Our Trip to Asia.

A Few of My Favorite Things From Tokyo So Far

I did a double take when I saw this set of vending machines.  The range of options is what really struck me.

Evidently the Japanese still find un-exploded bombs leftover from the massive number we (the U.S.A.) dropped on them tucked away in their backyards.  The picture in the lower right-hand corner shows an excavation crew pulling one out for disposal.

This is the Nakamise market in Asakusa.  We very much enjoyed poking around and buying gifts.

The View at Night Out Our Hotel Window

Japan

We made it to Tokyo!  I know we haven’t finished writing about Thailand yet, but here’s a quick update on Tokyo anyways.

So, our flight from Chiang Mai to Bangkok was cancelled and we were moved to a later flight, which was a probleme because we had to get to another flight from Chiang Mai to Kuala Lumpur and then from there to Tokyo.  We were only going to have an hour to connect in Bangkok—pretty tight for an international connection!  But, Air Asia was fantastic.  They got us our luggage immediately, right at the gate, and then walked us over to the Malaysia Airlines gate to check us in, and everything was fine. A little stressful though!

These flights were fine—mainly sleeping—and we arrived in Tokyo yesterday morning (Tuesday) at 7am.  After a little mishap with the trains, we got ourselves straightened out with the very kind help of a Japanese man who was on his way to….Massachusetts!  We finally got ourselves over to our hotel, and were able to check in early, a godsend, since we were both disgustingly dirty after a night in airports and flying across Asia.  We’re staying in a tiny studio/short term apartment, and it’s great—we have a kitchen, a washer/dryer, and the usual combination of insanely high tech Japanese toilets, showers, etc.  We hung out here for a bit and got settled, and then wandered off to find some lunch.  We ended up in a noddle joint that looked good, but we dicovered the menu was entirely in Kanji, which is the script Dave can’t read.  We stared at it for awhile, trying to figure out what to do and laughing a little because we were so lost.  There was an elderly man sitting next to us and he leaned over and told us he spoke English and offered to help.  He ordered us some soba with tempura, and we got into a conversation with him.  It turned out he had lived in the US in the 50s in Chicago and San Francisco, he had been to Boston, and he had fought in WWII on the side of the Japanese.  He had had a very lucky life—he told us he just missed being on a plane that crashed, and that almost all the men in his unit had died in the war, but his ancestors had protected him.  It was an incredibly neat conversation—amazing to meet a man who fought against us as a young man, and now at the end of his life was talking to two Americans visiting his country.

Next we poked around a bit, got some coffee and came back to rest a bit.  We headed back out.  We’re staying in Shinjuku, a neighborhood similar to Columbus Circle, and we decided to walk through Harajuku and Shibuya (super hipster neighborhoods) for dinner and sight seeing.  We wandered through bookstores, eyeglass frame shops, fancy department stores, and some residential areas, until we finally found the place we’d picked for dinner, tucked away on a small street.  After confirming they had a menu in English (again, the main menu was in Kanji) we were seated.  They gave us a Japanese menu and we didn’t know what to do!  There was no way to order so we were just trying to figure out how to leave politely when they showed up with the English menu.  We ordered grilled beef, grilled tomato, grilled pumpkin, and a rice ball with miso.  We also got a really neat little amuse bouche with tiny shrimps, some kind of fish, and a cucumber salad.  While we were eating this, I (Suzanne) managed to completely fumble my chopsticks and flip one out of my hand so that it fell down the stairs!  (We were on a little second floor area next to the steps.)  I was SO embarassed.  Luckily it didn’t seem to phase the wait staff, or they were polite enough to not tell me that I had just created an international incident.  We had an amazing meal and then headed home to collapse.  On the walk home, we suffered another mishap—I (Suzanne) felt my foot hit something, looked down, and discovered I had just kicked a huge toad!  I admit it, I screamed.  Luckily the toad was fine!  We stopped at a convenience store for some ice cream and breakfast for today.  The night ended pretty early as we both were worn out from the overnight flight.

