picture shows our arrival) and I had to run to make my connection at Incheon airport.   I think the held the flight for us, though.   South Korea continues to be in the news over the latest spat with their aggressive neighbor to the north.   Seoul is uncomfortably close to the border, as the map shows.

We made good time through the Shenzhen traffic and the two border posts just at sunset yesterday (first two pictures) .. a bunch of us is here at the Courtyard Marriott, some (me!) leaving today and some tomorrow.    The blurry picture is our arrival into Hong Kong last night and the bad boy International Commerce Center building teased me with a glimpse of it that I caught just before we entered into the Western Harbor tunnel to Hong Kong Island.

I could not check in on line but Asiana Airlines wishes me a Happy Happy Christmas.    Seems a requirement that even a cartoon Santa character needs to have a thick white moustache, right?

These pictures are all from around the restaurant where we had our team dinner Tue night, in the Futian district of Shenzhen. 

Pictures :  Those are little Santa Clauses on my head, and reindeer horns worn as a ‘scarf’ by my colleague;  yes –  that’s Harry Potter on the display screen for the movie theater inside Coco Park shopping mall;  plenty of bars such as the Lili Marleen bar and 1877 bar; some skyscrapers at night time are lit up with cool lighting like the diamond pattern on the building in the distance.

P.S.  The blue and red figure from Sunday’s post is Pres. Obama, of course .. did you get that? (I didn’t at first).  In American politics blue means Democratic Party and red means Republican Party. 

I had a hunch I need to make it out to Times Square out by Causeway Bay since that shopping mall hosts great exhibits year-round, and I was glad I did.     There is a collection of giant spray cans and figures outside to invite passers-by in, and inside the atrium of the mall there is a giant rotating wooden head, surrounded by an exhibition of giant wooden figures as well as little doll figures.     The one with the bandaged head and crutch is called ‘No War’ and makes a political statement, I’m sure.

I believe the International Commerce Center building in Kowloon has now opened its skydeck but alas – the smog in the city this weekend was terrible.   Check out the picture second from last that I took from the taxi on the way back to Shenzhen.   The apartment buildings are about 50 stories high.   The ICC building visible between them, goes up for another 60 stories : the skydeck is at the 110th floor.  But of course the view can only be appreciated on a clear day.

The last picture is the view if one looks back immediately after setting foot in mainland China after customs.   This building is newly renovated; on previous trips I found it covered up with scaffolding.

It should be no surprise that Christmas is embraced by the retail industry even though it’s a holiday with no religious significance in this part of the world.   So here are some pictures from Saturday.

Love Christmas, Love Hong Kong (and spend money in the process, of course!).   Don’t want to pay your supertaxes? Off to jail with you. (Looks like the rich are off the hook with paying super taxes in the USA anyway!).   These Monopoly floor decorations in Central Station is for a promotion by McDonalds.   Yes, they still sell the board game in the stores.    Tai Koo station is far out east on the Island Line and there I found a nice store called Muji (behind me in the reflection) with Japanese products.     I bought a white bone china dinner plate – to actually use in my apartment.   US$20 for the plate instead of US$1 for a cheap porcelain plate in China BUT the China plates are not flat – it’s really a shallow bowl. AND it’s not bone China, see?  The little toys clamoring for their escape is a scene straight from a Toy Story movie, also at this mall.

Click on the Visa billboard picture to get the original big size one and check it out.   Surprisingly, no USA icons : no Statue of Liberty, no Golden Gate Bridge.  What’s up with that, Visa?   The staid and uppity Peninsula Hotel did a good job of its Christmas decorations – the snowflakes seem to float in 3D since they are suspended by thin black cables.   Picture of a ‘Betty Boop’/ modern worldly girl that needs no handsome prince (is that him in the moonlight? no, looks like a monkey on the horse!) from the Peninsula Arcade next door.   Finally two pictures from the mall in International Finance Centre 2.    (Did Pinocchio play a trumpet in the original story?  I don’t recall that he did).

It’s Friday and I didn’t think I’d make it to Hong Kong : we all really thought we would be grounded and ordered to work this weekend.     We start the first round of system testing on Monday and we were struggling to get everything in place, 12 hour workdays notwithstanding.     But there we were, in the van : Willem, Will and William.   I hitched a ride to Hong Kong airport with the other two Wills.   The first picture shows a road sign in Shenzhen with live traffic densities, the second just another Shenzhen building.    Mickey Mouse in his Santa outfit is from a giant wall mural in Hong Kong train station, and the final picture is inside the train just before the last stop.   For the last few blocks to the Marriott Courtyard I took the tram even though I had some luggage to handle, since the taxis were in short supply.

These were taken on my walk back Sunday from the Sheraton Hotel .. the buildings decorated with music-themed graphics are only a block away from where my apartment is in Dameisha.   Very cool, the red microphone phone booth, is it not?

 

I go out to work on Monday morning
Tuesday I go off to honeymoon
I’ll be back again before it’s time for sunny down
I’ll be lazing on a Sunday afternoon
Bicycling on every Wednesday evening
Thursday I go waltzing to the zoo
I come from London town
I’m just an ordinary guy
Fridays I go painting in the Louvre
I’m bound to be proposing on a Saturday night
(There he goes again)
I’ll be lazing on a Sunday lazing on a Sunday
Lazing on a Sunday afternoon

From ‘A Night at the Opera’ (1975) by Queen

All the pictures are from the Sheraton Dameisha where we had an expensive Sunday lunch this afternoon in the Capri restaurant, which also allowed us to go outside onto the ocean-side deck and the private beach of the hotel.   A wedding ceremony was scheduled for later, as can be seen from the picture with the chairs on the beach.   (Note to self : the hotel has only 368 rooms, not the ‘more than a thousand’ I told my dad on the phone today).   The little fruit balloons I hold up in the last picture is part of my prize I won in a raffle contest : a free future Sunday brunch at the restaurant !

