Wait it's been a while, did I mention here previously that there's a Revenue Museum? That's literally down the street from me? (Because I live in the neighborhood adjacent to the IRAS building?)
Anyway to answer your question:
1. No I did not know
2. I can't find it on the internet at all, unless you mean the Trick Eye Museum? Which I did know existed
3. There's one in George Town in Penang I guess and I have been meaning to go there
4. Yeah man get here and we'll go to whatever museums you want. Even the philatelic museum.
My friend tagged it Singapore but it could quite well be in Penang. Either way!
I'm trying to book a trip to Spain, to get out of the cold, but the webpage I'm trying to book through refuses to accept my check in date, with a format error, no matter how I type it.
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thatassemblyguyJanitor of Technical Debt.Registered Userregular
So, I ended up booking a really good deal of a flight. It has a few legs to it, but the middle leg is by far the longest, and I got a really good rate on some upgraded seats.
The problem is that it is the second to last leg, and there is an almost 9 hour layover in a boring city where I have no desire to leave the airport before my flight to my final destination.
So, I look at other carriers and there is a very cheap flight that cuts the layover from 9 hours down to 2 (possibly 4 if I take a later flight).
It's worth it to me to cut the layover down, and the cost of the other one-way ticket is way less than the difference in fair for the same seats in the long-haul but with a much shorter layover.
Here's my dilemma, if I check-in for the original itinerary (that I need to get from my departure destination) it will be for all legs of the trip. I know I'll be able to get my luggage right before the last leg (international->local; so you pick up your bags to go through customs), but I don't want to be a huge dick about it because if I'm not there for the last flight, they might hold it up the flight until it's clear I'm not boarding? And since it's international->local it might trigger some DHS stuff? I don't know!
Has the [travel] thread done something like this before?
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Lost Salientblink twiceif you'd like me to mercy kill youRegistered Userregular
edited March 2018
Hmm, yeah, that could be problematic. I've done flights where I booked several legs individually to solve this ridiculous layover problem, but you're right that missing... your last leg of your flight? Will at the very least potentially have them holding up the flight assuming that you're somewhere in the airport. If you had additional ongoing travel that would probably get cancelled after you no-showed, but since it sounds like this is your final leg, probably that isn't an issue.
Once you've gone through customs and immigration to domestic transfer (which you normally need to do - at least at the major airports I've been through, you clear both customs AND immigration before your ongoing travel) I don't believe there will be any additional concerns in terms of immigration, necessarily. It's hard to say, but if we work off of the assumption that you are an American citizen and that the flight in question is returning from overseas to the United States, where you then have a domestic transfer, you should still be able to take ongoing travel within the United States to wherever.
But I would call your initial airline and ask them hypothetically if it would be possible to cancel the last leg of the flight without penalty. I wouldn't say anything about rebooking on a different airline, but I would pretend that I had a stopover for work, or decided to drive, or there was a family emergency... what the heck ever. If you're lucky they'll let you just not take the flight.
You could also live dangerously and do it at the last minute at the airport. "Sorry, can't make the flight! Broke my leg in the bathroom!"
The thing is, you don't want to end up on the hook for last-minute charges due to failure to show up, and I know some airlines will pull that shit. And also I wouldn't want to be the person who held up an entire airplane's departure by no-call-no-showing.
E: It is also smart to double-check luggage requirements for the surrogate flight you book. Typically with single-airline international-to-domestic connections, the allowed baggage for the international leg is the amount that gets checked through with no additional charges. But if you change airlines like this you may end up being asked to pay for luggage that would have been allowed on the codeshare or original airline.
Lost Salient on
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
and we finalize the grim voyage by ending the trip in Gethsemane
overall it was quite fun and informative, if a little morbid
Indie Winter on
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Lost Salientblink twiceif you'd like me to mercy kill youRegistered Userregular
edited March 2018
Indie, here's a couple of possible reasons for the touching headstones, which I have also seen at other military cemeteries:
1. The need to place/bury the bodies in a timely fashion and the number of the dead means that sometimes they didn't measure out spaces between bodies at all (i.e. they dug one long trench and interred many bodies side-by-side, not in unique graves). The headstones would be placed as proximal to the actual location of the body as possible rather than evenly metered out.
