London, 2012 Europe Trip – Part 4

London Day 3 was a very fulfilling and awfully tiring experience. I had decided to book my mum and I in for a full day tour of the London city. We were bustled into a waiting bus in the early rainy morning, and throughout the whole day, we visited a bunch of places, including Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and the Tower of London.

Because of the rainy weather, we weren’t able to see the Changing of the Guards. However, we did see the Changing of the Cavalry (I think that’s what it was called?) and it was nice to see all the pretty horses march out in orderly formations. However, the whole place smelled very strongly of horse manure, and there was this one guard who kept yelling out “Stand back!” whenever a tourist got too close to the horses or the stables.

The tour gave us some free time in the middle for some lunch. My mum and I went to this small, tucked away restaurant in the basement of some pub (we followed some blackboard signs) for some traditional English food; bangers and mash, and fish and chips! Compared to the rest of London, the food was relatively cheap and very filling. Hurrah for small hidden-away eateries!

Next up was the Tower of London. This was probably my favourite part of the day. We were allowed to look at the Crown Jewels, though we weren’t allowed to take photographs inside (which explains the lack of photos). All the diamonds and huge golden bowls…there were even huge ceremonial maces made out of solid gold! I imagine getting hit by one of those would be painful.

There were even a couple of small museums inside the buildings (castles? mini-castles?) inside the whole Tower of London grounds. This delightfully awkward photo of a suit of armour with a ridiculously large metal groin area was in a museum showing the weapons and armours used by the British hundreds of years ago. Suffice to say, there were plenty of people gawking and giggling at this poor tin man.

We finished off our busy day with a cruise on the Thames River. We saw a lot of the landmark-ish sites, including House of Parliament, Big Ben, and the London Eye. In spite of the rainy weather which had persisted for most of the day, the sky was beginning to clear up into a gorgeous shade of blue. I guess that’s London weather for you.

Signing off,
Marie

Tags: Food, Travel, Cruise, Europe, London, UK, Tour, Day Tour, Cavalry, Bangers and Mash, Fish and Chips, Tower of London, Thames, River, Thames River, House of Parliament, Big Ben, London Eye

London, 2012 Europe Trip – Part 3

Day 2 of our London visit started pretty early in the morning, along with the typical grey and gloomy London weather. Taking the bus from Marble Arch, we went to the famous antique market of Portobello Road. Although there weren’t that many people on the way there, by the time we got to the general area, it was CROWDED. Instead of walking through the market, it felt more like I was being dragged along by the tide of people. Argh, claustrophobia.

Despite the storm of people out on the roads, the inside of the antique markets were relatively quiet and calm. I guess they would have to be, given the plethora of easily breakable and expensive items. There were lots of different items on sale, including some interesting curiosities. I was obviously enamoured with this 100+ year old clarinet, but the price tag was ridiculous. Argh…

Amidst all the expensive Victorian items though, were some cheaper items obviously targeted towards tourists who couldn’t tell the difference between a real antique cameo brooch and brooches made in a Chinese factory. Although I didn’t really buy anything, there were tons of cute stalls selling literal piles of costume jewellery and other touristy things, like “I ♥ London” mugs.

Being a doll collector though, I did buy a small hand-made wooden doll. He’s dressed in the traditional British cavalry costume

Signing off,
Marie

Tags: Antique Market, Antiques, Doll, Europe, London, Market, Portobello Road, Travel, UK

London, 2012 Europe Trip – Part 2

Following our trip to the British Museum, we walked down to Trafalgar Square, where there were two top notch galleries; the National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery. We weren’t allowed to take photographs inside the galleries for obvious reasons, but suffice to say that we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. I especially loved the Van Gogh exhibits (he’s my favourite artist), and was able to purchase a lovely print of his for the relatively cheap price of £10 at the gift store. Anyway, since I wasn’t able to take any photographs inside the galleries, here are a couple of photographs of Trafalgar Square;

Obligatory touristy shot just outside the National Gallery with my new Van Gogh print!

Gorgeous weather! Hard to believe that it was really gloomy and rainy just 30 minutes ago but…I guess that’s London weather for you, haha.

Photo of Trafalgar Square and Nelson’s Column. You can see Big Ben peeking out at the back there.

And that was Day 1 of London! Next up, Day 2!

