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 …

75% Stats

lodgings 52
Time in transit 302 hrs
Photos 8000
Countries 16
Capitals 12
Money £13400 ($17980)
per day £73 ($110)
flights 13
Time in Air 77 hrs
Time underwater 4 hrs
World Heritage Sites 9
Nights in Transit 10
Nights in Dorm 11
Nights in Campervan 10
Movies in Cinema 7
Times poo'd on by bird 3 (matt 2, Betta 1)

Jakarta

We arrived into Jakarta domestic terminal an it was very new and shiny and first impressions of Jakarta were good. However that didn't last long. We got a bus into town and we very quickly saw a city of contrasts between the big high rise buildings and malls, and large areas of very poor, slum like neighbourhoods. Also the smog and polution was incredible. You could barely see the buildings through the haze. We soon saw the reason fo this...the traffic in Jakarta is worse that I've ever seen. They have big 8 lane highways biscecting the city and they seemed to be perminantly full of cars, and the cabbie on the ride from town said there was no traffic as it wa the weekend!
We were staying in a 'homestay' and once the cabbie had found it (3 u-turns and lots of asking directions later, meter still runing) we were happy enough with the place. It was very quiet, but mainy as it was right in the middle of nowhere ,well as much as you can be in a city of 10 million people. We tried to go for a walk that first afternoon but there are hardly any pavements and the pesky moped riders just swarm everywhere like a buzzing liquid, following the path of least resistance, even if that is on the pavement, we didn't feel very safe as pedestrians so didn't stray far from the house. We were reminded that Indonesia is a very muslim country at 5am the next morning there when the call to prayer started, it was so loud and lasted about 30 minutes! From then on we used our heathen/christian earplugs.

I read in the paper that Jakarta is the biggest city without a subway and it is a huge problem, as is the growing middle class who refuse to give up their cars for anything. They have started the transjakarta (a big AC bus in a dedicated lane) all over the city but basically it's a 3rd world, inadequate solution and it's still mercy to the traffic so not much quicker, even it is more comfortable. Still we caught a local bus and that was reminiscent of India or something so I guess it's an improvement on that.



We went to the old town, but there's really not much to see and by the time we'd spend 2 hours getting there by bus we'd lost any enthusiasm we may have had anyway. For the rest of our thankfully brief time there we got with the locals and stayed in the mall, ate good food at the food court and watched a movie. We could have been anywhere, which felt like a beautiful fantasy until we stepped out in to the street again, .

There were 2 reasons that meant we were able to endure a day there, it's quite safe for tourists, and the cabs are cheap but I honestly cannot think of a single reason why anyone would go to Jakarta, definitely a contender for worst city on our trip.

MandB

Bali, Ubud and Gili Islands

When our Asian Air plane landed on Bali the pilot welcomed us to “paradise island”. Needless to say, we had high expectations! We had a free pickup from the hotel we were staying in, and let me tell you that those dreams were shattered on the ride in to Kuta!! We saw neon signs, drunken Australians, tons of motorbikes and people selling sunglasses. I thought to myself “What is this place? Las Vegas? Thailand on speed?” We decided to sleep on it. Maybe Kuta would look better in the morning. It didn’t!

Kuta was hot, crowded and full of tourists that probably don’t really like travelling to other countries. These tourists could frequently be spotted on their motorbikes without helmets and with a beer in their hands. Some of them were even driving around with their children. WITHOUT HELMETS! We had enough of red, fat Australians after the first day (sorry, I do normally love Australians!), however, we had booked our hotel for 4 nights. We decided to spend our days drinking fancy coffee, eating great food and reading books. Luckily we had a pool where we were staying. We loved just hanging out there reading and swimming.


After our 4 nights in Gomorra was over we decided to check out what attracted Julia Roberts to Ubud. I think that’s where that movie/book Eat, Love, Pray is based (haven’t seen it). I could really see why anyone would come there to “find themselves”. We LOVED it! There are so many statues and old sculptures everywhere. The hawkers were less annoying, and there are so many cute cafes and stores. It is also very green there actually. I did feel that I was back in Angkor Wat sometimes. So yes, we did finally find our paradise Island in Bali eventually!

