Tokyo to Takayama

 

I started the day with a quick visit to the Imperial Palace.  I didn't have much time so I just made it to the entrance of the East Gardens for a quick snapshot.  The Gardens are just 4 long blocks from the Tokyo train station so it made a good stop before catching my train to Nagoya and Takayama.  The weather was so rainy and foggy, that I could barely see the Tokyo Tower from the gardens.

To go to Takayama, I took the bullet train to Nagoya and then a limited express train to Takayama.  The train to Nagoya usually get nice views of the mountains and Fuji, but it was too foggy for that.

At the train station in Nagoya, I bought a lunch box.  Plastic models of the content simplified choosing which box to pick, although I was wondering what the  plastic rectangular yellow block was going to be (it was sweet potato).  The train ride to Takayama is very scenic.  It follows a river and go through a number of small mountain towns.  The small Takayama train station has a very nice (English speaking) tourist information office just outside that provided me tips and bus time schedules.

It was a 10 minutes walk from the train station to my Ryokan.  The Sumiyoshi Ryokan, a traditional Japanese Inn, where I'm staying is located by the river in a small street of Takayama.  It wasn't hard to find it thanks to the map that Japanese Guest Houses, the booking service that I used, provided.  As I got there, I was warmly welcomed and shown to my room.  The main concern of the host was that I understood the shoe policy: shoes off at the entrance, switch to slippers to walk around, slippers off on the tatami, slippers off and plastic slippers on in the bathroom.  Very simple and civilized.  Then, I was served a very strong green tea and a Japanese cookie.  I was asked at what time I wanted dinner as well as breakfast the following day.  I was offered the choice of Japanese or Continental breakfast (I chose Japanese).

After settling in, I went for a walk in town.   The walk took me through beautiful old houses.  The pictures below are the famous private houses of Takayama, some of them over 500 year old.  Takayama feels like is Japan in a way that Tokyo doesn't.  Although touristy, the city feels small and unspoiled; a combination of a ski resort town with upscale stores and art galleries, a tourist stop with shops selling key rings and refrigerator magnets, and a small town with the rest of the shops selling produce and Kobe beef.

After my walk, it was time for dinner.  At first, I got a couple of small sushi dishes and I started thinking about which restaurant I was going to go to fill up when more plates came.

 

The main plate was Kobe beef cooked on my table with onions and sprouts with a tangy dipping sauce (a Takayama specialty).   Then, tempura and rice.  Followed by miso soup, pickles, and noodles.  Finally, a very sweet fish and watermelon for dessert.  All this was accompanied with sweet sake at first, and then a special green tea.  I was pretty full at the end of all this...  To be honest, I haven't eaten like this since the beginning of this trip.

After all this food, I decided to go again for a walk.  To my surprise, everything in the town closes early.  By 7:30pm, all shops were closed, except for places with revolving yellow lights (bars) or revolving red lights (casinos and pachinko houses).  I came back to the ryokan to connect to the Internet (they only have one computer, but I convinced the owner to allow me to connect my laptop directly).  Then, it was time for a traditional Japanese bath (unfortunately with the tub set to "Western" temperature).  By the time I was back to my room, it was transformed into a bedroom, with the table moved to the side and a futon spread on the tatami mats.

Tokyo

Except for a few hours the previous day and a few hours tomorrow, today is my only day at Tokyo.  I know that this is not nearly enough to make justice to this giant city, but for my first trip to Japan, I made the decision of going to the Japan Alps and Kyoto, rather than exploring Tokyo.

I started very early in the morning by going to the Tsukiji Fish market. It was pouring rain, but it didn't matter as the market is mostly enclosed in a huge hangar-like building.  The market is huge with lots of activity going on.  All this starts very early in the morning, in fact by the time I got there (5:45am), some was already wrapping up.  The tuna auction area is now heavily restricted to tourist and only a small area is open to sightseers from 5:30am to 6:15am (no flash photography allowed).  The auctions are fast paced and it's hard to figure out when it starts and ends.  The huge tunas are frozen, laid down on the ground, and numbered.  The prize for one of them can be up to a million yen ($10,000).   After I was asked politely to leave at 6:15am, I went around the "intermediate wholesale area" where the wholesale fish (including the Tuna) are cut into smaller pieces to be sold to retailers.

