It was no surprise to me that entering Cambodia was not an easy affair. Well actually entering the country was, all you needed to do was give the officials all the extra dollars they were illegally asking for (a dollar here for a passport stamp, a dollar there for overtime as it was a Saturday) and Bob’s your Uncle, your in! That’s where the real fun begins! It’s easy enough getting to the first city and we wee lucky to grab a small mini van instead of the big bus so travelled for the first hour in relative comfort. However, after the lunch stop that took three hours and where they brought you out alternatives to your order when they didn’t have what you wanted, those of us in the mini van did not have such good luck. First they crammed an extra few people in so we were all bunched up (though I had grabbed the front seat so was doing ok) and this is how we drove for the next two hours. And then the real fun began! Three mini vans pulled up for drinks and one drove off. leaving three mini vans worth of people and bags to fit into two. The first one filled with eight people in an eleven seater and refused any more as they were uncomfortable with all their bags (no roof rack) but, as I pointed out there were eight of them and at that point 16 of us (plus big bags and day sacks and no roof rack!) Did they care? Heck no they took one more person and drove off so we were left with 15 of us to cram into an 11 seater. It was darn near impossible, no make that totally impossible. The back seats were folded 90 degrees down so that immediately took out at least three seats and every bit of floor space had bags on it. Finally, after an hour or two negotiating, two girls opted to stay behind and so 13 of us managed to squeeze in, knees to chin, elbows locked and bodies entwined (not as fun as it sounds!) Stu and I in the front were like sitting ducks if there was an accident and to top it off the driver’s wife then tried to squeeze in sharing the driver’s seat so that he was basically sitting on the gear stick and couldn’t reach the pedals. At this point we didn’t know whether to laugh or cry so instead we all just shouted an refused to let her in! So with that we drove off, now into complete darkness for three more hours of fun and games, the one saving grace was that all but one couple on the bus were a great laugh and pleasant to be around!
Finally we arrived in Kompng Cham and checked into a filth pit of a hotel with an ant infested bed - but then beggars can’t be choosers hey! Ironically we hadn’t even wanted to come this far into Cambodia but we had discovered that the initial journey we wanted to do would cost us over $150 so realised it was better to come further down the country in order to go back up on a decent road that would be cheaper as we could use a local bus. But then in another twist of fate we didn’t end up making that journey at all as I continued to be ill and we thought it best to head to Sim Reap where we knew I could find at the very least a clean hotel! I was not actually looking forward to Siem Reap as I remember it as a filthy and corrupt city where the people were particularly unpleasant but I was in fact completely surprised by what I found. Thank goodness, as I remained being unwell for another couple of days.
The city has had a complete overhaul. It is still pretty dirty but nowhere near so and most of it is confined to less touristy areas. The centre has developed into a lovely social area with a great strip which despite being called Pub Street had a really pleasant feel to it and one which wouldn’t go amiss in the centre of London. There are loads of restaurants and bars and some great markets including the newly set up night market where you can get nibbled at by fish! Doctor Fish is great, you dip your toes in a pool of water and the fish come up and nibble away at any hard skin - it’s a great little massage actually though I wasn’t brave enough to opt for a full body version!
Being that we were in Siem Reap we of course decided that we would in fact go to the Angkor Wat. I actually felt a little uneasy about this as I had decided that we should visit the less touristy temples as the main ones are being destroyed by the huge number of feet pounding them every day. In fact, even whilst at the temples I felt uneasy. They are of course undeniably beautiful and completely awe inspiring but they have also certainly lost some of their magic from when I was last here. And it’s not simply that I have seen them before. There were literally thousands more people visiting them, the locals seem much more distant to the tourists and the hawkers more intense (“only one dollar, you buy form me, I go to school” - “no money no honey”) and the temples themselves really didn’t seem to be in as good a condition as they were even eight years ago. There is indeed a lot of preservation work going on but it seems shoddily done and as if they are merely chipping away and adding modern concrete and bricks to the ancient sites. Thankfully, some areas have now been roped off but for the most part you can still climb amongst the ruins grabbing every which part of the temple you want. Looting apparantly still goes on and it is well known that the entrance fees go mainly towards funding building up tourist resorts on the seaside rather than back into the temples for maintainance. That said, as I was last time, I was simply blown away.
We were taken around in a tuk tuk by the lovely Mr Chum, a sweet young man with a simply gorgeous smile - I was rather taken by him in fact! He would drop us off at one temple and tell us he’s see us on the other side and then no matter where we were or when we were there he managed to find us amongst the thousands of others also looking for their tuk tuk! Lovely Mr Chum! We used him again on the second day when we went to a couple of other much quieter temple complexes called the Roluos Group and Bateay Srei.
The Roluos Group was the first site of the ancient Khmer civilisation and had three main temples. The first now exists alongside a modern working Wat, the second a quite small completely crumbling complex called Preah Ko (Sacred Bull) on account of the Nandi statues found on site and the third was one of our favourite temples, a large complex of perfect symmetry with a mix of well maintained and crumbling relics, including lots of elephants guarding the corners of the five tiered main pyramid, which became the inspiration for many of the temples that followed the building of this one.
Bateay Srei is the Citadel of Women. Dedicated to Shiva it is incredible to look at. It may be small but when it comes to it’s current condition and the amazing carvings, which are the most intricate of all the temples, you can tell that us women always beat the men! This temple was built entirely by women, for women and is certainly one of the most ornate and is actually believed to be the instigator of the Khmer art movement. Before heading back to drive through the main site one last time I was wrapped around the fingers of a few sweet vendors, picking up a couple of scarves and a bag or two!
We decided to have a final day in Siem Reap just kind of chilling and catching up and mainly to give me the opportunity to write all the travel pieces I need to for the hotels we have stayed in and to catch up on months worth of this blog, which has been more than just a little neglected! Tell me, exactly where does one find the time when they are busy doing nothing?
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
Laos
Laos
You know you are really travelling in South East Asia when you have a ridiculously awful transport episode and getting into Laos was well and truly that. We had opted for a tourist VIP bus (didn’t have these last time I travelled!) as we had heard that crossing the border brings with it hefty over charging, which ultimately makes it more expensive to travel independently than on a tour bus. So VIP it was. It started off ok (doesn’t it always?) Ok, so it wasn’t exactly VIP but we had a seat and there was aircon, despite no loo for the journey that would take some people 18 hours. We were only on this bus for about six hours, before we had to stay the night in what turned out to be a family room attached to a restaurant. It wasn’t so bad though, at least it was close to the bus stop!
The problem came when we asked for our tickets as we didn’t want to be charged for the room in the morning, the new bus we were getting on, or the one that we knew we would have to change on to at the border. Apparantly this was a no can do situation. They simply refused to give us a ticket and by refusing so unapologetically we knew that we were in for a scam so there was no way we were giving up. Half an hour and a lot of shouting later they finally pulled out their ticket book and wrote us one - easy as pie. One thinks they might have protested too much and the very fact that it was so easy to give us a ticket simply went to show they were trying to pull the wool over our eyes. Indeed the first bus we got in in the morning, not only was a local minivan that would have cost us pittance to book ourselves but it was completely chocca with bags and boxes and too many people so that the excess staff wanted to sit in our seats (we refused to let them, grumpy I know but we had paid a heft “tourist’ price for the “VIP” transport and we weren’t going to give up what semblance of comfort we had. Furthermore, as we expected, they tried to charge us again and their faces dropped when they saw we had somehow kept hold of our tickets. Crossing the border itself was relatively pain free, even the goats, pigs, cows and chickens who roamed around on the Laos side knew the border regulations! And somehow, when we crossed over to Laos we managed, with the help of a local woman who I think was following us on her moto, to find the way to the bus stop a km a away where we got ourselves on a local bus (no sign of that VIP bus we were supposed to have) for the five hour journey to Savannakhet. No aircon but windows do the trick! Besides which you need to the windows for all the street vendors to thrust their chicken on sticks, fried baby frogs legs and drinks in bags through. When we arrived in Savannaket we decided that after about 18 hours of travelling the only things to do was jump on another local bus for the five hour journey to Pakse! It sounds crazy but in fact it is far better to get all the drudgery and long journeys with over in one hard bash than stretch them out, wasting days. So finally we arrived in Pakse, in Southern Laos at about eleven, with just enough time for me to get ill before bed!
We spent our first day ‘planning’ which for us meant having a long lunch with some people we met, meandering around a few shops, asking a few questions, grabbing a few fruit shakes and then deciding to order mountain bikes from Thailand to cycle the rest of the trip and we so nearly did order them before we remembered just how hot it is, couldn’t work out what to do with our bags and contemplated cycling in India which quite frankly would just never happen! So then we decided to spend five days kayaking to Four Thousand Islands on the Laos, Cambodia border but finances put paid to that so instead we rented ourselves a motorbike and hit the road for a couple of days on the Bolaven Plateaux, extending it to reach Champasak Ruins.
The Bolaven Plateaux was sumptuous, with beautiful scenery, plenty of waterfalls and tiny villages lining the roads. Here the children play naked, running around chasing dogs and chickens and playing with the must basic of toys yet having the most fun imaginable. Life is hard and the villagers are extremely poor but happiness exudes and the way of life at first glance seems totally idylic.
Our first stop was at a wonderful waterfall stop where locals go to picnic and enjoy the gorgeous waters. There were a couple of waterfalls and the locals all play in the water fully clothed, jeans and all. Not so much in this spot, but in many others along the river, villagers have integrated the river into their daily lives. They bathe in it, the children naked, the men in their underwear and the women in their beautiful sarongs. They do their teeth in it, they wash their dishes and clothes in it, they take their water from it and they use it to catch food and have fun. The Mekong is the heart of the country and a lifeline to nearly all within it.
In Tat Lo, one of the waterfalls, the local children stripped off in front of our guest house and jumped in and out of the river, hopping between water and mud, smothering themselves in the gloop and having a grand old time washing it off. Beautiful dogs bounded past, criss crossing the paths of pigs, golden cows, chickens and the children themselves. This river is a free for all and everyone, man and beast, enjoys its pleasure. Behind the children was the back drop of the beautiful waterfall, where locals and travellers relaxed in the cool waters and where we watched an elephant be bathed in the morning. This area is home to the Alak and Katu tribe who apparantly once a year on the full moon in March, perform a ritual water buffalo sacrifice. We were here on this very date but could simply not find out where we would go to watch this ritual. The lives of these tribes people are very basic and have not changed in hundreds of years.
After taking a wee dip in the waterfall, we had a delightful evening just relaxing on the waters edge in our guest house, eating delicious food and strolling around. The next morning we wondered further into the village where we saw our bathing elephant and stopped for a while to watch him eat. We wandered up to some perfectly set up allotments, meandered through the forest and strolled around the local villages and past the tribal homes, before we jumped back on the bikes to find some more waterfalls.
In the afternoon we came across a few other waterfalls and one in particular was simply divine. You could swim literally under the thundering falls which was so incredible and one of the most gorgeous natural experience ever! I loved it! The falls were a good 50 foot high and so beautiful. Afterwards we visited a 100 foot twin fall which was pretty impressive but we were looking at it from 50 foot above the top of the falls. Seen as there was a sign to the falls we thought maybe we would be able to walk down to them but after about half an hour of walking down the steepest, most narrow slopes only able to hold on with the help of impressively strong vines, all the while with heavy day sacks and motorcycle helmets in our hands, we decided that quite frankly we were risking our lives and we thought that perhaps there wasn’t the best search and rescue team out here to help us if need be! Besides, no one knows where we are anyhow. So rather reluctantly, but definitely sensibly we breathlessly climbed back up the practically vertical route to the top.
For some reason we were clearly in the mood for going way above and beyond the sensible today and so having already risked life and limb to get up close and personal to waterfalls we decided that we would not in fact go back to Pakse on the motor bike but would instead drive several hours further to Champasak where the ancient Khmer temples of Wat Phu Champasak are. It was quite an eventful journey with bugs splattering into our eyes and the bike’s lights being hardly worth the trouble! When we finally reached Champasak we had to cross the Mekong in the pitch black! SO our bike was put on two wee little wooden motorised canoes with a platform of wood over them, which constituted a boat and in the deep dark of the night crossed the waters with the driver both steering and emptying the boats of the waters that were fast flooding in! We made it though and so did the bike and found ourselves a little guest house, complete with transvestite owners, giant frogs and humongous crickets slash cockraoches in our shoes!
The ruins themselves were prettey spectacular, though not a patch on what we would see in Cambodia. None-the-less they were very beautiful, surrounded by sweet smelling frangipani trees and looking out over the far reaching plains, far below. Some of the ruins were off limits but the others we were able to get up close and personal, perhaps too much so as there was license to scramble over many ruins and carvings if we had wanted to. There were some wonderful carvings and etchings in perfectly cut huge rocks, symbolic of gods and goddesses. The best of which was a huge carving of an elephant into the side of a rock face.
After our ride back to Pakse we grabbed our stuff and got on a local bus (otherwise known as a big rickshaw) and headed down for the nearly four hours to Four Thousand Islands. Despite being a little saw on the bum it was a far more exciitng journey than it would have been had we stayed overnight in Pakse to get the luxury tourist truck. It wasn’t too crammed, there was the cutest little boy making us smile the whole way, everyone was friendly and fed us random root vegetables and what not and we made it in good time!
Four Thousand Islands was beautiful. It is life as it has always been, with no hassle, no stress, no crazy modern shananagans but all the beauty of living life at its most relaxing pace. We had no electricity and on some nights no water. We stayed in a lovely little shack right on the edge of the Mekong, with our very own guardian spider, complete with the craziest web I have ever seen. The only problem with being in such simple lodgings was that I decided that because it was an inappropriate place as possible I would get sick, really sick! Two days of being violently ill with no fan, limited running water, no electricity - not the best! Fortunately I managed to keep well on our first day and we hired bikes to cycle around the island, taking in raging waterfalls, hidden beaches with crystal clear warm waters, shaded country paths, hot open sand roads and water edge middle of nowhere restaurants. Whilst being ill and hanging out in the little shack at least I had the view of daily life on the Mekong, with families washing both themselves and their clothes and dishes, fishermen rowing out as the night sky enveloped them and tourists coming in and heading back to the mainland. Sadly, this meant of course that we would be heading back to the mainland at some point and after a few days (which was by no means long enough) on the gorgeous islands we started our border crossing journey, to reach Cambodia.
You know you are really travelling in South East Asia when you have a ridiculously awful transport episode and getting into Laos was well and truly that. We had opted for a tourist VIP bus (didn’t have these last time I travelled!) as we had heard that crossing the border brings with it hefty over charging, which ultimately makes it more expensive to travel independently than on a tour bus. So VIP it was. It started off ok (doesn’t it always?) Ok, so it wasn’t exactly VIP but we had a seat and there was aircon, despite no loo for the journey that would take some people 18 hours. We were only on this bus for about six hours, before we had to stay the night in what turned out to be a family room attached to a restaurant. It wasn’t so bad though, at least it was close to the bus stop!
The problem came when we asked for our tickets as we didn’t want to be charged for the room in the morning, the new bus we were getting on, or the one that we knew we would have to change on to at the border. Apparantly this was a no can do situation. They simply refused to give us a ticket and by refusing so unapologetically we knew that we were in for a scam so there was no way we were giving up. Half an hour and a lot of shouting later they finally pulled out their ticket book and wrote us one - easy as pie. One thinks they might have protested too much and the very fact that it was so easy to give us a ticket simply went to show they were trying to pull the wool over our eyes. Indeed the first bus we got in in the morning, not only was a local minivan that would have cost us pittance to book ourselves but it was completely chocca with bags and boxes and too many people so that the excess staff wanted to sit in our seats (we refused to let them, grumpy I know but we had paid a heft “tourist’ price for the “VIP” transport and we weren’t going to give up what semblance of comfort we had. Furthermore, as we expected, they tried to charge us again and their faces dropped when they saw we had somehow kept hold of our tickets. Crossing the border itself was relatively pain free, even the goats, pigs, cows and chickens who roamed around on the Laos side knew the border regulations! And somehow, when we crossed over to Laos we managed, with the help of a local woman who I think was following us on her moto, to find the way to the bus stop a km a away where we got ourselves on a local bus (no sign of that VIP bus we were supposed to have) for the five hour journey to Savannakhet. No aircon but windows do the trick! Besides which you need to the windows for all the street vendors to thrust their chicken on sticks, fried baby frogs legs and drinks in bags through. When we arrived in Savannaket we decided that after about 18 hours of travelling the only things to do was jump on another local bus for the five hour journey to Pakse! It sounds crazy but in fact it is far better to get all the drudgery and long journeys with over in one hard bash than stretch them out, wasting days. So finally we arrived in Pakse, in Southern Laos at about eleven, with just enough time for me to get ill before bed!
We spent our first day ‘planning’ which for us meant having a long lunch with some people we met, meandering around a few shops, asking a few questions, grabbing a few fruit shakes and then deciding to order mountain bikes from Thailand to cycle the rest of the trip and we so nearly did order them before we remembered just how hot it is, couldn’t work out what to do with our bags and contemplated cycling in India which quite frankly would just never happen! So then we decided to spend five days kayaking to Four Thousand Islands on the Laos, Cambodia border but finances put paid to that so instead we rented ourselves a motorbike and hit the road for a couple of days on the Bolaven Plateaux, extending it to reach Champasak Ruins.
The Bolaven Plateaux was sumptuous, with beautiful scenery, plenty of waterfalls and tiny villages lining the roads. Here the children play naked, running around chasing dogs and chickens and playing with the must basic of toys yet having the most fun imaginable. Life is hard and the villagers are extremely poor but happiness exudes and the way of life at first glance seems totally idylic.
Our first stop was at a wonderful waterfall stop where locals go to picnic and enjoy the gorgeous waters. There were a couple of waterfalls and the locals all play in the water fully clothed, jeans and all. Not so much in this spot, but in many others along the river, villagers have integrated the river into their daily lives. They bathe in it, the children naked, the men in their underwear and the women in their beautiful sarongs. They do their teeth in it, they wash their dishes and clothes in it, they take their water from it and they use it to catch food and have fun. The Mekong is the heart of the country and a lifeline to nearly all within it.
In Tat Lo, one of the waterfalls, the local children stripped off in front of our guest house and jumped in and out of the river, hopping between water and mud, smothering themselves in the gloop and having a grand old time washing it off. Beautiful dogs bounded past, criss crossing the paths of pigs, golden cows, chickens and the children themselves. This river is a free for all and everyone, man and beast, enjoys its pleasure. Behind the children was the back drop of the beautiful waterfall, where locals and travellers relaxed in the cool waters and where we watched an elephant be bathed in the morning. This area is home to the Alak and Katu tribe who apparantly once a year on the full moon in March, perform a ritual water buffalo sacrifice. We were here on this very date but could simply not find out where we would go to watch this ritual. The lives of these tribes people are very basic and have not changed in hundreds of years.
