| Australia + New Zealand 2010: Summary |
[May. 13th, 2010|08:12 pm] |
Oy.
Toilet.
Boot.
Torch.
Have a go.
Carpark.
Carport.
Take Away.
Boomerangs.
Bush.
Surf.
Koalas.
Kangaroos.
Wallabies.
Penguins.
Tram.
No worries.
Mate.
G'Day.
Sweet As.
Petrol.
Eucalyptus (gum).
Shell is Coles is Australia.
Burger King is Hungry Jacks in Australia.
Ozone layer above Australia is thin.
The sun+rays is very intense, you can feel the difference.
All native Australian trees are evergreen.
Toilets flush down, no spiral either way ;)
Adjust from +12 to -5.
Back to reality :(...
Back home :) |
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| New Zealand 2010: Day 06 (18): May 12 |
[May. 13th, 2010|08:11 pm] |
Checked out and ready to go. Wai-o-Tapu Thermal Wonderland! Opening at 830 we arrived around 9 and started through the park.
25 markers in total, each one had something special about them. Mud boiling, different minerals coming through the steam creating different colours, steam geysers, and the stench of sulphur. But all in all it was pretty cool. The last stop was called the Devil's Bath which was a pool of green water :D
Our tour at the Waitomo Caves was at 1230 and Waitomo being about 2 hours away, we couldn't stay to see the Geyser at Wai-o-tapu go at 1015... After 2 hours of driving we barely just made it to the 1230 tour, with only 5-10 minutes to spare with just enough time to grab something to eat.
Our first cave was the Ruakiri Cave, or The Den of the Dogs. Named after the animals that the Maori people found there. The cave consisted of millions of limestone formations. Like coral, they took years to form. Approximately 1cm of limestone could take around 100 years. There was a sign outside giving the fine of 10,000$ if any of the formations were damaged. Our guide, Lucas, also explained the glowworms and showed them to us as well. They are actually the larvae or maggot stage of a fly. They are light-brownish in colour and are about 1 to 2cm in length. Their glow comes from mixing an enzyme with their... excretion. Their stages are the egg, larvae, pupa, fly. The fly only lives for about a week and reproduces hundreds of eggs in that time. The glowworms or glowmaggots, catch their food by dropping down up to 20 lines of web, much like the spider. They catch insects and consume their.. Moisture. The most impressive part of this cave is that it is completely wheelchair accessible!
Our next stop, Aranui Caves. After briefly walking the Ruakiri Bushwalk in the rain, we met up with our next tour guide, Christian, with just the two of us, we took our tour through the smaller cave. This cave was discovered later than the other two by a farmer who was chasing a wild pig that ended up in that undiscovered cave. Unlike the other two caves, this one did not have glowworms due to the fact that there was no river running through it. At the end of the cave they have thought there to be an earthquake that collapsed the tunnel, closing off the rest of the cave as well as a water source that helped form them. Maybe.
And finally our last stop of this trip, the glowworm cave, Waitomo Caves. Having some time to spare, we chatted with the other visitors, 3 of which had came from England and had visited the caves in the 70s or 80s, pretty cool :P. The other visitor was from Saskatoon. It seems most people only know of a couple places like Toronto or Vancouver. When saying from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, she could usually sum it up with the Prairies in Canada. Cough. Heh... They were a fun bunch. In the cave we weren't allowed photography so we left our cameras behind. Our guide showed us some of the limestone formations as well as the threads of the glowworms and the maggot itself. A couple of the limestone formations were nicknamed. One was a kiwi doing a bungy jump, an Arab riding a Camel, and a mother with two children. Yup.
After this part of the cave we went lower to the river, where they have 4 boats setup and they bring the visitors into the underwater caverns in which the cave was first discovered. There were thousands of glowworms lighting up the cave ceiling like a night sky. Amazing sight.
Aaaaand. 2ish hours back to Auckland International Airport to waste or time till check-in and boarding at 7am. Going home!
Wai-o-Tapu - Devil's Bath
Waitomo Caves - Ruakiri |
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| New Zealand 2010: Day 05 (17): May 11 |
[May. 13th, 2010|08:05 pm] |
One thing we HAD to do if we ever got the chance on this trip was..... Surfing! We called last night and they happened to have another person arrange a lesson as well! Discovery Surfing nz.
An hour away at Mt Maunganui north of Rotorua in Tauranga, we joined the 1130 lesson at the Main Beach with another person from Seattle.
Got some nice warm wetsuits and went with Tully for some basic instructions and tips to help us along. We also practiced how to stand on the board once we caught a wave. And explained what a rip in the surf was... Something with the sand mounds underwater creating the white wave after hitting it etc.......
It was a great experience and so exhausting. The amount of salt water that ended up in my mouth didn't help either... The waves were pretty rough too, to me anyways. We were only taught how to drag our board into the waves and jump on, not how to paddle into them. Tully was very helpful and encouraging. By an hour I could barely push myself up on the board and wiped out instead. Sometimes I just rode the wave out on my knees :P so glad that we got to try it after the Bondi beach incident. Getting out of the water was another thing. There wasn't much sun and was actually very windy so basically, freezing. But well worth it.
Heading back we were deciding how to divide up activities from tonight and tomorrow morning, as our last morning. It was between Zorb Rotorua and Wai-o-Tapu Thermal Wonderland. And since we were already a bit wet, zorbing it was! Instead of lunch.
Not too far away from Rotorua, we got there and no one else was zorbing, a quiet day. Apparently its the low season on this side of the world because its fall weather. Cold.
Rosanna went through the 'straight' zorbing path while I took the 'zig-zag' which rolled me around like crazy, awesome. Zydro - with warm water in the ball too, so we also came out of this activity soaking wet and oh so cold afterwards. Again, worth it. Hahaha...
Aaaaand dinner. Had a large bento that I could barely finish. Yum. Rotorua has its fair share of jap and korean restaurants/stores/people, maybe a bit more korean actually...
Anyways. Tomorrow we head to Wai-o-Tapu and Waitomo! Then Auckland International Airport to stay the night and check-in for the 7am flight starting our journey home. Whee.
Wetsuit!
Zorbs! |
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| New Zealand 2010: Day 04 (16): May 10 |
[May. 13th, 2010|08:04 pm] |
Setting out for Tongariro National Park, we stopped by the Huka Falls, a small detour. The Huka Falls, where the New Zealand's largest lake drains into its largest river, the Waikato.
Tongariro National Park. Driving past Lake Taupo and a couple of other small towns, 2 hours later, we parked at the Whakapapa Village that is mainly used for ski chateaus and lodges and a base for hikers and maps. Several of the trails start from this area. Tongariro National Park was the first park to be both a cultural and historical world heritage status.
The employee at the visitor's centre told us to do a short hike to the Taranaki falls, which ended up to be about 2 hours long. It did lead us through bush, forest, and a nice waterfall though!
Afterwards we drove out to fill our gas tank, down to 5 litres and still had 2 hours of driving ahead of us... But our real destination, along Mangatepopo Road, the Tongariro Alpine Trail. By this time it was about 2pm and there was much land to cover. Our original goal was to hike to the Emerald Lakes at the Red Crater between Mt Tongariro and Mt Ngauruhoe but that would add another 4 hours to get there and back... So we set out anyways to get to the Soda Springs hiking up Mt Tongariro. Which would be about 2 hours one way.
As we went along the path was very rocky and just got worse. The 'trail' became cliffs sides and rocks that looked like steps but many were high steps, unstable setting, and some slippery as well. It didn't look to bad in the light but imagine in the dark... Haha... As we continued to Soda Springs, the sun was setting behind us lighting up the sky in blues yellows oranges pinks reds then purples, until it was black. The mountain in the distance made it look beautiful but also warned us that we would soon not be able to see. The actual soda springs weren't..... Much. Its too bad we couldn't make it to the Emerald Lake but no regrets! Walking back in the dark, the sun had completely set around 6ish and we still had some ways to go. Soon after the sky was lit up with stars, we could see the milky way so clearly. Beautiful. But looking down on the trail, only shadows would be racing by, could barely make out the trail we were to follow. Distinguished only by faint colour of the bush and rocks on the ground. A nice 8km hike.
And now 2 hours back to Rotorua for dinner. Whee. Driving at night was pretty intense. Most of the time we had our highbeams on and only switched between when passing cars on the approaching side. Otherwise we could barely make out 100m ahead of us. It only got worse as the thermal steam fogged up the road with light bouncing everywhere.
Tomorrow is.... Hmm.
View of one of the Mt while driving
Sunsetting from Soda Springs
Sunsetting from Mt Tongariro
Stars from Lake Taupo |
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| New Zealand 2010: Day 03 (15): May 09 |
[May. 13th, 2010|08:02 pm] |
Seema at Freeman's Lodge ordered a rental car company to pick us up at 8am, arrived at around 830. Meh. The first thing that bothered me was that the driver didn't offer to load our luggage. Went off to pick up another client, 4 passengers... And then headed to the rental car lot, Quality Car Rental, recommended by Seema.
As the only person working that day, this guy was very... Preoccupied? He went in and out of phone calls without even a gesture, just started talking. We went through the process and finally came to the drop-off times. They're open 8-430ish so between that time, good. I say that we were planning to drop it off at the airport, he says, No. Blunt. Mentioned that we talked with Seema about it and she said it would be okay to park at the airport and pay for the parking... He makes a call, and ok! He writes up the stuff, charges my card, doesn't ask of any 'features' I wanted such as gps or mp3, just... Writes it up. Goes out and drives the car around and then mentions, "Oh, you will have to park the car in the international lot, and put the key and stub under the front carpet. What time? Midnight?! No, no, no... The ticket would be huge, international parking! The 35 only covers like 3 hours. With our flight being at 7, checkin at 5ish, and they would come get it at 8... You gotta park it at 5. Figure out somewhere else to park it until then." ... we were told itd be 35. Not so much more as well. He makes a call while I'm trying to talk to him... A couple drives up to drop off their car and they need to be at the airport by 10, 10am comes and passes, "just 5 more minutes!" We go and think about the rental... And decide to get a car from the airport instead, better than dealing with this jerk, so sketchy. "Then why did you waste all of my time?" He makes a call, "how about you drop the car off at 430 and we'll waive the 35$" ... "AM?" "No, pm." "No, we have things planned" expected us to stay at the airport for more than 12 hours? No thanks, drop us off please.
Finally got to the airport and checked out thrifty, europcar, avis, budget, hertz... Looking for midnight dropoff and gps. The prices were a lot higher than 'quality cars' but the service and 'quality' so much better. Apparently the car the couple had has shotty brakes - -; Anyways, we shopped around and because we are under 25, there is an extra charge each day... Sigh. But we went with Europcar and got a Hyundai Getz.
By this time it was 1130 and our plan to go to Waitomo Caves, ruined. Headed to Rotorua, our hostel, Crash Palace, instead. Driving in the right seat and left side of the street was very odd this time around but easier to adjust after Japan. 3 hours later, we're in Rotorua, which has a distinctive smell of sulphur everywhere because of all of the thermal pools and geysers much like Beppu in Japan, but the smell wasn't as... Widespread throughout the whole city. Rooms are decent. Meh. So what to do tonight?...
With only a couple of hours to spare we booked a visit to the Mitai Cultural Village with Kiwi Experience upgrade! After shopping a bit for souvenirs we got on the shuttle and left.
Run by the Mikar family for generations and including other families now, the host introduced himself and taught us some words in the aboriginal language, which I can't seem to remember. They also called themselves the Maori. Aoeteroa - land of the long white cloud? Or something. Later as we drove along the distanced sky was in fact a large white cloud spread over the horizon, created by the thermal pools. Anyways, he chose a 'chief' for the guests and that chief spoke on behalf of us to the mitai... We were then led out into a cooking pit where the Hanni, traditional dinner, was being prepared - lamb chicken potatoes and sweet potatoes were cooking, smelled great. At this point the host gave thanks to all of the countries that were present, 21 in total and said a prayer in his language.
Then around a small creek, a group of them arrived in a canoe with torches and such, giving a good show. Then leading us to seats and a stage where the cultural experience took place. Showing us their weapons, instruments, fighting techniques, training, music and games, it was a great show. He also explained the tattoos that the aboriginal people would get in the past. The women possessed the Owl tattoo under their lips showing the eyes beak and body in abstract lines, to show wisdom and their duty as protectors of the children. The men eventually possessed four tattoos on their face. The bat, parrot, owl, and kiwi. The bat represented wisdom and leadership positioned on the forehead and over the eyes. The parrot was for speaking and stuff, the beak on both sides of the nose. The owl for protectors more abstract under the eyes. And finally the kiwi representing something else that I can't remember, placed around the mouth. There would be two kiwis, either side representing a parent. And finally, time for food. Delicious and oh so filling.
We then continued on to Rainbow Springs for the Kiwi Experience. The guides first showed us the trout in the pools with the small fresh water springs underneath. Turning off all of the torches, we were then shown the glow-worms that were around the same area. They also showed us some new zealand trees and animals. The alpine parrots, Kea. The dinosaur reptile, Tarutaru or something weird like that :D that actually lived in the time of the dinosaurs and was able to survive because of its extraordinary metabolism and abilities to slowdown heartrates and minimal nutrition. The silver fern, cabbage tree, a pool of rainbow trout, and finally the kiwi. This nocturnal flightless bird is endangered and its main predator, the slout. The park had 4 kiwi birds running around in their pens, we were only able to catch glimpses and backsides of the bird as it is very sensitive to light and sounds. Although I sorta saw the bird, it still seems very... Mystical? Heh...
Tomorrow, what... Tongariro National Park!
Driving to Rotorua
Mitai Performance |
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| New Zealand 2010: Day 02 (14): May 08 |
[May. 8th, 2010|10:13 am] |
Heading out from the hostel, UPhill to K-Road, a hub of buses we found our bus heading to the Newmarket/Broadway shopping streets. K-Road, Karangahape Road. Anyways. Got on the LinkBus, $1.70 ride! To the shopping district and got a nice breakfast as Massimo. Visited another Westfields shopping centre and other random shops. The unique chain shops I've seen have been glue, cottonon, justjeans... Meh. Again, shopping here isn't very nice, its a bit less stressful than Australia because we've begun to convert currencies before purchasing hahaha... But the prices are still very similar to home but a little skewed. Dinners here range from mid 20s to 30s but converted only reach mid 20s so not that bad at all...
After enough shopping we made our way to the Auckland Natural History Museum, where we could have used the knowledge and expertise of a tour guide but... Missed out. So although we saw a lot of interesting aboriginal artwork and sculptures, we don't really know what they mean or were used for... Unfortunately. Aside from aboriginal artifacts, the museum held exhibits on the usual stuff of dinosaurs native to the land such as Kiwi bird ancestors, the Mau birds and Giant Emperor penguins... And other flightless birds. And continuing on the third floor, exhibits on WWI and WWII etc. Spent a good 2-3 hours exploring.
Continuing on we headed out to Parnell Rd which we have been told would be a nice area to shop for more unique pieces... But everything was closed or closing... At 430. *sigh... After walking around and going into the shops that were open we decided to grab some dinner and got very stuffed with pizza :D
Tomorrow, renting a car and heading out to the Waitomo Caves and Rotorua.
Auckland Museum - Maori Sculpture
Auckland Museum - Duckweed |
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| New Zealand 2010: Day 01 (13): May 07 |
[May. 8th, 2010|10:09 am] |
Auckland. First impressions... Steep hills. Reminded me a bit of Korea actually... And the city centre was very heavily Korean as well! Although there were some Japanese and Chinese, more Koreans. Yup.
After making some plans, we 'ran' to the dock to get ferry tickets to Rangitoto Island... Only to be late by about 5 minutes :( but there was to be another ferry in a couple hours so we went shopping and got some lunch. While Burger King in Australia is called Hungry Jacks, it is actually Burger King in New Zealand :P
Short ferry ride to Rangitoto Island, the volcanic island! Hiking time! An hour hike to the summit, fun. The trail was very rough and rocky, could have easily tripped if we didn't pay enough attention. Even then the rocks slipped underneath us a couple times. Our surroundings were of trees shrubs and so much black volcanic rock, fields of it.
On our way up to the summit we took a short detour to 'lava caves' as the name describes, caves created by the lava flow so long ago that they are littered with trees and vines. Despite the constantly familiar surroundings throughout the hike, we had a great view of the coast of Auckland, complete with the Sky Tower, not too different from Toronto!
Arriving back in Auckland we continued to do some shopping... Whee. Rosanna has been looking forward to purchasing some necklaces with aboriginal symbols with deeper meanings to them such as the Koru and Tikiman... There's a list somewhere that I can't seem to find. Some symbolize a everlasting bond of friendship, good luck and fortune, protection from evil, safety to travellers, etc. We have encountered several different variations as well as differences in the quality of the pieces. They can get... pricey.
Tomorrow, more shopping on Broadway, Parnell and some culture from the Auckland Natural History Museum.
Rangitoto Island trail
Whitcoulls, Mother's Day |
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| Australia 2010: Day 12: May 06 |
[May. 6th, 2010|10:24 am] |
Melbourne. Heading into the city from St. Kilda, not bad. The trams run frequently and go all over the place. It works on the honour system... The 'driver' just dictates when to close the doors and move on, and probably where the tram turns and stuff. He doesn't check if you have bought a ticket or put it into the ticket machine thing. Hmm.
Queen Victoria Market. Much like our own St Lawrence Market, random shops of produce and a bunch more souvenir shops as well.
Federation Square, St Flinder's Station. Federation Square, celebrating Australia's confederation, duh. With free wi-fi! Very cool architecture and interesting typographic designs on the ground of the square. St Flinder's station, across the street, is like our Union Station, a hub of sorts.
National Gallery of Victoria. Beside the Art Centre, very nice place, the entrance a glass wall with waterfall. Ooo. We didn't have enough time to explore the actual gallery... But found time to get churros. ;) yum.
We made our way back to the hostel for our airport shuttle and made it to the Melbourne International Airport at 4 for our 6 flight to Auckland, New Zealand. Get ready for some more international flight drama! Apparently Qantas strongly, by strongly I mean they won't check you in until, recommends that you also have an outgoing flight from New Zealand before getting there. They then sent us out to get another flight booked out of New Zealand via Flight Centre. Of course, we had planned to come back to Sydney on the 12th and see Uncle Ronald and Auntie Maisie one more time and catch our flight back home on the 13th. However. We need either a re-entry visa or a brand new visa for Australia after leaving its soil... Which can only be obtained off-land. Even staying in the airport, after landing in Sydney we would have to go through customs to checkin with Air Canada and that would mean we'd technically be 'in Australia' and... Would require a visa - -; So we weren't allowed to purchase the ticket from Auckland to Sydney because of that... Our options?
1. Cancel our current flight home and book one from New Zealand. Expensive. So damn expensive.
2. Fly to another international destination to appease the outgoing flight and then apply for the Australian visa and cancel the first and book a flight to Sydney. Not too expensive but the cancellation fees were more than 50% of the ticket.
3. Stay in Australia.
So we bought a ticket to Fiji! Qantas again... Wanted us to have a plan after Fiji. They then suggested us to get a connecting flight to arrive prior to the Air Canada flight and catch it. Don't we need a visa for that? Apparently not? Wtf. 45 minutes before take-off... Check-in should be cut-off soon too! I ran back to Flight Centre and explained what they said and after they spoke to a Qantas rep at the check-in desk, apparently they have an agreement with Air Canada and we can land in Sydney without leaving the International Departures terminal, without a visa. Would have been nice to know this earlier. With a maximum of 8 hours connecting, the flight from Auckland had to land within 2 and 10am.... And only one flight worked for us... *sigh but it was the only way to get home with the least amount of damage to my depleting bank account... 7am flight from Auckland (+16) International to Sydney (+14) 830am arrival, 1025am departure to get back to Toronto (-5) at 420pm... 3.5 hours + 2 connection + 20 hour home. Fun!
