I've done this type of thing before, with the A-B-C's of the 2010 FIFA World Cup and the 2010 NFL Season, but this is different. This is longer. There is a good chance this is the longest post I've ever done by the time it is done. Anyway, here are the A-B-C's of my trip (the first of a few trip-overview posts). I'll try to be a little creative with these, so none of these will simply be cities.
A is for Aussie Rules Football
Well, this is a sports blog, so I'll start with the one international sport that dominated my trip. Sure, seeing the Royal Challengers Bangalore (still a terribly idiotic name) beat the Mumbai Indians by four runs was fun, but it was Aussie Rules Football that I really took too. I still feel that if Aussie Rules was an American sport (which would certainly be tough given 'Aussie' is in the name) it would be my 2nd favorite sport after 'American Rules' Football. The strategy is incredible in that game, the action end-to-end. Even sluggish defensive games seem fun and exciting. My cousins' favorite team Essendon is still #3 in the league, and if they continue to be good that will probably get me to get up (or stay up) to watch some of the AFL playoffs. Australia loves sports in a way that seems entirely American, since they follow many different sports (compared to Europe, where it is mainly just football), and it helps that I stayed in Victoria, but Aussie Rules, with their crazy fans, their 'Inside the NBA'-lite weekly show, and strategy any sports fan would love quickly became my favorite.
B is for Black Pepper Crab
One of my mental images when I was planning the trip was eating a giant Black Pepper Crab on Singapore's East Coast Seafood Center, with the planes descending into Changi flying overhead. In the beginning, this was an image of the last thing I would do on the trip (apart from flying), but I soon added a second near-full-day layover in Singapore on the way to Melbourne, making the image double in my mind. I was able to go to Jumbo Seafood both times, and eat those massive crabs. I have no real idea how they make the Black Pepper sauce taste so good. It permeates through the entire crab without being too saucy and messy. The cleanliness factor is important, because as a messy eater working with a crab that weighs nearly a kilo, there is a high chance for it being an extremely messy exercise. Somehow, I classed myself up to the point that I barely made any mess. So much so that I was able to save one of the lobster (or in this case, crab) bibs they gave me because it was so pristine. Jumbo seafood spoiled me, as now I want any trip to India to end with a day in Singapore and a black pepper crab at Jumbo seafood. No final leg of a trip will be complete without it.
C is for Columns at Ranakpur
I didn't really want to go to Rajasthan when I was planning my trip. I have disliked doing any touristy activities in India after a disappointing trip to Kerala after my cousin's wedding in Early 2011. Rajasthan was the idea of my Mom, and I went along because it is hard not to. Luckily, Rajasthan was surprisingly entertaining, with good food, good sights, good shopping (which for me meant good hand-crafted coasters) and a lack of humidity. However, nothing from that part of the trip was as memorable as the Jain temple in Ranakpur. It took us about two hours to get there from Udaipur, and we had to wait around for another 45 minutes, meandering around the temple, before the cameras (and the foreigners) were let inside. Nothing in those Jain temples are more impressive than their array of Columns, none similar to any others. I would estimate there were around 1,000 columns in that temple (quick note: estimate could be very, very wrong, but it was a large number), all carved with exacting detail. The whole temple was a brilliant testament to what India could be as a tourist destination.
D is for Dalat Easy Riders
My only regret with the Dalat Easy Rider tour is that I didn't get to ride the motorcycle. The Dalat Easy Rider tour was the first trip I did after I recovered from my first of two stomach upsets. The first bout (which took up my entire stay in Ho Chi Minh City was the worst of the two, and I was still a little unsure if I was totally healthy when the day started, but the feeling of the cool Dalat air rushing through my body, and the incredible views of the Vietnamese forest hills above, below and underneath me. The temples were all situated on these hills, serenely isolated from the rest of Dalat. The most fun was the incredible little roller-coaster descent to the Datanla Waterfall, but that whole day was memorable. I didn't really know too much about Dalat, and my tight schedule made this basically the only large trip I could take when I was there, but my God was I so happy I did. They have tours where you can rent the motorcycle yourself, but it probably was more fun being the passenger, just enjoying idyllic, forested Vietnam.
