Tokyo!

Plastic Food - looks good enough to eat!

Dev and I took the redeye flight from Singapore to Tokyo, arriving at 8:30am and took the train to our hostel in Asukasabashi. We had heard that it was winter in Japan but were still a little surprised at how cold it was! We only had one pair of jeans and a light windbreaker, chilly! :) After a quick nap, we took a walk to the Senso-ji temple nearby, where we checked out all the tourist shops and the main temple grounds. From there we walked to the Traditional Crafts Museum which was fairly unspectacular and then to Kappabashi Street which is a street of wholesale stores that sell all the dishes, cutlery, linens and of course all the plastic display food to the Japanese restaurants. A large number of the restaurants we saw in Tokyo had plastic food displays in their windows of their food options and we were surprised at how expensive it was. About $15 for a piece of plastic sushi, I'd rather the real thing! :)

Senso-ji Temple

We took the long way home, exploring the little side streets of Asukasa which apparantly escaped the Allied bombing and are similar to their Edo days. The smaller wooden shops with the paper Japanese signs in the windows are just like the movies. After a rest back at the hotel, we walked to the nearby district of Akihabara to find our first sushi dinner. The restaurant we settled on was packed full of Japanese businessmen. Even though it was a Tuesday night, everyone was drinking like it was the weekend! Everyone in the city is always so well dressed that we didn't quite fit in with our jeans, runners and windbreakers. Later, we took the subway out to Shibuya which is supposedly on par with Times and Picadilly Square and looks especially cool at night. The streets were crazy busy and lit up everywhere with huge screens and signs for stores and restaurants going at least six stories up. It was hard to get a picture that captured it all. :)

Shibuya At Night

Tokyo Metro System!

The next morning we got up a little later than planned and made our way over to Ryogoku across the river where the sumo stadium is located. We were super lucky, sumo tournaments happen only three times a year for two weeks and our trip was perfect timing! We bought tickets for that afternoon's festivities than went back to the hostel to get caught up on the rules and have lunch. One thing that is really cool in this city is that all the convenience stores have huge food sections with sushi and chicken and rice, udon noodles, a bakery, etc. and loads of people pop into the 7/11 for a quick and cheap lunch. There are even microwaves on the walls to heat up your food!

We got to the sumo stadium around 2:30pm and checked out the sumo museum (their hand prints are huge!), explored the stadium and then started watching the show around 4:00pm, which is when all the more advanced fighters start and the radio commentary kicks in. What was funny was the sumo wrestlers walking around the stadium and biking on the street, they looked so out of context. Dev was in the bathroom when one wrestler came in, he was enormous! They're not all as fat as on the movies, but they're super tall and look really strong!

Sumo Fight

The fights were way more interesting than we had imagined. Each match lasts less than a couple of minutes but can take up to 7 minutes of the wrestlers stomping and stretching and throwing salt around to intimidate their opponents before it starts! :) We heard that there never used to even be a time limit on the preparations! Most of the more advanced fighters take the fully allowed time. :) We were especially lucky in that there is one yokozuma (a top rank given to only select fighers) now and that he was fighting the final match. Surprisingly, he lost! and while some Japanese cheered, some threw their seat cushions at the stage as a form of booing! :)

Tuna at the Fish Market

The next morning, we were up just after 5:00am to hit the Tsukiji Fish Market, the largest fish market in the world! In 2008, the market sold over $18 million US in seafood per day! It was huge to say the least and was the most fish we've ever seen in one place. There were massive frozen tuna lying in lines along the floor. Neither one of us had ever seen the giant mussels that scallops come from...they're huge! :) After getting in the way of all the busy fish men, we did the traditional tourist thing and went for a sushi breakfast from one of the nearby restaurants. It was super delicious and we spent the meal chatting with a Japanese lady who was already drinking sake, it was like 8:30am! :)

Sushi Breakfast

We were surprised in that there is very little English spoken in Japan, but the people that do speak the language love to practice it! They are super friendly. More than once, locals offered help when we were looking at our directions somewhere or helped us make sense of the crazy metro system or chatted us up in the bars or hot springs. :) It was also one of the first countries we'd been in that most of the tourists are Japanese, so even the signs and brochures are rarely in English and you don't see a lot of Westerners anywhere. More authentic though. :)



Akihabara



After breakfast, we went into a McDonald's for a coffee and to wait until the stores in Ginza would begin to open. What's kind of gross is they are still big smokers here, so can smoke in the restaurants and stuff. Ginza which is one of many but the most presigious of Tokyo's shopping districts was impressive. It is compared to Fifth Avenue and Beverly Hills and is basically Yorkville but for ten square blocks. The stores are huge! The Apple store for example was four floors and the Forever 21 was six floors! The buildings are really cool to wander around because they are all themed for each designer like LV, Gucci, Tiffany's, etc. This is usually the location of the flagship stores and they often include showrooms which show the not released yet merchandise. We checked out the Sony showroom which let you fool around with the latest computers, cameras, 3D tvs. etc. They are big into decorating their electronics so there were little netbooks that were decorated to look like purses with fake clasps and snake skin exteriors! :)

Next, we headed to another large shopping district but of a slightly different variety. Akihabara is a large anime and electronics shopping area which is also where we grabbed lunch at a noodle shop. We didn't really understand the anime :) but the electronics stores were cool. Surprisingly, their phones are pretty big but they have built in 14.1 megapixal cameras and we even saw one that was waterproof! :) There was a picture of the phone in the shower! :) Finally, I dragged Dev to the Origami Museum which we was very patient about. :P

