The Fryhole

So to further my Wii quest, I have yet to actually go to a store. So there is no shame in my lack of Wii. Although all online venders seem to be sold out.
But as noon approches, the question is, when will the stores be restocked? I know Toys R Us gets their shipments in on Tuesday, but what about Walmart, EB Games, Future Shop, Bestbuy, Zellers, Super Store, London Drugs?

I hope to check out the Leduc Wallmart and EB Games today, maybe just EB, but we shall see.

Anyway I poached this from a news.com artical, and its the best thing I have heard all day. Other than a student insulting my WoW playing, Yea who has half their Teir 2? Yea not him!

“As part of the entertainment, Nintendo hired a company which has two people riding around on Segways, each of which is decked out with a flat-screen TV and a Wii. The two will roll–literally–up to a group in line, stop, and while hovering there, allow those in line to play games wireless on the Wii.”

Wiispect my Wii buying skills!

First a note about IE7: I’ve never before seen such a horribly mangled and confusing interface to webpages. Kudos to MS for out-doing themselves once again. At least the pain is spread evenly between the users and the web-developers for this revision. If the web browser is going to be hard to develop for; it should be hard to use as well. It’s only fair. Perhaps there is a setting somewhere to ‘fix’ the interface; but I surely know that I don’t want to open that particular Pandora’s box. Oh, and what interesting render bugs, as well!

Fortunately, today was clear and sunny again — though sorry, still no pictures. Began the day with a wandering down the beach to see the sand crabs that Angela reported yesterday. Took about a 30 minute walk to get down the beach far enough to see them; but see them I did! Most are very tiny, with only the odd larger one. The tiny ones seem to let you get closer to them than the large ones do… as soon as you draw even a little bit close to one of the larger ones it scuttles off into the foam and is lost to the ocean in a few seconds. I guess the little ones are younger and not yet seasoned enough to evade humans with such proficiency.

After that adventure and a brief interlude at the room to get ready we were off to the dive center. Took about a 20-30 minute ride from the resort to the dive center; which is in the Royal Phuket Marina on the east coast of Phuket (opposite coast from the resort). It is a very nice establishment and immediately upon arriving there we jumped aboard the diving speedboat that was all prepped and ready and headed off. The boat moved really quick and about 30 minutes later we were at Shark’s Point and ready to go into the water.

During the first dive of the day (a 1-hour, 17 meter dive), we actually did see a leopard shark — it was very cool; just sitting along the bottom of the ocean and remaining still — perhaps all the divers that were swirling around it were actually scaring it. It was difficult to see because there were so many dive groups around the shark — I’d say about 10-15 divers total, all clustering around the shark. Poor thing, but it really was a sight to see.

While the leopard shark was undoubtedly the hilight of the first dive, we saw quite a few underwater critters as well… there were alot of sea urchins out there, as well as scorpion fish, angel fish, and rock fish. The other rather cool critter we saw we aren’t sure how to identify. It was squid-esque, but it had very short tentacles and a rather large, oblong head around which a fin circled. The dive master tried to close in on it a bit; but when he got too close (a few meters), it suddenly shot off into the ocean… all that was missing was the cloud of ink and it would have been the perfect squid-escape.

For the second dive we went down to a place known as Ko Dok Mai (a 45-minute, 14 meter dive) — it is a towering island of stone (cliffs all the way around), lording over the ocean by something around 50 meters. You dive down the side of these cliffs; and after they enter the water they become the basis for a reef-like environment. There were quite a few sea urchins, though not as many as at Shark Point, and more varied fish — barracuda, parrot fish, grunts, groper, and then scorpion and angel fish again. Living in the little reef were also a fair number of moray eels, which were cool for me to see as I hadn’t yet seen them down under the sea in their habitat. Normally they just sit inside the reef with only a bit of their head visible; so the dive master kept trying to get them to try and bite his finger (they were smaller ones) to draw them out so that we can see, but they didn’t take the bait. We got lucky later, though, and got to see one that was outside of the reef, undulating as he was swimming up it. Very neat.

