tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244587542024-03-07T07:34:26.435+00:00Bike Hippiesassorted adventures, cycling and otherwiseHelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03299418875040197838noreply@blogger.comBlogger210125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24458754.post-4823445141200415692015-04-16T16:14:00.000+01:002015-04-16T16:14:30.941+01:00More TokyoOur time on bunny island sadly came to an end, and so too would our whole trip quite soon - we bullet trained back to Tokyo and checked into a capsule hotel. Normally capsules are gender segregated (in fact, many are men only) - I wanted to try one, Dgym wasn't so keen until I found a special one that offers couples' capsules.<br />
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Sadly, although I think capsules are a nice idea in principle, the implementation didn't seem so great. I'm not sure our couples' capsule was any bigger than a regular single capsule, so things were cosy to say the least. The walls are really thin and the end of the capsule is only a bamboo curtain so you can hear everybody else. It was baking hot at first - there was an air vent into the capsule but it didn't seem to help much.<br />
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It's all a little old fashioned - they use old style lightbulbs which don't help the heat situation. there's a CRT television hanging from the ceiling which (a) takes up a silly amount of space where you could have neat little shelves or pockets there and a flip-down flatscreen TV in the ceiling (b) makes for some excellent head banging moments. Fortunately the lights went out eventually, the air con in the corridor started to do its job and we both found the right sleeping positions to get us through the night, so long as nobody moved. We were quickly out of there the next morning... it was an experience worth having but also worth ending - although I'd gladly repeat it on my own with a well designed capsule that felt like my own little space and not a plastic box with somebody stomping on the ceiling.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nikojaga</td></tr>
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After that we were very happy to check into our proper hotel for the last couple of days, which were really all about the food.<br />
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We went on a cooking course and learned to make miso soup, yakisoba (grilled noodles), nikojaga (a type of stew) and taikayi (fish shaped waffle-type sweets - in this case filled with red bean paste but there are a lot of sweet and savoury possibilities). It was all pretty tasty and nikojaga in particular was so simple to make and so delicious that we'll definitely be trying it at home.<br />
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We also managed to get through more delicious sushi, a fantastic katsu curry, a most excellent bowl of ramen on Tokyo station's Ramen Street, and a mini choc fest in <a href="https://www.meiji.co.jp/sweets/choco-cafe/">100% Chocolate Cafe</a>.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Weird ice cream</td></tr>
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We also paid a visit to Namja Town in north west Tokyo where we visited the Ice cream Parlor and were able to sample all manner of weird ice cream flavours including pumpkin, potato, aubergine, wasabi, avocado, curry and tomato as well as some less weird but very delicious ones like plum sherbet and Japanese citrus. They were mostly very well done, my favourite was the aubergine which was slightly smoky. They also had some weirder ones like coal, oyster and cow tongue. I was hoping they'd have the famous raw horsemeat flavour but it wasn't on the list.<br />
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And so we're back home, after about 24 hours of travelling, including a stopover in Paris with a delightful inter-airport transfer, and the obligatory pain au chocolat, (it's actually illegal to pass through France without consuming one) - somehow I managed to have about three breakfasts, jetlag messes with appetite at least as badly as it does with sleep. Still, it's a lovely time of year to come home, it's warmer than it was when we left and everything smells of spring!Helhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03299418875040197838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24458754.post-52463301507642187582015-04-15T00:29:00.000+01:002015-04-15T00:29:14.327+01:00Bunny rampage<br />
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We took a detour to Hiroshima when we left Kobe. We only had a couple of hours there, but we both wanted to visit ground zero and the peace park and it was well worth a visit. The atomic bomb dome building was covered in scaffolding but understandably a lot of work goes into preserving its state (they are now looking into <a href="http://www.hiroshimapeacemedia.jp/?p=34038">retrofitting seismic protection</a>) and it is an eerie sight nonetheless.<br />
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There is certainly a "grim reminder" and memorial aspect to the place but the surrounding park is a lovely place to reflect and it is also a place of hope with several monuments to peace.<br />
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After that we stocked up on cabbages, carrots and bananas and got the train and ferry to Okunoshima.<br />
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Okunoshima is better known as Bunny Island, and is inhabited by approximately 700 rabbits and very little else. There are no natural predators (land based at least, we saw a few birds of prey overhead and I'm sure they have a pretty easy life) so the bunnies have little to fear and are happy to hop up and say hello, although their interest fades quite quickly if they find out you don't have food.<br />
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We had a couple of nights booked in the hotel there, buffet dinner and breakfast included - which was quite nice sometimes (especially the night they had a chocolate fountain), although neither of us are really keen on Japanese breakfast - there's a lot of strong flavours - pickles, fish, natto - which are quite hard to stomach so early on. We had a Japanese style room with a nice view out towards the sea - and we could see hundreds of bunnies hopping around outside.<br />
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Unfortunately it rained all day on our only full day on the island, and Dgym wasn't feeling well so we didn't get to make the most of it - we watched damp little bunnies running from the shelter of one tree to another, but I managed a slightly soggy walk around the island (only an hour) to see the rather creepy ruins of old forts and the WWII poison gas factory, all of which are now inhabited by rabbits.<br />
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Next morning Dgym was feeling a little better and the rain had stopped - we were up early and went out for an epic feeding session with all the tasty green stuff we'd picked up in 7/11 on the mainland, plus a few bananas. (for some silly reason they don't sell this on the island- you can buy bunny food pellets at the Tadanoumi port but they prefer fresh veg).<br />
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Okunoshima, like many things we have seen in Japan, really is as awesome as it sounds and is an incredibly unique place. The bunnies are friendly, incredibly cute and if you sprinkle your lap with shredded cabbage, you'll soon have a lovely warm bunny blanket to keep you warm.<br />
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Helhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03299418875040197838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24458754.post-79822837282434313112015-04-13T00:52:00.001+01:002015-04-13T01:38:25.990+01:00KobeWe spent a few days in Kobe. I only knew two things about Kobe before we got there - it had a big earthquake in 1995, and is famous for its beef. It's a lively city, and seemed busier than anywhere else we've been here, including Tokyo.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Blank canvas</td></tr>
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Kobe is sandwiched between mountains and sea, and has several cable cars taking you up onto the ridge overlooking the city. We took the Maya cable car + gondola on our first day in town - we have been trying to get as many forms of transport as possible into our holiday and this was an opportunity to strike off another two, so we weren't too bothered that we couldn't see the top of the mountains from the bottom and were happy to take a little adventure into a cloud. This is supposedly one of the most beautiful night views in the world, the problem being that (a) it wasn't night (at this time of year the last car back down is 5:30 so you can only do that in summer anyway) and (b) the cloud provided a perfect blank canvas upon which to project our own imagined views of Kobe and Osaka Bay.<br />
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There was a sign at the top of the cable car warning you to watch out for snakes - being British, we don't really get to see snakes in the wild - I've only ever had one or two fleeting glimpses, Dgym has never seen one - so to us this was exciting and we spent quite a while watching the bushes for interesting movement - we saw a shed skin but no actual snakes.<br />
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We took a day trip to Kyoto which was <i>cold</i>. It had been a bit fresh in Kobe but not too bad so I'd gone with raincoat over T-shirt, seriously regretting it when we got to Kyoto and realised it was colder - so first thing was a spot of hoodie shopping.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Outside Fushimi Inari</td></tr>
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We headed out to Fushimi-Inari shrine and started the walk up through the hundreds of orange torii (gates), along with several hundred other tourists. I hate other tourists, they are so annoying, why can't they all just go away?<br />
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We got fed up and uncomfortable quite quickly, so took the next exit and found a path alongside the shrine, through the bamboo forest - which was incredibly pretty and we had it almost completely to ourselves - there were a couple of small shrines dotted along the way - not that we're too bothered for temple and shrine viewing, it's equivalent to wandering around churches back home, and we don't do that much either.<br />
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Next day we visited Osaka, again a short day trip from Kobe. Seeing that there was a tall building with a glass elevator up to the 35th floor, followed by a pair of glass-walled escalators suspended over thin air taking you up to the 39th - this seemed like another great opportunity to make Dgym feel ill. Despite it being a good deal lower than Tokyo Skytree I think the open air terrace helped, and here is a picture of him looking all nervous.<br />
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Oh yes, and the beef. We maybe went a little crazy on the Kobe beef but it really is very nice.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Delicious cowflesh</td></tr>
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<br />Helhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03299418875040197838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24458754.post-85353274298402888152015-04-13T00:18:00.000+01:002015-04-13T01:32:39.313+01:00Over-friendly sushi<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ibusuki</td></tr>
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Further south, past the end of the bullet train line, pretty much as far south as you can get on the train, we stopped in the small town of Ibusuki for a couple of days.<br />
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Ibusuki has been described as the Hawaii of Japan. I'm not sure it needs one and I've never been to Hawaii but Ibusuki is laid back, volcanic, very lush and green and quite tropical so perhaps there are some similarities. We'd been wanting to see somewhere smaller, which it was, although the large number of rusting fixtures and overgrown buildings suggested it was a town that had seen better days.<br />
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Our hotel was only partly refurbished so some bits of it also had that kind of feeling - the room we booked turned out to be more of a prison cell with bad 60s decor and an ageing pink bathroom - we upgraded to a much nicer Japanese style room with tatami mats and futon beds - during the day, the room is occupied by a large, low coffee table with legless chairs - this is moved aside in the evening and futon beds (a thin mattress topped with sheets and duvet) are laid out.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dgym walks to Chiringashima</td></tr>
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We walked out to Chiringashima, a small island connected to the mainland at low tide by an 800m sandbar. The walk out to the start of the sandbar took at least an hour, and crossing was like wading through... well... damp sand. I kept falling behind Dgym - I can normally keep up but when each footstep is hindered by sand and you have to take more steps because you have shorter legs, it's inevitable and I think it's a great excuse. Our legs were pretty knackered by the time we got back to the shore and then it was another hour's walk back to town, by which point we had definitely earned some tasty 7/11 snacks.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP2LLT5bq-d8eVp1VJCygeY1JbRVVAtu-iE-jbLzuo3UitjrrMsSlp3z1EHSeb4Vl1niEGtShiZsqziztukETozyJoFr2ceJpqJHQ7t9Pydh9hl_Owik4N4Xtl5PjdnkBrNG0j9g/s1600/P1080913.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP2LLT5bq-d8eVp1VJCygeY1JbRVVAtu-iE-jbLzuo3UitjrrMsSlp3z1EHSeb4Vl1niEGtShiZsqziztukETozyJoFr2ceJpqJHQ7t9Pydh9hl_Owik4N4Xtl5PjdnkBrNG0j9g/s1600/P1080913.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lake Unagi</td></tr>
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I promised Dgym we'd take it easy the next day with a nice relaxing electric bike ride to a nearby lake. Of course there's only so much an electric bike can deal with and only so much you want it to deal with when you've rented it for four hours and want the battery to last long enough to help you when you really need it, so with many apologies to my husband's legs, I had to break my promise and we were pedalling quite hard at some points. We made it out to Lake Unagi and back and were able to see some beautiful Japanese countryside on the way - we passed farms where we saw cows and pigs, and saw several lizards on the cycle paths on our way out of town.<br />
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On our return I was straight onto the hotel shuttle bus up the road to the sand baths where I was given a yukata (Japanese robe) to wear and directed to one of several large sandpits where I lay down and a Japanese man shoveled black volcanic sand over me up to my neck.<br />
