Author: Y C

San Fran revisited

I’m in SF, actually Marin County, Novato now. I had to scramble for a flight and found a good NYC travel agent my dad uses for his China trips. I’d highly recommend Jessie from Far Eastern Travel International to get your tickets. Fast and accurate. I had basically 2 days to book a cheapo flight to SFO and she found it! Amazing because none of the on-line places could come through. The only closest one was Westchester County Airport near White Plains for $350 and that just wasn’t going to cut it. In the end Jessie found me AA tickets for $395. I’m now signed up on the OneWorld AA miles program. I think I’ll be collecting those as well 🙂

Weather was nice and good feeling to be here. I found Fox Rental car online for $15 a day. They gave me a brand new PT Cruiser (450 miles). Drives nice and competently. Other than that, nothing particularly distinguishing about the car performance. Met an Indianian woman also while waiting for Fox shuttle to pick us up. Lots of things changed with the airport, new roads, but nothing too earthshattering. Woman is in event management and doing a couple of events at Alcatraz and Sutter Winery in Wine Country. Her first time and was very excited. We chatted a bit about that and got my juices (no pun intended) flowing again at the idea of driving up there. Hmmm.

Have to focus on some business stuff here and hook up with some old friends/colleagues. That should probably tie up all my time. I doubt I’ll have the chance to make a Bay Area drive around. We’ll see.

Laters,
=YC

Belated Happy New Year Greetings

Thanks FC for the always enjoyable year end recap. One of the things I look forward to now that I can’t do it in person.

I’ve been traveling a lot, actually almost constantly for the past 6 months now. Currently back in the hometown, Ipoh Malaysia . B- and I have been running errands and took a couple of days off to visit Damai Laut (see previous postings) at the Swiss Garden Hotel Damai Laut. The trip started out very nice, our stay was extremely relaxing and we bummed around a lot in bed watching TV, eating and sleeping. But the experience leaving the resort was very disappointing and leaves much to be desired. In terms of the overall experience, I think it was bit better than the Mutiara Burau Bay Resorts Langkawi except for the poor spa service and travel arrangements from the resort to Lumut bus station.

Next stop to KL for some meetings and a B-‘s cousin’s wedding to attend. Tonight is a family dinner for my cousin who’s getting married tomorrow in Ipoh. Non stop eating of course but getting slower in my old age. Can’t pack it down like I used to :-(. I suppose that’s a good thing. It’s sobering when you’re insurance shopping :-|.

Limited email and internet (by design) to enjoy myself here. Let’s see how it works out.

Cheers all,
=YC

Christmas in Wulai (烏來)

B- and I went to visit the hot springs around Taipei. Wulai (烏來) is one of the more famous places to visit (the other is BeiTou (北投)) for hot spring rest and relaxation. B- found some places online and ended up settling for Full Moon Spa, a Japanese style place. We had dinner and breakfast included with our stay.

From the aboriginal Tai Ya Tribe we get a lot of multi-colored arts and crafts which reminds me so much of the type found in South America, Andes, Peru etc. I wonder if that’s by accident or not due to the similarities.

Nice relaxing time… getting scorched by the hot water and turning lobster like. Definitely like. Will be back 🙂

=YC