Bangkok in the daylight

We are ready to try out our superb knowledge of the rail system and head out of the condo and take the other way out of this neighborhood. As luck would have it, we get to pass over a canal, exciting....until we get there. The smell is powerful. The street lined with food sellers backed up against this sewer-canal, an amazing concept. Blessedly, the walk to the train is just a few minutes.

We immediately try to buy a multi-day pass, only to learn they have one day, three day or one month passes. We choose the 3 day for 300 b, $9. As we are in the process of the transaction, one of the workers who speaks English comes to talk to us. After learning the pass does not include the Sky Train, but only the subway, we decide this will be useless and are going to purchase only a single trip ticket. Hmmmmm....not so. The man has already started to give us the 3 day passes. He can't unsell them. So we buy the one he has already coded. That makes it ever more so useless as everything we are planning do in the next 3 days is together.

We are frustrated and leave with a bit of a pout, deciding the walk is not too far. Guess what....It IS!

Did I mention how hot Bangkok is? UGH!

The computer that comes with the condo has some security features on it such that I can't access aol or any of the sites where I have to log in. This is troublesome as the time Vic is in class I am to do the blogging...So we head over to the computer market, Pantip Plaza. We walk for hours here. There are no deals. It seems silly to buy an Asian computer now just for this trip. We find the internet cafe and catch up on Emails.

Bangkok 1st impressions

Our 1 hour taxi ride from the airport to the condo that we rented through vrbo.com came to a whopping $7.50. This makes us feel good. Except that the location of the condo is a bit concerning. Once one turns off the main street the aura declines. Narrow, dirty, lots of shacks amongst an occasional high rise. We wonder if this is safe.

The condo is very perfect. A one bedroom with a balcony, kitchen, living room, huge bath. Lots of space. We unwind for about a minute odd and questionable neighborhood. No sidewalks and it isn't clear which side of the road it the right one for folks to drive on, they use the whole road.

We stop at nearly the first place we see, perhaps a mile from the condo, a Laos restaurant. Have you ever had hot food. This is hotter! I thought I was going to die. I think Victor suffered more. But the food was good, the service was very attentive.

We manage to make it home without getting hit by a car. This too is good.

Macau to Bangkok

We awake to rain and are umbrella-less. We decide this is okay, and again walk into the main part of town for breakfast as we are not up to the Chinese Menu Challenge again.

We walk and walk, and peek into windows seeking out a regular styled coffee cup. When we find one of these, we are sure that they will have something we can enjoy for breakfast. Thank goodness they have the picture menu. We point, bacon and eggs, two coffees.

We continue our walk to Senado thinking we might do some shopping for silly things to bring home, but the mist has now turned into rain and this isn't nearly as fun at it would sounded before we started. We taxi back to the hotel empty handed. We have a few hours to go before needing to be at the airport.

Victor is pacing. He hates inactivity. So, we wrap up as best as one can and head out again. This time we are going to climb to the Guia Lighthouse, which is in our back yard, but far up the hill. I wonder if this isn't the hill that is going to finish me off, but we reach a certain point and the road flattens out as it circles the mountain. We are soaking, but this is okay. Did you know if you look closely by the exit of the hotel there may well be an umbrella rack for guests to use? Such is the case with our hotel, but I didn't look until we came in from this walk.

We get to the airport 3 hours ahead of our flight, which is okay, we eat. Then we shop. Rumor has it that wine is hard to come by in Bangkok. We buy every bottle of white wine they have in the whole airport, two bottles.

Finally we board, not a bad flight. We spend the flight time looking all our Bangkok stops up, (the condo, dentist and cooking school.) By the time we land, we are quite confident that we will "fly through the system like locals."

Macau, the rest of the day

We do continue the walk of the area and find St. Paul's ruins, find where the monk blew up the Danes, and found a great french restaurant down a little alleyway.

We enjoyed a perfect lunch at La Bonne Heure. Best meal yet, and a good price. We found it listed in the Lonely Planet guide, our bible so far.

We head back to the hotel for our afternoon siesta. Have you ever heard of Fashion TV, quite a phenom. Anther channel is showing Dr. 90210, a show about people getting plastic surgery and it follows them through their struggle with beauty. I have never heard of it, but apparently it does quite well, now in its fourth season. If this is what the outside world sees as America, its a shame!

