A Tale of Two Tailors

During our recent visit to Hong Kong I decided to get a new suit.

Hong Kong is of course famous for its tailors. Or at least, famous for the way its tailors stand out in the street touting their wares.

And it just so happened that our hotel was in the middle of a veritable tailor’s market. Convenient.

Every morning as we stepped outside we ran a gauntlet of well-dressed gentlemen handing us cards, describing the lovely suits and shirts they could make for us and stopping just short of physically manhandling us into their shops.

Over the course of the week we got to know them and they got to know us. Some stopped bothering us after a day or two. Others didn’t.

And one, let’s call him Lakshaman, was particularly persistent.

All this choice was intoxicating but in the end it was no choice at all. I went to Sam’s Tailor. Tailor to royalty. Tailor to the stars.

The shop walls were papered with photos of every celebrity you can think of. Each one was standing next to Manu (aka “Sam”), his measuring tape slung casually over his shoulder and a beaming smile on his face.

I tried on my new suit watched over by David Bowie, Tony Blair and George Bush Senior. I shook Manu’s hand and walked back to the hotel, proudly carrying my “Sam’s Tailor” suit bag.

And that was when I saw Lakshaman. He wasn’t happy. In fact, he took it quite personally.

“Every day I ask you if you want a suit! Every day you say no! And now here! Here you have gone to Sam’s! Why not me? What is wrong with my suits? Why do you insult me like this?”

And so on. And on. And on.

Every time I walked past him he would pick up where he last left off. After a day or two we both got a little tired of it. Around then he decided to abbreviate his tirades to simply calling me “Sam”.

I’ll be watching out for Lakshaman next time I’m in Hong Kong. Maybe I’ll even buy a suit from him.

I better. Or he’ll probably shank me at the airport.

Hong Kong in Pictures

Here’s a bunch of photos from our trip to Hong Kong last week.

Monday. Generic Hong Kong street scene.

Yuen Po Street Bird Garden in Kowloon. As well as your usual selection of sparrows and parrots there were cockatoos, galahs and this toucan. I suspect not all of this was strictly legal.

Tuesday. Ferry to Hong Kong Island from Kowloon. Street market in Soho on Hong Kong Island. Travelling companions Ty and Debbie in left of frame.The new-ish Bank of China building on Hong Kong Island, which has the locals up in arms for its shameless violation of Feng Shui principles. Triangles are bad mmkay.

Looking down on Hong Kong Island from halfway up the scenic Peak Tram route. That hill was seriously steep.

Group shot at the Peak, after we’d walked away from the tourists and found a nice quiet spot to enjoy some wine. No glasses, so we just necked it straight from the bottle. Classy.Wednesday. Phallic art and phallic buildings outside the art gallery in Kowloon. Dinner at One-thirtyone in Sai Kung. This refined dining was followed up by drinking in our hotel room and watching the Top 100 songs of the 80s on Chinese MTV. Good times.Thursday. A quick drink while waiting for the boat to Lantau Island. I wasn’t expecting to find officially licensed Monty Python beer, but then again, NO-ONE expects . . . oh never mind. Extra credit to anyone who can read what it says on my t-shirt and complete the phrase.The Big Buddha at Ngong Ping on Lantau Island. This bad boy is 34 metres tall. Luckily we had been fortified with a vegetarian lunch at the nearly Po Lin monastery before climbing the 268 steps to the base. I got that number from Wikipedia. I didn’t count them. Really. Cable car down from Ngong Ping to Tung Chung. While it was scary, it was a lot less scary than the taxi ride on the way up.Final night celebrations at Shui Hu Ju in Soho. That’s a bunch of deep fried chicken under all those chillies. It took a lot of beer to make the burning stop, let me tell you.

And that’s it. A thoroughly awesome trip and like always, over far too quickly.

Hope you enjoyed it. We certainly did.

Land of Magic and Dumplings

A quick update as we head into day three in Hong Kong.

Day one breakfast was successfully procured, you'll be pleased to know, as were mountainous volumes of dumplings for most meals since.

Ah, dumplings. How I love thee and thy messy splutziness.

