resuscitating the bolg in borneo

what a whirlwind......

Since our last blog we have driven across salt deserts in Bolivia, trekked around Machu Pichu in Peru and have almost been part of a protest in Santiago.
We have soaked in geothermal hotsprings with our friends in New Zealand and bumbled along the Sunshine Coast of Australia in a camper van.




We sit now writing this from a hotel lounge having just arrived in Sabah Borneo from Japan. via Bangkok and a two night train journey to Kualur Lumpar and a flight to Kota Kinabalu. Non stop travel!




We are pretty tired so are taking it easy for a few days and thought we would try and breath life back into the old blog.

So: Japan
On our first day we hit Tokyo running straight off the plane at 6am we dumped our bags and ate the wierdest food. Karen had a savoury jelly feast, mmm.......We marvelled at pachinko parlours (thousands of metal balls chinking and plinking down a pin ball like machine).

By 11.30am we found ourselves in the aisles of fancy dress department stores trying on cream cake costumes....

Then on to a duke box noodle bar where everything was in Japanese, so you put your money in, press a random button, go inside the cafe type place, handed the ticket to the waiter and waited to see what we got!!! invarably some noodles and stuff, but to us newbee's it was all fun fun

By 5pm we had decome dependent on the vending machines on almost every street corner: popping out cans of sweet milky ice coffee at 80p a pop, growing tired in the 30 degree humidity was not an option and we were averaging about one an hour!

We crashed at midnight, but not before checking out loads of trainer shops, sock shops, the mandrake comic shop, the Japanese craft centre, and a department store or two!!


After two more days of simillar ice coffee fuelled adventures our friend Fee arrived from Sicilly to see her brother and to join us for a week on the Shinkansen. So we had a nice lunch with the Volquardsen's in Shibuya, and began to plan. We started with a flee market the next morning to look for kimonos and treasures, then a Sunday walk around Yoyogi park where we watched the newly wed couples posing for photos.

So the next day with our shiny JR passess in hand we boarded the train for Kyoto. At a cool 285km p h the never ending seamless cities blurred into each other and we all arrive on time (to the second) in Kyoto of course.

Kyoto was spent visiting temples, shrines, walking around japanese gardens, staying in a traditional guest house and soaking in an open air onsen (japanese bath) in the hills north of Kyoto and catching glimpses of gesha's. Oh and of course (true to form) going to a giant flea market and finding lots more treasures, that are now in a box somewhere on the ocean working their way back to england (all 18kgs of them) I think we went a little crazy. But it was good fun.

We said goodbye to Fee for a few days as she had a fashion shoot in Tokyo with her brother, and headed off to Nara where we visited the biggest buddah in the world inside the largest wooden building in the world. The craftmanship was otherwordly and in the museum in Nara spent 4 hours just looking at carvings.

We travelled around Japan for three weeks like a bullet seeing as much as we posibbly could, getting as far south as Hakata/Fukuoka to visit the traditional potteries and as far north as the Tono Valley then lastly to Nikko and back to Tokyo.

We could write for hours as we absolutely loved Japan but we think we should let the photos do the talking.... as there are so many of them and they have taken over 4hrs to load!!!

All the best Karen and Marcel xxx

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