This page is a record of our travels. Countries we have visited, either for business or pleasure include: Canada (Vancouver, Toronto, Waterloo/Kitchener, Ottawa, Niagara and towns along Lake Huron and Lake Erie ), USA (New York, Buffalo, Boston, Denver, Chicago, Monterey, Cincinatti, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Grand Canyon), Malta, Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, China (Shanghai) and Singapore. My first holiday abroad was to either Malta or Spain, I cannot remember now. My first 'business' trip was to the north of Finland, Sweden and Norway to study the aurora borealis with low light TV cameras. The further north we went, the bleaker it became, but also the more beautiful it became. Strangely it was the photographs that reminded me of the beauty, my memories of that trip were of eating reindeer and an all pervading smell of pine wood.

The page was last updated on 3rd April 2009 .

Penang

We wanted to get away for a long weekend to have a break from all the organisation and the increasing chaos resulting from the impending move. We chose Penang which is just one hour's flight from Singapore. I had been to Penang for a couple of days on a business trip some four years ago and had been promising to take Ploy back to eat some of the best seafood I had ever tasted. Here are some photographs from our trip. We stayed at the Naza hotel which was OK without being exceptional. Undoubtedly the highlight of the trip was the day we spent at the Kek Lok Si Buddhist temple and the surrounding area including an interesting market. Click on the images to view them full size.

California and the Grand Canyon

Ploy and I have just returned from a two week holiday in the USA. I had to do a business trip to Las Vegas to the Consumer Electronics show and an associated conference so I decided it would be a chance for Ploy to see America for the first time. We took the non-stop flight on Singapore air from Singapore to Los Angeles, 14 hours there, but over 17 hours to return, although the bigger seats of the executive economy do help: at least they help me but on both flights Ploy failed to sleep at all. I had originally intended to get a bus from Los Angeles to Las Vegas as for five days I would be working and we wouldn't have a chance to drive anywhere, but I decided in the end to pick a car up at Los Angeles airport. I was a bit nervous as I hadn't driven a car at all for over a year, and the first thing I faced was a four hour drive, starting in Friday evening Los Angeles traffic on the 'wrong' side of the road. What helped enormously was the satellite navigation which gave (mostly) clear instructions all the way to our hotel in Las Vegas. To get to the reception of our hotel involved dragging our bags through the casino, whichever way we approached it, and my worst fears about Las Vegas seemed to be coming true. The hotel had already proudly announced itself in neon, 'Dirty Girls: Bikini clad bull riding and mud-wrestling' and 'the only bingo on the Strip': not the cultural icon I had hoped for then! Having dumped our bags in our room the first thing we did was look for something to eat, but we were sadly disappointed with the food offered by the hotel restaurant and I consoled myself with the fact that we could leave here after five days and go somewhere better. The next day was mostly working; Ploy came with me to look at all the new gadgets and toys on offer at the show. When we took a taxi back to our hotel I asked the taxi driver where a good restaurant was: "William B's" he said, "within walking distance of your hotel". Our experience of eating so far was twice in the hotel restaurant (breakfast did not improve on our first experience), and an overstretched service at the show itself. We had left the show earlier as we were still tired from the trip, and I left Ploy in the hotel sleeping whilst I wandered around. Las Vegas is a plastic gawdy city, from the half size Eiffel tower to the Sphinx. Everything is a replica with a liberal dose of tackiness lest one should forget where we we are. The endless neon, the casinos, the shows with 'celebrities' I had never heard of (Celine Dion and Barry Manilow excepted), the ubiquitous Steak and Shrimp restaurants serving obscene portions capable of feeding a small nation: I was prepared to hate this place. However things did improve. After my walk Ploy still wanted to sleep, so I went downstairs to the hotel Steak and Shrimp restaurant only to be told it was full. So I wandered out again and happened upon William B's where I had great service and a very nice meal. So the next night I took Ploy there, and as the restaurant is inevitable located in a casino, we spent the next couple of hours learning how to shoot crap which was fun. The next day I met Ploy for lunch and we found the best restaurant so far, the Capital Grille, which served extremely fresh, simple salads, and grilled meat and fish. That night we went back to restaurant again, so good was the lunch, and we went across to 'Wynn' where Ploy had discovered what she said, was a really nice casino. Indeed it was, much less seedy than the others with good bars and restaurants. Stephen Wynn, who owns this hotel and casino (and others) certainly knows how to provide what I felt was good value for money, up-market entertainment. I left Ploy at midnight still playing the slot machines: she returned back to the hotel at 4.00a.m., US$400 better off and full of stories. I had hardly slept for the four hours as I realized that I left my wife wandering Las Vegas alone, with no mobile phone or ID (left in the hotel), with a naive sense of safety as all my lecturing had had little effect on her: in Singapore we take safety for granted. On our last night in Las Vegas we went to see a show, La Reve, a sort of mix of circus and musical. It was excellent, the ninety minutes flew by, and we went back to our hotel at midnight after one last play on the slot machines and a final US200 payout, which just about covered our previous losses. The next day we would drive to the Grand Canyon with what I thought would be the proper start of the holiday, but in retrospect, Las Vegas did have something to offer and I can see why so many Americans go there for a weekend getaway.

