Meat on a Stick, and Food Stalls Near the Democracy Monument (Bangkok, Thailand)

Go to any convenience store in Bangkok and you will find them: small skewered sausages posing on the counter with the Slush puppies and other synthetic junk, gleaming brown and burgundy in their intestinal cases. I have never munched one of these mystery meat Wieners in Thailand, partly because they aren't exotic enough to warrant the time, money and stomach space, and partly because I am worried about getting sick. To put it blunt, Bangkok doesn't seem the place to be eating sausages... it seems a bit cheesy, a little bit too porky, and I'd feel a little bit too much like Homer Simpson on vacation! That said, I do enjoy stopping off regularly at the many convenience stores in this city whenever I am walking crosstown, to cool off and top up on Red Bull, my tonic of choice in the Kingdom, or hopefully to get into a conversation with any of the young female staff working there! But back to the meat: it turns out you can eat these little skewered sausages out on the street too, although again I have never actually done so. I did enjoy some squid on a stick on my last trip to Bangkok though, at food stalls right near the Democracy Monument (อนุสาวรีย์ประชาธิปไตย), on Thanon Ratchadamnoen Klang. The squid came in a takeaway plastic bag dripping with fiery sauce, and set me back 15฿. There was a Bollywood movie being filmed at the Monument at the time, filling the air with sweet and pungent Indian sounds. I noted to myself how Indian in fact the Democracy Monument looked, with its beds of vivid flowers (I could see why it would make a good backdrop for a Bollywood romance scene.)

Squid for 15 Baht a stick, and sausages on the street outside McDonald's, near the Democracy Monument (Thailand, 2008)

Wrote one Matthew Amster-Burton, back in the year 2000: "The typical Thai breakfast is rice porridge, but vendors offered plenty of atypical selections as well. One woman whose cart stood near the Democracy Monument on Thanon Ratchadamnoen Klang was pouring perfect silver-dollar, and smaller (1 baht?) pancakes onto a griddle. And one of the most beloved foods in Bangkok is ice cream. McDonald's offers a standard soft serve cone for 7B and Baskin-Robbins fights back with its "Teen Scoop", but the street vendors really get weird, piling three scoops of vanilla onto a hot dog bun and topping it with corn kernels or red bean paste. McDonalds, I should add, offers its pies in three flavors: pineapple, taro, and corn..."

Fresh fruit always goes down a treat on hot summer days (Thailand, 2008)

For more street food Bangkok style hit kyspeaks, who declared after a long expedition grazing in Bangkok: "My favorite would be the bacon stick we had at the Chatuchak weekend market. For 20 baht (around RM2), you get mini sausages wrapped with bacon on a skewer. The union of sausage and bacon was a match made in heaven as the juice and slight saltiness from bacon compliments the texture and taste of the sausage oh so well. You have to try this if you manage to find the stall!"

As I said earlier, I have never eaten these Simpsonish sausages in Bangkok. The next time I am there, I might very well partake! You only live once, and there is no room for food snobbishness in this world!

Vietnamese Supermarkets

Ho Chi Minh City might be cheap as chips when it comes to eating out, but prices are rising (food is up about 40 per cent this year according to one report I read recently), and a lot of folk are doing it tough. Consequently, self catering has developed a certain appeal, and it makes sense for those staying a long time, or thinking of staying a long time. Lonely Planet recommends grabbing a loaf of bread and stuffing it with white Vietnamese cheese and whatever else you can pick up at the market; Crowded World Vagabondic tells you there are plenty more self-catering options than that. If you want cost effectiveness and quality, take a stroll through one of the many supermarkets opening up in the city. We might consider them soulless and barren bastions of corporate greed in the west, but supermarkets pack a novelty punch in Vietnam (to the Vietnamese at least), and enjoy a department store style snob status. I think my girlfriend N. likes to go to the local supermarket just to check out what is on special, have a look around, and soak up the vibe. It is a place to hang out, to see and be seen, kind of like the classic American mall of the 1980s, circa Weird Science. Personally, while I loathe shopping at home, I have always been interested in checking out the supermarkets in foreign countries, just to see how they represent the culture. You can judge the taste and temperament of a people by the way they stock their supermarkets. In Spain, there are whole rows devoted to olives, and they take them seriously indeed. In Japan where I live at the moment, you can sometimes pick up a slab of whale, perfect for a steaming winter nabe, or at the end of the day find discount trays of sushi and sashimi, or crumbed chicken or octopus or squid, which sometime work as a filler between thick slices of bread (that combo does give you indigestion though.) Apart from that, there are always plenty of mushrooms and fish, soy sauce and sake... and grumpy old ladies pushing you out of the way. Icelandic supermarkets are sparse, warm and tasteful and sparse, big on bread, cheese and lamb, and numerous specimens from the deep. Go into a supermarket in London, and it is like all the culinary heritage of the world has been assembled under one roof. Moroccan sandwiches and Indian tandoori takeout and so on. I love all that shit!