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The sand is warm, not too hot at first but it builds - you're only supposed to stay in for 10 minutes as it can cause burns if you stay in too long. It was a strange 10 minutes, the sand was kind of warm and comforting but also heavy and constricting, and I could feel my heartbeat in my hands and feet the whole time. Afterwards, there were showers to clean off the sand, and an onsen so you could soak away the stress of being immersed in hot sand, by immersing yourself in hot water. I felt pretty refreshed afterwards, but also very red and sweaty.<br />
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The food options in Ibusuki were a little limited - but on our first night we headed out to a place with good reviews, which turned out to serve sushi and some other dishes. We chose couple of sushi sets which weren't as good as the ones we had in Kumamoto, but more to the point one of the toppings freaked us out somewhat - shortly after we'd been served our sets, Dgym announced that he had seen his prawn move. I didn't believe him and pointed out that (a) it had no head and (b) perhaps it had been resting on another bit of food and had slipped down.<br />
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But he saw this happen a couple more times and demanded I watch it carefully. Sure enough, the tail eventually twitched, which made me feel slightly ill. Eating bugs or raw horse is one thing... stuff that's still moving or still alive, nooo way. I watched my own shrimp closely but it was definitely past the point of movement - though I did feel funny about eating it. Dgym left his alone, fair enough (although I think he was a bit rude - when food waves at you, it's polite to wave back).<br />
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We later learned that sweet shrimp often do this - they're taken from a tank in the restaurant and often beheaded just before serving - so some residual tail twitching is common, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbjYXcg19gE">often a lot more violently than dgym's did.</a> So no doubt that it's fresh... but still no thank you.Helhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03299418875040197838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24458754.post-86982860302545986302015-04-06T14:50:00.000+01:002015-04-07T09:21:01.690+01:00With apologies to horsesWe took the bullet train south for 6 hours to Kumamoto, a city about half way down Kyushu, mainland Japan's southernmost island.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kumamoto Castle</td></tr>
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Despite our frequent dislike of cities, the ones in Japan are turning out to be quite enjoyable, providing us with tasty food, nice parks and pretty castles. People seem to be pretty good at being clean, quiet and respectful here so it is easier to coexist without the usual destruction of personal space and assault upon our ears. Kumamoto was no exception to this - it's a pleasantly lively town and we had a fun three days.<br />
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We visited Suizenji gardens which had ponds, stepping stones, cherry blossoms, herons and a mini Mount Fuji. We also visited the castle, a vast multi-level structure which has been partly rebuilt and provided a good couple of hours' wandering around gazing at pretty blossom trees and enormous stone walls. We were also going to visit Mt Aso but it's currently spewing poisonous gases so you can't go near the crater. However, from the top of the castle the volcano's activity was clear to see - it was quite a cloudy day anyway but it was definitely more grey and hazy in the eastern direction towards Aso.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Best sushi ever</td></tr>
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The food in Kumamoto was lovely. We visited Sumo, a sushi bar a few blocks from our hotel - they didn't speak a lot of English but we ordered a couple of sushi sets which turned out to be fantastic - the chef was making it right in front of us and passing us the pieces as soon as they were ready. The fish was tasty, smooth, melt in the mouth, the rice beautifully textured and still slightly warm. On the negative side, this has almost completely ruined English sushi for me!<br />
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The following night we went to a barbecue restaurant - following the delicious steaks we had in Hamamatsu, we were up for more grilled meat.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Horse</td></tr>
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However, this was yet another Japanese only menu with just a few pictures to go on. We ordered some tasty looking marbled meat and some other bits - the raw meat arrived thinly sliced and beautifully arranged with shredded raw onion, horseradish and some decorative flowers... and no grill.<br />
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Raw horse sashimi (basashi) is a local speciality - fish isn't the only thing the Japanese like to eat uncooked. Dgym was a bit bothered by this and tried to communicate that we'd really prefer a grill. This was either refused, or not understood because we didn't get one. And so we started on our our meal of cold dead horseflesh which (along with some other, warmer, things) was very nice. I'd like to say this has completely ruined English raw horsemeat for me but I'll leave you to insert your own Tesco lasagne joke here.<br />
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We also ended up in a cat cafe (Dgym's reaction to my suggesting this - "I hope they cook it better than the horse") - this is a cat shelter where you can go and interact with their cats and also grab a drink. One lady had the good sense to camp out next to a blanket and so had three or four furry companions snoozing beside her.<br />
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Most of the adult cats seemed a bit disinterested (i.e. they were cats) but we did spend a good portion of our time there with a tiny five week old black kitten who seemed intent on mauling my trouser pocket to death.<br />
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Helhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03299418875040197838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24458754.post-26122197309019912432015-03-30T01:35:00.001+01:002015-03-30T01:35:05.003+01:00HamamatsuAfter our trip to the mountains we were ready for somewhere warmer so we headed down to the coastal town of Hamamatsu which was still bloody freezing.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPeBh2aU766sVbgvx2nzIRpuOMCrINSImZShImjyIvesRiqZHBdMvNn0SgnByrAB-R1SyQt-6c77zjDZlRI2bOZdTEm60_yOr67Rhgzj3etQr4x2CA8oYQMj4PLoRw19ROgaQ-ig/s1600/IMG_0673.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPeBh2aU766sVbgvx2nzIRpuOMCrINSImZShImjyIvesRiqZHBdMvNn0SgnByrAB-R1SyQt-6c77zjDZlRI2bOZdTEm60_yOr67Rhgzj3etQr4x2CA8oYQMj4PLoRw19ROgaQ-ig/s1600/IMG_0673.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
We headed straight for the castle and surrounding park, supposedly the best place to view cherry blossoms but, although one tree had taken the plunge and was dripping with flowers, the others were still quite hesitant, unlike Dgym in his ice cream consumption - he had to stop off at a nearby van in spite of the cold, because it's not a real holiday unless he has an ice cream every day. We had a nice time walking around the pools and across stepping stones.<br />
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Hamamatsu presented a bit more of a challenge in terms of language - our hotel receptionist's English seemed to be limited to "thank you" (much like our Japanese) but we managed to communicate via the usual means of hand gestures and pointing. Dinner was another challenge - on our second night we ended up in a restaurant which didn't even use regular numbers, with the help of my phone app we gave ourselves a quick crash course in Japanese digits so we could figure out the prices and managed to deduce some important food words from the pictures.<br />
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The journey to Hamamatsu had been our first trip on the bullet train (Shinkansen) which was fantastic, they certainly look the part, are incredibly comfortable and feel fast like a train should be. I have been in trouble with Dgym for pointing out they're no faster than the TGV (both can go up to 320km/h although the Shinkansen is frequently more like 260-280 and the TGV has a much faster record time) however it is also important to note that so far nobody has been on strike when we've tried to use the Shinkansen. We are finding that with the Japan Rail Pass, it's quite feasible to stay in one place and take day trips of a couple of hundred miles, which is quite a different travel strategy for us considering the Shinkansen will take you a quarter the length of Japan in the time it takes a Thai train to show up.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLLW9eJNjbjvf80sphYMbmHZijEr3403BUPl4PA-iSTtdebQ2VX2GPQi6lhowHBR93OX2TC87V8TWfMPHmpqMms5TapOWbg65Qr6FgXcXEzg5xiyXq1D592oazRJ_S9pL8-r7ajA/s1600/P1080812e.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLLW9eJNjbjvf80sphYMbmHZijEr3403BUPl4PA-iSTtdebQ2VX2GPQi6lhowHBR93OX2TC87V8TWfMPHmpqMms5TapOWbg65Qr6FgXcXEzg5xiyXq1D592oazRJ_S9pL8-r7ajA/s1600/P1080812e.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Linimo</td></tr>
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With that in mind, we took a 45 minute bullet train from Hamamatsu to Nagoya, where we caught the subway out to the end of the line and then took the Linimo maglev line all the way out to the end. Linimo is one of the three operational maglevs in the world. It's not a high speed train but this was an opportunity to ride an actual maglev so we were pretty excited, unlike most of the other passengers for whom it was just another journey.<br />
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The ride felt incredibly smooth - it's a driverless system so we sat at the front which was quite strange and felt a bit like a rollercoaster - a maglev track can go up and down slopes and around corners in ways that are hard for conventional rail. Even more exciting was reaching the end of the line and watching the track being switched over - the tracks actually bend to make the connection between one side and the other. And then we rode back again, picked up lunch (Dgym indulged his McDonald's fetish while I had a delicious fish-waffle toasted sandwich) and returned to Hamamatsu. Yes, we took the train all that way to ride the train - we know how to party.<br />
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Next day we walked a couple of miles down to the seaside park, we picked up lunch in town before heading out and were shocked to find no benches en route on which to sit and eat it. We made it all the way to the sea before finding a concrete block on which to perch and eat our bento boxes with basil seed drink and delicious weird little puddings.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDHEgH5w0Fwauda-CzJ5KQm2f_L376sNfEqnpek0lpKH62SGorGV5_I2iEA7yddlT9XzC5K2KbMvYBjQ_M9V7JijuXu4SmqkH82fuQ3__Z3QPVF3v_umbNKR5vKIkvurSsjRBw5Q/s1600/IMG_0762e.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDHEgH5w0Fwauda-CzJ5KQm2f_L376sNfEqnpek0lpKH62SGorGV5_I2iEA7yddlT9XzC5K2KbMvYBjQ_M9V7JijuXu4SmqkH82fuQ3__Z3QPVF3v_umbNKR5vKIkvurSsjRBw5Q/s1600/IMG_0762e.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tsunami Evacuation Facility</td></tr>
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The coast, facing out into the Pacific Ocean, bore strong reminders of the possibility of tsunami, with signs everywhere, tall buildings designated as tsunami evacuation points and a purpose-built hill in the park<br />
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On our last night in Hamamatsu we found a BBQ / pizza restaurant which also had an all Japanese menu but also some friendly English speaking customers to help us out - Dgym got his pizza fix and we also ordered a delicious lump of marbled beef which was gently grilled in front of us, sliced and served with onions and salad and was the most delicious, smooth melt in the mouth beef I've ever had. We've had some decent steaks in the UK and some quite nice ones elsewhere but nothing quite this tender. We stopped by at lunch time the next day hoping for more but they weren't open. We will be looking out for more delicious cowflesh on our travels.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiibqtZh5invshiXoPxY27Ps5izlKbs3vv09CNUgDL7i8yDIryKXyYAswsFUC6amOhaeKbzORofNUoj5zqK9DO76cmMzcoTQGPZu9nhXavMOvg_HSmE_obgQRuwX7yqIdeVNKrURA/s1600/IMG_0804.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiibqtZh5invshiXoPxY27Ps5izlKbs3vv09CNUgDL7i8yDIryKXyYAswsFUC6amOhaeKbzORofNUoj5zqK9DO76cmMzcoTQGPZu9nhXavMOvg_HSmE_obgQRuwX7yqIdeVNKrURA/s1600/IMG_0804.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Blossoms</td></tr>
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Before leaving town we dropped our backpacks in a station locker and paid another visit to the park, and we were glad we did. It had warmed up considerably and just two days later, the blossoms had bloomed and the park was full of birds, squirrels and picnicking families!<br />
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We backtracked a little way to Kakegawa where we spent one night (that's Saturday hotels for you) with a lovely view over the castle from both our room and the ladies' onsen.<br />
<br />Helhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03299418875040197838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24458754.post-37793274713413977302015-03-29T14:12:00.002+01:002015-03-29T14:19:19.626+01:00Mountains and maglevsAfter the excitement of Tokyo we moved on to Nikko for the weekend, a small mountain town which is home to several shrines, temples and waterfalls.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tatami mats</td></tr>
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We stayed in a semi-Japanese style room which consisted of a tatami mat area with two legless chairs and a low table, but we got normal beds.<br />
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We'd not got on too well with the bus that was supposed to drop us near the hotel - it went right through our stop and circled back to the station so we jumped off at the next opportunity and had to walk about a mile in our backpacks - so we were sweaty and tired and ready to take advantage of the hotel's private onsen (hot spring bath).<br />
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Onsen are usually public and male/female segregated but we could use this one together privately and it was a good way to get used to the correct bathing and shoe / clothing removal routines before publicly embarrassing ourselves. Dgym found it a bit too hot for his tastes (he likes a nice luke warm bath) but I've since taken a couple of public onsen and while it's a bit of a nerve racking experience at first, I managed to correctly identify the ladies' bath, to my great relief nobody else was wearing any clothes either and it was overall quite a lovely experience.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQyeouaqinMVV0rsidOag-r_XHd9TD2o6mPhejPaDfm-lE6lRbib0yq6y7APp5mU7UxItTGNtL70MxojnRG2TyIe5ZFOw1Pd0Tbf5IKqazM-LN09WC6BuDmZOvWPyHYOIJW-6G6Q/s1600/IMG_0451e.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQyeouaqinMVV0rsidOag-r_XHd9TD2o6mPhejPaDfm-lE6lRbib0yq6y7APp5mU7UxItTGNtL70MxojnRG2TyIe5ZFOw1Pd0Tbf5IKqazM-LN09WC6BuDmZOvWPyHYOIJW-6G6Q/s1600/IMG_0451e.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lake Chuzenji</td></tr>
