JA TRAVEL BLOG

Day 5

Last day in Athens which was originally slated for “some” mountain biking. The tour company seems to be elusive so we gave this a miss.

Instead, we bought the 24hr Metro ticket & went to the coastal town of Glyfada. The Metro is pretty nice & that’s how most of the Greeks look like, pretty! Paris Hilton looks with the trendiest eyewear & boots. In a first world transport system, they trust u to validate ur ticket upon entry & the rest, u only need to walk in & out of the gantry, tram or bus. Pretty neat for 3€.

Glyfada is a coastal town with beaches & a few marinas. There is still some sun so the locals or maybe even tourist went swimming & sun bathe. Too cold for our liking.

As we missed Lycabettus Hill yesterday, we decided to climb it again today. This time, by foot! A bit “Chuan”, but the view of Athens is simply breathtaking. Worth the sweat. “Pleasant” surprise awaited us at the main road down the foothill. Apparently, there was a peaceful demonstration against the system of capitalism in Athens/Greece. Probably the rich getting richer & the poor getting poorer. You don’t get to see any demonstration of any kind in S’pore!!

After that we rushed to Monastiraki Square to buy the Bozouski. Cos its winter, the shop closed oredi…. So sad. No Greek guitar for me!

Went souvenir hunting instead. Always good to check around first as the difference in price can be really great especially in Euro!!

Walked through Plaka like we did on the first day as our way of saying goodbye to Historic Athens.

In a nutshell, the Greeks are not warm people. Its probably their culture. With that, the feel for the place becomes less. The youths has got lots of pent up anger with graffiti everywhere. Spoke to an almost adult youth, & he himself regretted the graffiti that he did. Spoilt some of the beauty of the place.

Basic cost is a huge factor in any European country. Not worth a second visit or have a “want to go again kinda feeling” to Athens, but maybe other Greek islands.

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Day 4

The day started pretty early at 5.30am as I went for a run in the cold Athens morning. The National Gardens just across the road from the hotel was just enough for a 1 hour run. Surprisingly, even the toads felt the cold as they trotted across the path rather than jump as they are supposed to.

Pleasant surprise:-

- Change of the Greek guards at the parliament building in their traditional kilt & pointy shoes.

- The National garden, a sanctuary in the bustling city.

- A mini petting zoo in the garden with donkeys, goats, chicken and ducks & a few others.

No pictures taken. Heck, nobody brings a camera when they go for run right??

The day started as slow as the free Wifi from the Hotel Diskourous. The free simple breakfast saved us some pennies for us while we milled with other travellers.

We started at the Temple of Olympian Zeus & the then proceeded to Acropolis new museum.

For only 1€ entrance fee, the museum is really value for money. It’s a nice concept where the museum was built above an ancient Athenian city. Visitors walks on glass panels with full view of the archaeological sight below. History of Acropolis is also told here with a reconstruction of the Pathenon sculpture done on the top floor. No photography allowed in any of the museum.

The next stop is the highest point in Athens, the Lykavitos hill. Took the Metro from Acropoli station instead of walking. 1€ ticket can be used for 1.5 hours on any of the public transport system. Pretty cool.

Rain started pouring as we ascended up the hill to the teleferik station. We simply call it cable car!. Not worth the 6€ per person ticket as the trip up is less than 10 minutes & with no view at all. Climbing up from the sides of the hill is much better, albeit needs a bit of work.

Can’t see anything much due to the heavy rain as we went down to our favourite Smiling Café with our chef Yanni (Johnny if in America) waiting to serve us.

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It’s a sleepy Monday even for people on holiday like us. Today is Acropolis Day! We went into the Acropolis area to witness how the theatre of 500B.C was designed & how the people then, had their entertainment other than procreating.

The Greeks & Romans have lots in common when it comes to building design. The pillars of Parthenon are very similar to sites in Rome & the Dionyssos had similar angled design for better echo & sound projection. The 12€ entrance fee for all the 6 attractions may not be a good idea but instead only pay 2€ per entry for only 2 of the attractions is worthwhile. i.e. the Acropolis itself & the Temple of Olympian Zeus.

As the tourist were milling around the historic site, work was ongoing to restore it for future generation. It’s fascinating how the structural engineer cum historian piece the archaeological finds together & filled up the missing areas. Oh yeah, the view of Athens from up here is simply breathtaking.

Anyways, the 12€ entrance to Acropolis allowed us to visit 4 other historic sites; The ancient Agora, The Kerimitos Burial grounds, the Temple of Olympian Zeus & the Hadrian Library.

My newly acquired North Face Prodigy is simply up to the task & the climbs were made a lot easier. J Weather became much warmer than the days before.

We were tired & boarded the City tour bus again to go to the so called shopping belt of Athens. Nice design but pretty high price. Note: Athens or Greece is one of the more expensive cities to visit in Europe. Now we know where This Fashion copied their designs from & reproduce at a small fraction of the price.

