Most beautiful island ever.

So I told you we were in Phuket, right? Well we were. And the plan was to head up to Phang Nga to do some kayaking before heading on to Bangkok, but we ended up taking a little detour after learning about a wonderful place called Koh Yao Noi from a wonderful cafe owner who sensed our waning fascination with the Scandanavian holiday mecca that is Karon Beach, Phuket. I actually had a lovely time in Phuket: did some pretty great snorkeling, lazed on the beach without getting sunburned, dabbled in medical tourism (the ear doctor when she looked in my left ear: "oh wow"), and met some interesting people who weren't even close to backpackers. However....it was not what Sarah and I had envisioned when we were planning our beach time at the tail end of this trip. The cafe owner guy pointed us to Koh Yao Noi and suggested we make our way to Phang Nga from there, by boat instead of by bus.

Best suggestion ever. Where Phuket was completely overrun with sarong shops, overpriced bad western food, overpriced bad westernized thai food and concrete, Koh Yao Noi was quiet, cheap, almost deserted, friendly, and breathtakingly beautiful. This was the view from our bungalow. No joke.


I really am trying not to like cats. I really am....but bungalow owners had 4 cats that were some of the cutest creatures I have ever seen in my life. Ko Samet may have the happiest dogs on earth, but the happiest cats were definitely here. We were just going to stay for a day, but that turned into three. Whoops. The monkeys.....oh the monkeys. I need sound effects and hand gestures to talk about those, so I'll do it later. Annnnd here we are in Phang Nga Town with only five days until I leave for home and Sarah heads off to Egypt (five!).

Definitely excited to be home for awhile and can't wait to see you all. Love you!

Whew

After 30 hours of travelling, we finally arrived at the Little Mermaid Guesthouse in Phuket. Do any of you watch Lost? Do you remember the episode with the flashback to Jack in Phuket? I'm pretty sure they filmed it in some completely different place. There are many wondrous sites here, but they involve quite creatively obscene outfits more than picturesque beach bungalows. More on that in another post....I am so behind!

There's tons of stuff I didn't get to talk about in Lao, but rather than run through all of them, I'm just going to make myself a reminder list so I can remember later.

Ok Cambodia....We flew to Siem Reap from Vientiane on December 1st with the intention of staying 2 nights then leaving for Bangkok to catch our December 4th flight. However, the protests were still going strong, so we decided to linger in Cambodia for another day or so and take our time with the Angkor temples. We found our guesthouse, dumped our stuff, and then met Mr. Pidor, the guesthouse's unofficial tuk tuk driver. He was incredibly patient and knowledgeable and listened to all over our ideas for iteneraries without telling us how ridiculous they were and nodding and smiling when we yelled that we'd changed our mind and wanted to go with his idea. The temples were absolutely amazing. Just....amazing. Mr. Pidor picked us up at 4:45 each morning to go see the sunrise. The first morning he took us to a mountain temple where we'd gone to see the sunset (along with 100 other tourists) the night before. It was mildly terrifying and incredibly creepy making the 10 minute hike up to the temple by ourselves, in the dark, and with what we later learned were monkeys making strange noises in the trees around us. It was completely worth it though when we climbed the treacherous stairs to the top of the temple and could sit there in silence and sloooowly start to make out the outlines of the temple towers. We had the whole place to ourselves for about 15 minutes before 5 or 6 more people showed up to watch the sun rise with us.

The food in Cambodia was also amazing. Mr. Pidor always took us to breakfast and lunch spots that were reasonably priced and delicious. Psic chicken? I'd never heard of it, but it was killer. As was a sour soup with lime, chicken, and tamarind. Oh! And there was ice cream! The real deal and in a cafe with giant beds and pillows. I realize this experience was completely manufactured so that people like me would come spend money, but whatever. You manufacture some caramel cashewnut ice cream, and I'm there.

Mr. Pidor's "best friend" was conveniently a regular taxi driver, and agreed to drive us to the Cambodian border where we could catch the bus to Bangkok. We'd heard horror stories about this road and were braced for the worst, but it was completely fine. We rode for 3 hours past hundreds of bicycles carrying impossible amounts of cargo, and then walked the last 30 feet or so into Thailand along with a parade of men pulling carts of chickens, baskets, etc. From then on we were back to the land where we always feel like we're being a little bit taken advantage of :-P

Catching up

Another random list! (Also, I was racing the clock....so my apologies for the incomplete sentences and spelling errors. I promise I'll run a spell check one day.)