After taking a wee dip in the waterfall, we had a delightful evening just relaxing on the waters edge in our guest house, eating delicious food and strolling around. The next morning we wondered further into the village where we saw our bathing elephant and stopped for a while to watch him eat. We wandered up to some perfectly set up allotments, meandered through the forest and strolled around the local villages and past the tribal homes, before we jumped back on the bikes to find some more waterfalls.
In the afternoon we came across a few other waterfalls and one in particular was simply divine. You could swim literally under the thundering falls which was so incredible and one of the most gorgeous natural experience ever! I loved it! The falls were a good 50 foot high and so beautiful. Afterwards we visited a 100 foot twin fall which was pretty impressive but we were looking at it from 50 foot above the top of the falls. Seen as there was a sign to the falls we thought maybe we would be able to walk down to them but after about half an hour of walking down the steepest, most narrow slopes only able to hold on with the help of impressively strong vines, all the while with heavy day sacks and motorcycle helmets in our hands, we decided that quite frankly we were risking our lives and we thought that perhaps there wasn’t the best search and rescue team out here to help us if need be! Besides, no one knows where we are anyhow. So rather reluctantly, but definitely sensibly we breathlessly climbed back up the practically vertical route to the top.
For some reason we were clearly in the mood for going way above and beyond the sensible today and so having already risked life and limb to get up close and personal to waterfalls we decided that we would not in fact go back to Pakse on the motor bike but would instead drive several hours further to Champasak where the ancient Khmer temples of Wat Phu Champasak are. It was quite an eventful journey with bugs splattering into our eyes and the bike’s lights being hardly worth the trouble! When we finally reached Champasak we had to cross the Mekong in the pitch black! SO our bike was put on two wee little wooden motorised canoes with a platform of wood over them, which constituted a boat and in the deep dark of the night crossed the waters with the driver both steering and emptying the boats of the waters that were fast flooding in! We made it though and so did the bike and found ourselves a little guest house, complete with transvestite owners, giant frogs and humongous crickets slash cockraoches in our shoes!
The ruins themselves were prettey spectacular, though not a patch on what we would see in Cambodia. None-the-less they were very beautiful, surrounded by sweet smelling frangipani trees and looking out over the far reaching plains, far below. Some of the ruins were off limits but the others we were able to get up close and personal, perhaps too much so as there was license to scramble over many ruins and carvings if we had wanted to. There were some wonderful carvings and etchings in perfectly cut huge rocks, symbolic of gods and goddesses. The best of which was a huge carving of an elephant into the side of a rock face.
After our ride back to Pakse we grabbed our stuff and got on a local bus (otherwise known as a big rickshaw) and headed down for the nearly four hours to Four Thousand Islands. Despite being a little saw on the bum it was a far more exciitng journey than it would have been had we stayed overnight in Pakse to get the luxury tourist truck. It wasn’t too crammed, there was the cutest little boy making us smile the whole way, everyone was friendly and fed us random root vegetables and what not and we made it in good time!
Four Thousand Islands was beautiful. It is life as it has always been, with no hassle, no stress, no crazy modern shananagans but all the beauty of living life at its most relaxing pace. We had no electricity and on some nights no water. We stayed in a lovely little shack right on the edge of the Mekong, with our very own guardian spider, complete with the craziest web I have ever seen. The only problem with being in such simple lodgings was that I decided that because it was an inappropriate place as possible I would get sick, really sick! Two days of being violently ill with no fan, limited running water, no electricity - not the best! Fortunately I managed to keep well on our first day and we hired bikes to cycle around the island, taking in raging waterfalls, hidden beaches with crystal clear warm waters, shaded country paths, hot open sand roads and water edge middle of nowhere restaurants. Whilst being ill and hanging out in the little shack at least I had the view of daily life on the Mekong, with families washing both themselves and their clothes and dishes, fishermen rowing out as the night sky enveloped them and tourists coming in and heading back to the mainland. Sadly, this meant of course that we would be heading back to the mainland at some point and after a few days (which was by no means long enough) on the gorgeous islands we started our border crossing journey, to reach Cambodia.
Vietnam
Our border crossing into Vietnam was simple and easy, contradictory to any of the nonsense that the Lonely Planet tried to feed you, which by all accounts would have had us not even trying to cross at the “border rarely used by foreigners due to all the problems”! Of course, in usual HarkerClarker fashion we had no Vietnamese Dong so straight away got stung for a crazy expensive five minute taxi journey. In fact the driver was so chuffed with conning us out of three whole dollars that he started showing the money to everyone around! Arriving at the bus station just in time we jumped on a busy busy, full of bags and boxes and whatnot, for the journey down to Bai Tu Long Bay. It was easy enough and we managed to change buses down to the little one road fishing village, Van Don, relatively easily. Finding a cash machine wasn’t so easy mind you and meant we had to do a further two hour round trip just to get some money out! Van Don itself was a little gem. Not much was going on and it is far from the tourist trail, which is exactly what we loved about it! leading down to the village we passed through a lively market lining the sides of the streets, with fruit and vegetables and dog head, complete with bullet holes, for sale. Spending time in Van Don we were also introduced to the typical Vietnamese way. The Vietnamese lead their lives very differently from any other country I have been to and this was instantly visible, infact it is the one of the most visible things about the country. Everybody seems t live their lives very openly. Most people in Van Don (and as we later found out throughout all of Vietnam) live their lives very publicly. Their living rooms are nearly almost at the very front of their houses, opening up completely to the street so you can see everything that is going on, including evening meals and very often sleeping. For those who run businesses their living space also doubles up as their restaurant or shop or what not. Another significant similarity between everyone’s home is that pride and place in their main living room is their television, always placed on a magnificent unit which stands proud over the daily going ons.
With no other tourists in the village, we had the place to ourselves and found a wonderful lady, sharp as anything keen to do as much business with us as possible! She enticed us into her restaurant, which was just a simple room, which doubled up as their living space and her husband somehow managed to conjure up the most incredible chicken dish, on two little pans outside in the dark. It was immensely delicious so of course we went back for lunch and dinner the next day. We also hired a little fishing boat from them to take us around all the wonderful karst limestone formations that jutted right out of the sea, like something from a fairy tale. We had watched the sunset over the glimmering waters the night before, as the fishermen came in and it was truly gorgeous. When you think of Vietnam one of the instant images that comes to mind is that of Halong Bay and Bai Tu Long was exactly that image, but better than what we would later find Halong bay to be, as there was no-one else, other than fishermen, around. Sadly, much of the day was kind of gray but that just gave the scenery a more mythical rather than magical feel to it! We drifted for about five hours between the stunning formations, passing tiny floating communities (too small to be villages), sandy deserted beaches and fishermen drumming as they made their way back on their small long boats and even wading in the shallow waters, catching fish with spears! Not bad for a 20 dollar fishing boat trip and oh so special as it was just us around - perfection.
From Van Don we hopped on a five hour bus to Hanoi. One of the strange things about the busses in Vietnam, which we found throughout the country, was that their tend to be more staff than obviously necessary, howver when you think beyond the obvious you realise that you need one person to drive; one to collect money; one to check a police presence as they only issue tickets when they might get checked; another to deal with getting the bus full of people (often with slightly aggressive tactics) as they don’t like driving half empty; another person needs to jump off the bus (usually at full speed) to bribe people here and there and then jump back on; and then finally you need at least one other person to do something else equally as ludicrous as everyone else is doing, even if it is just hanging out the door as the bus drives along at full pelt.
Anyway, we did manage to reach Hanoi alive and in relative comfort in all fairness, and we even think that we paid the correct fair, which we would soon learn is a well and true novelty in a land where ‘ferrangis’ definitely pay more than is possibly fair for pretty much anything that doesn’t have a price written down.
We found a gorgeous looking guesthouse, tucked away from the main road and based around a courtyard, with it’s own cinamatique and as we would find out each night, its own cat that liked to scream in to the wee hours, right outside of our doorway. I am pretty certain that it was a direct attempt at both keeping me awake and sending me crazy. After checking in, dumping our bags and jumping in the shower we headed over the road for a delicious pizza before going for a walk into town. The first thing to strike you about Hanoi is the motorbikes. Traffic was utterly mental and the sheer number of motorbikes was like something that I have never seen before and that’s coming from someone who lived and worked in Bangalore, India!
As we walked around the central lake, Hoan Kiem we came across the most odd scene of three pretty girls, in traditional Vietnamese garb, posing sweetly, if slightly evocatively, for dozens of photographers, on the water’s edge, but bizzarely with a leaf in their hands and as the centre of attention. It turns out that the tree they were posing under is the only tree in the whole of Hanoi whose leaves turn brown and shed and this was the time of year that it was happening, though we are pretty certain that we saw other brown leaves on the ground elsewhere in the city! We ended up popping into a travellers’ bar, aptly named ‘Le Pub’, where we may as well have been in a bar back home! Anyway, we met a honeymooning Oz couple, who were great fun and ended up staying for several hours, instead of just a quick drink to relax and get our bearings! It was nice though and our first taste of the true traveller friendly lifestyle that flows through South East Asia.
In the evening we went for a short wander through the nearby streets which made up the shoe market, selling (quite obviously) shoes upon shoes on the curb side. We found a tiny little eatery between a few shoe stands and were promptly ripped off for some delicious little roll type things and sausage!
Next day we spent the whole day exploring the wonderfully crumbling old town, which simply oozed character and archaic beauty. Every street was full of striking old buildings falling into various states of disrepair, with some renovated for the sake of tourist and in the money locals, to enjoy fine dining in gorgeous surrounds. Full of art galleries and silk shops; busy middle of the road markets (where you can buy everything from frogs, head sliced off before your eyes to never before seen fish and turtles waiting to be taken to the oven, which is ironic paring in mind how revered they are); cycle rickshaws; the inevitable motorbike (making its way through the most inappropriate tiny space); street vendors selling fruits and vegetable from their baskets balanced on their shoulders; little hair dressers set up against a brick wall or tree; and hundreds of people going about their daily life, the streets of the old town were certainly a sight to behold. Around every street corner was something new, from a garlic shop selling tens of different types and ladies in the common conical hats selling flowers to loud wholesale fabric markets, where staff were either hectically busy or sleeping upon rolls of material, hiding amongst the swathes of colours. And as all of this was going on, home life was being lived in full of everyone around. Even here in Hanoi most people seem to live their lives very openly sleeping in their shops of the reception of their hotel. in fact, read an interesting magazine article about how the cost of housing is (relatively) some of the highest in the world and so people simply can’t afford to buy rent let alone buy and hence why they all have no choice but to combine their work and home space. Even shop workers who simply are employed rather than own the shop often sleep in the store as part of their package.
Having explored the old town by day we spent the next day doing some of the more historical and cultural monuments of the city, whilst by night we went back in to the old town to eat and enjoy the lively atmosphere (and of course to shop for beautiful silk dresses!) We took in the sights of the fascinating Literary Temple; the humbling Hanoi Hilton which was, for so long, a vicious home to freedom fighters and a long term stay for prisoners of the Veitnamese war; the city museum with its collection of art works, every day objects, photos and anthroplogical relics. We explored the further afield back streets of the city and ambled around the lake, which was always full of people doing exercise walks, usually in their pyjamas. That was one of the most odd things about Hanoi (which we later discovered ran through much of Vietnam) all the women went around their daily lives in their jim jams. From doing their shopping, to walking around the lake or doing their aerobics class in the outdoor spaces around the lake with hundred of other similarly dressed women, they had a real penchant for wearing PJs all day, every day. Odd, odd, odd! In fact an oddity we never quite got to the bottom of!
I was lucky enough to secure a luxury boat cruise in Halong Bay for two days and so after dropping our visa applications for India off at the embassy we met the transfer to Halong, passing much of the same route that we took coming into Hanoi from Van Don. After a few hours and a stop over at this art centre for the disabled, where they made incredible stitched art work, we arrived at Halong and were taken to our boat with two other couples, which made way for a quiet and relaxed stay. The boat was beautiful and we enjoyed delicious food and scrummy cocktails on board. Sadly the days were not the best, much like in Bai Tu Long Bay, but the views were none the less stunning despite the overcast skies. We visited an incredible (if exceptionally busy) cave with stalagmites and stalactites making all sorts of shapes and figures as well as a wonderful floating village which was amazing to see. I was expecting some kind of market like those in Bangkok but in fact it was just a small community of lots of floating houses, complete with all the modcons and dogs.
We spent the rest of our time just drifting between the wonderful karst formations jutting out of the waters. Stu and I jumped in for a very refreshing swim, and I came out with a jelly fish bite! Thank goodness the boat had some cream as I really didn’t fancy peeing on myself (though I would be impressed if I managed to pee on my own stomach!) In the evening Stuart had a massage and we spent some time fishing for squid, which was fun for about ten minutes and then for me rather tedious, but Stu was determined and about an hour later came running down the corridor with a bucket full of water and one little squid! What a proud moment! The chef cooked it up the next morning for his breakfast, scrumptious!
When we got back to Hanoi we still had plenty of time to kill in Hanoi as we needed to wait five days to get our Indian visas so we decided to spend a few days trekking in stunning Bac Ha. After a pleasant overnight train to Lai Cai, we went one way, whilst all the other tourists headed in the other direction to more visited Sapa. We found our bus easily enough, which was a relief as it was five in the morning and we had a further few hours to travel before we would get to Bac Ha in time for the Tuesday morning market of the Dsong Flower tribe that we so wanted to see. Unfortunately, in what we would soon learn was true Vietnamese style, the bus wanted to charge us 300 dong, rather than the actual 50 that it was. Of course we fought this, after all the prices are written on the bus but they point blank refused to take us for less than 150, so having payed three times as much as we should have done (it was five in the morning after all so they had us over a barrel) we got under way for the ride through the countryside. On arrival in the smallest and most peaceful town ever we found a little guest house and promptly showered, overlooked by a naughty nude lady centre piece in the bathroom, before hiring a motorbike driver to drive us over the crazy bumpy roads to the market. yes that would be one motorbike for three fully grown adults! heck they do it all the time in Asia, so when in Rome and all that..... We drove through glorious countryside and finally ended up at this rickety old bridge which, no joke, was twisted so that half of it was sideways over the river, making for an adventurous walk over to the other side! The locals didn’t seem to care, mind you, and with a hop, skip and jump they were over in a jiffy, so of course we couldn’t show ourselves up! Over on the other side we were met with the most incredible scene. It seemed as if the entire tribe of Dsong Flower People had come together for the market (which they probably had). The whole market was alive with the most colourful costumes I have ever seen. With bright head scarves, incredibly beautiful intricately embroidered jackets, pleated rainbow skirts and aprons, and even special leg warmer type things (though why their legs need warming in this heat is beyond me!) It is quite literally impossible to describe how glorious the scene was. I only feel sorry for the men who miss out on all the fun and simply where whatever they want, a dull existence compared to the women and girls. What made the outfits even more beautiful was that thy were all accessorised with stunning smiles and gorgeously characterful faces. We bought a few colourful treats including bags and skirts for back home and then reluctantly left the market, which was possibly the best I have ever seen, simply for the people watching. We headed back to the town and had a wander round, before arranging our trekking trip for the next day.
We were so looking forward to our trek but I was aghast to find out just how hard it was from the very word go. We had a lovely guide and for the entire trip it was just us, which was incredible. Certainly if we had gone to Sapa there would have been many other tourists who we passed by. Unfortunately from the word go I struggled to handle the heat and the hills! I was determined to work through it though and carried on, before relenting and believing that something was just not right, at which point I was promptly violently sick! That said, I felt a hundred times better and was able to carry on! Thank goodness too as we passed through the most stunning scenery of terraced rice fields, complete with workers dressed in their full Dsong Flower People regalia. We also passed tiny little houses on the fields and met local tribes people which was incredible. To see the local tribes people at work in their daily lives was quite something and the setting was more than glorious. Wet hen passed a tiny little village school, with gorgeous little children, before Vin, our guide, decided that I simply couldn’t carry on (I was, afterall, continuing to be sick). So he called a bike to come and get me and take me to the homestay where we were spending the night, where upon arrival I promptly fell fast asleep. As we waited for the bike to pick me up we were at the end of this long old man made wooden bridge, where a family was moving a house, wooden piece by wooden piece across from one side of the gauge to the other to rebuild it. Old men, young women in their tribal clothes and kids were all involved in the incredibly hard physical job, but low me did they have a good location!
The homestay that we were staying at was in the middle of nowhere, in a tiny village and so was a wonderful place to see, though I felt so rude just rocking up and going to sleep! By the time Stu and Vin arrived I felt a little better and was forced to eat some of the huge dinner that they cooked for us. I kept saying that I simply couldn’t eat it and lo and behold when Stu and Vin made me carry on, it didn’t stay in me too long! I had been up and down to the outside toilet, down some rickety stairs and out in the dark, where scary dogs lurked and thankfully on the last occasion asked Stu to come out with me. Not so thankfully for him I never made it to the toilet before I was sick half over myself and all over their outside space, just a meter away form the toilet! Bless him though for being such a good husband and cleaning up after me, in the pitch black and all!
I felt a little better the next day, though Vin was convinced that I ‘had a baby inside’!!!! I tried in ernest to convince him that it was more likely something I ate but he was having none of it! He opted for a slightly easier route back than we would have taken, which in all honesty was fine by me. We passed through a number of villages which too us looked so picture perfect but I am sure that their lives aren’t easy. In one we went into a blacksmith’s studio, where the heat from the red hot utensils was incredible and where the women were working just as hard as the men. It was like stepping back in time and very cool to see. The countryside was not quite as spectacular as the day before but none the less it was a wonderful part of the walk and the trek was simply incredible, more so as we were well and truly on our own.
After Bac Ha we headed back on the journey to Hanoi where we had one last day enjoying the old town and took in a cookery class, which was brilliant. We took a trip through the market and then donned our aprons and chef hats and learnt to cook the most delicious and totally unhealthy chicken and much more healthy fresh spring rolls and a weird little desert. It was really good and put me right in the mood to become a proper little housewife!
