Friday 29 June 2012

Sydney Hop

We'd had a lovely, relaxing week on Hamilton Island, with just a glimpse of sun at the end to imagine what it'd be like in season. Now it was time to move on to Fiji.

Due to flight schedules and economical airline choice, our route from The Whitsundays to Fiji passed through Sydney and Auckland, with an overnight stop in the former.

Because the notional title for Leg 3 was "Beaches of the World", I had a hankering to get to Bondi Beach, which is indirectly between Sydney airport and the city centre. Events during our previous stop in Sydney hadn't permitted this.

As we were just overnighting between flights, we'd booked a very humble Formule 1 room, with shower, toilet, telly, and one double bed sideways underneath a single bed raised up bunk-style on a metal frame. Strange, but I suppose it maximizes the ways the room can be let.

Dusk had settled, and we managed to complete the 10-minute walk from the domestic terminal just as the very first drops of a rainstorm were falling. It was whilst sitting inside, looking out at the torrent, that I tried to sell the idea of taking a taxi to nighttime Bondi Beach to a tired Clare who would rather have stayed in the warm and dry, lying in front of the telly and grabbing a dinner from the McDonalds next door (people call them "Maccers" here, and the term is even used in adverts).

Clare acquiesced and, by the time the taxi came, the rain had stopped for the night. Dropped off on the road in the middle of the Bondi front, we walked away from the shops and restaurants, down the hill to the beachside promenade.

The first thing we saw was an ice-skating rink. What else do you want on a midwinter beach? Wonderful. Only the fact that it was closed for a private session saved Clare from having me try to drag her onto the ice.

Beyond, we could see the white lines of the famous breakers at the sea's edge, and we walked along the dark beach for a short distance before grabbing a pleasant dinner in a café called The Bucket List (appropriately for me, among so many others, I felt).

We'd had a very pleasant evening and Clare thanked me for persuading her to venture out.

Taxi back. Early start. Two one-feature-film flights, courtesy of seatback video-on-demand. Best ever transit in Auckland - the outgoing flight started boarding the moment we reached the gate, straight from the transfer security check. And we reached Fiji, again after a 6pm winter nightfall.

For our 90-minute taxi transfer from Nadi to the resort, we joined not only the driver but his wife. I imagined they'd taken advantage of the company car to pop into the city for for shopping. Anyway, it felt like getting a lift with friends, as we chatted the whole way, learning more about life on the island; floods, churches and hitch-hiking.

We finally arrived at our resort to a good first impression and a quick bite to eat. In the dark, we tried to work out what the setting was and what we'd be able to see in the daytime.

That was last night and, now I'm awake, I'm off to look out of the window and get a first proper view of Fiji.

Thursday 28 June 2012

Whitsunday Clouds

There was only one cloud over our time in Phuket, and it had nothing whatever to do with Phuket.

Because we decided so late that we could actually go on Leg 3, we had no accommodation researched or arranged anywhere - we have to do all that as we go along. So whilst sitting by the pool in Phuket, we tried to find and book good accommodation in Sydney (very successfully), The Whitsundays (see below) and Fiji (a story for another day, which Clare introduced in the last post).

I read TripAdvisor reviews of every resort in the Whitsunday Islands. We feel we've acquired a reasonable skill in interpreting reviews by now, and I concentrate on 2* and 4* reviews - people for whom everything wasn't either all right or all wrong. Normally different views on the same shortcomings emerge, allowing you to apply your own weighting for what matters to you.

Having gone through that process for every Whitsundays resort, there didn't seem any that seemed a safe bet for our precious one-off experience - mostly rip-offs (beyond a reasonable "exclusive" premium) and/or awful service/attitude. Some of the reviews were a few years old, though.

We turned to Airlie Beach (the bit of the mainland that faces the Whitsunday Islands) and found a much more normal selection of hotels and reviews. Unfortunately, location seemed to be a problem for a lot of places. Some were a long walk up a hill. A couple of the most promising turned out to have a big land reclamation project going on in front of them.

Quite dismayed by now, we considered splitting our time between two places. The trouble is that both of us find "travel days" complete wipe-outs in terms of relaxation, so we gave up on that.

