Happy Hockey Day, Canada!

     It’s a national holiday here in Canada, the day we all take off to celebrate the wonder that is the greatest game on earth – Hockey!  Okay, so it’s not “technically” a holiday, but it might as well be.  Between noon and four pacific time, the streets are going to be empty as every eye in the nation is on the Canada/US gold medal game.  On friday at 6 during what was only a semifinal game the parking lots were empty and the BF and I had a whole grocery store practically to ourselves, so when you multiply that by Gold and Sunday you get the complete ghost town effect. 

              This is so big here, you don’t even have to like or know anything about hockey to be caught up in all the excitement.  There was a line up around the block at the Georgia St Shark Club sports bar already at six this morning, and that’s not even the most coveted seat in the city.  At this point, the only way you can get a seat in GM Place for the game (er, I mean Canada Hockey Place, I don’t want those Olympic sponsorship people on my back) is if you’re running a country, sleeping with someone who’s running a country or have suddenly been drafted to play.  Actually, sleeping with someone who’s running a country probably isn’t even a guarantee, unless you’re really good.  On the bus yesterday I overheard some guys planning their hockey drinking game: everytime we score, take a shot. Every time we hit them really hard (it has to shake the glass, the criteria were pretty specific), take a shot.  And every time the US scores against us, just down the rest of the bottle and hope you forget it quickly.  Win or loose, they’re going to be completely pickled by four pm, and it’s either going to be one hell of a crazy party tonight or they’re going to be unconscious, so they won’t have to feel the agony of defeat.  Now that’s dedication.  I like it.  I could never do it myself, but I like it.  I wonder if liquor stores are going to see a big sales day…?   Or are they just not going to open because all their staff’s at home watching the game? 

            Basically, the nation has come to a standstill.  Please, everybody, get your cheezies and Bud Lights now before the puck drops, because once that happens, the country could suddenly transform into one of those abandoned shells so often seen in zombie movies after everyone’s been infected.  Ooh, that analogy works better than I had planned, as we’re already infected.  All of us.  With Olympic Gold Medal Hockey Fever (OGMHF).   God knows, my new TV and earth-changing high-def channels will have every pixel focused so closely in we’ll be able to identify the exact tooth that comes flying from the US player’s mouth when we slam him!  It’ll be awesome!  I’ll update this later with a postgame analysis, but no matter what it’s gonna be good.  

      Happy Hockey Day, Canada!

Tags: alcohol, Canada, excitement, happy, hockey, Olympics, party, USA

Spooky Halloween around the world.

       Here in North America Halloween rocks.  We have a commercially-successful excuse to dress up, trick or treat, do crazy things (”but Officer, it was Halloween!”), set off illegal fireworks, sing Monster Mash far too loudly and eat the junk food we spend the rest of the year trying to remove from our waistline.  Personally, I can’t survive the day unless I’ve heard Michael Jackson’s Thriller at least three times - something I don’t think will be a problem this year.  In the US it’s now the second most popular holiday for decorating after only Christmas.  But if you think we can party, you should check out how they do it in other countries.

                  Scotland gave us one of the great traditions we over here have stolen/corrupted/commercialized into our standard Canadian holiday. Little Scots used to carry traditional lanterns called Samhnag’s made out of turnips with the devil’s face carved into them in order to scare away evil spirits. Nowadays they’ve switched to pumpkins for their jack-o-lanterns, mainly because it’s waaay easier to carve a pumpkin than a turnip, but some cities, such as Perthshire, are trying to reinstate the old ways.  Hopefully vandals don’t go around blowing up turnips like pumpkins are blown up here, as a turnip can do so much more damage since they don’t smush and splatter on impact! 

        In Wales Halloween is called Nos Calan Gaeaf (the beginning of a new winter) and legend has it that the fearsome spirit Yr Hwch Ddu Gwta took the form of a tailless black sow and roamed the countryside with a headless woman.  Needless to say, kids would rush home early.  This fascinates me, mainly because I have no idea how to pronounce Yr Hwch Ddu Gwta.  It’s hard enough to type correctly.  Your how-itch do-doo g-wah-ta?  Beats the hell out of me, but it’s fun to try.   

         Halloween in Mexico is just the start of three days of festivities, Witches Night (Halloween), All Saints Day and Dia de los Muertos (the day of the dead).  I mean, really, why shouldn’t the dead get to party, too?  Skulls play a huge part in these rituals, as wooden skulls are placed on alters dedicated to the deceased, sugar skulls made with late relatives’ names on the foreheads are eaten, and they dance to honor the dead while wearing wooden skull masks called calacas.  Sugar and dancing?  How have we not started celebrating this yet?  Sweet.

