Orange County + Los Angeles

The worst part about going home to visit friends and family is the necessity of flying through Los Angeles airport.  It is the ninth circle of hell and if you've managed to avoid it you are living your best life.

I very cleverly found a route to avoid it on Air Canada via Vancouver, so by visiting Orange County I transited through LAX willingly in an act of self-flagellation.  All for a good cause!

Hangs with this legend, and rides in his stately miniature pick-up truck.

James and I had reunited a mere six weeks prior in Singapore.  He lives in Vietnam but visits his ancestral home of The OC regularly.  When I was considering my NoDak transit options we pieced it together so we had a few days together.

I'd only day tripped to the Los Angeles area before, once in high school and once after a very traumatic experience 3 years ago.  I only got to see slivers of the area back then, so was pleased to cover more ground with a local guide and his sweet ride.

Huntington Beach

James went to high school here, which blows my mind.  Real people do real things in such a picturesque and urban setting!  Our main priority for my first evening:

Fish tacos and wine, with his fantastic and fun mama Janet.  It was all very lovely and civilized, for a while.

After mama went home for the night we proceeded to get real sloppy on jugs of beer.  A debit card was lost along the way, but later recovered.  The best outcome of the night was James won a food and drinks package at a bar for ten people, which he will cash in on his next visit home.  Neither one of us have any idea when or how this contest was entered into.  I'm sad I'll miss that, as I feel legally entitled to be one of the ten guests.

I had the next day, my only full day, planned months in advance, since the moment I decided to stop in LA.

Audience ticket to watch a taping of Conan

To say this is a bucket list item for me would be a gross understatement.  I was beyond thrilled and excited, and didn't care that this would eat up a whole afternoon and therefore eliminate all chance of seeing/doing anything else.  But I didn't care, I had my priorities!

And then they went and cancelled the damn taping two weeks before. 😢 I was gutted, thinking my once-in-a-lifetime opportunity had slipped through my fingers.  But then I realized I'll just visit again another time.  A good excuse to visit James & fam again!  So what did we do instead?

Hollywood Reservoir

Plan B was enjoying a bit of nature, but not for the sake of peace and serenity (which was surprisingly in abundance here).  It was for this:

What's that by my head?  The Hollywood sign!  

A beautiful vantage point, and on a Thursday afternoon almost entirely devoid of people.  It was a long, narrow, winding uphill journey to get here by car so it's not the easiest drive, but it's worth it.  Next stop:

Walk of Fame

Hollywood Boulevard is nothing short of revolting.  So many tourists!  And fake garbage like Madam Tussauds wax museum.  But it's something you should do at least once, as there are some cool things to see around there (though no celebs).

Grauman's a.k.a. Mann's a.k.a. TCL Chinese Theater 

It's had a few name changes since opening in 1927 and it's one of the most famous movie theaters in the world.  The original Star Wars opened here!  We didn't pay to go inside and explore.  Instead we browsed the various hand and footprints of famous people that are out front:

Oh hey, look at this!

You can see the Hollywood sign from one of the intersections, if you lift your eyes up enough to catch it.  You can walk for miles looking down at the stars.

Pro tip: if there's any one star in particular you want to find look up online where it's located.  There are so many (including many random old timey people you've never heard of) that it would be hard if you didn't know where to look.  Which is precisely what we did for my favorite man (besides Conan):

Jeff Goldblum is my free pass and I didn't even know he had a star.  James took me on the hunt for a mysterious, secret star and I was overjoyed to see who it belonged to.  I immediately plopped down next to it for a photo shoot.  Luckily it wasn't in the busiest area of the street (which is around the Chinese theater) so I didn't get trampled.

If you're looking for a new religion, there's one obvious choice in this area.

They're swarming the street, all dressed like valets, like Mormons on steroids.

We did not stop in to test exactly which fatal personality flaws we possess that require expensive remedy, but I'm confident they're the most fun flaws one can have.  Their main church is a short drive away, and I was tickled to get a good shot of it driving by.

All hail Xenu!  Lest anyone accuse me of being unfair I'll repeat what I said to James, after fending off a herd of vest wearing proselytizers: don't take it personal; I'm equally hostile to all religions.

