hendrikch.com - Hendrik Christian Blog on Daily Life

We started the day early in the morning 7AM by heading to Chinatown for Dim Sum. The taste was not that great, and the price was extravagant. A simple 4 person dim-sum turned out to be $40. Avoid this Pearl City Restaurant in San Francisco Chinatown at all cost. It’s a rip-off !!

From there, we went to Lombard St., that is nothing but a garden up the hill, where you have to exercise your walking skill up the slope.

It’s not very obvious from this picture, but if you notice immediately on the right of my head, you can see the down slope from where we all walked up.

And all the effort walking up was just to see this garden !!

You be the judge if it’s worth the walk up. 

Next stop was Palace of Fine Arts, but all I saw was construction structure, so not sure where are the fine arts.

After that, our next stop was none other than the famous Golden Gate bridge, the orange-color bridge that’s more famous than her sister, Bay bridge not far further up.

The view on the other side of the bridge is very nice too.

We then proceed to Napa Valley to taste some wine produced in this area. I tasted white wine, red wine, even pink wine.

Can you spot me? There, the only person more aware of a camera than the person talking in front hehe….

The journey back from Napa valley was an hour, and we dropped by Fisherman’s Wharf, Pier 39 for sightseeing and dinner. I had clam chowder and mini donuts for snack. We then took a cruise around the San Francisco Bay Area, going under and around the Golden Gate bridge, then visit the notorious Alcatraz, where only elite prisoners used to be locked up, and with cold water, wind, and strong current, made it virtually impossible to get out of Alcatraz alive.

The skyline of San Francisco from the cruise ship.

The famous Golden Gate Bridge down under.

In the evening, we went for a city tour, went to Two Peaks, from where you could see the whole night view of San Francisco.

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We also spent a bit of time to visit the City Hall of San Francisco.

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After dinner back at Chinatown (again), I’m back at hotel.

The main place to visit today was Yosemite National Park on our way to San Francisco.

The trip from Los Angeles was very long. We left LA around 9AM in the morning, but we only reached Yosemite National Park around 4PM. Far is one thing, but with the bus having to turn every 100-200 meters to navigate its way up the curvy road makes the time taken to get even longer. I have never ever felt road-sick before taking a bus in my life, but this time round, I felt like I was about to throw up. Maybe I ate too much for lunch, maybe it was the path up to the mountain.

Below was the path we took from LA to San Francisco, via Yosemite.

Here are some photos I took while we were up there.

The famous El Capitan. Not sure what’s so great about this rock that they have to give it a name.

Not sure what I pointed then.

To think that global warming has taken effect so much, EVERYTHING down here was ice between 250,000 to 1 million years ago.

Trees here are generally very tall.

It took another 2 hours to get down to the ground from up there, and we finally reached the ground somewhere near Freeway 120 at 7PM. After having dinner in A&W+KFC, we left for San Francisco. We stayed in Fremont, about 30 minutes drive from downtown San Francisco.

Today was quite uneventful compared to previous hectic days. We started the day by visiting MGM Grand complex.

This is in Las Vegas, not New York. That Statue of Liberty is only a third of the original one in New York.

After taking some pictures, we left for the same Factory Outlet that we visited two days ago.

Had lunch there at Factory Outlet. My parents went to Panda Express again, but I decided against it, and I went to the interestingly-named In-n-Out Burger.

True to their name, their service was quick, the queue was quick since you were given very limited choices of meals there. Do you want Double Hamburger, Cheeseburger, or Hamburger? Make it a meal with fries and free-flow drink? That’s it. With their drink choices of root beer, ice lemon tea, lemonade, 7-Up, coke, etc., they had more drink choices than their food.

After that, we spent the rest of the days on the coach back to hotel near Los Angeles.

I told ya it was uneventful.

We departed from our hotel early in the morning 6AM, going to the Grand Canyon. The bus journey took 2.5hrs to get to the entrance, followed by 30 minutes bumpy ride to the Air Terminal. From there, we took another shuttle bus to two view points in West Canyon.

The first view point is called Eagle point, where you can see the eagle-like shape rock from the top. In this location also they have built a Skywalk, 4000 feet high from the bottom of the canyon, higher than any other building in the world. They claimed this construction can withstand the weight of 71 fully-loaded Boeing 747 airplanes, 100mph wind blowing from any direction, or 8.5 Richter scale earthquake. How they could have tested this claim is beyond me.

