Category: Personal

Yesterday I met this English guy, Neil, on the plane. We spent the night at the same place in Koh Samui. As we were checking out of the bungalows the receptionist asked me if I had a woman with me in my bungalow during the night. She was really insistent on it and I had to convince her that all I did was go to bed and nothing more with no one else. Neil and I had a good laugh out of it.

This morning we took the taxi boat to Koh Phangan together. Then we went looking for a place to stay. We nearly booked two bungalows at a place called Paradise Bungalows but then Neil found a better place nearby called the Sunrise Resort, where we got a room together that has a view of the resort’s pool and also has WiFi (although not free.) Like most places the resort is 10 meters away from the beach. We booked the room for 6 nights to include the Full Moon party and the night following that.

Most of the 7 readers of this blog have been to Thailand’s islands so I’ll refrain from describing what it’s like. I’ll just say that the beaches are beautiful and the laid back atmosphere is really great once you get into it.

Koh Phangan is also packed with Israelis. There’s Hebrew everywhere. Even the locals speak it. And I’m sorry to say that but Israelis are so… for a lack of a better word… vile. And loud. Oh so loud. This is very similar to what happened to me 15 years ago when I came back to Israel after 5 months in the US – I just can’t stand the way Israelis push you around and the way they talk to the locals – no courtesy whatsoever. Unfortunately I’m probably behaving more like that just because they’re around. I spoke very few words in Hebrew today, my excuse being that I have an English guy with me, but I’m sure many recognize that I’m Israeli. I guess I’ll socialize more with the Israelis in time. I just need to reconnect to my Israeli self again.

Just two pictures today. I doubt I’ll have many more pictures to post from here, as I’m going to be in the same place for a few days.

I got up in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back to sleep. So I got everything packed and ready for the flight today and got out at 6am to look for breakfast and have a last walk around Hong Kong’s streets. My plans were quickly foiled by rain. There was nothing open on the street except for a restaurant I tried but didn’t like and McDonald’s. So for the first time in years I went into McDonald’s and had an arteries-blocking meal of egg McMuffin and hash brown. At least I picked something that I never tried before. I’m going to have to run a few kilometers to lose the weight (and guilt) gained from eating this meal.

On the way to the airport I arrived to Central Station at a very busy time. It was probably the morning rush. I was so amazed at how quiet and civilized that rush is, that I had to take this 15 seconds video. Notice how you can hear the footsteps of the passengers walking quickly in and out of the station.

I got to Hong Kong International Airport (HKG) using the Airport Express train, which was a treat (it’s more expensive than the bus, but much faster and easier.) HKG is the cleanest, quietest, most accommodating and among the biggest airports I’ve ever been to. For example, carts are free of charge and there’s free WiFi everywhere. There are no boarding calls so in the terminals there is about one message per hour. Apart from that it’s absolute quiet. In the gates there are a little more messages, but not like in other airports I’ve been to – no “keep an eye on your things” type of messages, for example. The airport also has many shops and restaurants and is simply a pleasure to pass through.

Bangkok airport, on the other hand, is one big mess. So noisy and crowded. When I saw it I decided to ditch my plan to spend the night at Khoa San Road just so that I won’t have to be back to Bangkok airport tomorrow. I booked a flight to Koh Samui and immediately boarded it. A propeller plane took me there. Now usually I doubt the airlines’ claims that cellphones interrupt the flight or communication but for this flight I wanted to turn my cellphone off. It went fine and now I’m in Koh Samui after getting a room. It was 33 degrees Celsius when we landed and it’s still hot although the sun already set.

I’m in deep culture shock again. So far I only had to deal with western civilization. I hope I’m going to enjoy it here. Anyway, tomorrow I’m taking a taxi boat to Koh Phangan to find a place for the next few days.

Last night I went outside to see what Hong Kong is like at night. I went to Kowloon’s bar area only to find out that most bars were pretty empty around 11pm with girls standing outside trying to convince pedestrians to get in. After reading about the abundance of “working girls” in those bars and seeing that there was not much going on anyway, I decided not to go inside. I don’t drink and being alone in a bar isn’t really something I like. The hostel’s street was filled with fire trucks when I got back. I was afraid that the hostel’s building is the one in flames but luckily it wasn’t it (see first picture below.)