Yebisu Beer Museum

The next morning, we took the subway to Ueno where there was a great suggested walking tour through the old black market shops from WWII, down some back streets to some really cool Buddhist temples and ending near the Yanaka Cementary. We grabbed lunch and did some souvenier shopping then got on the subway to go to Ebisu where the Yebisu Beer Museum was located. This is the oldest beer in Japan and is now owned by Sapporo. The area really looked like the Distillery District with old brickworks buildings and cobbled streets. The Sapporo brewery was next door. The museum had great English signage and was cool, especially the tasting bar! We tried all the different kinds, except for the stout. :)

With Our New Japanese Friends :)

From there, we went down to Rappongi, a bar and clubbing district that has also been recently redeveloped with luxury condominium complexes. There we met our Mexican friend from the hostel and headed to a nearby pub. It was a random night but pretty funny. We bar hopped around the area for a while where we met an Australian bartender that gave us a great recommendation for a hot spring close to Tokyo. When it got late enough, we had to take the subway home, but then decided to check out a bar in our neighbourhood. We stumbled into a little bar with just the owner and his wife there but he waved us in and sat down to tell us a bunch of dirty jokes. :) Then we went to a bar down the street where we met a bunch of younger locals. One of the girls had recently broke up with her Canadian boyfriend. :)

At the Imperial Palace Park

Needless to say, we got a bit of a late start the next morning, but headed off to Iidabashi to see the Yasukuni-Jinja shrine and the nearby war museum in the afternoon. After that, we walked to the Imperial Palace grounds, which had a great park and was really pretty. We went out for dinner later to a restaurant near our hostel for a big sushi platter. Yummy! :) Dev had his heart set on going to the hot springs by then, so we had some research to do because people with tattoos are banned from hot springs, spas and gyms in Japan. Traditionally, only those in the Japanese mafia have tattoos! But we decided to give it a try and planned our trip for the next day.

We had to get up super early to take the subway across town and catch the first train out of Tokyo to Hakone, a nearby mountain town that is popular with the Tokyo people as a weekend retreat because of the amazing scenary and hot springs everywhere. We upgraded to the "Romance Car" on the way there, which is just the silly name for the comfortable train instead of the commuter train and bought the day transit pass. Once we arrived in Hakone, we did the recommendd loop allowed by our pass which included a train ride around a mountain, a rope car (looked like a fancy, insulated ski lift) up to the top of a mountain where you could see Mount Fuji and where we ate black eggs boiled in the active volcano, a cruise on a sightseeing boat on Lake Ashi and the bus ride to our hot springs destination. :) I managed to get into the place by wearing a t-shirt and a bandaid over my ankle tattoo and so we hit the pools.

Sightseeing Cruise - Lake Ashi

I'm A Little Teapot! :)

The place was awesome and had really interesting themed hot spring pools like red wine, green tea, coffee, chocolate and sake spas. They actually came around every hour or so to put red wine in the pool! :) It made them some really cool colours. They also had hot spring water slides which were pretty zippy! and a fish spa where you put your feet in a big pool of tiny fish and they eat all the dead skin off your feet. It felt soooo weird! :) We chatted with some old Japanese men in the red wine pool who insisted on helping us take pictures of ourselves in the pool. :) The pools were relaxing but maybe too relaxing because we were pretty tired by the time we had taken the commuter train back to Tokyo! :)

The train came back to Shinjuku station which is another great shopping area which has loads of tiny side streets filled with traditional bars and restaurants which was really cool. We explored for a while and had dinner at one of the vending machine restaurants (you buy a ticket for what you want at the vending machine and give it to the server) and then headed back to the hostel. The next morning we ran a few errands and then had to be on the airport shuttle by noon to head back to Canada and real life! :O

Kuala Lumpar & Singapore

In the lobby of our sweet hotel

Our flight arrived in Malaysia around 11:40pm and caught the airport bus to KL Sentral station. For some reason we were surprised to find the subway closed since it was past 1:00am by that time, but we caught a taxi to the Grocer's Inn where we had made a reservation. We had read in our Lonley Planet that Malaysia has a bed bug problem, so luckily we were on our guard because a couple of minutes after we checked in, we noticed some bugs crawling on the wall. After a quick google search, we identified them as bed bugs and immediately checked out. This made us pretty nervous to go into any of the sketchier hotels, so we checked in for the night at one of the fanciest hotels on the street called the 5 Elements. Our room rate at Grocer's was about $15 and 5 Elements was $60 so it was a large upgrade. We didn't want to take any chances as we've come this far without any bed bugs! :)

The room was beautiful, ac, flat screen tv, wifi, super comfy bed, bay window and hot shower and included a breakfast buffet.:) Unfortunately, it was almost 3:00am by that time, so we caught a couple of hours sleep, had breakfast and then decided to try to shop around for a cheaper hotel. We opted for a mid-range hotel at about $30 but when we moved our things to the room, right away I saw a few bugs (of a different variety) but googled those and found out they were a different species of bed bug! The book was right! So we checked out immediately again and re-checked into our nice hotel. It's our last chance to have our own room before we're back to the dorms, so it was nice to live it up for a few nights anyways! :) During all this, there was a crazy monsoon like rainfall, I can't remember the last time I was that soaked from head to toe! :) The streets were flooded!



