Singapore - Last Night

This is a picture of the Marina Bay Hotel and Casino. I had to in a take a look and drop a little money. This casino is pretty much like any in Nevada except that is huge, about the size of a pro basketball auditorium.

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Singapore - Clark Quay (at night)

Another picture at night.

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Singapore - Clark Quay (pronounced key)

Its been a few years, but I'm back in Singapore working with the team here. i don't recall posting anything on Singapore so here it is.

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Altena, Germany

Altena is a really cool steel town in a valley along a river.  At the top of a mountain there’s an ancient castle about 1000 years old.  This was the purpose of our trip.

Outer wall.  This was my first view of the castle.

A view of one tower from another.  In a couple more weeks all the trees will be orange, red, and yellow.

Soest, Germany

My coworker and I had a few hours to kill one Saturday and this town is near where we are staying.  It’s pretty low-key here, but a pretty town.

Building next to a small pond.

Church near the town center.

Hirschberg, Germany – Balloons

Another trip to this place.  This is the first nice day I’ve seen here.  I was out for my morning run today and heard a noise.  I looked up and saw hot air balloons everywhere.

Regensberg, Germany

We rented a car to get around Europe so we took several day trips.  One was to Regensberg.  I remembered a friend of mine from Dresden told me that it was a good place to visit, so I thought we’d just drive there and check it out.  By the way, if you decide to do a driving trip, GET A GPS!!!

 

We walked all the way across the town to find a bridge across this really wide river.  It was worth it to get this picture.

A view from inside the town.  the whole town looks like this.  Needless to say, my friend was right about Regensberg.  It’s really pretty.

Rothenburg, Germany

Another day another day trip.  this time to the medieval town of Rothenburg.  This places is hundreds of years old.  As I understand it, it didn’t get bombed during World War 2.

This is the city gate once you pass through into the town.  It’s really something, it doesn’t seem real.

A random cool street.  The whole town pretty much looks like this.

Yellow House on a corner.  we were actually leaving the town to go back to Munich and we passed by this place.  It was really pretty so I snapped a photo.

Munich, Germany

Next up on the trip is Munich.  Munich is one of my favorite cities.  It’s great to rent a bike and ride down by the river (very interesting sites there), of course the beer is great, tourism, the English Garden, and good restaurants.  It was a little warm during the time we were there, but livable.  I highly recommend 3-4 days in Munich is you find yourself in Germany.

Beer bike.  The world cup was going on during the trip.  There were people everywhere and this beer bike was driving around the garden.  Basically, you just site down, peddle, and drink beer.

This is inside the famous Hofbrau House.  this place is a zoo.  You can get a wheat beer in a .5 liter size, and a lager in a 1 liter size.  that’s it!  Needless to say, no one complains (until the next day).

Nymphenburg Palace.  Pretty and peaceful, but it was really hot and we couldn’t find water to drink.

This is the Munich Town Hall.  Pretty much the middle of everything that’s happening in Munich.

Schwangau, Germany

Next up from the Europe trip is Schwangau, Germany.  It was in the plan to spend a day here.  After being in Balzers a few days, I decided it would to see something else.  Balzers was pretty, but there really wasn’t much to do and it was EXPENSIVE!  Schwangau is the location of 2 very popular German castles; Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein.

 

This is a picture from the hotel room in the small town of Schwangau, notices the cows crossing the road in the background.

The photo on the right is of a small town next to Schwangau.  We walked around and had a nice lunch here.

This is Hohenschwangau castle.  It’s really pretty place and is as it was when it was removed from use in the 1800’s.

This is Neuschwanstein castle, it’s really beautiful in and around the castle.  There’s a waterfall that leads into a stream and a bridge over the stream.  This photo was taken from the bridge.

Liechtenstein

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted any trip pictures here.  I’m finally getting to it.  I had a last minute 1 day meeting in Liechtenstein, so rather than fly and out, we decided to stay a while.  This is the first stop.

This is the town of Balzers, the first overnight of the trip.  It’s sitting right up against the Alps.

This is the church in Balzers.  This is at the bottom of a hill, at the top there’s a castle.  We walked up to it, the gate was open so we just walked in and looked around.  After a while some people came out if a door a told us the castle wasn’t open and actually it’s never open except for special events.  Our bad, but we got to see it.

Here’s the castle.

iPhone 4

Well, I got one. I was on the fence for a while. I looked hard at several Android phones and got really close to switching to a Samsung Galaxy phone on TMobile. The iPhone won out though, it's too hard to give up the pure usability and simplicity. One other note, I will be getting a personal microcell for my home courtesy of AT&T. I have to say their customer service in this case was great.

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Huizhou, China

Huizhou is about a 3 1/2  hour bus ride from Hong Kong airport.  The drive is very tropical once away from the airport, it’s actually pretty once out of the city.  It’s pretty easy to get a bus to common destinations from the Hong Kong airport.  All you have to do is go to the transfer counter once you get through customs.  It takes about 2 hours to travel from the Hong Kong airport and get through immigration.

Hong Kong is part of China, but it’s a special administrative district.  This means there’s a border crossing.  The border crossing is in Shenzhen.  This actually ends up being 2 different buses; one from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, then another from Shenzhen to Huizhou.  At the border, you leave Hong Kong and go through Hong Kong immigration, then drive 500 feet to the China border where you go through immigration again.  Don’t forget to bring your bags, China customs must x-ray everything.  Once you finish this process, you get back on the bus that took you across the border.  It’s waiting on the other side of the customs hall.

