Last year I spent a month going around the world (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=463935), covering a safari in Africa, an iceberg cruise in Svalbard, live octopus in Busan and (the scariest of all) poutine in Ottawa. I'd been planning to top it this year with a two-month RTW that would take in various obscure Pacific islands, but due to time and finance constraints this seems imprudent at the moment... so I decided to fly almost all the way around the world and back instead. Twice.
Total 42562 miles, at a cost of approximately 25% of what I paid for my 28984-mile CRWSTAR1 last year. :cool:
To be covered in this thread is the first half:
SIN-BKK on Tiger Airways (TR)
BKK-ICN on Asiana (OZ)
ICN-LAX on Asiana (OZ)
and back, with a 5-day loop through South Korea (Seoul-Cheonan-Suanbo-Danyang-Guinsa-Seoul) on the way
And the trip starts tomorrow!
jpatokal
Jun 14, 06, 5:43 pm
I was about to fly halfway across the world and back in business class on my own dime, but first, it was time to repent for my sin and pay penance. After suffering through that oh-so-annoying hourlong wait between finishing all my pre-trip preparations and the point when it actually makes sense to leave for the airport, I counted to ten, bolted the door and lugged myself and my rollboard through the tropical afternoon down to the nearest subway (MRT) station. I can get to the airport by taxi in under 20 minutes, but doing it this way involves a transfer at City Hall, another at Tanah Merah and a third onto a bus from Changi T2 to the Budget Terminal. (The upside is that it costs $1.50 instead of $15.) The rush hour was just starting and there were no seats to be had on the train, but I didn't particularly mind -- there was plenty of sitting around ahead.
Almost precisely an hour later the third and final train pulled into T2's MRT station. Newly added signage showed the way toward the Budget Terminal shuttle buses, through a bewildering warren of underground passageways leading past, among other things, a frosted-glass door signed "SIA Cabin Crew Control Centre". Alas, any reveries of obedience training for SQ girls gone wild, involving spanking pert behinds wrapped in kebayas, soon evaporated when I emerged into the harsh flourescent light of the underground T2 bus terminal. One of the bus bays had a few signs with random colorful swirls, a sign stating that shuttle buses run every 10 minutes, and a bent length of steel pipe to balance your butt on (a task I'd imagine even well-controlled SQ stewardesses would find a challenge). After I'd inhaled my recommended daily allowance of exhaust, the bus eventually rolled up and I boarded, the only passenger aside from an Indian uncle toting a cup of teh tarik on a plastic strap.
The bus pulled up to a squat building painted creamy yellow and violet (I think Changi could use an Interior Design Control Centre) and I savored my first visit to the Budget Terminal, only opened in April 2006. Check-in queues were slim and my thumbprint-equipped Access Card eased me through immigration. Inside, the terminal bore a remarkable resemblance to a suburban Toys'R'Us: it's a giant warehouse with an aluminum roof, lots of brightly colored gewgaws for sale and gobs of signboards from the Angry Fruit Salad school of design. But the duty-free shop had the prerequisite bottle of Singapore Sling premix, Genki Sushi sold me a bowl of noodles for $3.80 and there was seating to spare.
The Budgeteers had one clever if evil trick up their sleeve: to prevent kiasu Singaporeans from camping out, gates were not announced in advance. Instead, 30 minutes before departure the flight monitor just silently switched to "Boarding" and the gate number appeared, precipitating a good-natured stampede towards it. But a Tiger guy with spiky blond hair was standing guard and proceeded to divide all entrants into two queues: one for families, one for the rest. The system worked smoothly and half an hour later we were ready to go.
I don't particularly like Tiger as far as Singapore's LCCs go, but I seem to end up flying them quite a bit anyway -- they fly to all sorts of interesting places and regularly offer the cheapest fares. The major problem for me is the seat pitch, which is bad by any standard, and I can't really imagine sitting on one of these birds for over three hours. Today the load was 60%-ish, so I had a free seat next to me, and as the plane accelerated towards takeoff and the little pigtailed girl in the seat in front of me squealed with excitement I smiled and thought to myself: "BAM -- on the road again!"
jpatokal
Jun 14, 06, 5:48 pm
I disembarked at good old Don Muang, inhaled the distinctive smell (which is neither good nor bad, just Don Muang, and quite different from Bangkok's overall funk) and reveled in my first Rot saap, thiu bin thii T-R-neung-neung-hok thammasaa Sin-ka-poh pai Krung Thep laew announcement in almost a year. How many more times will I pass through before Suvarnabhumi finally takes over?
I'd always thought transferring at BKK to be painless -- but I'd never actually needed to use the transfer desk before. I trudged across the terminal only to find that the Asiana desk wasn't open yet, and the sign saying that Thai is Asiana's handling agent did not mean that Thai would actually condescend to handle their pax. I squatted on the floor next to a power outlet for half an hour, watching as World Cup coverage was interrupted to show King Bhumibol celebrating his 60th year on the throne by welcoming an endless stream of dignitaries ranging from the Sultan of Brunei to the Prince of Liechtenstein, and then tried again, only to find three poor Burmese migrant workers flailing in a thicket of red tape and poorly photostatted documents with huge official approval seals. I'd already learned the hard way to never, ever end up behind anybody holding a Union of Myanmar passport in an immigration queue, but here there was no escape. Tappity-tappity-tap, and another half-hour later all three were dispatched... to sit on the sides and wait some more.
Now it was my turn. My ticket was accepted without question, but then the grilling started. Where did you come from? Where is your visa for Singapore? What do you do there? Where is your return ticket? What is your address in LAX? A few ''mai mii'' (not have) and ''mai dai'' (not can) punctuated phone calls later I was granted my boarding card to ICN and told that I'd need to check in again tomorrow for LAX.
I was given an "Asiana Lounge" coupon and, hearing for the first time about the existence of such a beast at an airport I thought I knew well, I embarked on a quest to find it. The map on the back of the coupon promised that the ASIANA LOUNGE should be between piers 2 and 3, next to the information booth and CIP First Class Lounge, but it entirely failed to manifest there -- until I saw the cut-out of an Asiana girl in her military gray uniform behind the CIP Business Class Lounge desk, smiling in a pose that said "I'm hiding a bayonet-tipped assault rifle behind my back and will march off to Pyongyang tomorrow if the captain so orders". With foreboding, I entered a dank cellar of crusty brown leather sofas and tortured souls sighing in corners as they counted minutes until their flight, and after raiding the triangle sandwiches (your choice of dry ham, buttery cheese or dodgy food poisoning) contemplated whether my penance had been sufficient. I could tighten my cilice and flagellate myself a little more by staying... or I could go for a massage at the TG lounge instead. Lead me not to temptation; I can find it myself. (It's right next to gate 32, and yes, it is a Star Alliance lounge although any signs saying so have been hidden.)
mad_atta
Jun 14, 06, 9:15 pm
Hurrah, a jpatokal trip report is always a happy discovery, and this is no exception. Looking forward to more... :)
After suffering through that oh-so-annoying hourlong wait between finishing all my pre-trip preparations and the point when it actually makes sense to leave for the airport...
Wow, that is something I have never experienced. Far more familiar to me is the realisation that the hour between now and the point at which it makes sense to leave for the airport will be entirely insufficient for the several hours of pre-trip preparations that I still need to do :D
Kiwi Flyer
Jun 15, 06, 12:15 am
ah yes the sudden realisation that you have to leave in an hour and haven't started packing, or the wondering whether you've misremembered the time and perhaps should already be on your way, or thinking about the 3 things you have to do on the way to the airport :D
Another good report from jpatokal to look forward to - yaay.
