So, about Vietnam ...

While I was triaging 7 weeks of snailmail on Thursday, I found a chunky package wrapped in white paper (rather than an envelope) with my name and address scribbled on it. I ripped it open as if it were a gift, and it practically was, because the package turned out to be the new 10th edition of the Lonely Planet guidebook to Vietnam.

Of which I wrote three destination chapters: North-Central Vietnam, Central Vietnam and Central Highlands. If you're interested in glorious landscapes, history, the American War in Vietnam, minority groups and cool weather, those are the chapters you'll wanna read first.

On Friday night:

Suzie: how chuffed are you!
[...]
ME: very chuffed
ME: i kinda pull it out in a pai sei way to show people
ME: but then they are chuffed, so i am more chuffed

The book doesn't hit stores till July, so if you were planning to pick up a guidebook to Vietnam in the next couple of weeks, hold your horses till you see this one. The new edition has a cover photo with conical hats (predictable, I know) and basket boats on a river. Or buy it here at LP.com.

Meanwhile, I'm toting my first copy around in a protective Ziploc bag, to show to all and sundry.

Not sick of Korean food at all

Watching the Seoul episode of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern makes me hungry for some doenjang jjigae (soybean stew). The mee pok ta I had for lunch didn't quite do the trick.

Amusing ourselves inflight

Apropos of my recent journey home via Incheon International Airport and Shanghai Pudong International Airport, I have to say that even though Darren Barefoot points out the many ways we can stay amused during flights, thanks to technology, I don't think we're at the point where we can say "we'll never be bored again." Because when my Shanghai layover got delayed by two hours, not even all the unread entries on my FAIL Blog RSS feed could keep me from wishing I was just on the plane and on the way home already. I had millions of RSS'd posts to catch up on (even if Google Reader claimed it was 1,000+, as usual) and another 200 pages of Revolutionary Road to finish --- but all I wanted to do was put my head down (preferably on a soft pillow), pass out and wake up in Singapore.

When I was in Korea, I took bus and train rides that lasted two to four hours, and none of them were as painful as these flights of equal duration. Part of it was that we were literally on the road, so there was always a definite sense of progressing somewhere, as opposed to an inchoate maundering through cloud and sky with no real landmarks. But a more important part of it, I think, was that we had comfortable, wide seats, with plenty of legroom (and headroom, come to think of it). And they didn't even try to serve any reprocessed mulch and pretend it was real food.

I know, I know, the economics of air travel are different. But one can't help wishing things were different.

Home again, home again, jiggety-jig

Back in Singapore, where the air is still, the sky is a surprisingly glorious blue and the cats are wondrously indolent. Other than dealing with an allergic reaction I picked up in Seoul, things are peachy keen. I'm all unpacked and about to start triaging snailmail.

What you missed of my trip home, as told via Facebook status updates:

9:09 a.m., Seoul
... is off to spend the day at Incheon Airport.

2:40 p.m., Incheon International Airport
... thinks every airport should have a place like the Naver-sponsored internet lounge at Incheon Airport --- super-fast wi-fi and power points built into every seat.

6:57 p.m., Shanghai Pudong International Airport
... is in Shanghai Pudong Airport on a 6-hour layover, where there is decent free wi-fi but no power points.

8:34 p.m.
Found the power points.

10:32 p.m.
... finally finished uploading all her Korea pictures to Flickr (thank you, free wi-fi at Incheon and Pudong).

12:12 a.m.
My connecting flight from Shanghai's been delayed ...

In the end the delay lasted two hours --- the plane was coming in from Beijing, which was enduring apocalyptic thunderstorms. I whittled away the extra time Skyping my cousin in Paris, whining on Facebook and reading Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road.

Since I touched down, I've had roti prata, teh tarik, Peranakan food at Big D's, and chicken rice and Hainanese food at Chin Chin Chicken Rice. I'm not sick of Korean food at all, but I don't think it'll taste the same if I eat any in Singapore this month.

A social whirlwind

I thought I would have more time to blog and catch up on uploading pictures when I got to Seoul last Friday, but instead it's been a steady stream of friends and friends-of-friends and new-friends-just-met inviting me out. Which is great, don't get me wrong, but the days are just whipping by and I go home in three days and it all just seems too soon yet not soon enough at the same time.

My travel karma's been particularly strong in Seoul. A very dear old friend from college was in town for a business trip --- his first business trip here in several years, so what are the chances, eh? We met in the very first quarter (term) of our freshman year, making it almost 16 years that we've known each other. No, we didn't drink to that. We had a late lunch at the Park Hyatt, followed by more dawdling around COEX Mall, copious drinking of Korean bottled iced teas (more him than me) and lounging in his hotel room eating grapes (more me than him). Note to self: find more writing assignments that throw in five-star hotel rooms.

Yesterday I met again with the trio of ultra-fit 60-year-old men whom I met on my second day in Korea. As promised, they took me for a bona fide Korean hiking experience, i.e. bring on the steep slopes and makgeolli (rice wine). I think I acquitted myself pretty well, considering that they hike three times a week (and one of them cycles 50-60 km daily). Over lunch later at a restaurant they knew well, the ajumma owner reminisced about a young man from Singapore many years ago whom she might just have had a thing for, showed off 1970s Singapore currency in almost perfectly crisp condition, bought some current Singapore currency off me (she insisted on paying me) and gave me three little bottles of Korean liquor to bring home. I can start my own Korean minibar now.

In between all that, there's been, er, shopping and wrapping up the last of my research work and watching indie films and also Terminator Salvation (meh for the latter, and going to a cinema in Seoul is pretty much the same experience as going to one in Singapore) and, er, more shopping. Today I'm off to peruse the DMZ. We'll see how the tour compares to viewing North Korea from afar at Goseong and Cheorwon.

The pink shoes in question

Previously mentioned here and here. Yeah, I suppose they don't look like real hiking shoes ...

Some days are like this

I took a bus (from Seoul to Taean), where I waited for another bus (to Cheollipo), to visit the Cheollipo Arboretum for less time than it took me to get there. Then I took another bus (to Taean), to catch another bus (to Seosan), to catch another bus (to Haemi), to see an old fortress that really wasn't very impressive and merited less than half an hour of my time.

Then I took a bus (to Seosan) and finally one last bus for the day (back to Seoul).

Thank goodness I fell into the company of a fellow foreign traveller for the day, plus he knew his plants, which was helpful for the arboretum visit. Now I know what red hot pokers are.

Going solo

In a week's time, I'll be in Seoul, with only a couple of sightseeing items left on my Lonely Planet to-do list. In two weeks' time, I'll be trying to stuff all my things into my backpack for the flight home.

The thing about long trips like this that aren't vacations per se, is that at the start they feel as if they're gonna go on forever, in both good and bad senses of the word. I flew into Seoul in late April and skidded into May, which passed in a blur of hiking, cave visits, bus rides and banchan (the side dishes served with a Korean meal). Now I'm in June and I don't know where the time has gone. If next year someone asks me, what were you doing in May 2009, all I'll be able to muster is, "I was in ... Korea?"

This is also the first time I've travelled solo for such a long stretch, which is remarkable because I've never been very good at doing anything solo. BoKo once remarked that he was surprised I'd decided to become a freelancer because I'd always struck him as the kind of person who liked being around other people. I think that's still true, but since I split up with Terz, I've also had to learn to be more comfortable with being by myself.

And I mean that in a very deliberate way, like choosing to go watch a movie by myself, without asking anyone else along, or having dinner on my own at a Thai Express outlet. These are not extraordinary things, but as someone whose first impulse is always to call friends and see who's free to hang out, it takes a little pep-talking to myself, to stop worrying about what other people will think, to get myself out there.

So in a way, this whole trip has been about getting myself out there, even though it was a professional decision to come to Korea, not a personal one. I guess I was ready for the personal challenge, though, because even though I'd established early on that unlike Vietnam, probably no one would be travelling with me this time, I was surprisingly not freaked out by it. Yes, surprisingly, because I've found in the last two years that far less demanding situations can be disproportionately upsetting.

And now I finally get why Adri was always so thrilled about packing a bag and just going, solo, wherever, whenever. Sure, I've got a job to do here, I can't ditch a town just because it's boring (Chungju, I'm looking at you), but there's still some room for day-to-day whim and fancy. I've even gotten used to the stares and questions. Solo travellers are a rarity in Korea, where the culture is very group-oriented, especially when it comes to eating. I think there's the added mystery of the fact that I'm a solo traveller and Asian and (if I get to the point of mentioning these details) 35 years old and not married.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I've taken this trip in my stride better than I thought I would, despite some bumps and hiccups along the way, and in no small part it's due to family and friends who have been my personal cheering squad along the way (not just for this trip, either). I don't think I could have made this journey at any earlier point in my life, but for now, everything seems to be in place.

An update for the sake of an update

I don't really feel like writing, but I'm headed to a new town tomorrow, so I figure I should stick something up here.

For the past three days I've been in Daejeon, which is the fifth largest city in South Korea and the largest city that I'll be writing about. Unfortunately, it doesn't have much by way of real sightseeing, so the most interesting time I've had is checking out the nightlife. It's been nice to sit in a bar and loiter over drinks again, and at Lucky Strike last night I had a very nice mojito --- made with love, truly, by the dedicated Korean bartender.

Friends at home have been asking me how things are here, with the former president's suicide and the North setting off missile tests willy-nilly. Truth be told, because I don't speak Korean, it's not like I can get under the skin of any of these issues. All I know is that with the former president's funeral being held today, there were plenty of emotional scenes playing on the news. Yesterday afternoon I stopped at a memorial for him outside Daejeon's City Hall to leave a flower, because a Korean friend in Singapore had asked me to. At night there were many more people lining up to pay their respects.

As for the North Korea missile tests, a friend in Seoul told me that as the USO and tour companies are still running their DMZ tours, things are status quo. So ... we'll see. One of my goals for the trip is to see all three places where one can visit or see something of the DMZ. I was at Goseong Unification Observatory three weeks ago along the eastern coast; there's still Panmunjom and Cheorwon to go.

The other thing worth reporting is that I am officially tired of having to handwash my underwear and socks, and re-pack my backpack every couple of days when I move on to a new town. Still lovin' the travelling --- I just wish that clean clothes could magically be awaiting me at each new stop.

So Daejeon's been fun, but I'm ready to get back to small-town Korea, with its helpful bus drivers and less hectic traffic.

Not homesick, but ---

It's very strange to dream of being in Singapore and wake up still in Korea.

Hiking right

So here's the first thing you gotta remember about hiking in South Korea: the country is 70% mountain, which means most hikes involve going up, up, up, and just because there's a well-worn trail from thousands of hikers passing through there every year (the Koreans do love their hiking) doesn't mean that it's going to be an easy one.

I'm getting used to all the climbing, because visiting just a simple temple or other sightseeing spot that's only 1 or 2 km from the trailhead usually involves some uphill work. Two thoughts keep me going when I get tired:

• It's all uphill now, which means it'll be all downhill later --- yay!
• If that old man/old woman/kid can scramble up and down this trail, so can I, dammit.

Today I went up Birobong, a peak in Sobaeksan National Park. Not many old men or old women on the trail, though there were a couple of boys with their dads. But it was the downhill-is-faster theory that betrayed me. The trail was pretty rocky, so coming down was a little tougher to navigate in terms of finding firm footholds. Now I understand why my Lecaf sneakers previously attracted concern from other hikers (a couple of them gestured at the shoes today too): while they're certainly comfortable, they simply haven't got the right traction and support for slithering down rocky paths.

I made it down okay, but next time I'll remember to wear my other shoes. In the remaining three weeks of my trip, there's one more national park on my must-see list and I might do a little extra hiking on my own around Seoul.

Not quite gone native

Although I've been mistaken for Korean a few times, it doesn't happen as often as it did in Vietnam. I think my short hair and backpack are a dead giveaway, as well as the fact that I'm often toting the Lonely Planet or else scribbling frantically in almost illegible English in my notebook.

Not looking local can trigger the most entertaining encounters, of course. Today, while I was working my way up a hiking trail at Woraksan National Park, I fell into the company of two men, both dressed to the hilt Korean-style for their hike: lightweight outdoor gear, backpacks, gloves and sweatbands. (Actually, the sweatbands are pretty anomalous for male Korean hikers.) After establishing that I was hiking solo, one of them gestured at my shoes and murmured with concern. I guess my new Lecaf sneakers --- pink! with flower details and a rainbow band --- weren't garang (Singlish, not Korean, for serious, hardcore) enough for him.

More surprising was when I was cornered by two well-dressed young women at the bus terminal. One of them did all the talking: First she established that I was foreign and English-speaking, then she gave me something "to read", about how to deal with life (that triggered my Spidey sense, of course). Then she asked if I knew God (aha!). I said yes, and she asked if I knew the name of God. I was stumped till she prompted, "Jehovah." To which I said, "Oh, you're Jehovah's Witnesses." If she was surprised that I'd heard of it, she covered it smoothly by asking for my telephone number "so that we can talk more about this." Which was my cue to murmur something about leaving town the next day (truly, I am!) and booking it out of there.

Of all the experiences I imagined having in Korea, being solicited by Jehovah's Witnesses was not one of them.

A final note about the pink Lecaf shoes: yesterday an ajumma on the bus complimented me on them and asked me how much they cost. She was impressed that they were only about 20,000 won (a little more than S$20). I couldn't decide if I was happy my new shoes had caught her eye --- or if I ought to be worried about my fashion sense. To quote an American teacher I met a few towns ago, "Have you noticed how Korean women hit 50 and then they all get a perm and a pink jacket?"

While waiting for the bus

I spend a lot of time on this trip waiting for buses. To get to lot of these national parks and other lovely sightseeing places, I have to wait for a bus that comes every hour or so. To be fair, most buses leave scrupulously on time, but sometimes --- as was the case this evening --- the bus doesn't appear as the schedule suggests it would. In tonight's case, it was only after asking for directions at various grocery stores, plus randomly overhearing an elderly Korean gentleman asking about the same bus, that I figured out I'd been waiting at the wrong place for the wrong bus. And that I had to wait an hour more for the right one to show up.

So I sat down and did some journalling instead.

The waiting does put a damper on things. It means I can't get to places as quickly as I'm used to (at home, I check the bus timings online obsessively before I get to a bus stop, so that I can already plan the quickest route), and there's a lot of downtime when, um, nothing happens. I suppose I oughta go with the zen and enjoy the fact that I'm not dashing from place to place, but sometimes I'm just itching to get on with it.