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On our first (and only) full day in Nikko we took the bus, more successfully this time, to visit a nearby lake and waterfall. Both were spectacular although it was really quite cold, and the cherry blossoms, or lack thereof, seemed to agree. Nikko itself was quite cold but getting a little further up into the mountains really gave it an edge.<br />
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We were able to take a lift down to near the bottom of the waterfall where there were viewing platforms and we discovered a cool optical illusion - stare intently at the moving water for 15-20 seconds, then shift your eyes to the adjacent rock, and it looks like the rock is moving upwards.<br />
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We headed back down the hill for the relative warmth of Nikko and more onsen.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Statues with hats</td></tr>
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Next morning we were leaving but first I took a short walk along the river by the hotel - the bank was lined with dozens of statues, each wearing a red crochet hat and a cotton bib. Some still had heads, some slightly less so.<br />
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It's said that the statues are never seen in the same order twice. I'm pretty sure the vast wealth of photography on the internet can be used to check this but it's a nice little legend - and perhaps it really is somebody's job to sneak out overnight and rearrange them. It was also a really beautiful walk along the river and Nikko truly is in a stunning location.<br />
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While in Nikko we also managed to sample various forms of Yuba, a local delicacy which is the skin that forms when you make tofu and, while I wouldn't actively seek it out, it is nicer than it sounds.<br />
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Our next stop was Kawaguchiko, a small tourist town at the foot of Mount Fuji which, strangely enough, turned out to be even colder than Nikko and also quite sparse in terms of restaurants which were actually open so we spent a nice couple of evenings shivering our way through town in probably sub-zero conditions wearing every layer of clothing we had, seeking out our dinner (to be fair, it was a particularly cold week in most of Japan).<br />
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Fuji itself was hiding when we arrived but was visible for the following two days - it really is a beautifully shaped mountain and I can kind of see what the fuss is about.<br />
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However, we had another reason for visiting the area - some months back I'd read about the maglev test facility near Tsuru which is home to an exhibition centre and viewing rooms which allow you to observe test runs of the 500km/h magnetically levitated trains (known in Japan as linear motor trains).<br />
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As formerly obsessive Transport Tycoon players, we are both a little obsessed with maglevs but they are still to become a reality on any kind of scale. There are currently only three public-serving maglev lines in the world and this line will one day join them.<br />
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The Japanese are clearly taking this seriously - construction begins this year and the line is scheduled to open from Tokyo - Nagoya in 2027 - the journey will take 40 minutes. It's a 42km test track but very little of it is visible above ground - huge amounts of tunnel have been constructed through the surrounding mountains and this will one day form part of the real line.<br />
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The <a href="http://www.linear-museum.pref.yamanashi.jp/english/">exhibition centre</a> itself is excellent - there are several observation rooms with displays showing where the test train currently is and how fast it's going. There's a tiny little toy maglev you can ride in (well, of course we did), a superconducting magnet demo and an incredibly detailed diorama showing the future of the area with maglevs, regular trains, buses and cars whizzing around.<br />
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We highly recommend visiting if you are in the area - it's not exactly on the tourist map but nor is it that hard to get to and indeed is day trippable from Tokyo - via the existing Chuo line and a change at Otsuki, it's a 20 min walk from Kasei railway station. It was quite a unique experience and I hope we'll come back and ride the maglev when the line opens!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Can you believe they let us drive it?</td></tr>
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Helhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03299418875040197838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24458754.post-32202267614959957912015-03-26T13:14:00.000+00:002015-03-26T13:33:31.380+00:00TokyoWe are in Japan on honeymoon - having got all that pesky marrying stuff out of the way and being long overdue a proper holiday, we decided to visit somewhere we've both always wanted to see, somewhere suitably weird that would provide us with delicious food, awesome trains and plenty more to keep us entertained.<br />
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So far the food has not disappointed - we have had sushi for breakfast, delicious bento box lunches and some lovely dinners, with a fair few interesting squishy sweet treats in between. The trains are indeed excellent - frighteningly clean, timely (apart from that one time when one of them was two minutes late), and very comfortable.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sushi breakfast</td></tr>
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We arrived in Tokyo last Wednesday evening and successfully found our hotel in the Ginza district. We enquired at reception about places to eat and were informed that since it was a little on the late side (9pm) quite a few of the local places would be closed, but were given somewhere to try. We failed to locate it but a lovely lady stopped and offered to help, and directed us to a more restauranty area a few minutes walk away. We had been advised to look at more than just ground level when seeking food - Tokyo is a dense city and restaurants can be several floors up. We ended up on the 11th floor of a shopping centre with a couple of meal sets - the presence of bibimbap on the menu and the kimchi that accompanied our meals suggested we might have ended up in a Korean restaurant, but it was tasty nonetheless and very good value at 1500yen (approx £8) each.<br />
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Next day we started off with a sushi breakfast in the Tsukiji fish market, which was lovely but huge. The market itself was very much reminiscent of south east Asian markets in layout and atmosphere - simple restaurants linked by narrow corridors, hard to tell where one ends and the next begins, tiny ladies ushering you in with laminated menus, each establishment equipped with a tiny open kitchen, diners crowded on stools around a narrow bar. And then you notice the super-clean kitchen, the floor that's not wet and filthy and the lack of stifling heat and mosquitoes. (Not that I want to diss SE Asian markets too much because they are awesome).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sweetcorny goodness</td></tr>
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We then quickly found ourselves in a convenience store checking out the weird treats (funny how that keeps happening) - I definitely won the most weird and disgusting item competition with my heated can of sweetcorn drink - imagine drinking a slightly sickening sweetcorn soup from a can. No really, just say the word and I'll bring you some back.<br />
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Our morning was spent wandering around a very pretty park which had a pond, giant fish, some grumpy looking cats, and two cherry trees that had managed to blossom, and we soon realised that it wasn't exactly warm.<br />
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We were in denial when we packed - we're going on holiday, how could it *possibly* be cold? A quick check of the weather forecast indicated that Tokyo was several degrees warmer than London. We'd also heard Japan can be quite rainy so we packed raincoats rather than winter coats, and threw in some thermal base layers just in case it got a bit nippy.<br />
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In the evening we went on a food tour - since discovering food tours in Vietnam, I've been keen on this as a great way to learn about the different foods of a country or city when first arriving. Unfortunately this wasn't a great food tour, there was not a lot of variety - but it was an enjoyable evening out with other Tokyo visitors, appropriate amounts of sake, tasty things on sticks and some sizzling pancake-hotplate action.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dgym cooks up some monjayaki</td></tr>
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Our second day was crazy and action packed, maybe a bit too much so. First up was a visit to the Kimuraya bakery at Ginza station, the oldest Western style bakery in Japan. Unfortunately this didn't open till 10am and we were out of the hotel and wanting breakfast by 9 so we settled for a pre-breakfast breakfast at a local cafe while we waited, and I had a lovely bright green mug of matcha. The bakery was well worth the wait as we were very excited to be able to buy what turned out to be a cubic apple turnover, thus beginning a new era of "trying to find cubic food".<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cubic food</td></tr>
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Next stop was in southern Tokyo for the Miraikan Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. Our main reason for visiting was to see the Asimo demonstration. If you didn't know, and didn't see him on QI, Asimo is a humanoid robot. I don't have pictures because it was a popular demo - I was standing behind a tall person, and everybody was filming it anyway so you can look it up on Youtube. He ran around, stood on one leg, hopped and then sang a little song. It was all very impressive although I'm not convinced it's not just a short person in a robot suit.<br />
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There were plenty of other exhibits, including some demos and videos of robot hands and eyes (motion tracking systems), and a Shinkai 6500 submersible which you could go into and imagine what it's like being crammed into a space not much bigger than a phonebox with two other people thousands of metres under the ocean. Museums can be pretty tiring and our feet were knackered after that so the obvious next step was to catch the metro to the other side of town and go up a 450m tower.<br />
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The Tokyo Skytree is only two years old and is the world's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_towers_in_the_world">tallest self supporting tower</a>. We've been up the Willis tower in Chicago but this one is higher and one of our goals for this trip was to send Dgym up a tall tower and make him feel sick. Well, we went up but, disappointingly, he felt fine.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Natto</td></tr>
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Next morning it was me feeling ill after accidentally ordering a bowl of natto, nasty stuff which we had been warned about on the food tour - it looks like an innocent little bowl of beans but dig in and they turns out to be stuck together with this stringy gloopy saliva-like substance. The taste is not nice either, I barely made it through a spoonful and had the aftertaste all day. It basically looks and tastes like a family of slugs have wandered all over your breakfast.<br />
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We had to head out of Tokyo after that as it was Saturday, and hotel bookings are insane on Saturday nights in Japan.<br />
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It's a huge city but it's clean, easy to get around and has nice parks. We were surprised by how quiet it is and at first wondered whether our ears had gone funny - cars seem unusually quiet, people don't raise their voices a lot and the streets just didn't seem that busy for such a dense city. We've headed off to see some more of Japan for now, but will be back for a few days at the end of our trip.Helhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03299418875040197838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24458754.post-5171138918991944312013-04-01T15:33:00.000+01:002013-04-01T15:33:20.277+01:00Dessert town<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
We were quite sad to leave Ban Krut, we enjoyed a very relaxing week there but we were also excited to move on, see new places and eat street food again - while there were a few regular food carts around town selling dried squid, pancakes and grilled chicken, Ban Krut was very much a restaurant kind of place (albeit a delicious seafoody one).</div>
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We took another longish train journey to Surat Thani (which is where I ate bugs last time). Based on the awesomeness of the markets, Surat Thani would be worth a few days' stay, however it's a bit too big for us and the hotels are a little lacking - I struggled to find a hotel not reviewed as grim or noisy, and the one we did stay in was OK but sat on top of a karaoke bar which kept going until 1am! It's the kind of place where people stop over one night on their way to beachier destinations, so I suppose there's little incentive to run a hotel where people might want to stay longer.</div>
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However, we did make an exciting discovery on Surat Thani's night market: rolled up ice cream! Your choice of ice cream flavour (green tea) is mixed up with your choice of stuff (brownie), it's all mixed up together, spread out on a coldplate and scraped off into little rolls. The ice cream flavour wasn't all that great but it was exciting nonetheless!</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ice cream rolls!</td></tr>
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We moved on swiftly next morning to Khanom, a town on the coast about 50 miles east of Surat. Perhaps some of the appeal was based Khanom being the Thai word for dessert, but it was described as a quiet fishing town with a couple of markets and nice beaches - sounds good to us!</div>
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Our bus arrived in the centre of town and headed straight for the seafront, which turned out to be a couple of kilometres' hot sweaty walk - it turns out Khanom is a pretty spread out kind of place! We stayed in the Golden Beach hotel, a slightly odd place with birds nesting in the corridors and a constant stream of horrible cheesy love songs playing in the reception and restaurant - we ate there the first night as it was quite a long walk to town but the music was so awful we avoided it after that.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Golden beach hotel - birds live here</td></tr>
