Sour airplane crew, sweet restaurant owners in Istanbul

Just a short update, since I'm nearly passing out in need of sleep... Turkish Airlines was OK - they had alright seats (except the turquoise color) with individual media centers and had a good choice of food and drinks. However, the crew was rather unpleasant, which pulls down my rating.

We made it to the hotel on time (11 pm), but Olav had gone to bed early with the flu, so we chilled in the jazz bar of the hotel for a little while and went to bed. I had trouble sleeping long, so I got up, out, and about to catch the sunrise. A nice taxi driver drove me out along the Bosporous Straight, and let me off somewhere near the bridge north of Bosporous Bridge, where a restaurant owner and his companion wondered what I was doing walking aimlessly around in the rain. They invited me inside even though they didn't open until 8 (almost 1.5 hours later), and we had a chat over three cups of tea and breakfast. Four policemen popped by as well, and when I was leaving, they refused to let me pay. I took the dolmus/bus back to Taksim Square and the hotel.

Olav, Astrid, and I had lunch before window shopping at a mall, and then we paid a visit to one of the seven wonders of the world; Hagia Sophia. It was really amazing. Read about the 1500 year-old cathedral/mosque in Wikipedia...

At the end of the day, we went back to the hotel and played Red Alert 3 until midnight :-)

next stop Istanbul

our last night in Bangkok was a good one. We had a simple dinner at Beer Palace (which offers a whooping 4 kinds of beer!), a visit to a karaoke bar which charged us double price for our own drinks as well as those they themselves offered to the tout and the dj/midi operator. Since we didn't even take advantage of their services (which consisted of lining up pretty girls in long skirts for incoming farang so they could pick one) and were the only ones making entertainment, we had a minor argument with the boss, paid half price, and got out. We had our night cap at a great place near the Silom night-market, where we turned down near 100 pussy ping-pong touts throughout the night. Is the demand that high? Our bed at the hip and minimalist HQ hostel at Silom soi 3 slept great, and the room was functional except there was no room for our stuff. Friendly staff, corn flakes included. $40 a night.

We head for Turkey this afternoon, so we've got a few hours available. Looking forward to meet Olav there tonight, and take on Istanbul. We're gonna need a lot of coffee!

three strikes, you're out (of battery)

our lucky day...? Um, no. We did have some initial luck in catching the ferry, but I was caught pants down (figure of speech) speeding. Third ticket in Thailand! The officer even gave me a discount. We stopped in Pattaya for a late lunch and continued to Bangkok on the new motorway. It's normally a 2 hour drive max, but we got creative at the end. Add an hour and a half :-) When we finally reached the Silom quarter, where we'd decided to stay, guess what... THE DANG CAR IS FLAT OUT OF BATTERY! So, thanks to HQ hostel's wifi, I'm now able to kill some time while waiting for the mechanic.

Own very own guard dog

the first thing Anders told me about Thailand was that dogs were very aggressive. "You should always carry a stick when walking alone. There are dogs everywhere, one at every driveway." There's one where we stay as well. This dog seems to have a liking in us. The other day, she walked us to the main road and back. Yesterday, she followed us to our bungalow, spent the night on our doormat, and welcomed each of us in the morning. She seems to be our devouted servant and guard dog. She even follows us to the table and sits under my hammoc.

Christmas island

We're at Ko Chang, the second largest island in Thailand located in the south-east, near Cambodia. We cancelled Cambodia, partly because we couldn't take the rental car there. We met a Swede in Trat who'd been bussing around Thailand and Cambodia for weeks, so we're thinking about doing Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand by bus next time.

Monday 22: We were 25 minutes late for the last ferry to Ko Chang (running 6:30 am through 7 pm every 45 minutes), so we spent a night in Trat in a room with a bed that was 2m long and 3m wide! A/C, warm water, TV, and wifi for less than $15... The next morning, we took the ferry over and shopped for a room. We ended up in a modern bungalow with sea view next to a small beach where they make the best mango smoothies. The name of the place is Ko Chang Bailan Beach Resort. Price: $30 per night. The service is great.

Tuesday 23: We spent the first day on the beach and shopped around a bit. The island is not crowded at all, but this is highly likely partly due to the world economic situation and the unfortunate political issues that have weakened Thailand's image a bit over the last three years. The short-term result is that lonely beach again fits it's name and that getting a room, a table, or a stool is almost too easy.

For the second time on this trip, I was caught breaking the law. We we're northbound on the road :-) and were stopped in a routine traffic control. I'd left my wallet in the room while swimming earlier, so it was time to pay another 200 baht to uncle police. Yes!