Sometimes, however, waiting isn't so uneventful. During one of today's hour-long waits: A mother arrived at the bus stop with her son, who's three or four years old. He started obsessively following around an older boy at the bus stop, the latter maybe eight or nine years old, and it turned out he wanted to try the orange drink the older boy was drinking. He got to try it, then he wanted to hold onto the drink (it was more than half-drunk by the older boy), and the older boy was like, whatever, you can have it.

So the mother and younger boy came back with the orange drink, at which point the boy's grandmother insisted on paying the other boy for the drink. Which set off this whole darting and ducking going on at one end of the bus stop, as the boy tried to decline the money but the grandmother kept stuffing it into his hand (or pocket).

The grandmother won, of course.

Meanwhile, I was still amazed that the mother allowed her son to drink from a stranger's cup. Cooties! Or something.

More buses (and waiting-for-buses) tomorrow. Which reminds me: I should go to sleep.

Pushing on

I've always been a city girl and I've always loved taking vacations in cities. Shanghai, Paris, London --- all good.

But after two days in Seoul, I needed to get out.

I blame it on the previous three weeks in small(er)-town Korea, where the pace is more laidback, the people are friendlier and the streets are less crowded. Plunging back into Seoul, with friends taking me out on the town both nights, it felt too frantic and too, too much.

So when some plans for day trips from Seoul didn't quite work out, I decided to get the hell outta there and push on with the rest of my trip. There'll be time enough to soak up the city vibe at the end, before I fly home.

Today I'm in Cheongju, where I poked around in a museum commemorating Korea's earliest metal printing press (which purportedly pre-dates Gutenberg's by more than 70 years), then took off on a 4-km hike on some fortress walls outside the city. It wasn't quite of Great Wall of China proportions, but the uphill sections certainly took the wind out of me. It's not customary in Korea to drink alone, but afterwards I sat down to dinner and ordered a bowlful of dongdongju (rice wine) to make it all better. Now I know why Koreans are always drinking after they come back from hiking (actually, they're happy to toss back a swig or two mid-hike too).

More national parks and limestone caves to come. As Yan Wei well knows, I had severe waterfall fatigue after we visited Dalat in Vietnam last year. We'll see if Korea gives me cave fatigue.

A little R&R

It's surreal to be back in Seoul, three weeks after I touched down here. The sun is out, again. I had to visit the Korea Tourism Organization near Cheonggye Stream, again (though the lanterns in the above picture aren't there anymore). I did lots of walking all over town, again. In fact, while out on an errand, I wound up in the same neighbourhood as the backpacker place I stayed at the last time --- and ran into someone whom I'd met at that backpacker place then. What are the chances, indeed.

I gave myself two days here to recharge and regroup, not so much because I was travel-fatiged (that hasn't hit, yet), but just to make sure my stuff was in order. Also to meet friends and sup on some good Korean barbecue --- that's one of the Korean meals that's well nigh impossible to order as a solo traveller.

There's plenty of free wi-fi in Seoul, so I've been uploading pictures to my Flickr account. I'm not going to be able to upload everything before I head out again tomorrow, so it'll be catch as catch can.

Gone caving

I've spent three days in this town (Samcheok) and seen three limestone caves. The first one, Hwaseongul, was fabulous. The second one, Cheonguk Donggul in Donghae, was meh. The third one, Daegeumgul, was pretty neat.

The only downside was that all of them were overly illuminated with garish coloured lights; that seems to be the trend in Asia. Phong Nha Cave in central Vietnam suffered from the same decorative affliction when I saw it last October.

I saw my first cave when I was 10: Yallingup Cave in southern Western Australia. My parents bought me a souvenir book, which I remember paging through for months (years?) afterwards. It's amazing how much I still retain. I could declaim "Helictites!" when I spotted them these couple of days, and tsk-tsk at visitors who touched the limestone formations (hello, way to contaminate the calcium carbonate). I mean, seriously, there was a guy at Daegeumgul today who touched every other formation hanging over our path as we finished the tour, with the kind of rapping one usually associates with checking for secret chambers. What, did he think the limestone formations were hollow and fake?

Besides the caves, there've been countless beaches, and the usual rounds of restaurant and hotel visits. This is the last I'll see of Korea's east coast on this trip. Tomorrow I'm headed inland to more national parks.

Top 10 tricks to happy backpacking in Korea

Without being able to speak Korean, that is.

1. Okay, so you gotta learn some basic Korean:

• annyeong haseyo ("hello" and all-purpose greeting)
• gamsa hamnida ("thank you")
• annyeong-hi gyeseyo ("goodbye", if you're the departing party, as I usually am)
• hana ("one", for a solo traveller)
• eolmayeyo ("how much is it?")
• masi sumnida ("delicious")
• an apologetic chon hangug marul mot'aeyo ("I don't speak Korean").

(PS: I'm trying to use the Korean government-sanctioned spelling style, but I might've made a mistake above or lapsed into the previous McCune-Reischauer system)

2. If you need directions, show someone the name of the place you're trying to find in hangeul. English text will throw most Koreans off. Maps are helpful only if they're in hangeul.

3. On that note, learn to read hangeul. Even if it takes you 10 minutes to parse a five-item restaurant menu, it still beats faffing about cluelessly. Also useful for spotting motel names, checking schedules at the bus terminal or destinations posted in the bus window, and reading toilet signs (though the latter tend to have appropriate graphics or English text as well).

4. Bring a phrasebook, and bookmark or dog-ear it so that it's easy to flip to the phrases you'll most often use on your trip. (I have about 10 pages dog-eared on my increasingly bashed-about copy.)

5. Don't spend all your small change. You'll always need 1,000-won notes and 100-won coins for bus fare.

6. Sometimes you won't know what you're eating. As long as you're not allergic to anything, just roll with it. The ajumma knows best!

7. Everyone knows about kimchi, but have a go at all the other banchan (side dishes) too. I'm currently addicted to the heavily salted-and-spiced anchovy-like fish that've been appearing with all my meals at these seaside towns (it reminds me of ikan bilis). And yesterday I had a braised beef side dish that was just divine. I almost abandoned my main course doenjang jjigae (soybean-paste stew) for it.

8. Always, always wear socks or stockings. At some point you'll probably have to remove your shoes to sit down at a restaurant, and showing your bare feet is a no-no. (I'm ashamed to admit that this didn't dawn on me till the end of my first week in Korea, but I've since been diligently atoning for my earlier faux pas).

9. Smile. A lot. It doesn't cost anything and it can smooth the way before you start stuttering in makeshift Korean.

10. Start accumulating some good travel karma by being considerate of people around you. Like don't hold up the entire queue at the bus or train station if you have a lot of questions. Or take the cue from the locals and give up your seat on the bus to someone who needs it more, especially the elderly or someone with a baby. Or be patient with people who want to hazard their English on you --- it's much harder for them to overcome the fear of making a mistake, than for you to wait and try to understand.

I've had a good first two weeks in Korea. Five more to go ...

My day began at 6 a.m.

This is very unusual for me, even when I'm doing on-the-road travel research. Most places in Korea don't open that early, so it's not like in The Amazing Race, where showing up at 7 a.m. sharp at the gate of the national park guarantees you the first chance to lurch in and find your clue.

But I was up at 6 a.m. anyway, because getting to Odaesan National Park from the town where I'm staying (Gangneung) involved an inter-city bus ride that needed to be timed right with the shuttle bus servicing different parts of the national park, so that I could optimise my time at all my stops and not spend all day waiting for the next bus (the shuttle bus runs only every hour or so).

In the afternoon, there was a painstaking wait outside another bus terminal --- this time in the nearby town of Hoenggye --- for another shuttle bus --- this time headed for Yongpyong Ski Resort. Ironically, at the national park in the morning I'd bumped into an Australian who'd commented that some of the transportation instructions in his copy of the Lonely Planet don't provide sufficient details about where one catches the bus. Now I got screwed --- it was only when the puce (yes, puce) coach glided by me with "All Seasons Yongpyong" emblazoned on its side, that I realised I'd been waiting in completely the wrong spot.

That shuttle bus also runs every hour or so.

So I said screw it, and took a taxi. It's not ski season, but a diligent Lonely Planet writer still has to go make sure all the buildings and services (and prices) are in place for the next snowfall.

Through sheer good fortune, I've been meeting older English-speaking Koreans who are more than happy to show a foreigner around while they exercise their English. One of them even took a course at my university (albeit a good decade before I was there). That has to be one of the most astonishing coincidences of my trip.

Nature rambling

I've spent the last two days at Seoraksan National Park, doing lots of traipsing and tripping along hiking paths marked mostly in Korean (and helpfully stocked with food and drinks stalls). The paths were mostly rock and gravel, but there were also steel staircases to help amateurs like me over the difficult bits. Don't knock those steel staircases --- without them, I would never ever have made it up as majestic a face as that of Ulsan Bawi. It took me one hour to make it up 1 km of fairly vertical distance, hitting the summit at about 3 p.m. Yeah, maybe that wasn't the best time to go climbing up an exposed rock face.

Remind me also to show you the photograph I'm calling "Fallen gimbap".

Tonight I'm staying in the coolest backpacker joint in Sokcho, The House Hostel, where I've met another Singaporean (the first one I've randomly met this trip) and two Thai women. Tomorrow I'm off to another coastal town, Gangneung, which is also known for having a "Tofu Village". That'll be a nice change of diet from the meat and fish I've been eating.

I feel like I ought to say something wittier here, since I don't know when I'll have internet access again. But I think my brain is feeling sympathy fatigue with my sore feet and calves, so I'm going to toddle upstairs with my beer and go chillax now.

I hope I don't smell of fish

I've spent the last two days in and around the fishing port town of Sokcho, along the northeastern coast of South Korea. I've eaten a good bit of fish, and squinted at a lot of dried squid and dried fish for sale in the markets and ports. Last night's dinner of raw fish took less than ten minutes to go from wriggling-in-the-water to sliced-and-served on my dinner table. I'm sure some travellers might find that disturbing.

To wrangle my way to the Goseong Unification Observatory today, I had to not only take an hour-long public bus ride, but also effectively hitchhike the last 10 km uphill to the observatory proper. As luck would have it, the ticket office hooked me up with a young Korean couple with two toddlers. The family barely spoke any English, but between my phrasebook and a lot of smiling, it worked out well. We figured out that they were headed to the same places I was for the rest of the day --- the aquarium and former presidential residences at Hwajinpo --- so we ended up spending most of the day together, before they dropped me back at Sokcho. Plus at lunchtime, they bought me instant noodles from a beach vendor and shared their homemade kimbap (Korean sushi) as well.

When I think of the phrase "the kindness of strangers", I will always think of this pleasant young couple.

Tomorrow I'm heading to my first national park of the trip, Seoraksan National Park. This is South Korea, so I'm sure there'll be internet access in the mountains --- if I have the energy after a day of hiking to use it.

All walked out

I think I must've walked at least 15 km today, and cycled another 5 km or so. The walkathon day began when I got to the ferry pier at Soyang Dam so early that I had 1.5 hours to kill before the first ferry departed. So I walked around to kill time. Later, traffic was bumper-to-bumper to get to Namiseom Island (of Winter Sonata fame), so I walked somewhere between 3 and 4 km, from the bus terminal at the town of Gapyeong to the ferry point for the island. And back, after visiting the island.

(In true Korean style, the island has declared itself the Republic of Naminara, with its own flag, currency and passport. Ticket counters on the mainland are marked "Ticket/Visa". They didn't check anyone's passport, though.)

The cycling came later, when I was back in Chuncheon, with about an hour to kill before dinner. So I decided I should go do that sunset cycling route that the previous guidebook author had recommended. It was a very pleasant way to round up my sojourn here, but man, with the wind blowing against me on my way back, it was harder than I bargained for.

Chuncheon has been full of little surprises: quirky cafes, unexpected finds, and lovely people who try to help me even though they don't speak a word of English and I can never remember Korean for "I don't speak Korean". The blisters were worth it.

No pictures, just (a bit of) text

Unlike the previous Lonely Planet research trip, I'm finding it harder these first few days to find the time to stay sort and label my images, which means I haven't gotten round to uploading any to Flickr. Meanwhile, just imagine the land of Winter Sonata (minus any actual winter), and you pretty much have an idea of what it all looks like around me.

When we return to our regularly scheduled programming, remind me to tell you about the story of the three jovial 60-year-old men I met at a rural bus stop. Also about funky university cafes in Chuncheon, huffing and puffing my way up an inclined road on a bicycle because I'd missed the (level) bicycle path, inhaling allegedly jade-infused air to improve my qi and wasting time looking for a room key that (duh) was in the power-activation slot for my hotel room in the first place.

(Uh ... forget about the last story. I'm pretty lame that way.)

Sleepy in Seoul

Arrived. Checked in at my humble backpacker lodgings. Showered, etc.

Now must sleep.

En route to Seoul

There would be a picture of my two backpacks here, taken this morning before I left for the airport to prove that I'm really travelling that light --- but the USB cable for my camera is in my check-in luggage.

I'm at Shanghai Pudong International Airport, where contrary to what the internet would tell you, there is free wi-fi. So I caught up on email, Facebook and RSS feeds instead of swotting up on hangeul. That can wait till I board the 1.5-hour flight to Seoul.

My flight from Singapore to Shanghai was packed with a couple of tour groups from China. This was the first time I've ever heard cabin crew sternly, shrilly yell, teacher-style, in Mandarin, "Please stay in your seats!" This was prompted by passengers who were unfastening their seatbelts and getting up from their seats the moment the plane lifted off from or hit the ground.

My ineptness with Mandarin is so embarrassing. I wasn't sure of the term for bottled water when the flight attendant was coming around with the beverage trolley (she simply used the generic word for "water"), and I could not, for the life of me, remember how to say "credit card" when I was ordering drinks at a cafe in the airport. I remember how to say "Korea", but I can't remember how "Seoul" is translated in Mandarin.

However, I did manage to work my way through a six-page inflight magazine story on "the spirit of art" in Melbourne. Just don't make me take a test on that.

Gathering it all together

The problem with gearing up to go on the road for seven weeks is that it's so all-consuming, I haven't been able to write to my satisfaction about what's going on with AWARE (if you need to catch up , the indefatigable Ovidia Yu has been providing excellent daily updates), or done anything sparkling and creative at all of late, or had enough time to store up cat-cuddles for the time I'll be away.

I have, however, managed to pack a lighter bag than I took to Vietnam last year, which is a pretty neat achievement considering that this time, I have to pack for 10-25 degree weather. Maybe I'm just getting better at squeezing the air out of Ziploc bags. Well, and travelling with a HP Mini instead of my usual Macbook helps.

