Hi everyone, I probably should have mentioned this here before but I've moved my blog to my own hosted domain, so from now on, please follow my adventures (in Japan) at this address: http://www.benji99.ca

See you there!

All pictures of Singapore uploaded

IMG_6102, originally uploaded by Benji99.

Including all the pictures from the fabulous Singapore Zoo!
Thailand pictures coming soon.

Pics of Singapore

IMG_5890, originally uploaded by Benji99.

Hello all, I'm in the process of uploading all the pictures from Singapore, including like this one, pictures of the Singapore Botanic Garden.

I will finish uploading all of my pictures from Singapore over the weekend (that's a promise!) so stay tuned.

As always, you can check them out by either clicking on the link on the right side, or by going to http://photos.benji99.ca

Thailand pictures will follow next week

More Hong Kong Pics

IMG_5530, originally uploaded by Benji99.

I've finished uploading all the Hong Kong pictures in their full-res glory. I'll upload Singapore and Thailand within the next few days. Stay tuned, but in the mean time, enjoy!

Back in town...

I was sad leaving Bangkok on Tuesday night and it's 35 degree weather, but I knew that I'll be back again, so that made the departure easier.

Our first stop on the way back was a 12 hour overnight lay-over in Hong Kong where we agreed to not get sleep at a Hotel. We were hoping to buy some electronics but by the time we had arrived back to Mongkok, all the stores were closed. It was still an interesting night where I managed to convince my friend at 3am to hop onto some random bus and see where it lended us. We ended up in this hugely dense residential area with high-rise buildings all around us. The are was very un-Hong Kong-like since there was practically no pedestrians or cars in motion.

These long-haul flights are starting to get easier as I slept a good 7-8 hours on the last Hong Kong to New York flight. In New York, we managed to narrowly catch the American Airlines flight to Montreal, as we were approaching Montreal, we thought the end of journey was near. Once again, however, leaving Montreal is much easier then getting back to it!

As we were approaching Montreal, we get a message from the captain that there was a lot of fog that had suddenly accumulated over Montreal and that we would need to wait for it to clear before we can land. We circled over Montreal (so close, yet so far!) for about 1.5 hours before they decided to head back to Albany, NY for refuelling. Upon touchdown, we were basically told that the plane was now heading back to JFK and that we could *maybe* catch another flight to Montreal later that night, or if we get off, we were totally on our own. We decided to disembark and rent a car back to Montreal.

Well that turned out to be easier said then done. Practically every car-rental company had a desk at the airport, but only Avis had a car that we could drop off in Canada (it needed to have a Canadian plate). Unfortunately, somebody beat us to that car already. We then decided to rent an american car that we would drive back to Montreal and drive it back to Plattsburgh the next day to drop it off. Only Hertz was willing to let us do that. We then rented the car (at a cost of 155$ USD for ONE day!, but fortunately split with 3 more passengers of the plane) and headed toward Canada. At the Canadian customs, we were informed that would not be allowed to enter the country with an american rental car. The customs officer then seemed to feel sorry for us and finally let us through.

Anyways, I'm now back home (and it's freaking cold here, and why is there still snow??!) and back at work. I'm currently going through all my pics and will start re-uploading the old ones in full-resolution as well as upload all the missing ones from Singapore and Bangkok.

One note about the DSLR camera. It's a nice camera, but not for me while travelling. Too big and heavy, on the last 2 weeks in Bangkok, I was leaving it at the hotel a lot more often than not. I'll be selling it and getting a high-end Point&Shoot camera instead(maybe going back to the Powershoot A series from Canon).

Stay tuned for pics...

Sorry for the lack of updates

Sorry guys for the lack of updates since arriving in Thailand, I've been having a hard time finding the motivation to use the computers here. I spent 1 week in Bangkok on arrival, the highlights would probably this amazing seafood restaurant where we ate a 1.4 kilo lobster! (bill also came out to 200$ CAD) and the Grand Palace.

We then headed to Chiang Mai for 6 days where I was very happy to get back on those 125cc motorbikes/scooters. Driving on the left-side of the road turned out not to be as challenging as I thought (after a couple close calls!).

I'm now back in Bangkok and getting ready to head back home tomorrow night. I really wish my stay here could have been longer...