We were thinking of getting some nice shots of the Temple of Olympian Zeus but the gates were closed early at 3 pm. Its winter!!! Sunset at 5.30 pm oredi.

Dinner at Smiling Café was a pleasant event. Nice owner who spoke good American English & he even gave us a plate of seedless grapes for free for desert.

After that, time to knock off cos we were simply too tired to move anymore, or even to write this blog.

Goodnight..!!!

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The second day in Athens is still rather slow to start with. Decided to take the City Hop On-Off bus tour (18€ each) and just spent the whole day exploring the Athens itself. Note thr ticket can be used for 24 hrs, i.e. 2 days.

Saw the original Olympic stadium, the Panathinaikon, Makes u wanna go running!

The flea market sells everything except human beings!! All around Ermou Street near Monastiraki Station.

While there are many local sellers, there are also as many “illegal” vendors. Every now & then u see them running cos the cops are coming after them. Within a minute, these guys will be back at the same location. Cat & mouse game occurs throughout the day. Tried to catch them on video but the things just happen too fast. Dang!!

Checked out Omonia Square where they had lots of immigrants & all the “colourful” people of Athens. The crowd do look kinda shady but the police were everywhere so it makes u feel safe.

Had lunch at an Kurdish Iranian “coffeeshop. The mutton ribs was mighty tasty… makes the body feel a lot warmer after that.

Instead of Angsana tree or rain tree, the streets are lined with orange trees. No one is interested in them except us. J

Night was spent all around Plaka. As it was a Sunday, not many shops are open except the restaurants. Went searchin for a pub with live music but there was none. A restaurant owner told us that the city sort of conserve the heritage of the ancient city by not allowing live rock, jazz or any other music except traditional in the heritage area. Pretty cool. Checked out the local hip areas but still the music not fantastic. Its just lots of people especially young adults talkin, playing board games, & drinking.

Couldn’t help but notice lots of motorbikers & cyclist in Athens that moves around very fast.

Can’t load in too many pics cos the internet sometimes got no connection or is reaaaaallly slow.

Okay la …. We are tired too.

Told ourselves that we’ll go running tomorrow morning. We’ll see how that’s gonna happen.

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Well, it all started with the concept, “ if we gonna travel, all destination must not speak the language that we ARE familiar with.” Sort of make life more “difficult”. In our case, more chicken n duck challenge!

The flight as usual starts with complains abt cabin crews who acted like we have not paid the $2 we owed them since last week. Anyways the flight with Turkish Air was great including the food, although it took more than 14hrs to reach Athens plus the transit at Istanbul.

Being a sucker for historic places, walking in a city mixed with history that dates back to anytime BC(Before Christ), is simply ………… better than history class.

We did not check out any of the historic sights upon arrival but did explore the rich Plaka areas for food & people watch. Since we still missed our rice staples, what better way to get good cheap food than to ask the Bangladeshi street sellers. Not only did Akbar tell us where to eat, he even took the trouble to bring us to the makan place & became our tour guide for a while.

The Plaka hangout area with the ancient Acropolis in the background is both romantic & freakin’ cold since the temperature dropped to 10 degrees C due the slight drizzle. Initial forecast was 18 degrees!

What helped to warm us was Catherine, a nice 60 year old local, who decided to become our night guide while I was admiring the Bouzouki, an ancient Greek guitar. You have to Google it to find out how it looks or sound like.

Met lots of nice people & 2 free guides made the start of our adventure really easy. That’s about how our 48hr day pans out. Got to sleep off the jet leg now.
Oh yeah, its gonna be a daily account of our 3 weeks travel.

Hello, you are about to read my trip to Australie, I did my internship in JA Travel, and I put a lot of efforts for this blog, so I have to ‘blog’ all my trips here .

My trip to Australia took place on 08 May 2009 (yeah, it’s like months ago) but it’s never too late of sharing experience, isn’t it? The cities that I went to: Melbourne, Sydney and Gold Coast. And I’ll be writing them separately, because I want to share as much as possible J

When I first stepped out from Tulamarine (Melbourne’s airport) and I thought everybody was smoking, but it was actually fog that came out from people’s breathe. It was really cold. That was the first thing that caught my intention. The second one, YELLOW CAB! Hahaha, yeah, I always saw it in the TV, and “I am so gonna take picture with it”.

The flight landed early in the morning, and first thing to do was to throw the lugage in to the hotel room and explore the city. Let me tell you what I found in this beautiful, calm and cold city.

1. Queen Victoria Market

In this market, you can’t find a single thing that has ‘made in china’ on it. Most places in this city operate really early in the morning, of course, this market too. So, if you happen to go there, make sure you don’t spend much time on your bed. Best impression that I got from this place: I tasted the finest and freshest foods that originally produce from Melbourne.

2. Federal Square

This is the place where we were told as ‘hang out’ place. Most people sit down by the river and chit chat. The visitor centre is also located here. Thing to say: from this area, you can see almost all the interesting building in Melbourne.