1. Food: I'm way way behind on food. We've had some amazing food in Laos, and it's surprisingly different from the food we enjoyed in Thailand. I'll start with tonight and work backwards, I guess. We met a lovely man and fellow foodie at dinner last night who said the best meal he'd had was at the Luang Prabang night market. We didn't even know they had food there, but sure enough, there was a little alley at the end crammed with stalls and tables with random people crowded around them. The food was fantastic. We had a whole fish grilled over charcoals, spring rolls, and dessert (mine was a quarter of a pumpkin that had been steamed with coconut pudding/flan-esque something or other inside.....sarah got coconut stuffed bananas). Deeelicious. Last night we ate "Thanksgiving" dinner at an American owned restaurant around the corner form our guest house (more on this below, too). It ended up being a bbq where turkey was the special meat option of the evening. We all gathered around a table, then the waiters came and removed the center tiles from the tabletop and lowered in a pot full of glowing charcoals. We then got a basket of glass noodles, herbs, vegetables, etc....a bucket full of chicken broth, and a platter full of raw chicken and buffalo meat. I'll have to rustle up a picture of this contraption, but you basically set a piece of pork fat on top of a domed grill that was on top of the charcoals. There was a ring around the dome where you could pour broth and add the vegetables and noodles to make a soup. After griling up our meat, we slathered it with a peanut tamarind bbq sauce....soooo good. Not Thanksgiving dinner (although Jeff, the lovely man mentioned above, ordered some potatoes that he mashed up with some of the broth....that's as close as we got), but pretty excellent. Before that there was some phenomenal fried fish (with ginger, lime leaves, and chiles), more amazing fruit shakes, and oh! (I just remembered) the most incredible bakery in southeast Asia. Mango crumble. Mango....crumble. We've gone every day. One day we went twice. This morning we discovered they had pumpkin pie, and apparently someone there knows how to make the real deal. It was phenomenal. Luckily they have another location in Vientiane.

2. PAD: This whole protest, airport closing thing is absolutely ridiculous. Nobody seems to know what the PAD's problem is. The only answer I can get is "they don't like the prime minister for some reason". I'll wikipedia it soon. We're not planning on being back in Thailand until December 4th, but we do have a ticket out of Bangkok that day. They need to stop being ridiculous. Them and the government. If they don't, we're starting to entertain ideas of changing our tickets home, hanging out in Vietnam, and flying from Hanoi to the US.

3. Thanksgiving dinner: I sorely missed family, scalloped oyesters, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and pumpkin desserts. We heard from Jacob via email that there was a Thanksgiving gathering at Lao Lao garden, so we went down there last night to chekc out prices. On our way to the restaurant, another American (he was the first one I'd met in Luang Prabang) mentioned he was also on his way to Lao Lao and we ended up joining him. We ended up at a big table full of Americans longing for the full meal but ready to settle for turkey cooked on the Lao-style bbq. It was a blast. And Jacob was there! (We randomly ended up at the same table.)

4. Now I have to go because the battery is dying on Sarah's laptop :-/

Love you all!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Eat extra pie for me.

Luang Prabang=Absolutely Amazing

Today was our first full day in the absolutely beautiful Luang Prabang. Aaaabsolutely beautiful. It's surround by mountains and made up of small streets lined with French colonial style buildings and overflowing with plants and flowers. Also, they have taken all of my favorite colors (all of them) and decorated everything from temples to Tuk Tuks. It's beautiful. We've had some delicious Lao food and some interesting Lao coffee, but spent the rest of the time strolling around. We did make it to a couple of Wats: one covered in sparkling mosaics and the other on top of a small hill where we could watch the sun set over the mountains. Beautiful.

In other good news, all the beautiful souveniers are very expensive, so I can't buy them! We're calling all the shops and markets "museums" now. Tonight we visited the nightly handicraft street museum.

The kids here (at least the ones we've met) are a little on the bizarre side. Sarah got attacked by one weilding a handful of straws at a cafe the other day. One girl was very very curious about why on earth I had bought my dress. (I don't think it's that offensive? Black shirt dress?) And two little boys (we're talking 4 or 5 years old) thought it would be hilaaaarious if they ran up behind me and tried to lift up my crazy black dress. Hilaaarious. Tomorrow we're going to hang out with some more kids at a literacy center. I'll report back on those.

