Run On the Spot

Chiang Mai, oh my!

Chiang Mai, or Muang Mai as the locals call it, sits right up in the North of Thailand. There are no beaches, the winters can be chilly, and compared to Bangkok it would barely warrant its own MRT stop. A thousand people will tell you that Chiang Mai attracts 'a different kind of tourist'. The ladyboys are few and far between and I don't think I ever once had to deal with the angry feelings that come from seeing an old, fat Western man with a very young Thai boy or girl in tow.

Chiang Mai is renowned for its handicrafts, both the sheer range and quantity. A good place to sample of of them is the Night Bazaar and night market area. Celadon pottery? Check. Tribal weavings? Check. Handwoven silk? Check. Silver jewellery? Check. The local produce is a feast for the eyes and the digs we stayed in were a feast for the soul.

We arrived stressed out, worn out (thank you Qantas for the six hour delay that meant I got in at 4.00am) and rung out. The first thing I did was what you do on any holiday after working hard, I fell sick.

But what a place to be sick in! Located outside of Chiang Mai and set up like a palace surrounded by its own rice paddies, it was the perfect place to just sit and enjoy your surroundings. Hell, they even had music playing under water. The hotel staff fussed over my cold and insisted on me drinking copious amounts of fresh ginger and lemongrass tea and approved of my choice of spicy sweet and sour tom yam soup for lunch most days to kill off any germs lurking in my throat and sweat out the rest. It felt like a bone fide slice of heaven. I can never sit still for more than about half a day and here I was content to just sit and read for days in a row.

We did, however, decide to have a day out and it was a wise choice. We went to visit some elephants and there was no trekking or painting involved. Trekking damages elephants' backs and is cruel. Painting is similar in that elephants are abused into picking up a brush and drawing. How many elephants have you ever seen voluntarily pick up a paint brush and draw? If you're in Chiang Mai, don't do it. Do go to the Elephant Nature Foundation, though. It is a sanctuary for abused and abandoned elephants. They have 33 in total and we spent the day feeding them and bathing them in the river. It was pure magic and they all have such different personalities. The little ones we got to bathe were three and four respectively and they fully submerge themselves under water and blow bubbles with their trunks.

Another of the young ones loves creeping up behind one of the dogs (there are fifty) and then tapping it on the shoulder to make it move. The dog pretends the elephant isn't there and then shuffles a couple of paces away like it was going to move anyway. You can stay anything from a day to several months at the Foundation which is about an hour's out of Chiang Mai.

If you're after taking a part of Chiang Mai home with you, first consider leaving part of yourself behind in the form of a donation to the Elephant Nature Foundation. If you feel like rewarding yourself for doing so, try a day exploring the various handicraft villages and shops. I didn't. Unfortunately I married someone who would rather stab his own eye out than have to look at handicraft. And, if that handcraft is located in a building known as a 'shop', the reaction is likely to result in stabbing the other eye out. Seeing as I wasn't prepared to lead around a blind man on this particular trip, I had to forgo the villages in favour of marital harmony. So please visit the craft villages if you are there, if only so I can live vicariously through you.

Many shops selling handicraft are run as fair trade projects so you can bag yourself something beautiful while helping out hill tribes and aid projects. You can't help but do good by buying local! Places to explore close to town include Jolie Femme for silk products (ask to see the weavers working out the back), Sop Moei Arts for hill tribe woven products, or Baan Celedon for pottery. Or support local up and coming talent in the night bazaar such as the Chiang Mai Cotton Co.

The other Olympic sports in Thailand, other than shopping and arm wrestling, are eating and smiling. The Thais, mainly Buddhists, have a smile for just about everyone. They also have a dish to suit everyone and every meal is a riot of flavour and colour. It would be wrong not to fill your belly with spicy soup, stir fried noodles, young mango salad and, my personal favourite, rubied water chestnuts in coconut milk.

Thailand is the kind of place where it would be impossible to leave with an empty hand, empty stomach or an empty heart.

The Great North Eastern Line

Five hours of delays in Tokyo and a leisurely 12 hour flight across the globe saw us back in the UK for the first time in a long time.