By this time it was well past lunch time (in fact, we didn't get out of the house until after lunch thanks to some good old fashioned American incompetence) and there was one restaurant James simply had to take me to.

Philippe the Original

Philippe's does French "dipped" sandwiches, which I've called French dip sandwiches my entire life.  Also different from the NoDak variety, you don't do the dipping yourself.

They come pre-soaked!  See how the top and bottom buns were dipped before assembly.  Plus it's customary to order with cheese, so we split our order between blue cheese and cheddar.  Delish!  And thanks to the off-peak timing it wasn't a madhouse like it often is.

Philippe's is called the Original because there's another restaurant that makes similar claims that they invented the French dipped sandwich.  Coles is downtown, where we were heading anyway, so we added it to the itinerary.  But we weren't there for more beef.

Their chocolate pie is amazing!  I'd be willing to give their French dip a try in the future, if it means I can get my hands on another piece of this tasty pie and laugh about the plot of The Help.

After our pie we wandered around downtown, seeing many surprisingly ornate buildings and hobos galore.

Angel's Flight

Angel's Flight is a funicular (cable car if you're not familiar with the term) that costs an affordable $1 in each direction.  The ride is pretty short at 91 meters (298 feet) is like a minute of ride time.

It was closed for nearly a decade because the cars slammed into each other in 2001 and killed a guy.  Oops!  But it's back now and presumably safe to carry us up to a nice little courtyard that was surprisingly deserted for a weekday afternoon.

We commuted back home to OC in rush hour traffic, which wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting it to be.  Yes, there are a million cars on the freeways, but they're moving.  And I didn't see any idiots who had randomly smashed into each other, thus blocking traffic and creating havoc.  This was such a welcomed change to Australian traffic.  I might be wrong here, but it's almost like California drivers know how to drive!

The next day I flew out in late afternoon, so we had one final morning to hang.  This might've been my favorite stop of the whole trip:

Trader Joe's

TJ's is the best grocery store on the planet.  It's very affordable, has amazing products, and pays/treats their workers awesomely.  It's almost mythical how fantastic it is!  We spent a leisurely chunk of time here and I bought as much [shelf stable] food as would fit into the unused crevices of my suitcase.  James had an entire empty suitcase he could check back home to Vietnam, so he filled up a shopping cart and brought it all back with him.  I might do this next time!  I got some fabulous products and my only wish is that I could transport the refrigerated and frozen stuff home with me.

Our next shopping stop was the thrift store, which was very fruitful for James in the way of Halloween and St Patrick's Day preparations.  Nothing for me, though, as my suitcase crevices were all filled with stuff from Trader Joe's.

Lunch time!

In-N-Out Burger

No trip to SoCal - and I mean no trip ever - is complete without a meal at In-N-Out.  They're only located in six states so seize the opportunity when you get the chance for some high quality, tasty fast food!

Those fries are a widely known off-menu "secret" called animal style, which includes melted cheese, grilled onions and their special sauce (called spread).  While the toppings are tasty, after two visits now I've decided that I really don't like their fries.  They're meh.  But what the fries lack is more than made up for in the burgers.  Real life chefs have crowed this place the ultimate fast food joint.  A must eat for those poor saps living in the other 44 states!

Huntington Beach Library

We swung through the ornate local library to kill a bit of time before I had to fly home via Canada, so we browsed the used book sale and tossed some coinage into the wishing well.  I got a copy of Animal Farm, which has been on my reread list for years now, for a quarter.  Who says California is overpriced?

And so ends my 48 hour Southern California adventure.  We did and saw a lot, not to mention ate and drank a lot, in my short time there.  I'm glad we still had plenty of chilling time at Chez Duquette to hang with his folks, too.  I'd met them before in Edinburgh at graduation 7.5 years ago, but I appreciated the chance to see how real people live in a place that, to my small town sensibilities, has always been La La Land.

Friend and fun family aside I will be back for you, Conan.  I. Will. Come. Back!

India

I've been calling it a "work trip" to India but that's not really true.  It was entirely professional development, which is fundamentally different.

I was on a program designed for student mobility professionals from Australian universities.  There were 12 of us total from 8 universities in three different states.

