The First Trip of 2008: Palawan

With January come and gone there's an urgency to get one trip under the belt and with Pris' birthday coming up we decided to go to Palawan.  I've been there one assignment before but Pris has never been so it's off to Palawan we go.  Okay, for all my talk about green destinations, El Nido seems a bit of a sell out, it is a bit of a high end destination but it is located in a marine sanctuary and it is to celebrate a birthday, so there.  

If anyone has any great ideas of what to do there or where else we can go in the immediate vicinity please let me know.  If you guys want to come along drop me a line.

My New Ixus 860 IS . . . and the greatest chess game in the world .. . not

I recently bought a point and shoot, a Canon Ixus 860IS. I think I mentioned in my earlier posts that I needed one because I don't like lugging my huge SLR kit with me, especially if it's just a quiet dinner with friends and because Pris and I don't have have too many pictures together when we go abroad ( I don't like stressing complete strangers out with my SLR when I ask them to take a picture of me and her).

A point and shoot solves both these problems. I'm quite happy with it and remember the times when I first got my SLR. There was a definite period of frustration with the SLR because I was taking great pictures with my point and shoot back then, a Canon Powershot S45, and with all the manual controls of the SLR I just wasn't producing. Jump ahead a few months of self study, consultations with other photographers and a ton of photography books and I finally figured out how to take great pictures with the SLR. Pictures a point and shoot would have a hard time taking.

Still, a point and shoot has its place. Went to a dinner with my wife's friends when one of their genius kids challenged me to a chess game. I couldn't have taken the picture of him moving his pieces with an SLR (unless I crouched down, moving some furniture and and distracting the kid which on hindsight might not have been a bad idea). Also handed the camera off to someone else for them to take a picture, no problems there either. You can guess who won the chess game. . .sorry games. He won two out of three, all this time watching cartoons !#@$&*

Vegas Baby

I remember the old TV series "Vegas" with Robert Ulrich. I remember how cool he was when he drove his car into his house, not into a separate garage. Beyond that however, I didn't really consider Las Vegas as much of a destination.

Gambling was never a really big thing for me, further re-enforced by the fact that I seek out the slot machines that take dimes, but since then I've been intrigued how it turned itself from a hard core gambling place to one that you could bring the whole family to. Gambling is still the major activity but there's so much more to do. We took in "O" by Cirque de Soleil, stuffed ourselves in the never ending buffets and basically just walked around taking in all the sights. There were the nightly fountain shows of the Mirage and the Bellagio, the shopping arcades in practically all of the hotels and of course the weird and wonderful things you could see in huge individual gambling halls of the different hotels. There was the lion display at the MGM and I for one wanted to get married again, this time under a Federation mandate, maybe even by Captain Kirk on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. Guests would include Klingons and Ferengi and the reception to follow at Quarks bar (sorry, my trekkie self is coming out). You can get this done at the Las Vegas Hilton which has a permanent "Star Trek: The Experience" hall. Pris didn't feel intergalactically romantic so we had to pass on that. One day though we'll push through with it, hope 7 of 9 can be her bridesmaid . . .

Gear Galore

I'm a bit of a techie so I thought I'd share what I bring along on trips with me in terms of photo gear. I wish I could just take a point and shoot camera but the magazines I take pictures for need hi-res format images so I need to bring my DSLR and that is where the trouble starts. For my basic gear I bring my Canon 30D, 10-20mm lens, 17-55mm lens, 100-300mm lens, flash, spare battery, about 8 gig worth of CF cards, photobank hard drive, cleaning kit, battery charger and a carbon fiber tripod. All that is stuffed (except the tripod) in a camera bag and it weighs quite a bit. I'm also starting to bring my back-up camera on trips, a Canon 350D, in case my main camera conks out but luckily this stays in the hotel room unless I need it.

So that's what I bring for the pics I will eventually publish. Other stuff I bring, more for personal holiday memories, are a hard drive video camera and more recently a smaller, easier to bring IXUS 860IS. Pris and I hardly have any pictures together since I don't feel at ease handing my SLRs of to strangers, and most of the time they don't know how to use it properly resulting in badly composed or unfocused pictures. Anyone can use an idiot box though so hopefully there will be more pics of us together. Also, for those times, like a quick dinner out, where you don't expect to take any pictures it's just easier to carry a small IXUS just in case you run into anything interesting.


In any case, good thing I married my photographer's assistant to help me carry my gear.

