Perth: A Nice Place To Live

After leaving Taipei in September, I had a master plan to visit one of my school colleagues who has relocated to Perth, Australia to get rich from the city's mining boom. Sadly, just before my visit my friend needed to return home in the US to attend to some personal matters.  With the puzzling doozy of figuring out what to do with a couple of non-refundable one-way tickets, I decided to make the long journey to the Southern Hemisphere that I had been planning all along. 

A public cemetery full of kangaroos!

Australia had been a part of my around-the-world journey three years ago, but I had not included the isolated Western port of Perth in my travels. And perhaps for good reason...it seems to not get many tourists besides Australians and other English-speakers on extended trips away from home. In fact, Perth may be able to lay claim to the title "most isolated city on Earth", as it lies more than 2,000 km from the nearest city of 100,000 people (Adelaide). 

Understandably, Perth is not a huge place. It has a population slightly under 2 million and a central district that can be walked easily in a couple hours. In many ways, it resembles an American city with sprawling suburbs. But Perth also seems very livable – it is blessed with a Mediterranean climate and many nice housing districts. Public transport is good and wine country is not far away. The city is clean, and I always enjoy seeing blue skies now that I live in Korea, where truly blue skies are rare.

Swan Valley wine tour was fun

In addition, Perth is remarkably diverse for a city of its size. Perth has attracted immigrants of all colors due to its booming economy. I was surprised by the number of Asians living there, especially Koreans! After residing in Korea for a year now I pick up quickly when I hear others speaking the Korean language...and I heard a lot of it in Perth! I also saw a lot of Korean restaurants (the food is far more expensive in Perth) and I was wondering, "What are all these Koreans doing here?" After my 5-day visit this is still a mystery.

Not having my friend to hang out with, I checked into a hostel, hoping to meet interesting people. Unfortunately, though the hostel I chose was very clean it was not conducive for meeting people, so I spent much of my visit to Perth alone. It wasn't quite what I wanted, though Perth was very easy to navigate solo.

 

My trip was relaxing, though I can't say it was terribly interesting. The weather was quite rainy and all the locals were apologizing for my terrible luck, as the weather is supposed to be quite pleasant during Perth's September. I walked around quite a bit my first day and headed to the Swan Valley vineyards my second. I got delightfully drunk at the vineyards and recalled how I missed the wine scene from my business school days at the University of Virginia. On my third day I visited the beach, but the rain placed a damper on my visit.

My most exciting day was clearly Saturday, my 4th day in Perth, when I headed to the port suburb of Fremantle. Unbeknownst to me, the local Aussie rules football club, the Fremantle Dockers, was in the semi-final of the national championship, and the town was mad for the team. After a fun tour of the Little Creatures Brewery, I made an Australian friend who showed me a great pub to watch the big match. Thankfully, my new friend was able to explain the rules of "footy" to me, and by the end of the night I was a loud "Freo" supporter like all the rest. The team won and the town went berserk! People were singing on the sidewalks, driving around honking horns, dancing and slapping high-fives at anyone who walked along. The Aussie spirit and passion for sports is similar to what I know from American football back home, which the Aussies refer to as "gridiron".

I'm now back in Korea, my semi-permanent foreign home. Returning to the English-speaking world served as relaxing time off for me, though perhaps a little too familiar. As a place to live, Perth is quite livable (and The Economist agrees), but as a place to visit it lacks the excitement and cultural unfamiliarity of much of Asia. I left happy to have seen Perth though knowing that had my friend not been living there, my valuable and limited vacation time would have been better utilized elsewhere.

I (Heart) Taipei

You know those T-shirts that so many places sell with the heart and the name of a place following? I really should have bought one on my latest trip. 

Korean expat crew with the lucky groom

My reason for being in Taipei was a happy one... I was celebrating the marriage of one of my Samsung coworkers and his lovely bride. After several weeks of hard work in the office I was ready for some much needed vacay, and Taipei in September was the perfect place to visit!

Xiaolongbao at the world-famous Din Tai Fung; round one of many

The wedding itself took place at the W Hotel in the eastern part of the city, and was one of the happiest, simplest wedding ceremonies I have been a part of.  It wasn't casual ... people were still wearing suits and dresses... but the air was so relaxing that we could have been at a beach. In the evening we enjoyed a sumptuous 12-course meal and a lively after party.

But little did I know that this wedding would represent my whole trip to Taipei... enjoying delicious food and breathing in an extraordinarily relaxed atmosphere in the whole city. Taipei was smaller than I had imagined, not nearly as crowded as my home in Seoul. Basically, Taipei is a much nicer version of mainland China. It is not rich but it is also not poor. The Taiwanese people seem very happy and confident about life. Food is quite good and everything is refreshingly inexpensive. Night markets are alive with activity and the clubs are hopping with activity on weekends. The air is clean and the green mountains shimmer on the city's outskirts.