The lunch was so good and the company so inviting that we decided to go back that evening for dinner. We think that Macau is small, and decide to walk. We have checked the map, went over the details with our maybe-speaking English doorman, who is very helpful and head out. I do get us to the right street, but at some point it all digresses. Perhaps we go too far, perhaps we turn to short, but we are in no mans land! For sure!

It takes us a bit of time (we are stubborn and refuse to backtrack) to find a real street with cars and taxis. When we do, it is only about a two minute ride to the square, seems we were practically there...but how to know? We are such adventurers!

We enjoy another wonderful meal at La Bonne Heure and we spend a good deal of time talking to the Chef who is Japanese. Asia is a blend of fascinating relationships. When you find something warm, welcoming and delicious, there is little need to continue the search, you have already found the prize.

Victor ordered the Escargot and Lamb and I go out on a limb with Carpaccio, which I love and duck with is just wonderful. We are thinking the carpaccio might make a nice addition to the menu, light courses full of flavor.

Macau the $60 Tour

Victor has found a scheduled 2 hour tour of Macau from Avis, for about $40 for the two of us and we head back to the Ferry terminal. There is nobody at the Avis desk, but we are a half hour early. Many people try to sell us their very special tour.

We wait.
And we wait.
We wait until one more charming person tries to sell us their tour and decide to go for it.

We get a private driver in a mini van who knows some English and the tour is to last for 2 hours as he takes us from destination to destination for views and photographs. We are given some instructions of what to do and say if we get stopped by Macau police. Victor thinks this if funny and hopes we do have a police adventure.

So off we go.... First our not-a-tour-guide driver takes us off to the statue, which is in front of the Lebanese restaurant, which we have already seen. Then we head to this tower that you can bungee jump off of. We have already seen it and aren't going to bungee jump. Then we head over to the main temple on the island. We have been here too. I now realize that we have "done" most of Macau. We start pointing out things we would like to see from our guide book and most of them are walked to from Senato Square.

We are laughing at our selves again.

Our driver takes us to the other islands, Taipa and Coloane to show us the immense Las Vegas styled casinos going in, 3,000 room hotel and a floating casino. These are both US companies. Macau is planning on some big growth! Again, these are both places we have seen from our taxi ride to hell. Finally our not-a-tour-guide driver takes us to the top of a hill with a lovely church and grounds that we had not seen and had not previously read about. I did get some pictures, will add later.

He took us back to Senato Square so that we could walk to the other places and I paid him the full agreed amount and a generous tip as he was very funny. After he drove off Victor pointed out we were only with him for an hour of our agreed 2 hours. I need to get me a roll-ex!

This experience was reminiscent of getting a foot massage by a "lady of the night"

Breakfast in Macau

If you are following these blogs, then you will remember the Sunday in Hong Kong were we had dim sum for breakfast, same thing here in Macau, only 10 times funnier. When we checked in we received breakfast coupons for one day, even though we were staying two days. When we went to the busy dining room, there is great confusion on how to deal with us and everyone seems to get involved with nobody taking control of the situation. By this time Victor and I have learned to sit back and laugh at these moments. Everyone in our immediate vicinity is laughing (at us). We smile back.

We are given a piece of paper with 10 vertical lines of Chinese text and told to circle which of the four we want for breakfast. Hmmmmmm. Nobody can tell us what any of the items is. We wait. Finally a nice lady comes on shift and is sent to us. She knows a handful of English so they have decided she can make this work. We get mostly things we like, some we don't but do have fun with the whole mess.

We taxi back to Senado Square which seems to be the center of everything that isn't a casino. Victor leads us up a hill, around a lake, through a temple and ended up after seemingly miles right in front of a restaurant that was on our list to try. Closed this day.

Macau, the rest of the day

We chill out with a great lunch overlooking Senado Square. I have something called African Chicken, a Portuguese specialty. Victor has ribs. Both are good, the atmosphere relaxing and we are able to get our feet back on the ground. Looking around is so interesting with old European architecture mixed with Chinese, old and new. I hope our photos show this. Markets are full of the same stuff we saw in HK. We taxi back to the hotel and relax before dinner.

