Good to be back

When the temperature in Finland is gliding steadily towards point zero, it’s not a bad idea to board a plane and go someplace warmer for a while. That’s exactly what I did when travelling to Asia for two weeks. Here’s a selection of photos and videos from the trip.

Malaysia

We stayed in Kuala Lumpur for 4 nights. While the days were spent at our office in TPM (Technology Park Malaysia), there was still plenty of time to walk around the city center. Navigating in KL is quite easy, thanks to the ever visible Petronas towers, which allow you to quickly recalibrate your internal compass after stepping out from the huge maze of shopping malls. During our stay there was an earthquake on the region, which caused some serious damage in Indonesia, but we did not notice it until watching the news next morning.

After the work week we flew to the Penang Island, which is located some 300 kilometers north from KL. We stayed at the center of George Town, a UNESCO world heritage site. As you can imagine, the views were quite different compared to the modern skyscraper filled landscape of KL. Personally I preferred the green areas found from Penang Hill, which can be reached with a 30 minute funicular ride up the mountain.

Japan

On the following week we were scheduled to start our work at the Osaka ATC office on monday morning. This meant we had to wake up at 4 AM on sunday and start our long journey from Penang to KL to Shanghai and finally Osaka KIX airport. Miraculously our luggage had also followed us all this way.

During our stay in Japan, it was time for another natural disaster: Typhoon Melor. When we were packing our things and boarding a Shinkansen in Osaka, while heading towards our office in Tokyo, the wind had already picked up quite a lot in Osaka. On the next morning the typhoon had already moved past Tokyo, but the local transit was in a chaos, causing the ever so punctual Japanese railway system to suffer from unusual delays.

On friday at noon we were done with the working tasks of the week, so we powered off our laptops and took a Shinkansen to the city of Kyoto. Compared to Osaka or Tokyo, this is a place where it is quite easy to explore the historical roots of the Japanese culture, as there are temples and gardens at almost every street corner.

There are of course also other kinds of cultural offerings in this city of 1.5 million inhabitants. For example, the staged samurai fights at the Toei Kyoto Studio Park:

Here’s another shot from the highly modern Kyoto Station and it’s amazing escalators going right to the top of the world:

Even though it’s always fun to travel around and see the world, after 15 days, 8 flights and 5 hotel rooms, it felt good to be back home in Helsinki. When you have a chance to get out every once in a while, it’s much easier to deal with the all darkness,  slush and influenza that come with the traditional autumn in Finland.