Our industry (and the country it operates in) is fairly small so I had met a quarter of these people before, but didn't know them well.  I certainly didn't know the ins and outs of how their university compares to mine before the trip, but I do now.  That sort of knowledge is genuine professional development, which I think is rare in this day and age.

I won't bore you with the specifics about my PD, but I promise you a solid half of our time was spent in workshops and peer-to-peer learning.  This was no work-sponsored Kontiki tour!  To prove it I will start out with various action shots of us being studious:

The program was in Mumbai, which was known as Bombay until surprisingly recently (1995).  It was changed in an effort to shed its British colonial past, which ended in 1947.  Exact figures are hard to come by but it's one of the biggest cities in the world. 

I was one of the last to arrive on Sunday morning despite my early departure from Singapore.  Almost everyone else was already there, out and about, so I narrowed in on their location and called an Uber to go meet them.  What showed up:

A tuk tuk!  An Uber tuk tuk!  I shit you not.

I was only mildly shocked at the vehicle.  There are far more tuk tuks on the streets of Mumbai than cars, so logically it makes sense that Uber has moved into this local market.  What really surprised me was the price.  It wasn't a long ride, 10 minutes max, and cost 21 rupees.  That's only 44 Australian cents!  30 cents US.  Insanity!

I'm going to structure this post as a series of surprises, because at the end of the day I don't know if India was anything like I was expecting.  Almost every single thing was a surprise to me.  Surprise #1 was the overall price point of things.  I've been to cheap countries before, but never 44-cent-Uber cheap!

We spent our first day wandering around Mumbai until the official proceedings began, being gawked at by locals while gawking at things ourselves.

Like these goats at a bus stop!  Surprise #2: how few cows I saw on the streets.  When you think of urban animals in India you think cows, but I saw a lot more goats.  And of course dogs.

Surprise #3: how healthy and well fed all the street dogs were.  Not a single one looked to be suffering.  In fact, they looked like they had a pretty comfortable life.  Not Matilda comfortable, of course, but lacking any true misery.

I guess a country that is largely vegetarian and follows a religion that preaches no harm to living creatures results in a decent life for street animals.

Our inaugural event was a traditional thali dinner.

Which is various Indian dishes served in small little bowls on a platter.  The waiters bring you more of each dish, so it's like a sit down buffet.

Surprise #4: "No, thank you" does not mean no.  We learned this the hard way on multiple occasions, starting with thali, by getting what we didn't want.  All Indians seem to hear is thank you and translate that to yes.  While "no, thank you" is a more polite way of saying no, it absolutely does not get your point across.

On our first full day after a full morning at a local university we embarked on the most interesting and impactful event, in my opinion, of the whole trip.

Tour of Dharavi slum

This is where the movie Slumdog Millionaire was set.  Not actually filmed there, due to it being one of the most densely populated places in the world making that impossible, but it's where the kid grew up and had his crazy experiences.

Dharavi is the largest slum in India, and probably all of Asia, with nearly a million inhabitants.  It's 2.1 square kilometers (.81 square miles) which, by my calculations, is about 62% the size of Central Park. Or 6x larger than Disneyland.  Or a shade under 5x larger than Vatican City.  However you want to calculate it, the only way that many people live together in that amount of space is stacked on top of each other.

Our tour guide told us how many slums there are in the city, which I've now forgotten and cannot seem to find anywhere online (I'm sure the number changes constantly).  The last census in India was in 2011 so every fact and figure out there is bound to be outdated and inaccurate.  About half of Mumbai's population of 22 million lives in one of the many slums.  This does not mean they're unemployed, starving bums.  The economy is actually quite booming, which is what we were there to see.

Plastic sorting and recycling is a huge industry, as is pottery, textiles and, ironically, leather.  We saw suitcases being hand made, which will be shipped on to legitimate retailers once branded.  I can't even imagine all the industries that exist here.  It was extensive and only the narrow walkways were not consumed by industry, much of it 24/7.  All of it informal, turning over $1 billion USD in trade per year!

Surprise #5: I thought a slum was a slum because people didn't work and were poor.  Man was I wrong.  The slum inhabitants, while poor, hustle harder than I ever have in my life.

