Home again...see you same time next year!

Well we are finally home.  Thanks so much to everyone who has followed along with us on our Italian-French-Thai-Japanese adventure.  We hope you've enjoyed the photos and commentary.  We had such a great time escaping the Phoenix heat this year that we are already planning our escape for Summer 2012.  So there won't be any new posts til then unless we go someplace cool in the meantime.  If you want to be notified when a new post is created, you can sign up to follow the blog via email (on the top right hand side of the blog, just enter your email address).

2 hours in Tokyo

We had a great time in Thailand visiting with my brother and seeing the sights but now it is time to go home.  At the Suvarnabhumi Airport in Thailand, Japan Airlines was celebrating its 55th year of service between Tokyo and Bangkok.  They were politely encouraging all passengers to take a photo with the flight attendants dressed in retro attire.

After a long flight with an interesting (?) Japanese breakfast, we arrived at Narita Airport in Japan and cleared through Customs and Immigration quickly.  We had an 8-hour layover, so we figured we had enough time to zip into the city of Tokyo and look around for a couple hours.  Tokyo is about an hour away by train from the airport.  We took the Narita Express to Tokyo station.

When we saw this building from the train window it hit us that we were really in Japan.

It was raining pretty hard when we walked out of Tokyo station -- we were glad that for once we checked the weather ahead of time and packed our umbrellas in the carryons.

 

The Tokyo Station is just across the street from the east gardens of the Imperial Palace, so we used what little time we had to walk around and take a few photos.  This is the Kikyomon Gate, which we discovered is not the visitor's entrance.

The East Gardens stand on the site of the former Edo Castle (built in 1457), but only a few structures -- a keep, a defense house, and two guardhouses -- remain standing.  Most of the other buildings were destroyed by fires in the 17th and 19th centuries. 

The visitor entrance is over by the Ohtemon Gate.  Swans wade in the moat next to the gate.

Here's Kevin at one of the massive wooden doors of the Ohtemon Gate.

This stylized dolphin sculpture was left over from the old Ohtemon gate which was damaged in April 1945 during WWII.  It is believed to date to the late 1600's. 

The Doshin-Bansho guardhouse is where the samurai guards used to be posted to keep watch over the palace grounds.

Here's a close up of the details on the guardhouse roof (and the rain!)

Through the mist in this photo, you can just make out the stone remains of the Tenshudai, which was the main tower or donjon.  It used to be five stories (165 feet) high, but it was destroyed by fire in 1657 and now the foundation is all that is left.

Unfortunately we didn't have much time for exploring, so we really only saw a fraction of the grounds.  I guess we'll just have to come back to Japan sometime in the future to complete the tour!

We made it back to the train station in plenty of time to grab a quick bite before boarding the train back to the airport.  We really enjoyed people watching in the station, and even got to see a girl dressed in Sailor Moon fashion.  Too bad I did not have my camera at the ready!  But she looked a little like this, only with the full pigtail/bun hairstyle as well.

Photo courtesy of e-Bay

Most everyone else we saw was dressed much more conservatively, since it was the middle of a workday.  Here's a typical scene near the ticket machines.

We boarded the train and made it back to the Narita airport, and cleared back through customs/immigration with time to spare.  Next stop, Phoenix!

Ang Thong Marine Park

After Koh Tao, we took the ferry back to Koh Samui and relaxed for a few days on the beach.  We also took a tour of the Ang Thong Marine Park, which was created in the 1980's as a marine preserve.

We went with one of the cheaper tour companies, and once we saw the boat we realized why it was so much cheaper -- there were huge holes in the bow and side of the boat.

Our first stop was an extremely crowded snorkeling spot called Koh Wao.  There must have been 300 people in the water, and everyone was bumping into each other and kicking each other.  Too crowded!

After snorkeling, we piled back into the boat to move on to the next island.  On the way we saw some beautiful scenery, like this beach with a natural arch...

... and this island that is shaped like a monkey; his face is in profile looking off to the right.

Our next stop was Mae Koh island, where you can hike up to the top to view the lagoon in the center of the island.  This was the lagoon used in the Leonardo Di Caprio movie "The Beach".

We also had a great view of the smaller islands all around us.  There are 42 islands in all in the Ang Thong marine park.

The wind and sea have eroded many of the smaller islands into towering formations.

There weren't as many people on this stop, just a few other speedboat groups and one or two longtail boats.

In the afternoon, our boat stopped at another island where our group had the beach to ourselves.

It rained for a little while forcing people to take shelter wherever they could find it.

