travelling allrite

Skytrax recently announced their Airport of the Year Awards for 2008 . The top ten were: Hong Kong Singapore Changi Seoul Incheon Kuala Lumpur KLIA Munich Kansai Copenhagen Zurich Helsinki Cape Town We've visited five out of the top six airports over the past four years, the exception being Munich, and I have to agree that they were all pretty good. My favourite is Singapore, which has excellent food stores, free internet and free beds to relax on. I found Hong Kong's airport train service to be rather expensive, while our time at KLIA was marred by long queues every step of the way. Seoul Incheon now has a railway connection to Seoul and I found the terminal to be very easy to get around. It's good to see Kansai high up on the list. Free internet airside, good eating options and the best train to Osaka!

How do I write this blog when I'm out there on holiday? My routine is usually as follows. We return to the hotel room generally not earlier than 8:30pm after a day exploring and travelling. While B kicks off her shoes and showers I swing into action. The first task is to setup my notebook computer, a gorgeous little Sharp CV50F Muramasa that I bought second-hand in Japan. It weighs less than a kilogram, and is not much larger than a hardcover novel and much thinner. I can easily carry it around in the notebook section of my daypack or lock it away in most hotel room safes. Even a 14" laptop is too big and heavy for this - I've tried it on my way to work. The Muramasa runs a Japanese version of Windows XP, has a slow processor and no optical drive, but it is super portable and does what I need on the road. Into the Muramasa I plug a Western Digital Passport 160GB portable hard disk. Like the notebook PC, the Passport is also very thin and is entirely USB powered, meaning on...

On this trip I felt like there were five stages to each of the flights. The first is when you take-off. With the powerful thrust pushing you back into your seat there is excitement. You watch as the ground disappears beneath you, trying to locate features before you disappear into the clouds. Then there is the turbulence, shaking you around in your seat. You hope desperately that it won't be like this the entire journey, focus on watching for the next entry into the high cloud that we begin the bumping again or the exit into blue sky that means some relief. After a couple of hours or so you get a bit inured to the turbulence. You still don't like it each time the aircraft quakes, but it ceases to consume your every thought. You look outside and all you can see is featureless high cloud. The sun is either very bright or is on the other side of the world and all you have is darkness for company. You get bored and wish that the flight was much shorter. With three hours left to fly...

It's now a week since we returned from Japan and there has been time to reflect on the journey. Negatives first. I feel that the holiday was too short, too rushed. We seemed to spend a good portion of each day travelling on trains. For me, that is not unusual as my daily commute to and from work is at least three hours by rail. But B didn't enjoy the non-Shinkansen portions and it was difficult to relax with her unease. More difficult was, I think, that there were only a couple of locations where we stayed more than one night. From all our travels we have learned that it staying a few nights in the same place can make a large difference to your enjoyment. There's less packing and unpacking, dragging luggage around. You get a feeling for the rhythms of the place, can revisit a restaurant or shop that you especially like. There is less pressure to make instant decisions knowing that you cannot revisit them. Following on from this were the hotels we stayed in. I think that we ...

B's mother returned today from her two week tour of China's part of the Silk Road. She had a fantastic time and it is apparent from her photos that they visited some spectacular sights along the way. Places like Jiayuguan, Dunhuang, Tian Chi (Heaven Lake), the Yellow River, Hua Shan and Turpan. While the only place in common with B's mother's last trip to China and our own was Xian I felt pretty familiar with her tour destinations thanks to the large amount of research I did in preparation prior to our trip. Months of attempting to digest everything I could about China. I had hoped to visit some of the same places she did, but unfortunately we just couldn't make it work out in the time available. I am still fascinated by the Silk Road, not just in China but also in the adjacent ex-Soviet 'stans. Unfortunately, they are probably not the kind of places that you could easily take a young child, but later on, who knows? I think that this is one case where I would r...

We made it home from Osaka. There is a special feeling that comes when your arrive at your house after a holiday. It is utter relaxation. No longer do you need to worry about other language or customs. There is no need to look up directions, to plan out your day, to journey between sights. Then again, you now need to clean up your own mess, to make your own bed. Rather than eat out you need to cook your own dinner. The shower is weak and the toilet doesn't wash your bum. And you need to wake up early tomorrow morning in order to spend a day at work. You are back to your old routine. Looking back upon this holiday in Japan I've decided that the theme of running water has applied to each of the days. Sunday - Arrival in Osaka - washing ourselves Japanese style Monday - Matsuyama - water from the hot springs at Dogo Onsen Tuesday - Takamatsu - waterfall at Ritsuen-koen Wednesday - Tsumago - streams of water throughout the town Thursday - Takayama - the sounds of rushing water eve...

Just watching BBC World News as live scorpions are being deep fried in a Beijing market. Now it's pork in steamed egg in a Chinese take-away. Brings back memories, but I know which country I prefer right now as a tourist. Yes, it's Japan. And I don't want to leave. [How do you eat duck heads? You open up the mouth and suck out the brains.] Still on the subject of news, we woke up this morning to see a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Iwate province flashed all over the Japanese news. Down here in Osaka we didn't feel a thing, but the pictures of roads demolished by landslides are quite astounding. Unfortunately they are currently listing 6 people dead and about 100 injured. Scary. The earthquake replaced the other big news which has dominated the television news since we arrived: the Akihabara knife-wielding murderer. Fortunately, there was nothing so dramatic to report about our adventures today. All we did was shop. And shop. And Eat. And shop. From the shops along the Shi...