Bankers

Sat at Brewerkz enjoying a few pints of American Pale Ale. There are some bankers on the table next to me (British and American). The topic of of their conversation ranged from skiing in Japan to beach condos in Vietnam via the new apartment one them has moved to in Singapore (near Clementi).

Just as they were about to leave they got on to the topic of their annual bonus. Talk about bitter. Apparently despite both of them having 'stellar years' they are expecting to receive smaller bonuses. Lots of sniping about colleagues and the unfairness of everything! I think one works at Morgan Stanley and the other possibly at JP Morgan.

Quite amusing and so far removed from the 'real' world to be almost satire.

Posted with Blogsy

Day Trip

Well in fact not even a day - I was in Kuala Lampur for 4 hours. Actually to be accurate I was at Kuala Lumpur airport for 4 hours. With a 30 minute train journey there and back to downtown KL it wasn't worth the hassle to do anything more exciting than clear immigration (to get my passport stamped), have some lunch and then return airside.

The purpose of my short excursion was the 370 miles I'll earn which will nudge me over the 50,000 mile threshold to keep my KrisFlyer Elite Gold status. Well worth it!

 

Posted with Blogsy

Tick Tock Transit

So by the time I got off my flight from Hanoi until my flight to London was scheduled to depart I had a whole 6 1/2 hours in Singapore. As much as I love the global hustle and bustle of an airport, I didn't particularly want to spend all of my 6 1/2 hours in one.

I dropped my bag at Left Luggage. This is normally a really quick and easy process, but today I was behind an Australian who was being a bit gormless.

Bag eventually dropped, I managed to time my arrival in the Immigration Hall just as a flight from Sydney was making its way through. My time in the queue was made longer by more more gormless Aussies who hadn't filled out their Landing Cards properly.

Slowly my time was ticking away......

I got in a cab bang on the dot of 6pm (just as the evening peak charges start - great!). My destination was the Swissotel Merchant Court hotel from where I could easily walk to Brewerkz.
The journey took 20 minutes, but cost me $26. Cabs in Singapore are no longer the bargain of the past. Still not a rip-off like at home though.

Tick tock......

I ordered my first beer at Brewerkz at 6.25pm. The place was nice and relaxed when I got there, but seemed to get mobbed with young children and their slack parents soon after I sat down. I should've sat at the bar instead of outside.

I had one other beer before paying up and setting off for a bit of a power walk to Lau Pa Sat.
Time now 7.10pm.......

I knew from looking on the internet that Lau Pa Sat was closed for renovation, but the street serving Satays was still going full swing. I sook a seat at Best Satay at 7.25pm. I ordered an XS Set (20 sticks) and a glass of Tiger. I think I must have set a satay consumption record as I finished my 20 sticks and beer by 7.45pm.
I was running a bit low on SGD so decided that I'd take the MRT to the airport - similar duration but much cheaper.

The train arrived at Raffles place at 7.50pm and I got off it at Changi Airport at 8.25pm.

I cleared immigration and that sort of ended my transit time. The rest of the time until until departure would be spent having a shower and in the dull surrounds of the KrisFlyer Gold lounge trying not to boredom eat.

Posted with Blogsy

Civilised Hanoi

I put a week of sitting on miniature plastic chairs whilst eating off tables barely above the floor behind me last night. Civilisation does exist in Hanoi!

My evening started with a Charlie Chaplin Martini at the Le Club Bar at the Sofitel Metropole. I then had an exquisite 'menu dégustation' at a fairly refined French restaurant, La Badiane.

Normally I would probably consider a 'menu dégustation' a bit of a con as the portion sizes are quite small and it is more heavily geared towards flavour and presentation (I like flavour and decent sized portions!). Anyway, this was perfect tonight as I'd been on a 3 hour lunch time food tour around the Old Quarter of Hanoi earlier in the day and really didn't need 'filling up'!

 

Posted with Blogsy

Food

Today has mostly been about food!

I want on a lunch time 'Food on Foot' tour which took us around the Old Quarter - so pretty much on the doorstep of my hotel. The tour lasted about 3 hours, so it makes for one of the longest lunches I think I've had.

There were 3 other people on the tour (all Australians) and we ate a ton of food!

Some of the restaurants we went to I'd either already eaten at, or had the dishes that they specialised in. However, that wasn't a negative thing at all, and I did get to try a lot of new stuff. I think the highlights were:

• Trying frog (Vietnamese jumping chicken) for the first time. Tastes like chicken.
• Sampling food from Hué - very different to food from Hanoi.
• Having bia hoi with a group with proper snacks.
• Trying some lethal rice wine with all kind of infusions (though not snake).
• Having ca phe with whipped egg yolk and condensed milk. Sort of a Vietnamese sweet cappuccino - I'm surprised Starbucks aren't all over this.

I think the only real negatives were that we ate to much, and also because a lot of food in Vietnam has fresh rice noodles at its core - we had a lot of noodles!

In a complete change of tack, for dinner I had a fantastic meal at a French restaurant called La Badiane. No little plastic chairs and tables here! I had the 5 course 'menu degustation' and it was fantastic. An extremely civilised way to end my Vietnamese eating experience for this trip.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Ha Long Bay

I'm now back in the chaos/mayhem/madness (delete as appropriate, but all apply) of Hanoi after my couple of days on Ha Long Bay.

The reality is that, taking into account the four and a half hour bus journey there and back, it was about 24 hours actually spent aboard a junk cruising around limestone karsts (this did include one night). My experience was good and it was well worth it, but frankly one limestone karst is very similar to another!

The actual 'cruise' experience, rather than the geography, was the thing that was interesting/amusing/annoying (again all three adjectives applied).

First of all were the meal times. We had 3 meals on board - lunch, dinner and a late breakfast. The food was pretty good with, understandably, a heavy seafood focus. However, I sort of expected some kind of communal dining experience with everybody around a shared table so that you could actually talk to a variety of people. But no, as there were two single travellers we were expected to eat together on a table for two. Me a (very) late thirties Brit, her a later middle aged Canadian from Ottawa. Not a great deal in common beyond travel!

Thankfully by dinner time I'd got talking to two young, female English doctors, one at Southampton General Hospital and the other currently living and working in New Zealand (friends from Newcastle University, holiday sort of in the middle). We had much more in common so we made a table of three for the rest of the meals. The Canadian had hooked up with a group of three other Canadians who were retirees.

The next thing that was interesting was that of our group of 14, 2 were vegetarians and 1 was coeliac. How the hell do you survive in this part of the world with 'strange' eating preferences/disorders?

The final thing of note that was amusing was seeing Americans play up to my own personal stereotype. The couple in question were on a 3 day/2night cruise, so we saw them when they'd been out on the bay for a day and a night already. Talk about loud, and in the case of the woman, dumb! One of the other people in their group was giving them an iPhone tutorial which was comedy gold. Stupid people and technology should not mix!

 

Posted with Blogsy

Dark

Off to Ha Long Bay tomorrow for an overnight cruise. I have a hunch that there might not be any wi-fi on the the boat I'll be on!

It will be interesting to see what nationality my fellow cruise passengers are. Aussies and Brits tend to be at the backpacker end of the spectrum, so maybe the cruise I booked will be out of their budget (hopefully). There are plenty of random Northern Europeans about, but most of the French I've seen appear to be part of big tour groups (the boat I'm on is hopefully too small to accommodate them). Then of course there are the Americans..........

Posted with Blogsy