:(

Sigh. We said goodbye to Chiang Mai today. My mom asked me when we first got here if there was a city that I could compare Chiang Mai to. I think I said Florence just because of its energy level/size/accessibility, but I ended up falling for Chiang Mai the same way I fell for ol' Firenze. (And actually, now that I'm typing this, I'm remembering that last night as I was running out to get some last minute bus supplies I ran into a couple from Florence who had also fallen in love with Chiang Mai.) The community was friendly, the cafes and restaurants charming, and the river a hub of activity.

Things I will miss:

1. Libra Guesthouse (clean room, our own bathroom, ridiculous but friendly family running the place, and the "American Breakfast")
2. Tuk-tuk man on the corner (Every day he stood out there and asked "where you want to go?!?" Today we told him we wanted to go to the bus station. On the way there he was very curious about where we'd been walking off to every day for the last 3 weeks without his help.)
3. Kanjana's (Best pumpkin curry and mango sticky rice ever. Friendliest chef/dishwasher wife/husband team ever.)
4. Crazy expats and their wealth of well-intentioned advice
5. Goodview Restaurant (good view)
6. Sunday night market (endless dirt cheap samples of tasty Thai treats and handicrafts galore!)
7. Old City alleyways
8. Well-dressed dogs
9. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Today we hopped on an early AM bus to Chang Khong on the Laotian border. It only broke down once! After the bus driver tried banging on some things (literally) to try and fix it, we got a new bus, where he cranked up the music and didn't even bother putting his unform shirt back on (I wouldn't have either). We succesfully crossed the Mekong River into Laos without much fanfare (what it lacked in fanfare it made up for in visa fees). And now....Sarah and I will work on mastering the dollar/kip conversion rate which is much less fun than the dollar/baht conversion rate. Woo :-P

Mae Sariang

This weekend Sarah went to Chiang Rai to do some leadership work, and I headed west to Mae Sariang to do some relaxing and cycling where I didn't fear for my life. It has been so lovely! I bought a book yesterday so I could read it in the riverside restaurants this weekend, but it was such a good read that I'd finished it before the bus ride ended. (Water for Elephants...great book) So today after a lovely bike ride through some Karen villages and a hike to a mountain temple, I began Nanny Diaries which someone had left on the guest house shelf.

It felt so good to get out on a bike, breath in mostly smog free breathes, and go for a few hours without seeing a farang (foreigner). At first I was trying to take pictures of everything, but then I decided today could be my 100% "enjoy the ride" day, and I'd capture things on film as necessary tomorrow.

After I got back from the ride, I went out to walk around and find dinner. I noticed all the cafes were absolutely packed, and then I remembered that today was the princess's funeral. I felt a little awkward being the white girl with Nanny Diaries to plop down and interrupt their event, soooo I went back to the guest house where the crowd was a little more mixed but where they still had the funeral on so I could get a sense of what everyone was crowding around televisions to watch.

Tomorrow=early AM breakfast, morning market, more biking, eating at the cafes now that the funeral is over, river sunset, bus to Chiang Mai.

This is just going to be a random list of things. Sorry :-P

1. Loi Krathong: This week, Thailand celebrated Loi Krathong. In Chiang Mai, they also celebrate/combine this holiday with the Yi Peng festival (read more here), and boy do they know how to throw a festival. The whole week was absolutely spectacular. We went to the opening ceremony a few days ago, and for the first time heard this lovely little tune: Once was enough to get it stuck in my head, but just in case it wasn't.....they played it everywhere, all the time, all week. There was a parade each night, and each was more extravagant than the previous night's. The real party, however, was at the river. There were oodles of fireworks and oodles of teenagers anxious to set them off (we're not talking the dinky safe kind either), countless krathong stands, and hundreds of people setting off hot air balloons. The hot air balloons were beeeautiful. It looked like someone had thrown stars into the sky, but these were dreamy and constantly moving.
2. Pictures: I've discovered (or confirmed, really) that my photography skills are abysmal. However! I am taking pictures. This is a significant accomplishment. I really will put them online someday, but just a heads up....there will be 4 albums: exciting thailand trip pictures, ridiculous dogs, backs of heads of people who decided to stand right in front of me while i was taking a picture, and white guys who obviously moved to Thailand so they could get a girlfriend.
3. Cooking school: Sarah and I went to cooking school today at one of our favorite Chiang Mai restaurants. We'd gone a week or so ago to a class run by an organic farm outside of town. During that class, we met some very interesting people, enjoyed the beautiful farm, learned a lot, and left absolutely stuffed. This time around it was just the two of us and the restaurant owner in her home kitchen, and it beat the pants off the other class. We went ot the market that morning with her husband who taught us a lot about the different things we could buy there and how they're used in cooking. We came back and spent the afternoon with Kanjana, who was an excellent teacher and very patient.
   
