Watching the Sunday gang in Harajuku

Ah, I've waited so long to be able to write that as a blog title!

So many things have happened in the last few days in Tokyo that I'd have to blog every half an hour to have any hope of writing about it all. I'm still not used to the fact that something new and amazing happens every single day when you're travelling, but in Japan something new and amazing happens every five minutes.

I spent two nights in Kyoto, but because accomodation is so hard to find in Japan I had to stay in two different hostels. The first one was incredibly sterile and dull, with a curfew and lots of crazy rules, but the second was brilliant: a really cosy place in an old Kyoto building, with Japanese fold out beds on tatami floors and a big heater right above my head that kept me warm all night! I really loved Kyoto, and although it was freezing cold, I went at the right time of year as the cherry blossom was out and everything looked like a picture postcard version of Japan. On my last day, after having visited more temples than I can remember, I headed for the Kyoto International Manga Museum as an antidote. The musuem itself was interesting, although as you all know I'm not the world's biggest manga fan, mainly because of the teenagers that were hanging around in the grounds of the museum, all dressed as various manga characters. The effort that they had gone to was incredible, and in true Japanese style they were happy to pose for endless photos.

I took the shinkansen back to Tokyo on Saturday night, but unfortunately I slept the whole way so didn't really get the chance to take it all in the second time round. I was also running a little late for my train, so didn't have time to buy any of the frankly fantastic food that is on sale in Japanese train stations: bento boxes and noodles and dumplings galore, and it's all fresh and tasty. I just stared at other people's food instead.

The reason I sped through Kyoto in 2 and a bit days was because I was determined to get back to Tokyo to spend my Sunday shopping in Harajuku and Shibuya with more crazy Japanese teenagers. After the manga of Kyoto, I was actually a little bit disappointed with the outfits on show; most of the kids there looked like goths rather than anything more extraordinary, but in every other way Harajuku is a brilliant part of town. Looking in all the shops but trying not to buy was torture, but I did manage to come away without breaking the bank. I stocked up on useful things like ziplock bags in the 100 yen shop, but because this is Japan, they're Hello Kitty ziplock bags. I'm going to look pretty cool waterproofing my stuff in Central America in Hello Kitty bags. As some of you may know, my hunt for the perfect trench coat has been a long and as yet fruitless search. In England trench coats only seem to be made for people with giant shoulders, so I look like an orphan each time I try one on. In Japan, however, there's no way that could be the case. Or so I thought: I tried on dozens of coats, and they were all too big! I was a) so cold and b) so focussed on the acquisition of a trench coat, that I was prepared to pay a fair amount of money for a coat that would hopefully last me a lifetime, but as it turned out, after trying on several in the 50 to 100 pound range, I found my very own new coat in a vintage shop just off the main shopping street in Haraujuku for only 15 English pounds! It is very slightly too big, a little too long, and the buttons will need changing on my return, but I have a trench coat! Words cannot express how happy I am to feel warm again, and to feel less like a badly dressed traveller. It will come in useful in Colorado, and then I'll send it home so it will be ready for an English winter on my return. I also saw a fabulous watch, of the sort that only the Japanese could make, for about 30 pounds, but I haven't bought it yet. If it's still on my mind on Friday...

After my afternoon's shopping, I'd arranged to meet Elaine at 7 in Shibuya. Ian and I met Elaine and her friends when we were doing karaoke in a gay bar in Hong Kong. She is Cantonese Australian, but has lived in Tokyo for 8 years, so offered to show me around when I got here. The evening started with dinner in a very hard to find restaurant 2 subway stops from Shibuya, where we ate endless varieties of fish, cooked and uncooked, and drank shochu and sake. I had the freshest sashimi I've ever had, tried tempura eel (was crumbly,tasted like white fish), fish guts (surprisingly good) and octopus. It made me very grateful to be able to eat anything put in front of me - being here and not being able to try the amazing food would be a sin. After dinner we headed for karaoke. Some but not all of you will realise that the opportunity to do karaoke in Japan, with Japanese people, was about the most exciting thing that has happened to me in, ooh, a week, and I'd been looking forward to it greatly. Elaine and I did English songs, I did some French songs with one of the Japanese girls who spoke a bit of French, the others did J-pop and various ballads, and we all drank wine that we'd snuck into the karaoke booth as drinks there were prohibitively expensive. I sang Abba, Madonna, the Beatles, the Bangles, Edith Piaf and France Gall, but the piece de resistance was the final, hands in the air singalong version of 'Do Re Mi' from the Sound of Music, with me as Julie Andrews and the Japanese as the children. I think I can actually die happy now.