For those contemplating all the history and romance of London, you must first be clear that the Hilton chain in the UK is not what is in Asia. Not by a long shot. In fact, not by the longest shot that's ever made its may into the Guinness Book of Records. For the Aussies out there, think of an RSL club that has undergone modern, but not very good renovations. For the Poms, think of a bingo hall in Ikea. Thankfully this was only where we were to lay our head and it was close to Notting Hill.

The main purpose of the London stopover was to catch up with long lost friends and then onto Leeds to catch up with not quite so lost family and friends in the North. London for me has always been a holiday destination and its many old buildings, galleries, eateries and shopping establishments prove a constant source of wonder.

Due to the delays out of Tokyo we arrived late at night and spent Sunday morning taking in the delights of Hyde Park, the Royal Academy of Art (well, at least their courtyard) and then on to Fortnum and Mason and Jermyn Street. Fortnum and Mason has been operating for the best part of three hundred years (1707). I've visited on numerous of occasions and have not yet made it beyond the first floor which houses thousands of teas, coffees and confectionary such as home made turkish delight. You feel like your are stepping back in time and buying a part of history. Which you literally are if you buy their Tercentenary Tea brought out to celebrate their 300th year in business.

To the back of this find establishment is Jermyn Street which is well know for it's many fine tailors and clothes so exquisite you'll wish you were a man. Here you'll find Church's shoes, Hackett, Thomas Pink and a host of smaller boutique suit, boot and shirt makers.

The true highlight of London, though, was catching up with H and C who I hadn't seen for at least ten years. I think it is the mark of a friendship when you can sit down to yum cha (dim sum to the Poms) and it feels like the last time you caught up was only a month ago. I came away thrilling in the delight that these were friendship made to stand the test of time.

The following day we explored Notting Hill for an hour or so before heading to Kings Cross for the train trip to Leeds. The welcome in Leeds was as warm as the weather was bitter and it was wonderful to see my mum, and aunts J and A. Although we had little time to spare we caught up with good friends I hadn't seen in over a year, ate way too much, and wrapped ourselves up against the weather and wandered about town.

Leeds has changed dramatically in the last few years from industrial city to white collar city. Many London firms have set up in Leeds as their base in the North and this influx of wealth has turned the city into a cosmopolitan hub. Leeds city centre boasts the first Harvey Nichols outside of London (now Manchester has one) and the shops in the beautiful Victoria Quarter are all tasteful and expensive. It's nickname is "Knightsbridge of the North" and its stable includes Paul Smith, Jo Malone, Vivienne Westood to name but a few. It's somewhere that makes window shopping a treat, if only for the ornate fittings around the shop windows themselves.

Should you find yourself in Leeds, head to Jigsaw in the Victoria Quarter for the incredible space it is housed in. There is an old glass domed roof on the top level and the shop keeps a victorian look which shows off the clothes to a tee.

Then scurry yourself away to Harvey Nichols' top floor for tea and something sweet. If only the sun didn't go down before 4.00pm, it would be perfect. Here's hoping my next drop in is in summer.

Sorry

Australia's parliament opened this morning.  This event usually elicits no more than a raised eyebrow over the morning paper but this morning was different.  This time the nation stopped to watch.  Kevin Rudd, Australia's new Prime Minister, in his inaugural speech to parliament, offered an unequivocal apology to the stolen generations of aboriginal Australian's forced removal from their parents and families.

Policies to remove aboriginal children, especially those who were half caste, began in the early part of the 20th century.  The removal policies were under the guise of removing these children from harm but had more to do with the belief that aboriginality had to be bred out.  While this may seem like something that is confined to the distant past, it is a practice that continued into the 1970s.  The previous government, the Howard Government, had steadfastly refused to say sorry. 

Kevin Rudd's speech was both moving and very human and the word 'sorry' was used over and over.

It is a momentous day for Australians everywhere and, if I were an Australian, today I would be proud of being one.

Read the PM's speech here.   

Raging in Furano

"Soba. Hand made. Hurry up." There are three things that delight me about these words. The first is that, thankfully, the tiny and lovely old lady who runs the restaurant we're in speaks more words of English than we do Japanese. Second, it involves the term 'hand made soba (buckwheat noodles)' which is music to this self confessed food addict's ears and, thirdly, it contains the term 'hurry up' which is just about the rudest thing I have ever heard coming out of the mouth of a Japanese person. Lack of language skills makes barbarians of us all, non more so than us with our cries of "Good Morning" falling flat in the evening and random words and gesticulations aimed at the unsuspecting and impossibly polite Japanese people we come into contact with. We're back in Japan but not a Japan we're familiar with.