Oh, our churros were wasted. We travelled with them too long and they had long become stale and cold :( but we also purchased milkshakes which were great.
With no time to spare we surprisingly weren't the last ones to board O.o... But last ones to check-in for sure. Finally arriving in Auckland at 1130pm we made our way to our hostel via shuttle and... the customs official asked about an ongoing ticket but didn't make much of it. Sleep.
Tomorrow, Rangitoto Island and Auckland shopping...
Inside of the National Gallery of Victoria
Ground highlight within Federation Square
Building highlight in Federation Square |
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| Australia 2010: Day 11: May 05 |
[May. 6th, 2010|10:23 am] |
Woke up at 625, gogogo! Went through everything again and our driver Cameron was off. The Great Ocean Road tour.
First town we passed through was Torquay, the hometown of QuikSilver and RipCurl! Passing over a small bridge, we were off! And our first stop: Bell's Beach. Morning Tea and biscuits... We had a lot of germans on the tour, france, ireland, thailand, japan and korea as well.
As we went along the road Cam elaborated on the road and explained to us that this road was built by the returning soldiers of WWI. Since they did not have jobs when they returned they were shown gratitude by being given this task which proved to be difficult and actually take some more lives, adding to the many already lost in the war. The road is very windy, motion-sick-enducing. Most of the views were basically the same, beach, cliffs, waves, eroded sandstone formations...
Split Point Lighthouse. Apparently this was the location of an old comedy that aired in Canada as well O.o... Hmm.
Wild Koalas. Kennett River. Driving up a pathway of a national park we were able to spot koalas up in the trees and we actually found one on the ground, moving to another tree. It crossed the dirt road right in front of us, illegal to touch them, and pretty dangerous too.
Cameron told us some stories of animal accidents that took place involving koalas and others with kangaroos. A girl on one of the tours came to Australia with her mind set on cuddling a koala, but being disappointed that the first ones she saw were up in the trees too far to hug. On her way to the toilet she spotted a koala sleeping on low tree and just had to get her hug! She ran up to it and tried to pry it off of the tree to no avail. Managing to wake the male koala, it held out an arm and she saw it is an invitation and ran in... Only to receive a nice big slash in the cheek 75mm deep. Ouch.
One morning as a man went through a park, an eastern grey kangaroo was hopping on through and saw and turned towards the man. Pretty cool, right? The kangaroo stopped shortly before the man, fell back onto its tail and threw the man meters away with its legs, piercing him with its nails in the process. Of course, the kangaroo had to make sure its point was made with a couple more kicks, breaking some ribs...
Otway's Rainforest. A looped pathway through a cool temperate rainforest full of eucalyptus trees.
Loch Ard. Razorback. Salt and Pepper shakers. Three Sisters. London Bridge. Besides Loch Ard, the rest of these are rock formations named after their shapes. Loch Ard Gorge was named after the shipwreck that took place and the story alongside it.
Loch Ard was the name of the ship that sunk, obviously. It was carrying mostly fine goods cargo, pianos, etc, but also some families and crew, totaling around 60 passengers. The compass wasn't working as it should be was dismissed because of the iron in the ship. The over confident captain thought he knew where he was but in the fog ended up closer to Tasmania than intended. Unable to readjust the heading in time, punctured the hull and sunk. A family from Ireland was on the ship heading to Melbourne, sans a son who stayed back. The daughter, Eva, was saved by crew mates and placed in a tub that kept her alive, while the crew mates eventually got too cold and drowned... Tom Pearce, one of the crew-in-training was lucky enough to wash up on the coast which happened to be the gorge. He then spotted and rescued Eva, bringing her back to the gorge and scaling the cliff to bring help. The hero of the town he and Eva eventually fell in love after she recovered. Later on Eva's brother requested that she come back home so he could take care of her, as their family would have wanted. What followed was a heart-breaking tale for Tom, working towards being good enough for Eva only to be too late as she moved on with her life and was actually very ill. He then also moved on and had two sons, who like their father became men of the sea only to become victims of shipwrecks... Hahah I'm sure the story sounded better to me than how I wrote it here :)
12 Apostles. Port Campbell National Park. Apparently the names of these formations were made for tourism sake. To attract the european crowd, the 12 Apostles. Along with the bridge of the London Bridge, a couple of the apostles have collapsed as the years go by as well...
We set out to get home but not before dropping by a small town to grab a quick dinner. Red Rooster!
Another story told by Cam as we passed a town celebrating an anniversary of the rabbit and later on, the fox... told of a man from Europe who moved to Melbourne and through letters conveyed that he was missing his old home and requested that his nephew could send him something that he could hunt. Being the good nephew, he sent some rabbits! But rabbits doing what the do best, became too much for the uncle and others to hunt. He then requested that his nephew send an animal that could help hunt down the rabbits, the fox. However, the fox did not only hunt some rabbits, it also damaged the marsupial population greatly... More damage caused by the conquering queen.
Anyways, off to New Zealand tomorrow after exploring a bit of Melbourne!
Loch Ard Gorge
A part of the 12 Apostles |
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| Australia 2010: Day 10: May 04 |
[May. 6th, 2010|10:21 am] |
10am pickup for the Penguin Parade tour on Philips Island. After picking up a couple more people and traversing through Melbourne closer to the beaches, we were brought past several cool buildings and dropped off at the Bunyip office to pay.
With a full bus our driver Bernie brought us to our first stop, a conservation centre (or something) where we saw some more reptiles, koala, emu, some birds, tasmanian devils, a wombat and a walk through a wallaby path! They were 'free' to wander around and we could feed them. This particular place only had 3 eastern grey kangaroos and 1 koala. Back in the building they took out a python and several people had the chance to hold it, feels interesting and strong... I didn't know before but snakes evolved from lizards and actually have two hind remnants of legs, evident only through two useless and small nails near the end of the snake.
Cape Woolamai. Nice and windy. We've seen too many beaches... But now its cloudly and cold. Nice waves though! We haven't had the chance to get surfing lessons since our one-hour-late Bondi Beach incident.
Churchill Island, here we visited a farm! And saw the furrrrrrry cow, Highland Cow, looks funny :D. There were the regular farm animals and a couple peacocks too... Here we watched a sheep shearing demonstration! Which was..... Interesting? Meh. As well, they demo'd a working dog that has been trained to work with herding sheep. Very well trained, and they don't bark! That was cool :P
Koalas, yup. More. By this time, it was cold, raining, and windy. Fun. Apparently everyone else was prepared for this with jackets and brolleys (umbrellas) unlike myself in a tshirt :D. This conservation park was a bit different in that they were high up in the trees. But since it was raining and cold I did a quick route and ran back to the centre and grabbed some hot chocolate... Which wasn't very hot. Owell. Koalas, although not endangered, are getting there. Their habitat has been cleared considerably and have been hunted by foxes but have also been stricken with a disease that can kill them, chlamydia.
The Nobbies - Seals, fortunately was indoors. Unfortunately there wasn't much too see. The seals were very far out on the rocks only visible through the built-in, 5$ cameras. Got a decent view of them through the camera though. Since it was raining the cameras were littered in water droplets blurring the view. Boo.
Penguin Parade, outdoors! Photography of any sort is not allowed. I wore my zing shirt for this occasion but couldn't get a picture with them :(... So. Raining cold and windy, we trekked out onto the beach to await the penguins coming back to their burrows. After waiting a bit, they arrived at 5:58. The penguins here are the smallest species of penguins, the fairy penguins. A group: raft. When reaching the beach the penguins had to be in a big enough raft or they would return to the ocean and wait for more! Incredibly cute, hahah. Waddling and falling their way into the hills to find their burrows, which could be up to 1km into land. After enduring a couple of rafts landing and waddling home, we headed back into the building, spotting several penguins in the bush and running across the path even. Drivers were told to check under their vehicles before driving off, just in case. Good experience. Hurray Philips Island!
Had pizza with the group and home to rest. 7am tomorrow for the Great Ocean Road.
Wallaby!
Python!
A crazy mech sculpture on a Churchill Island Farm...
Sheep being round up by a dog |
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| Australia 2010: Day 09: May 03 |
[May. 6th, 2010|10:16 am] |
Today: going to Melbourne. Having two choices, 6am or 1245, we chose 1245 for our flight so most of our day was spent in the Melbourne Domestic airport. Unlike Air Canada, we were able to check-in at the kiosk with just our reservation number. Easy stuff.
Blahblahblah, landed in Melbourne after a stop in Sydney, approx 5 hour flight in total. Took some time to find our shuttle, but finally reached Habitat HQ on St Kilda around..... 8 or 9?
Our first impression of Melbourne, very downtown Toronto-like! Built in a grid has a King and Queen street :P and streetcar/tram lanes running down the middle. Its a little bit more hill-y and has surf! We apparently didn't stay in a busy part of the town though, limited choices of food close-by... Oh well.
Habitat HQ is like a hotel. Very clean and comfy beds. And a lot of rooms. Our room has a double as well as a bunk bed, could fit 4 people. Its a nice place, friendly people, and we just missed seeing a Joey (kangaroo) and a snake on their special monday night visit.
After some talking and a call to the Stand-Up Paddle Boarding, we decided to book two tours through Bunyip. The next two days, the only real days we have in Melbourne, are not viable days for stand-up paddling boarding unfortunately :(... So the two tours are: Penguin Parade Ultimate Tour and The Great Ocean Road! Good stuff.
Way out of Cairns
Way into Melbourne |
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| Australia 2010: Day 08: May 02 |
[May. 2nd, 2010|06:26 am] |
Today. We go shopping. or try to. First stop, DFO. Direct Factory Outlet.
After walking for about 20-30 minutes we got to the outlet and we walked through the outlet in about an hour and a half and bought….. nothing. what a bust. The food court was pretty crappy too. skip. We decided to walk back to southern Cairns and walk around the shops and streets we have been through so many times already… whee.
Shopping in Asia is SO much easier and cheaper. The brands and prices here are either the same in Toronto or way too similar so the only things we've bought are touristy stuff, Zzz.
So in Cairns we have: bungy jumped, scuba dived, snorkelled, swam with the fishes, learned about the Tjapukai, seen koalas, fed with kangaroos and played with birds! not bad at all. |
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| Australia 2010: Day 07: May 01 |
[May. 2nd, 2010|06:25 am] |
3rd day in Cairns, 7th in Australia! Tjapukai, Scenic Skyrail, Koala Gardens, and BirdWorld! Got picked up from Cairns Central and headed to the Skyrail Station.
First stop, Tjapukai Cultural Park. Started off with a cultural background video which was pretty… sad but unfortunately true. European man comes and takes over and massacres most of the aboriginal people and destroys their culture only to be revived from survivors many many many years later. Sounds familiar hmm? After all that there was a small performance about their creation story with video effects projected onto a mirror with performers who timed their movements to it. Nicely done i'd say, its too bad there were only 6 of us in the audience…
Moving on……. went over to a didgeredoo (sp 0.o) performance with a dance about some animals and stuff. followed by a didgeredoo demo and tutorial, which doesn't sound too hard but is actually a bit difficult :P Followed by a short segment on medicinal herbs and fruits that were native to the area that the Tjapukai people used. Yup. sounds awesome…
After the educational part, spears and boomerangs! Apparently aboriginal people used spear throwers, an arm's-length stick with a hook at the end that held the spears in place. holding the throwing stick and the spear, it was used to launch the spear with more power than just your arm. Rosanna launched it past the targets… it was pretty fun but there were more people this time and not enough spears to go around.
Boomerangs! although we only really got one chance at throwing them, it was also pretty cool. Taught how to throw it and mine almost came back to me… but hit the enclosure people were in instead. oops. Rosanna bought her own plain boomerang that she can throw around, i got a souvenir one to keep safe…
Next up, Skyrail to Kuranda Village! Due to timing we just kept going up the rail instead of stopping at the towers, so it took about 35-40 minutes to get to the village from the bottom.
Walking through the village, it was full of arts and craft shops and numerous souvenirs shops, it seems a lot of small town/villages live off tourism. Northern Cairns seems all residential and pretty quiet besides for a passing car or two, of course, on a weekend… Making our way through and finding some small interesting souvenirs we stopped for lunch. Crocodile Pie! According to Rosanna, the taste was similar to chicken but the texture similar to fish. makes sense. not bad not bad.
However, the point of coming up here, Koala Gardens! Housing some crocodiles, turtles, lizards, snakes, frogs, and - koalas, kangaroos, wallabies and pademelons! The koalas were just in their small enclosures hanging out on the trees, no glass or anything, we could have just reached over and poked them ;) Best of all, there's a kangaroo/wallaby/pademelon pit where we were allowed to grab some feed and go down to feed them! Pretty cool, hold out your hand and they all come-a-running. The kangaroos push away the wallabies though, and the pademelon's were hiding under the ramp so we couldn't get to them… ohwell.
Since that took a lot quicker than we anticipated, and after a little convincing, we went to birdworld kuranda! An open aviary with so many birds. They were just flying and pooping everywhere. The visitors who bought some bird food pretty much got attacked by parrots and other birds, landing on their head, arms, shoulders, funfunfun! The rarest bird here was the Cassowary, which is apparently endangered? yes, birds are awesome. for some reason a green parrot flew onto my back a couple times and started to bite at my buttons. Rosanna was lucky too, a white bird landed on her head twice, for no apparent reason. hahaha… We were just happy that we didn't get pooped on. Lotsa pictures!
Once we left most of the shops were closing or already closed, so we headed straight to the skyrail to go back down and stop at the towers.
Our first stop on the Skyrail was the Barron Falls, walking through the Rainforest and beautiful views. Followed by the second stop, Red Peak, the highest point on the Skyrail, again nice views and walk through the rainforest. and of course, huge spiders!
After getting back to the city, we realized that there wasn't much else to see or do. The Blues Festival by the harbour was 75 dollar entry, so….. pass. Tomorrow, we're shopping and chilling. Leaving for Melbourne on Monday! 5 hour-ish flight from Cairns…
Spider!
Koala!
Kangaroo!
Indian Ringneck Parakeet!
Indian White Ringneck Parakeet! |
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| Australia 2010: Day 06: April 30 |
[Apr. 30th, 2010|07:48 am] |
Didn't have a good sleep last night, woke up at 243, 340ish, 440ish, 540ish. and we left at about 640ish to walk to the Reef Fleet Terminal down Spence St.
We booked through GoDo.com, and ended up with Passions of Paradise. I say ended up with because it didn't seem like one of the bigger rides at the harbour. However, the crew was great fun and were very helpful, recommended.
After a long sail ride and before actually realizing where we were, as group 1, scuba diving!! Awesome. It was a bit odd breathing through my mouth but I got used to it. Nasty salty taste on the mouthpieces... Breathe! So we were supposed to do a breath in, take piece out, bubble bubble, mouth piece in, and TWO to get rid of the water... But of course, once I put the mouthpiece in, breathe IN choke choke cough.. Blargh. Ew.
The reef was amazing. Beautiful. I like the view of forests and odd trees and this was even better, underwater and oh so very odd. I wish I had a camera to take as many pictures as I wanted. Anyways, we stayed with the instructor, Steve... Told be to grab on so.... I did. Who am I to say otherwise :P it was difficult to maintain depth though, I need to gain some muscle weight ;) brought us down and led us around. Played with some jellyfish, clown fish and their anemones, we even saw and swam a bit with a turtle! amazing. Before I knew it, 30 minutes was up. I didn't really understand all the hand signals, just 'ok' the whole time :P
Right after scuba we jumped in again for snorkeling! But by this time I was pretty damn tired - -;... Although there was a great view of the coral and fish, I was swimming off in an odd direction and just wanted to get to the damn beach to sit down. Snorkeling right after scuba diving messed me up a bit because going down meant I couldn't breathe in and out. Swallowed a lot of salt water a couple times, choke cough cough. Got to the beach/island/cay whatever and the sand was beautiful and is apparently 80% parrotfish poop! Yum. There was a lot of wind and SO many birds. A lot of them were just riding the winds it was pretty amazing. Being as tired as we were we jumped on the glass-bottom boat back to the ship instead of snorkeling back. It was cold out in the wind and in the wetsuit... We were actually at Michaelmas Cay.
Lunchtime.... Fish feeding! They fed a bunch of fish that swam near the surface, aggressive.
After lunch we went over to Paradise Reef and snorkeled around for half an hour. Again, amazing. The coral was beautiful and multicoloured, swam with many schools of fish but they always ran away when I tried to touch them :( lol... Many large parrotfish, some neon ones, black body white tailed, etc...... And more clown fish with their cool anemones. Played with some more jellyfish and watched as other fish took a bite out of them and watched as a smaller fish cleaned a parrotfish, crazy stuff down there. I also saw some snorkeler swim down to the coral and snap a piece off. Jerk. Continuing on.... For the half an hour I just stared down at the coral and fishes, floated along with the current and time just swam by. Oh. the underwater camera Rosanna borrowed from her friend brokedown before leaving Michaelmas Cay but is now working again in the hostel - -;... so we missed any underwater pics at Paradise Reef.
Back on the boat we spent an hour or two heading back to land. Sunburnt. Only on the front half sans bathing suit covered area. Red and starting to sting as I write this. Steve, the scuba instructor knows a lot of magic and card tricks that kept a lot of us entertained while not sunburning/bathing. Good job passions! Great experience.
Booking our flight and stay to Melbourne for 3 nights... whee… tomorrow, kuranda.
Great Barrier Reef! by Michaelmas Cay
Whatever this thing is.... by Michaelmas Cay
Crazy birds at Michaelmas Cay |
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| Australia 2010: Day 05: April 29 |
[Apr. 30th, 2010|07:37 am] |
Waking up and finally leaving at 5am, Uncle Ron gives us a ride to the airport where our plane connects to Cairns on its way to Osaka and Tokyo, whee…
Aaaannnd here we are, Cairns. 3 hour flight from Sydney, compared to the 48 hour train ride ;) good way to travel. Although it is supposed to rain in Cairns for the next couple days, we got here on a decent day with some sun and some clouds. Our first impression of Cairns once we stepped off the plane is that its very humid compared to Sydney, you can just feel the moisture, which brings out the bugs T_T.
Got a ride from Dreamtime Hostel and checked in with friendly staff and…. decent rooms. infested with small flies… annoying little buggers.
Undecided as to what to do, Chris, the attendant at Dreamtime, suggested a number of interesting things that we could do the rest of the day, it being 1130ish already… white water rafting, botanical gardens, bike ride down the esplanade, shopping, etc… After some planning and thought as to what we wanted to do in Cairns, we decided on……………………. bungy jump. AJ Hackett Cairns to be exact!
Yup. Bungy. We did it! expensive compared to the actual time it takes, but it was a great experience! Walking up the stairs to the jump was a trek, a lot of steps. Getting harnessed in and waiting for your turn… anticipation, hahaha… Tip-toed to the edge, looking down, wave to the camera… 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, goooooooooooooooooo…. i actually stayed in a dive position the whole time, its pretty funny, lol… spun around a lot and it was over! couldn't help but shout out as i fell. Once i got out i ran to rosanna's bag and grabbed her camera to capture her jump. They were a bit too dark but she should be able to get something out of them.
A lot of first time jumpers but there were a couple of return jumpers. One girl did her first jump that day and followed it up with 9 more. yikes. Another guy did 9 in total, intense. We were pretty much done after 1… There was also a man who came in a wheelchair, harnessed by the torso instead of the feet he jumped off and went!
