Trevin Chow: Travel

Amsterdam at Night

Sun, 17 Dec 2006 18:49:20 GMT

Amsterdam was such an amazing place. I fell in love right away almost immediately upon setting foot on the street out of the cab. It reminded me so much of Vancouver it was eerie. Each street was filled with a mixtu

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i heart Amsterdam

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 22:49:09 GMT

I got back a few days ago from my travel adventures in Hyderabad and Amsterdam. Amsterdam was my last stop where I spent 2 days with Didi before returning to Seattle. In retrospect, the decision to stay was good to help "soft-land" my jet lag as I eased back from teh 13.5 hour time difference between Hyderabad and Seattle.

Amsterdam was a total blast from the reported 600,000 bicycles, friendly people and completely walkable (or bikeable!) city center. Luck as on our side weather wise, as it stopped raining pretty much as soon as we arrived, and poured on the morning that we left, leaving us 2 days of relatively clear weather. Luckily I had brought my tuque as the weather got down to 1 or 2 celcius at night.

While there, I completely fell in love with the Van Gogh museum. The museum itself is a stark difference from the Rodin and Marmottan-Monet museums in Paris (my other 2 favorites) -- both of them are in what feels like run-downs shacks in comparison. The Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam however, is in either a new building or quite recently renovated. This gives them tons of floor and wall space allowing them to constantly run special exhibits in the lower portion of museum while keeping a large permanent Van Gogh collection on the main and upper floors. The current exhibit is one dedicated to Expressionism running through March 2007. Kadinsky and Schiele anyone?

Rest of my time in Amsterdam was spent at the Heineken museum, Bloemenmarkt (floating flower market), Waterlooplein flea market and the Westerstraat market. Eating wise, food was MUCH easier on my stomach than India and for the first time in 9 days I didn't feel like I had a crazy tape worm eating me from the inside out. Sunday night was spent with Mark, one of Didi's friends originally from Texas but now working in Amsterdam as an ex-pat. We hit an Argentinian grill with Mark and a few of his local buddies for an amazing meal. Argentinian spareribs...yummm...

Aside from the sight-seeing and photo taking opportunities, I also got to get to know Didi really well on this trip. It's funny how much you find out about your co-workers when you travel with them. Luckily she's a super cool chick and we got along famously. It's rare that I meet new people that I work with and form friendships. Awww....

In terms of photos, I haven't gone through all of them yet, but a few of them are posted up on my flickr page.

Hyderabad: http://www.flickr.com/photos/trevin/sets/72157594416100336/

Amsterdam: http://www.flickr.com/photos/trevin/sets/72157594416094196/

Be sure to leave me comments on my images if you like (or dislike) them. I'm always open to feedback :)

i heart Amsterdam

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 14:49:04 GMT

I got back a few days ago from my travel adventures in Hyderabad and Amsterdam. Amsterdam was my last stop where I spent 2 days with Didi before returning to Seattle. In retrospect, the decision to stay was good to help “soft-land” my jet lag as I eased back from teh 13.5 hour time difference between Hyderabad and Seattle.

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I am Jack's sense of adventure

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 17:05:13 GMT

So far the trip to India has been a blast. The food, the people and the crazy commute to work in the morning are making for an unforgettable trip.

The traffic is so insane, there is never a dull moment in our commute to or from work. The best is after work when we're rocketing through major intersections with 6-8 lanes of cars and motorcycles on a 3 lane street. Every day we wonder if we're going to be involve in a multi-car and multi-pedestrian accident. Luckily, we've come away unscathed, as well as everyone around us.

The people here are so friendly, especially our Microsoft team members. They are so accommodating and are so eager to learn. It's refreshing to give a presentation and see that not a single person has their face burried in their laptop and everyone is genuinely interested in what you have to say. I'm going to chalk that one up to their enthusiasm rather than my presentation skills :)

In the last 48 hours we've:

Ridden a camel:

Eaten the famous Hyderabad biryani:

Bargained for souvenirs:

Witnessed a wedding celebration

I love India!

P.S. - Big thanks to Shashwat and Vishal for bargaining their butts off tonight at the outdoor market, and putting up with me and Didi's souvenir obsession!

