Big Bangkok (Part 1)

We narrowly missed out on the typhoon that was hitting Japan. It seemed fairly bad in places from what we saw on the news.
Ever since we've left China we'd heard nothing but bad news about them on tv. Funny how we didn't see any of that when we were there. Hmmm.
I'm sick of cities. Some are obviously way better than others but they all have the same kind of things going on. I'm tired from the last week of manic travelling and the 2 hour bus ride in the heaviest traffic yet isn't improving my mood. Welcome to Thailand. This is Bangkok. Oh the joy. And it's raining. Humid. When are we going to Australia!? I don't need another 10 million people milling about me!
At least the hostel was good, clean and friendly. Back to the humidity though and wishing we were still in Japan. We'll start looking around tomorrow, I can't face it.
Next morning we had a cracking, included, breakfast. My mood had improved and we were much less weary. Travelling days are always the worst. You can spend 12 or more hours going from underground metros to overground trains to taxis to planes to buses and back to taxis then walk for an hour just to get somewhere to put your head down.
It was a good looking day though and we felt we could handle the hustle and bustle better after experiencing Beijing. Even so we were instantly approached by a guy claiming to be a police chief. He was telling us all the places to go and things to see whilst in Bangkok and then how much he loved England and so on. Suddenly a tuk-tuk driver appeared and within seconds we were off down the road on a roller coaster ride around Bangkok. This time we agreed a price before setting off! About 50pence for the ride wouldn't see us too much out of pocket!
He ended up taking us to the official, we hoped, tourist information office run by the government. By the end of about an hour we'd booked 3 tours, a flight to the island of Phuket, 2 nights stay on another 'paradise ' island, and a flight to Kuala Lumpur! It actually all worked out just about on budget but we knew we'd spend over on food and the such. Thailand is really cheap but we were willing to spend the cash to see something different other than another sprawling metropolis. We almost felt like we'd been fleeced but thought it all looked really good and were looking forward to getting away from it all.
In the afternoon we took a tuk-tuk ride to a boat which took us along the river, a major feature of Bangkok. Don't bother. The water is mud brown and it's mainly a grim ride. We stopped off, not by choice, at a snake farm. I'd already seen a crocodile on the way there on a river back so wasn't impressed by the ones kept in tiny cages in the snake farm. Other animals such as lizards and monkeys were kept here in tiny cages and I didn't like it one bit. Then the 'highlight' was the snake show! Hmmm. Snakes were taken out of bags and generally prodded and goaded into reacting and lashing out at the snake tamers. It was fairly tight but quite interesting to see cobras, boa constrictors and pythons doing their stuff. Nasty place on the whole.
There's a hidden undisclosed charge for everything here too. You pay for the boat ride, then you have to tip the driver to take you to the platform to drop you off. Then once on the pier you have to pay a 'landing fee' to some random idiot. Oh good. It's all peanuts to us but it's the dishonesty I can't abide.
Right so this is it. We're going to see the giant reclining Buddha statue and the huge Grand Palace drenched in gold. Think again! This is where we got introduced to senders. These guys masquerade as being officials when really they send you off to other places getting kick-backs from tuk-tuk drivers for getting you in their tuk-tuk. "The Grand Palace is closed" we were told. "What?, how come?"
"Half day closing for monks day"
"Oh really!" How gullible were we?!
"Reclining Buddha also closed."
So we ended up getting in a tuk-tuk for the rest of the day travelling round to various pretty cool temples and fairly cool places for about 80pence. It was actually really good but we still missed the major attractions of Bangkok.
Fuel seems to be a serious issue here and tuk-tuk drivers and taxi drivers get fuel vouchers from shops and restaurants for getting people through their doors. At this point I went insane. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to buy a fitted suit. Why I don't know. But we did. It worked out at Top Man prices for a proper fitted suit but as it's now been sent home I'll have to wait til I get back to see it!
After all this we went to get some food, no expense spared here. It's cheap anyway and so far all we've heard is that everybody gets ill in Thailand. I didn't want to take that chance!
Odd thing is here, well one of the many, is that tuk tuk and taxi drivers sometimes will not take you places. This is mainly because the traffic is just so bad they don't want to drive about. When drivers come up to traffic lights they turn their engines off to save petrol. There's a lot of bartering with tuk-tuk drivers but at least it's really cheap.
Bangkok and Thailand is the placed we researched the least. In fact we didn't even read a thing about it. Why did we come here?! The first days we were wondering. Before we got there the rough plan was just to pass through and get the train down to Singapore via a few places on the way. It was about 3 or 4 days train journey which didn't sound appealing. When we learnt about the recent Muslim bombings on the trains it didn't make it any better. So we were happy to do something different and fly to Phuket and with the promise of a fantasy island we were looking forward to leaving Bangkok already.
Hostel wise this was the most friendly place we'd been and we got talking to plenty of people who'd been all over. One guy, Jav, was from Edinburgh and was really hating it Bangkok but was really funny with it. He was fed up with the constant hassle he was getting off lady-boys. There are plenty here though. In fact it's more of a sexual melting pot than I've seen anywhere. Man-women, women-men it's all the same here so why old guys come here to pay for prostitutes I don't know, you never know what you're gonna get!
A few Chang beers and then off to bed to prepare for the next days tour. The bridge over the river Kwai. I didn't even realise it was in Thailand!

