Monday, October 27th, 2008
“No, I don’t want a Tuk-Tuk, or a taxi, or a guided tour, or some lovely gems. And tell your mates in Hong Kong I don’t want a suit, or shirts, or a watch”. OK, so I haven’t actually said that to any of them, I’ve been amazingly patient, and smiley. It’s all about the smiles in Thailand. It’s also all about the scams. Granted you’d have to be pretty daft to fall for most of them, but it gets a little irritating being constantly paranoid of anyone that tries to talk to you. And the simple matter of getting a lift around the ‘old town’ (conveniently both popular with tourists and not served by regular public transport) involves a tedious and time wasting bout of haggling. I’ve never been great at haggling, and it’s difficult to find the motivation when you suddenly realise your arguing over a matter of twenty pence. OK just have the 100 fucking Baht if you’ll shut up and let me get on with my day.
But it’s not all bad in Bangkok, there’s some cracking markets to hunt round. Last weekend we headed for the famous (well, it was in the guide book) Chatachuk Weekend Market in Bangkok. Fiona thought it started at 7, so we got up at 7, which meant we arrived just in time for it actually opening at 9. This was handy as it gave us a chance to give the place a once over whilst half the stalls were still setting up, and the market was still fairly quiet.
Four hours and probably several hundred stalls later, we made our way back upstream, passing by the hoards of punters coming off of tour buses, and I got to thinking about markets back home. Certainly Camden and Spittalfields are always crawling with tourists, but what about the Barras? Does Lonely Planet Glasgow list it as a must see? I haven’t been there in years - and I mean years as in the last visit I remember we were buying pirated floppy disks with Atari ST games for £2.50, maybe £2 depending on how good Dad’s haggling was that day - but I think I’ll definitely make a trip down there when I get back to Glasgow, just to see how it compares to the markets I’ve been kicking around in London and the rest of the world in the last few years.
Saturday, October 18th, 2008
After all the effort of carefully selecting music for my iPod before I left, I’ve hardly even listened to it so far. On the first flight from London to Tokyo I was kept entertained by the films and muic they had on the wee screen at my seat. They had the new Raconteurs album (Consolers of the Lonely), which I hadn’t got round to buying/hearing yet, so I listened to that while I was snoozing. It’s pretty good! Although to be fair I always find that music sounds twice as good when your half asleep - it’s a strange phenomenon.
As I mentioned in my ramblings about Tokyo, the new Oasis album (Dig Out Your Soul) was released in Japan the day we arrived (a week earlier than in the UK), so I was dying to get alisten to that. When I got to Mount Fuji on Sunday night, I had an email saying that as part of the deluxe box set I’d ordered, I could download the album the day before it’s UK release! Which I did, but then couldn’t actually listen to on my iPod for various technical reasons. Until I got to Hiroshima, got it sorted and had a good listen. First impressions are good although it always takes a while to draw your attention away from the first couple of tracks and any singles you’ve heard already.
The new Metallica album is awesome! There’s probably not much more to say on that. It’s fast. It’s loud. It’s catchy. (Some would say too loud but that’s a story for another day!)
Sunday, October 12th, 2008
My favourite slice of Japanese culture so far has to be AnPanMan, who I learned about at the Manga museum in Kyoto. AnPanMan is a cartoon character aimed at young children. His head is made of bean-curd bread, and he flies around helping the poor and hungry. When he rescues someone he flies with them on his back, and lets them eat his head. Then he gets a new head made.
Monday, October 6th, 2008
Luggage arrived just as we were checking out of the Khao-san guest house to head for the train. Shit they’re heavy. What did we need all this stuff for anyway? We’ve actually been managing just fine for the past four days.
First thing to do was to validate the Japan Rail passes, then we could hop on the bullet train down towards Mount Fuji. In fact it wasn’t quite as exciting as that, it was two Metros, a regular local train and a regular long distance train to get to Kawaguchiko. Yes, for the record, this was my idea. Kawaguchiko is a quiet little town in the mountains - it’s basically the Aviemore of Japan. The weather was a bit drearier down this way as well, so it was a welcome change from the sweaty madness of Tokyo. Hostel was nice too, a bit more old skool - shoes off at the door, sushi breakfast, that sort of thing.
As it was quite apparent there wasn’t much else to do in Kawaguchiko, we headed out for dinner to a Japanese BBQ restaurant, about a mile up the road. Sitting on the floor around the hot coals, the waiter brings out a selection of meat, fish and veg for you to cook yourself. He gave us a quick rundown of how to do it - grill it, dip it in the Teryaki sauce, grill it some more, eat it. His last instruction, however, was most unexpected.
“For fish, wait until stop moving”
I looked down at the plate, sure enough the little bugger was still alive. An eight-inch rainbow trout skewered from head to tail - both head and tail still wagging in protest. Delicious with a bit of Soy Sauce in the end though.
The evening’s second installment of Japanese culture came courtesy of a traditional Onsen bath. Instead of having individual showers in the Ryokan, all they have is a large, communal, very hot bath, preceded by a quick shower. A bit like the showers at the swimming baths only you’re not allowed to keep your trunks on and you have to sit on a little stool while your getting washed.
In comparison to the hostel in Tokyo, the Kawaguchiko Station Inn was absolute luxury!
Saturday, October 4th, 2008
We didn’t really have a plan for Saturday night. We got home from exploring Asakusa in the afternoon and were still in Wednesday’s clothes. Luckily there was a note on the room door telling us that BA had called and would be delivering our bags in the morning. Result! Well more of a consolation result, ideally they wouldn’t have lost them in the first place but hey.
This meant we could stick to our original plan of leaving Tokyo tomorrow to head south, so we made a list of all the things we still wanted to do in Japan and tried to make a plan for the next 10 days. And so Saturday night was assigned to going up Tokyo Tower.
Tokyo Tower is basically like the Eiffel Tower but a bit smaller (I think). The elevator ride up to the observation area is smooth as a baby’s backside, not like that rickety piece of shit in Paris. The views once you’re up there are awesome! Tokyo looks more like Tokyo from up here than it does on the ground. I managed to get a couple of decent pictures I think but they still don’t really do it justice…
