The Big Trip Route

Whenever anyone asks me where I travelled to on my Big Trip, what I would like to say is, "Well, from KL to Hatyai to Bangkok and then Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, after that Ho Chi Minh, Hue, back to Ho Chi Minh for a short cruise on the Mekong and then fly to Seoul, side trip to Seoraksan, back to Seoul, fly to Ulan Batar, up to Irkutsk, detour to Listvyanka, back to Irkutsk, on to Moscow, then St Petersburg, day trip to Peterhof, onwards to Helsinki, then on a ferry to Stockhom, off to Copenhagen after that, then Berlin, with a short visit to Potsdam, then to Budapest, then Prague, spend a day in Vienna to catch a train to Paris, then through the Chunnnel to London, take a bus to Oxford, train to Durham, fly to Dublin, ferry back to Oxford and then the train back to London and then fly MAS all the way back to Kuala Lumpur".

What really comes out is "ah, all over South East Asia, Russia and Europe", but I think it rather loses it's romance when i say it that way.

Labels: big trip

The Big Trip index page

OK, I've made a single page to point to all the posts I made during the Big Trip. To the curious out there, it is part of the work I'm doing to gather all of it into something more substantial.

Eventually.

Labels: big trip

5 July 2003 - Somewhere over Bucharest on Flight MH003
The Recruit

How do airlines choose what movies to show during inflight? Do othey just accept films at random from studios? Is there a panel that chooses from a selection? Or is there some sort of secret algorithm?

However they do it, I know that it's a lucky dip when you get to the plane. The choices on this flight are: Just Married, National Security, The Recruit, Children on their Birthdays, Kangaroo Jack, A Guy Thing and Juli Juli Bintang Tiga. I stuck my hand in, rummaged around and came up with... Colin Farell and Al Pacino.

The Recruit is about a young man (Colin Farrell) with a bright future heading towards MIT whose life is turned upside down when he is approached by a recruiting agent from the CIA (Al Pacino).

Now, I'd like to be James Bond as much as any other person, but I know what I'd do given the choice between spending three years as a student hanging out at frat parties and a year undergoing the most rigorous of training regimes learning how to jump through windows, how to be shot at and how to be tortured. But I didn't have a father who was employed by the CIA and killed in the line of duty, so I guess I just don't have the right motivation.

During training, he meets up with a stunning fellow recruit who immediately grabs his attention and presumably his more baser instincts, since we're talking about an action-thriller here, and not a romantic-comedy.

However, before he can finish his training, he slips up somewhere and ends up a wash-out. But he isn't, says our omniscient CIA trainer. He's actually in special ops. And our belle in training school is a double agent.

You know how when you're at a party, and you meet this guy who thinks he's pretty sharp and a hit with all the ladies, but actually he's not? Well, The Recruit's a bit like that. It thinks it's a really clever movie full of plot twists and smart dialogue, but it's just too full of unbelievable things that I felt like banging my head to a pulp against the food tray in front of me.

Let's just take this as an example: there's a killer virus out there that can travel through electricity lines and infect and affect every piece of electronics it encounters. Since this is taken with a straight face by an MIT candidate, I guess MIT likes people who follow orders well and keep an open mind on most things. No, make that all things. Actually, make that all things needed to make a hole-ridden plot work.

Here's another one. Somebody's stealing this code from a secure lab. We know it's secure because there are no floppy drives and no printers in the lab. I know how I would do it. It would involve a video camera and the 'type' command. But what do I know? I'm not a Hollywood scriptwriter. I would have never thought of using an external USB drive.

Even the great Al Pacino can't save the movie. And although Colin Farrell a pretty enough face, pretty doesn't cut it in a film like this.

You go to a movie to suspend disbelief, and be transported away to somewhere for an hour or two, but it's an awfully hard thing to do when you're faced with things that make you go "Wha-?!!" every few seconds.

Labels: big trip

Back in the old days, Britain was an island, aloof unto itself, protected from the vagrancies of the rest of Europe by the English Channel and all that water around it. Getting to England from Europe required a boat, and the most popular route was via Calais and a ferry ride across to Dover. To get from Paris to Calais or from Dover to London was another problem to be solved.

Now, Britain is still an island, both geographically and politically, but there is this tunnel connecting it with France and you can take the high-speed Eurostar train from Paris, through the French countryside via Lille, under the Channel and up again into Ashford, England and then into London.

The advantage is that in about three hours you get from the centre of Paris into the centre of London. If you fly, it takes about 50 minutes, but you need to be at the airport at least an hour before the flight, and takes another hour or so to get to and from the airports.

The big disadvantage is usually cost. The price of a single second-class ticket is EUR140. However, there is now a special offer, on limited trains, to travel for only EUR35. Seeing that a plane flight costs about EUR80, it is a stupendous deal.

Travelling on the Eurostar is a little like travelling on normal trains except for the bureaucracy. How on Earth Britain expects to be taken as part of Europe, I don't know. This is the only country since I've entered Europe that have had serious immigration checks, and the only one where I've had my passport looked at not once, not twice but three times. It's checked twice in Paris, once by French immigration, another time by British immigration and then you have to queue up again when you reach London. Does this make sense? No. Does this look like a way forward to a United Europe? No. Do the Brits look as if they're trying their darndest to stay out of it? Yes.

