Korea

We arrived on the jet foil from Japan, then took the high speed KTX train to the capital Seoul.

On initial impressions, Korea seemed quite like Japan, just not as good. It's not as clean, friendly, exciting or serene. Then again, you could say that about most places we've been to compared to Japan! We enjoyed our couple of days in Seoul but I don't think we'd rush back. It's not a showy city and maybe hasn't got the tourist highlights, but I could imagine it being a nice place to live for a while. That said, we enjoyed the palace, which was very impressive (with changing of the guard ceremony), and the Folk museum next door was very enlightening too. We also enjoyed the food but didn't stray too far from what we know. They have some rather extreme delicacies and like their seafood VERY fresh (see the movie 'Ong Bak' if you need an example!). The Korean BBQ was an unforgettable experience, certainly for the process if not the food.

We stayed in a very weird place (reminded me of an 80's doss house) but it was in a good area near the university. It was very cool and trendy with more coffee shops that you could ever need. Good restaurants too.

We would have loved to do a tour to the DMZ on the border with N Korea, but as well as it being quite a bad time for that at the moment, it was also closed on Monday (like almost everything in Seoul). Next time.

Next up, our final country, China.

Japan

Kyoto
Normally whenever I hear the town Kyoto mentioned my mind automatically whispers “agreement”. Well, I am glad that my brain now is finally able to come up with a few more associations (p.s I do applaud the Kyoto Agreement).


Kyoto is a town that is more beautiful than you could ever imagine. It is the home of the Geishas, of many beautiful temples and of friendly, helpful locals. Unfortunately, we did not see any Geishas. You have to be rich to be able to enjoy their company! They are NOT prostitutes at all, but they are so highly considered that you really have to splurge just to be in the same room as these dreamlike creatures.


Luckily for us, the temples are more accessible. Our favourite temple was the golden one. It actually has real gold leaf in the painting. It must have cost a fortune to make! The nicest part of this temple however, was the bright colourful trees that were situated around it. Nothing can beat the colours of nature … not even gold!


Another thing that was very impressive about Kyoto is that whenever the bus has to wait for a while, for example for a red light to become green, the engine stops! Apparently this saves 10% of the fuel. We experienced this in other towns as well. Way to go Japan!

It is also worth mentioning that we had the most fascinating cups of coffee in our lives in Kyoto. This little old lady made us coffee from instruments that looked like a science project. The coffee was great, and she gave us a refill!


Hiroshima
While my mind thinks of “agreement” when I hear the word “Kyoto”, you probably know what I think about when I hear “Hiroshima” being mentioned. I must admit that it has been a while since we learned about the bombings in school, and I am ashamed that I had forgotten most of what happened. I knew that it was absolutely terrible and that the destruction the bomb did was unimaginable. However, I had distanced myself from the information. Maybe it had been to difficult for me as a child to take in the atrocities and really understand what happened? I still can’t understand what happened, but I am completely shocked and horrified by it. It brings tears in my eyes.


In the museum we read about children who had been trying to run home, only to drop dead from their burns moments later. We read about parents who had to watch their children die in their arms. Some people got burns that were completely black! The bomb was so hot that flesh was dripping from people’s bodies. Obviously the people who were in a close radius to the bomb died immediately. 140 000 people had died by the end of 1945! Hiroshima is now focusing on being a centre for peace. The town is actively trying to abolish nuclear weapons. Today I learned that there are hydrogen bombs that are 1000 times stronger than the bomb that fell over Hiroshima. How can that be? Who would EVER want to inflict that kind of destruction to anyone? Well, I am naive, but I seriously hope that a nuclear weapon will NEVER happen again!



Seoul
We have just arrived in the capital of South Korea. We have seen no signs of war, like you would expect. The place looks very similar to Japan. The food is a bit cheaper though, so we are really looking forward to treating ourselves for the next 2 days until we fly to China on the 30th. China is our last country!!

Tokyo

We landed at 6:40 on the red-eye express after about 2 hours sleep and arrived to a completely different world to any that we've experienced before. It's honestly the first time we've arrived and failed to get anywhere unassisted. We were just stuck. The tube map(s) are quite daunting at first and there are 2 separate line networks, and a train network. It was all very confusing to start with, not to mention the japanese only ticket machines.
However, that was only a temporary problem and we checked into our very nice hostel and caught up on a little sleep. On going for a stroll that afternoon it became apparant very quickly how amazing a place both Japan and Tokyo are. The first thing is that it is so clean and tidy. I think we each saw one piece of graffitti in 3 days, and next to no rubbish anywhere. On top of that you have friendly, helpful humble people everywhere who never seem to break any rules, wonderful public infrastructure and amazing food, traditions and culture. As far as cities go it is utopia.


I think I speak for both of us when I say that we have both really fallen for Japan and Tokyo was a special introduction.

The surprises have been many too: we expected big lights, big crowds, unhappy denizens trudging to work, and a rather normal, expensive, dirty capital city, but the truth was far from that. Sure there are busy places, but certainly no worse than London, there were also some rather impressive streets of Neon but apart from that our expectaions were exceeded in every way.

