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| Tuesday, July 10, 2007 |
| Home again, home again |
I had intended to post while travelling, but as it turns out... I didn't. We were on the move basically from breakfast time until staggering back to our accomodations anywhere from 9pm to midnight (admittedly, breakfast was a little late on a few days!), so despite my best intentions, not only did I not post - I also failed to keep the video diary I'd been planning on. Oh well.
Singapore changes every time I see it. The Satay Club - which Ata's parents loved when they first visited as a childless couple, which Ata loved when she first visited as teenage Ata, and which held bad memories for Mr Ata after getting somewhat shafted by a stallholder when Ata and Mr Ata went there as newlyweds - is no more... querying a local produced directions, but arriving at the location we found a restaurant called "The Satay Club" rather than the collection of stalls that we recalled. We nibbled on a few satays, for old times sake, and then proceeded elsewhere. The whole Clarke Quay area (which, you must remember, Ata has not been to in six years) has become a swanky nightspot full of flash restaurants. And a Hooters bar. The sign outside reads "Delightfully Tacky - Yet Unrefined". All class.
A wedding reception (cocktails and nibbles to the sound of a band performing Oasis songs when we walked past) was in full swing inside a roped-off area, and shining steel and glass was all around. Sculptures and lights and dressed-up locals and bedazzled tourists (yeah... that was us).
Other things remained comfortably familiar - the subway system is still fantastically easy to use, clean and cheap and quick. Lots more English signs than previously, although most signs are also printed in Japanese, Malay, and Chinese.
Seoul was great to get around in too. Not quite so clean and simple as the Singapore MRT, but pretty damn good. Last time we used only the buses, as the subway system was still in it's infancy, but this time we went most places by train. More English spoken than when we were last there (16 years ago!), but still, most signage is in Korean. I regretted not taking the time to learn to read the Korean characters before going, as MLB#1 says that often things are just English words written in Korean characters, so being able to read the script means you can manage much more easily. He has not learned more than a few words of Korean, but having a Korean girlfriend does make life easier (Ata was particularly glad of her presence when an ATM machine swallowed her card... but that's a story for another time).
I arrived back in Adelaide this morning at 7:30 local time, having been left the guesthouse at 5:00am yesterday morning. Nine hours to kill at Changi airport - or was it ten? I can't remember. Then the midnight flight out of Singapore to Adelaide. Despite the late hour, and the fact that many passengers had been travelling for at least as long as Ata, everyone took the security measures well - most of those of us who got asked to stand aside for a light body-search after setting off the metal detectors even managed to look cheerful. I feel like I've shown my passport a million times, and declared every scrap of possibly declarable material I have on me, and now I'm about to rush out again for an appointment. Sleep when I'm dead, right?
Toodles for now! |
posted by Ata @ 9:40 am  |
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| 3 Comments: |
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Sounds like you had a brilliant time!
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Welcome back!