Sonux Blog

Warning: Not yet complete. I am re-importing the stuff previously published on my now defunct Lotus-Notes-Site.

It’s not Lotus Notes this time…it’s just a “normal” WordPress blog like thousand others on the net. It’s long time to say good-bye to Notes and I’m trying options…

My good old server at Strato died a hardware defect after years of service. A welcome opportunity to switch to a way of less care-intensive a web presence. Other events take up more and more of my time, which I no longer want to spend on server maintenance.

If you liked my Asia reports: Thanks for your interest! I will try to get them online again in a static version. The ones you know were in a Notes database, which will not come alive again. But the content is not lost. Give me time.

Seeing today’s weather I was on the brink of just staying at the hotel. Luckily a shopping center with Starbucks, Coffee Bean, and a lot of restaurants is attached But then I thought…maybe rain is a chance for some great shots and set out to the Bund to catch some tourists. It worked out. And pretty quickly. The Plum Rain is not heavy, but so fine that it blows everywhere. An umbrella is fairly useless. There is just 6 minutes between the first and the last photos shown here. Add 10 minutes on either side to get from a subway to the Bund and back and you have a good estimate of my time spent outside today Read more…

Surprising or not…Nina and I knew quite different parts of and views on Shanghai. So I got to know some areas I had not paid attention to before. Read more…

Today, eventually, was my first day at the Expo. My plan was to start in the late morning on the PuXi side, which supposingly was less crowded, and move over to the PuDong side only in the late afternoon, hoping that in the evening pavillion queues get shorter. Basically, I followed the area letters in reverse order, starting with E and planning to move all the way to A. The pavillions with the longest queues are all in A – Asia, which I would reach in the evening only. Than plan was good and I would recommend it again. I only spent a bit too much time in E and D, the PuXi side. Next time I switch over earlier. Read more…

While I’ve never been much into shopping I have so much time that I can afford also checking out changes along the major tourist shopping routes, NanJing Lu and HuaiHai Lu. Only on my way back I learned from the news monitors on the metro that today there were “only” some 380.000 visitors to the Expo. So it would have been a good day for visiting the Expo, despite (or because?) it being a holiday. Now it’s too late…I will go tomorrow morning. Read more…

Shanghai…finally…I’m back again in this city I’ve lived in for 2,5 years. I’ve longed to see Shanghai again. And now that I’m back I have the odd feeling of not having been away too long. Maybe that’s due to wrong expectations: Friends said Shanghai has changed dramatically. So I had expected not to recognize much any longer. But in my eyes it’s not that bad: While there definitely is a lot of changes these changes are “under the hood” (actually mostly underground ). True…there are certainly some new buildings, but I don’t see them as a radical change: There had been a lot of high rises. And now there are a few more. Read more…

Along Laos’ highways are milestones marking the distance to the next places. The actual place may vary–the next village, or a major place further afar. When trying to make out the distance to Vientiane while on the bus I could never find “Vientiane” on the milestones…until one time we hat slowed down sufficiently for me to read one of the milestones saying “Capital City”. Apparently this is what Laos would like visitors to think of it. Reminds me of old pre-reunification signposts on Eastern Germany’s highways, reading “Berlin, Hauptstadt der DDR”.

We’ve planned two and a half days in Vientiane, fairly many given our generally tight schedule–it’s about as much as we had in Hanoi. We thought it would be worth it. It wasn’t. But there are good coffee bars… Read more…

We knew it before arrival: Phonsavan is not the most beautiful of cities. We couldn’t know that it would be so boring that the first thing we looked for was the fastest way out…and even accepted yet another night bus, simply because the next flight out of this incarnation of boredom was two days later only. In our original itinerary Phonsavan occupied three days: One day of bus travel from Luang Prabang to get there (that still took place on 30-AUG), one day for visiting the Plain of Jars (the main and for most tourists only reason you get here at all, 31-AUG), and one day to travel on to Vientiane. With the night bus option we could save that travel day and made it instead a travel night. Read more…

Tat Kuang Si are a series of beautyful waterfalls 32km away from Luang Prabang. Tours are offered everywhere, and even any Tuk Tuk could bring you there. We had opted for a tour. Probably not so bad a deed as we where transported by van instead of tuk tuk. And it was an hour’s drive. Read more…

Laos – Considered the country with the lowest development level in Southeast Asia. We haven’t been there before. And even before starting to travel we felt like we would go there only once. I write these lines in a western style cafe in Vientiane on our last day, only waiting away the time until our flight to Bangkok starts. And by now we know for sure: It was worth coming here! But once might indeed be enough for quite some time. And now we also know: Good that we started in Luang Prabang, which was by far the most beautiful, most tranquil, most inspiring place in Laos of those three that we have seen. I have select 24 photos just for the first day of walking around the town (calling it “city” would be slightly exaggerated). And there are two more days in Luang Prabang to come… Read more…