Today I went to Ocean Park, an amusement park with ocean-related attractions. The park is divided into two parts on different sides of a mountain. To travel between the parts you can take a shuttle or ride the mountain-side cable car, which has an amazing view of the bay. As for the contents of the park – too many amusement park stuff, too few ocean attractions. If you’ve been to Eilat’s Coral World Underwater Observatory and Aquarium it’s pretty much the same, only with other sea creatures. The Allot Reef and Lagoon are amazing and the Jelly Fish display is beautiful. Other attractions include the sea lions, the giant panda habitat and an aviary, which I was less impressed with (the pandas look very unhappy in there.)

I really loved Hong Kong. It’s a great place to be in because there is so much activity here and things to do. But for now these three days were enough. I think Hong Kong is a place that would be amazing to live in, especially if you can speak the language. Who knows… maybe in the future :)

Tomorrow: a short 2 hour flight to Thailand. I plan to spend the first day there in Khoa San Road and the day after take a flight to Koh Phangan. There’s a full moon party in a few days, which I plan to attend (just to see what it’s like) and then decide whether I want to stay in Koh Phangan or move to a quieter place.

I don’t know what the Internet situation is going to be in Thailand, so there may not be regular updates from there.

I got up at around 4am (you already know that if you read my last post) and got out at 7am. I like the empty streets of an otherwise extremely busy city. Everything looks calm and the few people on the streets are taking their time walking, unlike the crazed typical walking you see during the day.

I went straight to Hong Kong Park, deciding to postpone Ocean Park for tomorrow. Hong Kong Park is a really beautiful urban park with many kinds of plants. It also resides on a mountain side, but after all the nature I saw in this trip I was a little underwhelmed. The thing I really liked about Hong Kong Park was the Aviary – a small, closed and controlled forest with many types of tropical birds and plants. You can see in the pictures some of the birds (I’m really happy I had the new camera for this.) Another nice thing in the park was Vantage Point – a 30 meters high tower with a very nice view.

Seeing it was still early, I went to Victoria Park – another urban park. I enjoyed walking the paths of the park, as there were already many people around at the time – exercising Tai Chi, jogging and playing Bowls.

After resting for a while (jet lag, I guess) I took the Peak Tram up to Victoria Peak. Victoria Peak is a must-see tourist attraction that gives a beautiful view of Hong Kong that is only ruined by the air pollution’s fog. Today wasn’t the best day for the peak, either – it was very cloudy and even rained a little. But tomorrow isn’t going to be any better. Like this guide suggested, I didn’t go to the sky terrace (observation deck) but instead walked the beautiful roads around the peak, which go through the mountain-side forest and give the best view from the peak.

Today I was walking around with headphones listening to Invaders Must Die in a loop. At times I was bobbing my head up and down or smiling because I was enjoying the music so much. I guess I looked a little stupid but I didn’t care. I like taking in sounds as much as sights, but walking around with familiar music gives some sense of security. Also, a lot of the locals walk around with headphones. And there’s another benefit – when you’re with headphones they don’t offer to custom make suits for you (what’s up with that?)

I took so many pictures it took me over 2 hours to create all the panoramas and choose the good ones. On some I couldn’t decide which are better so there are some that look almost identical. I’m such a crappy photographer.

I think I’ll go out tonight to have a taste of the nightlife, but since I’m tired of the blogging thing for today I’ll post now without telling about it. If anything interesting happens tonight I’ll write about it tomorrow. I also plan to go to Ocean Park tomorrow, but as usual… we’ll see how things go.

The flight to Hong Kong went pretty well. I think I slept quite a lot. I got to my hostel, took a quick shower and immediately went to do my traditional aimless wandering. Hong Kong is really beautiful and interesting – streets crammed with small shops alongside huge shopping centers and malls that are inside ginormous buildings. The people are really nice but unfortunately most speak very little English.

