Brian on the internet
The newspaper here says that it is the strongest typhoon to hit Taiwan this year. On the map it looks like its big enough to engulf the whole country, and the time this will happen will be tomorrow, Monday. It has been raining the whole day today and occasionally there are strong gusts of wind, where umbrellas get entangled. If it gets any worse, that means I will get a holiday on Monday!
After a few months off my bicycle, and because of the long long boring weekend in Shanghai, I decided to go out cycling in my playground, Pudong in Shanghai. Definitely had to dust off significant amount of cobwebs on my modified Felt F1X converted into a pseudo road-bike, and a little bit of voodoo with the weather.
Weather looked cloudy today Monday, but the rain looked sporadic from my apartment’s 31st floor window, and could see that in the direction of Pudong, it was starting to clear up at 1pm. At 2pm I was out the door with the bicycle and attached to the handle bar was a Garmin eTrex GPS just in case I get lost in one of the wide avenues in Pudong and my Polar S625X.
The GPS was set on the info screen where I had altimeter, odometer, moving time and all sorts of average speed. I didn’t want to have the map on so that I dont attract too much attention. The Polar S625X was displaying calories burnt and cadence. Usually I have speed on it instead of energy burnt but since I have that on the GPS, there was no need for redundant data.
My typical route consists of riding eastwards towards the Huangpu river, catch a ferry across (1.3RMB one way for bicycle) and then find my way to the main Century boulevard (I think that’s what they call it). There’s a cycle path next to it where you can do a constant 25-30kmph if you’re up to it. I went till a certain distance and had to turn back because of the drizzle (damn weather!).
And below on the Polar Pro Trainer data plots, you can see that the red lines are the heart rate (top) and the speed (bottom). For the second half of it, the level is a little lower, and that was because the road was starting to get wet and I did not want to get any mud marks on my back, and some parts of the road are tiled up and slippery. Not sure what was on the builder’s mind!!!
And finally, an exercise summary for the afternoon. Started at 2:11pm, rode for 3hrs and 3 minutes and burnt 1860kcal. Nice. Had a nice big dinner tonight to make up for the energy burnt.
Bicycle Configuration:
Anhui Province: Up at 6am after sleeping 8 hours to worry about whether my stuff are all dry. Doesn’t help that my hostel room already starts to smell damp, not from my airing, but just a general matter of things when you don’t pay too much for a room. Considering the night before was a bed made of board with 1cm of cushion, the one last night was a lot better.
0714hrs Huangshan Youth Hostel, Anhui Province: Up for breakfast. Looks like it will be another cloudy day. Since I have been out for some days now, thought I’d indulge in a little coffee and english breakfast, which here probably means bacon and many eggs with toast. Waiting for my lazyman tour to the villages so I can take things easy today before catching the 9pm train back to Shanghai.
I have also realised I might need a larger camera bag as I cannot store my extra 105mm lens in the Thinktank Speeddemon bag. It sits right in my left pocket in my cargo shorts. Not exactly very comfortable. Maybe a lens drop in case will do next time.
0823hrs In tour bus at Tunxi, Anhui Province N29.71073 E118.30611: Someone please remind me why in China it is a lot better to go on your own than to join a tour. This is a small bus with a dozen people in it, all locals except for me I guess, there are a couple with Beijing accent, and complete with the stereotypical always-smoking chinese male in his 30-40s. No chinese with rolled up long pants yet… I can’t do that as I’m on bermudas. So we are going around Tunxi city picking up passengers. My GPS are not getting the full signal it should be getting because of the dense buildings in the city. And I do have a tour guide as well, too bad she speaks only Chinese. This will be fun… Looks likely we have picked up all the passengers, and should be on our way out thru the south west of Tunxi…
Continue reading “Anhui & Jiangxi Province, China: Day 3 (6 Sept 2008)”
Jiangxi Province: Had a nice long 8 hour sleep last night here in Xiao Likeng in Jiangxi Province, afraid of the mosquitoes because of the countryside, but the sleep last night was peaceful enough with the windows wide opened and sound of cascading water outside all night long as the room was just next to the fast flowing canals. There doesn’t seem to be too much to do here so most inhabitants are asleep before 9pm, which you can tell by the lights all going off. Villagers walk around at night by bring along torch lights as there are no street lighting. What do you expect from a little village like this, right?
So here I am waking up at 6:30am, ready and packed up to go. The good thing about packing light is that I can check out of the inn I was staying in and could just go around the village to take pictures of the morning activities. Other than kids walking to school, the majority of villagers crowd around the pavillion square in the morning. There is a motorcycle with a big basket on its back full of chicken, and 2 guys with large chunks of pork, presumably you ask for a certain size and he will cut it to scale. It was not busy like a typical market, so I guess its just catering to the few hundred that live here.
