{"id":591,"date":"2007-01-02T14:46:58","date_gmt":"2007-01-02T14:46:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/walking-ixus.net\/blog\/?p=591"},"modified":"2007-01-02T14:46:58","modified_gmt":"2007-01-02T14:46:58","slug":"how_was_2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/walking-ixus.net\/blog\/how_was_2006\/","title":{"rendered":"How was 2006?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, 2006 could have been better in a lot of ways&#8230;but I DID do a lot of travel this year!  I resolved at the beginning of 2006 to <strong>&#8220;go places I&#8217;ve not been before&#8221;<\/strong> and for the most part, I think I achieved that.<br \/>\n<strong>March 2006:<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>First visit to Australia; Sydney and the Hunter Valley<\/em>. My first experience at backwards weather and driving on the wrong side of the road&#8230;<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.walking-ixus.net\/blog\/photos\/daoperahouse.html\" onclick=\"window.open('http:\/\/www.walking-ixus.net\/blog\/photos\/daoperahouse.html','popup','width=640,height=480,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.walking-ixus.net\/blog\/photos\/daoperahouse-thumb.jpg?resize=320%2C240\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<em>Different view of the Sydney Opera House<\/em><br \/>\n<strong>August 2006: <\/strong><br \/>\n<em>First visit to Nikko (world heritage site), Matsumoto (old castle and world&#8217;s biggest wasabi farm) and to Koenji (for the Awa-odori). <\/em> Just some of the sites you&#8217;ll see if you make the effort to GET OUT OF TOKYO!  I&#8217;m going to try to make it to Koenji each summer, schedule permitting from now on.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.walking-ixus.net\/blog\/photos\/awa-odori.html\" onclick=\"window.open('http:\/\/www.walking-ixus.net\/blog\/photos\/awa-odori.html','popup','width=640,height=480,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.walking-ixus.net\/blog\/photos\/awa-odori-thumb.jpg?resize=320%2C240\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<em>Awa-odori!<\/em><br \/>\n<em>First extended visit to Kuala Lumpur and various parts of Malaysia.<\/em>  Surprisingly compact central city, best siu-yuk I&#8217;ve had in my life and a bargain vacation spot.   Yup, that&#8217;s KL.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.walking-ixus.net\/blog\/photos\/klangsnack.html\" onclick=\"window.open('http:\/\/www.walking-ixus.net\/blog\/photos\/klangsnack.html','popup','width=640,height=480,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.walking-ixus.net\/blog\/photos\/klangsnack-thumb.jpg?resize=320%2C240\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<em>Street snack in Klang<\/em><br \/>\n<strong>November 2006: <\/strong><br \/>\n<em>First visit to Taiwan and to Taipei<\/em>.  Definitely on my &#8220;return visit&#8221; list to sample more nightlife (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.luxy-taipei.com\/\">Luxy<\/a> anyone?), food and to explore the rest of the island via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iht.com\/articles\/ap\/2006\/12\/28\/asia\/AS_GEN_Taiwan_High_Speed_Rail.php\">High Speed Rail<\/a>.   Taipei to Kaohsiung in 90 minutes?  Waaaaaaah!<br \/>\nOf cors that didn&#8217;t mean that I didn&#8217;t revisit some of my favourite cities on earth and visit places there that i&#8217;ve not been to yet!<br \/>\nOn my last visit to Hong Kong, I discovered new restaurants, new bars and lounges and the joys of staying up all night to save HK$300 cab fare!  How about Singapore?  Meeting new frens, staying in new places and eating, eating and drinking!  Each time I go back there it&#8217;s like meeting an old fren for the first time all over again.   Ah yes, and that philosophy applies in triplicate each time I return to Tokyo!<br \/>\nSome places that I&#8217;d like to check out in 2007.<br \/>\nHawaii: Yes, i&#8217;ve never done Hawaii properly.  Yes, I know it&#8217;s closer to SFO than New York is.  Enough!<br \/>\nTaiwan: It&#8217;s not just Taipei, ya know!<br \/>\nThailand: Maybe not right away, but eventually&#8230;<br \/>\nEastern Europe: Cold weather but supposed to be affordable and fun<br \/>\nScandinavia: Like Eastern Europe, except not that affordable&#8230;<br \/>\nJapan: north of the Tokaido\/Sanyo Shinkansen.  That means places like Akita, Takayama, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the like.<br \/>\nAustralia: How about the rest of the country outside of Sydney?<br \/>\nAside from the usual resolutions (eat better, lose 20 lbs, destroy my enemies), these are the places that I&#8217;d like to see this year.  Wonder how many i&#8217;ll be able to check off the list next year?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, 2006 could have been better in a lot of ways&#8230;but I DID do a lot of travel this year! I resolved at the beginning of 2006 to &#8220;go places I&#8217;ve not been before&#8221; and for the most part, I think I achieved that. March 2006: First visit to Australia; Sydney and the Hunter Valley. &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/walking-ixus.net\/blog\/how_was_2006\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;How was 2006?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-topics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2mgIi-9x","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/walking-ixus.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/walking-ixus.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/walking-ixus.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walking-ixus.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walking-ixus.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/walking-ixus.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/walking-ixus.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walking-ixus.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walking-ixus.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}