Happy Birthday Dawn!

Forget the smoke, forget the mosques, forget the city that brings you grief, forget the people who try to rip you off.

Why?

Because it's your birthday!

So Happy Birthday!

Ok, you can open your card and presents now (if you have received them)!
As for me I'm going to buy a cake and eat it on your behalf!

;p

My Brother's Wedding

After months of preparations, major house cleaning and headaches over money issues, my brother finally got married yesterday.

Besides helping him, i also have to juggle 2 different projects at the same time so it's been really exhausting. In fact, last night was the first time I had 8 hours of sleep in ages. Think I'm going to take today off to go into hibernation. Zzz...

Gone Shopping!

After years of preparation and pre-production work, 'Gone Shopping' the feature debut by local filmmaker Wee Lilin is finally out.

I was fortunate to be invited to the gala premiere at GV Vivocity yesterday and what an evening it was. Filled with lots of beautiful people, it seemed that the entire industry was out in full force for the event.

While the film was a bit slow in some parts, I really liked it overall especially the story threads involving Kym Ng and the Indian girl. It was a fantastic effort by Lilin and knowing how much hard work she put into it, I appreciated it even more.

I was also amused to see that my 2 second cameo was left intact and not on the cutting room floor. So ladies and gentlemen, 'Gone Shopping' is also the big screen debut of yours truly! Haha it's a blink and miss thingy though, so I wonder how many people will catch it. ;)

Home Sweet Home

7 flights, 6 weeks, 5 airports, 4 countries, 3 airlines, 2 continents and a lifetime of memories later, my summer holiday was finally over.

Strangely it took such a long trip for me to appreciate Singapore, I never thought there would come a day when I would actually miss home. Unfortunately a chain of events since I came back is making me have second thoughts about that.

Once I get over my laziness, I will resume posting about the the trip again...

Day 7 (11 June) - NOW We Are In Hell!

The buffet breakfast in the morning helped to make up a little for the lack of air-conditioning the previous day. It was the most sumptuous breakfast we had in France up to then. Being the Ugly Singaporeans that we are, we stole lots of fruit jams and Nutella to bring along for our trip. Luckily we were not discovered, or else it would have been humiliating!

After breakfast, we set off for our next destination - the religious town of Lourdes. On the way, we made a detour and visited Carcassone, an utterly charming medieval fortress town. It was here that Uncle Patrick broke his first chair. I stared dumbfounded as he calmly got up, assembled the broken pieces together and promptly exchanged it with another one at the next table...

Welcome to my castle!

After lunch, we continued on our way to Lourdes. It was almost nightfall by the time we hit town and appropriately enough for a religious city, we checked into the hotel from Hell!


Scary doesn't even begin to describe this place. Aunt Rita declared it the worst hotel room she stayed in her entire life! I shared a room with Dawn and JF and my bed was right beside the window which looked out to a corridor. We felt so exposed that JF woke up in the middle of the night in a panic and asked Dawn to hide all their jewels in the shoes!


Perhaps it was the effect of the hotel but I felt very unsettled the whole time I was in Lourdes. It had that kind of oppressive feeling that gave me the creeps. We witnessed the night procession which up to 10,000 pilgrims carried candles and walked round the square, following a gigantic statue of Mary.

The Nightly Procession

I don't mean to be rude but the whole procession looked like some cult thingy. Imagine deathly silence broken by occasional ghostly chantings. I love France but this was a place I could not wait to get out from...

Day 6 (10 June) - Hot As Hell

I attended my first mass ever (aside from my sister´s wedding) this morning. Although I'm a Buddhist, I do respect other religions and certainly am open to experiencing them. Unfortunately the service was in French and rather long and dreary, the church though was very beautiful.

The church in Avignon

After the service, we paid a visit to the Palace of the Popes. Between 1309 and 1377, 9 Popes stayed in Avignon as opposed to Vatican City. The Palace is a huge medieval gothic building, so big in fact that we barely had time to go through it entirely.