At least the trains leave on time. You wait in a boarding lounge (just like you would for a plane) and there is a queue to get on board (just like a plane) and there are announcements when you're in your seat (just like a plane) and if they're too many trains trying to get into the station ahead of you, you slow down a little (just like a plane).

The seats are a little cramped, but you get a nice tray that folds out to put your AlphaSmart on. I have to say that there is something about train travel that rocks me off to sleep. I have absolutely no problems nodding off on buses and trains.

EuroStar zips through the French countryside at some incredible speed - something like 200kmh, but has to slow down for the tunnel and the English countryside. In fact, they were strongly advertising that train travel the next day would be interrupted by vital works on the railroad that would improve service quality and cut journey times by half an hour. There was a lot of stress on this being work done on the English side, and I like the way that it was stressed as being "improvements" and not as "things we should have gotten right first time round but somehow failed to". A fellow passenger grumbled about the English inability to do things properly first time, and maybe that's the way they should look at joining Europe as well.

Because of problems on the line, the train reached Waterloo station about twenty minutes behind schedule. Add another twenty minutes for immigration. My brother had to actually call me up to find out where I was.

After all that, immigration was a breeze. I thought they would ask me to dig out my plane ticket to prove that I was leaving the country, but that didn't happen. Best of all, Adik was waiting outside and we immediately headed off for a great steak dinner, but that's another story.

Labels: big trip

Already by the late 1860s Monet and the other Impressionists were trying to paint the world as they saw it outdoors. Shadows cast a different colour in daylight and reflected hues make an even greater difference. This was radically different from the style of the time.

The Academy in Paris were unsure about this new direction and rejected them from exhibition. This spurred the new group to set up an exhibition of their own. In 1874 the first Impressionist exhibition was held, in direct confrontation with the annual Salon held by the Academy.

Although the movement had a few patrons, it took years before it was accepted. In this time, the various artists developed their own styles and ideas.

Monet's Coqueliots presents many of the ideas of the Impressionist movement. Depth is not characterised by perspective lines, but by colour. Things that are nearer have stronger colours and thicker strokes. The movement of the wind is captured in visual cues, such as the umbrella and the hat slightly askew, and in the blurring of colours, as in the grass on the right-hand side.

One reason for the "fuzziness" is because of changeable weather conditions, the paintings had to be painted quickly and there was no time for detail. The compromise meant that these paintings had to be viewed not up close and in detail, but from afar. The painting had to be viewed as a whole, and not as a sum of detailed parts.

This idea dictated the construction of the exhibition halls in the Musee d'Orsay. Instead of angled spotlights shining on the paintings, sunlight is the primary source of illumination. The impressionist gallery is placed close to the roof so that the best light is available, and it is acknowledged that the paintings will look different over the day as the sun changes position and colour. The idea is that spotlights will focus a viewer's attention onto a few parts of the picture, whereas changing sunlight will make a viewer look at the painting as a whole in various ways.

Degas, on the other hand, favoured the accenuation of movement. Movement is emphasised through a variety of methods. One is by blurring the details and using sudden changes in colour. Another is the framing of the picture off-centre, which gives the impression of it being a candid shot from a camera (Instant photography was a recent invention in the 1870s and Degas was a hobbyist photographer).

Although Renoir and Monet were good friends and frequently went to the same places to paint, they began to diverge in interpretation in the late 1880's. Renoir began to include many classical elements in his painting, such as attention to detail, but they were still impressionistic by the use of bright, complementary colours.

Monet became more interested in how light and climate affected colour. He purposely chose subjects that had a lot of moving light (such as seascapes and landscapes that had a lot of water) or diffused light (such as foggy weather).

The series of paintings of the cathedral at Rouen was, for him, a demanding study of the different aspects of light, the same cathedral at similar angles, just in different climates. The result is a stunning series of paintings, each individual although of the same subject from the same position. He later developed a similar series of haystacks that prompted Kandinsky to say that the subject does not matter any more and that only the colours are of interest.

The Rouen Cathedral series paintings are far more impressive in real life than in print. The paintings have texture, in Monet's effort to capture the light. Up close they resemble a random collection of vigorous brush strokes and the paint is clearly thicker in places. The painting is, in fact, three dimensional, looks quite different depending on the light source and the angle you view it at. The raised sections correspond to the highlighted areas of the subject, where the light catches a potrusion in the foreground.

Monet's later works became more abstract, as he tried to capture the essence of the light before him. This further abstraction led to the neo-impressionistic movement, and painters such as Seurat and Van Gogh, but since that's beyond Impressionism, we'll stop here.

Labels: big trip

One of my most favourite places in Paris and definitely one of my favourite art museums in the world, is the Musee d'Orsay, which house one the best collections of impressionism period.

The museum is housed in an old railway station, and contains art pieces dating from the early nineteenth century up to the early twentieth century. Slap bang in the middle of this is the Impressionism period, which includes artists like Monet, Renoir and Degas. I've long been interested in their art, specifically their motivations for making what I call "fuzzy pictures". My intrest was piqued by the collections I saw in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, and when I found out that they were giving guided tours specifically about the Impressionists, I jumped at the chance.

They actually give a lot of tours, but very few are in English. Fortunately, one of them was on a Thursday, when the museum extends its opening hours until 9.45 pm, which allows me to hang around until I really get tired of looking up close at fuzzy brushstrokes.

The impressionistic movement is officially said to have begun in 1874, when a bunch of young upstarts exhibited a series of paintings that formed a new movement in the art world. It was their work that gave impetus to later, more abstract forms of art, such as by Cezanne and Kandinsky. It is ironic that I celebrate this in-between period so much and yet loathe the bastard offspring.

