The whirlwind of Tokyo - Saturday, Nov. 29, 2014

As I've explained, the reason we paid an extra $100 or so for our tickets was so we could have a layover in Tokyo. The layover in Chicago was a byproduct, but the wonderful meals and service we received on ANA made us glad that we chose their service. (And their partnership with United made my miles account very happy too.)

Alisa and I "negotiated" a ride to the airport. Firstly, there are two airports in Bangkok, so there was a little early excitement as to if the driver actually knew where we were going. Secondly, we had our money replenished from the cash deposit we got back from our keys and towels at the hostel, so I was in no push to negotiate over a couple of dollars. Previously, we've had to pay tolls to get to the airport, and I had no idea if that was included in the price or not. The driver avoided the tolls, and so we avoided that question. 

With the cab ride over, the $10 of baht that we had left went to an incredibly delicious personal pan pizza for me. Hey, I was getting used to Eastern time - 6am in Thailand is 6pm at home. That's dinnertime to me!

No issues on the 8-hour flight to Tokyo. I attempted sleep, then watched some miscellaneous movies. We arrived, went through a couple customs lines, then met Deanne! 

Thankfully, our visit was a weekend, so she was able to travel down by night bus, and meet us for our whirlwind half day. Which started with an hour-long train ride into a Tokyo itself (with our giant bags) and a transfer to their metro and a couple block walk to our guesthouse.

We left our bags in "storage" (under a table in the common room) and only took our necessary stuff up the four flights of stairs. I was convinced we were going to come back exhausted (pretty true), so convinced everyone to set up our beds. 

There were written instructions with pictures, but I'm still not sure any of us really set up our futon-type beds correctly. (Possibly because the sheets didn't match the comforter we were supposed to stick in them.)

It was a bit chilly in Tokyo - around 50 degrees, so ramen was our first meal. We used a rented WIFI hotspot to get to a great restaurant. There were some mishaps with ordering (we wanted two bowls of ramen that we were going to split between the three, but they only started by giving us one), but having a speaker of Japanese with us helped when we wanted an extra bowl to share. We got some weird fermented roe stuff on rice - that was less pleasant, but interesting. 

It was the best ramen I've ever had. And, it was the most confusing toilet I've ever used. The Japanese are doing things with their technology that are making lives better - such as heated toilet seats. I was convinced one of the buttons for the seat would flush the toilet. Three minutes and a lot of button pressing later, I found the handle - where it typically is, on the tank. I'm sorry whoever sat down next - I probably inadvertently set it to be like 100 degrees and vibrate when they get on it. 

Our first restaurant down, we headed to the Government Building for our touristy bit. There were Christmas lights around - so it felt very festive (and a lot more appropriate, given the weather, than the trees and lights in Thailand). The city just continued on and on into the distance. 

Our next Google maps search took us to a shopping section looking for a sushi bar. We spent some time wandering in a craft shop, and became obsessed when we heard a card with cats meowing to Jingle Bells. The card section was four rows, and hundreds of cards! We could read where it said to push to get the music, so just picture two (Deanne was off buying her own thing) white girls with their ears to the stacks of cards trying to determine where this sometimes-playing cat jingle is coming from. It was only when Deanne found us again, and the employees tried to get us to leave because they were closing, that we had Deanne ask where to find the card. We cycles through a couple employees (and Deanne was using some sign language for a scratching cat), but we found it. Alisa skipped up to the register, and we were escorted from the premises. 

After that delightful shopping interlude, it was time to find that raw fish. The small restaurant was located on the 14th floor of a building - ok, this will be interesting. 

A curtain covered the door, so we thought they might be closed, but the host ushered us in and sat us at the bar - right by the sushi chef and the rows of fish on ice. 

It turns out, Deanne and her student budget have really only been to conveyor belt sushi places. On top of that, her choices are usually baked or vegetarian rolls, so this was much more of an experience for her than I expected. 

We were given an English-Japanese menu with very few prices on it. But hey, we were celebrating Deanne's birthday a couple days early! And, we were only in Tokyo for a night, so bring it on!

We started with salmon, fatty tuna, and Alisa and Deanne had some sweet shrimp. The touch of wasabi as well as the rawness was really testing Deanne's taste buds - and her face showed it. Next, we had some whelk and some salmon roe. Alisa and I were in heaven, and Deanne was keeping up like a champ. Another round of the salmon and we were on our way. (Thankfully, they took card. Happy birthday, Deanne!)

Our next search was for karaoke, and it led us to a bright, bustling area a few blocks away. 