We left Hanoi to go to Hoi-An, which we fell in love with. We were only going to stay a couple of days but stayed for the full week that we had left in Vietnam. We just adored the relaxed pace, the pretty river side old town, the lovely beaches and all the great food that we ate! We had a pleasant enough hotel and spent a few hours in the heat of the day chilling out watching movies and Discovery (this was the point of the start of our Discovery addiction). We spent a few days just wondering around the old town and through the markets relaxing in little coffee shops on the water’s edge of this idyllic town. We hired bikes to cycle around the back streets, through villages and fields and water fronted side streets. Every nook and cranny was perfect! One day we hired a scooter to drive to the ruins of My Son which was wonderful. We loved being on the bike, though we ended up riving far further than we needed to as we got quite lost! We passed stunning scenery of workers in conical hats tending to the rice paddies; water buffalo wallowing in the paddies and little stretches of water; hundreds of school children cycling home or to school (different ages go in the morning or afternoon as there is not enough space to have them all study together at the same time); and lively market scenes. The ruins themselves were wonderful. We practically had the place to ourselves, save for a few other tourists and so it was really peaceful and at some points erie taking in the different monuments, all covered in dewy cobwebs, complete with silvery spiders. One of the things that I find most strange about this abandoned ruins (along with all others) is not only that they were abandoned after so much work and love was put into them, but that they were always built in the most obscure and hard to reach places. It was like they never wanted to be found and wanted all the construction to be as hard as humanly possible.
We also had clothes made for us in Hoi-An. We met a lovely lady who ran a tailors and I had a few summer items whipped up and Stuart got too lovely suits that made him look deliciously handsome! It was good fun choosing what we were going to get made as the tailors all just hand you catalogues and magazine to look through and then you simply point at what you want. I got really fussy with Stu’s suits as the first was was great (after they took out the eighties shoulder pads!) but the second one was too short, too tight and generally not right. However, after half an hour it was perfect! We spent quite a lot of time talking to the two ladies in the tailors and it was interesting to hear their views on men. One was married and the other single but neither had much good t say about men, which was the case for most girls, who were quick to point out that men were useless and they were better off without them. To be fair, this does very much seem to be the case. Whilst all the women are hard at work, the men seem to be lolling around drinking and playing cards in the street, with their mates.
After a few days hanging on the beach and spending evenings eating delicious seafood we had to leave or else we might never have, in order to get to Laos.
With no other tourists in the village, we had the place to ourselves and found a wonderful lady, sharp as anything keen to do as much business with us as possible! She enticed us into her restaurant, which was just a simple room, which doubled up as their living space and her husband somehow managed to conjure up the most incredible chicken dish, on two little pans outside in the dark. It was immensely delicious so of course we went back for lunch and dinner the next day. We also hired a little fishing boat from them to take us around all the wonderful karst limestone formations that jutted right out of the sea, like something from a fairy tale. We had watched the sunset over the glimmering waters the night before, as the fishermen came in and it was truly gorgeous. When you think of Vietnam one of the instant images that comes to mind is that of Halong Bay and Bai Tu Long was exactly that image, but better than what we would later find Halong bay to be, as there was no-one else, other than fishermen, around. Sadly, much of the day was kind of gray but that just gave the scenery a more mythical rather than magical feel to it! We drifted for about five hours between the stunning formations, passing tiny floating communities (too small to be villages), sandy deserted beaches and fishermen drumming as they made their way back on their small long boats and even wading in the shallow waters, catching fish with spears! Not bad for a 20 dollar fishing boat trip and oh so special as it was just us around - perfection.
From Van Don we hopped on a five hour bus to Hanoi. One of the strange things about the busses in Vietnam, which we found throughout the country, was that their tend to be more staff than obviously necessary, howver when you think beyond the obvious you realise that you need one person to drive; one to collect money; one to check a police presence as they only issue tickets when they might get checked; another to deal with getting the bus full of people (often with slightly aggressive tactics) as they don’t like driving half empty; another person needs to jump off the bus (usually at full speed) to bribe people here and there and then jump back on; and then finally you need at least one other person to do something else equally as ludicrous as everyone else is doing, even if it is just hanging out the door as the bus drives along at full pelt.
Anyway, we did manage to reach Hanoi alive and in relative comfort in all fairness, and we even think that we paid the correct fair, which we would soon learn is a well and true novelty in a land where ‘ferrangis’ definitely pay more than is possibly fair for pretty much anything that doesn’t have a price written down.
We found a gorgeous looking guesthouse, tucked away from the main road and based around a courtyard, with it’s own cinamatique and as we would find out each night, its own cat that liked to scream in to the wee hours, right outside of our doorway. I am pretty certain that it was a direct attempt at both keeping me awake and sending me crazy. After checking in, dumping our bags and jumping in the shower we headed over the road for a delicious pizza before going for a walk into town. The first thing to strike you about Hanoi is the motorbikes. Traffic was utterly mental and the sheer number of motorbikes was like something that I have never seen before and that’s coming from someone who lived and worked in Bangalore, India!
As we walked around the central lake, Hoan Kiem we came across the most odd scene of three pretty girls, in traditional Vietnamese garb, posing sweetly, if slightly evocatively, for dozens of photographers, on the water’s edge, but bizzarely with a leaf in their hands and as the centre of attention. It turns out that the tree they were posing under is the only tree in the whole of Hanoi whose leaves turn brown and shed and this was the time of year that it was happening, though we are pretty certain that we saw other brown leaves on the ground elsewhere in the city! We ended up popping into a travellers’ bar, aptly named ‘Le Pub’, where we may as well have been in a bar back home! Anyway, we met a honeymooning Oz couple, who were great fun and ended up staying for several hours, instead of just a quick drink to relax and get our bearings! It was nice though and our first taste of the true traveller friendly lifestyle that flows through South East Asia.
In the evening we went for a short wander through the nearby streets which made up the shoe market, selling (quite obviously) shoes upon shoes on the curb side. We found a tiny little eatery between a few shoe stands and were promptly ripped off for some delicious little roll type things and sausage!
Next day we spent the whole day exploring the wonderfully crumbling old town, which simply oozed character and archaic beauty. Every street was full of striking old buildings falling into various states of disrepair, with some renovated for the sake of tourist and in the money locals, to enjoy fine dining in gorgeous surrounds. Full of art galleries and silk shops; busy middle of the road markets (where you can buy everything from frogs, head sliced off before your eyes to never before seen fish and turtles waiting to be taken to the oven, which is ironic paring in mind how revered they are); cycle rickshaws; the inevitable motorbike (making its way through the most inappropriate tiny space); street vendors selling fruits and vegetable from their baskets balanced on their shoulders; little hair dressers set up against a brick wall or tree; and hundreds of people going about their daily life, the streets of the old town were certainly a sight to behold. Around every street corner was something new, from a garlic shop selling tens of different types and ladies in the common conical hats selling flowers to loud wholesale fabric markets, where staff were either hectically busy or sleeping upon rolls of material, hiding amongst the swathes of colours. And as all of this was going on, home life was being lived in full of everyone around. Even here in Hanoi most people seem to live their lives very openly sleeping in their shops of the reception of their hotel. in fact, read an interesting magazine article about how the cost of housing is (relatively) some of the highest in the world and so people simply can’t afford to buy rent let alone buy and hence why they all have no choice but to combine their work and home space. Even shop workers who simply are employed rather than own the shop often sleep in the store as part of their package.
Having explored the old town by day we spent the next day doing some of the more historical and cultural monuments of the city, whilst by night we went back in to the old town to eat and enjoy the lively atmosphere (and of course to shop for beautiful silk dresses!) We took in the sights of the fascinating Literary Temple; the humbling Hanoi Hilton which was, for so long, a vicious home to freedom fighters and a long term stay for prisoners of the Veitnamese war; the city museum with its collection of art works, every day objects, photos and anthroplogical relics. We explored the further afield back streets of the city and ambled around the lake, which was always full of people doing exercise walks, usually in their pyjamas. That was one of the most odd things about Hanoi (which we later discovered ran through much of Vietnam) all the women went around their daily lives in their jim jams. From doing their shopping, to walking around the lake or doing their aerobics class in the outdoor spaces around the lake with hundred of other similarly dressed women, they had a real penchant for wearing PJs all day, every day. Odd, odd, odd! In fact an oddity we never quite got to the bottom of!
I was lucky enough to secure a luxury boat cruise in Halong Bay for two days and so after dropping our visa applications for India off at the embassy we met the transfer to Halong, passing much of the same route that we took coming into Hanoi from Van Don. After a few hours and a stop over at this art centre for the disabled, where they made incredible stitched art work, we arrived at Halong and were taken to our boat with two other couples, which made way for a quiet and relaxed stay. The boat was beautiful and we enjoyed delicious food and scrummy cocktails on board. Sadly the days were not the best, much like in Bai Tu Long Bay, but the views were none the less stunning despite the overcast skies. We visited an incredible (if exceptionally busy) cave with stalagmites and stalactites making all sorts of shapes and figures as well as a wonderful floating village which was amazing to see. I was expecting some kind of market like those in Bangkok but in fact it was just a small community of lots of floating houses, complete with all the modcons and dogs.
We spent the rest of our time just drifting between the wonderful karst formations jutting out of the waters. Stu and I jumped in for a very refreshing swim, and I came out with a jelly fish bite! Thank goodness the boat had some cream as I really didn’t fancy peeing on myself (though I would be impressed if I managed to pee on my own stomach!) In the evening Stuart had a massage and we spent some time fishing for squid, which was fun for about ten minutes and then for me rather tedious, but Stu was determined and about an hour later came running down the corridor with a bucket full of water and one little squid! What a proud moment! The chef cooked it up the next morning for his breakfast, scrumptious!
When we got back to Hanoi we still had plenty of time to kill in Hanoi as we needed to wait five days to get our Indian visas so we decided to spend a few days trekking in stunning Bac Ha. After a pleasant overnight train to Lai Cai, we went one way, whilst all the other tourists headed in the other direction to more visited Sapa. We found our bus easily enough, which was a relief as it was five in the morning and we had a further few hours to travel before we would get to Bac Ha in time for the Tuesday morning market of the Dsong Flower tribe that we so wanted to see. Unfortunately, in what we would soon learn was true Vietnamese style, the bus wanted to charge us 300 dong, rather than the actual 50 that it was. Of course we fought this, after all the prices are written on the bus but they point blank refused to take us for less than 150, so having payed three times as much as we should have done (it was five in the morning after all so they had us over a barrel) we got under way for the ride through the countryside. On arrival in the smallest and most peaceful town ever we found a little guest house and promptly showered, overlooked by a naughty nude lady centre piece in the bathroom, before hiring a motorbike driver to drive us over the crazy bumpy roads to the market. yes that would be one motorbike for three fully grown adults! heck they do it all the time in Asia, so when in Rome and all that..... We drove through glorious countryside and finally ended up at this rickety old bridge which, no joke, was twisted so that half of it was sideways over the river, making for an adventurous walk over to the other side! The locals didn’t seem to care, mind you, and with a hop, skip and jump they were over in a jiffy, so of course we couldn’t show ourselves up! Over on the other side we were met with the most incredible scene. It seemed as if the entire tribe of Dsong Flower People had come together for the market (which they probably had). The whole market was alive with the most colourful costumes I have ever seen. With bright head scarves, incredibly beautiful intricately embroidered jackets, pleated rainbow skirts and aprons, and even special leg warmer type things (though why their legs need warming in this heat is beyond me!) It is quite literally impossible to describe how glorious the scene was. I only feel sorry for the men who miss out on all the fun and simply where whatever they want, a dull existence compared to the women and girls. What made the outfits even more beautiful was that thy were all accessorised with stunning smiles and gorgeously characterful faces. We bought a few colourful treats including bags and skirts for back home and then reluctantly left the market, which was possibly the best I have ever seen, simply for the people watching. We headed back to the town and had a wander round, before arranging our trekking trip for the next day.
We were so looking forward to our trek but I was aghast to find out just how hard it was from the very word go. We had a lovely guide and for the entire trip it was just us, which was incredible. Certainly if we had gone to Sapa there would have been many other tourists who we passed by. Unfortunately from the word go I struggled to handle the heat and the hills! I was determined to work through it though and carried on, before relenting and believing that something was just not right, at which point I was promptly violently sick! That said, I felt a hundred times better and was able to carry on! Thank goodness too as we passed through the most stunning scenery of terraced rice fields, complete with workers dressed in their full Dsong Flower People regalia. We also passed tiny little houses on the fields and met local tribes people which was incredible. To see the local tribes people at work in their daily lives was quite something and the setting was more than glorious. Wet hen passed a tiny little village school, with gorgeous little children, before Vin, our guide, decided that I simply couldn’t carry on (I was, afterall, continuing to be sick). So he called a bike to come and get me and take me to the homestay where we were spending the night, where upon arrival I promptly fell fast asleep. As we waited for the bike to pick me up we were at the end of this long old man made wooden bridge, where a family was moving a house, wooden piece by wooden piece across from one side of the gauge to the other to rebuild it. Old men, young women in their tribal clothes and kids were all involved in the incredibly hard physical job, but low me did they have a good location!
The homestay that we were staying at was in the middle of nowhere, in a tiny village and so was a wonderful place to see, though I felt so rude just rocking up and going to sleep! By the time Stu and Vin arrived I felt a little better and was forced to eat some of the huge dinner that they cooked for us. I kept saying that I simply couldn’t eat it and lo and behold when Stu and Vin made me carry on, it didn’t stay in me too long! I had been up and down to the outside toilet, down some rickety stairs and out in the dark, where scary dogs lurked and thankfully on the last occasion asked Stu to come out with me. Not so thankfully for him I never made it to the toilet before I was sick half over myself and all over their outside space, just a meter away form the toilet! Bless him though for being such a good husband and cleaning up after me, in the pitch black and all!
I felt a little better the next day, though Vin was convinced that I ‘had a baby inside’!!!! I tried in ernest to convince him that it was more likely something I ate but he was having none of it! He opted for a slightly easier route back than we would have taken, which in all honesty was fine by me. We passed through a number of villages which too us looked so picture perfect but I am sure that their lives aren’t easy. In one we went into a blacksmith’s studio, where the heat from the red hot utensils was incredible and where the women were working just as hard as the men. It was like stepping back in time and very cool to see. The countryside was not quite as spectacular as the day before but none the less it was a wonderful part of the walk and the trek was simply incredible, more so as we were well and truly on our own.
After Bac Ha we headed back on the journey to Hanoi where we had one last day enjoying the old town and took in a cookery class, which was brilliant. We took a trip through the market and then donned our aprons and chef hats and learnt to cook the most delicious and totally unhealthy chicken and much more healthy fresh spring rolls and a weird little desert. It was really good and put me right in the mood to become a proper little housewife!
We left Hanoi to go to Hoi-An, which we fell in love with. We were only going to stay a couple of days but stayed for the full week that we had left in Vietnam. We just adored the relaxed pace, the pretty river side old town, the lovely beaches and all the great food that we ate! We had a pleasant enough hotel and spent a few hours in the heat of the day chilling out watching movies and Discovery (this was the point of the start of our Discovery addiction). We spent a few days just wondering around the old town and through the markets relaxing in little coffee shops on the water’s edge of this idyllic town. We hired bikes to cycle around the back streets, through villages and fields and water fronted side streets. Every nook and cranny was perfect! One day we hired a scooter to drive to the ruins of My Son which was wonderful. We loved being on the bike, though we ended up riving far further than we needed to as we got quite lost! We passed stunning scenery of workers in conical hats tending to the rice paddies; water buffalo wallowing in the paddies and little stretches of water; hundreds of school children cycling home or to school (different ages go in the morning or afternoon as there is not enough space to have them all study together at the same time); and lively market scenes. The ruins themselves were wonderful. We practically had the place to ourselves, save for a few other tourists and so it was really peaceful and at some points erie taking in the different monuments, all covered in dewy cobwebs, complete with silvery spiders. One of the things that I find most strange about this abandoned ruins (along with all others) is not only that they were abandoned after so much work and love was put into them, but that they were always built in the most obscure and hard to reach places. It was like they never wanted to be found and wanted all the construction to be as hard as humanly possible.
We also had clothes made for us in Hoi-An. We met a lovely lady who ran a tailors and I had a few summer items whipped up and Stuart got too lovely suits that made him look deliciously handsome! It was good fun choosing what we were going to get made as the tailors all just hand you catalogues and magazine to look through and then you simply point at what you want. I got really fussy with Stu’s suits as the first was was great (after they took out the eighties shoulder pads!) but the second one was too short, too tight and generally not right. However, after half an hour it was perfect! We spent quite a lot of time talking to the two ladies in the tailors and it was interesting to hear their views on men. One was married and the other single but neither had much good t say about men, which was the case for most girls, who were quick to point out that men were useless and they were better off without them. To be fair, this does very much seem to be the case. Whilst all the women are hard at work, the men seem to be lolling around drinking and playing cards in the street, with their mates.
After a few days hanging on the beach and spending evenings eating delicious seafood we had to leave or else we might never have, in order to get to Laos.
Monday, 27 April 2009
China
Ahh, China! Well its been about two months since I landed in the land of spitting, hawking, shouting, rudeness and utter filth and only now am I getting round to writing about it! As such I am certain I will miss out on some of the delights and (more of) the non delights but let’s see how well my memory serves me.
What I remember with clarity is that I was not happy about going to China. I didn’t fall in love with it last time and I was pretty certain I wouldn’t do so this time. Yes, there are some incredible landmarks and yes, there is stunning scenery and yes, there are even some nice people but in all honesty I have to say only some. The majority of the people are rude, disrespectful both to foreigners and each other and are so darned loud I can’t even explain it. Now I know that my voice carries but seriously they shout to just about everyone, including the person standing right next to them! They must have been born hawking and spitting and burping and shouting, there;s no other explanation for why else they would be doing it. Perhaps it all seemed doubly worse as we had just come from Japan, land of everything perfect.
After our disaster of a boat journey we finally arrived to the less than civilised city of Quingdao, a city full of possibilities - possibly a lovely beach (but it’s dirty), possibly a funky underground shopping district (but that is dirty too and depressing to boot), possibly some cool night clubs and bars (but they are shut and falling to tatters) and possibly some nice restaurants (if only you could find any). Arriving at the port was a noisy, crowded and dirty affair - the area is bleakly poverty stricken and desperately despairing. Every rumbling building looks as if it is on it’s last tethers and the fierce wind must whip through the makeshift doors and cracked windows, with zenith. Apparently it is the place to retire to but Lord only knows why as I can see little hope of aging happy here!