Jubilee777
Jun 15, 06, 12:47 am
The Budgeteers :D :D
I kinda like that word..... ;)
jpatokal
Jun 16, 06, 10:31 am
Wow, that is something I have never experienced. Far more familiar to me is the realisation that the hour between now and the point at which it makes sense to leave for the airport will be entirely insufficient for the several hours of pre-trip preparations that I still need to do :D
This is a familiar feeling for me as well, and the main reason why I now err on the side of caution :p
jpatokal
Jun 16, 06, 10:36 am
So the reason for this trip was that I had to go to LAX on business, and I spent a lot of time and effort trying to figure out a way to do it in business without bankrupting myself in the process. SQ's direct flights from SIN were out, and are pretty darn expensive even in (executive) economy, so I initially opted for the next best thing, namely TG's direct services from BKK. Economy rates here were surprisingly affordable, clocking in around S$1400, but executive econ upgrades would have doubled that and business would have been triple -- still a tempting proposition, it must be said. But then a Flyertalker tipped me off about OZ's US$1600 deal from Bangkok, a little research indicated that correctly chosen flights have lie-flat seats, and a friendly TA in Bangkok told me that stopovers are free and scored me seats on the dates I wanted, and the proverbial dice was cast.
My previous experience (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=182417) of flying SIN-ICN in a regional B757 almost put me off OZ for life, and I still didn't really believe the decent seat would materialize until I clambered on board and sat down on it. This 747 has obviously been around for a while and the seat, too, looked like the kinda thing you'd have seen in First circa 1980. There were three controls, two of which did the important bits (pushed back the seat and pushed up the leg rest), but the mysterious middle button didn't do anything despite the best efforts of a FA to coax it to perform. Biz looked full today and my seatmates were all Thais decked out in royal yellow.
Dinner was served promptly after takeoff and, as the menu was snatched away, I'll recreate it from memory:
Smoked salmon with grilled eggplant
Green salad
Assorted seafood brochette with rice and vegetables
Cheese and fruit platter
Banana cake
Presentation was impeccable, the starter was blah and I once again found myself wondering how much of my ticket price goes to pay for this pseudo-gourmet food and the FAs who bring it to me plate by plate. The main, though, was surprisingly tasty, consisting of juicy prawns, scallops and other "assorted seafood" grilled on a stick (I wonder how many people on board understood that from "brochette"?), although I declined the FA's offer to slather it with barbeque or chilli sauce, and the accompanying Californian Sauvignon Blanc was quite drinkable. I nibbled at the cheese and fruits, skipped the cake and coffee and tried to hit the sack. The Thai uncle next to me, though, savored his to the last crumb and drop, jabbered away with the aunties across the row for another half an hour, and when the lights were finally turned off fell asleep immediately and started snoring loudly. And, while thinking how annoying this is and what a waste it was to pay for biz, I fell asleep and slept soundly until morning.
jpatokal
Jun 16, 06, 10:49 am
"Oh boy", I told a friend before my departure, "another 24 hours and the escalators will start talking to me again!" And lest you question my sanity, she understood exactly what I meant -- Korea and Japan share the distinction of being the only countries in the world where it is considered par for course for these devices to dispatch useful information like "Please hold onto the handrail" and "Warning: end of escalator, watch your step".
I've always had miserable weather in Seoul (rain, sleet or both) and the weather forecast didn't look too promising, but an unbroken layer of cloud started to break as we approached ICN and flew over Yeongjong-do (http://wikitravel.org/en/Yeongjong_Island), my planned destination of Muui-do glinting in the dawn light. After a smooth touchdown and entry into ICN's space-age terminal, I queued up at the OZ transfer desk, got my boarding pass and headed up to the ICN lounge to munch on cornflakes and sip at bizarre Korean drinks (what on earth is nokcha?) while waiting for my turn for the shower.
Ablutions performed, I set out in search of luggage storage and a bus to Muuido, only to find out at the Asiana transfer desk that, as my layover was >6 hours, I was entitled to my choice of a transit tour or transit hotel. I opted for the hotel, figuring it'd be as good a place as any to store my stuff, and was duly transshipped to Airport Town Square's "Hotel Airpark", where a surprisingly large and decent room awaited me, containing a huge personal vending machine retailing, among other things, grilled squid and glow-in-the-dark condoms.
By now it was an absolutely gorgeous day outside, little fluffy clouds floating in the clear blue sky and a gentle breeze making sure that it was nice and warm in the sun, nice and cool in the shade. I asked at the front desk about getting a bus or taxi to Muuido, but after much collective head-scratching and sucking air through teeth they (for at least 4 hotel staff were summoned to deal with the problem) concluded that it would take me a minimum of 60,000W to the trip, using arithmetic which never made it past the language barrier. (The taxi there would've been 15K one-way, but what was the bit about needing to pay 30K for entrance fees and the ferry when my guidebook tells me it should be 2K?) I suggested plan B, the Haesupia Spa, and with relieved smiles was told that they'd be glad to shuttle me there for free.
Haesupia (http://www.haesoopia.co.kr/) is a squat block of a building just off the road to the airport. I paid my 6000W (~US$6), stripped down to the altogether and traipsed off downstairs in search of hot water, which was indeed available in copious quantities. The trick here is that they use heated deep sea salt water, probably a wise move given the amount of bilge in badly polluted Incheon Bay, but salty or not, a soak in piping hot water does wonders after a long flight. My Nordic heart was warmed by the spread of no less than 5 saunas, ranging from the almost traditional charcoal sauna to the mysterious "Jewel" (yok) sauna, tiled in raw jade with sacks of herbs by the stove, producing an effect like being stuck inside a microwaved menthol inhaler. The outside section had panoramic views of a concrete wall painted with a cheesy seaside mural, and with recorded birdchirps in the background I suntanned myself in the morning breeze and thought that hey, this is a pretty nice way to start your day. (Wanna see me naked? Find the spa on Google Maps/Earth (37.28'17.43" N, 126.31'10.29" E), zoom to maximum and switch to satellite mode. The courtyard is up top, and I'm the very relaxed-looking pixel on the top left side.)
After a few hours of this, interspersed with occasional masochistic bouts of standing under a waterfall of unheated (=4 deg C) seawater, I was as limp as an overcooked noodle and ready to head back and sleep. Before I could, though, the front desk called me up and ordered me in no uncertain terms to "Have lunch now". Airpark's a fine hotel, but steer clear of the restaurant -- I made the mistake of trying the proverbial free lunch, and it was easily the worst meal I've had in Korea. My curry rice contained apples and boiled dill pickles, and the Vietnamese-American guy next to me glumly hacked away at the inch-thick coating of his cutlet and wondered at the mysterious meat inside. I suffered through it, detonated a few tastebuds with the kimchi, headed to my room and crashed for 3 hours.
hyunja
Jun 16, 06, 2:24 pm
sip at bizarre Korean drinks (what on earth is nokcha?)
Nokcha, if indeed you are getting the right word, is green tea. So was what you drank sort of greenish colored tea? If the tea was brewed a bit too long, then it may have been brownish color.
If it was not a tea but an alcoholic beverage, then it's something else.
I like reading through your reports. Continue the great work.
HJ
TrayflowInUK
Jun 17, 06, 1:53 pm
jpatokal, I'm thrilled to see another TR from you. The one you did last year about visiting Svalbard still sticks in my head as one of the best trip reports ever posted. Looking forward to follow this one as it unfolds!
jpatokal
Jun 17, 06, 2:23 pm
Nokcha, if indeed you are getting the right word, is green tea. So was what you drank sort of greenish colored tea? If the tea was brewed a bit too long, then it may have been brownish color.