Waited around until 4 for the ride back to our hostel, saw a lot of other jumps like a backflip, a running jump from the roof, a girl was held upside-down then dropped… We also saw some people freak out and one backed out completely, another screamed a couple times but finally got pushed off and enjoyed it :D
Once we got back we booked another tour and went on our way for dinner. (we skipped lunch)… out in Cairns we just kept walking and found a LOT of souvenir stores and some nicer clothing stores. It is actually a very odd city, a lot of the shops are Japanese owned, there are a lot of Asian-style restaurants too. Of course alongside the Japanese owned shops, were a lot of Japanese tourists as well. We also saw a fair share of an asian population in Sydney, mostly Korean i believe.
Anyways, after a bit of souvenir shopping we headed out to find food. Again, a lot of asian-styled restaurants which we try to avoid. We settled on a small shop in the Daily Night Markets called Good Food Cafe, which came with an hour free wireless with the purchase, haha… we both had the Kangaroo Burger and Chips. Hmm… the kangaroo meat wasn't anything special, a bit tough, but i can now say i've eaten kangaroo. There is still Crocodile meat to try out too.
Tomorrow, an early morning to catch our boat for the Great Barrier Reef! Due to the Reef being where it is, Cairns is cursed with absolutely no surf. *sigh
Bungy!!
That's me! As you can see, my feet are first… expect some whiplash.
Bats!
Kangaroo Burger |
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| Australia 2010: Day 04: April 28 |
[Apr. 28th, 2010|02:25 pm] |
Despite our bad luck surfing, or lack of, yesterday we were able to book a Blue Mountains tour in the morning for today. They sent their confirmation through email so we stopped by the three-storey Apple store to steal their wi-fi and got the email :D
Anyways, we met up with our tour bus somewhere near Central and had two more pickup spots before we headed out of the city towards the mountains. Full bus, we went on a highway that had installed some additional fixtures to commemorate the fallen soldiers of WWI, a specific type of soldier I believe. Yup.
First stop was the nepean river. Apparently they discovered and named this river and later on found another river and named it ox river but again later found out it was "the same bloody river" heh. But they still call it differently in the north and south.
Our next stop of the tour was the kangaroo carving, it was actually off on the side of a residential road which was pretty... Odd. A small sign warning people of fines if they damage anything. The aborigines deem any drawing or carving that doesn't tell a story as graffiti, this one told of a kangaroo hunt and how they killed it and what direction they went afterwards O.o....... And around the area were some plants that were useful for the tribe in the area. Flax weed and some kind of tree with special flower/seed things. Yup, I pay attention ;)... They use those flowers as haircombs and one type of them actually takes 12 hours to burn through the inside. They also could be made into a sweet drink when blooming. Whee.
Next... Wentworth falls. A nice walk with several stairs and a nicer view of the waterfall and the 'pristine' forest in the valley supposedly older than the grand canyon...
Leura village. A nice small artsy village. Galleries and wood carved sculptures, expensive fine chocolate, etcetc... There was a nice pie place, steak and gravy! And some nice desserts available...
Scenic world + katoomba + the three sisters. Scenic world, great name... In optima! Spotted Optima everywhere, sorta crazy... Anyways. Cable car across a canyon between the three sisters and the katoomba waterfalls. Katoomba in the native tongue means falling water or something like that :D.... The three sisters, legend has it, three women of one tribe wanted to marry three men from another. The tribe did not want the women to marry and the men were to capture the women but a battle ensued. In order to keep them safe, a mystic transformed the three women into the rock figures. However, the mystic perished in the battle and the three women will forever remain as rock, ooooo.... We then enter the rainforest where they show the different type of gum/eucalyptus trees, ribbon gum, scribbly gum... Etc. A scenic railway then brought us up in a steep incline, through a cavern which was pretty cool.
Next up, the kings tableland. Amazing spot, great view. Its basically a huge cliff. There were apparently a number of suicides and wrecked cars over the cliff, and it was very windy too... Could have stayed there for a while, but we had to continue on.
We visited another national park to try and spot some roos but no luck. Only cockatoos. Zz...
On our way to the ferry we drove through the olympic park, the driver pointed out several of the buildings, what they were used for in the 2000 games and what they are used for now. Wish we could have looked around them more, owell.
The ferry brought us along the parramatta river where we got a nice view of the sunset and the full moon.
Tomorrow, heading out to Cairns! Silent-ish 'r'... Its... Odd to say. 7am flight, international gate, gotta wake up early... Thanks uncle ron and auntie maisie for having us over!
The Three Sisters
The Other Sister (on Kings Table) |
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| Australia 2010: Day 03: April 27 |
[Apr. 28th, 2010|06:19 am] |
Today... we were supposed to go surfing.
'Supposed to' being the key words.
We woke up planned for Bondi (Bon-die) Beach and headed to Bondi Junction around 930. At Bondi Junction we shopped a bit in the WestFields close by. I needed to grab some surf shorts anyways. Unlike Asia, the shopping here is too similar to Toronto without much discount/sales and a lot of name brands.
After some shopping and browsing we left to head to Bondi Beach.
Unlike Manly Beach, during a public holiday, Bondi Beach was pretty empty and actually a nice-sized crowd. We got off at the first stop at Bondi Beach and walked along the boardwalk, not exactly knowing where we were headed. Unfortunately there wasn't much sun out at the moment so the shots look cloudy.
At the end of the boardwalk, we found the 'Lets go Surfing' shop and made our way over. And as our luck would have it...... this week only! reduced times. - -;... we got there at 1pm, the shop closed at 12. hurray. SO as setbacks go, this one wasn't too bad, we're in Australia, another chance to learn surfing is bound to come up in the coming weeks :P, it sucks though, getting to Bondi Beach was a bit of a trip. But we made the best of it, got some food and ate on the beach, the nice clean sand and cool waters.
We trekked onto the Coastal Walk and got some nice views of the waves, rocks, beach, and surfers. Apparently it is a good spot to get glimpses of whales too! In July and August...
After a couple of hours on Bondi Beach we headed back to the city and shopped a bit more, what else we were to do? Our backup was Taronga Zoo but it closes at 530, it was approx 4 when we were still on the train back. A good shop that we found was 'glue', a lot of different brand name items discounted. But, as always, not in my size.
aaaaand we headed back and had some chinese food in a restaurant that Uncle Ron frequents by Chatswood Station. next up, Blue Mountain!
Bondi Beach
Bondi Beach |
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| Australia 2010: Day 02: April 26 |
[Apr. 26th, 2010|01:27 pm] |
I keep waking up way too early.
I guess its because i sleep too early too...
Anyways. Today we bought a day-pass, a 'MyMulti' which gave us access to trains, buses, and ferries! Headed to the Central Station in Sydney that connected most of the train lines. The train is a bit like the GO Train but like a subway car? Not as nice. We got off here and walked towards the harbour bridge, instead of taking the train all the way over there. It doesn't really feel like i'm in a foreign country besides the hills, mountains, accents, cars on the other sides, and the abundance of greenery around the city. We found a 3-storey Apple store too!
Since today was the public holiday for Anzac Day, there were a lot of people walking around too. When we finally made it to the harbour bridge, it was actually very crowded. Walked towards the bridge a bit and headed back around towards the Opera House. The different ferries headed off from this Circular Quay area, all included in the day-pass! The Opera House wasn't as impressive as it is from farther away, but it is still pretty cool. After taking a look around and pictures of details etc, we went to look for food!
Uncle Ron and his wife recommended that we go to the Belgian Beer Cafe to try the beer and get our own pot of oysters! Unfortunately, it was closed. We weren't sure if it was closed because of Anzac day or because it was lunch time... i guess we'll never find out. We decided to head to our next destination to find food, Manly Beach via ferry which gave us a couple of nice angles of the Opera House and all of the beach houses.
Again, the Manly Wharf and Beach area was very busy. We found a small Japanese place with a revolving trail for lunch. Where we tried tempura oysters. nothing really... exotic though. hah.
Continued to head to the beach after that. Since it was crowded we just took a walk around to take in the scenery. There were a lot of people trying to surf on the small waves, looks fun!
We headed back into the streets before the beach and visited a couple stores. Quiksilver, Billabong, Element, RipCurl, it was actually pretty hard to buy stuff because of the currency difference. In Asia the prices are skewed a little because of the decimal point but here it looks the same, so the price seems a bit too much if you think about it in CDN... i'll get over that soon cause i need to buy some surf shorts. I'll bring a currency converter too - -;...
Anyways, we decided to take the 'scenic' route back, which took about an hour to Chatswood Station, and brought us up and around a suburban city view. That bus drivers were actually very nice, which doesn't happen often enough with TTC drivers.
tomorrow. i fell asleep before we could decide where to go.... bondi or blue. we leave for cairns on thursday morning!
Harbour Bridge, behind all of these people
Opera House from up-close
Opera House, detail
Manly Beach |
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| Australia 2010: Day 01: April 25 |
[Apr. 25th, 2010|03:47 pm] |
We touched down at approximately 830am local time and finally got through customs and quarantine around 9-915. It was raining a little and the sky was full of clouds, it's still a bit surreal thinking of the fact that we're in australia :D. Anyways, Uncle Ronald, my dad's friend, picked us up and drove us around the town a bit.
While traveling back his usual route, roads were closed and diverted for the Anzac Day march, tomorrow is a public holiday! Anzac is similar to our Remembrance Day (wiki) in which they march to remember the fallen who fought in WWI. It's gonna be a busy day tomorrow with the long weekend coming to an end and families coming back and the continued diversion for the march.
During our ride we drove through Kings Cross, Sydney's nighttime Red Light District, and made a pitstop at the Mrs Macquarie's Chair which offered a nice view around the harbour bend capturing the view of the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge. Unfortunately there wasn't much sun so they pictures aren't as dramatic as they should be :P but pretty nice nonetheless. From here we were able to see a bunch of people walking on the bridge, the bridgeclimb we found online. But it being around 200$ each to climb it, we opted to save that money for something else. We also ran into a lone Kiwi bird, that Rosanna got up close and personal to take some better shots, hahaha... We're planning to come back another day to tour inside of the Opera House, Botanical Gardens, Circular Quay, and a ferry down to the Sydney Harbour to Manly Beach.
After taking a quick look at the Sydney Fish Market, we found our way into Sydney's Chinatown that mixed some korean and japanese stores in, there's an Ajisen Ramen and an ichiban! Although not as large as Toronto's Chinatown, it was just as busy and traffic just as horrible! Parked, we took a look around and found a large Flea Market, 'Market City' which had a lot of random shops that we decided to skip due to it being only the first day. An interesting addition to the city was the Monorail that went through several parts of the city, some having their own built station, others being added onto existing buildings!
Joining Uncle Ron and his weekly 'yum cha' sessions with a couple of his friends, we bypassed the crazy queue that awaited us on the floor at Marigold since they knew someone, or we would have wasted at least half an hour waiting... hurray! Dim sum wasn't that different from home, their food carts were a bit more sophisticated actually :P We headed back to Uncle Ron's place to unload our luggage and finally take a shower after a day on a plane. Rested a bit, and went back out to another friend's place for a freshly caught fish dinner. What will we be doing tomorrow 0.o... Bondi beach? too busy on the streets for Blue Mountain.
Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge
Monorail Station by the Market City |
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| Australia 2010: Day 00: April 24 |
[Apr. 23rd, 2010|11:08 pm] |
Waiting in YVR to reboard plane... Our gate is right beside the gate i boarded last year for korea, hahhaa...
Checking in at YYZ was....... Adventurous. Apparently we needed a visa in order to travel to Australia, you would expect the travel agents to inform us of this - -;...
But that wasn't a problem, apparently you can apply for one within minutes online for 25$!
However, since our boarding pass is booked under Uu (can't book under 1 letter), the visa couldn't be easily attached to our pass and passport... So they had to send a message to the australian government to verify and override some stuff to get us checked in and boarded, whee.
Thanks to dad we arrived at the airport at 5ish and we finally checked in, went through security, and got to our gate at 8! It's a good thing we got there early. We just barely checked in on time for our luggage to go through.
About 15 or 16 more hours to go! I think... Right? |
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| Korea 2009: Day 15: May 17 |
[May. 17th, 2009|11:07 pm] |
The conclusion.
Ashley dropped by with her brother, Gunil, to say her goodbyes since she'll be staying a couple more days, and Gunil, a couple more months. She also picked up the cellphone we were using thanks to Jinhyo, that has come in handy so much, we're very grateful.
Our plans? Head to a familiar dollar store. hahaha.. grab last minute candy for a dollar ;) We did however manage to do one thing that we haven't done this whole trip, get on the wrong train. we backtracked a station and found our shop, visited paris baguette once more, and left for the airport due to the ominous slowly darkening sky.
We had left our luggage in the hotel lobby in case we decided to eat lunch out instead, since checkout was at 12. so we went back, grabbed that, and made our way.
it was a bit of an adventure once we got to the express bus terminal, one stop away... T_T looking at the station 3D floorplan, there were no elevators that led to the ground floor, only flights of stairs, which was quickly solved by asking one of the info girls, who are standing in heels behind a small info pillar... haha... but once we got up to the ground floor, where were we supposed to go next? eventually Karen found where the airport shuttle picked people up and Cassie found another alternative although we believe it was a more expensive option. by that time, we had about 20000 won left and 9000 was supposed to be for the bus.
The shuttle karen found was exactly the one we want to get on but the only problem was, we can't cross the street to get to it... we'd have to go back underground, through some hallways, down some stairs, up an escalator, and finally across the street. it was more exhausting and confusing than it sounds - -;... and i also managing to break a small part of my brother's luggage. oops.
9000 won and 40ish minutes later, we're at Incheon Airport. Checked-in, Cassie and I go through security while Karen and Michelle wander outside to shop and explore. This is where the first sign occurs. but I'll get back to that later. so we go on the shuttle subway thing to get to the our gate, shopped around, looked at last minute souvenirs, and ate bulgogi burgers, mmmm, at Lotteria. Boarding time at 430 and michelle and karen are nowhere to be found at 426, but show up right on time, and boarding is delayed 15 minutes... haha
smooth 11-hour flight to vancouver. small sign occured. slept a little, watched the sun come up from the horizon, watched a bunch of japanese and korean dramas/movies that i downloaded at the hotel :D
and here is, what i would like to call, The Curse of the Hallabong.
Going through customs, i was led towards the line up to talk to someone to clear, as per usual. The other three, used machines to input their declaration, i think, and got to the carousel way ahead of me.
Backtrack. First sign. I bought a jar of Honey Citron Hallabong Tea from Jeju island which was meant for the lovely people at unikron, who would be able to use it as jam! (or just as tea, whatever) but due to a lack of.... brain, i packed it in with my carry-on. awesome. entering security at inchon airport, i had no choice but to leave it there. i watched as the guard gently place it into the garbage can. T_T... So because of that, i bought Tangerine chocolates and packets of the honey citron hallabong tea from the duty free lotte store.
Small sign, i guess, whatever, the cup they gave my with sprite, cracked. spilled on myself and my laptop. altho both appear to be... completely fine.
anyways, no problems getting through customs at vancouver, found my luggage, went to the washroom. as we left the customs hall, and put our luggage back on the plane, i realize that I left a bag back at the carousel. none other than the bag that held my hallabong tea and chocolate. the guard who collected our customs declaration form informed me that i wasn't allowed back into the customs hall and would have to talk to the lady in the next room and get an employee to go back for it. i threw my luggage on the belt and was told to go out, find the info desk, and call an Aircanada person to look for it. with no luck. it wasn't where it was supposed to be, i guess chocolate and tea in a duty-free bag would go pretty fast unattended.
but i had yet to give up. i was directed to another info-desk up the escalator, which directed me towards the aircanada customer care, who then told me to go to customs baggage claim on down a flight of stairs, who then called someone that said no one had turned it in, but proceeded to tell me that i should have go to the canada customs office in the first place to get someone to look for it, which was back up the escalator, across the a hallway, down another escalator, etc. so instead of doing that, i went back to the customer care desk who actually went down herself to try and find it, unfortunately, to no avail. by this time, my friends were already comfortably seated on the plane, and i had worked up a nice sweat, giving in to the curse of the hallabong. and it all started with my lapse of judgement while packing the tea into my carryon. a lesson learned.
5 more hours in the air to toronto. carrying 0% hallabong... we're about to land, ahead of schedule. hopefully all goes well and i don't have any other stories to add to this one :P since the presence of hallabong is gone, i guess it should be fine 0.o...
all in all, a good trip. good experience. i need to learn some korean ;)
but next year, australia. i hope.
home.
Cassie's bulgogi burger in the process.
The sunrise. |
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| Korea 2009: Day 14: May 16 |
[May. 17th, 2009|05:35 am] |
a quiet day-ish.
we woke up LATE from a exhausting day previous, jenny called but no one else was awake. when everyone eventually did get up, we met her at our closest station around noon. today's forecast: rain. all day. rain.
we went to shinsadong and got some food, and shopped around a bit. most of the shops along this street were jewelry and well, for women. so... yea.
after we finished walking through we decided to head back to COEX mall, again. that's way too many times at the same mall in two weeks. *sigh... we've seen shops open, new items arrive, movie ads change, high and low crowds in the mall... crazy.
we all did our last minute shopping, i guess... and karen and michelle went to find a bag that karen wanted at dongdaemun station somewhere, and jenny went to meet an elementary school friend! jenny's flight is at 11am to nyc, ours is at 510pm. cassie and i headed back to our hotel to pack up things and make them... fit. haha...
they gave us a call and we met them at gangnam to grab some dinner and redmango, a great dessert place, for our last night in korea. mm....
as we were going home, we passed by the interactive touchscreen installations along the street and saw that people were sending digital photomail! it's a great idea :D! we stopped for a bit and took a postcard type picture that sent to our email. this was in addition to a LOT more features that we didn't have time to go through... its a great attraction for everyone!
aaaaaaaand sleep. leaving soon!
Jenny! She's been working in NYC since Grad, we had to travel to Korea to see her! :P
The photomail from Gangnam |
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| Korea 2009: Day 13: May 15 |
[May. 16th, 2009|10:16 am] |
i'm getting very used to sleeping on the floor...
so we're back in seoul. and.... not exactly sure what sightseeing there is to do. BUT we all want to shop :P so we headed for LOTTE Department Store near Myeongdong. Here, and in Japan, the department stores are basically a collection of smaller stores packed onto a floor with their own employees. They are a lot less pushy than in Dongdaemun, but they see it appropriate to follow you around the store incase you want help... maybe koreans are used to it, but i'm sure we felt some sort of pressure. But like most department stores, the prices were....... above our willful range.
Karen found, on the map, a 'Young Plaza' or youth, that had some cheaper stores, and a uniqlo level, and more names that we recognize. we spent a good 3 hours there. karen was especially happy in the discount area for shirts and more for 5-15 dollars.
We went to eat at Kenzo Ramen in Myeongdong streets, apparently there's one at Kennedy and 7 or somethin? hm. and we dropped by some more shops until Jin called to tell us we were late for the festival! what festival u ask? the Yonsei University Festival, Akaraka.
It's basically a school spirit music festival. There was a bunch of school cheers and dances and jokes about their rivals, Seoul University. It was all accompanied by different and popular singers and comedians. The whole experience was great, altho it did get pretty rowdy in the middle of the stadium, not to mention the rain... There were some boy bands, girl bands, solo artists, comedians, rappers, and a very popular band, Super Junior. Ashley tried to translate most of the stuff but either way the festival was fun :P
Cassie Karen and Michelle stayed in the middle-area for a closer view, maybe they were actually able to see the stage, while Jinhyo, Sunmi, and... their friend, something eun? and i went to the top for a better view and less of a rowdy crowd :P...
after super junior, around 9, we went to go eat at a Chicken place, lol... altho it did take a while to find the other 3 again. had some flower soju 0.o which wasn't bad at all, and Hite, a popular beer brand. altho we were told Cass is the better brand... :(
Headed back home, Michelle fell asleep on a pillar as the rest of us got on the train... only to wake up with me waving bye to her - -;... realizing she has the key to the hotel. awesome. haaha, but it didnt take long for her to find us again, she even borrowed a random phone to give us a call.
