Travel – Page 4 – syntaxfree

Hips Don’t Lie

In a small Siam Square boutique selling office wear, I noticed that the friendly sales assistant serving me had a prominent Adam’s apple, low husky voice, and gargantuan feet spilling out of her strappy heels.

I picked out a top I wanted to try on. “This one, got my size?”

She approached me with a tape measure, encircled my shoulder blades with it dramatically, and measured my bust. “Okay,” she nodded.

I picked out a skirt I wanted to try on. “This one, also got my size?”

She approached me with a tape measure, encircled my butt with it dramatically, and measured my hips. “OOOOO!” she giggled, covering her mouth as her mascara’d eyelashes fluttered in alternate shock and glee.

“Sorry ma’am, this one don’t have large size.”

Kuching: Day One

While travelling in Greece several years ago, my companion and I were not surprised when the bus to Epidaurus left 45 minutes later than its scheduled departure time. We shrugged, accepted it as part of a Greek holiday, and counted our blessings that we’d found a shady spot to wait in. We were, however, somewhat blindsided when we turned up 7 minutes or so early for the return bus and found that it had already left, with the next bus due in about two and a half hours. We passed the time easily enough with other stranded backpackers, but I’ve never forgotten the laughable unpredictability of that particular travel glitch. Bloody Greeks.

Anyway, since a Greek bus leaving early is about as unheard of as a Parisian pavement without dog poo, I always dismissed it as a one-off, the sort of anecdote you throw into a conversation about travel stories when it reaches the point at which you revel, cackling, in the various national stereotypes your cosmopolitan jet-setting has only served to confirm.

Until we arrived at Senai Airport two weeks ago only to discover that the AirAsia flight described on our tickets as leaving at 1630 was, in fact, now leaving at 1545. We had received absolutely no notification of the change. But by a stroke of pure luck, we’d arrived in the last few minutes before the check-in counters closed, and made the flight.

Amusingly, the only reason we had even arrived as early as 1500 for what we thought was a 1630 internal flight was that the airport coach schedule from Senai Airport’s City Lounge was also markedly different from the coach schedule its website promised. So, having found that the 1440 coach no longer existed, we’d decided to take a cab rather than chance the 1500 coach. If not for that, we’d have been roundly fucked, first by the Senai City Lounge and then by AirAsia. Bloody Malaysia.

(There isn’t much more to write about the first day of the trip once we got to Kuching, apart from mentioning the great Teochew steamed fish dinner we had at ABC Seafood and the beginning of a dramatic shoe disintegration process that finally culminated in their utter surrender while trekking in Bako National Park two days later. I mostly just wanted to warn anyone reading this to be careful when flying AirAsia from Senai.)

Hanoi: Day Three

[I suddenly realized that I really should try and finish one trip’s worth of travel blog entries (Vietnam) before going on the next (Kuching for my second RWMF, next Thursday). Of course, I still only have 5 days blogged out of last August’s 17 day trip to London, Norway and Germany but Vietnam makes more sense as far as the art of the possible is concerned.]

For this day and the next, we’re on a tour to Ha Long Bay with Handspan Tours. After an early start, I drowse happily in the minibus, waking up intermittently to enjoy the bucolic countryside views and to steal Alec’s book every time he falls asleep (because for some reason I didn’t feel like reading my own). Of course, I soon fall asleep clutching it, wake up to find he’s stolen it back, and the whole cycle begins again.

The jetty is packed with pleasure boats parked at least five deep, and according to no discernable order or plan. We board one that will take us out to our eventual boat, the Dragon’s Pearl. Manoeuvring the boat out of the “berth” through all the others involves the sort of comedy hijinks that you thought only existed in the days of vaudeville or The Simple Life: Interns. The boats crash into each other gently but frequently, with crew members often using pure muscle power to push the boats out of a clinch. Tiny boats dart fearlessly in and out of the chaos, hoping to score a quick fruit sale to idle passengers. Our boat is in great shape, which is a relief after all the bangers we passed on the way, including more than a few names that I recognise from the other tour companies’ websites I surfed while trying to decide which tour to book.