4. Haircut: It is not horrendous! She did a great job.
5. Starbucks: Always there to remind me that it's the holiday season in the US. Dark cherry mocha and cranberry bliss bar, fa la la la la. However, should you find yourself in Chiang Mai getting coffee at Starbucks and feel compelled to take a picture....do not. They will get mad.
   
6. Monk chat: We've had some really interesting conversations with Em at one of the temples near our guest house. We're hoping we can bring him a monk "care package" (they sell them all over the city) before we leave.

Hope you're all doing well!

Thai Massage

Best $4 I've ever spent.

A watermelon shake and a cataloup shake....

That's all it took to put me right again. The trek was a blast. Dan and Clint, twins from New Zealand, Tim from Australia, Sarah, and I piled into the back of a pickup truck (with a roof!) and drove a few hours north. We did stop at the Tourist police office so they could give us some safety information and make sure we were all accounted for, but if this trek had been in the US I'm pretty sure there would have been about 19 safety forms to sign and far more life jackets involved. Nu was a great guide though and we all came out alive, so nown we can just look back and laugh.

First day was a few hours of hiking with a waterfall stop. (I'll probably post again about the trek once I have pictures). This is when we saw the first signs of the magic one can do with a big knife and some bamboo. Nu and our porter disappeared and did some some chopping, and 10 minutes later we had a bridge to cross the river with! 3 minutes later, the bridge was gone.

We spent the night in a Lahu village. That was a bizarre and fascinating experience that I'll have to recount when I have more computer time (maybe in the picture post). The Lahu tribe is from Burma and moved to the village 35 years ago or so. Apparently only half of them are in Thailand legally, so whenever the police come....the other half run across the border again until the police are gone.

The next day we did 4 or 5 hours of hiking, and my quads did lots of burning. Hong, our porter for that leg of the journey would periodically disappear from the trail and we'd hear more chopping. We ended our hike at a picnic site beside a river, where Hong proceeded to turn two bamboo logs into 5 bowls and handed out freshly whittled chopsticks!

The neeext leg of our journey was a bamboo raft to the village we stayed in the second night. The bamboo rafting was awesome. I don't have a picture to post yet, but just to give you an ideal....

It was a lazy river with a few light rapids, so we mostly just watched the mountains, trees and flowers go by. The highlight was the passionfruit that Nu picked as we floated along.

The second night we stayed with the Lisu hill tribe, who came to Thailand from China several hundred years ago. Their village was about half the size as the first one but much closer to cities, so there were more modern conveniences it seemed like. However, our accomdations were pretty much the same, a hut with a raised floor.....only this time with multicolored mosquito nets. Again, this village was fascinating, but less awkward than the first. This village also had more vocal animals. We had a pig friend that "slept" (maybe she just snores a lot?) under our hut, a cow that sleepwalks with a bell around its neck, chatty dogs, and roosters that really need somebody to tell them when the sun comes up.

Today we went caving and rode elephants, which were both lots of fun. Elephants are massive and bats smell bad.

The fruit shakes were glorious and now I'm going to sit here and hurt.

Love you all!

:)

I have 19 things I want to share, but we have to leave in 5 minutes for our great trek into the jungle. I'll just leave a little note about the election though...

We watched the coverage with a bunch of local expats and some other foreigners who were interested in both the election and watching the Americans watch the election. It was so cool. I think everyone, inlcuding myself, constantly went back and forth between being jubilant and crying. After we left that party it was strange, and I kind of wished I was in the US for a day. Life was going on as normal and nobody was talking about it :-P

Sad about proposition 8, but so so excited otherwise....and relieved!

Revisiting the pharmacist

A quick trip to the pharmacist around the corner pretty much cured my leg woes. The ol' legs have done an excellent job carrying me around the city all day. Sarah had a rough day today (too much delicious fruit?), so I went back to see if they could help us out again. I returned with a magical stomach potion that had ginger AND mint and some bonus rhubarb too! The woman on the bottle looked extremely happy so we're hoping that's what Sarah will look like when she wakes up in the morning :)

Today was supposed to be decision day....should we go to Laos or Cambodia? what are the "must do" things before we leave Chiang Mai? Where we can we watch the election results? It seems like having even a rough calendar mapped out will take away some of the stress over wanting to do everything and not having time. So far we've decided that both Laos and Cambodia would be awesome, there are lots of things we want to do in Chiang Mai, and that UN's Irish Pub seems to be the place to go. (One decision down!)

