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| 24 hours in TokyoOriginally, I'd planned to take a 1 week trip to Japan on the way to Seattle. Well things happened and 1 week turned to around 1 day. Of course trying to see even just Tokyo in a day would be nearly impossible so settled on a flight in on an afternoon and a flight out on the afternoon 48 hours later.... I was warned... Intimidated by reports of Tokyo's cost of living... But expensive yes, worse than Europe no. Narita is far away but ended up taking the cheapest and fastest option downtown. The Tokyo Skyliner train took less than an hour and even included a 2 day subway pass, package for around 2400 yen. Every other option costed at least $30 for the one way trip to downtown only. Stayed at this capsule hotel in the geek district of Akhibara. It's really just a hostel with a bit more privacy, but you do get your own TV, which I never used. Very organized. I'm surprised by the widespread use of squat toilets in this country. Despite their cleanliness compared to Chinese squatties, they seem a bit out of place in a country as modern as Japan. On the flip side, they do have the most modern toilets in the world, the type that showers your ass! Tokyo looks a lot like Seoul, except all the technology actually works! And no one ducks under turnstiles here! The streets are unbelievably pristine and well paved despite the population density. Spent much of the following day making use of the subway pass going place to place and eventually managed to see most of the main sites of Tokyo in less than 24 hours. Everything from the sashimi market to Roppongi to Shibuya, think I managed to touch it all! Even more fascinating than the physical would have to be Japanese fashion sense! Holy shit! The next day I hoped to see more, but ended up with a fever of 102 and ended up making a B line to the airport in the morning. Make a quick visit to the Narita clinic which not only charged an arm and a leg, but the Japanese doc prescribed a whole bunch of unrelated and useless tablets even without as much as a full examination. Ulcer tablets? WTF? I guess something in that country isn't quite up to par. | | |
| Vang Vieng, LaosOK, remember what I said about good roads in Laos? That's true... Only for the 20km from the border to Vientiane and the streets in Vientiane itself. I will say Vientiane offers a much better intro to Laos than does Poipet to Cambodia from Thailand. The road to Vang Vieng, while paved was full of potholes. Given that only a few years ago the only method of transport around the country was by river, I guess it's still considered a great improvement! I do have to say unlike Albania, I didn't see anyone on a horsecart! once out of Vientiane, the surroundings look very much like Cambodia, stilt village houses everywhere and lots of mud. Vang Vieng was very nice, very chilled, great scenery too... Well except for this one strip of identical guesthouses all showing reruns of friends, serving the same pseudo western food, and each containing about 95% white people. Yeh, just seems so odd and yet so familiar. I will never understand why some people come all the way to Laos to do things they do at home. They could save that horrendous air fare too! I admit I've been splurging a little in this short Laos trip of mine and got myself a $12 hotel room in a village where most guesthouses have rooms for 5. But coming from Europe where even $12 might not afford you a night in a public park, I thought it was a pretty sweet deal. The hotel was pretty good given its location, except for a bunch of drunken idiots making noise on the hallways and some really annoying Canadian girls (the flag patch gave it away) giving the staff a hard time. Hmmm. No wonder why they slapped on higher visa fees for Canadians. Rented a bike and planned to go explore the caves and the karst hills a bit. I came across one cave on the other side of the river and decided to check it out. Bad idea! Getting to the cave involved a walk through a narrow path along the rice paddies, many sections over narrow planks over muddy streams. But that wasn't it. Finally i got to a "ticket booth" which consisted of some 10 year old kids claiming ownership of this cave asking for 10,000 kip entrance and 50,000 for one of the kids to act as a guide. 50,000 for a guide? I thought no way, considering how small these caves were supposed to be. Then the path turned into a deluded swamp and I ended up walking in the rice paddy for the rest of the way, getting entirely soaked in mud and who knows what else! The caves itself were nice, but not too different from others I've seen. On the way back, I noticed there in fact was a solid path just a little to the right. Somehow I wasn't the only one to miss it since, I met 2 others also completely soaked in mud! Finally got back to the hotel and washed everything off. That night must've been the most amazing thunderstorm I've ever seen. Lightning striking everywhere and rains just pouring down for almost 2 hours. At one point the electricity in the hotel went out completely. Yet still there were village kids running around playing in the water. Caught the first minibus in the morning back to Vientiane. One great thing about southeast asia is how you can book a bus at a guesthouse/hotel and they actually come pick you up for free! In Europe they'd probably charge you 10 euros just to bring you to the bus station! Of course the bus driver drove around the village for an hour to every guesthouse trying to fill up the bus and finally we were on our way on that potholed road. At least drivers here are less nuts than in some other countries I've been in. The bus