Koh Phangan and Koh Samui, Thailand

After the debacle that was Japan, we decide to head for a seaside setting. Knowing that Thailand is one of the most inexpensive countries, and also one of our favourites, we make haste for Surat Thani from Bangkok. A short ferry ride later, and we are on Phangan, famous for it's raucous full moon parties, held, oddly enough, every full moon on the south beach. The rest of the island is pretty quiet as we have come in low season, and the beach we are at is called Haad Salad, a relatively quiet beach on a relatively quiet island, making it kind of a ghost town. Unless you rent a bike or scooter, the steep hills make it a hard slog to get around, but the views of the crystal clear waters make the tough going truly worth the work. Amenities are few near the beach, but a short walk along the beach reveals restaurants, resorts and dive schools up and down the length of the small beach. They do seem to be missing a trick, however, as no one along the beach rents snorkel gear, just sells it at typically inflated prices. I suppose they don't want to take business away from the many diveshops which offer snorkelling trips all over the coast. I would really rather just paddle around, looking at the multicoloured marine life at my leisure, instead of being hustled around by buff, bronzed dive geeks. I would rather just float along, looking like a pasty mannatee who got trapped in a pair of flippers.
 The staff at the place we stay are very accomodating, but they have strange ideas about upkeep. They don't clean their section of beach, but they will restain the walkways which join everything to everything else at about 9 pm without telling anyone, or in any way taping off stained sections, so that an unsuspecting guest doesn't start strolling down the walkway, unaware that the soles of his feet are fast becoming an unhealthy shade of reddish brown. Like myself.
As usual with many of these beachfront places, the restaurant is overpriced and ok, but not ok enough for the money, and the money is actually staggering considering that this is still Thailand, but it's the fabled islands, so they charge what the market dictates, so that's whatever they like. Further up the beach the restaurants are much better, or at least on first visit. The food at the one we choose is really nice, and our boy can run up and down the beach, just being 4. An added plus is the fire show just up the beach at the neighbouring restaurant. It starts off just looking like some guy having a lark with petrol and a stick, and finishes with a pretty well executed tandem routine, spinning, tossing and generally looking cool. The evening finishes off with a fireshow in the sky, as the weather threatens to close in. Back to the hotel it is.
The next morning arrives in the usual, spectactular Thai beach fashion, and the day passes lazily. Too lazily. I'm not sure I'm really soaking in the atmosphere this time, or perhaps it's just the disappointment of Japan still lingering and tainting an otherwise pretty perfect location.
Not much doing on Phangan, so we decide to go to Koh Samui before the full moon party starts. Samui is the most popular and set up of these islands. Granted, there are all manner of more interesting things to do and see, especially if diving and trekking are not your bag, but it makes the whole thing seem less beachy and more shop-y.
As for the things to do, the sights are many, including and very big Buddha, located on BIg Buddha beach. No, seriously. Right down the road from that is Wat Plai Lem and an 18 armed statue of  Guanyin, the goddess of mercy and compassion. Set on to a lake, the Wat consists of an exceptionally beautiful temple, a very large statue of a big fat buddha (but different from the Big Buddha), and the Guanyin. Really quite breath-taking.
We make the mistake of staying in what is known as the Fishermen's Village. I had heard it was very popular with tourists, but I had foolishly assumed it was in fact a fishermen's village. It is not. What it is, is a hideously overpriced tourist trap. Everything, including accomodation and food even more expensive than Kyoto, and nowhere near as charming, making this the absolute opposite of what we left Japan for. It's very pretty on the beach, and that's all it has going for it. Forty years ago, the place was probably very much the quaint little fishing village it purports to be, but then it likely didn't have a craft mall or several tattooo shops and a restaurant every 15 feet. We Think this is a terrible idea to have come here. We want to leave. So we do. A ferry to Surat Thani, then a flight to Bangkok, and a flight to Hanoi. This episode has given us some insight into Siobhan's Asperger's and how she deals with boredom. We stayed too long in Kyoto, whiich made her feel like she was bored. We collectively made a rash decision to leave the country rather than the city, which cost us a unique experience. We didn't think about just waiting out the boredom, and realising that this was momentary. A hard lesson learned, but we had planned to come to these islands later in the trip, so we have saved ourselves an unfortunate break in the trip later on. Another lesson learned is that the better known a place is here, the more gawd-awful it will be. Please let Vietnam be a better experience.

