Exploring Dublin

We set off early the next morning, after the obligatory "full Irish" - a huge cooked breaky up in the older part of the hotel.

First stop was Trinity College and the Book of Kells, which is housed in the Old Library Building. The exhibition is fascinating - it explains how books written in 800AD were constructed. It was all very manual, detailed work!

It also outlined the symbology behind what is considered to be "one of the most beautifully illustrated manuscripts in the world".

We then checked out the Long Room, the main chamber of the Old Library. Rows of dusty old books lined the two tall levels of the library. We wondered what sort of books this library housed.

Finally, booked out, we jumped on the Dublin city bus tour and did a lap round all the main sights.

While we passed the iconic Guiness Brewery, we decided not to throw down a pint at 11am, even though as Dad would say, it's midday somewhere in the world.

The bus tour finished back down on the River Liffey, just opposite the Temple Bar - a snazzy pub-filled area where we hung out for the rest of the afternoon, listening to Irish bands. The Irish are a fab bunch - cheerful and friendly, and full of life.

Several tow-tapping hours later, we headed back out to the hotel and had a quiet drink in the bar. In keeping with the rest of the style of Clontarf Castle, the Indigo Lounge was stylishly decorated. The huge red chandeliers really set it off.



We had planned to head back into town for dinner, but our colds had taken over and we both felt pretty grim. We attempted to book into the castle's Farenheit Grill, but it was booked solidly until 10pm.

So, we chomped into a room service meal and got to spend even more time in the comfyest (is that a word!) bed on the planet.

A winter weekend in Dublin - a Celtic castle

For Ant's Christmas present, I planned a winter weekend in Dublin - his first time to Ireland.

On a freezing Friday night in February, we two cold-stricken vegemites flew over to the Emerald Isle.

My big surprise was a stay in Clontarf Castle - the pics on the website looked fab, and I couldn't resist staying in an authentic Irish castle! Here are a few of their promotional pics...



After a 10 million Euro makeover, the castle has basically retained the fascade of the original 19th Century version, and built an annex onto the back of.

The foyer has an amazing fire place and is really nicely set up - you feel like you're walking back into history.

We were shown to the room, and were presented the most ginormous bed I've ever seen. I've seen king size beds before, but not one so tall...we practically needed a ladder to climb into it.

The room was also really nicely appointed, with a thick fluffy doona (ok, duvet...), and a particularly nice touch were the red and orange light boxes built into the wall behind the bed.


























The bed was definitely the highlight of the room. It had a layer of that body memory foam over the mattress, and was pretty much the most comfy bed either of us had ever slept in.

The flying cake is finally cut

After its epic journey from Oxford, conveyor belt ride through security, 11-hour rest in a crew storage area, turbulence, and despite the humidity in Singapore, the little pink cake made its way to the table, and our expanding tummies.

We had a fab few days in Singapore. Happy 60th birthday Mum!

Show me the crab (and gimme a satay while you're at it)

My all-time FAVOURITE experience in Singapore is chilli crab. Even if I only have a 3-hour stopover in Singapore, I'll hurtle out to the East Coast Parkway to get a dose of this mouth-watering dish.



Anyway, we had longer than three hours for the evening of Mum's birthday, and attempted to over-dose on chilli crab at the Long Beach Seafood Restaurant. Consumed with a Singha beer or ten, this is truly one of best food experiences on the planet. I said to Mum that I intended to be gutsing out on chilli crab for my 60th birthday.

Other fab restaurant precincts in the ever-expanding Singapore, include the newly refubished Clarke Quay and CHIJMES.

And of course there's always the trusty hawker centres, which we visited another night. Newton's Circus, now known as the Newton Food Centre is one of my favourite haunts - Mum and Dad first bought me here about 20 years ago and to me it's always been synonymous with Singapore.

Here's a pic of Dad working his way through a couple dozen mixed satays and the obligatory Singha.

A day at Sentosa

Another part of Mum's birthday surprise was a pampering session at the fabulous Spa Botanica at the Sentosa Resort. Sentosa is an island just off the Singaporean mainland, easily reachable by bus, cab or car.