Airplane

Here's a quickie. I had an afternoon meeting yesterday and as I stepped out of the building to wait for my ride I saw this airplane coming out of the clouds. It was perfectly aligned with the buildings and looked like a scene from some action movie trailer. It's always nice to have a camera handy at times like this and no, I don't go around with my DSLR wherever I go (although this time I wish I had it). This picture was care of my new toy, a Nokia N95 8 gig cellphone. "Hello, hello, wait a minute, got to take this shot . . .click".

"Give me candy . . . "

I’m not sure if I'm overdosing on Discovery and National Geographic Channel but while putting our top ten list of places to go for 2008 I was becoming a little guilty. 2007 was a bumper year for environmental awareness, from the widely publicized “An Inconvenient Truth” to the freaky weather patterns we witnessed in Europe, America and even in our own backyard in Asia. Unfortunately, travel contributes to this in a major way, considering the amount of fossil fuel we use jetting around. One could take less fuel guzzling modes of transportation but living in the Philippines, air travel is the only way to go unless I want to spend months on end on a cargo ship. Beyond the carbon footprint we leave behind when we travel (my trip to Machu Picchu for instance will release 4.6 tons of carbon dioxide into the environment, times two since Pris is coming), there’s the impact we have on the place once we get there. I never really gave it much thought, I always thought I was doing the place I was visiting a favor by going there to spend my money but that really depends.

I picked up a book recently from Lonely Planet called “Code Green” which is a guide to some of the best “Green” destinations to go to. A lot of it is filled with real nature destinations and it’s really affecting my choice of destinations. More importantly it has a few sections on responsible travel, as opposed to eco toursim which has been so misapplied it has lost all meaning. It talks about how to interact responsibly with locals, how to work with tour groups that employ locals properly, how not to haggle below a minimum point for services, etc. I highly recommend it.

Here’s one tip they have that I sometimes struggle with – begging. In short, they suggest that you don’t give anything, no money, no sweets, no food, nothing. It just propagates the cycle of begging and has turned some societies and even more tragically, kids, into professional beggars. One doesn’t need to look far, here in the Philippines I run into street urchins everyday and I used to give out sweets every Christmas. Now I’m just going to make contributions to dedicated non-governmental organizations that deal with poverty and who know how to break the chain. If you do feel charitable when you go traveling, search these organizations out and give through them. The picture above is of two Cambodian kids hanging out in Angkor Wat temple complex and yes, they did ask us for candy, fortunately I didn't have any on me. I'm such as sucker for these things.

Sites - Go to www.carbonfootprint.com to see how much of a footprint you leave.

2008 Top Ten . . . maybe more

Around the same time last year, I had started off the year with a grueling and yet strangely satisfying climb up Mount Kinabalu in Malaysia. It was the perfect way to start off the new year and it set the tone for the rest of the year. So far this year I have been . . . . nowhere, and January is fast running out.

To get out of this rut, I sat my wife down and we wrote down our annual top ten places we’d like to go to this year. We started with a review of last year's list and we were pleasantly surprised - Kota Kinabalu, Batanes Islands, Moscow & St. Petersburg, Siem Reap, Sagada, Shanghai, Davao. Towards the end of the year, Pris had already started rattling off more exotic destinations for our next trip. So this year we wanted to go to places where things weren’t so convenient, where there was a little more of a challenge to 1) get to and 2) to be slightly out of our element and just to get overwhelmed by the place. Not all places on this year's list fall under that category, budget wise we couldn’t afford to find far remote places and we do like to pamper ourselves every so often, but the general idea was to go get out there. So here is the list –

• For short long weekend getaways we planned to go to Hanoi / Laos or Myanmar. Local destinations, because you have to support your own, include Palawan, Zamboanga and Siargao. We’ll also end up in the US at some point this year for some family business so I’m trying to squeeze in Yosemite and a bit of biking and river rafting.

• Here are the epic destinations we want to go to but due to budget constraints or leave constraints these are real “wish” list destinations – India, the Silk Road, Iran, Turkey/Greece and the Galapagos Islands (too be substituted with Machu Picchu if my mountaineer friends can plan that trip).

I'll do a report at the end of the year to see which ones we actually got to do.