Update Part 2

Since our flight was delayed (see below) we have enough time for another post.  Here’s my update for the middle of our time in Thailand, we’ll get more up soon about the wedding!  We’ve had an amazing time in Thailand!

On Wednesday, our second full day in Chiang Mai, we went into the Old City section (it’s surrounded by a moat!) and visited wats (temples).  Chiang Mai has over 300 wats, so obviously we were unable to see them all, but we saw many amazingly beautiful wats, stupahs, and Buddah figures.  We took a lot of pictures, which we’ll get up on Flickr soon.  It was a really neat experience, but I wished we had someone along (Steve!) who could explain some of what we were looking at—it seemed like there was a lot we were just missing out on by not being familiar enough with the religion, iconography and history.  At one of the wats, we had the scariest experience of the trip—a slightly rabid looking dog had decided it was the guard of one particular building on the grounds, and when we got too close it started to heard us away, growling.  We very carefully walked away, and as soon as we were far enough away, it flopped back down and totally chilled out, like, okay, got those annoying non-monk humans away!  I don’t think we were actually in any danger, but it was not a friendly dog!  All the wats were full of dogs and cats, mostly very cute and friendly—we scratched some cats but stayed away from most of the dogs, since dog bites aren’t exactly the best vacation activity.  After walking around the city for several hours, we were sorely in need of some air conditioning, and Dave wanted to get something to wear to the wedding, so we went over to the mall, which was strangely like and unlike an American mall.  We poked around and explored for awhile and Dave got some clothes.  We also finally figured out how to order our coffee black, without sweetened condensed milk.  While I love me some sweetened condensed milk, the amount I’ve consumed in the last few days was bordering on insane and it was really nice to just get the coffee plain.  After that it was back to our guesthouse for a bit, and then we headed back into the Old City for a yoga class at the place Gernot has been training to be a yoga teacher.  It was a really wonderful experience—in a dimly lit, creaky wooden room, with windows open to the air and the sounds of the city, and pouring rain outside, and a class that felt really physically satisfying (Dave and I have been slacking a bit on the exercising!).  After class, we went home to shower and then and out to dinner with Tara, a new friend of ours and an old friend of Marisa’s, at Fine Restaurant, which was indeed quite fine.  It was a bit more upscale than the street places we’ve been eating at, and we had some amazing fish dishes.  After dinner, we tried to visit Iberry, an ice cream shop, but sadly just missed the closing time.

Thursday, we were picked up early and headed outside of town for a cooking class at Thai Farm Cooking School.  The trip included a stop at a huge food market, and then we were driven to a farm about half an hour outside the city.  We were in a class with a bunch of other nice tourists—two other Americans, one of whom is an epidemiologist!, a German college student, a Spanish guy traveling around the world, and two French women, one who works as a teacher in Beijing and one who works in Singapore.  We learned how to make Pad Thai, green and red curry, Tom Yum soup, green papaya salad, and various desserts.  It was quite a lot of fun, and hopefully we’ll be able to recreate what we made—it was all so delicious and seemed so easy there! The instructor was a really nice guy, and the school was very well set up and run.  We also made friends with some very cute cats.  When we came back, stuffed to the gills, we met up with Marisa and some friends.  Dave headed off to get a massage, and I went off with Marisa and Cindy and Fronie to buy some wedding related gear at the mall.  We also got to check out some of the crazy English on bags and other products, and I sampled Mr. Bun, an amazing food experience.   After shopping, I went and got a Thai massage myself, and after a bit more chill out time, there was more dinner.  This time we were determined to get to Iberry (there had been a second aborted experience in there somewhere) so we rushed a bit to get out by 9:30 so we could make the 10pm closing time.  We were quite disappointed to get there and discover they had closed early!  And lost business for at least 11 people.  Crushed, we finished up the evening with a great time at the Drunken Flower, which seemed to be a whiskey bar for Japanese expats.

