And so begins, the journey…

So begins the year with a mind-blowing 19-day European winter escapade; an epic journey of 26,968km with the following routing:

KUL-BKK: Thai Airways (B777-200)
BKK-CPH: Thai Airways (B747-400)
CPH-TXL: Scandinavian Airlines (B737-800)
TXL-FRA: Lufthansa (A321)
FRA-RIX: Lufthansa (B737-300)
RIX-CPH: AirBaltic (B737-300)
CPH-ARN: Scandinavian Airlines (B737-800)
ARN-HEL: Blue1 (Avro RJ85 Jumbolino 😀 – YAY!)
HEL-LHR: Blue1 (B717 – 1st time)
LHR-BKK: Thai Airways (B747-400)
BKK-KUL: Thai Airways (A330-300)

Hotels:
TXL: 3-room apartment at Brandenburg Gate
RIX: Monika Centrum (on the super cheap €58 a night)
CPH: Hotel Guldsmelden
ARN: The all time favourite Sheraton
HEL: Hotel Kamp
LHR: Undecided still… Knightsbridge, Bayswater or Sloane Square?

Cost of flights and accommodation – circa €3,500

Let’s see how this pans out.

So I’m really leaving…

This Friday for Athens (at the Grande Bretagne – Deluxe Suite), Istanbul (W Istanbul – Fantastic Suite), Zagreb (Westin Zagreb – Westin Guest Office), Ljubljana (day trip from Zagreb), and Riga (Monika Centrum – Deluxe Room).

Good to finally lift off to Europe after several months of grounding 🙂

Flying Thai, Lufthansa, Turkish Airlines and Croatia Airlines.

Updates soon! Tatas!

Road trip! Europe in February…

So it’s that time of the year again, the first of my (foreseeable) many trips to Europe in 2009.

I’m quite excited, it’s been quite some time since I flew long haul – unfortunately it will still be winter in these cities.  New cities I will be visiting this time around will be Athens, Istanbul and Zagreb.

I’ll be flying the TK (Turkish Airlines) and OU (Croatia Airlines) for the first time.  Wish me luck!  And I’m not flying Singapore Airlines this time round due to their prohibitively expensive airfares.

Lifting off on 6 February and back about 17 days after, here’s what’s in store…

TG418 KUL (Kuala Lumpur)/BKK (Bangkok) 2100/2205

TG920 BKK (Bangkok)/FRA (Frankfurt) 2340/0530+1

LH3380 FRA (Frankfurt)/ATH (Athens) 0920/1305

TK1846 ATH (Athens)/IST (Istanbul) 1055/1210

TK1449 IST (Istanbul)/ZAG (Zagreb) 1400/1505

OU410 ZAG (Zagreb)/FRA (Frankfurt) 0655/0830

LH3244 FRA (Frankfurt)/RIX (Riga) 1100/1410

LH3245 RIX (Riga)/FRA (Frankfurt) 1440/1555

TG923 FRA (Frankfurt)/BKK (Bangkok) 2055/1305+1

TG417 BKK (Bangkok)/KUL (Kuala Lumpur) 1640/1950

Let’s hit the road!

My next trip to Europe in July…

Stockholm, Sweden
Copenhagen, Denmark
Amsterdam, Netherlands

Riga, Latvia

Travelling season is back!! YAY!! Finally, Europe in summer!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTTSSS!

On a separate note, I’m thinking of taking up Italian… It seems only natural for me, rather than Spanish (which I did a while back), due to the presence of many native Italian speakers in my office at any given time. What do you think? Self-thought of course.. Too much in and out of Kuala Lumpur to attend classes…

Reflections

I have a flight to catch back to Kuala Lumpur in a couple of hours…

I must say that this has truly been an enjoyable trip. I had good company in Frankfurt which I will relish for some time.

Riga was an experience, both bad and good. Weather wasn’t too bad as well.

Krakow is a truly beautiful city. I will come back here for holiday as it is quite affordable (1 polish zloty is 1.3 malaysian ringgit).

I took a quick trip to the Wieliczka Salt Mine here this morning. Krakow’s Wieliczka salt mine is situated some ten kilometers from the center of Krakow. One of the UNESCO World Heritage Site in Poland, it has become increasingly a tourist attraction in the first place. Today visitors walk underground for about 2,000 metres in the oldest part of the salt mine and see its subterranean museum, which takes three hours or so.

Beautiful salt sculptures
My PDA camera decided to go wonky on me so here are some pictures I took off the internet, obviously credits go out to the individual photographers.

Salt has been mined near Krakow for centuries. The mines were closed in the early 1990s because of flooding (that made everything ham sap – okay, I know, lame attempt at a joke here), but large sections are open for visitors. Miners carved out statues and entire rooms from the rock salt.