The roots of the movement were embedded the work of French artists who, if you like, wanted to go back to Nature. They abandoned the warmth and comfort of their studios and ventured forth into the forests of the countryside. This was unusual, for at that time artists made their own paints and it was easier to do this within the confines of the studio. To go outside was to court additional difficulty, but this new breed of artists wanted to paint nature in its environment, and not as they saw it under a roof. Artists like Diaz de la Pena were considered to be outside the art community and they reslished their separation and celebrated their commune with nature.

Although they were outside the conservative art world of the Academy, they still adhered to the traditional romantic period style. Their landscapes were moody studys of a brooding Mother Nature, overlooking Man with her might.

Nevertheless, these rebels inspired the future generations of Impressionists, probably with their derring-do, as well as their body of work. Since these new young wild ones wanted to follow a path not deemed to be "classical", the only teachers they had were each other, and the only references they had were the work of those that inspired them.

In 1861, the work of a recently deceased artist named Delacroix was put on exhibit, and one piece in particular, The Lions, further captured the imagination of the Impressionists. The Lions was an unusual piece of work because it was a sketch for a later painting and not a finished product, but in it you can already see the factors that would inspire Impressionists to come.

Three things stand out. Firstly, the choice of colour veered away from the traditional dark, earth tones, and instead was bright and had plenty of contrast. Complementary colours (such as red and green) was the key.

Secondly, movement was accenuated by the use of colour. Instead of a gradual shade from dark to bright, form and movement was determined by different colours. Paint was placed on top of one another haphazardly to create an effect.

Thirdly, the brush strokes were very rough and seemingly imprecise. The texture of the strokes can be seen in the paint and you can see its movement as the artist moved it about.

These ideas crop up again and again in Impressionistic art. In the ten years between that time and when they finally presented the exhibition, another movement cropped up, which would further influence the impressionists - the Realists.

Manet was one such artist. He felt that it was time to begin painting life as it was, and not an idealisation, as was the thinking at the time. He rejected ideas such as the perfectly proportioned body, the goddess-like faces, inspired by Roman-Greco art, and instead began painting people who had lumps in funny areas, if you like, wearing fashionable shoes and jewellry. Furthermore, he recognised this rebellious idea, and proceded further to abstracise peripherals and props. This further inspired the impressionists to break out of the current mould and begin something anew.

Labels: big trip

Labels: big trip

What an odd thing to write about, I'm sure you're thinking. Surely there's not that much difference between food in Oxford and food in the rest of England. And English food has a deserved reputation for being mediocre.

However, I spent three years in Oxford, and I considered it home for time I was there. And a big part of my life is food, so it shouldn't be surprising that some of my most vivid memories should be connected with food.

It is a testament that although I can easily point to you several decent eating places in Oxford, I find it almost impossible to do the same in London (I can think of the budget Japanese shop near Leicester Square, but that's all that really comes to mind).

My first port of call when the bus came to a stop was Harvey's, the sandwich shop. I immediately stopped by for a scrumptious steak sandwich. In my years as an undergraduate I consumed countless numbers of these, always in half a loaf of ciabatta, always without tomato slices. It was a favourite stop for me because it was halfway between the Maths Institute and my college, and I could have a quick lunch while walking to one place or another. It was also conveniently near the cinema, so I could check out what was showing there.

The sandwiches from there are very, very good because they are generous and they give you exactly what you want: mustard, mayonnaise, brown sauce, cucumber, lettuce and 8oz of steak in half a loaf of ciabatta. In the nine years between the time I left University and now, they have not scrimped on any of the ingredients and their price has gone up a paltry 60p at the most.

There are other sandwich shops in the Covered Market, but none of them match the economy and taste of Harvey's.

Another favourite shop of mine is George & Davis. It should be world-famous, by right, if sales were based on quality alone, there should be a chain of G&D's stretching from John O' Groats to Land's End. People should be familiar with the G&D cows, not Ben & Jerry's, and the favoured flavours of the land would be Dime Bar Crunch and Chaos.

Instead, there are only two outlets in Oxford. Infuriatingly, the second shop opened five or six years after I left college. It's not a chain, really, because one called George & Davis, the other George & Danvey's, but the queues can be as long as ever, and the quality is still the same. Well, except that the Danvey branch seems to have fewer flavours on offer, but that could just be my imagination!

Why is it so good? First, the ice cream is good. No, I take that back, it's great. It's made in the basement and you can petition your own flavours (enough names on a petition sheet means a flavour gets made). The ice cream is solid, full of proper milk (not air) and it's difficult to be completely satisfied with just one scoop.

Secondly, the shops have got a fantastic atmosphere. It's full of students, so everyone's relaxed and having fun. There's a Question of the Day which wins you a free scoop of ice cream if you're the first to get it right (The question when I was recently there: "Which 1960 Billy Wilder film won Oscars for Best Film, Best Director and Best Script?"). You have your choice of free newspapers by the side, which I used to peruse in between bouts with tutorial questions.

Thirdly, the location's great. The original G&D's is just across the road from the Mathematical Institute which made it a comfortable place to hang out. It also faced Somerville College, the formerly all-girls college, which wasn't such a bad place to be.

The new G&D's sits across from Christ Church College, so you can now eat your Rum n' Raisin while in the shadow of Tom Tower (although why anyone would look forward to that, I don't know).