did get a flat tire mid way, but they got that sorted in about 10 minutes. More annoying was that we were all sweating because the A/C didn't work! Back in Vientiane, I made a quick stop at That Luang, another major Laotian monument, had lunch in the only mall in town, and made my way back to the border. Thailand is definitely much more organized than its neighbors, at least the roads are good! Once at Nong Khai station, I tried to get a 2nd class ticket only for them to tell me only first class was available. Fair enough. First class on Thai trains isn't really worth it, but you do get more privacy... if you happen to have the whole compartment to yourself. Otherwise you share with some odd stranger. Lucky for me, my compartment partner was some easy going Brit retiree Thailand who self proclaimed himself as "NOT a sex tourist". Unfortunately for us, the woman in the compartment next door sounded like some angry, pissed off European babushka woman who once yelled at us for talking too loud. So we made kept talking, this time about her, just to keep pissing her off. The train arrived in Hualumphong at 6:20am, which is suprisingly early given the tendency for Thai trains to be at least 4 hours late! Got to Karn's place to pick up my stuff only to find it's Typhoon 8 in Hong Kong, so I'll have to be staying another night here. | | |
| Back to Bangkok, on to LaosHaving gotten totally bored with Europe, felt glad to be back in Asia. I've been in Bangkok twice in a year now! Quite a relief to be paying for things that would cost 10 times more in Germany! Got in around 1:30, but didn't get to downtown til 3:30 given Bangkok's fabulous traffic. Met up with karn and stayed at his place a couple nights. European cities might be nice to look at, but they'll always lack that something that makes places like Bangkok so exciting and dymanic. Come to think of it, the only country I found really fascinating on my Eurotrip was Albania.
Didn't really do much except watch Batman and a Cosplay event on Saturday. I was trying to decide between going to Phuket or a quick trip to Laos. Ended up choosing Laos, since it's rainy season and not really in the mood for seeing more of "those" kind of tourists.
Got a sleeper to the Thai border town to Nong Khai. The rail link was supposed to have been extended 20km north to the Lao capital of Vientianne by now, but knowing Laos, nothing has happened yet. The second class sleeper was quite a change from the cattle train I took to Cambodia last time! And this might just be the best sleeper I've taken! All airconditioned, with just two levels of bunks on each side, facing forward, unlike those triple deck bunks of Chinese or European trains. My 10 hour train ticket was even cheaper than the ticket from Hong Kong to Guangzhou! Although my train was oldish, at least it had soap and sitdown toilets unlike even the soc alled new trains in China, which are usually poorly maintained!
Once in Northern Thailand, got a tuk tuk to the border, bus across the no man land's bridge, and another tuk tuk to Vientianne center. Laos visas are bought on arrival, I found it interesting how Vietnamese and Chinese (the dirty Asians) only have to pay $20, US and EU citizens pay $35, but Canadians have to pay $42? I guess Canadians aren't universally liked.
Despite being as developed as Cambodia, so far the roads have been pretty good, unlike that shit road to Siem Reap and this country has proper gas stations too! Vientianne is incredibly clean compared to Phnom Penh with proper sidewalks everywhere. I'm also amazed by the lack (mostly) of touts and the absence of pushiness of shopkeepers. No wonder why everyone says Laos is the highlight of Southeast Asia.
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| MunichI came here not because there was anything in particular I wanted to see but mainly to get my flight out of this continent. Got a train from Prague early in the morning, which crossed into Germany without any passport checks. let's just say Czech language sounds better than German. These days the Czech side looks almost as modern as the German side. I didn't make any reservations so I walked all over town looking for a place to stay for a night. I couldn't believe almost every hostel was full! Since I didn't care too much for Munich, I did have some thought of leaving immediately to Bangkok. Eventually I found a hostel, but the place kinda sucked with poor value for money. Although Sir Toby's in prague was expensive, it was an awesome hostel. Walked around town for a bit but it wasn't anything I haven't seen before. Decided to finally drag myself to go out for the night and went to some clubbing district called Kultfabrik. Turns out only one club out of about 40 was actually open that night! Cover charge was only 1 euro and didn't see too many stunnining women (twisted male/female ratio in this place), so left after midnight. The next day, I visited the memorial site of the Dachau concentration camp and the site of the botched 1972 Olympic games. Somehow I found this more interesting than castles/old pedestrian streets. Quickly got to the airport at 7 for my 9 o clock flight. Munich airport: Airport modern, amenities not. How can such a modern airport, not have any kind of internet access, never mind free internet access? Sat next to an Elisha Cuthbert look alike.. If it wasn't for the fact that I have seen Elisha in person before, I could've sworn it was her, albeit with a German acent. She was celebrating her birthday on the plane on her first long distance plane trip. Too bad she was going all the way to Australia rather than Bangkok. | | |
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