This time Victor has chosen a Lebanese restaurant down near the water. The desk writes the directions down and the taxi driver drops us off two blocks away. I think is a great improvement and wonder how they don't know where these places are. It isn't a big island. It might be that there aren't exact addresses, but more of an area. We were able to walk around and find the right restaurant. Either we were too late and had missed the dinner crowd or too early, but the place was empty. We had a nice dinner though selecting a mix of items and enjoying the many different flavors.

When finished we walked the casino district, quite different from the USA where the slot machines are practically out the doors urging you to come in with their constant clinking of coins, bells and whistles. In every case we had to really look for the casino part of the hotel and in several cases couldn't find it at all. There is very little English spoken in Macau. They get far more Asian visitors than Europeans and Americans.

We found a slot machine, dropped in our $5.00 HK coin and played for 15 minutes, as this was worth about 75 cents USD, we thought this a fairly good machine and wanted to play more. Alas, we only had Macau money and the casinos only take HK money. Odd...we are in Macau....

We are a little frustrated with our Macau experience so far, but this is Okay as Victor wakes up at 4am and reads the book again and by the time I get up he has a full exciting day planned for us.

Macau taxi ride to hell, and back!

Excited over our excellent little hotel on this casino island, we are ready to explore but will start with a trip to lunch. Victor has read the book and selected an area for dining. We head down to the front desk and try to explain where we want to go. It isn't until quite a bit later that we realize that speaking English is not the same as knowing the language. The helpful desk person writes down where we think we have pointed out to her, calls us a taxi and off we go...sure that we will be there in a few minutes as we are quite hungry.

Our driver takes us over the bridge to the next island, Taipa. I think this is odd, certain that Victor has selected something a bit closer to home. We start to get that tingling feeling that all is not quite right. The drive continues through this island and I realize we are on yet another bridge to yet another island, Coloane. Good lord, where are we going.

I finally kick Victor who speaks up and the driver indicates this is right and keeps going. Still further and we have left all commerce behind. There aren't even houses any more. Now I speak up. The driver gets out his phone and calls someone. They speak to Victor. It turns out the driver called the hotel. The driver continues to drive, why doesn't he pull over?

We now drive by a hotel but are still going further and further way. The price getting higher and higher. Victor explains where we wanted to go and gal from the hotel front desk says she thought he just wanted a restaurant. At the end of the road is a restaurant. Where ever this place is it is surely as far as one can go on Macau without going to China.

The driver won't stop, he is taking us to the fabled restaurant.

This is getting scary.

I have decided that I will not get out of the taxi at the end of nowhere. We tell him to take us back. He continues to follow the road, but I realize now it is making a loop. When we are finally back in the center of Taipa town Victor tells him we are getting out. This seems bold, but right.

We pay the full fare without fuss and walk around the block grateful we haven't been kidnapped and sent away to some Chinese brothel for the rest of our lives. We find a grocery and buy a bottle of wine. Victor decides we should get on a bus to get back to Macau peninsula. I figure it can't be worse than getting in a taxi. The buses tend to go where people go. So on we get on and for a less than a dollar for the two of us we get across this island, back to Macau and the bus drops us off exactly where Victor wanted to go in the first place, Senado Square, about 5 minutes from the hotel. Imagine that.

Hong Kong to Macau

This being Monday, the streets are a bit more active at 7 than they were yesterday and we easily find the restaurant we were looking for yesterday, just two blocks away from the hotel. Excellent coffee.

We check out and head over to the Macau Ferry terminal which is just fine and dandy. We buy the cheap seats instead of first class, stow our luggage and secure two nice seats looking out the window. A few minutes later we are asked to show our tickets. We are in the wrong seats. Who knew they were assigned? We are in the first row behind the wall that separates first from third class in the middle of the row. No windows anywhere around us. We read the what-to-do-in-Macau section of our handy Lonely Planet guide book.

Exiting from the ferry we are a bit confused where to go, but finally find the taxi line and are swiftly driven up the hill to our cute little hotel amid a teaming island full of Vegas styled neon hotels. This is a good choice!