If everything proceeds according to schedule, by this time tomorrow night I'll be in Seoul. You can start making your own Seoul-related puns now; I'm going to forbear for as long as I can.

My mind is full

In the run-up to my departure date, things are much more under control than they were the last time, but I still find myself with not enough spare braincells with which to write an energetic, witty post.

Maybe it's because a significant amount of my energies today went towards thinking about how to wrangle budget accommodation in Seoul, since I 'd procrastinated on making a reservation and my top two choices were fully booked. (Lucky for me, in this case it worked out for the better, because I've landed cheaper accommodation at a more central location.)

Maybe it's because the AWARE situation shows no signs of imploding or being amiably resolved. (More detailed thoughts to come later. I'm still working on it.)

Maybe it's because the weather it's so hot, it makes it difficult to think. On the bus back from Beach Road market today (I bought cheap army raincoats again), Ming and I were equally listless in conversation, thinking more about when we could reach the cool comfort of our respective homes. In fact, it was so hot last night that the cats came into my air-conditioned bedroom and slept on (not under) the covers.

I hope my brain gets to chillax soon.

I forgot how much I hate Windows

... till I started using a HP Mini today.

The machine itself is great. I had it in my bag for most of this afternoon and evening, and didn't feel the weight at all. It runs pretty fast, and while the keyboard takes a little getting used to, that's mostly to do with the placement of my hands with respect to the touchpad; the size itself is fine.

Now if only these machines could run OSX. I also miss Adium. Miranda looks positively like ICQ circa the late 1990s.

But all in all, I ain't complainin'. The nice folks at Edelman Singapore were nice enough to rustle me up a loan unit for the next few months, so I can bring it to Korea and not have to lug the Macbook everywhere. The latter held up very well against the rigours of on-the-road travel in Vietnam, including being bumped in a backpack against some rocks during an unexpectedly steep descent at Cuc Phuong National Park and enduring the rough vibralto of many motorbike rides throughout the entire trip. But my back and shoulders will be grateful for not having its weight bear down on them every. Single. Day. of the next trip.

So now I have one sparkling white Macbook and one snazzy black HP Mini. And a white cat and a black cat. Can we say photo op?

A meme-like blog post

Because I'm feeling a little under the weather and I can steal the questions from Tricia instead of having to think up entirely original material. And yes, even though I didn't bother with the "25 Random Things About Me" Facebook meme.

1. Do you like blue cheese?
I don't mind the odd daub of it.

2. Have you ever smoked?
Once. If I ever picked up the habit, my mom would kill me.

3. Do you own a gun?
No. I live in Singapore.

4. What flavor Kool-Aid was your favorite?
Clearly whoever came up with this list of questions is American. I must've tried Kool-Aid at some point during my university years, but I can't remember a single instance.

5. Do you get nervous before doctor appointments?
No. I just get impatient.

6. What do you think of hot dogs?
Yums! But only if they come with the trimmings.

7. Favourite Christmas movie?
Love Actually. I stole Packrat and Ondine's copy last Christmas and, er, haven't returned it yet.

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning?
Black coffee.

9. Can you do push-ups?
Kind of. Been practicing somewhat during Pilates class.

10. What's your favorite piece of jewellery?
A curvy silver bracelet I bought at a jewellery stand in the basement of Norris University Center, some time in the mid-1990s.

11. Favourite hobby?
Every time I see the word "hobby", I immediately think of "stamp collecting", even though I was an indifferent collector at best. I think hobbies are so 1980s.

12. Do you have A.D.D.?
We didn't have that in my generation at school.

13. What's one trait you dislike about yourself?
I don't have a very good memory.

14. Middle names?
Not telling! Some things are best kept private (or forgotten).

15. Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment.
What am I thinking?
Damn, I type fast.
My wrist is itchy.

16. Name 3 drinks you regularly drink.
Black coffee, ice-cold water and green tea (out of a bottle or a can).

17. Current worry?
I'll never write that novel.

18. Current hate right now?
When I was a kid, my mother told me not to say that I hated anything because "hate" is a very intense word and not be bandied about lightly (I don't think she used "bandied" though). So, uh, yeah, not really hating anything specific right now.

19. Favourite place to be?
I've been thinking a lot about Hoi An today, partly because a friend there has been Facebooking about eating at Casa Verde, and I'm trying to pitch a related food article. But I think my answer from before still stands: I don't really have a favourite place, though there are many places that I've liked dearly and would be happy to revisit.

Also, my apartment's still a good place to be, though it's not the same apartment that I wrote about the last time.

20. How did you bring in the new year?
Do you mean "ring in" Anyway, it was at a friend's apartment, with the clink of champagne and the riotous chorus of local TV station MediaCorp's New Year countdown event.

21. Where would you like to go?
Paris (again)! Iceland (was just watching a Bizarre Foods episode of this)! Also (in no particular order): Melbourne, Laos, China and Taiwan.

22. Name three people who will complete this.
Um. No.

23. Do you own slippers?
I'm going to steal Tricia's response because she said it best: "This is Singapore. We were born wearing slippers."

24 What shirt are you wearing?
A grey pajama top.

25. Do you like sleeping on satin sheets?
Dunno.

26. Can you whistle?
Yes, passably.

27. Favourite colour?
Red and its attendant hues.

28. Would you be a pirate?
Yes, if I can look as hot as Keira Knightley and get my pirate swag from 826 Valencia.

29. What songs do you sing in the shower?
None. I'm an execrable singer.

30. Favourite girl's name?
This changes regularly, but one perennial favourite is: Min.

31. Favorite boy's name?
Can't think of one right now.

32. What's in your pocket right now?
Nothing. After all, I'm going to bed.

Hepatitis-free

Almost, anyway.

I went to Tan Tock Seng Hospital's Travellers' Health and Vaccination Clinic today because I leave for Korea in less than a month and I hadn't checked if I needed any shots. Plus the American CDC seems to recommend anti-malarial protection for some of the rural areas I might be passing through.

As it turns out, the local travellers' clinic doesn't quite snort at the idea of one needing any preventive treatment for a visit to South Korea --- okay, they almost do. I believe the hospital staff member's exact words were: "It's Korea. It's safe."

So I just got the last-of-three hepatitis shots I was overdue for, and then I waltzed out of there after less than ten minutes. This duly impressed G-man, with whom I'd parted ways at Novena Square after lunch, but who had just barely made it out of the car park before I exited the hospital.

This last hepatitis shot is supposed to make me immune to Hepatitis A, and I'll have to get a $14 blood test in two months to see if I snagged Hepatitis B immunity as well. I'm sure I'll forget by then, though.

Related post: I got my shots

All the gansik that's fit to eat

Yesterday I discovered that one of my nearby supermarkets as a special "Best of Korea!!!" aisle. I'm not sure why because there aren't that many Korean expats in the neighbourhood. But the first thing I thought was, "Now I know where to go to practise reading hangeul ..."

However, this morning I inadvertently wound up practising how to read Chinese characters really quickly instead. As part of a pre-trip cultural immersion of sorts, I've borrowed the Korean TV series Woman of the House on DVD, which has Korean and Chinese language tracks, and only Chinese subtitles. I'm definitely not reading the subtitles fast enough to get the full details of the story, but it's amazing how much one can pick up from situational context and body language.

I'll be visiting Chuncheon, where Winter Sonata was filmed, so that's next on my must-watch list.

Travel talk

Serendipity is:

• Running into Preetam at last week's Hewlett-Packard launch event,
• Prompting me to visit his website and marvel at the usefulness of his Blogout '09 presentation, "Adventures of a Traveling Blogger",
• Leading us to exchange emails about our upcoming travel plans,
• Leading him to invite me to tonight's Singapore Travel Meetup Group's, uh, meetup.
  

It was my first time sticking my toe into anything meetup-ish, which turned out to be about ten adults sitting around a cafe table and talking mostly about travel. A lovely couple who'd recently been to Bandung, Indonesia did a little show-and-tell about their trip, then people just mingled. That same couple has lived in Seoul, so quite naturally we got to talking about Korea, then Vietnam, then Thailand, and finally Singapore.

Interestingly, the couple asked me if I knew of any particularly canonical Singapore fiction and I was stumped. I'm not a fan of Catherine Lim, Philip Jeyaretnam's writing doesn't quite strike me as being canonical and Alfian Sa'at's Corridor, which I like, feels premature nonetheless. In the end, I suggested they stick to theatre instead.

It's nice to be able to gab with new acquaintances for something on the order of two hours without noticing the time.

All shoed out (almost)

In the last month, I've acquired four new pairs of shoes. I'm not sure if, like the dress situation, this is some kind of delayed side effect of last year's backpacking trip.

In my own defence, only the first two pairs were premeditated buys, in anticipation of old shoes that were going to be retired soon. The latter two pairs were emergency acquisitions: on Tuesday and today, the soles of the shoes I was wearing went a-flap-flapping in the middle of the day, and because of my respective dinner plans, I couldn't just make do with a cheap pair of slippers till I got home.

Fortunately, on both days I was in town and within a short walk of a decent shoe shop. But now that I have four gleaming pairs of new shoes, I really need to stop.

Except that since my only pair of tramping-around-the-countryside shoes died in Dalat during the aforementioned backpacking trip, I still need to get a new pair (and break them in) to go tramping around the countryside in Korea next month. I'd really love a pair of Onitsuka Tigers, but I wonder how well that will go down in ex-occupied territory Korea.

Too darn wet

It's been unseasonally rainy, the kind of rain we're supposed to get in January (but this year we had just a lot of wind instead). It's odd having to deal with monsoon-style rain at this time of the year --- it just doesn't feel like March. But I don't really mind the wet. Gadding about in flip-flops brings me right back to last year's Vietnam trip, especially when I'm wearing the pair of black slippers I had to buy in Hue because my Tevas were giving me blisters. And I'm grateful for any cool weather that Singapore gets.

Nonetheless, I hope it's not going to be so wet in South Korea, which is where I'm headed next. It'll be spring and there's supposed to be "light rain"; I'm going to hit Beach Road market to pick up another $3 army poncho before I leave, but I hope I won't have to use it much.

What have been too wet lately are my pasta sauces. I failed to drain the diced tomatoes before chucking them in last week's bolognaise, resulting in a soupy sauce, and I messed up the proportion of chicken stock to sour cream on tonight's stroganoff, making for another liquidy concoction. Taste-wise both were fine, but these little screw-ups are the reason I never trust myself to cook a full meal for family or friends.

Cool things I found on the web today:

• Jon Stewart kicks CNBC's ass for years of bad financial journalism masquerading as market expertise (via my friend Dave's Facebook update).
  
• The Big Picture has some incredible images of people at work around the world (industrialisation never looked so good).
• Go Media has given us the perfect accompaniment to FAIL Blog: FAIL stickers (is there an Epic FAIL version?).

There's Australia, and then there's Tasmania

During the last six weeks of intensive writing, the only film I escaped my hermit-like existence to watch was Australia, which I liked despite its flaws and overreaching (perhaps a little because of the overreaching). You know: Baz Luhrmann, epic film, sweeping Australian landscapes and overweeningly will they-won't they love story.

Today I stumbled across Tasmania the Movie (via Hackpacker):



There's a full campaign. I've wanted to go visit Tasmania for a while now, but I want to see it even more now that I know that their tourism authorities have a fair dinkum sense of humour.

The Top Gear take on Vietnam

I finished writing the first draft of my Lonely Planet text last night, so it was a good time to watch the Top Gear: Vietnam Special, which turned out to be an excellent episode of travel TV and made me want to hop on the back of a motorcycle in Vietnam again.


But let me tell you: never mind the show's premise that they weren't travelling fast enough to meet the 8-day deadline to reach the finishing line at Halong Bay. The real reason they took a train from Hue to Hanoi is because there is nothing very interesting between Hue and Hanoi. I should know, I'm writing an entire chapter on that region.

I'm not a huge fan of Top Gear like, say, G-man, but this was a good episode. Also a great PR exercise for Vietnam. I fully imagine that legions of fans are going to show up in Halong Bay looking for Ba Hang Bar and in Hoi An to make zoot suits.

On the tourist trail, then off again

I've been plugging away at the writing since I got through the unexpected move and banged through Hue, Danang, Hoi An, Kon Tum, Pleiku and Buon Ma Thuot in about a week. If that sounds like a lot, it is: Hue, Danang and Hoi An comprise about half my total word count, while writing about Kon Tum, Pleiku and Buon Ma Thuot takes some diplomatic finesse because of how murky things are in the highlands (the social-political relations, not the air or the views, which are great).

Here's some of what I can't squeeze into the book about each town:

Hue (pronounced 'hway' or 'way', not 'hue' or 'huey') was where I first started to overdose on cultural sights. There's only so many imperial whatsits you can look at in a day before the ironic voice in my head withers in fatigue. I've never been one to diligently work through all the royal doodads that any culture puts on display (that's why I spent most of my time at Versailles lounging in the royal gardens rather than meditating on the royal fripperies), but now that the job called for it ... Well, I sucked it up and did it.

I don't like to play favourites, but I will say that of all the imperial tombs I liked the crazy Khai Dinh construction best, mostly because it seemed the least traditionally Vietnamese after all the others I'd seen. Also, I saw it around lunchtime, which is why its blazing blackness is forever seared into my memory.



Danang was great because it was a regular non-touristy city and every expat I met there loved it for being a regular non-touristy city. It's always been panned in previous editions of the guidebook, but I give it a big thumb's up. When you can walk for blocks without a single person trying to hawk you a postcard, conical hat or xe om ride, that's a precious thing.

Also it had excellent Vietnamese food. I'm not crazy about the local noodle speciality mi quang, so I went marginally upmarket and hit all these neat little Vietnamese restaurants instead. Writing the Danang restaurant section was hard last weekend when I was stuck at the laptop without a hearty meal within reach.


Hoi An I didn't like when I first met it. Too quaint, too much like a movie set and too many damn tourists. After Danang --- when locals would do a double-take at seeing me pass them on the street and I wouldn't see another foreign face for hours unless I popped into Bread of Life or Bamboo 2 Bar --- Hoi An seemed like some purgatorial outpost wherein I'd been cast to test my patience with relentless street sellers --- "Hey you! Come here!" --- and bellyaching tourists.

