Touring Tokyo

Tuesday June 18, 2013

I can hardly believe that our Asia trip has come to an end.

Map of Tokyo Metro System

We left April 28, and we are now in the Tokyo airport headed home via Chicago.  N is hoping to catch a Boston-Chicago hockey playoff game it the airport.  Although every time, I've watched Chicago doesn't seem to be doing very well.

 It has been an amazing trip, but we are ready to head home now.  Our bags are heavy, and our clothes are filthy. It's time to be back in our place.

Our time in Japan was lovely.  Tokyo is not a city that necessarily has "must see" spots, which suited us very well.  I love just wandering around and getting the flavour of a city.

We were not as organized as we could have been, and so we missed out on some stuff we might have liked to see but just wandering around the city proved extremely enjoyable.  N and I were both quite ill on and off during our time here, which slowed us down a little (we are wondering if it is a side effect of our malaria medication). The train system though a bit intimidating is great to use.  It takes you anywhere you need to go.

 National Art Centre Entrance

We went to The Tokyo National Art Centre, which is very interesting architecturally.  I was not blown away by the exhibits.  I can't complain though since most were free, and we only paid about $4 to go into one.

Some of my favourite Japanese prints are coming to one of the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museums next month.  An unfortunate miss.  We didn't find that out until we got there though.  It is still an interesting building to see.  It looks a bit odd amid all metallic skyscrapers.  It is in a high-end business area, but we found a nice bistro and a little sort of park area just behind it for lunch.

The other museum, I wanted to see was also closed on Monday. It has the largest collection of Asian art in the world. It is surrounded by a beautiful Ueno Park though so we enjoyed the trip. In Sundays, it apparently is a major hangout with a big goth scene.  Again our poor planning failed us, and we didn't get that information until we were there on Monday.  And the Museum is closed on Mondays.

Another museum, which has the largest collection of Asian art in the world was closed on Monday.  It is surrounded by a beautiful Ueno Park though so we enjoyed the trip anyways. In Sundays, it apparently is a major hangout with a big goth scene.  Again our poor planning failed us, and we didn't get that information until we were there on a Monday.  And the Museum is closed on Mondays.

The First Market was a highlight for me.  Early in the morning they are supposed to have enormous tuna but we went late in the afternoon and caught it for an hour just before it closed at 3pm.

The Metropolitan Government Building has a great view if the city for free!  That seemed like a good find.

While we were totally disorganized and missed out on a number of things that we may have enjoyed but it did not at all takeaway from our experience.  I think N was happy enough to have missed spending long hours in the museums, although he was genuinely disappointed for my sake.  The great thing about trying to get to so many if these destinations is that we saw lots of different parts of the city.

I had  my heart set on seeing Mt. Fuji. Unfortunately, June is supposed to be the worst time to see it because the weather is rainy/humid creating a cloudy haze that prevents a good view.  Instead of taking a 2hr bus (one way) to see it and being disappointed by not getting to see it we decided to just not try and enjoy trekking around in the city instead.  I just keep telling myself we'll have to come back.  I'd like to come again to see me cherry blossoms and the art museums. 

We went to an area called Shibuya. It has the busiest crosswalk in the city.  The Starbucks on the corner boasted the best view of the street.  It was quite cool just to sit up there, and people watch.

Again and again on this trip I have been surprised by how much I have enjoyed the major cities: Beijing, Bangkok, Kuching, Kuala Lumpur.  I knew I'd love Tokyo.  I don't know if I had a low expectation for these places, but I feel like I'd to return and spend more time or even live in many of them. 

We've rounded off an amazing trip, and I just feel like we will have to return because there is slouch left that we need to see and so many places that we missed!  The world is just so wonderfully vast and diverse.  The media always tricks me into thinking the world is small and everywhere is the same but it's just not at all that way.  Ever place we go give me such a different perspective and outlook on others, myself and the world.

It's such an amazing experience, something I really consider a gift!

A Few Days in Tokyo

So we've been here just two and a half hours and its pretty much official — I love Tokyo!  I already think this is just the best place ever!