Fried Rice - Shanghai

My wife was bummed. We had given up earlier on getting genuine Chinese dumplings/buns in a restaurant not only recommended by our friends and the guidebook but which the locals were actually lining up for. Even the insider tip of going to the third floor to get a table was met with another long line of people doing the same and so we had to give up our Chinese Dumplings. The place is called Huxingting Chasi(or the Midlake Pavillian Teahouse for us non-Chinese) and is located next to the central lake of Yu Garden. You can't miss it, if it's lunch time there is a long queue of people lining up. Go and get your buns early unless you have some sort of fetish for queuing up.

When it came to lunch the next day, come hell or high water, my wife was going to have her genuine Chinese lunch. We ended up in Super Brands Mall in Pudong looking for two restaurants recommended by our friends again. The problem was thatall the signs were in Chinese characters but by some divine intervention (and a few hand signals given by people we asked) we finally walked into Xiao Nan Guo restaurant. It's a great place, not all the waiters speak English but the receptionist gets by and gets you a table and the menu has English translation for the dishes.

The problem with eating in Chinese restos the world round is that if it's just two of you then you end up just ordering one or two dishes because the servings are usually family sized. That was not going to stop my wife and so we ended up ordering the following - Tofu in XO sauce, drunken chicken, grandma's pork, shrimp with crab fat and Shanghai style pork dumplings. The last hurdle was ordering rice. There was no rice dish on the menu and when we asked the waitress, who was taking our orders through the tried and tested point and order method, she excused herself to get someone who could speak English. When the head waiter came he suggested we skip the rice since we had ordered quite a lot already and I got the feeling that rice was more of a filler if the main dishes didn't do the job. And looking at our order sheet, the stuff we ordered would do the job. I'm happy to say that by the end of an extended lunch we had finished our all the dishes, except the pork and were thoroughly stuffed. Next stop, back to the hotel for a long siesta.

UP @ 100

Just a quick break from travel, I attended the opening ceremonies for the UP Centennial celebrations. Now I'm not one of those rabid fans that hangs on to the past glories of my college years, there weren't that many glories to speak of anyway (except I met my wife there and when I beat my friend Jon in a race around the academic oval) but I'm telling you walking along in the hundred torch procession riled up my school spirit.

"U - niver - sidad - ng - Pilipinas, U - niver - sidad - ng - Pilipinas" was what the crowd chanted accompanied by the beat of loud drums. The procession went around the academic oval starting with one torch and picking up more torch bearers along the way to mark the 100 years of the UP system.

At the end there was a short speech by UP President Roman and the ritual singing of "UP Naming Mahal", I kind of lip synced it, still don't know the lyrics. Then there was a short presentation by the 2007 UAAP Cheerleading Champions the UP Pep squad before everyone was invited to the academic oval for a free concert.
I hung back to take pictures of the symbol of UP, the oblation which was illuminated in colored lights. Kind of glad I went, nothing like visiting the past and seeing young minds still being molded in the way we were. Then the concert started with operatic melodies wafting over to where I was standing. Time to split this scene, give me the UPM Elvis concerts anytime. . . .

The Greatest Show on Earth . . In Shanghai.

I have always believed that the greatest show on earth was the annual UP Mountaineers concert held every December on a grassy field of the campus.

On my trip to Shanghai however, I attended a show that could rival this for the title of greatest show on earth. We had planned to attend a modern Chinese Acrobatic show but were told by Maggie (our favorite JIA girl) that they had been fully booked but that there was a more traditional show down the road from the hotel. We booked it and went.

Before going I didn’t have too high an expectation. For one, it wasn’t the show recommended by our friends hence not our first choice and second, I thought we’d seen it all before. Sure there will be people jumping through hoops, high flying kicks and kung fu fight scenes. Chuck in a few lion and dragon dances and that would be it, right? Boy was I wrong.

Sorry I wasn’t able to take any pictures, an announcement at the beginning of the show said that due to Intellectual Property rights taking of photos and videos would be banned which I found funny considering we were in China.

In any case, the show was a collection of several smaller shows. It started off with a bunch of girls of different ages doing the normal hand stands but soon evolved into mind blowing set-ups. Visualize this, three girls on all fours, two girls on top of them also on all fours and then one girl on top of these guys. Your standard cheerleader pyramid you think (as did I), big deal. Then, very slowly the girl on top does a hand stand, okay, still no big deal. Then the two girls below her do a hand stand and the three girls below her do one too, can you even visualize that. I couldn’t believe it myself. A cheerleader pyramid executed in handstands. After that moment I was hooked. Act after act was mind blowing. Sure you also had the freaky contortionist girl balancing a set of glasses on her hands, feet, mouth and forehead and turning herself in every which way possible but that was the only slightly freaky thing I saw. You also had the usual acrobat guys jumping through circles placed one on top of another and then you also had comical knife throwing acts where a poor guy from the audience was called to participate.