All in all, another good day.
We're leaving soon!!
Free hugs in Myeongdong!
Yonsei University Outdoor Stage/Stadium... and we don't have seats. |
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| Korea 2009: Day 12: May 14 |
[May. 15th, 2009|09:36 am] |
Woke up around 530 and saw some nice colours in the sky... our window was facing north so we didn't see the sunrise at all, even though we missed it anyways :P
Today is our last day in Jeju. We did so much yesterday, we're just finishing stuff off now. Our first stop, Manjanggul Lava Tubes. yup. lava tubes. This particular tube included three separate caves and is about 7416m long. It was cold, wet walk and it would take a long time to walk to the end and back, which most people do for some reason. we turned around after a quarter ;)
As we drove to our next destination, we stopped by the side to take pictures and soak in the scenery of the rocky shore and a uniquely shaped land formation. cleeeear waters.
As Cassie and Karen said. Over, on, under. water! we're getting on a submarine~.... we were ferried over to a smaller island, i'm not sure what it was called, then jumped into the sub that took us 30m down, which seemed to be enough to hit the bottom. they showed us a bunch of small fishes, coral walls, karen and cassie saw an octopus, there were small jellyfish floating around, it was fun! but it wasn't... AMAZING HOLYSHIT sorta thing :P they have a scuba diver that would lure the fish around the whole sub, giving us some cool shots.
We headed to lunch next, pork seemed to be a specialty on Jeju, so we had some of that. Cooked for us, we wrapped the meat with cabbage or lettuce and added in some spices and sauces, it was really good.
Next up, we headed towards a 'Scenic Park' that would provide a beautiful view as well as access to some building and the shore. But imagine a single road leading in and out that curved along with the shoreline. and then, at least 20 vehicles waiting in line at the end and more of them already in parked, and most of them are buses. and you have to pay to get into the parking lot - -;... yup. we turned around. along the path, there were picnic tables and a small access for... cars i guess! so we drove there, where there was no one and took the pictures we wanted, although i wonder what kind of shots we would get by the 'park'
We stopped by a small shop and bought some Hallabong Tangerines, which were expensive, since Jeju is known for it's delicious tangerines, as well as jeju cactuses for some reason. It was actually very juicy and good, worth the couple of dollars...
Next up, another cave. Micheon Cave. This cave happened to be very popular so I guess overtime it became more..... touristy. Inside the cave were several alterations like a smooth cave floor, a fountain, a painted wall, etc. they cave we went to in the morning was almost completely natural except for lights and signs and small side fences. outside of the cave, the park surrounding it was the most random collection of things such as a zoo, collection of statues, cactus garden, and some weird robotic walking things. creepy.
Our next route would lead us around and onto the central mountain/volcano called Mt Hallasan. Some currrrrvy roads, decent speeds, a bunch of cars and veery nice atmosphere and views, it was a nice drive up. and back down - -; since we weren't going to climb up the mountain due to time constraints.
Dinner destination: in the town core, horse meat. yup. raw meat as well as cooked. + bulgogi. it was delicious and juicy. We had to rush a bit tho, we still had to fill up gas and head back to avis to drop the car off. my driving was a bit insane, more than usual, taking the wrong turns a couple times too... it was awesome - -; fortunately the station and avis were pretty closeby the restaurant.
back to the airport and fulfilling karen's wishes she made at the micheon cave, the airport had Jeju Cactus Icecream! hahah, she had been looking for it for a long time now. i'm not a food critic so i cant really describe how it tasted besides, good, but not as good as melon ;)
jinhyo, ashley's friend, helped us find a better/nice hotel to stay at, really nice actually. Hotel Provista. two singles on the main floor, and a balcony type second floor with a mattress. albiet a bit more expensive than anticipated. owell. it'll be a comfortable last couple days :D
Submarine!
A platter of raw horse meat. yum. |
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| Korea 2009: Day 11: May 13 |
[May. 14th, 2009|12:59 am] |
Busy busy day.
Our first stop was the Miniature Park. Although our timing was pretty bad since we arrived at the exact same time as multiple buses full of high school or middle school students. They were also on the same plane as us, and stayed at the same hotel - -;...
In the miniature park we saw several buildings/monuments from around the world in... mini form. the white house, eiffel tower, leaning tower of pisa, great wall of china, etc... it was fun and we took a lot of pictures.
Second, we dropped by the o'sullac tea museum, which turned out to be an amazingly designed building. the interior was beautiful with interesting signage, nice displays, cool walls, packaging, furniture, flooring, everything was thought of and it is probably the best building we've been in. not to mention the green tea. The ice cream, cake, and actual teas :P
Across the road was the actual fields full of green tea plants. the rows of bushes just kept going and going. being the 'creatives' we are, we spent a long time just playing and taking pictures within the fields. we had way too much fun just being in green tea fields...
Third stop, the Teddy Bear museum. Also a very nice building, a spire at the top that let in all natural lighting to the main area of the building. The museum held several different 'teddy bears' dressed up as movie characters, famous stars, historical events, dracula, the list goes on and on, there were so many of them it was pretty crazy. even sculptures of teddy bears. it's too bad there was so much glare in the windows.
This was also the setting for a part of a korean drama, Goong, which depicted sequences in the drama through teddy bears. Cassie went nuts when she saw them :P
Four. Cheonjeyeon Falls. This one turned out to be a let down... out of three of the tiers of waterfalls, we only saw one. the first one was a hit or miss depending on waterflow, and the third one was several... far away. and there were a lot of stairs.
The only good part about this one was the bridge which offered an amazing view of the ocean and the 'subtropical forest' of cheonjeyeon. where we took the opportunity to snap a lot of shots.
Fifth, Daeyoo Land where we were supposed to ride ATV's, shoot stuff, and get some good food. 2/3. It turns out that the tickets we bought prior (at a special rate at the AVIS rental shop) was only for the ATV - -;... we didnt pay for the big package that included the atv, shooting, and food. After looking at the prices for shooting, 30000 won for 12 bullets at the pistol and at the clay shooting range........ we decided to skip it. but we were starving, so we got food which turned out to be decent, not anything spectacular.
Afterwards we (karen, cassie, and i) hit the ATV track, which turned out to be pretty awesome! just following a track, pushing the accelerator, and standing on the thing, it was looooads of fun. although i ended up having sand in my eyes and soot on my nostrils...
Six. Paper Doll Museum. The GPS gave us a lot of trouble for this one. it led us all the way around the sports stadium. the stadium had a lot of things inside of it.... a movie theatre, and multiple permanent 'museums'... which was pretty weird.
Anyways, the dolls were veeeerrry interesting, but so creepy. extremely. the way they are made, they don't have eyeballs. they have... eye slits. creepy. but a lot of them were pretty cool either way. We also ended up in a section that held historical korean stuff like the evolution of cellphones, typewriters, movie posters, weird stuff like that... at the end of the hall was an old classroom setting. for some reason there was a gun prop, which cassie had a lot of fun with... ...
Seven. this one was very spontaneous. Since we didnt do the shooting at Daeyoo Land, we discussed alternative activities and Ashley was able to set up something pretty cool and exciting. Jetboat and Parasailing. frakken awesome.
Karen, Cassie and I (again) paid 45000 cash instead of 65000 :D! because of some package deal and we rushed onto the boat. As we were pulling into the parking lot, other people were already putting on lifejackets. And off we went. It was preeeeeeetty cool. the driver did a lot of sharp turns and 360s and made sure all of us got at least a little wet. we could taste the saltwater from the splashes, hahaha... he also stopped at a couple places and told us about it... in korean. so we learnt a lot - -;
and we arrived back at the docks and quickly got changed to prepare for parasailing!! we are strapped into a harness, attached to the parachute, and the driver just sails away, leaving us to drift in the air, falling down again, and up again. it was an amazing experience that i'd do again anytime. i went up first and had a blast. they brought me down three times. the second and third time they lowered me into the cooooold water, thigh deep, or deeper, i lifted myself higher :P. it's a good thing i changed, i had pants on before. Karen and Cassie went after me and they both had an amazing time :P (my vocabulary is limited for some reason...)
Eighth. the 'Museum of Health and Sex'. yup. not as... playful as Love land, it was more scientific and had many artifacts and old drawings from different cultures. no pictures were allowed inside, so we had a bunch from the sculptures that were outside. hmm... meh.
Although we did witness a stupid car accident in the parking lot. A girl just reversed SO fast into a car behind her. it was the only car in that row of parking spots... it just happened to be parked behind her... ....... the car looked a LOT similar to ours so a couple of us were a bit freaked out for a second until i assured them we parked elsewhere. but yea, the girl reversed into the car and the second car... bounced backwards about half a parking spot. no cracks from what we saw, it was a bounce... weird. lol, we quickly left after that, as the owners of the other car came to see their car out of place :P
Nine! Dinner~ Ashley directed us to a Jeju Island specialty. Black-haired pigs. Apparently they are soooooo tasty due to the fact? that they feed off their own feces. 0.o either way, it was pretty good. The restaurant we went to had a unique way of cooking the meat as well (we cook it ourselves) but instead of the usual grill, they utilize the covers/lids of the traditional rice cookers, which proved to be good conductors of heat and didn't burn the meat as fast as korean bbq places in north america do. yum.
After trying to find an onsen/spa nearby and failing, we headed to our hostel for the night which seemed to be particularly out of place and empty :P but the lady that greeted us was nice and we have pretty good internet and a very nice view of the ocean (we think)... i can currently see a lighthouse in the distance and hear the waves.
a good day.
O'Sullac Tea Museum. i have a pretty bad tan T_T...
The Teddy Bear Museum, the thinker
The Paperdoll Museum, creepy melted heads sculpture
Jetboat coming back from an adventure
Parasailing!
Black-haired pig pork |
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| Korea 2009: Day 10: May 12 |
[May. 13th, 2009|02:50 am] |
After the morning bath and difficult sleep, we head out to grab our belongings from the place we didnt end up sleeping at :P It was 8000 won from each of us, 8$. o well. And today it was raining over most of Korea, we also had some bursts of hard rain in Busan.
Our next stop would be the Gimban International Airport. gimban?... sure. (correction: Gimhae International Airport in Busan, where'd gimban come from...) which would take us to Jeju Island by plane in 1 hour instead of ferry that would take 3-4 hours.
Arriving at Jeju Island we grabbed some brochures and rented a car. Yup. a car. We decided that this would be the easiest and hasslefree way of moving around Jeju, this is a common situation for tourists here since the buses are infrequent and untrustworthy. To rent a car in Korea you require an International Drivers License, which costs 15$ from CAA and... its valid for a year. pretty easy and painless procedure - -; anyways, we rented a... SM5, whatever that means, from a brand that we don't know of for sure... but it starts up instantly, rides smooth, and the brakes are more sensitive than the Stratus we have at home... which caused for abrupt stops while I was getting used to it. hahaha... sorry.
The car comes with an intelligent key card that locks, unlocks, opens the trunk. And AVIS installed a keyless ignition or maybe it was built that way, who knows... which starts the car in a blink of an eye. the best but most annoying part is the GPS system. There are a LOT of 'hidden' cameras that the GPS system warns you of, it goes a crazy flashing colour and annoying sound if you are above the limit while approaching the camera. This would also happen in school-crossing areas. It also marks the gas stations, police stations, some restaurants, and speedbumps, for some reason Jeju has a lot of speedbumps - -;. Of course, it's all in Korean so Ashley is helping to input locations and translate pertinent information :P
After locating our hotel in the pouring rain, a pretty nice hotel, i might add, we went to Jeju's Glass Castle. To eat. We had bibimbap with mackerel and eel, and some other stuff. it was SOOOOO good. after scraping off every bit, we hit the actual museum. It displays a creative array of glass creations from door handles, fish, flowers, people, teacups, chairs, and the list goes on. Most of the display was outside so the rain wasn't very nice to us, although it did let up a bit. We had a lot of fun here :D
The next stop, since MOST of the stuff was closed by now (7pm) we decided on going to Love Land, an.... adult-rated museum of sculptures and love-type-things. I'm not sure if I should say anymore besides that it was a fun place, great photo opps, and awkwardness bouncing off the wall when a group of mothers pass by. especially when you happen to be the only male in the current room... yup. Good times.
Driving back was crazy! There was a massive amount of fog and the streets/highways here aren't lit up with lamps but use the reflection of the car lights to help guide the cars. ONLY the reflections. gets a bit dangerous with narrow roads. Although it is still better than driving in Seoul where the drivers are.... not safe. or courteous. at all.... we would be hurt by now if i was driving in seoul. yikes. aaaaand sleep.
Oh. before that. there are a lot of energy saving additions in Korea. One would be the reflection only driving, another is the hotel key controlling the lights in the suite, once u remove it from the slot, all of the lights turn off. Our first condo had a sink that did not have its own pipes. Since the whole room would act as a shower stall, the sink utilized that drain as its own. In the current shower, you have to hold a button on the showerhead in order for it to spray, saving on water. it's the small things that add up!
Our rental car for Jeju Island. SM5 0.o
The Phoenix, Guardian of the South, at Glass Castle (i know its not made of glass...) |
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| Korea 2009: Day 09: May 11 |
[May. 13th, 2009|01:30 am] |
Time for Busan (or Pusan...)
Grabbed a day-pass and locked up our luggage at the station and went to the Jagalchi fish market for some fresh seafood. mm.... The random fish, squid, octopus, clams, other random sea-dwelling creatures 0.o... sea bugs, stingrays, eel, shark brain o.o!, king crabs... crazy.
We found a restaurant inside the market and sat up on the second floor with a view of the dock and ocean. We ordered a lot and spent a lot on sashimi, crab stew, and...... freshly chopped octopus. The tentacles were still moving and sticking to the plate with its suction cups. it was a nasty sight to see, looking like a plate of live worms really... but tasted pretty good o.o! lol... we were supposed to also try the live squid but they did not go out to catch any that day so there wasn't any.
Next up we went to find our place for the night, which ended up to be the extra rooms above an old couple's house, small and... a bit... dirty. :S
We left quickly to our the main stop of the day, Haedong Yongkung Temple. Similar to Japan, Korea has several Buddhist temples even though the main religion now is christianity. At this temple, it was built by the seaside and was chiefly created for the most merciful Goddess, Boddhisattva. The temple was enormous and beautiful, definitely worth the subway ride and subsequent taxi to the location.
I have a lot of photos... but with no explanation behind them...
and our last stop for the day, Vesta. A spa. yup. spa. I experienced the same sort of thing in Japan's onsens so I was more used to it than last time. A public bath with a bunch of naked men walking around - -;... anyways. The spas ranged from 40C to 50C as well as an outdoor balcony and a waterfall-type area where you would stand under a high pressured spout of water and receive a nice massage.
In addition to the relaxing baths, there were also co-ed saunas that ranged from -14C to 70C, they are frakking insane. like.... wow. The girls took their sweeeeeeeet time in the baths, i fell asleep by myself in the co-ed floor for an hour before they showed up - -;... i wish i took some korean lessons before the trip
When we first thought of going to the spa we thought of staying there instead of finding a hotel or alternative place to stay but decided against it due to the sleeping with strangers sorta deal But as relaxed as we were after the baths, we decided stay there for the night and it ended up being a little regretful once it started to crowd up near 11pm and sleeping was harder for everyone with louder snorers than myself and hotter rooms. Michelle and Karen slept in the ladies' room which got crowded and hot, Cassie and Ashley slept in the main room that was blessed with an echoing snore, and I slept in the main sleeping room where I had minor difficulties falling and staying asleep.
HOWEVER, staying over would mean we'd be able to experience the relaxing baths once again and since we have to leave early anyways, it would be relatively empty as well :D
No pictures from inside, prohibited. with all the naked bodies and all...
Freshly chopped Octopus
Astroboy at the Haedong Yongkungsa |
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| Korea 2009: Day 08: May 10 |
[May. 13th, 2009|01:24 am] |
Packed and ready to go.
Woke up around 430ish to leave at 525ish to meet Ashley at 530 on the corner. Walked to the Express Bus Terminal and jumped on the 630 bus to Gyeoungju. It's a good thing that the bus is actually comfortable, think an upgraded GO bus :P
4 hours till we actually reach the gyeongju bus terminal, went by fast since we all fell asleep :P... got there, waited, and jumped on the tour bus we're taking. we decided on this since we didnt have to bus around to each and every location, and we'd learn some historical stuff about the sites we visit as well. Although the tour was only in korean, we had ashley to help translate so we could learn stuff :D... there was also a couple from spain and a family from london, ontario.
Our first stop, a water thing with some crazy korean name o.o..., the last of its kind. connecting the ocean and a stream. it was rumoured to be an area where the King had parties but historical events have caused doubts. The King was said to be killed during a party at one of these locations but the assassination occurred during November, which did not make sense for the King to be partying outside. ....that's what i remember from ashley's translation. haha... but THAT was it. if we had to bus to that thing, we woulda skipped it in a fraction of a heartbeat...
Next, we stopped at a 'Tomb Park' an area where ancient tombs were amassed. it was similar to egyptian tombs, in which they are buried with golds items and sometimes with servants. they are buried than the tomb is built up around them then covered in soil. As time goes on the tomb would look like an almost natural hill. they've excavated most of the tombs but have also resealed them except for one called the 'heavenly horse tomb' named after the artifacts found inside. The park held the largest tomb built in gyeongju, which held a man, and then later, an addition was added for his wife. The articles inside, once exposed to the new air, began to rust and the pictures of who was actually buried, were blackened and lost forever.
Then we visited an Observatory which was built to resemble a well. Again, the last of its kind. It was built using 365 stones, the layers before the window represented past queens, and the layers above to represent the number of months, and 30 stones somewhere to represent the number of days in a month.... yea. they would have had to use a ladder in order to get to the top of the tower. The top wooden planks were positioned to point at each direction N S E W and from above, look like the chinese character for Well.
next stop, lunch! whee. it always seems that asian tours go to buffets.... altho i'm sure there's a financial business reason in doing so... lol. this particular place tho, had the gyeongju specialty, a red-bean paste dessert in a special bread, it was really good!
Seokguram Grotto was next. Positioned at the top of the highest mountain in the Gyeongju area, a Buddha and several other supporting deities were built and a structure was built around them. a square room leading into a circular, representing the ground and earth leading to the enlightened land of buddha. Being built at the top, it was believed the Buddha would look over the entire city. If this mountain was overtaken, the whole city would be in danger, whatever battle was to take place would be over. The intricacies that go into the ancient building were astounding. The Buddha is placed a bit off-center in order for the sunlight to correctly shine through, bounce off the wall, and light up the Buddha's face, instead of directly, which would create a shadow to be drawn across the face.
While the Japanese had control, the grotto was lost until a postman (i think) discovered a small hole and looked inside to discover the buddha. The Japanese then proceeded to try and dig up and move the whole structure to Japan. During this process, while trying to remove the actual Buddha, water began to spring up and they believed that the mountain would explode from that spot if the buddha was removed. They then proceeded to reroute the water only to find that it would be extremely difficult to move the structure without destroying it completely and stopped their efforts. The water was then used to create a fountain a bit lower than the grotto. However, the water was first used to keep the structure naturally cooler, which would in turn extend the lifespan of the statues.
AAaaand the last stop, Bulguksa Temple. We didnt really pay much attention to the explanations here and just explored and took pictures. One of the bridges was said to be the bridge that connected the earthly world with the Buddha's land. And the grounds could be separated into four sections being the land of humans, monks, buddhas, and the main... buddha 0.o...