I'd been here before and had one of their yummy Singapore Flower Ritual packages. This is how they describe the package:

"Surrender to the peace and tranquility of a private garden pavilion where fragrant flowers sweetly scent the air. The treatment begins with a deep pressure dry massage in an outdoor massage pavilion to soothe weary muscles, after which a special preparation of local herbs and flowers is gently rubbed into the skin. Then enjoy an aroma massage to moisturise the skin and induce further relaxation. A revitalising soak in a sweet smelling frangipani filled tub and an elixir of calming tea completes the cycle of blissful reawakening."

I can say without hesitation that this was one of the best spa treatments I've ever had. I think Mum agreed!

With Mum safely tucked up in her floral wonderland, Dad and I headed up to Fort Siloso - Singapore's only preserved coastal fort.

I didn't really know much about Singapore's history and the Japanese occupation of it during WWII. It was a really interesting (and eerie) site, where you could explore the actual tunnel system below the fort.

We were in one of the old bunkers, when this peacock decided to put on a show.

















Several hours later, we picked up a refreshed Mum, and wandered down to the beach, where a flock of restaurants and bars provide a great view out over what signs claim is the southernmost point of the asian continent.

Lunch down on the beach was great - we found an eatery that served a dizzying range of seafood and noodles, and opted for a noodle dish, with chilli crab being on the agenda for dinner.

The iconic Singapore Sling

One of the absolutely mandatory things to do in Singapore is to have a Singapore Sling at the iconic Long Bar at Raffles.

It seems odd to be sitting at one of the most expensive hotels in the country, scoffing peanuts and dumping the shells on the floor, but, needless to say, with such massive humidity, one has to keep the fluids up...

Here are Mum and I, doing what the locals do...

Taking the cake to Singapore

The day before I flew out to Singapore, Ant and I were mosying around Oxford with my friends from Oz - Al and Ian, and stumbled across the Cake Shop in the market place. They make the most wonderful tailored cakes - mainly fruit cakes with spectacular icing designs. They also do a series of comical characters made from marzipan. Absolutely fabulous!

I decided to get a small cake made up for Mum's birthday - it was really sweet: pink flowers and icing.

The next challenge was to get it through security at Heathrow! I was really worried they'd make me stick to the one piece of hand luggage rule that they're now enforcing pretty much without exception. Jamming the fruit cake into my already heaving backpack was not going to assist its longevity.

Fortunately, a very kind security inspector let me take the cake through - it had to be scanned of course, which was fine. I got some weird looks from fellow travellers as my little pink cake emerged from the xray machine on the conveyor belt.

It made the 11-hour flight safely too, ready for the big day!

MariMari sicks their lawyers onto me

Discussions between myself and MariMari came to a head when they sicked someone purporting to be their lawyer onto me.

This woman told me to stop bullying her client and making threats to defame their company....hardly defamation when I'm merely talking about their complete incompetence in handling my booking and securing my privacy.

She said that Malaysia doesn't have the same sort of data protection laws as other countries, and that any claim I made against them would not stand...curious though that they felt substantially threatened enough to get the lawyers onto me.

If that's their idea of customer service, that's fine. A company that has practices as crude as that won't last in the real world. I'm making it a mission to tell everyone about these muppets.

As for the reunion with my folks, it was fab, and we gutsed solidly on chilli crab and satays as planned.

I'm a baaaad blogger

They say time flies when you're having fun, and it's now been four months between posts. Who's a naughty blogger then!

Anyway...I shall attempt to resume some sense of regularity in my postings. Having just spent a month in good old Oz, I am more obsessed than ever with my home country and all the places I've not yet visited.

And, with London in full spring bloom, it's not so bad here either.

I'm going to loop back to my experience with that nasty little company in Malaysia, then start on the adventures of the last four months...

Snow in London

Once again England had a late winter, and we had a couple of huge dumps of snow that actually settled.

Snow never fails to make me feel like a kid, although the slipping and sliding isn't a good look...much nicer to be indoors watching it snow than having to be out in it....to say nothing of hte havoc it plays on the British rail system.

I confess, the night before this particular dump, they were predicting a snow fall. I woke up at 1am and went and had a peak out the window...sure enough there was a blanket of white. I squealed excitedly to myself and went back to sleep. Ah..the magic of snow!

Beware of your privacy when using online booking systems!

I am in the middle of an infuriating and entirely unsatisfactory experience with Malaysian based booking agency www.MariMari.com. This company is operated by Orient Travel and Tours, which also operates www.holidayasia.com.