Inside the dungeon in the Palace of the Popes

As we were rushed for time, we left Avignon after the visit, setting off for our next stop - Aix-en-Provence. It was a relief when we arrived at our hotel to discover that it was a large, modern establishment. However the relief quickly turned to dismay when we were informed that the air-conditioning for the entire hotel was down. As we didn't want to linger in the hot confines of our rooms, we quickly dumped our stuff and proceeded to explore the city.

When we reached the city, the Sunday market was just closing up and the stall holders were packing and leaving. I couldn't find anything particularly special about Aix but like most of the French towns we have visited, it was very chic and elegant.

For some reason, the old biddies didn't want to have dinner. Instead they chose to buy some pastries from the bakery to line their stomachs. So Dawn, JF and I had our dinner in a sidewalk cafe while the 4 of them sat outside waiting for us. It was very apparent that Uncle Raymond wanted to have dinner with us but was forced by Auntie Rose to eat a chicken pie instead.

It was very weird to see the 4 of them waiting outside for us so we tried to persuade them to join us. Auntie Rita and Uncle Pat decided to go for a walk so Auntie Rose relented and agreed to join us. By then, Uncle Raymond was throwing a mini tantrum and refused to order anything. Pretty soon they went for a walk too.

Needless to say, it was very amusing to see the dynamics between the 2 Lee sisters and their husbands. If it runs in the family, I really worry for JF...

After dinner, we went back to the hotel to face a sleepless night in our hot and stuffy room. As we were situated right next to the highway, it was very noisy when we opened the window. We were certainly not happy campers that night!

Tip on budget travelling - What to do when there is limited space?

Answer - Squeeze into whatever's available!

Day 5 (9 June) - Life´s A Fairytale

After breakfast, we decided to pack a picnic lunch and visit some of the noteworthy sights in Provence.

Our first stop was the breathtakingly beautiful Gordes. A stone village set on a mountain, Gordes was the kind of place which I thought existed only in medieval fairytales. I was wrong of course and a stroll through the village established the fact that tourists are well aware of the place and visiting it in droves.

Beautiful Gordes

Summer in Southern France is unforgiving and even for us Singaporeans who live on the Equator, it can get a little overwhelming. So we defected to the shades of the forest for our picnic and it made for a rather interesting sight. Imagine 6 Singaporeans and 1 Frenchman sitting on the ground plucking food from various plastic bags. Needless to say, the old biddies weren´t very impressed by this arrangement and were on the constant lookout for ants and other creepy-crawlies.

After lunch, it was a short walk to our next destination, the Senanque Abbey. Almost a thousand years old, the Abbey initially housed a community of Cistercian monks until they were expelled in 1903-1926.

A small group of monks returned in 1988, growing lavender and tending honey bees for a living. Today the Abbey serves it main purpose as a tourist attraction and we were brought on a guided tour through the various parts of the Abbey with a host of other visitors. Perhaps it was because we have been visiting too many religious buildings but I was quickly bored by the whole thing.

The historical Senanque Abbey

Thus it was with relief that the tour came to an end and we were on our way again. Along the country roads, we saw so many trees bearing luscious fruits of every imagination. Needless to say, the greedy Singaporean in us reared its ugly head and we had JF stop the car for me and Dawn to jump out and pluck some fresh cherries off the trees. I´m not big on cherries but those cherries were heavenly...

Our last stop of the day was Roussillon, a small village famed for ochre deposits. In fact, most of the houses there were all in ochre. When we passed a sign stating ´Famous Villages of France´, Uncle Raymond (Dawn´s dad) insisted that the place we were visiting was a recreation of famous villages in France. No matter how much we argued, he refused to believe that we were at the real village itself. Sigh...

It might have been the hectic pace of the day, the blistering heat or the picnic lunch, but I was feeling rather sick by the time we made our way back. I went straight to bed that day without dinner, exhaustion quickly taking over me.