Nothing toooooo interesting there that i can remember. The tour guide even quizzed Ashley with some facts and she got it right ;) lol... uhm... there was one very interesting thing that we wouldn't have noticed. The sides of the staircases included a curve at the corner that mimicked the curve of the traditional korean shoes.
We got dropped off at our hotel for the night and instantly headed back out to get some fooooood. Since ashley is finally with us, she knew what to order when we went to a REAL korean bbq place. a plate of pork, beef, bottle of soju! mm... Ashley didnt really drink much but cassie and i finished off the bottle with a little help from KAREN! who doesn't drink much at all, ever, which was nice and surprising for us :D
and finally, karaoke. hah.
We went back to the hotel, which had a karaoke thing in the basement which was completely empty so we got an extra... 30 minutes or somethin for free. and sleep.
sorry. i had to stop writing this two days ago and just got back to it near the end, where the post seems to thin out to basic details - -;...
The Observatory, i'm sure there's a korean name out there somewhere :D
The Gates to the Monks' area at Bulguksa |
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| korea 2009: Day 07: May 09 |
[May. 10th, 2009|03:00 am] |
Dongdaemun. Our only real destination today. The fashion district.
There were several malls in the area that had multiple floors with women's clothing and one floor of men's. Most of the clothing in each mall was the same and the method of selling was extremely stressful and pushy.
Each time i walked along the aisles, the people at the booths jump up and start talking, hyung nim, hyung nim~.... chacamanion 0.o that's prolly spelt wrong... then some realize i dont speak korean and the first thing they ask "where are you from?" and don't elaborate. and continue with broken english... whee.
but yea, when you can't speak the language, and maybe just the style of shopping, was too much for all of us. we headed back to coex mall. again. 3rd time... this time we explored the other side of the mall and found a uniqlo, where i actually didnt buy anything.
we ate at omurice, omurice fusion and pasta. yum. love omurice. after a bit more shopping we had some dessert at redmango, which was soooo good. altho demetri's crepes would have more to it.
headed back home and packed our stuff up. we're heading off to gyeong-somethinorother, busan, then jeju island. we were supposed to have the same condo afterwards, but the landlord found another, more permanent... people. so we're getting a bit of a refund but gotta find another place to stay after getting back from jeju. ashley's uncle found a hostel for us by insadong, altho not co-ed.
we did some laundry at her uncle's place and brought it all back to our place in order to dry. altho we have to meet at 530 in order to catch a bus around 6, 630. whee. sleep?...
Astroboys
Mixed Berry Waffle at Redmango |
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| Korea 2009: Day 06: May 08 |
[May. 9th, 2009|09:43 am] |
EVERLAND!!!!!... one of the famous amusement parks in Korea. Located in the Yong-in city, same as the Korean Folk Village. But Everland is huuuuuge and located so far far away it's as if the place was completely dedicated to everland and nothing was close by for hours... You enter the 'Everland Resort' and you just keep going up and up for a couple minutes until you actually get to the amusement park.
anyways. honestly, i didn't give a damn about amusement parks, had a grumpy mindset i guess... but by the end of the day, i had a lot of fun :D
it was probably because the first thing we did was go on a ride and that took about an hour to actually do. frakkin lineups. but the ride was similar to our cyclone at wonderland and it helped boost my energy, etc... :P
we went to several small rides after that, and watched their afternoon parade. dancers and floats. it was amazing how a LOT of the dancers were actually caucasian. it's like... "where did they all come from?!" the procession continued for about 15-20 minutes and then we headed off to safari world......
safari world had 2 main safari areas. One for the tigers and lions, the other for the bears. the elephant, monkeys, etc, were off in another, not directly connected to the safari area. The concept was similar to the african lion safari, we're all in a bus and traveling through a habitat built for the animals. There were several lions and tigers as well as a liger o.o! which looked like a lion with faint stripes. It seemed to me like the animals were trained a bit to avoid the vehicle... hmm. or just learnt to.
in the bear cage, they were everywhere. some more active than others of course. the driver had biscuits so that he could lure a bear onto the side of the bus in order to provide a more interesting trip for the visitors. the bear even stood on its hindlegs for a long time just to get some biscuits! haha...
Going through an animal thing afterwards, similar to a zoo, the animals were very active. penguins, beavers, toucan, snakes, bats, seals, otters, etc. we then proceeded to ride the Amazon Express, their water raft ride. we barely got wet tho, thankfully. At the exit, they provided fans and heating lamps for the people who actually did :P Around this area, the T-Express, Korea's pride and joy of roller coasters. the world's steepest drop of 77 degrees. Of course the long was longer than a 90 minute wait so we decided to skip it and get on with our lives >_>...
We jumped onto 'Human Sky' the 2-person ropeway, and ended up near the entrance where we encountered a 'BBoy Funny Battle' about to start. we stayed for that and encountered more caucasian dancers, breakdancers. haha... they gave an amusing show.
Next at 8 (my order is probably wrong and skipping several things) we went to get dinner. we got on the other ropeway, a 4-person one, that led us to the Grand Stage area where we grabbed some food and waited for the moonlight parade. the floats and dancers were lit up like crazy and the lights danced away.
An hour later, the multimedia and light show was to start. the 'Dream of Lucian'. Lasers, enormous projections, floats, and fireworks. it was great :D but the fireworks were amazing. it just kept going and going and going. fireworks mode on the camera is awesome. the fireworks display made the day all worth it.
aaaaaand home. there was a lot of traffic so it took a lot longer than we anticipated. *sigh
Liger
Phoenix in the Dream of Lucian
Fireworks! |
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| Korea 2009: Day 05: May 07 |
[May. 8th, 2009|07:52 am] |
This time we met Ashley at her uncle's place instead. It was closer to the subway line that we wanted to get onto, rather than transferring a couple times. The thing about the subway in Korea, it's about the same thing as in Japan. hahha... I'm not even sure which one is bigger. Anyways, destination: Gyeongbokgung Palace.
This year is their 100th anniversary of some... thing, so admission to the museums were completely free for the WHOLE year. Although admission to the palace was 3000 won, lol.
We rented an audio tour guide (which i didnt really end up using) that was sooooooo cool. It used a map and a audio pen with a reader. You press the pen onto the map and it tells you about the spot. you didnt have to press on a specific thing either, just the area of the building description or the number and it would start talking. double-sided too. crazy.
The palace was enormous. Separate buildings bigger than my house for each activity of the emperor, hahaha. The traditional architecture was interesting and also beautifully painted.
The first building you see as you enter the palace was surrounded by guardian statues. The four guardians of the South (Phoenix), East (Dragon), West (Tiger), North (Turtle), as well as a second tier of animals from the zodiac.
The pavilion on the lake was huge and beautifully placed to provide a view of the mountains and trees with the reflection from the water. By the pavilion, Ashley went to give her friend and brother a call in order to meet up with them for lunch and Insadong shopping.
Her friend was running a little late, and her brother decided not to come anymore. for some reason... seemed like he was having trouble adjusting to the time difference.
Anyways, there was also a free hanbok place again. This time we all (except ashley) got dressed up again. Cassie and Karen in the womens and Michelle and I in the mens clothing (due to limitations of clothing) haha... that was actually fun :P altho the good pictures are on michelle's camera.........
By the time we had finished and took the hanboks off, we had to go meet up with Ashley's friend. We took another 30 minutes while Ashley went, to explore the tower and its surrounding area. The tower was based on top of the National Folk Museum that we didnt have time to go through, but was also free and looked interesting :P and off we went to catch up to Ashley.
Her friend's name is Jin Hyo, he lent us cellphones to use for our stay in Korea, apparently he has several of them :P he setup the numbers and everything too! although i'm not sure what features we can actually use and stuff. he calls himself an 'Early Adapter' keeping up with the latest technological trend. his current phone is a touchscreen with two or three basic buttons, rivaling the iphone and storm. The technology in Asia is amazing, which is y Apple hasnt made a large dent in its market. The current cellphones are able to watch TV and their subways have reception, despite some of them being underground. The one i'm using has a UV Measure, measuring the UV rays by facing the phone towards the sun, an FM radio, karaoke, and this is an old phone...
I'm sure it was nice for Ashley not to have to explain everything and show us around. He's 25, or 26 in korean age, (wiki: in which a person's age is counted starting from conception, rather than from physical birth. Newborns start at one year old, and each passing of a New Year, rather than the birthday, adds one year to the person's age)... taking Electrical engineering, and did his mandatory time with the military, a special force that worked with the American military, since he is able to speak pretty good english. Altho he got injured... on the soccer field, by an american :P haha......
As with most subway stops, there are several shops before you even enter the system. This one in particular had Kyobo bookstore and accompanied by an art supplies store, stationary, music, notebooks, planners, stickers, etc. pretty crazy underground. cassie spent a lot of money on markers, since she loves them so much.
After lunch we headed off to Insadong to do shopping. This district is famous for traditional souvenirs, art galleries, and custom-made items such as jewelry. Each of us bought a couple of little trinkets as we walked through and Ashley and Jin Hyo left around 5:45 to meet up with their friends.
We then headed to finish off Insadong and then to City Hall, where the Hi-Seoul festival was still taking place. The Dance Party, which is basically a concert off two stages with random dancers among the crowd. It was a lot of fun and not that crowded, since it was an oldies themed day and it has been running all week so far.
Aaaaaaand home. Each day has been busy and exhausting, I fall asleep so easily after putting my head down.
Hanboks and... i'm not sure if the male outfits are hanboks...
Cassandra and one of the Dance Party... dancers. |
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| Korea 2009: Day 04: May 06 |
[May. 7th, 2009|08:46 am] |
Korean Folk Village. is where we're headed. Since our internet cellphones still suck (i'm not exactly sure how those phones work) i had to go outside and a couple steps away from the building in order to get enough reception to give Ashley a call and see if she was coming with. aiya...
Anyways, Ashley shows up later and researches a bit about getting a prepaid phone and tries to contact Jenny, who landed the same day we did but never contacted us - -; and banana milk is good. there's a strawberry milk too, and some blue one that says lite... hmm.
We walked a long way to get to the bus stop that would take us there. There were a LOT of bus stops that take you to random farther places, it's similar to the GO bus stops but.... for 1800 won (approx 1.80$) and it's tied to the subway thing so the same pass works on the bus, awesome. it took about 40 minutes to get to the village, which would be the equivalent to our Pioneer Village, same concept.
All of the staff wore the traditional hanboks and there were several gift shops that sold the same thing... haha. before we went in, we passed by a palm reading machine. All of us got a reading for fun and most of the reading seemed to be pretty precise somehow, and all of ours was different-ish. Of course, it took a while to read out since only ashley can read and translate it :P I only remember that i'm too honest in love ;) and uhm... i'm bound to have several little arguments with my future wife 0.o lol and i'm a good worker when i put my mind to it and stuff like that, i wish i wrote it down.
We went in and made our way through. We didnt really learn too much since we just walked around and took pictures :D... We took pictures of Senangdang (statues of faces, similar to totem poles 0.o?) and saw different kinds of homes for the rich and poor, servants and different jobs. Walked into the 'police station' of the times and tried on the traditional uniform with a spear! and played in the jail. hahahah... a nobleman's mansion that included guest and servant wings, which made it that much bigger. there were three museums which we paid for but they were..... not that informative. altho Ashley explained some things about the zodiac days and what traditionally happened on those days such as being more careful around knives and stuff on a certain day. and that mother's would dream of different things to predict whether their baby would be a boy or a girl. phallic type objects would represent a boy and other things, a girl. Ashley's mother dreamt of fish apparently. that seemed pretty interesting...
We went to a small swing set area where you stand on it and use your whole body to swing yourself up, i had a lot of trouble T_T karen did pretty good tho. we headed back out to the front to eat at the restaurant, 4 out of 5 of us ordered bibimbap which was pretty good. havent had a meal yet that didnt taste goooood. :D
Ashley had to meet her family at a certain subway station so we had to leave right after. finding the same bus going back to the same stop we got on at. and the shopping resumes... dangerous. i've spent a LOT already....... but this time, i'm also buying for other people ;)
We've only shopped a couple days and have looked forward to finding Basic House and UNIQLO which sell a lot of polos and basic things, but... they're so nice. altho sorta expensive. sometimes. :D after going through a bunch of shops around Gangnam, and seeing the awesome multi-use touchscreens on the street, we headed off to COEX Mall again for the sake of Karen.
This time it was SO different and you actually had space to move around. but it actually seemed sort of... dead. o well. i was in most of them already so i just sat outside waiting :P the aquarium and kimchi museum was closed so we didn't visit them. We also checked out the touchscreen interactive map, which was frakkin awesome. i explained it to my co-workers:
COEX Mall Interactive MAP. Language, Search, Popular Places, Info, Customer Service, Buildings Around, Restrooms, Parking, ATM.
You can click any of the 3D Blocks on the map and it will give you information, Name, Times of Op, Directions, and a general description
Directions will simulate a character walking through Where you are to where you want to go, also providing distance in meters and time
Also, the top of the screen has Weather, Time, Date and a 2D Map. At the bottom, advertisements.
Another cool addition was a button at the bottom labelled Handicapped/Children which would bring up the main toolbar at the bottom instead of the middle of the screen.
I have a video of it but I don't have the willpower at the moment to get it encoded smaller and sent
that was easy :D
and we ate at Jackie's Kitchen :D Korean-style chinese food, hahaha. was pretty good too! aaaaaaand back home. i always end up sleeping after shower, uploading pictures, and i'm totally out a couple minutes after i lie down.
The Palm reading machine :P
The Interactive Touchscreen Map!! |
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| Korea 2009: Day 03: May 05 |
[May. 6th, 2009|07:05 am] |
I'm very unprepared for this trip, karen did most of the planning and i did almost no research :D...
Today, Ashley had plans with her own friends so we were to fend for ourselves in Seoul. After grabbing some freshly baked goods for breakfast, we went underground and somehow bought Karen a subway pass as well, with gestures and basic words, haha...
We went off to Junggok where we found the tourist information centre and a section of the hi-seoul festival that was taking place during our stay. i'm not exactly sure what the point of the festival is, but it's very interesting and happy :P
Our first stop was the information centre, there was a small section in which life-sized cardboard cut-outs of some celebrities were available for you to hug and take pictures with, haha... and a small souvenir shop, where we tried to but couldn't buy any souvenirs because it was closed for Children's day :(
We did, however, get the chance to make our own flower lanterns with a simple round lantern, glue, and pieces of.... paper? sure. it was fun but the day ahead of us would prove to be difficult on them. Afterwards, Karen and Cassie tried on hanboks! They had a lot of fun posing in the traditional dress and taking photos.... a lot of photos...
Several sales were going towards World Vision, mugs, bookmarks, rings, etc. Along the riverbank of Hangang there were exhibits of the old marketplaces and artistic pieces as well as timelines, and graphic designs. Along the side railings, people were encouraged to tie a ribbon with their wishes for the future written on them. We also met a girl who had just came back from a trip to Toronto to visit her Uncle, a volunteer.
aaaaand my camera battery died because i havent charged it since i got it :(... stealing cassie's for now ;)
we then headed off to the shopping area between eujiro and myeongdong where there were a lot of familiar brands like adidas nike giordano GSTAR! (insanely expensive) puma, etc... and a lot of small stores, one in particular had lego people on shirts, bought myself a spartan lego-man :D but most of all, we found a uniqlo! i spent several won there..... ...and plan to spend some more... mostly because i havent bought any pants yet - -; all tops.
Since the city is on holiday, u can only imagine the insanity in the streets. One thing about walking in a crowd in Korea, no one says excuse me, sorry, pardon me... its: *push *shove *cut-off *swerve.... u get the point. I asked ashley how to say those things but she said that they dont really say it, they just...... move around eachother silently with the occasional bump.
Stopping for a moment at the Angel-in-us Coffee shop, where the cashier didnt know what the english on the menu said, we figured out our plan to head to Namsan Tower, North Seoul Tower, one again heading through some more shops. It was unavoidable since the shopping district was so huge. Also being discussed were light plans for Australia next year ;) hahaha
After we finally got out of the shopping area, we walked up to the cable cars that would lead us to the top of mountain where the tower was built. it was karen's first ride ever on a cable car apparently. whee. Up top there was a teddy bear museum! and wireframed people in the air, and shops and food places, and of course, the tower observatory. the lines were long but moved quickly. at the observation level on the windows they show what direction a certain city is, and the distance to it. Toronto Canada was mentioned, 10,577km or somethin like that away from the tower. we didn't take too long, michelle and karen got their fill of pictures and we left so that we had enough time to get through the elevator line and the cable car line. on the elevator level there were washrooms, which was also open to the skyline and the urinals were very..... interesting. and high. i wouldve taken a picture if there wasnt anyone else in there :P lol
A long day of walking and shopping, our feet were killing us. walked back to the subway and made our way home to go through our spoils and rest our heads.
Hanboks!
The Namsan (North Seoul) Tower |
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| Korea 2009: Day 02: May 04 |
[May. 5th, 2009|05:28 am] |
Woke up with the balcony door open, cold. at around 5ish but slept until 6 somethin, to the yoga stretches of michelle and cassie. hahaha....
we were supposed to meet up with ashley at 12 and figure something out. so we have a cellphone which is a bit........ troublesome. i locked it, but didnt know what the passcode was to unlock it - -; ugh.
we left around 830ish and went to find breakfast and wander around. visited numerous small shops and stopped at starbucks for a drink. we found a small bbq place where we had beef rib stew for 5$, yum. and we then continued to wander and explore a small mall and supermarket before meeting up with ashley.
we were -supposed- to call her ahead of time but since we didnt know the passcode we made sure to be there at 12 and they (ashley and her brother) arrived a couple minutes later carrying blankets for us to sleep on.
Ashley had to go visit family later so we figured out the cell phone thing (...passcode 0000) and found the closest uniqlo :D for us to visit until she was free again, which turned out to be preeeetty close. as we head off again ashley gives us a call, her family thing is close to a big mall so, let's go there instead... walked back and we got a ride to the COEX Mall but as we waited for Ashley, we explored the Bongeunsa temple to await a call from her later on.
Buddha's 2553th birthday just passed and we missed the festival. At the festival, people were given the chance to make their own paper lantern and hang it with wishes up in the temple grounds. There were hundreds. I have no clue about the facts but, it was a really nice place :D..........
There was also a small indoor lantern display which was pretty good. and free. awesome background opportunities ;). and in the middle of that, the cellphone died.... hahaha...
While exploring the small gift shop, i see Ashley and Gunil pass by and catch them before they go in any further. It seems that their cellphone died too... nice :P (we need to get a better one....) but shortly after we went off to COEX Mall.
The mall was very busy (apparently it's Children's day tomorrow so many people have the day off today. An interesting thing about some of the stores was that they have circular facades. there were several shops just filled with cute useless crap. perfect for souvenirs. hahah... AND! there were interactive touchscreens for the map of the mall! (but the one i saw didnt even work, so i didnt take a picture - -;) There were several advertisements for MOTO V10, X-men origins, and Star Trek. And we can't forget. Jackie (Chan)'s Kitchen. hahahaha... we didn't try it, but it was funny to look at :D. we stopped for lunch at a small kimbap place and went to meet Karen at the Express Bus Terminal.
But before that, we need to get our subway passes. The system works the same as in Japan, buy a card, load it up, scan it at the start of your trip and at the end. The only thing you need to worry about it getting to the right station and how much money is left on your card. The boarding level looked as if it was a narrow passageway with shops on the side but it was actually glass boards and doors built-up in order to prevent suicide... ...yea... it wasn't there the last time Ashley was in Korea. Cellphone's worked underground too! and their advertisements were in video form inside the trains. crazy.