I am Jack's sense of adventure

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 09:05:45 GMT

So far the trip to India has been a blast. The food, the people and the crazy commute to work in the morning are making for an unforgettable trip.

The traffic is so insane, there is never a dull moment in our commute to or from work. The best is after work when we’re rocketing through major intersections with 6-8 lanes of cars and motorcycles on a 3 lane street. Every day we wonder if we’re going to be involve in a multi-car and multi-pedestrian accident. Luckily, we’ve come away unscathed, as well as everyone around us.

The people here are so frie

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Hyderabad: tee dot edition

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 03:25:22 GMT

Got into Hyderabad this morning off a 9 hour leg from Amsterdam. Simply just getting here was an adventure in itself.. My running commentary:

Flying business class is the bomb diggity. It's pure gluttony up in there in the promise land with booze and food free flowing. Within 2 minutes of me stepping on the plane, someone was taking my jacket, and I had a glass of chardonnay in my hand.
5 hour layovers in Amsterdam are not fun when you arrive at 6am.
Business class tickets automatically get you into the business class lounge for KLM. I didn't discover this until I was on an IM session with one of the other leads on Windows Marketplace. I've never been into one of those lounges before... 2 words: Free lattes!
With 22+ hours of flying and layovers, it's impossible to avoid jet lag. I did my usual "stay up the night before as much as possible to sync my body to the new time zone" and that failed miserably. On the second leg of my trip I was sleeping like a newborn when I should have been wide awake.
The Hyderabad airport was a nightmare. Didi and I had to wait nearly 1.5 hours for our bags at the baggage claim. I don't know what was funnier -- the occassional terrified looks that Didi and I gave each other fearing our bags were lost, or the new friend that Didi made in the airport that just would not stop talking even if her life depended on it.
Driving from the airport to our hotel was pretty cool. You learn a few things:
- Off-leash dogs roam everywhere here, including taking naps at 3am in the the middle of the highway
- The painted lines in the road dividing the lanes are merely suggestions. Traffic is a free for all.
- We were told that there are nearly 6 million people in Hyderabad alone. This is 1/6th the size of Canda!

I only managed to get 3 hours of sleep last night but I seem to be bright-eyed and bushy tailed this morning. I predict that by 3pm I want to crash and burn.. but let's enjoy the ride until then :)

Hyderabad: teedot edition

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 19:25:48 GMT

Got into Hyderabad this morning off a 9 hour leg from Amsterdam. Simply just getting here was an adventure in itself.. My running commentary:

Flying business class is the bomb diggity. It’s pure gluttony up in there in the promise land with booze and food free flowing. Within 2 minutes of me stepping on the plane, someone was taking my jacket, and I had a glass of chardonnay in my hand.
5 hour layovers in Amsterdam are not fun when you arrive at 6am.
Business class tickets autom
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Rio Maggiore

Tue, 07 Nov 2006 22:07:43 GMT

On my vacation to Europe, my sister and I spent a couple of day
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Watch my sky dive

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 11:21:48 GMT

Now that I’m finally back at home, I got around to encoding the DVD of m

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What's worse?

Sun, 01 Oct 2006 08:56:43 GMT

What’s worse than your month long Europe trip coming to an end? Getting the flu on your second to last day.

Turns out I came down with the flu right as I got into London on the 27th, which prevented me from going out at all on Fri

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Cesky Krumlov

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 09:00:54 GMT

Our second last day in Prague started off with a poor start. After a late night last night taking pictures of the Charles Bridge and surrounding waterfront, we had to wake up for an early bus to Cesky Krumlov. We had to pack up our stuff since we were also checking out of our current hostel and we had to race for the bus. Unfortunately the bus was sold out, but we managed to buy tickets for

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Live like a king in Prague

Sat, 23 Sep 2006 09:26:56 GMT

Arrived in Prague yesterday morning off another night train. This train was completely ghetto compared to our Florence to Munich leg. We managed to meet some more kickass travelers on the train, Mark and Lindsay, who are also Canadian from Whistler.

We get to our hostel, the Czech Inn, just outside the main city center and I’m astounded at the quality of this hostel. It seems that as our trip goes on, the hostels are getting better and better. This one is more of a hotel than a hostel with completely clean rooms, modern clean design both inside and out with a cool lobby and bar. Highly recommended!