We come in at eleven at night and have the best service hands down that I have ever experienced at an airport information desk, in my life. The lady was  friendly, efficient and helpful.  It was the same story with the cab driver.

Everything in Tokyo is well labeled and conveniently sized.  The toilets have directions...although it scares me.

There are vending machines everywhere!  The pop bottles are normal, "hey, I a glass of pop" sizes, versus, "I was hoping to give myself diabetes in a single day" sizes we get at home.

The hotel room is teeny tiny but has all the things you need and more.  The flat screen tv is about the same size as the bed.  Origami cranes were waiting for us on top of clean pressed robes.  

There are a complementary razor and hair brush along with toothbrush and toothpaste in the shower.  Everyone needs a hair brush! It's very thoughtful seeming. There are also slippers with disposable inserts for germaphobes.

There is s flashlight on the wall in case of power outages and  a teeny little fridge.  The light switches are practically under the pillow.  And my favourite there is a recycling can in our room!    "Oh Tokyo, you had me at hello."

Seriously it's 1:30 in the morning and I am like over the moon happy.  And I am not the night person. 

Kula Lumpar - Petronas Towers

Mon June 11 & Tues June 12

Our last few days in Lombok were low key. We rented the scooter for another day of galavanting. And spent our last day just lying on the beach and eating.  It was lovely and relaxing.  

View from our window

Wednesday June 13 morning  we caught a flight to mainland Malaysia, into the city of Kula Lampur.  At this point we finally had to accept that the size and weight of one of our bags has now moved it into the checked baggage category.  This was very hard for N, as you pay quite a bit to check bags.  We did so well for so long!  Nearly two months with only two carrying bags!  

We're in nicer hotel, although it is teeny tiny and looks like the Easter Bunny decorated it.  We can see one of the Pretrona Twin Towers just through the trees from our window.  

We are now into the last week of our time in Asia!  Naturally my body would assume this is the time to fall ill,  again! Thank God for N!  He takes such amazing care of me: goes out to find the food I that willl settle my stomach, finds a clean sock (no face clothes)  to dampen to cool my head, turns the A/C off and on about a thousand times in the night and also gets no sleep because I am up every hour.  I am so, SO grateful for him!

I'm very eager to get out and explore the city.  One of its main attractions is supposed to be the food, not sure how that is going to sit today maybe we will put our emphasis elsewhere for our first day and go all out the second. 

A sample of the hilarious decore and poor sicky N in bed 

Thursday June 13 2013 

Sadly, instead of my health improving N joined me on team bed rest. Poor guy is in rough shape.  We spent very little time outside our room yesterday and a lot of time admiring bathroom tiling.  

Feeling a bit better in the after noon I decided to brave the streets on my own, while N rest and recouped.  I felt a bit intimidated in such a big city at first but I managed to find my way to a major mall, of which there are many.  I  found a hair salon that looked decent.  I am trying to grow out my short hair and it is always an awkward phase.  I was pleased with the result.  

Friday June 14

We are both a bit better today so decided to push ourselves to see some of the things on our short list.  In truth just wandering around the city feels like enough for me.  This is just such an interesting place.  

We were headed to Starbucks for breakfast but passed a little cafe called The Loaf. We were lure in by the amazing smell.  I don't know if its just been a long time since we had real breads but I'm pretty sure these were some of the best pastries I may have ever had.  My latte was also worth bragging about.  The chocolate pistachio croissant literally melted in my mouth, and all over my face.    (That may have had something to do with temp being well over 30).   I picked up this random little thing that I thought was a cranberry scone but turned out to be extremely moist and filled with a cream-cheesy kind of custard.  It took me about twenty minutes to finish because I just never wanted it to end.  It was so delicious!