Hanoi, Vietnam

I Always feel a little funny about going to communist countries. I suppose I buy into the cold war ideas about surveillance and repression and evil empires, I grew up in the days of Ronnie Raygun and Leonid Brezhnev, and my education about Vietnam came from Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and other films and stories about the "police action" in Vietnam. The real story was never really known by those of us who just existed on the periphery of the conflict. Vietnam had been under an awful lot of thumbs in it's pre-liberation days. The Chinese repeatedly invaded, the French colonised and were duly exorcised, and most famously the Americans, in their attempt to save south Vietnam from the domino effect of communism (their words, not mine), tried to spread their special brand of colonialism, and failed. Uncle Ho and the battle hardened guerillas of the Vietnamese countryside repelled a very insistent American force, creating the unified country of Vietnam. Today's Vietnam is not the agent Orange defoliated, bullet-ridden hotspot that memory and mystery inform of. Although the attitude towards the Americans is outwardly forgiving and accepting, a seething animosity is still just under the surface, evident in the words of tour guides telling us that they like Americans, their smiles just a little too wide, the words rehearsed and forced. Every informative film and museum showpiece and display makes mention of the war and the atrocities committed by every invading force throughout Vietnamese recorded history, from the Chinese to the French to the Americans, and how the valiant farmers and average citizens banded together every time to repel the forces of oppression, and especially how the brave members of the communist party were forced to even repel their own people when they sided with the American puppet Saigon government. For such a forgiving people, they are pretty bitter.
 That being said, Hanoi is a pretty loose feeling city, like anything goes and absolutely anything can be had for an exceptionally reasonable price. The motorcycle traffic is truly mad. There seems to be no organisation or road rules except "try not to be in my way when I come through, and I am coming now". There is a people to motorcycle ratio of 2 to 1, and with 8 million people in Hanoi, that makes for a pretty insane traffic snarl of motorcycles and scooters going every way they can go. Lanes are simply suggestions, scooters carry about as many people as your average SUV, and honking has replaced every signal and indicator that was created for traffic use, including traffic lights, hand signals, and stop signs. It takes some getting used to. For the first couple of days, you wonder if you will actually make it across the road before midnight, and by the third day you find your window in the traffic, take it, and don't look back or second guess yourself, or you'll die.
As bananas as the traffic is, I found myself really quite enjoying Hanoi. The shops sell a pretty wide variety of things, and things that I would not really expect, like coffee. Quite a few little shops sell Vietnamese coffee with names like Golden Weasel. Vietnamese coffee is served hot or cold, and frequently comes with sugar and condensed or fresh milk, making it very thick and very sweet. If you actually like the flavour of black coffee like I do, the coffee is a revelation. It seems spiced and a little sweet, its so nice just on its own. Viet food has long been one of my favourites and I had been looking forward to it the whole trip. It was pretty much what I expected, very fresh and savoury flavours, but not much heat. From what I understand, the flavours in the north of Vietnam tend to be savoury, in central Vietnam they are spicy and in the south, sweet. Siobhan found it all a bit sandy and dull, but I loved it. We only had a couple of days there before we go to Ha Long Bay, so we try to investigate what we can, including a trip to the infamous Hanoi Hilton, Hi Lo prison. The other important sights are Tortoise Island in the middle of Hoan Kiem lake, the single pillar pagoda, the temple of literature, and the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh, where his body lies in state, although some think it is just a wax dummy. I have been told that Hanoi is more sedate than its southern sister city, Saigon. I can't believe that a city could be crazier than this, so I am not really looking forward to that, but there's time before we get there.