We check into our clean wood-panelled room and report for lunch, which introduces us to the only disappointment of the tour: the food. It’s the sort of utterly bland, only nominally Oriental stuff that I haven’t tasted since we stopped for takeaway while driving through the English Midlands several years ago and I ordered Singapore Fried Rice for kicks. I assume it’s intended to cater to Western tastebuds, but it does both the country and Western tastebuds a huge disservice by doing so. I distract myself from the growing suspicion that I’m eating corrugated cardboard by running out frequently onto the deck to take pictures.

After lunch we make our first stop, at the Sung Sot “Amazing Cave”. Which, to be fair, is pretty amazing.

It’s quite dramatically lighted and has smoothened paths for people to walk along, but even if this detracts from the sort of raw “naturalness” that some people may want from a cave, it really still is spectacular.

Alec remarked that this picture makes him think of a mushroom cloud. Note the rather small people on the right for an idea of the scale of the place.

On the way out of the bay, we pass our first floating village. The next stop is Titop Island, which I think is the highest island in Ha Long Bay. You can climb to the top for a view of the karsts, which is okay but still inferior to drifting among them. The climb is straightforward but sweaty. Sodden with sweat halfway up, I suddenly remember doing a similar climb to my castle hostel in Bacharach, Germany – except with a backpack, and in the rain, and alone – and from then on it’s easy peasy.

There’s a swimming stop after this, but my eczema’s bad as it always is during any holiday where I spend a protracted amount of time in outdoor heat, and I’m wary of immersing raw skin where I don’t know how clean the water is. Later on, dinner features more mediocre food. Although our dinner companions are perfectly amiable, Alec’s beginning to feel the effects of yesterday’s street food on his digestive system and is a little under the weather, which affects my mood. (I become a ridiculous miserable wreck when anyone I love is ill and uncomfortable.)

After dinner, we sit on the empty top deck of the boat, which is anchored in the middle of Ha Long Bay for the night. As far as the eye can see, there are only the shadowy karsts, other boats in the distance with their lights reflected in the still water, and a clear sky full of stars.

Hanoi: Day Two

After a lazy morning and a little errand running for the next day’s trip to Ha Long Bay, we go to buy tickets for the water puppet show. The girl in the box office stares impassively at us as we stand about two feet away from her dull plastic window, trying to decide which show time to buy for. Having reached a decision, I step forward and open my mouth to ask for the tickets only to have said window abruptly shut in my face. A sign indicates the box office closes between noon and 12.45, and I guess the girl’s a real stickler for punctuality. If I were an uptight person this behaviour would annoy me but hell, I’m on holiday. We’ll go explore Hoan Kiem Lake and come back in 45.

Behind the counter

Truth be told, Ngoc Son Temple and the red “Sunbeam” bridge that leads to it are better appreciated from a distance. They look very picturesque when enveloped in the mist over the water, but once you actually get closer the temple’s fairly standard issue (except for the huge preserved tortoise carcass, that is) and won’t hold your attention long unless you’ve never seen a temple before. At the entrance to the bridge, I photograph a souvenir stall through its back door, and like the slightly different perspective it gives from the storefronts beautifully laid out for us tourists.

Is our children learning?

The banks of Hoan Kiem Lake seem as well-maintained as any park in Singapore. We stroll past a small series of modern art sculptures, a long line of propaganda posters, and scattered instances of furtive hand-holding and UST (for those of you who weren’t geeky enough to be active in the online X-Files communities of the 90s, that stands for Unresolved Sexual Tension) among young Vietnamese couples who should perhaps have been in school instead.

Eye of the tiger.

My usual penchant for bizarre statuary is amply sustained by this delightful white tiger on an ornamental wall near the entrance to Ngoc Son Temple. I want whatever mascara he’s got. Alec wants his ‘tache.

Proletariat and palm trees.

While we’re on the topic of statues, check out some Soviet Realism in the tropics!