Then I met some really lovely people. Then I heard some really lovely stories (personal ones, that don't get disclosed here or in the guidebook). Then I figured out that "Hey you!" is a direct translation of the Vietnamese term for addressing a stranger (the way in English you would say "Excuse me"). Then I lingered in Hoi An longer than I'd planned to --- also because Yan Wei joined me and hey, who am I to deny her a few days of Hoi An magic (especially since we spent most of our time out of town)?

I'd go back to Hoi An in a heartbeat now, mostly to hang out and eat lots of fabulous food (Morning Glory, Mango Rooms and Casa Verde, I'm lookin' at you). But not cao lau. I don't care if it is Hoi An's pride and joy, it just doesn't do it for me.


Kon Tum, then, which was very dusty and very poor. These are towns in Vietnam that you visit not for food or nightlife or ancient relics, but because they've got exotic minority (read: marginalised) villages in the area. These are places where you smile at the kids but keep them at a distance because how on earth can anyone do enough to help them all. I felt growly inside when we saw a packed tour bus leaving a "popular" orphanage and later a foreign couple dropped in on the orphanage's nursery with their guide to cuddle some poor babies (though I was a drop-in too, even if I did forbear from the cuddling).

I still feel growly. Ask me about it some time.


Pleiku was like the older sibling of Kon Tum, with slightly better but not necessarily trendier clothes. We found a cool cafe to hang out in and Yan Wei picked up a fan (the kind that wants to practise her English with us) at the market, which led to an earnest but awkward hour spent in that same cafe.

Buon Ma Thuot (pronounced 'boon me tote') had no good restaurants. All our sightseeing outside the town was great, but when we got back and had to scrounge up dinner --- well, let's just say that 'scrounge' is appropriate because there really wasn't much to pick from, even including street food options. You know a town is lacking in dining options when even our well-informed tour guide couldn't recommend us a place.


I'm skimming over the details, of course, but I have to conserve my strength for tomorrow's writing. One more major town to write about, then I switch into editing and cutting-text-to-meet-the-word-count mode. I hope I've set aside enough time for that.

A war zone, once

I've spent the better part of this week writing about Dong Hoi, Dong Ha and the DMZ, which means I've spent the better part of this week getting a crash course in the Vietnam War/American War in Vietnam/the Second Indochina War/the quagmire that the war in Iraq is constantly being compared to.

(We're calling it the American War in the guidebook.)

All you really need to know is this:

• Dong Hoi is the town immediately north of the DMZ that got pretty much shelled to bits by American bombing because it was the town immediately north of the DMZ (and hence used as a main staging area by the North).
  
• Dong Ha is the town immediately south of the DMZ that also got pretty much levelled thanks to its proximity to the border.
  
• The DMZ is the demilitarised zone that used to be a highly militarised area pockmarked with US bases, but almost everything was stripped by the Americans when they left or picked apart by successive militaries or people scrounging for scrap metal.
  

In short, none of these towns look very much like what war veterans remember, and a layman would have to really use his/her imagination to get something out of seeing these places. Not that I'm saying one shouldn't visit or respect the memory of what happened there --- just don't expect it to look like a scene out of a Vietnam War movie.


But let me backtrack a little first. Dong Hoi wasn't a DMZ stop. We were there to visit the Phong Nha Caves --- very nice, despite the crazy lighting scheme inside and the pouring rain outside. The only unnerving thing was feeling a mild wave of claustrophobia while we were inside the cave, even with Deanna for company. I never used to get that way.

We stumbled on other cool stuff in Dong Hoi, but for that you'll have to wait for the book. Onward to Dong Ha and the DMZ, to see grassy patches where men and their weapons once slugged it out in battles that became the stuff of legend. Seeing all the sites in one day means they all sort of blurred into one another. It's only in the writing that I've now finally sorted out a lot of the details, and thank goodness for friends who just happen to be military buffs. I now know what "Leathernecks" are and I'm replacing all references to "McNamara's Wall" with "McNamara's Line" (it just sounds better).

On a more sobering note: I didn't think too much about unexploded ordnance while I was in the DMZ, even though I pretty much followed in the footsteps of our guide, but yes, there's still heaps of it around (see Mines Advisory Group and Clear Path International for some updates) and this is one place where you're better off sticking to the beaten path.

Oh, cardboard

Ah, Vinh. Most people don't know where it is, but those I met in Vietnam who did, when they heard that I'd been there, were quick to offer a sympathetic gaze. "Oh, Vinh." They might as well've said, "Oh, cardboard."

It's nice to know I wasn't alone in finding Vinh utterly uninteresting, unsalvageable and uncommendable. We had to spend three nights there, right after one night in ho-hum Thanh Hoa (which isn't making a comeback in the book --- as I emailed my editor, "unless people have been clamouring for it? The town itself has little to recommend"). And even after Thanh Hoa, Vinh seemed, well, blah.

Fine, so it's a port/industrial city, and it can't help that it was bombed to bits during the war and got ugly Stalinist buildings from East Germany thereafter. But why are the streets so empty of all the street food and street life one finds in almost every Vietnamese town (even in Dalat on a cold November night)? What do all the people do when there isn't a 220th anniversary of the city's founding to celebrate? Why is there nothing to eat on the street except bun bo Hue? And why do some hotels rent rooms by the hour?

If not for the fact that Vinh is a common stop for buses to and from Laos, I don't think it would make it into the guidebook either. Sure, there's Cua Lo Beach half an hour away (see image above), but that's not a beach I'd come all the way here for.

I made a friend in Danang who had spent several months in Vinh. When I asked her how she had stood it, she said dryly, "Oh, I looked around for a bridge to throw myself off, but I couldn't find one."

First impressions

An excerpt from Sunday's IM conversations:

Wahj: what have you been up to?
Wahj: besides writing
ME: writing and procrastinating
ME: if i'm not doing one, i'm doing the other
ME: today i cleaned my shower curtain and shower in lieu of writing
ME: (altho i have written quite a bit after that)
Wahj: The power of procrastination is amazing
Wahj: I'm convinced the best way to do something is to have something else to do

True dat, but I think after a week of giving in to procrastination, I finally have text on the page that I'm reasonably proud of.

However, there are also lots of stories from my seven weeks of travelling that won't make it to Lonely Planet. I mean, it's a guidebook, not a travelogue or a memoir.

So since I've been getting storyteller's block when I'm with family and friends, plus there are more stories than can be told in one sitting anyway, I thought maybe I could try blogging some of them as I'm writing about the respective places.

First stop: Ninh Binh.


When people ask me what my favourite place on the trip was, I usually hesitate to give a reply because they were all good in their own way (except for Vinh, but more about that in a couple of days). Philosophically I also don't see much point in trying to single out one travel destination or experience and elevating it as the superlative. It smacks of a certain consumerist approach to travel that I'm none too crazy about.

The blithe answer to the "favourite place" question, though, is Ninh Binh.

Ninh Binh was easy to love. The weather was positively glorious for the three days we were there. The flowers were blooming and the buffalo were amiable. The rice fields were a ripe, rich green, and the farms were buzzing with harvesting activities (including a memorable skedaddle on motorbike past a small roadside fire fuelled by dried rice plants; I made it unscathed but my friend was unfortunately singed by a stray ember).

And our motorcycle guides made things easy. The lead guide always spoke pretty good English, everyone drove safely, and all they had to do was whip us off the main path and down some country lane for me to be happy.

In the living quarters of a 14th-century temple, we sat down for tea, bananas and persimmons with an elderly nun who wouldn't let Deanna take pictures of her until she put on her official robes. On an empty river coming back from Kenh Ga village, the boatman let me take the wheel because, you know, that's what they let tourists do. Deanna led forth to breakfasts of pho ngan (duck pho in a heady broth, which I never saw again on the trip) and other market foods that I promptly forgot the names of.

When you spend most of your day looking at mountains (okay, limestone karsts) and blue skies, it's not hard to like a place.

There were other mountains and other blue skies over the next seven weeks, but it was Ninh Binh's that I saw first.

Inundated by coffee chains

Hot on the heels of learning that Tully's Coffee from Seattle has opened two outlets in Singapore, I just learned tonight that there's a Trung Nguyen as well (via The Travelling Hungryboy). And only yesterday I was whining on Facebook to a friend that I miss my daily dose of ca phe sua da.

Having said that, I don't think Singapore really needs more coffee chains when it already has Starbucks, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Coffee Club, Gloria Jean's and TCC (I'm sure I've forgotten someone). And the fact that Trung Nguyen doesn't serve ca phe phin (drip coffee) kinda negates the whole point of ordering Vietnamese coffee.

As I was lamenting to Yan Wei last week, what Singapore needs are more indie cafes like Saigon's La Fenetre Soleil.

Degrees of separation

Thanks to the new friends I made on my travels in Vietnam, I am now:

• two degrees of separation away from Michael Bolton, via a relation of his I met in Hoi An.
• three degrees of separation away from Aung San Suu Kyi, via someone who's related to her husband's family, whom I also met in Hoi An.
• two degrees of separation away from Dustin Nguyen,* via my friend in Ho Chi Minh City.

A less upbeat version: a few minutes ago, I learned I'm three degrees of separation away from the a Singaporean being held hostage in the Mumbai attacks.

Edited to add (November 30): Scratch that. I do know a family member of the poor woman who died in the Mumbai attacks. Which really brings a new cast to it being a "small world".

* Being able to identify Dustin Nguyen is also a good indicator of one's age/generation. I immediately identified him in a portfolio of Vietnam advertising images; my much younger friend Yan Wei had no clue who he was.

Settling in

In a cab on my way to a family brunch this morning, I realised how quiet our roads are in Singapore. Just the inevitable engine noise, that's all. I sorta missed the rhythmic honking that's the soundtrack to every thoroughfare in Vietnam.

Later, at brunch, I was giving Packrat my two cents' worth of advice about shepherding junior college students on a fieldtrip around Ho Chi Minh City, and it seemed unreal that three days ago I was plodding around on those pothole-ridden sidewalks and today I was all dressed up for Prego's (in a skirt, Yan Wei!).

Even later, after brunch and the Anime Festival Asia and coffee with friends, I was waiting in a cab line at Marina Square as the monsoonal rain poured down, and I missed how easy it is to get a cab in Vietnam. They're always loitering on street corners, the drivers looking completely uninterested in picking up a fare, but if you approach them they're generally amenable to take you where you need to go. Yes, there are taxis with rigged meters that jump three times as fast as they're supposed to, and some drivers will deliberately take you the long way round --- but hey, at least there are taxis.

I know it sounds like I'm a little hopelessly stuck on a Vietnam loop, and I think it'll take me a bit of time to get things out of my system. But it's also nice to be home: cats, family, friends, food, apartment, Singlish, all.

One last look for now

One last lau de (goat hotpot).

One last beer in a friend's office.

Soon enough: home.

Last day

Things I'll be glad not to have to do when this trip is over:

• Hand-wash any clothes.
• Carry my laptop with me everywhere I go.
• Buy drinking water and fret over all the discarded plastic bottles.
• Plan my water intake and toilet options around the day's itinerary.
• Back up my text and image files on thumb drives and Gmail almost every night.
• Point to the handwritten note that says "Toi di viet sacs cho Lonely Planet" whenever I need to explain what I do to a non-English speaker.
  

Things I'll miss doing:

• Crossing the road with Zen-like impunity, even during rush hour across six lanes of traffic in central Saigon.
• Having good coffee available just about everywhere, except at certain hotels or overly-touristed areas.
  
• Eating crisp, cheap baguettes.
• Drinking cheap beer.
• Encountering people who are are extremely nice and helpful, even when they don't speak any English and haven't a clue what I'm trying to ask of them.
  

And on the 50th day of doxycycline ...

I got hit by a wave of nausea after downing the pill without food. Fortunately, the stomach unease was short-lived and I managed to enjoy a couple of caprioskas at Xu afterwards.

Saigon's been a whirlwind of cafes, restaurants and bars --- more good meals and cool joints than I remember from last year. Of course, it also helps to have a friend in town who knows all the cool joints.

Tomorrow is my last full day in Vietnam. It's surreal to think about going home after all this time.

Last stop

I'm in Dalat (yay!) enjoying the cool weather (yay!) and staying in a hotel with an incredible shower (yay!).

But the hotel has no wifi (boo).

So. I'm guessing there won't be updates for a while. Oh well, miles of cool countryside to bike around in the meantime ...

Town and country

We knew Buon Ma Thuot was going to be a dusty town because the orangey accumulations on the sides of the road got heavier, not lighter, as we entered the town. We felt the dust sheath our faces and clothes as we tramped all over the town centre for me to get my mapping and hotel visits done. I'm not sure I got all the dust off me last night; our bathroom ran out of hot water so I couldn't have a proper scrub-down.

But the good thing about being in a dusty town is that it makes you grateful for being able to get out of it --- out into villages filled with Vietnam's "other" people (some of the 53 non-Kinh ethnic groups), most of whom didn't bat an eyelid as we peered curiously out of a car or treaded carefully down a path between their longhouse homes. No constant echoes of children's "Hello! Hello!" here, like we had last Sunday while cycling across Cam Kim Island off Hoi An. These few days in the central highlands, it's been mostly bland indifference, which also makes me feel mercifully like less of a tourist.




One more day of poking around villages and the countryside tomorrow, then we should be off to the last working stop of my trip.

Two weeks to go

It feels like it was just yesterday that I blogged about being halfway through my trip, and now I'm down to the last two weeks. This is the part where the days start to fly past, I guess.

We've spent the last few days stomping across dusty towns where we're the only tourists in sight and there are no cafes serving "backpacker fare" (mushroom omelettes, French fries/croquettes or banana pancakes). We're surprised if we run across a menu available in English at all.

On the one hand, I've definitely got a touch of travel fatigue and part of me wants to be home, where I can hug my cats and I don't have to handwash anything after I shower at night. On the other hand, I can't quite imagine fitting back into sedate Singapore life after all this on-the-go never-knowing-exactly-where-tomorrow-leads frame of mind.

Mostly I'm pleasantly gratified that after five weeks on the road, countless horror stories from friends and other travellers, and the odd unpleasant encounter on the street --- I still really, really like Vietnam.

Going native

I'm not deliberately trying to be more Vietnamese, but I've started to:

• Politely touch my left hand to my right forearm when presenting business cards or other things to a Vietnamese person.
• Look for fish sauce before tucking into any Vietnamese meal.
• Need a cup of Vietnamese green tea to round off a meal.
• Wear my slippers/flipflops everywhere.
• Ride pillion on a motorbike without holding onto anything.

On the flip side, I've also had to buy and wear my first tourist T-shirt. In my own defence, it's a cheap replacement for one of my shirts that's sprung a hole. But still: it's got a dragon and the word "Vietnam" embroidered in gold thread on the front.