To be honest, the market is not very tourist friendly and many of the wholesalers see tourists as a nuisance.  Flash photograph is a big no-no, and you'll politely asked to leave if you take your camera too close to an auction. In addition, this is a very busy place with special "barrel" vehicles going around at high speeds and people transporting very heavy loads.  The floor is also quite wet and slippery.  I'm surprised that my guidebook lists this place as the first place to visit in Japan.  Except for the fact that being jet-lagged helps waking up at 5am to get there before the auction area is closed, it's a rough introduction to Tokyo.  Still, I had lots of fun there, but I would be cautious about to whom I'd recommend going to the market.

From the market, my plan was to head to the Hama Rikyu garden where I was going to take a ferry boat to Asakusa.  However, the gardens don't open until 9am and the rain was getting worse and worse.  Eventually, I broke down and bought a 650 Yen umbrella in a mini-mart and went for a walk to make time before the gardens open.  The walk took me to the Tsukiji shrine.  An "empire" style building that opened just before the Second World War.  From there, I explored some of the high rises near the gardens.  These are quite impressive buildings with nice details and reflections on each other.

At 9am, I headed to the gardens.  My guidebook considers them overrated and points out that the high rise buildings detract from the beauty of the garden.  Maybe it was the rainy and foggy weather, but I actually found the contrast very nice.  After the walk around the park, the rain was actually getting worse, so I decided to scrap the plan of going to Akasuka and instead I headed to the Tokyo National Museum for some indoor fun.

The Tokyo National Museum has an incredible collection of Japanese and Asian art.  The collection rotates continuously, so I was told that every visit to the museum is different.  During my visit, they had a special exhibit on Kabuki and they had impressive costumes and masks.  They also have a good exhibit describing the progression of Japanese arts from pre-historic times to the XVIII century.  The emphasis is on art, rather than history and IX and XX century art is, surprisingly, completely absent.  A specially enjoyable exhibit was the Gallery of Horyuji Treasures, containing Buddhist pieces from the Horyuji temple in Nara.

The weather was starting to look better, so I risked it by going to Akasuka.  Of all Tokyo, this was the first place that feels as if you are in "Japan".  Nakamise Dori, the street leading to the Sensoji Temple, was a lot of fun: people watching, yummy snacks, interesting souvenirs, plus people just living their normal life (there is a pre-school on that street).  At the end of the street, you get to Sensoji Temple.  Unfortunately, it's under renovation, so the whole building is enclosed in a metal structure and it was impossible to appreciate its arcghitecture.  Inside the temple, I followed the Shinto ritual: first, wash myself using the smoke from incense, then walk to the shrine and throw some coins through the grid, bow twice, clap twice, bow again.  After that, I went to get my fortune read using Buddhist sticks.  For that, you take a cylinder with a small hole at the top that it's full of sticks and shake it until one comes out.  Each stick has a number written in Chinese characters.  Using that number, one locates a drawer, where the interpretation (in Japanese and English) is found.  I got stick number 29 and looked in the drawer for the interpretation.  I think I got as good as it gets (text is verbatim):

Everything you worry about and trouble some affairs are almost over.  If you do your best, you will be successful in this society and become well-known. The wealth and treasures will be in your hand as you wish.

Now with my good fortune, but still in bad weather, I headed for the Meiji Jingu Shrine.  This Shinto shrine opened in 1920 in honor of Emperor and Empress Meiji (122nd emperor of Japan).  He took the initiative of opening the country to the world after a very long isolation period.  He also introduce Western civilization and developed technology from overseas, while preserving the Japanese identity.  So, he is considered the founder of modern Japan.   The Shrine is in a forest built in honor of the Emperor which is a quite change from the busy streets of Tokyo.