The other thing you should do when you're in Oxford is to go picnicking. You can either loll about in the sunshine by the river or you can loll about in the sunshine on the river. You can stock up on things like bread, cheese, and drinks from the local Sainsbury's or Mark's and Spencer's, but the authentic way to do it is to go to the Covered Market. It's a great place to just wander about - two of my favourite shops in there are Ben's Cookies and the cheese shop where I can buy Oxford Blue Cheese. I don't normally like blue cheese, but this one is creamy enough to make me forgive the strong taste. Ben and Claudi know this, so when I stayed with them, they almost invariably have a little stocked up in the fridge. Actually, the last time I was there, there was quite a bit, and I brought back a whole lump to London. My brother doesn't eat blue cheese, so there I was, wolfing it down, while he sat beside me with an awkward look on his face.

It's probably a lot easer to picnic on terra firma than it is in a boat, but if you are going to do it over water, make sure that at least one of you knows how to punt. It looks easy, but there is a knack to it that needs to be learnt. You'll find out before long that it's far easier to go around in circles that it is to go in a straight line. It's been more than ten years since I've done this, and before I was just getting the hang of it. I obviously have forgotten a lot in the time in-between.

Labels: big trip

I do not like London very much. The truth is, I think that London is one of the least pleasant cities to live in. However, all things have their silver linings, and London's is its collection of very fine museums.

The British Museum of Natural History must be one of the best museums of its kind in the world. Having said that, I usually don't visit it anywhere as often as I could, simply because I prefer visiting the Science Museum next door. This is strange, because I wouldn't categorise the Science Museum in London to be all that great, but I've always preferred hard core science over stuffed animals. And yet, perhaps I'll still change my mind.

My brother and I visited the Natural History museum because of the new Darwin Centre. It's actually only the first phase of many, and at the moment it's not terribly impressive to the casual visitor. What you see are some exhibits of preserved animals, an interactive multimedia display explaining why it's important to pickle animals and not much else. But that 'not much else' includes a behind-the-scenes tour of the centre, and that makes the whole trip worthwhile.

Because we visited close to closing time, my brother and I were the only ones on the tour, lead by one of the staff (Emma, I think her name was - Emma, if you're reading this and I'm wrong, please correct me). The tour goes into the actual laboratories used to preserve and examine specimens.

The Natural History Museum's collection of preserved specimens is one of the most important in the world. There are specimens dating from the early nineteen century. Some of the bottles are marked with a red cap. This is to indicate that the species was named based on examination of that particular animal.

The number of specimens is stupendous - something like six million, if I recall correctly. They keep everything from small beetles and earthworms, to their largest specimen, a fully-grown Komodo dragon.

The specimens are kept in specially cooled rooms, behind double doors. The doors are what my brother calls James Bond double doors, because the first set automatically opens when you wave your passkey over it, and then you step in, and when the outer doors have closed, only then do the inner ones open. Very cool. But a little over-the-top?

The temperature is kept at 13 degrees Celsius, below the flash-point of alcohol. And with that much alcohol floating about, it's probably a wise idea to do so. Obviously, there's no smoking in the labs.

A lot of the animals are kept upside-down. This puzzled both my brother and me, until we were told that limbs were less likely to be damaged when animals are pulled out right-side up.

The Darwin Centre has seven floors, and each floor focuses on one type of animal. I wondered if there are rivalries between the floors. "Don't talk to him, he's with the inverterbrates".

Labels: big trip

16 June 2003 - London
Hamlyns

When I was a teeny weeny tot running around London, I remembered that Hamlyns was the coolest place there (the new Science Museum notwithstanding). Come on, five floors of toys, toys, toys - there was no way that could go wrong.

These days, it's not the automatic stop for me that it used to be, but I still drop by to see what's going on when I get the chance. I think I've been to Harrod's twice, but I've lost count the number of times I've wandered up and down the escalators (almost always the escalators and not the lifts).

As you walk through the front doors, you are greeted by people making giant soap bubbles or playing with multi-coloured crayons or firing rubber pellets or throwing around giant spaceship frisbees. As far as I am concerned, a sense of wonderment fills me and I start wandering around googly-eyed looking at what's on offer. I hardly ever buy anything these days, but browsing around is undeniable, purified fun.

I know that some of you out there will snort with derision at me succumbing to the allure of mass commercialism. Most toys out there are tied-in to some over-hyped flavour-of-the-moment (e.g. Hulk) and are over-priced for what they give. But there are still some enjoyable things to oogle at - the micro remote control cars are pretty cool.

However, the magic doesn't last for long. I think I spent the longest playing FIFA 2003 on the Game Cube with my brother. These days, gadgets have to be smarter to keep the attention, big kids included, and there are not many gadget freaks out there bigger than me. To be honest, the only reason why my house is not filled with bleeding-edge technology is because it gets bleeding expensive to make it that way.

So it is with perversity that I content myself with simpler toys. The ones that fill me with nostalgia for my childhood days (for example, the Fisher Price ambulance that still sits on my shelf).

Labels: big trip

It's not as easy as you might think to find cheap food in Budapest and Prague, especially if you want to avoid the American fast food outlets. You first need to step outside the normal tourist areas, and then decide what it is that's worth eating.

Despite me telling my mum of university kebab horror stories, I've been having my fair share of them lately. Well, they're called gyros in Hungary but they're basically the same thing - sliced grilled meat in a pitta bread with sauces and vegtables.