When the rain let up, everyone had one last dip in the water before heading back to Koh Samui.

Koh Tao Pub Crawl

We flew from Chiang Mai to the island of Koh Samui, and from there took a ferry to a smaller island called Koh Tao.  In Thai, koh means "island" and tao means "turtle"; several species of turtle come to the island's beaches to breed.

Here is a view around the harbor near Sairee Beach.  The island's primary industries are tourism and fishing.

Here is a view of the island from the ferry.  Very green and tropical.

We came here mostly for scuba diving.  We did four dives over the course of two days, and saw some interesting corals and fish as well as giant clams.  But of course we left our underwater housing for our camera at home, so there are no photos.  We do, however, have photos of a pub crawl we did on our last night.  After dinner in town, we made our way back to our hotel bar which had a DJ playing techno music for a mostly empty room.

My Mai Tai came in a glass shaped like a woman.

After a couple of fruity drinks, we headed to Lotus beach bar.  It is right on the ocean, and has mats on the beach where patrons can lounge while sipping cocktails.

It was a very comfortable place to sit and watch the three firedancers who started performing around 9 o'clock.

They would dip either batons or poi (a wick on a chain) into a large container of kerosene and then light it and begin twirling.  In a little while, the whole place smelled like diesel.  



At times they came awfully close to the people sitting down, but they seemed to know what they were doing.

We were mesmerized for at least two hours, but they showed no signs of stopping.

But finally we had to tear ourselves away so we could head to the last bar on our itinerary, the Queen's Cabaret. 

The cabaret show had started several hours earlier, but we arrived just as they were lip-synching to "It's Raining Men".



I think it must be a requirement for these shows to include at least one version of "Lady Marmalade".  This "lady" was clearly channeling the Christina Aguilera version.



The "singer" for Aqua's "Barbie Girl" was very pretty...



But not nearly as sparkly as the "lady" performing the Abba medley.



Afterwards the performers came around and took photos.  I'm not sure who's face is scarier -- mine with no makeup or "hers" with so much makeup!

Chiang Mai Walking Street and Muay Thai Fights

Earlier this week we went to the fun but very tourisy Night Bazaar here in Chiang Mai.  Tonight is Saturday night, when they hold the weekly "Walking Street" market.  It seemed to us to be more of a fun local thing to do on a Saturday night; we saw lots of families out and about and there were definitely fewer obvious tourists.

There were lots of musicians playing everything from traditional music to singing karaoke on portable machines.  This little girl was very talented.  I think she is playing a khim, which is a hammered dulcimer.

We enjoyed walking up and down the street, checking out all the booths.  But the main reason we came here was for dinner, to try some local foods.  Of course we started off sharing an order of phad thai.

Then Kevin had a local sausage (kind of like the ones shown here, but shaped differently and from a different stall).

This lady sold all kinds of good-looking things; we bought a delicious grilled banana skewer to share.

And for dessert there was a tasty ice cream square.

There were a few delicacies that we just weren't adventurous enough to try.  Normally, Kevin loves calamari, but this squid on a stick just didn't appeal for some reason.

And not even the low, low price of 20 baht (about 65 cents) was enough to tempt us to try these fried insects.

After our street-food dinner, we took a tuk-tuk to the Thai boxing stadium.  Our driver was a lady, which I thought was pretty cool.  We haven't seen any female tuk-tuk drivers here.  She also had the most tricked out tuk-tuk in town.  The rear passenger seat sat on top of a thumping bass, and the ride was equipped with speakers that could be heard down the block. Very fun!

We arrived at the Thapae Boxing Stadium just in time for the start of the fights.

Muay Thai is a style of boxing/fighting that originated in Thailand.  It is nicknamed the "Art of Eight Limbs" because fighters are permitted to use fists, elbows, feet, and knees.

The stadium had an interesting setup.  Most of the spectators were farangs (foreigners) although there was one section full of Thai people, most likely friends and families of the fighters.  There were several bars selling overpriced beers.

Bookies competed with each other to convince the foreigners to wager on each fight.  Here are a group of tourists placing bets.

Traditional music accompanies each fight, getting faster as the rounds progress.  The clarinet-style instrument is called a Pi Muay, Pi Java, or Pi Kaek.



One of the fights we saw was a championship fight for the 85 lb weight class.  These were some tough kids!

For intermission, they also had a "special fight" -- five guys blindfolded and forced to duke it out with each other (no kicking allowed).  Things got interesting whenever they mistook the referee for a combatant.



Afterwards, the blindfolded guys came around asking for contributions and taking photos with the spectators.