After diving we returned to the resort, where we sat down and had a meal at the Marriott Cafe, which had fantastic service and wonderful food.  \o/

Today is the day of the Wii, and I don’t have one…

serves me right for not getting on any pre-order list.

This is my plan is to hit stores after work this wiik and see how long it takes me to get the Wii!

For honor and Wii!

Updated! Pictures added.
Sorry at the lack of updates. We’ve been crazy busy. Since the last post, we’ve been through (as long as I haven’t forgotten anything):

1. Nara, Japan Done: Nara, on November 9
2. Osaka, Japan Done: Osaka Universal City, on November 10 Osaka Castle, on November 11
   
3. Himeji, Japan Done: Himeji, on November 12
   
4. Hiroshima, Japan Done: Hiroshima, on November 12
5. Fukuoka, Japan Done: Fukuoka, on November 13/14/15
   
6. Flew from Fukuoka, Japan through Tokyo, Japan (said goodbye to Andrew ); through Bangkok, Thailand, and ended up in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
7. Siem Reap/Angkor Wat, Cambodia.
8. Flew from Siem Reap, Cambodia through Bangkok, Thailand, and ended in Phuket, Thailand; where we promptly checked into the JW Marriot Phuket Beach (possibly insert other modifiers here) Club for our 1-week stay at the resort.

I know, we have a lot of updates to do. We basically didn’t have time as we tried to squeeze all the time we could into our last days in Japan and our short stay in Cambodia. Even now (during the 1-week stay at the resort); I won’t be filling in all the blanks. As to why, I have a simple answer for you: swim-up bar with waterfall. What I will try to do is post about today (our first full day at the resort), and will try to stay on top of posting about Phuket, so that it doesn’t build up any more than it already has!

So, today was our first day at the resort. A quick walk along the (magnificent) beach in the morning apprised me of two facts:

1. There is a significant undertow; though it is manageable (this would be what their little yellow flag that is tagged as “Experienced Swimmers Only” refers to, I would bet).
2. The ocean in Phuket is warmer than our hotel pool was in Siem Reap, Cambodia (I think the pool was cooled purposefully though, so take that with a grain of salt).

Angela went further down the beach than I did (I stayed closer to the resort), and ended up finding a lot of sand crabs a ways away from the resort. I’m looking forward to going down myself tomorrow or the next day and checking them out.

After a light breakfast I decided it was time to check out this swim-up bar that I had noticed in the resort map; so Angela and I set off. When it came into sight, I said “Wow! Nice Bar!” and Angela said “Sweet! Nice Waterfall!” She sorta missed the fact that behind the waterfall was a bar. We drank there for a few hours (UHmm… it was time to drink in Canada, I am sure! *cough*), from about 10:00 to Noon. After enough drinks we decided it was time to swim (well, really we were swimming during/between the drinking; but I mean in the ocean), so we all set off for the beach (by this time Mom and Dad had joined us as well) and Mom stayed ashore as the rest of us dove into the waves.

It was a very pleasant swim, very warm water and all that; but I wanted to try the sailboats that the resort provides for the use of their patrons; so we weren’t out very long before returning to shore to the sailboat sign-out place. Shockingly, it turns out that they won’t just hand a sailboat out to just anyone. We had to undergo training first! So we scheduled our training for later in the afternoon and had lunch while we were waiting.

When the time came we were all ready, and after a short (read: 2-minute) lecture about how a sailboat works in general - Hint: travel perpendicular to the wind for best results - we were off! Angela opted to not go first, so it was the trainer and I in the small one-person sailboat, heading out from the beach. He showed me how the ropes and whatnot worked, how to turn, and then nonchallantly told me to take the helm. Was kind of nervous; but I did OK… though I was never able to turn into the wind properly. Turning into the wind is safer (less chance of a capsize) than turning away from the wind, but harder to do, too. Turning away from the wind I can do, but into the wind will take more practice.