Far from the big cities on Honshu, we're slap bang in the middle of the north island, Hokkaido, in the tiny town of Furano in the middle of winter. Furano is renowned for its beautiful lavender and flower fields in summer, the bizzare 'belly button dance' and great skiing. We're here for the latter. We could have opted for the more popular option of Niseko, a hit with a large number of Aussies and foreigners, but that's our main reason not to head there. Why bother going to another country only to be surrounded by the familiar?

Furano is definitely not the party town that Niseko is reported as being. It's the kind of place Japanese couples and families head to for a weekend or a few days and is not really set up for international tourists looking to stay for a week or more. We found where we are staying on the internet and it was the perfect end point to a disastrous journey to get here involving a cancelled flight, arriving in Sapporo late at night after all the buses had left and hiring an unsuspecting taxi to bring us here, a mere three hours from the airport. I thank my lucky stars we're in Japan and the taxi driver was far too polite to refuse us and curse us for our madness.

Furano Fresh Power Lodge has recently been converted from a japanese style guest house and we're the first guests to stay in our studio. It has all of the chicness of good functional design and non of the faux Heidi's homestead features that many ski lodges adopt. Tim, our Canadian host, is full of warmth, great recommendations for places to eat and a godsend when it comes to the tricky task of trying to work out how to get our skis to Aspen from Furano. The Kitachomine gondola is just across the road and up a flight of stairs away. Lift tickets are cheap at $40 AUD a day and ladies enjoy discounted tickets of a mere $32 a day Tuesday through Thursday.

The slopes are not particularly challenging, even I wasn't phased by any of the black runs, but the powder is incredibly light and soft. Besides, there is almost no-one on the slopes save for a few army groups and school kids and our longest wait is about two minutes for a gondola. You can ski the Furano side of the mountain by catching a chair lift that traverses the two sides and you can while away the journey to the accompaniment of Japanese pop (J Pop) spouting from the speakers. The Furano side has a couple of black run options and is also home to the very swanky looking New Prince Hotel, complete with a wooden village of local craft shops which had Mr S close to losing the will to live. He was saved by the presence of a cute coffee house amongst the twee huts and the odd stares we received for traipsing around the joint in clunky ski boots.

The apres-ski options seem to centre around the town itself, although where we are there is a Mongolian lamb restaurant in an igloo and a bone fide ice bar, complete with all the glasses made of ice. On our first day here we decided to head into Asahikawa, an hour away, to visit their zoo which is home to three polar bears and a whole troop of snow monkeys.

Our best find, however, is the restaurant mentioned at the start which serves the most delicious handmade soba noodles. The first night we had them in a beautiful soup with duck and tempura prawns, and last night we ate them cold with tempura on the side. We're back off there tonight to negotiate the special of the day through a series of grunts and hand gestures as we kneel at an impossibly small table. As the dinner hour is now nigh, I am being called on to "hurry up" in far less polite terms.

More photos can be found in the Furano photo album.

Going Bonkers in Honkers

Like buses, I hadn't been to Hong Kong for a long time and then this year I ended up there three times and two of those trips were within a month of each other.

I have to confess that I was not an automatic lover of Hong Kong. My first visit in 2002 was for less than 24 hours in the middle of winter. Ditto my second trip about two years later where an entire football team was arrested on the flight up and I was staying with friends who were having a stressful time. I took myself off to Macau for the day and meandered through the Portuguese cobbled streets in the cold and the rain in awe at the order of the shops on the street that seemed to run in a bizzare cake shop-jewellry shop-casino-cake shop pattern.

The three times this year, though, have been different and mostly beacuse I have managed to catch up my friend, Miss L, each time. Miss L is a big shot lawyer and even bigger shot paddler who has taken to life in Hong Kong like a HK junk to water. The weather has also been warmer and not as polluted as it usually is. My fleeting visit in May (enough time to pop in for lunch with Miss L in Central and then back on the plane) was in the middle of Golden Week so all the factories across the border in China were shut down. Honkers was all blue skies and happy people.