After trying practically every bank in the city for an ATM that worked we finally bought our train tickets to Beijing. Despite not looking forward to reaching the capital at all, I was delighted to be leaving Quingdao! The train journey proved to be the first of many hideous, filthy and loud train journeys throughout China and upon arrival we hunted for the hotel we had preliminary booked and after a long old search in the cold early morning we gave up and checked into a characterless but perfectly pleasant hotel, just outside of some Hutong. Beijing was far worse than I remembered it. Bitterly cold it sadly was also in the middle of a major drought and so layers of dust blew through the wind, settling on all the ice. The Summer Palace was entirely depressing. Note to myself - there is a reason that it is called the SUMMER palace! Coated in dust, desolate and relatively quiet it lacked any of the spirit and beauty that it has in the summer, though still an impressive sight. We actually almost ended up staying the night as we couldn’t find our way out! The Forbidden City was heaving with people due to the Chinese New Year celebrations, which took away some of it’s magic but it was still an impressive sight to behold, though I am certain that when I was last there, there was a whispering wall, which no-one seemed to know about this time round! Maybe someone moved it! I was devastated to see that they had knocked down a whole area of the city, where I stayed last time I was there, and went to the opera. Now there is, to be fair, a beautiful shopping street but it is entirely empty and deserted, as if it was made purely for show for the Olmypics. Speaking of which, we went to the Olympic site which was just utterly depressing - it is practically falling apart and it only had any life in it as it was abuzz with the energy of thousands of Chinese holiday makers for the New Year celebrations, it was so sad to see. There was however a saving grace for Beijing, which was the fireworks for Chinese New Year. On our second night in the city we had a delicious dinner (all Chinese food is gorgeous!) in a really friendly restaurant where the staff were all having a meal together and brought us over sweets of all sorts of hideous flavours and oranges! Outside bangers were going off left, right and centre, we had never seen anything like it before! When we went to bed we were disappointed not to have seen any further celebrations as we had tried really hard to find out what was going on but all was redeemed when at midnight the skies quite literally lit up with the most fireworks i have ever seen. i twas as if every family in the neighbourhood, no make that the city, was holding their own display and from where we were we could just watch the rockets dancing in the skies for well over an hour. It was incredible. Aside form that there were other things I managed to like about the city, including meandering through the Hutong (old districts) with their more traditional way of life and the hustle and bustle of energetic markets that were hard to find, hidden behind the shiny new shopping districts but were great fun once you were there. We never quite got the never up to eat fried cockroaches, mini sea horses or scorpions, mind you! There was a definite air of celebration over the few days we were there, with country folk coming into the city for the holidays and the locals all in festive spirit, however I was still happy to be leaving the city and heading down to Shanghai, though I had little expectations that it would be any better.
Fortunately In Shanghai we were staying in a the most beautiful hotel which definitely made our stay more enjoyable, but aside from that, whilst I again didn’t love it, I much preferred it to Beijing. It’s a pretty intense city and was throwing down the rain the whole time we were there, which created a thick layer of fog obscuring much of the Bund, or was that cloud actually smog? The pollution in Shanghai is outrageous and apparantly clouds of smog hang over the city most days. The Bund itself was perhaps less impressive than I imagined it to be. I am not sure what I was expecting but perhaps it is like walking over Waterloo Bridge in London, where on a grey, wet and miserable day it is a totally unpleasant experience but when the sun is shining there is no better place to be. The river side strip was full of Hawkers and photographers with their mobile shops but to be honest lacked any real feel or character. It was fun to see the neon lights flashing along he opposite bank and to see boats go by with impressive lit up advertising, whilst on our side of the river the old colonial buildings stood with grandeur and pride. As usual we did far too much walking but as usual that meant that we stumbled across all sorts of quirky places, from pretty little French quarters filled with advertising graffiti; backstreets that looked like they haven’t changed in 50 years; newly developed traditional style shopping areas; narrow lanes of small hutong and a gorgeous little shopping area, which we still don’t know the name of. It was simply adorable. Basically the ground floor buildings had all been converted into quaint little boutiques, hippy style coffee shops and funky art and photography galleries while the upper buildings were clearly still flats and homes, belonging to the same people who had lived their for 50 years, hanging out their washing and throwing out their rubbish.
After Shanghai it was off to our third major city, Hong Kong and at least I knew that I would love it! Not only did we have three top hotels lined up (including the awe inspiring Peninsular, with the most incredible $2,500 per night suite, complete with fabulous Rolls Royce upon check out) but we were also going to see my friends Em and Rich who lived there, Rachel who was over for work, my other friends Gloves and Amanda and as it turned out a friend of mine called Lorraine who I hadn’t spoken to, let alone seen, in over ten years since school! To top it off we were finally going to get warm! Bliss!
Naturally we had a blast in HK, though I have to say that even I was worn out and done over by all the shopping opportunities - it can, at times, seem as if there is no escape! We had a day hanging out in one of the most glorious of shopping malls ever, waiting for Rachel to turn up from her day out with her journalists. After hours of waiting we finally saw her for just a few minutes before she had to head off again but we managed to have the whole of the next day with her. Poor Stuart was so good following us around the secret knock off shops Rachel had been told about! I managed to restrain myself (knock offs can run into the hundreds themselves) but it was great fun! We had a a delicious lunch on Stanley Beach, which could very well have been back home for all the ‘whiteys’ that were there! This was expat central, especially on a glorious Sunday! The taxi ride back to the mainland was glorious, with striking views over the water and countryside.
Stu and I made sure that during our stay we got to see some of the countryside and so visited a couple of islands, which were superb. To me this is the ideal living situation. You can be on a gorgeous island with sandy beaches, lush countryside, other expats and many locals, all enjoying the quieter side of life, whilst just half an hour away by boat to one of the liveliest places in the world. Of course we didn’t get to see all the islands but we spent a lovely day at Lamar Island, where we enjoyed some time on the small sandy beach and a glorious coastal walk though lush jungle terrain over-looking the glistening waters. We had another afternoon on the island of Chung Chow, where we tucked into a cheap feast of incredible dimsum and not so great chicken feet! Well you gotta try them but I can’t say I would revisit the taste (or texture!) Fuelled up we set off on a long walk around the west side of the island and were rewarded with amazing views and strwaberries on the beach at the end of it, complete with a new friend who just wanted to sit by me, not sharing our strawberries but just enjoying being slightly stalkerish! We also visited Lantau Island but that turned into a shopping trip (surprise, surprise) as we left the metro via an outlet mall - all shopping for Stuart mind you!
We had a couple of evenings with my friends Em and Rich which was great fun. We went to some delicious restaurants and totally enjoyed catching up! Rich joined us on a night out with my long lost friend Lorraine who is HK born and bred and it was lovely to see her after about ten years. We then all met up with more friends of mine, Gloves and Amanda for a night at the Happy Valley Races which was a blast. It totally felt like we were back at home socialising with all our friends, especially as Rachel was here, so it really felt like home! Hong Kong is so easy to get used to very quickly. It’s totally westernised and aside from getting lost on the hugest of metro stations it is pretty easy to navigate. As usual we did plenty of walking, taking in the tat of the night markets (and the delicious food there!), huge shopping boulevards, giant malls, walking routes in developing areas, beaches, countryside and semi peaceful gardens and aviaries just off the mainstrips.
After the mayhem of Hong Kong, which we loved but which Stuart found a little over-whelming, we headed for the more peaceful setting of Guilin, with its incredible karst lime rock formations, jutting out all over the place. We stayed in Dabu Town, in HOMA, a unique art hotel, set in the surrounds of an outside sculpture park, with the backdrop of beautiful rocks rising to the sky. The hotel is a Relais and Chateaux property so rather lush but it was a little like groundhog day for the few days we were there as we were the only ones for breakfast and they put us in the same place each day and the same music was playing, with the same staff - all quite amusing but most importantly delicious! We spent one day on bikes riding through the sculpture park and then through the surrounding villages, tucked amongst the giant looming rocks. The locals were none too excited about seeing us, except for a few smilers and wavers, but it was none the less a beautiful ride. The villages were so basic and simple with the most beautiful environment and it truly looked like something out of a fairy tale movie - you half expected to see Shrek and his princess running down the dirt paths! It was so refreshing being out in the cold on our bikes and so rewarding to be up close and personal to both the local communities and the extraordinary scenery.
After the day in Guilin the town, in Guilin the province, we then spent a day in Yanshhou, just a short bus journey away. This pretty little town, more like a village, is based around the Yulong River, where the karst formations jut out of the water making it appear other worldly. The town is full of cafes and little shops that wouldn’t go amiss in a Parisian backstreet and it has a lovely central market area which crawls its way down to the river’s edge, where every other person is touting to get you to take a river ride. We decided to opt for a bum breaking tandem bike ride instead and had a glorious afternoon riding through rice paddies, open fields, along the river and through the most stunning karst mountains imaginable. I rode with flowers in my hair having bouht a gorgeous little crown of colourful and sweetly scented flowers from a local vendor! The day was so relaxing as we rode through little paths, all the while with stunning scenery at every turn. These karst formations are simply dotted around with no rhyme or reason and little communities have worked their way around them to build villages and towns. We trekked up stairs upon stairs to reach the heady heights of Moon Cave, so called as it is a tremendous perfect circle carved by the wind through a mountain top. The views were giddying and quite gorgeous but nothing compared to what they would be in the summer when the fields would be glowing yellow and the mountains and rice paddies all lush green. None the less it was well worth the steep climb and the leg shaking climb back down.
Our train out was not until late in the night on our third day and so we heaved our luggage over to the station to put them in hold for the day and got ourselves up to Reed Flute Cave, just outside of the main city of Guilin. Even 2000 years ago the whole area of the countryside that we had enjoyed was famed for its beauty and was an inspiration to the most highly-renowned artists of the era. Han Yu (768-824), the great poet of the Tang dynasty, likened it to a green ribbon unfurling alongside jasper hairpins. The karst formations are home to an abundance of grottos and underground passages and Reed Flute Cave (so called as the verdant reeds growing outside of the cave’s mouth were once used to make flutes) is one of the most famous of all the caves. Apparantly it is not the most beautiful (me thinks this is a line to get tourists to book much more expensive trips to other caves) but whether it is or is not it was certainly not a disappointment. Stunning beautiful and exceptionally big the cave was truly incredible. The water-eroded cave is a spectacular world of stalactites, stone pillars, bizarre rock formations and pools of water, now iIlluminated by colored lighting. A full 240 meters long, walking through it is a surreal and unearthly experience. It is Chinese custom to give some of the more spectacular formations (or more obviously characteristic) a legendary or poetic name such as Crystal Palace, Dragon Pagoda, Virgin Forest, Flower and Fruit Mountain. Some were quite easy to see why whilst others required a little more imagination!
From Guilin we headed down on a long old 48 hour journey of train, taxi and ferry to the island of Hainan, where we were in for a real treat! We had three days at the Ritz Carlton Sanya Resort lined up and it was utter bliss. Our first night we spent in a local hotel on the main strip and tucked into some delicious home made pasta before getting up the next morning for the beautiful bus ride to Sanya, itself. Sanya is in an area of the island designated as a reserve but this stretch of sand has been built along with all luxurious resorts, of world class quality. The Ritz Carlton was utter bliss with beautiful rooms, several gorgeous pools, stunning gardens and all right on the golden sands! Of course, as soon as we arrived we set off on a walk and half an hour later came back beet red and destroyed! We literally could not go out in the sun for the rest of the time we were there and were sore all over! We still managed to have a wonderful time relaxing on loungers in the shade, tucking into the most delicious of lunches and dinners, popping down to the local shopping and entertainment mall for pizza and sun screen and enjoying the likes of divine massages! This writing malarky has sure got me some lovely spa treatments, fine meals and amazing rooms! On the day we left, we went in usual Harkerclarker style, later than anticipated and ended up missing the train by minutes so had to get a bus to Haiko instead, where we missed the ferry and so ended up spending the night (which incidently was Valentine’s Day) in a totally unromantic scummy little place and having a totally unromantic dinner of goodness only knows what as we coldn’t find out quite what animal any of the pictures of food were! Oh well these things happen and Valentine’s as a married couple can only get better! The next day we got on the ferry along with a congregation of Hawaii shirt and Hawaii shorts clad Chinese tourists for the overnight trip back to the mainland. Then it was an early morning train to the border of Vietnam and a quick cross over before a bus to our fist Vietnamese pit stop. We had all good intentions of returning to China to see some more of the stunning Western scenery but turns out they weren’t going to let us in to Tibet (not just us mind you, any foreigners!) and so we would actually end up having longer in Vietnam and heading south through South East Asia.
What I remember with clarity is that I was not happy about going to China. I didn’t fall in love with it last time and I was pretty certain I wouldn’t do so this time. Yes, there are some incredible landmarks and yes, there is stunning scenery and yes, there are even some nice people but in all honesty I have to say only some. The majority of the people are rude, disrespectful both to foreigners and each other and are so darned loud I can’t even explain it. Now I know that my voice carries but seriously they shout to just about everyone, including the person standing right next to them! They must have been born hawking and spitting and burping and shouting, there;s no other explanation for why else they would be doing it. Perhaps it all seemed doubly worse as we had just come from Japan, land of everything perfect.
After our disaster of a boat journey we finally arrived to the less than civilised city of Quingdao, a city full of possibilities - possibly a lovely beach (but it’s dirty), possibly a funky underground shopping district (but that is dirty too and depressing to boot), possibly some cool night clubs and bars (but they are shut and falling to tatters) and possibly some nice restaurants (if only you could find any). Arriving at the port was a noisy, crowded and dirty affair - the area is bleakly poverty stricken and desperately despairing. Every rumbling building looks as if it is on it’s last tethers and the fierce wind must whip through the makeshift doors and cracked windows, with zenith. Apparently it is the place to retire to but Lord only knows why as I can see little hope of aging happy here!
After trying practically every bank in the city for an ATM that worked we finally bought our train tickets to Beijing. Despite not looking forward to reaching the capital at all, I was delighted to be leaving Quingdao! The train journey proved to be the first of many hideous, filthy and loud train journeys throughout China and upon arrival we hunted for the hotel we had preliminary booked and after a long old search in the cold early morning we gave up and checked into a characterless but perfectly pleasant hotel, just outside of some Hutong. Beijing was far worse than I remembered it. Bitterly cold it sadly was also in the middle of a major drought and so layers of dust blew through the wind, settling on all the ice. The Summer Palace was entirely depressing. Note to myself - there is a reason that it is called the SUMMER palace! Coated in dust, desolate and relatively quiet it lacked any of the spirit and beauty that it has in the summer, though still an impressive sight. We actually almost ended up staying the night as we couldn’t find our way out! The Forbidden City was heaving with people due to the Chinese New Year celebrations, which took away some of it’s magic but it was still an impressive sight to behold, though I am certain that when I was last there, there was a whispering wall, which no-one seemed to know about this time round! Maybe someone moved it! I was devastated to see that they had knocked down a whole area of the city, where I stayed last time I was there, and went to the opera. Now there is, to be fair, a beautiful shopping street but it is entirely empty and deserted, as if it was made purely for show for the Olmypics. Speaking of which, we went to the Olympic site which was just utterly depressing - it is practically falling apart and it only had any life in it as it was abuzz with the energy of thousands of Chinese holiday makers for the New Year celebrations, it was so sad to see. There was however a saving grace for Beijing, which was the fireworks for Chinese New Year. On our second night in the city we had a delicious dinner (all Chinese food is gorgeous!) in a really friendly restaurant where the staff were all having a meal together and brought us over sweets of all sorts of hideous flavours and oranges! Outside bangers were going off left, right and centre, we had never seen anything like it before! When we went to bed we were disappointed not to have seen any further celebrations as we had tried really hard to find out what was going on but all was redeemed when at midnight the skies quite literally lit up with the most fireworks i have ever seen. i twas as if every family in the neighbourhood, no make that the city, was holding their own display and from where we were we could just watch the rockets dancing in the skies for well over an hour. It was incredible. Aside form that there were other things I managed to like about the city, including meandering through the Hutong (old districts) with their more traditional way of life and the hustle and bustle of energetic markets that were hard to find, hidden behind the shiny new shopping districts but were great fun once you were there. We never quite got the never up to eat fried cockroaches, mini sea horses or scorpions, mind you! There was a definite air of celebration over the few days we were there, with country folk coming into the city for the holidays and the locals all in festive spirit, however I was still happy to be leaving the city and heading down to Shanghai, though I had little expectations that it would be any better.
Fortunately In Shanghai we were staying in a the most beautiful hotel which definitely made our stay more enjoyable, but aside from that, whilst I again didn’t love it, I much preferred it to Beijing. It’s a pretty intense city and was throwing down the rain the whole time we were there, which created a thick layer of fog obscuring much of the Bund, or was that cloud actually smog? The pollution in Shanghai is outrageous and apparantly clouds of smog hang over the city most days. The Bund itself was perhaps less impressive than I imagined it to be. I am not sure what I was expecting but perhaps it is like walking over Waterloo Bridge in London, where on a grey, wet and miserable day it is a totally unpleasant experience but when the sun is shining there is no better place to be. The river side strip was full of Hawkers and photographers with their mobile shops but to be honest lacked any real feel or character. It was fun to see the neon lights flashing along he opposite bank and to see boats go by with impressive lit up advertising, whilst on our side of the river the old colonial buildings stood with grandeur and pride. As usual we did far too much walking but as usual that meant that we stumbled across all sorts of quirky places, from pretty little French quarters filled with advertising graffiti; backstreets that looked like they haven’t changed in 50 years; newly developed traditional style shopping areas; narrow lanes of small hutong and a gorgeous little shopping area, which we still don’t know the name of. It was simply adorable. Basically the ground floor buildings had all been converted into quaint little boutiques, hippy style coffee shops and funky art and photography galleries while the upper buildings were clearly still flats and homes, belonging to the same people who had lived their for 50 years, hanging out their washing and throwing out their rubbish.
After Shanghai it was off to our third major city, Hong Kong and at least I knew that I would love it! Not only did we have three top hotels lined up (including the awe inspiring Peninsular, with the most incredible $2,500 per night suite, complete with fabulous Rolls Royce upon check out) but we were also going to see my friends Em and Rich who lived there, Rachel who was over for work, my other friends Gloves and Amanda and as it turned out a friend of mine called Lorraine who I hadn’t spoken to, let alone seen, in over ten years since school! To top it off we were finally going to get warm! Bliss!
Naturally we had a blast in HK, though I have to say that even I was worn out and done over by all the shopping opportunities - it can, at times, seem as if there is no escape! We had a day hanging out in one of the most glorious of shopping malls ever, waiting for Rachel to turn up from her day out with her journalists. After hours of waiting we finally saw her for just a few minutes before she had to head off again but we managed to have the whole of the next day with her. Poor Stuart was so good following us around the secret knock off shops Rachel had been told about! I managed to restrain myself (knock offs can run into the hundreds themselves) but it was great fun! We had a a delicious lunch on Stanley Beach, which could very well have been back home for all the ‘whiteys’ that were there! This was expat central, especially on a glorious Sunday! The taxi ride back to the mainland was glorious, with striking views over the water and countryside.
