Notes from Brisbane - Amazing thing

"oh no Salma, I think I left my backpack on the Citycat", I told Salma when we were chatting on the bus to West End after visiting the University of Queensland by waterway.
Salma look a bit disappointed (about me, I was talking too much).Then she calmly called the city council, telling them about her friend's situation and asking them for help with hope the backpack was still there on the same Citycat that had just left UQ. She said they can find it unless somebody else pick it up.
I was half worried as I left my new Nexus tablet in the bag and half okay as something inside of me saying "This is Brisbane. Salma looks so calm. It will be okay". We then hung out in West End, having lunch at a Italian restaurant along the main road of West End. I could never forget that big super-delicious dish of mussels with tomato sauce. Just as I finished my lunch, somebody called Salma talking about about a black backpack as I had described before. I then talked to that woman, she finally made sure that the bag was exact as I said: with a yellow-cover tablet (deep inside). She told me to come to her office before 4:30 p.m

OMG. I feel so excited that didn't f*cking care about that rain coming at the moment. Salma took me to a small 'lost items' office in the city, next to the river. The woman was there, warmly welcoming me. She seemed excited to see me, as if she was the one who lost the bag. Quickly finishing a few procedures, she happily gave me back the backpack.

I then told Salma how amazing thing happened: I lost my backpack and got it back in just 2 hours. Yes, I was lucky but ain't Brisbane great?
I love Brisbane!

Notes from Brisbane - Places (3)

QUT - Garden Point campus

I passed by the old Parliament House before reaching QUT main entrance.

I like this outdoor cafeteria in front of the School of design.

Notes from Brisbane - Places (2)

Brisbane Square

the building and the open space of Brisbane Square

Brisbane Square, view including the Treasury and toward Queen St Mall

View from the Brisbane Library to the Treasury

Notes from Brisbane - Places (1)

"There's not much to see in Bris"
"Oh you need no more than 3 days for Brisbane"
...

(view from Kangaroo Point)

I just decided to book and stay as long as possible due to my schedule before leaving Australia. I was so lucky to have 2 local Vietnamese and 1 Brissy friends taking me around the small river city. Closer to the equator, Brisbane has a warmer climate than Sydney and probably this explains why life seems to be more relaxing here.

Places:

Australians know how to design river banks. Both Melbourne and Brisbane have nice planned river banks, coincidentally called "Southbank", with chains of public buildings. While Melbourne's Southbank seems more exciting with lots of large commercial space, contemporary designed bridges, Brisbane's is still very enjoyable to me with the chain of gallery, museum, performing center.

With my couzinz in Melbourne

my cousin posing in a street of Reservoir, Victoria

We wandered around the neighborhood in hope of finding a nice park but the green space in Google map turned out to be just a 'reserve' land. So boring!

A street in one of Reservoir neighborhoods.

The typology is stable: all are 1-storey detached houses with similar front garden and almost-the-same architectural style. I paid attention to the gardening work of each houses which reveal partially about lifestyles of the owners.

me and the guyz in a graffiti allley in Melbourne CBD. This alley is perpendicular to Bourke St.

Be careful, tourists ;-)

An interesting television program named "Camera Giau Kin" (Hidden camera) shows some examples of how foreign (in fact also national) tourists may be cheated by taxi drivers or "xe ôm" (rental motobiker) in Ha Noi, Vietnam.

You might not understand Vietnamese, but watching this video you can still understand the situations with their clear graphic illustration. The 'foreigners' in the video in fact are very fluent at Vietnamese but they pretend as new comers. All of the random taxi drivers and 'xe ôm' riders in this video took them around further than the actually necessary distance.

At the end of the video, they suggest tourists using Xich Lô (Cyclo) for affordable rates and convenience while sightseeing the city. In reality, I don't trust either. There are always good and bad drivers in every type of vehicles. So tourists should always need to watch out.

C'mon, it's not that bad. We do 'watch out' everytime we travel, rite?

from my friend's album - a trip to the Middle of Vietnam

She was mainly to Da Nang, the travelling around the middle of my country

oops, delicious!

And this was how she marked her "been there done that"

A short trip to the beach

Martin sms, saying he wanted to to go a beach near Saigon. And I suggested Vung Tau.
My plan was to take the hydro-foil fast ferry, which would take about 1 hour 45 minutes, at early morning then we'd have sometime for landscape and the finally the beach.

I chose Nghinh Phong peak, the southern end of Vung Tau city dividing its beach into two parts. The West coast is Bai Truoc ( Front beach) and the East coast is Bai Sau (Behind beach). I thought it was a right place to visit for my personal interest of standing high enjoying large view and for Martin's first time there. Moreover, it was just on our way from the port to Bai Sau.

Of course, to have the best view, we climbed to the top of the mountain where stood a statue of Jesus. It really took our breathe,  and our early breakfast, away. In fact, we had to stop 3 or 4 times in the middle of the route but finally we did it, pheewwww.

 This woman was collecting dried "hoa sứ" for tea making.

 One of the two cannons on the sides of Jesus statue, on the top of the mountain.

Behind Martin was the east-side cityscape, including Bai Sau.

Jesus, welcoming all people didn't matter they were Christian or not

 So steep.

 

 The port at Vung Tau.

Leaving Nghinh Phong peak, both I and Martin ran out of energy and decided to have lunch soon and "Lẩu cá đuối" (Demon fish hot pot) was undoubtedly a good choice. Martin was uncomfortable with the heat of the air and the heat from the meal. We sweated like in steambath. Diving in the peaceful salty water after lunch just made things perfect!

