Category Archives: travel

Hong Kong

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I was hoping that Hong Kong would be a good start to the trip. Oh yes. We had our 24 hours of Hong Kong which, by its bigness and craziness and strangeness just stopped me completely thinking about all the stuff I was supposed to do before leaving Perth.

The stream of consciousness goes something like this:

Arrive in HK Airport about 8pm. Planes everywhere. Airport is huge. Glass and steel. Walk a mile, then take a flat out driver-less train to another terminal. Walk another couple of miles. Hurry hurry. Get baggage. Ask about hotel voucher. Get directed to other end of terminal. Walk a couple of miles with bags and tired kid (feet don’t work). Enormous glass-sided elevator. Walk more. Ask. Walk back again. Buy expensive but good sandwich. Walk, elevator, walk to bus terminal. Outside at last. Night. Hot and sticky (duh). Climb on bus. Worry about luggage getting stolen. Double decker bus! Get front seats at top. Big windows. Rain. Lightning. Hundreds of twenty-five story apartment buildings. Massive freeways. Massive bridges. Maybe fifty big container cranes in the harbour? Roads being built everywhere.

Nathan Road, Kowloon. Neon! Amazing! Get off bus. Bea nearly stays on by herself! Hotel foyer. Lolly shop in hotel foyer (makes little girl very happy). Tiny but comfortable room. Downstairs in the Bar. Free welcome cocktail. Free WiFi (makes Gra very happy). Lifts. Nearly midnight. Sleep.

And that is just the first couple of hours of the place. And amongst all of that I didn’t once think about the unfinished things in my lists. Ahhh. Holidays.

beach foot

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beach foot

So we are now staying with friends on Ischia, which is an island out in the mediterranean off Napoli. And here is an imposing sculpture of a foot by Nino Basile titled “Cursus vitae” hanging over a tiny beach.

Restless children. Gelati soon.

rain washed neon

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HK Lights

Originally uploaded by gra.


Thunder & lightning.

Rain washed neon just like Gibson’s cyberpunk future.

We jumped in a cab and headed down to the Inter-Continental for a $10 cup of tea and a gawk at the lights. There is some fancy lightshow on a bunch of buildings in Central, but the lightning striking the peaks behind the buildings is a much better show.

24 hours in HK was a big spin out, a big reminder of the bigness of China and tiny little place called Perth that we come from.

12 hours and counting

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Well, here we go. A frantic last couple of weeks. Now we have about 12 hours before boarding the plane for our three month European tour.

I’ll be blogging here about what we see and do and trying to pick out the funniest, weirdest, coolest things out there and pop in a few photos as well along the way.

So, stay tuned. I’ll try for an entry a day, but not as a boring travel diary. Something a bit different. Ciao.

europe 2005

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We (Lib, Bea and I) have been talking for ages about getting away for a decent break this year. This all started because of the redevelopment of the old industrial land at the end of the street. With that remediation stopped at least temporarily, we’ve decided to go anyway.

Well, the good news is that the tickets are finally booked and paid for, and we are setting off for about three months in (mostly) Europe starting on May 26th. We’ll be back in early September.

I’ve started a page with our itenerary on it which I will update as we work out what, where and when.

Toxic Dust Cloud, or Take A Holiday?

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I’ll take the holiday thanks.

We live in South Fremantle, just a couple of streets back from South Beach. We live in a dead-end street. It is quiet. We can easily walk to the beach. Paradise? Yes, almost. As usual, in every perfect world there is something evil creeping underground waiting to strike :-(

There’s a old factory at the end of the street. It borders onto South Beach. That old factory is build on the site of a lead smelter that closed in the 1920s. Developers are now about to pull down the factory and prepare the land for construction of a whole lot of houses. Problem: the ground is unstable. The developer plans to dig out 5m of soil and filter it, taking out the big bits, and put it back, then add 0.5m of new topsoil.

The big problem there is the filtering. My understanding is that they are going to pick up the dirt and filter it with something. They are going to do it in the open, with prevailing winds blowing the dust into my house, garden and all our lungs.

Best practice for the developer would be to build something to contain the dust over the whole site but they aren’t going to do that.

Most likely we’ll have to move away from our home for a few months to escape exposure from the dust. To turn that big downer into something positive, we are thinking about a 3 month work break/sabbatical/exploration in Europe and Asia, maybe Vietnam, Japan, Italy, UK … plus a few more. We will see.

There’s a bunch of community action going on which we are supporting, including a Supreme Court action against the government to get the approval for the remediation plan set aside, and a really result by Adele Carles who ran against the sitting ALP member in the state election. At this stage of counting she has over 6% of the vote.

More on the whole issue at savesouthbeach.com.

Sleeping in airports

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We might be doing some budget travel this year, so sleepinginairports.com might have some useful tips for us:

For travellers who are REALLY on a budget and are looking for a way to skim a few bucks off their travel expenses, why not consider sleeping in an airport? Many airports are actually better than local lodging. And to top it off – IT’S FREE! Your friends and family may look at you funny when you return with your airport stories, but that’s only part of the fun. So now, sit back….get out your travel itinerary and plan which airports you’re going to sleep in (or avoid altogether) during your next trip.

Link via BoingBoing