I have to say that they do 'em well in Budapest. It's yummy and filling and all for only HFL350 (about RM4). And they dollop in all the yoghurt you want.

It's much nicer than the University kebab vans. It probably has something to do with the fact that the meat looks like real meat and not reconstituted by-by-products (the stuff they don't even throw into sausages). Yummy stuff.

On the other hand, I never thought anything could compare with the lows of University roadside van food, until I had a burger in Prague. I mean, I say bad things about Ramlyburgers back home, but my Czech burger recalibrated the scale.

They're very cheap (about CKr20 ~ RM2) and for good reason. Let's begin with how it looks. What you see when you order a burger is some wrapping paper, some bun, some green leafy stuff and something hidden behind all that. It looks like something trying to disguise itself as meat behind lettuce and bread. It's embarassed that it's even called a burger, and has tried to disappear by drowning itself with tomato sauce.

It gets better. Go ahead, take a bite. You'll taste the bun, the lettuce, the tomato sauce and... something. It has a texture not unlike cardboard that has been left soaking wet for a few days. It really needs to be tasted to be believed.

And if you dare look at what you've bitten into... well, it was the stingiest looking chicken burger I've ever seen. No more than a single layer of mince, a thin white line which just about separated it from being called a lettuce sandwich. And you pay for this stuff.

Well, to be fair, I was a little fuller after that, although it probably had to do with me downing whole litre of water just to wash away the memory.

Maybe I shouldn't judge a whole country's burger industry by just one sample. Perhaps I should try another one tomorrow - after all, they're cheap enough. Wish me luck, guys.

Labels: big trip

Finally. I've hit it. I thought it might happen sometime around now, and it has. I've hit the Travelling Wall.

The Travelling Wall is that point of time when you suddenly feel that it's about time that you stopped travelling and went back home. When if somebody gave you a ticket home right then, you would be sorely tempted to take it.

There are many reasons why you hit the Wall. Sometimes it's just the tiredness of living out of a suitcase. I hit that in the USA after about a month or so, but travelling then included the stress of finding a place to stay everytime I flew in. Now I reserve hostel beds in advance

Sometimes it's because you're disillusioned by the lack of stability and you just want to be able to wake up to something predictable. Well, that's not hit me yet. I'm looking forward to Prague, to meeting my brother in London and to (hopefully) go to Dublin.

And sometimes it's because you just miss home. You miss being around people you know. You miss your cats. And you miss being able to wake up in the morning and eating roti telur.

What I would really like is for somebody to give me a return ticket, so I can go back home for a few weeks and then continue travelling the last month or so. To recharge my batteries, as it were. Although it sounds odd that I'm asking to take a break from a vacation, travelling is pretty hard work sometimes. You get out of it as much as you put in, and I've been putting in a fair bit. I'm happier for it though, I have to say.

I have not regretted a single minute of this trip so far. It's reminded me how little I know about the world and, has, at times, tested my resources. I've learned more about myself and what I'm able to do and what it is that makes me tick.

But I do miss my roti telur.

Labels: big trip

It's absolutely incredible. I can actually count on one hand the number of days it's rained on me on this trip. Apart from these few aberations, the weather has been absolutely incredible.

Take Budapest, for example. I am sweltering here in this hotel room. It must be 36 degrees plus outside. I drink so much water, I think I spend more on it than food.

I don't have a thermometer with me, but I find the state of my undergarments at the end of a hard day's walk to be a pretty good indicator. Stickiness corrolates to temperature. No, it doesn't hug the wall when I throw it there, but it does seem to momentarily cling before dropping.

I have to admit that I do look upon with some envy at all those air-conditioned tour buses as they zoom up and down the Buda hills, but I console myself with the thought that I am my own free man and not tied down to the whims of some fascistic tour guide. You hear me? I'm FREE! And getting a good work-out, to boot.

Sometimes all this works to my advantage. In the heat I'm not my normal slightly dishevelled self and turn into a more grotesque version, with my t-shirt collar askew from sweat, my wind-blown sculptured coiffure above a shining brow and the hair on my arms gently layered with a mildew of perspiration. All this helps cultivate my sweaty skinflint student look and I do get the occasional break when bargaining for discounts. Either that, or the shopkeepers are keen to get me out as quickly as possible.

Labels: big trip

Budapest is actually two cities, Buda and Pest. It's was actually originally called Pest-Buda but I think they changed it because Buda is the older half, because Buda looks over Pest and because Buda looks way cooler anyway, with it's castle.

In fact, I'm sure in some dictionary somewhere, next to the word 'buda' you're going to see the following description: "lots and lots and lots of hills, don't even try to walk it if you don't plan to climb a lot, but is pretty nice to look at".

It doesn't look too bad to start off with. Just walk down this road and you're at Matthias Church. Well, this road slopes at an almighty angle, and those smart Hungarian entrepreneurs had placed their grocery shops just at the point where you think "Oh my, this is hard work". I rewarded them by buying a litre and a half of water straight away.

The view of Pest from up there is, in short, outstanding.

(If it wasn't, I was going to march straight up to the nearest Tourist Information centre and demand to know why. It should be made mandatory by law that high places must print disclaimers if the view from the top is disappointing. I can name two places that should have large WARNING stickers on them: The Berliner Dom in Berlin and St Stephen's Basilica in Budapest.)