The pri

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Florence and Munich (Oktoberfest!)

Wed, 20 Sep 2006 06:48:48 GMT

The Cow Goes ‘Moo’

And so did the steak on my plate. It might have even twitched. Our last night in Florence was marked by a quest to find an eatery for the famous local Florentine Steak. It was described to us as ’so tender you can cut it with a spoon’. How can you not want to try that?

Our dinner companions were Gillian and one of our hostel roomates, a peculiar girl named JJ who shared way too much information about her last European hookup in a bunk bed. Yuck. After walking about a mile in the pouring rain, we end up at a restaurant famous for its steak, but it’s freaking packed. So we turn around and go to the first place that seems decent — kind of defeats the whole purpose of walking that far for a specific restaurant, but we were hungry. We order a bottle of house red and an appetizer, then it’s onto the steak. We realized that after the waiter took our order, he never asked us how we wanted it cooked. Not good. The steak arrives at the table and it appears nicely cooked — charred on the outside, great set of herbs and it smells divine. I cut into it and I swear it tried to bite me. That thing was more raw than probably even the tuna sashimi I love so much back home. Woah. I manage to power through it and it’s actually not that bad. In fact, it’s quite tasty but I couldn’t finish it all because the thought of completely raw beef was turning me off. I tried squeezing some lemon on it in hopes that it would somehow magically cook some more, but hey, can’t win ‘em all!

Florence was great, an unbelievable experience filled with some great photos, great friends and some much needed relaxing. Goodb

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Ready, set, jump!

Sun, 17 Sep 2006 05:29:48 GMT

“Tilt your head back, push your pelvis out like you’re making love and hook your legs around like a banana. Capisca?”

There I was, sitting with my legs hanging out of an airplane, wondering how I ended up in Molinella, Italy, about to jump out on my first tandem skydive.

Rewind.

The first day we arrived in Florence, the hostel owner showed me a bunch of skydiving videos. Apparantly he’s taken to sky diving this past year like a fish to water and has already jumped 36 times. He asked if I wanted to go on Saturday, which would be my second last day in Florence before heading for Germany. I brushed it off, but after getting asked a few more times later in the week, I decided it would be a cool thing to finally do. Although I’m mildly scared of heights, I always wanted to try sky diving but never got around to it at home. What better way to finally do something I’ve thought about for the past 10 years and also have even greater memories associated with my Europe trip?

Saturday rolls around and I get woken up at 5:45am. “Trevin, wake the $!@* up”. Nice way to start the day after 4 hours of sleep. The only worse way to get woken up would be for him to flick cigarette butts in my face. We catch a train out to Bologna, Italy, which is 1 hour north of Florence, then another train out to Molinel

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Touring around Tuscany

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 18:06:06 GMT

Once I leave Florence I’ll truly be sad. So far, I’ve had such a great time here not only due to the central location to all the Tuscan hill towns but also because the hostel we’ve stayed at is so great.

I’ve met countless people in this hostel and because of the great atmosphere here, I’ve managed to from some solid friendships that will definitely last long after I leave Florence.

The day before yesterday we visited Lucca which is 1 hour west of Florence by Train. Lucca is a cool town, but definitely has become a tourist destination. i blame it on all the guide books! We rented bikes and rode around for an hour around the city and the medieval walls, definitely a great time.

We then took a train 30 mins south to get to Pisa. Let me tell you, Pisa is pretty much a dump and a disappointment as a city. But the leaning tower is breathtaking. When Colene and I emerged from one of the alleys, it was so funny because we both said “Holy sh*t” at the same time. The tower is in fantastic condition and is really a sight to see. After the obligatory tourist photos,

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Latest update from Florence

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 17:12:08 GMT

Last 4 days have been a blast. We left Rome and have hit a bunch of Tuscan hill towns after arriving in Florence. We’ve hit Lucca,
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How to make money in Europe

Sun, 10 Sep 2006 12:38:01 GMT

After traveling partially through Europe so far, hitting day 7 of my 4 week trip, I realize there are a few easy ways to make money. Since my time on intenet is running out, I’ll only talk about my idea for a hostel.