              Romanians have the perfect reason to celebrate Halloween, as Dracula himself, according to myth, lived right there in Transylvania (specifically the town of Sighisoara – another one I’m not going to try and pronounce).  Dracula’s spirit is believed to live here, as the city once was the site of public Witch trials (it makes sense to keep all your spooky dead people together, right?) which are recreated by actors amidst all the costume parties.  Can you just imagine getting pissed drunk and watching a live “Witch trial”?  Neither can I.

                 In Lebanon, Syria and the Palestine don’t actually celebrate Halloween, but Arab Christians hold Eid Il-Burbara (Saint Barbara’s Day) on Dec 4th instead.  The festivities are nearly identical to the Halloween we know and love here, and include wearing costumes, trick or treating and singing a Halloween song.  No, not Monster Mash, though I would love to hear that in Arabic.  Similarly, Kuwait and other Gulf states have Qarqe’an.  It’s not scary, but children wear traditional costumes and sing outside homes for handouts of candy and nuts.  There it’s actually cool to get nuts, and if you give them out you don’t have to worry about your house being egged later that night!

          And then there’s Japan.  There actually is no Halloween per se in Japanese culture, but think about it, do you really think they would pass up a chance to dress up in weird clothes (or weirder clothes) and celebrate?  Their Halloween is based mainly on American pop culture, but it has really caught on and I personally would love to see it. Carved pumpkins are a common sight and Disneyland and Universal Studios over there have huge festivities leading up to the big day.  A few years ago I was in Disneyland Paris just before Halloween, and the decorations were massive, with everything from a troupe of life-sized pumpkin men taking over Frontierland to the riverboat in the rivers of the far west being turned into a giant floating gray ghost, but apparently the decorations and theming in the Tokyo park are twice as impressive. 

            There are many reasons fall is one of my favorite times to travel, but if you really want a show, check out some of these countries and I’m sure you’ll have yourself a bewitching good time.  There’s just something about Halloween that makes we want to end this blog with a big Mad-Scientist cackle.  So i will.

           Mmmmwwwwwaaaahaaahahahahahhahaha!

Tags: Canada, candy, Europe, France, Halloween, Japan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mexico, Middle East, Monster Mash, Romania, Scotland, Sweden, Thriller, traditons, USA, weird

I wrote a book! What a novel idea.

Travel agent by day, novelist by night.  For years my routine regularly involves going to work just as Holly, but when I get home I put on my cape and morph into my alter-ego Rocket Girl (or Travel Junkie, or Grammatically Correct Girl, whatever, I haven’t come up with a good Super Hero name yet) and curl up with my laptop and hammer away.  It’s not going to save the world (unless, of course there’s a massive flood and the world needs to use it as a flotation device), but my efforts have finally bore fruit and my novel is finally complete.   You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to say that.  I’ve finally written something that passes my anal-retentive “is this good enough to show other people?” test!  Insert happy dance here.

It’s an action/mystery work of fiction, but, naturally, there’s a giant amount of travel thrown in.  This is me, here.   Here’s the gist (I’m not going to spoil it now!): five years ago a group of people witnessed a brutal murder in a Seattle bar, and the killer was never captured.  In the interim, the witnesses have dispersed all over the globe, either trying to escape bad memories or through job commitments.  When suddenly someone begins unexpectedly hunting down and killing the witnesses, two survivors take it upon themselves to warn the others, but when standard phone calls/e-mails fail, they take to the skies.  Thus begins an international cat-and-mouse game that spans the planet from Seattle to Bangkok, Sydney to London, one where motivation, trust and the truth are put to the ultimate test and a missed connection could leave them permanently delayed.

Ooh, that actually sounds pretty good.  I’ll have to save that.

Anyhow, I’m so crazy-happy-over the moon that it’s finally done, but now I’m entering a whole new phase of the writing process.  The first hurdle is, of course, sucking up that fear that your closest friends and family (or as I like to call them, the “focus group”) are going to read the first draft and hate it (not that they’d actually say that, I do love them for a reason, but still…).  Then there’s the next step of “how the hell am I supposed to get this published?”  This is the new adventure, the research, the nerve-wracking submitting my manuscript for its blind dates in hoping we’ll find the perfect publisher and soon end up on Chapters shelves everywhere.  I’ve had articles published before, but this is a whole different animal, not to mention a hell of a lot more postage to mail.  You know that super-excited-but-scared-to-the-point-of-nearly-loosing-bladder-control feeling?  I’m there.

I don’t know how this is going to progress, but I can’t wait!  Of course, I’ll blog about it every step of the way.

Woo hoo!  My book is done!

Tags: Bangkok, Book, fiction, London, published, Seattle, Sydney, travel agent, USA, writer

Insurance – why you want it, but don’t.