E is for Eating and Observing
No city can really go wrong with a CN Tower type tower. It is strange because the only thing those towers are selling is the ability to view the city from up above. They have no residential or commercial purpose because all they are are elevator shafts and a few revolving floors. Still, their allure is pretty hard to avoid. I went to many cities with these types of buildings, and what my Mom and I quickly realized is that the price of actually having food at one of the revolving restaurants is a damn good deal when considering the price of not having food at one of the revolving observation decks. We did this little scam at the Menara KL in Kuala Lumpur, but there we only had tea. I took the scam to its natural conclusion with a lunch buffet at the Sydney Tower. The buffet there was really good. They gave a ridiculous amount of meat choices, all presented really well. In the end, the view actually became kind of secondary to the food in Sydney. I went to two observation decks sans food in Melbourne (The Eureka Tower) and Tokyo (The Tokyo SkyTree), but they weren't the same.
F is for Flinders St. & Federation Square
Melbourne isn't Sydney. It doesn't have the array of sights to see, the world-famous Opera House, or the hustle and bustle. But it is probably the best walking city I went to on my trip (some of this is probably due to the fact that I walked in Melbourne more than any other city). And during my various walks around Melbourne, Federation Square, right opposite the ornate entrance to Flinders St. Station, was my center point. From there, you got a view of everything. The cluster of buildings to the East, the other cluster of government buildings and financial offices to the West, and the Eureka Tower and the newer buildings to the South. You had the MCG off to one side, and the wiry Eiffel-Tower styled top of the Arts building on one side. From there, I enjoyed a few brews at the International Brew House who's name I now forget, but it was just a great way to end an evening in Melbourne.
G is for General Pol Pot
Call it ignorance, but I didn't really know a lot about the Khmer Rouge genocide that Cambodia endured in the 70's before heading to Phnom Penh. It never had the cache or the scope of the Holocaust, but seeing what I saw and experiencing what I experienced, there is a definite argument to be made that it was worse. What Pol Pot and his cronies did in Cambodia defies explanation, defies everything, really. To bash babies' brains into tree stumps. To smash peoples' skulls with hammers and axes. To play loud propaganda music to cover up the shrieks and cries for help. All of it for no real reason. What is left of the Pol Pot regime is basically the 'Killing Fields' outside of Phnom Penh and the old school-house-turned-torture-prison-turned-museum in Phnom Penh, and both make for a chilling, lasting, day of witnessing just how evil evil can get.
H is for Haribeil
I mentioned how when leaving Tokyo, I was not sure if having those last 10 days in India was a mistake or not. I left India a month-and-a-half earlier wanting more time with my family, but came back dreading the heat, the humidity and all the countless other pains that one has to deal with in India. But if anything made me happy to spend those last 10 days was my trip to my cousin's friend's estate in little Haribeil.There is no better way to describe the scenery and beauty of the estate region of India than by saying that it is unlike anything you would imagine would be in India. There is nothing Indian about it, apart from the semi-frequent power outages. When I was in the estate, it was hard to imagine that this is the same country that I was sweating my skin off two days in earlier, wilting under the oppressive heat. No, this is a different India. This is the India you see in the 'Incredible India' tourism ads that are on TV every now and then. Put aside the fact that the people there and what we did during those few days was also memorable, but I've done the same with those same people in Bangalore. No, the estate was the star. That and her shortbread.
I is for Intestinal Issues
When I travel to India, I go in knowing that I will most likely get sick at some point. It is just going to happen. I usually don't get sick enough to throw up, but sick enough to ruin a few days. Well, this time I never really got sick in India. That's the good news. The bad news is I got sick two other times outside India. The first came as a real punch to the gut, as all of a sudden on my flight from Johannesburg to Bangkok, I started feeling ill. Within an hour, I was fixed in a catatonic state, zombied out and lightheaded. The stomach illness ended up lasting throughout my three days in Ho Chi Minh City, ruining that city for me. In the end, I've put that bout on having tap water in Cape Town the night before I left. The second was more normal, coming from indulging in one too many spicy Thai dishes in my first day in Bangkok, and I only exacerbated that bout by having oily food on the second evening of the bout and a Gin and Tonic on the third. I don't know what consumed me to do that, but it did lead to me eating a $7 Naan. So there's that.
