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.