Articles from this Category
11 January 2014
Mark arrived from Beijing last night after a 2 hour delay. We only bad a brief chat then, so I had a better catch up with him over breakfast. We had planned on going to the Siberian Tiger Park and there was no reason to change the plan. The hotel taxi drivers were around and […]
10 January 2014
As if to repeat yesterday morning, we explored our neighbourhood to start off the day. We found the old Jewish area where Jews from Russia and Europe settled to escape persecution. We didn’t have many things we wanted to do today, as we planned on saving some activities for when Mark (a friend living in […]
9 January 2014
The sun rose around 0700 but we didn’t rush to get out of bed. After a simple hotel buffet breakfast, we wandered around the old part of Harbin a little. The weather was cold, clear and crisp. We found the walking street which was only 2 streets away. What we needed was a scarf and […]
8 January 2014
Kim, being on NZ time woke up about 0400. As we had retired about 2200 last night, I more-or-less had enough sleep too. We chatted and got ready around 0600 and left the hotel at 0645 to find the E21 bus just outside the hotel; perfect timing! We arrived at the airport just less than […]
4 December 2013
Killing time I slept till 0700 and did some admin on the computer till 1000 when I had brunch of fishball kwayteow soup. Uniqlo beckoned again and I went to their flagship store next to Times Square which was impressive even before their expansion slated for next week. That killed half a day and I […]
3 December 2013
Immigration was a breeze today. It always seems to be the case when I need to kill time and when the queues are shocking, I have a tight self-connect to make. I took the A21 bus into Mong Kok and was at the Lucky Hostel by 0730 waking up the manager from bed. I was […]
3 March 2013
I toyed with the idea of replacing my phone. I have a Sony Ericsson Android which was getting badly scratched on the screen; it does everything but in slow motion as it has a slow single-core processor. I felt no urgency in replacing it though; I like its more compact form compared to most smartphones. But on […]
18 December 2012
It was a 0600 arrival into Hong Kong and that saw me reach downtown Nathan Road by around 0730. I’ve been let into hotels at this time before but luck wasn’t with me today. For a start, the hotel reception didn’t open till 0900 which meant that I had to go sit at McDonald’s with […]
17 June 2012
Above: Gentrified hutong area of Beijing known as Nanluoguxiang. Final exploration My last day in China today. I fly out at 2355 bound for Dubai and continuing to Karachi. I walked to a gentrified hutong area known as Nanluoguxiang. It was quite nice and shaded by willows as it was a 37degC day. Most shops […]
16 June 2012
At breakfast I met my fellow-countrymen. Funny that in China and when I travel, I’m normally unmistakably ethnically Chinese. But for other Malaysians on the road, I’m usually of Malayo-Polynesian extract … being Iban, Bidayuh or even Malay. As I’ve been in Beijing a couple of times, I had done most of the sights before […]