The drive to the Grand Canyon from Las Vegas is about six hours and also goes over the Hoover Dam where we stopped for a while to view that incredible engineering feat. The drive is mostly through desert, but as we started along the last fifty miles towards the Grand Canyon the feeling of trepidation and excitement grew: could it really be as fantastic as everything I had read. Because we did not arrive until about 4.00p.m. I had booked a night in a hotel and we first checked in and got rid of our bags. We then left immediately for the Grand Canyon as the best times to view it, I was told, was sunset and sunrise. As we approached the car park we got the occassional glimpse, but it was when we got out of the car the majesty of the sight hit us. Ploy, for whom understatement is an art, just exclaimed "Wow". I felt like a player in a Friedrich painting, my sense of place lost in this jaw dropping experience. And it is an experience that cannot be got through the photographs or film. You need to hear the cry of the birds, and let the stillness engulf you. Truly this was the most incredible sight in nature I had ever seen. What we had not planned for was the cold, a wind that cut right through our inadequate clothing, so after an hour we were returned to the warmth of our hotel. That night, as the hotel did not serve any food, we followed the recommendation and went to the hotel across the road from ours where we had a really nice meal and were entertained by some live music and some Native American dancing by two children: even though the number of guests could be counted on the fingers of one hand. One interesting fact we did learn was that this area had not had any rain, not a drop, for 85 consecutive days (the rapidly approaching record was 101 days apparently). In fact the dryness of the desert, here and in Las Vegas, was reaping its effect on both our skins where we having to dip ourselves in oil every morning to prevent from looking like two monkeys.

The next day we were to return to Los Angeles and we started out early on the 400 mile drive. The drive is again across desert and the size of this nation becomes apparent as we drove mile after mile, hour after hour without seeing any sign of civilization, just the occassional fellow travellers on the road, the huge trucks and the mile long freight trains. Our hotel, in San Gabriel just outside of Los Angeles, was in the middle of a small Asian centre, littered with Vietnamese and Chinese restaurants. Again we were unlucky with the hotel food (we were very tired after the drive and so chose not to go out), where both service and food were poor, so we ventured out anyway and were lucky enough to find a Chinese medicine shop where we bought some cream to aid our skins: and did it work well, within a couple of days everything was back to normal. Apparently it is quite common to have skin irritation in the dryness of the desert. We only had one day on Los Angeles, and we chose to go to the Avenue of Stars and wander around there. We managed to drive there without too much problem, but the street itself is somewhat of a disappointment, although to be honest I didn't really know what to expect. The street is lined with touristy shops selling the same T-shirts and movie memoribilia, and although it was fun spotting some of my favourite stars and standing on the steps where the Oscars are held it was a little bit boring. I had planned to go to one of the movie museums, but instead we opted for one of the tours around Bel Air to intrude on the movie stars homes. The guide was fun and had lots stories which, whether true or not, made the trip fun. It is interesting to hear of the Caroll Lombard story of how, having been given the option before she was famous, of offering 'services' to her boss (a movie theatre owner) or losing her job, 'chose' the latter, leaving her, her mother and grandmother without any income. However as we now know, she fought on and when she was famous 25 years later and was about to receive her star she chose to have it planted right outside the office of her former boss who still had the same job all those years later: every morning her ex-boss is reminded of his previous actions, a lovely way to exact revenge. I was also interested to hear that Tom Cruise has managed to get the tour busses stopped from going up his street as he felt it was intrusive. Well as his house is surrounded by high hedges I doubt the level of intrusion, and in any case if he wanted privacy why did he buy a house in Bel Air of all places: he has the money to buy a house anywhere. I am not advocating reporters hiding in his bathroom, but it is so different to the, mostly older is seems, movie stars that seem to welcome the publicity and even come out to greet the tour busses. The bus driver told us that one day he stopped outside Mel Gibson's house only to see the window of a jeep wound down and for Mel Gibson himself to ask, "Seen anyone famous today?".