By the end of our two hours, I'd managed to miss the last train back to my hostel in Asakusa, so instead we headed to another bar, where we played some random drinking games which always seemed to involve me drinking shots of vodka, then went for some very late night noodles and gyoza. Elaine was kind enough to let me stay at her flat, as a taxi would have cost about the same as crossing the whole of London in a black cab in the middle of the night would cost: too much. I've spent today feeling very very tired, but very glad that I went out. The only disappointment of today was that I had arranged to meet one of Elaine's friends, Aimi, at Shibuya station's West Exit at 4.30pm, as she's a hairdresser and was going to cut my hair. Unfortunately, Shibuya station doesn't actually have a West Exit, so I wandered around but couldn't find her... I was really looking forward to my Japanese haircut too! Still, I can wait until LA. I ended my day by going to Roppongi and climbing the Mori Tower, which is Tokyo's tallest building and has stunning views from the observation deck on the 54th floor. I got there just before sunset and stayed until it was dark: I know that I do this in every large city I visit, but I do genuinely love the view from up high!

Right, this post is too long. Those of you that are still reading now must be really bored at work, huh? Tomorrow's plan involves going to see some Kabuki theatre, so I shall try to get myself to a computer soon to relate it all!

Due to lack of inspiration, let's just call this post 'Kyoto'

So here I am in olde worlde Kyoto, and very nice it is too. I left Tokyo on Thursday, taking the shinkansen (bullet train), which was really cool. It gets you to Kyoto in 2 hours and 40 minutes, which is scarily fast given that it's rather a long way. It's a monument to Japanese efficiency - they never break down, are never late, and arrive to the minute that they're due in. Dad, you would have loved it. I took some pics.

I ate some lovely okonomayaki on my arrival, then wandered around a bit, but I was so unbelievably cold that I decided to seek refuge in a passing Irish bar for a warming glass of wine. I went in there intending to stay for an hour or so, but ended up in there for 5 hours talking to all the anglophile Japanese people that were hanging out at the bar. They were all so darned nice! I haven't met a not nice Japanese person yet. I do really love them.

Today I have been touristing to the max, visiting dozens of temples and shrines and taking photos as much as I humanly could. There are loads of tourists here, but they're all Japanese, so lots of photo taking was done by all today. You see the odd 40 something European couple, but hardly any other travellers. I'm enjoying the solitude and isolation after the crazy partying of South East Asia.

The only clouds on my happy little horizon are a) that I am still freezing to death, and b) my camera has finally met its end. It won't switch on 4 times out of 5, and the battery now lasts for all of 30 minutes. I've managed to take some photos today, thankfully, but I can't use a camera that only works for 30 minutes at a time for the next 7 months. Tokyo camera purchase here I come... In some ways if it was going to pack up it's good that it happened in the land of futuristic electronic gadgets I suppose, but it is still a bit annoying.

And on a final note, some Japanese randomness for your reading pleasure:
- The toilet seats are heated!
- There's a button in public toilets that makes a flushing noise to disguise other noises
- Lots of people wear surgical masks on their faces when they walk down the street
- Queuing is an art form; perfect lines of people on subway platforms, at rush hour. Amazing.
- Packaging is also an art form. Everything, even the crepe you buy on the street, is absolutely amazingly wrapped.
- Japanese women could teach us a thing or two about walking in heels all day long

Big in and on Japan

I'm so proud of that title. I tower over people here, yet I love the place with my whole entire being. I'm still realising that I'm actually here; unlike Thailand, Laos etc, Japan is somewhere that I've wanted to visit since I was about 14, so much so that I almost studied Japanese at university instead of regular old French and Spanish, so being here can genuinely be described as fulfilling a life long ambition, which I suppose doesn't happen all that often. And although I've just reread that sentence and winced at how cheesy it is, it's completely true so I'm leaving it in!

