Toledo & Burns

This week I had to may a quick overnight trip to Toledo. I can say that Iberia is not one of my favorite airlines after I learned that they charge for water on 2.5 hour flights. Not providing water irked me a little. Toledo seemed nice, though I didn't actually get to see much of the city. It's set up on top of hills and has a several large historic buildings. My meeting was held in what seemed to be a military academy and around 11am a drum beat started and continued for the next several hours. The students had clearly not done something well and were being punished by hours of marching and being shouted at. My GPS did not serve me well either as the maps in it seemed to date from the Franco era. I had to drive to and from the airport in Madrid, and the traffic in Madrid can be terrible. Likewise, the road signs are terrible, making it hard to get around. But, it's good I learned because I'll be back in Madrid soon and I'll know better what to expect.

The second item this week was Burns Night. One my friends from work decided to organize a Burns Night, a Scottish semi-holiday involving haggis, scotch, and reading Burns. He had freshly caught Haggis (clockwise Haggis naturally) flown down from Scotland, and an admirable collection of Scotch. It was a fun night, so until next year.

Christmas Vacation: Phuket, the place your flight attendant warned you about

It's true, he did. He said the souvenirs are way over priced and to watch out for rip offs, and that even he gets bad prices even though he's Thai.

The final (and longest) stop of the trip was Phuket, for a bit of time at the beach. The weather was just as hot and even more humid, but at least there was the water to cool you down. Phuket would barely exist if it weren't for tourism, so the entire place is mainly hotels, shops and restaurants catering to tourists. Aside from the beaches and scenery, there's nothing to really see or do. Patong (the section of Phuket we stayed in) was not to my taste at all. It is just row upon row of high pressure souvenir shops, massage parlours, sleezy bars, and sex shows. At night, the streets are full of women in mini-skirts and tube tops offering massages (but I'm guessing that's not all they were offering). If I went again, I would definitely go to a different and quieter area, probably to one of the big resorts outside of town.

I spent my days going around on day trips to different islands by speedboat for sightseeing and snorkeling. The area is full of little islands that jut up out of the water and are quite pretty. The first day I went to the area around Krabi, an area known for its beaches. It was probably the least exciting of the day trips, but still pretty cool.


The next trip was to Phi Phi island. This day was mostly visiting different beautiful beaches for swimming and relaxing, and included the beach from the movie The Beach.


The last trip was around Phang Nga bay. This was probably the best of the trips and was a mix of sightseeing, snorkeling and visiting beaches. The scenery of rocky islands jutting up from the water was really spectacular. It included the island that was used in the James Bond movie Man with the Golden Gun.

And also a fishing village built entirely on stilts in the middle of the river.


For a place that was hit by a massive tsunami just a few years ago, it is completely rebuilt and I could see no evidence that anything had ever happened. The only noticeable things were the tsunami evacuation signs everywhere and markers saying how high the waves were in that location.

The food in Thailand was quite good, though not as hot as I had expected. I'm used to Thai food being very spicy, but I didn't find anything too spicy (maybe they toned it down because I'm a foreigner). And, like Singapore and unlike Holland, Thailand also has lots of 7-elevens, Carrefours, and Tescos....

After all that, it was back to the airport for the flight back to Singapore and then Amsterdam. It was a really good trip.

The pictures are here, here, and here.

Christmas Vacation: Ayutthaya

After Bangkok, the next stop was the ancient Thai capital of Ayutthaya, about 80km from Bangkok. Instead of trying to figure out how to get there and what to do with our bags, we instead hired the hotel car for the day. This meant we had a very nice air conditioned car, a safe place to keep our luggage, someone to drive us to all the various temples and sights in Ayutthaya, and an easy way of getting to the airport when we were done. All in all, a smart move.

Ayutthaya is a collection of many ruins of temples and palaces that made up the former capital before it was destroyed and relocated to Bangkok. There are far too many to see in just one day, but in total I think we managed to see six. Some are in better condition than others, but you get the impression of what must have been a major and prosperous city in its time.

Some highlights are prangs & buddhas, the buddha covered by a tree


The big buddha

and the really big buddha.


The rest of the pictures are here.

Christmas Vacation: Bangkok

Bangkok is bigger (or at least feels it) and more chaotic than Singapore, and much harder to get around. The metro doesn't really go where most of the tourist attractions are, and the taxis and tuk-tuks seem to be run by scam artists. Mostly I relied on the hotel car to take me around. The Thai people themselves are very warm and friendly, but there is a group of them that try to make a buck at the expense of tourists. Still, even at its worst, the hassles were less than in Egypt.

The weather was very hot, humid, and sunny, with the only respite being shade, car rides, and the hotel. In spite of that, I managed without too much suffering.

The hotel I stayed in was, um, interesting. It was quite new and in a good location, but they were going for a modern, artistic feel and took it way too far. The open plan bathroom was a little over the top (who needs an open view of the bedroom from the bathroom?). The interior, at first, I though was mostly bare concrete. I was wrong, the interior was completely finished and then painted to emulate the look of unfinished concrete. Who does that?