3. Eureka Skydeck 88

It’s the tallest building with observation deck and with 360 degree views of Melbourne and the worlds only EDGE experience. I was so excited before I stepped in to this building. And when part of this building moved out from the building (so-called EDGE) I started to worried, every side of the room was made of glass and I could see the view clearly, I didn’t dare to look down, simply because I was 88 storeys high!

4. Dockland Park

Nice coffee with interesting architectural building and views. There are a lot of boats too by the river. I saw some jelly fish too (scary huh). It’s really a place to take nice pictures, wait, did I mention that the Fish ‘n Chips is really special? J

5. Melbourne Zoo and Aquarium

I was hoping to see Koala and Kangaroo on the road before I landed in Australia. But I didn’t see any and I was desperate, so I went to the zoo. But it was kinda disapponting, I saw only two koala in the zoo and few kangaroos and I couldn’t land my hand on them.

Buildings, bridges and transports got my attentions too. I took a lot of picture with these interesting objects. Because they were simply new to me, and we can’t find any in our hometown.

Last but not least, living cost (sounds weird huh, we don’t live here, so let’s call it Traveling Cost). The hotel that i stayed was Vibe Hotel, a real good deal hotel. Check with JA Travel to find out more about the cost. Woo hoo!

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I have always wondered how many different type of airplanes there are… how big, how many people can they have… etc…
Finally got down to do a tabulation of some of the different types of planes around…
The variation is really a handful!!!

F1 formula – Night race in Singapore is round the corner!25-27 Sep 2009

Batam, or better still the Riau islands near Batam, is known for many things, but not really for cycling. Now that has changed after we rode the 6 bridges (some say 7) connecting these islands.

These bridges make a spectacular contrast of modern engineering against a rural backdrop linking Batam to the southern islands of Rempang and Galang. The Barelang bridges have become an icon in Batam (the name is an abbreviation from Batam, Rempang, and Galang) & riding them makes one feel … well … “On top of the world”!

The Ride

The start/end is the Barelang bridge itself. The spectacular views along the way makes the 55km route (one way) feel short if one wants to soak in the scenes. For the super “kilat” athlete who relishes the challenge, conquering the rolling hills, cross & head winds; man-machine against the terrain, the challenge is too mouth watering to resist.

Unlike riding in forever congested Singapore at any time of day, the island ride is smooth with hardly any traffic & excellent road condition. Brakes were hardly used & is only required for the photo shoots & watermelon breaks.

The excellent mobile service support provided, made both the recreational & avid cyclist feel shiok! Lots of hydration, & we even get water supply while on the move ala Tour de France! We got to ride as fast as humanly possible or as hard as our legs can take us! After all, no one gets left behind with the support vehicle always in sight.

The Turn

The u-turn point is the sleepy ex Vietnamese refugee camp at Galang. While letting the sore thighs recover, we took to the sights of the village, boats & amneties used by the “boat people”.

After replenishing the loss fluids with the super cold Pocari & watermelon, we head back for the return leg. The ride seems easier especially with the cloudy skies. Drafting(cycling term for group aerodynamic riding formation) as much as possible do help in conserving energy but the ride becomes less of a challenge. The sight of the first bridge(our start/end point) on the return leg is simply spectacular & a sight for sore eyes.

Post ride

The seafood at newly opened Harbour Bay never tasted better. Nice pubs there too with rather corny names like 911 Café, & G-spot. Hmmm …

Retiring at Harris hotel is even more pleasant with the all inclusive package. Exchanging banter about the day’s event over the free flowing drinks till late, makes the hard work all more rewarding. The traditional massage slotted in the morning chased the fatigue away & we were fresh when he head back to Singapore albeit a bit sore around the legs.

It seems that all who went had some “unfinished” business in Barelang as the conversation centered around “when I return here, I’m gonna do things better, this way or another …”!

Statistics

Total U-turn distance from Barelang bridge – 110km

* Longer distance of 160km can be arranged but the ride starts from town.

Decent completion time – 4 hrs 30 min

Kilat athlete time – 4hrs

Happy-happy photo taking time – 5 hrs 40 min …. No pressure, no complains.

In a nutshell, one need NOT be a great athlete to do it. Anyone physically fit and knows how to ride a bicycle can do it. Having the right bicycle(not the market bike extremes) or rather road bikes does the trick. Knowing how to operate it will bring you all the miles. The Barelang bridges offer a great experience. WOW to the view.  Ride to your limit.  Feel the satisfaction after the trip. What next? Seafood & massage!!

CHECK out the hassle free package : BATAM Cycling Adventure

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Came across this interesting show : Round the world in “80 Trades”.  Another cool way to see the world.

The host Conor Woodman is actually an economist by profession, but one day just felt that he don’t want to be desk- bound, so decided to go round the world. But with a difference. He traded to go round the world. He sold his house for £25,000 and went to different countries, buying from one region n selling at other making a profit. Watch it… quite a different n inspiring program!!

Check out how to sell chilli source in India!!