This is the Skywalk behind me.

If you wish, you could pay $179 per person, and they’ll fly you around the Grand Canyon in a helicopter, and down to the Colorado River, where you can take a boat around but we felt it’s too expensive.

This area is currently in the second year of 20-year project to build this area. If I’m not mistaken, they are planning a shopping mall and even a new airport due for completion next year. So, the next time you visit Grand Canyon, you may drop by airplane, rather than enduring over 3 hrs bus journey.

We stayed in this area close to two hours, including having our lunch here. We then proceed to take the shuttle bus to the next view point, called Guano point. The view from Guano point is breathtaking, far much better than the view at Eagle point.

If you’re daring enough, feel free to climb up all the way to the peak of a small mountain, from where you could see unobstructed 360-degrees view of the Grand Canyon and Colorado River.

The path to the top is dangerous and risky as there are no guard rails around it. Some path way were even less than 1m wide. Take one step too many, and adios. The view, however, is unsurpassed. See for yourself.

From Guano point, we took the same shuttle bus again to go back to the Air Terminal.

On our way back from the Grand Canyon, everyone were deep in their sleep. We dropped by Hoover Dam, viewing it from Arizona side. On the rock surface on the side, you could see the line where the water used to be, and compare it to where the water is now. It’s a huge difference, and I wonder where all the water went to.

We finally reached back our hotel at 5PM, and after taking a breather, we went out again at 7PM to visit the main attraction in Las Vegas, which is ? Casino !!! It’s amazing we have been here for two full days, and we haven’t even visited Las Vegas Casino.

We were dropped at Bally’s and had a free time. So, we walked around from hotel to hotel. We first went to Bellagio again, to catch the musical fountain again, this time viewing it during the evening.

At the corner of the street in front of Bellagio hotel, a man on wheelchair with some friends were preaching Jesus, telling people walking around there that the only way to reach your salvation is by God’s grace through Jesus Christ. Probably not many people even heard them, but I truly salute their commitment and desire to preach the Gospel. Well, in a such sinful city, they have probably picked the hardest city of all.

From there, we walked towards Treasure Island hotel, hoping to catch 10PM show that we missed two days earlier. We walked past Caesar’s Palace, Flamingo, the Mirage, until we reached Treasure Island.

Fortunately, the show was performed because it was not windy today. It was a pirates naval war with dances, singing, fire, water splash, people jumping into the water, and pirates well-known walk-the-plank.

When the show has finished, we walked to The Venetian again. The view inside The Venetian is stunning as you would expect.

We finally walked back to Bally’s to catch 12.15AM coach that would bring us back to hotel for a good night sleep.

I woke up around 7 AM today, had my pretty heavy continental breakfast and I left the hotel by 8.45AM. The coach we took was so full, not a single seat left empty. That bus took off the freeway towards Las Vegas. The trip should have taken “only” 5 hours, but we stopped half-way to visit Factory Outlet, as well as to have lunch.

In Factory Outlet, you can see TONS of branded-goods at supposedly cheaper price. You can find Reebok, Polo Ralph Lauren, Samsonite, Calvin Klein, Nautica, Quiksilver, Aldo, Coach, Coles, Liz Claiborne, and all kinds of brand. I went to most of the shops, none were really that cheap, most of them are not even cheaper at all compared to Singapore. Maybe, it’s just my shopping skills was lousy hehe….

I can assure you that it’s not like they have a vending machine, you put in the coins, and a restroom magically appear for you to use

Around here, for a month during 17 September to 19 October, you can buy a $1 coupon to support breast cancer treatment, and that coupon gives you additional 25% discount of just one item in one store on top of whatever promotion they are having. For example, Reebok had “Buy 1 pairs of shoe, buy the 2nd one at 50% off; Buy 2 pairs, get the 3rd one free” promotion, and you can still add on 25% discount on that. I found one tennis Reebok shoe for $40 (with all the promotion, you could end up close to $20), but unfortunately, all the size they had left were 6.5, 7, 9.5 and above. My shoe size is 8.5, too bad.

We only had an hour there before we proceed to have our lunch at Panda Express. Their logo reminds me of Kungfu Panda the movie.

Next stop, Las Vegas. Imagine our schedule for this evening. We have just had a long journey from Los Angeles. We checked into our hotel room at 3.45PM, and we’re asked to gather at the lobby at 4PM for a short tour around the hotel. By 5.30PM, we’re supposed to get back to hotel lobby again to join the night tour.