Arriving at the station, wandering around, and waiting for an hour or so, Karen shows up and we're finally reunited. Go back to the apartment, figure out plans, head out to dinner then head home to rest from our exhausting day. zzz....
Lantern's at the Bongeunsa Temple
Part of the Lantern festival, shaped as infinity. |
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| Korea 2009: Day 01: May 03 |
[May. 5th, 2009|05:06 am] |
And off to Korea.
630am flight, just a bit too early.
5 hour flight to vancouver, surprised to see the personal touchscreens on the domestic flight, guess it depends on the plane? meh. Watched Yes Man and Benjamin Button. Yes Man was pretty good. Button was not bad either, altho i slept through the middle of it and woke up half-way through.........
Visited the Olympic Store and grabbed some lunch. Dropped Karen off, since her flight to Seoul is a day later, and chilled at the gate after roaming through duty-free shops.
Next up, 11 hour flight to Incheon airport. yikes. Wasn't exactly comfortabble, but we survived. People have got to learn how to use the touchscreen tho :@ stop stabbing the back of my head already, frak... other than that, explored the selection of movies and shows. Found Nurse.Fighter.Boy that carlos told me about, although i never got around to watching it....
Drifted in and out of sleep, but didnt really get much in the end because I was so damn tired when we landed. Right away, they took our temperature because being let into the main area. This area then led to a shuttle bringing us from the gates to the main building.
Ashley's uncle met us at the exit and we went off to find our place in Seoul. The air quality is a bit worse than Toronto, and we were able to see the smog over the city when we drove in. And the driving, hooooly shit. crazy. very aggressive. I'm totally freaked out to drive out in Jeju... we'll see T_T. Lots of cars, narrow lanes, swerrrrving. A couple awesome things in the car was the speed indicator, telling you when you go over and beeping like crazy. and the actual car, sensors on the outside beeping more and more when going closer to an object.
Unloaded at our rental condo, 4th floor, 2 washrooms, kitchenette, master bedroom, 2ndary bedroom, balcony, pretty spacious for a temp place, of course it wasnt meant for such a short-term stay. Went over to ashley's uncle's place for a home-cooked meal. Was really good and soo damn filling. She and her brother haven't been back in almost 7 years so her smallest cousin doesn't even remember them! She'll be busy for a couple days during dinner to catch-up with her several relatives around town. A lot of them didn't even know she was coming over.
Brought back blankets and mats to sleep on (since we dont have beds) and shopped a little in the convenience store for water and snacks. Apparently i was lucky and grabbed two adapters from Stine instead of just one because I need both for it to work T_T... Went out for a stroll around 9pm and a lot of the small stores were still open. It's too bad we dont really know the small greeting phrases cause we had almost no clue what they were saying to us as we entered and left :D... its nice that we didnt get lost.
and then i pass out while the others are on the computer.
Finishing up my meal at Ashley's Uncle's house, yumm... majisoooo...
Accent of our apartment in Seoul |
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| too busy T_T |
[May. 27th, 2008|07:38 am] |
gaaah
busybusy.
haven't had time to write the last couple days T_T
9-6 work, wake up at 730 to get ready... leave work at 6,
sleep the moment i get home, wake up for dinner, back to sleep...
wake up at 430am. try to sleep T_T...
jetlag kills.
will write asap :S? |
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| day twentythree |
[May. 24th, 2008|03:11 am] |
after getting up around 10, i went out along to explore and shop... i wanted to find some shoes, but the only ones i did end up liking, there were only the 'samples' left and i did not want to buy those o.o...
walked around from place and place lalalala, and got back at around 1130/45 and michelle was awake and packing. in the middle of packing, michelle speaks up and... we have a problem. big. sorta problem. when she booked the hostels for beppu she booked APRIL 21st and 22nd instead of MAY... so at the moment, we'd have no place to stay in beppu T_T... stressful.
we both immediately went online to try and find something but all of the hostels automatically do not allow people to book a place for the night of, so anything for 'tonight' would be 'booked' online, we would have to call and check T_T... since michelle felt really bad, she went out to find a phone to call.... and somehow she found out that calling beppu would be long distance and we would have to use a gray phone with an international calling card, which of course, we don't have, and the closest gray phone would be at the airport... because most japanese are nice people, the daughter of whoever michelle was talking to, lent her her cellphone and she placed the call. the person who picked up at the hostel could not speak english well, so michelle tried to get the daughter to talk to the receptionist person... and we were told to call after 9pm to see if there were any free rooms 0.o, that the place was booked up... michelle wasn't sure because there was a strong language barrier between her and the daughter and the receptionist - -;... *sigh* she felt really bad and bought out lunch too... lol
after she came back and explained what happened, i got the great idea of asked david to help us :D hurray! luckily he was on msn at work and he placed the call to khaosan beppu. he got a different person on the phone and... there were several empty rooms... several. we'd only have to get there before 9, since that's when the counter would close. not a problem. beppu booked, and we're ready to go. thanks david! saved our asses. we would've had to stay in hikari no mori for a couple more days if not... lol.
after all of that commotion and stress, we finished packing and went for a quick run to you me to try and find cassie's rice bowl container thingy... with no luck. we hurrrrrrrried back to david's and grabbed our luggage and hauled it to the station to catch the express train from hikari no mori to beppu. and of course, we miss it. by a minute. we watched as it left the station :( *sigh*... but luckily for us, getting to beppu wouldn't be as difficult as first getting to hikari no mori :P we headed towards kumamoto station and from there, we asked one of the train staff people in broken english, how to get to beppu the fastest (before 9) so we jumped on a train to hakata, then hakata to beppu, easy stuff. although our luggage is friggen heavy now, after buying a lot of crap and packing it into our pieces of luggage T_T...
we reached beppu station at around 730-45? and found our hostel in about 15 minutes. nice. our room was on the 3rd floor though. with no elevator. ngaaaah. we had a japanese style room, tatami floors with sliding doors to a small step-down patio/sitting area. bunk beds, and a whole-room shower, the room had a drain in the middle of it, so the shower was just attached to the wall, the toilet and sink to one side.
as soon we settled in a little bit, i began to look up how to get to our next stop, lodge tyojirou by kansai airport. easy enough, limited express to shinkansen to limited express to the airport, then a private line to the hostel... it'd just take 5 hours to get to the airport T_T... whee. michelle went downstairs to talk to the locals and get info on where to go during our day in beppu. our priority: the jigoku (hell) pits, a series of 9 hot springs setup as a tourist attraction. oooooo....
by the time we realized we havent eaten dinner yet, it was 10ish so we headed out and were pointed into the direction of a family restaurant called skylark. we totally overlooked it and found a small ramen place instead :D... when michelle asked for an english menu, the girl described the bowls in english! and her english wasnt too bad either, good job! mm. ramen. i actually did see a couple of ajisen ramen places... one was really old and run-down the other wasn't as bad... we didnt eat there tho. the ramen we had at this small place used the thinner noodles, which i think i prefer o.o.... hmm.
as we walked back, a random guy in his underwear was running from... somewhere, into an apartment building... we guessed that he went to an onsen and... forgot... clothes? lol... who knows, that was pretty funny. one of the guys michelle met in the hostel was screaming gay and apparently asked if i was single... michelle, being the good friend that she is, told him i was taken o.o *phew* get the hell away from me :D
a hand onsen 0.o in front of beppu station
it's crazy where i see hitachi all around japan. shrine/temple sponsors, air conditioners, escalators, washers, dryers, everywhere. (yes, my photography skills are lacking)
wireless at airport not letting me upload pics :( |
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| day twentytwo |
[May. 24th, 2008|03:09 am] |
slow morning, we planned to meet up with david for lunch, in ozu. hopped on the 1138 train and waited a bit at ozu for him to show up.
since he works in the area-ish, he brought us to a small but good ramen place hidden away in the side streets. it's a bit weird for me to be served rice on the side with my ramen but... o well.
ok. well the first highlight of the day was the purpose of meeting up with david at lunch, to take his car. yea o.o... i think they call it a K-car or somethin? they're a lot smaller and not as powerful as regular cars, but because the are small, they fit with the narrow narrow narrow streets of japan. he brought out some maps so we could try and follow them to reach our destination: kikuchi gorge. we were also supposed come back and pick him up afterwards.
after the ramen, michelle suggested i drive him back to work.... so... off we go. and something goes wrong O_O! wtf's.... maybe it's just the gravel? hmmmmmm keep going a bit more... wtf... hmm... david gets out of the car, i notice... o.o emergency brake ;) it's aallll good. lol... out into the street, aw crap, left side, left side. lalalala... turn! wipers?! other side... ooo the signals... turning left.... wrong direction! lol.... in more simpler terms... everything has gone opposite. gotta sit in the right-hand seat, drive on the left-hand side, signal with my right, and right/left on the signal is flipped. yikes. and no left turns at a red light. crazy. and... drive through reds! lol... apparently many japanese people run the red light, it's very common o.o... so if we must, we must.
anyways, david directed me to his work place, and we got there in one piece. i adjusted pretty quickly to the left-side and the turning lanes, but the signaling still needs some work, i forget sometimes and the wiper goes off instead. we pull into the company parking lot... and, of course, the parking lot is designed like shit. the workers there could have done a better job, easily. aiya.
aaaaand we're off. since we didn't have a map for the place david works, he sorta directed us back into the right direction... we were to take the street out, get on the 325, right on the 387, and right on the 45 up to the gorge. after driving for a while, we see the 'kikuchi' sign, we're already on that road! hurray. there were no numbers on it tho, so... we should be good. continue driving, driving... wtf, we're on the 341. T_T... michelle and i figured out some crazy way to get back to the 325... get onto the... 90? then 139? iuno the only streets with names were these numbered routes T_T it was horrible. anyways, we somehow finally ended up on 325... it led up to a mountain side where there were a lot of twists, turns, curves, and slides... lol, it was actually pretty fun once u got a hang of the car. there were a bunch of sections where only one car would fit comfortably, so we'd both slow down and pass eachother... after these, we came to a split, i took the road that we were naturally flowing into, and ended up on a small bridge that was only wide enough to fit the car, barely. scary shit o.o... and we end up in a small residential area with so many more narrow narrow roads - -;... we come back out, back across the scary narrow bridge, to find some random guy pissing into the stream, keeeeeep driving... and for some reason we end up on 203. but we never really strayed from 325... so we kept going... and going... since 203 was going in the same general direction. and we were lucky, for some crazy reason 203 intersected with 325 (although our map didn't show it) and we're finally going up the right road. the rest was sorta boring and straight forward... we didnt get lost anymore :( it took about an hour in total to reach the parking lot for the kikuchi gorge/ravine/area so that was pretty good.
when we did reach the parking lot, we weren't sure it was the right place :P but i got a signal from michelle, and i paid for the parking... apparently michelle was ASKING if it was good, not saying that it was - -;... but, it was :P lol...
we walk into the area and going into the paths... there are two routes. we (i) choose the left one, although i was pretty sure it was going the other way... lol o well. the forest path was pretty nice, a bit scary too, there were no rails, and their makeshift 'rope and logs' were not at a lot of the cliffs as well. it could be extremely dangerous o.o... extremely. we walk up and take a bunch of pictures along the way, and we find a caterpillar spinning its... cocoon and michelle gets some good shots (the macro on mine was... weird, and i was too impatient :P) so she has some good pics. we keep walking and walking, taking a bunch of pictures, and at the end of the path............. is... a parking lot. yea. - -;... so after a minute or two of complaining to no one in particular, we head back down the same route, which was several times faster since we weren't taking any or as many pictures as on the way up. there was one thing that we did stop and take several, near the beginning (or our end) of the route, there was a large butterfly or moth thing attached so a small plant. the wings were green and even looked like leaves, the body was white and thick, a lot larger compared to regular moths. it looked very interesting and possible evil. we took our bunch of macro pics and kept on going onto the correct route.
after a couple of minutes walking by the ravine, we come into a couple of openings and one in particular led out towards the cliff and waterfalls. the perfect place to take pictures! there was no one there to tell us how far out we could go (even though we paid to get in and park...) we could've went into the water if we wanted to (although we did not want to o.o...) michelle and i took a bunch of pictures by the small waterfall at the edge of the cliff :D i guess it's the same at any other 'natural' wilderness place, but it was a first for me. no warnings put in place for 'beware of the waterfall, you might kill yourself' type stuff... as we kept walking through, there were numerous more occasions where we'd stop and take a bunch of pictures by the ravine and forest, but the first area was by far the best :P
we spent about 3 hours hiking around the forest and decided we needed to head back in order to pick up david at a reasonable time. granted that we didn't get lost again. and driving back to town was a breeze, we easily found the right routes and it was a bit faster too. i think i got used to driving in japan by this time... i think. lol :P... once we got into the city, i got lost again. we were supposed to turn at a 7-11, but at the same time, we were also looking for route 202. APPARENTLY (we saw afterwards) 202 is perpendicular to the street we were supposed to have turned on - -;... oops? we drove around lost for a good half an hour to 45 minutes and finally ended up in teradyne's parking lot once again. they (he and don) were waiting for a while now :S sorry!
i stumble out of the car, finally completed all the driving i'd do in japan, and we're off again to drop don off at home. it seemed to me that only from kumamoto did the setting sun actually turn red. o.o and i dont think i have a good picture of that :(
we head back to david's to rest a bit and then we head back out to find some dinner and either karaoke or a bar. (it's our last night in kumamoto after-all) david drove us back out into the city and we go into a small bar that serves italian food.... italian bar food o.o... so the portions were smallish :( dave and i got some pizzas, which were actually pretty good! thin-crust :D and michee got some pasta dish... the small pizzas were... small. and the large was... small. *sigh* but we were full-ish after another pizza. lol...
since michelle doesn't sing, and dave probably wouldnt, and i dont think i'd feel comfortable singing in front of a bunch of strangers (it'd be an open-bar type of karaoke)... we decided to head back to bar alex! whee.
we get there and the back of the bar, by the couches, were taken over by may's (alex's fiance) co-workers, who all work at a candy store somewhere... and her mom! haha... the youngest was 19, and... older. lol. none of them were my type - -;... i'm very picky. may was the prettiest out of them all, and she's taken. lol :P
at some point we were all introduced and i can remember......... miki, yoko, ayana, mori, and may... 0.o o well... some dangerous questions flew by though o.o... michelle asked them how old we look and we'd range in the teens. then they asked us! and... dave and i just sorta... kept silent, let michelle handle it. good job michelle!
i drank an 'oasis' and 'pirates' drink, both were pretty good, but the second oasis tasted a bit different 0.o iuno. o well. michelle went crazy over the white russians... too bad i dont do coffee. o.o...
for some reason, david called alex, masao-kun, and apparently alex was given a japanese name... hahaha, and he answers to it too, it's pretty crazy o.o! michelle asked may and her friends to give us some japanese names and david ended up with osamu, michelle with risa or keiko... and i'm keisuke. :D i've thought about names and if i have three kids, i'd have their names start with (oldest to youngest) K or C, A, and R... a reflection of my own siblings as well as my best friends, it's a cool coincidence so, that's my 'plan'. i've liked the name kyou or kyousuke, or somethin like that but iuno how that name would fare in canada. o.o... meh.
anyways. may and her friends then asked us (michelle) to give them english names! they all seemed to go crazy and laughed a lot with approval. there was a.... amanda, jenny, becky, elizabeth, ashley, and a katherine. lol... it was a good night. when we told may that we'd be leaving the next morning she said to come back! see us again! haha... michelle doesn't plan on coming back to japan until after 5 or more years, wants to see other places first... but i think i'd come back (if my life allows me) after a couple of years, with other people, maybe leon! since he missed this part of japan :P... hahaha. meh. we'll see where my life takes me...
and... since drinking and driving can be fatal in japan (if you get caught, u'd get fired. just like that), david called up a daikou, which is a service offered in japan and korea, iuno bout other places, where a driver would come to where u are and drive your car back to your house, and there would be a follow car to take the driver back. and it costs a lot less than a taxi. our daikou was an old man, and the follow car seemed to be... his wife? iuno. its possible - -;.
but a good day, good night, good memories. thanks dave! :P
at kikuchi gorge, we were 'allowed' to walk into the ravine, and this is me by a cliff by a small waterfall, with my new bag!
...another adventure all in itself, i'm driving. in japan. (with david's car)... |
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| will update... soon... |
[May. 23rd, 2008|10:54 pm] |
no wireless at this hostel >_<
i'll update when i get home...
work start: 26th.
9-6pm T_T |
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| day twentyone |
[May. 21st, 2008|07:07 am] |
for some reason we chose to go to nagasaki today, instead of amakusa or takachiho. we planned out our bus/train routes and the ride would take about 3 hours... yikes.
we got to the station and we were about.... 30 seconds too late. the right train left as we were climbing the stairs to the ticket counter thingy... *sigh*... the other train (non-express) came and we jumped on that instead. we get to the next station and jump on another train, which was not the express and ended up taking about an hour and a half longer than the express was supposed to. instead of arriving at 12-1ish, we got there around 230 - -; and, it was raining. hard. what a crappy... ngah. on the train we went through several areas that were very countryside-ish and it was just a platform, the train driver would check the tickets and everything... i also saw a bunch of coasts that were veryvery low tide or something, boats were resting on the bottom of the lake, still tied to the dock.
when we arrived at urakami (right before nagasaki) station, we bought some buns for 'lunch' and umbrellas. we stopped at urakami because it was the station closest to the nagasaki peace memorial museum and peace park, which were the priority of the trip to nagasaki.
we easily arrived at the nagasaki peace museum, our feet were completely soaked, ugh. i hate it when my socks get wet inside my shoes T_T... here, there were about 4 small museums gathered together but the other ones were closed. anyways, we headed towards the nagasaki bomb museum and went through it.
compared to the hiroshima museum, this one was a lot smaller, (and cost more) but i guess it is still part of the experience, learning about the atomic bombs. although the bomb on nagasaki was larger (fatman) the museum, asides from it's own local landmarks and testimonials, seemed like a summary of the hiroshima bombing.
there was also a 'special exhibit' by a japanese photographer who has taken several photographs in the middle east, mainly iraq, and examines how the war is affecting the people there through photography, and comparing it slightly to what had happened to japan. he had a couple of stories about children who had been suffering through the war about their home, lack of health care, and their problems. one story was about a boy he had photographed, he saw that he had amputee legs and wanted to take a picture, altho he didn't ask how it happened, he thought to himself, that he must have stepped on a mine. years later, he found the same boy again and learnt that his legs were not actually destroyed by a mine but he suffered from polio and he did not have full control over his legs and they were not strong enough to stand by themselves. the wooden legs were to support his legs to enable him to walk. when he was younger, if he was able to go to a different town to receive the medical treatment, it would have not turned out this way. but because of the war, he has suffered a lot. (i'm positive the impact of the photographs and story were a lot better than how i told it... T_T)
afterwards we walked to the hypocenter of the bomb, where a large spire marked it and circling steps surrounded it. it was a very large and quiet area. there was also a statue as well as a duplicate of a part of the urakami cathedral after the bombing.
we walked on towards the peace park. we saw several different statues given by various countries to commemorate peace and the bombing. they were all very interesting statues. in the centre, was the peace fountain which is shaped like dove's wings, also resembling the shape of the harbor. these wings of water open up and the peace statue is seen directly between them. altho i don't know the story behind the large peace statue, it actually looks like its directing traffic or something... i'll look it up later. it was huge tho.
after this, we decided to try and find the half torii gate, surviving the bomb, it stood on one leg. we walked for a while and we only came to a place that looked like a shrine, but was closed. no other place could have been it... we'll never know. (unless we look it up and stuff...)