Unfortunately, I won't upload any pictures until I arrive back in Montreal, but expect a lot of them there!

See you all soon

Arrived in Bangkok

Finally arrived in Bangkok, but I'll keep that for a future update, for now I'll talk about Singapore.

I had this impression of Singapore from previous visitors of the country that it was a sterile, boring, overly-westernized, clean and oppressed city. In actuality, I was pleasantly surprised to find very much the contrary in a few regards.

First of all, I was tight on time when I had to book the hotel, so I didn't do much research on where the hotel was located. The name of the Hotel was Fragrance Hotel, and it was located in the Geyland district of Singapore. It was close to the MRT (Subway/train) and well centralized in the city. What I didn't count on was the fact that Geylang is probably the most active red-light district in all of Singapore. For some reason there was no prostitutes on our street, but on the next street, you could spot something like 50 of them lined up looking for customers. Furthermor, they could be spotted at most places where they serve food (hey most of them weren't too bad looking, and I can think of worst things to have to look at).

Aside from the prostitutes, we also found some great, extremely cheap (3-7 $CAD) local food by the means of the Hawker Centres. These centres are basically restaurants that have food already cooked and ready to eat and usually little to no tables in the restaurant. The tables would instead be lined up on the fairly large sidewalks leading all the way up to the street. Since the tables take up the whole sidewalk, you are forced to essentially make your way through narrow gaps between the restaurants and where the tables are (usually with lots of customers). This forces you to peruse and smell the various foods available, and because they're cheap, we never had to limit ourselves!

I was expecting some great multi-culturalism in Singapore and I was not dissapointed in the least. In our (very short visit), we managed to eat Indonesian, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Indian (of course!), Korean, Malay and some other islamic-looking foods. And it was good! Generally, we frown upong eating at food-courts in Canada because they generally suck. We found in Singapore, on Orchard Road, what a Food court should be. No fast-food American crap here, just foods from countries all over Asia at super-cheap prices (but a bit more than Hawker Centres). They even had Dim Sum served on the carts! If I lived in Singapore, I'd want to live as close to this place as possible :)

While in Singapore, other than generally walking around the city, we checked out Singapore Botanical Garden which is simply awe-inspiring. It was so large that we gave up half-way through from exhaustion. To give you an idea, there's an orchid garden INSIDE the Botannical garden that itself alone took over 2 hours to go through, and it probably took up less than 10% of the whole park. This park puts all parks in Montreal to shame...

As for the public transportation system, we were expecting another example of how pathetic the one we have back home really was, and we weren't dissapointed even though it wasn't quite as advanced as the Hong Kong one. Finally, as in every other city I've visited so far in Asia, taxis here are dirt cheap!

On the last night, my friend's uncle invited us to an amazing seafood restaurant area in Singapore. The crabs were incredibly huge and were prepared in a Chili sauce and a black-pepper sauce. We wished we had found out about these restaurants earlier...

There's many things we didn't have to visit in Singapore, such as Sentosa island and the Jurong birdpark, but that's ok, they'll still be there for next time, and there will be, that's for sure!

My expectations for Singapore were low, and it turns out that even though I'm very happy to be back in Bangkok, Singapore may be have become my favorite city in Asia so far.

More to come from Bangkok very soon, as well as pictures from Singapore.

Moving on

It's now time to move on from Singapore to Bangkok. Unfortunately, I'm leaving for the airport in 10 minutes and therefor do not have time to do a proper update on Singapore (which was MUCH better than anticipated). In fact, Singapore may be my favorite Asian city so far...

I'll make a proper update (as well as upload pictures) from Thailand within the next few days.
Stay tuned...

More pics from Hong Kong

DSCN0893, originally uploaded by Benji99.

Including pics taken by my friend Mike which includes a few of pictures with me in them, alors Maman, j'ai rempli mon quota...

Hong Kong Madness

IMG_4798, originally uploaded by Benji99.

Another batch of Hong Kong pictures was uploaded to Flickr.
Will upload the rest in the next day or two. This picture of a (very busy) intersection in Causeway Bay (Hong Kong Island) gives you a damn good idea of how crazy and crowded Hong Kong can be!