I did all my shopping early (got a new pocket camera with some accessories, a small MP3 player, padlocks (for Thailand) and the new Prodigy album. Woohoo for that :) Apparently shopping is a very common tourist activity here and luckily I’m not into it. For lunch I went looking for a local restaurant and found a dumplings place that had very few tourist guests. An English-speaking waitress was called to serve me and she brought with her what appeared to be the one and only English menu in the restaurant. I was seated in front of a local that helped translate my request for Diet Coke to the waitress. In an attempt to eat stuff that I don’t usually eat, I ordered “Shrimp and assorted meat dumplings.” I hope “assorted meat” doesn’t mean kitty.

I continued walking around until I got tired and decided that I need to replace the old camera with the new one, went back to my hotel room, charged all the new gadgets and went back out. I didn’t last long after eating dinner because my body was signaling that if I push it further it’ll get back at me. Instead of exploring the night life as I wanted to, I got back in the hostel, started writing this post and fell asleep during (I guess I was tired.) Now I’m completing it at around 4am because I got up feeling so-so. I think closed hostel rooms (I don’t have an outside facing window, just air conditioning) don’t agree with me.

Tomorrow (actually today in a few hours) I’m considering going to Ocean Park, which is an educational amusement park about “life” and is supposed to be very good. However, this may take the entire day. Another option is going to Hong Kong Park, which is an urban green area inside Hong Kong, and later visiting the famous Victoria Peak. Haven’t decided yet.

I’m sitting at the airport terminal and still have some time until my flight departs so I can report this day and the next post will be at the end of the first day in Hong Kong.

The drive to LAX went uninterrupted. I stood in a little in what seems to be typical LA traffic and saw all the exits to famous places like Sunset Blvd, Venice and Van Nuys. I went straight to the airport, though. Before returning the car I took this picture:

Now let’s do some math: I drove 22861 – 18719 = 4142 miles,which are 6666 km (hmmm… interesting number.) Over 26 days that’s pretty impressive even if you don’t account for the fact that the car didn’t move an inch during my time in San Francisco (for 9 days!)

I’ll write again from Hong Kong :) Cya

Today was dedicated to getting ready for tomorrow’s trip – first doing my laundry and then packing. I’m not happy that I have more stuff than I did when I came (mainly the coat – it takes a lot of room in the backpack.) I went to O’Reilly’s Irish pub again, where I met one of the employees of my favorite cafe, 901 Columbus. His name is Eddie and he is half Mexican, half Guatemalan. We then talked for quite a while about life in Israel, in Mexico and in the US. This is the longest conversation I had with someone that wasn’t a friend of mine from before.

Later I went to see Maz Jobrani,the Iranian stand up comedian. I haven’t heard of him before but apparently he’s very famous (YouTube videos.) He was very funny and the crowd was a mix of mostly Middle Eastern people and other different ethnics. Being the only Jew in the crowd I waved to a bunch of Palestinians who waved back as a gesture of peace orchestrated by Jobrani. It was funny, but I was happy to be tagged “the Jew” and not “the Israeli” (it didn’t come up) although I don’t think there was any danger from this fun-loving crowd.

I technically have another day in the US, but tomorrow I have to drive almost 7 hours to LAX airport and then fly 14+ hours to HKG airport. It’s all going to seem like one long day, so I won’t be blogging at least until March 2nd. Hong Kong is 6 hours ahead of Israel, so I’m going to have more overlap which will make it easier for making phone calls and text messaging,

It was rainy in the morning so I gave up on my plans to visit the Golden Gate Park (in retrospect I could have gone because it didn’t really rain after the morning showers). Instead I went last-minute-shopping for a friend (I couldn’t find what he was looking for.) On the way I went to the Virgin megastore to see if the have The Prodigy’s new album in stock early, but they didn’t. The different release dates in different countries thing is so stupid in this age where everything is connected.

On the way back I went through the very steep Broderick street (see pictures below) and while walking down the steep part I saw a drunk homeless guy trying to walk it up but tripping. So I asked him if he needed help. In return he asked me if I had any spare change on me to give him. I gave him all the change I had (less than one Dollar) and then offered my help again. He accepted my offer but succeeded going up pretty much on his own. On the way up he promised me a hug and when we finished our ascent he kept it and gave me a hug. I don’t get hugged much these days so I’ll take whatever I can get :) Walking down the street again I found some of the change I gave him that he probably dropped.