The second time was over a couple of days so I was able to wander around in the mornings and evenings through Causeway Bay, Central and Soho as I was conveniently located in Wan Chai.

For those of you who have been living under a rock with cotton wool in your ears and blindfolded, Hong Kong is a shoppers paradise. Tax is capped at a low 16% and there are a million ways to spend your money in Hong Kong and one of the things that I have been drawn to is the abundance of design ranging from too cool for school to rich kitsch. My top picks are as follows:

GOD (Goods of Desire) is like a much cooler version of Ikea combined with Hong Kongese and communist kitsch. Think double happiness duvet sets, 'liberate your kitchen" and "serve the people" dish cloths, a great line in bags and purses featuring Hong Kong street scenes and beautiful hand made silver jewelllery made exclusively for GOD. There are an increasing number of GOD stores around Hong Kong, or as I like to think of it, GOD is now omnipresent.

Homeless is the kind of shop you'd head to for all your Christmas and birthday shopping. It's a treasure trove of sausage dog salt and pepper shakers mixed in with old bike cogs used as trivets. Located to the right of the Soho area its a little quieter and makes you feel like you stumbled on somehwere rather special. Close by is a lovely dress shop run by a former designer at Shanghai Tang.

Hong Kong Design Gallery cries out to you to unleash your inner bower bird and while away several hours debating what you can afford and fit into your suitcase. It's just next door to the turtle shaped Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre which is worth a look at even if you're only after great views of Kowloon.

Shanghai Tang is at the couture end of the market and provides a riot of colour and beautiful fabrics. It's outrageously expensive but some things fit a small budget and prove a constant delight when you scurry them home.

If shopping is not your bag, just wandering through Soho is a feast for the eyes. It all starts when you catch the escalators and moving walkways up the hill (Hong Kong's ingenious way of moving people up and down the hilly districts). You'll find cake shops that are so beautiful that don't seem real, T Shirt shops where every T Shirt is stored in its own glass canister, galleries a plently featuring modern artists and Chinese antiques.

From the escalators you'll discover that many shops exist beyond the ground floor of a building and if they are on level 2 or 3 you have the perfect view into them from the comfort of the escalator. Transport is nothing short of impressive and operates on an Octopus card system where you just scan your card in the vague dirrection of the boom gates for the MTR and away you go. The card can also be used to get you to the airport or buy sundries from the 7-11 shops found on every corner.

Food is a big part of Hong Kong and dumplings are an absolute must. Some of the best dumplings are as cheap as chips and can be found within spitting distance of the second escalator. A Hong Kong speciality are chicken soup dumplings. The soup is frozen and the dumpling wrapped around it. When it is steamed, the soup melts and burst in your mouth when you bite into the dumpling much like the tremendous satisfaction you feel bursting a cherry tomato.

Even leaving Hong Kong is a breeze. You can check in in town and make your way out to the airport sans luggage and then enjoy (yes, enjoy!) ambling around the impressive airport working out just how soon you can make it back to Honkers.

I've added a few more photos in the album Bonkers in Honkers. For the fellow sign junkies among you, Hong Kong provided a plethora of funny shop names.

Cholera Outbreak? How Hanoi-ing!

The last few months have been a bit of a blur, as I have been away so much, so I have decided to take it country by country as some places I have been back to twice in a month. A country I have just come back from and don't cover often is Vietnam.

It's the third time I have been and it continues to fascinate me. This is a country that only adopted traffic lights ten years ago. The first visit saw these lights treated like Christmas lights; decorative and pretty but made no difference to the traffic flow at all. Walking across the road was like believing you could walk across water each time. Walk slow and have faith in the fact that the (now predominantly) mopeds will move around you.

This time the visit was clouded a little by a cholera outbreak affecting Hanoi. There are concerns about under reporting and I thought about this as I had my hair washed in a falling down terrace in Hang Bac Street by an enthusiastic hairdresser who insisted on sluicing my ears out with the shower hose. The sad thing about cholera is that it is treatable. If you are fit and healthy and have access to decent health care, then you are highly likely to survive it. Cholera can also be quite mild in many so you may think it is only an upset stomach and not something that has killed millions across the globe.