After the temple, a short subway ride took me back to my hotel and dinner.  After that, I went to the train station to book my train tickets for the rest of the trip.  I'm traveling using the JR pass which is an incredible deal for the kind of trip that I'm making.  When making reservations, I found out that it's much better to write things down than trying to talk.  It took some time, but I left the office with the three main reservations (to Takayama, to Kyoto, and back to the airport) that I needed.

From the reservation office, I decided to go and check out some of the stores in Shinjuku.  I ended in a huge electronic store (Bic Camera).  Something like Fry's but 8 stories high.  The store has display models of everything, so it was a lot of fun to try computers, cell phones, cameras, etc.  The latest trend in cell phones is flip smart phones with big screens, high resolution cameras, and turn by turn by turn directions.  I ended buying a 8 Gb Class 6 HDSD card for just under $20 (I'll probably laugh at this price when I read it again a few years down the road).  There was a big sign saying "Duty Free store", so I tried to ask the cashier about how to get the consumption tax back.  I was presented with a nice leaflet that except for the title (Duty Free) was all in Japanese...  Later I found on the web that you just need to present your passport and you get 5% consumption-tax discount on your purchase.  However, one needs to buy at least 10,000 yens ($100), so my purchase didn't qualify anyway.  After checking out some of the other stores (clothing is really expensive in Tokyo), my feet were hurting so it was time for me to go back to my hotel for the night.  A very long and wet day in Tokyo was over.

Overall, my feelings about Tokyo changed throughout the day.  It was expecting to find a cosmopolitan city like New York, London, or Paris, but instead  I found a mega-town where people are not very diverse and, surprisingly, they are not used to foreigners.  In addition, Tokyo is very expensive (specially with 94 yens = 1 dollar cash exchange rate) and the language barrier is high.  Although everything in the subway is written in Japanese and Latin characters, the same is not true in the JR lines and on the streets.  If you can't play pattern matching of Chinese characters, it's easy to get lost.  But after I got over those initial difficulties, and I got better at navigating the city, the appeal of Tokyo increased.  I'm looking forward to come back in the future with more time to explore the city further.

Bangkok to Tokyo

Sawadee Thailand!

Konnichiwa Japan!

Today is a traveling day.  I'm flying from Bangkok to Tokyo in an early morning flight.  It was painful waking up at 3:45am, but I'll get an extra half day in Tokyo (if I can stay awake).  After dealing with UAL extra security, going through the modern Bangkok airport was a breeze.

At the other end, at Norita airport, it was very different.  We landed on time (3:10pm).  But after going through the quarantine station (checking for flu viruses), the very long and slow immigration line (similar to the ones in the US, requiring fingerprints and a photograph) and getting my backpack carefully searched by a Japanese custom agent, it was already 4:30pm!  The next train to Shinjuku was at 4:45 which meant that I arrived at my hotel after 6pm.  So much for a half day in Tokyo...

The Sunroute Plaza Hotel in Shinjuku was amazing and I highly recommend it if you can get a room at a discount.  It's a 2 minute walk to the Shinjuku JR station and subway.  It's also close to "Time Square" (left), the skyscrapers, many shopping malls, and close, but not too close, to a very crazy night area (basically a Japanese Disney-like version of a red light district).  I've been told that the area is very safe unless you are an unaccompanied woman (the area did feel safe when I walked it at 9pm).

Ayutthaya

We took the night train from Chiang Mai to Ayutthaya.  Unfortunately, the train was running late so we didn't get to Ayutthaya until 6:45am.  This was bad as we missed our appointment to get in our day room in the Sherwood Guest House.  We got some breakfast at 7-11(a very common shop in Thailand) and waited until 7:30am for our friendly guest to come back after dropping her kid to school.

The city of Ayutthaya is the "old" capital of the Thai Kingdom.  It was founded in 1350 by King U-Thong and the Thai kingdom was ruled from there by 33 Kings, until the Burmese successfully took it in 1767, sacked it, burnt it, and destroyed it.  The city was abandoned after that and the seat of the kingdom moved to Bangkok, a city that was easier to protect as it was surrounded by swamps.  Although terrible events, the good news for tourists is that the city is a treasure of temples and sights that remained unchanged for years.  Most of the ruins of the old temples are part of the Ayutthaya Historical Park, a UNESCO world heritage site.  Our first stop was Wat Mahathat, a well known site because of the Buddha head surrounded by the roots of a bodhi tree (with a special meaning as Buddha's awakening was under a bodhi tree).  The head was actually buried under the ground and it has been slowly carry up by the tree. 