J is for the Japan Rail Pass
Japan's railway system is world famous, for all the right reasons. It is ridiculously precise, pulling into the station at the exact right position at the exact right time. Of course, one of these right reasons isn't its price. Traveling by rail is not cheap, but Japan does its tourist a service by offering the Japan Rail Pass, allowing unlimited access to their JR Trains, including the slower (but still super-fast) versions of their Shinkansen Bullet Trains. The passes aren't cheap, but they are still a damn good deal. The big problem is that Japan doesn't really advertise this pass, and you have to buy the voucher to buy the pass outside of Japan. The trains, after all the messiness of getting the pass and getting on a train, were wonderful, with Wi-Fi, seats that recline far further back than any economy seat on a plane, and girls rolling food and drink carts through the cars, even selling beer. The hours I spent on the train allowed me to watch most of Season 1 of Game of Thrones and get near Mt. Fuji. By the end of my time in Japan, I became a veteran at riding the JR Rail, knowing how to confidently flash my pass to the guards, knowing where to line up to easily enter the train, and knowing just where the AC Outlets are located on the trains.
K is for Kangaroos!
Other than meeting my family, there was probably nothing I wanted to do more in Australia than fiddle around with the native wildlife. Australia's probably more famous for its wildlife than anything else, and nothing is more recognizable than those weird, hopping marsupials. My Uncle and Aunt took my sister to a wildlife farm on Phillip Island, near Melbourne, that had free range kangaroos that you can go up to, pet and feed them (and the Emus, but I was terrified of the Emus, with their velociraptorian faces and height). I never expected to see so many kangaroos and so many of them be willing to hop right over to you and beg for food. The kangaroos really were like hopping dogs. My sister told me that when she went, the kangaroos shied away from her and everyone else at the park. I was astounded by this, because they flocked to me like sheep coming to a shepard. The best moment, though, was my cousin Lisa noticing the little head of a baby kangaroo popping intermittently out of the pouch of the mother kangaroo. That basically forced me to be a paparazzi for a while, trying to snap a picture of a kangaroo baby. I was able to, and I was also able to throw feed at a sleeping koala in hopes of waking it up (failed), and was able to have a picture of me being terrified of an emu (success). All in all, a great, uniquely Australian, day.
L is for Leopold Cafe
I never really knew about Leopold Cafe until November 26th, 2008, when Mumbai was attacked. The Leopold Cafe was one of the targets, and a few people died amidst the hundreds of rounds fired into that Cafe. I had no idea it was so close to my Grandparents' apartment, but now I do. Now I also know who the manager is, what the rules of the upstairs is, the protocol for entering with a backpack, and who some of the main waiters are. Mostly because of the attack, but also due to the preponderance of foreigners, common opinion is that Leopold Cafe is more of a tourist attraction than a place to eat, but I have to disagree. Leopold Cafe's food in genuinely good. That whole little hamlet off the Causeway near the Taj hotel is littered with good restaurants that are probably a little too commercial to ever get the credit that they deserve. Both times before I left Mumbai for the airport was go to Leopold for one last meal, one last few hours spent people watching the foreigners having fun in my old family hometown.
M is for Milk & Honey
Nothing I drank had the impact of Milk & Honey Beer, courtesy of Mitchell's Scottish Ale House in the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town. I went there too many times, and drank Milk & Honey too many times. I actually enjoyed some of the other craft beer they had, but the Milk & Honey beer was the best beer I have ever had. My last day there, I had too many mugs of Milk & Honey, and because of fearing being hungover during my flight because of those beers, I had tap water in my hotel, which I believer directly led to my sickness that ruined my time in Ho Chi Minh City. Would I trade not having those extra Milk & Honey's for being able to get out of bed in Ho Chi Minh City? Yeah, I probably would. But Milk & Honey led to a lot of great things in Cape Town, most of which is ensuring that I have to go back.