Halfway point

Yesterday marked the exact halfway point of my trip. I would've blogged it last night, but in the midst of sorting photos and clearing email, I was hit by a wave of fatigue (no doubt somewhat Larue-induced) and decided to sleep instead.

My mind does not quite compute that I've been travelling for ages, it seems, and seen so much --- yet I'm only halfway to the finish line. Then again, last night I met someone who was travelling across Vietnam for 12 weeks with his partner and daughter, making him the first traveller I've encountered with a longer itinerary than mine.

In 25 days, I've eaten less than five bowls of pho (I'm "off" it for some reason, this time around), many plates of spinach fried with garlic, and I'm trying not to eat too many banana fritters. I went cycling for the first time today, but my plan to spend the entire day on a bike was thwarted by the relentless, raincoat-penetrating rain. I continue to be mistaken for being Vietnamese by locals and foreigners alike.

I don't know how many kilometres I've travelled, although Wahj gave me a crash course on using Google Earth via Skype last week, so maybe I'll plot my entire trip on a map when I have the time. Suffice to say that I'm halfway down the coast of Vietnam in Hoi An, and I hope to remain typhoon- and flood-free while I'm here. (Last week, the river rose to 1.5 metres at its banks. I'm not staying at a hotel near there, but still.)

Onward ho!

Zen and the art of being a motorbike pillion rider

James remarked over email that he couldn't imagine me scooting around in Vietnam on a motorcycle. I'm kinda surprised at it myself. Before this trip I had been on a motorbike exactly twice in my life, both times as a passenger: the first time a less-than-10-minute ride in central Hanoi from the hotel to a cafe; the second time when beeker took me out for lunch when I was jetlagged.

Since I got to Vietnam, I've been on a motorbike at least every other day, and then often for the better part of the day. And it's been great. As they say, there's no better way to see Vietnam than on a motorbike. How else would you appreciate all the little back-roads through villages that don't appear on the map, the speedy efficiency of stopping, parking or even making a U-turn against traffic, and most of all the feeling of going somewhere? The occasional sore butt or dirty feet and legs (from the driving rain and puddles) are well worth it.

It's even got me hankering to learn how to ride a bike when I get home.

But being the driver would take some of the fun out of it. What I enjoy now: the freedom to partially disengage from the world, and let the ride take you, well, wherever. It's easy enough to follow the rhythms of the motorcycle's motion, and since you can't simply doze off as a passenger in a car can, you have plenty of time to think, or just be.

Riding on the back of the bike has been the best time for me to think nothing more complicated than, "Ah ... Vietnam!" --- or, conversely, to come up with new ideas and possibilities for work, life and the future. It's easy to let the mind go, either way, and there's a reassuring "Feel the Force" aura to it.

Now I know why we have Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, The Long Way Down/The Long Way Round, and any number of motorcycle-inspired narratives. Maybe if Singapore was big enough to have more long and winding roads that we could ride down, we'd all be a more Zen population too.

Lessons learned from backpacking after the age of 30

I thought I did good this trip on packing a bag that I can carry (although I can't lift it up to an overhead compartment without assistance). Compared to previous trips (see here and here), I have only three pairs of footwear. Plus I offloaded a couple of small items with Deanna, who was travelling with me but has now gone back to Singapore.

Still, there's always something new one can learn:

1. When kicking off a long trip in a developing country with a hot climate, don't fall for a new brand of shower gel (especially the moisturising kind) just because it smells great.

2. Bring more plasters (band-aids) because wearing the same pair of comfy broken-in footwear for two weeks in a row will still give you blisters.

3. The $3 army poncho (available at Beach Road market in Singapore) is a total bargain. It's lightweight, dries quickly and covers someone my size carrying two backpacks.

4. Listen to ampulets and bring a bandanna. Here in Vietnam, it would've been useful to shield my hair from the insides of all the motorcycle helmets I've had to wear. (More than once I've been tempted to buy my own helmet at a market.)

5. Steal soap from hotels that generously replenish toiletries --- the bars will be useful for emergency laundry later on the road.

6. Steal disposable chopsticks --- you never know when you want to eat something in a hotel room that doesn't have cutlery.

Tomorrow I hit a new town, where there are more lessons to come, I'm sure.

Toi khong hieu

So apparently, I look Vietnamese.

Despite my short hair.

And sunglasses (when it isn't raining).

And camouflage-pattern daypack.

And Tevas.

I don't get it.

Pictures, but no text

Not sure when I'll write a proper blog entry again, but I'm trying to add images regularly to my Flickr photo set, so mosey over there for updates.

Rolling down those Vietnam roads

This picture is from my first day of official Lonely Planet work in Ninh Binh. Our pace has been considerably more go-go-go since then.

We have so far seen Ninh Binh (loveleh), Thanh Hoa, Vinh (meh) and now we're in Dong Ha drying out our shoes and socks after today's on-again, off-again rainbursts. I was wearing a green army poncho for most of today; now I have a better idea of how American GIs must have felt during the rainy season some forty years ago.

American GIs and Vietnamese war veterans are on my mind, because today we saw a replica Vietnamese wartime village and tomorrow we hit the DMZ. For details you'll have to read the guidebook, because after tramping around the countryside all day, I'm just too goddamn tired at night to write a proper blog post (even when I do have stable wifi).

However, my Flickr photo set for this trip has been updated, if you're interested.

Getting things sorted

When friends at home saw me online this afternoon, all they wanted to know was a) how was everything in Hanoi, and b) what was I doing online instead of checking out the place I'm supposed to be writing about?

To the latter, the answer is: I'm not writing about Hanoi, I was chillaxing for the day and I was online only to finish up some prep work for tomorrow, which is the first real "working" day of my trip.

Today we wandered around Hanoi some to run errands --- buy train tickets and Vietnam SIM cards --- and I got to eat a lot more street food than I did the last time. No pho yet, but plenty of time for that (seven weeks, to be precise). Today we had bun cha, baby pineapples, some dumplings with, er, mystery meat, a salad-y thing with something that resembled beef jerky, and cha ca la vong. I was too busy eating to take pictures of anything.

Hanoi is still a fun place to get lost in, just don't let the motorbikes run you over, but I think the air quality has declined distinctly. The quality of light at night is just off, somehow.

Tomorrow we're off to Ninh Binh, and I don't know if the hotel we're checking into has wifi. So don't mind if there's silence around here for a few days ...

Welcome to Hanoi

Despite the portentous signs at Changi Airport's Budget Terminal, we did get to Hanoi, safe and sound and on schedule.

Before that, it was a mad day of rushing about. This was partly my fault because I procrastinated on various errands that I could've done weeks ago (changing money, photocopying, making extra keys). Exacerbating the situation was the fact that Ink chose the eve of my departure to develop a cornea ulcer.

A cornea ulcer. It sounds worse than it looks (it looks like he has the pink-eye), but it entailed additional last-minute running around and pet care arrangements (thank you, Suzie and PetBuddy extraordinaire). One hour before I was due to leave for the airport, I was still sitting at my computer and wondering how many other things I needed to do.

Somehow, I made it. I wasn't even late for my flight.

In Hanoi, we've checked into a decent hotel that has an excellent as-good-as-at-home-if-not-better wireless network, had a drink with a fellow Lonely Planet writer and done a little laundry to boot. Plus there's a cool old Chinese house opposite the hotel that I can't wait to see in daylight.

My fridge smells faintly of durian

I haven't had any durian this season, so I treated myself to the next best thing today: durian puffs from Puteri Mas. The treat was for finishing all my Singapore-based work ahead of time, thereby giving myself one entire week to do last-minute prep and research for my trip. This includes:

• Finalising my air ticket back to Singapore.
• Buying a poncho or three.
• Changing money.
• Getting my second hepatitis jab.
• Getting a haircut.
• Buying Apple Care.
  
• Seeing family and friends.
• Backing up the laptop.
• Packing and making sure I can heave the backpack around.
• Avoiding the downtown area where the first! ever! Formula One night race! is majorly fucking up traffic.
  

I'm sure there's other things I've forgotten.

In other news, my landlord is selling the place where I live, so I have to wait and see if the buyer wants to let me renew the lease. Failing which, it's back to the classifieds after I get back from Vietnam.

A kick in the butt

That's what I need sometimes. Fortunately, today Deanna was available to provide it, which is why I have finally booked my air ticket to Vietnam. For those of you who have been asking when I'll be away, I now have a clearer answer than "early October" for you: specifically, from Thursday, October 2.

When I will return is still up in the air, but likely mid-/late November. I will book my air ticket this week, though, because Tiger Airways is having a fare sale and I was an idiot not to book my departure flight earlier when it would have saved me some money.

If anyone has any interesting tales to offer about north-central or central Vietnam --- anything from Ninh Binh down to Hue, Hoi An and Danang, then south through the highlands where Buon Ma Thuot and Dalat are --- let me know.

Related posts: I got my shots, Like a lost backpacker

I got my shots

Like a good germ-fearing person, I betook myself on Monday to Tan Tock Seng Hospital's Travellers' Health and Vaccination Clinic, where the nurse informed me that for Vietnam, the following shots were recommended:

• Tetanus
• Typhoid
• Influenza
• Hepatitis A & B
• Japanese encephalitis
• Rabies
  

At which point I wondered if there wasn't some kind of cap on the number of shots one could get at one go, because seriously? Owwwww.

As it turned out, before you get the Hepatitis A & B jabs, they test your blood to see if you're a carrier (or something like that lah, I'm honestly not too clear on the medical details). So no shots for that yesterday. I also declined the rabies and Japanese encephalitis shots, on the grounds that I plan to flee from any animals that might attack me and that Japanese encephalitis seems kind of rare, compared to dengue, malaria and the like.

(If I'm being egregiously ignorant, feel free to point it out in the comments. It just seemed like getting that many shots were overkill. Yes, this is how my brain works when it comes to medical decisions.)

So at the end of the session, I got tetatnus, typhoid and flu jabs, one in my right arm and two in my left, after which I went for a Pilates class that involved putting some amount of weight and strain on my shoulders, so for the rest of the evening, my upper arms were a little sore.

Fortunately, I had a Very Nice Dinner waiting for me.


It's amazing what one lovely host can put together with five guests who chip in with wine and bounty from Cold Storage. I had cheese and dip and wine till I was ready to fall asleep in my chair, but not before we talked of Facebook and Indonesia and more Facebook (seriously, six adults, mostly in their thirties, sitting around with red wine, talking about Facebook).

There is a story yet to come about the anti-malarial pills, but that will wait till tomorrow.

Related post: Like a lost backpacker

Like a lost backpacker

Around lunchtime, I trooped around the towering office buildings of Beach Road and Shenton Way: grey hoodie, three-quarter jeans, orange shoes and a rather large backpack (thanks for the loan, Adri!). This is what all that education my parents paid for has come to --- me looking like an overgrown teenager, amidst all the financial types talking about stock market prices and other things I know little about.

Why a large backpack, you ask? I'm test-driving it for an upcoming trip to Vietnam to write for Lonely Planet.

LONELY PLANET.

Yes, this is the Really Cool Writing Gig I've been mentioning.

LONELY PLANET.

Okay, that's really the last time I'm going to put that in all caps.

The backpack seems to be a good fit. Now to figure out the other 20 million details before I go (in between finishing up work, of course) ...

The charger won't charge

After its first jaunt overseas, the Macbook charger decided today that it didn't want to work anymore. Oh sure, it put on a good front this morning while I was clearing email and work, but after I got home from a lunch appointment, it flatly refused to do its job.

Fortunately, Wahj came to the rescue (again) and drove over to lend me his spare Macbook charger. Otherwise I wouldn't be blogging right now, nor could I have spent the evening choosing and editing some of the vacation pictures.

The unexpected thing about not being quite ready to write about the trip, is that hour by hour I can feel the experience slipping away from me, perhaps because Shanghai was different yet not so different from Singapore, so everything is starting to blur together, as if I'd never gone.

No, I didn't eat that many xiao long baos

It's one thing to have a flight delayed for over an hour due to a "technical malfunction", but to spend that time stuck in the packed airplane with the bloody Garuda Indonesia anthem playing on an unremitting loop is the perfect recipe for a little air rage, if you ask me. If you haven't heard it, it's an overwrought, pseudo-operatic, well-muzaked paean to soulless corporate slash nationalist self-importance. On an unremitting loop. Good thing I had Michael Pollan's very engrossing The Omnivore's Dilemma to read.

The worst part? As I was settling down to sleep at home last night, the bloody Garuda song popped, unbidden, into my head again. It's about the most annoying earworm evar.

The obligatory blog post about my travels to come later. I need to clear some work first.

No bad puns on Shanghai in this post title

I'm going away on vacation to Shanghai tonight. I spent the entire day cleaning the house and running errands, and finally sat down to pack at 6 p.m.

At which point my brain gave out and I could not compute if daily temperatures of 20-25 degrees C mean that I should pack a jacket, or not. So I called Ondine, who confirmed that I would need one --- no, not leather, too heavy, something lighter.

Bear in mind that I used to field Chicago winters, no problems. One glance at the weather forecast, and I used to know which jacket I'd need, how many layers to wear under it (in the event of the weather changing midway through the day) and which shoes to wear. Now I find myself staring blankly at a website that tells me it's 71 degrees F in Shanghai "right now!" and my only response is to exult that it'll be cooler than it is in Singapore.

For the first time, I'll be bringing my laptop on vacation with me. I'm not going to do any work or read any work-related emails, but I thought it'd be useful for downloading pictures from the new camera and finding out what's going in Shanghai (I've barely worked out an itinerary yet). Plus I'm staying with a friend, so there won't be any security issues.

If anyone is still interested in my shoe count (see previous tallies for five days in Bali and four days in Ho Chi Minh City; I forgot to tally it for the two-week Paris/London jaunt, but I'm pretty sure it was three pairs then), this time it's three pairs for a seven-day trip.

Oh, and unlike the last time, I have a valid passport.

Edited to add (9:51 p.m.): xkcd goes to the airport too! At least I don't have lockpicks and the blood of a churchmouse ...

Edited to add (11.09 p.m.): Okay, I may only have three pairs of shoes (okay, four if you count slippers), but in my one hand-carry luggage and one check-in bag are squished three other bags, giving me five bags in total: one small wheelie, one backpack, one small messenger bag for daily use, one small handbag for going out at night and one fold-up bag that can be used to tote back shopping acquisitions. I think I'm going a little mad --- or taking that old Girl Guide motto "Be Prepared" far too seriously.