My father and I had plotted for months to meet in Singapore over new year, and surprise my mother for her 60th birthday. Mum knew she was going to Singapore, but had no idea I was flying in from the UK to meet them for 4 days. Bring on the chilli crab!

Dad (who's surname is also Surplice) booked his and Mum's accommodation at the Raffles The Plaza hotel through www.marimari.com. In a second and unrelated booking, and with slightly different dates, I booked into the same hotel through MariMari's site.

Marimari confirmed my parent's booking via email, and then in a second email to my parents the same day, mentioned that they were also happy to confirm the booking for a Ms Melanie Surplice. That email had the gall to ask if we were related! Do they ask all the Mr Smith's or Mr Lee's who put bookings through their system, if they are related?? Mum happened to read the email and instantly put two and two together. Thank you MariMari for stuffing up the surprise!

When it came to my attention that MariMari had compromised my privacy by disclosing my name in another unrelated booking, I sent an email to the marimari staff member who I had been dealing with. I was subsequently told that she had resigned. How convenient for MariMari...

The new reservations manager then emailed me to say that they had read all the email correspondence and couldn't understand what the problem was. ARGH!!!

I wrote another long email and pointed out exactly what the problem was...ie, that YOU DON'T DISCLOSE OTHER PEOPLE'S NAMES IN BOOKINGS THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THEM. This is just entirely unacceptable business conduct. In many countries, it is also an illegal breach of privacy. Not so in Malaysia, I'm told. But more about that later.

I wanted MariMari to fix their gross error, and compensate me in some way for stuffing up the surprise.

I also said that if they didn't resolve the situation satisfactorily, that I would, amongst other things, blog about it, contact key travel and IT journalists about it, and notify the various tourism authorities about this unacceptable conduct.

MariMari came back and offered me what they suggested was a "token gesture" for the "inconvenience" they had caused their "valued" customer. They offered my parents and I each a refund of one night's accommodation. Pathetic I say! The surprise cost a whole lot more than the SING180 worth of accommodation they offered us, and frankly, I was insulted.

I stay in hotels all over the world and have never experienced anything like this. Were it not peak season, I'd have cancelled the booking straight away, but at the risk of not finding accommodation in Singapore over new year, it's just not worth it at this point. I will certainly never book any accommodation through marimari.com again.

I'm still in dispute with this company.

Stay tuned for the next installment...

Vinopolis - a wine-taster's delight

Wine tasting at Vinopolis is a fabulous way to spend an afternoon - just make sure you don't have to function responsibly after you leave.

We did the Vintage Wine Tasting tour and got to sample some awesome wines from all over the world. The benefit of wine-tasting at this place, is that you can try wines you may not do otherwise (I'm biased, so I tend to favour Australian wines). This particular day, we tried everything from Argentinian wines to authentic portuguese ports and some great reserve wines.



Set beneath the arches of an old Victorian viaduct, just behind Borough Markets at London Bridge, Vinopolis is a great venue for wine-tasting and corporate venues alike - Factiva held a customer event here a couple of years ago, and the unique nature of the venue makes it an unforgettable experience. Check it out!

Christmas markets in Vienna

Anne, Kelly and I decided earlier in the year that we'd like to go to some Christmas markets (Christkindlmärkte), and chose Vienna.

It was my first time in Vienna, and the stunning architecture jumped out at me as soon as we started our first day's sightseeing.



It was cold and overcast, but a cheeky early morning gluwein helped to warm us up. A festive atmosphere wafted through each of the markets we visited, amidst smells of mulled wine, hearty fried foods and various versions of boiled frankfurts.

I loved the handicrafts and hand-made Christmas decorations, which came in just about every colour and festive theme imaginable. If I ever have a white Christmas (which is still on the wish list), I'd love to be sitting around a tree decorated with Austrian decorations.



One of the most frequented Christmas markets is the "Christkindlmarkt" on the square in front of the City Hall. I loved how the old City Hall building and vivid blue sky provided such a dramatic backdrop to the already colourful markets.


























The Christmas markets and our weekend in Vienna was fab, as was the schnitzel!

A weekend in the Big Apple

"I want to be a part of it, in old New York"...

Ahh - the Big Apple never fails to dazzle. I was in the US for a work trip in early November and got to spend the weekend in Manhattan before heading down to Factiva's head office in Princeton, New Jersey.
