Below, a view from the river.

Arigato Japan

More Japanese facts:
1. It isn't really called Japan. It's called Nippon. Japan is what we call it for some reason, it does sound better though.
2. Japan is made up of 4 main islands. It also consists of many smaller ones too, 3,000 in fact!

Although the place can be hectic and in your face it doesn't take long to get away from it all, as we found at Mount Fuji. The people on the whole are really friendly and try and help, unlike in China when sometimes you walk into a place the staff literally run off into a back room rather than deal with you!
There's no-one trying to sell you stuff, no-one staring at you and you're definitely not a target for con-men in such a strong economy. The food is great, unless you don't like fish as it seems most dishes are based around anything that lives in the sea. There are loads of good looking women everywhere, which always helps, and everything is generally very clean and well organised. These guys know what they're doing and the transport around the places are an example of that. It's streets ahead of England. But there are many similarities with good ole blighty that also make the place really cool. I'd love to go back to Japan and miss it immensely. The best in Asia so far!

Japanese fast food. Cheap and great!
Japanese beer. Fair cheap and great!

Oh Osaka

The Japanese bubble had to burst at some point. Osaka was that point. We learnt a couple of things here. 1. It's worth spending a little extra money on accommodation to have a more pleasant stay (our 6 pound a night room didn't quite live up to much!!!). 2. Not all Japanese people are clean.
Right from the start Osaka didn't feel as good as other locations. As we were flying out from here we ended our Japanese experience here. Not knowing much about any of the places before hand didn't seem to matter before but as it turns out Osaka was a huge nothing. A big city with a lot of people and not a lot of much else. Grim as they come. It's a shame we spent 2 days here but that's the way it sometimes goes.
Our hostel was abysmal, a real grot fest. We should've twigged when we could only book single rooms but we didn't expect the place to be full of disgusting old men walking around like zombies in their underwear. The hallways stunk of piss and the rooms stunk of stale fags. Lovely. Quite why you had to take your shoes off at the door to this hovel we had no idea!
We slept in the sticky brown room to the sound of Japanese men hacking up in the bathroom. If that sounds like fun then this is the place for you! Dire. I wouldn't recommend a thing from this place. Osaka castle looked good but by the time we arrived it was closed and absolutely throwing it down! For food, of the cheaper variety, we had found a reliable Japanese resource. Mosburger. A Japanese, we think, burger place. Oh the shame. It had to be done though and at least it was much better than McDonalds. I was really thinking ahead to Australia at this point and getting thoroughly fed up with city life. I was not looking forward to our next destination, Bangkok, one bit. I didn't want to go back to another Beijing. Things turned out much different though.
On our last day in Japan we tried to find something of interest in Osaka. We failed. Or maybe Osaka did. Even the river walk was awful, rank greeny brown water with about as much enticing views as a sewage farm. The only interesting thing was seeing a German guy we'd met in Yokohama just strolling round. Another one of those odd little coincidences absolutely miles apart.
The homeless exist in their droves here. We had seen nowhere near as many anywhere else. Of all the places to come and choose to be homeless they chose Osaka. What a bunch of spivs. Still the climate was good, the could sleep right on the pavement with only large cockroaches covering them rather than a cardboard box. No-one begs much here and we are the last people they ask, I think if they could speak some English then maybe they'd try but who knows.
This was another opportunity to try and save the situation by trying some local delicacy. What we thought were sort of dough balls turned out to be dough balls....but with octopus suckers in. Nice. They weren't too bad as it happens but I will never, never have them again!
We watched a tv programme showing the highlights of Osaka. True to form they tried really hard to make something out of nothing and everything it showed was one of the dire uninteresting rubbish we'd seen. What a disappointment. Let's get out of here.