Anyway, we played around for a little bit and then headed back into the beach, intending to switch me for Angela. However just at that time the resorts bigger sailboat was beaching to discharge it’s passengers, so the trainer just turned it around and boarded all of us (Angela, Dad, and I) and headed out to the open sea. The bigger sailboat was lots of fun to ride (I never drove it; but it was fun to ride) — it has a larger sail area than the small one-man boats (obviously), and thus goes faster (…and almost capsizes when some crazy sister catches too much wind and even the weight of the passengers can barely keep it more-or-less upright. Not listing any names…). Apparently it’s also more stable (owing to the twinned hulls) than the one-person sailboat; but you’d never know it with the people that were driving it this time.

That drew to a close our sailboat training; but it was just as well as it was clouding up a bit and the wind was really starting to come up, so we headed to the beach and dinner. I had originally planned to go into town to a club that I saw a flyer for; but tonight is apparently the once-weekly all-you-can-eat steak-and-seafood grill-fest, so I cancelled that (will have to do later) in favour of staying at the resort. The dinner was superlative, what more can I say? They had a beautiful ice sculpture by the desserts table…

A little about the resort: it is on the west coast of Phuket, quite a ways from Phuket City. In fact, it is far away from everything — the City is about 40-50 minutes away, driving. This has it’s negatives (difficult shopping, have to put up with resort prices, etc.) but also it’s really big positives (absolutely huge expanse of very nice beach with no-one on it, basically no-one around, no traffic, etc.). The resort itself has been great — service is exquisite, and they’re nice enough to add a 10% service charge to everything so you don’t have to worry about who you need to tip (and by how much). That sounds a little sarcastic; but it isn’t meant to be — in this case, a built-in service charge is much better than having to worry about tipping. For example, all you need to know is your room number; and then charge-back everything to the room and sign for it. If you had to worry about tipping; you might have to carry cash to tip the people that weren’t directly involved in you signing a receipt. There’s a lot of water around — said cash might get wet — say when a big wave hits your sailboat, for example.

The weather in Phuket is pretty nice — about 30-35 degree days, it seems like, (and I already mentioned a very warm ocean)… so no complaints on that account! I want to post pictures of the resort and whatnot (and I wish I had some of us sailboating), but unfortunately can’t right now… tomorrow is diving… and I have a feeling there is a drink out there somewhere with my name on it for tonight.

Some general photos of the resort (some in the day, some at night with the torches on):

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On our last day in Cambodia, Joey took us to Tonle Sap, the river/lake that connects to the Mekong Delta. There’s a floating village about 5 miles out from shore.

In the dry season, much of the Tonle Sap in this area dries up, and they build a road out to the village. Mom claims it is just like the ice road across the MacKenzie River. Or at least the Cambodian counterpart.

The floating village also had some tourist shops (of course), and a crocodile farm.

This was our last excursion in Cambodia. Joey took us to the airport, we said goodbye, and braved the two flights (via Bangkok ) to Phuket.

Our first two full days in Siem Reap were spent wandering the ruins of Angkor, for as long as we could stand the heat. Which was about 6 hours or so. After that we needed to go back to the hotel and swim, as going from 15 to 33 degrees in a day is a real shock to the system.

There are more pictures in the gallery, so I’ll just post the highlights here.

Our first stop was the ancient city of Angkor Thom. We arrived through the south gate, which has a “naga” (7-headed serpent) bridge leading up to it, with gods lining one side and demons lining the other, both carrying a serpent.

The bridge leads to a gate with 3 towers carved with 4 faces (on the cardinal points). At the base are 3-headed elephants plucking lotus flowers with their trunks, forming the supporting pillars.

Inside the city of Angkor Thom are:

The Bayon, with its famous face towers

The Baphuon, a 5-tiered pyramid that is being restored

The Phimeanakas or Royal Palace

The Elephant Terrace

And, of course… monkeys!