2. Difficulty in separating remains - the identities of the dead were known but the remains could not be identified or separated adequately for unique burial. I've seen that more in actual mass/unit burials, but it's certainly a possibility.
Lost Salient on
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
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Lost Salientblink twiceif you'd like me to mercy kill youRegistered Userregular
Also I am using this as an excuse to revisit my photos of Verdun.
Part of a destroyed shelter outside of Fort Douaumont, which would have housed a half-company of infantry
The fields of identified dead from the top of the ossuary
Douaumont Ossuary
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
+11
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
edited March 2018
My immediate thought about the touching headstones was something like the two men were killed in a vehicle or a shelter and the remains afterwards couldn't be distinguished from each other.
I remember visiting Verdun on a school trip. The sheer number of graves is mind-boggling.
Edit: Nope, brainfart, I'm thinking of Tyne Cot not Verdun.
Yeah, Verdun is very sobering. The thing that stood out to me were all the places where anything larger than grass/weeds can't grow because the ground is still poison and/or UXO.
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thatassemblyguyJanitor of Technical Debt.Registered Userregular
I think I’d be OK with the baggage (I travel with basically two backpacks that can fit into most carry-on requirements - looking at you British Airways ticketing agent that made me check one of my backpacks but let someone board with a piece of luggage that was big enough it probably violated the checked baggage limits).
But you basically confirm my fear that the airline might be goosey and try to charge me some difference in airfare if I don’t show up for the last leg.
I’ll just putz around in the airport for the 8-9ish hours. Probably look into the possibility of the airport having a lounge that I can buy a one-day pass to access.
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Lost Salientblink twiceif you'd like me to mercy kill youRegistered Userregular
I mean, you may as well call them to ask. Maybe they'll be like "if you're going to miss it, it's fine!"
But yeah, airport lounge is a good fallback plan.
I am looking forward to my next trip to Hong Kong, in April/beginning May, because I'm going to finally set up e-Channel services for myself so I don't have to deal with the manual immigration queues anymore. It's the little things.
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
Hello there, thread. I'm going to be travelling to Japan this summer, my first international solo trip. While I have a few things to do--climbing Fuji is the main thing--I'm kind of at a loss as to other activities. I plan on visiting some museums and castles, as well as some historical battlefields to indulge my interest in samurai history. But I'm there for two weeks and kind of need to fill the days a bit more. So those of you who have gone, what do you recommend? I'll have a foreigner rail pass so pretty much anywhere is open at this point, though the Tokyo and Kyoto areas are mostly where I'll be operating out of.
Hello there, thread. I'm going to be travelling to Japan this summer, my first international solo trip. While I have a few things to do--climbing Fuji is the main thing--I'm kind of at a loss as to other activities. I plan on visiting some museums and castles, as well as some historical battlefields to indulge my interest in samurai history. But I'm there for two weeks and kind of need to fill the days a bit more. So those of you who have gone, what do you recommend? I'll have a foreigner rail pass so pretty much anywhere is open at this point, though the Tokyo and Kyoto areas are mostly where I'll be operating out of.
Hello there, thread. I'm going to be travelling to Japan this summer, my first international solo trip. While I have a few things to do--climbing Fuji is the main thing--I'm kind of at a loss as to other activities. I plan on visiting some museums and castles, as well as some historical battlefields to indulge my interest in samurai history. But I'm there for two weeks and kind of need to fill the days a bit more. So those of you who have gone, what do you recommend? I'll have a foreigner rail pass so pretty much anywhere is open at this point, though the Tokyo and Kyoto areas are mostly where I'll be operating out of.
Inuyama Jyou.
Oldest remaining castle in Japan: never destroyed, original architecture.
Osaka.
It’s like an hour on the Shinkansen, go to Osaka and just walk around all day and eat. Go to Dotonbori and eat until you can’t feel feelings.
I bought Deus Ex: Mankind Divided because I wanted to go back to Prague so bad.
Everyone, go to Prague. It's ill as fuck. Also, everyone, buy me plane tickets. I need to get out of this dump. Don't give until it hurts, give until it feels good.
Lost Salientblink twiceif you'd like me to mercy kill youRegistered Userregular
edited March 2018
Better than pocket wifi is a secondary SIM card if your phone has the capability.
Osaka was probably my favourite place I visited in Japan. At least a few years ago it was a great place for live music and vintage shopping, too. So maybe check that out?