              It was embarrassing.  I was in highschool, looking forwards to going down to Seattle with my first able-to-drive-without-adult-supervision friends for a little outlet shopping, and Mom refused to let me go unless everyone going had travel medical insurance.  So we all paid the CAD$2.00 for one day’s coverage, went, and grumbled about how we didn’t even need to use it.  But now, looking back, I see how right she was.  That’s the whole point of having insurance, to have it but not use it.  If you do have to use it, it means something horrible has happened, and nobody wants their vacation ruined.  Plus - and take my word on this, I see it every day at work - all those unused insurance policies seem like a bargain the second you actually have to make a claim.  

            Here in Canada, we take a hell of a lot for granted.  With our free medicare we can go the doctor or hospital any time we need to and only have to pay for the prescribed medication.  But the second you cross any international boarder, all those luxuries are gone.  Years ago we had a client who drove across the boarder to play golf in Blaine, Washington, when he had a heart attack. You could practically see Canada from where he was, and since he wasn’t going to the US for long, he didn’t worry about insurance.  Then he got the bill for the medical treatment and ambulance transport back to Vancouver, and he had to mortgage his home to pay it off.  Granted, that’s an extreme case, but no one wants to go into serious debt in exchange for their health.  You shouldn’t have to trade one necessity for another.

                Then there’s cancellation insurance, the most underrated of all policies.  Nobody plans to cancel their vacation, if they did they wouldn’t have booked it in the first place.  But nowadays pretty much everything in the travel world is at least partially nonrefundable, so if you do have to cancel, you’re going to pay for it.  For the most part, cancellation insurance covers you if a serious medical condition pops up prior to your departure.  Just deciding not to go is not covered.  Some policies do offer “change of mind”, where, a certain number of days prior to departure you can cancel for any reason and claim back a percentage of your travel costs, but it’s never, ever, 100%.  If you break up with your boyfriend or get into a fight with your roommate and just cannot imagine traveling with them anymore, the change of mind clause would kick in and you could at least recoup some of your costs.  Once I had a honeymoon couple who called off their wedding right before it was supposed to take place, and were no longer speaking to one another.  They had opted not to take the cancellation insurance because they figured hey, it’s their honeymoon, there’s no way they’re going to cancel.  The bride ended up going on the vacation alone (most packages don’t allow name changes, so we couldn’t substitute a friend instead at that late date) while the groom stayed home and sued her to get his money back.  Last I heard they were still in litigation. 

                   Oh, and not getting your passport/entry visas in time is not covered by insurance.  Ever.  It’s considered your own fault for not getting the paperwork in sooner.  If you find out you can’t get your passport in time enough days prior to departure the change of mind clause in your cancellation policy may help you get some of your cash back, but for the most part, you’re hooped. 

             And please, God, do not assume your credit card will cover you.  Yes, some credit cards offer cancellation/medical insurance, particularly the higher-end platinum cards, but whatever you do, call the credit card company and double-check what coverage you have before you decline the optional insurance offered by the travel agency.  Sometimes the credit card coverage is all that you need, but they’re notorious for having low limits on how much they will pay out in case of emergency, or restrictive age limits.  One of my clients had relied on his Avion card for years without a problem, but when he did need to make a claim, he was told that, while his card did offer full coverage, he was a year older than the age limit, so he got no coverage at all.  So please, please call your credit card company and make sure you know all the details before you rely on their insurance.

         It hurts to add that extra CAD$200.00 or whatever to your already expensive trip.  I know.  But in comparison to the money and heartache that not having insurance can cause, it’s a small price to pay.

Tags: BlogSherpa, budget, Canada, cancellation, health, insurance, medical, USA

Disneyland smackdown – California v. Paris v. Hong Kong

           Yep, I’m a dork.  Let’s just get that out of the way right off the bat.  I unabashedly love Disneyland, have been more times than I care to admit - and counting.  It’s pure fun.  Hell, just hearing the Disney music playing as I wait to enter brings a huge grin to my face.  Through my travels I have been lucky enough to visit parks on 3 continents (Disney World in Florida and Tokyo Disneyland are still on my hit list, but I’m sure it won’t be too long before I have them chalked off, too.  I’ll keep you posted) and am qualified to compare them head to head in this, my first Disneyland Smackdown.  

           For the purposes of this smackdown, I’m going to stick with just the “Disneyland” and not include the California Adventure or MGM Studios Paris, as they are  each so unique, and would put Hong Kong, a place with only one park, at a disadvantage right off the bat.  Also, I’m going to focus more on the differences between them than the similarities.  This is because, to have the “Disneyland” title, there has to be a huge amount of similarities to keep the Mousketeers happy.  If the formula ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?  Every park has a Main Street, Tomorrowland,  Fantasyland, etc. and honestly, if you need a bathroom on Main Street, they’re in the same place in all three countries.  And so it begins…

          The first major difference any guest would notice is the Castle.  It’s smack in front of you and will undoubtedly require a photo stop at least once in every visit.  In California, the castle was intentionally built smallish and done in pastels as to be friendly and unintimidating to visitors.  In Paris, where the guests are going to be accustomed to insanely large and ornate realcastles in their home countries, the castle is much larger, more gothic in it’s architecture, and bright pink.  Oh, and it has a giant animatronic dragon beneath it.  Hong Kong tried to recreate the cuter California castle, and they did a good job, but it’s small-scale is highlighted by the mountains surrounding the park, making it seem, well, dinky.

