Lookout Point at Pattaya

If you do not have much time to spend at Pattaya, you can proceed to Khao Phra Tamnak (เขาพระตำหนัก) lookout point to get a great view of the beaches between Pattaya and Jomtien. The lookout point is also known as Khao Phra Bat (เขาพระบาท) and is located within the Royal Thai Navy's (RTN) Radio station 104.75Mhz. Besides the statue dedicated to the founder of the RTN, there is a small gift shop within the radio station. You can buy some RTN memorabilia such as base ball cap or stickers.

Interesting "Shirts", Oops Sights

Was travelling back to Bangkok from Chonburi. Saw this interesting sight along elevated highway into the city. The buildings, I believe has been left uncompleted since the 1997 financial crisis.

Ratchaprasong Interactions

During the trip to Bangkok two weeks ago, went to the shopping district at Ratchaprasong and noticed that life is slowing returning to normal. The crowds are back and the infamous Bangkok traffic jams have reappeared.

Alighted at Siam BTS interchange and headed for Zen/Central World. While shopping centres such Siam Paragon was not affected by the political protest in May 2010, Zen/Central World was really in bad shape. The damage by the indiscriminate arson attack has left Zen and the tower block badly damaged. Eventhough Isetan survived the arson attack, it was not opened to the public then.





Over at Siam Square, the damage to Siam Theatre was equally bad.

There were also damages to shopping centres at Victory Monument.



Nevertheless, it appears that the events in May 2010 has been quickly forgotten. Siam Paragon was filled with shoppers in the evening on a weekday. Noted part of the crowd are youths and a large portion consisting of students from nearby schools and Chulalongkorn University.

Some comments about the BTS:

1. Quite like the concept of a linkway running from Siam BTS to nearby MBK and also towards the Ratchaprasong interaction. This helps to cut down the need to go down to street level and dealing with vehicle traffic.

2. I was pleasant surprised by the orderly manner that Bangkokians adopted when taking the BTS.
While expecting passengers to surge into the train, Bangkokians at Siam BTS queued in single file beside the train entrance and waited for all passengers to alight before entering the train.

Bangkok - Heritage Hotel

Went to Bangkok last week after leaving the country in 1997. It appears that the city is slowly coming back to life after the political upheaval from Mar to May 2010. Speaking to the local residents, they are generally relieved that the political situation has improved for the moment.

Stayed at a relatively new business hotel near the business and shopping district of Silom. The one-year-old Heritage Hotel

is conveniently located along Narathives Road, less than five minutes walk to the Chong Nonsi BTS station.

The rates are generally affordable averaging about Thai Baht 2,000 a day.
We got a good rate probably because the take up rate was still improving in Jun 2010.

What I like about this place is that there are plenty of food joints just around the corner along Navathives Road. If you do not want to take the BTS, a 15 minutes casual walk would bring to the nearby shopping centres such as Silom Complex located next to the Saladaeng BTS Station.

Thoughts on Laos

Before I visited Laos in late April 2009, I did not think much of this land-locked country sandwiched by bigger neighbours all round (Thailand in the south, Vietnam in the east, Myanmar in western and China in the north).

Obviously, given the lack of foreign investments, I was already prepared for the lack of infrastructure development in Laos. That said, I was nevertheless charmed by the laid back nature in Vientiane. Although I did not intend to stay at Novotel as it was not conveniently located in relation to the places of interest, I found the colonial design of the hotel rather refreshing. The staff at the hotel were friendly and the lighting and decorations helped to enhance the atmosphere.

My interest in this country grew gradually and I was fortunate to chance across a Lao/Thai jointly produced movie titled Good Morning Luang Prabang (in Laotian Sabaidee Luang Prabang).
Sabaidee is a greeting used by Laotian in every day life (similar to sawasdee in Thailand or G'Day in Australia) while Luang Prabang was the former capital of ancient Lao.

A rave reviews have been written about the movie, the first Lao language movie in more than 30 years. Albeit the simple story plot, I felt that the movie had managed to convey the view that Laos does have really nice sights

Lan Xang - Food

Vientiane is a small city with a population of more than 700,000. With such a small base, it is not surprising to find that they have only one air-condition shopping centre. Known as Talart Sao (Morning market), the centre operates from 9am to about 5 in the evening.

The three levels of shops offer a limited choice for tourists. Level one has shops selling clothing, electronic goods, antiques, a cafe and a fast food restaurant. At level two, there are a whole collection of goldsmith shops. Level three offer a varied selections of shops selling souvenirs, bags and wallets and DVDs. There is also a food court offering local delicacies.