Indian cooking class

We spent a lovely evening learning about Indian spices and flavors from some lovely women at a cooking school.  My fat ass's favorite part about cooking my own food was eating it!

I am a lover of Indian food, but even in my regular life I have a low limit for how much I can handle (once per month is more than enough for me).  While we had many excellent meals on this trip, it was non-stop Indian food for breakfast, lunch and dinner for six straight days which can wear on a person.

Surprise #6: This is shockingly difficult to come by (in sufficient quantities):

To be clear this was (tragically) not a heavily boozed up trip.  In fact, there was far less casual boozing than I'd expected-slash-hoped for.  But on occasion we did treat ourselves to the sweetest of sweet nectar, Kingfisher beer.  That is if it was available.

More than once when we asked for it at a restaurant they had none.  On the one occasion we were ready to tie one on we very quickly drank the restaurant dry.  I am a huge fan of Kingfisher and was very excited to drink it in its natural habitat, but my dream of drunken Indian nights was not to be.

Holli

Completely by accident our visit was lucky enough to coincide with the Hindu "festival of colors", or Holli.  It's celebrated to fend off a demon, or celebrate the banishment of the demon.  Something about a demon!  They throw around colored powder and make a beautiful mess.

As part of the festivities they also burn an effigy of the demon in a late night bonfire.

It's literally done in the middle of the night, which didn't fit into our packed and busy daily schedule so some local villagers were kind enough to hold a bonfire just after sunset so we could watch the ritual.

We only got to "play" Holli with each other and not the whole community.  I never saw one big gathering of humanity throwing around color, but we did see many stained, smiling people along the way.

Warli Painting Class

Warli is a style of painting that tells stories, and was traditionally done atop a background of mud and...wait for it...cow dung.  Luckily we did our paintings on simple colored paper, but we did see (though luckily did not smell) the real deal in action.

Gateway of India

Here was the closest I've ever been, and likely ever will be, to being a celebrity.  So many people came up to us and wanted to take selfies with us.  It was wild!

When we asked our guide Vedanth why, why on earth are we so interesting, he likened us to exotic zoo animals that these people have never seen before.  Of course people are going to take pictures!

He said it gentler than that, but he makes a good point.  Many of those people were there on vacation, coming from far away, small places where tourists never go.  So we really were a fascinating, unique sight for them.  An absolutely wild experience!

But back to the arch.  It was built in 1911 to commemorate a visit from the King of England, who at the time was king of India, too.  A monument celebrating colonization, hmm, interesting.

The Gateway of India is right next door to the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.

This is one of the sites of the November 2008 terrorist attacks, where 12 coordinated attacks took place around Mumbai and killed 165 people.  The movie Hotel Mumbai came out (in Australia, at least) literally the day before I left but I had the good sense not to pay too close attention to it.  I definitely want to see it now, after the fact.

Surprise #7: This, everywhere:

All over town!  What?  Why?!  I'm baffled.  What is going on with office chairs in India that this service is so widely needed and advertized?

I found it endlessly amusing, and nobody noticed all these signs until I pointed them out.  So perplexing!  But not nearly as perplexing (and horrifying) as this:

O.M.G.  Donate your eyes!  While simultaneously buying fruits.

I went into this experience expecting to be horrified by everything I saw in India.  The pollution, the poverty, and unspeakable amounts of suffering.  I realize I only got a short glimpse of one urban area, but I was very surprised to see no such thing.  Story time of an interaction I won't ever forget:

We were walking down a very busy beach, filled with Holli revellers.  We were attracting attention as usual, and one tipsy guy notices us and starts shouting in our direction.  Usually this has trouble written all over it, but his message was, almost word for word:

Hello visitors!  Don't go to the slums while you're here.  Go to the high rises and the new businesses.  This isn't the Mumbai of the past; Mumbai is new money!    

My final surprise: That I actually went to India.

Never in my life did I expect to travel there.  In fact I actively avoided it and dreaded the thought after hearing some unpleasant stories.  But I'm really glad I went, and had a safe, structured itinerary with some cool people who were in the same boat as me, all while benefiting my career.