I am also told that the hotels in Vietnam take your passports because the police come every night to ensure that all tourists are accounted for. That sort of breaks the spell of comfort and ease I had been feeling here, knowing that in some way we are still being tracked and that this is still quite a repressive regime, like the communists of old. Tourists are tolerated for their money, and a hand is almost always in your pocket. Tips are the order of the day, and if no tips are forthcoming like at grocery stores, then there never seems to prices on anything so the shopkeepers can rip you off at their leisure, just making up prices as they see fit. The principle is sound, if you have more, you should be able to pay more. There is no concept of relative poverty, as no tourists sleep on the street, and no tourists go without. It makes sense to pay a little more, but when you know what something is worth and you know that you are being smiled at and ripped off at the same time, its a little galling. At this point, I should mention that this does not just happen to tourists, but also to wealthy Vietnamese as well. It is seen as culturally proper for the wealthy to pay more. In many respects I agree with this philosophy, but it feels as though this practice is applied only to outsiders. Tourists are seen as two legged wallets first, people second and if you are American, two legged scum wallets. Fortunately, I am Canadian and British, so I am simply a cash cow and not a pig.
Griping over. There's really a lot to like about Hanoi, even the supertouristy things like the water puppet shows are actually pretty cool, transport is pretty affordable if you've managed to get a properly licensed taxi, like Taxi Group. You roll the dice with taxis as many of the drivers will positively fleece you. Even the ones that have meters have been fiddled with, so that a 60000 dong ride will cost 300 000 without even noticingBut the  liscensed cabs are easy to find and very cheap.
To balance this gripe is the fact that so many Vietnamese words cause my inner juvenile to snigger constantly. Even the currency is funny. Dong. Heh heh heh. Phuc Long Dong. Surely they know how funny this is? No? This means something not filthy? Hmmm. Nope, still hilarious.
Anyway, Ha Long Bay is next for a couple of days, and later on Sa Pa in the mountains. Should be fun!

Nara, Japan

We have by decided to leave Japan for several reasons, but the main one was boredom. Now we are regretting the decision. We won't get to see Tokyo, Mt Fuji, or take a bullet train. Perhaps we have been hasty. Kyoto was beautiful but altogether too sedate, compared to the places we have been, but is the rest of Japan the same? We won't find out this trip. Maybe next time.
Nara is next. Its the former capital and even sleepier than Kyoto, but no less picturesque. Every historic building has appeared on a postcard many times over. I do sometimes wonder how they manage to get the thousands of tourists out of the shot, though. Every site is overrun with tour buses full of people, mostly foreign tourists, but the occasional busload of schoolchildren on a field trip. The kids have been learning English in school and have been given a script to speak to English speaking tourists. They have a question about food, about hobbies and about where we come from, they are achingly polite, but not overly shy. In fact, a few of them jostle for position to ask the next question in adorably fractured English. I feel mote than just a little shame at the fact that 12 year old schoolchildren have a better command of my language than I do of theirs, but its a feeling I have gotten used to, assuming the world understands me, therefore I don't need to understand them. We encounter a few of these groups and be as kind and patient as we can, trying hard to understand and answer all of their questions.
compared to north American or English schoolkids, this lot are incredibly well behaved and respectful. Makes me wonder where we went wrong. I blame hippies. Moving on.
the place we stay is again someone's home that we found on air b n b. That's a brilliant website. Of course the place is Japanese sized, so I am constantly braining myself on door frames, and my back really doesn't like the very hard beds, but the place has everything a little family needs for day to day functioning. We don't have much time, so we have to be choosey about what sights to see. We decide that the largest wooden building in the world, Todaiji-ji, will do nicely. The road to the temple runs through a park with semi-tame deer which you can feed by hand with thin biscuits sold at vendors dotted throughout the park. The deer are so used to this that there is no even the smallest hint of natural trepidation as they confidently approach you for biscuits. You hold one out and two deer come ambling ovrr to take it from your hand. Cute! You hold out another and there are 4 deer all vying for some biscuit love. You are lord of the woodland animals! You hold out another and 6 of them are advancing quite quickly. They think you could pick up the pace with the cookies. Then 7 or 8 of them are taking turns nipping at your shirt, biting your backside and headbutting your testicles. The sudden urge to throw the remainder of the biscuits at the closest deer and tearass it out of there with your newly retailored clothes and most of your manhood still intact sensibly wins out. Your place is behind the safety of a fence. You already knew this, of course.