Yesterday was eventful, with a ferry trip across to Hong Kong Island from Kowloon, a ride up to the peak on the skytram and once we made it safely back down, celebratory mango daiquiris in a bar trying very hard to look like 1930s Shanghai.

Today will apparently involve a trip to a Buddhist temple. And, I suspect, more dumplings.

We've taken lots of photos, but my iPod (upon which I'm laboriously tapping this out) isn't ideally suited to uploading them

I will upload them though, as soon as I find some technology better able to cope with that sort of thing.

Gone Honkin'

Updates may be intermittent for the next few days, as we've skived off for a week's holiday in Hong Kong.

We arrived this morning, 6.30am local time, after an 8-hour flight.

Expected level of activity this first day: low.

First mission: to find some breakfast.

Here 'Tis

Another minor blog drought, although not for the (occasional) lack of attempts to update.

I spent yesterday in Sydney, with a conference in the morning and meetings in the afternoon. The plane home was delayed for half an hour leading me to think: what a perfect time to blog! And to complain about QANTAS's's visibly deteriorating service standards!

But sadly free WiFi was nowhere to be found, only an outrageous $5 per hour service. I was almost annoyed enough to pay the price just so I could bitch about it. But sanity prevailed and now I'm bitching about it from home. As nature intended.

Beyond such trips to exotic places, there's been lots happening. Some bits blogworthy. Some not.

Visits to work last week by the industry regulator (nothing untoward . . . they love us). A funeral on the weekend for a friend of my wife's family. And the continuing saga of packing our lives into small boxes ready to move this weekend.

As tends to happen in these times, it'll all get distilled down to the stuff that's going through my head when I actually get around to writing.

And this time around, this was it. Hope you enjoyed it.

(She's) Stranded

After almost two weeks in London / Barcelona / Cape Town my lovely wife is finally on her way home.

In fact, she was supposed to be here by now . . . scheduled to arrive at 6pm this very evening.

Notice the time? Yeah. 8.10. PM. A late plane and missed connection and she is still, as I write, stuck in Johannesburg.

It's obviously not the funnest place in the world to be stranded . . . highest violent crime rate in the world and whatnot.

But luckily she's managed to find herself some bodyguards. I got a text saying she was having drinks with the St. George Illawarra Dragons. And their documentary crew.

It's got to be a rare thing to be told your wife is hanging out with a football team, and for it to make you feel better.

Moving (Slowly)

It's just under four weeks until we move into our cool new place, and my lovely wife's decided to go overseas for two weeks.

Well . . . "decided" is maybe too strong a word. She's off on a work trip to Europe and South Africa. As I write this I'm guessing she's somewhere over Turkey on her way to Barcelona via London. I'm missing her terribly.

Still, that leaves me to continue with the packing on my own.

Like every other time we've moved house (and this'll be the fourth time in five years) we're going through a process of throwing away as much stuff as we can before we go.

There's something about having to pack boxes and pick them up and lug them to the truck and drive them to the new house and take them out of the truck and unpack them that really focuses the mind on a doing a jolly good cull in advance.

And like every other time we've done that, there's agonising over what to get rid of, an emotional wrench as the decision is made and then, five minutes after the load is dumped at the op shop, a struggle to name more than two of the items in there.

It's probably just in time. With international travel comes international purchases.

So I'm sure there'll be one or two new things to fill in some of the gaps.

Byron Bay

Last Sunday Kate, Eliza and I flew north for a week of R&R, and hopefully some cooling off, in Byron Bay. It seems odd to have to go to northern NSW to escape the heat, but there you are. Climate change and whatnot.

It had been raining up there for a week and our arrival heralded the first day of sunshine. The weather was just starting to get hot again. The ground was steaming and the air was humid.

We picked up our Prius from the airport and headed south in a cloud of smug.

It was a couple of hours before we could check into the house we'd rented, so we decided to take a quick detour to Nimbin to pick up some 'supplies'. You know, postcards and stuff. Unfortunately, the road was flooded (as it was in many places around there) so we went back into Byron, only to confront the mother of all traffic jams.

We thought the crawling traffic was because of the once-a-month market in the town, but after a few days we realised it's actually like that all the time. Once we made it into town we wandered around said market for a while, got our fill of hippiedom (and local sausages - very nice) then went to find our house.