After a few days in Ubud we went to Trawangan in the Gili islands. There were no cars or motorbikes here! Although, there were many cute horses that seemed to be worked a bit too hard. The place was amazing though! Imagine combining diving, beautiful beaches, great, cheap food and places that show recent movies every night for peanuts! We had a really good time there. We managed to read a couple of more books, and we finally realised what backpacking is all about ; reading and eating.

We were quite sad to live our beautiful island today after 6 days of paradise. We are currently back in Ubud. We will stay here for 2 nights before we head to Jakarta. Hopefully we will get to see a Balinese dance tomorrow.


Hope all is well in Norway and the UK!

Matt&Betta

Singapore

We arrived in Singapore to begin the Asian segment of our trip. A bit that we have both been looking forward to since we left LHR some 142 days earlier. Singapore is a very good starting place for asia as it's got the hustle, bustle and food but it's also very westernised and extremely clean and safe. A gradual way back in.

It's also a lot more expensive that other asian countries, so we stayed in a dorm room. The first time we had to do that in a while...in fact the first time for a month that we had to stay in a hostel at all.

We've both really enjoyed Singapore, it's a very interesting place and it's got a fascinating history and some amazing new developments. The Marina Bay Sands hotel complex is astounding, and the Singapore Flyer is very impressive too. We went to the Zoo which was great, possibly the best Zoo I can think of, as well as the Changi WW2 museum and rather eclectically, the Philantelic museum too (we were very hot and they had air con!) However, trumping all of this by a country mile, are the hawker markets. These are very basic eating areas, where there are loads of stalls selling local fayre. They are not posh but they are very functional and incredible value. You are looking at £2-3 for a wonderful plate of local grub, freshly cooked. Noodles, Rice, Dim Sum, Curry. It's all there and all lovely. I didn't try the frog porridge though I'm sure it's delicious too.

We also had some business to attend to. Namely getting our visas for China and it turned out to be a bit of a pain. We turned up with forms printed and filled out and passport photos, but were told when we got there that we needed proof of our flight from China. We had to go back to the hostel (90 min round trip) to pick that up, only to be told on our return that the forms were out of date and we'd need to fill out new ones too. So much for trying to be organised. We eventually got our applications in with seconds to spare before they closed (at 3pm obviously!) To our amazement 4 days later we collected our passports with visas with very little fuss (and £50). Yay, we can now go to China.

We also discovered when we were there, and somewhat by accident, that Joe was arriving in Singapore for work, and more incredibly, Ragnhild was coming out for a holiday too! As such we met Joe for dinner twice and Joe and Ragnhild once, as well as hanging out a bit, and even blagging a swim in the roof top pool of the Hilton. It was really nice to meet up with some friends from home and for Betta to speak some proper Norwegian too.


Next up, a new country for us both, Indonesia.

MandB

Brisbane and beyond

After having said goodbye to beautiful New Zealand we found ourselves in Australia once again. We spent 3 and a half day in Brisbane. Hospitable Nikki picked us up from the airport and we spent 2 days at her place. She took us to an amazing cheese factory and we had a good time there.











On Friday the 8th we met my old friend Julian. It was so great seeing him again! He has a flat with nice views of the city. Since we wanted to spend as much time with him as possible, we decided to stay with him for the last night (Sat the 9th). We had a great time! Julian was playing the piano and the guitar for us constantly. It felt like being in a musical. Seriously! Julian’s nice friend Craig was also there.

Inspired by the Ylvisaaker brothers (Norwegian guys), we decided to make some prank phone calls to the states. Julian was playing the piano and singing while trying to ordering rooms. It was so funny! Unfortunately, most people hung up, but there were a few that didn’t ;)

It was very sad to leave on Sunday, but at the same time we knew that Asian food was calling for us.