The year 2007, in books

Wahj and I were recently talking about how we each evaluate the last few years of our lives: he sees distinctly good and bad years, while I recall the past more in terms of individual events rather than in yearly blocks.

What I didn't say was that, obviously, this year's been different.

I still kept reading books, though, and buying far more than I oughta have. I read more non-fiction (occupational hazard, I'm writing such a book myself), chalked up an impressive amount of reading during the third-quarter vacation, and ended the year by caving in to the Borders discount card (I've already had a Kinokuniya discount card for several years).

The final tally: 30 (would've been 31 if I'd been more diligent the last few nights of the year). It's the second highest number since I started keeping this annual record, and only three books were rereads --- yay me!

1. Guns, germs & Steel: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years, Jared Diamond (January)

I like books like this: big, bold and compressing heaps of history into several hundred pages (okay, closer to a thousand in this case, but still). Plenty to learn about how agriculture spread from the Fertile Crescent to the rest of the world, how 168 Spanish conquistadors defeated 80,000 Inca warriors in 1532 and what exactly Australian aborigines were doing on their continent for the millennia that preceded European arrival. Whatever the extent of geographical determinism, it's fascinating to know where we might've come from and how we got to this point today.

2. Shalimar the Clown, Salman Rushdie (February)

I'm a big fan of Rushdie and this was a good one. Not too weighed down by talk of terrorism and politics, and always beautiful.

3. A History of God, Karen Armstrong (March)

Heavy-going stuff. I'd be a liar if I said I understood all of it; at some points, I was just flipping the pages to get through it (I find it almost pathologically impossible to give up on reading a book halfway). Nevertheless, I liked seeing how ideas about God have changed through the centuries. I'd need to learn more about Judaism and Islam to really get some of these ideas, though.

4. A Cook's Tour, Anthony Bourdain (March) *

My idea of light reading, after the preceding three tomes. Plus if one can't go on vacation just yet, reading about Bourdain's travels are the next best thing.

5. The Naked Jape: Uncovering the Hidden World of Jokes, Jimmy Carr & Lucy Greeves (April)

More non-fiction: jokesters write about the history of the joke. Entertaining without trying too hard or being over-the-top, even though there are jokes on every page. I wanna write books like this!

6. Down Under, Bill Bryson (April) *

The almost-annual reread. It's a good pick-me-up when nothing else will do.

7. Arthur & George, Julian Barnes, (May)

I'm not usually big on historical fiction, but this was absolutely engrossing. I don't know (or care) if any of it was based on historical fact; the story had its own sense of purpose and life driving it forward. Now that I think it, the character George in this book reminds me of Oscar from Oscar and Lucinda (which I read in 2006).

8. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (May)

Another solid fiction read, this time about a dysfunctional family in a college town setting --- the better to conjure up scenes of academic posturing and college student angst, all in one. Maybe the characters' preoccupations are a little too precious, as a result, but I still liked how it all came together.

9. Old Man's War, John Scalzi (June)
10. The Ghost Brigades, John Scalzi (I forgot what month I read it in)

I've been reading John Scalzi's blog for years; this year, I finally got around to his books. I like the premise well enough, but I've never been big on action-adventure science fiction, so this was entertaining but not entirely my cup of tea.

11. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson (July) *

I keep rereading this in the hope that more of the science he expounds will stick in my head. What I find most engaging, though, is all the drama behind all the dry facts that have come to inhabit our science textbooks. It makes me wonder what really goes on at today's science conferences before they decided whether to delist Pluto as a planet and the like.

12. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling (August)

I read it because I had to finish the series. It was too long, too circuitous and tried to mention everyone in the dramatis personae. This is what happens when you wait till the last book to start really killing people off.

Oh, and the epilogue? So self-indulgent. I don't care and it's very confusing to have new characters named after the ones that just got offed.

13. A Home at the End of the World, Michael Cunningham (August)

A great recommendation from a friend. More dysfunctionality, this time with gay men and their, uh, woman. For some reason, it's all the scenes to do with mortality, particularly parental mortality, that come to mind right now.

14. Paris: A Secret History, Andrew Hussey (September)

I finished this on the day after I arrived in Paris, then toted it around for a few days to track down a couple of neat places like Passage Denferth. I had other notes about the place where Abelard used to teach (I think) on Ile de la Cité or less well-known old churches with piquant histories --- but I'm too lazy to go dig up my notes now.

Anyway, as a book it didn't quite rev up as much sordid steam as I'd hoped, but I enjoy these "alternative" histories.

15. Theft: A Love Story, Peter Casey (September)

I suppose it's a strange thing to read a book that's predominantly set in Australia while I was in Paris and London, but the idea of fakery/forgery and the international art shenanigans in the book were quite at home amidst all the museums I visited.

16. How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff (September)

I pulled this off Stellou's shelf and it was such a good read for a "young people" book. Sometimes the narrator got a little too Holden Caulfield on me, but the unexpected turns in the story (I'm trying not to give anything away here) helped to keep things going. I actually think this could be a little too intense for its "young people" label. Surely it belongs on the fiction shelf with A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and its ilk.

17. Paris Out Of Hand: A Wayward Guide, Karen Elizabeth Gordon (September)

A very different kind of guidebook, and best read --- as I did --- after one has just visited Paris. One of those whimsical, imagined journeys that always makes me wonder, how did anyone get this green-lighted at the publisher's? Not because it's bad, but because it's the kind of richly imagined (there's that word again) narrative that one hardly expects to be able to pick up anymore.

18. On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan (September)

Stellou gave me her galleys of this --- it's lovely to have publishing connections --- so I read it with typos and all, none of which impeded my enjoyment of the book. Very internal as McEwan tends to be, and I always wonder how he manages to keep control of everything without making these multi-layered narratives seem like schizophrenic skips through the park. I would like to write a book like this: one man, one woman, one night --- and all that unfolds before and after.

19. Islam: A Short History, Karen Armstrong (September)

I picked this up for a couple of pounds at --- damn, I've forgotten the name of the second-hand bookshop already, but I'm sure Stellou will remember. 200-plus pages of a crash course in Islam that I found very handy. I'm not sure that I'll ever read the Qu'ran cover-to-cover, so I think this might be a handy cheatsheet of sorts for me.

20. Goh Keng Swee: A Portrait, Tan Siok Sun (September)

Oh dear. I was so looking forward to this and then on the very first page of the narrative, the name of the man whose biography this was got truncated in a typically Singaporean fashion to "GKS" --- and that was the end of it for me. I mean, I read the whole book, but it didn't have any of the zest or oomph that one would expect from a biography at once personal and political. Oh, I know, it's hard in Singapore to tell certain stories at all, the moment they show any sign of diverging from the official narrative. But there better be some damn good notes or excised chapters lying around in someone's safe, otherwise I'm not sure what the whole exercise was for.

21. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card (October)

Wahj loaned me this because it's one of those sci-fi classics that I've been meaning to read forever. I'm glad I read it now because I don't think I would've fully gotten into it at a younger age --- after all, it's mostly about boys learning to fight a war while bouncing around in a scenario room. What surprised me was to see it in Kinokuniya's children's section a few weeks later, with a cover that would suggest it was all action-packed adventure as opposed to one big scorching mindfuck.

22. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (October)

I'd like to read more graphic novels, but I never know where to begin. This one came recommended by Salon some time ago, and I was thrilled to finally track it down at Kinokuniya (thanks to Wahj figuring out how their apparently-convoluted-but-actually-alphabetical graphic novel section is sorted). The book is a very vivid personal memoir, but mediated through the graphic novel format and so it doesn't read as "heavy" as, say, any number of the abovementioned narratives about dysfunctional families --- but it's still a solid, good read.

23. Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, Ariel Levy (November)

Another one I finally tracked down. Short and sharp, making a clear and compelling argument about why tarting or slutting it up does not make for women's "liberation". A must-read for all girls and women, alongside Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth.

24. The View From Castle Rock, Alice Munro (November)

I bought this because Nardac had highly recommended Munro and I wanted to see how she turned family history into memoir (I'm trying to figure out what to do with my family narrative too). It read like historical fiction, but I suppose with that added quality of the reader wondering what's "real" and what isn't. I was just amazed at the fact that Munro could go back to the village where her great-great-grandfather had come from and find family records, including personal letters and the like (at least, I'm assuming those are actual letters, not fictionalised ones). Those aren't typically the sort of resources one finds in a village in China or Sri Lanka.

25. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, Jared Diamond (November)

It took me a few months to get through this, mostly because it was too heavy to lug around so I made it my bedtime reading. More fascinating case studies, and more esoteric ones too. I finally know what might have happened to the Easter Islanders who raised their magnificent statues, and learned a lot about Norse and South Pacific societies as well. The case studies are the best bit, really --- but then I always love a good old-fashioned story.

26. iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon, Steve Wozniak & Gina Smith (December)

An impulse buy --- I'm not that much of a Machead. It's an interesting narrative: the guy did originate many computer interfaces and accessories that we take for granted today after all, not to mention the universal remote control. But it sounded very much like a guy chatting into a tape recorder and less a structured, studied story with proper context and everything. Then again, if it really is Steve Wozniak's voice we're hearing throughout the story, I guess that's the sort of story he'd tell anyway.

27. Girl Meets Boy, Ali Smith (December)

So beautiful and lyrical --- and I'm fairly certain I didn't completely understand it. I need to go read it again.

28. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein (December)

Another long overdue read, especially after reading John Scalzi's Old Man's War. I definitely glossed over all the military jargon (repple-depple, anyone?) and tried not to get bogged down in the politics. I must say the protagonist was much more engaging than I thought he would be.

29. Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe, Bill Bryson (December)

I was surprised to see this lying on the best friend's bookshelf because I thought I a) knew had heard of all of Bryson's books, b) had read most of the travel ones. Turns out this is one of his early ones, which you can tell because the tone and writing isn't as tight as his later books, not to mention there's quite a bit of unfathomable whining about some aspect of his travels or European culture that seems quite at odds with the more charitable approach I'd gotten used to. I think I'll stick to his more recent titles.

30. Moral Disorder, Margaret Atwood (December)

I bought this off the internet and promptly read it, which makes it two collections of short stories by female Canadian writers that I read within the span of two months. This one's entirely fictional and more introspective, I think, which sorta makes it an appropriate book to end the year on.

For next year, I'm going to start keeping notes throughout the year as I read. As you can tell, my memory of the books I read earlier in the year is sketchy compared to more recent reads. Which is totally unfair to the books, plus I obviously need to supplement my wilting memory.

So: more note-taking and more reading. Also more borrowing of books from the library or friends, I think, because the place I'm moving to is smaller and I just can't keep buying books the way I do. As always, reading recommendations are welcome.

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Related posts: The year in books 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003

Technorati Tags: books, reading, the year in books

A sole comparison

The last piece of lemon sole I had before last night was as delightfully light as its name suggests, served on a white plate with some sparse vegetables. It was at Le Chien Qui Fume, a seafood restaurant off Les Halles in Paris that my cousin brought us to for dinner, after a day at Versailles. She had a splendid platter of fresh seafood that she happily plucked off its mountain of ice, and later we shared a sublime sabayon, the first I'd ever sampled and what she assured me was a very good specimen thereof.


Last night's lemon sole was a whole different matter. At Big Fish, the friend whose birthday it was wanted oysters and rainbow trout, then there was seafood chowder too, and I thought the lemon sole would be a nice light wrap-up to my meal. But how wrong I was because at Big Fish, they give you the whole lemon sole, slathered in a sauce that my tastebuds are too feeble to identify other than that it was tomato-based.

Needless to say, I couldn't eat dessert afterwards.

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Technorati Tags: lemon sole, seafood, Le Chien Qui Fume, Paris, Big Fish Seafood Grill, Singapore,

Why I'm not getting any better at this travel thing

So there I am, standing at the check-in counter in the departure lounge of Terminal 1, twiddling my thumbs with glee that Bali is just a few hours away, when the service staff behind the counter says, "Your passport expires on May 4 next year."

"Uh-huh." Still gleeful, still twiddling. Or rather, still chattering to Ondine, who won the free hotel stay in Bali and graciously invited me to go along.

"You need six months' validity on your passport," says the service staff.

"Uh-huh." I nod, I smile, I bob --- and then I think, today is November 4, so ... SHIT.

The service staff is counting off the months on her fingers. December-January-February-March-April-May. Six marks the spot, six marks the fact that my passport would expire six months from my date of departure from Singapore.

"How long are you staying in Bali?" she asks.

"Two days only." I believe I was starting to whine.

Nevertheles, next came the "please wait by the side, ma'am" request while one of her colleagues made a few phone calls. It must have taken less than ten minutes to sort it all out, but it felt like much longer and I felt like the biggest dolt for checking everything, including our dates of departure and return (this has previously been an issue), except the requirement that I know well enough to recite backwards in my sleep in Latin: six months' validity.

"I hope they let me go," I whined some more while Ondine and Packrat, to their credit, did not panic or chastise me.

Then I had a happy thumbs-up signal from the service staff, who said they'd spoken to Indonesian immigration, who'd given the go-ahead. We checked in, we had a quick dinner, we caught our plane --- we were on our way!

Except that at the immigration airport at the Denpasar airport, the immigration officer gave me the old stink-eye. "You need six months' validity."

"I know," I said in what I hoped sounded like a quiet, contrite tone.

He counted off dates on his fingers too. Then he repeated his point in his best officialese tone.

"In Singapore, they called Indonesia to ask if it was okay," I ventured. It was the only card I had to play, other than the US$10 bill in my wallet.

"They called who?" he wanted to know. So young, yet so determined.

"They called Indonesian immigration and they said it was okay," I said haplessly.

He said something in Bahasa to his colleague at the next counter and did some mulling on his own. I quavered where I was standing and wondered what exactly is involved when one is turned back by a country's immigration services.

Maybe I showed enough fear, contrition, general guilelessness or combination of all three, but he said, "You leaving when?"

"In two days," was my prompt response. Did I need to show him my air ticket to prove it?

He flipped open the passport to some random page and proceeded with his stamp-and-scribble routine. "Okay, this time I let you. Next time, six month's validity."

"Yesthankyouokaythankyouthankyou." I took the passport and stepped quickly towards Ondine before he could change his mind.

Ondine's assessment of the affair: "Your mother sure scold you."