Petaling Street - covered market area

So after drying off and waiting out the rain, we decided to check out Chinatown, which is where our hotel was located. Petaling Street was one street over and is the main commercial area. It's covered (because of all the rainfall they get) and stocked full of stalls selling clothes, souveniers and food. We wandered around and then I dragged Dev around on a little walking tour of some of the main sights in the area. The city is largely inhabited by Chinese and Indian people and was colonized by the British and the population is largely Muslim, so there is a really interesting mix of Chinese and Indian shops, Islamic as well as colonial style buildings, as well as a bunch of skyscrapers. For lunch, we found this great area that looks like a food court but had loads of food stalls with cheap Indian, Chinese and Thai food. Yummy! We were pretty tired from our long night, so headed back to the room to wait out the rain that was starting again.

Indian Temple near chinatown

Later that night, we checked out a local restaurant across the street from our hotel. The food was delicious but Dev informed me halfway through the meal that he had seen a bunch of rats running across the back of the restaurant. I know they're probably everywhere where we eat here, but I still don't want to think about it while I'm eating! :) As a side note, the people here are really friendly and speak the best English that we've encountered in Asia so far! It was raining when we went to dinner and an older man asked us if we wanted to share his umbrella to cross the street! :)

The next morning, we snoozed the alarm a couple of times (the bed was soooo comfortable!) but took the light rail transit to KLCC or the Petronas Twin Towers and were there by around 9:30am. We had hoped to make it up to the Skybridge (where the final action scene of Entrapment took place :)) but it was closed for maintenance so instead browsed the super fancy shopping mall. We don't really understand who is buying all this designer fashion from these malls, but everywhere in Australia and Asia, the malls are filled with Gucci, Cartier, Tod's, Jimmy Choo, Armani, etc. stores. Window shopping only! :)

Meg standing in front of a place

We then bought a ticket on the Hop-on Hop-off tour bus around the city. It was great because it was air-conditioned which was a great relief after walking around the city, visited all the major sites and had commentary running about each attraction. We stopped to take pictures of the KL Tower (kind of looks like the CN Tower), the National Palace, Merdeka Square, Little India and the Lake Gardens. By around 4:00pm we had seen everything and were pretty exhausted but wanted to wait and see the Petronas tower all lit up at night so we went back to KLCC to check the movie times. :) Movies are about $4 here and cost the same as the smoothie I bought at Boost Juice before the movie! :) There was nothing great playing so we rock paper scissored and Dev picked Summer of the Witch with Nicolas Cage. He'll play in anything. :) The best part of the movie in my opinion was that it was only one and a half hours :) and was perfect timing to come out after and check out the building which looked really cool, almost sci-fi! :)

Standing infront of the Petronas Towers at night

We tried out the clay pot chicken at a streetstall for dinner near our hotel, had a beer, shopped a little in the markets and then headed back to the hotel for an early morning bus to Singapore! :)

Tickets on the ordinary buses to Singapore were sold out so we bought a ticket on the Executive Coach which was still only about $30 for the seven hour trip! It was a super fancy bus with huge reclining seats with footrests, individual televisions sets and food during the trip. I wish the Greyhound was anything like this! :) The trip flew by and we arrived in the Little India of Singapore. We wasted a bunch of time in the sweltering heat trying to find an ATM that would accept our cards so we finally made it to our hostel at around 5:00pm. We took a quick rest and then headed out to wander around the Chinatown near our place and grab some beers and dinner. We had heard that Singapore is known as being really strict and is known as a "fine" city, because it's really nice but also because you can get fined for almost anything including not flushing the toilet in a public washroom! :) Chewing gum is banned as well and beer and alcohol is really expensive because of their "sin" taxes. Probably because of all this, the city was super clean, even Chinatown! :)



Taking in the Singapore's waterfront



Clarke Quay bar district near our hostel

The next morning we went out to the river to check out the Singapore Flyer (huge ferris wheel like the London Eye), the new casino, the Esplanade theatre and the Civic District (the city's colonial core) with loads of old colonial buildings that look brand new, statues and museums. There is also a shopping mall on almost every corner. We also saw the first Raffles hotel and ate lunch at one of the cool food courts, then we headed to Orchard Road, the main shopping district. We wandered around window shopping and then took the long way back to our hostel through the financial core and saw lots of cute little side streets. After dinner, we checked out Clarke Quay which is an awesome bar district along the river. It looks like a cross between the village at Blue Mountain and the Distillery district, with covered pedestrian streets and cute little bars, including a fancy Burger King bar called Whopper Bar. I bought an ice cream sandwhich there that actaully came with a piece of bread! but sugary bread? :)

Meg eating her mint chocolate chip on a piece of bread

By around 8:00pm we had to go get our bags to head to the airport for our red-eye flight to Tokyo. You can take the subway all the way to the airport for about $2. For a city/country of just over 5 million people they have the most amazing subway system with like ten different lines and it's really cheap! We were really impressed until we got to Tokyo and saw their metro system!

　



2 Weeks Island Hopping: Thai Islands

New Year's Party

We took a pretty miserable overnight bus from Bangkok to Surat Thani (southern Thailand), where we arrived at 6:00am and had to wait in a dirt floor hut with a couple hundred people for two hours to get on the ferry which took almost four hours to get to Koh Pha Ngan. Koh Pha Ngan is one of the most popular islands in Thailand - mostly due to the partying. The upside was that we had booked for five nights so were able to stay put for a while and relax. :) Our hotel was near Ben Tai beach, halfway between the pier (Thongsala) and Haad Rin, the beach where they throw the full moon parties. The hotel was decent and in a good location, but we certainly had some hotel envy; the resorts on the beach were amazing! :) We had arrived in the afternoon on December 30th, so spent the first day and a half exploring the town of Thongsala where there are loads of restaurants and tourist shops, eating delicious food and checking out the beach near our hotel. The lady who ran our hotel was a little crazy, she would get so flustered anytime anyone asked her anything and was really hard to understand but her food was great. :) After sleeping in and lazing around during the day on New Year's Eve, we caught the tuk tuk down to the Full Moon New Year's Party!