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We found a beautiful big (and apparently seven-legged) orb weaver spider hanging off the phone wires - South East Asia has plenty of spiders although we have encountered very few of them and this is the biggest we've seen by far - her body was a couple of inches long. I tried to get Dgym to stand nice and close to give a proper sense of scale but he wasn't having any of it.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Orb weaver spider</td></tr>
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<br />We also met quite a few football fans in this part of the country. Quite understandable - football's popular all over the world, but what we found curious was that they mostly seemed to be Manchester United supporters. Most people think of London when we say we're from the UK but here the default assumption was that we might be from Manchester! (Alternatively, the conversation goes "Where are you from?" "England" "Ahhh.... David Beckham!") We were a bit bewildered to meet so many Thai fans supporting an English team, but then again neither of us really "get" football.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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And as if he hadn't had enough animal encounters this holiday, Dgym had his foot mauled by tiny puppies:</div>
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Khanom was a nice town with a good beach but not quite what we were looking for for our last week in Thailand, so we moved on after a couple of days. We were kindly offered a lift into town by another hotel visitor, a Man United fan of course, so we crammed into the back of his pick up truck - what with both of us carrying backpacks and the five kids and a bicycle already in the truck it was a bit of a squeeze so we perched on the end, tried not to crush any children and held tight for the couple of kilometres' ride, hoping there would be no sudden acceleration!<br />
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We weren't quite sure how to catch the bus back out of town but after a couple of minutes of standing by the side of the road looking confused, we were soon offered help by a motorbike taxi driver who kindly phoned the minibus people so they knew to pick us up.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Khanom beach</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Khanom town</td></tr>
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Helhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03299418875040197838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24458754.post-65134274020231492602013-03-16T01:07:00.000+00:002013-03-16T01:07:25.791+00:00Ban KrutBan Krut was recommended to us by two separate Thai people, so we felt it was probably worth checking out. It also happened to be a couple of stops further down the train line and turned out to be a relaxed little beach town full of resorts, seafood restaurants and beach bars. Most importantly, it had a 7/11 and a pancake man.<br />
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It was here that we happened upon a delightful new snack, green tea flavoured Sponge Crunch - which turned out to be very tasty little crunchy sponge rings. They also come in chocolate and strawberry flavour, but the chocolate wasn't up to much and who likes strawberry flavoured anything?<br />
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We spent a week in Ban Krut. There's not a lot happening in the area - local attractions include a temple on a hill, a big gold Buddha on a hill, a cave full of buddhas, a couple more temples, the beach and some very pretty scenery. However, there is a lot of seafood to be eaten and we did our best, falling into a daily routine of swimming, bike rides, tasty food and hiding from the midday sun. The beach was lovely with nice sand, gentle waves and incredibly warm water.</div>
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We went up the hill to see the Buddha - the resort had free bikes which were single gear and often in quite a state - you'd be lucky to get one brake, let alone two, so while going up the hill was hard work, coming back down again was plain scary (also, very squeaky). However, it was worth the trip - the Buddha statue was very impressive and we got some lovely sunset views over the surrounding mountains and coconut plantations.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Coconuts and mountains</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Big gold Buddha</td></tr>
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<br />Another ride took us south along the coast towards Bang Saphan and then inland through some beautiful countryside - we saw cows, fields, coconut trees and also found some baby pineapples.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pineapple</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dgym marvels at a pina colada plantation</td></tr>
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I really wish I had a better picture of this - this guy rode past us carrying two enormous long poles, each several metres long. We were busy being impressed by that when his passenger came into view. You see that on the back of the motorbike? That's a monkey.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Monkey on a motorbike</td></tr>
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<br />More pictures from Ban Krut:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Beach bar</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Temple lit up at night</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Beach swings</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stormy day</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdl2xIE79SnzWqMPHmf527NAetaE-j82PvzoTeZdxKxfOo3QlsLl6tg2QnGjYbiYzrOjM7yXQZ07JvedEfwDyghLzPhvC6QskcE1k3zYVOP9JaHFSl7erQfHMQvbHiZ4dcUhmfrA/s1600/P1040878.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdl2xIE79SnzWqMPHmf527NAetaE-j82PvzoTeZdxKxfOo3QlsLl6tg2QnGjYbiYzrOjM7yXQZ07JvedEfwDyghLzPhvC6QskcE1k3zYVOP9JaHFSl7erQfHMQvbHiZ4dcUhmfrA/s320/P1040878.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Squid snacks</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiiGL27f8Lhc_YkbVrpICtNl7zC-vyd3JTmogaaa6lwugTNYa1SITBk77HdH0cHhBqIELuARtkNMCEor9VhH_-TX1ZiSVZ3I1bNjkWlvtMqEWtC1HqjPzxpECNBCnT13nzlSDEMw/s1600/P1040957.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiiGL27f8Lhc_YkbVrpICtNl7zC-vyd3JTmogaaa6lwugTNYa1SITBk77HdH0cHhBqIELuARtkNMCEor9VhH_-TX1ZiSVZ3I1bNjkWlvtMqEWtC1HqjPzxpECNBCnT13nzlSDEMw/s320/P1040957.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Boats</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzrcO7zBP2N8oUPTaTFqhmE1Nl45ZAczrJ4igA-_jVHPLyDKJF_1j3ubDlsRM6djFB9SEA59PuVyeHcAYVAgAgsE9_TB5ELAatn4pc0TUD_qTTB1m6iPzS-Sbjd0-lJ_jFMCQKJg/s1600/P1040975.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzrcO7zBP2N8oUPTaTFqhmE1Nl45ZAczrJ4igA-_jVHPLyDKJF_1j3ubDlsRM6djFB9SEA59PuVyeHcAYVAgAgsE9_TB5ELAatn4pc0TUD_qTTB1m6iPzS-Sbjd0-lJ_jFMCQKJg/s320/P1040975.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cow and bird</td></tr>
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</div>
</div>
Helhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03299418875040197838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24458754.post-72518604219258779382013-03-09T14:48:00.001+00:002013-03-09T14:48:43.083+00:00Prachuap Khiri Khan<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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We previously spent a week in Prachuap before went to Vietnam - seeing as we were headed back that way and it was so lovely the first time round, we couldn't resist stopping in for another few days. Unfortunately we had hit the start of the long weekend for Makha Bucha day, a Buddhist festival. Being a nice bit of coast a few hours' drive from Bangkok, long weekends transform this area from a sleepy seaside town into party central and all the hotels fill up.<br /><br />After a long hot sweaty walk around town we had no room, and realised we probably should have pre-booked. I sat on the sea wall to use the wifi of a hotel we'd previously stayed in and search some booking sites, while Dgym headed to the bike shop to try and rent a scooter to look further afield.<br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS-xbZF2aeXINJjMnPq714sa0kCxQ_4WlbP6sTnLxgrnYfK4PIXMdgoygsD0Afuu802tfLC0zZOURruEdgEF5jyzvWtsTjFAg9eoc-Ma0Y_xrYYKRB9LLUSiANRVxMw5k03fzDGg/s1600/IMG_20130223_195323.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS-xbZF2aeXINJjMnPq714sa0kCxQ_4WlbP6sTnLxgrnYfK4PIXMdgoygsD0Afuu802tfLC0zZOURruEdgEF5jyzvWtsTjFAg9eoc-Ma0Y_xrYYKRB9LLUSiANRVxMw5k03fzDGg/s320/IMG_20130223_195323.jpg" width="320" /></a>It turned out the bike shop owner had a contact with a spare room in a cheap guesthouse near the station so we reconvened and were tuktuked over there. The guesthouse turned out to be a small cottage with kitchen and living areas, owned by a German-Thai couple who had lived in Germany for 40 years and then moved back - neither spoke much English so we found ourselves thoroughly confused by trying to recall scraps of German while also trying to use and expand our Thai vocabulary.</div>
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Still, we enjoyed spending another three days in Prachuap - despite being kept up at night by trains, dogs and on the last morning woken by some kind of heavy duty blender being operated on the other side of the wall from our heads at 8am! The pier and temples were all lit up, the seafront was full of people and there were sand sculptures and a fire spinner on the beach. There was also an interesting looking market on the seafront but it turned out to be mostly wooden furniture and plants, neither of which we are looking to take home as souvenirs.</div>
<br />We spent most of our time in the Ao Manao area, which is where Dgym was bitten last time we stayed. We revisited the monkey area (with Dgym keeping a healthy distance from the offending furballs) and "walked" up Khao Lommuak, a 275m high hill on the headland between the Prachuap and Manao bays.<div>
<br />There is a reason for the quote marks around the word walked. The path up the hill started out as steps. They were quite steep and we found ourselves quite hot and sweaty after no time at all. The steps stopped about two thirds of the way up and the route continued as a roped rocky path. No worries,we were wearing reasonable shoes and can handle a bit of rough terrain!<br /><br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKhb2ibl3je_B-Lz-kCVbfWQbmvNcHsrM6CrKVzHY5nCaL7mfYjQeVrtY-2PdPmgrEJ1VJkM1K7N1rpgK9OwfrxfAf42rmpArzRvmPI-t_q4zplU-DCnyeQaq60xkmmdijolPW5A/s1600/P1040455.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKhb2ibl3je_B-Lz-kCVbfWQbmvNcHsrM6CrKVzHY5nCaL7mfYjQeVrtY-2PdPmgrEJ1VJkM1K7N1rpgK9OwfrxfAf42rmpArzRvmPI-t_q4zplU-DCnyeQaq60xkmmdijolPW5A/s320/P1040455.JPG" width="320" /></a>It got steeper and more technical as the "path" continued up. The rope was strong and well secured but there came a point when we realised that we were going up pretty much vertically and in any sane situation we'd be double roped and wearing helmets, climbing shoes and harnesses. That and other things like we probably should have set out with more water and also it was going to be even more interesting getting back down. Fortunately we both did a few sessions of indoor climbing a few years ago so obviously knew exactly what we were doing.</div>
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Well, we made it to the top. There was a little pagoda and some smashing views over the local bays. There were some little oranges on the pagoda which would have made an ideal hilltop snack, but they'd been offered up to the Buddha and it probably would have been bad karma to eat them.</div>
<br />We made it back down again, with some abseiling and careful use of footholds - Dgym's legs were trembling by the time we reached the bottom, at almost exactly the same spot where he'd fainted a couple of weeks previously! Can't take him anywhere... well, at least not there apparently.<br /><br />Apart from that, our two beach days were pretty relaxing. Ao Manao is really a very lovely beach - the water is warm, the waves are gentle and it is owned and controlled by the Air Force, meaning it's kept nice and clean and also is unlikely to get overdeveloped. The northern end has pretty little pink seashells and tiny digging crabs:<br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzsjHRuderU0x4mRtMKD72C-TtlkjLR_5nrgiWyJILV7p_qV2nRNAUPF7MIhjcENznBtl0qm21YNNDzdVji7o_-4NtwVo5OtvISB0XZjJegfvjPilDycpJfU9NFAu23TwS5sNrbQ/s1600/IMG_5924.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzsjHRuderU0x4mRtMKD72C-TtlkjLR_5nrgiWyJILV7p_qV2nRNAUPF7MIhjcENznBtl0qm21YNNDzdVji7o_-4NtwVo5OtvISB0XZjJegfvjPilDycpJfU9NFAu23TwS5sNrbQ/s320/IMG_5924.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">North end of Ao Manao</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjxTT2o_UP9WNqg7p_cUeq0u4gZixMy7uvh0drGpTyOHuQxk1oBaghlqh4i_1FNit-uL6r1eHnePTChVChVdTHf8H9QxVOKYHPLbYpAFxT7JVsrg0FuNiZHh2umEb7zlVjFhE5vA/s1600/P1030647.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjxTT2o_UP9WNqg7p_cUeq0u4gZixMy7uvh0drGpTyOHuQxk1oBaghlqh4i_1FNit-uL6r1eHnePTChVChVdTHf8H9QxVOKYHPLbYpAFxT7JVsrg0FuNiZHh2umEb7zlVjFhE5vA/s320/P1030647.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Digging crab</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAwe3fyWpmgRZmCLOh-zXG_5YcETVog_fUGlFDBmzPTgL6f0D86JV_9IOZncohOKvQtCVxoGL0tveBJt9YfIDtXBoSJTC4aOXNiKY7XQKNKMy5O6vk-fY7Yh_nYNTs8mPMX-M-QA/s1600/P1030441.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAwe3fyWpmgRZmCLOh-zXG_5YcETVog_fUGlFDBmzPTgL6f0D86JV_9IOZncohOKvQtCVxoGL0tveBJt9YfIDtXBoSJTC4aOXNiKY7XQKNKMy5O6vk-fY7Yh_nYNTs8mPMX-M-QA/s320/P1030441.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Also, feet-sized seashells</td></tr>
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At the southern end there are plenty of deckchairs, umbrellas and little restaurants serving delicious seafood.</div>
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<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ7ynrqM64L4LC3H4qoOqr0d269CwBWN9K6LH1WX65gHV6rnzSuhcmEYCf1X4SgH1SmXpuhRJ_9ebpBO_34UmhuIHcSSZrZ34sNhueknnTWujLmEcLVE1-GWajSAgCj3l-_0VpkQ/s1600/P1040466.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ7ynrqM64L4LC3H4qoOqr0d269CwBWN9K6LH1WX65gHV6rnzSuhcmEYCf1X4SgH1SmXpuhRJ_9ebpBO_34UmhuIHcSSZrZ34sNhueknnTWujLmEcLVE1-GWajSAgCj3l-_0VpkQ/s320/P1040466.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption">Check out those suckers!</td></tr>
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The Air Force run some kind of activity sessions for teenagers at weekends which seem very popular - we saw hundreds of kids running back and forth along the beach and playing silly games like bottom shuffling races down to the sea, everybody lying end to end, and getting spun around several times then seeing if you can still run in a straight line.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHixAHMXB5tk2HDSMXk_F2NnYpVoFfqz6BQ-GH6e4oPDG0OnvY1X9oOlShQhU6pv1XtlbAj2U8YMIDg0iVH1CgMV9dygmAHOuBW5Nwqy_aeoOqTWiPyfylA2iVZzsmP0R7eLTYSw/s320/P1040524.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">End to end</td></tr>