           The coolest things to compare are the coasters.  Big Thunder Mountain in California is big and classic with the focus more on the animatronic goat chewing dynamite and bat-filled mines than the speed or the drops.  You just enjoy this ride, it’s not particularly thrilling.  Paris once again took this idea and cranked it up to the extreme.  Their Big Thunder is hands-down my favorite Disneyland ride in any park, as it takes up the entirety of the island in the middle of the Rivers of the Far West, and the start and end involves a dark, fast tunnel right underneath the water before you pop up on the other side. The “danger” factor is upped, too, as if you speed off the rails, you end up in the water.  They have the goat, too.    Hong Kong, unfortunately,  doesn’t have a Big Thunder yet, but I’m sure one’s in the plans somewhere.

                All three parks do have Space Mountains, though.  And all three are thrilling, fast and whip you around crazy turns in the dark.  For years the California one made me dizzy, as so many of the twists were in the same direction, but about five years ago they overhauled it, introducing new ride cars, a better soundtrack and new track configuration.  It made a huge difference in my books, as the dizziness is gone and it’s just a crapload of fun.  This is a great ride people who like the coaster experience without giant drops to contend with.  Hong Kong’s Space Mountain is a close counterpart here too, and the screamometer level is about equal to California, although this one, most likely due to the fact that it’s technology is only a few years old, feels faster and darker.  And then there’s Paris.  I went on this ride expecting it to be as simplistic (for lack of a better word) as the other two.  In hindsight, the over-the-head locking seatbelt should have tipped me off, but it didn’t.  This ride really goes up the screamometer right from the start, where they actually shoot you out of a cannon on the roof, going from zero to feaking fast in seconds.  Inside there’s also a full 360 loop and a corkscrew.  The intensity caught me so off guard that I bruised both knees bracing them on the back of the seat in front of me!  Once I knew what this ride was like, it’s great (still no big drops.  I don’t do big drops), but if you’re unprepared, look out :) 

           It’s a Small World (come on, you knew it was coming) is so synonamous with Disneyland that all three parks feature one.  You either love it or hate it, but everyone rides it.  Hong Kong was the first to deviate from the Small World mold, mixing animatronic characters from Disney movies (Aladdin riding his carpet in the middle east, Lilo and Stitch surfing in Hawaii, etc) with the ubiquitous singing dolls.  As someone raised on IASM(my mobile played the music when I was an  infant, no joke) I was worried this would detract from the simple joy of this ride, but it surprised me by being very seamlessly integrated into the classic format.  Now it’s kind of a “spot the movie characters” game as you go.  Especially great for the little ones.  As recently as June 09, California took a page from Hong Kong’s book and debuted their own new IASM, complete with the ”hidden” characters.  Paris, as of writing this, was still using the classic format.

           Naturally, the language is going to be different from country to country, but the Disney people do a great job of putting signage in multiple languages, and what isn’t translated is accompanied by pictograms to remove any confusion.  There is something that makes me giggle uncontrollably at hearing the PeeWee Herman voice of the robot in Star Tours entirely in French, though.  The Jungle Cruise in Hong Kong found a simple solution to the language issue by just running boats in Mandarin, Cantonese and English simultaneously.  All you have to do is make sure you get into the right line and you’re golden.

           Food is an essential part of any theme park experience, and, coming at it with a very westernized palette, I found this aspect a ton of fun overseas.  Sure, all three parks have the standards: hot dogs, burgers, fries, Mickey-shaped ice cream bars, etc. but the regional specialties make this interesting.  Hong Kong, for example, sells fish balls and Korean squid on a stick at the street carts right along with the hot dogs.  The Plaza Inn here sells wonderful Dim Sum meant to be shared in a lantern-lit restaurant.  Paris has frog’s legs and sells alcohol pretty much everywhere, so you can wander around with your wine and frog’s legs to your heart’s content. 

              In conclusion, the castle is bigger and the rides are more intense in Paris;  Hong Kong is smaller and newer with more of a focus on regional food and the smaller family-friendly rides;  And California is the original, so nothing can compete with that.  Plus, due to their age, they have the most rides per square foot.  But despite all their differences, Disneyland is still Disneyland, regardless of what country you’re in.  If you have kids or just like feeling like one, it will always be worth the price of admission.

Tags: BlogSherpa, California, China, Disney Specialist, disneyland and anaheim, France, Hong Kong, memories, Paris, roller coasters, theme park, USA