BBC on Travel Writing Compensation

Good to know if the review you are reading involves some sort of compensation: http://www.bbc.com/travel/blog/20130501-the-risk-of-accepting-free-travel

Toyko 2012

Quick trip to Toyko for a presentation. Not much time for tourist things but had Tsukemen at Yasube near Shinjuku. Yasube is a version of an apparently prevalent style of Japanese noodle bar where you order from a vending machine, someone takes the ticket from the machine and hands it to the chefs, and a couple min later you get some noodles on the side of some great broth. Went here twice for quick food and was happy for 720 or 820 yen.




Used jet lag to my advantage and visited Daiwa Sushi at the Tsukiji FIsh Market around 5:45am. 8 pieces of sushi, 3 tuna maki, and 3 salmon roe maki for 3,500 yen. Very good and very fresh fish. Will definitely plan for more time and have a beef bowl and two or three other meals next time in that area.

~78 yen to $1. The Hyatt Regency Shinjuku was fine near the station for the NRT express train. United Airlines was pretty weak SFO-NRT on a 744 but pretty decent, outside of the food, on a new 772 on the return.

Additional Photos

Manila and Seoul - August 2012

In Manila for a conference and honestly, Manila is really pretty weak. It's not very walkable, and if you do walk somewhere other than one of the very westernized malls in Makati, people look at you as if you are crazy. Really not much to write home about this trip. It's a little hard to trust people as a lot of them seem to be interested in what kind of tip they can get from you or how they might milk more money out of you. At any rate, the Shangri-La Makati hotel was very nice and had the best, most diverse buffet-style breakfast I've ever seen. Sushi, sashimi, dim sum, indian, philipino, western, cheese, and basically anything you might want to eat for breakfast or lunch. Oh, and some fruit and a variety of 6-8 juices. Great spa with a nice hot tub, steam, and sauna. 42 pesos for $1 at this time. Taxi from the airport to the Shagri-La Makati took a long route, but still 450p so only around $10. Return trip was quicker and 140p. So yeah, that's a 25 min cab ride for about $4 including a tip.

Very good drinks at the Blind Pig in Makati. Very cool wood interior and a drink menu consulted on by Milk and Honey in London. Base drinks (Wild Turkey bourbon, etc.) were 330p which wasn't too bad. A drink from the next shelf up, e.g. Sazerac rye, Bullit or Buffalo Trace bourbon was 1000p, or about $25. I know they had to get that to Manila, but BT is $20 a bottle retail in San Francisco.



Spent one day in Seoul as a stopover on Asiana Airlines (SFO-ICN-MNL RT). Interesting place for the short amount of time I was there and that doesn't include scenery as it rained basically the whole time. Would definitely go back and have some more street food and ramen. People seemed very nice and I noticed that there was a good amount of MLB wear.  Took a nice bus (KLM airport limousine) from ICN to the Grand Hyatt Seoul which worked pretty well for $14 each way. 1123 won per 1$ at this time.

A few pics

London - Lille - Paris - Lyon, May 2012

More Pics

Nice densely-packed trip to the EU including a day at the French Open and the best 12 day stretch of sunny and warm weather I have had in Europe. Nice London room at the Grazing Goat gastropub near Marble Arch and a very good lunch at St John Bread and Wine. Quick visits to the Tate Modern as well. Took the Eurostar to Lille, which was jammed with parents and kids as the next stop was Eurodisney. A short trip so not too bad.

Lille is a good stop for a day or two to wander around and have some good and very reasonably priced beer and wine. Particularly at La Part des Anges for wine and La Capsule for beer. Would also recommend the mussels with beurre d'escargot from Aux Moules and La Bottega Pizza.
 
The French Open was nice, but it was very difficult to get in to any of the side courts so would highly recommend stadium tickets. Good breakfast and sandwiches near our hotel (The Keppler) at Josephine. Not many memorable restaurants, although Le Comptoir was good, but the best food was from the Marche Woodrow Wilson on Saturday and Wednesday. Walking up the steps at the Eiffel Tower was a good use of 5€ for a quad workout :)

Lyon was a very welcome change from Paris. Much better food with a real diversity of menus, helpful people, and a great setting with two rivers. Heavy regional food in a happy, communal setting at Chez Paul was a nice start. Large rooms at the Grand Hotel Terreaux.