Ring of Fire

We hadn't known what to expect but the streets of Haad Rin were lined with tables of buckets of booze and the bars and streets were packed. It started to rain a little when we first arrived a little before 10pm, so we bought our first bucket and hid under a storefront. The buckets consist of a flask of liquor, probably half the size of a mickey, a bottle of pop and a bottle of energy drink with ice. Prices range from about 150 baht to 300 baht ($5 to $10). They actually weren't half bad. :) When the rain stopped, the crowd starting venturing to the beach. There are around ten huge bars lining the beach with party-ers going right out to the water. In between the bars are sketchy booths selling cheap buckets. We noticed pretty quickly that the liquor and red bull bottles had been resealed so were clearly full of cheap home brew, kinda gross. :) We were told that about 30,000 people come to the New Year's party, it was crazy busy and we were lucky in that the rain held off for the rest of the night. The bars have huge sound systems and light shows trying to attract the ravers and for the rest there are waterslides through fire, fire jump ropes, rings of fire to jump through, etc. None of which Dev and I were keen to partake in, but it was fun to watch! The next day we saw soooo many people with bandages and casts, so probably a good call. :)

 

Blacklight Paintings!

Time flew and before we knew it, it was midnight and we headed to the clock in the middle for the countdown. Everyone was getting these great blacklight body paintings and we totally got caught up in it and paid 500 baht ($15 ish) for blacklight paintings all over our arms, Dev got sweet flames and me a fish skeleton, why not? :)

Dev, Me and Rhys

The craziest part of the night is that shortly after midnight, Dev ran into a friend from university who is teaching in Korea and we hung out the rest of the night with him and his group of friends. Small world! :) We bar hopped and danced to some classic rock and before we knew it, it was 4:30 in the morning and I was absolutely starving! :) There were beer bottles and people past out all over the beach but the party wasn't even close to winding down (we were told the after hours places open around 11:00am), we've never seen anything like it! We headed back into town and grabbed the most delicious chicken sandwiches ever! and then caught our tuk tuk back to our hotel. The next day, I was in bed until 4:00pm! I'm not used to drinking liquor this trip and didn't feel too hot. :)

When I finally got up on New Year's day, all we had time for was watching the sunset at Ben Tai beach which was really beautfiul and then we went for dinner at a really cool seafood restaurant called Fisherman's. Our table was in a small boat off the back of the restaurant and over the water. Not super comfortable because we sat on the floor and were kind of on a tilt, but pretty cool just the same! :)

Beach Lunch (maybe where devi got food poisoning :))

The next day we got up at a more reasonable hour :) and rented a motorbike for two days. We headed first for the national park in the middle of the island and the Pabang Waterfall, which wasn't much of a waterfall but had a great lookout. Then we went past the Chinese temple and to the north side of the island where the beaches are more secluded and spent a couple of hours at Haad Kohm beach which was really nice. When we got hungry, we drove to Chaloklam for lunch at a restaurant overlooking the huge beach there. It's a shame but most tourists to Koh Pha Ngan only stay near Haad Rin where the party is every night. The island was surprisingly really beautiful and great to explore. We didn't even make it to the other half of the island! We took the long way home along the west coast and went back to our hotel. Dev ended up with food poisoning that night (he's a delicate flower lately :)) so we stuck around the room that night and most of the next day except for going back to Thongsala for lunch and a little shopping. That evening, when Dev was feeling better, we drove out to Haad Rin again to check out the full moon beach in the daylight. It's really pretty but pretty dirty, but the road to the beach goes over some enormous hills with amazing views of the ocean so it was a beautiful drive.

Double Parked :)

The next morning, we woke up super early to catch the ferry to Krabi, on the west coast of the mainland in the Southern Gulf Coast. We booked a hotel off the bus about ten minutes from the town centre but they had a pool and gave us a motorbike for free. We checked into our bungalow which was really cute but right away Dev clogged the toilet and then looked down and noticed that a frog had been under the toilet seat and was now also in the toilet! :P Needless to say, it was pretty embarassing when we had to go tell the front desk! We took a swim in the pool, grabbed lunch at the hotel then took the bike into town. Our hotel was closest to Ao Nang beach, which was really pretty and surrounded by cliffs so we took a swim and relaxed for awhile. We wandered around town which had the typical restaurants and tourist souvenier shops and got ice cream (I'm going to be about 100 pounds heavier when I get home :)) We were double-parked by another motorbike, but Dev manouvered it out and we headed back to the hotel. He's really good at driving the manual bikes now. :)



Our bungalow on the beach

 The next morning we checked out and took the ferry to Koh Lanta. We had been told that it was a pretty island where we could get a bungalow on the beach for cheap, which Dev had been waiting the whole trip for! We booked a hotel for one night in advance on Klong Khong beach (where the affordable accomodation is) but it was a little removed from the other bars and hotels so we looked around that afternoon for a more rustic place. We booked at a hotel in the middle of the main strip along the beach called "Where Else" that was so adorable. The bungalows were super rustic, with mosquito nets and the bathroom off the back practically in the woods! :) We even had a wood front porch with our own hammock and nocturnal crabs scratching around in our bathroom at night! :) Since the hotel food is always expensive and pretty subpar, that night for dinner we ventured behind the hotel strip to the small local eateries and found an awesome restaurant run by a Thai women and her family. :) The food was amazing and we ended up going there a bunch of times, especially for her cashew chicken and green curry! Yummy! :)