Stu and I made sure that during our stay we got to see some of the countryside and so visited a couple of islands, which were superb. To me this is the ideal living situation. You can be on a gorgeous island with sandy beaches, lush countryside, other expats and many locals, all enjoying the quieter side of life, whilst just half an hour away by boat to one of the liveliest places in the world. Of course we didn’t get to see all the islands but we spent a lovely day at Lamar Island, where we enjoyed some time on the small sandy beach and a glorious coastal walk though lush jungle terrain over-looking the glistening waters. We had another afternoon on the island of Chung Chow, where we tucked into a cheap feast of incredible dimsum and not so great chicken feet! Well you gotta try them but I can’t say I would revisit the taste (or texture!) Fuelled up we set off on a long walk around the west side of the island and were rewarded with amazing views and strwaberries on the beach at the end of it, complete with a new friend who just wanted to sit by me, not sharing our strawberries but just enjoying being slightly stalkerish! We also visited Lantau Island but that turned into a shopping trip (surprise, surprise) as we left the metro via an outlet mall - all shopping for Stuart mind you!
We had a couple of evenings with my friends Em and Rich which was great fun. We went to some delicious restaurants and totally enjoyed catching up! Rich joined us on a night out with my long lost friend Lorraine who is HK born and bred and it was lovely to see her after about ten years. We then all met up with more friends of mine, Gloves and Amanda for a night at the Happy Valley Races which was a blast. It totally felt like we were back at home socialising with all our friends, especially as Rachel was here, so it really felt like home! Hong Kong is so easy to get used to very quickly. It’s totally westernised and aside from getting lost on the hugest of metro stations it is pretty easy to navigate. As usual we did plenty of walking, taking in the tat of the night markets (and the delicious food there!), huge shopping boulevards, giant malls, walking routes in developing areas, beaches, countryside and semi peaceful gardens and aviaries just off the mainstrips.
After the mayhem of Hong Kong, which we loved but which Stuart found a little over-whelming, we headed for the more peaceful setting of Guilin, with its incredible karst lime rock formations, jutting out all over the place. We stayed in Dabu Town, in HOMA, a unique art hotel, set in the surrounds of an outside sculpture park, with the backdrop of beautiful rocks rising to the sky. The hotel is a Relais and Chateaux property so rather lush but it was a little like groundhog day for the few days we were there as we were the only ones for breakfast and they put us in the same place each day and the same music was playing, with the same staff - all quite amusing but most importantly delicious! We spent one day on bikes riding through the sculpture park and then through the surrounding villages, tucked amongst the giant looming rocks. The locals were none too excited about seeing us, except for a few smilers and wavers, but it was none the less a beautiful ride. The villages were so basic and simple with the most beautiful environment and it truly looked like something out of a fairy tale movie - you half expected to see Shrek and his princess running down the dirt paths! It was so refreshing being out in the cold on our bikes and so rewarding to be up close and personal to both the local communities and the extraordinary scenery.
After the day in Guilin the town, in Guilin the province, we then spent a day in Yanshhou, just a short bus journey away. This pretty little town, more like a village, is based around the Yulong River, where the karst formations jut out of the water making it appear other worldly. The town is full of cafes and little shops that wouldn’t go amiss in a Parisian backstreet and it has a lovely central market area which crawls its way down to the river’s edge, where every other person is touting to get you to take a river ride. We decided to opt for a bum breaking tandem bike ride instead and had a glorious afternoon riding through rice paddies, open fields, along the river and through the most stunning karst mountains imaginable. I rode with flowers in my hair having bouht a gorgeous little crown of colourful and sweetly scented flowers from a local vendor! The day was so relaxing as we rode through little paths, all the while with stunning scenery at every turn. These karst formations are simply dotted around with no rhyme or reason and little communities have worked their way around them to build villages and towns. We trekked up stairs upon stairs to reach the heady heights of Moon Cave, so called as it is a tremendous perfect circle carved by the wind through a mountain top. The views were giddying and quite gorgeous but nothing compared to what they would be in the summer when the fields would be glowing yellow and the mountains and rice paddies all lush green. None the less it was well worth the steep climb and the leg shaking climb back down.
Our train out was not until late in the night on our third day and so we heaved our luggage over to the station to put them in hold for the day and got ourselves up to Reed Flute Cave, just outside of the main city of Guilin. Even 2000 years ago the whole area of the countryside that we had enjoyed was famed for its beauty and was an inspiration to the most highly-renowned artists of the era. Han Yu (768-824), the great poet of the Tang dynasty, likened it to a green ribbon unfurling alongside jasper hairpins. The karst formations are home to an abundance of grottos and underground passages and Reed Flute Cave (so called as the verdant reeds growing outside of the cave’s mouth were once used to make flutes) is one of the most famous of all the caves. Apparantly it is not the most beautiful (me thinks this is a line to get tourists to book much more expensive trips to other caves) but whether it is or is not it was certainly not a disappointment. Stunning beautiful and exceptionally big the cave was truly incredible. The water-eroded cave is a spectacular world of stalactites, stone pillars, bizarre rock formations and pools of water, now iIlluminated by colored lighting. A full 240 meters long, walking through it is a surreal and unearthly experience. It is Chinese custom to give some of the more spectacular formations (or more obviously characteristic) a legendary or poetic name such as Crystal Palace, Dragon Pagoda, Virgin Forest, Flower and Fruit Mountain. Some were quite easy to see why whilst others required a little more imagination!
From Guilin we headed down on a long old 48 hour journey of train, taxi and ferry to the island of Hainan, where we were in for a real treat! We had three days at the Ritz Carlton Sanya Resort lined up and it was utter bliss. Our first night we spent in a local hotel on the main strip and tucked into some delicious home made pasta before getting up the next morning for the beautiful bus ride to Sanya, itself. Sanya is in an area of the island designated as a reserve but this stretch of sand has been built along with all luxurious resorts, of world class quality. The Ritz Carlton was utter bliss with beautiful rooms, several gorgeous pools, stunning gardens and all right on the golden sands! Of course, as soon as we arrived we set off on a walk and half an hour later came back beet red and destroyed! We literally could not go out in the sun for the rest of the time we were there and were sore all over! We still managed to have a wonderful time relaxing on loungers in the shade, tucking into the most delicious of lunches and dinners, popping down to the local shopping and entertainment mall for pizza and sun screen and enjoying the likes of divine massages! This writing malarky has sure got me some lovely spa treatments, fine meals and amazing rooms! On the day we left, we went in usual Harkerclarker style, later than anticipated and ended up missing the train by minutes so had to get a bus to Haiko instead, where we missed the ferry and so ended up spending the night (which incidently was Valentine’s Day) in a totally unromantic scummy little place and having a totally unromantic dinner of goodness only knows what as we coldn’t find out quite what animal any of the pictures of food were! Oh well these things happen and Valentine’s as a married couple can only get better! The next day we got on the ferry along with a congregation of Hawaii shirt and Hawaii shorts clad Chinese tourists for the overnight trip back to the mainland. Then it was an early morning train to the border of Vietnam and a quick cross over before a bus to our fist Vietnamese pit stop. We had all good intentions of returning to China to see some more of the stunning Western scenery but turns out they weren’t going to let us in to Tibet (not just us mind you, any foreigners!) and so we would actually end up having longer in Vietnam and heading south through South East Asia.
Japan to China sea crossing
“Move your bags we have a leak” said Stu. Move my bags? I’m still asleep, how can I move my bags? “Seriously, wake up and move your bags, we have a leak I say,” he says. “We have a leak, you say?” I say, “A leak? A leak!” I jump up and hunt for my shoes, “where are my shoes?” I fret, as if getting my feet wet, or worse, dirty from the grimy floor, is all I need to worry about. How about getting the rest of my body wet as the evidently rising water creeps up, trapping us in, gushing up to our mouths and nostrils? We are after all on a somewhat semi ancient boat, half way between Japan and China, and all Stu is worried about is our bags. What about our lives? I’m more precious over them!
It turns out the gushing water is in fact a burst hot water pipe but none the less it instills little faith in me on the health and safety status of our ferry. Come morning time, the water is cleared inside but outside it is more than choppy and my poor churned up tummy, still reeling from the effects of my virus, just doesn’t seem to be acting as string as it should and after an hour or so of nausea, it totally gives up and I give in to sea sickness. Brilliant, right at the start of my day as well. Fortunately I manage to sleep practically the whole rest of the day so times passes pretty quickly, until we feel ourselves motionless. Sadly, we have stopped sailing for all the wrong reasons. Thinking, along with the rest of the passengers, that we are about to embark, we sit and wait patiently for the doors to open. After all, they haven’t been open anywhere on the ship at all and some fresh air would do us a treat. No such luck, after two hours pass by we finally work out that we are actually still a few hours form our destination but bad winds are preventing us to get into port there so no disembarkation today. Brilliant, another night of the over heated, stuffy, rocky, leaking, ancient boat! And apparently there is o guarantee that we will dock tomorrow morning either its a sit and wait game and with little entertainment to keep us occupied and no fresh air to be had and my poor tum still feeling a little weary - it isn’t going to be much fun! Fortunately dinner of rice and emergency curry (vacuum packed emergency curry sauce poured over rice) isn’t as bad as you might imagine it to be and we have a few pennies left to spend on drinks , cookies and icecream. Isn’t as bad as you might imagine it to be? That was just the first few hours of delay. With another night under our belt, more rice than one stomache can take, hours of kids with endless energy running around, manga cartoons on repeat and only half an hour of Mr Bean for company, things were not looking so good. Especially by the time we realise that we will be spending our second non scheduled night on board - the thoughts of what could be offered for a second emergency dinner were enough to keep us entertained for all of about two seconds, Somehow it seems as if our travel to China had been doomed form the start....
It turns out the gushing water is in fact a burst hot water pipe but none the less it instills little faith in me on the health and safety status of our ferry. Come morning time, the water is cleared inside but outside it is more than choppy and my poor churned up tummy, still reeling from the effects of my virus, just doesn’t seem to be acting as string as it should and after an hour or so of nausea, it totally gives up and I give in to sea sickness. Brilliant, right at the start of my day as well. Fortunately I manage to sleep practically the whole rest of the day so times passes pretty quickly, until we feel ourselves motionless. Sadly, we have stopped sailing for all the wrong reasons. Thinking, along with the rest of the passengers, that we are about to embark, we sit and wait patiently for the doors to open. After all, they haven’t been open anywhere on the ship at all and some fresh air would do us a treat. No such luck, after two hours pass by we finally work out that we are actually still a few hours form our destination but bad winds are preventing us to get into port there so no disembarkation today. Brilliant, another night of the over heated, stuffy, rocky, leaking, ancient boat! And apparently there is o guarantee that we will dock tomorrow morning either its a sit and wait game and with little entertainment to keep us occupied and no fresh air to be had and my poor tum still feeling a little weary - it isn’t going to be much fun! Fortunately dinner of rice and emergency curry (vacuum packed emergency curry sauce poured over rice) isn’t as bad as you might imagine it to be and we have a few pennies left to spend on drinks , cookies and icecream. Isn’t as bad as you might imagine it to be? That was just the first few hours of delay. With another night under our belt, more rice than one stomache can take, hours of kids with endless energy running around, manga cartoons on repeat and only half an hour of Mr Bean for company, things were not looking so good. Especially by the time we realise that we will be spending our second non scheduled night on board - the thoughts of what could be offered for a second emergency dinner were enough to keep us entertained for all of about two seconds, Somehow it seems as if our travel to China had been doomed form the start....
Kagoshima (17th to 20th January)
We headed south to Kagoshima, a few days earlier than originally planned, with the intention of heading down to the islands in our minds. It was time for a bit of warmth and some outdoors adventure and the islands looked set to promise that - not extreme heat, just jeans a t shirt kind of weather - just what we are after. Kagoshima, itself, delivered lovely weather upon arrival. Gorgeous sunshine shone down on us as we checked into a cheap little hostel and trekked down to the port to find out about our tickets. I have picked up some kind of virus and have been quivering and shaking for a few days, so the sun on my face felt lovely. We managed to find out all about the ferries and were fuelled with excitement at the prospect of heading south and more so that for the first time in 60 years China and Taiwan have opened up their flight and ferry routes so we would be able to sail all the way down to Taiwan and on to China, perfect. Sadly, the next day we find out that yes China and Taiwan have opened up but Japan and Taiwan have closed their ferry route, so our travel plans are thrown up in the air completely.
No worries, we’ll go to South Korea instead. Ok so it will be freezing, but it will be worth it and we can put up with cold for a few days. So straight on the phone we get to book our ferry from South Korea to China, in order that we have all our papers in place to book our ferry into the country. Luck is not on our side though, there is a national holiday and so no ferries for the whole week that we are looking to leave Korea, which means we would be there for about two weeks, when we were only after one. Ordinarily we wouldn’t mind but it will be bitterly cold and we know nothing about the country and can’t get much guide info online so with this in mind it seems that we are opting to head straight to China. We are disappointed as all our exciting plans seems to have sizzled away but then we will end up with more time to visit Vietnam, maybe pop into Laos and ultimately have more time in India and we are thinking now that it might be possible to get over to Dubai by boat before we head home. (Looks like we are flying as the Central Asia route is not possible due to weather, the Middle East route not possible due to politics and the Africa route a little dodgy due to Somalian pirates!)
Anyway, with all routes blocked and all plans changed we can at least enjoy a few days on relative warmth in Kagoshima right? Wrong! We wake up to the worst rain imaginable and my virus is well and truly trying to kill me! Well, maybe not quite that bad, but it sure is working against me! We decide to jump on the train to Ibushki, where there is apparently the world’s only natural hot sand bath. It takes over an hour and all the while I am burning up and coming over all shivery! I’m thinking burying my already more than slightly claustrophobic self in heavy sand, when feeling quite so dodge, is not the best idea! None the less, if this is the world’s only natural hot sand bath I’m clearly not going to give it a miss. And actually it turns out to be ok, well more than ok, it turns out to be wonderful! We start off in glorious hot baths (separate men’s and women’s of course) before donning our Yukatas (Stu has on my short one, and I his long men’s one by mistake, and everyone is laughing - at him though, not me!) We walk out into the cold sea air and quickly totter to the sand bath, where little old women are waiting to bury us deep in the gorgeously warm rough sand. I whimp out to start with and keep my arms out and get buried so super shallow that I get cold so I call sweet little old burial women over to cover me up more! It’s actually a great feeling and the heat does wonders for my burning back. We can hear the waves lapping the shore, though can’t quite see them as the sand has been sheltered with bamboo coverings for the winter, whereas in the summer, it’s open to the water front. After half an hour of steaming away, we head back indoors for more hot bathing before heading back to the station, where we have time enough to kill for Stu to boil an egg in the station’s hot fountain (!) before we jump on the train and head back. And straight to bed for some TLC it is for me. That is after we enjoy another Mexican wrap from the shop we found the night before. Stu said he wouldn’t worry about me until I went of my food and when I couldn’t force down the delicious wrap, he knew something was seriously up! Me not eating - this is major!
Next day, feeling a lot better, we head to Sakarujima, on the Satsuma Peninnisula, home of one active volcano, a very cool lave field, lots of satsumas (hence the name), a lovely public foot spa and a cracking onsen. The onsen was divine. As it is within holy grounds you have to go through a tora as you walk into it and also it i, unusually, mixed. As such you have to wear a dressing gown . Nestling under a holy tree with a shrine and right on the ocean’s edge it was so picture perfect, especially as the sun set gloriously over the sea, with reds and oranges splashing across the sky and sparkling in the water’s shimmery reflections. For dinner we headed into the backstreets of Kagoshima, trying to find a local little joint to enjoy local treats. After an age of looking for a cheap sushi joint we opted for a quaint little place that looked like it had never changed in all of it’s working years. With a few options presented to us in pictures we ended up with some obscure dishes including chicken sushi - otherwise known as raw chicken. So when in Rome and all that.... it actually wasn’t so bad, in fact rather tasty which goes to show just how pathetically cautious we are in England! The restaurant was a riot. A team of local business men ordered us local firewater and when they left and a drunken group of friends came in they tried to get us drunk along with them, buying us beer. The Grandmother who cooked (or served up, in the case of the raw chicken) seemed quite famous with newspaper cuttings about her up on the walls and everyone delighted in having some foreigners enjoy the atmosphere of this very local place! Finally, plenty of laughs, loads of photos and a few drinks later we headed back, feeling lucky in our local find!
After the beauty of Satsuma we headed for the not so beautiful port town of Shimoneski, home to the famous blow fish meal which done wrong can kill you pretty darn quickly. Done right or wrong, there was no chance of us trying out the local food on this occasion! Shimoneski has little of any interest, aside from a booming Pachinko and gambling scene and so we spent the afternoon in the less than exciting local shopping centre and post office, while our night was spent in an odd little guest house full of ferry workers and grumpy old women!
No worries, we’ll go to South Korea instead. Ok so it will be freezing, but it will be worth it and we can put up with cold for a few days. So straight on the phone we get to book our ferry from South Korea to China, in order that we have all our papers in place to book our ferry into the country. Luck is not on our side though, there is a national holiday and so no ferries for the whole week that we are looking to leave Korea, which means we would be there for about two weeks, when we were only after one. Ordinarily we wouldn’t mind but it will be bitterly cold and we know nothing about the country and can’t get much guide info online so with this in mind it seems that we are opting to head straight to China. We are disappointed as all our exciting plans seems to have sizzled away but then we will end up with more time to visit Vietnam, maybe pop into Laos and ultimately have more time in India and we are thinking now that it might be possible to get over to Dubai by boat before we head home. (Looks like we are flying as the Central Asia route is not possible due to weather, the Middle East route not possible due to politics and the Africa route a little dodgy due to Somalian pirates!)