The rest of the trip takes about 1 1/2 hours and the bus drops you off right at your hotel.  I stayed at the Kande International Hotel.  It’s pretty nice, good enough gym, pool, and restaurants.  The area around the hotel is also pretty.  The hotel is between a dirty looking river and the West Lake.  The pictures that follow are all of the West Lake area.

 

This picture is a wall that runs along the river.  This is where I started my walk.  The hotel is on the other side of the wall.

This is a big shopping plaza across from the lake, down the street from the hotel.  The trees in the background have little white flowers that are really fragrant when it rains.  The smell is maybe a little too intense.

The lake has a bunch of islands that are connected by walk ways.

 

These are pictures of a 1000 year old pagoda on one of the islands.

This is a view from the pagoda (yes, you can climb up inside).  It’s really tight inside the pagoda, and the stairs are really steep.  The higher you climb, the lower the ceiling and narrower the standing area.

After climbing the inside of the pagoda, I was looking for a place to park myself.  I noticed a small roof in the trees and found this little sitting area.  there was no one there.  This is a view form the inside.

Hirschberg-Warstein, Germany

Hirschberg is the actual name of the town I was staying.  The people here are incredibly nice.  My partner needed to borrow an iron to iron his clothes, instead they offered to just do it for him.  I have to admit though, cabin fever is starting to set in.  Here are a few more pictures.

Here’s a picture of the hotel I stayed at.  It’s named “The Land Cramer Hotel”.  It was built in 1792.  Yes, that’s correct, 1792, it was remodeled in 1972.

This is the town of Hirschberg.  Notice the church right in the middle, the hotel I stayed at is across the street.

This is a picture of the very historic town of Zoest.  The history of this town goes back almost 1000 years.  I had dinner here with my Customer.

This is what I came back to after work one day.  It’s supposed to be spring!!!  It was really pretty though.

Warstein Germany 2010

This is my first time in this town.  It is know for a pretty good size brewery, Warsteiner.  All the local places seem to carry it, can’t imagine why.  I tried some at dinner last night, it’s pretty good if you like a traditional German Pilsner (I do).

The weather isn’t so good now so these are in black and white.

This is a view from the left side of my window.  It’s a church, the bells ring frequently.  The whole town looks like this.  The town is actually on top of a small hill.  I noticed when I went out to today.

This is the view from the right side of the window in my room.  Next time I’m out, I’ll bring the camera and take a picture of the town on the hill.

Tokyo March 2010

Finally!  I got around to uploading our Tokyo pictures.  This was a great trip.  My wife was able to join me and we got to go all over Tokyo and even to Mount Fuji.  In general, people in Tokyo are extremely helpful even to the point of actually walking you to where you are trying to go.  We are both looking forward to the trip to Tokyo.

Check out the pictures.

This first picture is from our first full day, the weather was perfect.  This is the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.

Also from our first day, this is Nakamise shopping street.  I have this same picture from a previous trip somewhere in my blog.  It looks pretty much the same.

Here’s a picture of our full day trip to Mount Fuji.  We spent the better part of a day on a bus in the fog.  We got so tired of the bus and the fog we decided to spend the extra money to take the bullet train back to the hotel.  IT WAS WORTH IT!!!

Again, Mount Fuji.  This is a couple of days later from the top floor of our hotel.  That morning at breakfast we thought we go to the top floor restaurant and see if we were able to see Mount Fuji.  Unfortunately, the restaurant was closed, but I noticed a bunch of doors that looked like conference rooms.  We just walked into one, opened the blinds, and this is what we saw.

Here’s a garden. The view in black and white was pretty cool.  I was a pretty place.

Finally, Tokyo Disney.  This is actually Tokyo Disney Sea.  It is really something, very well done.  One small problem, we went on the Saturday of spring break in Tokyo.  We didn’t get to ride even one ride.

Snow? In Tokyo!!??

This is really something, I had no idea that it snows in Tokyo in March!!  This is the view from our hotel room looking down over the city.  We’ve been here a few days now, the first full day was pretty nice, since that day, the weather has become worse.  First foggy days, then rain, now SNOW!!!  There’s a couple of inches on the ground at this point.  I’ll post more pictures when I get some time.  My favorite is the mount Fuji pictures.

Maui Sunset

Time for a much needed vacation.  This picture pretty much sums it up.

Evening Trip to Red Square

I’m finally getting around to posting these.  We worked pretty hard during the week.  We finally wrapped up about 6 PM Friday then headed back to the hotel.  We changed and were headed to the train station by 6:30.  Purchasing tickets was pretty easy from this part of Moscow, it’s sort of a suburb.  It also helped that one of the guys with us (our partner) spoke some Russian and had done all of it before.

Here are the trains side by side.  The ride to the city center area was about 30 minutes.  The train was pretty comfortable, good enough for a train ride of a few hours.  Actually, it was more comfortable than the United 747 seat I’m sitting in as I write this entry.

Next we had to take the metro (subway) to near Red Square.  This is one of the deep escalators we had to take deep into the metro system.  this was scary.  It is really deep, steep, and fast.

I think I mentioned that it’s cold in Moscow in January.  This night it was about –20 C and it was snowing.  I think anyone coming to Moscow for the first time should see it this way.  It’s just like what you see on TV. 

These are pictures of the Kremlin.  I grew up during the peak of the cold war so this gave me a bit of a funny feeling being here.

 

I can’t remember the name of this structure but to me it symbolizes Russia.

I have a few more pictures, but nothing really worth putting up.  This business trip was by far one of the most difficult, but also one of the coolest places I’ve been.