More Hong Kong

We are of course up very early again and on the streets by 6:30. Victor assures me that he saw a Western styled coffee shop just up the road that will be open. When we have reached a point of walking that I consider to be "half-way to China" I speak up. It's dark, surely dangerous, walls of rolled down uninviting metal doors, and looking less and less likely to provide dining of any sort. I don't thing Asia tends to wake up early and certainly not on a Sunday! We turn around....walk more...finally we see food-in-the-window-signs, lights on upstairs and head that way....ends up that it is a research center for healthy food. This is not going to work....but from the top of the stairs we spy a restaurant on the second floor of the building across from us in full swing.

We find the entrance and go. Ahah! I think we are the only Westerners here, today or many days, perhaps ever. Many of the diners have a good chuckle at our inability to communicate. We try ordering coffee. This works, but comes cold. We then are looking at a menu of Chinese characters (strangely, the first restaurant without a picture menu.) We are frantically whispering back and forth about how are we going to order without getting fried bugs and live snakes for breakfast. Our waitress comes over and tells us we will have dim sum and she will bring things for us. I enjoyed it, Victor prefers eggs for breakfast.

We take a cab over to the Ferry terminal and explore another island, this one Cheng Chou. Bigger than yesterdays exploration, even some of the market stalls are open. We walk across the isthmus to the beach on the further side of the island and are surprised to see litter. Everywhere else we have been has been fantastically well tended and clean. Its warm and humid.

When we come back we take a cab to the Causeway for shopping. This was really high energy walking. Dynamic crowds everywhere. We got tangled in the maze of streets and bought three sweaters. I wanted to get on one of those narrow two story buses and just go where ever it went, so we did...in the wrong direction for about a minute. But that was cool.

We head over to SoHo for lunch and end up at Cafe de Paris, a French place styled after a train car. Very nice, we both chose their fixed course lunch with an octopus salad, a steak and a delicious tart dessert. We got some great recipe ideas here: Homemade ice-cream of the week, a chocolate fondue dessert with lady fingers & strawberries. Raspberry port over ice-cream, creme brulee or cheese cake...

After lunch we head back to the hotel for our nap, this time we did not sleep through the evening and headed over to Kowloon and the Temple Street Night Market. This one victor really enjoyed. He set his focus on a couple of things and drove a hard bargain. We can now call him Mr. Roll-ex, ha ha!

We then wandered into a whore house and had side by side foot massages by two ladies of the night.

For dinner we returned to SoHo and chose a Spanish restaurant serving Argentine beef. Nothing new here.

A Hong Kong Day

We wake up excited to see our bay view from the day time and find that we are fogged in. For some reason, this makes me want to order room service for breakfast. Why? I don't know, but it was the last time we ordered room service, quite awful!.

I have been to Hong Kong many years ago, and remember many spots. We start with a walking tour that takes us by most of these Western area highlights: Dried Seafood Market, Herbs & Medicine Markets, Antique Market all closed because it is pre-8:00. We are still off on our time clock but getting better.

We head for this grand escalator 800 meters long, the longest in the world, only to find that the mornings the escalator runs one way down, and we are at the bottom. I am not going to walk up just to take this grand escalator down. Instead we head over to the ferry terminal and decide to go to an island. The first terminal is going to Kowloon, just across the harbor, this is not the one we want. The next terminal the folks ask us where we want to go. Being rather random about our day we don't really care and decide to go where ever this boat is going. A good choice as it is going to the tiny island of Peng Chou, where I lived for 3 weeks when visiting years ago!

Again, not quite understanding the transportation, we get on and take seats in the first class section. This was supposed to be extra money, which they did let us know about the next time that we went to 1st class. The island was charming, lots of new building, but no motorized cars. Carts and bikes were the ride of the day. We walked up a hill, found my old house, back along the waterfront which has an all new walk-way being built. We found the old bar we hung out at, but it wasn't open yet, being just 10am.

Heading back towards the ferry we stop on a street corner restaurant to start researching some new recipes. We had dim sum and shared a big beer. I loved it. The shrimp in rice paper, beef balls, pork wrapped in cabbage and a sweet bread with beef stuffing. $70 HK, $10 US.

