history of a man

First of all I want to calm down some people that has written me, the situation in general here in Thailand is of normality, apart from the fact that the two airports of Bangkok have been taken over by the government opponents. The terrorists attacks with hundreds of victims that are on the news have happened in India, here there have been some incidents with the demonstrators but nothing so bad.

Anyway many flights have been canceled, including the one that was supposed to take me yesterday to Siem Reap (Cambodia) from Chiang Mai, where I am now. It was a direct flight, so it didn’t have to stop in Bangkok, but it seems that the plane is “trapped” in Bangkok, or at least that’s what I’ve understood from the explanations they’ve given me.

All this has forced me to change a little bit my trip plans. Yesterday I took a night bus to Bangkok, where I am now, and I’ll spend here one day and tomorrow (Saturday) I’ll continue to Siem Reap with another bus. I will lose almost two days with this change, but at least I’ll try to do a couple of things in Bangkok that I couldn’t do last week, specially visiting the royal palace.

That’s all, this is just a little annoying but nothing to worry about, at least so far. The people here seems to be more tired than worried about the situation, and there seem to be no reason to be alarmed. I’ll inform you if there is any further change to the situation.

After the night flight from Kuala Lumpur and passing the usual controls of passport and luggage (taking out all my dirty clothes from my backpack is something I had to do everytime I travelled outside Japan during the year I lived there), I took the train to Ueno. I arrived there around 9am, and it was too early for checking-in at the hostel, so I left my backpack in a locker and went to visit the area.

The Ueno park central lake	Pagoda

Just after entering the park, and while I bought a coffee from an automatic machine, a Japanese beggar came to me and had me talking for about hour telling me (with a quite limited English) about his opinions of Japan and how (according to him) Japan should open more to the western world, and also how i should start talking with every Japanese girl I saw…

Lanterns at the entrance to a temple	“Doris” (traditional doors) at the entrance to a temple

Once finished the discussion I started walking around the Ueno area, and visiting the temples and monuments of the surroundings. Around noon I started looking for a place to eat, and finally I decided for a small curry restaurant… one of the things that I had missed the most was the japanese curry-rice, and it was as good as I remembered :p

Walking around Ueno

After lunch I went to the hostel, and after the check-in I went directly to bed to recover some lost sleep. After the siesta I went to Shibuya to have a look and have dinner there. Almost everything was as I remembered, apart from the small Indian restaurant where we used to go quite often, that had disappeared along with the rest of the building, so I had some ramen at another place I used to go, and then had a beer at the “200 yen place” (although now it was 300).

The Hachiko statue, a frequent meeting point	One of Shibuya’s main streets
Shibuya crossing	Walking around

More pics in my flickr set: 2008-AsiaTrip-03-Tokyo .

After a few days in Singapore, it was time to continue my trip to new lands. I had a night flight to Tokyo booked from Kuala Lumpur, and my idea was spending the day there before taking the flight, so Pier and me left early that morning. After the six hours bus ride, we arrived to KL, and I left my luggage at the bus station for visiting the city.

The KL monorail	Coming closer to the Petronas

The main objective was the Petronas towers, that impressed me again as the first time I saw them, even if it’s been a while since they were the tallest building of the world (the title was for the Taipei 101 in Taiwan, although it is not so impressive in my opinion), and both have been already surpassed by the Burj Dubai that will soon reach the amazing height of 818 metres… I’ll have to go to Dubai some day to see that in person.

Close look to the Petronas

After the “serious” pictures, Pier and me made some fun shots with the tower in our back. Afterwards I went with Pier to buy some souvenirs, and he left for going back to Singapore. Then I went to the Times Square building and bought some books and had a coffee at the Starbucks. Then as I went out it starting raining hard, so I decided to finish the visit.

Some “fun” shots

After picking up my luggage I went to the airport. The night flight was quite tiring but without incidents, and around 7am I finally arrived to the Narita airport.

More pics in my flickr set: 2008-AsiaTrip-02-Kuala Lumpur .

After two days going out at night, and possibly also influenced by the timezone and weather change , on Sunday I woke up exhausted, so we took the day really easy. The afternoon we walked around the Marina Bay and Esplanade area.

The Esplanade	Th “big durian”

We went to the Merlion (the city simbol) and we had a coffee in a cafe nearby, and we went back home. At night we had dinner at a place close to Brenda’s house, then chatted a while a checked internet, and went to sleep early because the day after was going to be hard.

The Merlion	Coming back home

Even after the long trip and the party of the previous day, I didn’t have any jet-lag symptoms, so after a small brunch Brenda, Pier and me went to China Town and walked a bit around. I also bought the bus ticket for Kuala Lumpur that I would take a couple of days after.

Typical houses in China Town

Afterwards we went to Sentosa, a small island to the south of the city, that is some kind of touristic park. I was already there during my previous visit to the city, but in these last two years they have constructed several new things, and in particular there is a new train service that makes accessing to the island quite easier.

Sights from the coast facing Sentosa	New tourist centre in construction at the entrance of Sentosa

After riding in one of the attraction we went to Newton to have dinner. It’s a big square with lot of small Asian food restaurants on the sides. After that Brenda and Pier were quite tired, so I decided to go out alone. My friend Fer had told me about a Spanish party that night, but before I went to meet my friend Serene, from Singapore, to have a beer.

Serene and Fiona	Myself with Serene in Clarke Quay

Once there i got a text from Fer telling me that he could not go out, so I stayed with Serene and her friend Fiona, and afterwards we went to Clarke Quay for a while.

More pics in my flikr set “Asia Trip 2008: Singapore”