Inspired by the spirit of revolution, our stomachs remind us it’s lunch time. And thanks to wuyuetian, I know just the place. Eating here probably breaks a couple of the food rules in the travel guide – all the raw vegetables look like they’ve been rinsed in tap water – but if you have to get food poisoning somewhere, you might as well get it from a meal as magnificent as this. (My stomach was fine, Alec’s was…rather more affected. Thank God for growing up in Southeast Asia, I guess.) Although I wasn’t too keen on the big stuffed spring rolls, the bun cha (grilled pork patties with rice noodles, to which you add herbs by the handful and ladle over delicious gravy that’s about 2 parts MSG and 1 part stock) is probably the best street food I’ve ever eaten. Our total bill, for huge unfinishable servings of pork patties, spring rolls, noodles, herbs, a Coke and a San Miguel, is 65,000D (S$6.50/a little over 2 pounds) – less than the price of a solitary San Miguel in most bars in Singapore. Thanks again, wuyuetian! I wouldn’t have had a clue about this place without your tip!

The Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre show (photo at the top) is quite charming, although water puppetry doesn’t seem to focus as much on the subtleties of an individual puppet’s movement (please note I know nothing about puppetry and my only basis of comparison is what I saw at the start of Being John Malkovich) as on getting the puppets to do synchronised dances and formations together. There are also light-hearted skits about villagers chasing fish around by thwacking themselves into the water, villagers chasing cats around by thwacking themselves into the water, and villagers chasing each other around by thwacking themselves into the water. And, of course, they do the legend of Hoan Kiem Lake. All good fun.

Light burden

After the show we walk around the cathedral area and do a little shopping on Nha Tho. This is most definitely an expat zone, with Spanish restaurants and suchlike, and cool shops full of cool things that I can’t bring myself to afford. I buy a weird little buffalo lantern thingy at a poky little place at the end of the road where the prices are less scary. My family thinks it’s hilariously ugly.

Since we’ve had local street food for lunch, the natural contrast in a trip to Vietnam is fancy French food for dinner. The outside courtyard of Green Tangerine is beautiful, and so romantic that I almost forgive Alec for forgetting to bring our travel guide. Almost.

This is what we have for dinner, and yes, I’m such a sad person that I actually copied all of this from the menu:

Starters:

Crab remoulade with orange zests on a layer of fresh asparagus, served with scallops marinated in orange flower essence separated by a sesame lace (Alec)
Scallops marinated in lavender flower presented on a bruschetta pancake (Me)

Mains:

Beef cheek braised in red wine perfumed with raspberry vinegar, with small diced potatos and apples enhanced by dates (Alec)
Pork fillet rolled in blackcurrant and “ngo” herb served with stuffed bamboo shoots and small vegetables crusted with sesame (Me)

Desserts:

A sort of taster dish, with chocolate truffle, creme brulee, a grape stuffed with sorbet, kiwi paste in a pastry shell and probably something else we couldn’t identify (Alec)
Creme brulee in Calvados, served in an apple baked in red wine (Me)

Total bill: 53 USD. We leave a 100,000D tip because the service has been lovely, despite being fully aware that that alone is more than our entire lunch cost.

Perhaps you’re wondering why we don’t seem to have explored the Old Quarter much. We did, but it’s just so difficult to capture its incredible appeal in words and pictures. Hanoi feels like its constant influx of tourists have little effect on its real life and the Old Quarter epitomizes this.

Everything to everybody

Yes, souvenir shops and hotels and tourist eateries spring up everywhere, but Hang Dau is still thronged every night we walk through it with happy Vietnamese women, a street full of shoes reflected in their eyes, and their men patiently waiting on motorbikes parked four deep. Yes, I do often have to politely decline the “Salut! Photo?” offers of the ubiquitious girls carrying baskets of fruit at either end of their yoke, but for every one of those girls there’s a wizened old lady in a conical hat carrying anything from plasticware to prawns at the ends of her yoke, and we mean nothing to her.

On the same street where I decide against buying a conical hat because I think the price is too high and I’m not in the mood to bargain, other shops feel it’s still worth their while to continue in the trades they have spent their lives in. I sincerely hope they never let us change that.

Hanoi: Day One

The Budget Terminal is the spitting image of most modern European airports and quite unlike Changi terminals 1 or 2 in look and feel. I haven’t a clue why other budget airlines wouldn’t want to use it – they’ve said to the media that their passengers won’t want to walk on the tarmac in the open to the plane, but this smacks of extreme muppetry.