The rest of the temple contains hundreds of headless Buddha statues (nobody could tell us why they were headless) and ruins of the "Grand Palace" just behind the temple.  A reconstruction of a 20m tall column gives an idea of how magnificent the palace was.  We were at the temple and palace just at opening time, so we had the place just to ourselves.  Ayutthaya is a popular day trip from Bangkok, but most tourist don't arrive until 10:30am or 11am, so the morning is very quiet.

From Wat Mahathat, we headed to the monastery and temple of Wat Phra Ram.  The tall Chedi commemorates the story of the two brothers, Chao Ai and Chao Yi, the two elder brothers that were fighting for the throne.  They had a duel on an elephant with the result of both of them being killed.  His younger brother, King Borom Rachathirat, built two pagodas and the Chedi to commemorate (celebrate?) the event that made him King.

The Chedi was also the place of a robbery in the 50s.  There were stories of a treasure hidden inside the Chedi, but before archeologists could find it, a band of thief found their way to it.  The amazing treasure was split, and the major pieces were cut in small segments for easy transport.  The thieves were captured and most of the pieces were recovered (except for a major gold piece for which only 1/3 was recovered).  The treasure is now housed at the National Museum where we had the opportunity of seeing them later in the day.

Our next stop was Wihan Phra Mongkhon Bophit where a large, very large, bronze cast of Buddha is housed. This Buddha is the largest bronze statue in Thailand.  This modern temple, in the shape of an oversized Swiss chalet replaced the original temple that was destroyed by the Burmese troops.  The temple is next to the three spires of Wat Phra Si Sanphet which are the iconic view of Ayutthaya.  These three bell-shaped chedi taper off into descending rings.

The temple is located in the Grand Palace compound and it was used as the private royal chapel of the Thai kings. It's believed that the temple contained a 16m high standing Buddha covered with gold.  The Burmese troops, burned it down as a mean of extracting the gold in the surface.  The resulting 250kg of gold were then taken as loot back to Burma.  A surviving segment of the arm that gives an idea of the dimension of the statue can also be seen at the National Museum in Ayutthaya.

The temple are next to a beautiful park with nice reflecting ponds, a teak house, and an elephant camp.  There is also plenty of shade for a picnic or for just escaping the Thai bright sun.  After a brief visit to the Teak house, we headed towards the elephant camp. This was a more elaborated camp with the handlers dress up traditionally and the elephants carrying a large chair with a gold and red umbrella on top.

  

Cute picture to the left, right?  Wrong.  Without context, this picture looks like a young elephant doing a nice trick.  In reality, it was one of the most brutal animal cruelty I have seen and it made me questioned how much fun I had with the elephant riding a few days ago.  The young elephant was being trained and it wasn't very happy about it.  Periodically it would try to rebel which was swiftly stopped by a hit of the cane held by the trainer.  If you look carefully, you can see that the cane ends on a pike which was used to dig on the elephant skin and in some instances on the more sensitive skin behind his ears.  This went on for a long time, with the elephant being abused every time he failed to follow the trainer's commands.

 From the elephant camp, it was a short walk to the National Museum.  This small museum contains the pieces recovered from the robbery at Wat Phra Ram plus the reconstruction of a traditional Thai teak house with antiques provided by city people.  From the museum we walked on the backroads of Ayutthaya to see the remains of the reclining Buddha (Wat Lokayasutharam).  This 42m long Buddha is made out of brick and covered with plaster.

