So, here we go - the first of hopefully many email updates from afar. If you only want the quick version read the first paragraph. For more detail keep reading.
Quick update: Gigi and I left Brisbane 21 Feb for Melbourne to spend three days with my sister and welcome my new nephew Lachlan into the family. 24 Feb we flew to Bangkok for 6 days of shopping and eating before arriving in Naples on 2 March. We’ve gone from 35 degrees to 11 but it doesn’t seem that bad. We are staying with Gi’s mother and sister. The jet lag is almost passed, our bags unpacked and the pizzas as good as ever. This week will see Gi assessing work options while we consider whether to stay in Naples or move north. Watch this space!
Details: so, we checked in at Brisbane airport for the domestic flight to Melbourne without any problems. The amount of luggage and associated weight was to be my biggest stress factor over the coming week or so. Gi has packed twice as many clothes as me…definitely the Italian part of him…and has a bag full of computer bits and pieces plus the two didgeridoos. It’s a bit like travelling with a group of musicians and their entourage. Every time I get off a plane I’m looking for the trolley, fully aware that there is no way in hell that we can manage all of our luggage and the hand luggage. Gigi has three times the official hand luggage allowance but somehow manages to look like he isn’t carrying 25 kg of weight on his back and shoulder. The nonchalance seems to waiver as the exhaustion of a longer trip sets in though!
But I digress, back to Melbourne. My sister Kim had her baby a week earlier so we were greeted by little Lachlan who was just as we like babies to be … quietly watching the world with interest, feeding or sleeping. He still has that smudged look that new born babies have, you know, that look like they’ve been squeezed out and haven’t quite regained their composure. He has a little jaundice but looks very much like his older brother Joshua (something to do with coming from the same gene pool one suspects) who was learning to hold Lachlan and not poke out his younger brother’s eyes. The house was full with my mum and dad in residency as official helpers. Daddy Noel is lovely to watch with his boys and Kim was slowing recovering from the birth. Melbourne itself was a site unseen this time except for a brief meander down Acland Street at St Kilda.
Mum and Dad took us out to the Melbourne airport late on the 23rd Feb for our 1am flight on the24th. It seemed like a good idea at the time when I was booking it but all I wanted to do was go to bed, not deal with the stress of checking in for an international flight with my musician look-a-like Gigi and all of his excess baggage. We managed to get checked in with a warning that we may not be so lucky in Bangkok. After teary farewells to my parents we got through the passport control doors only to be pulled up by the security guy who wanted to weigh my trolley bag..which clocked in at 17 kg! He sent me back to the check in counter where I somehow smiled sweetly enough to get the damn thing sent as checked in luggage and a waiver on what now amounted to 17 kgs of excess baggage.
The flight was okay, with us arriving in Bangkok at 6am local time. We had booked into the Baiyoke Sky Hotel and arrived there soon after to check in early to our 4 ½ star room. The Baiyoke Sky is now the tallest building in Bangkok, with an observatory and revolving restaurant on the 87th or so floor. Not that the view of Bangkok from that height is very inspiring as the city is totally flat with no mountain or sea views. The whole establishment seems to have the strangest architectural configurations. We were upgraded to a suite but still I wouldn’t recommend you stay there. The rooms were large but badly designed and oddly furnished. The stale smell of smoke was something we became accustomed to but to our surprise there was smoking throughout with sandy ashtrays next to all of the elevators entrances. We did enjoy a massage and manicure at the hotels spa centre but I decided not to venture into the pool.
However the rest of Bangkok was, as always (forgiving the humidity, traffic, pollution and ten million residents), a delight. We spent the 6 days shopping, rediscovering favourite spots, exclaiming at the changes that had occurred since our last visit 5 years earlier, eating the widest variety of Thai street food as possible and spending time with friends. I particularly enjoyed catching up with two old school friends from my AFS exchange time some 18 years ago. My best Thai friend Doeng is now married to a Japanese girl and has two daughters Hannah, 2, and Kyoka, 8 months. He has the most delightful family and was very much a proud father when we visited their home. Doeng treated us to a couple of typical Thai meals; one was at a seafood open-air restaurant by the Mekhong River. We also enjoyed seeing the late night flower market where two-dozen fresh roses cost about $2. Warn, a girlfriend from school, is still asking me to hook her up with a foreign man so she can live overseas. Her criterion has changed little in the 18 years I’ve know her – tall, handsome, with dark hair. One day I’ll surprise her and have someone suitable in mind.