Signing off,
Marie

Tags: Europe, London, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Nelson's Column, Trafalgar Square, Travel, UK

London, 2012 Europe Trip – Part 1

For 10 days or so, my mum and I decided to take a trip to Europe, specifically London, UK, and Paris, France. It was my mum’s first time to Europe, my first time to the UK, and our first trip together with just the two of us, so we didn’t really know what to expect. Also, it was my dad’s idea that we go in the first place, and he had suggested the trip only a few weeks earlier, so we didn’t have much time to prepare and research places to visit and such. In a nutshell, we didn’t know what to expect at all.

Our “hotel” was a small flat run by a Korean couple. There were basically three rooms, one of them which had been converted to a quasi-dormitory with a bunch of bunk beds. The other two were just like small hotel rooms. VERY small hotel rooms. Our room had a window, thank goodness, though it only led out to the iron fire exit stairs outside. And the room was just large enough to contain a queen sized bed and a small dressing table. At least the bed was extremely comfortable

After checking in and resting for the night, we woke up refreshed and ready to go in the morning the next day. Our hotel stay included a home-made Korean style breakfast every morning, which was amazing! The Korean lady was an amazing cook. We had our meals in the dormitory room, along with all the other people staying at the place. Although the communal eating space was a bit cramped, we had a lot of fun talking and sharing information on getting around London.

Our first stop was the British Museum. Taking the tube for the first time was a little frightening because I have never taken the subway before (except in Korea). But it was a lot like Korea (except everything was in English, duh), and the trip was very straight-forward. And there weren’t any drugged up hobos like I had expected either, probably because the tube tickets were so expensive so the hobos couldn’t get in the stations in the first place.

The façade of the building was actually quite small and plain, so we were really surprised when we went in and saw building after building (or entrances after entrances), encased in a dome of glass ceiling. Woah. Talk about unexpected. The museum was huge! And because it was so big, and we couldn’t possibly look at all of the exhibits, we looked at the most famous ones.

The Egyptian Galleries were very impressive, although very crowded, and there were artefacts such as the Rosetta Stone, which were very interesting. My favourite part of the galleries though, were the mummies. There were tons of mummies of people, and it was fascinating to see how little the bodies had decayed. There were also mummies of animals! Those were cute.

Fish Mummy! The wooden coffin is a cute touch

There were plenty of other galleries that we looked through, and we could have been there all day, but we didn’t have the time. We had lunch outside the museum, munching on cheap hotdogs while feeding the yucky parts to the more than willing pigeons.

Signing off,
Marie

Tags: Travel, Budget Travel, Europe, London, UK, British Museum, Egyptian Gallery, Egyptian History, Mummies, Mummy, Fish Mummy

Back from Europe!

I am finally back home from my trip to Europe (London and Paris)! Part 1 will hopefully be up by tomorrow morning…stay tuned!

Signing off,
Marie

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam – Part 4

Our last full day in Vietnam was spent on a full-day city course (a definitely must for first-timers to any city!). We were picked up near our hotel at 8AM in the morning again (gee, these Vietnamese people really like to start the day early) and were bundled into a waiting van where some 10 other tourists were sitting, waiting for the tour to begin. Our tour guide was nice, but he had a horrible habit of drifting his sentences away into nothing, so you couldn’t hear the last half of all his sentences (“And this is the Chinese temple for Goddess…….*mumble mumble*”). Still, I had enough information from my pre-trip research to understand what was going on.

Our first stop was at the old Chinese temple at the centre of the city. It was over 200 years old, and was built when Chinese merchants settled in Vietnam after the country was conquered by the Chinese. All the parts of the temple were directly shipped from China, and the details in the ornate carvings depicted intricate scenes of everyday life, such as merchants haggling and funeral processions and such. The temple was dedicated to the Sky Goddess Ho (though I had to remind myself not to laugh every time the tour guide said her name), and devotees would burn wishes attached to coils of incense, as they believed that when the incense was finished burning, the wish would be carried up into the sky along with the smoke.

Our next stop was a rather depressing stay at the War Remnants Museum. It was a state-funded and state-operated museum dedicated to “exposing the truths of the Vietnam War”. Although it was rather jingoistic and took the chance to portray the US government in a negative light every chance it had, it was a very educational stay, especially where the exhibits showed the consequences of the use of Agent Orange. Definitely not for the faint-hearted though. On every wall of the exhibition rooms, there were photographs of children born with defects as a result of the chemicals used, of children with huge gaping wounds and burns from bombs and napalms, and even two pickled remains of stillborn babies born to mother exposed to Agent Orange. *shudder*

We then proceeded to go to the Reunification Palace. This was where the end of the Vietnam War happened when the two tanks came crashing in through the gates.  All the rooms were preserved exactly as they were at the end of the war, and although some of the rooms were still being used today for state meetings and such, most of the rooms still had the antique feel of being stuck in the mid-70′s. There was even a model helicopter on the roof, similar to the one that took Saigon’s President and his family to safety when the tanks came crashing in.