I'm still puzzled by this one. I'm fairly sure I got the hangul right, but the drink wasn't tea at all -- it was a goopy sweet white liquid much more like yulmucha (Job's tears drink) or the barley drinks you get in Singapore. I'll try to take a picture on my way back.
jpatokal
Jun 17, 06, 2:28 pm
OZ has two flights daily from ICN to LAX, and I'd specifically booked myself on this one in anticipation of the lie-flat seat that awaited me. Imagine, then, my disappointment on finding that this was one of the unrefurbished models with only pathetically modest recline. To add insult to injury, the auxiliary power unit (APU) gave up the ghost at ICN, so we were delayed by the better part of a sweaty hour with the air-con turned off (and no, I don't know why it was so hot in the plane when it was nice and cool outside).
But a glass of champagne helped soothe my nerves, and I decided to be generous and permit OZ one last chance to serve me a Korean meal. Today's offering was bibimbap, which consists of rice, veggies, and meat served with a dollop of chilli paste, furiously mashed together until you're left with a sticky, orange but (if done properly) very tasty mess. It's probably the only Korean dish even I can prepare adequately at home, and I'm pleased to report that OZ finally pulled the first halfway decent Korean meal I've eaten on a plane. Congrats!
The meal was served Korean style with a banchan assortment of beansprout soup, kimchi, those tiny dry fish and a bowl of something that approximated egg shells dusted with green tea in texture and taste (although I'd hazard a guess that it was some kind of seaweed). A Western-style cheese platter closely mimicking yesterday's followed, with a very drinkable Sandeman's 20 y.o. tawny port, and the final touch was a poofy cappucino mousse drizzled with strawberryish sauce. All in all, a competent but unextraordinary performance.
I then made the mistake of asking the crew if they happen to have an adapter for the 15V Empower power socket in my seat. For the life of me, I don't understand why airlines go to the trouble of fitting these things if there's no way for anybody to use them, but at Asiana the staff appeared to never even have heard about this feature of their own aircraft: three stewardesses convened a war council beside my seat, taking turns to peer at the mysterious socket with a green LED on top and scratching heads in confusion before disappearing into the galley. A few minutes later one returned with a smile and produced an adapter with a flourish and a smile, but I had to break her heart as it was a dime-store Euro-to-US adapter. Sigh.
I tossed and turned in my seat for the next six hours, occasionally attempting to find something interesting on the personal screen (many channels but no AVOD), which just resulted me in flipping back and forth between the airshow, King Kong, Pink Panther and a Becks & Posh documentary like a teenager with ADHD. Eventually, though, my level of tiredness surpassed the suckiness of the seat and I slept for a grand total of perhaps 3 hours total.
Breakfast... no, lunch... no, "snack" came two hours before arrival, consisting of an appetizer of smoked salmon, a spring-roll-ish thing with a mysterious wrapper and a main of mystery beef or mystery chicken. I groggily opted for the mystery beef (the mystery chicken looked way too much like something from Airpark's restaurant) and was treated to slabs of cow in goopy, tasteless brown sauce with lashings of chili -- evidently Asiana was back to its usual form for Korean food.
Half an hour before landing the aircraft nosed into Californian airspace just south of San Francisco, and the ridges and dried rivers of the desert soon gave way to the massive urban sprawl that is Los Angeles -- endless rows of flat, low-rise housing in a strict grid pattern, marching off into the smog, with only Downtown's skyscrapers breaking the monotony. The aircraft banked past a HoJo's (they still exist!) and an In-n-Out Burger before touching down the cracked brown concrete of LAX.
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Seoul Incheon Inter..." Pause. Switch mental tape. Rewind. Play. "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Los Angeles International Airport."
Serge1977
Jun 17, 06, 3:59 pm
until I saw the cut-out of an Asiana girl in her military gray uniform behind the CIP Business Class Lounge desk, smiling in a pose that said "I'm hiding a bayonet-tipped assault rifle behind my back and will march off to Pyongyang tomorrow if the captain so orders". .)
Hahaha absolutely brilliant. Hope don muang is still open when i do a rtw in october (odds are it will be) so I can look her up :p
Keep'em coming!
jpatokal
Jul 1, 06, 2:56 am
Los Angeles (http://wikitravel.org/en/Los_Angeles) started demonstrating its love affair with the car at the airport, where OZ's 777 was unceremoniously docked next to a CX 747 at a bus gate. We were shipped out into the Tom Bradley terminal, where lack of signage and dim lighting were compensated for by irritated staff yelling the same near-incomprehensible instructions over and over ("FOUR FIVE VISITORS TWO THREE RESIDENTS YOU SIR LEFT QUEUE FOUR!"). There wasn't much of a queue though -- thank you, business class -- and my interrogation was completed in three simple steps:
- So what are you doing in LA?
- Business.
- What kind of business?
- Meetings.
- What kind of meetings?
- Dot com.
- Thank you.
And the conversation above repeated itself word for word at Customs. So remember folks: if you're a terrorist with a record of felonies and genocide, entering the United States to deal drugs, overthrow the US government and commit immoral activities, just tell 'em you're coming to LA to see a dot-com and all will be forgiven.
Now, instead of giving y'all a blow by blow of every taco I ate for a week, I'll just limit myself to a series of sneering vignettes on what the rest of the world finds weird about California, the promised land where coffee is cold, drinks are large and tits are silicone (with apologies to K).
You can tell a lot about a country by its newspaper ads. In Singapore, foreigners occasionally whinge about why the Straits Times' ads seems to consist of nothing except bust enhancement creams (my theory is that the boobs sitting in the editorial office need all the help they can get), but as the bra of the average Californian female can contain a Singaporean and two bags of groceries, you don't see much of this in LA.
It's not that Angelenos aren't into big mammaries, far from it, it's just that the idea of rubbing on a little cream and hoping for some results, oh, a few months down the line is just so insufficiently instantly gratifying. Instead, the LA Weekly's ads promise augmentation the old-fashioned way with knives and guaranteed results, or alternatively Botox, "vaginal rejuvenation", medical marijuana evaluations, colon hydrotherapy, strip clubs and "jobs wanted" ads for porn movies -- and I won't even mention the personals (although I do hope the admirably modest Mr. Multi-Millionaire finds the young buff transsexual into plug play that he's looking for).
The scenery was itself quite fascinating in its repetitive suburban blandness. For an entire hour, as the bus cruised down Venice Blvd towards Downtown LA, all I saw out the window was a seemingly endless series of auto repair shops, used car dealerships, smog check stations, window-tinters, fast food chains, carpet shops, and furniture stores, plus a few check-cashing places, Western Unions, and taquerias mixed in for variety's sake.
The ride gave me a feeling I imagine many visitors to New York get: the feeling that this is a city so big, you can get lost in it. That never happens to me in New York, it seems too small and familiar, and there are always too many people around. But something about the way the sun shines so unforgivingly on everyone in LA makes this place seem huge and impersonal. The sidewalks are not constantly crowded with people, and there's something private and nice about that, if not a little isolating. --New York Hack (http://newyorkhack.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_newyorkhack_archive.html)
It's been over 12 years since I last set foot in these United States -- what has changed? Surprisingly little, it seems; the strip malls have continued their inexorable march during the time that I was away, but the endless sequence iterated above doesn't actually look any different than 12 years ago. Coffee shops have multiplied though (thank you, Starbucks), juice bars also seem hip (or this is just a Cali thing? I'm pretty sure the organic smoothies are), and gas certainly wasn't $3.30 a gallon last time around.
