It’s a new day in Phuket.  Now we get to see this beautiful hotel.  I just wanted to share some pictures with you before we head off to our great sailing adventure for the week.  It’s our 38th wedding anniversary almost so . . .

Check out this fishing boat.  Chris said he’s only seen these boats in James Bond movies.

Off we go to more great adventures.

 

 

 

After a great night’s sleep in our little bed in our little room with no bad dreams of fish floating around in my tummy we retraced our steps back to the train terminal and out the other side to catch a taxi to the International Terminal.  We had plenty of time to have a nice breakfast of eggs, ham and toast before we boarded our flight on Thai Airlines to Bangkok. 

It’s an interesting process to fly internationally.  You don’t have to take your clothes off to go through security but you do have to fill out a lot of forms and go through various check points.  Everyone is very orderly and helpful even if they don’t speak English.

Once on board we settled in and had a nice lunch of pork and rice with a lovely lotus root salad.  No sake this time and since we’re on vacation we ordered gin and tonics.  Can’t wait to get to Thailand and try their MaiThai’s!     just kidding

Our five and a half hour flight to Bangkok was uneventful.  The airport was a ways out of town so we couldn’t see any of the city.  We had plenty of time to find our connecting flight to Phuket so we wandered around a lot to stretch our legs.  Lots of huge orchid arrangements – all real.  And my favorite find of all

On to Phuket.  Bangkok is a very smoggy city because we could barely see the buildings and not for very long.  It was hazy most of the way but as we got close to Phuket and starting our decent we could see many small islands that looked like they’d been splattered about.  Look very closely.

We collected our two little duffle bags (traveling very light this trip) and learned that to catch a cab to our hotel you pick a company inside the terminal and pay for your cab there then head outside to get your cab.  When we stepped outside it felt like we’d stepped into a third world country. Night time.  Hot and humid.  Cars, buses, taxis, scooters zipping around. people yelling.  Utter chaos.  At least to us.  Maybe it was organized chaos to them.   All we were told was to look for number 45.  What the hell did that mean in all of this?

Well, believe it or not, we did it – although it took running to the other side of the organized chaos to get to number 45.  The view from our taxi cab ride was incredible.  I wished I could have taken pictures of all of this but it was too dark and things were happening too fast.  We were on a narrow two lane road with a high wall on our side and jungle on the other.  Lots of traffic.  Lots of tiny motor scooters and many 100cc scooters with custom made (ie homemade) “side cars.”  These side cars consisted of the frame of a cube about 2 feet wide by 3 feet long by 5 feet high and filled to over flowing with who knows what.  It was amazing to see.   On the jungle side there were many places where the jungle was cut away where people had  little houses and scooters were turning in and out of these places.  There were also trucks with ??? piled all around and over them, stuff stacked so high you’d think the truck would topple over.  It was all quite the site for us.

After about a 30 minute taxi ride to our hotel, we landed at the JW Marriott Phuket.     Wow     How fancy   So peaceful   It was around 1900 and very dark.   An open  breezeway with a big infinity pool.  As we checked in we were treated to neatly wrapped cold washcloths on a tray with orchids and glasses of ice cold tea.

Our room is amazing as is this hotel.

Off to the bar for a night cap.  Sa Was Dee Kaa

Our official Thailand sailing trip doesn’t start until Saturday, Feb. 28 at 1500 but we started at 1500 on Thursday, Feb. 26 with a ride to the Shin station with a friend, Tracy.  From Iwakuni we rode the high speed Shin south to Haneda in Fukuoka for our flight to Thailand on Friday morning at 1140. 

Our train ride turned out to be the commuter train with high speed stops all along the way.  Most stops were less than a minute long for people to exit and enter the train.  So it took an hour and a half to get to our destination and no fizzy cart this time.  Darn.