Frantic traffic at the intersection of  Bui Thi Xuan Street and Cong Quynh Street, Ho Chi Minh City, District 1 (Vietnam, 2008) 

So, how do the supermarkets in Vietnam stack up to those of Barcelona, Tokyo, Reykjavík and London? Well, like Vietnam in general, I find them noisy, crowded, and often chaotic. Wheels on trolleys buckle, causing you to lurch. Last time I went shopping in the state owned Co-op Mart at the end of my adopted street, Bùi Thị Xuân Street, on Cống Quỳnh Street in Saigon, I got followed round the aisles by a pervert. He stood in front of my girlfriend N. and gestured obscenely, squeezing the air with two hands to demonstrate what he would like to do with her breasts. Maybe he was a security guard for the supermarket... I heard they don't like foreigners in that place. And a foreign guy with a local girl, that must be their worst nightmare! Guys giving me the envious eye ought to understand that my life is nothing to be envied... I ought to be envying them. Sometimes relationships aren't they're all cracked up to be... sometimes I wish I was free to fly the coop, get out and do what I want to do, drink rice wine with the old dudes in the slums, or hang out with some girls.  But whatever... the odd pervert aside, I like hanging out at the Co-op Mart on Cống Quỳnh (which they call the Co-op Mart CQ for short), and I am always happy to see what they stock. Unlike the steamy markets outside, Vietnamese supermarkets are air conditioned, and you can take your time checking out the exhibits. Racks of durians looking like medieval torture implements. A vast array of odd fruits and vegetables, with an earthiness you can sense. No genetically modified, shrink wrapped produce here (apart from the mushrooms you see below!) No style over substance, no extravagant carbon mileage. But at the same time, no persistent touts or beggars either... just the odd weirdo or pervert. Furthermore, there is no need to bargain like you do out in the wet markets for a decent price. As this photo demonstrates, all the prices are fixed.

Fruit and veg, Saigon Style, inside the Co-op Mart on Cong Quynh Street (Vietnam, 2008)

In the bottom right corner of this photo you can see some Hồng Dòn, which I believe are a type of Vietnamese persimmon, going for 14,800 Dong (US$0.89) per kilo (if I can read the sign correctly). They don't look nothing like the persimmons I see every late autumn and early winter in Japan, so they must be the bitter persimmons (the ones you're supposed to eat green.) However, hồng supposedly means "red" or "pink" in Vietnamese, so go figure. In any case, Vietnam is a paradise for fruit and veg lovers, and you could make a decent meal, back in your hotel or apartment, out of some of specimens at the market. Many fruits are eaten with a salt and chilli dipping sauce which might seem like a strange accompaniment at first, but is "quite possibly addictive", as Lonely Planet concedes.

N. ascertains the freshness of this mystery fruit, at the CQ branch of the Co-op Supermarket (Vietnam, 2008)

This is another fruit or vegetable I find difficult to identify. Whatever it is, it is probably grown locally -- 95% of the merchandise on sale at Co-op is locally-made or locally-grown products, according to some report I read online. They are quite unlike the type of fruit and vegetables you would see in the West. No boring apples and oranges here! Well, actually there are apples and oranges, but they're in the minority, and they are probably as exotic to locals as the Hồng Dòn are to us. 