The time in Bangkok was spent mostly in the main tourist area around the Grand Palace. Within the Grand Palace complex itself, there is the palace and the amazingly impressive Wat Phra Kaew, or temple of the emerald Buddha. It has to rank as one of the most impressive sights I have ever seen. It is a collection of several temples, with detailed murals surrounding them that tell the history of Thailand. Gold leaf, intricate carvings, and statues are everywhere. I don't really know how to describe it. I didn't really even know how to look a it; there is just so much to take in you don't even know where to start. My pictures don't come close to doing the place justice, you'll just have to add it to your list of places to visit to understand.

The emerald Buddha itself, is actually quite small, though it sits on a very high throne surrounded by gold and jewels. It wouldn't look at all out of place in an Indiana Jones movie. Unfortunately, they don't allow pictures of it.

The Grand Palace is the former residence of the king, but is still used for some official functions. It is in a similar style to the temple, but is less elaborate and more approachable. Unfortunately, you aren't allowed to go inside most of it.


The next stop was Wat Pho, home to the giant reclining Buddha. It was only a few blocks from the palace, so we decided to walk. Along the way, we ran into a nice guy who wanted to practice his english and ask us how we were liking Bangkok. Then he told us that Wat Pho was closed (the tour books and the hotel driver warned us to ignore anyone who tells you things are closed, so suspicion was aroused) and we should instead go to see some other temples. (They were temples that would have been worth seeing on a longer visit, but I'd decided to skip them because they were more distant and less impressive). He said for 60baht we could hire a tuk-tuk to take us to all these temples and wait for us while we went inside. That is less than $2 for half a day of siteseeing, so even more suspicion. Then he said we should only use certain kinds of tuk-tuks (more suspicion), and then one of those kind suddenly turned up (now convinced of a scam). I balked and didn't get in and made an excuse to walk away to take a picture and didn't go back. A very common scam I've heard of in Thailand (from books and other people) is for tuk-tuks to offer you a tour for a ridiculously cheap price and then take you instead to an out of the way gift shop where you don't know your way back and try to pressure you to buy stuff. For bringing you to the store, the driver gets a kickback. Generally, all you lose is some time, but on a trip like this time is the most valuable thing you have and you can't afford to waste it like that.

Finally reaching Wat Pho, it was again very intersting an elaborate, though not to the extent as Wat Phra Kaew.

The highlight of it is the giant, gold, buddha. By giant, I mean, giant.


The last stop for the day was Wat Arun, across the river from the other sites. The unique thing about Wat Arun is that it is made out of broken china plates. The chinese ships that came to Bangkok to trade carried ballast with them on the way. In ancient China, the cheapest thing to use for ballast wasn't rocks or bricks like other people would use, but broken china. And what's really amazing, is that when the Thais built the temple, they went through all the broken china and found the pieces that originally went together and reassembled them!



After Wat Arun, it was late in the day, so we decided to take a taxi back. At the taxi stand, the driver refused to use the meter and insisted we pay him a ridiculously high (for Bangkok) amount of money. It was even high than what it cost to have the hotel car drive us there in the first place. To make it better, he flat out refused to negotiate down at all and said no other driver there would take us. Being tired, we paid, but we decided we'd had enough of taxis and tuk-tuks.

The rest of the pictures are
here.

Christmas Vacation: Singapore

Now that I'm back from the Christmas vacation, it's time to report on the goings on. When I left Holland for the 12 hour flight to Singapore, it was in the midst of the 3rd straight day of freezing fog. You could barely see anywhere, and everything was slowly accumulating a hard crust of ice. Had the sun been out, it might have looked pretty, but without any light, it was just miserable. The plus side to this, though, was that a lot of the incoming flights that were trying to connect with mine didn't make it, so there was lots of extra space on the plane to spread out.

Singapore. Singapore was awesome. I didn't have high expectations for it, thinking it would be just another big city, but I really enjoyed it and could totally picture myself living there. It's clean, modern, efficient, and everything is in english (though a lot of people struggle with it). One of the best parts of Singapore was the people. Everywhere I went I felt special and important; from museums to restaurants, there were always people around being helpful and checking to make sure everything was going well. That was really nice. Getting around was also really easy as the taxis were very cheap and plentiful.

It's quite a scenic city at night and everywhere was decorated for Christmas (and everywhere was playing non-stop carols...)



Day 1 was spent visiting Sentosa Island, Chinatown, and Little India. Sentosa has an acquarium, historic fort, and outdoor activities; while Chinatown and Little India have impressive temples and lots of little shops.


Day 2 was spent walking around the downtown area and visiting malls. Shopping seems to be the national pastime of Singapore, and there are tons of huge shopping malls everywhere, some general malls, and some that are devoted entirely to specific things like computers or electronics.


The weather during the trip was hot and humid, with a predictable monsoon storm in the afternoons for a couple hours. But, there were 7-elevens on every corner where you could buy a cold drink or a slurpee. Better still, in Singapore everything is air conditioned down to freezing cold temperatures, very nice:) If you're ever in the neighborhood, you should definitely pay Singapore a visit.

Oh, and they have Carrefour there too, unlike Holland...

The rest of the pictures can be found here.