I arrived late on a Friday night and stayed at the centrally located Hotel 31 for a couple of nights. As is typical of New York hotels, you get tiny little rooms unless you're prepared to spend BIG bucks! In any case, Hotel 31 was clean and comfortable and most importantly, reasonably close to the big sights like the Empire State Building and 5th Avenue.

With the US dollar losing ground against Sterling, New York is a shopper's paradise, and my mission seemed to be to single-handedly fuel the American economy for two days.

The country was a few days out from its mid-term elections, so campaign-mania pretty much dominated media coverage of every one of the 10,000 cable channels (ok, so that's an exaggeration, but there is nothing subtle about US election campaign advertising). That was mildly amusing for about an hour then simply got tedious...

With a five hour difference between my body and NY time, I got up really early to a perfect autumn day. The sky was cloudless, and it was a perfect opportunity to go up to the top of the Empire State Building. The queues were minimal, and instead of taking a couple of hours to get up to the observation deck as it did last time, I got up the top in 15 minutes. It's definitely worth going as early as possible to beat the crowds.

The view was stunning, and it was also worth paying for the self-paced audio tour to get a commentary of what I was actually looking at. The view from the top really puts the island into perspective. other than Hong Kong, I have never seen so many skyscrapers! I think it's the sheer scale of the city - the towering building and the interetsing shadows they cast, that amaze me the most about New York.

Shopping was next on my agenda, and I was desperate to get to Century 21 - a huge department store that many people had recommened. I've tried to get to Century 21 on two seperate previous visits to NY, and as a result of two unfortunate unscheduled shop closures, have never actually set foot in the place.

I jumped on the Metro and headed down to the Century 21 shop located just near Ground Zero. I never saw the twin towers when they were standing, but I've been to the Ground Zero site a couple of times, and I still feel physically sick when I walk around it. It's eerie - just to imagine what it would have been like to have seen the buildings, let alone the horror of seeing them go down, and all the carnage it caused. Ugh....makes me shudder.

Fortunately, Century 21 was open, and was packed with tourists and locals. As soon as I walked in the doors, I knew that it was worth seeing this place. There were floors and floors of clothes, accessories, bags, shoes and homewares that really demanded several weeks inspection as opposed to the few hours I could spare.

Ok - it was just a department store, but everything seemed so cheap, and there was just so much choice. The queues to the change rooms were truly horrific, so it was worth getting a good solid trolley full of clothes before investing the 25 minutes in the queue to try them on.

I left with several ahem...bags, and decided to dump it all back at the hotel before heading out for the next spree. Judging by the inquisitive looks I got on the Metro, I wondered if I had gone any way to my mission of supporting the US economy for a day. It felt like it.

The fabulous 5th avenue is always worth a stroll. I would love to know how much money is spent on that strip in a single day or year, given that some of the smaller pieces in Bvulgari or Tiffany & Co. would probably buy me a couple of flats in London. *sigh*.

Drooling aside, I passed the stunning Trump Tower and had a peak inside. I reckon the Starbucks on the mezzanine level of that building has it made. What a nice little earner. Much Donald Trump merchandise was available in the foyer - DT branded pens and cufflinks, shirts and books etc. It was an impressive building, but I don't know if I'd want Trump Tower branded all over myself....

Every shop I went into the rest of the day was packed, and the change rooms queues were infinitely long. It seems like everyone in the city was there to fuel the US econony as enthusiastically as I was.

I'd arranged to have dinner with a couple of friends, and we had a yummy meal uptown, at BlueChili, an Asian fusion place. The cocktails and food were particularly good, although it took a while to realise that one of the funky cascading water features was actually splashing off onto one of the nearby funky white seats, to form a funky shiny puddle that changed hues as the mood lights transitioned from red to green and blue. Noice!

The next day was packed with more shopping and a very long walk from the hotel up to Central Park. It was also the day of the famous New York marathon, so the helicopters and crowds were out in force.

It was a fab weekend! You've gotta love the vibrancy of New York - the brashness of the people, and their passion for bagels, bling and all things big!

The joys of security checks!

Ugh! The new security arrangements at British airports are somewhat of a nightmare. With the additional time you now need to add to get through security checks (complete with limited toiletries in a see-though sealable plastic bag, it makes a one hour flight to Ireland a 4-5 hour deal by the time you leave your house.

In any case, it seems that the new rules afre here to stay for a while, so worth getting familiar with!