I checked off the usual tourist boxes in Taipei: a couple memorials (Sun Yat Sen, Chiang Kai Shek), took some photos with the second tallest building in the world (Taipei 101), and observed the Chinese antiquities at the Palace Museum. I also spent an afternoon feeling Zen at a hot spring. But the highlights were clearly the food... such a variety of unique and delicious (and did I mention inexpensive) dishes. Beef noodle, xiao long bao, flavored tofu, hot pot, bubble tea, shaved ice...mmm mmm!! Night markets are full of unexpected treats as well: juices and fried things and meats and seafood and rice.  Such a variety. I dined at the famous Din Tai Fung twice in four days and that was not a mistake. I understand now why the long lines of tourists queue outside.

Hello Kitty Airways!!

Oh, and I must mention that I arrived in Taipei on a Hello Kitty themed plane. If you fly Eva Air from Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, or Los Angeles, you can experience the weird cuteness of this too.  The airline commits very hard to the brand: Hello Kitty check-in areas, Kitty pillows, Kitty dining utensils, Kitty shaped vegetables on the in-flight meal. It is ridiculous and over the top, yet somehow the happy cartoon feels quintessentially Taipei. I fell in love with the people and the vibe of the city during my visit, and I will be back.

Hot, hot summer days in the Middle East

By moving abroad to work with a company that has a vast international presence, I thought I would have significant opportunity for extravagant business travel.  Unfortunately, Samsung has greatly disappointed in that respect. However, I did finally get a chance at a unique travel experience in August while working on a project for Samsung's construction company, Samsung C&T.  We were working on a market entry strategy for one of the company's new businesses and we needed to travel to the Middle East to discuss opportunities with other companies.

The Samsung business team: me, Steve (from Canada), Fabio (from Italy), and VP Fuad (from UK)

August was probably, however, the worst time to travel to this region.  Daytime highs every day were 38C (100F) and above, and many expats take this time of year to escape on their summer holidays.  Additionally, Ramadan 2013 ended early in August and many of the locals take long holidays in the feast days following.  So scheduling business meetings was very difficult!  I lost track of the number of people I contacted who asked, "Could you come back in September?"

Project deadlines being what they were, we departed nonetheless for Dubai on August 11th.  I had visited Dubai on my around-the-world adventure in 2010, calling it "bizarre" and observing all the excesses of the Emiratis and the rigid class distinctions.  In the wake of the financial crisis, the place had felt like "a college frat party that just emptied its last keg of beer," but in 2013 the construction cranes seem to be moving again and the place again has a feeling of something being built where nothing should be.

My Samsung team of four people spent a week in the Emirates, pulling on our suits to exchange business cards and talk shop with construction companies in the country.  One big advantage that the Gulf region has is very robust air conditioning. It was ironic that I felt much more comfortable in a suit in the UAE than I would have in Seoul during the summer, where air conditioning is almost non-existent inside the Samsung offices.  At the beginning of just about every meeting we would be offered tea and coffee, and some lowly staff member from India would be dispatched to bring us our beverages.  I think every company in the UAE has a "tea boy" on staff!

However, in some buildings we were greeted with the stench of pungent cologne – I couldn't understand why Emiratis like these awful fragrances.  In one building I was so overwhelmed by the smell that I almost felt like I was suffocating.

There was little time for exploring during the week but after Thursday evening we were able to enjoy our weekend a bit (the Middle East work week is Sunday to Thursday, with holy day on Friday).  We had time to smoke shisha and drive around Dubai.  I also ascended the Burj Khalifa a second time (a project partly managed by Samsung C&T) and was similarly unimpressed with its absurd height.  The Burj was clearly built just to be super tall, but doesn't look particularly elegant in my opinion.  Again I saw Mall of the Emirates and introduced my non-American colleagues to the ridiculous portion sizes at the Cheesecake Factory. The nightlife I saw was disappointingly dude-heavy. Dubai felt artificial and expensive for no good reason.

My team also visited Abu Dhabi, which is a short 90 minute drive from Dubai through the vast desert, for a day of business meetings.  It is sleepier but feels considerably less artificial than Dubai.  However there is no reason to visit AD as a tourist.