Downtown KL feels a lot like Manhattan, NY.  It is all glamour!  There are designer shops on every corner.  The whole downtown area is just one mall bumping into another mall.  Some places we have travelled my camera is always horizontal.  All the shots are landscapes: beaches, fields, winding roads.  In cities like KL and NY it's always portrait mode.  The camera in in a constant vertical state to capture the colossal giants that adorn the streets.  It's not all posh, the city still has its own very authentic, unique flavour.  It's a really neat place to just amble around and window shop (since I'm not in the market for Louis Vuitton luggage).  They do have lots of my favourite stores from home too but I find it depressing to try on clothes when the other women shopping are too small for the xs!

The mix of people in KL is also fascinating to observe.  The local people are a cross section of mainly Malay, Indian and Chinese.  There are many visible Muslim's: women in bright patterned hijabs (head scarves) fastened with glitzy jewelled broaches and quite a few full burkas.  You see many badly dressed Caucasians (I assume mainly tourists) as well as those who appear to be doing business here in suits.   I think there is a significant expat community in KL as well.  Some people dressed extremely well in designer clothes or just fashionably trendy but not high end with cutting edge haircuts.  It's a really diverse metropolis.  I enjoy the vibe of the city.  It's the kind of place where it seems like no one really blends in so you don't feel like you stick out so badly.  

We headed to the Bird Park, which is the largest in the world.  I took two photos and the camera battery promptly died.  Charging it apparently got overlooked in our delirium yesterday.  We wandered around trying to find somewhere to sell us a cheap one with no luck (it's a stupid $80 specialty battery) so we headed back to the hotel to charge it.  

After some lunch the battery was finally charged so we headed back to the Bird Park.  

It may be because I watched Free Willy too many times as a kid...but I really hated this place.  The park aspect is lovely.  The exotic birds in cramped cages next to blaring low heavy bass music and the peacocks missing all their tail feathers was extremely distressing.  Places like this make me like people a little less.  And also hate children a lot.  In my opinion if parents don't prevent their children from tormenting innocent creatures then there should be nothing preventing strangers from smacking evil children!  Obviously I would never hit kid but man there were some parents in that park I seriously wanted to punch in the face. Clearly,I have a high tolerance for the abuse of nature...I am now committed to stop visiting these type of places.  It's more of a necessity thing, before I end up in a foreign prison somewhere.  

I do love taking photos of birds though so that was a redeeming factor.  And I love flamingos...and I especially love when those hilariously awkward birds fly.  

Mandarin Ducks...little cuties kept splashing around and wouldn't hold still long enough to get very good pics of them.  The pond was filled with coy fish as well, you can see them in the water.  

Hornbill

In the afternoon we got up close to Petronas Twin Towers.  They are quite impressive.  There is a shopping mall between them.  We got some frozen yogurt and dinner while we waited for dark.  The towers look even cooler all lit up at night.  

 

Yea for selfies on the iPad!

 

As always, photos don't do it justice

Tomorrow at 2pm we fly off to Tokyo for a few days.  This is the last lag of our journey before returning to Canada!

The Eye Glass Adventure

Saturday June 8 2013

A little back story: while on Gili Meno the arm, randomly,  fell off my glasses when I picked them up one morning.  I had packed some contacts but they are not ideal, between my very dry eyes and all the dust I don't last long in them.  (Although they did prove surprisingly great for snorkelling in!) I didn't want to try and have them fixed here and end up with a lot of hassel and my nice frames ruined for good.  We had seen glasses sold absurdly cheap in Bangkok, so I was hopeful that I could buy a replacement pair while on the go.  The trouble was finding a city on these small Indonesian islands big enough to have an Eye Centre.  I haven't seen any locals wearing glasses.  

We settled in the south of Lombok in a beach town called Kuta (yes, we also went to a Kuta beach in Bali - same name but different island).  Our hotel owner was very eager to help us get to Praya, where we could buy glasses.  He apparently had nothing better to do than drive two tourists half an hour on his scooter.  The $10 we payed him to take us is pretty good money, considering you can drive an hour on less than a litre of gas and a litre of gas costs $0.50.  We ended up having to take two scooters because after N got on behind him he declared it, "impossible" to take us both on one.  So his nephew, who works at the hotel was commissioned to drive a second scooter and off we went.  When we asked for helmets he assured us, "no problem." When we got up to 80 clicks I tell ya I was praying hard there would be no problem!  