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Ao Manao is a couple of miles out of Prachuap. We really enjoyed the town itself which has some lovely sunrises and sunsets:</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjarG_hgs0fQ6ts-ZyigSdW_5adFVD3TnaiMvcAlz8f0Q_fdHTJCGZg_wHcOVZ9yz-mSqrD2b4As_XtDmS6CLbi9Mbv_t01lqBqqS4MOAW4CClma8vFi88LIF6V6XlWLPjU3q-ChQ/s1600/IMG_5955_filtered.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjarG_hgs0fQ6ts-ZyigSdW_5adFVD3TnaiMvcAlz8f0Q_fdHTJCGZg_wHcOVZ9yz-mSqrD2b4As_XtDmS6CLbi9Mbv_t01lqBqqS4MOAW4CClma8vFi88LIF6V6XlWLPjU3q-ChQ/s320/IMG_5955_filtered.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sunrise over islands in Prachuap Bay</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQZgaRr9Yt-oL1U5yXu21y89wB1C4UE5ZNFFMk_m59o5Wki95jsmTLlpBWw6pI8Fi7a4Vz4UZKdCwtrRVfGWNEACHOsHoiizDJ99tsiL_X1UkYmZ8ViTjDGjZ14zjEYxxQ3FyScg/s1600/P1030558.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQZgaRr9Yt-oL1U5yXu21y89wB1C4UE5ZNFFMk_m59o5Wki95jsmTLlpBWw6pI8Fi7a4Vz4UZKdCwtrRVfGWNEACHOsHoiizDJ99tsiL_X1UkYmZ8ViTjDGjZ14zjEYxxQ3FyScg/s320/P1030558.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sunset from Wat Thammikaram (Monkey Mountain)</td></tr>
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It also has two populations of monkeys - the nice monkeys, one of which bit Dgym, and the mean monkeys, who didn't actually do anything wrong.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGuhgNmYDmJ_sCZJfqGNFLOOqYOmA_KiTWjTffARqoGMsBMnqXgvh1u4EthfvuQ8j1x1Inz4Hdg5uMg4wrxde5FOLO6MA_pdZ9VVcFRG70aohBRcKohELxrlsRqzZzTVc_BamEqw/s1600/IMG_5886.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGuhgNmYDmJ_sCZJfqGNFLOOqYOmA_KiTWjTffARqoGMsBMnqXgvh1u4EthfvuQ8j1x1Inz4Hdg5uMg4wrxde5FOLO6MA_pdZ9VVcFRG70aohBRcKohELxrlsRqzZzTVc_BamEqw/s320/IMG_5886.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Nice" monkey</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1TXYZ_UNl6DAbkN2d7kjrjyqDMK6DDShz9tSJxh1B-rHg3H_duMveY7vEvK9kytkstLefWxjfSTspg7MB84QiiHl5fXZIU8EvSqut2_8AOc7tbdNzgZiAjGa1raMfn_WyUxM_2A/s1600/P1030485.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1TXYZ_UNl6DAbkN2d7kjrjyqDMK6DDShz9tSJxh1B-rHg3H_duMveY7vEvK9kytkstLefWxjfSTspg7MB84QiiHl5fXZIU8EvSqut2_8AOc7tbdNzgZiAjGa1raMfn_WyUxM_2A/s320/P1030485.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Guilty looking "mean" monkey</td></tr>
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Prachuap also has morning and evening markets, some great restaurants, bicycle rental and some pretty cheap hotels. It is very popular with Thais on long weekends and otherwise has a low level of non-Thai tourism A lot of the restaurants have a translated menu and there's even a couple of pizza places but most visitors seemed to be there to have a quiet time and appreciate the place for what it is. We'd definitely recommend it if you want to go somewhere genuinely Thai, eat nice Thai food and relax for a while!</div>
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We first heard about Prachuap just before we left the UK, my dad sent me a Guardian article about <a href="http://m.guardian.co.uk/travel/2012/jan/16/thailand-top-10-beach-hotels">Thai beach hotels</a> - so thanks Dad!</div>
Helhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03299418875040197838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24458754.post-61890292813265542902013-03-04T02:42:00.002+00:002013-03-04T14:42:27.806+00:00Pak Nam PranWe're back in Thailand now. Whereas Vietnamese food is very nice and the coffee's way better, Thai food still wins hands down, and that includes the awesome snacks. One of the first things we did on our return to Bangkok was to hit 7/11, where I found an appropriately-named (and also very tasty) snack for Dgym:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmdQvV5_QI_G1UqM7Wdls2BMAGJfyGREgwj_nTDHMtFMfwp9XFX5aH56lfLpGrZLUtLVukbG52CH0Y34YPHeNxPAI1rY5GsJInphd5tVf26PoQV-x7zGGfzm4l7bcVwU-XPIXuyQ/s1600/P1040390.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmdQvV5_QI_G1UqM7Wdls2BMAGJfyGREgwj_nTDHMtFMfwp9XFX5aH56lfLpGrZLUtLVukbG52CH0Y34YPHeNxPAI1rY5GsJInphd5tVf26PoQV-x7zGGfzm4l7bcVwU-XPIXuyQ/s320/P1040390.JPG" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's true.</td></tr>
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(His injections have all gone well, one more to go and he hasn't started foaming at the mouth yet).</div>
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We have spent the past couple of weeks train-hopping our way south to explore the Gulf coast some more - before we headed out to Vietnam we'd spent a very enjoyable week in Prachuap Khiri Khan, a pleasant and sleepy little seaside town, and we decided to explore that stretch of coast some more.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj_vSN-39x3rdlGrQn69DE5K-Cddxa8xpmd6Gq1qtW_rwNhHA1pjGm_Pjt33whXw1O_vrJGZZSTgJoCphSqohPHWSu5Hu-0bzjQPI8jLDsJQMkQxZ06TCVNYTj9sYlZ2EFsgONDg/s1600/P1040394.JPG" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj_vSN-39x3rdlGrQn69DE5K-Cddxa8xpmd6Gq1qtW_rwNhHA1pjGm_Pjt33whXw1O_vrJGZZSTgJoCphSqohPHWSu5Hu-0bzjQPI8jLDsJQMkQxZ06TCVNYTj9sYlZ2EFsgONDg/s320/P1040394.JPG" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Riding 4th class</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div>
Our first stop was Hua Hin - we arrived about 8pm, our train having been due in at 5 (not at all unusual with Thai trains) and after wandering around and finding a hotel we made a snap judgement that this wasn't our kind of place.</div>
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A little hasty perhaps but expat bars and burger joints everywhere isn't a good sign for us - not to mention very few Thai people in sight - and wherever Thai people go, good Thai food is never far behind! So we weren't too keen to hang around and made a "swift" exit next morning by means of sitting around for a couple of hours waiting for the next train to show up<span style="font-family: 'Bitstream Vera Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">.</span></div>
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We got off at Pran Buri, a small quiet town which was actually too quiet and so untouristy we actually had to use hand gestures to get a drink from a street stall - which is fine, we're gradually learning Thai at a rate of about one word per day, but we saw no sign of anywhere to stay... so we found a taxi to take us to Pak Nam Pran, a nearby seaside town which we'd previously noted on the map and looked as if it may have some potential.</div>
<br />
Pak Nam Pran turned out to be to be the dried squid capital of Thailand, with racks and racks of flattened squid drying in the sun all the way along the seafront. The smell was quite something - I was quite delighted to see so many squid in one place, although Dgym was less impressed.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv-L0mLDtu3snZPgkJTsCdU6CiRp90L_TpkrR85XNXRfp6UcO_8Q1pO72rE6yrshPCrJwMWWEuIZbzjBqoNBK-YL9RQhGYmIdxG_aqAg2wVJKyNKz_NrnNgSKWkwbwY04F4xyGeg/s1600/IMG_6708.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv-L0mLDtu3snZPgkJTsCdU6CiRp90L_TpkrR85XNXRfp6UcO_8Q1pO72rE6yrshPCrJwMWWEuIZbzjBqoNBK-YL9RQhGYmIdxG_aqAg2wVJKyNKz_NrnNgSKWkwbwY04F4xyGeg/s320/IMG_6708.JPG" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Squidville</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Dried squid on a string makes a lovely decoration and won't add much to our baggage weight, so our friends and family will be delighted to learn we are bringing one home for everybody!</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgky65EkEA9hZ0-aw3pP9YbGS9T7QmTd4ytibEb_dSglxDrSUCopaEdC7fhWheVMm7XyPaFpx7mRMH8qHBHbYuAhQ4stm5BhJtYA2yTVUt1m_4SGjXCT1VWb-KqpJfKFZMmucuwtA/s1600/IMG_6704.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgky65EkEA9hZ0-aw3pP9YbGS9T7QmTd4ytibEb_dSglxDrSUCopaEdC7fhWheVMm7XyPaFpx7mRMH8qHBHbYuAhQ4stm5BhJtYA2yTVUt1m_4SGjXCT1VWb-KqpJfKFZMmucuwtA/s320/IMG_6704.JPG" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Squid shop</td></tr>
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<br />
<div>
The town centre lacked our kind of cheap & comfortable hotel so we ended up in a resort about a 10 minute walk away from the centre and we took the day off from hot sweaty travelling to use the lovely swimming pool, catch up on laundry, explore the town a bit and figure out what to do next.</div>
<br />
It seemed like a nice little town with plenty of cheap street food, a nice clean beach and a big 7/11 which made us most happy (I won the find-the-weirdest-food contest by picking up a packet of chocolate bacon flavour sunflower seeds). We weren't the only tourists but felt like it at times - we were stared at and waved at quite a bit and although there are quite a few resorts nearby, either they were quite empty or their occupants weren't venturing into the town much.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjYI88JgpaASNfPZHBiIqRCxTLyv9EA0t6vP7pe3fLYwO11exsncJQ12KjkTEEea2KQEHiWpzgDU-w3yqB8EDB0aL4NIO3D0180XzJPbmh2HqnNzwvS2RYtlLQMSGsJTRR4JvmeA/s1600/IMG_6691.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjYI88JgpaASNfPZHBiIqRCxTLyv9EA0t6vP7pe3fLYwO11exsncJQ12KjkTEEea2KQEHiWpzgDU-w3yqB8EDB0aL4NIO3D0180XzJPbmh2HqnNzwvS2RYtlLQMSGsJTRR4JvmeA/s320/IMG_6691.JPG" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lovely beach and broken pier at Pak Nam Pran</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-yUBFm0cZzf5NURP4dRcPuipmMFfAAlMmrn1YBJD0IYuUhSD9blg3CLrrq63V-ol2JuMlFT-PW1R3xi704Iw52c8xkZKr3EUQg2nvnQTJpBV1l80F8udDa0eHPqtiuVICixIgSg/s1600/P1040410.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-yUBFm0cZzf5NURP4dRcPuipmMFfAAlMmrn1YBJD0IYuUhSD9blg3CLrrq63V-ol2JuMlFT-PW1R3xi704Iw52c8xkZKr3EUQg2nvnQTJpBV1l80F8udDa0eHPqtiuVICixIgSg/s320/P1040410.JPG" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Beautiful wooden houses</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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One of the nice things about being here at this time of year is that it's spring - back home that's when we get lambs but apparently around here it's baby gecko time! I found this tiny fella trying to sneak into our room:</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy59vO0UmKQ-g3umb2yhAHWNSNW69jOoGtdop64m9VrowrlKA7YRz3XXUSZL2bOvijmIl1OpNFwmkKb_yMMrufV9bVk-prVWZy15v925-ZmQAcMw5LdTN0B1T4E0XVhVGhZIT9nA/s1600/P1040423.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy59vO0UmKQ-g3umb2yhAHWNSNW69jOoGtdop64m9VrowrlKA7YRz3XXUSZL2bOvijmIl1OpNFwmkKb_yMMrufV9bVk-prVWZy15v925-ZmQAcMw5LdTN0B1T4E0XVhVGhZIT9nA/s320/P1040423.JPG" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gecklet</td></tr>
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We spent two nights in Pak Nam Pran and then decided to move on. While waiting for the train out of town we stopped at a food stall and, by the tried and tested means of "pointing at yummy stuff", we obtained these lovely dumpling-pancake things - the orange one was shrimp flavour, the other contained some kind of leafy vegetable<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7XmnBwsLH_s785Ld_H7DdrpEsG57J4ys1qjSGFQtycsz4lJTCQUHaefwII0TELCA50sCU5FbiBpYWIWKDhHFvgoQP5R2kBE7qlJSHzTBObIYtpqFowT9Hbu6JXko65k9xVpew8A/s1600/IMG_20130223_121148.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7XmnBwsLH_s785Ld_H7DdrpEsG57J4ys1qjSGFQtycsz4lJTCQUHaefwII0TELCA50sCU5FbiBpYWIWKDhHFvgoQP5R2kBE7qlJSHzTBObIYtpqFowT9Hbu6JXko65k9xVpew8A/s320/IMG_20130223_121148.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dumpling things</td></tr>
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Helhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03299418875040197838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24458754.post-86976284269154735122013-02-25T12:40:00.001+00:002013-02-25T12:40:41.536+00:00bye bye Vietnam<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB4UYFqzVUcqxjQXuKfTLzTSKYl_D8b5Wlxtvs6So6KQlyhF1Ex9X6FSHWwfdEfESTPLQe0xMZHAt8I3233yQ1ruTgs14Bmeib68Odyaqc-nykRHMu-tKUp_kDN0Cwseaq4-NAkQ/s1600/P1040361.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB4UYFqzVUcqxjQXuKfTLzTSKYl_D8b5Wlxtvs6So6KQlyhF1Ex9X6FSHWwfdEfESTPLQe0xMZHAt8I3233yQ1ruTgs14Bmeib68Odyaqc-nykRHMu-tKUp_kDN0Cwseaq4-NAkQ/s320/P1040361.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
We hired bikes in Hoi An and rode through some beautiful countryside to to the beach, which was clean, sandy and full of Vietnamese families enjoying their weekend. We spent a couple of afternoons there chilling out, reading, drinking cold drinks and eating tasty seafood.<br />
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I rode into town a couple of times which was a bit scarier - junctions are slightly terrifying when you're in a huge crowd of motorbikes and wanting to turn left. There's also a stream of people riding bikes and scooters against the flow of traffic on the left hand side.. hey, if you're going that way and want something on the other side of the road then why not? It's crazy, you need eyes in the front, back and both sides of your head at all times but I survived!</div>
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I did a sunrise photography workshop which involved getting up insanely early (5am pickup - Dgym is not into photography or mornings so funnily enough he opted out), piled into a minibus with five other sleepy tourists and driven out of town to catch a ferry to a nearby fishing village. Fortunately this involved the intake of some lovely Vietnamese coffee and a gorgeous sunrise as we crossed the water, so everybody perked up pretty quickly. We were taken to see and photograph the fishing boats coming in to shore, women coming to meet the boats and fight and haggle over their contents, seafood being weighed and packed up, huge blocks of ice being chipped to keep the produce fresh.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7QQ8p4IdN2pBGp29MLyqmc6aV4bJBfFBmpctxrnqk4OOmnqExCGWG48oAA3YxW8bfVPnQH9bQh_YuLC2XFSJMvZLJ4uuRscAMBazaxq9q7i0WUuBb1_OQLhcqFx47WSSoAFMgFw/s1600/IMG_6434.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7QQ8p4IdN2pBGp29MLyqmc6aV4bJBfFBmpctxrnqk4OOmnqExCGWG48oAA3YxW8bfVPnQH9bQh_YuLC2XFSJMvZLJ4uuRscAMBazaxq9q7i0WUuBb1_OQLhcqFx47WSSoAFMgFw/s320/IMG_6434.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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We were given some very useful advice on how to photograph people, how to approach them and make sure it's OK to do so, show them the photograph afterwards and tell them "Dep!" (Beautiful) which often raises a smile. (Although you don't do this with busy fisherwomen) We were then led on a walk through the village followed by a visit to a fish sauce factory which gave us the opportunity to practise low light photography - i.e. steadying a camera / operating a tripod whilst also holding our noses!<br />
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I learned a lot anyway - it was well worth getting up hideously early for, and as if I didn't already have hundreds of photos to sort through when we get home, I now have hundreds more!<br />