This is the Tokyo I think about - similar to the Vegas Strip or Times Square with its neon brightness. (They even had an area with a sign that said Times Square!)

On the way to the karaoke place, we stumbled upon a crepe place. This is one of the two things Deanne wanted us to try. (The other being parfaits, but we ran out of energy for those.) I stuck with Nutella and banana, and Deanne and Alisa had similar rifts of that. 

Fully sugared up, we went and rented a room for half an hour for karaoke. Karaoke in Japan is not done one by one on stage as it is in America - you get a room, a couple mikes, and a waiter. I somehow managed to communicate to our waiter that the drinks we were ordering should have sparklers in them. Fun fact - sparklers don't work like birthday candles. You will fail if you attempt to blow them out. 

Our now slightly smoky room had a TV and microphones. I had figured that my 20-turning-21-year-old sister could drink in Japan, but she attempted to explain some complicated rules about the drinking age where there's a "social" age and a grocery store age. Whatever they were, no one was checking ids and we got our mojitos. 

The cold that I had begun to harbor yesterday was only aggravated by the enthusiastic renderings of Ke$ha, Taylor Swift, Journey, and Rihanna. The sore throat had taken it's hold, but not before our half hour had stretched into an hour and all of us were slightly hoarse. 

It was a final train ride back to our guesthouse, where I watched the drunken youths of Tokyo do the same thing that the drunken youths of DC do on the trains - be loud, or sick, or judging, or asleep. 

The opportunity to sleep horizontally and not on a plane was a welcome one - we let a slightly sick, slightly sleepy Deanne just hug us goodbye in the morning instead of escorting us to Narita and the airport. We made some mistakes along the way (we didn't have cash to buy tickets at the first station, so they just let us go a few stops for free, then we couldn't understand why we had to buy two tickets to get on the one train to take us to Narita, so probably ended up paying twice what we should have because the kiosk was unclear, and then we didn't use our passports to get the foreign discount). But, safely to the airport, it was a single, twelve hour flight back to DC. 

It is exciting leaving at 10am in the morning and getting to DC at 11am. Thank goodness we didn't take our final two flights back to back. After a few hours, I was going stir crazy, and even Emma Stone was having a hard time keeping my attention. 

My wonderful, generous grandparents coordinated picking us up from the airport. My dog Ellie had been staying with them, so I got a wet, happy welcome home from her when we walked through the door. She and my grandpa had bonded, and my grandma sent along this picture (which I showed to our roommates in Bangkok, a nice woman with poodle earrings who was on our fight to DC, and the pet picture mailing list at my company).

Apparently, he would put the leg rest up partway so she could scramble up and into his lap. I think he was a little off-put when I came back and he was thrust back into second. (I think my grandma was a little happy, since she had been runner up since I left.)

Alisa got on the road pretty quickly back to Pittsburgh - good since it was a holiday weekend (though it didn't feel like it to us!) and the time change was going to hit us any moment. 

My moment was my hour-long nap in the afternoon, then three days of an evening nap of a couple hours, then a full night's sleep. I think having the cold was a blessing in disguise - I was able to sleep whenever and however long that I was able, so besides waking up to flip over at 3am, I was golden. 

Besides catching a cold that has had me crippled for a week and a half (can I use that as an excuse for these posts being so delayed?), I got two more countries under my belt, as well as a treasure trove of experiences with my bestie and travel buddy Alisa. 

Now, let's have some Christmas!

Escaping the heat in Bangkok - Friday, Nov. 28, 2014

It was downright chilly as well left Chiang Mai in the wee hours to hop a plane to Bangkok. Now we had the opportunity to do all of the sights that we missed in the first day!

The blast of hot, humid air reminded us that we were tired of traveling and (I'm going to regret this in a few days) tired of being sweaty. 

We dropped our bags at our hostel, then headed to Khao San Road (a tourist paradise and den of "tour guides" and "helpful" bystanders trying to sell you something) for one of our last meals. It was pad thai (of course) and a banana shake (of course) but it was at an Irish pub with two guys already passed out and what might have been their escort slowly pouring more beer into her mouth with two hands on the glass. 

So, with our role models sleeping on a table at 11:30 in the morning, it was time to decide what to do. Open the guidebook... And immediately become lazy and apathetic. 

Jim Thompson's house was finally decided on, and I flagged down a taxi to take us the couple of miles. We get across the destination, then ask for the meter to get turned on. 

And this is where we were thwarted. Not only did that taxi refuse (which resulted in us getting out of the cab while it was still rolling), but so did the next three. The "helpful" man on the corner told us to use a tuktuk, but I was not going to risk getting stuck in stinky, sweaty, smoggy traffic without air conditioning. My love of tuktuks has limits. 