I did hunt around up there for Castle Cavedn as well, and I really have no idea where it is. This was a shame, because I really wanted to be able to title this piece "Climbed up a hill to climb down a cave". I went to the exact spot on the map, and there was something behind locked doors that looked a little like an entrance to a cave, but who knows?

The jewel in the Buda crown must be Buda castle itself. Like all good castles, it occupies the highest point in the city, and yes, it gets my You-Get-Good-Views-From-Here label of endorsement. It's large (but not as large as the palace complexes of Peterhof or Sanssoucci) and it now houses numerous museums, like the Museum of Cotemporary Art, The Hungarian National Gallery and The Budapest History Museum (none of which, unfortunately, I was terribly interested in).

There is actually a furnicular railway up to the castle, but I think that that's for wimps and you wouldn't catch a real man like me going up on one. Not unless it was for free, of course.

In my naivety (and this trip is certainly exposing lots of that), I had thought that all those fantastic buildings that I saw across the Danube from Pest were on one hill. There was this huge, Soviet-styled statue (I found out later it was the Liberation Monument) that caught the eye and warranted a closer look. I tried to find the best route
across to it, but to my consternation, I kept going downhill. Well, unsurprisingly, that was because it was on top of another hill.

Well, I had climbed to the top of Neak Pearn, and I had wheezed up to Seoul Tower, and I had battled Seoraksan and (barely) won, so I rolled up my sleeves and climbed Gell¢¾rt-hegy.

I am proud to say that I managed it without wheezing once, and I even beat a couple to the top (although I'm pretty sure they didn't even notice I was there). Yet again, great views from the top. And I even had the will-power to not give in and pay double-price for a litre of water and waited until I got down to rehydrate.

By the time I had got down, it was only five o'clock, but nine hours of climbing up and down hills had pretty much done it for me. But tomorrow, I think I'll tackle the much flatter Heroes' Square.

Labels: big trip

I've bought myself an EURail ticket. It's one of those things that lets you travel for so many free trips on European rail for within a certain period of time. You pay quite a bit for it, but since you travel for free, it should work out.

Well, not exactly for free. Let me give you some examples.

• If you travel from a country where the EURail pass applies to one where it doesn't, you obviously don't get to travel for free in the latter. They calculate a price for you, based on a free journey to the border. For example, when I asked how much it cost to travel from Budapest to Prague, I was quoted Hf12,000 (which is about EUR50). It was high enough to make me think twice about travelling.
  
• You need to make a reservation when travelling on EuroCity, InterCity or InterCity Express trains, which is just about every train going from a city in one country to another country. These reservations aren't free. They can cost anything from EUR5 to EUR20, depending on the train, the country and the class of the travel. They're not even consistent. In Sweden, first and second class reservations have different costs; In Denmark, they don't. Hence, my decision to travel second class in Sweden, but first in Denmark.
  
• Night trains need reservations as well as a supplement if you want to use a sleeperette, couchette, or sleeping car. They're all basically "places to sleep", going from a reclining chair all the way to private cabin. A couchette (a flat place to lie on in a shared cabin) costs about EUR20. Note that cost of the couchette supplement will buy you a similar sort of sleeping area and a trip on the night train between KL and Singapore.
  
• The rail days are only valid between midnight to midnight. There is something called the 7pm rule which means that any journey starting after 7pm and ending the next day is considered part of the next day's journey; hence, instead of a 24-hour day, you get a 29-hour travelling day. However, there are several overnight train journeys that require a change at some station before midnight, especially if you're travelling from some hick provincial town. Once you make that transfer, the 7pm rule doesn't count any more, forcing you to use up an extra day on your EURail ticket. The problem I faced when travelling from Stockholm to Berlin was that although the trip takes 14 hours, there's no way to use up only one Rail Day, hence my decision to stopover in Copenhagen. If, for example, you want to travel from Lisbon to Budapest, you must use up at least two Rail Days (although that involves three transfers including one with a 10-minute wndow).
  

So, is it a good deal? Well, train travel in Europe (especially that area covering France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria) is so expensive that even with the EURail ticket at the exorbitant costs they're selling it at, it's actually worth it if you want to travel Europe by rail. This is especially true if you plan to either go trans-continental (e.g. all the way from Lisbon to Rome to Budapest to Scandinavia to Paris) or if you want to make many small day excursions.

It isn't anywhere near as good as the Delta Air Fly-All-You-Want ticket that I had when I was travelling in the states all those years ago. Then, the only criteria was that there was a free seat on the plane, and then off you go. There were no extra costs, nor did you have to make reservations.

Labels: big trip

There is a reason why people get stereo-typed. You hear about loud Americans and arrogant Germans, and there must be some basis for it all.

Take my train journey from Berlin to Budapest, for example. I was sharing a couchette cabin with this dear old German lady and two Americans.

These guys were walking advertisements for stereotypical Americans. They spent half the night talking to each other, in loud, annoying voices, on subjects as diverse as which girls in college were hot to which girls they've met on their trip so far were hot. Not that I enjoy eavesdropping on people, but there are times when you just don't have a choice.

"Man, do you remember Sharon?"
"Oh yeah, she was awesome, dude. But she'd do anyone."
"No way! How come she never did it with me?"
"Cos you're such an a******, dude!"

"Do you remember that chick from London? Man, she was hot!"

And so on, and so forth. For at least an hour they discussed various conquests (rather, degrees of conquest).