Hostel

I could open a Hostel in Europe and make a fortune. The keys to a good hostel by the usual standards are: (1) clean bathroom (2) as few beds as possible in each dorm and (3) convenient location in a decent part of town. Majority of higest rated hostels get 2 of the 3 right, and the ‘best’ ones get 3 of 3. The tragic part is that all these hostels are missing the bigger picture and not progressive enough. They haven’t fully realized that the 3 before mentioned categories should be considered the most basic things a hostel needs to do to even get a steady stream of satisfied customers. Think of them as the the ‘physiological’ category of Maslow’s Hostel hierarchy of needs.

If I were to setup a hostel in Europe, here is what I woudl do:

1. clean bathrooms with hot water – many ostels can’t even get the clean part right. Being clean isn’t just about cleanign it everyday, but it’s also about how many people share that bathroom. Keep the numbers low — so far, it seems like 10 people or less is the sweet spot. More tha

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La Notte in Bianco in Rome

Sun, 10 Sep 2006 12:10:22 GMT

Last couple of days have been a blast in Rome. At our new hostel, we coincidentally met 6 other Canadians who are also traveling around Europe in similar fashion. Up until now, colene and I have been awestruck on how unsociable most of the other hostelers have been in Italy. Our first night in Rome, we asked nearly the entire hostel to come out for a drink at 9pm and everyone except 1 person preferred to stay in, read a book or just eat by themselves! Coincidentally most of those people have been Americans :) After being on the roa

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Salty Cinque Terre

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 08:11:05 GMT

We arrived in Cinque Terre yesterday at 4pm via train from Nice. While it was sad to say goodbye to Nice after such a short time it was definitely time to go. The city doesn’t have that much to do when you’re traveling with your sister (vs. a significant other). Sunset walks by the beach are just a bit akward and I think we have the unwritten agreement that we want to downplay any opportunity for continuing assumptions that we’re a couple It was almost funny for the first 2 days, but now we manage to work in the words “my brother” or ”my sister” in every conversation to clarify our relationship. Remember my goal was to find a wife in Europe right? :)

Cinque Terre is absolutely gorgeous. upon arriving off the Train, we ended up right in Monterosso wwhere we tok an immediate train to Vernazza. We opted for Vernazza to find accommodations based on recommendation by a few people saying it was the most charming and low key. They were definitely right! Vernazza is tiny compared to the other towns, but definitely a great place to stay. No soone rthan 2 mins after getting off the train in Vernazza, we were approached by an unshaven It

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Aurevoir Nice!

Mon, 04 Sep 2006 15:15:05 GMT

We planned on waking up early today to hit Nice and the surrounding area. But “early” ended up being 10am :) We’re in a 9 bed mixed dorm, with a 10th bed shoved in the middle of the room for colene. It’s actually pretty funny since she’s situated right in front of the bathroom door.

We spent today in the small town of Eze, which is some medieval town with some heritage of the area. Frankly, it was so boring I can’t even remember the historical tales. Just our luck, today was totally fogged in at Eze, so the promised picturesque views ended up beign views of cloud cover and fog. So we were left with a medieval town tourist trap trying to sell us perfume, olive oil and expensive sandwiches.

after the eventful trip to Eze, we took a short bus ride to Monac

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Europe and beyond

Sun, 03 Sep 2006 16:55:13 GMT

After nearly 24 hours in transit, we finally arrived at our hostel in Nice. All it took was 2 flight delays, 1 missed connected and forfeiting 128 pounds in airfare. Phew, what a day.

Today was simply one big blur. The combination of hunger, exhaustion, jet lag and frustration made for a brutal, brutal day to get to Europe. The hostel,
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Europe 2006 begins saturday

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 02:28:21 GMT

As of today, I’m officially on vacation.. no meetings, no phone calls, no specs, and most importantly, no work email! My

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New York Recap

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 06:14:18 GMT

My shotgun trip to New York wrapped up Sunday night with a direct flight from JFK to Seatac on American Airlines. Instead of cab'ing it from Amir's place in Chelsea, I took the E train and Airtrain to JFK. All I have to say is that NYC public transit is really slick. Color me impressed!