Decent but not fantastic Fx rates of $1.56 for 1£ and $1.25 for 1€. United Airlines SFO-LHR RT with a paid upgrade on a new 777 on the way over. Pretty good flights.

London, Budapest, Vienna

Three days in London, at the Zetter Townhouses which was nice but a bit on the pricey side at $415 a night. Great small downstairs bar area though. Note for next trip: eat at St Johns. Malev Hungarian Airlines to Budapest for a weekend with cwr. Unfortunately a holiday weekend (All Saint's Day on Nov 1) so many bars and restaurants were closed but we managed what we could. Fantastic dinner at Onyx with 6 courses of updated Hungarian and wine parings. The bread is served with butter, cream cheese, and pork terrine, all of which were great with about 10 kinds of breads and cheese puffs. Just awesome. Perfect beef, foie gras three ways that were all like candy, more pork, and so on. Champagne breakfast with Hungarian sparkling at Villa Bagatele, which doubles as an interior design store, so a little over the top decoration-wise, but otherwise great. Excellent veal soup at Dunacorso and a nice lunch at Belvarosi Lugas Etterem including goose cracklings with hot hungarian peppers.

A 2:50 train ride to Vienna for about $30. Great deal. Nice train. Would probably pop for 1st class next time. Hit Plachutta for boiled beef and even more goose liver, this time bruleed with a few red currants on top. A very good night at a few local wine bar/tasting room/buffets on a street a little northeast of central Vienna: Heuriger Christ, very nice whites with excellent wild boar "salami", more at Karl Lentner including some fantastic pork with crispy skin, and finishing at Richard Lentner. A fairly rare day in that all three were open on the same day, since we were out on a holiday. Funky opening hours for all the Heuriger in Vienna, due to the tax breaks they get on serving their local wine. Cool to know that there are around 1000 acres of vineyards within the (large) city limits of Vienna. It was, however, difficult to find a decent red. Another great experience at the Vienna Town Hall (Rathaus) with dinner, a waltz exposition, and a welcome from the mayor of Vienna.

One good thing from the flight back (VIE-LHR on BMI, LHR-SFO on UA) was the Posh Wrap veggie and feta wrap served warm on BMI. Best airline snack I've had in a while. Pretty standard United Airlines SFO-LHR flight on the way over.

Photos at aklink.tcb.net/pics/2011-eu.

Hong Kong

Quick couple days in Hong Kong on the way back from Saigon. HK is very warm (around 30-33C), even when compared to Saigon. Good dumplings for lunch near our office in Peking Shui Jiao Wang at No. 118, Jeffe Road. Thanks to Google for the recommendation. HKD 39 ($4.88 at the 7.99 HKG to $1 at the time) for very good hot and sour soup with dumplings. Stayed at the W Hotel Hong Kong which has a gym and spa on the 73rd floor and pool/hot tub on the 76th having good views of the city and a little bit of the harbor. The rooms are nice, with all the W touches including computer-controlled blinds and lights. The sauna off the dressing room on the 73rd floor was a highlight. Would definitely stay here again, although the food options in the immediate area were very western and the hotel is on top of the Kowloon station and its very high end mall. Had a salad nicoise (healthy!) with a side of mac and cheese (not healthy but awesome after a week of noodles and dumplings) at the steakhouse and wine bar in Central Park. Good happy hour ($5 decent martinis) until 8:30 which was nice. Their bread was essentially little cheese puffs, which were also not healthy but very very good.

Attempted a hike on Lantau suggested by Time Out (overview link). It may not come across in the article but on a sunny (really beautiful around 32C/90F) day this hike is very very warm and humid. I was on the 11:00 ferry to Mui Wo, started hiking up at Noon, and had drank 2.5L of water by 13:15. I turned around about 25 min after the country park when the trail leaves South Lantau Road. I would love to do this in the future, but would start much earlier in the day (7:00?) to avoid some of the sun and probably take a bus (1/2/3 or a couple others from the ferry terminal) for the first 2.5 km. Starting at the park and doing the 2:00 (listed at 2:45, but I suspect most people will do it more quickly) from the country park to Pak Kung Au then the Lantau Peak hike. Had lunch at the Turkish restaurant by the Mui Wo ferry terminal. The minced lamb with a side of babaganoush hit the post-hike salt need.