That night, we sat at Coffee Bean in Nguyen Du street, opposite to Duc Ba Cathedral. Such a view for a coffee shop. So sorry Rock was sick and unable to join the Vung Tau trip, but he recovered quickly and got fine enough to wander around the city center that night, gossiping about cars, girls..etc. It would have been much better if these two guys had more time in Saigon, and in Vietnam so that they could see and enjoy more. However, they made a tour from Ha Noi, Hoi An, Hue, to Saigon. That was more than my travel experience in my own homeworld.

 

Martin and Rock.

Some travelling experience I gained for myself:

- I planned everything by searching on the Internet.
- Diadiem.com has a good map of Vung Tau and Ho Chi Minh city.

- It's better buying hydro-foil tickets, especially round-trip ticket, soon if the plan is on weekend.

A lot of people will travel from Saigon in Saturday morning and from Vung in Sunday afternoon.

- Buying the ticket at Ben Bach Dang: 10 Ton Duc Thang Str, District 1. 

There are several companies with slightly different schedule but one same price.

(I just remembered two names: Vina Express and Greenlines)

- 1-way: 200.000 VND

round-trip: 400.000 VND

- Round-trip ticket is better.

- Some mistakes with tickets usually happen on the come-back trip. Several tickets have the same number. But if you have a ticket, they won't kick you out.

- Taxi is the best vehicle.

Just use Vinasun or Mai Linh. I don't trust the others. 

Ask them to turn on the meter.

- "Bai Sau" is better than "Bai Truoc", everybody says so.

- Looking for a restaurant? Be careful with Hoang Hoa Tham street.

( I had one experience there with my friends. We paid surprisingly high price for an ordinary dinnder. People on a travelling website say some taxi drivers may take visitors there and get money from the restaurant for that)

- Demon fish hot pot: 40 Truong Cong Dinh Str.

I visited there twice and really satisfied. The restaurant is small, no air conditioner. But it's the best for the hot pot.

- Get back to the port at least 15 minutes before the departure.

China-SuZhou

At SuZhou, the first place we visited was a famous silk factory for SuZhou is world-famous for not its landscape but also its unique silk. They showed us a sample manufacturing chain of silk to understand how Suzhou silk are made, then they lead us to a showroom. Their silk really made a great enough impression for travellers to spend big money here. Yes, big money. The price of a world-class product!

Here is a performance. 4 women was stretching the silk out to create thin and large layers. Finally, they'd combine these layers to create a product, for example a drag or anything.



SuZhou is called " The Venice of Asia". I was extremely excited to be on a boat around the channels in an ancient area of SuZhou.


The ancient area is compared to Hoi An in Vietnam. But we all must say that their "ancient streets" are more beautiful, better invested and developed, and of course more attractive. Beside souvenir shops, they have bars and cafes, restaurant and small tea shop with traditional Chinese live music performance.




When we got back to our hotel. We decided to walk out more the find a place to sit, eat, drink and talk - like we often do in our beloved country. At this point of culture, Chinese people are no different from Vietnamese. They have a lot of small food-vendor and small food-shops late at night. I remember the temperature that night was lower than 10 celsius. We all grouped tightly in a very small red tent and enjoyed the night very well til after midnight.

And this is HangZhou

This is HangZhou, the second destination of our trip. I was impressed not by this city buildings but its greenery system. The best place of this city is probably the West Lake.

(unfinished, to be continued)


By redgoat3003


By redgoat3003
as an urban designer, I took some notice of the details in the streets. They reminded me somehow of our new urban area Phu My Hung, developed by Taiwanese. I guess there is a relationship here. lol.



By redgoat3003

We took a short trip on West Lake to enjoy sightseeing the beauty of HangZhou main landscape.


By redgoat3003
An arcade that reminded me of Saigon Center building in Ho Chi Minh city.


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By redgoat3003
Night street. We realized that in both HangZhou and ShangHai, nightstreets are always crowded. Stores use vibrant colors, mostly red. Vendors keep saying and saying, showing what they get trying luring people to buy some. We even got stuck with some disturbiing "marketers" who kept chasing and persuading us to try their "service" ( they sell " lady, massage, beautiful girls....")


By redgoat3003

Chinese people are better at law-obeying in the stretets than Vietnamese, as most people in higher-developed countries. However, we could still find some people risked their life in large streets breaking the rule, and that was quite interesting to us. I know if the streets in my city( and my country also, are wide enough with as many cars enough, our citizens will also behavior better in traffic.

China (Shanghai)

too busy to write something interesting here

Shanghai is the first city of China that I visited. Love that fabulous megacity!

Til now, I've visited 3 of the commercial streets/areas as the inspiration for my graduation thesis. They are Orchard road of Singapore, Siam Square of Bangkok and Nanjing road of Shanghai. Morever, I also visited a huge market place in Shanghai with huge department stores and hundreds of shops that sell a heaven and hell of copied/fake brand fashion( I can't remember the Chinese name!)

The other 2 cities are Hangzhou and Suzhou.
Here are some photos from Shanghai:

First are some views from ShangHai Television Tower


I like this photo: from the East Side of the river ( PuDong - newer urban area) looking to the West Side - with old classic building.






It's a pride to see one of the tallest high-rise buildings of the world in real life. I always love those skycrappers since my first day of university. Though I do not study to design them, I want to design a whole area for them, and how they interact with each other.


a huge street with 4 mega-store at its corners. They sell fake brand fashion clothes and electric product. We call this huge "copy street"


A food street near the "copy street".


delicious grilled octopus !


This scene would gratify people those who love skyscrappers and urban vistas.


People love shopping. I love shopping streets.And this is the fabulous NanJing road of Shanghai.