Fuji apples from Japan, wrapped up like gourmet melons in Tokyo, and what seem to be oranges (Vietnam, 2008)

For some reason, milk and dairy products are huge in Vietnam. Probably too huge, in my opinion. You can get free plates and knives and forks attached with cartons of powdered baby milk, which seems a little bit suspicious to me. It seems like aggressive marketing to me, like third world exploitation, the sort that Nestlé might indulge in. Green tea is also rising in popularity in the Land of the South Viets, and you will find gallons of it in the supermarket. Ditto for the local Vietnamese coffee... well, not quite gallons, maybe tons would be a better metric. It's all instant. Back to the tea: I don't know why, but the green tea here seems more yellow than green. For some reason it doesn't work well with me, but then maybe that is my fault. The instant coffee looks like instant coffee anywhere else in the world.

N. with the Nescafe range, in our comfy Co-op (Vietnam, 2008)

On the topic of green tea, the venerable Thanh Nien Daily reports:

Green tea has been drunk in copious amounts by Vietnamese families at home and in restaurants for centuries.

But a recent boom in bottled green tea, made both locally and abroad, means that the traditional beverage is now competing with big names like Pepsi Cola and even bottled water.

Nga (eds. note: no relation to my girlfriend N. featured in this story), a convenience shop owner in a District 5 alley off An Duong Vuong Street, says she started selling bottled green tea – which is often sweetened with honey or sugar – when she noticed the beverages were selling like hotcakes at other local shops...

First Impressions Mean So Much

Thailand was the first foreign country I ever visited, when I was just 19 years-old. I don't believe I will feel culture shock as cutting or as cool as that ever again, unless I manage to travel to an alien planet, or at least to sub-Saharan Africa!

It was late 1992, and I was en route to the Middle East with my man Garnet Mae. We had a couple of days to kill in Bangkok, awaiting our Turkish Airlines connection. Arriving in the dead of night at the city's old Don Mueang International Airport (ท่าอากาศยานดอนเมือง), we decided to proceed to the Khao San Road guesthouse area, with a mad Englishman and Irishman to split the taxi fare.

It was my first night in Asia, and everything about the place amazed me.

The heat, the nonchalance with which the taxi driver careered us through the traffic, the lack of functioning seatbelts. The humidity, whole families hanging out of the back of pickup trucks (they may well have been SpaceCabs, or at least some precursor to the SpaceCab invasion.) 

Throngs of people on the streets, despite the fact it was nearly midnight. Gridlock and pandemonium, and what made it even more surreal, was that the taxi we rode inside was an exact replica of my Dad's blue Holden Commodore (I later discovered that they were both Golf rip-offs.)

That said, my Dad never gunned his Commodore down the wrong side of the road the way our Thai taxi driver did that night, cursing his fellow motorists. I hung on to the roofstrap for dear life as we shuttled through ever shabbier and more colorful districts, into the Old City. Trees were wrapped with strings of blinking lights, while behind them, vast billboards rose advertising Japanese and American firms. We were all convinced that the taxi driver was going to rip us off. When he finally pulled up on the kerb and announced that we had arrived at Khao San Road, none of us believed him.

Getting out of the car, I was startled to see some Thai police leading a shirtless guy past us, bound by handcuffs and covered with tattoos.

And I thought to myself: What kind of country is this?

I did not know it at the time, but at the head of Khao San Road there stands a massive (and apparently historic) police station. Anyway, after spending nearly 8 years in Asia now, guys in handcuffs no longer alarm me. I have even worn them myself on the odd occasion, and played the role of the scary criminal on the great stage of life.

I have loosened up, and Khao San Road no longer scares me.

But will it fascinate me again? that is the great question, as I await my next trip there, in just a couple of weeks. I am not a virgin anymore, sexually and travelwise, and I know that the first time is always means much more, than the 2nd or 3rd time around (let alone the 8th or 9th)... (For my evolving guide to Bangkok's Golden Mile and what you can find there, click here.)