I got myself up pretty early this morning and headed off to Ueno station where I booked some seat reservations for the bullet train to Kyoto and back, then headed for Shinjuku and Shibuya to do some window shopping and people watching. I didn't have a massive plan for today, I was happy enough just being here and taking it all in.

Every social interaction here has been an absolute joy; I try a few words of Japanese, they try out their English, we nod and bow a lot, and somehow manage to make ourselves understood. I love Japanese people. Three different people have come up to me in the street and started a conversation simply because I'm western, and I've caught two people taking photos of me when they thought I wasn't looking. Tokyo is so far from being a world city; it's so Japanese! I hardly saw any other foreigners all day and lots of people stared at me, in a really fascinated 'oh, look at the gaijin, she's got curly hair' sort of way.

I've negotiated the subway and the trains without any problems, bought myself sushi for lunch and some more sushi for dinner, and managed not to get lost or have any of those 'Lost in Translation' moments that people say you'll have. Still, I do have 9 more days so there's plenty of time.

It's 9pm now, and I'm back at my hostel utterly exhausted by a whole day in Tokyo; my eyes hurt from all the wide eyed staring I've done, my feet hurt from all the walking, and I'm still shivering from the cold. Itis incidentally only 8 degrees here, that's 30 whole degrees colder than Thailand, and I am soooooooo cooooooold! I'm wearing all my clothes at the same time, so I look ridiculous, but I am still cold. I think I might actually buy myself a coat here to avoid freezing to death. Any excuse to shop, non? If I get out of here without ruining myself financially it will be a miracle; it is as horrendously expensive as everyone says, and the clothes are quite simply amazing. It's like going into a shop full of all the things that you have a picture of in your head but can never actually find in an actual shop in the UK.

Despite the cold and the tiredness, I've been so excited about being in Tokyo today that I had to stop myself from crying this morning as I was so happy. I had a wave of 'I'm the luckiest person in the world-ness' come over me and it all got a bit much. I'm very glad I stopped myself as I think the poor Japanese people would have been very concerned. They are so polite, I dread to think what they'd do with a crying, shivering girl.

I'm heading to Kyoto tomorrow, and coming back to Tokyo on Saturday night in time for a trip to Harajuku on Sunday to watch the crazy fashions. Yes, I am cutting short ancient capital and home of the Geisha time to make sure I don't miss watching some teenagers dressed as anime characters, but that's my choice and I'm happy with it.

And after that I will still have 6 more days in Tokyo - bring it on!

Hong Kong

Not a very original title for a post, admittedly, but that is exactly what I shall be writing about, so...

Ian has just left, and I'm in an internet cafe where I'm supposed to be uploading photos, but fate doesn't seem to want me to so I'm blogging instead. Hopefully Japan of all places will have computers with USB and CD drives...

Hong Kong is an absolutely amazing place, a really cool mix of East and West, with incredibly friendly people and great dim sum! Ian is seriously considering moving here, which I am encouraging him in as then I can come back to visit.

I actually feel like I've had a weekend for once, rather than all days being the same, we went out on Friday and Saturday nights, had a tired and not very challenging Sunday, and have spent today in Central HK surrounded by people in suits.

Predictably, we ended up in a gay bar doing karaoke on Friday night, serenading the poor locals with renditions of 'Total Eclipse of the Heart' and 'Voulez Vous'. They loved us: we made lots of new friends and the whole bar said goodbye to us when we left. Somehow we'd ended up staying out until 4am although both of us had been travelling for hours. Probably something to do with the Thai Red Bull that I still had in my bag...