Upon arrival we take the Vietnam Airlines minibus to central Hanoi (32,000D each). During the journey, we promptly fall in love with Hanoi’s vitality and charm even on our very first glimpses of it. The traffic is chaotic by Singaporean standards of course, but with none of the hair’s breadth brinksmanship I remember about Istanbul. Dust-bathed fruit sellers stand hopefully on the highway shoulder; a passing truck zooms past, then pulls over and reverses 20 metres along the shoulder for some bananas. Later that night, as we walk in the Old Quarter, kids playing badminton at the side of the road dart into multi-directional traffic to retrieve stray shuttlecocks without a moment’s hesitation.

It’s already dark when we reach central Hanoi. (Our plane landed at 1820.) As expected we’re mobbed by motorcycle/taxi/cyclo drivers the minute we step out of the minibus, but fend them off and walk some distance down the road to get our bearings. It only takes about half an hour to walk from there to our hotel in the Old Quarter, and if we were more familiar with the route and weren’t dragging luggage it would have been even faster. It’s a lovely first meeting with Hanoi – all along the length of Hoan Kiem lake, and then into the Old Quarter to Hang Bac, where we check into the awesome Queen Hotel¹.

It’s late when we set out for dinner, so unfortunately Cha Ca La Vong isn’t taking any more new diners. We eat at the only other place still open along the same road (Golden something or other). It looks like a tourist trap, but surprises us with perfectly cooked crispy squid in dill sauce and tender, flavourful beef grilled in honey. Bottles of Hanoi bia wash everything down well. Bill: about 140,000D. Singapore feels a million miles away.

¹ Review: Queen Hotel
We could have gone for cheaper places than this, but we haven’t been on a proper holiday together in ages and had decided we deserved something just a tiny bit better than usual. For US$35 per night in this place, we got a room with attached bathroom, aircon, small balcony, TV with most cable channels, DVD player, free Internet (note that this doesn’t even mean you have to bring your laptop – they have a freaking computer in the room with unlimited Internet access for you to use!), buffet breakfast brought to your room every day, and silk covers on the bed. Great service and attention to detail in beautifying even the common areas suggest this is a well-managed place across the board. If there’s a better room deal in Hanoi, I’d love to hear about it.

Me Not Ready Love You Long Time Just Yet

An update on wonderful Vietnam is on the way, faster than a speeding bullet speeding motorcycle clapped-out but valiantly struggling made-in-China death trap of a moped with no side mirrors!

(Thanks for being so patient, everybody. But um, yeah, I still need a little more time.)

Hanoi Ahoy

Regular readers of this site may be aware that I keep a fruitless and ultimately masochistic vigil over what’s happening in London. Normally, finding out that I could watch Calexico and Iron & Wine at the Forum if I were in London on 23 April would be a KNNBCCB moment.

But tonight I’m actually able to take it philosophically, because on 23 April I shall be returning from a trip to Hanoi with Alec, the only travel beyond Bintan and KL we’ll have done together since he moved here.¹ Needless to say I’m very much looking forward to it, and if you’ve got any Hanoi travel tips, do share!

And if you’re in London, GO AND WATCH CALEXICO AND IRON & WINE OR I’LL KICK YO’ ASS.

¹ This isn’t at all from want of trying or interest, it’s just that circumstances have conspired in the worst of ways in the past year to prevent us travelling for any decent length of time together. First I was doing my pupillage, which you can’t take leave from. Then I finished my pupillage but he’d just started a new job, so I went travelling in Europe alone. Then he was finally able to take leave but I’d just started my new job, so he went travelling in Europe alone. But from April onwards we should finally be able to start escaping Singapore on a regular basis, and thank God for that.

London 2005: V&A, Serpentine Gallery, Notting Hill

Day Six: Tuesday 9 August

In the V&A’s lovely John Madjewski courtyard, we start off lolling on a shady expanse of lawn, enjoying a delicious takeaway briyani lunch and the feel of grass between our toes. Russ rolls around on the ground taking photographs of me from various angles. He uses a balletic leg in the air to point in the direction he wants me to look, which does the trick of dissolving my usual self-conscious photo look with laughter.

Kids are running in the fountain. (Click on the photo to see them, they’re rather small as kids tend to be.) As soon as we finish our lunch, we become the only adults in the fountain unaccompanied by children.

