No fancy place, but Aza on ice in leiden

Finally it's cold enough for some real ice experience.
---this email was sent from my blackberry

Anna and Ilja in Israel

This is a lazy post, just a slideshow of the pictures with some text, but it is post.

Israel: restaurants and food

This is actually a post based on two trips. My first trip was at the beginning of September. This was a business trip to The ICT Counter Terrorism Conference. The second trip was at the end of September together with Anna to visit Adina and Dan's wedding and of course to enjoy a nice week of vacation in the Holy Land. This post has two parts: first some restaurants and finally some night clubs.

The Old Man and the Ocean is a fish restaurant in old Jaffa. It's an Arab restaurant filled with Israelis enjoying good food for a low price. I've been three times to this place and every time the food was good and the atmosphere typical fast Arab: sit down, you get the 20 salads (meze like) including humus and falafel, a guy comes up to take your order and before you know it, there is a giant fish waiting on you plate. They serve a very sweet but nice lemonade with the food. The last time was somewhat different though, although it had nothing to do with the food. When we took a taxi from the Sheraton Moriah (shitty hotel, better go for the Sheraton Tel Aviv which is $20 more, but triple the value), we asked the driver if he knew the place. He said yes, but immediately stopped the car to ask his colleagues at the hotel who gave him some directions. Then we took off and at 30 Shekkel on the meter I asked him if he knew where we were going, and he said, yeah sure. However, we ended up on the top of the modern tourist part of Jaffa. After some talk and talk, we finally decided to leave the car, since he apparently had no clue where the restaurant was located. However, after we left the car he came after us and demanded money, so much that we attracted the attention of the police. But after explaining the situation, they send him away. Walking around in Jaffa, we waited and waited for a taxi until Tel Aviv’s most shabby cab driver showed up who knew exactly where the restaurant was and who charged us 25 Shekkels for the 5 minute drive (roughly triple of what it should cost) however, we had reached our destination!

Benny the Fisherman is a fish restaurant located in Tel Aviv’s old Port and is a restaurant just like the Old Man and the Ocean, but more oriented at tourists, fancy and double the price. The food was good, but without an Israeli with you, they may try to rip you off. My first visit with Dana was just fine but with Anna, they doubled the prices of the fish.

Diana (Tel 077-5156168/04-6464343) is supposed to be one of Nazareth’s best restaurants. When Susan and I arrived in Nazareth, we just could not find it. Eventually, a friendly man told us that the restaurant had moved and showed us how to get there: he got in the backseat of our car, brought us to our destination and left….just a very nice guy indeed. The restaurant is indeed nice, falafel with sesame around it, very tender lamb and an excellent wine list. The second time I visited the place with Anna and instead of sitting in the nice garden (which was too cold at the beginning of October) we sat in the restaurant where they used the airco like it was still the middle of the summer. Probably better to eat here in the summer.

Tapas and Tel Aviv makes a great combination. Anna and I visited two: Tapeo and Champa. Tapeo is a more popular upscale restaurant. The tapas look beautiful and taste great! One guy makes the cold tapas behind the bar. Champa is a rather new place with no tables and no wine list: they only serve Cava, the Spanish bubbly wine. However, the Cava they serve is good and cheap (50 shekkel a bottle which is around 10 Euros) and the simple tapas taste great! Just a pity that the Cava is so good in finding a short cut to your head, doesn’t it Anna? ;-)

Tel Aviv nightlife

Tel Aviv has a great night life scene. Getting in is easy for a foreigner (so it seems). With both Susan at the beginning of September and with Anna at the end of September, it was a piece of cake to get into a club. Just say hi to the selector and she would waive us through.None of the clubs charged any entrance fees. Drinks were between 40 and 50 Shekkels for a mix (GT or wodka red bull)

The first club for me to visit in Israel was the Clara a.k.a. Fashion Club. It’s located opposite to the XXX hotel in the direction of Jaffa, next to the dolfinarium. First floor has a mix of club house and ‘90s remixed while the 2nd floor is a rooftop club with more relaxed house. The view over the sea is great. Crowd is somewhat younger and the guys are a little more trained and into tight outfits than in the rest of Tel Aviv. Too bad the club closes at the end of September for the winter.

Zizzi Tripo is an excellent club in the basement of 7 Karlibach St. Club house is the music and the crowd is 25-35, so I felt right at home :-). Below a compilation of three short clips I shot with my wonderfull Nokia N95 8Gb.