A is for Aussie Rules Football
Well, this is a sports blog, so I'll start with the one international sport that dominated my trip. Sure, seeing the Royal Challengers Bangalore (still a terribly idiotic name) beat the Mumbai Indians by four runs was fun, but it was Aussie Rules Football that I really took too. I still feel that if Aussie Rules was an American sport (which would certainly be tough given 'Aussie' is in the name) it would be my 2nd favorite sport after 'American Rules' Football. The strategy is incredible in that game, the action end-to-end. Even sluggish defensive games seem fun and exciting. My cousins' favorite team Essendon is still #3 in the league, and if they continue to be good that will probably get me to get up (or stay up) to watch some of the AFL playoffs. Australia loves sports in a way that seems entirely American, since they follow many different sports (compared to Europe, where it is mainly just football), and it helps that I stayed in Victoria, but Aussie Rules, with their crazy fans, their 'Inside the NBA'-lite weekly show, and strategy any sports fan would love quickly became my favorite.
B is for Black Pepper Crab
One of my mental images when I was planning the trip was eating a giant Black Pepper Crab on Singapore's East Coast Seafood Center, with the planes descending into Changi flying overhead. In the beginning, this was an image of the last thing I would do on the trip (apart from flying), but I soon added a second near-full-day layover in Singapore on the way to Melbourne, making the image double in my mind. I was able to go to Jumbo Seafood both times, and eat those massive crabs. I have no real idea how they make the Black Pepper sauce taste so good. It permeates through the entire crab without being too saucy and messy. The cleanliness factor is important, because as a messy eater working with a crab that weighs nearly a kilo, there is a high chance for it being an extremely messy exercise. Somehow, I classed myself up to the point that I barely made any mess. So much so that I was able to save one of the lobster (or in this case, crab) bibs they gave me because it was so pristine. Jumbo seafood spoiled me, as now I want any trip to India to end with a day in Singapore and a black pepper crab at Jumbo seafood. No final leg of a trip will be complete without it.
C is for Columns at Ranakpur
I didn't really want to go to Rajasthan when I was planning my trip. I have disliked doing any touristy activities in India after a disappointing trip to Kerala after my cousin's wedding in Early 2011. Rajasthan was the idea of my Mom, and I went along because it is hard not to. Luckily, Rajasthan was surprisingly entertaining, with good food, good sights, good shopping (which for me meant good hand-crafted coasters) and a lack of humidity. However, nothing from that part of the trip was as memorable as the Jain temple in Ranakpur. It took us about two hours to get there from Udaipur, and we had to wait around for another 45 minutes, meandering around the temple, before the cameras (and the foreigners) were let inside. Nothing in those Jain temples are more impressive than their array of Columns, none similar to any others. I would estimate there were around 1,000 columns in that temple (quick note: estimate could be very, very wrong, but it was a large number), all carved with exacting detail. The whole temple was a brilliant testament to what India could be as a tourist destination.
D is for Dalat Easy Riders
My only regret with the Dalat Easy Rider tour is that I didn't get to ride the motorcycle. The Dalat Easy Rider tour was the first trip I did after I recovered from my first of two stomach upsets. The first bout (which took up my entire stay in Ho Chi Minh City was the worst of the two, and I was still a little unsure if I was totally healthy when the day started, but the feeling of the cool Dalat air rushing through my body, and the incredible views of the Vietnamese forest hills above, below and underneath me. The temples were all situated on these hills, serenely isolated from the rest of Dalat. The most fun was the incredible little roller-coaster descent to the Datanla Waterfall, but that whole day was memorable. I didn't really know too much about Dalat, and my tight schedule made this basically the only large trip I could take when I was there, but my God was I so happy I did. They have tours where you can rent the motorcycle yourself, but it probably was more fun being the passenger, just enjoying idyllic, forested Vietnam.