The other highlight of our Bangkok bash was the weekend markets at Chatuchak. They say if you can’t find it at Chatuchak you can’t find it in Bangkok. It’s a lively place and certainly very popular with both locals and tourists for bargain shopping. It doesn’t matter if you are looking for clothes, home wares, Thai souvenirs or illegally imported reptiles it’s available at the JJ markets. Gigi went back on Sunday to acquire two new tattoos. And in accordance with his Italian desire for company I spent most of the day sitting in the tattoo booth, sweating and waiting (im)patiently while the whole world passed by openly staring at the two foreigners – one with his armed under the tattoo needle and the other looking hot, bored and generally bothered. Needless to say the next day was ‘whatever Jenny wants day’!
Bangkok quickly came to an end. Doeng works as a steward for Thai Airways and was scheduled to fly to London at about the same time that we were flying to Munich. I’d arranged for him to accompany us to the airport to ‘help’ us check in, fully aware that Gigi had shopped the pants off me and only increased the weight of our luggage. (In an attempt to minimise mine, I’d decided to discard the sneakers I’d taken as I’d bought new Converse in Bangkok…only to have the hotel porter spy them in the rubbish bin when he came to collect our bags for checkout and promptly sit down on the bed, remove his shoes, try them on, exclaim at how good they were and take them off for himself!) With four pieces of luggage plus the didgeridoos I think we had well over 90 kg between us. Doeng was standing with us in the queue looking quite resplendent in his Thai Airways uniform. As soon as the check in staff spotted him we were whisked into the business class queue (but not upgraded!) and checked in without a word about the luggage restrictions. In true Thai style Doeng asked a number of inane questions like ‘Is the flight full?’ and ‘What sort of aircraft is it?’ while the luggage handlers struggled to lift Gigi’s backpack bypassing the scales. Thank goodness for old friends!
The Lufthansa flight to Munich was somewhat painful. Somehow we ended up in the children friendly zone with 2 squirming babies in front and some 6 or so older children close by. The seating is much smaller than on Thai and I swear as well as being too wide across the derrière I’m just too tall. Legs hanging over into the aisle are fair game for every fool that wanders down to the toilets in the dark, not to mention the food and drink trolley. It was a long, uncomfortable flight followed by a long, slow transit wait at the Munich airport which was only made slightly better by the availability of the free tea and coffee as we watched the sun come up over the patches of snow around the airport.
We finally arrived in Naples at about 11am, collected all of our luggage with a sigh of relief and exited passed the relaxed customs officials to be greeted by a shriek and tears from Gigi’s mother Rosaria. We crammed everything and ourselves into her little car and headed to her apartment at Casalnuovo. His sister Irene, who is now 23, lives with her mother and the four of us are sharing a space that would normally house only one person in Australia. We are however safe, warm, comfortable and well fed. Gigi’s mother has accepted his vegan-ism with barely a ruffle. I’ve already had the pleasure of two true Neapolitan pizzas, fresh mozzarella and prosciutto, pasta with lentils, fresh artichoke, local salami and bread, and last night we dined at a seafood restaurant. And we’ve just gotten off the plane.
We are still waiting for any of the four packages to arrive from Australia. I’m trying not to worry about them, just like I’m not thinking about the missing bank statements and ATM card I ordered before I left Australia. The local post seems to be a mystery but I’m told we’ll be approaching the post office to make them aware of our arrival just in case something is sitting in the back room as ‘undeliverable’.
Gigi and I drove to the other side of Naples today to visit the Vulcano Solfatara. It’s a natural volcanic area that is basically a crater that looks a bit like you would imagine the moon’s surface to look like. Except there are patches of boiling mud, sulphuric gases and vapour escaping from the ground and evidence of the Romans’ use of the area historically for sauna and therapeutic purposes. Gigi was very excited to visit the Solfatara as he hasn’t been since he was a child. We later drove into the historical centre of Naples for a ‘real’ pizza and a Sunday afternoon stroll around the quiet piazzas as a light rain started to fall.
So, the jet lag is okay. My Thai language is pretty good considering I haven’t used it at all for 5 years. My Italian is not as crappy as I’d expected but I do have a lot of work to do on the verbs. And I’ve started writing already…six months ahead of my deadline. This week we’ll be doing official stuff like sorting out my ‘permission to reside’, checking out the campervan options for when my parents come to visit in August and assessing Gigi’s employment opportunities. We are planning a visit north to see Gi’s aunt who lives near Udine within the next ten days or so as well. Gigi is torn between wanting to stay in Naples close to family and the city he has love/hate relationship with and moving north where things are move civilised but not as ‘earthy’ as they are in Naples. It’s not as cold as I’d expected…the snow around the Munich airport was just quietly rather disconcerting but Naples just seems to be a bit windy with odd rainy days. I can’t quite believe that we are here. Rather I can’t believe that we managed to rent the house, sell the car, pack up our lives and make it to the plane on time. But here we are, the start of all things new, in a city that sits under a volcano and is older than I can imagine.