Anyway, with all routes blocked and all plans changed we can at least enjoy a few days on relative warmth in Kagoshima right? Wrong! We wake up to the worst rain imaginable and my virus is well and truly trying to kill me! Well, maybe not quite that bad, but it sure is working against me! We decide to jump on the train to Ibushki, where there is apparently the world’s only natural hot sand bath. It takes over an hour and all the while I am burning up and coming over all shivery! I’m thinking burying my already more than slightly claustrophobic self in heavy sand, when feeling quite so dodge, is not the best idea! None the less, if this is the world’s only natural hot sand bath I’m clearly not going to give it a miss. And actually it turns out to be ok, well more than ok, it turns out to be wonderful! We start off in glorious hot baths (separate men’s and women’s of course) before donning our Yukatas (Stu has on my short one, and I his long men’s one by mistake, and everyone is laughing - at him though, not me!) We walk out into the cold sea air and quickly totter to the sand bath, where little old women are waiting to bury us deep in the gorgeously warm rough sand. I whimp out to start with and keep my arms out and get buried so super shallow that I get cold so I call sweet little old burial women over to cover me up more! It’s actually a great feeling and the heat does wonders for my burning back. We can hear the waves lapping the shore, though can’t quite see them as the sand has been sheltered with bamboo coverings for the winter, whereas in the summer, it’s open to the water front. After half an hour of steaming away, we head back indoors for more hot bathing before heading back to the station, where we have time enough to kill for Stu to boil an egg in the station’s hot fountain (!) before we jump on the train and head back. And straight to bed for some TLC it is for me. That is after we enjoy another Mexican wrap from the shop we found the night before. Stu said he wouldn’t worry about me until I went of my food and when I couldn’t force down the delicious wrap, he knew something was seriously up! Me not eating - this is major!
Next day, feeling a lot better, we head to Sakarujima, on the Satsuma Peninnisula, home of one active volcano, a very cool lave field, lots of satsumas (hence the name), a lovely public foot spa and a cracking onsen. The onsen was divine. As it is within holy grounds you have to go through a tora as you walk into it and also it i, unusually, mixed. As such you have to wear a dressing gown . Nestling under a holy tree with a shrine and right on the ocean’s edge it was so picture perfect, especially as the sun set gloriously over the sea, with reds and oranges splashing across the sky and sparkling in the water’s shimmery reflections. For dinner we headed into the backstreets of Kagoshima, trying to find a local little joint to enjoy local treats. After an age of looking for a cheap sushi joint we opted for a quaint little place that looked like it had never changed in all of it’s working years. With a few options presented to us in pictures we ended up with some obscure dishes including chicken sushi - otherwise known as raw chicken. So when in Rome and all that.... it actually wasn’t so bad, in fact rather tasty which goes to show just how pathetically cautious we are in England! The restaurant was a riot. A team of local business men ordered us local firewater and when they left and a drunken group of friends came in they tried to get us drunk along with them, buying us beer. The Grandmother who cooked (or served up, in the case of the raw chicken) seemed quite famous with newspaper cuttings about her up on the walls and everyone delighted in having some foreigners enjoy the atmosphere of this very local place! Finally, plenty of laughs, loads of photos and a few drinks later we headed back, feeling lucky in our local find!
After the beauty of Satsuma we headed for the not so beautiful port town of Shimoneski, home to the famous blow fish meal which done wrong can kill you pretty darn quickly. Done right or wrong, there was no chance of us trying out the local food on this occasion! Shimoneski has little of any interest, aside from a booming Pachinko and gambling scene and so we spent the afternoon in the less than exciting local shopping centre and post office, while our night was spent in an odd little guest house full of ferry workers and grumpy old women!
Sunday, 1 March 2009
Kyoto (9th to 17th January)
Kyoto is a serene and magical place - the storehouse of most of Japan’s traditional culture. There are 17 Unesco World Heritage sites in Kyoto alone (not that we were able to see them all) and there are more than 1600 Buddhist temples and over 400 Shintō shrines (which we definitely did not see all of). It is where the Japan that we all think of in our imaginations (unless we are immediately drawn to the bright lights of Tokyo). There are raked pebble zen gardens, gorgeous bamboo forests, trees that in winter whistle in the breeze and in the autumn burst into a kaleidoscope of oranges and bronzes, whilst in the spring they come alive with pink cherry blossom. There are hidden temples, flowing streams, wooded mountains, striking geisha tottering in wooden slippers and a sure sense of peace in the air. As a town itself it is a delight, where the people are as friendly as can be and the food as delicious as possible. There is plenty to do in the centre, with excellent shopping and a few sites, as well as the incredible old districts where Geisha spotting is all in an evening’s entertainment. They are truly incredible to see, like something out of a movie. There are only about 800 modern day Geisha in the country left, so spotting not one, but three was a thrill for me. It sounds silly to get so excited about seeing one but when you think about their lives and the work that goes into looking the way that they do, it is really quite something. They spend years learning how to be the perfect companions (now for business men though once for Samuri and generals) learning to dance, sing, tell jokes, serve tea and alcohol is a graceful way We spent several early evenings in the old district of Gion just wandering up and down amid the bamboo fronted teahouses (ochaya), restaurants and traditional residences (machiya) dating from the late Edo period (around the 1800’s) to see if we could spot any geisha or maiko (apprentice geisha).
We had over a week in Kyoto but used it as a base to visit some nearby cities as well such as Hiroshima, Osaka, Nara and Hikone, as well as return to Tokyo for the Sumo! Bosh! In that time we stayed in three different place, first off was a little youth hostel in a dorm, then the rather more upmarket Westin Kyoto (where all the dignatories stay when they are in town) and then finally to a small hotel with Japanese style rooms and shared bathrooms, which I still just love!
We started off with a days’s bussing and walking to take in some of the closer sights including the Kinkakuji Temple (Golden Pavillion) and Daitokuji Temple (Zen Gardens). The Kinkakuji Temple was truly a site to behold, especially on such a sunny day when the glorious gold building was reflected in the silvery waters of the pond. Everything is so serene and delicate and a world away form the craziness of Tokyo. This is the Japan I dreamed of (minus the cherry blossom - oh well we can always come back!) Everything has its place, everything is perfectly created and positioned with peace and simplicity in mind. The Daitokuji Temple and Zen Gardens was another haven of tranquility amongst a huge complex of temples. The gardens were painstakingly perfect, raked everyday, with rocks and stones positioned with accuracy for specific meanings. One of the walkways around the main central room was what is called a Nightingale Floor, which has been created to “sing” (basically squeak) specifically when you walk in certain places in order to prevent intruders. Apparantly a few important old Japanese buildings such as castles and temples would have these as well as secret hideouts where Samuri could jump out of the ceiling to attack intruders.
Our next day, we moved to the Westin and headed out on a walk to wherever! We started off trudging in the rain up to the hotel’s garden viewpoint which was pretty spectacular over the city and countryside and then simply headed into the woods, where we walked without seeing anyone, through the rain and in and amongst temples and shrines. We headed further towards the mountains and in true us form walked massively further than we ever intended getting utterly lost but finding Buddhist schools, observatories and baseball teams in training along the way. We ended up walking for about 8 hours as we just couldn’t get distances correct and people kept giving us a million different directions. We wanted to end the day at the famous Fushimi Inari, and the walk there took us past numerous other temples and shrines and famous houses as well as the loveliest and cheapest little sushi place (which we would never refind as we were totally lost!) After literally hours of walking and threats to turn back we finally found it and were relieved to see that it was totally worth the crazy walk to get there.
Fushimi Inari Shrine is the most famous of several thousands of shrines dedicated to Inari throughout Japan. We had read that it had lots of Torri (entrance gates to holy areas) but were simply unprepared for just how many there were - literally thousands of orange and black gates to walk through, winding past smaller temples and shrines. Inari is the Shinto god of rice, and foxes are thought to be his messengers, therefore there were countless fox statues amongst the shrines. We must have walked for about two hours through the gates, though we in no way passed through all the Toriis as they were scattered in all directions. After all that walking, if ever we deserved a delicious noodle dinner and warm communal bath, tonight was the night! Thank goodness we seem to be lucking out with always getting the bathrooms to ourselves.
Next day it was off to Nara, the ancient capital of Japan from 710 to 784. We had come here to see some of the old town, walk through the countryside and enjoy the tame deer that rome through the town and park but we didn’t expect quite the amount of deer that there were or just how tame they were! According to the legendary history of Kasuga Shrine, a mythological god Takemikazuchi arrived in Nara on a white deer to guard the newly built capital of Heijo-kyo. Since then the deer were regarded as heavenly animal to protect the city and the country and now they are great fun, nudging you for food and roaming at free around the district. Nara is home to some incredible temple and shrine complexes. The Kasuga Shrine has hundreds of lanterns surrounding it which when lit up would like mind blowing; the Kōfuku-ji temple is home to a giant bronze Buddha and the Nigatsudo Temple afforded us breathtaking sunset views over the district.
After Nara we spent a day in nearby Hikone, taking in one of the country’s best preserved castles. Built over almost 20 years from 1603 to 1622 it escaped demolishion at the start of the Meiji period in 1868, only at the hands of the emperor himself, who ordered it to be kept intact, making it one of the oldest original-construction castles in Japan. There isn’t much inside of it - no old furnishings or such but as a structure it is quite magnificent and Stuart and I have noted a few design points for the house one day we will build! Walking around the old town we also stumbled across a lovely newly built area that Stuart fell in love with. So whilst he snapped away at the new buildings I found myself a couple of vintage kimonos to send home and then we bought some rather dubious sweets to try including what turned out to be jellyfied sweet beans and another green sticky gooey something or other!
Kyoto is just an hour or so away from Hiroshima and so we visited for a day to take in the museum and commemorative sites. As a city it is an energetic and happy place that doesn’t forget its past but which has moved on quickly and progressively. It also serves up one of our favourite dishes - okonomiyaki. Apparantly the city is home to over 2,000 okonomiyaki restaurants. The specialty is prepared by spreading a mixture of flour and water onto a griddle and adding bean sprouts, sliced cabbage, meat, egg, and noodles in to the thin pancake. Delicious! Of course though, no visit to the city is a visit if you do not get an understanding of the atomic bomb that decimated the city in 1945. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum was an incredibly moving experience and one that I would not want to revisit. It wasn’t a museum that went on a rant against the USA it simply told the story of what happened and implored everyone to fight against any future atomic and nuclear bombs. The images, displays and stories were incredibly hard to look at and read and visiting the other sites including the Children’s Memorial (after a girl who subsequently fought and lost her battle with Lukemia as a result of the bomb) and the A Bomb Domb, were also very hard to visit but it gets you thinking pretty hard about what happened and about what is happening right now. It is terrifying to think of the damage that can be done with bombs we are creating in this day and age.
But on to happier visits we enjoyed whilst staying in Kyoto...Sumo - bosh bosh bosh! What an awesome day and well worth the six hour return train journey we took to get there! I was a little bit worried that i really wasn’t going to be that interested or that after a short while I would be thoroughly bored. However, it was awesome and we both loved every second of it and have well and truly become sumo officianos. The day starts quite quietly in terms of the audience as there are hundreds of bouts between junior wrestlers (junior in rank not in age) which meant that we were able to get up close an personal to all the action, in fact at a could of points we had to duck out of the way before being flattened by these hundred stone men - ok not quite a hundred stone but these are huge men. Not that their size makes them any less athletic than the likes of me and you - in fact the moves they were making and the flexing of their legs suggests extreme fitness and agility - something you don’t really expect when witnessing giant men in what look like nappies with slicked back perfectly quiffed hair. As the day went on and the better known “celeb” wrestlers came on the crowds were huge, raucous and beer fuelled! All great fun and such a laugh to see the usually quiet and demure Japanese going well and truly at it - little old ladies and all!
We also had time to spend an afternoon in nearby Osaka and were lucky enough to go for the Naked Man Festival - ooh la la !!! no such luck ladies - the men actually wear loincloths - not that it always covered everything!! Trust me though girls - it’s not the best site in the world seeing hundreds of skinny and freezing cold Japanese teens and men marching around, chanting and getting water thrown on them!!!! The even started with hundred of little school children, of about 3 or 4 years old, marching to the temple in teeny little shorts and T’s for the girls (no top for the boys) - bear in mind this is January in Japan and we were wrapped in gloves, jackets, thermals and hats! They were so darned cute though as they chanted and stormed up to the temple - great fun! After two lots of school kids did their stuff, next came the (almost) naked men - chanting and stomping, with gritted teeth, absolutely freezing up to the temple. Once there the leader gives a speech and the water is thrown all over the poor lads who then clamber all over each other reaching for prayers or wishes that are thrown from the temples eaves. We have never seen anything like this - absolutely hilarious! Dating back over 1200 years, the festival - known as the Hadaka Matsuri takes place at several locations throughout Japan. Its origins lie in a decree issued by Emperor Shotoko in 767, which ordered the nation to offer prayers in order to dispel a plague. It is a brilliant site to behold - the Japanese are totally crazy - no wonder they love Tashiki’s castle so much - they are all absolute nutters. It’s just hilarious to see the two differnt sides of the nation’s people - the quite, peacfeul, demure and respectable side and the loud, raucous, naked, laughing side - later fuelled with ciggies and alcohol in the city bars! Brilliant!!!
We had over a week in Kyoto but used it as a base to visit some nearby cities as well such as Hiroshima, Osaka, Nara and Hikone, as well as return to Tokyo for the Sumo! Bosh! In that time we stayed in three different place, first off was a little youth hostel in a dorm, then the rather more upmarket Westin Kyoto (where all the dignatories stay when they are in town) and then finally to a small hotel with Japanese style rooms and shared bathrooms, which I still just love!
We started off with a days’s bussing and walking to take in some of the closer sights including the Kinkakuji Temple (Golden Pavillion) and Daitokuji Temple (Zen Gardens). The Kinkakuji Temple was truly a site to behold, especially on such a sunny day when the glorious gold building was reflected in the silvery waters of the pond. Everything is so serene and delicate and a world away form the craziness of Tokyo. This is the Japan I dreamed of (minus the cherry blossom - oh well we can always come back!) Everything has its place, everything is perfectly created and positioned with peace and simplicity in mind. The Daitokuji Temple and Zen Gardens was another haven of tranquility amongst a huge complex of temples. The gardens were painstakingly perfect, raked everyday, with rocks and stones positioned with accuracy for specific meanings. One of the walkways around the main central room was what is called a Nightingale Floor, which has been created to “sing” (basically squeak) specifically when you walk in certain places in order to prevent intruders. Apparantly a few important old Japanese buildings such as castles and temples would have these as well as secret hideouts where Samuri could jump out of the ceiling to attack intruders.
Our next day, we moved to the Westin and headed out on a walk to wherever! We started off trudging in the rain up to the hotel’s garden viewpoint which was pretty spectacular over the city and countryside and then simply headed into the woods, where we walked without seeing anyone, through the rain and in and amongst temples and shrines. We headed further towards the mountains and in true us form walked massively further than we ever intended getting utterly lost but finding Buddhist schools, observatories and baseball teams in training along the way. We ended up walking for about 8 hours as we just couldn’t get distances correct and people kept giving us a million different directions. We wanted to end the day at the famous Fushimi Inari, and the walk there took us past numerous other temples and shrines and famous houses as well as the loveliest and cheapest little sushi place (which we would never refind as we were totally lost!) After literally hours of walking and threats to turn back we finally found it and were relieved to see that it was totally worth the crazy walk to get there.
Fushimi Inari Shrine is the most famous of several thousands of shrines dedicated to Inari throughout Japan. We had read that it had lots of Torri (entrance gates to holy areas) but were simply unprepared for just how many there were - literally thousands of orange and black gates to walk through, winding past smaller temples and shrines. Inari is the Shinto god of rice, and foxes are thought to be his messengers, therefore there were countless fox statues amongst the shrines. We must have walked for about two hours through the gates, though we in no way passed through all the Toriis as they were scattered in all directions. After all that walking, if ever we deserved a delicious noodle dinner and warm communal bath, tonight was the night! Thank goodness we seem to be lucking out with always getting the bathrooms to ourselves.
Next day it was off to Nara, the ancient capital of Japan from 710 to 784. We had come here to see some of the old town, walk through the countryside and enjoy the tame deer that rome through the town and park but we didn’t expect quite the amount of deer that there were or just how tame they were! According to the legendary history of Kasuga Shrine, a mythological god Takemikazuchi arrived in Nara on a white deer to guard the newly built capital of Heijo-kyo. Since then the deer were regarded as heavenly animal to protect the city and the country and now they are great fun, nudging you for food and roaming at free around the district. Nara is home to some incredible temple and shrine complexes. The Kasuga Shrine has hundreds of lanterns surrounding it which when lit up would like mind blowing; the Kōfuku-ji temple is home to a giant bronze Buddha and the Nigatsudo Temple afforded us breathtaking sunset views over the district.
After Nara we spent a day in nearby Hikone, taking in one of the country’s best preserved castles. Built over almost 20 years from 1603 to 1622 it escaped demolishion at the start of the Meiji period in 1868, only at the hands of the emperor himself, who ordered it to be kept intact, making it one of the oldest original-construction castles in Japan. There isn’t much inside of it - no old furnishings or such but as a structure it is quite magnificent and Stuart and I have noted a few design points for the house one day we will build! Walking around the old town we also stumbled across a lovely newly built area that Stuart fell in love with. So whilst he snapped away at the new buildings I found myself a couple of vintage kimonos to send home and then we bought some rather dubious sweets to try including what turned out to be jellyfied sweet beans and another green sticky gooey something or other!
Kyoto is just an hour or so away from Hiroshima and so we visited for a day to take in the museum and commemorative sites. As a city it is an energetic and happy place that doesn’t forget its past but which has moved on quickly and progressively. It also serves up one of our favourite dishes - okonomiyaki. Apparantly the city is home to over 2,000 okonomiyaki restaurants. The specialty is prepared by spreading a mixture of flour and water onto a griddle and adding bean sprouts, sliced cabbage, meat, egg, and noodles in to the thin pancake. Delicious! Of course though, no visit to the city is a visit if you do not get an understanding of the atomic bomb that decimated the city in 1945. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum was an incredibly moving experience and one that I would not want to revisit. It wasn’t a museum that went on a rant against the USA it simply told the story of what happened and implored everyone to fight against any future atomic and nuclear bombs. The images, displays and stories were incredibly hard to look at and read and visiting the other sites including the Children’s Memorial (after a girl who subsequently fought and lost her battle with Lukemia as a result of the bomb) and the A Bomb Domb, were also very hard to visit but it gets you thinking pretty hard about what happened and about what is happening right now. It is terrifying to think of the damage that can be done with bombs we are creating in this day and age.
But on to happier visits we enjoyed whilst staying in Kyoto...Sumo - bosh bosh bosh! What an awesome day and well worth the six hour return train journey we took to get there! I was a little bit worried that i really wasn’t going to be that interested or that after a short while I would be thoroughly bored. However, it was awesome and we both loved every second of it and have well and truly become sumo officianos. The day starts quite quietly in terms of the audience as there are hundreds of bouts between junior wrestlers (junior in rank not in age) which meant that we were able to get up close an personal to all the action, in fact at a could of points we had to duck out of the way before being flattened by these hundred stone men - ok not quite a hundred stone but these are huge men. Not that their size makes them any less athletic than the likes of me and you - in fact the moves they were making and the flexing of their legs suggests extreme fitness and agility - something you don’t really expect when witnessing giant men in what look like nappies with slicked back perfectly quiffed hair. As the day went on and the better known “celeb” wrestlers came on the crowds were huge, raucous and beer fuelled! All great fun and such a laugh to see the usually quiet and demure Japanese going well and truly at it - little old ladies and all!