What was more surprising was that these guys weren't just out of high school. They were both over twenty six. Listening to them talk made me feel good that at 26 I was where I was in life, working in what I consider to be a worthwhile job, and not where they were. Okay, they probably made it with more hot girls than I did, but they'd have to be pretty hot to beat what I was doing.

Just as they were drifting to sleep, the train pulled into some other station. At least eight more Americans clambered on board into the cabin next door and just to confirm that the two I had just listened to weren't an aberration, they then proceeded to loudly explain to each other how sucky couchette cabins were, even if they did have awesome cup holders.

Labels: big trip

In Russian, bolshoi means big, which is a word you would think they would use more often, given their predilection for all things big.

Everything is huge is Russia: the country, the buildings, the statues, the women.

Well, the women seem to fall into two categories: extremely thin or extremely large. There seems to be some sort of correlation between age and size. I exagerrate a little, but not much.

The statues are just huge. What on Earth makes people think that having large monuments to themselves is such a great idea?

But maybe there is so much in Russia that they can afford to be profligant. The country is huge. Remember, it's taking us six nights to cross the country from Ulan Batar to St Petersburg by train. There are (at least) five time zones covering the country. And there is a lot of space in between the towns.

Russia is large enough and rich enough in raw materials to be self-sufficient. They don't need to be trading partners with anyone if they don't want to. And yet, all this potential seems to be wasted. Things are sometimes so inefficient, especially when you compare it with countries like Singapore, Switzerland, Hong Kong and Luxemburg. It's a paradox that the larger a country is, the less they seem to be able to do with their resources. The US is an exception to this, and I suppose that Russia is correct in trying to use them as an example for privatisaton, but they have a long, long way to go.

Labels: big trip

I had studied German in school for two years. Well, actually it was four, but there was a break in the middle and I started again from scratch, so I consider it two. It was a choice between German, Music and Latin. There was no way I was going to take a dead language, and I thought that I could learn music on my own, so German it was for me, then.

I can tell you, from personal experience, that the gulf between GCSE German and the real world is as wide as the Malaysian football league and the English Premier League. They kind of look the same, but one is faster, more complex and takes much more skill to master.

Take the simplest of instructions, for example. The things that the conductor says when the train is entering the station I can just about understand, but some of it are educated guesses. "The next station is blahblahblah. We hope you had a lovely journey. Please do not forget your belongings.". Something like that.

I worry that I'm missing the subtleties. What if the conducter was actually saying "The next station is blahblahblah. We hope you've had a lovely journey. And, by the way, the train is on fire, so it would be a good idea to get off as soon as possible.".

It must mean something that the first full conversation I had was with a lovely film attendant near Alexanderplatz, although it consisted mostly of me repeating what she was saying.
"Matrix Reloaded, die Film is auf Englisch oder Deutsch?"
"Alles auf Deutsch."
"Alles auf Deutsch?"
"Sie m☻ssen nach Potsdam Platz gehen."
"Potsdam Platz?"
"Ja, es gibt Film auf Englisch im Potsdam Platz."
"Film auf Englisch in Potsdam Platz. Danke sch¢¼n!"

Now, I'm sure that you can understand what was going on in that last conversation without me having to translate it. And a lot of what I talk to people about is in that vein. They're just simple phrases that I know, and I kind of fake it around them.

Sometimes I get into trouble. They start playing dirty, by speaking too quickly and using words I don't understand.

For example, here's me ordering dinner:
"Einmal Fisch mit Frites, bitte."
"FischUndFrites? DreiStucke,Ja?"
"Erm... Ja..."
"M¢¼chtenSieKetchipOderSenfOderReinchwalkSosse?"
"Erm... Ketchup is gut, danke."
"OK,dasistzweiEurof☻nfundneunzigbitte."

At this point I just give them a five Euro note that I know I should get change from.

It actually amazes me how few people in Germany are comfortable speaking in English. Unlike those in Finland, Sweden and Denmark, the Germans assume first you can speak German, and then only try communicating to you in English. Even the guided tours at Sanssoucci palace were in German (which is why I didn't go on one).

Anyway, despite my very basic German, most of what I say has been one of the following: Entschuldigung bitte (Excuse me please), Ich versthehe nicht (I don't understand), and Mein Deutsch ist nicht so gut (My German isn't very good).

Labels: big trip

Aha. Finally. Three weeks after it opened in Moscow, I finally got a chance to see it. I didn't see it in Moscow or St Petersburg because Mama doesn't like Keanu Reeves. I didn't see it in Scandanavia because it was expensive (about RM40 for a ticket).

I almost didn't get to see it in Berlin because almost everything in Germany is in German. All the TV programs are in German. All the plays, the musicals, the newspapers, the magazines, most of the signs, the menus, you name it, it's in German. Subsequently, most of the films have been dubbed in German too.

They seem to be well done. I had the chance to watch Star Wars I: The Phantom Menance in a showroom and it was the German version. The guy dubbing Qui Gon Jin really sounded like Liam Neeson. It was a very impressive performance. Even Jar Jar Binks didn't sound as annoying.

But no matter how well done it is, I still am completely and thoroughly against voice-over dubbing. The inflection and manner of speech is part of the acting itself and to take that away from a film and replace it with something else is simply butchering a film. You
could argue that sub-titling also spoils a film, but surely less so than dubbing. I also have the same bugbear about translated works. I told my mum that I haven't read Dr Zhivagho because I don't read Ruussian. She was amazed, but surely, it's not the same thing to read a translated version. The author's words have been changed.