Exploring the Island

The next day, we moved down the beach and spent the day lounging around the bungalow, lounging in the hammocks at a nearby restaurant with banana shakes and then lounging around the hotel restaurant on the beach which was soooo cool and ecclectic. The next day we rented a motorbike and explored the rest of the island. We drove out to Old Lanta, where the houses are on stilts over the water, tried to get to the national park but gave up when the road was unpaved and crazy bumpy, went to Ao Nuy beach for a swim, shopping at the markets in Klong Dao, then back to our bungalow. That night, we had a few beers with a German guy we met at the bar while we watched the sunset and had a late dinner at our favourite restaurant. We spent one more day on the island where we checked out a nearby pool and then we left early the next morning for Koh Pi PI.

Ao Lo Dalam Beach & a Banana Chocolate Smoothie!

We were a little worried about finding a room in Koh Pi Pi because it's high season there but booked a room at tourist information right off the dock and were picked up in our taxi. :) There are actually no motor vehicles on the island so the taxi is actually a guy with a huge trailer that he pushes down the streets that he puts our bags and in this case, his toddler son into to our hotel. :) These guys are everywhere, carrying cases of pop, pinapples, anything and it looks like tough work, especially in that heat! Our hotel was pretty crappy but it worked and we didn't stick around long before we headed out for lunch and to the beach. Ao Lo Dalam beach is the largest beach on the main island which is actually called Pi Pi Don and was really pretty. Both Don and the smaller island Pi Pi Ley are strangely curvey which makes for some great coves and bays surrounded by limestone cliffs which is what makes the island so famous and supposedly the location of some of the world's most beautfiul beaches. The beach was packed and was covered in beach chairs, so we rented two chairs and an umbrella (for about $3) and chilled for the rest of the day. The next day on the island we had booked a boat tour around the island of Pi Pi Don, Bamboo Island to the north and Pi Pi Ley. The smaller island (Ley) is undeveloped and can only be visited by tours. It apparently is protected because of a very lucrative business of collecting and selling some special bird's nests from the caves on the island.

The water was such a cool colour!

The boat tour was nice because it was a really complete tour of the islands so we got a chance to see all of the really neat and secluded bays and coves but it was a little exhausting. :) It was a pretty small longtail boat with a really loud motor and we got pretty wet all the time; it was a lot of boating. :) We got to stop for a swim or snorkel a couple of times; although the coral was pretty dead, the fish were cool and the water and scenery were really amazing. We also stopped for lunch on the beach at Bamboo Island, to see the monkeys (or monkey in this case followed by like fifty tourists :)) on Monkey Beach and finally to watch the beginning of the sunset at Maya Bay on Pi Pi Ley which is where they filmed the movie "The Beach". There were soooo many tourists and tourist boats there for the sunset that we were pretty excited that we had booked a camping trip for the next night where it would be much less crowded. :)

Maya Bay

The next day, we checked out of our hotel room and went back to Ao Lo Dalam beach to chill and swim a bit before we had to meet our boat at 3:00pm for our Maya Bay camping trip. There were about 70 on the camping trip, so we all loaded onto the boat and headed for Pi Pi Ley. Along the way we stopped at a snorkeling spot in Piley Bay which had pretty nice coral and some colourful fish and then we swam to the back entrance through the trees to Maya Bay, just like on the movie. We had to swim in with just our flip flops in our hands. :)

Maya Beach Camping Trip

The beach was really beautiful and deserted now except for our tour group. We grabbed beers and watched the entire sunset this time and then lined up for our dinner of chicken curry and vegetables. They had set up a large square of beach mats with beer can candles for everyone to hang out on and so we enjoyed a couple of beers and rum buckets. :) It was a surprisingly bright night and the water was so amazing. Apparantly there is phospherous in the water and when the conditions are right, the water can light up or glow in the dark. It wasn't glowing on the night that we were there, but when we went swimming in the dark, the phosperous would move around and look like glitter all around your hands and feet. It was sooo cool! :) Our Thai tour guides put on a pretty crazy fire show too. :) At the end of the night, we grabbed two beach mats, two pillows and two sleeping bags and found a place near the end of the beach to spend the night. I haven't slept on the beach since high school and the sand was surprisingly hard, but we both had a pretty great sleep. :)

Our Beach Digs

We were woken up by the sun and mosquitos in the morning and had breakfast on the beach and a refreshing swim before getting back on the boat into town. What a great trip! :) When we got back into town, we were happy to see that our bags were still at the travel agency and we grabbed lunch and got back on a boat, a ferry to Phuket. :) Phuket is the largest island in Thailand and so doesn't feel like much of an island but has some really amazing beaches. It is the most popular place in Thailand for all inclusive resorts. Once on the island, we got a room in Phuket Town, the older part of the city and explored. The island has a lot of Portuguese influence so the buildings are older and European style so is a bit different. We were pretty tired so after walking around a bit and grabbing dinner, we headed back to our hotel for a movie. :) We had to check out the next morning but our flight didn't leave until 9:00pm so we left our luggage at the hotel and took a local bus to Patong Beach.



Patong Beach

I don't know if I have ever seen a bigger, morie crowded beach! But it was really beautiful and the colourful umbrellas and chairs kind of add to the look of it. ::P We rented some beach chairs and the service was great! :) They guys would come and adjust the umbrellas whenever the sun moved so that we would be fully covered and would serve drinks! :) It was so crazy hot that an umbrella was entirely mandatory, leaving even to go for a swim was really hot! :) We explored the souvenir shops and headed back to Phuket Town by bus later in the afternoon. We went out for our last meal in Thailand (the food is so good here!) and then caught a cab to the airport. Ten days left of our vacation! :)

Bangkok for Xmas!