Also worth mentioning was what I call the lovers act. It consisted of 2 long swaths of cloth hanging from the ceiling which the couple used to tie/hold themselves while swinging around the stage. Some of their moves were very breath taking like when the guy, who is tied to the cloth holds the girl in his arm and then drops her so she can hold onto his leg (no safety ropes or net) and some moves were posed so iconically they could have come from a painting. Imagine man flying through the air around the stage, woman looking up to him hanging on to his hand in the classic lovers pose.

I wish I could have taken pictures, but then again even that wouldn’t do the show any justice. I highly recommend you guys go and catch a show if you can. I couldn’t believe the number of “oohs” and “aaahs” I let lose.

JIA Shanghai

There are a few memorable hotels, inns and hostels I've stayed in. There was one weird moment where we were forced to stay in a motel of questionable repute with my family one Holy Week vacation when everything else was solidly booked. A brief moment of awkwardness came to pass when we had to explain to my mum what the mirror on the ceiling was for- "So you can watch yourself fall asleep".

Then there was the hostel in Barcelona, the one with the paper thin walls where you could hear everything your neighbors were saying. Our stay was unfortunately timed with a Rolling Stones concert that weekend so the college kids staying next door had the annoying routine of waking up 11:00pm at night and spend the next 30 minutes getting ready to go out and stumbling back 4:00am after a night of drinks and merriment. There was also a crying incident although my wife and I couldn't figure out what that was all about.

Not all of it was bad though. I was preparing for the worst when I had booked myself and my mountaineer friends in a $2 a night hostel in Kota Kinabalu but the place was actually nice. The rooms were clean as was the shared bathroom and we had a lovely British couple as our bunk mates so that was nice. The peanut butter and bread breakfast was the best I'd ever had and would you believe that airport transfer upon arrival was actually included in the price.

So given my experiences above, our hotel in Shanghai was heaven, not to mention my first encounter with a "Boutique" hotel. The JIA Shanghai is located in the posher side of Nanjing Road. It's walking distance from Plaza 66 which features all the luxury brands I know about (no, not Northface), LV, Hermes, Hugo Boss, etc. But it isn't the location that put JIA on my all time favorite places to stay.After checking in at the ultra chic reception and walking around the small but modernistic lounge and lobby we headed off into our room. Here are the highlights in no particular order, a huge LCD TV (always important and the first thing I check out), an equally humongous king sized bed, fully stocked bathroom (yes, bathroom) complete with shaving kit, cool toothbrushes with mini colgate tubes (not the weird generic ones in plain beige tin tubes), and an assortment of bottles with questionable labels which if you were cool you'd know what they were for. My wife was not and so I hear her on the phone with the reception desk "What is Head Start for..... and Smooth Operator.....oh I see, what about Head Smoothie". Very uncool.

The thing that really did it for me though were the little things. There was a wrapped gift which contained several sachets of Jasmine tea and a compartmentalized box with an apple in one compartment and White Rabbit candy in the other. Upon returning to our hotel on New Year's Eve we saw a pair of oversized sunglasses on our pillows with the requisite Bayaspirin Plus C tablets, everything to help you recover from the nights festivities.

The staff were great if not overly helpful and the language barrier kind of proved the point. We asked the waiter / busboy (it's a small hotel) if there were fireworks displays for the new year celebration and after some awkward explaining he came back with a list of telephone numbers where we can buy fireworks, delivery costs additional. Maggie from the front desk was sweet, helpful and funny all rolled into one. She arranged for our tickets to the acrobatics show, wrote down our destinations in Chinese characters to ensure our cab driver knew exactly where to take us, she even warned us which kind of cabs not to take and when we were retiring before midnight on New Year's Eve she bade us goodnight saying "See you next year!".
The only negative I could think of was that the staff were immaculately dressed. Guys wore black suits, the girls like Maggie wore a smart jacket with matching skirt and black tights, all color coordinated in shades of black and grey. It kind of made me feel a bit insecure with my slightly oversized grey Marks and Spencers Car Coat but coolness is a state of mind so in my mind, I was cool. Maybe a trip to Zara wouldn't hurt though.