E is for Eating and Observing
No city can really go wrong with a CN Tower type tower. It is strange because the only thing those towers are selling is the ability to view the city from up above. They have no residential or commercial purpose because all they are are elevator shafts and a few revolving floors. Still, their allure is pretty hard to avoid. I went to many cities with these types of buildings, and what my Mom and I quickly realized is that the price of actually having food at one of the revolving restaurants is a damn good deal when considering the price of not having food at one of the revolving observation decks. We did this little scam at the Menara KL in Kuala Lumpur, but there we only had tea. I took the scam to its natural conclusion with a lunch buffet at the Sydney Tower. The buffet there was really good. They gave a ridiculous amount of meat choices, all presented really well. In the end, the view actually became kind of secondary to the food in Sydney. I went to two observation decks sans food in Melbourne (The Eureka Tower) and Tokyo (The Tokyo SkyTree), but they weren't the same.
F is for Flinders St. & Federation Square
Melbourne isn't Sydney. It doesn't have the array of sights to see, the world-famous Opera House, or the hustle and bustle. But it is probably the best walking city I went to on my trip (some of this is probably due to the fact that I walked in Melbourne more than any other city). And during my various walks around Melbourne, Federation Square, right opposite the ornate entrance to Flinders St. Station, was my center point. From there, you got a view of everything. The cluster of buildings to the East, the other cluster of government buildings and financial offices to the West, and the Eureka Tower and the newer buildings to the South. You had the MCG off to one side, and the wiry Eiffel-Tower styled top of the Arts building on one side. From there, I enjoyed a few brews at the International Brew House who's name I now forget, but it was just a great way to end an evening in Melbourne.
G is for General Pol Pot
Call it ignorance, but I didn't really know a lot about the Khmer Rouge genocide that Cambodia endured in the 70's before heading to Phnom Penh. It never had the cache or the scope of the Holocaust, but seeing what I saw and experiencing what I experienced, there is a definite argument to be made that it was worse. What Pol Pot and his cronies did in Cambodia defies explanation, defies everything, really. To bash babies' brains into tree stumps. To smash peoples' skulls with hammers and axes. To play loud propaganda music to cover up the shrieks and cries for help. All of it for no real reason. What is left of the Pol Pot regime is basically the 'Killing Fields' outside of Phnom Penh and the old school-house-turned-torture-prison-turned-museum in Phnom Penh, and both make for a chilling, lasting, day of witnessing just how evil evil can get.
H is for Haribeil
I mentioned how when leaving Tokyo, I was not sure if having those last 10 days in India was a mistake or not. I left India a month-and-a-half earlier wanting more time with my family, but came back dreading the heat, the humidity and all the countless other pains that one has to deal with in India. But if anything made me happy to spend those last 10 days was my trip to my cousin's friend's estate in little Haribeil.There is no better way to describe the scenery and beauty of the estate region of India than by saying that it is unlike anything you would imagine would be in India. There is nothing Indian about it, apart from the semi-frequent power outages. When I was in the estate, it was hard to imagine that this is the same country that I was sweating my skin off two days in earlier, wilting under the oppressive heat. No, this is a different India. This is the India you see in the 'Incredible India' tourism ads that are on TV every now and then. Put aside the fact that the people there and what we did during those few days was also memorable, but I've done the same with those same people in Bangalore. No, the estate was the star. That and her shortbread.
I is for Intestinal Issues
When I travel to India, I go in knowing that I will most likely get sick at some point. It is just going to happen. I usually don't get sick enough to throw up, but sick enough to ruin a few days. Well, this time I never really got sick in India. That's the good news. The bad news is I got sick two other times outside India. The first came as a real punch to the gut, as all of a sudden on my flight from Johannesburg to Bangkok, I started feeling ill. Within an hour, I was fixed in a catatonic state, zombied out and lightheaded. The stomach illness ended up lasting throughout my three days in Ho Chi Minh City, ruining that city for me. In the end, I've put that bout on having tap water in Cape Town the night before I left. The second was more normal, coming from indulging in one too many spicy Thai dishes in my first day in Bangkok, and I only exacerbated that bout by having oily food on the second evening of the bout and a Gin and Tonic on the third. I don't know what consumed me to do that, but it did lead to me eating a $7 Naan. So there's that.