American supermarkets are large, slow-moving targets popular with foreigners firing cheap shots, but I think it's safe to say that only in California will you find an entire aisle called "New Age Beverages". In the name of science, I purchased a dildo-pink bottle of SoBe(r) Lizard Fuel(r) Strawberry and Banana Flavored Beverage with a Blend of Astragalus, Ginseng & Yerba Mate ("BRING ON THE BIGGEST AIRS AND THE BIGGEST FLAIRS", quoth the back of the bottle), but after the first gulp I realized I'd made a terrible mistake. I'd assumed that "Lizard Fuel" was a metaphoric expression for an energy drink for Californian dope-... hepcats like the baggy-pantsed fellow falling off his BMX bike on the bottle's illustration, but no, based on the taste it appears that Astragalus is a genus of iguana and yerba mate is Oacaxan for "kerosene".
So while an insane array of options certainly counts among the upsides of American grocery stores (I'm fairly sure the rather ordinary Ralphs in El Segundo stocks more products than all of Singapore combined), the downside for the single non-resident that everything comes in American-sized packages. It took an active search to find orange juice in a container of under a gallon (I settled for half), or a package of less than 300 Q-tips, and even yogurt was mostly sold by the 20-pack. Still, I was too busy drooling over twelve flavors of bagels and Key Lime pie to care -- say what you want about American cuisine, but it certainly is possible to eat well in this country if you want.
As I usually do, I did my best to stick to local cuisine, which in California tends to mean a) Caesar salads, b) anything involving Hawaiian fish with strange names like ahi, mahi-mahi, hula-hula and wiki-wiki-burger, and c) great big sticky cheese-laden refried-beany macho-nacho globs of food from south of the border. As a colleague noted, in California "authentic" means "meaty and greasy", while any restaurant without that tag will gladly serve you, say, a nice organic vegan tofu burrito with sprouts and low-fat salsa. But I didn't mind one bit: Madre de Dios, why is it so difficult to export halfway decent Mexican food outside the Americas, and why is it that every two-peso taqueria in Los Angeles kicks butt? Probably the best of all was my last meal, a Burrito Grande(tm) at a Mrs. Garcia's chain outlet, stuffed to the bursting point and a little beyond with pinto beans, dirty rice, salsa and incredibly mouth-meltingly smooth slices of beef tongue all melded together into a fat tube of perfection.
One Sunday afternoon, I rode the Ghetto Blue (http://www.laweekly.com/general/features/killing-time-on-the-ghetto-blue/2052/) to the city center. The station list of the Metro Blue Line, which crosses through South Central, reads like a Top 10 list of gangster rap and urban violence: Watts, Compton, Inglewood... and the consequent emphasis on safety and security, reinforced through posters, signs, cameras, emergency buttons etc is in itself more akin to provoke anxiety attacks than the reality of trolley-pushing Hispanic moms, frazzled Vietnam vets and black guys in big pants that populate the system (with the occasional big-eyed white girl making the long haul to or from Long Beach). Being an ex-New Yorker, my idea of an inner-city ghetto is a crumbling housing project in Harlem with a few blown-out crack house shells around it, but in South Central even the ghettos look like strip malls -- it's just that nobody's watered the lawn for a while, half the shops are boarded shut, and the rest are hiding behind iron bars and advertise bail bonds, instant pregnancy tests and pawn shops.
The really amazing bit is that the Blue Line is the only form of public transport that runs north-south across greater LA, a region of 13-14 million people, and it's an at-grade tram with a frequency of a train once every 12 minutes. I originally planned to go check out the Getty Center, but it turned out that on Sundays most of LA's already sufficiently pitiful public transport shuts down entirely, and there was no way to get there that didn't involve a minimum of three bus transfers -- and the MTA's otherwise fairly decent site omitted any indication of whether the neighborhoods for these changes are the kind of places where a lost-looking white boy can stand around at a bus stop without getting relieved of excessive possessions.
So I ended up Downtown, which, this being LA, really isn't. In any other city of over ten million, prime lots of land next to the main train station and its subway interchange would be 50-story office towers and condos; in Los Angeles, they're parking lots and four-story "lofts". I munched on French dipped roast beef at Philippe's and watched America flagellate itself over concentration camps in the Japanese American Nat'l Museum, which was done well enough, but I couldn't help being a little cynical on two fronts. First, if you're going to equate the relocation era with Nazi Germany and use the word "concentration camp", then maybe quotes where ex-inmates ..... about the mosquitoes and slow legal aid isn't quite right approach. And second, if you're going to go on a "Never again" theme with assorted rants about constitutional liberties and whatnot, then when's the Guantanamo branch opening? At least the volunteer guide had found a novel enemy to oppose, as he spent 5 minutes ripping the ACLU a new one as if this was all their fault.
After pottering about in the plastic wonderland of Little Tokyo and drooling over the delightfully brutal metalscapes of the Caltrans building and the Walt Disney Hall, I descended into MOCA to get a dose of modern art. The main current exhibit was by Robert Rauschenberg, whose works incorporate various banes of the archivist including -- and I quote -- "pants fragments", "elephant dung" and the admirably honest "unidentifiable debris". It was OK, but as usual my eyes glazed over when exposed to excessive repetition of the same theme. Except for one video clip of people calling and putting each other on hold, Norma Johnson's whiny Afro-American angst didn't fare much better, but the permanent exhibition tucked away in the basement proved a little more interesting, if ultimately forgettable to the point that, two days later, I can't actually remember any of the works. Blah.
On my last day I ended up in Culver City (http://wikitravel.org/en/Culver_City) for the afternoon, and promptly set out to its most famous(?) sight, the inimitable Museum of Jurassic Technology (http://www.mjt.org). Imagine a "Ripley's Believe It Or Not?" teleported from the 19th century, curated by obsessively detailed pathological liars, and you will have a vague idea of the sheer weirdness that permeates the place -- some of the stuff inside is true, some of it is entirely fabricated, and all of it is so strange that there's no way of telling which is which. I spent a good 3-4 hours poking around, watching the videos on topics all and sundry, culminating in "Levsha: The Tale of a Cross-eyed Lefty from Tula and the Steel Flea", which may sound like an obscure Russian art-house movie, but was in fact a surreal yet utterly poker-faced documentary of a thoroughly pointless story that may or may not have happened. I'm sure there's a parallel to Los Angeles as a whole somewhere in here.
party_boy
Jul 1, 06, 4:15 am
I then made the mistake of asking the crew if they happen to have an adapter for the 15V Empower power socket in my seat. For the life of me, I don't understand why airlines go to the trouble of fitting these things if there's no way for anybody to use them, but at Asiana the staff appeared to never even have heard about this feature of their own aircraft: three stewardesses convened a war council beside my seat, taking turns to peer at the mysterious socket with a green LED on top and scratching heads in confusion before disappearing into the galley. A few minutes later one returned with a smile and produced an adapter with a flourish and a smile, but I had to break her heart as it was a dime-store Euro-to-US adapter. Sigh.
LoL. I love the use of adjectives in your posts...quite entertaining. I get crazy mental pictures of three hot Korean stewardesses poking at your seat screaming at each other in Korean.
Swanhunter
Jul 1, 06, 5:45 am
A wonderful read so far. I love the way you use the little things to bring the story fully alive. The Thai airport announcement instantly transported me from London to Don Muang.
FLYGVA
Jul 1, 06, 2:01 pm
I was on OZ on HKG - ICN and ICN - ORD (and vv). On this route you get the old C class for sure. But why did you have a power outlet at your seat? I had an adapter, but no power outlet (OZ FA to me and my seat mate : "Sorry Sir, no power in this seat").