Wednesday 24: Astrid got a foot massage and had 20 nails done. She spent the rest of the day in a hammoc. Anders went scuba diving all day - two great dives with a professional Thai crew from The Dive Experience. We had our Christmas dinner together accompanied by Blues Brothers (just the movie) including the worst t-bone steak ever, but it was perfectly leveled with my expectations, so no harm done. Just remember to order fish or chicken if you want good food! We spent the rest of Christmas Eve in each our hammoc with wine coolers and fried banana in crack powder :-)

Thursday 25: Merry Christmas to all Americans! It's time for breakfast (Astrid is finally up) and this blog will be continued soon... Thanks for following us!

Wedding, silk, ancient history, and thai boxing

This day has been long and eventfull. We got up before 7 and left around 7:30 for a wedding in Nong Bua Daeng, another village in Chaiyaphum. A friend of mine from last year's trip to Bangkok, Aoy, married Joachim from Ganz in Austria. We didn't have time to stay long (I would have loved to see more), but what we saw was beautiful and fun. Before lunch, we made it to the silk village Ban Khwao - a place where one should have a guide. We bought some stuff and set course south.



After a short stop in Chaiyaphum city for KFC (yes!), we drove to Nakhon Ratchasima, or Korat, to see the 1000-year old Khmer temple Phrasat Phi Mai. It's about three hours from "home" in Huai Mak Daeng, so we didn't arrive before dark. And I just had to stop and feed an elephant on the way ;-p After dinner, we're going to watch the local thai boxing tournament, which starts about now...

Chaiyaphum

We're in a small village where pizza ingredients cost about two days' pay. You can of course buy the ingredients at the K Mart equvivalent. It is winter, which means that we need to put on a sweater during the evening. The city of Chaiyaphum looks like three villages thrown together into one. Where we live, they make rubber, eukalyptus (I don't know what that is in English), and some kind of root vegetable (like potato but not the same). I don't know what they call it. Cassava! They could have made more, but as they don't have enough trucks for transportation, they don't.

Money means a lot. The money is in Bangkok. In Bangkok, you can rent a hole in the wall place to make and sell stuff. Or work within tourism. Clothes are made in hole in the wall places (the same shirt in hundreds of them) and bought by people that somehow get to sell the clothes for export.

As everywhere except Norway and Germany, tomorrow may mean tomorrow, the day after, or never. What is for certain, is that tomorrow (!) we will go and look for a traditional Thai instrument in Chaiyaphum.

A rental car named Chaiyaphum

Anders woke up early and decided to be efficient. He went to the rental car office. He also forgot the map and reservation number, but Wireless road is not far from Sukhumvit soi 11 - only the rental car office is on a street off of Wireless road - which is not named Wireless road at all in Thai, but something like Radio road. Anyway... he actually managed to get a car. And drove back. Well, not entirely. There are traffic regulations in Bangkok as well, which should be followed when the police is present. This is a picture of the intersection (Anders demonstrated full knowledge of the rules a few days earlier when he explained them in detail to Astrid who was eagerly listening). Here are the rules: All traffic except buses and taxi must turn left. And onto the highway. Anders didn't want to do that, but was promptly pulled over and relieved of his driving license, which could be picked up later at the police station on Wireless road (yes!) Afterwards, he could go on (straight) and pick up Astrid and the luggage. Then, we went to the police station and paid the fine (200 baht / 40 kr / $7) and set course for Chaiyaphum. Bangkok-Chaiyaphum took 5 and a half hours, including a half hour lunch. We made Chaiyaphum city by dark, and easily found the way towards Tat Tone (waterfall) and Huai Mak Daeng.

Second or third day

I don't know what we did the first day we were here... I am not sure if I was awake or asleep:) Some taxi and tuktuk drivers managed to fool us anyway, so I guess I was asleep. No, not really... We were sort of willingly mislead... We didn't really know where we were, so we decided to take a cab. Of course, they wouldn't take us unless we agreed to stop a few places on the way. When we refused, we had to stop to have a serious talk, and then we agreed.

But we have seen the boat from the movie, Bangkok Dangerous (which by the way is a title we love) which is rainbow colored, has a large motor at the back, and can be used to smash things with if you're the cool kind of guy (Nicholas Cage).

Don't book rental cars at the last minute during Christmas. It might not work our entirely as planned. We'll have an exciting morning ahead of us:)

Astrid

One night in Bangkok...

Well, three nights, actually. After a long (15 hour) haul from Oslo through Munich to Bangkok, with separate seats since the AirBerlin carrier was full, finding a taxi and checking into a hotel was a breeze. No need to book a room in advance, 900 baht per night. We're staying at Sukhumvit Soi 11/1, one of the central parts of Bangkok. A few stops from the main shopping malls by Skytrain or Metro, and with lots of places to eat and drink on our doorstep, it's an alright place to stay. Sure, the Marriot across the street offers more luxury, but for at least 7 times the price. Unfortunately, I wished I slept there tonight, because a party of load africans had decided to not stop partying until 7 am this morning...