The most fascinating part of the building was the underground bunker. A labyrinth of metal hallways, all the rooms were left exactly as they were during the war. There were posters marking the number of troops in certain areas, number of casualties, a room full of old typewriters, and even some escape routes hidden behind secret doors that were never used. Kind of spooky, but in a good way.

We then went to the Saigon Notre-Dame Basilica. Built by French missionaries, the signature red façade was built with bricks that were brought straight from Marseille! In front of the cathedral, there was a small round area of grass with the statue of the Virgin Mary in the centre of it. There was tons of people, just sitting, feeding the pigeons, or in the case of one woman, having a photo shoot (well, it WAS a nice day out).

After some time had passed, we were allowed into the cathedral itself. The sudden rush of tourists all flocking in simultaneously created a very claustrophobic wave, but that didn’t deter me from admiring the internal architecture. Maybe it’s because I’ve been to the Vatican and have seen grander cathedrals, but honestly, the inside was not awe-inspiring or anything like that. However, the stained-glass windows were really pretty, especially in contrast with the rest of the dark and rather gloomy inside.

That concluded the day-tour. We were dropped off at our hotel again, and after a quick dinner, we took the cab to go to the Bitexco Financial Tower, the tallest building in HCMC.

The night view of the observation deck on the 49th floor was fantastic! We had a 360 degree view of all of Saigon, and with the night lights on, the view was beautiful. There were also these snazzy computer screens located strategically around the observation deck that you could use to look up more information on specific buildings or sites. Our visit to the tower coincided with Earth Hour, which meant that all the lights were turned off, which didn’t matter too much; in fact, it made the view even better as there weren’t any inside lights interfering with the night lights outside.

So that concludes my Vietnam trip! The next day, after a quick breakfast, we went back to the very hot and inefficient airport and flew back to Malaysia. Whew!

Signing off,
Marie

Tags: Asia, Bitexco, Bitexco Financial Tower, Budget Travel, Chinese temple, HCMC, Ho Chi Minh City, Indochina, Notre Dame, Reunification Palace, Saigon, Saigon Notre-Dame Basilica, Sky Goddess Ho, Skyscraper, Stained Glass, Tallest Building, Travel, Underground Bunker, Vietnam, Vietnam War, War Remnants Museum

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam – Part 3

After our trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels, we took a much well-deserved break at the hotel (the weather was incredibly hot) before leaving for the Saigon River with our hotel guide, Thao. Thao was our amazing guide/hotel manager/tour organizer person. She was very prompt with emails and was very thorough in making sure our entire trip went very smoothly. And she also accompanied us to the riverside to make sure we got on the right boat! How nice of her.

We rode to the Saigon riverside on cyclos. Cyclos were basically these sort of carriages attached to the front of bicycles. The person driving would sit on the bicycle, and steer with handles attached to the back of the carriage. Our drivers were all very nice, and they spoke English (hurrah!) so they explained to us the various buildings and parks that we went past. In contrast to the blazing hot weather of the early afternoon, it was much cooler at night, with a wind blowing from the river. The only part that terrified me slightly was the plethora of motorcycles, all rushing around and honking at us. Still, we took our leisurely time to the river and we survived.

At the river, we got on a traditional Vietnamese junk for our dinner cruise. We had a spectacular view of District 1 and 2 with all the lights on, and we were also treated to a pretty decadent 6 course dinner as well. Throughout the meal, there were entertainers dancing and singing at the front of the boat, which was interesting as they performed traditional Vietnamese songs. The only annoying part was when they tried to come up to our table after the performance, trying to sell us CDs of their performances. But I suppose that’s what’s being a tourist is about. Near the end of the cruise, we went up to the top of boat where we enjoyed the night breeze and the scenery. There was this other boat behind us that had neon lights that made it look like a fish. Well, my dad thought it was a shark at first, so we started calling it Shark Boat. We grew a little obsessed with it after a while. You’ll see what I mean in Part 4.

Angry Shark Boat!

Part 4 will be up soon (hopefully!)

*update* Part 4 is here! Click here to read it!

Signing off,
Marie

Tags: Asia, Boat, Budget Travel, Cruise, HCMC, Ho Chi Minh City, Indochina, Junk, Photography, Saigon, Saigon River, Shark boat, Travel, Vietnam, Vietnamese junk