Enjoyed your report and brought back some nice memories about my trip and my trip report about it, which I should finish :rolleyes:
jpatokal
Jul 1, 06, 11:08 pm
While in the TSA line -- it was rush hour at America's busiest international gateway, so they had condescended to open two (2) lanes, one of them reserved for crew and disabled pax -- I pondered how it would be possible to make LAX any more depressing. Maybe they could change the tiles from dirty off-white to dirty hospital green? Pipe in artificial sewage scent instead of the current eau du decay? You can't lower the ceilings any more, or take away more windows, or make the signage more confusing, or make the announcements less comprehensible, or give the staff more attitude... it's actually weird how a terminal this small (for Tom Bradley Int'l can't hold a candle to the FRAs, LHRs or even SINs of this world) can be so dysfunctional. But I eventually shoe carnivalled myself to the 5th floor Asiana Lounge and, while their own wireless didn't work, snarfed a signal from the neighboring China Airlines lounge and was happy as a clam with a geoduck-sized Internet hookup.
And oh yes: LAX, like other US airports, has no exit immigration. I'm still not sure if this is really smart, because it is after all a rather silly exercise (if you've already gotten in, why would there be a problem with letting you out?), or really stupid, because now the infamous green departure card is given to the check-in agent and you will be in deep doo-doo the next time if they wipe their hiney with it.
Some 40 minutes before the flight the lounge started emptying and I followed the crowd. I'd planned to pick up a bottle or two of California wine, but LAX's duty-free was equally depressing and didn't have anything for sale for under $25 (which equates to 12.5 Two-Buck Chucks at Ralphs). A mob roamed around gate 105, I snuck into the biz line and clambered aboard a plane that I already knew would be equally depressing -- I'd managed to find out that cocoon-style seats would be flown from Jun 28 on occasion and from Oct with more regularity, which entirely failed to help me now. On the bright side, I managed to avoid being squished near or (God forbid) between Mother Whale and her son Moby Dick, who not only were rather overly generously proportioned but started quarreling noisily while in the check-in queue, always a good sign when you've got 13 hours of flight ahead.
After a final circuit of LAX's many, many terminals we took off and were plunging into the fog within seconds of takeoff. What Asiana termed a "heavy snack" (what's wrong with "dinner"?) followed:
Prosciutto with asparagus, lobster medallion
Caesar salad
Seabass with duchess potatoes
Cheese & fruits
Apple tart
In a reverse of the previous attempt, the appetizer was downright tasty -- I especially liked a hollowed-out chunk of Japanese cucumber served with a dab of red tomato pesto, although the Caesar salad just isn't a Caesar salad without parmesan and croutons (or a decent dressing). The wines were the same as on the way to LAX, I kept to the California theme with a Kenwood Zinfandel and it was quite good indeeed. The main, on the other hand, was execrable, greasy seabass with hard potatoes and muddy overcooked zucchini. Cheese & fruits -- Camembert and, um, something -- were good though, as was the apple tart.
Ever noticed that your IQ goes down when you fly? I spent two hours watching "Big Momma's House 2" and actually thought it was a pretty good movie, and then surprised myself by falling asleep for three hours. By then it was time to eat some more:
Beef mixed with kimchi and rice
Croissants and muffins
Yogurt
Fruit platter
Tea, coffee and juice
Three cheers for chili and pickled cabbage for breakfast, although I felt a twinge of regret for my hapless seatmate Mr. Gomez, who skipped breakfast in favor of more sleep -- good luck doing so next to a piping hot bowl of kimchi.
jpatokal
Jul 3, 06, 9:31 am
We touched down in a pre-dawn mist so swirling, dense and theatrical that I half-expected zombies to lurch out from below the gates while Michael Jackson grabbed his crotch in the disembarkation lounge. But the funereal ambience was appropriate, as South Korea had just lost 2-0 to Switzerland, bringing their World Cup endeavours to an untimely end. Immigration and customs was ludicrously fast and I was in the Limousine Bus to the city within minutes, peering out of the window at the impenetrable fog.
The JW Marriott Seoul looks like just every other JW in Asia, but the real surprise was lurking in the basement: the famed Marquis Spa, of which I'd heard whispered tales of awe on Flyertalk. I was actually sufficiently tired that I briefly considered just a shower in my room, but I forced myself to head downstairs, and, well, damn. Facilities available include a humongous gym complete with indoor running track and interesting torture machines that let you strap yourself in by your feet and then yank you up to hang upside down like a bat, an Olympic-sized heated swimming pool, a 5-meter scuba pool, a full selection of Aquagym water workout machines, an assortment of hot tubs and saunas (all available in male, female and mixed versions), a climbing wall, not one but three golf driving ranges, a solarium room, a whole bunch of full-body showers, and -- phew -- a resting room.
At this point my regular readers just might be saying "Hmm" -- what am I doing in a $300-a-night JW, when the last time I opted for a $20/night flophouse here in Seoul (http://wikitravel.org/en/Seoul)? Well, the hotel costs a scarcely believable 20,000 Marriott points as a reward (viz 15,000 for the somewhat less exciting Courtyard El Segundo/LAX), and while this alone still probably wouldn't have sufficed, my good friend Z. had, after a few rounds of plan changes, taken the week off and would be flying down to meet me.
But I had half a day to kill first, so I started off with an educational trip to Seodaemun Prison, the notorious detention center where two generations of Koreans were imprisoned, starved, tortured and executed during the Japanese occupation. Much of the complex is still in its original state, but parts have been converted into a museum where animatronic figures of Japanese interrogators cackle maniacally while electrocuting, waterboarding, raping, inserting pins under fingernails and just beating up hapless prisoners. A free English guide was provided, but her nationalist fervor seemed a little punctured when I pointed out that these techniques, including the infamous "coffin cells" where you're locked standing up inside a coffin-sized box for a few days or weeks, are still regularly employed by North Korea (and in all likelyhood on a much larger scale than Japan ever managed). One of the people enshrined here is a Mr. Kam, who at the age of 65 threw a bomb into a crowd of Japanese military at Seoul Station, killing and wounding over 30. Terrorist or freedom fighter?
I took refuge from the uncomfortable ambiguities of reality with a trek up neighboring Mt. Inwangsan, home to a giant construction site, a smattering of Buddhist temples and Seoul's best known shamanist shrine (pointedly omitted from the subway station's maps). Other accounts I've read of the place have involved shamanesses performing mystical rites in pine groves and old men dancing naked with pig heads, but the most exciting thing I could find was a Swiss-cheese rock with lots of pigeons and a motherlode of empty soju bottles.
Z. showed up in the evening and we decided to celebrate in style -- doggie style. Now Korea may have a mutt-munching reputation, but digging your teeth into one isn't as simple as going to the nearest McD's and asking for a Quarter Hounder; the habit is, technically, illegal, and the law is enforced just enough to keep pooches off the menu in places where tourists might see them. But with Google's help (the Marriott's mildly shocked concierge was less useful), we had some clues to crack Da Poodle Code and we set off into dingy alleyways near otherwise neon-sparkly Myeongdong to find our Holy Grail. The first round of searching for matching signboards was inconclusive, so we popped into a likely-looking stew shop and asked for bosintang. No luck there, but Z's puppy eyes melted the matronly keeper's heart and she dragged us by the elbow to another shop we'd passed earlier, which advertised puffer dishes in big letters, but served up dog meat soup on demand. It was getting late and we were the only customers, but within minutes a constellation of kimchi and a big steaming pot of meaty stew appeared on our table, and it was time to chow down.