When first approaching the gates to the temple, the first though is "When does this get interesting?". It doesn't take long to get interesting as the corner is rounded from the ticket takers' booth, and there, standing in the middle of a big green space, is a bloody great wooden temple. Its actually quite awesome, first sight catches your breath in your throat as you struggle to say " Wow!". A monster of a wooden temple houses a monster of a Buddha statue and a few others besides. Dominic decides he wants to sit in the giant wooden hand. Sympathetically we stop him as he tries to crawl under the rope. The gift shop runs half the length of the walls and runs the gamut between the tasteful and the totally unrelated. Dominic finds a pen he wants, I get a zenlooking bead thing, and Siobhan gets a few bits of cloth that she really likes the look of, but can't quite understand their relevance to the temple. The grounds are also immense and very peaceful, despite being overrun by tourbusloads of seniors and schoolbusloads of children again.
Like Kyoto, Nara is quiet and picturesque and we think that maybe it would be nice to stay in Japan. We understand the mistake we made by not waiting until we get somewhere more active. Too bad we have to fly to Vietnam. Oh well, next time.

Kyoto, Japan

Honestly, I was less excited to go to Japan than I have been to go anywhere else. Being a Canadian, 1 in 4 people I have met have been to Japan including a large chunk of my own family. It just seemed like a marginally more exotic Mexico, for all the people who have been. I know, its not a competition for who can go to the least visited place, and that the Japanese culture is both exotic and impenetrable for most westerners, but I feel that Japan has become so modernised, so westernized and frankly overexposed in the last 40 years, that much of the mystique of the place has been replaced by flashing lights, ninja and robot themed restaurants, manga and japanimation. It just feels like it has a major vein of artificially pumping its lifeblood. I am certain that if the surface is scratched, the tale changes, but there is just not the time or money to do anything but the most cursory of walkthroughs.
The city of Kyoto, former capital city of Japan and still capital city of geisha (or geiko) culture holds much of the mystery and allure that I find missing from other major cities.The architecture is a mixture of the old, venerable temple and the ultramodern. The area we stayed in is called Gion, which is one of the oldest sections of the city, and as the allies decided to give Kyoto a miss with their bombing campaigns in WWII, Gion still retains much of the feel of old world Japan. Many guides will tell you that if enough time and watchfulness is invested in the little backstreets of Gion, geiko and their maiko (the colourful trainees to the geiko) will furtively skitter by between schools and appointments. They will not pose for pictures and they will not welcome the appearance of a camera. In order to spend anytime in their proximity, one of several methods may be employed, and I do mean employed, as every method involves an expensive trip to a tea house or private back room where executives are entertained be geiko, maiko and an older woman who plays the shamisen while the alcohol evaporates faster than the contents of their wallets. The geiko are charming, witty and most of all patient, to the point where they applaud the childish antics of the exceptionally well paid and badly behaved CEOs and their VIPs. If a geiko does slow down and smile for a picture in the street, they are very likely tourists who have been dressed and made up like geiko. There are some give aways, like the way certain makeup accompanies certain hairstyles and hair decorations, and whether they look vaguely Kansas-esque are indicative of their veracity, but to the untrained eye, they are still fantastically well done and beautifully made up. At this time I should like to say that my last statement was not in any way racist. Yes, I know, people of Asian descent are born in Americas breadbasket daily, but as tourists will want to be stopped and posed with because of  the transformative efforts of the company who has supplied them with this opportunity to play geisha, they are instantly recognisable as not-geisha. Stop waving the racist red card. Its dull.