Devin on Khoa San Road

We flew to Bangkok on Chistmas Eve, which felt very luxurious compared to the buses we had been taking in Vietnam. We headed to Khoa San, the backpacker area of the city and where there are tons of bars, restaurants, hotels and street vendors. We wanted a nice place to spend the holidays so we splurged on a hotel on the main street with a roof top pool overlooking the neighbourhood. We had sure missed phad thai while we were away (from Thailand), so we grabbed some for lunch then had to shop around for a hotel reservation for New Year's in Koh Pha Ngan which was a little difficult (Koh Pha Ngan is where they have the full moon parties and roughly 30,000 people head to the beach for a party). We had to go to about six different travel agents to get a reservation - people generally book months in advance.

Dev at Christmas Light Display

After settling that, we chilled out until night fall so that we could go downtown to do a Christmas light walking tour that we had read about. They don't technically celebrate Christmas in Thailand, but they love the shopping and decorations that go with it, so the lights were amazing, especially in the shopping centres! :) At some of the really big hotels too, the Christmas light displays were great, super cheesy too! At one hotel downtown, they had a gingerbread house, reindeer, carolors, the works!

Bangkok Traffic

The walking tour was a little hard to follow, but took us by the big hotels, then across the major shopping centres, finishing at Siam Square. Siam Square is the Dundas Square of Bangkok, but times like a hundred. The square was lit up by palm trees with Christmas lights on them. Bangkok is known for its lifestyle shopping centres and Siam Paragon is crazy! It's like six huge floors of swanky stores with a huge movie theatre at the top and restaurants on the ground floor. There were people everywhere. After checking everything out and getting into the Christmas spirit, we took on the incredible challenge of trying to find a taxi back to our hotel. :)

Rooftop Pool - Christmas Day



Meg at TRON 3-D

The next day was Christmas and was a little different than back home. We started off the day in the rooftop pool. :) After breakfast, we headed to Chatuchuk market for some Christmas shopping. This weekend market has thousands of stalls and was great to wander around. It ended up to be largely a locals market though, so we didn't end of getting anything, but there were loads of stuff that we would have loved to be able to bring home with us! Cowboy boots, huge leather bags, loads of clothes, it was really tempting. We finished up early and took the Skytrain back to Siam Paragon. The Skytrain was really cool, super fast and clean and overlooking the city, would be really cool for Toronto. You could be from Etobicoke to downtown in five minutes, no problem. :) Once back at Siam, we headed up to the theatre to catch TRON IMAX 3-D! We had to get the cashier to explain it to us though, because they have a very complicated price structure where different seats in the theatre cost different prices and its assigned seating! We'd read about this, but were still a little surprised when before the movie, the king's anthem and a video clip came on and everyone in the theatre stood up. They love their king here, there are pictures of him absolutely everywhere, in every restaurant, on the streets, of all ages too. If you see a picture of a baby, it's usually the king 70 years or so ago. :) After the movie, we headed back to Khoa San for sushi Christmas dinner! Dev picked the movie so Meg picked the dinner.

The next morning we were up super early to catch a train to Ayuthaya, a town two hours north of Bangkok that is known for its ancient temple ruins. The town used to be the captial of what would have been Thailand and was surrounded by three rivers converging, so was protected until the Burmese invasion which pushed the capital to Bangkok. We found a cute little guesthouse and rented some bicycles and I dragged Dev all over the city. :)



Ancient Palace Ruins



That's a person standing on its lap!

The temple ruins were amazing, they are all over the city but you have to pay into get inside the larger ones. We visited a few, including the old ancient palace and spent the afternoon biking around. Dev needed to go home for a nap :) so we crashed for an hour or two and then headed out on a boat tour we had booked. Just before dusk, a longtail boat took us around the city to see three more temple sites. The first temple had been largely restored but housed one of the country's largest seated Buddhas, which sounds kind of lame until you actually see it. It was huge! The second site had been partially restored but still had ruins which like a hundred old buddhas surrounding a temple and a huge reclining buddha.

At Last Temple

The boat arrived at the last temple side just as the sun was setting. This is supposedly the most photographed site in the city and it was easy to see why. The temple ruins were on a huge grassy hill with the river in front and the sunset behind. It was really pretty and we managed to get some pictures before our camera battery died. :) I forgot to mention that our room at the guesthouse had the bathroom right in the bedroom with only a half wall seperating them, very strange! :)

Meg at Waterfall In National Park

The next day we were up super early again because we wanted to get to the Khao Yai National Park near Pak Chong. It was like the Amazing Race trying to get out there, because we had no idea where we were going, but we figured it out. We took a train to Pak Chong in the morning, then a local bus (a truck with benches in the back) to a guesthouse we had read about. Then we quickly had lunch and got back on the bus (which you wave down on the highway) to the park in lots of time! :) There we rented a motorbike (scooter) but they only had a manual bike, so Dev had to learn how to drive it pretty quickly, a bit of a rough ride at first! :) The park was enormous and really beautiful but the trails were not well marked and hard to find, so we drove around mostly to check out a bunch of the waterfalls and lookout points. We didn't see any wild elephants, cobras or tigers (thank goodness!) but did see loads of gibbons (tree monkeys) and wild deer.