After Angkor Thom, we went to Ta Prohm, a temple that was chosen to be left in its ‘natural state’ as an example of how most of Angkor looked on its discovery in the 19th century.

After lunch, we went to Angkor Wat, the most famous of the Angkor temples. It actually has 5 towers (one in the centre and 4 on each corner), although most pictures only show the 3 you can see when you are directly facing the temple. Here, you can see 4 of the towers.

By that point (about 15:30 on a very hot and sunny day), we were done. So, Joey took us back to the hotel, and we swam and relaxed until about 18:30, when he picked us up to go to a restaurant he recommended - the Angkor Mondial Restaurant. It had a buffet of various Cambodian and other SE Asian cuisine, followed by Apsara dancers.

The evening would have been wonderful, had it not been for the large tour group of obnoxious French people (is that an oxymoron?) that arrived extremely late, and then had to mill about while deciding where to sit, get up many times to get food, and stand to take pictures, even though their table was front and centre. Jerks.

The next day we got up early to travel to Banteay Srei, a beautiful out-lying temple. On the way we stopped at Pre Rup.

Banteay Srei is a beautiful little temple made of pink sandstone. It has very detailed carvings over its walls, doorways, and towers, which are still mostly intact.

Sadly, the same group of French jerks showed up with their cloud of smoke (many of them were smoking despite all of the “No Smoking” signs), so we left.

On the drive back to the main temple area, Joey stopped at a friend’s market and showed us how palm sugar is made.

Then, we toured:

East Mebon, with its elephant statues

Ta Som, that has a large strangler fig tree over the east entrance

Neak Pean, with 4 ponds surrounding a central pond and Sanctuary Tower

And finally, Preah Khan, with Dad helping to guard the north entrance

Then, it was time for lunch!

By this point, we were pretty much templed out, so we decided to give Joey the rest of the day off, and just relax in our hotel for the afternoon.

In the evening, we wandered around Siem Reap for a while, and saw a flock of bats (is that what you call a group of bats?) over one of the central gardens. They were everywhere - it was kind of creepy, for no good reason. Stupid Hollywood-esque social conditioning.

Our journey from Fukuoka to Siem Reap (the town near the Angkor ruins in Cambodia) was a bit long, as there were 3 flights involved, and one of them involved a transfer in Bangkok. We may have mentioned this elsewhere, but the “new and improved” Bangkok airport isn’t so much improved. For one thing, they have some rather confusing signage. For example, when you see a sign that says “International Transfers” and arrows pointing both left and right… well, it just leads to confusion. And since it’s a new airport, the staff are also unfamiliar with things, and give conflicting directions.

After much wandering around, we eventually found the correct check-in point - only to learn that our luggage had not been checked through. So, I got to go through Customs and Immigration, find all of our backpacks (which I found in the nick of time, as they were about to be carted to the “Unclaimed Luggage” section), check them all in (while explaining to the check-in staff that there were 3 other people already inside and all 4 bags weren’t mine), pay the departure tax, go through Immigration again, and find the gate.

I don’t really like the Bangkok airport.

While I was doing this, Mom, Dad, and Remi were trying to find the departure gate. Of course, as I mentioned, the signage in Bangkok airport leaves much to be desired. Somehow they managed to wander into the Domestic Terminal, as it wasn’t very clearly marked and the security people didn’t really care if they were wandering out of the secured section. They definitely did mind when Mom, Dad, and Remi wanted back in to the secured section though. :O Fortunately, one of the staff understood the problem and escorted them to the correct area.

So, when we arrived in Siem Reap, we were rather tired, and the incredible heat and humidity that greeted us didn’t help matters much. All of us were in need of a shower and some sleep.

Fortunately for us, there was a licensed taxi stand just outside the Siem Reap airport, and we meet Joey.