The house was in Suffolk Park, a three minute walk from Tallow Beach and far enough away from the madness that is Byron Bay proper to afford us some peace and quiet. The owner insisted on giving us a long, comprehensive and mostly superfluous guided tour before asking for next-of-kin details, on the off chance that we were all to perish simultaneously in (for example) a car crash. And she actually used the word 'fireball'.

Debbie and Danielle were arriving on Monday afternoon, so once we got rid of the owner, we had the place to ourselves for the first night.

The next few days consisted of doing nothing but laying around the house reading, laying around the beach reading, and playing cards on the deck overlooking the oddly lush (well, for a Victorian, anyway) tropical garden.

This, um, activity was broken up by a spa visit on Monday for massages and sauna, and on Tuesday another attempt, this time successful, to get to Nimbin. While in Nimbin the heavens fairly opened for a storm the likes of which had not been seen for at least a week (apparently) and we were thinking we might be stranded there. But just as we were starting to think this might not actually be a bad thing, the rain stopped and we left. Oh well. Great town, though.

On Wednesday Kate and Eliza braved the very choppy surf of Tallow Beach while I sat on the sand reading and snoozing. Same again on Thursday, although this time the surf was even choppier. The dirty foam lining the sand was knee-deep and before long it started to rain. We didn't stay long that day.

We got up early on Friday to pack up and get out before the owner got there and subjected us to another half-hour spiel on some irritating minutiae. (We just made it as it turned out . . . we saw her sitting in her car outside as we drove off).

On the way out of Byron we stopped off at the famous Sharky's Tattoo to get some ink. I got a Möbius strip on my back (so sticking with the nerdy vibe), Kate got 'miel' ('Honey' in French) in white ink on her wrist and Eliza got her father's (my uncle's) initials on her back, in memory of his passing away one year ago yesterday.

Our flight out of Coolangatta was in the evening, so we had almost a whole day to kill in the north coast hinterland and the Gold Coast.

And kill it we did. We drove through the Tweed region, which was reasonably entertaining and pleasantly eccentric. For example, the Tweed town of Mooball has taken its branding potential to a somewhat ridiculous extreme, with just about every surface (including power poles and the occasional rock) painted in black and white cow spots.

We stopped in Murwillumbah, a pretty little town with a cinema that the tourist lady breathlessly told us (two or three times) was original art-deco and had, would you believe it, bean bags. Gosh.

We had lunch in the cutely-named Tumbulgum before driving through Coolangatta to Surfer's Paradise. I'd not been there since our 1988 family holiday and it doesn't seem to have changed a lot. The architecture is staunchly 1980's tack (there must have been a bylaw passed requiring this) and the whole place screams North American Tourism. The mini-golf course is even named Putt-Putt Golf. We stopped at the beach for two minutes to dip our feet, then got the hell out of there.

We ended up being a little early for the flight so Kate did what she does best, and sweet talked the check-in guy into getting us on an earlier one. It's just as well she did. All the flights were delayed by a few hours and the earlier flight ended up leaving at our original flight time, with our original flight leaving much later.

All in all, a great relaxing week. Now it's back to work. Sigh.

And here's some photos.

Before: Footy field on the the road to Nimbin when we arrived on Sunday afternoon.


After: the same footy field 48 hours later.


Soaking in the atmosphere in Nimbin.


Tropical garden at the house. Thankfully the water feature (the pipe and tub contraption on the left) wasn't working. I hate water features.


Your humble correspondent faces the mighty Tallow Beach surf . . .


. . . before having a snooze.


Kate's feet. This is the only photo of her she'd let me use.


Eliza and Debbie playing Chinese Checkers. I think I'm reading Famous magazine.


Eliza and I at Surfer's Paradise. We didn't stay long.


No photos of the tattoos at this stage. I'll post some in the next day or two.

Copenhagen

We left Brussells early on Wednesday morning. Still can't shake the feeling that Brussells is just Amsterdam without the sense of humour. The feeling remained as we headed back to Amsterdam (briefly) to catch a short flight to Copenhagen.