Good-bye Hong Kong, Hello Singapore

Yesterday, we finally left Hong Kong and the madness for Singapore!
So far, first impressions of Singapore are very interesting. First, there seems to be a lot less people (at least where we're staying). Second, the area we're staying is close to Little India and as such, there are many Indians, Muslims and Pakistanis, which means, lots of Indian food!! Oh, it's 30 degrees celcius over here :)

Some final thoughts on Hong Kong. The hostel we stayed in was very adequate, it was really cheap (it cost us under 20$/night) and it was in an amazing location in Hong Kong. Mong Kok was everything was had heard about it prior, it's incredibly alive, and this at all times of the day. Unfortunately, Hong Kong was Foggy every single day except for one (which we took advantage to make it to the peak).

We've found much better internet cafes over here, so I've already started uploading more pictures of Hong Kong. As you will see on a few of the pictures, unfortunately there was some dust that made it's way onto my filter one day, so a blemish will show up on a few pictures...

That's all for now.

Update from the East

Sorry guys for my lack of updates while in Hong Kong, internet access is not as easy to come by as in other places that I've visited prior.

A couple days ago, we decided to try some of the Sushi here, little did we know that we probably walked into the most expensive restaurant in Hong Kong! The bill for all 3 of us came out to 1975 $HKD (or just under 300 $CAD), but it was incredible, none of us had Sushi this good and this fresh before.

A few notes about the public transit system, I've heard it before from a friend who had travelled here recently, but I was really surprised in how right he was. It's absolutely fantastic, it's super convenient, quick, and clean! We never have to wait more than 5 minutes for the subway. Finally, they use a touchless smart-card system call the Octopus card. Essentially, it's a prepaid card that you use to pay most any kind of public transport here including the busses, trams, subways, trains and even the ferries! Unlike Montreal, there are no flat fees for travel, you pay by how far you travel, even so, I'd take this system over an out-dated flat-rate one.

As I had mentioned previously, we were going to attend two concerts while we're in Hong Kong. What an experience those were! The first was on St. Valentine's day and it consisted of a traditional Chinese orchestra as well as two performers in full custumes coming on stage to perform short excerpts of traditional Chinese songs. It was amazing to see the orchestra, which was about the size of a western one, but the instruments were all completely different!

The second concert was even better, this one consisted of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra which is a standard Western orchestra. The orchestra, however, performed Chinese classical compositions that followed more western guidelines as well as use more western instruments (violins, violas, double bass, etc...). There was however a couple compositions that incorporated chinese instruments such as Erhu Concerto. The Erhu is a string instrument similar to the Violin but sounds completely different!

That's all for now, we can see some of the sky for once, so we'll be heading to Victoria peak. I promise to upload more pictures before we head to Singapore.

Pics!

Just taking a minute to mention that I've finally uploaded a few pictures to my Flickr page, once again, you can find it here. I found a pretty speedy internet cafe here in Mong Kok, I'll upload a lot more in the next day or two. I'll post with more information on the happenings then as well!

Full day down...

Chinese Opera last night was very cool. It was not an Opera per se, but it was Chinese Orchestra with a couple performers that would come on stage and perform some popular traditional Chinese songs. What was interesting about the orchestra was that it was composed entirely of non-western instruments! I liked the experience very much and will be looking forward to the ongoing performances!

Yesterday we also had Dim Sum for the first time, we weren't dissapointed :)

It's incredible how many people are here, we were walking around last night at around 11:30PM and the sidewalks and pedestrian streets were still completely packed. I doubt many other cities around the world can boast to have this active of a nightlife (on a Wednesday night no less!). Finally, walking around here is quite exhaustive, you need to be on a constant lookup not to run into other people.

I already have many pictures, but the internet connection where we're staying is too slow to upload, I'll look for a faster one of the next day or two.

Oh yeah, I've been primed to just how loud a man can snore, it's actually really impressive (but not when you're trying to slepp!!), I need to find a way to record it.

More soon

I'm alive and kicking in Hong Kong

It's 8:45Am local time here in Hong Kong.
The travel time to get here was as grueling as ever with just about 24 hours in total travel time.
Just as had happened to our friend Michael who had arrived 2 days earlier, our baggages were delayed, and we are expecting them later today.

