Ask Melvin Ng

Hollywood walk of fame here we come. One of my early childhood kung-fu hero, Bruce Lee. The other one is with hottie Halle Berry.

Aha…this is where the American Idol show is staged. Did I tell you I’m a fan of that show?

One for the album with the Hollywood signage in the background. 

Donald Duck and Harry Potter fans…I was never a huge HP fan though but what the heck I’ll just snap their handprint for you.

It was quite a long journey to travel from San Francisco to Las Vegas or otherwise known as Sin City. By the time we arrived, it was already evening. The trip was rather uneventful and the landscape was rather flat and dusty since it’s on desert. The road was VERY STRAIGHT as you can see from the photo.

This was taken on the bus during our journey back from Grand Canyon towards Las Vegas. Nice sunset.

The 3 musketeers after coming out of one of the casino hotels. Noticed the 3 of us wearing the bling-bling necklace

This was taken at the walkway beside our hotel. It’s pretty crowded and have the air of festivity to it.

One of the newer attractions, the Venice city with it’s fake skyscape

And some of the hotels that we always see on TV but now we get to see it for real…

Ceasar’s Palace, The Pyramid, Grand MGM, The Bellagio, Monte Carlo and many others more.   

With that said, it’s a tourist attraction with lots of attraction and casinos. However, I didn’t really enjoy it. Perhaps it’s just not my cup of tea. There was one event though which I wanted to attend badly, which was Celine Dion’s performance. Unfortunately, they don’t have any more tickets, and she’ll only be performing till October 2007.

We were already in Las Vegas and to visit the Grand Canyon, we had to take an early journey of 4 hours each way, to reach Grand Canyon. It would be great injustice for me to try to explain how magnificient and humbled I am when I first laid eyes on the canyon. You’ll have to personally experience it for yourself to really feel it. I just felt so humbled by the experience that I was left speechless. In fact, I just sat down by the cliff for almost an hour to just let the feeling and sigh sink in.

Our tour guide mentioned that at night, the view would be different because of the silhouette created by the moon light. I’d love to experience that illusion and hopefully will be able to camp over in the night time.

On the way back from the Grand Canyon, we stopped by Hoover Dam. It’s one of the most famous dam especially in the US but not because of it’s size (there are much more bigger dams nowadays). Rather, because at the time it was built, it was considered an engineering marvel and today, it supplies over 70% of the water to Las Vegas.

If I’m not mistaken, the dam shown in the movie, The Transformers, was the Hoover Dam.

When I arrived the the Yosemite National Park, I was simply mesmerized by its beauty and serenity. The magnificient view of nature just captivated me so much that I’ve vowed to go back one more time, and this time around to actually camp overnight!

On the way to the Yosemite National Park, we passed by El Capitan, the single largest piece of rock! This rock is also one of the favorites amongst mountain climbers. Because it’s so high up, it takes days for climbers to reach the top. Because of that, the climbers will actually eat, sleep, pee and poop while hanging on the cliff.

As you can see, there’s a valley where the El Capitan is. This was formed a long time ago when the glaciers cut through the rocks, hence the huge ‘U’ shaped valley. If a valley is formed by river cutting through it, then the shape would be more like ‘V’ shaped.

Forest fire is another thing that’s pretty common at Yosemite National Park. Usually these are caused by lightning more than anything else. Also, at times the fire is purposely left to burn in a controlled manner so as to fertilize the soil, and reduce the amount of dead wood in order for younger and newer trees to grow. (Kids, don’t try this at home!)

We arrived at San Francisco on September 11, and stayed there till September 18, before heading off for a 7 day tour.

The frist diner that we went to for dinner was pretty cool. It had that retro classic feel to it, with juke boxes and even a car inside the dining area. Check out that classic automobile. Hmm…don’t test me, I don’t know what make is it.  Probably you can tell me.

At our favorite restaurant, The Elephant Bar.

Oh boy, we had so much fun renting a car (Mazda) and drove all the way to Gilroy to do some heavy shopping. Gobala had his driving license expired, so he couldn’t get behind the wheels. Vince was the navigator, and I was the driver. It took some getting use to since back home we drive on the left hand side of the road, and now we had to drive on the right!

The good thing was our car had a GPS system, which was VERY accurate. In fact, we went to Gilroy with nothing else but the GPS directing us.

Along the way, we saw our evil nemesis…PayPal. Let’s not get into what they did for us but it was enough to give us some sleepless nights.

There were hundreds of outlet shops there that I think my wife would have enjoyed it had she been there. Unfortunately I had to do some shopping on my own.

This one just caught my eyes and I had to snap a photo of it! I bought 3 t-shirts from this shop because I thought it was so cool.

While in SF, we came across the Apple store. Initially we thought of getting the iPod, then we found out that they were launching the iPod Touch, which was very similar to the iPhone, but without the camera, phone capability, and a few other functions. Sounds tempting…then on the last day when we were suppose to go buy it, David Cavanaugh flashed his iPhone in front of us and told us that he manage to unlock it. That was it. We ARE GOING TO GET THE IHONE!!!

And we bought it…all 3 of us!

After we completed our 7 day tour, we’re back in San Francisco again for another night before flying off to Taiwan. To kill time, we thought of visiting the Alcatraz but heck, all tickets were sold out the night before. Darn!

We didn’t book our hotel in advance and much to our horror, the few hotels that we went to check on that day were fully occupied! *Gasps*

Luckily we manage to locate a hostel around the area. It’s pretty neat and tidy so we have no complaints. In fact, it was quite comfortable especially since it has Internet connection and self-service laundry machines.

Off we went to Fisherman’s Wharf and since we had not taken the cable car before, we decided to hop onto one.

Me and Gobala waiting for the cable car ….

Despite the modernization taking place, the cable car has remain true to its roots by still employing manual methods of operating it. It still needs humans to push the car around to turn it to the other direction once it has reached the end of its route.

The 3 of us huddled at the back of the cable car…it was fun experiencing this timeless classic vehicle.

The streets in SF have very steep slopes and this one is taken from the top.

When we reached Fisherman’s Wharf, we decided to be more adventurous and rented a bicycle for each of us to cycle across the Golden Gate Bridge. We cycled about 13km across the bridge and took the ferry on the journey back.

Mind you, we weren’t prepared for the ride so we had our jeans on. Otherwise shorts would have been more appropriate.

And some of the slopes were pretty steep that we had to walk and push our bikes up! Talk about being fit eh

At the other end of our ride, we saw some pretty nice houses fronting the sea. How about some dream building here. It would be nice to have a house here, and a private yatch that I can sail out anytime just to enjoy life.

Oh, did I mention how tasty an ice cream can be in a hot scorching day especially after a tiring bicycle ride? Yummy!

We boarded the ferry and headed back to Fisherman’s Wharf…the view was simply magnificient with the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz visible from the ship.

The 3 Malaysian Musketeers riding off into the sun…