I've never read an appetizing description of the taste of dog -- "stringy", "grainy", "gamey", even something about little hairs in the meat near the skin -- so I was surprised to find that, in a word, it was actually pretty good. The meat has a beefy taste, akin to veal, with perhaps a hint of lamb, and was nice, smooth and tender texturewise. Any putative smell was nuked by the presence of large quantities of garlic, chili, spring onion, sesame leaves and a tangle of herbs, and we finished every piece in the pot. Korea 1, ASPCA 0.
We spent the next four days poking around the less-explored reaches of Korea. Being a two-meter-tall blond alien in Korea gets you enough stares as is, but heading off to the countryside with a Japanese girl in tow really gets the locals interested; either you get dagger looks because they think she's Korean and you're stealing their women, or you get even worse dagger looks because they realize she is Japanese and you thus not only think Korean women aren't good enough, but are consorting with the enemy to boot. Z. took to claiming "Singaporean" as her nationality, but I insisted on the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, sometimes to my detriment:
(Korean has no "f" sound, so they use "p" instead. This means that you can play a round of golpeu, watch pupbol on TV and head for Maekttonaltteu to get your paseuteu pudeu fix.)
After a token 37-minute, 300-km-per-hour trip on Korea's KTX high-speed train to Cheonan, the rest of the time we used ordinary buses and slept in the kind of hotels where you pay your money (in advance) to a pair of hands behind a frosted-glass window, corridors have mood lighting and vending machines retail personal lubricant. Let's compare one to the Marriott point by point:
JW Marriott Seoul vs. Joatel Cheonan
$400 (rack) vs. $50 (rack)
Internet access $25/day vs.. In-room Internet PC for free
Two chocolates vs. two condoms on your pillow
Ordinary bathtub vs. heart-shaped jacuzzi in bathroom
Whisky and cognac vs. beer, soju and dildos in minibar
Porn costs $18/channel/day vs. three channels of it for free
Don't get too excited by that last point though; this is heavily-censored softcore Korean porn we're talking about, so it's slightly less interesting than watching a National Geographic documentary on the mating habits of frogs. Korean motels also don't really seem to have cottoned on to the fact that truly dedacent indulgence requires a bouncy bed, not one that feels like the sheets are nailed to plyboard.
On my last visit to Korea, I was bowled over by the similarities to Japan, and while Z. (who hadn't been to Korea in 8 years) was going through the same phase, this time my eye was more drawn to the differences. The relative paucity of temples and shrines and the omnipresence of church steeples. The remarkable total absence of pachinko parlors. The way hangul writing has supplanted Chinese characters far more thoroughly than kana ever managed in Japan. The overwhelming dominance of chaebol superconglomerates like Samsung and Hyundai; one of our motels had a Samsung airconditioner, Samsung TV, Samsung DVD, Samsung refridgerator, Samsung water cooler and looked out onto a block of Samsung apartment blocks.
Independence Hall (http://wikitravel.org/en/Cheonan): The closest South Korea gets to North Korea, this super-patriotic exercise in nationalism sprawls out over acres of land near Cheonan, dotted with hundreds of fluttering South Korean flags and the phallic pillars of the Juche... oops, I mean Monument to the Nation. On the other side of a gargantuan Korean-style gate filled with turgid socialist-realistic sculpture are no less than seven "halls" (vast museum complexes) describing Korean history in tones that make Fox News sound like pinko liberal comsymps. The "Hall of Japanese Aggression" was obviously done by the same people behind Seodaemun Prison, complete with animatronic torture puppets, while the "Hall of the Social and Cultural Movement" manages to make even Korea's modest achievements in jazz music an exercise in throwing off the shackles of imperialist colonialism. Yow.
Suanbo Hot Springs (http://wikitravel.org/en/Suanbo): Kind of depressing as far as hot spring towns go, especially as it was off-season and there were very few other people around. We lucked out though in finding the newest hotel in town for a cheap price (perhaps partly because their spa was being repaired), and the hike up to the nearby Park Hotel was made worthwhile by the views from its outdoor tubs. Still kind of forgettable though, there's got to be a better spa out there somewhere...
Gosu Caves (http://wikitravel.org/en/Danyang): One of Danyang's top sights, this is a cave in Korea, by Koreans, for Koreans, at least based on the size of the walkways squeezed into the cavern -- claustrophobes and dieters steer clear. There are 1.7 km of metal walkways laid into the mountain, looping crazily left, right, up, down and sideways. Late in the afternoon we were the only ones in the entire place, except for a couple of very, very bored-looking attendants. A second test of courage came when we tried the dongdongju ladled out from bubbling metal cans in the souvenir shops outside. Imagine fermented milk mixed with Sprite and tinted a delicate shade of peachy mud; as with dog soup, the biggest shock was that it wasn't as bad as you'd expect.
Guin-sa Temple (http://wikitravel.org/en/Guinsa): Buried in the mountains near Danyang, this stupendously huge temple complex houses the headquarters of the million-strong Cheontae (Ch. Tientai, Jp. Tendai) school of Buddhism, which holds (among other things) that all things are absolutely unreal yet provisionally real simultaneously. Revealed to the founder in a dream in 1945, they've been pouring concrete ever since and the still-expanding buildings already house, among many other things, Korea's largest lecture hall and cafeteria. This was no empty exercise in megalomania either, gray-pantsed devotees were busily buzzing about on an ordinary Wednesday and the courtyard housed more pots of kimchi than I ever hope to smell in my life. We ate our share for lunch -- as this is utopia, it was provided for free -- and scurried off before their hypnotic vajra-in-expanding-circles logo washed our brains. (Maybe it already did; I couldn't help buying a strip of stickers and now one adorns my rollaboard.)
On the last day, we boarded a surprisingly spiffy mugunghwa express-only-in-name train and clunked our way back to Seoul's Cheongnyangni station for three hours and then some, replete with quadrilingual announcements for every single halt along the way. "...komapsumnida. The next station is Dongbanggwangjangmakgeollisoju. Kono eki de o-ori no kata, juubun go-chuui kudasai. Xie xie!" It had been getting increasingly hazy throughout the week and by that day, when crossing the bridge from Seoul to Incheon, the haze was so bad you could barely see across the bay. ICN was its usual busy self and, after our respective check-ins, we adjourned to the OZ lounge where Z. was delighted to find copious supplies of tomato juice, vodka and Tabasco, and proceeded to make sure we'd be properly bloodied, sedated and dehydrated before we boarded our planes and flew our separate ways.
mosburger
Jul 4, 06, 9:24 am
Delightful insights once more from jpatokal. We want Korean nightlife escapades! ;)
TrayflowInUK
Jul 4, 06, 2:54 pm
You ate dog? You are now my hero. :D
twyatt
Jul 4, 06, 5:28 pm
This is an awesome post....I can't wait to hear about the rest of the trip and places you visited. This is well written and it takes the reader through these airports and experiences.
I think that when you visit ICN you should pay a visit to Panmunjom and the inter-Korean DMZ. I would be interested to hear your observations. I was there twice; once in 1999 the other in 2000, except I was on the D.P.R (North) Korea side both times.
I'm looking forward to reading about the remainder of the trip.
jpatokal
Jul 5, 06, 5:23 am
I'm almost disappointed here: first I skewer American culture, then I go eat the family pet, and instead of being labeled the antichrist I get called a "hero" instead? Sigh. Maybe I need to troll a little harder. But thanks for the kudos anyway ;)
I think that when you visit ICN you should pay a visit to Panmunjom and the inter-Korean DMZ. I would be interested to hear your observations. I was there twice; once in 1999 the other in 2000, except I was on the D.P.R (North) Korea side both times.
I have no plans to go to the DMZ, because I already went there (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=463935&page=4&pp=15). :p (Scroll down past the Canada stuff.)