In the end we crossed our fingers and booked one resort, hoping the reviews had been unnecessarily jaundiced.

Hamilton Island is the largest occupied/resort island in the Whitsunday Islands, and the site of the Great Barrier Reef Airport. The whole island is on lease from the Oz government to Robert Oatley.

He's built three resorts (expensive, ouch and you-what???), plus various apartments and a marina area with various restaurants. There are shuttle buses around the island and you can charge to your room (almost) anywhere on the island by showing your key.

We landed and were swiftly installed in the Reef View Hotel (expensive) in a beautiful 15th-floor room with king sized bed and whole-glass-wall view across the bay and other islands. Not dirty at all, and certainly not in need of refurbishment.

Downstairs for dinner, we found £16 starters, £23 mains and £5 bottles of beer. We'd read a review warning to expect bills of £130 for a meal for two, and that's pretty much what we found - we feared we'd probably end up paying as much on food as the cost of the room.

However, those turned out to be the most expensive prices on the island apart from a couple of fine dining restaurants at the marina, so the non-accommodation costs eventually came to about 60% of the room, which isn't so unusual.

In any case, we'd found that Sydney was unusually expensive, so things aren't all that much higher here.

The other thing that bears saying, relative to the reviews of the hotel/island as that we found every single member of staff friendly, polite and very helpful. We'll be submitting a review of our own to try to correct the story.

Did I say view of the bay? Well, actually when we arrived there was quite low cloud, which closed in until we could see hardly anything out of the window - that'll teach us to bank on Aussie winter weather!

In fact, the weather forecast for the whole week involved clouds and some rain. Days 1-3 had a solid overcast with overnight rain, and on days 4 and 5 the rain intruded a little into the daytime.

We're not complaining. We've "won" everywhere else we've been this year - typical: "last week was really bad", so we can hardly complain when our luck ebbs slightly. In a strange way, it made the lovely place even more relaxing.

We did ask about a day trip to snorkel on the Barrier Reef, but apparently the wind was too high and looked set to stay that way for our whole week.

Day 6 was brighter, with maybe half an hour of the sun peeping through the clouds, which we celebrated by sitting beside a beachfront pool for the first time. In the afternoon I sailed Clare round the bay in a small catamaran. This was a little outside Clare's comfort zone, but she did end up enjoying it.

Our package included an afternoon boat trip to famous Whitehaven Beach on uninhabited Whitsunday Island. It became our daily ritual to wake, look out of the window, and re-book the trip for the following day whilst on our way to breakfast.

In the end, we reached day 7, our last full day, and had to go. It turned out to be the best day - a reasonable temperature and quite a few glimpses of the sun through the clouds. Whitehaven Beach is worthy of its reputation - a graceful 7km arc of pure, floury, white silica sand. Gorgeous!

Monday 25 June 2012

Stunning Sydney

We flew from Phuket to Singapore, a flight of about 2 hours, with a 1.5 hour stopover in Singapore. We then caught our overnight flight to Sydney, journey time 7.5 hours. Fortunately, the flight was not full, so with plenty of vacant seats, we could stretch out and get a few hours sleep.

We landed in Sydney at about 10.30am on the 19/6, and after a short train journey to Circular Quay and a short walk (encountering steep steps on the way with our heavy luggage) we got to our hotel at midday.

We could not check in until 2pm, so we left our luggage and went to explore. We were literally minutes from the harbour and, for me, my first sight of Sydney Opera House, and the Harbour Bridge, truly they are magnificent sights. The weather was lovely and sunny with a bright blue sky, although the temperature was only about 18 degrees, somewhat cooler than Phuket, but not surprising as its mid-winter in Australia.

We walked around the harbour and decided to go up to an observation deck and to have lunch. We went to a Japanese restaurant and had a nice meal. We had left our coats and fleeces at the hotel and we got decidedly chilly, so after lunch we wandered back to our hotel and checked in; we were very happy with the room.

After relaxing for a few hours, we wandered out to find somewhere for dinner in the harbour area and also to see it at night, which was lovely. As I am still being careful with what I eat, we settled on a restaurant where I had an omelette and Dave had veal. We then went back to the hotel, after this gentle introduction to Sydney.