Another way to see real geiko and meiko is to go to the theatre and see them performing the annual spring and autumn dances. These dances are traditionally performed by geiko, maiko and an all female Kabuki troupe, and accompanied by older geiko on various traditional instruments, and many times their musical instructors. A kabuki performance begins the show, in this instance the story of Son Goku, the monkey god who is based on the Chinese character Sun Wukong, and whom many feel is further based upon the Hindu character, Hanuman. The cast is again all female, in fact the only male I saw on stage was a man who knelt down by the side of the stage and used two blocks of wood cracked together to make fight noises. The geiko and maiko come next, their movements intricate and make up exquisite. The meiko come first, their geiko next and then the elders of the house come on last. Eventually 17 or 18 dancers are on at once, all performing the finale to loud but respectful applause. A real geiko has been seen entering the performance, so her attempts to leave were well marked by the audience. She never showed fear or annoyance as the crowd gathered around, clamoring for photos, and as soon as she saw a window in the crowd she quickly and gracefully made her exit.
The food in Kyoto really is quite wonderful I'm told, but as the budget allowed us to either grocery shop and buy premade food from 7-11 (also very good and inexpensive), or relatively inexpensive noodle bars and places that locals frequent, so I really can't speak to the quality or flavour of the local cuisine.
Kyoto is also well known for the absurd number of shrines and temples. Most are pretty, all are calm and serene, but samey as temples go. There are a few that really stand out. Kinkaku-ji, or the Golden Pavillion, is a temple founded initially in the14th century, destroyed in 1950 by a monk who burned it down, then rebuilt by 1955. Aside from the amazing sight of this revered temple reflected in the pond in which it is situated, the most remarkable thing is the fact that the whole structure is covered in gold leaf, which to be perfectly honest, appeared like cheap paint. The knowledge of the gold leaf is what makes it remarkable, not the sight. To-ji is a very cool old wood temple that just happens to have a 5 storey pagoda parked right next to it, and Chion-in, chief site among the Jodo sect of Zen Buddhists.
Quite a few peculiarities are evident; no one ever jaywalks. Ever.
 Perfectly sensible people will stand at a crosswalk at 2 am waiting for a light to go green, even though not a single vehicle, motorised or otherwise, crosses their path. A non-conformist, rebellious few look twitchy as they seriously consider doing the unthinkable, but they take so long to make up their minds that the light changes, easing their consciences and they carry on their way, safe in the knowledge that If they really wanted, they could be masters of their own fates. A great deal is made of the number and variety of vending machines. This may be true in Tokyo (I haven't been yet, I don't know), but in Kyoto there ARE an awful lot of vending machines, but 95% of them are drinks machines. I didn't see any of the wacky things that are supposedly for sale to the unsuspecting passer-by. Just drinks. Coffee, tea, beer, juice and soda, all cold, all in cans, no live crabs, no plutonium, no bondage-in-a-box kits, just drinks.
This is, without a shade of sarcasm, the cleanest city I have ever seen. I mean so clean, I had to actually visually scour the streets to find gum dried on to the pavement. This is down to two factors: cleanliness and shame. Its true that the Japanese are a tidy lot, there's really no space for slovenliness, but most importantly there are things that the Japanese simply don't do, as it is embarrassing or shameful, bad mannered things that only westerners do. Eating and drinking as you walk down the street is not done, so as there is no refuse being made on the go, there is nothing to throw on the streets, therefore a shame-assisted cleanliness is maintained.
Sadly, we missed the iconic cherry blossoms by about 3 weeks. I'm sure it would have been a truly breathtaking sight, but there are so many pictures out there already, I don't have to think too hard to conjure an image.
We are also stunned by how sedate the whole Japanese experience is. We are now so used to jarring sounds, bright clashing, flashing colours, taking your life in your hands crossing the street, hawkers, touts and souvenir shops, that we find ourselves getting bored of the whole thing pretty quickly. I am actually shocked by my reaction to it all. I would have thought that the calm and "Zen" of it all would be a refreshing change, but I am simply bored by the calm and the brown and greenness of it all. The fact that it costs a mint to be this bored doesn't go a long way to easing this malaise. I do wonder if Kyoto was the place to start this part of the trip. We decide that the combination of loss of interest and loss of finance is a vacation killer, and it's time to move on. We knew it would be expensive, and the expense was budgeted for, but we just can't justify paying that much for the boredom. We decide to leave Japan after a short trip to Nara, mostly because we have trouble believing that we would just leave because we are bored, and want to see one more place. Maybe next year we will have our heads in a place appropriate for a trip to Japan. I hope it will get more interesting in the next former capital, Nara.