We returned to HK on the noon ferry and decided to give that escalator another try and planned to head up to SoHo. We got as far as the first riser, and the escalator was stopped. We didn't know if this continued all the way up or not, so decided that we should just get off and explore where we were. We explored a Japanese restaurant called Coi. We had sushi, quite lovely this eating in little bits all throughout the day! We enjoyed California Rolls, Tempura Shrimp Rolls, Gyoso, Beef in the sticky rice paper and two beers, $212 HK, $28 US. We saw a treat here that neither of us has had before. Not sure what it is called, will look for as we travel, but it is sushi in the seaweed wrapped like an ice-cream cone. Odd as can be.

Leading the fairly sedimentary lifestyle that we do at the Charlotte barely prepares one for all the walking we are doing. Victor's knee is bad and has affected his hip too and he has put on quite a limp. So we decide to get massages. Following the directions and good pricing we find on a brochure, we end of cutting through a dining room to the elevators and up to the 8th floor. This is an elegant environment, not one of the frantic storefront places. The rates do not match the brochure. They explain that is isn't their brochure and give us a different brochure. I get a foot massage and wonder if I will ever walk again. Victor gets a regular beating massage, but really can walk again! I thought the price was $35 us for the two of us, but turns out it was $60. Still a good value compared to traditional US rates.

The escalator is fixed and we head up the hill again to SoHo. Walked a bit of the district and stopped at the Staunton Bar & Cafe, a corner place for some people watching. We then continued to the top of the escalator and then took a cab to Victory Peak. This is the single most changed venue since I was last here. New buildings actually block the views. Very odd! It was still clouding/foggy/(polluted?) that we didn't get much of a view.

It is here on top of the world that we realize that we have misunderstood the exchange rate. I like to figure in a way that I can do it in my head quickly, Victor does it some other way. Some places it is easier to multiply and drop decimals, in others, it is easier to divide....Whatever method, as long as you are close works for me. But I was using a wrong formula. This made everything seem really affordable. I was quite disappointed when I did finally figure out how wrong I was. Ugggh, I can say I was about half right. I was doing something like 100HK= 7US, when it is really reversed-ish, $100HK=13US. Fooey!

We cab back to the hotel with plans for a nap and a dinner at one of the Argentine restaurants we found in SoHo, instead we woke up at midnight. We aren't really lagging, just not acclimating yet.

Arriving in Hong Kong

We are so close to getting it right, but not quite. We exit the plane and head for the express train into Hong Kong and upon arrival, are then stuck with what to do next...there is no additional train with a stop called A12 which is next to the hotel. Alas, when we ask, it turns out that the A12 stop is a bus stop and that bus originates from the airport, not where we are. We are advised to take a taxi.

This works out fine and we are soon enjoying our 26th floor, two room suite overlooking the bay at the Ramada Hotel. They were having a sale for folks in the travel industry which we qualified for. This was very comfortable!

Narita Town

Today we plan on visiting Narita and then heading to the airport for Hong Kong. We are up so early! We have another icky breakfast buffet, try to read the paper and then get on the bus to the Airport so we can get on the train to Narita. While the hotel has a Narita shuttle, it doesn't go into town until 10am and it is only 7:00...so the airport and train it is!

Narita is all a-hush, still asleep when we arrive. The delivery trucks are dropping off their wares, the street sellers are cooking their treats and most shop doors are locked tight. There is no window shopping as all store fronts have that metal roller-door that comes down to close off the shop.

We have a simple map and find that most roads lead to the temple. We start the trek, a long downward loop. This route is an absolute feast for the eyes and I take many photos, which I will post here when we get to a spot where I can upload them from. There are the tiniest fried shrimp, eels that are still swimming, some things I couldn't recognize, but guessed that I probably wouldn't eat and lots of temple shops where you can buy seemingly thousands of different red and gold trinkets. When we get to the temple I am amazed at the amount of commerce going on in what should be a holy place. Do we do this in the US?

The grounds are huge and we walked all of it, some parts twice. I am finding myself voluntarily climbing stairs, this too is unusual for me!

It seems that almost everyone eats from street vendors, coffee is not a required morning beverage for the locals such as it is for us and so we are having difficulty finding a stopping point. All the sit-down restaurants don't seem to open until 11 am for lunch. We are nearly back to the train when we find a cafe to wile away the hour before lunch. (Hopefully the jet-lag timing thing will correct soon so that our eating times begin to match serving times!)