The area of Hong Kong we're staying is called Mong Kok, and is a little overwhelming to say the least! When they said that this place is active and heavily populated, they were'nt kidding! (Pictures will be forthcoming in a couple days)

Anyway, it's DIM SUM time!!
Oh, and there's a Chinese Opera concert that we'll be attending to tonight, this should be very interesting!

7 days to go!

Well, I'm FINALLY about to leave again!
I will be leaving on Monday morning. I can't wait!

Here is the final itinerary:
1 week in Hong Kong
1 week in Singapore
1 week in Bangkok
1 week in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand (tentative)

As many of you know, I will not be traveling alone this time around, I will be joined by my friends Michael and Don. Should be a lot of fun :)

Oh I found some really interesting concerts in both Hong Kong and Singapore that will be attending. (Click on the links for info on the concerts)

As many of you know already, I've purchased a much nicer camera recently and will be once again updating my Flickr page as I go along.

As always, if you want to stay up to date on my ramblings here on my blog or of the latest pictures I've uploaded to Flickr, the best is via the built-in RSS feeds.

You can find them for my blog and for Flickr by clicking on the links. Firefox, Opera and IE 7 all have integrated RSS readers so that you will automatically be kept up to date without having to visit the sites..

That's all for now, all I can hope for at this point is that the weather will co-operate next Monday so as not to interfere with take-off!

Still going...

こんにちは (Hello) everybody, wanted to let you know of a few updates.

My return in February has been confirmed, I will be in Asia from Mid-February to Mid-January. The reason for the delay is that I'm timing my time there with the Chinese new year festivities which will start on February 18th 2007. I'll be able to celebrate the year of the pig in style, in the capital of Chinese culture, Hong Kong!

It also turns out that 2 friends will (or should) accompany me on this journey. One of which is supposed to be with me the whole way. This should prove different from my last outing!

As for the pictures, I've collected and cleaned up some 500+ (instead of 2700+!) of my favorite pictures from the last trip and added them to a new Flickr set called Asia Trip 2006 (Best of). You should be view that set by using this Link.

Finally, I've finally gotten my own domain, benji99.ca. This means that I have some simpler ways to access my blog and my flickr pictures.

Blog: http://blog.benji99.ca
Flickr: http://photos.benji99.ca

Ciao for now.

Crow Castle

Crow Castle, originally uploaded by Raiden256.

Found a goregous picture of Japanese castle taken by someone else on Flickr.
A good idea of what awaits me next fall...

What's coming up next

Hello everyone, I wanted to provide an update to what's going to be coming up next for me and my travels.

In January, I'll be going back to Asia, the itenerary looks pretty set and will include: 1 week in Hong Kong, 1 week in Singapore, 1 week in Bangkok and 1 week in Northern Thailand (For a total of 1 month). There'll be some change this time however, as I won't be travelling completely alone this time. I'll be joined by a friend for the first 2 weeks (Hong Kong and Singapore) and will be on my own in Thailand after that. As you can see, this trip has a more "urban" emphasis than my last one.

The trip looks to be very exciting, the day I had spent in Hong Kong was woefully insufficient, I'm very much excited to experience more of it's culture and it's Dim Sum hah! As for Singapore, well, it's reputation preceeds it, and it's supposed to have some of the cuisine in the world (never a bad thing!). Finally, in Thailand, a little bit of deju should be a welcome sight, I didn't get to see much of Thailand last time around and should be able to (in part) fix that this time.

The trip in January is not the only trip I'm currently actively planning. I also want to be able to go to Japan for 2 months in Fall 2007. It'll be difficult to finance, but I think I'm on the right track to achieve this. (My estimated budget for that trip will be around 10,000$, and that's not counting the plane ticket!) I've heard some interest from some of my friends to join me on at least part of this trip, but I'll still be planning as if I'll be going alone. Besides, not only do I not regret going on my last trip alone, I think it immeasurably enhanced it.

Speaking of Japan, I've also put learning Japanese into high gear since I've returned from my trip last spring and I'll be continuing the formal lessons this fall. Should be exciting.

That's all for now

Wat Phu Champasak

05-May-Asia-2006-219, originally uploaded by Benji99.

I've pretty much finished uploading the my pictures of the trip to my Flickr account. What you're looking at here is the of the great Khmer temple Wat Phu Champasak which dates back to the 8-13th century.
You can find that picture as well as many others on my flickr site!