Just hope to see some of you here – it’s worth the effort, if only for the pizza alone!
Quick update: Gigi and I left Brisbane 21 Feb for Melbourne to spend three days with my sister and welcome my new nephew Lachlan into the family. 24 Feb we flew to Bangkok for 6 days of shopping and eating before arriving in Naples on 2 March. We’ve gone from 35 degrees to 11 but it doesn’t seem that bad. We are staying with Gi’s mother and sister. The jet lag is almost passed, our bags unpacked and the pizzas as good as ever. This week will see Gi assessing work options while we consider whether to stay in Naples or move north. Watch this space!
Details: so, we checked in at Brisbane airport for the domestic flight to Melbourne without any problems. The amount of luggage and associated weight was to be my biggest stress factor over the coming week or so. Gi has packed twice as many clothes as me…definitely the Italian part of him…and has a bag full of computer bits and pieces plus the two didgeridoos. It’s a bit like travelling with a group of musicians and their entourage. Every time I get off a plane I’m looking for the trolley, fully aware that there is no way in hell that we can manage all of our luggage and the hand luggage. Gigi has three times the official hand luggage allowance but somehow manages to look like he isn’t carrying 25 kg of weight on his back and shoulder. The nonchalance seems to waiver as the exhaustion of a longer trip sets in though!
But I digress, back to Melbourne. My sister Kim had her baby a week earlier so we were greeted by little Lachlan who was just as we like babies to be … quietly watching the world with interest, feeding or sleeping. He still has that smudged look that new born babies have, you know, that look like they’ve been squeezed out and haven’t quite regained their composure. He has a little jaundice but looks very much like his older brother Joshua (something to do with coming from the same gene pool one suspects) who was learning to hold Lachlan and not poke out his younger brother’s eyes. The house was full with my mum and dad in residency as official helpers. Daddy Noel is lovely to watch with his boys and Kim was slowing recovering from the birth. Melbourne itself was a site unseen this time except for a brief meander down Acland Street at St Kilda.
Mum and Dad took us out to the Melbourne airport late on the 23rd Feb for our 1am flight on the24th. It seemed like a good idea at the time when I was booking it but all I wanted to do was go to bed, not deal with the stress of checking in for an international flight with my musician look-a-like Gigi and all of his excess baggage. We managed to get checked in with a warning that we may not be so lucky in Bangkok. After teary farewells to my parents we got through the passport control doors only to be pulled up by the security guy who wanted to weigh my trolley bag..which clocked in at 17 kg! He sent me back to the check in counter where I somehow smiled sweetly enough to get the damn thing sent as checked in luggage and a waiver on what now amounted to 17 kgs of excess baggage.
The flight was okay, with us arriving in Bangkok at 6am local time. We had booked into the Baiyoke Sky Hotel and arrived there soon after to check in early to our 4 ½ star room. The Baiyoke Sky is now the tallest building in Bangkok, with an observatory and revolving restaurant on the 87th or so floor. Not that the view of Bangkok from that height is very inspiring as the city is totally flat with no mountain or sea views. The whole establishment seems to have the strangest architectural configurations. We were upgraded to a suite but still I wouldn’t recommend you stay there. The rooms were large but badly designed and oddly furnished. The stale smell of smoke was something we became accustomed to but to our surprise there was smoking throughout with sandy ashtrays next to all of the elevators entrances. We did enjoy a massage and manicure at the hotels spa centre but I decided not to venture into the pool.
However the rest of Bangkok was, as always (forgiving the humidity, traffic, pollution and ten million residents), a delight. We spent the 6 days shopping, rediscovering favourite spots, exclaiming at the changes that had occurred since our last visit 5 years earlier, eating the widest variety of Thai street food as possible and spending time with friends. I particularly enjoyed catching up with two old school friends from my AFS exchange time some 18 years ago. My best Thai friend Doeng is now married to a Japanese girl and has two daughters Hannah, 2, and Kyoka, 8 months. He has the most delightful family and was very much a proud father when we visited their home. Doeng treated us to a couple of typical Thai meals; one was at a seafood open-air restaurant by the Mekhong River. We also enjoyed seeing the late night flower market where two-dozen fresh roses cost about $2. Warn, a girlfriend from school, is still asking me to hook her up with a foreign man so she can live overseas. Her criterion has changed little in the 18 years I’ve know her – tall, handsome, with dark hair. One day I’ll surprise her and have someone suitable in mind.
The other highlight of our Bangkok bash was the weekend markets at Chatuchak. They say if you can’t find it at Chatuchak you can’t find it in Bangkok. It’s a lively place and certainly very popular with both locals and tourists for bargain shopping. It doesn’t matter if you are looking for clothes, home wares, Thai souvenirs or illegally imported reptiles it’s available at the JJ markets. Gigi went back on Sunday to acquire two new tattoos. And in accordance with his Italian desire for company I spent most of the day sitting in the tattoo booth, sweating and waiting (im)patiently while the whole world passed by openly staring at the two foreigners – one with his armed under the tattoo needle and the other looking hot, bored and generally bothered. Needless to say the next day was ‘whatever Jenny wants day’!