I did some more walking around Chiang Mai, which is very accessible by foot. We're staying in the old city, which is surrounded by a moat and is primarily a pseudo-grid of "soi" or alleys. The city center and the Ping River are to the east, which is where you'll find the night bazaar (not my favorite of the many markets we've been to), silk and fabric shops, the large produce market (see old post), etc.

Tonight was also the Sunday Market, and although I was thinking I was marketed out at this point, it's my favorite of the ones we've been to so far. It had a wider variety of crafts from some of the hill tribes which were a nice change of pace from endless stalls selling fisherman's pants. (By the way, you all need some of these pants. I wore my new ones today, and they are literally the most comfortable things I've ever worn. I only looked a little bit like a hippie earth mother.) The market was also dotted with musicians ranging from a 5 member Thai boy band to a one man band playing 4 instruments (there were lots of toes involved).

And now, bedtime. We have to wake up early for cooking school!

Northward

Yesterday (which guest house man tells me was Thursday) Sarah and I waved goodbye to Ko Samet and took the overnight train to Chiang Mai. They were out of first class cabins and second class sleeper cabins so we decided to try our luck with second class seats. It was a festival of new smells and sounds, but there were some lovely jungle views.

I'm soooo excited for all that Chiang Mai and the surrounding area holds, but it's going to be difficult deciding how to spend our time here. Today we checked in to our guest house with free wireless (woo!), walked around to get our bearings, and ate some delicious overnight bus ride recovery food. (I'm probably going to talk about food a lot throughout the trip, feel free to tune out if you're not interested :-P) I got a pumpkin curry that was just spicy enough to leaving me sweating (glowing?) but that didn't require a recovery period (as the curries have thusfar), a shockingly purple dragon fruit shake, and a...maz...ing mango sticky rice for dessert. Sarah described the sticky rice well: the perfect combination of salty, sweet, creamy, and fresh.

We've heard that the Sunday market is not to be missed, but today we walked through a couple of the markets that are held on a daily basis. The first was exclusively produce/meat/fish. The vegetables and fruits were abundant and beautiful, and there were many I'd never seen before. Umpteen different kinds of ginger, chiles, garlic, etc. The other one offered dried foods and textiles, but we didn't spend very long there because I'd become afflicted with my terrible condition.

My terrible condition: golfer's vasculitis. This is something that primarily affects people over the age of 50 (if you round to the nearest 50 that's me?) Yup. It is a lovely rash thing on your legs that according to google, is just now becoming a "legit" condition and is basically just a pain. I was mostly annoyed and not overly concerned until the woman at our guesthouse who organizes the treks learned of the situation. She was extremely helpful and told me the name of a clinic that treats patients whose bones are being eaten away and also skin conditions. She also (very generously) shared some cream that her friend's daughter uses on her skin. (I'm using it on a test spot this evening!)

It better be cured before trekking next week! (Guesthouse woman would not let me go this week :-P Probably a wise decision on her part.)

Love you all!

Bungalows....

Sarah and I have learned several things in Ko Samet (which has been absolutely lovely):

1. "Bungalow" can mean many many different things. For example, it can mean the incredibly adorable little hut with the porch and rocking chairs that overlooks the ocean. It can also mean the little box about a 15 minute walk up the mud hill with holes in the screens and a construction site next door. You neeeever know.
2. Sometimes....hotel that makes no claim of a beach view>>bungalow.
3. Dogs that live on Ko Samet are probably the happiest in the world. Their schedule consists of eating scraps people give them at the beachside cafes, Taking a nap in the shade of the unused beach umbrellas, eating lunch scraps, taking a cool down swim in the ocean, dinner scraps, and watching the sun set in a little ball in the sand.
4. Fruit is definitely still delicious.

We've spent two full days here....mostly reading on the beach. There's a hostel type thing that's popular with backpackers that serves a great breakfast. We've gone and had our daily coffee and eggs, but THIS morning I discovered the banana breakfast sandwich. They apparently bake all their own bread, so they take a couple slices of that....put some bananas and cinnamon on it, and then grill it until it's gooey goodness. I will sorely miss it. The island has been nice. It's an interesting mix of Thai people, European families, and backpackers. Also, the water is a color I don't think I've seen before. Sarah and I came to the conclusion that it's decidedly not Caribbean colored....more of a muted jade green.

Tomorrow we're taking a bus back to Bangkok and then hopefully an overnight train to Chiang Mai. We're hoping to set up shop there for awhile.