Looking forward to checking bags with Singapore Airlines in the train station below the hotel and getting back to SF.

HK and Saigon Pics at aklink.tcb.net/pics/2011-ap

A Few Days in Saigon

Spent a few days in Saigon for a network conference. The weather was generally good, pretty warm (mid-80s F) and very humid. It rained at least once every day of my trip which helped clear pollution out of the air and generally make things more comfortable. Smaller things are easy and inexpensive. A Mobfone SIM card bought off the street for 70,000 dong ($3.50) offered unlimited 3G coverage that was better than AT&T in San Francisco and $0.15 text messages to US and global numbers. Calling Vietnam toll-free numbers was also completely free with the card. 50,000 dong topup cards are widely available.

There are a real lack of interesting tourist activities in Saigon. A few churches are preserved, the Hotel Des Postes had many tourists but is still essentially a functioning post office with a giant (50m?) communications tower sticking out of it. The Ben Trang Market was a real waste of time, as was wandering around the backpacker district (Pham Ngu Lao).

The tunnel complex at Cu Chi is a somewhat bizarre tourist trap celebrating the efforts of the locals to resit the French then Americans with a series of tunnels dug up to 30 meters into the ground. They used these to funnel supplies from the southern end of the Ho Chi Minh Trail into Saigon. The Americans relentlessly bombed this area from 1966 until the early 1970's. The location is about 70 km from central Saigon and took around 50 min in a minibus. The tour starts with a video celebrating two locals who were "excellent killer of American". There was an advance warning from our guide that the movie was very communistic and we could leave if it was too intense, but more than anything I found it sad that given a chance to show an informational, potentially hard-hitting review of the needs behind the tunnel complex, they have gone with a 1967-era video with poorly-staged footage. I think a real loss of opportunity given what may be the level of understanding other tourists at the site may have. After the video the walking tour moves to tunnel entrances, traps for the enemy soldiers (read: Americans), a walk through an example tunnel "expanded for tourists", and to the shooting range. Yup. You can shoot an AK, an M-16, or several other automatic rifles for about $5 per round with a 10 round minimium.

Not many rickshaws around, but their drivers are pretty aggressive in wanting you to give them a dollar for a ride somewhere. What you have plenty of are motorbikes. All day and all night with incessant honking. Crossing the street, particularly a main street or around a plaza, simply requires a step of faith into traffic such that that the mass of bikes, cars, and buses will avoid you. The bikes are pretty good at doing so, car less, and buses don't seem to stop for much at all. The walkability of Saigon is pretty low, at least without considerable stress and concern for safety. The cabs from the couple reputable companies (Mai Linh, Vinasun) are very inexpensive ($2 for a 10 min ride) and generally available.

The Park Hyatt Saigon is everything that a hotel should be. Great service, excellent rooms, beds, restaurants, bars, and a decent location. You do pay western prices with local beer at $6.70, breakfast at $25 (although fantastic and obviating the need for lunch) and rooms approaching $350 with vat and service. Happy to have had a conference rate for most of my stay.

Airport WiFi Report

SFO: Free wif
HKG: Free wifi
SIN: Free wifi (with code from information desk)
SGN: No open wifi at all

Arriving in Saigon

32 hours door-to-door from SF to the Park Hyatt Saigon. Not as bad as it might seem because at least 8 of those were sleep and 5 were a layover in Singapore. Managed to squeeze most of a fantasy football draft in at 6:00 during a 90 min stop in HKG on the way.

Singapore Airlines is pretty good. Decent drinks selection and the food ranged from pretty good (glutenous rice with shrimp, chicken, and chili HKG-SIN and indian for breakfast SFO-HKG) to very meh (chicken and rice for dinner SFO-HKG). Completely worth the $50 for an exit row seat SFO-HKG-SIN, although it is next to the four middle seats that have bassinets on the bulkhead and that means screaming babies on and off for 13 hours.

The Park Hyatt is everything that a hotel should be. Over-the-top service, fantastic beds, quiet, great food at the restaurants, free wifi with good connectivity, 42" flat screens, ESPN Vietnam.

Sitting at SFO one hour before boarding. Appears that we'll get in to HKG about 13 hours from takeoff. Suppose this isn't too bad when I'm tacking 4 to SIN, a 6 hour layover, and 2 hrs to SGN on to the trip. Looking forward to some food.