I am back in Frankfurt, Germany, at least temporarily. After a last delicious Japanese dinner and a (Swedish ;)) massage I headed for Pudong Airport. Somehow the massage had taken half an hour longer than we had planned. Still, I was at the airport 1,5 hours before departure time. But nonetheless it meant I was the very last person to check in for the flight. Surprised me a bit, but so it was. And it certainly meant that I got the worst seat: In the middle of a row in the far back of the plane. I survived. The advantage was: In Frankfurt my luggage was out quite early. 😉 Continue reading Frankfurt – Relaxing from all the Travel
Monthly Archives: August 2007
Shanghai (III) Technology Museum / Ocean Aquarium
Science & Technology Musem
That’s a huge game hall. I had not expected to learn many new things as I believe I am staying fairly much up-to-date on popular science. I just wanted to see how they present it. In the majority of the cases of the permanent exhibition you can’t really say it would be a ‘presentation’. The makers of this museum have taken a very playful approach, which by itself is nothing bad. In my eyes, though, the plays and games offered to experience a science or technology concept will not transport much knowledge about the concept as such. My best examples were right next to each other in the computer technology section: Pattern Matching and Olfactory Recognition (identify objects by smelling). Continue reading Shanghai (III) Technology Museum / Ocean Aquarium
Shanghai (II) Gaudi / Urban Planning
Yesterday’s visit to Paulaner Bräuhaus together with a friend proved to be necessary: I had lost a bit good German habits, like speaking German fluently, or cheering before starting to drink a beer instead of just taking it in by myself right away when served. The Chesse-Krainer weren’t so authentic, though. Hm…as far as I remember, maybe I’m wrong on my memory, too. Continue reading Shanghai (II) Gaudi / Urban Planning
Shanghai (I) Closing the Loop
The loop is closed: I am back in Shanghai, sitting in a Starbucks Café and drinking one Cappucchino after the other. It is a good feeling…not because the Cappucchino is good (it is OK, but can by no means compete with a real Vietnamese coffee), but because it is so clean and relaxing an atmosphere: Just sitting without being bothered by any hawkers at all. Especially after fleeing Ho Chi Minh City. In fact, this 20-million-people city of Shanghai gave me an odd feeling of emptyness: Just walk on the clean and broad pavement in the direction wanted. Cross the streets with a surprising sense of safety at traffic lights. An odd statement after all my complaining about the mad Chinese traffic between the lines of many earlier articles. Forget it, in comparison China is a kindergarten’s traffic education site. It is a good feeling of safe, clean, straight-forward, and fast transportation when leaving Shanghai Pudong Int’l Airport with the first MagLev of the day at 300km/h (in early morning and late evening the trains run with reduced speed for noise reduction), switch to a surprisingly empty subway, which brings you into the heart of the city in a time you probably just managed to leave a Vietnamese Int’l airport. If, that is, your immigration runs as smooth as in China. These two contries are still worlds apart. Continue reading Shanghai (I) Closing the Loop
Ho Chi Minh City (II) Walking
On my way south through Vietnam I had not found people who liked Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon. I know now why: This city sucks. There’s nothing really worth seeing. It’s loud, noisy, dirty, traffic is mad, has way way way too many street hawkers (which makes sitting in a cafe a pain as you get interrupted every minute with newspapers, head-wagging plastic dogs, or piles of copied books) and motorbike offers (which makes walking along the streets a pain as there is a motorbike waiting every 10 meters). In the smaller cities I could bring up the effort to smile and say “No, thanks” and that usually ended it. But here I had to revert back to the rude way of entirely ignoring.
Walking had the additional pains of mad traffic and long ways, and my right big toe really hurting. The bruise from the diving fin there heals, but slowly. Continue reading Ho Chi Minh City (II) Walking
Ho Chi Minh City (I) Arriving
NT_20070822_101226.jpg: Bye bye Nha Trang…the view from my breakfast table this morning. Has something carribean to it, doesn it?
My last hours in Nha Trang I spent at the beach having breakfast and reading.Then boarded the hotel’s owner’s brother’s car or something like that and was brought to the airport. With Hanoi Airport being a joke already I didn’t expect much of an airport, and that was what I got: Not much. Continue reading Ho Chi Minh City (I) Arriving
Nha Trang (III) More Diving
I finally have pictures! The last dive today, two National Geographic Dives. One of the divers of our group of three could not descend with problems equalizing. Really a pitty for her, but she engaged in her ‘project’ taking pictures of us while gearing up and entering the water. Many many thanks!
The underwater pictures are made by one of the Rainbow Divers, it is probably not far fetched to call her a professional 😉 which means: We bought these pictures from Rainbow. Continue reading Nha Trang (III) More Diving
Nha Trang (II) Open Water Diver Course
No new pictures, sorry, at least nothing exciting. I had kinda promised an article by now, hoping I would have had diving pictures, or at least pictures of me right before a dive, but I haven’t. There was another guest on the boat today by chance taking a picture of me while doing my first “backroll entry”, which means sitting on the edge of the boat and rolling backwards over board into the water (you have seen that in James Bond movies), which must look quite great. But I couldn’t find that lady later after the dive in the Rainbow Bar, grrr….
Continue reading Nha Trang (II) Open Water Diver Course
Map of Vietnam
Map of Vietnam, updated as of 24-AUG-2007, leaving Vietnam from Ho Chi Minh City. Continue reading Map of Vietnam
Nha Trang (I) Discover Scuba Diving
Nha Trang as a town is not exactly exciting. That’s not what you come for. What you come for is beach and water.
Beach
Yesterday I just walked up and down the beaches without actual lying down or going for a swim. It was by all means way too hot for beach. I have seen locals at the beach early in the morning (I am talking about 6am) or late in the evening (when the sun is more or less gone again). Inbetween none of the locals is so mad to lie down and get fried by the sun. The beach is all to the western tourists. But even they aren’t so numerous. Continue reading Nha Trang (I) Discover Scuba Diving