As always, miss you and hope you're all doing well :)

PS. Saltwater has taken my hair down to medium huge.

Pictures:

1. These are from the ferry ride over to Ko Samet.

2. This was our bungalow

3. This was better than the bungalow

4. Ko Samet dogs taking their morning nap

5. This house belongs to the family who rented us beach chairs each day.

6. A favorite beachfront dinner spot for both Sarah and I and the Ko Samet dogs.

7. Just a lovely rainbow :)

8. Our other favorite waterfront eatery....I wasn't very good at capturing the ambiance her at night.

Good job stomach (knock on wood and cross your fingers)

I'll go ahead and apologize now for the lack of coherence in these posts. The meter is always running and my thoughts are never collected all the way :-P

So it's been 2 days or so in Bangkok and we've eaten quite the variety of Thai food from quite the variety of vendors. So far, my digestive system is holding it's own. We found a lovely hotel (for a whopping $10/person) with an open cafe in the lobby where we've had breakfast each morning and enjoyed the breeze. The first afternoon here we went to the weekend market and decided to try our luck with some fruit (yum! yum yum yum) and a market food stall. They were out of everything except fish curry and something none of us understood. We ordered a couple of both, and after we got it....we still had absolutely no idea what that second dish was. But we survived! Yesterday we tried some bonafide street food noodle soups which were delicious and fresh....and less than $1!




Last night we went to a blues lounge near our hotel just for somthing relaxing and different. The guitar player was unreal. I'm amazed if that's the best gig he can get in Bangkok.

We've done much walking and seen a lot of Bangkok, but I think it's time to move on for now. We're heading to to Ko Samet to do some snorkeling and recouping on the beach. Also, before we leave, Sarah and I are going to get a cell phone set up....so we should be reachable soon. I'll send that number as soon as it's working.

I hope things are going well on your ends. How was everyone's weekend in Raleigh? Emily....how are Spanish classes? There were so many little dog outfit shops in Tokyo. Beulah needed all of them. Hoo....how was Cornhuskin? Andy....what are you being for halloween this year? I hear they are trying very hard to make the Franklin St. celebration much lamer.

Thank you thank you thank you to those people who helped with my car in Raleigh. I owe you big time.

PS. My hair is absolutely enormous.

Pictures:
Here are a few pictures from our first few days in Bangkok when my stomach was on such great behavior.

1. Toilets: Turns out this is actually a pretty nice one. Jacob is flushing it.


















2. Puppies at the weekend market: These puppies were heartbreaking. I'm going to pretend that the ones they don't sell get sent to Ko Samet to play on the beach all day. I don't think I could take it otherwise.


















3. Market food


















4. Street food


















5. Waterfront property is apparently not prime real estate in Bangkok. The river and canals were lined with housing like this.














6. Part of Bangkok's skyline from the top of the Golden Mount. Below this is the "golden" part of the golden mount.

Hello Bangkok!

I should learn how to say "hello" in Thai. Also how to say "thank you".

Jacob and I made it to Bangkok, and Sarah was waiting for us at our gate! We had a nice day and a half in Tokyo before arriving here. Honestly, it didn't feel that much different from being in an American city most of the time. It was like New York except we were most decidedly in the minority. We saw the Imperial Gardens, got lost in the financial district, and then had some outstanding sushi with all of the Japanese businessmen on their lunch break. The rest of the time we spent wandering around the city and dining on noodle soups.

I actually wasn't that excited about Bangkok, but I already am enjoying it much more than Tokyo. It's grittier and more colorful. I wouldn't want to stay here forever, but there's plenty of good people watching to go around and an abundance of beautiful fruit (that you can smell long before you figure out where it is).

Sorry this is short! 3 minutes left on the meter, and then we're heading to the weekend market.

Miss you all!

Pictures

1. A view of Tokyo from the Imperial Gardens on one gray and misty day (you may need to click for the full size picture). This weather turned out to be peachy compared to the buckets of rain we got the next day. My waterproof jacket lost all its waterproofing in about 5 hours :-/

2. Prefecture Trees: The most exciting part of the Imperial Gardens (Seriously. The emperor apparently has a thing for grass. Grass and rocks.) was the little section where each of Japan's prefectures was represented by a tree. The first picture is the little plot where, apparently, the cool prefectures' trees live. The lamer trees were in the plot next door. I don't know if you can see it, but above the little white sign is a stump. Poor stump prefecture.

3. Businesspeople: So many of them. Mostly men.




































4. Awesome sushi: Let me know if you can identify that pink blob beside the shrimp.