I made it to Bangkok at 6am local time this morning, and then on to Hong Kong.   There I paid $20 for a shower (completely worth it),  met a colleague from PwC Singapore and our driver took us across the border to mainland China, and to the office to work for 3 hrs.     So by this time – 9 pm China time,  Johannesburg lies very far behind me ! My apartment is in decent shape.   I had to throw out all the perishables in the fridge since the power went out or was turned out by the cleaners.

Pictures : Ndebele dolls from the ‘Out of Africa’ store at OR Tambo airport; World Cup 2010 paraphernalia are hanging in there – last call, I think; the Thai bird that brought us to Bangkok parked at the gate at JNB airport, and inside Bangkok airport making the connection to the flight to Hong Kong.

 

Back to work!   I’ll take the very short hotel shuttle to the Gautrain station which runs into O R Tambo airport here in Johannesburg, then ship out Hong Kong via Bang Kok on Thai Air.   Here is where I usually post a route map but below is the best I could do with the Thai Air website.   Note to Thai Air webmaster :  move Johannesburg down from Zimbabwe into South Africa on the map!  : )

 

A few pictures from today : my hotel is right across from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange;  Use only what you need exhorts Eskom the national electric utility; and since the hotel shuttle from the airport was pretty expensive  I had to go and do a test run on the new Gautrain.   The Sandton station is just around the block from the hotel and the airport is three stops away.   The system is set up the same way as in Seattle and Hong Kong : buy a magnetic card for a nominal fee, and top it up at any station’s ticketing machines.    Tap the turnstile reader with the card to register your departure point and tap the exit turnstile reader at the arrival station.   The fare is calculated and deducted from the card.   A one-way fare from Sandton Square to the airport is  R100 (US$15) : not cheap by South African standards, but a cab ride to the hotel will cost at least US$ 50 –  and besides, if you intend to fly for transport* you can definitely afford a $15 train fare!   The train’s inside is very nicely appointed in a gold, blue and cream color scheme and the seats are very comfortable.  The train hits 160 km/h (100 mph) for short stretches between the stations and runs very smoothly.     Very nice!   The last picture is a view of the old rail track from the elevated Rhodesfield station.

*which reminds me of my experience this morning at British Airways’ security check point at Cape Town this morning.  I only had to take out my notebook computer and my Blackberry.  Didn’t have to take my shoes off, nor take the bag of liquids out of my computer bag.   Walked through the metal detector, the bleep + red light went off, but I was just waved through by the attendant.  On top of all that I unintentionally smuggled in a 1/2 bottled water tucked into the side of my backpack that I was not called on either .. whoah !

The time has come to pack up again .. staying overnight in Johannesburg tomorrow night, then to Hong Kong via Bang Kok on Monday.  About the same time as from Seattle, but this time I fly west.

The Arizona Spur is one of a franchise, the South African equivalent of TGI Fridays, where we had dinner last night before the movie.   A few other South African artifacts : I love the GPS coordinates on my new Cape Town t-shirt, and the moo-vuzela that the cow uses to trumpet its cheese; and the hand-made African wire-and-bead reindeer looks a little lost.  Can you blame him – this far south with Christmas less than a month away?

Mooi berge means ‘beautiful mountains’ and is the name of a farm stall outside Stellenbosch known for its colorful scarecrows and metal artwork in and around its strawberry fields.   (Confession : the pictures are actually from Tuesday, when it was very windy).    The best time of year to visit the Cape Town area is well into the new year, as late as April.

My friend Marlien and I went to the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront,  situated in the heart of Cape Town’s working harbour with the dramatic backdrop of Table Mountain.   The red structure in the second picture is the Clock Tower.  (That is the Ocean Princess cruise liner from Princess Cruise Lines at the dock on the left behind it). The restored warehouse in the one below it is now filled with souvenir shops and art shops.  Finally, we found my favorite artwork mirrors of which I have one already.  I regret now that I forgot to look up and write down the name of the plate metal artist that made the frame.

My friend Marlien and I visited the Lanzerac Hotel on Sunday afternoon.   It is another example of Cape Dutch architecture that endures on a 300-year old country estate.  Back in the day when I was a student at the University of Stellenbosch nearby, we could come here and sit on the patio and get a little rowdy.  It seems to me that those days are over !

While spending money here I have to divide by 7, since there are 7 South African Rand in one US Dollar.   I remember on my first trip to the USA in 1990 that I had to multiply by 2.5 – that’s how dramatically the exchange rate has changed.  (But the rand is actually too ‘strong’, it is hampering exports and job growth in South Africa).   The Rand takes its name from the Witwatersrand (Eng. White-waters-ridge), the ridge upon which Johannesburg  is built and where most of South Africa’s gold deposits were found.  The rand has the symbol “R” and is subdivided into 100 cents, symbol “c”.   The Rand notes denotes the so-called Big Five, a reference to five of Africa’s greatest wild animals – some people say the five most difficult animals in Africa to hunt on foot.  (Of course they are protected today but poaching is a stubborn problem).   Which are they?  The rhino, the African elephant, the lion, the African buffalo and the leopard.

 

These pictures were all taken around Die Braak (Eng ‘Fallow Land’), the Stellenbosch village town square dating back to the late 1700s.  The buildings are good examples of Cape Dutch architecture.   In the first picture there are slave bells on visible on the right (yes, the Dutch had slaves in The Cape.  It was finally abolished in 1834 after revolts from the slave-owners).    I stand in front of  Die Kruithuis (Eng. The Ammunition House), and the church is St Mary’s Cathedral.