I'm in Bali.
I have a lot of opinions about this traffic and to my shame did not instantly catch on to how to drive a motorbike (by which I mean I ditched out doing figure eights yesterday). Sigh sigh sigh.
Been relaxing as hell otherwise though.
My only sadness is the sheer quantity of litter in the water and on every beach I've been to in Indonesia. We ain't doing great with this planet of ours, folks.
Lost Salient on
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
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Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
edited March 2018
I just buy a sim card and replace my current one when I get to the new place.
But then again I am never needed for work reasons when I am on holiday.
I got a SIM when I went to Japan and it was great. This isn't always an option based on what bands your phone can use and what bands the country you're visiting use. My American friends all had to get pocket wifi for their phones.
firewaterwordSatchitanandaPais Vasco to San FranciscoRegistered Userregular
Google fi has been wonderful for me so far. Kind of scared they're going to pull the plug on it since it's just too damn good to be true. Austria, Italy, Mexico, and New Zealand have all been seamless so far. To say nothing about how damn cheap it is.
Has anyone got experience getting a coach from Fiumicino into Rome city centre? I've seen there are several companies that go from the airport to the main train station in the city centre.
Taxis are very expensive and the coach is only £5 one way.
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
edited April 2018
Decided since my central America trip won't be happening for a few years, and flights around Europe are so cheap, I might try and go to Spain at the end of the year so I can practice my Spanish. (Seriously I can get from the UK to Spain for £10, and it costs over £100 just to do the 50mins from here to Johannesburg)
I've been a few times with family when I was little but I don't really know the place at all. I'm not really looking to do the cities and touristy places, maybe just find a quiet pretty place with some nice nature and just chill for a week and inflict my terrible Español on the poor locals.
I suggest getting the train. IIRC, second class is 6€, first class is 14€. It’s faster than the coach, roomier, there’s bathrooms on board, and it’s a lot easier to find the train in my experience than figuring out which bus to take. But I love trains, so I’m biased.
Full disclosure: I’m on the Leonardo Express train between Rome and the airport at this very moment.
Shadowhope on
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
Decided since my central America trip won't be happening for a few years, and flights around Europe are so cheap, I might try and go to Spain at the end of the year so I can practice my Spanish. (Seriously I can get from the UK to Spain for £10, and it costs over £100 just to do the 50mins from here to Johannesburg)
I've been a few times with family when I was little but I don't really know the place at all. I'm not really looking to do the cities and touristy places, maybe just find a quiet pretty place with some nice nature and just chill for a week and inflict my terrible Español on the poor locals.
Google fi has been wonderful for me so far. Kind of scared they're going to pull the plug on it since it's just too damn good to be true. Austria, Italy, Mexico, and New Zealand have all been seamless so far. To say nothing about how damn cheap it is.
In the UK it's pretty expensive. The minimum cost per month is ~£20 and that's just a gig of data. I pay £10 and get 3 gig with another provider, which I can happily use across Europe (and maybe the US now too)
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
Planning to go through Tokyo-Sapporo-Fukuoka-Tokyo in February for a Snow Festival to Evo Japan tour, with brief stops before and after to check in on some spots I liked during my last visit. So I went to look up a round-trip flight to Japan at Orbitz, it comes out at about $1,300. Then I switch Orbitz to Flight+Hotel mode to check on booking a hotel for a partial segment of the trip, and adding on a hotel room for a few nights drops the total price down to around $1,000. I don't know exactly how they work that out, but it seems convenient.
ISN'T THE FORUM AND THE PALATINE HILL LIKE THE COOLEST THING, HOLY DAMN, RIGHT
Way late but hell yes, it is.
The way I describe the Palatine Hill is this: "Yeah, so chances are the history you know is the history of Western civilization. And, for basically a few hundred years of the height of the greatest empire of the ancient world everything either happened, or was reported on, here. I stood at the top of the hill and imagined the messengers breathlessly running to its top to report the news of the day. You know the word palace? Yeah, that's derived from this very hill."
Lost Salientblink twiceif you'd like me to mercy kill youRegistered Userregular
Walking through it - and this is embarrassing - one of my first reactions was, "Oh, so THIS is what 90% of 'glorious imperial city' fantasy settings are based on." Like, when you talk about a place designed, by happenstance or deliberately, to instill awe? I couldn't stop imagining how people from the provinces would have felt when they arrived.