On Saturday we shopped a little, but the main event of our day was the evening, as Louise had excelled herself as ever and put us on the list for a club called Volar, which apparently is hard to get into, especially for foreigners. We had some dinner and a cocktail at the top of a skyscraper first (Ian was very scared) then headed into Lan Kwai Fong, where all the bars are, for some pre club drinks. That may have been the point at which we both decided we could live here - it was packed full of people from literally all over the world, and made London seem monocultural. We only headed to the club at about 2am, me unhappily wearing my Primark plimsolls as their strict dress code forbade my beloved flip flops. We danced, Ian bought 2 champagne cocktails for 37 pounds, we danced some more, then some friendly people started chatting to us and pouring vodka into our mouths, and then very quickly it was hometime, as poor little Ian was feeling a bit worse for wear!

We wandered around a bit yesterday, then went to the night markets in the evening, which were lots of fun and good to see, but not a patch on Bangkok if you actually wanted to buy anything. We went up to the Peak today, as it is apparently an essential thing to do in Hong Kong and it's our last day here, but unfortunately given the rather overcast weather we could see nothing but the inside of a cloud. I imagine the view must be amazing when the cloud isn't there. Another reason to come back!

I'm absolutely exhausted after all the travelling to get here and the partying once here, and have a morning flight to Tokyo tomorrow. I am incredibly excited about Japan, but also a little bit scared, as my Japanese is still limited to about 5 phrases. Wish me luck!

Did someone say the travelling was supposed to be hard?

This post is written from an internet cafe in Hong Kong, where I arrived this afternoon and am now waiting for the arrival of Ian from Delhi. I'll be in Japan on Tuesday, I woke up in Thailand this morning, and this time next month I'll be in Mexico. I love my jet set life. Can I please do it forever?

I believe that the last post I wrote was from Koh Phangan on the day of the Full Moon Party, which was less than two weeks ago, but now feels like ancient history. I'm really glad I went to the FMP - the timing was perfect, and it was brilliant to meet up with so many other travelling peeps there, but frankly FMP itself is more like a night out in the Bigg Market than a night in Ibiza. Maybe I'm just getting on a bit, but the music was the same awful commercial tripe you hear everywhere in Asia (I cannot take hearing 'Beautiful Girl' by Sean Kingston ever again), and the crowd was mostly composed of drunken English and Swedish people on 2 week holidays being sick in the sea. Still, Nasrine and I did manage to stay up until 7am and watch the sunrise, and I did do at least 4 solid hours of dancing, so it was far from a bad night.

I took my hangover away from Koh Phangan the next day and got the night ferry to Krabi. I had heard that the night ferry is usually like one big slumber party of sociable travellers, but since everyone on it had been to FMP the night before, I don't think I heard one bit of conversation for the entire 8 hours. You get a proper lie down mattress and a pillow - I slept like a dead person. It was ace.

I'd arranged to meet my friend Jo, who was in my hostel in Bangkok, in Krabi, but as it turned out in the 'everything in Thailand is easy' way of things, she was actually on the same bus as me from Surat Thani to Krabi. We headed straight for Ton Sai, which is a tiny place next to Railay beach that can only be accessed by boat. Ton Sai is cheap, as there's nothing to do there, and chilled, as it's full of climbers. Our bungalow only cost a bargainous 150 baht (that's 3 pounds) each a night, which is pretty amazing given how expensive anything near a Thai beach has become. I spent 3 nights there, sunbathing and chatting and reading, and generally catching up on my sleep. The sunsets there were more beautiful than any I've seen so far, and I've seen a lot. There was a storm every day during my Andaman side beach time too, and watching them come in over the sea was almost as amazing as watching the sunsets.

Last Sunday, after a solid month of trying to meet and missing each other, Marcella and I managed to reunite ourselves in Koh Phi Phi. I got the boat in from Ton Sai, she flew into Phuket and got the boat into the same pier, so I just waited for all of five minutes before she turned up. Too easy! I readily admit that the 4 nights we spent on Koh Phi Phi weren't hardcore, grown up travelling in any way: we were on holiday. Accomodation there is famously expensive, and our aircon, tv, hot shower, no mozzies room that we got for 10 quid each was actually a bit of a bargain. Again, you don't really do much at the beach; daytime sunbathing followed by night time drinking and dancing on the beach is pretty much the size of it. I had intended to go diving whilst there, but sadly had to bin that idea when I realised that it costs 50 pounds for one half day's diving. That's twice as much as Koh Tao! I did venture from the beach once, to go on an afternoon snorkelling and sunset watching trip. We were taken to Maya beach, where 'The Beach' was filmed, which is suitably beautiful and unspoilt, but would be more so were it not filled with camera toting tourists every single day.

