Category: Travel

Elephant encounter

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Who knew a creature as large as an elephant could be cute? The elephant I’m walking with in this photo is five-year-old Namthip and she was cute! While we were in Chiang Mai, we spent a wonderful day with rescued domesticated elephants and their keepers. There was no riding and they didn’t perform any tricks. We walked through the jungle with them, watched them eat and take a mud bath (see photo below). We filled the bags we were given with chopped up sugar cane, which all the elephants loved. They would take it from your hand with their trunks and then crunch it loudly while reaching out for more. Not surprisingly given their size, elephants have voracious appetites and eat all day long. They very eagerly hoovered up all the left-over fruit from our picnic lunch, including the banana leaves it had been served on.

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Chiang Mai

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I’m not sure how many temples there are in Chiang Mai but it seems like there’s one on every street corner! And each one seems more splendid than the last. The temple in this photo is Wat Phra Singh, which we visited first because it was closest to our hotel. Our guidebook says it houses the most revered Buddha image in Chiang Mai and that it is an excellent example of Lanna architecture. It is certainly very impressive with its bright gold stupa and immaculate, peaceful gardens. We visited many temples on our walk around the old city and it was awe inspiring. The displays in the Lanna Folklife Museum expertly explain the religious beliefs and customs of the northern Thai people. After our visit there, we were better informed about what we were looking at in the temples. The people watching was good too: robed monks mingled with locals bringing their offerings and saying their prayers as well as tourists from all over the world. It is all very relaxed and inclusive.

Preserving the past

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Chinese seafarers were aware of Penang as early as the 15th century. Settlers from Sumatra arrived in Penang in the 18th century and in 1771 the sultan of Kedah signed an agreement with the British East India Company. Penang was also the capital of the Straits Settlements (which included Malacca and Singapore) for a while. One can almost feel the layers of history when one wanders through the narrow, winding streets of George Town and in 2008 it was declared a Unesco World Heritage Site. We visited Penang again a couple of weeks ago and had a delicious dinner in the Kebaya restaurant, which is part of the Seven Terraces Hotel – a row of seven restored 19th century Anglo-Chinese terraced houses (go to http://www.seventerraces.com/web/aboutus.htm to find out more). Investment banker Chris Ong, who grew up in Penang, and his business partner have done a wonderful thing here – he is passionate about his Baba heritage and the hotel and restaurant showcase his personal collection of Straits Chinese porcelain (for an interview with Chris Ong go to http://www.themalaymailonline.com/travel/article/10-things-about-chris-ong-hotelier-who-champions-penangs-heritage-shophouse).

Walking uphill

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We’re in training for our tramp up Mount Kinabalu in Sabah (east Malaysia) at the beginning of June. Because that will involve walking uphill for many hours, we’ve been trying to do some walks that involve going up and down stairs. One of these is a route up Ipoh’s highest hill, Bukit Kledang, which has various flights of stairs in various states of disrepair and no handrails anywhere! (The photo is of stairs I regularly went up and down while in Auckland and is about as far from the Kledang conditions as possible). We went up early yesterday morning while it was still dark so that we could test our headlamps and also take advantage of the cooler temperature. I never know which is worse – going up or coming down! Both seemed really hard yesterday and when we got back to the car at 8am, the temperature was already 31 degrees. I’m trying to remain optimistic about my chances of completing the Mount Kinabalu climb.

Churches in Old Goa

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Sé Cathedral is the largest church in Asia and is only one of numerous churches in Old Goa. It is a magnificent structure and must have been truly spectacular when the interior was still richly decorated and not white-washed as it is now. The remaining bell tower (the other one having been struck by lightning) houses the huge bell, which once tolled during the unspeakable autos-da-fe held during the Inquisition in this outpost of the Portuguese empire. Those are distant memories for the hundreds of Indian Catholics who were attending mass at the nearby (and wonderfully named) Basilica of Bom Jesus the day we visited. This was in preparation for the feast of St Francis Xavier, whose “incorrupt” body is kept in this church. We had a fascinating morning visiting some of the churches and museums as well as the Viceroy’s Arch with its commemoration of Vasco da Gama.

Do not fly Air Asia ever!

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Today’s report on the causes of the crash of flight QZ8501 last December in which 162 people died clinches this decision for me (see The Guardian article http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/01/airasia-crew-actions-caused-jet-to-lose-control-say-crash-investigators). A cracked solder joint malfunctioned four times during the flight and 23 times in the previous year. The flight crew disengaged the autopilot and then could not rectify the fault or cope with the stall the aircraft went into. The weather had nothing to do with the crash.

