Ray and Barb's European Excursion 2008: July 2008

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Blessed by Buddhism

Wednesday 30 July 2008

Oh to be blessed by someone who is into Buddhism, a guy at the Heineken Bier place on the corner of Waterlooplein and Amstel?. We stopped for an ale and lemonade but as the bar woman couldn't do a shandy, we asked for lemonade - which brought a perplexed series of options so we said "You choose." What Barb got was Apple juice and I had a glass of beer with a bit of a head on it. We sat in the part shade but, as the sun crept round to the south, I was continuing to cook in the sun on my left arm at least. So we moved inside to pay for the drinks and decided to stay in for another ale and this time a coke. Twasn't the branded Coca Cola but I guess it did the trick. There were steep steps up to the next level (almost as steep as the Anne Frank House) and we sat up there sipping and observing.

Sitting outside with our first drinks we were blissfully unaware of the glass cleaning procedure but inside we were high enough to observe and think perhaps we won't be going back there again. What they did was hold a used glass upside down and swirl it in this soapy water then place it to drain on the bench without even rinsing it. The bar woman placed her glasses at end by the sink but the manager placed his straight down at the front of the glass stack – ready for the next patron. Barb said the colour of this rinsing water looked pretty dark and murky!

This guy sat on the steps to drink his beer and turned to us and said something. My "pardon" brought a "Good evening" response. Later he turned to us again and asked what we were doing in Amsterdam and where we were from etc. He thought about the Penal Colony history of Australia and asked that wasn't us was it? After some more small talk he brought his palms together in prayer mode and said he was into Buddhism and wished us well.

Night Lights - Hong Kong Harbour

Tuesday 22 July 2008
The standard of service and product for the Night Lights Cruise was basic, with the promise that we can drink as much as we want, all included in the price. The commentary was given in Chinese and then English but with her accent it was difficult to make sense of. (This proved to also be the case on a later cruise in a different country).

The light show itself was great for the coordination of the various businesses and building owners to have a sequential light display on one building to be followed (overlapped) by a light display on another.

Cameron Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Tuesday 22 July 2008
Later we headed out to the nearby Ferry Terminal to find somewhere to dine and wait for our time for the Harbour Light Cruise. Then we remembered we had left the camera back at the Hotel, so back to the Hotel and we decide to dine there before heading back the whole distance to the Ferry Terminal to wait at the clock tower to be picked up for the Harbour Light Cruise.

We were wearing these stickers to indicate we were part of this cruise but we couldn't see anyone obvious. People we asked weren't able to help us and we finally phoned the contact number and this guy apologised and said someone would be there shortly. At the set departure time we went past the older couple getting assistance from someone (we thought just another tourist). The harbour cruise ferry boat was rising up and down quite significantly at the wharf steps and waved us back. Thats when we realised this 'tourist assisting' was our tour guide so we quickly showed our tickets and were assisted on board by timing our jump at their indication, and they grabbing hands.

Royal Optical Shop, Cameron Rd., Kowloon

Tuesday 22 July 2008

After a power nap that is what we did - and made all our purchases in this first Optical Store we came to. I went to investigate getting some frames for the graduated transistion lenses I ended up with after not finding myself comfortable with the distortion to the side. We ended up replacing my driving glasses with new titanium frames as well as basic frames for the lenses I had, plus Barb bought herself new frames as well, all for around NZ$500.00. Way cheaper than the NZ$1,100.00 I paid for one pair of glasses at the beginning of the year.

Who's that walking down the street?

Sounds like a lyric line to a song

Waiting for Jeantine

Thursday 31 July 2008 in Amsterdam
Jeantine's CT scan day, so off to the Hospital for the 11am appointment. Running short of time so took the tram – one zone, two stops. The liquid Jeantine had to drink was clear and didn't have the taste of the previous time. A guy who joined us in the waiting area, certainly didn't like the liquid he was required to drink. Barb set her iTouch clock for every 15 minutes but they came for Jeantine in half and hour. After the scan Jeantine was able to find an office within the Hospital building to pay the excess on her medical insurance.