Apartment 98 (98 Dizengoff St., second floor.) is a nice place, but we ended up here when the party was apparently at its end. The place is really a club in an apartment building. Nice touch is the Mini Cooper they’ve built in the place. To get to the second floor, you have to use an old and crampy lift.

Uptown (old port) turned out to be my favorite. The hardest to get in, not the best music (house mixed with popular, 80/90s and some Israeli music) and clearly regular DJs (the second Saturday, the mix really resembled the first when I heard Cela Cela again) it did have a great atmosphere with a large outside area. Below a short phone movie shot at September 12th 2008.

The French Alps

After the heat of the South and the high level of organization of the tourist camp ground in Anduze, we left for the French Alps. If the Cevennes is a beautiful area, the Alps are stunning. Besides the beauty of the area, the atmosphere was also quite different. When we arrived at the camping
(Camping Municipal in Choranche), there was no warden,

just a little note telling us that the warden is present every day between 1900 and 1930 and that we’re invited to pick a place. No organization, paperwork before you can set up your tent, no documents to show…..just a small note to welcome us and invite us to feel at home!

The French Alps also proved a nice place to try some hiking. Let the pictures show that we did hike!

Of course, the Alps are still the French Alps and also have sufficient places where one can enjoy a good lunch. The choice was made for Grenoble,but no restaurant yet. That proved to be easy. In the shades of a church we found restaurant with a simple (but excellent) lunch. Too bad we forgot to note the name of the place ….
Forgot to mention, it was a completely non-smoking vacation for me!

Cevennes: South-East France

Travelling through Europe is not something I have posted on a lot. But then, for the past eight years, I've been to Europe during my summer holidays. The place we’ve been to the last six(!) times is a camping site called Cevennes Provence near Anduze in the South of France. The first time we went to Cevennes Provence, we fell in love with the place, and since then we’ve just been going back. Either going to the camp site after a bad experience somewhere else, or as a starting point for discovering some other part of Southern Europe. However, every year, we’ve had a different place for our tent. The best thing about the camp site is the amount of privacy you have at the vast majority of places. Of course, there is a ‘pull-hut’ (caravanning) area in the flat lower part of the camp site. This is where the places are nice, orderly and where the people are nice and orderly. Our site, was not so orderly, like we are not so orderly.

Camping is nice, but one needs to eat as well. Eating in this sense, is more than just using the rudimentary camping kitchen tools. Our favorite tool for selecting restaurants is the Guide Rouge, or the online version at ViaMichelin. This time, we selected a simple restaurant near Ales: Auberge des Voutins in Mejannes Les Ales. However, the restaurant is a Bib Gourmand (), which is the Guide Rouge's indication that you get a good meal/menu for a decent(relatively low) price. While Anna enjoyed her lamb, I enjoyed duck breast and a fish soup. We finished of course with a selection of cheeses and a beautiful dessert!

However, even North Europeans looking for a warmer climate can become climate change refugees. When the weather forecast predicted a couple of days with 36 degree Celsius, we decided that warm is good, but hot is probably a little too much. Especially for our poor dog. So after a week we left the Cevennes again and moved to the French Alps.

Koh Tao

Koh Tao, a white pearl in the Gulf of Thailand and Diver's paradise. However, the trip to Koh Tao is more like a ride to hell. It starts with the pick up truck drive from the trainstation to the ferry pier.
Then, when (or if) you have survived the ride, you should hope for good weather. Fortunately, this year the weather was good. This gave me the opportunity to take a picture of my 2007 vacation love: the garbage/puke can. Last year's ferry was the first in a couple of days because of the bad weather. However, the weather had improved only marginally. I ended up holding the railing with one hand and this garbage can with the other, while Anna was preventing my head from slamming to other parts of the boat and two Singaporese guys were drinking beers and throwing empty beer cans in *my* garbage can every 15 minutes. But, this year's ferry ride was like a walk in the park (taking travel sickness pills helps ;-).