Photo of food coupon. Unused coupons can be refunded.











Lao-style wanton noodle. They do not add tomato ketchup.









Laotian tuk tuk stand beside the shopping centre.

Visit to the former Land of a Million Elephants (Lan Xang)

From 29 Apr to 1 May 2009, went on a short trip to Vientiane, otherwise known as Vieng Chan in Indochina. The journey from Singapore to Vieng Chan took slightly more than four hours as there is a need to transit at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport (New Bangkok International Airport).






We arrived at Wattay International at about 1.45 pm and went straight to Novotel Hotel located about 10 minutes away. The hotel is situated at the junction of the main road from the airport, Luang Prabang Road and Samsenthai and Setthatirath Road. The four-storey hotel is designed in old colonial style.
The room where I stayed overlook a park dedicated to legendary Chao Fa Nguom the Great who established Lan Xang empire.

Culture Shock

Observations While In Vietnam

If you have not practice defensive driving, Viet Nam is a good place to start

Sometimes it makes me wonder if they have highway code tests

WHY?

The ratio of motorcyclists versus motor vehicles

WATCH OUT FOR THE MOTORCYCLISTS

- Safety helmets is a fashion item. They have all sorts of designs, most of them would not have pass our safety standards

- Talking on your mobile while riding your motorbike

- Sit up to four to a motorcycle (grown-ups)

- Motorcyclists or cyclists riding abreast as if they own the road

- Motorcyclists riding in the middle of single lane road

- Motorcyclists filtering from a minor road to a major road without looking out for oncoming vehicles. It is amazing as I have still not seen a single accident of such nature during my time in Viet Nam

BUS PASSENGERS - WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

- Get on the bus as fast as you can as the bus driver does not wait for you to get on before moving off

- Get off the bus as fast as you can as the bus driver does not wait for you to alight before moving off

- The bus driver decides at his pleasure whether to stop and pick up passengers

PADESTRIANS

- Walking across a major circle/road crossing without a care to the world

HOW NOT TO "RUN OVER" ROAD USERS

- Blowing your car or motorcycle horn every five minutes (sometimes it makes me wonder if it has become a habit)

- Be ready to do emergency stop

WHAT ELSE?

- Passengers on buses get motion sickness. Plastic bags are readily available if you need one. What puzzles me if that when Vietnamese ride their motorcycles, they do not suffer from the sickness

- It takes more than nine months to resurface a stretch of road

AS ALWAYS IN A FEEL GOOD MOVIE, THERE IS A HAPPY ENDING

There is still some good like

Giving up your seats to the elder, expectant mothers, young children

National Science Museum

Who says that a visit to the museum is boring. Well, a visit to the National Science Museum in Tokyo changed my perception. In 2006, my wife and I brought our kids to Tokyo for holidays. Sure, everyone knows about Tokyo Disneyland. I love Tokyo Disneyland too. Actually, it was my second visit to Disneyland, the first was about seventeen years ago during our honeymoon. But you cannot survive just on Disneyland with kids in Tokyo. While researching on what to do in Tokyo, I changed upon the National Science Museum and decided to include it in my itinerary. I had some apprehension, of course, as I do not know how my children would feel about a visit to the museum.

Just a bit of history. The National Science Centre was established in Oct 1871 and went by the name of Ministry of Education Museum. It adopted its latest name in Jun 1949. The main museum is located in Ueno with a branch in Shinjuku. Besides being known as a major train station in Japan, Ueno is a nature locale signified by the spacious Ueno Park (which include the zoo). Of course, Ueno is also home to some of Tokyo's finest cultural sites, including the Tokyo National Museum, the National Museum of Western Art, and the National Science Museum, as well as a major public concert hall (extracted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ueno,_Tokyo).

Given the limited time (we went in the afternoon), we decided to focus on the new building at the museum. We were not disappointed as it is basically an all-in-one museum covering themes such as evolution of life to a look into the future -the mystery of space. I would say my children were definitely attracted by the dinosaurs display ranging from T-Rex to the genial plant eaters. In the section covering Science and Technology, there were many hands on experiments for visitors - young and old- to try out. This is something like our very own Singapore Science Centre.