Our first impressions of Copenhagen were that the airport was nice and clean and very well laid out. Continuing that thought, the trains to the city were new and efficient. The central train station was well-looked after and the roads a brilliant example of how to seamlessly integrate cars, buses and bikes. This is a town that definitely knows how to do public transport.

Going further, the buildings are cool (Danish design, don't you know), the people are friendly and the coffee is excellent. Basically, within half-an-hour of arriving, Kate had decided she wants to live there. I had to agree.

If Brussells is Amsterdam without the sense of humour, Copenhagen is Amsterdam with a better sense of style.

On Thursday morning we had breakfast at Meyer's Cafe, around the corner from the hotel. We just stumbled upon it, and later found that it was recommended by Wallpaper* magazine as the place to have breakfast if you're only in Copenhagen for one day. Yay us.

Next we took a cruise around the canals and the harbour to look at all the great architecture. This is a town where the arts are valued much more highly than sports. Therefore, the major capital works currently underway include a new theatre and opera house by the water. My kinda town. Finally, a quick visit to the Museum of Art in the botanical gardens (quick because we only had about 45 minutes before they closed).

Friday morning we enjoyed the free organic breakfast at the hotel (organic also was the shampoo in the room and the beer in the bar) before deciding to go to Sweden for lunch. As you do.

The train from Copenhagen to Malmo on the west coast of Sweden only takes about 40 minutes. Had some lunch, did some shopping (particularly at department store H&M - we need one of those in Australia) and headed back.

Friday night was "Culture Night" in Copenhagen. This is a once-a-year event where all the museums and a bunch of culturally important places are open free until midnight. We looked around the ruins under Christiansborg Palace, which has been repeatedly burnt/pulled down, and rebuilt, over the last few centuries. We also saw the Design Centre (where it is clearly established that every cool modern design you can think of is Danish) and the National Museum. The latter was a little dull, but the actors swanning around in period dress and 3-foot hairstyles were moderately entertaining.

Saturday was then all about doing the last few things we felt we must do before leaving. These were to visit a flea market in Fredriksborg (shades of the dodgy market in Brussells . . . see previous post), visit Christianshavn (supposedly an experimental free state, but more like a Little Amsterdam in the city) and finally a visit to the Museum of Erotica. The latter was interesting, particularly with its details on the sex lives of celebrities, and lots of very cool vintage images.

And that's it. We left on Sunday morning in definite agreement with Mr Andersen . . . Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen.

The remainder of the trip was just 35 hours transit back to Melbourne, including 7ish-hour layovers in Amsterdam (where we met up with Shannon again) and Kuala Lumpur. Details on the trip home vary between those that are too dull for discussion, and those that have been withheld to protect the innocent. Nuff said, really.

And now some photos.

Canals in Copenhagen


New Copenhagen Opera House


The Baltic Sea between Copenhagen and Malmo, taken from the train window. In the distance is a bank of wind turbines (Danish designed, of course). These contribute to the 19% of the nation's power that comes from wind, and to the city's plan to be carbon-neutral by 2025.


Awesome hairstyles on display in the National Museum. It brings to mind Jennifer Saunders' effort in the excellent Let Them Eat Cake. Except on Ms Saunders' ship the cannons actually fired.


Not as many bikes as Amsterdam, but still a good effort. Apparently only 20% of city residents actually drive to work.


Christianshavn streetscape.


Spiral tower in Christianshavn.


Fountain near the main shopping strip. No water restrictions in Denmark.


Finally, the layover in Amsterdam. Well you wouldn't just hang around the airport, would you?


And that's it. Arrived back home early on Tuesday morning, local time. Back to reality.

Hope you've enjoyed our travels.

Paris and Brussells

I've been back home for a few days, so the holiday diary now seems a little superfluous. However, I hate to leave it incomplete.

After leaving Tourtoirac, Kate, Shannon and I hopped a train to Paris. Sarah and Greg were staying in the south for a few more days, before heading off to Spain and Italy.

We arrived in Paris in the late afternoon on Sunday, and would be leaving early on Tuesday morning. So we would have only one full day, and a checklist of things to do. This was to see the three cathedrals: Notre Dame, Sacré Coeur and Sainte-Chapelle, go shopping in Place des Vosges and go to a cemetery. Not really important which one, but we did want to see at least one dead celebrity.