Next morning we went to book the Harbour Bridge climb for the following day, which we did for 11.05 am, but we realised that would leave time tight to get to the right point in the Botanical Garden to take the classic pictures of the Opera House and bridge. So after some discussion we decided to do the climb on the 20/6; back we went to the booking office and changed the climb date to that afternoon - staff were very helpful - the last daylight climb (price goes up for climbs after dusk). The climb was for 2.25pm, which left us with just about an hour to get something to eat and drink and to go back to the hotel to put our trainers on. This we managed with a few minutes to spare.

The safety precautions, which includes being breathalysered, going through a metal detector and preparation for the walk is very thorough, they take safety very seriously. You have to wear overalls and a safety harness which is attached at all times and you have radio to hear your guide. You also have to use a simulator set of ladders before you do the real thing on the bridge.

There was 11 in our group, mostly Americans, three from UK (including ourselves) and one Aussie. From ground level the climb looks pretty daunting, but is actually fairly easy and the views on the way up are pretty stunning. We were also lucky that the weather was again clear and sunny. Our young guide, Kate, was fun and very informative. She also took photos at regular intervals on the way up and down, as you are not allowed to take a camera. Reaching the top was amazing and the sun was beginning to go down, so by the time we started the descent, we were able to see a most stunning sunset, with the sun setting behind the Blue Mountains.

Total time (including safety prep) is just under four hours. You get a group photo free, others you have to buy, we got three, as you definitely need to have a record of your climb. We also each brought a tee-shirt, not cheap, but we have realised that Sydney is not a cheap place and that Australia is probably the most expensive place we have been on our travels.

We again ate in a restaurant by the harbour and were pleasantly surprised that they had gluten free options, our waitress said that a gluten free diet is very fashionable in Sydney, being a lifestyle choice rather than a medical one. I opted for a chicken Caesar salad, but we did share a gluten free chocolate meringue with ice-cream! Although I don't know for certain if I have gluten and wheat intolerance, avoiding it, along with caffeine, alcohol, seeds, etc, (as advised by my GP) seems to be helping.

We were up early the next day to go into the Botanical Gardens to get the classic picture of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge before going on a guided tour of the Opera House at 10.30am. We were later leaving the hotel than planned as we had spent some time on Skype speaking to an agent about hotels in Fiji, which seems to be nearly fully booked, probably because we are there around the 4th July, we were unsuccessful in booking a hotel in Fiji at that point, so would have to continue looking later.

Anyway, we got to the Opera House on time for the tour. It is really an amazing building and we saw a video as part of the tour which showed some of the designs which were considered, none were as iconic as the one that was chosen nor were the designs as timeless. I was surprised to learn that construction started in 1959 with completion scheduled for three years later, in fact it was not opened until 1973, some 14 times over the original budget! The theatres are amazing and if we had more time in Sydney we would have loved to have gone and seen a performance.

Our tour tickets included an offer of a $10 meal at The Studio Cafe at the Opera House, our cheapest meal by far in Sydney!

After lunch we walked round the Opera House and through the Botanical Gardens where Government House is. This is open to the public on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Unfortunately, this was Thursday, so we just walked around the outside.

We then walked into the town centre to Sydney Tower (also known as Centre Point and AMP Tower), where we went up to the observation floor which had stunning views over Sydney. It also has a revolving restaurant, and we decided to return for dinner later as it was our last night in Sydney. We opted for the buffet meal and booked for 8pm.

We went back to the hotel via Woolworths, a supermarket chain, to stock up on gluten free food.

We got a cab to Sydney Tower for dinner. You have 1.5 hours and you can eat as much as you want. They had plenty of gluten free options too, and the desserts I thought were particularly nice. We had our picture taken again (we had one taken on our earlier visit to the tower, which we did not purchase) we did buy this one. Everywhere you go there is someone taking your picture and the package is around $35. Picture taking is BIG business in Australia!

The meal at the Tower, was a lovely way to round off our time in Sydney.

Wednesday 20 June 2012

Just Phuket

Although it'd always amused my naughty-schoolboy self to make "f***-it" puns about this place, someone burst my bubble before we came by explaining it was pronounced "pooket". Never mind.