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We flew out of Vietnam last week, having spent about a week and a half there. It's a tiny amount of time for such a big country and I think we barely scratched the surface of what it has to offer. We arrived with a few preconceptions, mostly about it being less laid back, busier and less friendly than other countries in the region.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6W3YsU4rJawmnRnb6LcJ-7FvsJ-i2Jm4Swr0_ApG8BWhyHnq7-GQOoBZZOHXC6HQDoJ8gdSylwUgbJtE9UB475d-l6nFZcl59mefyJr0jo2iOl0xnFGzjsEkKIwSzpmcOW_svfg/s1600/IMG_6063.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6W3YsU4rJawmnRnb6LcJ-7FvsJ-i2Jm4Swr0_ApG8BWhyHnq7-GQOoBZZOHXC6HQDoJ8gdSylwUgbJtE9UB475d-l6nFZcl59mefyJr0jo2iOl0xnFGzjsEkKIwSzpmcOW_svfg/s320/IMG_6063.JPG" width="320" /></a>It's certainly noisier. The constant horn beeping in Saigon is insane, it got a lot less in Hoi An where there was much less traffic, but still the default state of most drivers is to be beeping as often as possible. It's not at all an angry beeping you might get in, say, the UK or the US - it's very much what beeping is actually meant for, saying "I'm here". Some might say it loses its meaning amid the hundreds of others also saying "I'm here" but hey.<br />
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We didn't find it at all unfriendly - we met many lovely smiley and friendly people in Vietnam, especially once we got away from the city. There was probably a little price gouging but we did find in some cases repeat business quickly started to earn discounts, so maybe it's not so much prices for locals but prices for regulars.<br />
<br />
However, the taxi drivers need to start behaving themselves! We were aware of various scams when we arrived, so made sure to arrange for a taxi from a desk in the airport, and on the streets only pick up taxis from companies we "knew" to be reputable. Unfortunately we were still screwed over for about a tenner by a Mai Linh driver who decided the meter value (which read 40.0 or something for a 10 minute journey, meaning 40,000 dong which is about £1.20) should be multiplied up with an extra zero and we owed him about 400,000 dong. We were new to all these zeroes, and pretty sure he was having a laugh but didn't have much to back us up so we paid up, scowled a bit and moved on. Some taxis come with a sticker that make it unambiguous, this one didn't. Oh well... other journeys we took were fine but it pays to agree a price beforehand, or be very clear about how the meter works.</div>
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To end on a positive note about Vietnam: we are missing the coffee!</div>
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Helhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03299418875040197838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24458754.post-55274825747069199792013-02-22T03:19:00.003+00:002013-02-23T04:22:50.196+00:00Vietnamese spamMore
than a week after the Year of the Snake began, the Vietnamese were
still wishing everybody seasons greetings and listening to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Uo0JAUWijM">Abba's"Happy New Year"</a> which is now firmly stuck in my head.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU9Wi2Kh4ESMQjCrvXPQpxtZuqop4Dez4_RArKStXC3oI79tTYT3qXYApaWRl_H9Njw3C6orL5t5Ea5k7g4QpRXv8kl8bp2Fk0Zk1kYfN4M0AIhBj2Xf4it4jnxCv_2CIBeFAurw/s1600/P1040373.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU9Wi2Kh4ESMQjCrvXPQpxtZuqop4Dez4_RArKStXC3oI79tTYT3qXYApaWRl_H9Njw3C6orL5t5Ea5k7g4QpRXv8kl8bp2Fk0Zk1kYfN4M0AIhBj2Xf4it4jnxCv_2CIBeFAurw/s320/P1040373.JPG" width="320" /></a> We
spent five days in Hoi An, a small town about half way up between
North and South. It's quite touristy, with a very photogenic old town
full of pretty buildings, colourful lanterns and little old ladies
with pointy hats and fruit baskets. Westernised restaurants are
common, with full english menu and the opportunity to have a
hamburger or pizza.</div>
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However,
it's not hard to find proper Vietnamese food in the form of street
restaurants, which are much like Thai ones except the seats are much
lower - think those little foot stools you stand on to get to a high
shelf. The Vietnamese are short, but not <i>that</i>
short! People throw their napkins and food scraps on the floor,
apparently a holdover from when they had pigs snuffling around
cleaning it all up, only they stopped using the pigs.</div>
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We
had plenty of pho - I say too much, I'm not a big fan of the
delicate aromatic flavour and prefer a Bun Bo Huey, which is a spicy
noodle soup with beef, pork and lemongrass - it has a similar hot &
sour flavour to Thailand's Tom Yum. Baguettes were a little
disappointing, in the UK a Vietnamese baguette (Banh Mi) has meat or
eggs or whatever and lots of crunchy vegetables like grated carrot,
beansprouts etc. The ones we had in Vietnam were less crunchy and
really just a strongly flavoured meaty sandwich which didn't really
suit our tastes.</div>
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Spring
rolls were a particular favourite with us, especially the rice
pancake variety which are filled with lovely crunchy vegetables,
shrimp etc. I tried the local noodle speciality Cao Lau, in which the
noodles are cooked three times in a special kind of water that you
only find in Hoi An - they had quite a delicate, unique flavour.</div>
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I
went on a food tour which was pretty interesting - this involved a
tour of the market, a walk around the streets of Hoi An, and sampling
of approximately forty different foods and drinks spread over five
hours. I had no breakfast and set out hungry, which seemed like a
good plan but after about six foods I was ready to stop - I'd
particularly enjoyed the first few things which included half a
freshly made spring roll and a delicious sweet
black sesame soup called Xi Ma - it looks like motor oil or tar in a
steaming bucket on the street but I love black sesame flavour and it
was delicious so I foolishly opted for a second helpings.</div>
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I
made it through the full forty foods anyway, trying to pace myself
and just get a taste of everything, settling into a steady pace of
continuous low-level eating. By the end, I wasn't even particularly
full and was ready for lunch a couple of hours later!</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIcdSU4nu861fSWKi_PufZT3H2K7cqkzjJXfaAAGKOqgEgQ9xhcPoyjKnLAoKR8WonYXcc_J8csrtsWg6kaB_onxm-GqNJHFH5VclzmYEFuTRXtD5NsZcwirwlnWgz4GvnMjsNYQ/s1600/IMG_6233.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIcdSU4nu861fSWKi_PufZT3H2K7cqkzjJXfaAAGKOqgEgQ9xhcPoyjKnLAoKR8WonYXcc_J8csrtsWg6kaB_onxm-GqNJHFH5VclzmYEFuTRXtD5NsZcwirwlnWgz4GvnMjsNYQ/s320/IMG_6233.JPG" width="320" /></a>Other
highlights included silken tofu melted into ginger syrup (so smooth
and creamy), rice pancakes with minced wood mushroom, crispy wontons
(another local specialty, they're topped with salsa and taste like a
cross between wontons, nachos and pizza).</div>
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We
learned some curious things about Vietnamese tastes - during the war,
Vietnamese soldiers got very hungry and started stealing cans of spam
from US army bases. Somehow the delicious spammy flavour caught on
and it became popular after the war finished. Native versions are
produced these days, and if you sit down in a Vietnamese restaurant
and see a pile of long thin banana leaf parcels on the table, those
might well be spam sausages to be snacked on while you wait for the
real food. We had the opportunity to try both the beef and pork
flavour of these and... well, let's just say I've never really got
into the spongey meat scene. (I've also sadly never tried the real
thing so couldn't possibly compare).</div>
Helhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03299418875040197838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24458754.post-24061005770783019592013-02-11T17:06:00.000+00:002013-02-11T17:11:44.932+00:00Happy New Year of the Snake!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Being in Vietnam over the Lunar New Year has its good and its bad points. Quite a lot of shops and restaurants are closed, tours unavailable etc. It's crazy-busy, especially in the evenings. I don't know how much busier than usual. On the plus side, the atmosphere is pretty amazing - so many people, it's mayhem but it's good mayhem.<br />
<br />
I feel I have become one with the constant horn beeping. I'm normally quite averse to crowds but these ones are very non-threatening, no pushing or elbowing, and I think it helps being relatively tall here (Vietnamese are among the world's shortest people and at 5'4" I'm the same height as the average man!) Dgym is spending a lot of time hiding out in the hotel until either all the beeping goes away or we do.<br />
<br />
We arrived in time to see the beautiful flower displays on Nguyen Hue, a wide street which has been closed to traffic for the celebrations. It seems a popular activity for young women at this time of year is to dress up in your prettiest dress (and there are some <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ao_dai"><i>very</i> pretty dresses</a>) and smile your sweetest smile while posing for photographs in front of flower displays, fountains, bonsai trees and whatever else happens to be nearby.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Flower street</td></tr>
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On New Year's Eve we went down to the flower street to join in celebrations and see the fireworks. The street was full of people sitting down eating sausages on sticks and chatting. Midnight came and there were fifteen minutes of fireworks - it was a bit weird not having Big Ben to tell us when the moment had arrived, although there was some beeping from nearby speakers. After the display was over everybody walked back very slowly and smelling of fireworks.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">New Year's Eve, Saigon style</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Next day I visited the Spring Flower Festival, quite accidentally - I wanted to check out a park on the way to the War Remnants Museum. It looked as if something interesting was going on in the park, and the something interesting only cost 20,000 dong (about 60p) to get in. Museum could wait! It turned out to be... well, an assortment of things but mainly bonsai trees, ranging in size from small to really small. Also some bonsai islands - big slabs of stone modelled into tiny worlds with trees, waterfalls, tiny people, pagodas and bridges. This turns out to be a Vietnamese specialty called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%B2n_Non_B%E1%BB%99">Hòn Non Bộ</a> and there were some really stunning displays. There were also a few more flower displays and some cacti which seemed to be a more permanent part of the park but it was really all about the bonsai.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bonsai scenery</td></tr>
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Helhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03299418875040197838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24458754.post-131129247536145632013-02-08T14:33:00.001+00:002013-02-08T14:33:38.796+00:00Crazy trafficWe arrived in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, a few hours ago. First impressions are that they do a lot of beeping here, and the coffee is insanely awesome, and we wonder whether there is some connection there. It is extra-crazy here due to the upcoming New Year - the streets are beautifully lit up, I'm hoping we'll see some flower displays tomorrow and everywhere people are carrying balloons and giant plants around on their motorbikes.<br />
<br />
We were kind of expecting the traffic - it sounds like it makes a strong impression on everybody who comes to Vietnam. The advice normally given when crossing the road is to close your eyes, step out and let the traffic weave around you. You'll grow old and die on the pavement if you wait for a clear moment. What nobody mentioned is that the same rules appear to apply for cars and motorbikes at major junctions, either that or our taxi driver was a maniac. Bangkok traffic is already beginning to look tame.<br />
<br />
We have, however, had a lovely dinner at the Pho 24 chain (with insanely awesome coffee), followed by a couple of delightfully crunchy spring rolls and what can only be described as very thin, crispy caramelised sheets of sliced banana.<br />
<br />
Dgym's rabies situation is under control, in that he hasn't developed any yet and has an appointment for his day-3 shot tomorrow morning. (You have to be injected on days 1, 3, 7, 14 and 30) His hand is a little bit hurty but otherwise he is fine. I've never been fainted on before, and it would have been a whole lot less terrifying had I known it was perfectly normal to roll your eyes back and convulse for a couple of seconds when you faint.<br />
<br />
I was actually taking photos when he was bitten. One minute it was "Aww, he has a monkey friend on his shoulder, that will make a lovely picture". By the time the camera was pointed and firing away, he had a second monkey not-really-a-friend jumping up and snapping at his hand. I'm not unkind enough to post that on the internet. As consolation, here are pictures of both of us disguised as spectacled monkeys:<br />
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Helhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03299418875040197838noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24458754.post-77175686441812602002013-02-06T11:34:00.000+00:002013-02-06T11:34:48.783+00:00Taken out by a monkey.We have been staying in Prachuap Khiri Khan for the past week, a nice little town about 4 hours by train from Bangkok. It is on the Gulf of Thailand so this is in theory a bit of beach holiday, but in practice it has been cloudy most of the time so we have just been enjoying some walks, books and game development - great stuff!<br /><br />I know we often talk about the food on our travels but that maybe just because it is easy to describe. What is hard to explain is how wonderfully relaxed the atmosphere is. People just get on with their lives without rushing and it is a joy to be back in the country.<br /><br />This morning we decided to rent some bikes and head back down to the air force base just to the south of town. Visitors need to sign in and out but they have a really nice beach and we wanted to make the most of a reasonably sunny day. They also have a small population of spectacled monkeys that are very mild mannered and will very gently take food from your hand if you offer it to them. We had fed the monkeys previously and decided to go see them again, hoping to see a baby because they are a completely different colour (apparently golden, but I would have said ginger).<br /><br />What we didn't count on is that while a small amount of food will be taken quite politely, a whole bag of peanuts is far too exciting, and before I knew it I had a monkey running along my arm and trying to bite its way through the plastic bag, only to miss and graze my hand slightly with its teeth. Annoyingly it was enough to draw blood so it was time to wash the wound and go visit the hospital for a rabies jab, but before we got around to that there was the small matter of my tendency to faint when I see my own blood, which I did about a minute later (can't rush these things, I'm on holiday).<br /><br />I woke up about 20 seconds later and was somewhat surprised to find that I wasn't in a hotel bed and that the vivid monkey dream I had been having wasn't a dream after all. Still feeling very faint I sat up and had a drink and some food while waiting for the ambulance that someone had called. The rest is prime example of the warmth and care that we have received in Thailand - we were taken by ambulance to the military hospital where I had the wound cleaned and was given the first rabies jab as well as some antibacterials, and then we were dropped off by ambulance back next to our bikes. Because we were on a military base and went to the military hospital it was all free of charge, but I owe them a big debt of gratitude.<br /><br />Thank you to all the people that helped me today and got me back on my feet. And as to the monkey, well played to the victor by knock out!dgymhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08669745183272934850noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24458754.post-19725332292754563702013-02-03T11:56:00.001+00:002013-02-04T01:27:18.258+00:00Floating market and a 4D filmWe spent a week in Bangkok, recovering from jetlag, getting used to the heat and seeing some more stuff. It's a huge city and there was plenty we didn't get around to doing last time so we had no problem filling our days with things to do and filling our bellies with tasty food.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieEtRgqVqPkQAhiSAAnXKENjAwN2G6L3oOrUSpfMDQNIq2p6zvd4OZcdzm57tfnL4xXnbXFIkTBsUYDnX5GgbzcNO6i5WAeNEbnfBF9ewXplRErY5xXKdWQzwtNtPsH8WmGs1rcw/s1600/IMG_5742.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Floating Market at Khlong Lat" border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieEtRgqVqPkQAhiSAAnXKENjAwN2G6L3oOrUSpfMDQNIq2p6zvd4OZcdzm57tfnL4xXnbXFIkTBsUYDnX5GgbzcNO6i5WAeNEbnfBF9ewXplRErY5xXKdWQzwtNtPsH8WmGs1rcw/s320/IMG_5742.JPG" title="" width="320" /></a></div>