Ghibli Museum, Mitaka

Everyone knows about Disneyland when you mention Tokyo but how many are familiar with Ghibli Museum. Ghibli (pronounced Jiburi or Gee Blee), you say, what is it? Japanese is known for introducing Anime and this is a museum dedicated to the works of the well-known Japanese animation collaborators Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata. As my kids were on holidays with us, I had specially planned a short trip out of Tokyo to see this museum.

Several anime features created by Studio Ghibli have won the Animage Anime Grand Prix award including Castle in the Sky in 1986, My Neighbor Totoro in 1988, and Kiki's Delivery Service in 1989. In 2002, Spirited Away won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature, the first anime film to win an Academy Award (extracted from Wikipedia).

From our accommodation of Ikekuburo, we took the subway to Shinjuku and from there switched to the the Chuo Line for the town of Mitaka. Tickets to the museum has to be purchased prior to the visit but before Nov 2007, those who willing to take a risk could purchase entrance tickets at Mitaka's JTB office. We were the fortunate ones as we decided to leave Tokyo earlier. A guide on how to purchase tickets presented by Lorenzo Conti is at http://digilander.libero.it/joe.chip/ghibli_e.htm

After breakfast and purchasing the tickets, we took a slow stroll through the town on our way to the museum. Upon reaching the museum, we were greeted by a colourful structure looming in a park. In the museum, there were many displays related to the many works of the company. Unfortunately, photographs is not allowed inside the main museum. Visitors could also enjoy specially created some short animation clips at their small theatre.

A special momento for visit the museum is definitely the entrance ticket fashioned like a strip of negative. See picture at http://www.flickr.com/photos/riverseal/386146507/.

We also attempted to visit to Sanrio Puroland, the theme dedicated to Hello Kitty but unfortunately we arrived 5 minutes after the ticketing booth closed. Oh well, the next best thing was to explore the Tama town, otherwise known as Hello Kitty Town.

Den Do Festival

On the web, a search on festivals in Vietnam will produce numerous results. That's right, many provinces and even some villages have their own unique event to commemorate each year. Some of the events are closely linked to the arrival of the New Year while some are to celebrate and remember historic fiqures.

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to enjoy the sounds and sights of one such event. This took place in Apr 2008 in the nearby province of Bac Ninh in the village of Dinh Bang. The village is located in Tu Son District, about 20 km northeast of Ha Noi. I went there by public bus from Long Bien Terminal (Bus 10).

The three-day festival is held at Den Do (Do Temple) to commemorate the enthronement of King Ly Thai To. He is best known for establishing Ha Noi, then known as Thang Long, as the capital of Vietnam in 1010. Den Do was built under the Ly Dynasty in 1030 in Chau Co Phap village (now Dinh Bang village), in Tu Son district, where King Ly Thai To was born. The temple was to dedicated to the King and then his seven successors. King Ly’s descendants from the Republic of Korea have returned to join local descendants and thousands of pilgrims in the festival, which annually takes place on the 14th-16th day of the third lunar month (which fall on April 19-21 this year) with the main rituals on the 15th day. The Ly family from the RoK is descendants of prince Ly Long Tuong, seventh son of Ly Anh Tong (1138-1175), who had to leave the homeland in 1226 to avoid a bloodshed made by the Tran Dynasty which took the throne from the Ly Dynasty. [Italics - extracted from http://www.smiletravelvietnam.com/]

By the time I reached Tu Son, the procession had already started and the bus I was on was caught in a massive jam. Considering this was a one-lane, two-day road, it was a slow crawl. not wanting to miss out, I decided to alight short of our destination and walked the remaining 300m to the junction leading to Dinh Bang.

The procession was a sea of colours when young and old dressed in their traditional costumes lining up in two making their way to Do Temple. Along the way, the procession stopped at Dinh Bang Commune Hall for a short rest. When I arrived at Den Temple, it was filled with many people either offering prayers or just to soak in the atmosphere. (to be continued)

Chua Huong (Perfume Pagoda)

In Vietnamese, Chua means pagoda while Den means temple. Chua generally is associated with Buddhist while Den is for worshipping ancestors. And in Vietnam, there are many pagodas and temples. In fact, all villages have at least one temple.

Towards the end of my nine-month stay in Ha Noi, my foreign friends and myself made a final field trip to Chua Huong in Ha Tay province. Located about 70km south of Ha Noi, Perfume Pagoda is one of the most popular pagodas in Vietnam. The festival of the pagoda is one of the longest, stretching from Feb to late-Apr each year. It is said that all Vietnamese endeavour to visit the pagoda once in their lifetime.