We also had time to spend an afternoon in nearby Osaka and were lucky enough to go for the Naked Man Festival - ooh la la !!! no such luck ladies - the men actually wear loincloths - not that it always covered everything!! Trust me though girls - it’s not the best site in the world seeing hundreds of skinny and freezing cold Japanese teens and men marching around, chanting and getting water thrown on them!!!! The even started with hundred of little school children, of about 3 or 4 years old, marching to the temple in teeny little shorts and T’s for the girls (no top for the boys) - bear in mind this is January in Japan and we were wrapped in gloves, jackets, thermals and hats! They were so darned cute though as they chanted and stormed up to the temple - great fun! After two lots of school kids did their stuff, next came the (almost) naked men - chanting and stomping, with gritted teeth, absolutely freezing up to the temple. Once there the leader gives a speech and the water is thrown all over the poor lads who then clamber all over each other reaching for prayers or wishes that are thrown from the temples eaves. We have never seen anything like this - absolutely hilarious! Dating back over 1200 years, the festival - known as the Hadaka Matsuri takes place at several locations throughout Japan. Its origins lie in a decree issued by Emperor Shotoko in 767, which ordered the nation to offer prayers in order to dispel a plague. It is a brilliant site to behold - the Japanese are totally crazy - no wonder they love Tashiki’s castle so much - they are all absolute nutters. It’s just hilarious to see the two differnt sides of the nation’s people - the quite, peacfeul, demure and respectable side and the loud, raucous, naked, laughing side - later fuelled with ciggies and alcohol in the city bars! Brilliant!!!
Tokyo (30th December to 8th January)
Tokyo is a city of millions of people but plenty of space; space to move about in and breathe what seems like fresh air in; space to walk in parks as well as through busy streets, where the people actually move out of your way, apologise if they bump into you and smile as you pass; space to take a step back or stop dead in the middle of the street to check out the neon signs, buzzing and whirring twenty four seven. It is a city full of parks with gnarled but perfectly trimmed giant bonsai trees, neatly decorating the grass you aren’t allowed to walk on, and of parks with big lakes in them surrounded by the most perfectly pleasant and tidy homeless people who have made their own villages of blue tarpauling and collected piles of cans, neatly stashed away ready to sell. It is a city of noise and colour and, especially when you open the doors to a pachinko parlour, where the noise simply blows you away; and it is a city of pachinko parlours a plenty, with the kerchink of coins and balls running through the slot machines cranking it up at all hours of the day, in front of the square eyes of the punters putting coin after coin down the throats of the hungry machines as they gobble up their hard earnings; noise, noise, noise keeps them going, egging them to put more money in and they do in droves, sitting there for hours on end, collecting buckets and buckets of balls to trade in for useless tat; meanwhile their arcade comrades bet on digital horses, with their books of stats in hand, as if they were really at the races, or waste time and cash trying to manipulate machine arms to grab boxes of ice-cream, cartoon covered pillows or useless little dangly dongles for their phones. And more noise comes as you pass the shops, with the screams and shouts of the staff calling you in to get your 2009 lucky bags - MUSHI, MUSHI. It is a city of mod cons mixed age old traditions, modern shops criss crossed with rammed markets from yesteryear, where you move cheek by jowel and in pigeon steps amongst the crowds. Where new years’ revelling mixes parties in Roppongi with queuing for hours to collect balloons and write wishes to send in the air and thousands upon thousands rushing, practically crushing each other as they go, to get in to the temples for their first new year prayers. A city where millions line up for hours to visit temples over the festivities and thousands form orderly queues to catch a glimpse of the royals in one of their two public appearances in their palace, each year. A city where those lines are so neat and tidy and no one barges in or tries to bump up their place, where they move quickly and precisely and if you need to duck out of line for whatever reason, no one will mind when you come back and slot back in. It is a city where the food is delicious, oodles of noodles, cheap as chips and tasty as pie. A city where there is a bakey on every corner, selling increible baked goods filled with sweet bean, chocolate, savoury treats and all sorts. Where water is free in every restaurant and you can slurp and burp away to your heart’s content. Tokyo is a city of interesting districts, completely different from the next but all full of the most glorious shops and boutiques and hundreds of restaurants. It is an urban landscape of designer stores a plenty and cute boutiques which dress the bow legged girls as they shuffle shuffle - wiggle wiggle through town. Some districts are designed to modern perfection, others completely covered or underground, like small towns within cities and others still mixing the charm of old school Tokyo with glassy new shop fronts and funky modern malls - where quirky kids dress for kicks in the most odd little outfits they can find, posing provocatively for what appears to be the benefit of their old man pimp of sorts. It is a city where even away form Harajuku and the crazy dressed up punks, the kids are all fashion furious with cool simply oozing out of their pores and the drab and dreary rarely seen, except amongst the salary men and women who predominately walk around in pristine black suits, accessorised with see through umbrellas (apparantly the brollies de rigeor). It is a city crammed with temples and shrines at every turn, decorated by prayer tablets and wish papers tied into the trees and scented by cauldrons of incense burning, waiting to rubbed into your skin for good health and wishes. Where the statues of Buddha and of mothers with babies are well wrapped in red aprons to keep them warm through the winter. Tokyo is a city where the trains run on time and the tubes have separate carriages for women and children only, where the ticket barriers are open unless you try and get through without a ticket and where it seems you are innocent until proven guilty and the staff not only are super friendly and helpful but bow to every passenger as they pass by. The underground system is one where there are lifts and escalators at every turn, making navigating your way through the warren of immense tunnels more pleasant, even if you do come out of the wrong exit and end up walking quite some way back to the correct one. Tokyo is a city which is easy to live in, where quickly you feel like a local and where eating fish bone chips becomes the norm. It is a 24 hour city, full of vending machines for cold drinks, hot drinks, brollies, clothes and even vending machine restaurants. It is a city that owns the most pleasant red light district you could imagine and one where people want to help you, both the locals and expats alike. When you get your guide book out they rush to aide you or when you ask for directions, they walk you there themselves. Tokyo is a city with mind blowing hotels where we were lucky enough to stay in the Ritz Carlton (woke up their on my 30th) the ark (went to bed there on my 30th) and the Park Hyatt, from Lost in Translation, that was awe inspiring. All three had incredible view over Mount Fuji, the city of the Tokyo Tower and sunsets were simply jaw dropping. So what is tokyo? Tokyo is a city you could move to and love and maybe one day it will be city where we do just that!
Takayama (24th to 30th December 2008)
Takayama is simply an adorable place to spend time, the kind of place where one would want to retire to and happily spend the rest of their lives, knowing they have the best of it all. As a town it is small but not too small, with no high rises spoiling the atmosphere and enough different districts (if they are large enough to be called that) to keep you occupied. Lets start with the pretty little main area, which is where we spent Christmas Eve evening. Christmas Eve day was spent on the slowest imaginable, but perfectly pleasant train (all of two coaches long) tootling through the countryside, stopping at the tiniest little ports of call, before arriving in gorgeous Takayama. We decided to treat ourselves a little, with the Christmas money we had been given, to a better room than we would normally have done and ended up in one of the most popular little hotels in town, with a lovely large Japanese style room. It had a little living area with a table, perfect for Christmas dinner and a rather smart cubicle style bathroom, plus the best of all of Japan’s inventions, the heated toilet. I had been to a public toilet earlier that had a button to make flushing sounds, so no-one need hear whatever it is you may be doing! After sorting our stuff out we went for a walk around town and popped into a noodle joint for noodle and pork soup, which was delicious. The Japanese don’t celebrate Christmas at all but some of the streets had a few beautiful wooden decorations and bunting made of children’s Christmas drawings and as we walked down the main street festive music was playing. After dinner we bought a whole host of treats for Christmas Day lunch.
Christmas day started off a little more unusually. Well actually it started off rather deliciously as we had bought some apple and cinnamon buns and bacon and cheese rolls for breakfast! Scrumptious! But after that we had to walk in to the nearby city (if it is actually that) centre to buy a cable to get the internet working for the hotel, as I had had a little Christmas Eve strop at not being able to Skype anyone! It was strange on Christmas to be shopping and really nothing would suggest it was Christmas at all, after all it was just another day in Japan! The walk into the more modern area was lovely as we followed the route of the carp filled river, through the morning market, where we tried an egg white fluffy sweet, which was incredible and passed by cute houses before we crossed into the busy area. We had a quick pootle around the supermarket, which stocked the most fantastical things and then got ourselves to the electronics shop. Once we got the cable sorted we walked back and went about setting out our Christmas Dinner! The Harker’s had put together a little Christmas kit, so we put up some decorations, watered the self growing Christmas tree, I put in my flashing earings and we laid out all the sweets and goodies and mini crackers on the table. Lunch was a fanfare of Japanese goodies, including noodles, rice, tempura, fried veggie things and egg things, sushi and so much more (including local Takayama rice crackers and to die for local Hida sweet beef) and we even had a couple of cold beers to enjoy. It was actually delicious and whilst it was an odd way to spend our first ever Christmas together we really enjoyed it and have decided that our new family tradition will be to go for Japanese on Christmas Eve. After skyping with all and sundry, which was great to do, we went out for a another walk, nose around the old district and popped into a few shops. The old district is truly gorgeous, all wooden and very understated and simple. There are several preserved areas in the town and they have lovely little shops and restaurants to wander around. Just as we had set out for our walk a few flakes of snow began to fall, which was lovely and gave a real spirit of festivities to the day. As we walked around the old town we kept saying just how beautiful it would be with snow. Little did we know that overnight that was just what was coming - snow upon snow upon more snow!
So we woke up to one of the whitest Boxing Days I have ever had the pleasure of seeing. It was simply beautiful. The snow was the softest and most delicate snow imaginable, just like casting sugar and it was well over a foot deep and had no sign of stopping! A walk was definately in order so after a treat of Frosties that we bought on Christmas Day, for breakfast, out we popped, map in hand, to follow a route that would take up up close and personal with plenty of temples and beautiful scenery. The walk took about two or three hours and throughout it did not stop snowing, it was simply incredible and showed the most beautiful side of Japan I was worried we weren’t going to see. We passed a number of temples, all very simply and elegantly designed and walked through tightly packed but well organised and uniquely designed neighbourhoods before reaching stunning forest land. The forests were awesome, truly spectacular in the snow and as little gusts of wind blew we would be showered with snow fall that would panic me into running - I thought we might be caught in an avalanche but the snow was so light it would barely have bothered an ant! By the time we got to a park, filled with perfect snow, we were just that bit too cold to build a snowman so opted for a vending machine coffee and hot chocolate instead (very cool) and took what turned out to be the very long, but interesting way back! We then topped up our fuel with some little treats in town including these rice dough (we think) balls and little pancake fishes filled with chocolate, sesame and sweet bean.
Next day the snow was just as beautiful as we started our morning with a walk to the second of the morning markets to pick up breakfast. We mainly spent the day mooching around town, enjoying the setting, as it would be the last real day in Takayama. We also went for a second walk along a marked trail but got terribly off trail as the snow was so deep that we really didn’t know where we were meant to be going. It was pleasant enough though and we had a lovely day. By now we had moved to a second hotel which had a shared bathroom, which was kind of a neat experience and one that throughout the rest of Japan (I write with hindsight, in what is now February) I cam e to really love and would be disappointed if we had a private bath instead! Basically there is a separate room for men and women and in the middle is what is fundamentally a huge hot bath, that after a sit down, stool shower, you would all sit in and enjoy! Interesting! the first one I was alone but on the second time there were others in their, it is odd how quickly you accept totally different customs as ordinary! I’m not kidding when I say I absolutely love the idea of the shared bath, not because I actually want to share my bath - I preferred it on my own, but because it is so novel, much better for the environment and the idea of just jumping in when you want a bath without having to wait to run it (although there are set open times in Japan) is great.
Over our last two days in Takayama we actually left town and with a two day bus pass, went up and down to several different onsen towns and spent a night in Takayama’s hostel, housed in a temple, which was interesting to see, but run by a hideous American guy who should not be allowed near happy travelers. Our first onsen experience was at Hiraru Onsen. Here there were two large onsen complexes, one for boys and another for girls, where you stripped off and sipped in and out for about eight different pools. The matter of order is to start with a sit down shower and then relax in the steaming inside bath first. Once in the water you are meant to put the small onsen towel folded on your head and when walking about, just hold it in front of your more intimate areas for discretion. Some women had no discretion whatsoever and others far too much (when it comes to onsen tradition), wearing little toweling skirts to protect their dignity. After the fist inside bath there are a number of others outside, all with different purposes, heats or setting. It was great fun running from one hot bath to the next, with the invigorating chill of a snowy sky on your body! It was also really gorgeous to be in a hot spring (fed from totally natural waters) with snow all around! The only shame was not sharing it with each other, let alone anyone else. After an hour, we met up in the relaxation area, which was a big lounge where you could get a massage or just fall asleep. After a drink I popped back in for another half hour, whilst Stuart had a sleep.
Our last day we got back on the bus and went to the end of the line to a place whose name, now two months on, I can’t quite remember but will insert at a later point! It is popular walking territory and when we arrived there was a huge search party going on with media attention for a couple of walkers who had got lost in the mountains. We didn’t go too far but headed into the snow to build some snow seats to eat a snack on and them make a gorgeous little snowman - best one ever! It was really beautiful with more snow than you could imagine, whilst back in town the snow had completely melted, leaving behind not so lovely slush! After a short walk and a huge snowball fight (me losing terribly) we jumped back on the bus for a few minutes to Fusihiki, which we had heard had some great little onsen - if you could find them! We got off at the wrong bus stop and ended up walking a little but further than we though we would (story of our travels!) but passed striking little rivers with boulders strewn across in what would seem like organised beauty, with little rapids and mini waterfalls tumbling around, all surrounded by inches of the white stuff! After lunch in a bus stop (of bakery pastries which we have already grown fond of) we strolled around trying to find these little onsen. Finally we came across one, which we still don’t know if it was the one we were looking for but it was superb. The place looked to be just a little tearoom, with an irory (square fire pit) in the middle, but upon a little misscommunication we managed to work out that there were two natural baths at the back, one small indoor one and one small outdoor one. It was just the two of us and as such we had the chance to share the experience together which was great as this was an altogether different affair to the Hiraru Onsen. Here the baths were really small and the indoor one far too hot to go into, but why would you even want to when you could be outside, in the rock pool, surrounded 360 by stunning snowy mountains and alpine scenery. It was truly incredible. We are well and truly onsen lovers and will be onsen hopping throughout Japan if we have our way! We spent a few hours in the baths, well in and out as it was so hot, but it was such a thrill and just so relaxing and beautiful - this is a good good life!
Christmas day started off a little more unusually. Well actually it started off rather deliciously as we had bought some apple and cinnamon buns and bacon and cheese rolls for breakfast! Scrumptious! But after that we had to walk in to the nearby city (if it is actually that) centre to buy a cable to get the internet working for the hotel, as I had had a little Christmas Eve strop at not being able to Skype anyone! It was strange on Christmas to be shopping and really nothing would suggest it was Christmas at all, after all it was just another day in Japan! The walk into the more modern area was lovely as we followed the route of the carp filled river, through the morning market, where we tried an egg white fluffy sweet, which was incredible and passed by cute houses before we crossed into the busy area. We had a quick pootle around the supermarket, which stocked the most fantastical things and then got ourselves to the electronics shop. Once we got the cable sorted we walked back and went about setting out our Christmas Dinner! The Harker’s had put together a little Christmas kit, so we put up some decorations, watered the self growing Christmas tree, I put in my flashing earings and we laid out all the sweets and goodies and mini crackers on the table. Lunch was a fanfare of Japanese goodies, including noodles, rice, tempura, fried veggie things and egg things, sushi and so much more (including local Takayama rice crackers and to die for local Hida sweet beef) and we even had a couple of cold beers to enjoy. It was actually delicious and whilst it was an odd way to spend our first ever Christmas together we really enjoyed it and have decided that our new family tradition will be to go for Japanese on Christmas Eve. After skyping with all and sundry, which was great to do, we went out for a another walk, nose around the old district and popped into a few shops. The old district is truly gorgeous, all wooden and very understated and simple. There are several preserved areas in the town and they have lovely little shops and restaurants to wander around. Just as we had set out for our walk a few flakes of snow began to fall, which was lovely and gave a real spirit of festivities to the day. As we walked around the old town we kept saying just how beautiful it would be with snow. Little did we know that overnight that was just what was coming - snow upon snow upon more snow!
So we woke up to one of the whitest Boxing Days I have ever had the pleasure of seeing. It was simply beautiful. The snow was the softest and most delicate snow imaginable, just like casting sugar and it was well over a foot deep and had no sign of stopping! A walk was definately in order so after a treat of Frosties that we bought on Christmas Day, for breakfast, out we popped, map in hand, to follow a route that would take up up close and personal with plenty of temples and beautiful scenery. The walk took about two or three hours and throughout it did not stop snowing, it was simply incredible and showed the most beautiful side of Japan I was worried we weren’t going to see. We passed a number of temples, all very simply and elegantly designed and walked through tightly packed but well organised and uniquely designed neighbourhoods before reaching stunning forest land. The forests were awesome, truly spectacular in the snow and as little gusts of wind blew we would be showered with snow fall that would panic me into running - I thought we might be caught in an avalanche but the snow was so light it would barely have bothered an ant! By the time we got to a park, filled with perfect snow, we were just that bit too cold to build a snowman so opted for a vending machine coffee and hot chocolate instead (very cool) and took what turned out to be the very long, but interesting way back! We then topped up our fuel with some little treats in town including these rice dough (we think) balls and little pancake fishes filled with chocolate, sesame and sweet bean.
Next day the snow was just as beautiful as we started our morning with a walk to the second of the morning markets to pick up breakfast. We mainly spent the day mooching around town, enjoying the setting, as it would be the last real day in Takayama. We also went for a second walk along a marked trail but got terribly off trail as the snow was so deep that we really didn’t know where we were meant to be going. It was pleasant enough though and we had a lovely day. By now we had moved to a second hotel which had a shared bathroom, which was kind of a neat experience and one that throughout the rest of Japan (I write with hindsight, in what is now February) I cam e to really love and would be disappointed if we had a private bath instead! Basically there is a separate room for men and women and in the middle is what is fundamentally a huge hot bath, that after a sit down, stool shower, you would all sit in and enjoy! Interesting! the first one I was alone but on the second time there were others in their, it is odd how quickly you accept totally different customs as ordinary! I’m not kidding when I say I absolutely love the idea of the shared bath, not because I actually want to share my bath - I preferred it on my own, but because it is so novel, much better for the environment and the idea of just jumping in when you want a bath without having to wait to run it (although there are set open times in Japan) is great.