I'm looking forward to reading about the remainder of the trip.
Ask and ye shall receive!
jpatokal
Jul 5, 06, 5:28 am
"Arrrrgh", was my first reaction when I stepped aboard this gorgeous, cocoon-seated, huge personal flat-paneled top of the line Asiana plane with new business class -- this was the plane they were supposed to fly me to LAX and back with. The seat's control panel has more buttons than a Japanese toilet and to top it off not only did I have the best seat in the house, but there was nobody next to me (biz was half-empty today). Why, oh why, couldn't they rotate this plane to one of those flights where I actually needed to sleep? I drowned my yuppie crocodile tears in a glass of Piper-Heidsieck and waited for dinner -- choice of steak, monkfish or bulgogi Korean-style beef -- which was served up shortly.
Roast beef roll, maguro tataki with black pepper, smoked salmon
Beef steak with black pepper sauce, potatoes and vegetables
Cheese and fruit platter
Lemon tart
I congratulated myself on being smart enough to skip the bulgogi, as this was quite possibly my best Asiana meal yet. The tataki (grilled on the outside, raw on the inside) tuna was perfect and the black pepper complemented it surprisingly well, and the roast beef wrapped around veggies was darn good too. The smoked salmon was, well, smoked salmon (again), but at least a mustard-y dipping sauce was provided, artistically presented in a hollowed-out tomato slice. The steak was regretfully well-done, but it was still very moist and tender; the potatoes were a tad overcooked; and the broccoli and carrot had been boiled to death in a British prison canteen. The same Cali wines were still on the menu, so I tried a random Burgundy and regretted it. (Why is it that French wine is so bad most of the time?) Today's cheeses were cheddar and a Korean Camembert, which was mild but not unpleasant, and the lemon tart, while inoffensive, would have been unidentifiable without the menu. All in all, competent but not quite Michelin three-star.
The theme continued with Asiana's entertainment system, which turned out not to be on-demand after all. Both the Club and J-Pop audio channels flaked out some 30 minutes into the flight, and despite their best efforts (including pressing all the buttons on the controller and lots of makeup-crackingly pained smiles) all the captain's stewardesses couldn't put it together again. While not in the least sleepy, after the lights were dimmed (why? it's 6 PM and the time difference is two hours!) I dutifully tested out the flat bed, which was miles better than the previous crapp-o-seat but not quite up to SQ Spacebed caliber. The incline is noticeably steeper, and the footrest is kinda awkward if you're tall, it doesn't even bend fully out of the way if you don't want to use it... but I would still have hacked up a miniature octopus and eaten its still-wriggling tentacles raw to have gotten this plane for the flights to/from LAX.
I have one last request for Asiana: I understand that flights across Indochina are often a little bumpy, but please don't scare your frequent fliers by using the word "severe" to describe turbulence that isn't (on three separate occasions, natch). Singapore Airlines, for example, correctly reserves this word for when the wings start clapping pattycake and the only thing stopping you from turning into a wet spot on the bulkhead is your seatbelt. If my red wine stays in its glass, it's "mild", and when the stewardesses start shrieking "we're all going to die", you're allowed to use the word "moderate". Thank you.
party_boy
Jul 5, 06, 2:13 pm
Roast beef roll, maguro tataki with black pepper, smoked salmon
Beef steak with black pepper sauce, potatoes and vegetables
Cheese and fruit platter
Lemon tart
Sounds most excellent. How did the monkfish look?
Singapore Airlines, for example, correctly reserves this word for when the wings start clapping pattycake and the only thing stopping you from turning into a wet spot on the bulkhead is your seatbelt. If my red wine stays in its glass, it's "mild", and when the stewardesses start shrieking "we're all going to die", you're allowed to use the word "moderate". Thank you.
Like the incident on, I believe Virgin earlier this year?
party_boy
Jul 5, 06, 2:16 pm
I'm almost disappointed here: first I skewer American culture, then I go eat the family pet, and instead of being labeled the antichrist I get called a "hero" instead?
C'mon you're not going to get a rise out of us. We have to live the crazy culture on a daily basis. You're just visiting. As for eating Fido, it's not THAT difficult. Actually I found it quite good. You know you're eating pretty weird when you eat Porcupine or LIVE Monkey Brains. I'll give major props for that. (I've done the Porcupine, but not the monkey brains.)
jpatokal
Jul 6, 06, 8:18 am
C'mon you're not going to get a rise out of us. We have to live the crazy culture on a daily basis. You're just visiting. As for eating Fido, it's not THAT difficult. Actually I found it quite good. You know you're eating pretty weird when you eat Porcupine or LIVE Monkey Brains. I'll give major props for that. (I've done the Porcupine, but not the monkey brains.)
Yeah, dog is very much a taboo thing -- meat is meat, period. In my book shiokara (http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=538356) (pic (http://www16.ocn.ne.jp/~uoshige/shiokara.jpg)) is far and away the most vile thing I've actually eaten, with silkworms in the runner-up spot, and live octopus tentacles get an honorary mention for sheer weirdness (but not the taste, which is very mild).
And re: the monkfish, I don't know how it looked because I didn't order it :p
party_boy
Jul 11, 06, 4:59 am
Yeah, dog is very much a taboo thing -- meat is meat, period. In my book shiokara (http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=538356) (pic (http://www16.ocn.ne.jp/~uoshige/shiokara.jpg)) is far and away the most vile thing I've actually eaten, with silkworms in the runner-up spot, and live octopus tentacles get an honorary mention for sheer weirdness (but not the taste, which is very mild).
And re: the monkfish, I don't know how it looked because I didn't order it :p
Fido is really taboo in western cultures. I agree that meat is meat. My point was that there are a lot of more interesting things that people eat on a routine basis.
Actually I've had Shiokara before. It was bad, but not THAT bad. In China, they have a subculture that eats raw cow intestines that havne't been cleaned. It's simply chop open the cow stomach and start eating. THAT is something I don't think I'll ever try.
Keep up the trip report. I enjoy it.
jpatokal
Jul 12, 06, 9:47 am
It's one of those travel writing cliches: "It was a dark and stormy night, and as Dirk Grunto stepped off his steel-plated Conquistador turboprop, the humid, fetid, jungly-bungly tropical air of Singabangolumpur socked him in the face like the right upper cut of a pissed-off bargirl." While no longer literally true -- thanks to the invention of the jetway, these days the first smell of a new place even in the tropics consists mostly of plastic, engine grease and industrial-strength detergents -- there's a kernel of truth in there somewhere, and in Bangkok's case said kernel does still sock you in the face, or at least the nostrils, when you step out of the air-conditioned terminal into the outdoor taxi scrum. Yup, I was in the tropics again.
Tonight the queue lottery gave me a gangly, spectacled Thai-Malay chappie with a steely determination to get me to my destination as fast as possible while saying as little as possible. I tried pulling my usual trick of breaking a 500-baht note at the tollbooth, but he dug a hundred out of his personal stash, paid the toll with that, and then proceeded to shuffle money on the dashboard like a three-card monte dealer with a coke habit until he had a pile containing precisely 480 baht to give back to me -- all while driving at 140 km/h on the Uttaraphimuk Elevated Tollway. I reflexively clutched at the non-existent seatbelt, then sighed, said a silent prayer and placed my fate in the gentle, loving hands of my insurance company. With no further prompting on my part, he picked the right exit, executed the three U-turns necessary for the optimal route to Phayonyothin Soi 7 and delivered me to the hotel doorstep in one piece, well earning a 29 baht tip, that, for the first time, prompted a smile and a genuine-sounding thanks.