I was pretty sure our travel agent said that our destination was the last stop on the southbound Shin route and there was no hurry in exiting the train and I figured it would be pretty obvious when we were at the right stop.  So we got there, but it wasn’t that obvious and people were getting on board so we thought – maybe this was the second to the last stop.  I asked a young Japanese person who I thought might know English (which she didn’t and who got several other (non-English speaking young Japanese people involved) if this was where we should get off and boy did we get a lot of different answers.  Not only yes and no but also when I showed them our ticket they saw Iwakuni and got really concerned.

Anyway, one of them led us to the uniformed Shin attendant standing in the doorway who ushered us off the train and pointed to the stairway.  So we figured we’d better get off and figure it out later.  Lucky for us we were in the right place at the right time and all was well once again.

From here we wandered through the massive train/transit terminal and out the other side and walked the 5 blocks to our hotel – the President’s Hotel at $59/night.  What a deal.  Tiny room but we’re tiny people so it worked for us.

The front desk recommended a restaurant about 6 blocks away that sounded like it was called the Booty.  She said that’s where they always go so off we went to have our “going away” dinner.  To our surprise there was no English menu and no English speaking people so once again we had a most interesting feast.  First course was sashimi – a whole platter of raw fish.

Then a couple of small dishes of lotus root with okra and some other green things.  And then another main dish of what I call grilled fish face  – which we got to pick out ourselves.

Fortunately, I know how to say sake which I’ve learned can wash down just about anything.

Then back to our tiny room for a great night’s sleep.

Here are a few updates on various recent posts and a hint of what’s to come.

Remember the soba noodles I made?

Our (Inter)National Margarita Day party was great fun, even barbecuing the carne in the rain.

So what’s next?  In two days we’re off to Phuket for a week of sailing around the islands off the coast of Thailand.  It looks like the lows will be in the mid-70’s and the high’s in the mid-90’s.  Can’t wait.

 

We were so pooped last night I forgot to tell you the rest of the Costco Adventure story.

After shopping at Costco we planned to have dinner at a restaurant in Hiroshima that was highly recommended by a friend.  We had a brochure of the place with a little map on the back showing a two block radius around the restaurant.  So we typed in the name of the restaurant on Chris’ iphone and set off to try to find it.

It’s dark, we’re hungry, Hiroshima is a big city with a lot of people everywhere and we’re trying to navigate our way through all of this on the “wrong” side of the street.  We eventually get to the location the phone thinks we want to be, in some little alley and I ask the little old Japanese man who seemed to be a parking attendant  where the restaurant was – by showing him the brochure.  He jumped up and grabbed our map and started jabbering very fast and pointing down the alley and . . .

Anyway, this was clearly not the right place.  So, we decided we’d had enough dodging buses, trolleys, motor scooters, pedestrians, cars and would just head for home.  In the process of getting out of downtown Hiroshima we ended up going up a ramp into a bus transit station of some sort.  There was a police man ahead of us so I jumped out of the car and ran to him, flailing my map and he started yelling at me and pointing and jumped in his car.  So I jumped back in our car and he proceeded to give us a police escort all through the bus terminal with his lights flashing.  All the people waiting for their buses turned and stared with their mouths agape.  We weren’t sure if we were headed to the police station or what.

As we finally got through and out of this massive bus complex the police man pulled over so we did the same.  Again we waived our map and begged for mercy and kept saying Iwakuni.  Again, more excited Japanese jabberings and pointing and we were off again this time the police man followed us all the way through the city until we were safely back on Highway 2 headed in the right direction.

Even when we got on the right road it was still a bit intense because of all the signs and not wanting to end up on the Expressway.  Plus the Friday night traffic on these little one and two lane highways was moving pretty slow.  But we eventually made it home safe and sound and had some delicious leftovers –  pork chops, mashed potatoes, and peas.

And that’s why I was too pooped to write all this last night.

In preparation for our (Inter)National Margarita Day Party on Sunday we made a “quick”  (45 kilometers in 1 hour 45 minutes each way) trip up to Costco in Hiroshima.  It’s very much like every Costco we’ve been to back home.  There were just a few additions we found interesting.  For example

Costco size sake

and next to the pizza,

 

 

and not just large cuts of meat

 

Other than that and lots of Japanese products mixed with our typical US products we pretty much got everything we needed plus the usual other stuff we didn’t know we needed.  Anyway, Happy (Inter)National Margarita Day – almost.