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
Hey all, not sure if anyone is interested, but my wife and I recently finished a 10 month, 14 country, 33K+ mile trip riding our motorcycles from Seattle, WA to Buenos Aires, Argentina. We took more photos than I can count, but we put together a recap here: http://www.advjb2.com/2018/06/photo-recap-moto-trip-americas.html. Here's a sample of some of our favorites:
That is beautiful and amazing and I am instantly jealous and completely in awe of you managing to do that.
Ha thanks! It was definitely the toughest thing we've ever done. In some respects it felt really easy, our biggest problems every day were deciding where to go, finding food, gas, and somewhere to camp. Dealing with crazy drivers was pretty exhausting, especially in Peru. Now we are struggling with reverse culture shock and dealing with how fast everything is in the US and the rat race.
Posts
My friend tagged it Singapore but it could quite well be in Penang. Either way!
The problem is that it is the second to last leg, and there is an almost 9 hour layover in a boring city where I have no desire to leave the airport before my flight to my final destination.
So, I look at other carriers and there is a very cheap flight that cuts the layover from 9 hours down to 2 (possibly 4 if I take a later flight).
It's worth it to me to cut the layover down, and the cost of the other one-way ticket is way less than the difference in fair for the same seats in the long-haul but with a much shorter layover.
Here's my dilemma, if I check-in for the original itinerary (that I need to get from my departure destination) it will be for all legs of the trip. I know I'll be able to get my luggage right before the last leg (international->local; so you pick up your bags to go through customs), but I don't want to be a huge dick about it because if I'm not there for the last flight, they might hold it up the flight until it's clear I'm not boarding? And since it's international->local it might trigger some DHS stuff? I don't know!
Has the [travel] thread done something like this before?
Once you've gone through customs and immigration to domestic transfer (which you normally need to do - at least at the major airports I've been through, you clear both customs AND immigration before your ongoing travel) I don't believe there will be any additional concerns in terms of immigration, necessarily. It's hard to say, but if we work off of the assumption that you are an American citizen and that the flight in question is returning from overseas to the United States, where you then have a domestic transfer, you should still be able to take ongoing travel within the United States to wherever.
But I would call your initial airline and ask them hypothetically if it would be possible to cancel the last leg of the flight without penalty. I wouldn't say anything about rebooking on a different airline, but I would pretend that I had a stopover for work, or decided to drive, or there was a family emergency... what the heck ever. If you're lucky they'll let you just not take the flight.
You could also live dangerously and do it at the last minute at the airport. "Sorry, can't make the flight! Broke my leg in the bathroom!"
The thing is, you don't want to end up on the hook for last-minute charges due to failure to show up, and I know some airlines will pull that shit. And also I wouldn't want to be the person who held up an entire airplane's departure by no-call-no-showing.
E: It is also smart to double-check luggage requirements for the surrogate flight you book. Typically with single-airline international-to-domestic connections, the allowed baggage for the international leg is the amount that gets checked through with no additional charges. But if you change airlines like this you may end up being asked to pay for luggage that would have been allowed on the codeshare or original airline.
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
Going to Whistler for 10 days next week, I am stressed cuz I need to get a lot of work done before that and I haven’t yet
Going to Stockholm for work with a weekend in Berlin with a bunch of work friends in April, Berlin reccs welcome
And booked Portugal with my family for May, need to plan that, have 9 days - any thoughts on a good rough itinerary?
And with that half my vacay for the year will be gone (did SLC and Colorado for snowboarding this year already)
But ya
entire wall was studded with these regimental symbols, each corresponding with the units of the fallen
most of these boys are from australia and new zealand. awful long way from home.
alas,
quite a unique thing there, not sure what's the backstory
and a few enemy combatants, too
then we continued the motif of the outing with a visit to some biblical burial crypts
and down the hill
you can see the Church of Mary Magdalene in the distance
closer view of the church, though not taken by me personally since my photo came out bad:
and then to a? Mormon park??
and we finalize the grim voyage by ending the trip in Gethsemane
overall it was quite fun and informative, if a little morbid
1. The need to place/bury the bodies in a timely fashion and the number of the dead means that sometimes they didn't measure out spaces between bodies at all (i.e. they dug one long trench and interred many bodies side-by-side, not in unique graves). The headstones would be placed as proximal to the actual location of the body as possible rather than evenly metered out.