Previously, I'd expected Phuket to have a negative "youngsters' party island" vibe. Hence it only got on our itinerary because Aussie friend and colleague Pat told me there were really nice parts too - like Karon Beach.

By contrast, Clare expected an exclusive, quite high-end destination - which is far closer to what we found.

After our usual fairly thorough, though last-but-one-minute research, we'd booked at the Mövenpick Resort & Spa Karon Beach.

I knew the Swiss-run Mövenpick hotel chain from two periods of over a year when I was working in The Hague and staying there. Good quality without being pretentious.

Nevertheless, their Phuket hotel was quite large and I didn't expect an outstanding experience outside a small/boutique hotel. I was wrong.

Although we've thought quite hard, we can't fault it.

We arrived to a choice of rooms, and picked the one that was lighter and with a (far) better view, even at the cost of having separate beds.

There are three pools, one with a swim-up bar, one with almost no children and one too small and square (c/f 3 bears). Then there's the beach - long, white and quiet, with beautiful crashing rows of surf and hawkers easily urged on their way. The ice-cream guy was, however, eagerly welcomed. We couldn't work out how he kept our two Magnums nearly solid in his shoulder-carried cool bag, but we were grateful.

We've spent two days at the beach, one at the big pool and three at the middle pool, with beer arriving for me at a moderate rate, once I'd trained the pool staff ;-)

The hotel has the best buffet breakfast I've ever seen (and I've seen quite a few), with a very wide choice. There are three different dinner restaurants - all at reasonable restaurant prices. We did have room service twice, and it arrived bang on the 30 minutes they said each time. I guess that's the Swiss influence.

We've been very happy here. Only fear is that this'll be hard to beat, and it'd be a shame to have the best first, and downhill from there.

It has occurred to me that the blog posts from this leg might be less interesting than the preceding ones. They were real voyages of discovery, in various ways. This leg is a lot more like five pretty nobby beach holidays in a row. If we'd been taking them separately, then they wouldn't count as "adventure travel" and so wouldn't normally appear here. We will keep writing, but trying to concentrate on our experience rather than hotel reviews.

Sydney next :-)

Saturday 16 June 2012

Slingless

(Because we were in Singapore but Clare was off alcohol, such as Singapore Slings)

Let me re-tell Clare's story from the last couple of posts from my PoV.

Having omitted to research it earlier, we sat using mobile data on our iPhones in the baggage hall of Changi airport (pronounced with a soft g - like Chang-ee). I found the address of the Grand Pacific hotel, then looked it up on a map to find the nearest subway station, then downloaded a subway map.

We decided to save a line-change and go to a slightly further-away stop, then got misled by a local-area map in that station. Hence we ended up dragging our cases along from the third-closest station in the sweltering morning heat after our long overnight flight. Fortunately, things improved from this point.

After feeling well enough for us to book leg 3 a couple of days before, Clare felt queasy throughout the long flight and too poorly to leave the hotel room once we'd got in and freshened up. She said that if she'd felt that way before, we wouldn't have booked to travel!

With Clare as comfortable as possible, she urged me to go out and see something of Singapore to make the best of our short time there.

I strolled out, past the closest and second-closest subway stops, then across a large sports field where I watched teams playing cricket against the soaring backdrop of the central business district (CBD).

Then I caught my first sight of the Marina Bay Sands hotel. This is an amazing sight, even though I'd seen it on F1 race coverage on TV. There's a 340m-long curved, vaguely boat-shaped top, complete with infinity swimming pool, perched 200m or 57 storeys up on top of three tower blocks. Amazing.

I strolled down to the Esplanade area, a promenade with shops behind by the side of Marina Bay, enjoying fabulous views of the Sands and the CBD across the water. I took a photo or two (hundred).

There was a bandstand on the promenade under a high-tech curved-steel-tube ...um... structure with taught sheeting ...um... roof. A pretty good band were sound-checking there, so I got an ice-cream wafer (the flavour of durian fruit, similar to guava) and sat on a big arc of steps running down to the water, enjoying the music and soaking in the view. Wow!