Hiroshima

Hiroshima is world famous for all the wrong reasons. It was the first place to be hit with a nuclear bomb in warfare.
It may seem a bit of a morbid place to choose to visit but it wasn't like that at all. It was more a look into human survival under the worst possible circumstances as well as the idiocy of world leaders that made it fascinating. Aswell as how humans bounce back and rebuild their lives and cities.
Living in Hiroshima means you can never forget the war and the devastating effect it had here. There's trams running through the city and one of the main stops is called 'The atomic bomb dome'. This is the point, or 300 metres from the actual point, where the atomic bomb exploded. There is a building on this spot, the dome itself, which survived the blast and was quite odd as they've left it standing reminder in it's exact ruined form. You can not ignore this every single day. You must get used to the sight of it but as a tourist it's quite odd seeing it in such a modern city. Of course the city itself has to be quite modern as it was totally flattened during the second world war.
The museum was really moving and detailed the after effects and the causes leading upto the explosion.
Hiroshima was chosen as a target because of it's large military base. Everybody in the town had to help out in the war effort which was really crippling the people living there. Not only that but it was chosen after a process of elimination from an original 11 targets. On the day any one of 5 targets could've been hit but Hiroshima had the best weather on the morning of the 6th of August 1945. At 8:15am the B-52 American bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare over the city. It detonated 600 metres above the ground wiping out 200,000 people and completely flattening 4km of the city. The radiation from the blast affected people 6km away and survivors still carry medical books so the Americans could see the after effects that a nuclear bombs have on people.
Temperatures rose up to 4,000 degrees Celsius and many artifacts have been kept in the museum a d are on display. It's a grim site. Many photos from the blast show the starkness of the place and the people. There's a stone step, which used to be in front of a bank, that has the shadow of a human burnt into it from the blinding blast.
Loads of other information about the effect of nuclear radiation on humans is on display, some of it pretty horrific, as well as info about the bombs themselves and the countries that stockpile them.
Japan during the war were run by an total mentalist leader. This guy banned freedom of thought. This meant that if you had any ideas that went against the government you could be shopped in by someone and immediately killed. After the bombing of Hiroshima the Japanese still did not surrender and one day later another bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. It still took another 2 weeks for the surrender. The museum did focus a lot on how the Americans had not given enough warning for the bombs but never really focused too much on the unbelievable atrocities the Japanese army were committing throughout the war.
The area around the museum is now called the Peace Park and is dedicated to the survivors and those who perished.
The city has rebuilt and become modern but still in a traditional Japanese way so some parts of it still look as good as Kyoto.
We were totally loving Japan at this point and every place we'd visit we'd wish we could stay longer.
Next and final Japanese stop is Osaka!
Above is Hiroshima castle. Obviously it's not old due to the bomb but it doesn't make it less beautiful. We strolled through it, watch out for crabs nipping your feet!!!