The salty last supper
There’s even an entire cathedral carved out of salt within the mines. The floors are carved and polished, the chandeliers are made of rock salt crystals, and the stations of the cross are carved out of salt too!

My little souvenir from the salt mine
On a separate note, I was having a late night / early morning conversation with Simmy. She’s truly something I must say. To get married so early in life.

She brought up one good question on blogs. I told her I do practise some amount of self-censorship when it comes to my blog.

I don’t really blog about my personal life (besides the occasional emotional episodes). I am one, who believes that a clear line should be drawn when divulging potentially confidential aspects of my life. In Chinese, we say 1 is 1 and 2 is 2.

Heck, if I wanted to do the whole “how-I-truly-feel and who-did-what” thing, I would start an anonymous blog.

But for now, I’m happy with what I’ve done so far with this one and don’t see any reason to fix anything that’s not broken.

So, here’s to the upcoming loads of booze, annoyance, 15.5 hours of flying and 6.75 hours of transiting. See you all back in Kuala Lumpur.

“Plis retun you sit uplight and faster you sit bilt, sawadee ka”

Cheers!

Greetings from Poland!

Goodbye Riga, hello Krakow! It’s been a long journey (both this trip and to get to Krakow). Long story, I’m dead tired and hungry. More updates soon.

Skyline Bar, Reval Hotel Latvija

Fancy a drink in one of Riga’s tallest buildings? How about watching the sun set over a soothing mojito? Chilling out with some friends?

If you are ever in Latvia, a visit to Reval Hotel Latvija’s Skyline Bar is a must! I’ll let the pictures speak for itself.

Located on the 26th floor of Latvia’s tallest hotel, Skyline Bar offers sweeping views of the capital, Riga.

Exciting moments indeed!

What a day!!

What a day it has been today… Firstly, it’s my dad’s birthday, so happy birthday dad!

 

I had a very very good day today, I met people whom I needed to meet and it was a productive day, business wise.

 

It started with a very sumptuous breakfast at the hotel’s restaurant…  I must say things have been great since that horrendous room change episode.  I get treated like God now, the staff address me by name “Mr. Lee, good morning!”, “Mr. Lee, how was your day?”.  Malaysian hotels ought to learn from that, excellent “service recovery” I’d say.

 

Scrambled eggs, REAL BABI (not beef) bacon, gravlax (marinated salmon) with dill sauce and a nice multiseed breadroll.

 

Outside, it was about 10 degrees Celsius so it was quite pleasant to be walking around in a suit.  One thing though, with Riga being such a small city, all my appointments were actually within walking distance from my centrally located hotel.  The cab drivers must be thinking “this stupid China man” when they were forced to ferry me around, just like we think “stupid gwai lou, KLCC is just 3 minutes walk away lah”.

 

It was nice, spring was in the air and everyone on the street was in a cheery mood.  Ladies were busy planting nice little flowers.

 

Nice white flower

 

 

Nice purple flower

 

Nice yellow flower

 

Nice ladies planting flowers

 

I think I managed to rope in about 1.5 million worth of business in the next 6 months today. =)  In one of my appointments, I was in such haste to leave that I left my notepad in the clients’ office.  The reception dropped a note under my door stating there was a package waiting for me at the concierge.  I’d like to thank Irina for her BIG BIG favour she did, sending my notepad back to the hotel.  You’re my life-saver!  This whole trip’s work is in there!

 

Surprise surprise!

 

Thanks a million once again Irina!

 

Having a breakfast meeting tomorrow with one of the most important client in Riga.  Then its to the airport (AGAIN) for the flight to Krakow, Poland via Warsaw.  More updates then… Cheerios yo!

Pizza by web…

Ok so today was a really busy day and I am dead tired.

 

Was running through this page to look for a dinner place and decided for pizza instead.

 

They have pizza ordering system through the internet! How good is that…

 

I made my order (One lat, the Latvian currency = 7 ringgit)

 

Yes they called me immediately after that… Hehe!

 

My vegetarian pizza, beer and water hehe!

 

Do we even have this back home? I’m a happy man… For now.. I *hearts* LuLu Pizza! hehe! =)

Oh La La…

Okay, so Riga isn’t that bad…  As a matter of fact, I think that Riga is so much better than Tallinn…

 

I walked around the old town and city today, here are some pictures…

 

Cappuccino… These guys take the pains to dress it up. Starbucks, learn!

 

My lunch… Waffles with cherry stew and whipped cream! Yummy!

 

On main street Riga, they still have communist-style electric busses here…

 

Monument of independence…

 

Old town Riga, cobblestone streets…

 

One of the many Russian Orthodox cathedrals scattered around Riga

 

Riga at night, from the riverside