As I write this I've been travelling for 24 hours, and I can't believe that the South East Asia portion of my trip is already over. It's too depressing to think that I have no idea when I'll be able to go back. I'd really got used to being there, and it still hasn't sunk in that I won't see my travel buddies again (at least for a long long time) and can't just go out and eat pad thai from the street once I've finished writing this post.

Still - I'm in Hong Kong, Ian is on his way, I really can't complain. As with all huge world cities I've been in, I bloody love the place already. The people seem really nice for big city folks, and each and every one of them speaks fluent English, so I'm going to have huge long chats while I can before I spend a mute 10 days trying to remember my Japanese - eek.

This is my island in the sun

I have no idea how I am going to relate all of the amazing things that have happened since I last got round to writing anything, which was in Phnom Penh all that time ago, but I shall try.

A brief version would be Phnom Penh - Siem Reap - Bangkok - Ko Phangan but I shall try to elaborate a bit on that without writing a dissertation.

Phnom Penh is the sort of place that you have to visit, as you have to go through the grief of it all, but you also have to leave as soon as you possibly can afterwards to avoid going insane. It's not a nice city. Siem Reap, on the other hand, is beautiful. It is the Luang Prabang of Cambodia - very wealthy and full of older tourists, which makes for good food, clean streets and free wifi all over the place. I stayed 4 nights, going to Angkor Wat, then timed my return to Thailand to have 15 days before I fly out again.

I loved Cambodia, but I have to admit a certain sense of relief at returning to the flat roads and 7-Elevens of Thailand: everything here is so easy.

I was so incredibly happy to be back in Bangkok, as it really felt like coming home. The weekend that I spent there was possibly one of the best of my life so far - I went with the intention of shopping, and did, a lot, but also met some great people and had several brilliant nights out. On Friday night I went to a ladyboy show with people from my hostel (how do men have curves? how?) followed by a day at Chatuchak market on the outskirts of the city. It's the size of 5 football pitches, and I bought lots of great clothes for very little money. Beautiful 2nd hand dress for 2 pounds anyone? On Saturday night Chloe's cousin Serge invited us to the 1st birthday party of the bar he works in, which is inside a very flash hotel. We knew that it was 500 baht for free food and drink all night, but we didn't know that the drink was wine and the food was cheese and charcuterie. I was so happy I nearly cried, and that's without mentioning the bar made from ice, the very expensive vodka brnads and the minted expat clientele. Sunday night was my last night in Bangkok, so my friend Jo and I decided to go to have an expensive cocktail at one of the rooftop bars at the top of a hotel. We chose the Vertigo bar at the top of the Banyan Tree, getting there about 30 minutes before sunset. You all know I love heights, but it was incredible by anyone's standards. Jo and I ended up talking to two English guys that were staying in the hotel, and they ended up not only paying for our drinks but also inviting us to dinner with them in the restaurant at the top of the skyscraper. I ate mozzarella salad and sea bass and drank white wine for the price of about 50 of my regular meals here. It was long term backpacker heaven. Once this trip is over I'm all about first class travel I tell you.

I'd left it too late to get a bus ticket to get down to the islands for the Full Moon party, so I had to fly from Bangkok to Koh Samui instead. It only came to 60 pounds, and the ease of taking a one hour flight over a 12 hour bus and ferry made it worhwhile. I think. Anyway, here I am in Koh Phangan, waiting for this evening's Full Moon Party on the beach with about 5,000 other people who have descended on this tiny island for tonight. We were down at the beach last night, and it was relatively crazy with only a few hundred people around, so heaven knows what tonight is going to be like. It all feels a bit like a Saturday night at Glastonbury with everyone going to see the main headline act and no one else. A lot of people that I travelled with in Laos are all reconvening here today, so I'm pretty excited about tonight. We're staying in a brilliant bungalow for only 700 baht between two, despite just turning up without a reservation yesterday morning. Everything in Thailand is so easy!