Even before I read this, I had decided not to fly Air Asia ever again. We were booked on a flight from KL to Lombok on 7 November. We were finishing our packing prior to the two-hour drive to KLIA2, when we got a text message saying the flight was cancelled due to volcanic ash. I immediately phoned our hotel on Lombok to let them know and the hotel owner said the airport was open – he knew this because he had just returned after seeing his wife off on a Singapore Airlines flight.

You cannot phone Air Asia. The only forms of communication are an e-form (I have sent numerous emails this way and have never received a response) and Live Chat (which almost always comes up with the message “We are experiencing a high volume of chats. Please try again later. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.”) No surprise either that the insurance Air Asia sells you does not cover flights they have cancelled.

After badgering them for days, I finally got this response from an Air Asia representative:
Please be inform we already escalate your case to the respective department for investigation process.
We are really apologize for any inconvenienced to you and your family .

Then I managed to get on a Live Chat after waiting in front of my laptop for over an hour to find out what “the respective department” means and how the investigation is proceeding. That gave me a case number and an undertaking to email “the respective department” for an urgent reply. But I’m not holding my breath.

We’ve just been to India and were booked to return on an Air Asia flight from Goa to KL by the company. When we checked in, the desk attendant told us that our pre-booked seats were not reclinable and we would have to pay 450 rupees each to get seats that reclined. This is another Air Asia scam – cheap flights that include nothing and everything you add (even your seats it would seem!) adds to the cost. It is cheaper to fly a non-budget airline where the price you are quoted covers your seat, your luggage, your in-flight entertainment and your refreshments.

When we went to another desk to pay for our reclinable seats, the attendant there said he could give us much better seats for no extra cost. We were reluctant to believe him but he persuaded us and changed our boarding passes. When we eventually got onto the plane (surprise, surprise! The flight was delayed by over an hour) we realised why. It was an almost empty flight and most people got three seats to themselves. Why then were we told to pay for better seats?

An update to this warning (29 July 2016):

Air Asia plane drifts into a Jet Star plane’s flight path:
http://www.smh.com.au/business/aviation/airasia-and-jetstar-flights-narrowly-avoid-collision-at-gold-coast-airport-20160728-gqg752.html

Another update (5 September 2016):

Reported in the New Zealand Herald today:
“AirAsia X will drop the use of pre-selected ‘opt-out’ services and change how it discloses processing fees when selling airline tickets online after being issued with a formal warning by the Commerce Commission.
The censure was issued over AirAsia X’s flights from Auckland to the Gold Coast , when the airline’s advertised price for the flights didn’t include a pre-selected checked baggage allowance and charged an unavoidable ‘processing fee’.”
(http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11703852)

No such restrictions on Air Asia in Malaysia though! Your “cheap” flight ends up costing almost as much as other airlines. Be warned!

Yet another update (8 September 2016):

I guess I could update you on Air Asia horror stories almost every week! Here’s another. An Air Asia flight departing Sydney bound for Kuala Lumpur ended up in Melbourne. Pilot error – typed in the wrong coordinates and then didn’t correct this despite numerous opportunities to do so.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/sep/07/airasia-pilot-flies-melbourne-malaysia-navigation-error

 

India

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We’re in Hyderabad. Yesterday we took a private tour, which meant a friendly, well-informed tour guide with impeccable English, a driver so good-looking he belongs in a Bollywood movie and an air-conditioned car. The photo above is of the clock tower in the beautiful Chowmahalla Palace built in the 18th and 19th centuries by the nizams, a Muslim dynasty that ruled the area from 1724. They were fabulously wealthy mostly due to the diamond trade. We also went to the impressive ruins of the Golconda Fort that date from the 16th century, when it was developed by the Qutb Shahs on the commanding site that had been used for at least three centuries before that. From there we went to view the magnificent domed tombs of the Qutb Shahs. Seven of the eight rulers from that dynasty are buried here. As impressive as all these sites were, perhaps more interesting were the glimpses of daily life in the old city that we got while driving through the narrow streets clogged with traffic (mostly motorcycles, tuk-tuks and overcrowded buses), pedestrians, flocks of goats and other animals (cows, dogs and even a horse). It is chaotic and there are no discernible traffic rules, but it is certainly not dull!

Sydney in the sunshine

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We took a risk visiting Sydney in the middle of winter but as you can see from the photo above, we had plenty of sunshine. The views of the opera house and the harbour bridge (see pic below) from the top of the Museum of Contemporary Art were spectacular. Our children flew from Auckland to spend the week with us and we enjoyed their company as well as that of other family and friends who are lucky enough to live in this wonderful city. The week flew by in a happy whirl of sightseeing, art and music, cafes and restaurants, bus and train rides and browsing in book and record stores.

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