(We ended up going to Montmartre cemetery, because this was the closest to our hotel. Celebrity spotting was limited to Alexandre Dumas and Hector Berlioz. Hmmm. Might try the one with Jim Morrison next time.)

We actually did manage to do all of these things, as well as fit in some overpriced coffee, a nice lunch and a nice dinner. The dinner would have been better if we hadn't been accosted by some obnoxious Aussie tourists who insisted on talking to us about the way Parisians treat their pets, but still.

The cathedrals were all appropriately spectacular, particularly the stained-glass windows in Sainte-Chapelle.

Tuesday morning we took the train north to Brussells, where we farewelled our travelling companion Shannon, who was off to explore Rotterdam and then Berlin.

Brussells was not really what we expected. Being the capital of Europe (apparently) and the home of the UN, I was expecting something like Canberra, or at least The Hague. What we saw was more like Footscray expanded out to an entire city.

This is not necessarily a problem, as I happen to like Footscray. It's just not what I was expecting.

We would be in Brussells for less than 24 hours. The aim (well, my aim) was to bask in all things Tintin as much as possible. Kate had heard about a street market near our hotel, so that seemed like a good place to start.

Once we found it, it turned out to be a combination of people selling very cool vintage furniture and objêts, and others flogging utter unmitigated junk. Seriously, some of the stalls looked like someone had upended their third-drawer-down on a blanket. Not much Tintin, sadly.

But nearby was a Tintin merchandise shop, where we could admire a €3,000 signed poster, cels from the 1980s TV show, and various sketches and whatnot from Studio Hergé. Inspired by this, and receiving directions from the store owner, I then headed out to the comic book museum. (Kate respectfully declined to join me.)

And it was simply fantastic. Comprehensive histories of Belgian and other international cartoonists (lots on Hergé, natch), their creations, and more detail than you might care to know about the development of comic styles over time. Budge, you would have loved it.

When I got back to the hotel, Kate and I went for a wander through the backstreets, as we tend to do. We found Katje's Kitchen, a great little restaurant run by an expat Dutch guy. Great food, great atmosphere. If you find yourself in Brussells, drop in.

Left the next morning for Copenhagen, which will be covered in the next exiting instalment.

And now some photos . . .

Drinks in Paris.


Paris red-light district, featuring the Moulin Rouge. The queue outside goes for blocks.


Saints outside Notre Dame. The fifth from the left looks like my father-in-law Russell. No, really.


Outside Sainte-Chapelle cathedral.


Stained-glass windows inside Sainte-Chapelle.


The view over Paris from the front steps of Sacré Coeur.


My personal shrine. Tintin mural at Brussells Midi train station.


Brussells streetscape.


Dinner at Katje's Kitchen.

Photos from Tourtoirac

Back online after a bit of a break. Since the last post we've been through Paris, Brussels, Copenhagen, and back to Amsterdam (briefly). Right now I'm sitting in Kuala Lumpur airport waiting for the final leg of the flight home to Melbourne.

Lots of updates to make, but I figured I'd start where I left off.

Not a lot happened during the rest of the stay in Tourtoirac. Activities mainly consisted of visiting other small towns, markets and Cathedrals, and playing cards by the pool.

The chateau in Hautefort was a definite highlight (see previous post) as was the medical museum in Hautefort. The medical museum presented a decidedly creepy history of European medicine over the last 400 years or so, in a building that had variously been used as a hospice for plague patients, and orphanage and a nunnery.

We also visited the caves of Lascaux, which feature an astonishing array of (approximately) 17,000-year old Cro-Magnon cave paintings. They were accidentally discovered in 1940 when a dog being walked through the forest fell into the caves through a hole in the ground. The caves were opened as a tourist attraction a few years later, but closed in the 1960s as exposure to humans has led to a fungus or some such growing on the paintings and destroying them.

Not being keen to let all those tourist dollars disappear, the operators have meticulously recreated the caves and the paintings (known as Lascaux II) and run guided tours through them. It's sterling work, and if they didn't tell you they were recreations you wouldn't necessarily pick it.