At the weekend we visited a floating market - I read up on various markets around Bangkok and decided that Khlong Lat sounded genuine and untouristy and also one of the easiest to get to (where easy to get to means going to the end of the Skytrain line and then spending 20 minutes in a taxi).<br />
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Getting to the end of the Skytrain line was a bit of an adventure, when we came to buy the tickets it turned out they'd added two extra stations worth of line since somebody had written the instructions for getting to Khlong Lat, so we could go even further out in that direction. We had to change at Wong Wian Yai (the old end of the line) and get a different train onto the new bit, which we hoped would take us two extra stops. It only took us one - turns out the last station isn't quite ready yet, but we had to shuttle back and forth on the train a couple of times to figure that out!<br />
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The taxi journey was interesting too, I'd marked the wrong location on the map so, following on GPS, we started to think he was taking us to the wrong place, but weren't too bothered as he had repeated the correct name back to us twice, and also the scenery was kind of pretty and it felt like an interesting adventure either way. We ended up at a market anyway, all day we were a little unsure whether it was the right one - turns out it was.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's a bowl of tiny fried eggs!</td></tr>
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Khlong Lat isn't the floatiest of markets - there were several vendors on the river selling food but they didn't move around much. I'd imagined floating markets to be more like a giant sushi bar where you sit by the edge of the water and food comes to you along the canal. Most of the market action was indoors in the fixed buildings, but it was still excellent and there were lots of interesting looking stalls, unfortunately we didn't eat that much as we've been finding the heat to be a real appetite killer. My favourite bit was the lady making pretty deep-fried crackers by coating a flower-shaped mould in batter and then plunging it into boiling oil.<br />
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There were also some tiny turtles in a bucket. I thought they were probably for food (no, I didn't eat any) and Dgym thought maybe they were pets, but further reading reveals that people buy them to release into the wild, which is supposed to bring good luck. Especially for the turtle, which has just escaped being eaten and/or made captive.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOoY7uY_AbFnX7tKSuLVFhJWKLsW-KEsrDmvEPizn8vMaduNuUkRMdCVza6gxhubEAS34tsyZ7oXB0U1QjMot0dFUN6RwyyVM1pwqh1mnbXO8dW0s-J8Gk7UhLG0SOSIYhJKNcVw/s1600/IMG_5710.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="turtles in a bucket" border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOoY7uY_AbFnX7tKSuLVFhJWKLsW-KEsrDmvEPizn8vMaduNuUkRMdCVza6gxhubEAS34tsyZ7oXB0U1QjMot0dFUN6RwyyVM1pwqh1mnbXO8dW0s-J8Gk7UhLG0SOSIYhJKNcVw/s320/IMG_5710.JPG" title="" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lucky turtles</td></tr>
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I'd recommend Khlong Lat as a nice genuine market experience - few tourists, and it was nice to see people enjoying their sunday lunch! If you're after a bustling market with lots of boats, I hear Damnoen Saduak and Amphawa are better for that, although much further out.<br />
<br />
We headed back to Bangkok soon after lunch as we had some very different plans for the afternoon, involving the 4DX cinema at Siam and two big buckets of popcorn. We'd always assumed that the fourth dimension is time, but how wrong were we? It turns out that once you've got a 3D film, you add extra dimensions by rocking the seats around every time there's a fight (we were watching Hansel and Gretel, which has quite a lot of those) and periodically spraying people in the face and releasing scents. My personal favourite were the back kickers which kept making me want to turn round and throttle the annoying child that wasn't actually sitting behind me. Basically, if 3D didn't make you feel ill enough already, 4D's here to help. It was worth doing once though - it was also my first 3D movie and whereas 3D alone is plain lame, at least 4D made it an amusing experience.Helhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03299418875040197838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24458754.post-87412583044310083022013-01-30T15:13:00.000+00:002013-02-03T10:50:54.553+00:00Tasty stuff<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="text-align: center;">A selection of some of the food we've had so far...</span> (you'll need to click 'i' to see the descriptions)</div>
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No fried bugs yet. I saw some, but restrained myself.Helhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03299418875040197838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24458754.post-34429882119989657002013-01-30T12:31:00.001+00:002013-01-30T12:31:30.378+00:00We just can't stay awaySo we're back in Thailand again, 2 years after we last left. We were haunted by memories of tasty delicious food, excessive amounts of sunshine, coconuts with straws in them and all those offers of tuktuks and massages... well OK, we can take or leave that last one.<br />
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We've been in Bangkok for the past few days - having left behind a freezing snowy UK, we have been easing our way into the 30°C heat and getting stuck into some yummy Thai food.<br />
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We flew out on Eva Air, which was fine apart from the horrible food but it's currently the cheapest way of flying direct from London to Bangkok. It's a couple of hundred quid cheaper than Thai which has nicer food but not 200 quid nicer - that's a lot of yummy street food. Our advice: fly Eva but bring sandwiches!<br />
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Our plane flew a different route from last time, passing over Georgia and Azerbaijan at night with tiny scattered settlements visible in the mountains which was kind of cool, and meeting with dawn over Turkmenistan. We flew over Afghanistan (which is apparently an OK thing to do), then across India and over the enormous Ganges delta which was, as any self respecting delta should be, criss-crossed with rivers and looking quite spectacular from the air.<br />
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Anyway - it's lovely to be back here. We've done quite a lot over the past few days which we need to catch up on writing about, and have some exciting plans for the coming weeks!Helhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03299418875040197838noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24458754.post-70704327363714034352012-04-21T09:06:00.000+01:002012-04-21T20:25:21.385+01:00CubaWe popped into Cuba for a couple of days on our way home. People don't generally pop in and out of Cuba and it's not really advisable, especially when the Pope's also popping in for the same couple of days and planning on generally getting in your way. We weren't stalking him, honest, although he may have been stalking us.<br />
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I'd long coveted Cuba as a potential cycle touring destination so knew a few things about it including that it was full of shiny old cars from the Fifties, and considerably less full of Americans. In our brief time there it was interesting to see the reality.<br />
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We didn't meet any Americans (although we met quite a few Germans and also an English couple - we realised it had been a few weeks since we'd seen other English people so hearing the accent was unexpectedly odd!). We stayed in a casa particular, which is a private B&B - everything I've ever read about Cuba recommends staying and eating in them rather than hotels and restaurants - and it was certainly very pleasant, but more about that later...<br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/orangebrompton/7083727967/" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" title="Old Car by orangebrompton, on Flickr"><img alt="Old Car" height="213" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7092/7083727967_9c158feedb_n.jpg" width="320" /></a> Quite a lot of the cars (maybe a third?) still are ancient <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yank_tank">yank tanks</a> - most of them (apart from the taxis) are not so shiny with rust patches everywhere and spewing out lots of black exhaust smoke. It's quite a sight though, and very surreal when we first arrived, especially as they were on relatively modern looking roads and not in a black and white movie.<br />
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We spent our only full day in Havana trying to get air tickets home. We weren't sure when we arrived there whether we'd be sticking around, we'd become a bit holidayed out and keen to get home, eat delicious English food (actually yes, really) and allow our poor injured wallets to recover a bit - but it quickly became clear, for various reasons, that we'd definitely had enough. So we headed over to the offices of Cubana, the national airline, to buy our tickets back to London and that was when things started getting fun.<br />
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We'd checked on the internet the previous night, on our casa's blazingly fast (and probably a bit illegal) 38kbps internet connection, so we knew the price of the tickets. When they tried to charge us an extra 200CUC each we were a bit surprised but when we questioned this it became clear that there was a credit card price and a cash price, and that if we paid in cash we'd get our tickets at close enough to the internet price. Which was where the fun began - there was a cash machine next door, and it even worked (not common in Cuba) but it would only give out 150CUC at a time in 5CUC bills. We'd have to do that about six times to get enough cash, and that many notes in my money belt would make me look super-fat.<br />
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The next hour was spent trekking around town trying to find a decent ATM. We found one that only gave out CUP (the other Cuban currency, for locals only) and one that didn't really exist, before giving up and going back to the first one. We went into the bank and tried to use our cards to get money out at the counter. They wouldn't do that without seeing our visas, which the owner of our casa had conveniently not returned to us after taking down our details. So Dgym went to the original ATM and withdrew as much money as he could in 5CUC notes, which turned out to be just enough. He then waddled back into the bank looking extremely fat and changed them for 50's. I'm sure they put the fives straight back in the cash machine. Dgym promptly received a flurry of text messages from his ever-vigilant bank, who had noticed some weird cash withdrawal activity in a foreign country and decided to block his cards. Yay! But we got our tickets. Us: 1, Cuba: 0.<br />
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It was lunchtime by then - we caught a tourist bus back to the casa to sort a few things out, then spent another couple of hours trying to get back on the tourist bus (turns out you can get <i>off</i> anywhere but you have to find the stops to get on, or it will whizz by and ignore you) by which time it was getting kind of late and now we were worrying about not having enough cash left to pay for our dinner and all the other stuff - the next day would be a special holiday as everybody had the morning off to watch the Pope do his thing, so the banks (and probably the ATMs too) would be closed. So we had to get off the tourist bus again at the first cash machine we saw, which fortunately worked, while I got us lots more $5 bills. By then it was about 5pm.<br />
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No, Cuba's not somewhere you just pop into. For somewhere we only spent a couple of days, there's rather a lot to be said (and if you've spoken to Dgym since we got back, you'll have heard <i>all</i> about what he thought of Cuba!) ... more to follow!Helhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03299418875040197838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24458754.post-9675331996295313852012-04-05T11:43:00.000+01:002012-04-05T11:43:19.519+01:00A trip to the rainforestWe decided to do a rainforest tour on our last day in Costa Rica, with the hope of seeing some interesting wildlife but also the extreme likelihood of seeing lots of cool trees (which are less likely to run away when they see you).<br />
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We woke at the unholy hour of 6am for pickup and driven around for a couple of hours collecting equally sleepy looking people from hotels much posher than ours - you know, the kind with fountains outside and valets and fancy luggage trolleys (We decided that somebody should do a tour where they just take you past all the hotels you can't afford, and maybe laugh at you a bit too)</div>
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Thankfully, we were allowed to stop off for an expensive but very nice breakfast of rice, beans and egg (yeah, that again) with the added excitement of a tasty grilled banana and acceptable coffee.</div>