2. Difficulty in separating remains - the identities of the dead were known but the remains could not be identified or separated adequately for unique burial. I've seen that more in actual mass/unit burials, but it's certainly a possibility.
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
Part of a destroyed shelter outside of Fort Douaumont, which would have housed a half-company of infantry
The fields of identified dead from the top of the ossuary
Douaumont Ossuary
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
I remember visiting Verdun on a school trip. The sheer number of graves is mind-boggling.
Edit: Nope, brainfart, I'm thinking of Tyne Cot not Verdun.
I think I’d be OK with the baggage (I travel with basically two backpacks that can fit into most carry-on requirements - looking at you British Airways ticketing agent that made me check one of my backpacks but let someone board with a piece of luggage that was big enough it probably violated the checked baggage limits).
But you basically confirm my fear that the airline might be goosey and try to charge me some difference in airfare if I don’t show up for the last leg.
I’ll just putz around in the airport for the 8-9ish hours. Probably look into the possibility of the airport having a lounge that I can buy a one-day pass to access.
But yeah, airport lounge is a good fallback plan.
I am looking forward to my next trip to Hong Kong, in April/beginning May, because I'm going to finally set up e-Channel services for myself so I don't have to deal with the manual immigration queues anymore. It's the little things.
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
Get a pocket wifi.
Go to this place:
Druide Absinth Bar Berlin
Schönhauser Allee 42
And get hammered on Absinthe and Absinthe cocktails.
Inuyama Jyou.
Oldest remaining castle in Japan: never destroyed, original architecture.
Osaka.
It’s like an hour on the Shinkansen, go to Osaka and just walk around all day and eat. Go to Dotonbori and eat until you can’t feel feelings.
Everyone, go to Prague. It's ill as fuck. Also, everyone, buy me plane tickets. I need to get out of this dump. Don't give until it hurts, give until it feels good.
Osaka was probably my favourite place I visited in Japan. At least a few years ago it was a great place for live music and vintage shopping, too. So maybe check that out?
I'm in Bali.
I have a lot of opinions about this traffic and to my shame did not instantly catch on to how to drive a motorbike (by which I mean I ditched out doing figure eights yesterday). Sigh sigh sigh.
Been relaxing as hell otherwise though.
My only sadness is the sheer quantity of litter in the water and on every beach I've been to in Indonesia. We ain't doing great with this planet of ours, folks.
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
But then again I am never needed for work reasons when I am on holiday.
Satans..... hints.....
Has anyone got experience getting a coach from Fiumicino into Rome city centre? I've seen there are several companies that go from the airport to the main train station in the city centre.
Taxis are very expensive and the coach is only £5 one way.
I've been a few times with family when I was little but I don't really know the place at all. I'm not really looking to do the cities and touristy places, maybe just find a quiet pretty place with some nice nature and just chill for a week and inflict my terrible Español on the poor locals.
Full disclosure: I’m on the Leonardo Express train between Rome and the airport at this very moment.
Hop across the bay. Go to Bilbao and Santander.
Have fun.
but basque country is very lovely
but lots of spain is lovely
southern spain i like a lot
but i feel like each part of spain is very different
pick a random place and eat tapas and drink wine and walk around
Rome is beautiful....
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
In the UK it's pretty expensive. The minimum cost per month is ~£20 and that's just a gig of data. I pay £10 and get 3 gig with another provider, which I can happily use across Europe (and maybe the US now too)
Last time I was there the light was so beautiful i thought I was on a movie set.
Way late but hell yes, it is.
The way I describe the Palatine Hill is this: "Yeah, so chances are the history you know is the history of Western civilization. And, for basically a few hundred years of the height of the greatest empire of the ancient world everything either happened, or was reported on, here. I stood at the top of the hill and imagined the messengers breathlessly running to its top to report the news of the day. You know the word palace? Yeah, that's derived from this very hill."
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
Hope you enjoy!
Ha thanks! It was definitely the toughest thing we've ever done. In some respects it felt really easy, our biggest problems every day were deciding where to go, finding food, gas, and somewhere to camp. Dealing with crazy drivers was pretty exhausting, especially in Peru. Now we are struggling with reverse culture shock and dealing with how fast everything is in the US and the rat race.