The twenty year old nephew (who doesn't look a day old than 12) was very friendly and quite chatty.  When we stopped to fill up with gas he told me that he was from Praya.  I asked if he lived here in Kuta, now that he was working at the hotel.  He confirmed that he did but I wasn't sure if he had fully understood me so I clarified, "you don't drive here each day?" He threw his head back and laughed at the hilarious notion that anyone would drive half an hour to work every day.  And I laughed with him but not for the same reason. I laughed because this is such a different world where a half hour commute to work is obsurd.  

I'm not sure our hotel owner had ever been in an Eye Centre before.  He is a very friendly guy, missing about four teeth on the bottom.  He assured us that he would "help" us, meaning that he would prevent us from getting screwed over with me tourist price.  I'm not positive that he did help all that much but we we glad to have him because the girls at the Eye Centre spoke zero English.  

Double checking the prescription is right

There was very minimal slightly outdated selection.  It was kind of stuff that was popular when I got my first pair of glasses, ten years ago, maybe even later.  And I felt very rushed and silly for asking to try on more than one pair.  So I decided I was just going to go hipster and get the old man frames.  Our liaison said, they made me look beautiful because they matched my hair.  I have to admit all the way back I was singing in my head, "I wear your grandad's clothes, I look incredible".  Love that song!  

For $50 all in I was fairly happy with the resulted eye sight.  N is really pumped to try and claim this on our Health Insurance.  I'm optimistic that the place I got other pair will be able to repair them, when I get home.  So I am not wearing this kind of quirky look all the time. 

Love the wood arms on my new retro glasses

Sunday June 9 2013

Today we rented a scooter and toured around the coast of this island.  It is so breathtakingly beautiful!  We came across the illegal gold mining we had read about, which was kind of a rush (nice pun right*).  It's not nearly as sketchy as it sounds.  I'm not real sure what about it is illegal it was very out in the open.  And we checked a bunch of beaches that are normally supposed to be quiet but were busy with locals because it was Sunday.  We did find one lovely beach that was totally deserted!  It was really cool but there was something strangely eerie about being in the ocean and being so alone.  I can't really explain it, it was like something in a bad movie I was just waiting for jaws to emerge out of the ocean or the mafia to come from over the hill and kidnap us.  Tragic that my overworked imagination spoiled our romantic beach experience, although N felt it too.  It was just too quiet.  Still it was pretty sweet!  And we did stay there for a fairly long time but it just felt kinda weird to stay too long.  

Low season is just ending here so there are a smattering of shops that are open but they only have a dusty selection of left overs from last years stock.  Hotels are just starting to raise their room prices.  All the restaurants look closed but are in fact open, though most do not serve half of what is advertised on their signs.  We did find the most amazing pumpkin curry ever though!  I am going to have to find a recipe for it when we get home!

Finding Nemo in Gili Meno

Saturday June 8 2013 1:00pm

We took the "public boat" to Lombok at 8 am this morning. (I'm pretty sure it was the same boat we took over in the first place only we had to buy a ticket from an official booth.) Then took at shuttle bus that the other tourists came to call the musical shuttle because we seemed to keep dropping off and adding new people every five minutes.  After three hours, we got to the southern tip of the island to Kuta Beach.  I'm stationed at a restaurant again while N scouts out a decent place for a good price.  I wait sweating a little puddle and looking longingly towards the ocean about a hundred meters away.

I think we are really going to enjoy it here. It's still low-season, so it's slow, but it seems like there is also a little bit more going on here.  

Yesterday June 7 2013

We paid our hotel owner $20 to take us in his teeny tiny "day cruiser" to go snorkelling. Afterwards, we will check out Gili Trawangan (the party island of the three little Gili Islands).  I wish we could have had my camera along, but it would have been the end of it with all the sea water.  I never quite caught the hotel owners name though we grew quite fond of him.  