These two amuse me because of their reluctance to sit on the many available chairs. They leave little wet bumprints on the ground when they stand up to run back into the fountain.

The hugely endearing 70 Years of Penguin Design exhibition is the main reason for our visit, but while we’re there we also take a quick look at the RIBA Stirling prizewinners of the last decade. Apart from my beloved Gherkin, I also like Foster and Partners’ American Air Museum in Duxford, the winner for 1998.

From here it’s a nice walk to Hyde Park, where we eyeball this year’s huge flatpack armadillo

Summer Pavilion and visit Rirkrit Tiravanika’s Rirkritrospective in the Serpentine Gallery. (Methinks Mr Tiravanika and I share a similar sense of verbal humour.) Two of the installations here are mock-ups of the artist’s New York apartment, and gallery visitors are encouraged to make themselves at home. People are sitting chatting in the kitchen, lounging in front of the TV, scrawling on the clapboard floors and walls. Two selections:

Dear Rirkrit,

You need to stop living in these dumps. Find a nice girl & settle down, bring up some children, get a steady job in management.

Love, Dad.

And:

I read the use-by date on something in the fridge; it expired in July.

Dinner at the Windsor Castle involves paying rather dearly for its considerable charm – £8.50 for my salad, £1.50 for a small glass of shitty mixed cola – but it’s the only pub I’ve ever been to in England which still has all its sections intact. It’s fun watching everyone else having to bend almost double to cross from one section to the next when you hardly have to do so yourself.

We get to Being Boiled at the Notting Hill Arts Club while entry is still free. Dave and Jeremy join us later on. I enjoy happy hour not because of the drink promotions (the £2 Troy beer from Turkey is pretty awful) but because they’re playing good electrohouse. Nothing special in London of course, but truly music to my Singapore-deadened ears.

Dahlia, tonight’s live act, does Peaches-stylie riotgrrrl electrocabaret while wearing lingerie, fishnets and stilettos. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I’d found her sexy but her gyrations mostly remind me of muscly calisthenics and I later reduce Russ to helpless giggles on the dancefloor with my very own Dahlia imitation, featuring a piercing gaze, a lingering, beckoning, finger, and then manic hip-jerking. It works especially well to Tainted Love, but falls apart horribly once I try it with Vitalic.

On the long tube ride back to Wimbledon I suddenly remember it was National Day in Singapore today. I had totally forgotten. I can’t help being struck by the contrast – how easily and tracelessly Singapore slips away once I am here, and how two years after leaving London for Singapore I still ache for it every day.

London 2005: London Wetland Centre

Day Five: Monday 8 August

Russ suddenly realizes he has to drive to Oxford today to move his stuff back to London, so I improvise a London Wetland Centre plan. Much like the Dulwich Picture Gallery, it’s another place I always meant to visit when I lived in London, but never did.

Traditional conservation goes topsy-turvy

What’s pretty cool about the place is the story behind its creation: when four Victorian-era reservoirs became redundant upon installation of the London Ring Main water system, rather than abandon the area to indiscriminate development, the reservoirs were used as the basis for this wetland centre. I rather like the idea of turning reservoirs into conservation sites. These days it seems people are more likely to do the opposite.

So with existing migratory routes already covering the area, they worked on the Field Of Dreams philosophy of “If you build it, they will come”, built a wetland paradise and just waited for birds to discover it – and they did.

A wader on the mudflats

I end up seeing about a hundred times more birds here today than I ever have at Sungei Buloh, and as any real ecosystem is, it’s teeming with all sorts of plant and animal life as well. The grounds are well-planned but not overly manicured, so you don’t feel you’re at yet another bird park or public duck pond.

Natural blues

It also has headfucks for non-bird people like me (I assume bird people already know about the Oxyura australis), who then end up stalking ducks round ponds for ages in blue-bill-induced disbelief.

I finish exploring the whole place in three leisurely hours. On the way home I look at the bus routes leaving from the bus stop I’m using. Tooting! I know someone in Tooting! On the spur of the moment I call Jeff (unannounced, out of the blue), and an hour or so later I am eating dinner with him. And thus ends my hastily improvised day, which I couldn’t have planned any better.