This is Las Vegas, not Paris. That Eiffel tower in the background is only half the size of the original one in Paris.

Half an hour later, by 6PM, we had reached the musical fountain in front of Belagio hotel.

We then went into Bellagio hotel to see their interior. They have a garden in which they changed the decoration every two months.

I can feel the tree is looking at me, hiiiiiiyyyyyyyyy…….

By 7PM, we were already at some dance show.

7.30PM, Caesar’s Palace. This place is huge, and very nicely decorated.

As you would expect, they have all Romans theme in there, they even have a giant Trojan horse for you to see.

The reason why we were rushed to Caesar’s Palace (actually we rushed everywhere we went to) was to watch this Statue show which started at 8PM sharp, for a mere seven minutes.

It’s a story about a king who was about to surrender his crown, and the prince of fire and princess of water fought for the throne.

By 8.07PM, the show has ended, and we all rushed back to our coach, in order to catch the next Pirates 8.30PM show at Treasure Island.

With 48 of us in the tour extremely cooperative and on-time, we reached the place by 8.20PM. Sadly, the wind was blowing heavily and the organizer cancelled the show due to heavy wind. Apparently, the show they were going to show had fire blast that may be unsafe to the audience when the wind blows too strong.

The last stop was The Venetian, mentioned as the largest hotel complex in the world. They had casino on the first floor, a “river” complete with Vienna-style gondola and the person rowing your boat singing romantic Italian song for you. If I thought Caesar’s Palace was huge, anyone will be overwhelmed by the sheer size of this hotel combined with casino combined with shopping mall. Their “branch” in Macau supposedly bigger, but I’m not sure.

By 10PM, we all reached back to hotel, just missed a “screening” on a canopy overhead the retail complex next to our Four Queens hotel. The screening contains 12 millions of LEDs in what must be the largest screen on the planet. They call it Viva Vision.

If you have been reading this far, you’d probably realized it has been a busy packed day but thoroughly enjoyable. It’s almost 1AM now, and I’d better get some sleep before I wake up tomorrow 5AM to go to The Grand Canyon.

I woke up around 4.30AM and took cab to airport around 5.30AM. Fortunately I reached the check-in counter earlier, and I was out from there in 15 minutes. A couple of minutes after I arrived, a horde of people started to build up a queue behind me. Within 10 minutes, there were at least 30 people behind me, *phew*. It pays to reach airport earlier.

The flight flew on-time at 8.40AM and I reached Taipei around 1.30PM for transit. Having a three-hour transit enabled me and my parents to roam around the airport, finding food court and gift shop. We even managed to find a bit of time to find free hotspot to launch Skype, so we called my auntie in Taipei.

Walking around the airport, we found this interesting pyramid with paper plane created by children attached to it.

Three hours later, we hopped on to our long haul flight to Los Angeles, a “painful” 12-hour sit on the plane. I had a Rubik’s cube with me the whole flight from Singapore to Los Angeles, and I haven’t even managed to solve two layers of it in that 17 hours. Anyone here expert is solving Rubik’s cube?

For the lack of better picture, trust me, this is a picture of Los Angeles from the plane. Not very interesting I reckon.

We finally, finally reached Los Angeles after enduring countless times of turbulences, sleep-awake cycle, toddlers non-stop crying on the plane. We reached on time again 1.40PM. Queuing to get to the immigration counter took close to 30 minutes. Within 5 minutes, my parents were cleared. Not so with me. I was escorted to special “Federal Investigation Unit” section, and was asked to sit down for a while. Fortunately for me, it lasted less than an hour. A combination of my old Visa, departure clearance during my previous trip, my change of address and employment since then contributed to my delay. Anyway, glad that I was finally cleared, and now 6.30PM, I am at hotel, and I got to brush my teeth haha….

We rested for a while, and then went out to explore this Rowland Heights area.

After walking around, this area feels more like Taipei than Los Angeles, as there are SO many Chinese here, mostly from Taiwan I think. Another thing I noticed here is how big everything are. Their bed and meal portion are big. Their watermelon are HUGE.

Their lobsters are GIGANTIC. The hand below is for comparison purpose. Also, it’s my first time seeing lobster with claws !! On a first sight, I thought they were crabs.

A tiring day no doubt, rest well, and get ready for early 5-hour journey to Las Vegas tomorrow. Las Vegas, here I come !!!