*gulp*


Fortunately, I didn't need my passport for anything else during our two-day stay except to get out of the country, so my little gaffe didn't get in the way of our sunbathing, lolling about, and consumption of Greek food, room service and Khong Guan or Marks & Spencer biscuits. The hotel staff were very nice to us even though we were, essentially, freeloaders, and there were a surprising number of cute, cherubic babies around the swimming pool.

Alas, no good male eye candy, and I didn't get as much of a tan as I wanted. For future reference, I'll try to make beach vacations at least a three-day affair.

Thank you, Ondine!

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Related posts: More sleep, less blogging, Getting better at this travel thing

Technorati Tags: Bali, travel, passport

More sleep, less blogging

I was going to blog about why I'm not getting any better at this travel thing after all, but I've been really beat since I got back so I'm going to go to bed instead.

Yes, go to bed. Before midnight. On the eve of a public holiday.

In lieu of an entertaining yet edifying travel anecdote, have a picture of what I was looking at for the last two evenings.



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Getting better at this travel thing

I did not pack at the last minute. I did not pack four pairs of shoes (and certainly not five). Perhaps most importantly, I can lift my baggage without any difficulty.

Okay, so I'm only going to be away for 48 hours.

However, I didn't make it to the money changer because I got complacent after my mom passed me some extra currency. So for my back-up stash, I'll resort for once to the airport's currency counter.

Oops, I should get probably quit chatting with kk and head to the airport now ...

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On foot in Paris and London

"How are you going to blog about all this?" Stellou wondered towards the end of my vacation. Good question. She's done a better job of it so far than I have, with her accounts of my close(ish) encounter with the mouse, our visit to the Imperial War Museum (if not for working on the Army Museum of Singapore, I admit that I wouldn't know of the Imperial's existence), our practically nonstop chitter-chatter, and my last couple of days in London.

Across the Channel, my cousin records only the night of gay karaoke --- during which I did not sing, so you could rightly argue that I didn't earn even a mention in that blog entry.


How to blog this then, sixteen days spent six, then seven timezones away, listening to everyone whine about how they didn't get a real summer while I merrily danced between my choices of two jackets (one brown leather, one black cotton), four pairs of shoes (oh, alright, I only wore two most of the time) and countless combinations of sweater-over-long-sleeved-T-shirt. Some afternoons were warm enough to make me wish I'd snuck a tank-top along as well, and in London, Stellou was happy to loan me a pink-and-white striped one.

But I landed in Paris first, where I tried not to be the dork that describes everything as looking like a movie set, but sometimes it seemed that no matter down which little street I turned, there it was, a pretty movie set waiting for me to walk on. Must be nice, to live in a city where most buildings seem to be older than one's grandparents, if not their grandparents, and where so many neighbourhoods average at a comforting 4-5 storeys high. Plus there seemed to be a patisserie on every street corner (my daily walk to the Metro station took me past three, at least) and a balcony outside every window. How much more charming could it get?


It was my first time in Paris, so I dutifully hit all the tourist stops: the Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Notre Dame, Versailles, Sacré Coeur, Moulin Rouge, Champs-Elysées, Arc de Triomphe --- plus the final jackpot of three museums on my last day: Musée d'Orsay, Centre Pompidou and Musée Carnavalet. Not that this means I spent any time queuing up to climb to the top of the Eiffel or the Arc de Triomphe. More like, I passed by and checked out the tourist spectacle as spectacle in itself, then maundered off to see some art or have a coffee.

So I also saw the Musée d'Art Modérne, which cousin Nardac says no one ever goes to --- and indeed there were not more than ten people there (excluding the security people) when I visited. Nardac's Dacnar took us on his personalised tour of the Père Lachaise cemetery, where we saw the greatest hits like Jim Morrison and Frédéric Chopin and Abelard and Heloise. But we had to give Oscar Wilde a miss because the cemetery was closing and an eagle-eyed security guard on a scooter was trailing us to make sure we really left the place.

Even in as tourist-infested a location as Versailles, Nardac and I blithely walked through a doorway that happened to be open and found ourselves this:


See what I mean about feeling like I was on a movie set?

Actually, the word that kept popping into my head as I flitted about Paris was "stupendous". My aunt, with whom I was travelling then, had used it to describe Notre Dame on our first day, and the word kept recurring whenever I saw something amazing. The Louvre --- stupendous. Musée d'Orsay --- stupendous. Versailles --- stupendous. The gardens of Versailles --- even more stupendous.

And the art ... You'd think I'd have been all art-ed out after the Louvre on the second day, but no, the secret, you see, is everything in moderation. A couple hours of one kind of art, then a break for tea or the toilet or to take photos of tourists, looking at art.


And then more of the art itself. Géricault, whom I'd forgotten I liked, and David, whom I'd never really looked at before, and old favourites Matisse and Picasso and new possibilities Robert Delaunay and countless others I've forgotten. Art I loved and art I didn't understand, and art I stumbled upon in the park at Le Jardin du Luxembourg.

And not just in Paris, but in London too: in Sir John Soane's and the Tate Modern and the British Museum and the V&A. We didn't make it to the Design Museum , although Stellou assured me --- as she did repeatedly with many museums, she's the museum cafe queen, that one --- that "it has a very nice cafe". I think I understood even less of the Tate than I did of the Pompidou, so we stepped out for a breather onto the little balcony on the third? fourth? level. Millennium Bridge looked great, but what was up with the clangingly modern piece of music being performed there?


At least in London the museums were mercifully free, although Naomi Klein wanted to charge me £12 to attend her book launch (pish-posh, is what I believe Mary Poppins would say to that). But what really got my goat is that Macbeth opened three days after I left with Patrick Stewart in the lead. Also, that by the time we discovered during London Open House what a great little theatre the Almeida is, there were no more tickets available for its shows (with Stockard Channing in the lead!) during the remaining days I was in town.

Patrick Stewart! As Macbeth!

I didn't see any Shakespeare this trip, because none of the plays at the Globe were particularly appealing to me. In fact, I didn't see any shows at all unless you count a BAFTA screening of Hula Girls or an Institute of Contemporary Art screening of Helvetica (both were priceless in their own ways). Instead, I burrowed my way through parks and markets: Hyde Park and the neverending Richmond Park in Kingston, Borough Market for cheese and pies and UpMarket for "bohemian/indie" wares.

Since I got back, people have been asking me which city I preferred and I don't know that one can make a choice. Paris was fresh and new (my first time there), the French (people and language) were not as fearsome as some anecdotes had led me to believe, and by the end of my week there, I was thinking that if I had a reason to hang out in the city long enough to get my French up to scratch, that wouldn't be such a bad thing.

London was a grey and grimy second city, but I got to stay with Stellou and Olive, and Stellou and I got to hang out and giggle a lot like we haven't done since we were in university together. How does one weigh the relative appeal of a fresh pain au chocolat from the corner patisserie with that of a fresh pot of homebrewed coffee and all sorts of breakfasty marvels (Cantal cheese, fresh walnut bread from the corner bakery, fig jam or blackcurrant yoghurt) coming out of the kitchen where one can comfortably sit with one leg up on the chair?


I remember the first time I met Olive in Singapore, I asked him how he was enjoying hanging out with Stellou and her sister, to which he responded, "You never know where you'll end up, but there will always be something tasty there." Which is true, because with Stellou and Olive in charge, there was gastro-pubbing at The Charles Lamb, okonomiyaki in Covent Garden (we were keeping in the spirit after seeing Hula Girls), Pieministers from Borough Market, the brunch spread at Otto Lenghi, and finally French food in The Fox Reformed. Sure, Canteen did disappoint, but it was more than compensated for by the home-cooked paella and beef compote that Stellou and Olive respectively whipped up (despite their misbehaving oven).

With all this on the menu, it should come as no surprise that I did not once taste either shepherd's pie or fish'n'chips during my visit.

Yet London's offerings paled in comparison to Paris's, about which I'm certain countless cultural treatises and newspaper commentaries have been written. I will only add that under Nardac's confident tutelage, we had very lovely seafood at Le Chien Qui Fume (the one near Les Halles), Bistro Chantefable off Gambetta and her favourite restaurant somewhere in Belleville. Plus I OD'd on freshly made chocolate eclairs and pain du chocolat almost every day. Good thing I only discovered Nutella crepes towards the end of the trip.


On one of our first days in Paris, Nardac mentioned offhandedly that we should let ourselves get lost in Paris, since even the natives do. I didn't --- deliberately, because I didn't want to have to ask for directions in my mangled French --- but there were times between museums when I wasn't so much following street signs as loosely heading in the general direction that I oughta be.

London actually proved to be more of a challenge in this regard, maybe because I rarely had a map with me when I was on my own. Somewhere after heading south from Oxford Street for Piccadilly Circus, I ended up on the Strand, then near Trafalgar Square instead and it was only the providential appearance of a mounted tourist map that saved me from circling the streets endlessly (sure, I could've asked for directions, but where would've been the fun in that?). Then there was the time I came out of the British Museum and again needed to mosey south to Piccadilly Circus --- except that I wound up going north by mistake and had to get my bearings by navigating by the setting sun. Who needs a map when one has heavenly bodies on your side?

I guess I didn't quite get lost enough, because at the end of the day, I still had to make my way home.


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Technorati Tags: London, Paris, travel, travelogue

I need to get more sun

But the weather in Singapore is just too damn hot.


Vacation photos are up on Flickr, after I spent the weekend sorting through them. I really need to stop my hand from quavering whenever I snap a picture, or overexposing my images because they seem too dark on the small camera viewscreen.

No vacation blog post yet. I'll try to crank it out one of these nights.

In other news, I am almost over jetlag (just in time for the work week!), took my first motorcycle ride on Friday, watched 881 in the theatres and today ate a heap of Gouda cheese. Now I really, really need to psych myself up for work tomorrow ...

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Easing back into things

This is my current status on Facebook: [Tym] is mildly jetlagged, swamped with email and missing fresh fromage.

I got back yesterday, spent most of today accepting the fact that I'm jetlagged and reading email in comprehensible dosages, and maybe by tomorrow will be able to kick into gear for some measure of real work. Of course, what I really want to do is sort through the 500-plus images from my camera and cameraphone, so that I can upload them onto Flickr.

I was gone for just over two weeks, but it's funny how much has happened with friends at home during the interim. Everyone is calling or SMSing with, "A lot has happened, we're moving house/switching jobs/exploring a whole new business opportunity/giving you a free trip to Bali." Okay, there's been only one of the latter, but it's a nice way to be welcomed home.

I would like to think that there'll be a travelogue of some kind here soon, but meanwhile there's mountains of work foo standing between me and the weekend.

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At the last minute

I couldn't remember where I'd left my passport and took ten panic-stricken minutes to find it (I did use it just three weeks ago).

I decided to squeeze everything into one piece of check-in luggage. I may not be able to lift it for long now, but I'll be able to offload some of it at my first port of call.

I decided to stop blogging and go eat my last bona fide Asian meal for 16 days.

Ciao!

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Did you know ...

... that the first CD ever produced was The Visitors by Abba? So says BBC News, as the "Compact disc hits 25th birthday".

I've never been a real musichead so I don't think I started buying CDs till the early 1990s. When I graduated from university in 1997, CDs were still something you bought in a music store ("CD store", though they didn't sell blank ones), while data storage to the average person meant 3.5" floppy disks or Iomega zip disks with a whopping 100 MB capacity.

I don't remember the first CD I bought (though I remember that the first cassette tape was a 1983 compilation of Grammy Award-winning songs). I do know that I did a double-take after seeing Discmans for sale in Ho Chi Minh City last week (alongside pirated music CDs, no less) and I almost wished I hadn't given my mother permission to sell mine some years ago, otherwise I could add it to my growing Collection of Obsolete Technology.

When I cleaned house a couple of months ago, I accumulated at least 100 used CDs for recycling. My mother now hangs some of them outside her windows to scare the birds away. How far we've come.

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Technorati Tags: CD

We're not in Ho Chi Minh City anymore, Toto

Therefore:

1. Don't stroll across a road and expect oncoming traffic to slow down or stop. In fact, no more rampant jaywalking, period.
2. Don't expect the made-at-home morning coffee to jolt me off my chair. My coffee is as strong as it's always been, but now it's sorta bland-tasting. I suppose my tongue will acclimatise to the missing sharpness eventually.
3. Don't smile at the waitstaff, even at expensive cafes. They don't smile back.
4. Stop measuring walking distances in terms of how they compare to the walking route from Kim Hotel in Pham Ngu Lao across the park to Clinton's Pho (i.e. Pho 2000), then down Le Loi to downtown Saigon.
   

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Technorati Tags: Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon, Vietnam, travel

Give the people beef, said the Communist paté

We had a lot of beef, but we didn't get around to any banh mi with paté, mostly because every time we walked past a banh mi stall, the sight of the hefty baguettes made me think I wouldn't make it beyond two bites before I declared myself full.

But we had pho everyday, from street stalls and airconditioned eateries (Pho 2000's broth and menu is superior to Pho 24's, which must be why Clinton dined at the former back when he was still POTUS) --- with beef slices, beef balls or other cow parts which aren't on the average foreign traveller's diet, and, one time, pho with a baguette on the side. After one mouthful of soup-soaked bread, the only thing either of us could say was: "Now why the hell didn't anyone think of that before?"


I swear the pho in Vietnam tastes better simply because all the ingredients are locally grown, which means they not only taste fresher but also taste of, well, Vietnam. No Australian beef, no imported leaves and the soup's probably been brewed in the same scraped-up pot they've been cooking in for the last ten years. Don't look too closely at the pot or the dishwashing area --- it might put you off your meal. Just concentrate on the bowl of hot soup in front of you, never mind that the same shop's separate translated menu gave pho tai chin and pho chin vien the same description in English, all the iffiness has been scalded away anyway.

In between overdosing on pho, we traipsed up and down the streets of Saigon (meaning District 1, not some fond pseudo-American affectation): pondering narrow buildings and indecipherable shop signs, waving off offers of motorcycle or cyclo rides, sidestepping the inevitable puddles in the streets or cracked sidewalks (it rained everyday we were there), gawking at expert capteh players or neighbourhood aerobics classes in the park.


Ho Chi Minh City was not as crowded, nor as grating, nor as smelly as I'd been led to imagine. People were generally friendly, and most people who tried to sell us something backed off quietly when we declined with a smile and a shake of the head. Shopkeepers tried to get the best price outta us, of course, but we never paid more than we wanted to for anything. It was generally the young guys who were easy to bargain down, not the cheerful but adamant aunties. Flinty they could be, and completed uninclined to coddle our rudimentary bargaining attempts.