On Koh Tao I went back to dive with Seashell divers, the dive school where I got my PADI Open Water last year. Last year's crew was gone, but the school was still good. However, no diving to the Chumpung dive site, so no sharks..... Apparently, I chose the wrong week to dive since most people had left for the full moon parties.I did some good dives at Green Rock and White Rock and even did a night dive (one closer to my Advanced Open Water). But no Chumpung. When the Friday dive turned out to be the same as the Wednesday, I had to choose a different school. Bad plan.... Even though Jeff (from Seashell) advised me the school, JBL (I'm not sure of the name, tried to forget) was not really a success. First, my dive guide dived like he was completely alone, oblivious of me. Second, the trip was not to Chumpung, but Shark Rock (but no sharks) and finally, the longboat from the dive boat to the beach, sunk. Yes, indeed, it did sink. It started with a new guy steering the long boat in the dive boat (it's the guy in the picture on the right), smashing some woodwork to pieces, then hitting it again, almost throwing some air tanks overboard. Then, when we had all boarded this fast attack boat, we sailed off and after 30 seconds, the engine stopped and we started drifting to the reef (which is when I took this picture).... and continued drifting until we hit the reef (I had packed my camera already fortunately).Then, most of the passengers had expected the dive school crew to act professionally or at least to take the lead, but no: they got out and told everyone else to stay in the boat until the boat almost collapsed and people started leaving without instructions. Then, when everyone had abandoned ship (it's the small boat in the middle) we just swam, walked (for those who had brought their shoes) or drifted to the shore. Later that day I paid for the dive and had a well deserved mango-strawberry shake.

Bangkok

This is what Thailand looks like and this is the Thailand I dream of when I'm not in Thailand. However, this is not really the Thailand I'll be posting on.Although I will be lazy in this post, there are two stories definitely worth sharing. The first is a night out in Bangkok.
First to the Gullivans at Koa Sang Road, a shabby place with cheap drinks, waiters stalking you for an order the moment you set foot inside, backpackers (the younger ones) and Thai girls (no boys, unless you would count the ladyboy in the corner). Here I met two guys, one from Vanunu(?) and one from somewhere else (we met pretty early and the party lasted till pretty early so forgive me for not remembering all the details, but I do have the picture!). When Gullivans closed we went for a snack and some local info to the 7Eleven. Here we learned that the best place for this time of night, would probably be the Spicey. When Gullivan is shabby, this would be shabbiest (see my VirtualTourist tip). However, first we had to get there. Since Tuktuk drivers are paid by delivered customer (bad sign) 200Bath (I learned this the next day by asking a taxi driver), they don’t need to make money on the ride, so the tuktuk was for free!
After paying the 300baht(!!!!!!!!!) entrance fee (outrageous expensive for Bangkok) we entered a big sports hall with a bar on one side, three small higher podiums in the middle, a fair amount of horny drunken white guys and double the number of Thai girls (including the ladyboys). After 10 minutes, my first friend disappeared after getting into trouble: he took pictures under a hooker’s skirt(indeed, somewhat of a pervert) who was not amused and complained to her pimp (although there are not many pimps in Bangkok, this girl had one and wanted the protection). The pimp got a little upset, but after calming him down (“my friend is drunk, I’ll keep him under control”), he was cool too and understood that the girl had her part. Anyway, my new found friend thought it was time to call it a day and left. The party went on (see the YouTube insert movie) and on, and on and on, no more pics of the even shabbier places we went to afterwards. But I can tell you that I did not see the sun rise....it was already high up in the sky when I hit the sack.

I'll post seperately on the second worthy / blogggable story to post later on. For now, a slideshow with some captions for the pictures.

Singapore

Singapore is special, very, very special. It is like the white sheep in the family of Asian cities. Singapore looks like Hongkong, has a somewhat similar history, also includes a large Chinese group but Singapore is different, very, very different. So what makes it special and different? First of all, Singapore is clean. Of course you will see some sigarette buts on the pavement (but you need to look carefully) and there might be some occassional litter, but generally speaking, Singapore is as clean as for example Oslo or Stockholm. Of course, clean is a consequence of rules, very strict rules. Reason two why Singapore is different. Left, you'll see a picture from the subway showing the local fine menu. The fines are in Singapore Dollar which is worth around 50 Eurocents.

First stop: Chinatown for some dinner and cheap beers. This is the good thing about Chinatown, no matter where on earth you go, it's always the same: good food, low prices. It's like a McDonalds, but better. Singapore has more etnic areas like little India (pic left) and the Arab area (the other pic). However, although we had some good beers in Little India and excellent tea in the Arab quarters, nothing beats Chinatown!

Eating every night in Chinatown would be a little too much, so we headed for Boat Quai, a more tourist oriented area, where we paid tripple for fair food (in Chinatown it was simply good). However, the atmosphere on Boat Quai was pretty good. A lot of people and a zillion pubs and clubs close by. Our local guide Rebecca(not really local, but East coat American, but still more local than we ;-) told us to check out the Ministry of Sound. As obedient good researchers, we set out to take a closer look at this place.

Almost forgot to mention the great hotel: Sheraton Towers, not directly on Orchard road, but definately a good pick (mine :-). Below is a small movie of the relaxed coffee/smoking area outside to chill a little after breakfast and before starting a day of work.