We hopped on the train for a little day trip from Kyoto to Osaka. There was a nice graphic design exhibition on that I made Elaine go to and after I'd ogled all the lovely work for about 10 hours we had a wander around the city. The first thing we noticed is that everyone rides bikes! Everything from full on racers to stripped down courier single speeds and those cool little folding bikes. And all the kids look super cool… Maybe a little too cool.
There wasn't a lot to do in Osaka, but it was nice to go for a little day trip. As ever, photos on Flickr. Enjoy!
* Too Cool For School
** The Man With One Red Shoe was an offbeat spy comedy starring Tom Hanks. This man has two red shoes and is on a bike.
Faster than a speeding bullet! About the same power as a locomotive though.
So we headed down to Kyoto for a few days and finally got to use our JR Pass on a Bullet Train! Whooooooooooo!!!!! That thing makes the DART look like a thing that's really slow… oh wait… it is really slow! The bullet trains (or shinkansen in Japanese) can get up to about 300km/h, at which point everything becomes a blur and goes to plaid. They might look like giant white tampons but they're still cool and strangely sexy. Real tampons are icky…
After getting in to Kyoto we had a bit of a wander around trying to see some geishas but we didn't spot any, until a few days later on the bus! Kyoto is famous for it's temples and shrines, so we headed for a wander around Fushimi Inari, a shrine dedicated to the Japanese god of business. Companies and businesses donate the massive gates – called torii – as a way of bringing good fortune. These line the path up and around the hills so it's like walking in a weird orange tunnel in some parts. We also spent a while wandering around Kyoto station (mostly trying to find a toilet) which is a really impressive piece of modern architecture with one of the scariest escalator rides I've ever been on. We contemplated life for a while in the Zen Garden of Ryokan-ji, but that gave me a headache so I had the tiniest pint of Guinness ever. I know things are smaller in Japan, but this is ridiculous!
Have a goo on Flickr and let me know what ye think.
Due to our Indian Visa fiasco, we had a few extra days in Tokyo and as we had our handy Japan Rail pass we could go on all the trains for free! So we took a day-trip down to Yokohama which is a really nice city. It's odd having a smaller city so close to one really big city, a bit like having Galway about 20 minutes from Dublin.
Our first stop was Chinatown, Yokohama having a large Chinese population due to it being a port city. The gates and temples were really bright and detailed as opposed to the slightly more restrained Japanese gates (torii) that we've seen so far. There was tonnes of people wandering about and some lady had a little terrier in a pram!One step up form having it in a handbag. Elaine has been finding it hard to get local food that is vegetarian, but we thought she'ld be OK with some sweetcorn soup in a Chinese restaurant… eh, not really, it had big bits of chicken in it, so poor Elaine was really brave and ate a bit, then headed to Starbucks for a cookie :(
Japan's tallest building, the Landmark Tower, is in Yokohama and we went up to the viewing deck on the 69th floor (hee-hee 69) in the fastest elevator ever. That's one of the great things about Japan, they don't just normal trains or elevators, they do really fast ones! I think we hit about 120m/s, which works out around 268mph! Shit, my ears popped after about 2 seconds in the lift. The view was a bit hazy from the top, but it was still slightly surreal to be up so high above everything else. Back down on terra firma, we hit Chinatown again to see it all lit up at night, and spent a bit too much time wandering around trying in vain to find the Yokohama Curry Museum, so the fun park in the bay was just closing and I didn't get to go on the crazy rollercoaster that goes into a hole in the ground. Boo-urns. We did have an Indian for dinner to make up for missing the curry museum. We were bloody knackered after all that so we fell into out tiny little bed in our tiny little room back in Tokyo.
Have a look at the photos on Flickr and drop me some comments!
Me, some girl dressed up as a maid and The Colonel. Damn him and his tasty chicken!
Finally arrived in Japan, sorry about the wait for a post, I've been too busy doing stuff :) Our first stop was Tokyo, which is the coolest city ever. Elaine and myself had a bit of bother getting our Indian Visas sorted out; first we went to one place, which was closed, then to the Embassy proper, which doesn't actually take visa applications, then we had to go to the third and final, actual 100% real visa office the next day. We thought we might have to stay in Tokyo for the whole time as it takes gaijin visas 8 working days to process, but it was sorted eventually…
Our first day we spent wandering around the Imperial Palace where the Emperor lives with Darth Vader. The park around the Palace is really odd, there's a cool fountain area and over the road from it is a beautiful park where a lot of homeless guys live. On the English language map it translates as from Japanese as "Park and Area for People Who Cannot Go Home". The next day I dragged Elaine to a Max Huber (graphic designer) exhibition in Ginza, which was deadly. There was actually two separate exhibitions on, so obviously we had to go to both! After that we hit Akihabara with all it's electronic stores and Manga shops and from there we tried to spot a few Harajuku girls, but it was raining so they didn't want to come out to play.