J is for the Japan Rail Pass
Japan's railway system is world famous, for all the right reasons. It is ridiculously precise, pulling into the station at the exact right position at the exact right time. Of course, one of these right reasons isn't its price. Traveling by rail is not cheap, but Japan does its tourist a service by offering the Japan Rail Pass, allowing unlimited access to their JR Trains, including the slower (but still super-fast) versions of their Shinkansen Bullet Trains. The passes aren't cheap, but they are still a damn good deal. The big problem is that Japan doesn't really advertise this pass, and you have to buy the voucher to buy the pass outside of Japan. The trains, after all the messiness of getting the pass and getting on a train, were wonderful, with Wi-Fi, seats that recline far further back than any economy seat on a plane, and girls rolling food and drink carts through the cars, even selling beer. The hours I spent on the train allowed me to watch most of Season 1 of Game of Thrones and get near Mt. Fuji. By the end of my time in Japan, I became a veteran at riding the JR Rail, knowing how to confidently flash my pass to the guards, knowing where to line up to easily enter the train, and knowing just where the AC Outlets are located on the trains.
K is for Kangaroos!
Other than meeting my family, there was probably nothing I wanted to do more in Australia than fiddle around with the native wildlife. Australia's probably more famous for its wildlife than anything else, and nothing is more recognizable than those weird, hopping marsupials. My Uncle and Aunt took my sister to a wildlife farm on Phillip Island, near Melbourne, that had free range kangaroos that you can go up to, pet and feed them (and the Emus, but I was terrified of the Emus, with their velociraptorian faces and height). I never expected to see so many kangaroos and so many of them be willing to hop right over to you and beg for food. The kangaroos really were like hopping dogs. My sister told me that when she went, the kangaroos shied away from her and everyone else at the park. I was astounded by this, because they flocked to me like sheep coming to a shepard. The best moment, though, was my cousin Lisa noticing the little head of a baby kangaroo popping intermittently out of the pouch of the mother kangaroo. That basically forced me to be a paparazzi for a while, trying to snap a picture of a kangaroo baby. I was able to, and I was also able to throw feed at a sleeping koala in hopes of waking it up (failed), and was able to have a picture of me being terrified of an emu (success). All in all, a great, uniquely Australian, day.
L is for Leopold Cafe
I never really knew about Leopold Cafe until November 26th, 2008, when Mumbai was attacked. The Leopold Cafe was one of the targets, and a few people died amidst the hundreds of rounds fired into that Cafe. I had no idea it was so close to my Grandparents' apartment, but now I do. Now I also know who the manager is, what the rules of the upstairs is, the protocol for entering with a backpack, and who some of the main waiters are. Mostly because of the attack, but also due to the preponderance of foreigners, common opinion is that Leopold Cafe is more of a tourist attraction than a place to eat, but I have to disagree. Leopold Cafe's food in genuinely good. That whole little hamlet off the Causeway near the Taj hotel is littered with good restaurants that are probably a little too commercial to ever get the credit that they deserve. Both times before I left Mumbai for the airport was go to Leopold for one last meal, one last few hours spent people watching the foreigners having fun in my old family hometown.
M is for Milk & Honey
Nothing I drank had the impact of Milk & Honey Beer, courtesy of Mitchell's Scottish Ale House in the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town. I went there too many times, and drank Milk & Honey too many times. I actually enjoyed some of the other craft beer they had, but the Milk & Honey beer was the best beer I have ever had. My last day there, I had too many mugs of Milk & Honey, and because of fearing being hungover during my flight because of those beers, I had tap water in my hotel, which I believer directly led to my sickness that ruined my time in Ho Chi Minh City. Would I trade not having those extra Milk & Honey's for being able to get out of bed in Ho Chi Minh City? Yeah, I probably would. But Milk & Honey led to a lot of great things in Cape Town, most of which is ensuring that I have to go back.