Back via the Tram and called into Cafe Noir that Jeantine said she had a great Greek salad before. Her Greek salad this time was slightly different and she couldn't finish it, so it was doggy bag for that. Barb had a sandwich on ciabatta and Ray a BLTC, bacon, lettuce, tomato and chicken – quite yummy all round. Drinks were two large freshly squeezed orange and a banana smoothie for Barb. Second drinks included another orange, plus Pepsi and espresso which was fine. Might be able to trust the coffee there.

We left Jeantine to catch the bus to work, for a team building day and Barb and Ray were about to walk home when Barb's eye caught this black board sign that pointed to this Tobacco and Magazine vendor shop where we picked up a smaller map of Amsterdam and a Red Bull Air Race branded cap for Ray. Expect the cap show up in future photos. Another sunny warm day in Amsterdam.

jhm Kinder Museum Cafe

The Gallery of the Academy of Architecture, across the lane from the jhm Kinder Museum. Wednesday 30 July 2008

We decided to try this cafe across from the Kinder Museum, with tables inside the glassed passageway looking out to this courtyard with cafe tables. We had walked inside toward the kitchen and found we had to go back to this side door to the courtyard and then across to the customer entrance. We were told to take a seat and they would be with us shortly to take our order. From the menu we could see that it was a Jewish establishment with explanation of kosher meats and milk products that can be mixed with any of the meats. We found a table partly in the shade and enjoyed a sandwich with had large slices of cheese (gouda?) on panini style brown bread that had been heated so the cheese was slightly soft. So we split the bread in two and built up an open sandwich each with supplied side salad. The cappuccino was OK, a little bitter for a start (palate adjustment?) but Barb said her cafe latte was fine and the almond slice was excellent. From a leisurely lunch and people watching we walked back out to the surrounding passageway and studied the photos on display of Muslim and Jewish kids having got together to learn about each other and posted photos of their experiences. Also on display were interesting natural light photos of the reconstruction of the Museum (I think).

Gotai Ferry into Hong Kong

Tuesday 22 July 2008
I didn't think I would be finding Starbucks so attractive, people who could speak English and the coffee was recognisable, even if you didn't get a 'flat white' as we know it. The people there, both behind the counter and fellow customers, were quite helpful in pointing us in the right direction for the Wan Chai Electronic shopping mall/stalls. This involved two sections on the tram and Starbucks happily changed a note to coins for us.

After a moment of puzzlement, standing on the pavement, looking at the street signs after getting off the tram, we wandered through this combined walkway subway entrance and could then see the Wan Chai computer centre. Only thing was, there was only one store open. It was just on 10am and Hong Kong shops generally don't open until that time, staying open until 10pm or later. However by the time we did a circuit of the stalls, the shops were opening and we were being greeted by the various shop owners. Lugging our overnight bags with us (perhaps we should have travelled to our Hotel first to deposit our bags) was a hinderance to us going back to previous quotes and playing them off against one another. Some would offer a 'cash price', saving the 2% (or whatever) transaction fee with credit cards. We ended up looking at a cell phone for Barbara (as it was still too early to consider buying a iPhone). We asked what price a combo deal with the Panasonic TZ25 would be and he quoted a price that sounded good but I'm not sure it was any better than the two packages added together. The camera deal came with spare battery and a 2 Gb SD memory card but at least it was cheaper than in New Zealand and the phone component was quite good.

From our shopping experience we used that nearby subway entrance to catch a train under the harbour to Kowloon. We found assistance from a help desk, who also changed notes to coins and with the relevant ticket from a vending machine away we went. We struck trouble at our destination station, when we both were stopped by the barrier that wouldn't release after we insterted our cards. I retrieved mine but the machine took Barbara's but we could see others were having trouble and going to this help desk. The guy gave us two blue passes and the machine let us through this time.