Meg at National Park Viewpoint

The ride home was super chilly but we made it and grabbed dinner at the hotel. The old ladies there were great cooks and one was really funny. Dev asked if he could have some garlic bread and she sad no, then yes in a 'Night at the Roxbury' kind of way. So we waited for a while thinking there was garlic bread coming before I went up again to ask. She said the same to me, but then I asked again and realized she didn't know how she sounded and there was no garlic bread. It was really funny. :)

We had our last really early morning the next day to head back to Bangkok. We got a room on the sixth floor (lots of stairs) of a hotel near the train station. We had a quiet day and night and the next morning explored Chinatown before getting on our night bus to Koh Pha Ngan for New Year's!





10 Days in 'Nam

They actually wear these hats here!

We arrived in Hanoi (Northern Vietnam) just after dark on Dec. 12th. We had arranged for our hotel to pick us up from the airport and right away we realized that the Vietnamese spoke the least amount of English of all the countries we've been to so far. Dev asked our driver what his favourite pho restaurant was and he answered that the car had cost $20,000. :) Another thing that we noticed right away was the buildings. Land is very expensive in the city and there don't appear to be any building restrictions regulating the height of buildings. So the buildings are tall and skinny; the higher your hotel room the cheaper it is, so we had a lot of stairs to climb at our first hotel! :)

Junks in Halong Bay (Similar to our boat :))

The rooms were super cute though, so we checked in and got right to business as we had to book our tour to Halong Bay for the next day. Finally it was time to eat, but we had an extremely difficult time finding a restaurant in the dark so we had to settle for an Irish pub! Then Dev and I checked out the nearby night market. The streets were crazy, filled with people and motorbikes going in every direction. After a quick walk around, we headed back to the hotel for an early morning. This was by far the craziest city we'd been to in terms of traffic and people.



Meg Outside the Amazing Cave



We were picked up from our hotel at eight in the morning for the three and a half hour bus ride to Halong Bay City. After a confusing trip of bus and group switches, we finally made it to our boat (there are an infinite number of tour package combinations and somehow they are able to keep track of which people go where at what times!). It was a cloudy but nice day and the boat (called a junk) was really beautiful. It was made of dark teak wood and had a dining room and back deck, a sun deck on the top and private rooms along the sides. Our room was nicer than some of our hotel rooms! :) We had lunch on the boat and then made our way over to some of the cooler rock formations. We were given kayaks for half an hour, but Dev disagreed with the principle of kayaking around without anywhere to actually go, so we did a lot of floating around. :)

Then we were taken to the "Amazing Cave" which was actually amazing. :) It was enormous! Finally, back on the boat, we watched the sun go down on the upper deck while the boat made its way off the coast of Cat Ba Island. After dinner, Dev and I retired to our room for another early morning with breakfast at 7am although we did make a valiant effort to get up at 4am to watch the sunrise, it was a tad too early for us. :)

Halong Bay - On Our Boat's Sundeck

Dev in Kayak Gear!

The next day, after breakfast, our group was redivided and we were taken on a smaller boat to Cat Ba Island, a national park. We had the choice of a short trek or a bike ride, and considering our flip flops, we opted for the cycling. Like many of the bicycles in Southeast Asia, they were in comically poor condition and the group spent a good amount of time trying to find enough bikes that were adequately functional. My bike and an English girl's would jump gears whenever we were on even the slightest incline and one girl ended up with a flat tire, and this was only a ten minute ride! :) The bike ride took us to the "Hospital Cave", the self explanatory name for an 18-room cave dug out of the side of a mountain and hidden by a secret door which was used as a hospital during the Vietnam war. It was pretty impressive and even included a small swimming pool and ping pong room. Apparantely, even Ho Chi Ming stayed in the cave at one point (the Communist leader of North Vietnam and still the biggest deal even though he died in 1969). After our ride, we got back on the bus and then another boat (any tour here has to have a million steps in the process :)) to the Monkey Island Resort.

Our Monkey Island Hut

Monkey Island resort was beautiful with a great beach looking out onto Halong Bay. We were each given these great rustic huts just off the beach which were so cool. We had lunch and were given the afternooon to just chill and relax which was wonderful! At 4pm we met up with the guide and some people from the group to hike up over a rock hill to a secluded beach which was run by the monkeys! :) The guide actually said to us before we left that if we showed our teeth or made any sudden movements it was likely that the monkeys would bite us! A guy on our group actually did end up getting bit on the hike but was luckily wearing jeans so it barely broke the skin, crazy! :) We watched the sunset from the beach then headed back to the resort for our welcome cocktails! :) It turned out there were actually two girls from Scarborough (who teach English in Korea) and a guy from the Danforth on the trip (small world :)). We all had dinner together and a couple of beers around the fire. A number of people decided it was so great that they would stay for an extra day but unfortunately, we were on a pretty tight deadline so had to keep moving. :)

Dev & Pho at a Street Stall

The next day was a travel day, an early breakfast, a boat to Cat Ba Island, a bus across the island, a boat to the bigger boat, lunch, back onto a smaller boat and then the last bus back to Hanoi! :) But we were pretty lucky because it started to rain on the way back instead of on our trip! :) Needless ot say, we were pretty tired by the time we got back to Hanoi! Our hotel that we had booked through forgot to keep rooms reserved for us so instead put us up in their sister hotel nearby which was actually supposed to be $75 but gave it to us for the price of the other hotel, $15. It was awesome and brand new; huge bed, rainwater shower and huge flat screen tv! :) We cleaned up and headed out to find a Pho 24 (a chain of fast food pho soup restaurants). Pho is huuuge in Vietnam and there are loads of corner food stalls that serve nothing but pho beef run by little old ladies. Sometimes there are tables inside but the locals often eat right on the street on little stools. Dev and the girls we were with hadn't had Pho before so Pho 24 was easing into it. :) Also, we didn't know this before, but although the Vietnamese eat pho pretty much any time of day, it is most often eaten for breakfast or early lunch.