One thing I have to mention is our trip to the Tsukiji fish market. After much deliberation, we decided to go to the Tuna auction which takes place before 6am. We got up at 4:30 but it was a very special experience and we are glad we did it. We also decided to queue up for 80 minutes to have breakfast in the market area at Sushi-Dai, reportedly the best Sushi place in Tokyo (which would probably make it high in the world list too!). It was AMAZING. I didn't really fancy it if truth be told but once we got settled into our very small space at the counter it became apparant it was worth the wait. After some lovely salmon rolls, I mistakenly ordered Shashimi (sliced raw fish) but were glad I did as it's the best bit of Tuna I have ever eaten. You honestlty would not have known it was fish unless you'd been told. Just a unique texture and taste and the red snapper wasn't bad either. A once in a life time experience.
.

Bullet train to Kyoto next...

MandB

Malaysia

Langkawi

After having spent great days in Kho Phi Phi, we were rather disappointed when we found ourselves in the Ghost town, also called Langkawi. According to the lonely planet this was supposed to be a glorious place with beaches so white that you needed sunglasses. The beach was OK. It was full of Malaysians doing various boat activities. It was impossible to swim in the water though, due to the waves and rip currents. The water was not clear.

The town of Langkawi looked very 80s and so deserted. Matt said that he felt that he was in a disaster movie right after the people had just fled the town. There were a few good restaurants, but other than that there was nothing to do! Since we don’t like sitting around working on our tan, we decided to leave the place and head for Georgetown in Penang instead.

Georgetown

This town was more than interesting! It used to be a famous trading city back in the colonial days, and so many different nationalities clearly left their marks on the city. The English built beautiful colonial buildings! On every corner you could see either a beautiful Hindu temple, a mosque or a Chinese temple. The town was so alive and colourful. We had the most amazing Chinese and Indian food there. The history of the place is also very interesting, so we really enjoyed visiting the museums in the town.





Kuala Lumpur
Now this capital is NOTHING like Jakarta! First of all, it has a great subway system. We can get anywhere we want, but since we are staying in a central place we don’t really need to take it that much. We can also walk on the pavements, can you believe that? The food here has not been as great as the rest of Malaysia, but we are by no means starving. Who can complain when you get to eat fresh noodles? We went to see Harry Potter yesterday. It was a great movie I think. We only paid 10$ for the two of us. We will probably watch another movie tonight because we have to spend some time while waiting for our night train that takes us to Singapore this evening.



We only have two more days of summer, and then it’s winter in Japan!!

Final Flights

As promised...

Singapore Tokyo 20/11/2010 22:00 05:40 (+1) JL36
Seoul Shanghai 30/11/2010 11:40 12:40 CZ314
Beijing London 15/12/2010 12:10 15:20 BA0038

Koh Phi Phi

Some places in the world seem too beautiful to be true and arriving at Koh Phi Phi, you realise that it is definitely in that category. I'd done my OW diving course there in 2006 and we had plans to come back and do more diving. Betta decided to do her advanced course, so we checked in with Viking Divers (still as professional, thorough and friendly as I remembered). The diving sadly wasn't that great. Betta got Seasick as the seas were rough and not pleasant to get in and especially out of the water back onto the boat. We were't blssed with the best vizibility either but we did a wreck and night dive so that was good to keep pushing the boundaries. I am very proud to report that Betta is now an advanced adventurer!



Apart from the diving we've been enjoying the good food and all the facilities you could need as a backpacker. My only concern is that it's a bit too chavy in high season. We kept getting offered fliers for wet t-shirt contests and booze cruises. I like to think we both look quite youthful for our ages but we surely don't look that young!

Chav's aside, it's a magical place and we could have easily spent longer there.





We go to Palau Langkawi in Malaysia tomorrow (country number 18) for a week before heading south to Singapore and our flight to Tokyo on the 20th.

Other news: We've changed our plan to fly from Seoul to China now (saving time and money over a Ferry amazingly) so we have 3 more flights to go. We are also coming back a few days earlier than planned too so have moved a couple of flights forward. I'll post the flight itiniary for you uber fans soon.

Oh, and we're home 5 weeks today!

MandB

Phuket

It was amazing coming to Thailand after Jakarta. The food did absolutely live up to our high expectations. Green curries, red curries, spring rolls, Pad Thai … need I say more? We stayed very close to Kata beach. The beach itself is absolutely stunning. The sand is clean and white, and the water is lush. The only slightly annoying thing was that there were too many Scandinavians there. There were so many bars called “Viking”. I am sorry to say that a lot of my fellow scandies who come here are probably sex tourists. I really do hate seeing all those poor girls in the bar working long hours, trying to pretend that they find those men attractive.


The weather was not really good while we were there. It rained almost every day, which is unusual as it is supposed to be high season at the moment. We did spend two great afternoons reading on the beach though.


Today we arrived on Phi Phi. What a great island! It is much more relaxed than Phuket, and there are no (obvious) sex tourists here. The food seems a lot cheaper too!

Now we just need to get out there, book our diving dates, eat some freshly cooked Thai food and swallow it down with a Chang. Oh my, is it fall did you say? We haven’t noticed …