Back in Bangkok

I have been looking forward to this day since the minute I left in September of last year. I have thought about the sun and the heat, the smells and textures and tastes, the atmosphere and colours every single day for 10 months. Every mouthful of food since leaving has been compared to the last one in Bangkok. Every drink has been put in the harsh light reflecting off the fresh juices to be found at 5 carts to the block on most pedestrian streets in the backpacker areas of Bangkok. Every glance at a dour and grey Church of England edifice reminds me that somewhere God likes colour, but not here. I wonder if there is an correlation between colour and ambient temperature. Every sunny day (and there are precious few in England) is shamed by a memory, knowing that at its strongest, the sunlight in Britain simply isn't going to infuse you with that sense of sub tropical satisfaction. I step out of the airplane at Suvarnabhumi airport, and I am immediately greeted with a hot breath of air so thick you could chew it. Every thought and sensation comes at full tilt, and I can remember very few times in which I have been happier.
After we returned from our trek last year, I went through a bit of a withdrawal from southeast Asia. I sulked a while, and returned to my studies, thinking of nothing but sitting at a roadside restaurant in Chiang Mai, Thailand, eating pad Thai and drinking pineapple and passion fruit smoothies, listening to the traffic and the mixture of Thai and western voices, discussing everything from English football to what to see and how much to see it by tuktuk. Friendly negotiations and the knowing dance of customer relations experts and expats. Then it was cold and grey and miserable English winter. The memories faded and the hard graft of university set in, coupled with raising a child with Siobhan, and the daily business of getting on. Siobhan notices that there are dead cheap flights to Bangkok, and maybe we should get them and worry about where to go later? It's still December and it's too far away for it to be real. The Malaysian flight disaster is a distant memory and so is the downing of the Malaysian flight over Ukraine. There seems to be a real rash of crashes and near misses, but it's still a long ways away.
Then the Nepal earthquake devastates all of these amazing sights and places between Kathmandu and Pokhara, jogging mental pictures and mini movies of places we had seen and been less than a year ago. Durbar square in Kathmandu is a pile of rubble, and the same goes for Patan and Bahktapur. I spend hours comparing my pictures of what I saw versus news pictures of what's left in abject shock. How the royal Kumari of Kathmandu and her domicile in Durbar Square survived without so much as a scratch as dozens of people were killed by falling debris just metres from her door is a potentially divine mystery. There were shops along the mountain roads to Pokhara who's back ends were supported by stilts rising out of the sheer drop down the mountainside that always seemed pretty perilous in calmer tectonic times, but now ... I wonder if anyone made it out before they just disappeared down the cliff face. The memories of these places that were just right there and I have the photos and film to prove they were there and now they just aren't and what about all the people we met there that ran coffee shops or gave us a deal on souvenirs or just wanted to practice their English or the smiling faces or those who nearly ran us over or.... it becomes too much for a minute.
It sure kickstarts the desire to get back there though, and now we're here! That undercurrent in the air of fish, the lights and sound, its wonderful! From the fire escape of my hotel I see a boy netfishing in the canal and I'm reminded that I'm the one with the unreal life. There is a rawness to life here which you will never really see in the west unless you live a very raw life as well. There are colourful temples and colourful characters everywhere. There's an electricity in the air and it's not coming from that very low slung extension cord. There's  loads of solo older guys, and regardless of why they are there, you just know that there will be a young Thai girl in his sights soon enough. That may not be true, but you think that they must be those creepy types. You're probably right. I know there are huge swathes of this city I know nothing about. I have no business in the seedier areas, and I'm just too old to satisfy lingering curiosity. I don't actually care. Its on record in books and film if I simply must know. The same goes for the very affluent areas and the bars and clubs hold no allure. I'm just happy to be in the warm air, smelling and seeing and being in Bangkok. Japan is next on the itinerary, and I'm excited but I fear for the bank account.