He asked us where we would like to go, realized that we had absolutely no idea, but Mom required air conditioning, and so took us to a nice new hotel, complete with a swimming pool that we took advantage of as soon as we were checked in.

Joey owns his own car, knows Siem Reap very well (having lived there his whole life) and speaks good English, so we hired him to be our driver for the next 3 days. If any of you are going to Cambodia - look him up. His actual name is Mr. Hout Choy, but he goes by “Joey” for tourists who would just mangle his name anyway. His phone number is 855-1241-9944 and his email is houtchoy@yahoo.com. We highly recommend him.

On other thing of note - Remi and I had a gecko in our hotel room. Hee hee!

Our last couple of days in Japan were spent wandering around, shopping, eating, playing arcade games, and watching sumo!

For those that don’t know, sumo is the greatest spectator sport ever! It’s got something for everyone - tradition, ceremony, history, and two fat bastards hurtling themselves at one another. Plus, if you only like some of those aspects, you can tune out the ones you don’t like. So, for example, you can sit and drink beer with your friends, and ignore all the symbolic stuff, and just watch the action.

Although, to be honest, the stamping and preening beforehand is pretty fun too - you get to watch the rikishi [wrestlers] attempt to freak each other out.

It was a good note to leave Japan on - two days of a sumo tournament, including lots of good food. And, of course, video games for Remi and Andrew.

We took the Shinkansen from Himeji to Hiroshima, found a hotel, stashed our bags, and took the tram to Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park. The first thing you see as you step off the tram is the Atomic Bomb Dome, which is the remains of a building that was about 600 m directly below the bomb on August 6, 1945.

It’s a very chilling reminder of the level of destruction that people are capable of, and set the tone for the rest of the day. We went to the museum, which had been remodelled and expanded since I had been there in 1993. So there was even more charred and melted artifacts on display, and more education about atomic weapons.

The mayor of Hiroshima (and all the people too, I’m guessing) is a strong opponent of nuclear weapons, and there are copies of all the letters that have been written though the years to various governments, protesting nuclear tests. Sadly, a new one had been added only days before to Kim Jong Ill.

The park also has a monument to peace and a perpetual flame that will only be extinguished once all atomic weapons are dismantled. Obviously, it’s still burning.

We really didn’t take that many pictures, as seeing it once is horrifying enough. As you can imagine, it was a rather subdued evening.

After leaving Osaka, our next target was Himeji, to see Himeji castle. It was much better than Osaka castle, in my not-so-humble opinion.

… and when you get to a new castle, what’s the first thing that you do? Play with the fish in the moat, of course!

Seriously. Just start tossing breadcrumbs or something else edible into the water and watch them all appear! Eventually we got enough clustered around that when you tossed a new crumb in, the water would all roil around and fish would actually be forced up out of the water by the crowd as they all fought over it. When we stopped to look around we actually had a number of Japanese people watching as well; so we gave some crumbs to a small child standing nearby and laughed about the fish with the older man to our left.

Of course, this always give birth to the best plan ever, wherein Andrew wanted to get a whole bunch of crackers and slowly make our way around the moat, gathering up all the fish with the promise of food; until we would meet on the opposite side of the castle and have all the fish in the moat there. That would have been crazy, roiling, fish-angry water.

Someday maybe we’ll do it.
The castle itself was quite imposing, viewed from the outside.

… and for a measure of scale, check out this picture of us with the castle.

When we got inside the castle, we were pleasantly surprised. It has not yet been re-built into a modern, office-building-like interior, and remains somewhat antique-looking…

… complete with old-style muskets on weapon racks.

The castle was very interesting, particularly in view of the secret rooms that were all over the place that served the purpose of allowing warriors to spring forth from the walls at strange places and attack invaders. Hidden warrior-cubby-hole sort of things… I want to add some to my house; you never know when they might come in handy.

After the castle itself, we toured the gardens (which are quite nearby, just a few minutes’ walk).

… and then we ran off to catch our train to Hiroshima.