From the reclining Buddha, we headed back to our day room to have lunch and to take a shower before heading back to Bangkok.  There were three possible ways to come back: train, bus, and mini bus.  We decided to take the train. The decision was based on what would be closer to our hotel in Bangkok as we were going to arrive during rush hour.   Our fare to Bangkok in third class was an amazing 20 Baht ($0.60).  For reference of how cheap this 1.5 hour train ride was, the Tuk-Tuk that took us from the hotel to the train station charged 50 Baht.   We arrived at Bangkok and quickly hop into a taxi.  The driver was getting more and more upset about traffic, until he finally told us that we either pay 200 Baht (instead of the meter fare, which would be around 80 Baht) or we had to get out.  We tried to negotiate to no avail so we left the car, leaving an unhappy driver as we declined to pay for the partial ride.  We quickly spotted a Tuk Tuk, we a much cheerful driver, that took us to the hotel for 80 Baht.

From the hotel we went near the famous Khao San road (left) for our final dinner with our guide and the rest of the group.  Some of then were continuing to Southern  Thailand, some of them were heading home. I had an early flight the next day, so I declined the invitation for drinks at the highest building in Bangkok and returned to my hotel to get ready for my flight to Japan.

Chiang Mai Day 2

Today I decided to go on my own to explore the numerous temples (Wats) of Chiang Mai.  The city claims that it has more Wats than any other city in Thailand, including Bangkok.  At last count, Chiang Mai had over 300 wats.

  Chiang Mai was a walled city.  A significant part of the walls is still present and the moat was converted in beautiful canals with fountains that are illuminated at night.  Walking the old town is relatively easy as it follows a regular grid (with the occassional wat blocking the way) and if you get lost, you just need to walk until you hit one of the city walls or one of the named gates at the wall.

Even though the city has so many wats, they are not copies of each other and each has a different character.  One of the wats that I visited was built in teak wood, polished to a deep red color.   Different than most wats, the light was very subdued which gave a very intimate feeling to the place despite the very high ceilings.   Fortune telling was available in the temple.  This is done by holding a cylinder full of sticks each with a number.  You shake the cylinder until one of the sticks falls out.  A monk then finds the number in a book and interpret the fortune (or question) to you.  Unfortunately, there was no English-speaking monk available at the moment so I didn't get my fortune read.

The next wat I visited was more in the standard style for Thai temples.  The temple, although relatively modern, follows the influence of the Lanna period of the 13-14th century which is characteristic of temples in the area.  It has a striking, almost blinding, golden stupa shining in the morning sun.  Next to the stupa, the wat has amazingly life-like paintings.. almost like photographs, describing the trip of a monk in India and Nepal, following the steps of Lord Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha).   

A monk in that temple gave me a short and concise introduction to Buddhism under the gaze of a striking bronze Buddha.  Buddhism is based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama.  He was born in 566 B.C. the son of a Rajan and live comfortably in present day Nepal.  He was "innocent", not knowing suffering thanks to the wealth of his family.  In fact, he was so innocent, that he didn't even know that people die.  Disillusioned when he realized the suffering of most, he decided to live the live of an ascetic and embarked on a spiritual quest.  Eventually, that led him to the banks of the Nairangana (present day India) where he meditated under a Bodhi tree.  There he had his awakening, an understanding of the nature of suffering, its cause, and a way to stop it.  He ascended to Nirvana, the end of the cycle of rebirth and suffering at the age of 80.

I kept wondering throughout the city, stopping for a delicious Thai Ice Coffee (like Thai tea but with coffee instead of tea and ice).  Eventually, almost by chance, I stumbled upon Wat Chedi Luang.  The most striking feature is the semi-destroyed Chedi that collapsed during an earthquake in 1545.  Today is a major tourist attraction and it has been stabilized without altering its ruined look.

The Chedi is not accessible to worshippers due to the fragility of the structure.  However, an ingenious cable system transports and drops holly water near Buddha's statue half way up the Chedi.  In the picture to the left, you can see the cables and a cylinder containing the water attached to a rope that allows to tilt it and pour the water out.   The meaning of the holly water was explained to me by a young monk.  It's actually very close to the mystery of the transfiguration in Christianity.  The water after being blessed, remains water (this is, it contains all the feature of water, including the possibility of making you sick if you drink it), but its essence has been changed to the universal spirit.  By returning the spirit to the ground near Buddha, one is honoring both Buddha and the spirit.