I really am a fortune gal!

Weekend in Singapore

Our German friends who got hitched in Spain last summer live a quick and easy 8 hour flight away in Singapore.  Finally I got off my duff and visited after living near each other for far too long!

Sadly Martin was not in attendance since I was en route to a work trip.  However!  James, the "priest" from our wedding flew in from Vietnam, so we had a decent little reunion.  Martin and I had been to Singapore briefly on our pre-grad school SE Asia tour 8.5 years ago (day 1 and day 2 chronicled here) so don't feel too bad for him.  Somebody has to stay home and take care of Matilda!

I arrived Friday afternoon, which naturally means Germans have hours upon hours of work left for the week.  Note the irony that the Americans - off work by 4, enjoying an early happy hour - were the ones who won two world wars, and not Das Germans.  Ahhh, sweet victory.

We enjoyed a fine happy hour at their apartment in their absence until it was time for the axis and the allies to reunite for dinner and our planned nightly activity of wandering around town and drinking in public, which is shockingly not illegal in a country where everything is illegal.

My favorite thing was gawking at all the wacky Asian products to be seen.

Along with various sights.

And spectacular views!

Nothing too wild as we had a big Saturday planned.  My onward departure to work was stupid early Sunday morning, so we had to make the most of our one full day together.

Starting with champagne brunch!

Singapore is a pricey place so whenever you can stay home and make your own food and/or drink your own [duty free] booze, you do.  This isn't Crazy Rich Asians, after all, it's Middle Class Expats!

It's also a warm place.  Warmer than Australia, even, as it's almost on the equator.  What better way to beat the heat than this?

Philipp and Lara's building has a kick ass pool, where we lounged for many hours swimming, catching up and gossiping about everybody we know, because that's how we do.

We then took our day drinking out in public to enjoy some beautiful Singaporean (I assume colonial) architecture.

With ample stops for more drinks, of course.

This was at Potato Head, which I'd been to in Bali (pro tip: don't go there).  I didn't realize there were more of them throughout Asia.  This one was so much better because of the lack of Australian bogans and beggars and hookers.  I bet all those people are illegal in Singapore.

We continued wandering around and swung through Chinatown in search of more pre-dinner drinks.

Before stopping for best damn dumplings I have ever had in my life!

At Maxwell Hawker Centre we had a whole table full of various Chinese dishes to share, which in retrospect was incredibly foolish.  We should have each gotten two plates, one fried dumpling and one steamed dumpling, and eaten nothing but that.  Next time I'm not sharing those dumplings with anybody!  Holy man were they good, and most dishes cost no more than $5.

And now for the main event!

Gardens by the Bay

These tree-like structures are called "supertrees" and there are several of them ranging in height from 82 to 160 feet (25 to 50 meters).  They're vertical gardens several stories high with exteriors covered in real plants.

I don't think it's a widely known fact based on the lack of crowds, but you can go up one (for a fee, of course) for THE best view in town.

There's a rooftop bar that looks right onto Marina Bay Sands!

I think the top of Marina Bay Sands is only available to hotel guests but even if it did open to the public this is a much better vantage point so you can see it.  It is a sight to behold!

After enjoying the view and our $20 drink we then took a stroll and got more great views, this time of the Singapore Flyer.

We even walked through the ground level of Marina Bay Sands.

This building is crazy thin!  It took one minute, maybe not even, to walk from one end to the other.  It looks so big and imposing that I never grasped the fact that the land footprint is surprisingly small.

We were heading in the direction of home when we came across a random carnival.

It gave me brief flashbacks of the North Dakota State Fair, but alas it was missing my favorite parts (farm animals and deep fried foods).  I don't care for rides in my old age, but two of the four of us were very keen to ride some rides.

Twenty years ago I would've been down for such thrill seeking shenanigans, but no more!

Here ends my 36-hour whirlwind trip to Singapore.

My onward flight was at 8:15 a.m. Sunday so I had to get up and ready by 6 to get to the airport.  Far from ideal, but it was my only option to get where I was going on time.  This being a work trip I was fortunate to squeeze any leisure time at all!

Stay tuned for my final destination, arguably the most exotic place this small town girl has ever been!