Systematic travel

An average day in the travelling life is pretty hectic when you have limited time in a place. It pays to be sort of organised so you can quickly get on with seeing stuff.
Before we arrive anywhere we usually have pre-booked a place a day or two before. Once you arrive you try to get as much information as you can from the train/plane/bus station. Japan was great for this as the tourist info places are all really helpful and the maps are great.
We usually jot down brief instructions, or at least the address, of the place we are staying so it makes it a little easier to ask people or look on maps on how to get there. It usually helps to ask at the tourist info or at your hotel on what the best things to see are as this saves time in strolling around looking at the not-as-good stuff.
You quickly have to get used to every city so in Japan this got really tough as we had limited time. Constantly having a map with us was essential.
Working out local transport is sometimes tricky but we've found most people are helpful, many people helped us out in Japan just because we looked lost even though most times we were fine!
Just trying to do the best you can in the time you've got is tricky but it's all a brilliant experience and no day is ever the same. Every time you leave your room in Asia something happens, which is partly why it's been soo difficult to keep up with this blog!
Right, next city!

Hong Kong Airport.
Somewhere in China. It's all a blur.

Pondering the social and democratic change affecting China and it's commerce...probably.

Hello Kyoto

Another day another city. But this city is the old capital of Japan. It's got history coming out of it's ears and world heritage sites everywhere. There's so many temples dotted everywhere that you've no chance in seeing them all. We saw a couple and they are beautiful but after China and then seeing a couple here you kind of get a bit templed out.
A strange coincedance happened here. A guy from England we'd met in Kawaguchi-ko was stopping in the same place as us. It's odd because it's like seeing someone in Manchester then travelling to London 3 days later to stop in the same place as that person!
There are some really amazing looking streets here that have kept to the original old Japanese style, wooden build with sliding doors and just a really great look. Kyoto is so photogenic and even though we only spent a day here we took loads of pictures.
Getting to Kyoto was cool in itself as it was the first time we got to use a proper bullet train, Shinkansen. These things are weird. They used to be the fastest in the world, now overtaken by the French TGV, but they still remain quick as hell! When you stand on a platform waiting sometimes trains pass through the station that you had no idea were approaching. They are soo fast and yet quiet it's surreal. They mainly look like aeroplanes on rails and have the interior to match, but with a huge amount of leg room and seriously comfy chairs. All the Japanese travel with beers in tow, and they have a few great beers to choose from, as drinking seems to be a national pass time.
The most famous thing around Kyoto is that it's really the home of the Samurai and Geisha. Around Japan it's quite a regular occurrence to be on the train next to someone wearing traditional Japanese dress, gowns and wooden shoes, both male and female. This is even more common in Kyoto where you see lots of women going out on the town dressed like Geishas even though a lot of the men just wear suits.
It's a great place though and I'd go back, it's kind of a shame that we only had a limited time in Japan as I'd really have liked to spend more like a month there at least.Above, one of the classic streets of Kyoto. Below, one of the many ornate temples.

Fuji film

After all the cities we've been to we needed to get out to the country. Mount Fuji is the largest mountain in Japan, it's actually an old volcano but there you go. We thought it would be a good idea to climb it but upon arriving we soon realised the weather would be too bad. The little town we stopped in was great though, Kawaguchi-ko. It's part of the Fuji 5 lakes, which is the lake district of Japan. There's a great lake there and some small shops and eateries but not much else. Loved it. So chilled out after the hustle and bustle of all the cities.
Throughout Asia the weather has been hot, around 35-39 degrees, so getting to Japan and it being around 25 degrees was such a relief and much better when out and about. However, once you get up to the 5th station, sort of the base camp of Mount Fuji, the weather drops about 10 degrees and the wind increases 10 fold. Along with the rain and cloud we knew that the 8 hour walk to the top was out of the question. With all the travelling we were too tired anyway. We mooched around and then went back down to the town. That evening we thought we'd try and sample some real traditional Japanese food in a local restaurant. Thankfully our Hotel, Inn, supplied us with a hand drawn map of local restaurants. We strolled through a neighbourhood to find a cosy Japanese place right in the middle of a housing estate. Not much English was spoke inside but it was good fun trying just to order the food, of which we had no idea what it was. There was a guy inside, looking like odd-job from James Bond, who was really friendly and let us try his food and drink some of his traditional wine! He was really trying with us and at one point even rang a mate to find out what the English was for "Is this your first ever Japanese meal?". We had a good laugh with him and the chef/owner, who made one of the best meals of my life. He cooked it on the hot plate in front of us like a true tradesman. Real pride went into it and it was brill. Okonimi- sort of egg based fried omelette thing that was amazing.
Our hotel, or Inn, was cracking too and fair cheap at 9 pound each a night. Our room was true Japanese style with sliding doors and free Japanese tea provided all day. As with other places in Japan free internet is provided but it's tough getting on with all the other backpackers hogging the pcs!! In the room we were provided with night gowns. These are for hanging around in and going for an Onsen. This is the Japanese hot bath and took a bit of getting used to. Thankfully diagrams of what to do were placed on the wall.
First you take off you robe and place it in a basket in the communal room. Then totally starkers you go into the male-only, obviously there is a ladies version too, bathing area. You have a shower and make sure you are clean before getting into a large hot bath with everybody else. It took some getting used to and you can only take the heat of the water, after slowly easing your way in, for about 10 minutes. The bath itself was on a kind of outside balcony so you can sit in the bath totally naked, outside-ish, boiling hot and checking out Mount Fuji. Really good stuff. Once you get out of the bath you feel amazingly relaxed and totally clean. I nearly fainted when I got out trying to acclimatise to the heat!
It was a really good time there and even the traffic lights for pedestrians played a little fairytale tune when you could cross. This did drive me totally insane after a while but it was good nontheless.
I'd go back and try and give Fuji a go, we could see it right out of our window but it's covered in cloud 95% of the year!
This is the view from our hotel room. It was probably about as clear as Fuji got whilst we were there!