0815hrs Jiangwan, Jiangxi Province N29.37054 E118.04676: Met up with my motorcycle driver at 0730hrs sharp, and this guy has been a good tour guide (Mr Yu, mobile number: 1387 0330 588). On a cold and misty Friday morning, he first stopped me at a concealed lookout on the road, to take a nice lanscape view of Wengkou Village. He was probably surprised to see a guy with 3 cameras. Took a couple of photos of the village situates at a bend of the river, the wind still calm so you see perfect reflection. Too bad for the thin fog, but i took many photos from the same spot.
Continue reading “Anhui & Jiangxi Province, China: Day 2 (5 Sept 2008)”
This is another one of those quick decisions. Before I know it, I’m already on the 2235hrs N418 train to Huangshan. This is an overnight train that will take 12 hours to get to Huangshan City, also known as Tunxi. I’m no stranger to Chinese hard sleeper trains.
As usual, picked up the middle bunk. Hard sleepers have compartments with 6 beds, 2 columns of 3 bunks. The cushion is at least 5cm thick, enough for me. The trick is to get the middle bunk, for me at least. Top bunk smells of smoke (someone is always smoking in the non smoking train) and there is always someone sitting on your bunk at the bottom. Ticket cost 169RMB one way and it is now possible to buy return tickets in Shanghai.
Packing was quite difficult. On one hand I wanted to pack light as I could be village hopping a bit, but I’d want to also pack quite a number of photo gears. At the end, decided not to pack long pants, purely shorts, 3 t-shirts, socks and underwear, of course, and premium disposable toileteries from my many trips to Tokyo. The D2H comes along with spare EN-EL4a battery, 40mm ULTRON, and 105mm AIS lens. Thought about my new 12-24mm lens but had to cut down on weight. theres also the Leica M6 with 8 rolls of film and a 50mm Summicron lens. And the trustworthy Ricoh GRD.
Anyway, train is zipping along now and it should be time to sleep. And then I had another eureka moment with this system. When you board the train, a conductor comes along and switched your train ticket for a credit card thingy. I then realised that is how they keep track of who is going where. Between every stops they will come to wake you up and exchange your card thingy widget back to your ticket. That way they know who has a ticket, where they are going and will be able to catch fare dodgers! Genius!
Continue reading “Anhui & Jiangxi Province, China: Day 1 (4 Sept 2008)”
Okutama is an area of wilderness in Tokyo prefecture, lodged on the western end of it, looks close to Tokyo but according to schedules, takes almost the same amount time to get to as Nikko. The plan would be to hike from the train station to the lake and then back. Figured 4-5hrs hike to get there.
Traveling light today. Only cameras are the Ricoh, which comes along with me everywhere and a Leica M2 with 35mm Summicron ASPH lens. Weather is 50% chance of rain, which in my experience means sure chance of a drizzle. Whether or not it will get me wet is another story. This trip sees my old GPS tagging along, fresh from its stint in New Zealand last week and a newly charged battery to boot. Shouldn’t have the urge to buy overpriced batteries anymore.
0804hrs: On the Chuo rapid line to Tachikawa station before switching to a train that hopefully ends up at Okutama. This rapid train seems to stop at Musashi-Kagonei. A swith will be required to get to Tachikawa.
0844hrs: Train change at Tachikawa. Surprisingly large train station this. Chuo line is on platforms 3-6 and Ome line that goes to Okutama in on platform 1-2. Only problem for me is that the first train i see on the platform goes towards Okutama but stops short in Kabe. looks like another stop is in order here.
Continue reading “Travels: Okutama, Tokyo Prefecture, Japan”
I am in Wellington for a week long business trip, and a deadline for Sunday 17 August has been moved to later in the week, so suddenly I have almost the whole weekend with no plans. As Wellington is a small city, I will quickly run out of things to see. Who could argue that New Zealand has some of the best sceneries around, and who cares that most of it are farms and sheeps. Good enough excuse for a drive if you ask me. So on Friday night its time to have a look at Google Maps and write out the itinerary on a piece of paper. I’ve found that the most effective way to do it would be to write all the names of the important towns in graphical form and the name fo the highway. The closest writing material I found was a little post-it note, so it’ll do. Helps that the Post-It will stick to the dashboard when I’m driving. So it is possible to drive and know where to go at the same time.
