We had spent an afternoon in Tokyo before heading off to Kyoto but this was nowhere near enough time to explore the city. We now had a week to do exactly that. The key question - where to start? We decided to head to the famous Meiji Shrine first. Negotiating the Tokyo subway system was not going to be easy but we'd have to brave it sooner or later so why not immediately. We didn't have a Japan guidebook so we had to rely on a tourist leaflet we'd obtained in Tokyo. As not all the subway maps at the stations [View Full Entry]

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Kyoto, once the capital of Japan, is an excellent place to experience Japanese culture. We were keen to start exploring the city as soon as possible and since we were unable to check in to our hotel until 3pm we decided that we might as well start straight away. We had only arrived in Japan the day before and we had had to get up fairly early to catch the bullet train from Tokyo but we weren't too tired. The train journey had been incredibly comfortable. Food was obviously high on our list of priorities so our first stop was a [View Full Entry]

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With just 6 hours in which to see Bangkok we didn't have any time to waste. After a long and painful wait to clear immigration we dashed out of the airport building only to be surrounded by people trying to convince us that 1000 baht was a good price for a taxi into town. Luckily I had noticed a sign that said 'Local Taxi' a little earlier and we were able to find our way back to it without too much difficulty. A 'local' taxi only set us back 350 baht, a marked improvement on the prices we had been quoted [View Full Entry]

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Dreams of sun, sea, and San Miguel filled my head as our plane approached Cebu airport. Alas, the closer we got to landing, the more apparent it became that the sun part was likely to be lacking, at least on our first day. It wasn't actually raining but the sky was a menacing shade of grey. We had come to the Philippines as everybody had told us that this was an excellent time of year to visit - sunshine guaranteed. It was still the rainy season in Singapore and we really needed to get away from the miserable weather for a [View Full Entry]

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I saw in the Year of the Rat, at a hotel on Steven's Road. This was the first time that I had attended a Chinese New Year reunion dinner, and I had no idea what to expect. We had been invited to the dinner by a friend of the family and his American wife, who had been teaching me Chinese for a few months, before my trip to Nepal and Tibet. I had been warned by several people, that I would have to participate in the tossing of the lucky salad. I wasn't entirely sure what this would involve, but it [View Full Entry]

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Having arrived back in Kathmandu a day late, we were keener than ever to get to Chitwan. We decided not to waste any time in Kathmandu and after a quick lunch in Thamel, headed straight to the bus station. We had missed all the tourist buses for the day so we had to take a local bus. We figured that as it was still relatively early in the afternoon we might just make it to Narayangarh before dark - wishful thinking. The road to Chitwan is the same as the road to Pokhara until you reach a village called Mugling, where [View Full Entry]

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It was absolutely freezing in Lhasa. The rest of Tibet had been cold, but this was outrageous. I made a mental note to myself regarding the visiting of mountainous countries in the winter i.e. that I should never do it again. Our hotel in Lhasa closely resembled the hotels we had stayed in, in both Shigatse and Gyantse, although the standard of the room was perhaps slightly higher than it had been in the other places. Lhasa itself was larger than I had imagined and essentially just another Chinese city. There were of course the famous Tibetan landmarks that we had [View Full Entry]

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Our journey to Tibet started in the early hours of the morning. We went to the Greenline bus station near Thamel in Kathmandu, where there was a mini bus waiting to take us to the Chinese border. Although we were not keen on group travel, we would be traveling through Tibet with a group as this is a requirement for tourists entering Tibet from Nepal. Three other members of the group were traveling with us to the border post at Kodari, where we would meet the others. I wasn't feeling too well both because I had a cold and because I [View Full Entry]

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The trekking got off to a surprisingly good start. We had left Pokhara pretty early in the morning and had driven to a place called Lumle. This was where we were to begin our trek. Not surprisingly we were accosted by women trying to sell us jewelery the moment we stepped out of the vehicle, but our excitement canceled out any annoyance that was felt because of this. The trek itself started out well, although we were disappointed to find that the sky was completely overcast. This meant that although the scenery was pretty, we didn't quite experience the stunning views [View Full Entry]

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We were in high spirits when we landed in Kathmandu, having had the good fortune to have been seated on the right hand side of the plane. This meant that we had had a spectacular view of the Himalayas as we approached Kathmandu. We were met at the airport by a representative of the Singapore Gurkha Contingent, who handed over our plane tickets for the Pokhara to Kathmandu leg of our trip. Clearing immigration was a bit of a hassle as we had to fill out disembarkation cards as well as visa application forms, and then had to queue not only [View Full Entry]

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