London 2005: Spitalfields, Mass, Nav (on Trisha!), Grooverider

Day Four: Sunday 7 August

(My Sunday photos were lower in both quantity and quality than for the other days – I was too busy shopping. But I’ll bung some in anyway, it brightens up the page. As usual, click for larger versions.)

A Just Married red London bus with open top deck

Match made in London.

I see this on the way to Spitalfields, but just miss the bridal couple leaving the upper deck, unfortunately. What a lovely idea for a summer wedding in London. (It just wouldn’t be the same on a bendy bus now, would it? Routemaster forever!)

Saddest welcome ever.

Yes, for the third time in four days I am back in the Spitalfields/Brick Lane area, which is a bit much even for a Shoreditch twat like me, but it was always such a happy Sunday place that I can’t resist, plus I just have to go to Spitalfields before the fuckers-that-be bulldoze the whole place.

Off Cheshire Street.

As usual, Spitalfields is full of beautiful things, most of which I’m too cheap to buy. The new “(Up)Market” (yes, really) is, thank God, no more upmarket than Spitalfields, and has the advantage of being a little less crammed with stalls and people. Throughout the markets I resist the various epicurean delights on offer because I know that as long as I can hold out till I reach Brick Lane, heaven awaits me in a Beigel Bake hot salt beef bagel. (Lovely photo here.) I end my shopping in Beyond Retro where I find, sadly, that even the British woman of yesteryear is still bigger than me and no clothes fit.

Total damage:

A photo-print board for Alec from Tom Shedden Photography in Spitalfields. Can’t find the one I bought on the site, but it’s a close-up of an old black and white horseracing photo mounted on weathered wood.
Thingy which can double as a scarf, belt or hairband, also double-sided with lovely prints on either side – £5, Spitalfields.
Pacman badge! £1, Up(Market).
2 vintage scarves – £1.50 each, Beyond Retro.
Hot salt beef bagel! £2-something, and worth every hot salty beefy penny.

I rush to Ogle Street for evening mass. Fr Fudge (stop laughing) is as powerful a preacher as he always was, and like last year, I savour the differences between mass here and mass in Singapore. Old hymns, none of this meandering nu-Christian pan-pipes tedium that I keep getting fed in my parish at home. A sermon I couldn’t have just made up myself from common sense. No bloody mobile phones going off, no bloody mobile phones going off, no bloody mobile phones going off! I roll my lips and tongue and heart around the small differences in the prayers here – Trespasses. Lead us not into temptation. Became incarnate of the Virgin Mary – and treasure the taste of the Blood in my mouth.

I meet Nav for dinner at Carluccio’s, where I am crushed to find they’ve taken my wild boar ragu off the menu. I try the spicy sausage penne but it isn’t as nice. A few months ago, Nav came to Singapore and broke the news that she was going to be in the audience of Trisha. This of course filled me with absolute glee, and I along with everyone else there at the time who were familiar with Trisha began reciting clichés that Nav totally had to get up and slam the guests with, e.g. “Once a cheat-ah, ALWAYS a cheat-ah!”, “Yuh need to get up and take responsibilit-y for yuh life, innit?” etc.etc. Tonight Nav updates me on this, and as usual, she doesn’t disappoint. Apparently she chewed out the mother of a murder victim for whining on TV about all her problems when she’d never sought professional help. I love Nav so much. My only disappointment is that she didn’t put on an estuary accent.

From here, Russ picks me up and we head for Herbal. Grooverider’s there tonight, and I get in for free. BOOYA! It’s a little too jazzy for my tastes at first, but the last hour is great, sweaty, junglist action. I relish the feeling of being the only yellow skin on the dancefloor (there’s a Japanese couple around, but they don’t dance), although I do wish the three immense black guys in front of me weren’t strenuously disproving that old chestnutty stereotype that all black people have rhythm. They certainly share my tastes in jungle though – Grooverider drops an amazing raggalicious track and they go wild in what I can only describe as an ape-like dance, stomping and swaying from side to side while crouched over, heads arching and rearing with each sway. One grabs the other’s shoulders and they do the dance together, laughing and cheering. If you’re looking for racism anywhere here, don’t bother – it is the perfect dance to that song, and a perfect end to the night.