Magnitude 6.8 Earthquake in Tohoku, Japan

It has been a hot summer so far here in Japan, and everyone has been walking around like a zombie, drained by the humidity. It has also been an active time seismically -- four earthquakes in the past week, two of them strong enough to alert me, and to startle me. I have had some shocking migraines and headaches in the past couple days, and at first I attributed them to the heat and my badly designed counterfeit North Face backpack, and a dose of the strong summer sun. I know from my experience that prolonged exposure to the tropics can be enough to trigger a migraine, that is what happened to me once, waiting to meet some girls outside Saigon's Bến Thành Market in March 2007. I have also come to expect the odd headache and neck and back pain from wearing my rip off rucksack, which I bought from the very same marketplace in Vietnam, later that year. Nonetheless, just after midnight last night my new supposedly earthquake proof house started trembling and surfing on its foundations, and I thought to myself: could those migraines have been linked to the earth? Was there a correlation between the pent up pressure in the north and eastern coasts of Honshu, and the pent up pressure in my head? Interestingly, when I woke up this morning, most of my migraine was gone. It was still plenty hot outside, but Japan's seismic frustration had been vented, dissipated into shakes. At least for now. It will only be a matter of time before it gets built up again.

There were 60+ people injured in this morning's earthquake, according to an IBC News report.

There was an earthquake last night although I wasn't quite sure at first if it was really an earthquake, or dizziness associated with my recent bout of migraine headaches. I had to look up to the little Vietnamese windchime I picked up in the middle of a deluge in Đà Lạt to make sure, and sure enough, it was indeed jerking about even though there was no wind in my apartment. I jumped up and edged half way outside the back door a step or two from my computer, which opens on to a huge car park which I figure could make a good refuge if the Big One ever strikes. I pretty much knew right from the start though, that this wasn't the Big One. Big earthquakes start big and there is a kind of mathematical relationship between the size of the peak of the shake, and the intensity of the onset. Since this earthquake had started light, I figured it wasn't going to be anything more than a 3 (on the Japanese magnitude scale.) Nonetheless, it was scary as all earthquakes are scary and I had to tell myself to relax, to chill out, to even enjoy it in a kind of Stormchaser from the Discovery Channel vibe. This, after all, was my encounter with nature, and an expedition into the realm of unusual phenomena. Japan wouldn't exist, it it wasn't for the collision of the plates. According to some theorists, life on earth wouldn't exist either, if it wasn't for plate tectonics. I leaned back on the doorframe with half my body inside and half my body perched a foot above the grass outside, and was struck by how quiet it was out here, here in the outer suburbs of Tokyo. The frame throbbed gently against my back, like an electric current running through the house, and I understood at that moment that earthquakes were waves, the energy passing through the ground the same way a wave rolls through the water. The shuddering went on for quite some time, sometimes subsiding, sometimes fevering up a notch -- all in all a minute by my reckoning (although it seemed much longer than that.) When it became clear it was over, I switched on the TV to see they were already reporting on it. Panels of earthquake experts were assembling, providing instant analysis. Footage from a couple of security cameras was already on the air. How could they get it together so fast? The media in Japan are on their game, that's for sure. They showed this map of the magnitudes on TV, using the Japanese earthquake shaking scale, color coded. The Japanese have their own earthquake rating system, which is different from the Richter scale. While the Richter scale measures the energy released from a quake, the Japanese system (in a typically subjective, Asian way) measures the level of shaking in any particular place. So the further out from the epicenter you get, the lower the magnitude will be, using the Japanese system.

X marks the spot: the epicenter of the earthquake, in Iwate Prefecture, Tohoku region of Japan.