But we're moving away from the main point, and that is I want to say that I think that Matrix Reload is a very good film. There are also a lot of inidivdual things I could point to that I really hate, but overall, it's good. Even if it does have Keanu Reeves in it.

It's another sequel in a year of sequels. We've already had X-Men 2, we're going to get Terminator 3, the big one at the end of the year is The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King AND (as if it weren't enough) another Matrix sequel, Matrix Revolution.

The story picks up six months after the end of the last one. It begins with another awesome Trinity (Carrie Anne "tight wetsuit looks good on her" Moss) action scene where she single-handedly takes on many, many guys in a slow-mo camera-panning kung-fu fist-fight that the original initiated and is now standard in all action movies (and yes, she does look good in her threads).

Neo (Keanu "man, when will he gain more than one expression" Reeves), Trinity and Morpheus (Lawrence "listen to my elocution" Fishburn) are still running around the Matrix trying to free the people in it and save Zion, the last bastion of humanity in the real world.

Neo still has his super-powers that he discovered at the end of the last movie but now people keep making it clear that there's no point having the ability to fly and fight like you're on hyperspeed if you don't know what you're going to do with it. Morepheus is convinced that Neo is the One, but what on Earth (or on Matrix) is the One meant to do?

Well, this movie is about that, and that main plot is very well done. As before, there is a twist, but it all builds up so nicely to it, it works well.

The other story is Neo and Trinity's burgeoning love story and the introduction of Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Locke (Harry J. Lennix). These characters provide some tension and it's very probable that they will have a major part to play in the third installment.

Also back is Agent Smith(Hugo Weaving), but... well, there's more to him now than before. I shall leave it at that and let you find out.

Most of the action scenes are great and I never really get tired of watching them fight. There's so much effort put into choreographing them, just sit back and enjoy them as works of art.

The whole movie is stylish. It isn't innovative, but long black overcoats and sunglasses will probably never go out of style. And there's something about fighting while keeping a deadpan look on your face that's just, well, cool.

(I've just realised that the Matrix owes a lot of its look to the Terminator series - black threads, cool shades and that deadpan look.)

What I do have a big problem with is the use of computer-generated Neos for some of the action sequences, especially his fight with Agent Smiths. The problem is that it looks computer-generated. I know that a lot of the graphics in the film are created on a processor somewhere, but for goodness sakes, guys, it's got to look real.

When they look good, it works great. For example, the shots in a chase scene where the motorcycle swerves in and out of traffic must have been computer-generated to some extent, but it looks so good it's a thrill. But some other shots just look baloney. I hate them. They spoil the whole movie. If I could, I would edit out whole sections of fight scenes simply because they annoy me. Snip, snip, snip.

Another thing that annoys me are the long stretches of discourse that don't move the plot forward at all but seem to be just there emphasise how much the Wzarchowski Brothers (who produced, wrote and directed the series) know about philosophy. There is a point when being clever is just showing off. It's good to break up the action, but next time guys, try some comedy instead of existentialism.

However, all in all, these are not major problems and the movie works well enough for me. There are some very good scenes, especially the one after Neo goes through the door to find out what exactly it is he has to do (a lot of doors in this one, by the way). Also, just about every Morpheus scene where he spouts theology and struts and poses is actually great. It could have been bad, but it works with Lawrence Fishburn.

The initial reviews to this said that because the original set such high standards and expectations, this version just had more of the same, and there was nothing new.

Well, as far as I'm concerned, it just has to be good enough, and I enjoyed it enough to look forward to the next one this December. Even if it does have Keanu Reeves in it.

Labels: big trip

I've been racking my brain to think of lucky breaks I've had on this trip so far, and I can't come up with any. I can think of many 'challenges to overcome' and since they didn't kill me, I guess they made me better. I certainly hope so.

Maybe I exagerrate a little bit. I did manage to go into, not one, but two cathedral towers at student price because the cashiers insisted that I was one. I did get to travel on a Scandanavian ferry for free. I did manage to not fall off a mountaintop.

But, as a whole, the returns have not been enough to balance out the bad breaks.

Let's take this evening's hijinks as a case in point. I bought a ticket with a couchette from Berlin to Budapest. What a great idea. I get a good night's sleep and wake up to the strains of the accordians of Hungary (or whatever it is they play).

I've got my ticket, I checked it twice, I made sure I got my bags out early so I didn't have to rush in case anything bad happened (who says I don't learn from my mistakes?), I take good care of my bags and valuables and then I take note of my seat number (44) and wagon number (164) so I don't have to rush.

Except that my seat doesn't exist. Couchette 44 in Wagon 164 is a figment of somebody's imagination because Wagon 164 is not a couchette wagon.

I had a nice long conversation with the conductress, mostly in German. There is some sort of strike or something somewhere and because of that, the last wagon is not a sleeping wagon. That's how good my German was.

For a long, long moment I thought that she was going to send me to go sit in a chair and I was about to demand (Hear that? Demand.) for my EUR20.50 back because I wasn't going to be sleeping in a bed like I had paid for.

Fortunately, I didn't have to show my darker side (stop sniggering, you guys) and it was settled by me being given a fourth couchette in a wagon that already had three people, and would eventually get one more.

At this point, I am trying to be positive and I must say that I am extremely thankful that I still have my health, most of my money, my passport and (although the last is debatable) my sanity.

Labels: big trip