 

Day two at our ryokan started with another soak in the bath and then breakfast which consisted of many small dishes of assorted vegees and salad.  Plus an egg we could cook ourselves if we didn’t want to eat it raw.  Here’s what our breakfast spread looked like for the 5 of us.  At each place there are about 10 dishes of various surprises.

Back in our room I wanted to show you the special slipper you wear when in the bath room.  There’s hardly room to put them on and turn around.

Upon checking out we were greeted by our shoes happily lined up and waiting for their next adventure.

Today’s adventure took us to Kozan Park, home of Rurikoji, a Buddist Temple best known for it’s five storied pagoda.  It was built in 1442 and is 31 meters tall.  This pagoda is ranked among Japan’s greatest national treasures.

Images of the temple grounds.

As I researched this area I discovered a brewery not far away and since it was lunchtime off we went to check it out.

In addition to the traditional Japanese fare they specialized in homemade sausages

 

and great beer, including a very good chocolate stout

 

Nothing like a great Italian 7-cheese pizza with German sausage and beer in a Bavarian brewery on a rainy day in Japan    . . . ahhh . . .

Here’s the view behind the brewery.

Then the long, slow drive home and time to get ready for the week ahead.

PS – Boy did I mess up with the trash today.  I forgot that Monday was a holiday and put out Monday’s trash on Tuesday – oops.

Well what a weekend we had.  We set off early Sunday morning for Yamaguchi City with friends Bill, Tracy, and their daughter Pearl.  Instead of taking the train or driving on the expressway like last weekend we took the local highway.  After about an hour and a half of driving at 50 kph we turned off the highway and headed up into the mountains to an interesting place called Chogennosato.

As I understand it, this place belonged to Chogen Shounin, an adventurous Buddhist monk.

When the great Toudai Temple in Nara City was destroyed in the Genpei battle of 1180 he provided the massive Japanese Cedar and Cypress trees for the temple to be rebuilt.  These trees stood 20 – 40 meters tall and were one and a half meters around.

Instead of chopping them down, the men dug huge holes down into the ground around the tree’s root system until the tree could no longer hold itself upright.  Next, hundreds of men had to get the trees from up on the mountain down to the stream below using block and tackle and huge amounts of manpower.

Then they would dam up one side of the river in various spots to increase the flow on the other side to get the logs down stream and out into the Seto Sea where they floated the logs north to Osaka and then many miles upstream to the city of Nara where the temple was rebuilt.  All this occurred back in the 12 century!

This park had many recreated old buildings to explore, like the traditional Japanese house, a stone sauna for the workers, a wood shop, and other support buildings for the logging activities.

The thatched roofs were amazingly thick.

Time for a delicious Soba lunch break.

After lunch we got to make our own soba noodles.  First we combined a mixture of buckwheat and soba flour with a small amount of water.  We did this in a large bowl by swirling it around with our finger tips

until it became a smooth ball.

Then we flattened it and rolled it out

and the best part – chopping up the thin noodles with this massive noodle chopping knife.

Great fun.

As we continued to explore this area we came upon some massively huge bamboo.

And this 800 year old Camellia tree.

At the highest point in the park is a playground for the kiddies.  The highlight here was the 103 meter roller slide.  We’d never seen this before.  You slide down on a little foam pad with a rope handle on all these little rollers.

From here we headed off to try our hand at Indigo dying.  This, too, was really fun.

First you choose what you want to make.  I picked a scarf, Pearl chose a handkerchief, and Tracy a table topper.  Then you can tie knots in it and/or put marbles or little balls under the cloth and tie them in with rubber bands.

