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Sep

Greenland on hold

I should be winging my way to Toronto instead of sitting here blogging in rainy Melbourne, dammit.

The plan was to cruise the Artic circle on the Clipper Adventurer, but I’m not going anymore because my ship hit a rock. Happily, no-one was hurt, but the ship won’t be repaired in time for our polar cruise to go ahead.

Next report from the Mornington Peninsula’s Safety Beach, instead of Greenland…

http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/cruise-ship-stranded-in-the-arctic-20100830-13z9e.html

Sep

Hot on the phone in Seoul

I was having a fight with Optus yesterday about my overdue phone bill. I had queries about it and they said ‘why didn’t you ring earlier?’ Because I was in Seoul, I said.

South Korea, like Japan, doesn’t sing from the same hymn sheet as the rest of us. Their phones are predominantly non-GSM, running instead on CDMA technology (isn’t this the technology that Australia just turned off so we could all go digital? Any illumination welcomed.).

So instead of wrestling with my Australian phone and gladly offering my bank account up, lock stock to Optus, I hired a phone at the airport from one of the line of phone companies set up at the exit doors.Not just a SIM card to slip into my phone, but the whole shebang.

When I got the phone, it was so clunky and old, I wanted to put a bumper sticker on it saying something like, “My other phone is a Blackberry.” Incidentally, out of all the Koreans and expats I met, they were all trucking god-ugly phones: mostly clam shells. (Toooo early naughties!) And this in a country where something like 95% of the population has a mobile phone, and the home of Samsung and LG.

The international wires say that smartphones have been slow on the take-up due to lack of mobile apps and the high cost of the technology. The cynic in my head says keeping the government is keeping the non-Korean brands out of town. Can anyone else smell the non-competition rat here?

Sep

My enduring image of Seoul is not its elegant Joseon palaces, neon signs or pretty traditional houses, but legs.

Legs, legs, legs.

Seoul, like much of Asia, is currently in the grip of a fashion obsession where short shorts are teamed with the highest heels – wedges or stilettos, whatever you can totter on.

Little Korean girls have, collectively, shot up overnight at least three inches, and will wade through rainy puddles, in sweltering humidity and even brave the unseasonable chill wind, bearing legs to the elements in the name of fashion.

Damn it if I can’t find a photo to show you!

Hooker Hill in the foreign enclave of Itaewon is, however, the first time I’ve seen cleavage in Seoul – and then it’s a pumped-up girl working it for the money. Tall transvestites laze on chaise lounges till the late-night rush hour, while buzz-cut off-duty US soldiers chase each other among the traffic, banging on car bonnets as they dodge through the taxis, laughing at their freedom. The Military Police move through the crowds, negotiating peace. The foreign tourist do last-minute shopping amongst the leather and large-sized branded sportswear shops.

Itaewon is where the restaurant strip sees Persian kebab houses face French patisseries, Thai restaurants and euro wine bars. There’s KFC and Burger King, Korea’s own bibimbap holes in the wall and roast chicken carts. Midnight fruit sellers and Cuban cigar convenience stores, bands blaring and clubs beating.

Bars, bands, GIs and girls, it’s down the road from the gay strip, Homo Hill. It’s the Kings Cross of Seoul, it’s the city’s foreign heart.

Sep

Things I just don’t get about Malaysia

No kissing in taxis (see explanatory picture).

The B.U.M. Equipment clothing range. For men, women and children. Er, market research, anyone?

The Petronas towers. Yeah, they’re big man. Ok, they’re real big. And that’s really about it. No cure for cancer or the common cold. They’re. Just. Big. Call me a killjoy, I don’t care.

The fact the population is just 1.6 million (with surrounds, 7 million). “Melbourne looks so small after KL,” said the Kiwi in front of me as we flew into Melbourne lat night.

Clearly, her eyes were painted on. Or perhaps that we were flying at the time over the desolate northern suburbs, where the highest point is the VideoEzy store. Or it’s just that when we think of Asian cities, we think of megapolises. KL’s population is dwarfed by Melbourne, which recently topped four million.

KL’s a young city, too, with Chienese settlers dropping in to mine tin in the 1850s, relative to Melbourne’s founding in 1835.

However, I notice that we both now have Chinese language directions at both airports, so we’re not so dissimilar after all, eh?

Aug

China in transit

Killing time at Beijing airport with delays, I offer you a sample of today’s headlines in the English-language China Daily:

Street food blamed for cholera outbreak.

Hand-washing practices urged for professionals.

A birthday cake for six-year old pandas Yuan Yuan and Tuan Tuan

And a story entitled “Smaller penalties for breaking family planning rules”, which states that parents should register extra births past their one-child policy before the upcoming census, and as a result, will face minimal fines. In the past, the fines have been nine times the average annual income.

The newspaper states that last year, around 100,000 babies were born in Beijing, and these ‘illegal’ newborns do not get citizenship.

[PS I would have posted this earlier, but my connection in Beijing mysteriously times out when I try to access not only Facebook but also blogger.com. Go figure.]