This map of Honshu Island shows the epicenter (X marks the spot.) The epicenter was in the Iwate Prefecture of the Tohoku (East North region of Honshu), which suffered some damage and injuries but no fatalities, as far as I know so far. On TV there were scenes of bags of crisps and snacks spilt in convenience stores, broken tiles, a broken grave or two. Apart from danger the red zone on this map signifies a "strong magnitude 6". It should be noted, that 7 is as high as you can go on the Japanese Richter scale, so a strong 6 is pretty bad. As far as I know, 6 is supposed to represent shaking and swaying so severe that you can't stand up, and your home or building could fall down. Radiating out from the epicenter, the orange zones represent weak 6 and magnitude 5 shaking, the green zones are 4's and 3's, while the blues and whites signify miniscule 2's and 1's. Folks in those zones probably didn't even notice the quake (unless they were earthquake sensitive.) When my apartment started shuddering and pulsing in Tokyo last night, I correctly guessed I was experiencing a magnitude 3 quake (on the Japanese scale.) I have faced down plenty of 3's over the past seven years, and in some way, gotten used to them. The heaviest I have experienced is a magnitude 4, back in July 2005. That was strong enough for me and I can't imagine what a magnitude 6 quake would be like. It was worth noting that tonight's quake was merely an aftershock of the temblor which killed a number of folk in the East North region a month ago.

As Japan Probe reported:

A little over a month has passed since a strong earthquake hit Iwate Prefecture, and the area has been hit with another quake.

A strong earthquake jolted northern Japan early on Thursday, injuring at least 76 people, trapping hundreds in halted trains and temporarily cutting off electric power to thousands of homes.

The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said there was no threat of a tsunami from the quake, which struck at 00:26 a.m. Thursday (11:26 a.m. EDT Wednesday) and had a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 and could be felt as far away as Tokyo. 

At the time of this posting, NTV news was reporting a total of 109 injured, but the figure may increase as more information becomes available...

Here is a shot of those broken tiles.

Earthquake damage, in Tohoku.

Tokyo Bay, Which Way? Which Way?

I went for a walk along the Edo River today, and I found that if you head south for about 75 minutes or so, you eventually get to the ocean -- or rather Tokyo Bay (東京湾), which empties into the sea. This is what the mouth looks like. A lot of pebbles and mud, and plenty of pylons. Not particularly pretty, I agree, but stop for a minute and you will detect a scent of salt in the air, a bit of an oceanic vibe. Apparently Disneyland is just up the shore, on the right side. Go to the left, across one of those massive bridges, and you will reach Chiba.

So many worlds await! Which way do I go?

(Which way? Which way?)

Jogger taking a breather, at the mouth of the Edo River (Japan, 2008)

Handy Phone

Nga had asked me to collect a cellphone for her in Singapore, on my way to Vietnam. Specifically, she wanted a Nokia -- a Nokia 6300 (or perhaps a 6230i). "When you come singapore," she instructed me on GMail chat (2008/04/01/15:42, I was strung out between my Fun Club stint in the early morning, and my night shift high on the phones over Shinjuku)... "When you come Singapore can you ask price phone 6230i and 6300 help me because myfriend has just bough. she said me phone in singapore is cheaper than viet nam. Viet nam expensive.i bough for mother V3i 2689000 viet nam dong but myfriend tell me it was expensive in singapore is only 2350000 vnd."

Now I am not much of a shopper generally, nowhere near as good a shopper as Nga, who I have observed in combat - ("Today I took my friend Fauzi's advice and went to Toa Payoh to look at cell phones. I'm not a gadget person and don't care about ringtones, video clips or playing games. For me its purely a device to save time...") - she knows how to bargain hard. Like some other men, shopping fills me with anxiety and dread -- all the more so when I am shopping for something I don't really understand. I have always enlisted girlfriends to help me buy cellphones in Japan, and the one that I did procure for myself, one crisp Christmas Day, was pink. Why did I choose a pink phone? you might wonder... well, it was because I panicked, and just picked up the first thing I saw, hoping rather forlornly that pink didn't mean feminine in Japan, my newfound wonderland. Of course, it did, and it still does, and if I had done the hard comparisons, shopped around, thought about it at least, I would have bought a completely different model. Or the same model in a slightly more masculine color! But I am a hunter, not a gatherer, and when I enter a shop or mall or department store, I think of nothing but getting out of there as fast as possible. I am there for the quick kill, in other words. And shopping for mobile phones is the hardest, most tedious kind of shopping imaginable, because the plans are so complicated, and there are so many _pros and ^cons to weigh. I was only going to be in Singapore one short day en route to Vietnam as part of the Obsessive Love & the Rolling of the Dice, and I didn't know the city particularly well. If I had my way I would have spent the day soaking up the souks in Kampung Glam, or hanging with my feathered friends at Jurong Bird Park. But Nga wanted me to find out how much the Nokia 6300 or 6230i models costed in Singapore, and presumably to buy one of them on her behalf. So, I had to comply. One motivator: if I bought her a phone, I would be able to talk to her on it. And that might help us overcome the inevitable loneliness, caused by living in a long-distance relationship, in totally different countries. But once I got to Singapore I found that everything was more expensive than I had anticipated, and I started to worry, that I didn't have enough cash to pay for the phone.