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/orangebrompton/6888581164/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="Anhinga by orangebrompton, on Flickr"><img alt="Anhinga" height="209" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7196/6888581164_8ec57017b9_n.jpg" width="320" /></a> The first part of the tour was a boat trip on the Sarapiqui river, where we saw quite a lot of birds (including cute little swallow-like things that circled the boat constantly), lots of iguanas, a Jesus Christ lizard (which walks on water, although we didn't see it do that), a couple of alligators, some howler monkeys and several local families going for a Sunday dip. Oh, and a squirrel.</div>
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One of the more curious creatures we encountered was the Anhinga - it was described to us as a type of duck but it's not really - there is no such thing as "like water off an Anhinga's back" because, despite being a water bird, it's not waterproof and after a dive it has to spend hours drying its wings in the sun before it can fly again. This makes for quite a photogenic display (at first we thought it was posing) but sounds like asking to be dinner - there must be very few things that want to eat it.<br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/orangebrompton/6888584846/" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" title="Extremely convincing stick insect by orangebrompton, on Flickr"><img alt="Extremely convincing stick insect" height="213" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7182/6888584846_13ef077a55_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Next we were taken to the Selva Verde lodge for a walk around the trails, where we spotted some turtles, several tiny frogs, some orb weaver spiders and some ants carrying little red berries. By far the coolest thing we found here was a very convincing stick insect attached to a fence. I didn't notice him at all and it was only when he moved that Dgym realised it wasn't a stick.<br />
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After lunch we visited the Braulio Carillo rainforest, a vast natural park to the north east of San Jose, where it was pleasantly cool in comparison to the sticky humidity on the trail walk. There was another short guided walk where we saw tapir footprints (we weren't so optimistic as to hope to see the real thing, but it was cool to see where they'd been) and a butterfly garden, where a pretty yellow butterfly took a fancy to me and decided to take up residence on my trouser leg.<br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/orangebrompton/6901378926/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="Rainforest Tram by orangebrompton, on Flickr"><img alt="Rainforest Tram" height="213" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7218/6901378926_6775429ee2_n.jpg" width="320" /></a> Finally we got to ride through the rainforest canopy on the aerial tram, an open air gondola running at two different levels through the reserve. We saw very little wildlife, only one bird, but it was pretty spectacular riding through the dense foliage and getting a close up view of such an incredible ecosystem. Our guide was very knowledgeable and had a lot to tell us about the different species of tree and the wildlife that can sometimes be spotted among them. We'd been particularly keen to see a sloth and, although we didn't see one on the ride, we learned that they host their own little ecosystem - there's not a lot of sloth under all that fur, which is covered in green algae which helps the sloth camouflage itself and also feeds the hundreds of beetles that live on the sloth - the beetles also help keep the sloth clean. After learning that, I'm not so sure I want to hug one any more.<br />
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After we'd got off the tram and were preparing to leave, our guide called us over as he'd just spotted a sloth asleep at the top of a tree! It was quite high up and, even with my zoom lens, you couldn't make out which bit was which, but it made our day complete! <br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/orangebrompton/7047465213/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="Sloth by orangebrompton, on Flickr"><img alt="Sloth" height="333" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7213/7047465213_7d5bcd98ed.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>Helhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03299418875040197838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24458754.post-32516847606421271282012-03-24T12:53:00.000+00:002012-09-12T16:43:51.178+01:00Costa RicaBefore we arrived in Costa Rica we only knew two things about it - it's comparatively expensive for Central America, and it has heaps of wildlife - an estimated 6% of the world's plant and animal species may live here.<br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/orangebrompton/6859913468/" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" title="Hummingbird by orangebrompton, on Flickr"><img alt="Hummingbird" height="213" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7072/6859913468_9d06bccea0.jpg" width="320" /></a> We stayed in Tamarindo, which turned out to be quite a touristy beach town popular with Americans, especially during Spring Break which it is at the moment - and with prices to match the budgets of people on short luxury breaks, at first we were a bit put off but the room was lovely, it was really great to have a hot shower again (a rarity in Nicaragua) and the wildlife soon started to win us over - just a couple of streets back from the main buzz there are trees full of beautiful birds, large lizards roaming around and choruses of crickets. If you look up at the treetops for long enough, you can spot tiny hummingbirds going about their business, I'd never seen hummingbirds before and they're kind of lovely.<br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/orangebrompton/7005740245/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="Playa Grande by orangebrompton, on Flickr"><img alt="Playa Grande" height="213" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7232/7005740245_46537aec03.jpg" width="320" /></a> After a few days we realised there was a quieter beach just up the coast so we hopped (or at least stumbled) onto a water taxi and headed just a tiny bit north to Playa Grande, so close but so very far away (at least by road) and quite a mini-paradise. The beach is something quite special, it's a protected area so there's no development along the seafront, just lots of wild trees and bushes. It's part of the Las Baulas national park, an important nesting ground for leatherback turtles - unfortunately we have missed the nesting season by just a couple of weeks, but it does mean we're allowed onto the beach in the evening to watch the waves and beautiful sunsets. We took a surfing lesson, which was good fun but we ended up with raw knees (wetsuits are a great invention) and got quite a lot of the Pacific ocean up our noses.<br />
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We went ziplining for my birthday, you can do it in a rainforest but we went for a regular dry forest option with <a href="http://www.canopypuraaventura.com/">Pura Aventura</a> since it was close by and convenient - we were picked up early and taken to a property a few miles from Tamarindo, then transported into the forest by a very bumpy truck and given helmets, harnesses and basic instructions before being sent off one by one down the first line. It's a little bit scary being so high up suspended by just a couple of metal cables and a bit of canvas, but we had safety lines, good instructions and the instructors made sure we were always attached to something when high up. We saw a tree full of monkeys at one point, and on one of the last zip lines we all went upside down with help from the instructors! It was a fun morning, and at the end of it we got to take away a DVD of pictures and videos from the session (which will be posted as soon as we have access to a DVD drive!)<br />
<br />Helhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03299418875040197838noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24458754.post-58516965255330663782012-03-21T00:45:00.000+00:002012-03-22T15:59:21.183+00:00Gnarly<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/orangebrompton/6857050008/" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" title="Nicaraguan Grackle by orangebrompton, on Flickr"><img alt="Nicaraguan Grackle" height="160" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7099/6857050008_ca0e7b18cc_m.jpg" width="240" /></a> We spent two days on
Ometepe which was very pretty, and the residents seemed very
friendly, but we weren't too happy with the food and, especially on
Sunday when half the stuff was shut, we struggled to eat decently and
that won't do. And since Dgym took objection to the colour of the lake (too
murky, not blue enough, he's very fussy) we decided to head for
the real beach.<br />
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We found a tiny beach
town on the Pacific coast, El Gigante. It's smaller and less “lively”
than the bigger and more popular town of San Juan del Sur, a few
miles further south. It's also harder to get to – you can take a
bus which drops you off 7km from the town and then hike the rest
of the way, or you can do as we did and take a taxi from Rivas or the
ferry port.</div>
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The scenery on the way
there was very pretty – lots of trees and fields and roadside
piggies. At first the road was paved but then we took a left, the
driver mentioned something about “tierra” and we were on stony
dirt track for the next 18km, which made for a fun bumpy ride with
lots of tight corners and steep bits thrown in for good measure. We
were OK but were also a bit concerned that the taxi might fall apart!</div>
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We had an uneventful
few days there, apart from the excitement of a helicopter landing on
the beach one day (it drew quite a crowd, just stopping to ask
directions) and a power cut which lasted all afternoon and well into
the evening (not an uncommon occurrence in Nicaragua).</div>
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Apart from
that it was all very chilled. It's a bit of a surfing
hotspot and is inhabited by quite a few American surfers with quite a lot of English spoken – we
devised a little drinking game which helped us stay well hydrated,
take a sip of water every time you hear the word “gnarly”.</div>
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/orangebrompton/6855433986/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="El Gigante by orangebrompton, on Flickr"><img alt="El Gigante" height="158" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7185/6855433986_d3c681b58e_m.jpg" width="240" /></a> El Gigante has about 6 or 7 restaurants, a handful of hotels and hostels and an internet cafe. It gets some pretty strong winds so walks on the beach were accompanied by a good sandblasting of the legs, and we were mostly coated in a thin layer of grime that week. The
food was very nice, the coffee is OK (we've been told, to confirm our
suspicions, that Nicaraguans export all the good stuff) and the
sunsets are pretty awesome. There were lots of dogs and a couple of
cats wandering around the town, scrounging for scraps at dinner time,
and we also met a really tiny puppy. We did lots of reading in
hammocks, went for a walk up the nearby lookout point of the Giant's
foot, climbed on rocks and saw lots of crabs and spiky sea urchins,
and watched brown pelicans diving all day.</div>
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After a few days, we
were starting to feel the smallness of the town and keen to get out
for some more food variety (we really do follow our stomachs) so we
headed back out to civilization and down to the border.</div>
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I got a little bit fond
of Nicaragua in the couple of weeks we spent there – prices are
affordable, the locals are friendly and the hammocks were awesome.
Admittedly, most of the food was nothing to write home about (even if we are)
- when we got back from Thailand, we just wanted to eat Thai food,
but you're not going to catch us trying to smuggle a suitcase full of
plantains back to the UK.</div>Helhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03299418875040197838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24458754.post-35496136844607139002012-03-20T17:01:00.000+00:002012-03-20T17:01:08.392+00:00ChocomuseoNicaragua has a long history of cocoa consumption, so what better way to celebrate the local culture than to go on a chocolate making course? It is very important to be a polite and considerate visitor after all.<br />
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The museum in Granada is very small being just a couple of rooms with lots of information and pictures on the walls, some beans and nibs you can touch and smell, and an inner courtyard with a couple of cocoa trees. You can look around for free or stop and get something at the cafe (the chocolate milk is excellent) but the area is quite thick with midges as these are kept to fertilise the trees.<br />
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The main attraction is a chocolate making course which lasts a couple of hours and is run several times a day. There are quite a few steps involved in the processing starting with the fermentation of the beans to develop their flavour, followed by drying them. This takes up to a week so the course starts with already dried beans which we took over to a stone wok for roasting over a fire.<br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/orangebrompton/7000322931/" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" title="Roasting beans by orangebrompton, on Flickr"><img alt="Roasting beans" height="160" src="http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6118/7000322931_0e740bf782_m.jpg" width="240" /></a><br />
The roasting is done at about 70 degrees C and takes 5 minutes or so, during which time the beans tend to jump around quite a bit and even out of the large wok we were using. You can tell when they are done when they start to smell all chocolatey, after which we let them cool for a few minutes before breaking the shells open by hand to extract the nibs which are already quite nice to eat.<br />
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We ground the nibs using a pestle and mortar which turns them into a thick paste called cocoa liquor which can be used directly in several drinks. We made a Mayan drink using water and cinnamon, and an Aztec drink with added vanilla and chilli which was churned until it was frothy. Finally we made a Spanish drink which is like the Aztec drink but uses milk instead of water. These were all quite delicious.<br />
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To make chocolate bars the liquor is refined (further ground) and then churned for 10 hours with sugar, before being tempered to give it a nice shine when it sets. That would have been a long wait so we took some pre-churned chocolate and added some ingredients before pouring it into molds. I added chili powder and Helen chose almond flakes. That marked the end of the course, and we were asked to come back a couple of hours later to pick up the bars once they had set in the fridge.<br />
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We had a lot of fun making the drinks and working with the cocoa, well worth doing if you ever get the chance.Helhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03299418875040197838noreply@blogger.com0