Over our last two days in Takayama we actually left town and with a two day bus pass, went up and down to several different onsen towns and spent a night in Takayama’s hostel, housed in a temple, which was interesting to see, but run by a hideous American guy who should not be allowed near happy travelers. Our first onsen experience was at Hiraru Onsen. Here there were two large onsen complexes, one for boys and another for girls, where you stripped off and sipped in and out for about eight different pools. The matter of order is to start with a sit down shower and then relax in the steaming inside bath first. Once in the water you are meant to put the small onsen towel folded on your head and when walking about, just hold it in front of your more intimate areas for discretion. Some women had no discretion whatsoever and others far too much (when it comes to onsen tradition), wearing little toweling skirts to protect their dignity. After the fist inside bath there are a number of others outside, all with different purposes, heats or setting. It was great fun running from one hot bath to the next, with the invigorating chill of a snowy sky on your body! It was also really gorgeous to be in a hot spring (fed from totally natural waters) with snow all around! The only shame was not sharing it with each other, let alone anyone else. After an hour, we met up in the relaxation area, which was a big lounge where you could get a massage or just fall asleep. After a drink I popped back in for another half hour, whilst Stuart had a sleep.
Our last day we got back on the bus and went to the end of the line to a place whose name, now two months on, I can’t quite remember but will insert at a later point! It is popular walking territory and when we arrived there was a huge search party going on with media attention for a couple of walkers who had got lost in the mountains. We didn’t go too far but headed into the snow to build some snow seats to eat a snack on and them make a gorgeous little snowman - best one ever! It was really beautiful with more snow than you could imagine, whilst back in town the snow had completely melted, leaving behind not so lovely slush! After a short walk and a huge snowball fight (me losing terribly) we jumped back on the bus for a few minutes to Fusihiki, which we had heard had some great little onsen - if you could find them! We got off at the wrong bus stop and ended up walking a little but further than we though we would (story of our travels!) but passed striking little rivers with boulders strewn across in what would seem like organised beauty, with little rapids and mini waterfalls tumbling around, all surrounded by inches of the white stuff! After lunch in a bus stop (of bakery pastries which we have already grown fond of) we strolled around trying to find these little onsen. Finally we came across one, which we still don’t know if it was the one we were looking for but it was superb. The place looked to be just a little tearoom, with an irory (square fire pit) in the middle, but upon a little misscommunication we managed to work out that there were two natural baths at the back, one small indoor one and one small outdoor one. It was just the two of us and as such we had the chance to share the experience together which was great as this was an altogether different affair to the Hiraru Onsen. Here the baths were really small and the indoor one far too hot to go into, but why would you even want to when you could be outside, in the rock pool, surrounded 360 by stunning snowy mountains and alpine scenery. It was truly incredible. We are well and truly onsen lovers and will be onsen hopping throughout Japan if we have our way! We spent a few hours in the baths, well in and out as it was so hot, but it was such a thrill and just so relaxing and beautiful - this is a good good life!
Takayama (24th to 30th December 2008)
Takayama is simply an adorable place to spend time, the kind of place where one would want to retire to and happily spend the rest of their lives, knowing they have the best of it all. As a town it is small but not too small, with no high rises spoiling the atmosphere and enough different districts (if they are large enough to be called that) to keep you occupied. Lets start with the pretty little main area, which is where we spent Christmas Eve evening. Christmas Eve day was spent on the slowest imaginable, but perfectly pleasant train (all of two coaches long) tootling through the countryside, stopping at the tiniest little ports of call, before arriving in gorgeous Takayama. We decided to treat ourselves a little, with the Christmas money we had been given, to a better room than we would normally have done and ended up in one of the most popular little hotels in town, with a lovely large Japanese style room. It had a little living area with a table, perfect for Christmas dinner and a rather smart cubicle style bathroom, plus the best of all of Japan’s inventions, the heated toilet. I had been to a public toilet earlier that had a button to make flushing sounds, so no-one need hear whatever it is you may be doing! After sorting our stuff out we went for a walk around town and popped into a noodle joint for noodle and pork soup, which was delicious. The Japanese don’t celebrate Christmas at all but some of the streets had a few beautiful wooden decorations and bunting made of children’s Christmas drawings and as we walked down the main street festive music was playing. After dinner we bought a whole host of treats for Christmas Day lunch.
Christmas day started off a little more unusually. Well actually it started off rather deliciously as we had bought some apple and cinnamon buns and bacon and cheese rolls for breakfast! Scrumptious! But after that we had to walk in to the nearby city (if it is actually that) centre to buy a cable to get the internet working for the hotel, as I had had a little Christmas Eve strop at not being able to Skype anyone! It was strange on Christmas to be shopping and really nothing would suggest it was Christmas at all, after all it was just another day in Japan! The walk into the more modern area was lovely as we followed the route of the carp filled river, through the morning market, where we tried an egg white fluffy sweet, which was incredible and passed by cute houses before we crossed into the busy area. We had a quick pootle around the supermarket, which stocked the most fantastical things and then got ourselves to the electronics shop. Once we got the cable sorted we walked back and went about setting out our Christmas Dinner! The Harker’s had put together a little Christmas kit, so we put up some decorations, watered the self growing Christmas tree, I put in my flashing earings and we laid out all the sweets and goodies and mini crackers on the table. Lunch was a fanfare of Japanese goodies, including noodles, rice, tempura, fried veggie things and egg things, sushi and so much more (including local Takayama rice crackers and to die for local Hida sweet beef) and we even had a couple of cold beers to enjoy. It was actually delicious and whilst it was an odd way to spend our first ever Christmas together we really enjoyed it and have decided that our new family tradition will be to go for Japanese on Christmas Eve. After skyping with all and sundry, which was great to do, we went out for a another walk, nose around the old district and popped into a few shops. The old district is truly gorgeous, all wooden and very understated and simple. There are several preserved areas in the town and they have lovely little shops and restaurants to wander around. Just as we had set out for our walk a few flakes of snow began to fall, which was lovely and gave a real spirit of festivities to the day. As we walked around the old town we kept saying just how beautiful it would be with snow. Little did we know that overnight that was just what was coming - snow upon snow upon more snow!
So we woke up to one of the whitest Boxing Days I have ever had the pleasure of seeing. It was simply beautiful. The snow was the softest and most delicate snow imaginable, just like casting sugar and it was well over a foot deep and had no sign of stopping! A walk was definately in order so after a treat of Frosties that we bought on Christmas Day, for breakfast, out we popped, map in hand, to follow a route that would take up up close and personal with plenty of temples and beautiful scenery. The walk took about two or three hours and throughout it did not stop snowing, it was simply incredible and showed the most beautiful side of Japan I was worried we weren’t going to see. We passed a number of temples, all very simply and elegantly designed and walked through tightly packed but well organised and uniquely designed neighbourhoods before reaching stunning forest land. The forests were awesome, truly spectacular in the snow and as little gusts of wind blew we would be showered with snow fall that would panic me into running - I thought we might be caught in an avalanche but the snow was so light it would barely have bothered an ant! By the time we got to a park, filled with perfect snow, we were just that bit too cold to build a snowman so opted for a vending machine coffee and hot chocolate instead (very cool) and took what turned out to be the very long, but interesting way back! We then topped up our fuel with some little treats in town including these rice dough (we think) balls and little pancake fishes filled with chocolate, sesame and sweet bean.
Next day the snow was just as beautiful as we started our morning with a walk to the second of the morning markets to pick up breakfast. We mainly spent the day mooching around town, enjoying the setting, as it would be the last real day in Takayama. We also went for a second walk along a marked trail but got terribly off trail as the snow was so deep that we really didn’t know where we were meant to be going. It was pleasant enough though and we had a lovely day. By now we had moved to a second hotel which had a shared bathroom, which was kind of a neat experience and one that throughout the rest of Japan (I write with hindsight, in what is now February) I cam e to really love and would be disappointed if we had a private bath instead! Basically there is a separate room for men and women and in the middle is what is fundamentally a huge hot bath, that after a sit down, stool shower, you would all sit in and enjoy! Interesting! the first one I was alone but on the second time there were others in their, it is odd how quickly you accept totally different customs as ordinary! I’m not kidding when I say I absolutely love the idea of the shared bath, not because I actually want to share my bath - I preferred it on my own, but because it is so novel, much better for the environment and the idea of just jumping in when you want a bath without having to wait to run it (although there are set open times in Japan) is great.
Over our last two days in Takayama we actually left town and with a two day bus pass, went up and down to several different onsen towns and spent a night in Takayama’s hostel, housed in a temple, which was interesting to see, but run by a hideous American guy who should not be allowed near happy travelers. Our first onsen experience was at Hiraru Onsen. Here there were two large onsen complexes, one for boys and another for girls, where you stripped off and sipped in and out for about eight different pools. The matter of order is to start with a sit down shower and then relax in the steaming inside bath first. Once in the water you are meant to put the small onsen towel folded on your head and when walking about, just hold it in front of your more intimate areas for discretion. Some women had no discretion whatsoever and others far too much (when it comes to onsen tradition), wearing little toweling skirts to protect their dignity. After the fist inside bath there are a number of others outside, all with different purposes, heats or setting. It was great fun running from one hot bath to the next, with the invigorating chill of a snowy sky on your body! It was also really gorgeous to be in a hot spring (fed from totally natural waters) with snow all around! The only shame was not sharing it with each other, let alone anyone else. After an hour, we met up in the relaxation area, which was a big lounge where you could get a massage or just fall asleep. After a drink I popped back in for another half hour, whilst Stuart had a sleep.
Our last day we got back on the bus and went to the end of the line to a place whose name, now two months on, I can’t quite remember but will insert at a later point! It is popular walking territory and when we arrived there was a huge search party going on with media attention for a couple of walkers who had got lost in the mountains. We didn’t go too far but headed into the snow to build some snow seats to eat a snack on and them make a gorgeous little snowman - best one ever! It was really beautiful with more snow than you could imagine, whilst back in town the snow had completely melted, leaving behind not so lovely slush! After a short walk and a huge snowball fight (me losing terribly) we jumped back on the bus for a few minutes to Fusihiki, which we had heard had some great little onsen - if you could find them! We got off at the wrong bus stop and ended up walking a little but further than we though we would (story of our travels!) but passed striking little rivers with boulders strewn across in what would seem like organised beauty, with little rapids and mini waterfalls tumbling around, all surrounded by inches of the white stuff! After lunch in a bus stop (of bakery pastries which we have already grown fond of) we strolled around trying to find these little onsen. Finally we came across one, which we still don’t know if it was the one we were looking for but it was superb. The place looked to be just a little tearoom, with an irory (square fire pit) in the middle, but upon a little misscommunication we managed to work out that there were two natural baths at the back, one small indoor one and one small outdoor one. It was just the two of us and as such we had the chance to share the experience together which was great as this was an altogether different affair to the Hiraru Onsen. Here the baths were really small and the indoor one far too hot to go into, but why would you even want to when you could be outside, in the rock pool, surrounded 360 by stunning snowy mountains and alpine scenery. It was truly incredible. We are well and truly onsen lovers and will be onsen hopping throughout Japan if we have our way! We spent a few hours in the baths, well in and out as it was so hot, but it was such a thrill and just so relaxing and beautiful - this is a good good life!
Christmas day started off a little more unusually. Well actually it started off rather deliciously as we had bought some apple and cinnamon buns and bacon and cheese rolls for breakfast! Scrumptious! But after that we had to walk in to the nearby city (if it is actually that) centre to buy a cable to get the internet working for the hotel, as I had had a little Christmas Eve strop at not being able to Skype anyone! It was strange on Christmas to be shopping and really nothing would suggest it was Christmas at all, after all it was just another day in Japan! The walk into the more modern area was lovely as we followed the route of the carp filled river, through the morning market, where we tried an egg white fluffy sweet, which was incredible and passed by cute houses before we crossed into the busy area. We had a quick pootle around the supermarket, which stocked the most fantastical things and then got ourselves to the electronics shop. Once we got the cable sorted we walked back and went about setting out our Christmas Dinner! The Harker’s had put together a little Christmas kit, so we put up some decorations, watered the self growing Christmas tree, I put in my flashing earings and we laid out all the sweets and goodies and mini crackers on the table. Lunch was a fanfare of Japanese goodies, including noodles, rice, tempura, fried veggie things and egg things, sushi and so much more (including local Takayama rice crackers and to die for local Hida sweet beef) and we even had a couple of cold beers to enjoy. It was actually delicious and whilst it was an odd way to spend our first ever Christmas together we really enjoyed it and have decided that our new family tradition will be to go for Japanese on Christmas Eve. After skyping with all and sundry, which was great to do, we went out for a another walk, nose around the old district and popped into a few shops. The old district is truly gorgeous, all wooden and very understated and simple. There are several preserved areas in the town and they have lovely little shops and restaurants to wander around. Just as we had set out for our walk a few flakes of snow began to fall, which was lovely and gave a real spirit of festivities to the day. As we walked around the old town we kept saying just how beautiful it would be with snow. Little did we know that overnight that was just what was coming - snow upon snow upon more snow!
So we woke up to one of the whitest Boxing Days I have ever had the pleasure of seeing. It was simply beautiful. The snow was the softest and most delicate snow imaginable, just like casting sugar and it was well over a foot deep and had no sign of stopping! A walk was definately in order so after a treat of Frosties that we bought on Christmas Day, for breakfast, out we popped, map in hand, to follow a route that would take up up close and personal with plenty of temples and beautiful scenery. The walk took about two or three hours and throughout it did not stop snowing, it was simply incredible and showed the most beautiful side of Japan I was worried we weren’t going to see. We passed a number of temples, all very simply and elegantly designed and walked through tightly packed but well organised and uniquely designed neighbourhoods before reaching stunning forest land. The forests were awesome, truly spectacular in the snow and as little gusts of wind blew we would be showered with snow fall that would panic me into running - I thought we might be caught in an avalanche but the snow was so light it would barely have bothered an ant! By the time we got to a park, filled with perfect snow, we were just that bit too cold to build a snowman so opted for a vending machine coffee and hot chocolate instead (very cool) and took what turned out to be the very long, but interesting way back! We then topped up our fuel with some little treats in town including these rice dough (we think) balls and little pancake fishes filled with chocolate, sesame and sweet bean.
Next day the snow was just as beautiful as we started our morning with a walk to the second of the morning markets to pick up breakfast. We mainly spent the day mooching around town, enjoying the setting, as it would be the last real day in Takayama. We also went for a second walk along a marked trail but got terribly off trail as the snow was so deep that we really didn’t know where we were meant to be going. It was pleasant enough though and we had a lovely day. By now we had moved to a second hotel which had a shared bathroom, which was kind of a neat experience and one that throughout the rest of Japan (I write with hindsight, in what is now February) I cam e to really love and would be disappointed if we had a private bath instead! Basically there is a separate room for men and women and in the middle is what is fundamentally a huge hot bath, that after a sit down, stool shower, you would all sit in and enjoy! Interesting! the first one I was alone but on the second time there were others in their, it is odd how quickly you accept totally different customs as ordinary! I’m not kidding when I say I absolutely love the idea of the shared bath, not because I actually want to share my bath - I preferred it on my own, but because it is so novel, much better for the environment and the idea of just jumping in when you want a bath without having to wait to run it (although there are set open times in Japan) is great.
Over our last two days in Takayama we actually left town and with a two day bus pass, went up and down to several different onsen towns and spent a night in Takayama’s hostel, housed in a temple, which was interesting to see, but run by a hideous American guy who should not be allowed near happy travelers. Our first onsen experience was at Hiraru Onsen. Here there were two large onsen complexes, one for boys and another for girls, where you stripped off and sipped in and out for about eight different pools. The matter of order is to start with a sit down shower and then relax in the steaming inside bath first. Once in the water you are meant to put the small onsen towel folded on your head and when walking about, just hold it in front of your more intimate areas for discretion. Some women had no discretion whatsoever and others far too much (when it comes to onsen tradition), wearing little toweling skirts to protect their dignity. After the fist inside bath there are a number of others outside, all with different purposes, heats or setting. It was great fun running from one hot bath to the next, with the invigorating chill of a snowy sky on your body! It was also really gorgeous to be in a hot spring (fed from totally natural waters) with snow all around! The only shame was not sharing it with each other, let alone anyone else. After an hour, we met up in the relaxation area, which was a big lounge where you could get a massage or just fall asleep. After a drink I popped back in for another half hour, whilst Stuart had a sleep.
Our last day we got back on the bus and went to the end of the line to a place whose name, now two months on, I can’t quite remember but will insert at a later point! It is popular walking territory and when we arrived there was a huge search party going on with media attention for a couple of walkers who had got lost in the mountains. We didn’t go too far but headed into the snow to build some snow seats to eat a snack on and them make a gorgeous little snowman - best one ever! It was really beautiful with more snow than you could imagine, whilst back in town the snow had completely melted, leaving behind not so lovely slush! After a short walk and a huge snowball fight (me losing terribly) we jumped back on the bus for a few minutes to Fusihiki, which we had heard had some great little onsen - if you could find them! We got off at the wrong bus stop and ended up walking a little but further than we though we would (story of our travels!) but passed striking little rivers with boulders strewn across in what would seem like organised beauty, with little rapids and mini waterfalls tumbling around, all surrounded by inches of the white stuff! After lunch in a bus stop (of bakery pastries which we have already grown fond of) we strolled around trying to find these little onsen. Finally we came across one, which we still don’t know if it was the one we were looking for but it was superb. The place looked to be just a little tearoom, with an irory (square fire pit) in the middle, but upon a little misscommunication we managed to work out that there were two natural baths at the back, one small indoor one and one small outdoor one. It was just the two of us and as such we had the chance to share the experience together which was great as this was an altogether different affair to the Hiraru Onsen. Here the baths were really small and the indoor one far too hot to go into, but why would you even want to when you could be outside, in the rock pool, surrounded 360 by stunning snowy mountains and alpine scenery. It was truly incredible. We are well and truly onsen lovers and will be onsen hopping throughout Japan if we have our way! We spent a few hours in the baths, well in and out as it was so hot, but it was such a thrill and just so relaxing and beautiful - this is a good good life!
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