This is the view down onto Kawaguchi-ko, the lake is just on the left, from Mount Fuji.

The counrtyside of Japan is beautiful and we only saw a bit of it but I'd definitely go back without a doubt.
On the way out of Kawaguchi-ko we started talking to an Australian guy who'd married a Japanese woman and was on holiday there. He said an odd thing to me, apart from originally thinking I was German(which has happened so many times!). I told him that we were going to Autralia soon-ish and he replied "You'll find it a step down, they're a bit backwards." I didn't quite know whether he meant Japan was a step down or Australia. 'I'm sure I'll find out' I thought.

Yo Yokohama

Yokohama is half an hour down the road from Tokyo. We thought this would be our first use of the Shinkansen bullet train but alas a regular train was our transport. Yokohama is basically the port town to Tokyo. It's a very nice place too. Clean, friendly and a lot quieter than Tokyo. There are strong ties with San Diego here as it's directly across the water......a fair way but still. It explains some of the warehouses around the area, they're definitely more Western and standout a lot. There is a cracking pier and great viewing point over the city and back onto Tokyo. All curved wood and smooth grass, with views onto a similar(but newer) style of Golden Gate bridge.
Baseball is huge in Japan, it's on TV everyday, and Yokohama have a major team with a pretty large stadium and nice grounds around it. I like this place, it's more chilled if you want to get away from it and the sun was seriously beating down when we were there.
The city part of Yokohama is also quite impressive, they're mad on huge Ferris wheels and have them in every town city! There's also a theme park with roller coasters and a bizarre 'European' village. Strange stuff but good for the kids I'm sure.
I'll be honest that the only reason I'd even heard of Yokohama is because they make tyres but it turned out to be quite a cool place. It, apparently, has the largest Chinatown in the world but as we'd already been to China we weren't that bothered. However, this Chinatown isn't quite like China. It was clean.
As this is the busiest period of our trip we started hitting a city a day and got pretty hectic. Yokohama, definitely worth a visit. Time to move on!

Above, the Yokohama ferry terminal......it beats Dover.

Go go Tokyo!

Japanese facts:
1. They are incredibly polite people.
2. There is a high standard of food and general hygiene.
3. In most hotels or traditional Japanese Inns(Ryokens) you have to take off your shoes and wear provided slippers around the place. You generally sleep on futons on the matted floor, more comfy than it sounds.
4. Most cars driven here are box shaped....and white(about 90% of all the cars on the road are white).
5. There is 1 drinks vending machine to about 20 people, which is good for when you're thirsty, and considering there's 128 million people here that's a hell of a lot!
6. Older Japanese men are strange. They read comic book stories, which involve a bit of drawn schoolgirl porn, on the trains. There is also women only carriages on the train to try and curb groping incidents.
7. Apart from number 6, Japan is a very safe place to be.
8. It's not as expensive as you may think.
9. Japan and China do not get on!!