On Saturday evening, we left Dubai for Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.  About the best thing I can say about Dubai is that it is *way* better than Saudi!!  You cannot do anything in Saudi ... no touching women, no drinking, no nothing. Such a boring place.  You cannot even smoke shisha in Riyadh.  Our only nightly activity was bowling at the Intercontinental Hotel.  Riyadh is a place that feels ready for a construction boom, but it's not clear whether they have the competency to organize it.  For instance, the Samsung office sits in the 2nd-tallest building in the city, standing alone in the desert on the north end of the city. Why put a building there?  Most of the expats in Saudi live in compounds, which have relaxed rules towards womens' dress and the like, but those must feel like prisons to them.

Thankfully after two days I escaped to Qatar, which feels like "Saudi lite" – more conservative than UAE but you can still drink in hotels and women do not face the same restrictions as in Saudi.  Doha was nice but quiet and it feels like the whole city is under construction.  Clearly the place is very wealthy, and a ton of money is being put towards projects to impress the global citizens who descend on the country for the 2022 World Cup (though it would be sheer madness to play during the summer months). You can only drink at hotels, but we did happen to have a nice lounge next to where we were staying at the Crowne Plaza.  But Doha is quiet and the expats seemed pretty bored there too.  I prefer Korea much more!

Samsung vs. Apple, in Riyadh

Upon returning to my expat home in Korea, I did miss my daily hummus at the breakfast buffet and the easy ability to converse in English in places like Dubai and Doha.  I also missed good air conditioning.  However, the Middle East is not the place for me – too hot and flat and sandy and expensive.  I'm hoping business travel takes me to other parts of the world!

Kyoto Springtime

Two weekends ago at the beginning of April, I found myself in Kyoto, Japan.  It is an absolutely marvelous place to be in the springtime.

The flight from Seoul was delightfully short -- only an hour and a half until we landed in Osaka.  Kyoto is rather far from Kansai Airport, about 60 miles (100 km), but with Japan's rapid trains getting into the city is no problem at all.  I was traveling with my Samsung colleague Dave and my friend Eddie from back in the USA, who works now in Vietnam and made the long flight up from Ho Chi Minh City to see the famous Kyoto cherry blossoms!  The blossoms are prominent in many parts of Japan during the early spring, I have read, and they are commonly found in Korea as well, but I had heard that they were legendary in Kyoto, which is quite beautiful in its own right.

My first surprising impression of Kyoto, actually, was how hard we had to work to find the beauty of the city.  Though dotted with all sorts of old temples, shrines, and palaces, upon arriving at Kyoto Station one only sees the bland, concrete, modern architecture that has replaced much of the ancient stuff in the center city.  I had expected something more like Florence, Italy -- a preserved masterpiece where one wanders from plaza to plaza and tries to avoid being consumed by too much of the place too quickly.

But if you arm yourself with a map and board one of Kyoto's convenient buses, you can reach almost any site worth seeing quite easily.  Our first stop on a warm Friday was Ginkakuji Temple.  The walk from the bus stop had all sorts of cherry blossoms hanging over the sidewalk.  I think we missed the well-known Philosopher's Path, instead darting into the temple and breathing in the calm of the large Zen garden inside.  Even full of tourists, I felt like I could walk at ease around the grounds and loved breathing in the clean Japan air (Korea, you need to fix the haze that hangs over Seoul).  Riding the Kyoto bus was peaceful too, with a driver who seemed to have perfected the art of driving his vehicle smoothly.

We took a long ride across town towards Kinkakuji Temple but missed out once the sun went down.  No worries, there was more to see.  We migrated to the Nijo Castle, originally the shogun's residence in Kyoto.  At nighttime the cherry blossoms inside were lit up inside the large grounds.  Spectacular!!!  Unfortunately I didn't know how to make best use of my new DSLR camera to take the finest photos, but the visual memory I have will be one of my best from Kyoto.  We ate a late dinner at a noodle restaurant, then wandered to our capsule hotel for an early bedtime.  The capsule hotel was like a glorified hostel.  Beds were larger than I expected but you were definitely in tight quarters and a semi-enclosed space.  It felt like sleeping on a spaceship!

We woke up early on Saturday because rain was in the forecast.  We stopped at Hirano Shrine on our way back towards Kinkakuji.  Also known as the Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Kinkakuji was short of the picturesque blossoms but equally Zen as our temple visit the day before.  Unfortunately, the forecasted rain arrived on time and umbrellas were out the rest of the day.  We viewed Ninnaji Temple on our way towards Arashiyama, a hilly area in the western part of the city.  We found more blossoms here and the Tenryuji Temple, which contained a splendid bamboo forest.  The Arashiyama area had nice shopping too but the rain had tired us out a bit and we accomplished less sightseeing than one would have hoped.  At night, Eddie introduced us to a Japanese gentleman from Harvard who introduced us to a fine traditional Japanese bar in the posh Gion district, followed by a karaoke session!