I walked back to our hotel past the Raffles Hotel, thinking about how to share this experience with Clare. I decided not to show her my photos, and even to hide my camera so she wouldn't think to ask, so that she could discover it fresh for herself the next day, when hopefully she'd be well.

She was, and we did. On the second day (our only whole day here) we saw everything I'd seen the first afternoon; still as stunning.

We sat chilling with drinks for an hour enjoying the view from the Esplanade, then crossed the bridge to look at the Merlion statue. This is an 8m-high white stone mer-lion (c/f mermaid) with a fountain spouting forward from its mouth.

Singapore means "lion city", since an early coloniser thought he'd seen a lion there, completely erroneously.

We then took a leisurely lunch. After that, we started trying to walk along the side of the Singapore river, long the heart of the city before continual land reclamation created the bay, the area where the Sands sits, and all the dock areas behind.

Unfortunately, the sun was just too fierce - probably the harshest we've encountered it anywhere (just 85 miles north of the equator). We had to retire to our hotel for a siesta.

That evening, with the sun gone but the heat of the air only slightly reduced, we returned (via Raffles, as Clare described) to the Esplanade for a lovely meal with fabulous night views of the CBD across the bay.

On our last morning we caught the subway to the middle of the CBD. On the train I read Wikitravel on my iPhone and learned an amazing fact:

"Granted self-rule in 1955, Singapore briefly joined Malaysia in 1963 when the British left, but was expelled because the Chinese-majority city was seen as a threat to Malay dominance, and the island became independent on 9 August 1965, thus becoming the only country to gain independence against its own will in the history of the modern world."

We went up the tallest building in Singapore, 1 Raffles Place. This has a triangular observation deck on its roof, just surrounded by chest-high glass sides. We relished the great views over the whole country, but only for ten or so minutes, because a siren sounded and we had to go down due to a risk of lightning from growing storm clouds. We escaped without lightning or even rain - never mind.

We returned to the airport via the subway. We used the nearest subway station to the hotel, but the doorman pointed toward the station we'd used when arriving. Turned out there is a cumbersome interchange half-way along between lines built at different times, so we probably weren't as far wrong as I thought on our arrival.

We arrived at the airport, checked in (getting away with 1.5 kilos overweight) and duly dumped our drinks before going airside. There was no security, which quite surprised us, so we went and bought new water supplies for the flight.

When we got to the gate, we discovered that the security was there - another of the irritating airports (like Shanghai) where they confiscate your water immediately before boarding the plane - leaving your hydration to the mercy of the airline. Grrrr!

Sunday 10 June 2012

Singapore - 10 June 2012

We woke to sun and blue sky, a marked contrast from yesterday when we arrived to an overcast sky and rain, also (fingers crossed, touch wood, etc, etc,) tum feels better.

After breakfast, we wandered down to the Marina Bay, passing Raffles Hotel on the way, where we said we would go for a drink in the evening - more of that later. The weather was extremely hot and we had to use our umbrellas as parasols because of the intensity of the sun - temperature was 33 degrees, although it felt much hotter. Our hotel, which was recommended by Lucy at the Flight Centre, was really well situated and less than 15 minutes walk from the marina.

Singapore is a lovely city and like Japan, very clean. Signs are in English which is also widely spoken. Once at the Marina, we went into the Esplande Centre which houses shops and a theatre. We went up to the roof terrace to get a good view of the harbour. There is a hotel, The Sands, consisting of six separate towers, with what looks like a boat perched on top, an amazing sight. Coming down from the roof terrace, we stopped for a drink overlooking the harbour and did our favourite hobby of people watching!

We then walked over the bridge to another part of the marina and then followed the river, stopping for a light salad lunch on the way. The buildings in the financial centre are really tall and impressive, but too tall to get a good photograph.

By mid afternoon we were wilting in the heat, so we headed back to the hotel.

A couple of hours later after a rest and shower we headed out for dinner, but first a drink at Raffles in their Courtyard Bar. Dave decided to have a gin and tonic and, as I am avoiding alcohol, I had a diet coke. The surroundings were lovely and we joked that these drinks were not going to be cheap, so for a bit of fun we guessed the possible cost, I said £15 and Dave said £20. We were so way off, as these two drinks came to £35! The most expensive diet coke I have ever had. Needless to say, we did not have a second drink.