Train on the carpet, inside Changi Airport, on Night One of Obsessive Love & the Rolling of the Dice (Singapore, 2008)

I -- ("the shopkeeper just simply said the warranty is shop warranty not original nokia warranty...") -- met a nice girl in Ho Chi Minh City and we got to know each other on the Internet, and eventually lust turned to love, of the slightly obsessive kind. I was en route to another round of tropical romance when, in the old trade center of Singapore, Nga asked me to buy her a gift. This immediately threw me into a spin, because shopping is not my forte, especially shopping for cell phones, or hand phones as they called here. I didn't know this city that well, and I wouldn't be staying here very long. As it turned out, finding the phone Nga wanted wasn't really the problem, I saw it on sale all over the place -- the problem was cash. In other words, I was worried that Nga would spend all of it. It should be said, that every residential area of Singapore has a few mobile phone shops -- even the dive where I ended up staying, just off the East Coast Parkway. Nick above recommended Toa Payo -- ("Okay so Toa Payoh is a place with a local market area of small shops selling the usual array of gadgets and things that people want...") -- h, where Blazing the Used Handphone Specialist has six branches. Now used cellphones (or handphones, using the local lingo) may well be a Singaporean thing -- I have never heard of them in Japan. Japanese people would never recycle an item as intimate as a cellphone -- that would be like buying used underwear. (Actually, some men do like buying used underwear in Japan, but that is another story entirely!)

Singapore Dome, down near the harbor, captured by my 1.5MP phone (Singapore, 2008)

The legendary Danny Choo, on his way to conquering Japan, wrote: "In Singapore, people change their phones all the time, usually within one or 2 years or even a -- ("instead of waiting for the future to arrive, why not put the future in your hands right now?") --  few months! That is why there are lot of 2nd hand phone shops around the neighborhood that will greatly buy your phone and resell it."

Parliament House, between bouts of hectic shopping (Singapore, 2008)

I am not sure about these 2nd hand hand phones, but anyway, I found plenty of new models, including the one Nga requested, in my trips around town. ("CnC Mobile is a Singapore based mobile phone, broadband Internet and cable TV dealer, and is a StarHub exclusive partner.") All I needed was her assent, and I would have laid cash down on the counter. "When you give price on 25 i will answer," she had promised me, in our last GMail chat. But reaching Nga has never proved to be so straightforward, or so logical, despite all the wonders of modern technology. We just never seem able to hook up, unless it happens physically. In an Internet cafe downtown, sucking on a dewy iced coffee, I composed her an email informing of her of my discoveries, urging her to respond as time was running out. I wanted her to understand the gravity of the situation.

Hi I am in Singapore now. It is very hot but fun.  I had some trouble finding a hotel last night and had to pay too much money. But I still have enough I think. I checked at some Nokia stores to see how much the Nokia 6300 costs. It is about 3,000,000 Dong or more. Maybe we should buy it in Vietnam? I am worried I don't have enough money because my hotel is expensive. Anyway, see you tomorrow at 9am.

Singapore Bay (Singapore, 2008)

I bought another iced coffee and resumed my seat, wondering what I should do. Cool as it was, my JPhone didn't have web access, so I couldn't check GMail on it as I rambled around town. I tried calling Nga for the 17th time that day, hoping she might pick up my cell... ah, what a futile wish! I only wanted to make her understand that I only had a certain amount of money, and it had to get us both through the entire holiday. The cafe was full of teenagers, and the sound of various conversations leaked into my headspace, in several languages... I couldn't make out the words that were said. Rorschach style, my mind formed the fragments into narratives... ("I'm planning to buy a new hand-held phone and bring it back to my country. I've heard that SIm LIm and Lucky Plaza offer cell phones at cheap prices. However, I also read horror stories of people getting ripped off at these places...")