On Sunday morning, the rain had mostly stopped and we wandered back through Gion's small streets.  This is what we had pictured Kyoto looking like!!  We moved south and wandered through a large residential district full of temples on our way to the Fushimi Inari Shrine.  How amazing it must be to live around so many wonderful temples!  The shrine is dedicated to Inari, the Japanese fox goddess.  One sees dozens of stone foxes and hundreds of bright orange torii gates inscribed with Japanese stories.  The grounds are so large that one could wander here all day!  But we didn't have such time, sadly.  My weekend in Japan passed far too quickly.

The dangerous part about traveling to Japan is that the more I visit, the more I yearn to return!  Japan is such a harmonious and peaceful country.  It is quite different from any other place I have ever visited and it is wonderful in an inimitable, unique way.  Given how close it lies to the Korean peninsula, I am bound to return again to Japan soon.

Niseko -- The Land of Endless, Powdery Snow

Can't believe that two weeks have gone by already since I visited Niseko, Japan over the Lunar New Year holiday.  Wanted to put together a quick wrapup of my memories for an amazing trip!

The trip was a ski adventure organized with my Samsung colleagues.  We got off for the Lunar New Year holiday, and since all Koreans go home to see their families it wasn't very sensible to stay in the country.  Unfortunately the new moon fell on a Sunday this year so we only got Monday off from work, but thankfully I had a couple vacation days saved up.

Niseko lies on Hokkaido Island, the northernmost of the Japanese archipelago.  As the island lies quite a bit further north than Seoul, about even with the eastern tip of Russia, it has a wintry climate this time of year.  Niseko's location, on the southern part of the island near Sapporo, lies at the perfect confluence of chilly air plus sea humidity, meaning that it gets inundated with a seemingly endless bit of light, powdery snow.  By the time we arrived, the resort had already reported 540" (1371 cm) of snow for the season!!

I've never skied in so much fresh powder, and I actually had difficulty adjusting on the first day.  I was a disaster, falling all over the place.  Thankfully, when you fall in that much snow, you have about zero chance of hurting yourself, but then you have the difficulty of pulling yourself out!!  In fact, on my first fall I nearly lost my right ski in a snowdrift and, once found, I had the extraordinarily difficult task of figuring out how to stand up and put the ski back on in waist-deep powder.  Talk about a challenge!  I did a little backcountry skiing my first day with more advanced people than me and was exhausted (and scared) as I tried to dodge trees and keep my balance.  By the end of the day I was defeated by the mountain.

Down in my spirits, I anted up for an expensive two-hour private lesson the next day.  Given how much this trip was costing me anyway, I didn't want my last two days of skiing ruined by my inability to navigate such unnatural terrain.  The lesson gave me significantly more confidence, and by the third day I was back in the woods.  Such an incredible experience back there.  You're in seemingly virgin ski territory, just you and your ski buddies, just making your own path down the mountain.

This Japanese mountain, mostly uncrowded and massive, totally made Korean skiing look amateur.  We were staying in a town near the Grand Hirafu gondola but the mountain actually has 4 resorts total that you can ski with an all-resort pass.  Besides my trip to Utah last year, this was the only mountain I had done where the bottom lifts only take you to intermediate parts of the mountain, then additional lifts climb you closer and closer to the top.  The very top was almost always foggy and windy and rather difficult due to the extremely low visibility.  There was almost always snow falling, so good goggles and a face mask are essential.  When the mountain occasionally clears up you might get a view of nearby Mount Yotei, an almost perfect volcanic cone.  I'm told it's the second-most photographed object in Japan, after Mount Fuji.  Absolutely breathtaking!

My colleagues were great to hang out with both during skiing and apres, and we dined very well in the Hirafu town.  We ate delicious ramen, barbequed meat skewers at an izakaya, and sukiyaki hot pot.  Yum yum yum!!  Even convenience store seaweed rice rolls were quite tasty.  About the only thing missing was sobe noodles, as you see from Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations episode in Niseko.  We also could have used a hot tub near our cabins, given how sore we were at the end of long ski days!  Though Japan can be notoriously difficult for foreigners to navigate the Hirafu town is full of Australians so all the establishments have learned how to cope with English speakers :)

And there were cool animated figures at Sapporo Airport...I love Japan!!

Though it's only a 2.5 hour flight from Seoul I don't know if I will ever make it back to Hokkaido, but I sure hope I do.  The countryside outside of Sapporo is so empty and so not like the crowded Japan I imagined.  I do hope to make it back one day.