Here's my trip summary:

Airport security and travel nightmare from hell
Birthday dinner with Amir's familia
As always, Amir's girlfriend Kaelyn, was so much fun. We always get along and have the best time. We even got to visit some ghetto made made beach in Long Island city together.
Got to meet Sharon (pronounced like Sha-rone), Amir's younger brother for the first time. I remember hearing about him quitting his Finserv job like it was yesterday. This trip I found out he just finished his first year of Law School at Cornell. Woah, time flies!
This time felt like even more party central since we hit so many places and I was here for only 3 days. We managed to get drinks and good times at:
- Employees Only
- 235th
- 420
- PM
Met up with Matt, who works with me on my team but remotely from New York. Matt used to be our test manager but came to the dark side of PM'ing about a year ago. Matt has actually been on the team longer than me (shocking!) but we never hung out socially until relatively recently. Thanks for the good times and seafood at Mary's fish camp Matt! Thankfully there was no spit in our food from the reservation mania.
Neils moved out to NYC for an internship at Phillips research. Haven't seen him since July 4th Weekend in Entiat. Neils, you rock the house, Saturday night was kick-ass!
Got to meet Deepthy, a college friend of both Craig and Neils, who also lives in NYC. Deepthy was a total sweatheart and made Saturday night a complete blast. Staying out to 5:30am wouldn't have been fun without her.
We even managed to squeeze in time to see A Scanner Darkly on sunday afternoon. While the film treatment (interpolated rotoscoping) added a cool effect over the live-action film, this was definitely not my type of movie. Some cool lines and dramatic scenes, but I'm not usually one for tripped out drug themed movies.
Shockingly, my diet consisted of neither hot dogs or bagels this time. However, had a killer brunch at Cafe Henri in Long Island city, and late lunch sunday at Yummy Swarmy off Bleecker.

Amir, happy birthday bro. Hope the 26th was a blast.

Held hostage by terrorists

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 06:03:39 GMT

By now, everyone should have heard about the foiled terrorist attack in the UK. For those that haven't, here a link to the BBC News article to bring you up to speed.

Airlines terror plot disrupted [BBC News]

This is some scary stuff. 21 people arrested, and 3 US airlines were believed to have been targets for these attacks. The attack was supposedly involved building explosives with liquids and electronics devices as detonators that the terrorists were planning on bringing aboard the planes.

Currently, passengers are not allowed to take carry-ons on any flight in the UK. In the US, your carry-ons are not allowed to contain any liquids.

Unfortunately, the damn terrorists decided to coincide their attack with my trip to NYC to visit Amir. My flight was scheduled to lave Seatac at 5:50pm with a 3 hour lay-over in San Francisco before continuing onto JFK. When my boarding pass was printed, my Gate # for the second leg from San Fran to NYC wasn't printed out.

After getting my boarding pass and checking my bag, I had to go through, what I expected to be, a crazy security checkpoint. To my surprise, the security checkpoint wasn't that bad. People were being ~~forced~~ told to throw away any "liquids". People in line were asking all these crazy questions wondering whether their carry-on items were considered "liquids". WTF?! People, what is so hard to understand about "liquid"?? Hint: if it's not solid, it's either considered a liquid or a gas, and I"m pretty sure most people know wtf a gas is.

I wanted to smack this one dude in front of me when he was trying to debate with the security officer about whether his cologne was considered a liquid. First of all, last time I checked, cologne wasn't considered a solid or a gas. Second, why are you giving the security guy a hard time? He's just doing his job! It's not like you're going to negotiate with the security guy for an exemption.

After spending 25 mins in the security checkpoint, I end up at my gate waiting for my flight. Thankfully, it's on time! As I'm sitting there, I strike up a conversation with a girl sitting next to me. She told me that she got ot the airport at 11am this morning for a 1pm flight, and spent 4 hours in the security line. She said there were close to 3000 people in the security line and it went from the terminal out into the parking garage. If you know Seatac airport at all, that would have been one serious line. This girl ended up missing not 1, but 3 possible flights on her route and was now forced to take a later flight at 7pm -- 2 hours after mine, which means she will be at the airport for 8 hours before departing. Sucks to be her.