So, Tokyo. Huge. That's one way of looking at it. The airport was big enough. But once we arrived at our Japanese Inn, very excellent place too, we realised that this is a completely different place to China. Completely. For one it's clean. The roads and streets are litter free, although there are hardly any bins around the streets at all!
We only had 2 full days here so to see it all would be impossible. The transport system is excellent but a bit tricky to negotiate at first as there are soo many districts within Tokyo. Once you get the hang of it, which you quickly do, it's brilliant and ultra reliable.
Our first night was a shock for another reason though. We had no money and our cards would not draw cash out of any of the machines around Tokyo. We wandered the streets for hours trying different cash machines so we could get some money out to buy food, we hadn't eaten all day at this point. In the end we had to ask some other tourists for about 1 pound so we could get the train back to our place.
We asked around and found out that only a couple of banks in Tokyo would be able to accept our cards, we headed off there in the morning after borrowing money from the hostel to buy train tickets! We withdrew all the money for the coming 8 days as we were not going to risk running out again. Finally after over 24 hours we bought some food, I've never been soo hungry in my life!!
We got the underground to a really busy street to see the youth culture that hangs around Tokyo. Lots of people dressed as punks and dolls and all manner of accessories. Also a few surf shops, turns out Japan has a big surf culture and many surf spots and beaches along the coast. Shame we don't have the time to check them out. A big difference we started to notice was that even though there wasn't many white westerners like ourselves around the Japanese people don't stare at us and clearly aren't bothered at all by us like the Chinese were. Here we're not a target in any way. They have the 2nd biggest economy in the world, behind the US, so to them tourists are less rich and therefore not worth hassling. We walk down a street and people giving out brochures and leaflets selling stuff will hand them to everyone but us. It's great! You can really relax, more than in China, and just get on with enjoying the place.
We then scooted off to Yoyogi park, the best park I've ever been to. Everybody is out. It's a beautiful day and the atmosphere is excellent, added to with the hordes of people all doing different activities. Such as:
Large drum groups beating out endless rhythms,
Asian/African music troupes dancing singing and playing instruments,
Frisbee matches, football matches, poi-ers, baseballers, umbrella art(?), footbaggers, flute players hiding beneath trees, skateboarders, theatre groups, Japanese guys dressed like Elvis and taking turns to dance to rock and roll records....all day, cyclists, dog walkers, joggers, picnics, people rolling glass balls on themselves(?!), badminton players, tap dancers, jugglers and guitar players. The whole place just had a brilliant vibe and was a cool place to spend the day.
We crossed a bridge over the road to discover we'd just missed a full rock band playing in the street, bummer, but on the other side of the bridge was a really laid back hippy market. I for one never expected Japanese hippies but these guys were cool as hell. The usual arts and crafts being sold along with amazing(and cheap!) noodles along with hemp beer, very tasty. We're in love with Tokyo already!

As night came it was time to go to the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world at Shibuya. The high rise and high class buildings surround this place. People really have money here and it's the first place I've actually felt a bit conscious that we look like scruffy travellers to the hip and trendy Japanese kids. The pedestrian crossing looks cool in itself, 3 or 4 crossings merge and everybody crosses at the same time. Due to the orderly behaviour of the Japanese people it's fairly rare that anybody crosses the street, even if it's 12 at night without a car in sight for miles, when the red man light is on. Quite odd but funny.
After some good sushi we headed back knowing that we had to move on the next day and feeling like we'd seen hardly anything, but what we had seen we loved.
Next day we exchanged our rail passes that will allow us unlimited travel for 7 days on trains and some buses. Train travel is fairly expensive so it worked out a good investment.
This place so far is top of the list of places to come back to. I can see why they don't get on with the Chinese!
Next stop, on what is going to be a whirlwind tour of Japan in 7 days, Yokohama!

Below is a shot of the wicked baseball stadium in Tokyo, old style new style!