Another suggestion from the book was to go to movie. Multiple hours of  sitting in air conditioning and no decisions? We were willing to negotiate with a taxi to get us to Siam Center, which had a cineplex. 

The collection of malls around and including Siam Center was breath-taking. Five stories of boutique stores, each with their own storefronts and styles. I've seen some pretty tricked out malls in the Middle East, but at least one of those floors takes the cake for most detail I've seen in a mall. 

There was also an orchid festival on display, so that was pretty as well. 

We walked down hallways of brand name stores while at a comfortable room temperature. We found the massive movie theater in the connected second mall on the very top floor.

We attempted the kiosk to buy our tickets, but were thwarted when Alisa's card didn't have a chip in it. There were also a staggering number of theaters and price points (including VIP couches and 4D), but the next showing was just at a "regular" theater. Since we didn't really know where the assigned seats we were picking were, we just picked randomly on the middle. 

We snacked on Mr. Donut and Starbucks for the 45 minute interlude in the air conditioning before taking our seats. 

The entrance to the theater was a grand staircase that led up to the middle of the first floor of seats. Each side flanking the stairs was rough 2/3s the side of a U.S. theater (making just the first floor about double the width of a typical theater - if you include the stairs, and about 50-odd rows of seats). 

The previews got underway as Alisa and I wrapped up in our scarfs cum blankets. Most had some amount of English, though we could only understand the English parts of the Bollywood-esque Thai movie that was about learning to speak English. At least, that's what we guessed it was about. 

At the end of the previews, the recorded orchestra swelled and everyone rose as photos of the royal family were shown over children singing (a bit like this: http://youtu.be/jnxw9Q_F2gk). We don't do that in the U.S.  

Clearly I'm writing this post a bit belatedly, but as I was telling this story, someone mentioned that the Hunger Games movie had been banned in Thailand because protestors had been using the unifying tune in their protests. Clearly it was completely banned - one of the cinema chains had pulled it from their theaters, and the three-finger salute from the movie was banned, which, while not as crazy as it being completely gone, is still pretty shocking. 

We finished off our segment of incredibly Westernized things with Coldstone. No shame. 

Using the mall's wifi, I planned our route back, which was going to have us take the Skytrain (which had a few more stations built on it than the 8-year-old guidebook had in it) to the river ("Chao Praya"), then a ferry up the river to near our hostel, and a couple block walk to our street. 

It was evening at this point - the sun was setting, and it was rush hour. It is a good thing that that was the only train trip we took in Thailand - I think Alisa would've exploded if one more person didn't respect her personal space. We made it to the dock, and even managed to get on the right boat! The twenty minutes we waited on the platform reminded us of how much air conditioning helps your mood...

But, Wat Arun, which we didn't visit, was sparkling at night, as was Wat Kanlaya and many other riverfront buildings. 

The most serendipitous thing for me was that our route home was through a pedestrian section just off the chaotic shopping road of Khao San. It was the perfect place to come back to later to get our dinner. 

So, many hours after we originally "checked in" to the hostel, we get to go to our rooms. It was just two bunks, and one pair was (surprising to us because we incorrectly remembered reserving a female dorm) two guys from California. It was an hour of chatting (and teasing) before they headed out for dinner and we took showers. We had to leave at 4am to catch a cab, but also didn't want to get on a plane super gross. More relaxing in the A/C finally made us ready for our final meal in Thailand. 

We went back to the pedestrian street, still bustling with masseuses, fish tanks for foot cleaning, shops, carts that were serving alcohol, and a myriad of other noises, food, and people. I picked the busiest restaurant and, for my meal, the pad thai. Alisa's chicken had some charcoal or something in it, but... They had banana shakes. I was happy. 

We had been counting down our baht - I didn't really want to leave with a lot of money in our pockets, and I didn't want to have to go on a shopping spree at the airport. I had just checked the cash stash when I saw a woman peddling hammocks. 

Rosie got a hammock when she was in Thailand, and I mentioned it to my sister when she was in China, but she didn't find one. I hadn't seen them but in one place, and now, fortuitously, right where we're having dinner, hours before we get on a plane to leave, there it is. 

She came over and priced it at $20 (in baht). I was incredibly embarrassed at the amount the I could offer because we still had to pay for dinner with our reserves. But she took my offer of $7 in baht and Alisa's $3 in American! So, with pennies left (I had to root through the change to see if there was enough for mango sticky rice for dessert at a stall!), we returned to the hostel for our three-ish hours of sleep.