We've seen the Grand Palace, taken a river boat, visited Dow's sister (my aunt, in a way), and, of course, had some state-of-the-art massage :-)

Yahoo!! We're leaving tomorrow morning!

On my desktop, I've got weather reports from Oslo (-4 C), Chaiyaphum (21), Bangkok (24), Istanbul (11), Alanya (13), Columbia (8), and Nashville (2). I just removed Honolulu, which we visited about a year ago (sigh).

Astrid has placed clothes and stuff in small piles all over the livingroom floor. I've made a pile of sunglasses, mp3-player, camera, and earplugs.

We still need to pack, but first, we have a party to join for a few hours and maybe a last visit to cafe Copa Con Oro pending.

Thailand, Cambodia, and Turkey next

It's business as usual this week, that is, full throttle at school, work, and home. I'm finishing up the End of Month tasks at work and taking a course in SAS Data Integration Studio, while Astrid is going to Trondheim for a meeting related to her MSc and she'll finish up some work at BNP Paribas. It seems something is up every night, and then, finally, on Saturday we're OUT OF HERE and on our way south...

We're still alive (barely)

Maybe one should blog a little everyday. We only blog on vacation. So, here's for preparing the next one! We're planning a trip to Thailand. Having become totally paranoid, I won't post the actual dates here and now.

Anyways... If you ever think about going there, you might find these sites useful:
thai-language.com - dictionaries (Thai-English, English-Thai), phrases, pronounciation, etc, etc. A really good site.
maps.google.com - Not only maps, but driving directions as well.
-instructions on how to pee and poo

We're going to rent a car, using one of the major companies. Keep in mind that they use every inch of the road, drive on the left, and that when a police officer is waving his hand up and down at you, it might mean stop or go. It's all in the wrist (stiff=stop, loose=go), and when they follow you with blue lights on, it might not have anything to do with you. Paranoia, here we come!

homecoming

we had to pack our bags this morning and wrap up the instrument. It was hot, we'd accumulated some heavy goods over the last couple of weeks, we had trouble getting a taxi, and we were already late. This did not stop Anders from making a last visit to the post office for mailing his last post cards. After passing some heavy traffic (using the road shoulder and the empty yet restricted olympic lane creatively), we arrived just in time at the airport and avoided the all too familiar loudspeaker message: Can Mr Eggum and Mrs Melby please go to gate, you are delaying the flight! We spent a couple of hours in downtown Amsterdam, and was picked up by Olav at Oslo airport around 11 pm. It's way past midnight now, we've eaten a sleeping pill each, and Astrid is already in dream land. Thanks for following us!

sightseeing Beijing

we actually managed to keep our schedule. First, we biked to the post office to buy cardboard and had breakfast. After returning the bikes to the apartment, we took a cab to the Summer Palace. Our schedule for the rest of the day was as follows (and we are no earlybirds): Visit the Forbidden city, shop silk at the Clothing Market (we actually bought quite a few souvenirs and had to make another stop at home to unload), bike to the station, take the train closer to downtown and walk to the music instrument store - we lost our way, and reached the store at about 9 pm. We (or 360 yuans for two flutes, 40 for a lesson, and 30 for taxi) convinced them to stay open for a while longer so that Astrid got her guzhong (?)lesson . The guy was very talented. He played almost all of the instruments they had, and if did it well. Great! Dinner at last. Two drunk chicks tried to pick up Anders,convincing him that they were all out of money and really drunk. Tough luck! We took a taxi to our bikes, biked home (but stopped by the friendly neighbourhood kiosk) and fell fast asleep.

Back(packers) to Beijing

As you can see, Astrid is now very comfortable with chopsticks. We're at Hong Kong airport, waiting for the 11:55 flight to Beijing. When she finished her noodles, her first words were Lets find Starbucks! We're aiming to wash our clothes, visit the Summer Palace, learn how to play the instrument we bought last week, and do some shopping today. Tough schedule! Nothing is mandatory, though - as usual :-)

There are at least 9 million bicycles in Beijing, and they all have different sounds. The bell seems to mean "I'm here", the more radiant "watch out", or simply "move!". You can load anything on your bike, cardboard (several square metres of it), garbage, fruit, your fridge, your wife, your wife and family... My bike is pink and has one bell. I try not to look behind me, and the crowd of people in front of me seems to know what they are doing. Anders has got two bells on his orange bike (of course included in the bargain price). Our bikes are the ONLY bikes with color. All other bikes are grey or black or something in between. Around where we live, Chinese people seem to live as well (live, work... I am not sure about the difference, and that is not entirely in a bad way) each in their own store. It turns out that some of them speak English, for instance the son of our friend at the store next to the bike store. Closer to the Summer Palace, which is where we went this afternoon, the side of the roads are all covered with cardboard woods and olympic pennants. We stopped at a restaurant where you boil your own food in soup. They had to bring us the menu "in flesh" to be able to take our order, and cook various food for us to show us how to prepare it. Tomorrow will be a busy day, the number one and two priorities being going back to the music store and getting hold of cardboard to wrap what we bought at our last visit there.