When we wanted a break from the street scene, we hunted down some of Travelfish's top 10 Saigon cafes. Creperie & Cafe was the perfect antidote to a waterlogged afternoon in serious propaganda-filled museums. La Fenetre Soleil, though tucked away in a splendid second-floor space, offered plenty of people-watching opportunities.


Other times, it was back to our daily diet of cafe sua da (iced Vietnamese coffee with copious dollops of condensed milk); I probably consumed an entire month's worth of sugar in my four days.

Museums, sightseeing and urban rambles aside, we decided towards the end that what we really liked to do was to park ourselves streetside on the edge of backpacker district Pham Ngu Lao and watch the people stream by. Locals on bikes, of course, but also foreign tourists of both the amiable and the sketchy sort, or child street performers with fire-breathing or shoe-shining talents. Not to mention what seemed to be the nightly ten-minute blackout that would prompt the crowd's cheer (jeer?), as the only light left came from the individually-powered food stalls.

One last bowl of pho, one last T-shirt stuffed into an over-full backpack --- and then we flew home.


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Technorati Tags: Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon, Vietnam, travel

So long and thanks for all the tea

I'm not sure what the deal is with tea and me lately, but the last work-related meeting I had this week was on Monday at Zen Bone Tea Mind. It was budak's suggestion and a very fine one, because the place is a) pretty, b) quiet on weekday afternoons, and c) operates on the assumption that people will order one tea and then sit there for as long as they like while the waitstaff keeps efficiently topping up the hot water. Now if only it had wifi ...

Tonight, I'm sitting here with a mug of most excellent Stash peppermint tea (thank you, sarah and Little Miss Drinkalot!) and trying to remember if I've forgotten anything work-wise before I go on vacation. It's oddly quiet because Ink isn't here (Terz is cat-sitting him while I'm going to be away) and the flatmates aren't home yet.

Okay, let's see: Yahoogroups switched off, vacation email autoresponse set, perishable food consumed or otherwise cleared from the fridge. Now I just need to pack my vacation wallet, phone and camera chargers and a few remaining toiletries, and we're good to go.

PS: I am bringing 3 pairs of footwear for a 4-day trip, which edges out the previous record.

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In search of fresh pho and French food

In a month, I'll be in Ho Chi Minh City (or is it more kosher to refer to it as Saigon?). I have four days, I have Travelfish's downloadable e-guide, and I have no travel objectives other than to consume as much fresh street food and inexpensive good French food as I can.

I'll be scouring noodlepie, Nibble & Scribble and The Travelling Hungryboy for tips, and Woof!'s already passed along his recommendations, but if anyone has any other advice to offer for my little jaunt, I'd be glad to hear it. Given how busy work has been lately, this is my least planned-in-advance trip ever (despite having booked air tickets more than three months ago).

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Technorati Tags: Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon

An unlikely nightmare

Last night I dreamed that I was leaving on a vacation with Terz and some friends, but even though I had three huge bags with me as I met them after work, I hadn't actually had the time to pack properly (who knows what was in those bags) and hadn't packed any toiletries.

So then there was the dashing off to some kind of convenience store/pharmacy to pick up random toiletry items, but when I got back to my bags and my friends, it was time to go and I didn't have a toiletry pouch to put the items in. Why this should seem like a gargantuan crisis, I have no idea, but I was panicked enough in the dream that I woke up in real life --- and then wondered why the hell I would be panicking over not having toiletries when, hello, vacation? Even an imaginary one.

Potential vacation spots for January have been narrowed down to Myanmar and Laos (Adri's current adventures there helped to swing my vote that way). But I haven't sealed the deal by booking air tickets or accommodation yet...

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Technorati Tags: dream, vacation

I've forgotten how to blog

So now I have a little bit of breathing space between work, but I've forgotten how to blog. I sit here, I stare at the blank Blogger screen, and I wonder what it is that one writes about when one blogs. I think about the day that's passed, or is passing, and I can't think of anything that's worth committing to words, as such.

I mean, of course, there's stuff. There was Terz's birthday last Friday, which involved a considerably amount of alcohol, semi-public humiliation and silliness for him, and not very much of any of that for me (because I had to put him to bed eventually, see).

There was the Museum's soft launch on Sunday, which involved showing people around the place so that they'd know exactly where the help they'd given us had gone. If anyone wants a personal walk-through, I'm available for one-on-one tours till December 13, all for the low, low price of a good meal and a glass of wine.

And then there was the usual whining about how much I need a vacation. At last recitation (last night), I have the following places on my to-visit list (in no particular order): central Vietnam (currently in the path of the most creatively named Typhoon Durian), Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Bali and Beijing (which I've been talking about visiting since June). I have booked not a single air ticket. I have no travelling companion (Terz is otherwise occupied). My window of travel is in January only. At the rate this is going, I will still be talking about the proverbial well-earned vacation come next December.

I do believe I now remember what blogging is all about after all.

For the record, I am still in the office, drinking cold Tiger beer out of a white Ikea coffee mug, while we try to complete everything in time for a certain midnight deadline.

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Technorati Tags: blogging

The vacation

I'm long overdue on a post regarding the vacation proper, but the funny thing about me and vacations is that I find it so damned hard to write about them once I return. I've only ever done it once, for last year's jaunt to the Pacific Northwest; every other vacation has been an unaccounted-for blank in this blog's record.

It doesn't help that people keep telling me to give travel writing a go, since I seem to be halfway decent at writing in general, and it's not as if the travel reports we see in our local newspapers or magazines are that eloquent in the first place. But while I have no trouble accumulating plenty of facts and travel tips about the places we visit, or in maintaining a thoughtful handwritten journal during the trip, it's in getting down to summarise the experience overall that writer's block hits --- big time.

So I say, screw it. Here's my version of the vacation, eloquent or not, and it'll just have to do:


Bali
Originally uploaded by Tym.

We zipped down to Bali for my best friend's wedding and all we did, really, was loll around on the beach like torpid teenagers. There was one day when we took ourselves off on a drive around the central part of the island and up into the mountains, but frankly, that was just an excuse so that we could resign ourselves to the beach again the next day. When someone asked me a few nights ago what we did in Bali, I had to shamefully admit, "We mostly just stayed in Nusa Dua." Upon his look of disapproval (it came pretty close to 'scorn', actually), I hastily appended the excuses: "Yah, I know, we'll have to go back again and do Bali properly. But it was a short trip, just zipped in and out for the wedding --- " and so on, and so forth.

I do want to go back and do Bali 'properly'. It would involve the black beaches in the north, more time in the mountains and villages, and zero time at Kuta. G-man might've thought that Terz and I were more Kuta/Legian kind of people, but I think we've outgrown that phase of life. While Nusa Dua and its attendant luxuries --- they turn down your bed while you're out to dinner! they bring you $8 Bintang beers on the beach! the bridal couple's villa has its own pool and indoor/outdoor shower area! --- were fun and precisely the sort of mindless indulgence that we were craving this time around, those were just trappings of the touristic Bali. They could've been replicated just about anywhere in the world that there's tropical weather and a good beach.

As for the wedding, needless to say, it was beautiful.


BaliPhoneCam-0508-014
Originally uploaded by Terz.

My part in it was deceptively simple: make the best friend's speech. Ha! One of my test lines for it went something like this: "When I got married, [the best friend] was my bridesmaid and she got the easy job, you know: drawing up a to-do list, sorting out flowers, and so on. She decides to get married, and what does she ask me to do? Make a speech. (droll laughter)"

I didn't use that line, because it's a very bad line indeed, but I did feel increasingly panicked as time wore on and the speech that I'd sat down to draft in late June just wouldn't materialise. After many drafts (including last-minute scribbles on hotel stationery at the dinner table, a scant hour before I was due to speak) and one-woman rehearsals (including practising on the porch of our hotel room on the day itself), it all fortuitously came together in a reasonably seamless expatiation of less than five minutes in which I did not embarrass the best friend (a high priority, when you've been friends eighteen years), did not "try too hard" (I think) and did not accidentally say a bad line from an earlier draft that would make me sound like a complete doofus (e.g. see previous paragraph).

As you can tell from the list of don'ts, I was aiming to not screw up rather than to excel with flair.

I'm going to have to watch the video of the wedding dinner some time, to see if the speech actually came off as harmlessly as I remember it. Without a doubt, it was overshadowed by the boisterous antics of the groom's best friend immediately after. But the best friend laughed at the right moments during my yammerings, which is all that really matters in the end.

So those were the two big moments in Bali: the beach and the wedding speech. Everything else is burnt out by the tropical glare: the brief reunion with an old schoolmate who now lives Down Under, the brief encounters with the groom's energetic friends, the brief moments of kindness from the couple's family (I say 'brief' because there was so much going on, not because they were stingy with their kindnesses), the brief two hours spent luxuriating at Ku De Ta.

Thank you to everyone who made lovely suggestions. We couldn't take up every single one of them, but will certainly file away useful bits for the next trip.

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Technorati Tags: Bali, beach, wedding speech

The bubble

Maybe it's all the Murakami we've been reading, but it strikes me that a vacation is like a bubble of time: protected, enclosed, but temporary, fragile, and all the more appealing for its gossamer impermanence. The person you are, the things you see when you're on vacation aren't so much in a different dimension from your real life --- as Darren suggested tonight, recounting everything in his life that changed while we were away --- as they are momentarily suspended, segregated, compartmentalised in a different realm of possibility.

The lead-up to a vacation is, after all, packed with realness: With a finite number of days or hours remaining at home, there's laundry to do, clothes to pack, TV programmes to record on the VCR, perishable food to eat or toss out, trash to flush down the rubbish chute, windows to close, and, if the vacation's a long one, electronic appliances to unplug from the wall sockets. At work, there's work to finish, that must be finished, before one can depart with a truly free spirit, without fear that the cellphone will ring, unwelcome, or that one will, upon return, be blamed for things left out of place.

The vacation truly begins when one finally leaves home for the airport. The bags are packed: anything forgotten must be acquired en route. The air tickets are in hand: any changes to the intinerary are at the discretion of the airline or the governments concerned. The posture is straightened, a quiet metamorphosis from the worker bee into the leisure traveller.

Forget work. Forget anything to do with the mundanity of life: family (never mind the startling updates the night before that half the cousins are either pregnant or getting engaged), friends, colleagues, blogs, bills, news, obligations, plans, goals, dreams. All is on hold, all can wait till you get back, till you're ready to take up them up again. For now, there is only an air ticket, a seat on the plane, a journey across time and space.

What happens on the vacation, stays on the vacation. The people you meet, you'll likely never meet again. The things you see, disconnected from their real context for tourists' eyes, you may never fully understand (and certainly not in a matter of the few days in that foreign land). The money you spend, you tell yourself it's from a different budget, your conscience eased perhaps by a translation of the foreign currency into manageable, equivalent amounts. And the person you are, you choose. Nobody knows who you are, back home. You are who you are, right now.

You forget to set the alarm clock.

Then it ends, inevitably. Bags are repacked, the vacation mood folded away with the clothes. The journey home doesn't seem as long as it took to get there; the familiar is just around the corner. Things forgotten begin to nose into one's consciousness: news headlines on the airport TVs, news magazines on the flight, cellphone beeps after touchdown.

The key twists in the lock, the door opens, the week-old air rushes to greet you like a forgotten puppy. The bubble bursts.

And everything's right where you left it.

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Technorati Tags: vacation

A first time for everything

Well, I've never gone on vacation with five pairs of shoes before.

And three of them slippers.

Whee!

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Info, please!

We'll be going to Bali for five days next week for the best friend's wedding. We're putting up at a hotel at Nusa Dua and, other than the wedding day itself, the rest of the time is ours.

This will be our first time in Bali. Even though I cringe at resorting to such a shamelessly lazy request for information, I plead for mercy on account of the fact that we really don't have the time this week to engage in our usually thorough pre-trip research at the Lonely Planet website and other online resources.

So I am shamelessly, lazily appealing for travel tips and suggestions, pretty pretty pretty please. We will probably spend a day or two soaking up the sun on the beach with nothing more intense than the latest Harry Potter novel for company. But other than that, what's fun to do? We don't dive, but we walk/hike/swim and the husband, if you didn't know already, is a photographer.

Ideas that have been tossed our way so far: dinner at Jimbaran, not the sunset dinner cruise, some local crafts village, $15 steaks at Hard Rock Cafe.

Oh, and how much cash should we bring? We're not really big spenders, although we'll probably indulge in a nice seafood dinner or two and perhaps the charm of the whole bargain shopping thing will finally appeal to me. I've been advised that we'll need 100,000 rupiah (S$16-17) for airport departure tax, but other than that, suggestions have ranged from $200 to $1000 per person (hotel is already paid for), and I confess I'm pretty lost.

All suggestions are welcome. Particularly good ideas will be rewarded with a Kuta trinket of your choice or a lovely photograph autographed by the husband.

It's amazing what the nose can do

The really nice thing about Project Shop Cafe is that once you enter in its glass-walled space, it doesn't smell like you're in Singapore anymore. I'm not sure if it's the dark wooden floorboards, the attentive stalks of lemongrass in the vase on each table, the blend of East-West spices wafting over from the kitchen, or a combination of all three --- but it just doesn't smell local.

I can't say what it smells like, either, though my brain tried the darnedest to figure it out during dinner last night. For all I know, it could be the air freshener that they use. That was sufficient recently to trigger my olfactory memory at one of the shopping malls --- my eyes told me I was in Singapore, my brain was convinced I'd been magicked to Woodfield Mall, Illinois.

Even the smell of jet fuel the other night instantly catapulted me elsewhere. As I stepped off the Skytrain at Terminal 2, the signature scent of kerosene stole in between the cracks, and for a splitsecond, I thought I'd just stepped off a plane in North America, at the start of a sparkling new adventure.

(I suppose I could've imagined a sparkling new adventure in any country with an international airport, but most of my flights have been to/from North America, so therein lies the bias.)

Back at Project Shop Cafe last night, my friend EH was also transported elsewhere: she was convinced that the place was the spitting image of a cafe that she'd frequented in Nepal in 1992. Her memories were purely visual: the blackboard scrawled with daily specials, the abnormally tall cake slices waiting patiently under clear glass cake covers, the glass-bottled drinks ranged harmonically on the shelves over the kitchen counter. The likeness was so strong that she spent half the evening reminiscing about all the other cafes she'd visited in Nepal.

Project Shop Cafe does not, in fact, serve Nepalese food, but they have a number of Asian fusiony numbers that are a treat for the tastebuds. We didn't linger for dessert, but that big honking piece of chocolate cake will be mine the next time I'm there.

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