Aug

Things I like about Changi airport

Why I love Changi airport. Simply because the loo fits my luggage trolley in it. Singaporeans love their shopping and are happy to accommodate the trait in its visitors.

There are lollies on the desk of the customs clerk. I ask him if he eats them all day. “No,” he says. “Then I would be too sweet and nice to the passengers.”

The 24-hour GST refund desk and the Singaporean glam shoe company, Charles & Keith, with GST-free, sale-marked-down shoes right next door.

And the other thing I absolutely adore about Singapore? The fact my handbag gets its own seat, without question. And, to top that, when I go into a chilli crab restaurant, it not only gets its own seat, but has a cover draped over it so it’s not spattered with sauce. God, it sounds so uncool, but viva Singapore!

Aug

Early morning over Kuala Lumpur

Flying over Kuala Lumpur before sunrise, the city of 1.8 million looks dark and empty. I’m having a flashback, oddly, to another time, arriving before dawn in a small Russian city, dumped off an overnight bus on an overpass on its outskirts.

Surprisingly, the Russian soldier who gets off the bus at the same lonely point speaks good English, and he becomes my guide. He is walking to war… The town’s train station is a major gathering point for fresh conscripts to be sent to Chechnya.

The closer we get to the station, the more the streets fill with young men with rough crew-cuts and ill-fitting uniforms, walking to war in plastic sandals, their cheap regulation boots slug over their shoulders. They eye my leather hiking boots with avarice.

My guide is older than most, at 28 he is educated and has a career. Yet he seems untouched by what is country is making him do. He’s neither excited nor angry nor afraid – just stoic. He says he knew he would have to go. His best friend went before him and is already dead.

As the taxi drives through palm gardens and terraces of ferns, the humid Malaysian air warming bones chilled by a Melbourne winter, it’s a strange memory to recall this morning. But who ever can control their memories?

Aug

A country drive: Kyneton exposed

It’s a town where the espresso consumption equates the population of 4300 people: surely 4300 espressos, macciatos, afogatos, cappucinos and lattes were dished up this weekend in Australia’s most happing country town, Kyneton.

How groovy can one town be? The answer is: impossibly so. Cafes and galleries open at a rate of knots, yet there’s still a tractor shop in the middle of the hip Piper Street strip. Gothic florists, truffle degustation dinners, lazy Sunday organic breakfast scenes and hideaway of celebrated chefs, designers, musicians and writers…amazing stuff.

There are two sides to the town: the High Street, where the burger shop is doing one with the lot and a can of coke for $8, Videoworld (for your viewing pleasure) and Best & Less is hidden out the back. At first sight, it appears there are more vets than doctors, but there’s a hospital there too.

The other side is chic Pipers St, home of all those pumping cafes, pinot dinners and food from the Middle East, continental Europe, India and beyond. I would like to have shown you a photo, but it was bucketing down rain all weekend.

Every town has its own dark secret, and residents were more than happy to pull up a chair at a wooden table, put the tea pot down … and spill. The broken hearts, street rivalry, the spooky-sounding Exclusive Brethren who appear to own the furniture shops stuffed with blue micro-fibre sofas and whose website spends much energy defending bad TV coverage.

Food, fury and fiefdoms…love it…

Jul

Friday night dinner

Jul

A new national pasttime: abusing Asian tourists?

What I did on my winter vacation: abused Asian tourists. Do you think this is a trend that’ll take off?

So now I’m starting to sound like Tony Abbott (er, before the election campaign started), but let me explain…

Last week, a few of us toddled down to Phillip Island, just south of Melbourne, a little chunk of land that has been given over to growing penguins and kangaroos. Literally. We stopped in a wildlife park and spotted such delicious creatures as Tasmanian devils (notoriously bad tempered, anti-social creatures) and open grasslands where large kangaroos leapt up to you, frisking your pockets for food. There was also an area for koalas.

If you’re reading this and unaware, koalas sleep for about 18 hours a day, and the rest of the time is spent eating leaves and mating. In all, a fairly uncomplicated lifestyle. Australian kids are brought up knowing they’re not the most exciting animal. They don’t sing, dance or beg to be patted. Mostly, they just sleep. Ok, so I’m trying to justify shouting at the tourists who were throwing pellets at the sleeping koalas, so they could get a better photo. Cranky? You bet.

It felt so good, I had another crack at some girls down at the penguin parade where, every night, hundreds of tiny penguins return from a day’s fishing at sea to their burrows and mates. They are wild, so the wildlife service has built boardwalks so we can see them running home, undisturbed by a size 10 boot squishing them.

Visiting the penguins is so popular, the warnings not to take photos are repeated in a swag of languages, including Japanese and Chinese. If you’re caught photographing the penguins, your camera is immediately confiscated by the wildlife rangers because the flash sends the penguins blind and they die because they can’t catch fish. Simple, really. Except most of us can’t turn off a flash, hence the blanket ban against cameras.

So why do people persist in trying??? Annoyingly, both times I had my little tantrums, the women apologiesed in perfect English. No excuses.

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