At the moment we are in Singapore. We are spending 6 days here because we want to get Visas for China. Man it really was a hassle trying to organise that! Matt had checked out the information in regards to getting the visa. When we got to the office (after an hour of looking for it), they told us they needed the immigration papers for Singapore, and our itinerary! So we had to go back to our hostel and get it. Why don’t they put that information online??? When we got back we had to fill out the forms we had printed out from the internet again. It turned out that the version we printed out was outdated. We get to pick up our passports again with the visa on Thursday. However, I am starting to feel nervous about that! China keep cancelling all these meeting because of the Nobel peace price issue. We all know how important I am, so will they let me in? I guess I shouldn’t joke about that online. You never know. But seriously though, I really hope it all works out!

Singapore is very hot. We have been walking around a lot. We saw Little India and Chinatown yesterday.
The hawker markets are amazing! The food is really cheap and OH SO GOOD! Matt was very excited about getting bubble tea again. I was not so excited about drinking rubbish coffee. Is it time for me to give up my addiction?

It is raining at the moment. We are going to the zoo today. Hopefully we’ll see the white tiger.

By the way, we only have less than 3 months left of travelling now. Christmas will come before we know it, and then we’ll be home. Luckily we get to eat loads of noodles before that happen.

Enjoy the fall guys! At least you don’t need to worry about aircon.
Matt&Betta

New Zealand

Sorry for the delay in this instalment of the blog. We’ve just been having too much fun. We’ve been here almost a month and it really doesn’t feel like it.

We took advantage of some home comforts in Christchurch (and were able to feel what a 4.6 earthquake is like) before setting off on the first leg of our NZ road trip. We got our Jucy ‘crib’ campervan and headed south. Unfortunately this coincided with the most unseasonable weather for about 20 years and a storm the size of Australia brought rain and snow in large quantities. Fortunately we were able to borrow blankets, so sleeping in the car was OK but it was pretty cold at night and getting out of bed in the morning was a real struggle. In a nutshell we went to Queenstown and felt like the only people not going to the mountains but it’s so beautiful there we didn’t mind too much. The weather meant we couldn’t head south or west so we went down to the east coast and to the Dunedin peninsular which is very pretty. We waited for 90 minutes for Blue Penguins to not appear on a freezing cold night but that slight disappointment aside we had a great time.



Back to Christchurch to warm up for a couple of days before heading off again for our road trip part 2 up to Auckland. We planned a day in the vineyards of Marlborough near Blenheim. We biked around from cellar door to cellar door. We actually learnt as much as we drunk and it was a brilliant day out. The biking was the most exercise we’d done for weeks though so we were a bit sore in both head and bottom the day after.
Our road trip north was really nice and a few standout things included The Waitomo Glowworm cave which were really nice as well as the Coromandel peninsular which was beautiful too. We also had a slight car accident in Rotarua (not my fault I hasten to add) but there were no injuries, we had a zero excess insurance policy, and there was not much damage so it was no big deal thankfully. An example of the notorious bad NZ driving though.

Following that we went up to the Bay of islands where we were lucky enough to stay with Terry and Celia at their bach. The highlight for us was a boat tour. The bay is just lovely and we saw so many Dolphins and also Orca too which was great. This part of the world is really stunningly beautiful, even if Cook once called it ‘the hellhole of the pacific’. It’s changed quite a lot for the better since the whaling days of the 19th century.


Finally we’ve been relaxing and taking it easy in Auckland with Elizabeth before we hit the road again.

I can safely say we are leaving NZ with very fond memories, every one is so friendly in shops and cafes etc. Apart from that it’s also really English in so many ways and it’s been really nice to stay in ream homes rather than backpacker places. Even though we’ve had a month here there are quite a number of things we would like to have done but didn’t have the time. Next time.

We have been really well looked after by friends and family in NZ and Australia. Everyone has been so helpful and generous to us so a big thanks to Suzie (Sydney), Tony & Dawn, Terry & Celia and Elizabeth. We are very appreciative of all that you have done for us and you’ve helped make this a very relaxing and fun segment of our trip.

Off to Brisbane for 3 days later today then Singapore on Sunday for the final third of our trip, in Asia. Now where did I put the suncream…


M&B