A few hours later Nga replied: "you buy it for me it is very cheap.i went shop nokia to day it is 4800.000 very expensive..." But I never go to see her mail, because by the time she sent it, I was lying back in bed, in my establishment near the Malay Cultural Village. It wasn't a friendly hotel.

Analogue girl (Vietnam, 2008)

So, I failed in my mission to buy Nga a handyphone in Singapore -- I hope she forgives me someday. ("As we already said the Samsung G800 and Sony Ericsson K850 may be the primary rivals in the 5-megapixel cameraphone battle among feature phones...") To make matters worse, as I was retiring late that night at my hotel near Malay Village, setting my keitai alarm to get me up for my ultra early morning flight, the unthinka -- ("Motorola is closing its Singapore operation, barely 3 months after announcing its expansion plan in Penang, Malaysia...") -- ble occurred -- my keitai died. Maybe I overexerted it with all that texting Nga during the day, and taking photos around town. I could have recharged it, but my gear was not compatible with the Singaporean electricity grid. So, my phone was out for the count, and it was only Day One. I seared with regret at the realization, because my phone was my camera too (just not a particularly powerful one!). In the end, one chilly evening in Đà Lạt, Nga suggested something very old school, but brilliant nonetheless. "Why don't you buy an analogue camera?" she said, or words to that effect. By analogue I mean film based, pre digital. Come to think of it, analogue is not the type of word she would use, it wasn't part of her vocabulary. I am probably putting words in her mouth. We picked up a FujiFilm Q Cam at one of the local shops and it did the job admirably, capturing all those Central Highland highlights. I am slowly scanning all the photos I took and putting them online. The second day after returning to Tokyo, I went over to the Soft Bank showroom in Asakusa, and bought a new phone with points that I had accrued from my past custom. This one is 5-megapixel.



In a Class of its Own: Changi Airport

Singapore's Changi Airport ought to be considered a tourist attraction in its own right for its sheer opulence and the range of things that you can do there. The place consistently wins awards for excellence and is described as one of the best airports in the world, as well as a busy Asian hub (the 5th busiest in Asia, and the 19th busiest in the world, in 2007).

While London Heathrow was going into meltdown during its recent expansion, Singapore Airport's new Terminal 3 opened without a hitch earlier this year -- a little delayed due to the War on Terror and the subsequent stalling in traffic growth. Even before it opened, T3 was being praised as an architectural wonder. As Singapore Sights wrote: "Terminal 3 features a unique roof architecture which allows soft natural light into the building while keeping tropical heat out. The one-of-a-kind design has 919 skylights with specially designed reflector panels which automatically adjust themselves to allow an optimal amount of soft and uniform daylight into the terminal building. The overall effect is a soothing ambience at all times of the day.

"Another key highlight of Terminal 3 is a five-storey high vertical garden, called the Green Wall. Spanning 300 meters across the main building, it can be admired both from the departure and arrival halls. The Green Wall is covered with 25 species of climbing plants and is interspersed with four cascading waterfalls. In addition, a sculptured sandstone art wall display with multi-language welcome messages located below the Green Wall offers an artistic treat for arriving passengers waiting for their baggage..."

Changi has been courting both premium and budget travellers with the opening of a commercially important persons terminal by JetQuay and a S$45 million Budget Terminal in 2006. To further diversify the picture, the new full-service nine-story Crowne Plaza Hotel is under construction, immediately adjacent to Terminal 3.