At Ho Chi Ming Mausoleum

Meg was feeling a little under the weather so after dinner, we headed back to the hotel to enjoy a movie on our huge television (First Wives Club :)) and go to bed early. The next day we got up early in order to catch Ho Chi Ming at his masoleum. Ho Chi Ming was the leader of the Communist movement in Vietnam and is treated like a God; they have had him embalmed in this masoleum since 1969 when he died and everybody goes to see him. We were lucky because he had just returned from his two-month annual trip to Russia for touch-ups! Apparantly, Mao, Lenin and Stalin are also embalmed in Russia for viewing purposes. Weird! After that, Dev and I walked around the Hoan Kiem Lake in the middle of the city, ate pho at a street stall (delicious!) then went to the Hoa Lo Prison Museum. The latter prison is famous for keeping political prisoners for the French during the revolution and then prisoners of war during the Vietnam war. We're not 100% sure, but it was implied that John McCain had a stint in the prison.

Overnight Bus - Comfy! :)



That evening, we caught our first Vietnam overnight sleeper bus to Hoi An, a 22 hour trip! We could not help but laugh when we saw what the "VIP" bus looked like and realized that we weren't likely to get much sleep. The pictures made it look infinitely more comfortable. At about 6:00am, we had a rest stop in Dong Ha (the town separating north and south Vietnam - an strategic place during the war) for breakfast, where a man named Hoa convinced us to take a detour and do a tour of the DMZ or Demilitarised Zone. Hoa was a great guide and took us to one of many Northern Communist cemetaries and then across the border of what was once North and South Vietnam to Vinh Moc tunnels.

In DMZ Tunnels - Someone's Former Bedroom!

Because of all the air bombings over Vietnam, many tunnels were built where people lived for the better part of six years! It was pretty crazy. Then Hoa put us on a minibus with a bunch of locals and chickens back to Hue to meet our bus. After the second leg of our tour, we arrived in Hoi An, took the first hotel that we saw ($12 with breakfest and was actually really nice), grabbed a quick dinner and settled in for the night. Long trip!

Dev in Hoi An

Hoi An is a really cute, ancient port town where loads of Chinese, French, Dutch and Indian people settled and so the town is really beautiful and of course, on the river. The first day in town, I dragged Dev to the Hoi An Old Town where you can buy tickets to see inside some historic houses, temples and meeting halls, etc. Many of the houses are built using teak wood, which has been able to withstand 1-2 metre annual floods from the river for more than 200 years. One lady told us every wet season they move all the furniture from the lower floor to the top floor. Hoi An is also really famous because it's supposedly one of the best places to buy custom made clothing and shoes. Because we couldn't fit anything in our luggage, we totally resisted tons of great stuff, I only caved once for a jacket I really wanted. We ordered it that morning, the lady measured me up and told me to come back at 4:00pm for final fittings.

Hoi An At Night

So we headed back to the hotel to do some errands then went for a beer by the water where we ran into the guy from Toronto that we had met in Halong Bay. He joined us for a drink, we picked up the jacket, then we wandered around the markets and went for cao lau at a local food stall. This is a local specialty which consists of doughy flat noodles topped with croutons, bean sprouts and greens, pork slices and broth. Yummy! We also tried other Hoi An specialities such as the fried wontons (crazy good) and the white rose, shrimp steamed in rice paper (pretty good). Dev started to feel sick that night and I was still sick from the bus ride so although we had booked a half day tour the next morning, we ended up skipping it because we were going to have to survive another night bus the following day to Ho Chi Ming City (Saigon), a 28 hour bus this time!!

They'll load anything on their bikes here - even more bikes :)

This night bus was, I thought, a little better than the first and we both got some sleep (we had bought some sleeping pills from the local pharmacy and after googling them found out they were Valium :)). Dev continued to get sicker and was really burning up, so after finding a hotel the next evening we took a quick trip to the international hospital. We were pretty lucky, the hospital was clean and the doctor spoke English, we got in right away and they filled the perscription themselves. We ordered Pizza Hut from next door and went to bed early. The next day, he was still sick so we decided we would stay in the city longer than planned and instead of two more overnight buses to Angkor Wat and to Bangkok to see the temple ruins in Cambodia, we made the decision to book a 1.5 hour flight from Saigon to Bangkok on Christmas Eve. This allowed Dev to rest up while he was sick (apparently all Pfrimmer men are babies when they're sick).

Mekong Delta Traffic Jam

So we spent the first day recovering and going to the night market, eating Pizza Hut and watching movies (I did a little bit of exploring on my own around near the hotel) but the following day, I dragged Dev to go see the Reunification Palace (the government offices where North Vietnam finally conquered Saigon) and the War Remnant Museum. The next day, Dev still wasn't feeling well, so I booked a day trip to the Mekong Delta, rural Southern Vietnam. I spent the day with two Australian girls and a couple from Belguim where we went to a coconut candy factory, took a long tail boat through the river and went to a market. It was a tour of random stops but a good way to get out of the hotel and leave Dev in peace. :) He was feeling a bit better on my return so we went out to one of the bars on the main street for dinner and to watch the crazy Saigon traffic and then got ready for our flight back to Bangkok the following day!