Opal mine, Ladies market, and jazz

After a simple Chinese breakfast on 17 Wellington street, we headed over to Kowloon and visited Gary and his wife Annie, who treated us with an outstanding lunch, Cantonese style, in a great restaurant. We also visited the Opal Mine, their jewellery store, which is designed like a mine where you can a lot about opals. Astrid got a beautiful ring there, too. After lunch, we did some shopping at Ladies market, and walked down Nathan road to Kowloon pier, where we saw the whole 8 pm lightshow. Again. :-) We marked the end of our stay in Hong Kong with a visit to a jazz club in Soho. The live band was lousy, but we were the only guests that monday night. We had a good time, though!

Split

Anders took boat, train, and bus as far away from the city as possible, while Astrid explored the streets South of Hollywood road, including antique markets, art galleries, temple, and other treats.

Anders: Caught the star ferry from Hong Kong island to Kowloon, where I went to Opalmine to visit a friend I made in Thailand last year. He was there! Meeting him and his family for lunch tomorrow. Continued by train and bus to Sai Wung, a fisherman village famous for its restaurants where you can pick fresh catch from the boat and have it prepared your way - this was not cheap, though! Just wanting breakfast, I opted for the other end of the scale, and ended up with sweet and sour pig knuckles and tea. They forgot my rice, so I didn't eat a lot, eventually. Another bus ride later, I reached my destination, but the water was more suitable for sailing, windsurfing, and cayaking than snorkeling or diving, and I needed license or course reservation for the former, so I just took in the beautiful scenery and began my journey back home. Learned that buses only accept exact fare, ie don't give change, the hard way. Dropped a 20 HK$ bill into the coin slot the first time, easily more than doubling the fare...

Astrid: Had morning tea in the window of our room on the 24th floor, looking at the boats crossing over from Central to Kowloon. Walked around the neighbourhood (Soho), went to oldest temple in HK, visited contemporary art galleries and the antique market in Hollywood Road.

After meeting up, having pizza, and relaxing a little bit, we took the ferry to Kowloon to see the 8 pm lightshow on the skyscrapers on Hong Kong from a distance.

Hong Kong

The view from our room on the 24th floor
We arrived in Shenzhen this morning, and entered Hong Kong through immigration a few minutes later. This is the cleanest city we've visited so far. Prices are high, almost the same as in Norway for food and hotel. We'll be staying here for three nights before returning to Beijing.

We took the Peak Tram to the top of Hong Kong, where we were funneled straight into a shopping mall. Apart from banking and finance, it seems to be all about shopping here. The city is full of exclusive brands (which makes them less exclusive?), so this is not the place for making a bargain, considering that we're going back to Beijing on Tuesday (thanks to Olav, who helped us book tickets Saturday night). This city is breaking our budget, but it's a fun place. We had a great Italian dinner with a rose wine and a delicious dessert. According to an Aussie who's been working here for a couple of years, many people are a-holes here. We haven't met any, but it's my impression that foreigners don't always mix with the locals. We are lucky, though, since everyone we've met have been sweet as sugar :-)

Staring contest

Astrid writes: For 2 days, we have seen only 1 white person - an American - except each other. My eyes are amazingly blue all of a sudden, and we are the tallest people on the planet. Today we arrived in Wuchang/Wuhan by train. I slept all night, but Anders had some trouble sleeping - partly due to bad dreams about Chinese characters (which we enjoy) and partly due to increasingly stomach problems. Wuhan is a city of about 12 million people in the mid south (still the only white people). The city is located om the Yangtze river. Upon arrival, we were met by a huge construction site, forcing us to walk for at least 20 minutes around the train station (entrance on one side - way out on the other!) in 35 degrees C and extreme humidity. The ticket office was on the front side of the building, outside, of course. We bought tickets for Shenzhen for the same night, and checked in to the closest hotel to take a day off. (RMB 85). After sleeping for a couple of hours, we headed downtown to get something to eat. We took a cab to Snack Street, a street filled with snack bars and hole-in-the-wall restaurants. Actually, the entire city (at least the part we saw) consists of hole-in-the-wall places, offering chili, foodish stuff, pots and pans, and everything else that anyone could possibly buy. We did not go to the city centre, though. We seem to have gotten a two-bed coupe for tonight, which we are very happy about. Today, we actually managed to buy the tickets we wanted, without any English (not entirely true, since a helpful woman in the line did assist us a little bit). Chinese people are extremely kind, helping us getting cabs and being very understanding about our general level of confusion. Taxi drivers, however, are not particularily fond of foreigners... Many refuse to take us.