On the Friday we went canoeing down the river Auvezere, which runs through Tourtoirac. The water was low, in fact never more than about a metre deep, so the life jackets we were wearing seemed a little superfluous. A couple of times we actually had to get out and drag the canoes around as we were getting caught on rocks.

Our final night, Saturday, was celebrated with our lovely host Jo, her husband John, and a gaggle of ex-pat Australians, some of whom had settled locally and some that were just passing through. Great night, and a fitting end to a lovely stay.

Here's some photos from Tourtoirac and surrounds.

Lunch at the Medieval Cafe in Hautefort. From left: Russell, the top of Sarah's head, Jill, me, the back of Greg's head, and Shannon.


The beautifully named Bastard's Walk in Hautefort. Named after the Baron and Baroness de Bastard who lived there. I'm not making this up.


The eponymous chateau at Hautefort, location of the film Ever After. (Note: that's Sarah, not Drew Barrymore)


Gardens at Hautefort chateau. This is actually a contraband shot, as cameras were verboten. I'm going to hell.


Monastery at Brantome, location of unseemly activities by the monks.


Bridges in Brantome. (Note the smoke on the water behind the bridge. Bauw bauw bauw . . . bauw-bauw bauw-bauw . . . etc)


Cathedral at Brantome.


Thousand-year-old cathedral in the village of St. Jean de Cole.

Tourtoirac

Well, that's it for Amsterdam. After three days we'd pretty much seen all there was to see (it's not very big after all) and on Thursday Kate and Shannon and I took the train to Rotterdam.

Being Holland's major port, Rotterdam was almost bombed out of existence in WW2, and so has been almost entirely rebuilt in the last 60 years. We took a cruise around the city ports, looking at the buildings and architecture, including the very few that had survived.

On Saturday morning we left Amsterdam early to catch a sequence of trains to Thiviers in the south of France. The first was a Eurail to Paris, the second a Paris metro, the third a regional train to Limoges and the last a very regional train to Thiviers.

Given we had a few delays, it's astonishing that at the end of the day we were a grand total of five minutes late. The main issue was queuing for tickets at the Paris metro, which meant we made the train to Limoges with only three minutes to spare. That was close. Then the train to Limoges was stopped for about twenty minutes outside what looked like an army barracks. (The popular theory was that some miscreant was being hauled off to be shot. Whatever . . . we kept playing cards). Fortunately, the train to Thiviers was also delayed, and then sped the rest of the way, so we ended up being more or less on time.

From Thiviers we were driven in style (well, in a rented 4WD crammed in with all our luggage) to Tourtoirac. Here we're all staying in a converted barn, which is actually a lot nicer than it sounds, with Kate's parents.

The days since arriving have consisted of visiting pretty little French villages like Brantome and Hautefort, eating baguettes and croissants, wearing berets and striped t-shirts and playing the accordion. You know the type of thing.

The most interesting bit so far has been Hautefort, which is the site of a 12th century fortress that's been destroyed and rebuilt numerous times over the centuries. It's all very fairy-tale-looking, and so was used as the set for the movie Ever After. After visiting the castle we went back to the house to watch the movie, going oooh look that's the topiary etc. Ah, holidays.

Not a lot to report from here, really. This is the kickin-back part of the journey. On Sunday we'll be heading off for Paris for a few nights, followed by Copenhagen.

Photos from Amsterdam

Very early morning arrival in Amsterdam Schipol airport.


Early morning in the streets of Amsterdam. The slight lean on the buildings is not an optical illusion and not due to the camera angle. Amsterdam is all built on marshy ground and as far as I can see, subject to imminent collapse into the mud.


Waiting outside the apartment for the agent. Ours is the one to the right of the red doors. Note all the bikes.


One of many canals. Pronounced "cay-nells" or alternatively (if they're not nearby) "far canals". That's hilarious after a few days in Amsterdam.


One of many windmills.


One of many coffeeshop visits. Note the name of the shop behind the window. You know you're in Amsterdam when.


Amsterdam tram. Pretty much the same as the Melbourne variety, but a little more reliable.


Building site near the Van Gogh museum. The crane is dropping part of the new building's foundation, which is a steel girder about 5 storeys high. This is what it takes to get buildings on a solid footing.