it was STILL raining, so instead of heading down into chinatown to try one of their famous dishes that combined western, chinese, and japanese, we headed back, beginning our 3 hour ride back... where we sat and got kicked out of several 'reserved' seats :P...
when we finally did get back, the rain had already stopped and david picked us up from hikari no mori... we drove around a bit and most of the places were actually closed T_T, this was around 930pm... and we went to a sushi place instead of the ramen places we were aiming for.
this sushi place seemed a bit different from the others. the chefs were in the back, the track ran into the back and out again. to order specific dishes, it was through a telecom. altho it was very.... 'efficient' i guess... it was very odd and seems less authentic and nice than having the sushi chef right in front of u. it was like a fast-food version of sushi on a track thingy (i'm sure there's a better word for it that i've forgotten... :P) but nevertheless, the sushi was good and 105¥ per plate. when we asked for the bill (kaikei, not okanjo) the waitress plugged in into an electronic device then input it into a numbered card o.o... we take the card up to the cashier and it reads from it again... crazy. but interesting...
so... our day trip to nagasaki was... ok.
all the days we've actually spent in kumamoto were good
once we stepped out into nagasaki... bad. 0.o... weird.
the peace fountain and statue
menu at the sushi place... |
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| day twenty |
[May. 21st, 2008|07:05 am] |
woke up a bit late, we went to eat some yakiniku. this place is a bit like korean bbq but the grill is like... advanced. there are air filters built into the grill so none of the smoke goes up. you order a plate of meat, and the rest of the salad/fruit bar is free. it doesn't sound like much but it fills you. was pretty good too :P
the rest of the day we relaxed some more and explored the near-by mall called you me. or... you and me... but in japanese, you me would be pronounced as yume which would mean dream o.o oooo clever... anyways. we walk in and its a weird experience. there are like... no walls separating the shops. it's like one massive store. pretty cool... we just looked around, tried to find stuff to buy... there was only 2 floors and the 3 upper floors were... parking. yea. and theres a lot of parking around the mall too. a bit crazy. the only thing i bought was a ruler, that folds out to 30cm, and has degrees on it... and has holes at the CM mark (altho i've been using inches for the past couple years :S... didn't think of that till now...)
we were about to leave when we saw... o.o there's another building. this time the first floor was parking, the 2nd was the 'mall' and the 3rd (and more?) was a theatre. first thing i found was the hobby store, hahaha... had some (very very limited) vinyl toys, and a bunch of anime stuff, whee. spent most of my time there looking for random stuff to buy :P
after thaaat... we came back to david's and i took a nap while he and michelle went to pick up a cake later on. tonight was to be yuko's 'going away' party, she'll be in south carolina (as i mentioned before) for about 3 months. they came back with the cake, and we left to pick up yuko. she has a big fat cat called chii, as in chiisai (small), because it... used to be chiisai. haha... and a small dog out in the front yard who only seems to be nice to yuko... it started growling once we got a little bit closer... scary.
anyways, we met up with a bunch of ppl in front of the parco, rotating marble thingy... nolan, 23? 24? yr old jewish guy, francois, 22 guy from quebec, jarod 23 from somewhere in the states... cant remember... takao from the night before, and the girls, ayako (maru-chan is what yuko calls her cause of her last name), hotaru (which means firefly), and kazue, those are the only names i remember... they speak limited english, so they got to 'practice'. hahaha... after we all met up, we walked to the restaurant, ninoni. and the logo is a pig. o.o... when we were walking somewho kazue read michelle's life line and told her she'd live until she was about 60 yrs old... but apparently michelle got that reading before 0.o... and when she saw my life line, wow, that's longer! at least 100! hurray~ david's life line was a lot longer tho, too long, proportional with his huge hands i guess :P
we sat on the floor again, and since david's a really tall guy, he was cramped most of the night :P everyone's surprised when i sorta reply to their questions in japanese, you understood?! hehe, it's fun to surprise ppl... lol. too bad i don't know more tho... anyways, michelle talked to francois for a while, takao, kazue and hotaru were in front of us. and we sorta talked about... the usual: why we're in japan, where we've been, etc... we used david's phone to take some pictures from francois' phone (which david has to send us o.o!)... random funny signs from places in japan, crazy english :P...
for some reason hotaru called me cute, i cant remember y... :P anyways. after a while david and takao started helping kazue learn some english phrases for her job as a secretary and assistant at a legal office... the name was something and chiba. o well. but i pointed out that.... if she speaks to the caller in english... they'll continue talking to her in english, and she won't understand... 0.o lol. good luck to her. lol...
afterwards hotaru and kazue went home (it was a sunday night afterall) and the rest of us went to a small cafe, cafe switch, for dessert. it was crazy how obvious and stupid the spelling errors were for the NAME of the place - -;... the name is spelt right on the carpet and other stuff but the menu board written in chalk is spelt wrong, but placed right in the front. if they looked up a little, they'd be able to spell it right... *sigh*... i guess i'd do the same if it was japanese tho... meh. we ordered then sat at the outside table.
jarod, who's leaving japan in august, is teaching english with the JET company that my brother was going to join, but decided not to... he didn't say how it was but it seemed to like japan a lot, altho the japanese seem to not have the concept of 'chilling' everything was always planned in like a week in advance, unable to just call someone and meet up. when we saw the cafe switch menu and signs, we started to critique it, like any graphic designer would, and jarod went... did you guys take graphic design?! which was surprising for us cause he actually knew of it. he said he took some liberal arts courses and learnt some 'graphic design' stuff... he's more of a programmer like me, which is pretty cool, but i guess he's more programmer-y than me and my actionscript :P cause he knew and liked how it was more similar to other languages. blahblahblah... but yea, that was cool to meet someone that's going to go into the same field.
nolan, who we've been warned is very blunt and... mean? likes yuko, but when he was asked "where he liked her from" in japanese, it's sorta literal or colloquial, depending on how it's said... could be, asking what he likes about her, or how he came to like her, or what you like about her.. or somethin... anyways, his answer was, her legs. lol... they were expecting him to say her personality or something, which he mentioned wasn't that great 0.o... and then he went on to say that a new teacher at his school has a larger chest and that he likes the teacher from the waist up and yuko from the waist down. lol.... then yuko argued how he hasn't even seen her chest... lalala... apparently this conversation wasn't anything too out of the ordinary for them... lol.
and soon after, people started to disperse. nolan and francois sorta argued about who would take yuko home... lol... and nolan ended up going that. after we did get back to david's, he got a call from nolan, his car got stuck somewhere - -;... and... i don't know how that story ended... 0.o meh.
our yakiniku.. sorta. pork and chicken.. mmm
dinner at ninoni... |
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| day nineteen |
[May. 19th, 2008|01:06 pm] |
because of our late night we all woke up around 11ish instead of 10... good timing for lunch tho. since david lives and works around here, he frequents some places and this time we went to a small quaint okonomiyaki shop called... yorimichi i think. our second time having okonomiyaki and this time it looked... nicer, fluffier, better o.o... and that it was. last time it was a large 'manten' mix but this time we chose a couple ingredients instead. i got meat (pork) and corn which turned out really good.. .mmmmmmm. and its really filling too. like. really filling.
the owner knows david and we're introduced as the canadian foreigners, but they think i'm japanese (cause i haven't said anything yet)... and i get to practice listening to japanese that i understand and trying to answer in jap too... it's fun but challenging. esp when you dont know a word or two that'd be essential to your answer... like... 'graduated', whenever they ask y we're here on vacation or if we're students... hahah it's a good thing we have a translator
dave drove and took the long, scenic path with lots and lots of twists and turns and crazy signs that make it look like 90 degree turns, and unnecessary curves... crazy. would be insane drifting and racing on this route. insane. i fell asleep for a while in and out of a daze.
when we finally stopped for a break, we were at a lookout point that gave us a view of the daikanbou. which is a formation of mountains and hills that look like a buddha lying down, pretty interesting... and an amazing view of the city below
we then headed towards mt aso, or mt nakadake 0.o... there's some difference... lemme google it... ahhh. ok. mt aso is the compilation of 5 different peaks of volcanoes and mt nakadake is the largest active volcano in the world. o.o in the world! when we entered the peak area, the sulfur level was 0 and you can look into the nakadake crater, which was pretty cool. the water was green from the minerals in the volcano and steam from the water gathered and rose continuously, it was pretty cool. when i walked further up, i began coughing O_O! a bit scary, u feel it in your throat and u can't help coughing. by that time, the warning turned yellow (2nd highest level out of 4 levels)... and we sat around in the stone huts, that were built to avoid... stuff 0.o... talking about movies and random shit. it was preeeeetty chill.
got back into the car and headed back to david's place, supposed to meet at his friend's place around 630 for a dinner party thing. on our way down we caught glimpses of a lot of interesting landscapes, the most interesting, komezuka. it is the hill/mountain that has a large round crater in the middle, the tip looks like it is scooped out. stories go that the city was starving and the gods scooped out the top of the hill to feed them. the crater was formed naturally, so it's pretty cool to see.
arrived at cheryl's place, greeted by their kid, lance who's a year and... a bunch of months old, pretty cute :P... don and cheryl's house. the other ppl that were there were... takao (25 or 6), chase (?) and his wife, midori, they got married in... february. and more ppl to come later on. just small talk, still a bit awkward not knowing anyone, so we played a bit with their kid. more people showed up... eriko, arlene and her dad, keith and rie (who we met a couple days earlier), and a couple of other people...
chase had a small namco attachment that played ms pacman, mappy, and some other games. for a while we played those games and it was awkward talking to anyone... just sorta kept ourselves until a bit after dinner, eriko and michelle bonded a bit, i talked a bit with arlene's dad, (yea, weird) from the philippines who was staying in japan to help out arlene cause she's pregnant... and so is cheryl, she's expecting her second in a couple of weeks.
everyone was admiring michelle's body... like, all the women there. lol... and i got called cute :P someone said david was sexy but then he turns cute after talking... lol. that was some weird conversation...
after a bit michelle and i ended up talking to don and cheryl. they're both engineers and have been in japan for almost 2 years. when they first got here, they didn't know -any- japanese, they're both from america, went to university together, started dating in 97 and even considered joining the peace core... they decided that once cheryl got pregnant, she'd quit her job and focus on raising her children, she wanted to do this as well, and at the time, don's work (teradyne, david works here too) was offering positions in a japanese branch. once cheryl got pregnant, the timing worked out great and they decided to move out here to kumamoto to have their first (and second) child. teradyne provided a private tutor for them and helped them setup everything they needed, housing and other essentials.
they still own a house back in... california? and don't plan on staying in japan for too long, maybe another couple of years. their way of life is amazing, they moved to a country where they didn't know the language, knew a couple of people, and started their family. it's inspirational and adventurous. and we headed home soon afterwards... zzz
crater of mt nakadake
komezuka |
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| day eighteen |
[May. 17th, 2008|10:22 pm] |
our day to go and explore a bit of kumamoto...
since david had work, michelle and i partially planned to go to kumamoto castle and suizenji park. after waking up, at around 10-ish, and even hearing some roosters crowing, dave left us a cellphone that we could use to get in touch with him while we traveled around the city to meet up for dinner. had to find and change the language to english though :P the cellphones have so many crazy functions here, ours seem extremely primitive.
after finally leaving, to walk to the train station, we bumped into the closeby uniqlo, and... i bought more stuff :P this is a pretty good store for interesting and pretty cheap clothing, a lot of other places are pretty expensive :S so we've been to 3 different uniqlo's but the actual clothes are pretty much the same, same with the graniph stores we've found. after shopping there for a while, i had enough stuff that i should go back to david's place to drop it off before heading out again. hahaha...
as we walked back to the train station, not knowing 'exactly' where it was, there was a pedestrian bridge that had stairs on the sides and a sloped area in the middle. in that minute, i was wondering wtf that was.... and the next, a bike came down on that path! aaaahhhhh, thats pretty cool!
subway to shin-suizenji station which led us (sorta) to the park closeby, not much signage leading us to it, (in english anyways) and the park took 3 years to create, but the landscaping was very interesting and elaborate. the lake in the middle was full of carp and the water was so clear, unlike all of the previous lakes we've seen. there were also some ducks and cranes. the trees were trimmed reguarly (we saw a gardener or two working on them) and positioned creatively on the land areas.
walking around, we saw a series of torii gates, which seemed like a rip off of the inari shrine we went to the other day... as well as a weird hill that was too obviously man-made. then we opened the map we were given. the hill was actually called mt. fuji! they were trying to capture famous japanese landmarks within this one park, it was very interesting.
we left and headed towards kumamoto castle by the tram, pretty easy to get to. the castle was.. ok. the most interesting parts of the castle area were the turrets and the walls leading to the castle. the walls were sloped slightly and then went straight up, which is supposedly harder to climb. the azoumon gate (or something like that) was the south-east exit, which is usually called the hell gate, that would let demons in, was only used to remove dead bodies and waste. this castle is part of the three famous castles in japan, probably because of the castle area, not just the main tower, which was the only part of the area that was rebuilt.
after exiting through the azoumon gate we visited the traditional crafts centre, which was nothing like the kyoto crafts centre was supposed to be. not much souvenirs, a lot of actual... expensive... crafted pottery and stuff. downstairs had a small 'doll' collection, a bunch of porcelain-type dolls with creepy eyes. yikes. michelle found them pretty amusing though.
we walked back to the shopping district kamitori and shimatori (somethin like that) where we looked around a lot and i finally found a decent bag or two, but had to decide.... we'll see if its good enough ;) there are a lot of ppl who's jobs... suck. they stand out in the street and give out packs of tissue or holding a sign, or yelling out to ppl to come on in, showing menus and stuff... :S ouch.
david called and we were to meet in front of parco where the spinning marble statue thing is... and there we waited. at one point, a bunch of 'healers' approached me and i just said, no, and they moved on (i had no idea what they were doing) then they went to michelle, hahaha, hilarious.
anyways, david shows up and we walk through a bunch of streets and end up in a restaurant that i can't remember the name of, but michelle took some cards, and david did the ordering. we had to sit inside, by the bar, where all the servers went past, the worst for david tho, he was on the outside and he's a pretty big guy. lol. it was pretty loud, but i guess u sorta tune it out... the backyard patio was a lot a nicer but full. :@! he got a bunch of random stuff like seafood salad, and... craziest of all, horse meat. yea. it was cooked on a skewer and it was actually pretty tender and good. although kumamoto is known for it, it's supposedly better in its raw form, a meat sashimi type thing. we talked about his work for a bit, he's at teradyne and does engineering stuff for projects :P
afterwards we went over to... swiss. a dessert place, and met his friend, yuko, who is leaving sometime next week to stay in... south carolina? for three months. and we talked a bit about random stuff and people, the usual. the only thing that was swiss about the place was... the posters on the wall. :P
next stop was 'bar alex' a small cozy bar that's owned by... alex. david knows him somehow and everyone was really nice. alex was from... california (i think) and is getting married here in japan. we talked about ourselves a little, learnt some stuff about them, even critiqued his menu/card. lol... there was one number that was completely different that the others. stood out to michelle... but yea, i drank a vodka+coke that was pretty good, the vodka had a vanilla flavour! then a mai tai, it was ok... and a bit later on in the night, he made a layered drink called pousse cafe. there was like... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8? layers... it looked pretty crazy to drink, but it was actually only 30%. we used a straw to drink it so that was... weird. it went down pretty fast with a bunch of different flavours, and a little burning in my mouth and throat.. lol. michelle has pictures of it... haha. that was a pretty cool experience, meeting a bunch of japanese people and the 'foreigners' living among them o.o... lol.
once we got back (the bar closed at 2, which is pretty late compared to a LOT of other places in japan) we all sorta just stayed up at our laptops and did whatever until 430ish... lol. tmr there's a dinner party o.o...
a crane at the suizenji park
alex at his bar at bar alex with the other bartender, hiro, who's only 20 o.o!
yea, i was fine afterwards. |
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| day seventeen |
[May. 16th, 2008|03:39 pm] |
shuupatsu! it's our day of travel.
woke up at 6am, and almost quietly grabbed our crap and left the hostel around 630-45. we were supposed to tell them if we were planning to leave before 8 but... we forgot so we just left a note :P
at kyoto, i stopped to look at the boarding times while leon and michelle went somewhere else. i look back and they're gone! no clue where they went :( waited for a while and got a bit impatient so i went towards the last direction that i saw them going... no luck. hmm... maybe they went down to the coin lockers, where's the elevator? hmmmmmmmmmmmm maybe after 10 minutes in total of not knowing where they were, they show up near the escalator and they had indeed went down to the coin lockers, michelle and i were to lock our stuff up at kyoto while we went with leon to the airport... aiya.
jumped onto the train straight to kansai airport which took about an hour. during this time i finished my 5th book! chronicles of narnia, the horse's boy or somethin. pretty good so far, i guess...
arrived and figured out the kansai airport, for the future, and accompanied leon to the check-in gate, which didn't take too long at all, and up to the security gates which the lines were extremely long, but moved fairly quickly. we couldnt go with him farther, so we left at that point and headed back to kyoto station. felt as if the trip was ending... :(
our plan was at first to visit the kyoto handicraft centre where they sold a bunch of souvenirs and stuff but we scrapped that earlier because we would have to take a bus all the way there then back, in time to catch our own train, heading to kumamoto to stay with my friend. but because of the time we got back to kyoto, we decided to head to the uniqlo that we first saw across the tracks when we first got to kyoto... although we didnt exactly know where it was T_T... walked out, chose one way, and... no luck. dead end... but i went to go buy eneloop batteries at some bic camera department store. and not much time to go to find uniqlo again... we then decided (or remembered) we gotta get my friend something! found a small dessert thing that looked cool at the station and grabbed that.
tried to find some lunch but we headed to shin-osaka since we had to transfer there anyways. took the shinkansen to kokura and for some crazy reason we had 7 minutes between that and the next train we had to catch... and of course, we missed it - -;... the next one would be 2 hours later... scrambled a bit, stressed a lot, i didnt write down my friend's phone number so we had no way of reaching him... and then we asked the JR attendant and our new route would be kokura to hakata to kumamoto to hikari no mori. the connecting time between hakata and kumamoto was 9 minutes, not bad... but kumamoto to hikari no mori, 3 minutes. is that humanly possible?!
when we arrived at hakata, 9 minutes.... there were no elevators or escalators... and 2 flights of stairs - -;.. it was friggen evil, we had to carry and drag our luggages up them, horrible. but we DID catch our train, sweating horribly. and stressing for our next transfer, 3 minutes :S yikes.
as soon as we got NEAR kumamoto, we got ready at the doors in order to jump off the train and rush to the next one. since i studied that stupid route, it took only a little bit to distinguish, we gotta go that direction! that train! that platform! gogogo!!! we ran with our luggage, crazy. the doors closed right behind me T_T... we werent even sure if it was the right train........... after the first stop, we knew we were fine. phew. altho we'd be arriving about 10 minutes later than we should have... oops.
finally arrived at hikari no mori 'forest of lights' and when we showed our JR passes to leave the station, the attendant only saw michelle's and said... "michelle? and andrew?" and we're like... o.o wtf. how the hell did u know... just weird for a moment, but apparently my friend, david, left a message and a phone number to give him a call when we arrived.
prior to this trip, i've only known david through my fansubbing of one piece, which has been almost 6 years, so i've actually 'known' him for 6 years... but have never met him or really talked to him. so u don't really know what to expect. i only knew that he was from the u.s. and.... worked in engineering... and... yea. since we didnt know what he looked like, we just kept looking around wondering... maybe that's him! or him... hmm, that one? but he pulled up close-by and that was easy. haha...
david's really tall. from pittsburgh. 4 other siblings. and although he always seems to talk like he's so much older online, he's only about 4-5 years older! crazy. he's a pretty quiet person usually... so yea.