Friday (today), we finally managed to sleep past 7am for the first time on our trip!  It must have been the mint juleps at Drunken Flower.  We finally got to try Dragonfruit today at breakfast, which was great—it is so cool looking and I’ve been eying it curiously all week.  (It’s pink with green spikes coming off it and is a bit like a less tart kiwi; the flesh is white with black seeds and very juicy.)  A note about breakfast—we’ve been eating Thai breakfasts all week, which for me has meant rice porridge with an egg (unfortunately a little on the raw side for my taste!), and for Dave has meant a soup with meatballs and rice, with fried dough dipped in condensed milk on the side, and then coffee and fruit for both of us.  I (Suzanne) headed out early to do a little shopping at Weave, an organization that sells fair trade, living wage traditional handcrafts made by Thai refugee women, with a fried banana stop on the way.  After that, I headed over to meet up with Marisa and several of the other visiting guests, and we all got manicures and pedicures at a French spa.  (My toes are blue and my fingers are a very natural shade of pink.)  This was my first manicure and my second pedicure, ever.  I’m not sure I’m super into having people poke around at my fingers and toes but they look much nicer than they do when I try to polish them myself.  Dave went off and did manly stuff with some of the other men, I think, I’m not sure what but there was food involved.  Then we all (the women) stopped at a road side stand for some khao soi (noodles with curry), and ran a few errands before leaving the city, including FINALLY getting into Iberry for some loganberry sorbet.  After that we all piled in a van for the trip out to our beautiful guesthouse a bit outside the city.  The wedding festivities started tonight with dinner at an outdoor restaurant on the Ping River.

Update

Hi folks, sorry it has been far and few between—our internet access has been unreliable and slow when we have had it, and we have been very busy as well.  Now we are in the Chiang Mai airport awaiting our flight to Bangkok, where we will connect to our Tokyo flight.  Unfortunately, the situation is a bit stressful: our 12:25 flight was cancelled and we will have to take a later flight to Bangkok, so our time is tight.  But the Air Asia staff member we dealt with at the counter arranged it so that we would have our checked-in luggage held for us at the gate, and they would meet us at the check-in counter to make sure we got to our flight successfully.  So I think we’ll be fine.

Anyways, Thailand has been wonderful.  We met a bunch of great people who came for Marisa and Gernot’s wedding, and speaking of that—the ceremony was wonderful and the reception party was a lot of fun.  We ate a tremendous amount of great food, saw amazing sights, and because we didn’t do nearly as much as we would have liked, we will certainly be back to visit.

We’ll be posting more soon, including more about Thailand.  I’m quite confident our hotel in Tokyo will have more reliable internet access!

Thailand, Day .5 and Day 1

We arrived in Chiang Mai last night around 6pm.  It’s one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever seen.  Here’s a partial list of the last day and a bit:

• Eating khao soi (curry noodles) at a roadside stand
• Staying in the most awesomely decorated guest house ever
• Eating rice porridge with egg and scallions and sweet coffee for breakfast
• Coconut ice cream, in a freshly opened coconut, covered with sweetened condensed milk, dried sweetened mung beans (maybe?), some unidentified gelatinous sweet things, and fresh coconut
• Hanging out in a bar that’s basically a roof over some tables, with a Thai man playing Stairway to Heaven on the guitar, eating piles of Thai food
• Hanging out with old and new friends
• The Chiang Mai Insect Museum
• Ordering Phad Thai at the lunch cafeteria at the nursing school (and getting laughed at in a nice way by the man in front us)
• Drinking beer at an expat improv jazz bar
• Getting Thai massages
• Riding three on a scooter and two on a bike
• Riding in a tuk tuk (scooter type thing with a three-seat cart attached)
• Riding in a song-thew (converted pick up truck)
• Eating (Dave) and not eating (Suzanne) deep fried toad skin
• Eating tempura apple
• Lots and lots of coffee with sweetened condensed milk

We like Thailand quite a lot so far!  More to come tomorrow, with photos