Up into the sunlight to try and find what street we were in and which way to walk to the hotel. It turned out to be longer than our map reading indicated but we window shopped along the way, thinking it would be worth going back to look at glass frames.

Ray and Craig outside the Gotai Ferry Terminal in Macau

Next morning we got up in time to head off with Craig as he went to work with a little diversion to the Gotai Ferry Terminal where he was able to use one of his special cards (Oyster Card?) to get free Ferry trips to Hong Kong. From the Ferry Terminal on the Hong Kong side (rather than the Kowloon side we had left from the day before) we took the first cab on the rank but the Taxi driver didn't speak English so the Won Chai centre we asked for got us to some other centre near the High Court. At there was a Starbucks there - I didn't think I would be finding Starbucks so attractive.

Ray outside the entrance to Craig's Apartment in Macau

First Stop Hong Kong

We left a miserable wet Auckland day for some eleven hours in an Air N.Z. 747-400, which had better specs than the Lufthansa on the next leg. With an aisle seat up against a bulk head we were able to move out of our seat relatively easily and Ray could see various stages of the same movie on a number of screens. Individual LCD screens on the back of each seat in Pacific class was good for the passenger to play around with different movie styles and music genre. You could even make your own playlist from all the offerings of classical, pop, jazz and whatever.
The noise reducing headphones I had purchased from Katthmandu worked after a fashion, replacing one tone with another, hopefully less tiring but difficult for a qualitative assessment.
With a night time flight we did get some sleep and it was interesting in the morning to see the tracking of the flight on the screens, showing time left, height, speed and temperature outside.
It helped my geography to have the flight path illustrated like so. When I had looked at the Atlas before I didn't think we would be flying over the Phillipines - Ah lessons in life.

When we arrived in Hong Kong we were impressed with the systems and high speed subway type train that transported us from arrivals to customs and the buses. We had a 'bit of a character' who was putting on a performance for us people in his care to get to the correct buses. We were instructed to wear our 'stick on' name labels with the relevant bus company and sit and wait in one area until called to move to the next phase.

It was fascinating looking at the various styles of accomodation on our way into Kowloon and the amazing bridge structures. Craig later told us they even have space inside the boxed sections that can keep limited traffic flowing during typhoons that stop traffic traveling on the open, exposed, carriage ways.

Our Hotel Ramada seemed to be in cross over area, partly run down on one side and at the front entrance, somewhat more stylish. Looking out our Hotel room window, we could see older, run down buildings and signs of rust.

We were pleased to be allowed in so early in the day, some time before 9am so we could fit in a short sleep. From that we gathered out energies to head to the Ferry Terminal, where we found a Star Bucks to sip a coffee and contemplate the information we needed to get over to Macau. We gave cousin Craig a call to his Hong Kong number, which was diverted to his Macau number.

Following Craig's instructions we caught the free Venetian Buses to the Venetian Casino and tried to contact Craig but being in Macau (even getting special Vodafone texts welcoming us to the new calling area) we couldn't get through. Then ensued a drawn out saga of trying to get help from Casino staff who spoke English and point us in the direction of a phone we could use so we could make a toll call back to Hong Kong, hopefully to get through to Craig. Some punters told us the area code for Hong Kong but didn't include the double zero in front. Finally after getting the necessary Macau dollars from the cashiers for the casino we headed back to the phones and finally got through to Craig, who worked across the road (somewhere) from this Venetian Casino and told us to head to the Star Bucks inside and he'd be there in 15 minutes. Those phone problems took a couple of hours to resolve.

Using a taxi we headed to Craig's place to drop our bags and we headed out to walk various sites including the old Portugese area. We got to the old Portugese Fort at 7pm, it's closing time. Interesting just wandering all those little alley ways and the facade of the old Portugese Church. Heading down hill again we weaved our way through narrow streets to one of Craig's favourite Restaurants and luckily they were able to fit us in. A cabbage dish with Portugese salami, a prawn dish and a chicken option filled the requirements and we headed back to Craig's Macau Apartment to crash after a tiring day.