he drove us back to his apartment, which isn't that small, easily fit me and michelle in the carpeted area 0.o... which i guess is meant as a living room? sure. he's a bit messy, but its all good :P one thing that we've taken notice of is that he leaves a lot of his doors unlocked o.o his car, his apartment, there's like no fear of theft. his neighbourhood is also pretty quiet tho, we passed a lot of countryside to get here, where there's still some civilization.
anyways, after chilling for about half an hour, it got dark outside, and we went off to meet up with two of his friends, keith and rie, at some restaurant they go to. we ordered some chicken dish, which was pretty good... keith and david are usually pretty quiet ppl, apparently, and i'm already really quiet too, so there are random and odd spaces of silence, which are a little bit awkward... but i guess that's inevitable for people who have just met and don't know what to talk about... meh. they were both pretty nice, keith's from... some other state in the u.s. and rie's from japan. we just all talked about places in japan, how we knew each other, their friends, random stuff like that.
afterwards we went off to 'dragon kitchen' a chinese-type dessert place (sorta) where michelle and i had parfaits and they had bbt and sherbet and... other stuff. again, more random conversations and then we started critiquing the business card, which was.... pretty bad, for such a nice looking place. the printing was nasty too :S o well...
and after a bit, we all headed home. we would see keith and rie again on saturday, for some dinner party... we're gonna meet a lot of interesting and random ppl through david...
back at his place, we have two futons setup and we took over his closet with our luggage. both of us stayed up for a while before showering or sleeping just on the internet updating our blogs and doing random stuff. david had work the next day so he was asleep... we were to head off to kumamoto castle, suizenji park, and the small covered shopping streets in the kumamoto area.
started to feel a little homesick... but that might be because leon left, we brought him to the airport... the trip changes, and then there was the stressful 6 or 7 hour shinkansen/subway/train trip to get to david's place in hikari no mori... *sigh*... leon, come back! :P
leon going through security, where we couldn't follow him any longer.
he doesn't look sad at all! lol
me at my friend's, david's (dythim), place |
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| day sixteen |
[May. 15th, 2008|10:00 am] |
our last day in kyoto! leon's last day in japan :(
lots of stuff planned for today! sanjusangendo, the torii gate path at fushimi inari shrine, and himeji castle, which is one of the only castles that still consists of it's original wooden structure. then dinner with estarmir, a friend from high-school.
sanjusangendo was surprisingly very close to our hostel. got there pretty fast by walking, led by leon, of course. lol... plastered everywhere is 'no photographs of the statues' no. no. no. sucks :( its so damn tempting. there are about 1000 kannon statues, built by 70 different sculptors as well as 3 additional groups of sculptors later on, they are similar yet there are differences in the face, robe, hands, fingers, it was incredible. in front of the display of the 1000 kannons, 28 deities, all national treasures, are displayed and briefly explained, relating to sanskrit names, and other cultures. the two famous are fujin and raijin who are commonly placed on either side of gates to ward off evil and stuff... michelle wrote it down, i forget :(...
an interesting tidbit was the way the hall was built. it was created in such a way that earthquakes would not affect the statues and the wooden panels of the hall would prevent any major destruction that might happen.
after slowly going through the hall, we went outside and walked around a little bit. at some doors, you can look inside and sorta see the kannons... i hid a little from the monks and took a blurry pic that i ended up deleting but when michelle tried to, a monk looked up and saw and was like.... X with his arms and michelle didn't notice - -;... i had to warn her. he looked like he was gonna come outside and attack us or something :S runaway~
somehow leon left his JR pass back at the hostel, so since we had to go back in that direction anyways, and he really needed the pass, he went back while i grabbed some food (buns and onigiri)...
the onigiri is packed in a way that u gotta pull one middle piece of plastic all the way around, the pull the two outside ones out, releasing the rice in the middle to meet the seaweed wrapping. its very ingenious but confused the hell out of me and caused a mess :P
we left the inari station and wasn't exactly sure where the temple was... until we walked outside and saw the torii gate. lol. maybe its in that direction 0.o... hmmmm lol. in the entrance of the shrine, several kitsune (fox) statues were placed, instead of the usual lions everywhere else. although i believe they represent similar things as fujin and raijin. to the right of the entrance, a couple of miko and priests (i guess... 0.o) were performing small ceremonies? maybe... which consisted of a couple of instruments, sounded pretty nice.
and on to the path! the whole path was laid out on a map and estimated 2 hours as completion. insane. we were going to do only a little bit of it since we had to move on to the next destination. the number of gates was amazing, and they are placed so closely together, it's a beautiful sight. as u look back, the reverse side of the gates have things written on either side on the poles, different on every one. some of the gates are faded, others a bright or darker but bright orange. i noticed one old guy who was actually repainting a gate, and on the sides had fallen gates with ladders preparing to repair them. several other gate bases were broken, and other gates breaking. it seems to take a lot of maintenance, but even then it is still magnificent. it wasn't all gates though, there were breaks in which several small shrines were placed, featuring the kitsune, and even some frog statues. and of course, small places to eat run by old women living in the mountainous areas... anyways, we cut out somehow and ended up within a residential area that somehow leaded back into the shrine...
and off we went to himeji castle. which is one of japans 'three famous castles' along with matsumoto and kumamoto. and of course, we find out the train schedule we've been carrying around is a year old and the shinkansen runs 20 minutes later then the booklet said and we missed one while we read the schedule at the station. (they didn't know that we did until i told them... :P) and the next train would be an hour later, which would get us to the castle around... 345ish) an hour away! and to add to that... the book said the castle would close at 4. but we'll go anyways, at least see it from outside.
when we got there leon headed straight to the tourist info centre and... it actually closes at 5! lucky! and the castle is a straight line, 1km away from the station. easy walk. rushing, to get there in time, there are other people just getting there too. it's all good. :D...
like many other places in japan, we had to remove our shoes and wear slippers inside. since this castle still has its own original structure, this step was very important in maintaining the castle. the steps up were extremely steep, i felt that if i didnt lean forward a bit, i'd EASILY fall backwards when going up to the next floor. the castle consisted of 6 floors and a couple had some 'historical' information and stuff shown in glass cases, but the main attraction was the architecture and the... actual castle. the sun was out and behind some clouds which provided a very nice view as well as lighting inside the castle. the 6th floor offered an amazing view of the city, and the heavenly.... heavens. :P
and then we started heading out, and back to the station. but we stopped for ice cream! leon didnt want any at first... until he said apple mango flavour. lol... there was also miso, black sesame, melon, cherry blossom, etc... crazy. and i had black sesame :P melon is really good too! michelle wanted a 'taste' of the black sesame and the old guy at the counter grabbed a cup and gave her some, which was actually a lot for a 'taste'... had to convince her to actually go back and buy something or she'd feel bad, as if she tricked the old man... lol
and so... gave estarmir a call and arranged to meet at 7 at kyoto station, central exit. which was exactly where we found him. i've been wanting to try okonomiyaki for a long time and this was the perfect chance, and leon's last night too. haha.
when est first arrived in japan in late march?, he stayed in kyoto, close to an okonomiyaki shop and we walked for about half an hour from the station and arrived at the small shop. the four of us had the manten mix, which consists of.... stuff, iuno. - -;... but it was pretty good! and only 900¥. while est told us about his month so far in japan, (he's... crazy. lol) the chef cooked the mix at the grill in front and later brought it ready to eat to our own table grill. covering it in some dressings and mayo. yumm....
it was extremely filling, and good... extremely filling. and we headed back out, est to the station (it would be a 30min ride back to his area) and us to the hostel where we still needed to pack.
for some reason, the three of us stayed up to at least 1 or 2am altho we planned to get up at 6 the next morning... leon had some milk and snacks to finish, so we helped him with that :P and... yea. we probably bugged the shit out of our roommates tho :D hahaha...
i'd say we learnt a bit about leon, not that much, since when we first left for the trip, we didnt know much at all.... o.o the three of us reflected on the trip as if it was actually ending, since leon was leaving... it's almost over! and we've actually missed out on a bunch of things, even though we spent so much time. might have been the late-ish mornings and the early closing times...
but it's been pretty great so far, still a bit surreal, and off to sleep. zzz.
leon and michelle walking through the torii gates
himeji castle
zzz.... |
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| day fifteen |
[May. 15th, 2008|09:59 am] |
nara.
at first we thought bradley was going to join us this time, but he decided to head to hiroshima instead, because the other day he went the wrong way and ended up in osaka instead 0.o meh.
we headed over to the station and towards the tourist info centre, which happened to be closed on tuesdays - -;... guh. we had to figure out how to get to nara! there was a smaller but crowded info centre that leon went into and found out. the nara line. duh. had some time to kill so we went to eat lunch, finally got my omerice with hayashi sauce, it was preeeetty good. not amazing, but.. yea. :P
and onto nara we went. several people recommended it and said that the trip would take the whole day, so we decided to cross our kobe from our list. it's also called the deer park because of the mass amounts of tame deer wandering around you. we saw several more temples and stuff... from outside, and several more deer.
michelle bought some deer... crackers/cookies/flat stuff and as soon as she paid and picked it up, the closeby deer swarmed her, she was trapped between them and a fence, crazy. they bit her a couple times too! this happened to a lot of people actually, those deer are vicious.
the one temple we did go to was... called... something... and it held the largest in the world buddha statue. it was huge. huge. it was also accompanied by smaller ones on either side. huge.
outside to the right, was a smaller buddha that looked... evil. but it apparently was believed to relieve people of aches and pains by touching the buddha in the same spot then touching the respective part of your own body. it was placed pretty high so people could only touch the legs and knees. if i was buddhist, i might believe these things :P too bad.
since there wasn't much else to do in nara, we started to head back. drifting from shop to shop in order to waste more time :P but of course, it started raining. so we hurried a little to the nara station to head back to kyoto and our hostel. and we saw bradley! that liar went to nara. evil. o well - -;
at kyoto station, we decided to look around a bit since we weren't hungry and it was raining, but everything ended up being too expensive to even look at, we ended up on the children's floor with toys and accessories. hahaha... leon's had a car and train obsession since the beginning of the trip :P
anyways, after losing michelle on some other floor for a while, it was time to head back to the hostel. and of course, it was raining hard - -;... it hasn't rained this hard the whole time we've been in japan, it was usually lighter and in patches. the walk to the hostel would be about 15 minutes and neither michelle or i had an umbrella or jacket. mr hui had his windbreaker complete with hood, safe from the evil rain. by the time we got back we were both soaked and tired.
while michelle went to shower and do laundry, leon and i decided to head back out and get some dinner, and some cup noodles for michelle. with some umbrellas and dry clothes, we departed back to the pontocho area.
under a covered street, we passed by a 'capsule' store that leon knew that i wanted to go into :P too bad for him, i spent like 20 minutes in there looking for stuff... (they were supposed to close at 10, i went in at 945ish...) the store basically had anime figures that were usually 'surprise' boxes, but unwrapped and sold separately. found some nice stuff there :D the most i spent in one place while in kyoto... lol
after walking around a bit more, we wandered into a shop that we had to pay at a vending machine first, then sit down and they would take our tickets and we'd get our food. you didn't have to say a word, the tea and chopsticks, and stuff were right in front of you. the fast-food pace of noodles and rice and stuff is crazy here.
after grabbing some cup noodles, we returned in the once again heavy rain and i did some laundry. whee - -;... at least it was SO much cheaper than the other place. it was only 300¥ for washer and dryer combined, detergent was free.
the deers attack
the largest buddha in the world, i think.
one bad thing about a 'dorm' type hostel room is that some people tend to sleep early or just earlier than you and it's almost impossible not to make noise when the bunk beds squeak going up the ladder, the blankets make noise, the door ALWAYS slams shut and locks, and the small cubbies underneath you close with a magnetic click. o well - -; too bad. (we are usually the ones that are up the latest :P) |
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| day fourteen |
[May. 14th, 2008|11:39 am] |
hiroshima.
a new roomie, bradley, was planning on heading to hiroshima as well, so we thought we'd all go together, michelle had another random guy who wanted to join us as well, the more the merrier i guess...
anyways. we were supposed to leave at 930, bradley went to go get some breakfast cause he was ready around 9ish, and michelle was.... slow :P. i think. probably. or maybe it was me? anyways, her friend richard was done and ready at 9, and we sorta dawdled around until around 10ish waiting for bradley to get back! iuno if any else minded much, but richard was pretty pissy about it, so we left and headed to the station and onto hiroshima.
although we felt bad, it makes sense, we dont really know the guy and he was pretty late, so we just left without him. meh. on track to hiroshima, the shinkansen from kyoto doesnt go there so we gotta go down one stop to shin-osaka THEN get on again to hiroshima, aiya.
the previous night, after dinner in pontocho area, my lower left calf started hurting a lot as i walked. it was like a pinching feeling, as if it was building up in order to burst. it would hurt a lot with long walks, which we had that night...
anyways, this was relevant because we were going to walk to the hiroshima site, but a streetcar would be faster, and easier on my leg. finding the damn thing was weird cause we didnt look at the map closely enough. it was so logical, but we missed it by looking at signs on the wall instead of the pamphlet. meh, we eventually found it and arrived at the a-bomb dome where the building has been reconstructed to the state it was at right after the bomb hit as a memory of the tragedy as well as a symbol for world peace afterwards. the building was very, intense. to the side of this dome, there was a small monument with paper cranes and a small pagoda with statues of birds which was dedicated to children. i think.
after spending some time at the dome, we headed towards the park where the eternal flame for peace was burning and the cenotaph which symbolized the grave site for all who lost their lives because of the bomb. they were all lined up beautifully with the japanese flag waving in the background.
there was a memorial building that provided testimonials, names, and some other information about the tragedy. the main room was a circular path that was very quiet and peaceful providing some facts about the bombing and continued down into a middle circular room that depicted how hiroshima looked right after the bombing. there were hundreds of thousands of tiles used to create this panoramic illustration, each to represent a life lost. in the centre of the room, a small and solemn water fountain gently flowed, offering water to all of the people who suffered without water during the time.
outside of this room was a digital presentation of the names and pictures of people who were identified among the dead, many young and old. going up, there was a temporary exhibition about the intense thirst that victims suffered, testimonials from survivors about the suffering going on around them and how they were unable to help. it was very.... deep and saddening. michelle's going to be haunted by 'mizu' for a while...
after leaving, and losing michelle and richard for a while, we headed into the museum which elaborated on the actual bomb, the facts, american decisions, japanese laws, emergency situations, diseases, aftereffects, atomic bombs in general, and a lot more. i think the most important piece shown in the first part of the museum was the numerous and unending number of petitions sent by the mayor of hiroshima to other countries rumored to have begun any nuclear testing. the latest on the wall was from 2006, and it looked as if the way couldn't hold any more and would need to be expanded soon.
this then led into testimonials from victims and survivors and their families. it got extremely graphic and just incredibly depressing. parents identified their children through lunch boxes, sandals, clothes, because they were unable to any other way. remnants of their children were donated to the museum. a father buried his son with his favorite tricycle and helmet, and moved him 40 years later to their family grave site... there were also several diseases and aftereffects from the bomb, different for some. most memorable was a man losing the top part of his fingers from the blast and a black nail-like material grew from the fingers, only the material had blood vessels and were round and thick, whenever it would fall off, blood would gush out and the black 'nails' would grow once again. there was also a small section devoted to sadoko, who was famous for folding more than a thousand paper cranes to show how much she wanted to live. anyone would have to just sit for a while after going through that museum.
after resting a little bit, we decided to head over to miyajima. although we knew most of the stuff would be closed, we would have no other chance to head there. richard, who didnt turn out to be so bad, decided to head back to the hostel.
when we finally reached miyajima, after a subway ride and a 15 minute ferry, we only had about 15 minutes to wander before the next boat would leave, and we needed to catch that in order to get back to the hostel by shinkansen.
leon walked ahead, towards the torii gates. there were some deer there, but there were signs that they were not tame, and to watch your babies carefully. michelle stayed around the ferry area and got into her own world with her photography. as soon as leon and i reached the beach closest to the gates, and snapped some shots, we had to head back immediately. run run run, for like 20 seconds. walk fast! lol... but we didnt know where michelle was... as soon as we got into the station, the ferry was gone, and michelle was coming out from the dock cause we weren't on the boat :P and we had to wait another 30 minutes for the next ferry... :(
there happened to be another ferry, not covered by the JR pass, which we took instead, which was 15 minutes later instead of 30, and gave us a higher chance of catching the required shinkansen trains. we got off the ferry, reached the train station, and then...... got a bit lost trying to get to the other side of the platforms... and missed the train. oops. my fault. while waiting we went through our options and it was still possible to pay an extra.... 1300¥ or somethin to ride the nozomi line from shin-osaka to kyoto (15 minutes), but we decided to ask when we got to the hiroshima JR station.
unfortunately, they couldnt speak english - -;... and somehow i managed to make use of the japanese i learnt and figured out that it would only cost 840¥ through nozomi OR take the JR subway for free, but almost 4 times longer. of course we opted for the free option :P and we eventually found our way back to the hostel. whee. train times are evil. :(
the a-bomb dome
small paper cranes folded by sadoko
while walking back, i almost tripped while crossing the street... and for some reason by leg felt a bit better o.o... whoa. |
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| day thirteen |
[May. 13th, 2008|12:26 pm] |
Woke up and left rina's place around 8 or 9, i cant remember... the four of us squished into the back and we set off to head for kyoto. took a pit stop along the way at a small cafe, all the mountains surrounding were giving off smoke, looked pretty cool. rina's uncle paid again for breakfast! so nice O_O! he's a 'president' of a mechanical parts design place, which sounds cool. haha
back into the car, which has a built-in gps system, the four of us in the squished back drifted in and out of sleep during the ride, since it was about an hour or so back to our hostel where we would change, shower, etc...
the plan was to meet them at the castle at 12. so we did whatever and took the bus to nijo castle, but they were no where to be found. leon gave them a couple calls (cause 10¥ cut off after a bit...) and we concluded that they were at a different castle - -;, the golden pavilion, kinkakuji, which was a lot farther away, so we jumped on the next bus and we arrived at about 1245 and went through the route which took about 20 minutes or so.
the castle is built on the riverbed and is plated in gold, ooo. picture below. along the paths there were also coin tossing pits for.. luck, i guess. it was a huge mound of money and a small bowl. the scenery was very nice and calming, despite the loads of students and people around.
and we came out the exit and met up once again with rina and her uncle and aunt to head to lunch. after some more driving and napping, we end up around arashiyama area. her uncle paid for lunch! and we walked around a bit across the bridge that looked like nihonbashi without the highway over top of it... but not into the mountain area, o well.
went towards the daikakuji which had several ikebana setup near the entrance, he paid for entrance fees! aiya, so nice. the temple was pretty big, they were displaying kimonos, buddhist alters, flowers, zen gravel gardens... gates, a lot of stuff. an interesting tidbit was that the floor boards leading the the master's room were intentionally made squeaky so that they would know when someone was approaching, oooooo.
that was nice, and we got a ride back to our hostel at around 5ish, but dropped off a bit away cause there were cops in the area :P aaaand we napped (or i napped, iuno what they did...) but we headed out to pontocho, a night-type + gaming district not too far away. passing a bunch of clubs and other 'clubs' until we arrived at a random dinner area bar-type place where i got some yakisooooba.
it was a nice night, we all bonded a bit too, awwww... we learnt a bit about leon and leon learnt a bit about us, altho i doubt he wanted to know :P o well. we stopped by a gaming centre so michelle could use the washroom... so much gambling! coin games, pachinko, virtual horse racing... crazy.
kinkakuji from across the pond
ikebana at the daikakuji |
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