Well, after studying basic Vietnamese for close to nine-month, I eagerly look forward to my trip. The three of us (Chinese Huang Min and Thai Weerapan) made our trip on a Sunday. Through her contact, Huang Min managed to arrange for a taxi (engaged for a day) for the three of us. We started off from our school in Hoai Duc District at about 0700H. From our school, the taxi headed towards the provincial capital of Ha Dong before taking Highway 1 for the journey to our wharf for our boat trip to the pagoda.

At about 0900H, we reached Ben Duc pier. There were not much crowd there as the festival had ended a fortnight earlier. We had to pay a little more to get a boat specially for the three of us. According to our boatwoman, most of the inhabitants at Ben Duc are involved in the tourism business and each boat owner are limited to one trip every month (or three month. I cannot recollect exactly). The boat ride took us about one and a half hour.

I have not been to the famous Guilin in Chinese but I was told that the scenery along Yen Vi river to Perfume Pagoda is not unlike that of Guilin. Upon reaching the foot of the mountain leading to Perfume Pagoda, we made our way to our first destination Thien Tru Temple (Den Thien Tru). Thereafter, we made our way to the cable car station for our accent to Perfume Pagoda as we did not want to make the difficult trip up. The trip up by cable car allowed us to enjoy the wonderful limestone outcrops formation in the region. Fortunately for us, it started drizzling after we reached Perfume Pagoda.

When we reached the entrance to the pagoda, I was surprised to find that we have to descend to a large cavern. This reminder me of a similar religious complex I had visited 14 years ago in Thailand's Petchburi province. There were many worshippers at the pagoda and we were told that no meat items are allowed as offerings.

After spending some time there, we decided to make our descend to the boat pier for our trip back. By the time we returned to Ben Duc, it was almost 1630 in the evening.

Visit to Cao Bang, Northern Vietnam

On 14 and 15 Jun 2008, my foreign friends and myself made possibly the last visit out province before we finished our nine-month course. We left at about 0600H on Saturday morning. The group included Dima, Park, Cuờng, Mấn, Anan, Mee, Supra and myself. Also accompanying us for the trip were Huong and Phuong. Huong, who is the cousin of cô Yến, is a second-year French-language student at the Academy. Phuong is Huong’s close friend from her secondary school. Phuong is a second-year student at the University of Commerce.

The journey to Cao Bằng took us through Thái Nguyên and Bắn Kạn province. Before pushing off for Cao Bằng, we stopped at Sóc Son for breakfast. The first part of the journey took us through relatively flat terrain. Once we hit Bắn Kạn, the terrain became mountainous and we had to drive through a series of uphill climbs. As we entered Cao Bằng, the drive became more harrowing as some of the climbs took us through some serious swerving curves up the mountains. The view from the drive, I must admit is spectacular.

We reached Cao Bằng at about 1230H. We had lunch and checked into a relatively new hotel overlooking the river dividing Cao Bằng. In the afternoon, we headed for Bác Bó on a north westerly direction on route 203, the ride there took us about 2 hours as the road was not in perfect condition. Along the way, we saw widespread cultivation of tobacco plant. Located about 50km from Cao Bằng, Bác Bó is located just across the border between Việt Nam and Trung Quốc. It was the base for Hố Chì Minh when returned to Việt Nam after about 30 years abroad in 1941. It was here that he set out on his quest to liberate Việt Nam until 1944.

Sunday we set off for Thác Bản Giốc (Bản Giốc Waterfall) at 0600H. The journey took us about 3 hours this time on north easterly direction on route 204. Compared with the journey to Bác Bó, the scenery on the second journey was simply breathtaking. This was enhanced by the morning rain making the mountain shrouded in mist. The scene resembled possibly what Shangri-La might have looked like. The trip took us through many climbs and valleys cultivated with rice, maize and tobacco. The rice was cultivated on terraces.

Before heading for the waterfall, we went to a border checkpoint at Tà Lùng. After breakfast at Tà Lùng, we headed for our final destination. The sight at Bản Giốc was awesome. The wide waterfall is also located along the border, which brings to mind Niagara Falls at the US - Canadian border. From our location, we can see Chinese tourists across the river. We even met and spoke to some Chínese tourists who went on raft ride to see the waterfall close up.

At about 1100H, we left the place and made our slow journey back to Hà Nội. We reached the Academy at about 2100H. Although the journey was laborious, it was worth the effort as the scene at the waterfall was a sight to behold.