I leave for Krabi on the other side of Thailand tomorrow night, and plan on doing absolutely nothing on a beach between then and my flight to HK next Friday. My trip is taking me to much more difficult destinations than Thailand, but I'm over any feelings of guilt about that now, and I readily admit that all I am doing here is having a damn good time.

Running late in Laos and Cambodia

All those of you that told me that 2 months in South East Asia was more than enough were all wrong - 2 months here is only barely scratching the surface! I've got just less than 3 weeks left before flying to HK, and I'm going to have to rush through Cambodia if I'm to have any Andaman side diving time left at all - oh woe is me.

I'm writing this from a very hot and sweaty internet cafe in Phnom Penh. Since I last managed to find an internet connection worth connecting to, I've been from Vang Vieng in Laos, through Vientiane, then overnight to a place called Pakse, where we stayed for precisely 30 minutes before heading to the 4,000 Islands on the border with Cambodia, where I stayed doing precisely nothing for four whole days, before attempting the 12 hour Laos - Phnom Penh bus yesterday. Phew.

I spent a little bit more than the planned 2 weeks in Laos, but I'm glad that I did. Laos has developed and changed a lot since the rest of you did your travels all those years ago, and it's now a very heavily backpackered place where you meet a million people and lots of drinking happens. Or it is when you follow the route that I did anyway. There's still a lot of poverty, chilled out Lao people and bad roads, but there's also an awful lot of Beerlao. Excitingly, whilst in Vientiane, I met up with Chris Mastaglio from school, who has lived and worked out there for 3 or so years, which was brilliant as he is a veritable fluent Lao speaking local now and could answer all my random Lao questions.

I only really have one week in Cambodia, as I am planning to be in Bangkok again by next weekend, so I'm heading to Siem Reap tomorrow, for the obligatory Angkor Wat visit. My first impressions of Cambodia were coloured by the truly awful bus journey from Laos to here: 23 USD for 12 hours of non-aircon oversold bus with people sitting on plastic chairs in the aisles and backpacks piled up everywhere, complete with unnecessary 2 hour stops, much confusion, changing bus to a minivan for the final leg of the journey and then being subjected to Cambodian pop for the last 3 hours. Not the best start, especially as I was very happy in my hammock in the 4,000 Islands.

Happily, today was a brilliant day. This is the first day I have spent entirely alone since Chiang Mai I think, but I really must do it more often - I hired myself a moto driver for the day and took in the S-21 prison, the killing fields, the Russian market, the Royal Palace, and lots of other random stuff. My driver was called Ron, a 2nd year medical student who has Sundays off and drives people round the sites to earn some more money. His English was perfect and we had lots of great chats about Cambodia, our respective families and the health care system in the UK. He was a star and wouldn't even let me pay for lunch. The traffic in Phnom Penh is petrifying, with no traffic lights or order, just horns to remove the random pedestrians, pushbikes and cows from the path of speeding motorbikes. I was riding on the back of the bike, without a helmet, obviously, but I got quite into it after the first roundabout crossing and was disappointed when it was over!

I think I might have lots of time for the Cambodians - they all seem very enterprising, somehow their English is almost always perfect, and they smile and laugh all the time. They've really been through the mill too; the Khmer Rouge killed about 25% of the population between 1975 and 1979, including anyone that could speak a foreign language or wore glasses. I've overdosed on Khmer Rouge today with the prison and killing field trips, as well as buying a copy of a book called 'First They Killed My Father'; a pretty famous book about a young girl's time under the evil regime. I bought it this afternoon, am half way through, and will most probably have it finished before I go to sleep this evening. It's quite strange reading about something so hideous in the place that it actually happened only 30 years ago.

I shall soon be back in Thailand, where my Thai mobile will work, wifi exists, and internet cafes are on every corner, so I might even upload some photos from there if you're lucky.