The temple complex also contains a large number of minor temples in different styles, including one with a very large reclining Buddha (the reclining position represents Buddha just before ascending to Nirvana).  There is even a Chinese temple with a "fat" Buddha.

It seems that there was a huge party in the temple complex.  There were  people selling food, religious artifacts, books, etc.  There was also loudspeakers playing a repetitive tune in traditional Thai instruments.  It turned that it was part of the funeral of the head monk of the temple.  There was also a eery life-like statue of him.  Yes, the monk to the left is not a person, it's a statue (also noticed the 5-tier umbrellas around him, a sign of his high religious status).  There was a room with a sign saying in different languages "No Women."  I entered the room to find, to my surprise, a plastic casket connected to an A/C unit where the monk was laying.  After a quick bow, I left the room as fast as I could.

After the temple, I started walking back to my hotel.  I made a wrong turn, and instead walk in the other direction to Buak Hat Park.  A beautiful oasis of water, fountains, and trees at the corner of the old city.  After realizing my mistake, I turned around  and started heading, now for real, to my hotel.  I was hopping to get a final Thai massage before having to go to the train station to catch my overnight train back to Bangkok, but I didn't have enough time, so I opted instead for a foot massage.  After a long day of walking, it was the right thing to get.   We met in the hotel to catch the transportation back to the train station where our overnight train to Bangkok was waiting. It turned that the train was stopping in Ayutthaya, a city that I was interested in visiting more than Bangkok.  Lindsay decided to come with me, so our guide told the conductor that we would be leaving the train there (at 5:30am) instead of Bangkok.  After a nice Thai dinner served in our seats, it was time to go to bed.  I love sleeping in night trains, the movement is soothing and a good pair of ear plugs and face mask are enough to block the noise and lights.  There is also to say about the efficiency of moving hundreds of miles in comfort while sleeping.

Hilltribe Trek Day 3

This was our last day trekking, but instead of hiking, we were taking a bamboo raft down the Mae Tang river.  The raft was built the previous day and after some final adjustments, and checking that it had enough bamboos for our weight, it was ready to go.

A bamboo raft is a very simple boat.  It sits just above the water, so sitting on it means getting wet.  It's also controlled by putting with two or three long bamboo sticks.  We had two rafts for our group with the backpacks tied up high above the platform.  The water is pretty shallow this time of the year, at waist level or lower most of the time.  The Mae Tang is used for river rafting later on the season (and further downstream), so we just floated down the river with the occasional Class 1 rapid. 

The scenery from the raft was amazing with beautiful trees, birds, and the occasional village or elephant camp.   We stopped in one of the village half way to get some drinks and souvenirs.  A nice place, but I got bitten by a nasty spider on the sole of my foot which was quite painful for 20 minutes or so.

 

 

 

A common encounter down the river were water buffaloes that love to get in the river and just cool down in it.  Water buffaloes come in two colors, black and a strange (human like) pink.  The buffaloes belong to people living around the river and they are let roam until they are needed for working the fields (water buffaloes in the area are only eaten after dying from natural causes).

Eventually, we followed the example of the buffaloes and jump into the water.  It was fun floating down the muddy river side by side with the raft.  In about 4 hours, we reached our destination, a nice village, reachable by dirt road, where our transportation was waiting.  After having lunch and bidding farewell to our local guides, we started our way back to Chiang Mai.  After a long, dusty trip, we were back to the city.  It was nice to have a proper shower and a change of clothes after the trekking.  After that, Lindsay and I decided to get a Thai massage.  We left the hotel and walked around for 40 minutes trying to find a place...  Eventually, we quit on it, and decided to go back to the hotel.  As we turned on the hotel street, there was a massage place...  no idea how we missed it the first time.  After a wonderful Thai massage, we headed for dinner with the group at the night market.

After some nice food and drinks, I returned to the hotel in a tuk-tuk, while most of the group went for a long night of drinking and partying.