The original plan calls for a drive up to Taranaki and a loop around Mount Taranaki and New Plymouth. Mount Taranaki was visible on the flight to Wellington from Auckland, and it looks like another perfectly conical volcano like Mount Fuji in Japan, so it could be a nice place to go to. But after a check with a Kiwi, I realised it might take a lot longer than a day to do that trip. Probably up to 6 hours up to New Plymouth, and another 6 to get back. That means a whole day of straight driving. An alternative route that makes more sense would be a counter clockwise loop to Martinborough and up to Woodville, and cutting across Manawatu Gorge over to North Palmeston and back down to Wellington along the coast. Looks like a comfortable day long drive with plenty of opportunity for stops. So this shall be the route for today.
As usual, I bring quite a lot of gear with me when I’m on business trip. This trip I have my GPS with me (finally) although the battery seems to be rather flat since I have not recharged it since, who knows when. I have my Nikon D2H with 40mm and 105mm prime lenses and Ricoh GR with me as well. Just in case the rental car has it, I brought my iPod Touch, dreaming of a nice spanking new car with iPod connector built in. The difficulty here will be to type this blog while on the trip. Will be difficult to manage the Nokia E61 and drive at the same time, and I dont expect too long a stopover for rests. Ah well, then I will have to type in the skeleton on the phone, and expand it later on the PC.
The plan this time is to do a loop of the North Island through the Hutts, Martinborough, and up to North Palmeston and improvising along the way according to the scenery. It looks like, compared to the original crazier plan to loop Mt Taranaki, this one may be possible to do in a day without being knackered.
Only real issue is it seems to be raining quite a bit this winter in New Zealand. There were some spells of bright sunshine when its supposed to be raining. But on the Sunday of the trip, it was supposed to be cloudy with a little peep of sunshine. At least for Wellington. Looks like up North the weather is not that promising according to the Metrological Department here. Plus the road here does seem to be narrower, so it would be difficult to drive fast and cover plenty of ground.
Continue reading “Travels: South of North Island, New Zealand”
This is interesting. I hold a standard Y class economy ticket which I bought last minute at Taipei Taoyuan aiport (TPE) but in Taipei they put me in the lounge as well. So when I checked in today at Narita, I asked them what made me so special (of course I didn’t mind the lounge, beats sitting in the common area next to someone taking a nap across 4 seats) and she told me that’s because I bought the most expensive economy ticket (i.e. at full fare!). Yeah, so I think I might have paid something like 2000USD to fly one way from Taipei to Tokyo to Shanghai. 2 legs, 1 direction. So I’m going to drink all the wine I can get my hands on. Where is the caviar!!!
After a lot of weekends in Tokyo, its difficult to know where else to visit. Until I stumbled upon this Tokyo tourism webpage with a list of recommended walks around Tokyo. Going through the whole list, I went for the “Discover old Edo (Half Day) [Monzen-Nakacho]” route. This involves taking the Toei line all from Yoyogi JR all the way to Kiyosumi-Shirakawa station.
Kiyosumi Garden
A short walk away is the Kiyosumi Garden, which cost 150Y to enter, which is not too bad considering the gardens are quite well maintained, and the lake there filled with turtles and the largest Kois I have ever seen, some of them size of a full sized cat. This would make a nice place to do some landscape photography with tripods. The rest of the route is a nice walk, but nothing special.
When you look at the map of Nikko, there are 3 major attractions. There’s Nikko town proper, with all its UNESCO temples where the majority of tourists are dropped, then to the west there’s Lake Chuzenji and the Onsen at the end of the road, including Senjogahara, which I did in the last trip… and finally there’s the east with Kirifuri highlands. And a visit is not over till I’ve gone to Kirifuri, which is the destination this week. Mountains, forests, valleys & cows!
Its a similar early morning sight. I am having a McGriddles at the McDonalds at Asakusa in the alley near to the Tobu railway station, waiting for the Tobu Sightseeing Center to open its doors at 7:45am to buy the 4400yen All Nikko Pass. The current expectation is that this will not be as impressive as the latter but the only way to find out would be to go and have a look.
While having my McGriddles, it looks as though the bus ride to Kirifuri Kogen will be cheaper to go a-la-carte rather than a full All Nikko pass. A bus ride to Kirifuri cost just about 650 yen according to the web. Making the quick decision to jump on the next available train to Nikko without waiting for the sightseeing centre to open. Looks like I don’t need the All-Nikko pass this time. Again, cheapest ticket is the 2hr train to Tobu Nikko at 1320yen. The limited express trains costs double as they have reserved seats and possibly half an hour quicker. They seem to call these limited express and the services have names like Kegon and Kinu. For me, I can spend 30 minutes extra. Everything is routine now for me with the Tobu station at Asakusa. This is my third time here. Buy ticket, go to platform 5 and board the first 2 trains away from the station entrance. Remember, the other train cars get left behind on the way to Tobu Nikko.
Continue reading “Travels: Kirifuri Kougen: Tochigi Prefecture, Japan”
nangka.org 