We continued on to the harbour, which looked lovely lit up, found a nice restaurant, where the meal and two drinks cost £25, significantly less than the two drinks at Raffles.

We wandered back to our hotel in the humidity, it's not much cooler than the daytime temperatures, such a pleasure to get to our air conditioned room!

Saturday 9 June 2012

Singapore 8/9 June 2012

We were at home longer than we intended due to my tummy troubles (which are not resolved even after two trips to doctor, and tests which were clear, I was advised to take probiotics and watch my diet. Therefore, on advice from GP, I am currently avoiding - amongst other things - wheat, gluten, caffeine, spices, any fruit or veg with seeds and strangely onions ........ and alcohol - so at least my liver should be healthy - all of which can apparently irritate the gut - have been eating peanuts as I thought these were okay (cannot eat crisps) but after looking on the Internet, they are a definite no no!

We, therefore, flew out to Singapore at 11.30am on the 8/6 on a 12 hour flight and, due to the time difference, landed at 7am on the 9/6.

We got a train from the airport to our hotel and after a bit of confusion about which stop we should get off at, we arrived at the hotel just after 9am, luckily we were able to get into our room straightaway (although twin beds, otherwise we would have had to wait until midday). Unfortunately, my tummy has not been good again today, so I stayed in hotel room and Dave went out for a couple of hours to explore Singapore. This is VERY frustrating as I so want to be able to fully enjoy this last leg of our once in a lifetime trip and to remember it for the right reasons. Hoping a good night's sleep (we both did not have good night's sleep before we left nor slept on the flight) will be beneficial.

So fingers crossed that I get to enjoy the full day we have in Singapore tomorrow and that my tum gets better for the rest of the trip.

I felt a bit better on Dave's return, so we ate in the hotel tonight, Dave from the 'all you can eat' buffet; I had lamb shank and mashed potatoes and veg (all okay foods!). We met a really nice Aussie couple who we chatted to, so it made a nice evening.

Wednesday 6 June 2012

Away 3

After application of care and patience, Clare's tum is now in a fit state to travel (we hope), and we'll be going with it.

Here we are again at Heathrow, ready to leave on the third and final leg of our grand tour. This time it's a full lap of the world - travelling Eastward like Phileas Fogg so we get July 6/7 twice!

We only booked on Wednesday, and here we are on Friday, so Thursday was busy and I got the most stressy I have in ages. When you're going away for a month or more, there are some things where it makes a lot of difference whether you've packed them or not - adding up to a lot of inconvenience saved/suffered over the time.

The outline of leg 3 is as follows:

9-10 Jun - Singapore
11-17 - Phuket, Thailand
18 - Singapore (transit only)
19-21 - Sydney, Australia
22-28 - Hamilton Island, Australia
28 - Sydney (transit only)
29 Jun-5 Jul - Fiji
6 Jul - Auckland, New Zealand (transit only)
6 (AGAIN!!!) - 11 Jul - Hawaii, USA
12-14 - San Francisco
15-18 - New York
19-25 - Antigua
26 Jul - Home

As you can see, this is the "leisure leg" (well, more than the others). It was provisionally titled "Beaches of the World" and, while there's so many fabulous beaches we couldn't see them all, I feel like we're giving it a good stab. We'll make a point to hit famous Bondi Beach while we're in Sydney.

At one time this leg was going to include more places I've been before, but now it's only big cities (Sydney, SF, NY).

There's no problems with visas this time, all on arrival except the online Aussie ones we got yesterday and the U.S. ESTAs we have left from leg 1.

Here we go!

Where We Went 2

Mainly for our own memories, here's the full list of where we spent each night of Leg2:

 6-9 Apr - Beijing, China
10 Apr - Sleeper train
11-12 - Xian
13-15 - Yangtze River Cruise
16 - Wuhan
17 - Nanjing
18 - Suzhou
19-22 - Shanghai
23-26 - Tokyo, Japan
27-30 - Kyoto
1-4 May - Hiroshima
5 - Kobe
6 - Tokyo
7 May - Home