The next day we started our journey up to San Francisco. We took the Route 101 and Highway 1, the Pacific Coast Highway, which some report, is the most beautiful route in the world. Because of the length of the journey I had booked a hotel at about the halfway point. Once outside of Los Angeles and approaching Santa Barbara we began to see what those writers had meant. The sweeping beaches with the Pacific rollers framed by the hills with our highway cutting a swathe between them; beautiful indeed. But the best was to be saved for Highway one where the road narrows and winds it way around the cliffs, each bend bringing an even more breathtaking view. Luckily the road was quiet giving us opportunity to frequently stop and just take in the view. Our hotel at Ragged Point also did not disappoint, perched as it was 400 feet on the cliffs above the Pacific.

The next day we continued our journey north, before rejoining Route 101 for the last 100 miles up to San Francisco. I had only ever been to the airport at San Francisco and I was very keen to actually stay and see the city. As we got lost on our way in we started by having to cross the Bay bridge twice, and there was certainly some excitement as I eventually drove the car down the road to our hotel persued by a tram. We stayed downtown at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel which proved itself very comfortable and friendly, and situated as it was between Union Square and Chinatown, with the trams running right outside the hotel, we could just park up the car and walk or bus to everywhere for the rest of our stay.

There was so much to do in San Francisco we could not do it justice as we only had one full day there. We chose to walk through ChinaTown (the biggest outside of China we were told), where Ploy finally bought a warmer coat: San Francisco is always cooler than its surroundings we were later told because of the funneling effect of the wind through the Harbour. It was so nice to not just have the same old shops as you see in every major city: window shopping was actually a pleasure there, and it takes a lot for me to say that. While I lose myself in specialist music stores or art gallery shops, Ploy frequents the antique shops and the discount clothing stores, and we wander around together some food stalls offering the freshest looking fish we had ever seen. We keep walking until we find Fisherman's Wharf (where Ploy had her first encounter with sea lions, which she fell in love with), and after lunch we take a converted tram bus on a tour around some of the sights, again with a very informative and interesting driver who clearly loved his city.

The evening was spent having dinner in a jazz club and a final drink a blues club, both offering excellent live music. I could have spent many more days in the city, there was so much we didn't see and do: the only slightly negative note was the number of homeless begging, especially at night time, which Ploy especially found uncomfortable.

The final part of our holiday was spent in Monterey, 100 miles south of San Francisco. I stayed there once before on a business trip and loved the place, at this time of year a sleepy fishing village and the perfect spot to unwind for our last two days. Montery is the sort of place I would love to retire to, by the sea, with great seafood and a lively art community. The last time I stayed there I went whale watching and had the thrill of watching four humpbacks: this time the swell was too much for the boats to go out, but Ploy did reaquaint herself with the sea lions and we had a lovely afternoon wandering around the aquarium. The seafood was as good as I remembered and the antique fair close to us in Cannery Row whiled away a few hours. We stayed at the Montery Bay Inn hotel, and had a fantastic view from our balcony across the harbour: the hotel also had the most comfortable king size bed I have ever slept in.

Our last day was spent driving the 350 miles south again back to Los Angeles airport, a largely uneventful journey, although it did give Ploy her first experience of an American diner breakfast. All in all a great holiday. When I ask Ploy what was her favourite parts, she surprisingly choses the San Francisco sea lions (but San Francisco is too cold), Las Vegas and Los Angeles, and if she had to live in any of those places, she would chose Los Angeles, probably my least favourite choice! I am now under instruction to save to buy our apartment, but at the same time Ploy has also asked me where shall we go next year.