I'll try do a few more posts in the next while, I've only got a short while in Japan so trying to squeeze as much in as possible. Check out the Flickr shots and leave some comments if you like.
Thanks to Elaine and her swish, new camera for the blog photo!
Our first day we spent wandering around the Imperial Palace where the Emperor lives with Darth Vader. The park around the Palace is really odd, there's a cool fountain area and over the road from it is a beautiful park where a lot of homeless guys live. On the English language Japanese map it translates as "Park and Area for People Who Cannot Go Home". The next day I dragged Elaine to a Max Huber (graphic designer) exhibition in Ginza, which was deadly. There was actually two separate exhibitions on, so obviously we had to go to both!
I'l try do a few more posts in the next while, I've only got a short while in Japan so trying to squeeze as much in as possible. Check out the Flickr shots and leave some comments if you like.
Chiang Mai is a nice little town in the north of Thailand with lots of temples and wats. It's the ancient capital which you can tell from the remains of the massive walls and moat that encircles the Old City. We did a good bit of walking around looking at the temples – one of which contained a freaky life-like statue of a monk meditating, which I thought was real! We also had some really nice Thai food (I love a bit of Chiang Mai sausage…) and obvioulsy did the Funky Gibbon while we were there.
One of the main things I noticed walking around the town was how much street art, graffiti and stickers there were all over the town, which I thought was quite cool. I've been taking photos of different bits of designy stuff over the whole trip and I've been collecting them in a Flickr set – Design/Art/Graffiti/Type.
If you want to see the shots from Chiang Mai check em out on Flickr. Toodles!
As promised, here's some loverly photos from the day at the Flight of the Gibbon. Check 'em out on Flickr. I put some on Facespace too, if anyone has one of those. I hear the kids are all into it these days…
Do, Do, Do the Funky Gibbon! We are here to show you how.
I didn't get to see any gibbons in Laos but I got a second chance in Thailand. OK, so I didn't actually see any in Chiang Mai, but I did hear some in the forest canopy while doing the Flying Gibbon. We set out around 6.30am for some fun swinging through the trees. There were zip lines, abseiling and rope bridges to caper along in the green treetops of the hills above Chiang Mai. Our guide, Dave, was a little hung-over from too much rice wine the night before, but zipping through the trees soon cheered him up. It was all over very quickly, but time flies when your hanging upside down from a tree…
I'll have some photos up on flickr soon, but if you get sick of looking at me doing the funky gibbon, then check this out.
That's not the boat we took. It was a lot smaller than that. I basically had to swim all the way…
To get from Luang Prabang to the Thai border at Heuy Xai we had to take a slow boat for two days up the Mekong. Most people do the trip in the opposite direction so it wasn't as packed with annoying backpackers, though there were still a few on the boat. The trip was pretty uneventful, I got to read about 200+ pages of a book and watch a few movies on my iPod. The scenery was pretty fantastic and it got better and better the further upriver we went. The view out from our hostel window where we stopped for the night was amazing; the full moon was shining through the clouds, lighting up the river that is normally a dull, rushing brown during the day into a silver arc cutting through the blacked out hills.
The second day was a lot quicker but less comfortable than the first day. We had a lot of kids waving at us from the shore, some jumping into the river and trying to swim out to the boat for fun. There was also a point where the boat stopped to let a load of locals on to sell food and beer. When we got to Huey Xai we looked at doing the Gibbon Experience, which is three days trekking through the jungle and staying in a tree-house, but it was too expensive, so I'll have to find some monkeys somewhere else :(
Ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention. I've just been handed an urgent and horrifying news story. I need all of you, to stop what you're doing and listen… CANNONBALL!!!
The Kuang SI Waterfall in Luang Prabang is such a beautiful place. Six of us took a tuk tuk out there and spent the day climbing around the different levels and jumping into the swimming areas, which was great in the heat. There was also some cool rope swings that I had a good time flying off… Elaine even had a go jumping into the water, she's hardcore!
Luang Prabang is really chilled out and there's a cool night market every night. There's lots of food and clothes and trinkets on sale, and it's good fun to walk around being nosey. Luang Prabang is also home to a lot of monks who live in the Wats around town. If you get up early enough – around 5am – you can go and see them on their daily trek around town, where the local people give them rice and food in return for blessings. It's really something to see, with their bright orange robes lighting up a rainy morning.
Check out the Flickr and drop a few comments. And stay classy.