Bangkok quickly came to an end. Doeng works as a steward for Thai Airways and was scheduled to fly to London at about the same time that we were flying to Munich. I’d arranged for him to accompany us to the airport to ‘help’ us check in, fully aware that Gigi had shopped the pants off me and only increased the weight of our luggage. (In an attempt to minimise mine, I’d decided to discard the sneakers I’d taken as I’d bought new Converse in Bangkok…only to have the hotel porter spy them in the rubbish bin when he came to collect our bags for checkout and promptly sit down on the bed, remove his shoes, try them on, exclaim at how good they were and take them off for himself!) With four pieces of luggage plus the didgeridoos I think we had well over 90 kg between us. Doeng was standing with us in the queue looking quite resplendent in his Thai Airways uniform. As soon as the check in staff spotted him we were whisked into the business class queue (but not upgraded!) and checked in without a word about the luggage restrictions. In true Thai style Doeng asked a number of inane questions like ‘Is the flight full?’ and ‘What sort of aircraft is it?’ while the luggage handlers struggled to lift Gigi’s backpack bypassing the scales. Thank goodness for old friends!
The Lufthansa flight to Munich was somewhat painful. Somehow we ended up in the children friendly zone with 2 squirming babies in front and some 6 or so older children close by. The seating is much smaller than on Thai and I swear as well as being too wide across the derrière I’m just too tall. Legs hanging over into the aisle are fair game for every fool that wanders down to the toilets in the dark, not to mention the food and drink trolley. It was a long, uncomfortable flight followed by a long, slow transit wait at the Munich airport which was only made slightly better by the availability of the free tea and coffee as we watched the sun come up over the patches of snow around the airport.
We finally arrived in Naples at about 11am, collected all of our luggage with a sigh of relief and exited passed the relaxed customs officials to be greeted by a shriek and tears from Gigi’s mother Rosaria. We crammed everything and ourselves into her little car and headed to her apartment at Casalnuovo. His sister Irene, who is now 23, lives with her mother and the four of us are sharing a space that would normally house only one person in Australia. We are however safe, warm, comfortable and well fed. Gigi’s mother has accepted his vegan-ism with barely a ruffle. I’ve already had the pleasure of two true Neapolitan pizzas, fresh mozzarella and prosciutto, pasta with lentils, fresh artichoke, local salami and bread, and last night we dined at a seafood restaurant. And we’ve just gotten off the plane.
We are still waiting for any of the four packages to arrive from Australia. I’m trying not to worry about them, just like I’m not thinking about the missing bank statements and ATM card I ordered before I left Australia. The local post seems to be a mystery but I’m told we’ll be approaching the post office to make them aware of our arrival just in case something is sitting in the back room as ‘undeliverable’.
Gigi and I drove to the other side of Naples today to visit the Vulcano Solfatara. It’s a natural volcanic area that is basically a crater that looks a bit like you would imagine the moon’s surface to look like. Except there are patches of boiling mud, sulphuric gases and vapour escaping from the ground and evidence of the Romans’ use of the area historically for sauna and therapeutic purposes. Gigi was very excited to visit the Solfatara as he hasn’t been since he was a child. We later drove into the historical centre of Naples for a ‘real’ pizza and a Sunday afternoon stroll around the quiet piazzas as a light rain started to fall.
So, the jet lag is okay. My Thai language is pretty good considering I haven’t used it at all for 5 years. My Italian is not as crappy as I’d expected but I do have a lot of work to do on the verbs. And I’ve started writing already…six months ahead of my deadline. This week we’ll be doing official stuff like sorting out my ‘permission to reside’, checking out the campervan options for when my parents come to visit in August and assessing Gigi’s employment opportunities. We are planning a visit north to see Gi’s aunt who lives near Udine within the next ten days or so as well. Gigi is torn between wanting to stay in Naples close to family and the city he has love/hate relationship with and moving north where things are move civilised but not as ‘earthy’ as they are in Naples. It’s not as cold as I’d expected…the snow around the Munich airport was just quietly rather disconcerting but Naples just seems to be a bit windy with odd rainy days. I can’t quite believe that we are here. Rather I can’t believe that we managed to rent the house, sell the car, pack up our lives and make it to the plane on time. But here we are, the start of all things new, in a city that sits under a volcano and is older than I can imagine.
Just hope to see some of you here – it’s worth the effort, if only for the pizza alone!
No comments:
Post a Comment