According to Changi Airport's own official website, which rates me as one of their friends, the facility boasts the following amenities:

1 -- Miles of duty-free shopping, the usual kind of stuff you would expect to find in an airport -- but also shopping of a seriously more upmarket calibre. Inside Retailing Magazine reported in January 2008: "Apple, FIFA, Vertu, Sony Style and Ferrari are brands usually associated with up-market shopping malls. Now they're coming to an airport near you - well, near to those travelling internationally anyway... "Singapore Changi Airport's long-awaited third terminal, T3, will open on January 9 with more than 100 retailers and 40 food operators vying for the cash of not just travellers but locals as well.  "While 55 of the new retail tenancies and 20 food operators will be air-side - which means only travellers can access them - another 45 shops and 20 food vendors will be accessible to Singaporeans who aren't flying anywhere.  "'For Singaporeans, a trip to the airport is something the whole family likes to do, so we want to give them more reason to come out here,' an airport spokesperson told Inside Retailing Magazine on a tour of the new terminal, currently under systems testing..." 2 -- Rooftop swimming pool with accompanying bar (of course!). 3 -- Gardens and koi ponds featuring cactus, bamboo, ferns, sunflower, and heliconia -- truly beautiful believe me! 4 -- Sleeping chairs fitted with vibrator alerts to wake you up when your plane leaves (I'm planning to camp out there the next time I find myself stranded with no money, as happened in 2003!) I'll just plug in my ear-plugs and doze off! 6 -- A sports bar with a complicated payment system, which seems to involve the manager having to validate every purchase, and the signing of paperwork. This frequently results in the staff forgetting to give change to customers, who then get angry and storm off to find another bar (of which there are many, thankfully!) 7 -- A free movie cinema (that's right, a free cinema in an airport!) with a big screen and cinema-style seats and 24-hour rotation. The only thing missing is the popcorn. And the only catch is all the movies they play seem to be cheesy B-grade American movies, the sort that might appeal to teenagers (and Singaporeans, no doubt!) 8 -- Countless restaurants offering an international range -- sushi or Indian curries, you name it. Says Laura, who had the chance to overnight at Changi: "There is a fantastic indian restraunt on the second floor in terminal 1, has the best Dosai (Indian pancake with a yummy potato filling) and its pretty cheap too." Actually, I believe I gorged myself on those dosais back in 2003, when I was en route to Iceland. There was a variety stuffed with cheese which was so rich, I couldn't even finish them! On my coming trip, I will search them out. 9 -- Traditional culture shows using live actors. On my last visit there was a Chinese magician-cum-martial artist juggling plates and catching knives. At one point his assistant tried to lance his throat with a sharp spear. By some Shaolin magic of mind-over-matter, the martial artist was able to prevent the spear from piercing his neck. The assistant strained with all his might, and the spear bent over at a ridiculous angle -- but the only wound the martial artist suffered was a little blood. This little blood was enough to freak out some Nordic children in the crowd, who had to run back to the shields of their mothers. Whatever happened to the Viking spirit? 10 -- A downstairs foodcourt set up in the typical "hawker's market" style, featuring such delicious dishes as chicken laksa (you need tissues because it sure is spicy!). 11 -- A science museum and "Timezone Australia" arcade lounge. 12 -- Designated napping areas and specially designed snooze chairs free of charge. Or, for $AUS23 for three hours, you can sleep in your own chamber at the shower, fitness and lifestyle centre. A room with television and a private bathroom in the Ambassador Transit Hotel - which is within the airport - costs $44, while a budget room with shared bathroom is $30. 13 -- If pampering is on your itinerary, the Aromazone massage centre has aromatherapy, reflexology and massage treatments. A one-hour aromatherapeutic massage treatment costs $AUS58. A traditional foot reflexology session, helpful in relaxing nerves and tracing qi imbalances, is $30 per half-hour, as is a head-and-shoulder massage. 14 -- Changi's fitness centre or the gym in the Ambassador Transit Hotel have sessions for between $AUS8 and $12 (including hire of sports attire and footwear). At the rooftop swimming pool and jacuzzi complex, a swim and shower costs $AUS10. You must bring your own swimwear but soap, shampoo, shower gel, moisturising lotion and towels are provided. If you're feeling a bit out of puff after your workout, head to the oxygen bar, where 10 minutes of pure oxygen costs $12.

Anyway, you get the picture: it is one kick-ass airport, consistently voted the best in the world. You could spend the day in there, and still find things to do. There are options all round, and plenty of beverages to be consumed.