I sent everything I got for friends to Israel. Hopefully that’s the last assignment on this trip. If you’re a friend of mine reading this and you have requests from the UK (I doubt anyone wants anything from Thailand) please submit your requests now. Then I went to do my laundry and met there three other slightly drunk homeless people – a woman and two men. there was actually another one who slept under the table almost the entire hour I was there, then got up, was upset about something and left.

The three were kind of entertaining – we talked about all kinds of stuff but mostly they couldn’t really keep focus on an ongoing conversation. I gave them about 2 Dollars. Some of it so they can dry their clothes in the dryer and the rest of the money they’ll probably use to buy more drinks. I’m not happy about it but I don’t judge them.

I still enjoy just being here and walking the streets of San Francisco. Everything is so colorful – the architecture, the people, the sounds. Anyway, preparing for the next flight I started sorting out my stuff. Here’s a picture of almost all the electronics and cables I carry with me:

From The Trip – Misc

In the picture:

• Palm Tungsten T (in the aluminum case)
• Palm universal charger cable with exchangeable power sockets
• Polar watch and transmitter
• Israeli cellphone and USB charger cable
• American cellphone and wall socket charger cable
• Camera non-standard USB cable (assholes)
• General purpose USB extender cord (never used it)
• USB SD card reader (easier to use for transferring camera pictures)
• Wall-socket-to-USB converter (useful for charging stuff that has USB cables without a computer)
• ASUS Eee PC
• ASUS Eee PC charging cable
• Garmin nuvi 265WT
• Garmin USB standard mini USB charger and data cable
• Headphones and microphone set
• Head light (haven’t used it yet, but presumably will be useful in Thailand)

Not in the picture:

• Nikon Coolpix camera (sucked from day 1. I’m not buying Nikon again)
• Batteries (the camera needs a lot of them)
• Garmin mount (for the car window)
• Garmin car FM receiver and charger cable
• Universal socket adapter (just got it today, the picture was taken yesterday)
• Carrying case for the Garmin (also got it today)

I won’t use the American cellphone and the GPS on the rest of my trip, so they will go in the big bag wrapped in the warm clothes I won’t be using over the next few weeks in Hong Kong and Thailand.

Tomorrow it looks like I might be able to go jogging again. Then I’ll try go to the Golden Gate Park and later in the evening to that comedy club that I went to on Saturday.

The sun was shining when I got up. It was still pretty cold outside. Perfect for jogging, so that’s exactly what I did – this time I went a little further and probably ran between 9 to 10 km. It feels great to start the day with a workout. I actually mean it feels great to be after the workout because during I’m just a sweaty pig struggling for air.

After a shower and breakfast I went again to walk around the San Francisco downtown area. Luckily I’m not the shopping type because if you’re into shopping you can spend there entire days going in and out of shops. All the famous names are there, crammed into a relatively small area so you don’t have to walk much from Saks to Macy’s to the Ugg store.

So after walking quite a lot I was very tired, went back to the hotel to rest and later went to Golden Flower, a small and very good Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown. I love those small places, where the cooks are the owners and the waiter is probably a relative, treating restaurant guests like house guests and all speak English with an accent, like me :) And after that I was even more tired (I think I ate too much, but it was so good) so I went back to the hotel again just to watch TV and catch up on my reading (a lot of stuff happens in the Tech industry in 4 weeks.) It feels great not be uptight about going places and seeing stuff. I’ll have enough of that in Hong Kong, where I’m going to spend only 3 nights.

Later I went to 901 Columbus, my favorite neighborhood place and called it a night. Tomorrow, if the weather allows, I plan to go to a place a homeless guy recommended for me today – Golden Gate Park – where in some places around it things are supposedly preserved from the 60s (at least that’s what he said.) It should be a nice park anyway. It’s pretty far, but I think I’ll walk.

Today’s pictures are just street pictures of San Francisco. Nothing special.