Tripping out - (Shanghai Part II)

We were warned about the Bund Tourist Tunnel by several people. It's corny, kitschy, weird and just plain dumb. According to the guidebook "The five-minute ride will have your head spinning and you wonder if the Chinese central government isn't giving Shanghai just a little too much money".

And so with that in mind we headed straight for it. What can go wrong, with that kind of an intro how disappointing can it be? The video screen near the ticket booth tells people to get ready for a ride that will take you through the "abysmal" sea and into the earth's crust. It was starting to look up already.

Our carriage is a floor to ceiling clear plexi glass capsule. We get one all to ourselves and get ready for the ride. I got to say everything we heard and read about it was true . . . and I loved it. The ride is supposed to simulate a journey through the center of the earth starting with the oceans, going through the crust, entering the liquid core and coming out the other side in the reverse order. I kept thinking about those old movies and cartoons where characters burrow into the ground and end up, guess where, in China. To simulate this amazing journey the tunnel is lit up by thousands of bulbs, LEDs, lasers and poofy air filled cartoon characters. Not sure what they were doing in the middle of the earth's molten center but there they were.

What was truly amazing was this was all taking place under the Huangpu river connecting the Bund with the opposite bank where the Oriental Pearl Tower stands. If anything it was the most interesting way to cross the river but it makes you wonder why oh why create such a ride under the river . . . Here's a tip, squint your eyes and shake your head violently while listening to Jimi Hendrix and the capsule also turns into a time machine and transports you back to the 70's.

Super Ride - Go Fast

One of the great things about Shanghai is that the ride from the airport to the city is a tourist attraction in itself. The Magnetic Levitation (MagLev) train, the only commercial one in operation in the world is The Way to get into the city. Forget the bus, the dodgy cabs and even the posh Audi A6 from the hotel. What will take you about an hour in a cab will take you a zippy 8 minutes in the MagLev. And in true Shangai Chic fashion you have a choice of first class and economy although I’m not sure how much more first class you will feel in just 8 minutes.

The ride itself is pretty amazing. All carriages have an indicator showing how fast the train is moving which helps build up the excitement. In my misguided youth I’ve gone as fast as 160 kph on the highway so when the MagLev speedo showed it was going 200kph the same giddy feeling started creeping into my stomach. The acceleration can’t really be felt, I mean you don’t get pushed back into your seat or anything but there is considerable banking when the train takes in a curve. When we hit 300 kph the countryside was zipping by very quickly. I saw canal waterways and the barren fields quickly turn into concrete houses and huge housing complexes. The next time I looked up we were doing 400kph. I couldn’t take my eyes of the indicator. How fast was this thing going to go. I joked the wife about us sticking our hands out on either side of the carriage so that the train could take off.

When it hit 430kph it finally started to slow down. According to my brother the MagLev can actually go much faster but in Shanghai’s case it would just run out of track.

I’m not sure if the speed made me light headed or it was because I couldn’t stop giggling when we got off the train but I totally forgot to take a picture of it so sorry, no pics for this post. Here's a link to their official website though - http://www.smtdc.com/en/.

What a Way to End the Year (Shanghai Part I)

Our last trip of the year was initiated by my wife, as all our trips are. It was November when she broached the idea and I couldn't believe we were going to literally squeeze one last trip in. In fact, it would spill over to the new year. Yup, we were going to break family tradition and spend it on our own. Kind of a get away from it all jaunt, spend some quality time, just the two of us kind of trip. The destination for just such a trip was Shanghai, China. Yes, we were going to have our alone time in a country with a population of 1.3 billion people. Let me tell you, if you want to get a good, feet on the ground kind of feel for how many people there are in China, take a walk down Nanjing Pedestrian road. The number of people were ridiculous and this wasn't even Chinese New Year, this is just plain western new year.

Just a quick preview of what's coming up (have to go through my tons of pictures before I can post) here were the highlights for me - MagLev, Acrobatics Show, our authentic Chinese meal and our Hotel. Keep tuned.

Resolution

Sorry for the silence folks, was off to Shanghai for the new year and for some reason (I wonder what reason that was) I couldn't access the blogspot page . . . . any blogspot page for that matter.

Not to worry, with the new year comes new resolutions one of which is to write more frequently. . . so watch out soon for The Shanghai Report.