We go out much deeper in the boat than we had could swim on our own. I was thrilled that we got to see three tortoises!  I didn't realize how camouflaged they were,  I didn't even see the one until our guy swam down and scared it enough that it started to swim.  The other two we saw coming up out of the deep for a breath of air.

The whole time I had lines from Finding in my head.  "The butt!  Don't touch the butt!"  And then I hit my head swimming right into the thing!  And I just hear all those cute little voices as we swam near the "drop off".  

We were both really glad we went out with the boat!  

It was a good experience to visit Gili Trawangan, just to see it, but we were glad were not staying there—not our scene. It had much more going on and seemed like lots if fun but was nothing of the quiet paradise we enjoyed on Meno.  

Snorkelling and Cats

Thursday June 6 2013

I'm not so much a cat person but  I do really like snorkelling.  

In advertisements for Gili Meno Island they brag, "Tropical Paradise: no motor vehicles and no dogs."  This advertisement is not to deter dog lovers rather I think it is because the rest of Asia is so over populated with stray dogs.  Gili Meno though is over run with cats!  I think most of them have loving homes, although the shortened tails some of them sport make me wonder otherwise.  I don't have an issue with cats, in fact as a kid I much preferred them to dogs but these Indonesian cats are another matter.  These cats are just way too friendly, for my liking.  

Most of the restaurants have little covered cabanas, where you can recline for lunch (it's very relaxing).  And for most meals we have been joined by a feline companion to molest us with his company.  These cats have no manners, no fear and no respect!  They rub against you, attempt to sample your food and help themselves to your pillows.  No amount of shooing, swatting or gesturing deters them from staying.  All things considered they are a pretty minor pest, fairly cute and relatively clean.  The place we rented our scuba gear from yesterday had twin three-week-old black kittens. It brought me back to my childhood, when our slutty cat seemed to pop out a new litter every few months.  Oh, the funny things that remind you of home.  

Snorkelling is very popular in the Gili's because of the coral that is so close.  N and I have gotten quite into it the last few days.  You can rent equipment (mask and flippers) for $2.50 a day, almost anywhere!  It's pretty great.  When the tide gets low on one side of the island you just walk half an hour to the other side where it's still high and good for swimming.  The water is the perfect temperature, like a bathtub after you've sat in it too long.  And the ocean is lovely and calm most of the day.  There are periods where the wind picks up and it gets rough but then you can just move to a different part of the island.  

We were quite thrilled yesterday to discover how fun it was to go snorkelling.  We had briefly tried it in Africa N liked it but I had ended up with a mouth full of water and really hated the mask on my face.  Here the masks have something to prevent splashing water getting into the breathing tube, which makes a big difference.  

It is only about a 50 meter swim out to really cool "coral gardens".  The swimming is very easy with flippers.  The water is so salty you just float along the the surface. 

 I thought to myself when we first got out yesterday, " I'm in real life Finding Nemo!"  There is an amazing variety of tropical fluorescent coloured fish, huge schools dancing and spinning around.  And today we found the ship wreck that we had heard about, from the tour places.  I really wish I was about to take pictures down there but maybe it is more fun just enjoying God's wonders in the moment.  

Today N and I were in one spot and I saw this interesting fish  that  I had seen from a distance yesterday.  From far away I had been worried it was an eel.  Closer up it turned out to be a foot long skinny transparent/silver fish with a long pointy nose, kind of like a mini sword fish.  I got within about a meter of it and it just disappeared.  I stuck my head up to tell N, who was standing a short distance away, about it and it was  loosing his mind with excitement.  "A fish just jumped right over you!"  He was thrilled that he got to see it!  

Tomorrow we are planning to take a boat to another one of the Gili Islands to do some more snorkelling.  It will be our last day.  

On a side note: My glasses broke today (not sure how the arm just randomly fell off) so we kind of need get into a bigger centre and see if we can buy me some new ones.  We saw glasses for sale on the street, lenses included, for $15 so now I'm just kicking myself for not buying a second pair there for fun!  (For now I have contacts but with my dry eyes can only where them about 6 hours...which is kind of a short amount of time to have sight)