Our return walk up the hill has all the stores open now and the street vendors very busy. The menus seem to highlight grilled eel. We had the pleasure of watching the process of eel butchering from start to finish....When we did finally stop for lunch, I ordered chicken.

Every restaurant has pictures or the actual dishes as presented with pricing in the windows and we are now able to window shop our away to the top of the hill and the idea was that we would share a favorite and eat there. Instead we ate at the very British pub. They had wine.

After lunch we discovered an internet cafe and touched base with the Hotel. All is well and we head back to the Hotel and on to the Airport again...This time to actually fly!

Tokyo for Lunch

Who is the researcher for this trip that stuck us at the airport? Ahhhh...Lynn! I was a bit nervous about jumping right into lodging in Tokyo, a place neither of us have been to and where everything would have been an unknown and so took what I thought would be a more familiar introduction to Asia...An airport hotel, the Holiday Inn.

This decision results in our having to take the hotel bus back to the Airport, then catch the express train to Tokyo, an amazing $100 round trip. Another weak research moment...what to do when we get to Tokyo? We got off at Ginza station and walked around and around, each of us in hurting shoes. But it was neat. Neither of us are shoppers, so this may not have been the best section to explore, but we did have some interesting views, enjoyed a park, found that almost no one spoke English (at least where we were) there is no such thing as an internet cafe and we had a fantastic lunch.

In our rambling about town we came across a little alley way that we returned to for lunch. The restaurant had about 30 seats at 6 tables and you were sat with other folks. We watched one group of three come in and they were sat at 3 different tables. WOW!

This was a locals restaurant, mostly business men. I was the only woman there. The nice thing about menus here is that almost all of them have pictures so it doesn't matter if you can't read it...just point and cross your fingers that you didn't just order something too wacky! We both chose what would have been a Binto styled meal here, but it didn't come in a box. Miso soup, rice, pork & vegetables, potstickers, and a beer for less than $20 very reasonable!

We found a wine shop and picked up a good bottle and headed back to Narita. Our summary is that Tokyo was not too easy for those who don't know the language. At least Ginza was not trying very hard to appeal to the tourist industry with most street signs sans-English subtitles. We wish we had done more research on Tokyo to maximize our time here. A tour might have been the way to go.

We slept through dinner and are up at 2 am...This Narita stop was supposed to be our time clock correction period...we hope the next day brings us into better balance!

So on our first day we figured we had a $125 lunch. Sort of like pilots and the $100 hamburger.

Take off and Landing

Thanks to our good friends Jack and Jeannie, we find ourselves comfortably ensconced in Business class for our long flight to Narita, Japan. We can't express how thankful we are! Victor thinks we should travel more so we can catch up on the movie scene. We each watched 4 movies, that would be 4 more than we have watched in the last 2 years.

This is Victor's first trip to a destination outside his many language skills and he finds it difficult. Sort of like loosing your sense of direction. Not only can we not communicate verbally, but we also can't read the letters and pretend to break the word down to figure out the meaning. Thank goodness for the widespread use English subtitles. We hope this is the case in more places than just the airport!

Our first event happens when nice man takes my bag and hustles us off to a taxi. This happened so fast and I knew right away this wasn't the way to go as we were staying at an airport hotel. When asked the price and told where we were headed he swiftly returned my bag and pointed us in the direction of the hotel bus stop.

When we arrived we checked out our room and then stopped in the hotel bar for a dinner and a glass of wine. We might have been better suited at a non-hotel airport, perhaps in Narita, as airport lodging is like a prison. You just can't walk out the door and find a good restaurant. We wouldn't even know where to begin! Taking the bus back to the airport for another bus or train didn't seem viable...but it was our first day in the Far East and we needed to acclimate and build up our confidence with little successes, like paying the bill right, ordering what you really want, figuring out the exchange rates and so on.

We find that our personal time clocks are off a great deal and we awake at a terribly early hour. Thank goodness the restaurant opens early.....

We are off!!!

While we have left the hill, we haven't left the USA yet and I can only hope this is the worst hotel we will experience! We are likely the only guests here that have rented for the whole night. Don't ask how we ended up here, a wrong turn would be the best answer and I don't know why I didn't insist on leaving.

We did enjoy some great tastes of Louisiana at La Creole in San Carlos for dinner. We speculated that this might be our last "American" meal.