Apart from wandering the fascinating streets of the Old Quarter, where I spent the first night on a street selling nothing but shoes, other highlights included having time to grab a quick bite to eat at Koto near the Temple of Literature. Koto is a restaurant which teaches street kids culinary and hospitality skills and enables them to find jobs after the 18 month training program. They have a 100% success rate. The food is delicious too and I would thoroughly reccomend a visit if you find yourself in need of a little physical and spiritual nurishment in Hanoi.

Further along Van Mieu Street is CraftLink which is a shop set up to promote Vietnamese handicrafts and keep traditional artisans in jobs. It's a virtual treasure trove of woven scarfs, jewellery and embroidery and the perfect spot for Christmas shopping with a conscience.

Hanoi is home to a huge number of NGOs which are responsible for the massive 4x4s on the road. Faced with one of these beasts the "walk of faith" method goes out the window and you just run for your life. One of the upsides is that quite a few grass roots projects have taken root in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City and I am a firm believer in them. There are a number of interesting studies by economists and mathmeticians about how micro credit helps raise the earnings of everyone and not just those at the top of the food chain.

In Ho Chi Minh City, still referred to as Saigon by many, one such project shop is Mystere at 141 Dong Khoi Street. It sells jewellery from Sapa in the North and weavings from just outside of Hue. It was set up and run by a German man who is as enthusiastic with his customers as he is about his weavers.

Less chartitably inclined, but food for the soul nonetheless, is Gaya. Soft as a feather embroidered bed linens, exquisite lacquerware and too chic for use chopsticks abound. The real eye candy for me is the clothes section upstairs which carries clothes which combine perfect French tailoring with rich cottons and Vietnamese fabrics. That only one or two of each item is made is a decided bonus and I am yet to walk away empty handed or wear one of Romyda Keth's creations without a flurry of compliments.

A few doors down, the people who bring the cool to communism are Saigon Kitsch. Want a mouse mat with a picture of communist workers in the fields on it? This is the place for you. Need a bag made out of recyled flour bags? This is the place for you. My favourite items in the shop, though, are the communist slogan coasters taken from billboard designs. And should you wish to fill your belly with French coffee and ice cream, you can always head to the titilatingly named Fanny's on the same street.

Who knows when I will next make it to Vietnam again but I can certainly say that, despite a cholera outbreak, food poisoning and electrocuting myself, the tremendously friendly Vietnamese people are what make Vietnam the magical place it is.

I've posted more photos from this trip in the Photo Album So Long Saigon.

Taipei 101

Standing out like a boy in a beauty parlour (Sydney excepted) the Taipei 101 building is one of the tallest buildings in the world and towers above the city of Taipei.  It is shaped to represent bamboo, both flexible and strong, which is pretty much what you want in a city prone to the odd earthquake or two.  You ride up in a lift that has your ears popping more than popcorn and you arrive on the viewing floor complete with icrecream parlour and jewellery shops.  The first place I'd think to look for bling and HagenDaaz!

The views are tremendous and take in the whole of Taipei and much of the surrounding hills.  Taipei is actually surrounded by lush countryside and some wonderful walks through national parks (so I read in the brochures).  If 89 stories doesn't do it for you, you can make your way up a few further flights of stairs to level 91 and an outdoor viewing platform.  Despite the high winds, you could spend hours watching planes take off from the nearby airport.  They take several minutes to reach the same height as the 101 building.

Taipei, as always, is a city I enjoy being in.  My agents took my fabric shopping and haggled on by behalf for gorgeous Shantung embroidered silk.  I stayed in a hotel which was a lovely small hotel, only my room had no window. And I was taken out for dinner with friends to a restaurant called Peoples which is so hip and cool, the only way to open the enourmous doors is to scan your hand over a secret garden ornament which breaks the laser beam and opens the door.  The concrete cave the restaurant is housed in is impressive, the food spectacular, and the resigned look on the faces of the too cool for school staff when yet another punter drops and breaks the porcelin chopsticks is priceless.

And I made it out just before the typhoon hit.  Bonus!

Islamic Arts Museum - Malaysia

One of the benefits of staying near the station in KL is just how close it is to the museum and gallery district.  All of which are located in a beautiful park which also contains the botanic gardens, butterfly garden and the largest bird garden in the world.  Think of a stadium in a jungle setting covered over with netting, and you get the picture.  The local monkeys in the park love nothing more than to sit on the netting and taunt the birds inside.