I spent the night at Reflections (http://www.reflections-thai.com/rooms.html), which was as crazy as ever (see that first picture with the hammock, sand and palm trees? that's inside room 404), although rates have over doubled since it was written up in the New York Times and who knows where else -- I had to pay nearly $50 for the night. I was awakened early by a tropical rainstorm (darn you, Dirk Grunto!), and after a leisurely breakfast sauntered over to the Skytrain station for a zip into the city. For all the newspaper coverage about Thai political distress, the economy sure seemed to be hummingly along nicely: the little mall next to Ari station, completed last year, had a couple of walls knocked out and was busily being reworked into a part of a new, larger shopping mall under construction next door.
But neither could compare with my destination, namely Bangkok (http://wikitravel.org/en/Bangkok)'s latest shopping extravaganza, the stupendo-humongo-bubbaliciously big Siam Paragon. I was prejudiced to hate it -- Lord knows the last thing Bangers needs is more shopping malls -- and the early morning emptiness in the two luxury levels filled with more Prada and Jimmy Choo than a year's worth of Sex in the City did little to dispel this. But then I discovered the huge Kinokuniya bookstore on the 4th floor, and the funky True netcafe-slash-flower shop below it, and the section of 30-odd shops devoted to high-quality Thai fabric, ceramics and art, and by the time I'd made it into the basement I was ready to forgive all. Rarely does any shop with the word "gourmet" in its name deserve the moniker, but Paragon's Gourmet Market does -- I counted, among other things, 4 different types of dragonfruit, 16 varieties of rice sold by the kilo, and three shelves full of different kinds of eggplant. I stocked up on raw peppercorns, kaffir lime leaves and various other hard-to-find green curry ingredients, snarfed down a quick Isaan meal of sticky rice, deep-fried beef and papaya salad next door, sampled ginger sorbet and a Thai-style coconut crepe, and washed it all down with an utterly improbable yet supremely tasty beetroot-passionfruit drink from Soontra (18B a pop at most Skytrain stations). One last bag of freshly roasted corn-off-the-cob from the street, and it was time to loosen my belt and head to the airport.
jpatokal
Jul 22, 06, 12:52 pm
One of the things I like most about Don Muang is that, unlike the great majority of the world's airports, it doesn't feel dominated by a flag carrier or even two. The airline signs as you drive up to the terminal include every Central Asian -stan and North Korea's Air Koryo, and sitting at one of the satellite wings on an ordinary afternoon, in less than an hour I saw planes from Yemenia, Cathay, Etihad, Finnair, Royal Nepal, SAS, Indian, Swiss, Lufthansa, an assortment of strange Chinese cargo planes and even Druk Air's little plane from Bhutan (which seems to spend an awful lot of time on the tarmac at BKK).
And then it was time to crawl back into the tin of sardines, although I had an extra half an hour to planespot while they looked for the can opener. The plane was pretty close to full and I again made the amateur mistake of plonking myself down in the non-reclining seat just before the exit row, which means that I am currently typing this contorted into a sort of sitting lotus position, with the laptop propped up against my chest at a 30-degree angle -- and the lady in front hasn't even reclined yet. (Later she did, and I had to yank up the angle to 60; this isn't very ergonomic anymore.) As too often tends to be the case with midweek LCC flights, much of the plane was taken up by a mainland Chinese tour group, making the sort of racket only a mainland Chinese tour group can and spitting on the floor for good measure. Aside from the occasional horrrrrrk-pthui!, the flight was uneventful, and we landed at the Budget Terminal with nary a bump.
In contrast to Changi's main terminal, where disembarkation inspections are a rare treat, the cheapo plebs on Tiger are all assumed to be contraband-smuggling criminals and everybody was treated to security checks and X-rays on landing. (I wonder what happened to the jumpy Thai guy who'd been sitting next to me, who clutched his bag nervously for the entire flight and even took it with him to the bathroom.) As compensation, though, the floor of the corridor from the gate to the arrivals hall has been painted with smiley faces.
In the mood for more pain, I danced the bus-MRT-MRT-MRT ballet again and arrived back home an hour later to a huge pile of mail, no sentient lifeforms crawling out of the fridge and even my trusty yucca palm still alive, if visibly gasping for water. Half the way around the world and back complete -- now it was time for the other half.
mad_atta
Jul 23, 06, 6:57 am
jpatokal, thank you so much for another truly superb trip report. Just the right level of detail, an entertaining writing style and a nice line in thoughtful/provocative asides combine to make your reports a joy to read.
So when's the next trip? :)
Rejuvenated
Jul 23, 06, 4:20 pm
Great Report. ^
Kiwi Flyer
Jul 23, 06, 8:38 pm
Another great report of a great trip ^^^
One of the things I like most about Don Muang is that, unlike the great majority of the world's airports, it doesn't feel dominated by a flag carrier or even two. The airline signs as you drive up to the terminal include every Central Asian -stan and North Korea's Air Koryo, and sitting at one of the satellite wings on an ordinary afternoon, in less than an hour I saw planes from Yemenia, Cathay, Etihad, Finnair, Royal Nepal, SAS, Indian, Swiss, Lufthansa, an assortment of strange Chinese cargo planes and even Druk Air's little plane from Bhutan (which seems to spend an awful lot of time on the tarmac at BKK).
Indeed BKK is one of the few airports I crane my neck while taxiing in and out to see what exotic airlines are there.
jacob_m
Jul 24, 06, 5:19 am
Hilarious read and great photos!!! :D Well done!! ^
jpatokal
Jul 26, 06, 6:13 am
The audience adjourns for light refreshments, while the Singapore Multi-Cultural Racial Harmony Orchestra entertains stragglers with a well-scripted ballet performance of "Let's All Consume Together to Ensure Changi's Hub Position in the 21st Century".
Where How What
SIN-CGK SQ Mosquito-infested data centers
CGK-SIN SQ 12-hour stopover at home
SIN-BKK FD A night at the Taj Mahal with a tattooed lesbian and
a $3 bottle of Thai rum
BKK-KUL AK The infinite edge of the Shang and
the one-ringgit tour of Putrajaya
KUL-DPS AK Chilling in Seminyak, jazzing it up in Ubud
DPS-CGK QZ What happens in Jakarta, stays in Jakarta
(unless they're Uzbek pole dancers)
CGK-SIN VF Nasi goreng spesial
SIN-BKK TG 300,000 Buddhas at the temple of the UFO-worshipping cult,
12 nekkid gogo dancers and lots of baby oil
BKK-SIN TG Anticlimax on the Airbus 300-600
SIN-BKK TG Holidaying at the Inn
BKK-SIN TG The final buh-bye to Don Muang
http://jpatokal.iki.fi/photo/travel/Singapore/Chinatown/NewMajestic_PartyGirl_Leg_tn.JPG (http://jpatokal.iki.fi/photo/travel/Singapore/Chinatown/NewMajestic_PartyGirl_Leg.JPG) http://jpatokal.iki.fi/photo/travel/Thailand/WatDhammakaya/MemorialHall_Closeup_tn.JPG (http://jpatokal.iki.fi/photo/travel/Thailand/WatDhammakaya/MemorialHall_Closeup.JPG) http://jpatokal.iki.fi/photo/travel/Thailand/Bangkok/City/Marriott_Tsunami_tn.JPG (http://jpatokal.iki.fi/photo/travel/Thailand/Bangkok/City/Marriott_Tsunami.JPG)
End of intermission: September 2006
Continue onto... The Double-Almost-RTW, Part 2: SIN-LHR-Europe-YOW and back on SQ/AC C and lotsa LCCs (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?p=6462313)