I get onto the plan without incident, promptly fall asleep and wake up just as we're landing in San Fran. Funny part is that I wake up sleeping on the shoulder of the dude next to me. I apologized to the guy and he told me he tried to shake me off 3 times, but i kept leaning back on him so he gave up. Funny stuff. I guess I''m thankful that nice people still exist in the world :)

I get off my plane and then realize "sh*t!, i dont' know the gate # for my next flight" (remember, it wasn't printed on my boarding pass I got in Seattle). For the life of me, I could not find out what the gate # was within the "secured area" of SFO, so I had to exit back into the terminal just to find out the gate #. Because I had to exit the secured area, I had to go through the security checkpoint again! ARGH!

I'm standing in line, and once again, I'm stuck with people who IQ must be their shoe size. People are arguing and yelling at the security guy because he's making them throw out makeup, eye drops, etc. The best part was this one lady who had to throw out her $150 bottle of perfume. Ouch.

After the 65 minute parade through this second security checkpoint, I walk up to my gate and find out that my flight is delayed by 4 hours. WTF!

I promptly find a restaurant in the airport order myself some food and Guinness. I'm now plunking away at some work stuff on T-Mobile wifi ($9.99 per day, ouch!).

So turns out that even though the terrorist attack happened on the other side of the world, they managed to indirectly hold me hostage in the San Francisco airport. I guess this is the part where I say the cliche line "the world is flat". But I won't.

Europe bound

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 04:18:14 GMT

After dragging ass for the the last 2 months on our Europe plans, my sister and I finally got around to cementing the trip by booking our airline tix. The first leg of our trip is from Seattle to Nice, France where we spend a few days then kickoff our month long adventure.

We have a ton more planning to do but our initial high level itinerary looks like this:

- South of France (arriving in Nice)

- Italy through Cinque Terra, Rome and Florence

- Prague, Czech Republic

- Munich, Germany for Oktoberfest

- Paris, France

- London, UK which is our departure point for returning to Seattle

Here's a Windows Live Local collection we started: http://local.live.com/?v=2&cid=C97E92F3E4DAD144!1092

Since my sis lives in Vancouver, I can't even begin to tell you how hard it was to plan this trip over the phone and over IM. It's crazy to try to coordinate airfare research and look at maps. When I finally went back to Vancouver this weekend to celebrate my birthday with my family, it was finally the catalyst we needed to book our tickets.

After using a ton of travel websites and experimenting with real travel agents, we ended up using Kayak.com and FlyBmi.com (British Midland) to book our tickets.

Kayak.com is an amazing service which does price comparisons between a massive number of sources, similar to Sidestep.com. The advantages that Kayak has is that Open Jaw ticketing is a first class citizen in their model making efficient trips possible (vs. the traditional roundtrip tickets). Their UI needs work, but if you want to fly Open Jaw, this is really your best tool. If you are flying one-way or round-trip, I would still use Sidestep.com since their UX is orders ot magnitude better than Kayak's.

Lots more planning to do to flesh our itinerary more, but at least we have the stake in the ground now for the basis of our trip. No turning back now! :)

Noah, where are you?

Thu, 18 May 2006 15:25:42 GMT

Day 2 in NYC. Like yesterday, the weather called for thundershowers in the afternoon. And like yesterday, it was sunny as hell outside with barely and cloud cover. I scoff at the weather report and trek out to hit somewhere for lunch.

Not surprisingly, I venture out for a hot dog at
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Easy on the cream cheese

Thu, 18 May 2006 15:17:06 GMT

Day 1 in NYC is complete. After failing to get any sleep on the Jet Blue red-eye, I arrived at Amir’s at 9:30am dead tired and in need of some shut eye. I slept straight through until nearly 2pm then met up with Amir and a few of his co-workers for lunch at a spot on 9th Ave and W 22nd.

After finishing lunch, I decided to walk around town and vowed not to take a subway all day. The weather forecast called for afternoon rain, but the weather man (or woman) must be hopped up on crack because there wasn’t a cloud to be seen all day and it must have hit the upper 70’s. I walked from W 21st up to Times Square, then up to Central Park and further north to W 79th. I then proceeded to walk

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