A true highlight of the park is the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia.  I had never had the chance to go before but, finding myself in possession of a free hour between meetings, I made a dash to the museum to see what all the fuss was about.  It is possibly one of the most beautiful spaces I have been in.  Even though the collection is tremendous, with ancient writings with useful explanations of the different types of Sanskrit and blueprints and models of different mosques around the world, again with explanations as to why they have been built they way they have and where they have, I couldn't help but spend much of my time looking up.

There are a range of domed ceilings in the museum which contrast beautifully with the rest of the flat white ceilings.  My photos do not do them justice but they are exquisite.  There is such beauty in Islamic art which comes from the interweaving of intricate patterns and shapes.   I can see where the buildings themselves form a part of the spiritual connection for believers.  And thankfully not a fat cheeked cherub or old man in a cloud in sight.

I would thoroughly recommend the museum for those interested in finding out more about Islamic art and design.  The explanations assume no knowledge of Islam and so are perfect for those of us who know too little.

I also had the chance on this trip to explore East Malaysia and spend far too few days in Kota Kinabalu and Kuching.  I would love to have more time in both as they are delightfully relaxed.  Kuching is a pretty little city which is also a handicraft lovers dream.  It also happens to be known as the city of cats!

More pictures can be found in the photos Album Malaysia August 2007.

'Sick puppy beige' anyone?

I am annoyed and angry as I have just been duped. Deciding that life is just too busy at the moment to concern myself with selecting colours to paint our apartment and coupled with the fact that I am married to a lovely man who, unfortunately, only hears "Adam, blah blah blah blah blah blah?" when you say things like "Adam, do you think we should go for a matte or semi-gloss finish?", I thought I would heed Dulux's promise to take care of things and hire one of their colour consultants. Naturally, they charge per the hour and, then after the first hour, in 15 minute increments.

What followed was a lesson in how to take a really funky warehouse apartment and reccommend colours that are so dull and boring that they must have come out of a Homeworld brochure. You may think that I jest at the expense of the outer suburb set but I jest not. We have friends out in MacMansion land and these were the very same colours that they had been told to paint their house in. I'm calling the suggested scheme 'Slit your wrists Suburbia'.

There were no less than FIVE feature walls and all this in a two bedroom apartment. Both bedrooms (beige and darker beige), part of the hallway (deep purple to break it up even though it is clearly a cool design feature), the living room (poo brown to make it even darker than it already is) and the dining room (bright red). The kitchen, was to be painted white which would look phenomenally boring seeing as all our plates and dishes are white. Naturally all the woodwork was to be white too. Not for Eva, the crazy idea of drawing attention to the groovy oversized doors.

This would actually have become funny at some point, had it all not been conducted so very slowly, and small paper samples clipped so very slowly, and sighing and writing so very very slowly in order to ensure that it went over the one hour and she charged us for the extra 15 minute increment! If I worked that slow, I would get fired. She works slower than a maimed centipede and she gets a bonus.

What this has taught me is two things. No matter that I am leaving for Malaysia on Monday and face at least six weeks overseas before the end of the year, I will find time to keep our apartment looking like it belongs to us and is our home.

The second is that I am my father's daughter. I get my love of design, light and colour from him and I should trust that. It's a shame it cost me $200 to find that out.

More words of wisdom

As a large number of you will know, I have a bit of thing for new words.  Here are a few more that have tickled my fancy of late:

Warragamba highballs - A glass of water in Sydney.  Warragamba is the dam that supplies water to Sydney and is the one we get daily reports on how little water there is left in it and still Australia does not recycle its water.  Check out the dam stats for yourself!

Boy Flu - Another term for the common cold. 

Urban Assault Vehicles (UAV)  - another term for SUVs along with Chelsea tractors (UK) and Double Bay tractors (Aus).  This is the official term used by the head of the Pedestrian Council to describe 4x4s.  While he may be as mad as a cut snake, he is the person responsible for establishing 40kms zones around all schools so hats off to him.

StalkBook - (courtesy of Miss L in HK) When you use the powers of Facebook not for good, but for evil.