Then you dunk your scarf in the indigo dye and swish it around just a few times for a few seconds, like mine – 3 times for 15 seconds each time or for really dark indigo – 5 times for 1 1/2 minutes each time.  After each dunking you take it out and untangle it and spread out the cloth exposing it to the air.  It was amazing that after the first dunking the cloth turned a lime green and as it felt the air it settled in to blue.

Once this process was complete we rinsed and rinsed and rinsed our cloth under cold water until the water ran clear.  Then we set the color by doing a 2 minutes soak in vinegar water.  Then another good long rinse and voila – a new indigo scarf for me!

Believe it or not our day was not over yet.  There was more to come.  We drove on into Yamaguchi City to a ryokhan (a Japanese Inn with hot springs) called Matsudaya.  This is like a hotel with a hot springs bath and includes dinner and breakfast.

As you enter the hotel lobby the first thing you do is take off your shoes and put on the hotel’s slippers.

Then you check in.  After checking in to our rooms

we donned our yukata (robe) and hanten (winter jacket) and headed off to the furoo (bath) and rotenburou (outdoor bath) for a soak.  Dinner was at 1830 and what’s fun about staying at these places is that you just go straight from the bath to dinner wearing your yukata to dinner and breakfast.

Dinner was more than you can imagine.

The right hand picture shows 7 dishes with about 3 different things on each one – just from my place setting alone.  Plus 2 dipping sauces.

And then came the second course.  Just 3 different dishes.  Puffer fish was the specialty this night.

And dessert.  The little brown thing was really good with some gooey custardy stuff in the center.  The fruit was really good too.

When we got back to our room our table was moved to the side and two futons were laid out on the floor with big puffy comforters on top.

Wow, what a great day!

Oh, and another “interesting” observation – these pillows seem to be filled with beans or maybe buckwheat.  A little . . . different. . .

Oyasumi nasai

Now that the guest bedroom is almost set up I need to get sheets, etc. for the bed.  Many US people here do most of there purchasing through Amazon Japan so I thought I’d give that a try.  Here is a good example of my blog subtitle “Every day is an Adventure!”

I just went online to Amazon Japan and typed in “bedding.”  What did I get?  “Bedding the Biker Next Door.”   I just cracked up but had to stay focused on my task so I then typed in “sheets.”  And what did I get?  “Between the Sheets.”  This is just too funny and I had to share it.  I still haven’t found what I thought I was looking for and who knows what I’ll get when I type in “comforter.”

 

Well we got back from Sapporo on Thursday night with just enough time to wash clothes and repack for our weekend trip to Fukuoka.  Fukuoka is 251 kilometers (156 miles) south of Iwakuni on the island of Kyushu.  We took the expressway and stopped at a rest stop along the way.  This was not like any rest stop by the freeway I’ve ever seen.  The women’s restroom looked like it was lifted right out of a very fancy spa, complete with fresh flowers and toasty warm heated seats.

And check this out.  Just in case you can’t find your way around in there. . .

Another cool thing about this trip on the expressway is that we went through 35 tunnels.  I counted them all on the way back.  They ranged in length from 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) to 210 meters (1/8th of a mile).

We had two reasons for this trip.  First, one of the guys Chris works with is in a Latin band and he had a big show there Saturday night.  Nelson, who plays percussion in this band, is an interesting guy.  He grew up in Puerto Rico, lived in the US for awhile, he’s married to a Japanese woman and his father is Italian so he’s fluent in four languages – Spanish, English, Japanese and Italian.  Anyway, the twenty piece Japanese band was great.  They played a Latin Jazz style of music with lots of brass.  It was fun to watch the young Japanese salsa dancing.

Our second purpose for the trip was to go to Ikea.  Yep, even in Japan.

In an early post I mentioned that we want all of our friends and relations to come visit us so we now have a little van crammed full of your new guest room furniture.

We rented this little van and since the seats folded up along the sides there wasn’t room for the queen size mattress but Chris, the engineer, found a way to make it fit along with all the other boxes of furniture.

All in all a great new adventure traveling by car and navigating the Japanese signs and reading our Japanese maps.  Thank goodness for google maps on Chris’ phone.