Moo and the J dog

DAY 6 We were up at sunrise this morning to have breakfast and wait for the bus. It had been great to spend the day with the elephants but 2 nights roughing it was enough. It was not so much our rustic accommodations, it was that they were on the side of a hill with decks and steps that were particularly hard to negotiate at night in poor light. And were difficult with the suitcases too. The bus picked us up from the lodge and took us into town to pick up the rest of the passengers. Storing the luggage in a 13 seater minivan was a big issue. Suitcases (ours) and backpacks (everybody else) were stowed under seats and in the aisles. We were full with 2 people sitting with the driver. We were allocated ... read more

DAY 1 Our first day was a travel day. Singapore airlines have generous leg room and a large screen in the seat back. It was a very comfortable flight. I watched Victoria and Albert and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a beautiful story.Anything with Dame Judy Dench is great. The second movie was the Beguiled with Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell. It was set in the civil war era and was quite intense. I loved it. Justin was less successful with his choices. Our 1 hour stopover in Singapore turned into 4, as the plane had mechanical issues and we waited for a replacement plane. It was frustrating but who wants to fly on dodgy plane. This meant we were later getting to Phnom Penh. Getting through immigration was a breeze. We had organised our visas ... read more

Did not wake up until arounnd 9am today. We went downstairs to sample the free breakfast at the hotel. Found out that that you gotta get there early. The weather was great today. Temperature about 27 degrees celcius and clear skies. First up was Grand Central Terminal. We hadn't gone there last time and I was keen to check out the food court downstairs. Justin had a steak sandwich and I had the strawberry cheesecake from Juniors. Cheesecake is famous from Juniors and I wasn't disappointed. This building is amazingly beautiful. It was Sunday morning so there was not a lot of people rushing about but you can get a sense of what it would be like during rush hour. There is a fantastic mural on the ceiling of the main hall - painted in gold ... read more

Well today was the highlight of our trip. We are so very tired tonight but very happy. Today was the day we met with our volunteer guide from the Good Samaratan club in Kyoto. This is a group of university students who guide foreigners around the city of Kyoto. Today we had a lovely fellow named Hideaki who brought along a trainee, Ryo. When you have a volunteer guide you must pay for the bus fares and lunch but no other payments are made. So the boys met us at our Ryokan at 9am. They gave us some one day passes for use on the Kyoto bus system and then we were off to our first stop. We travelled by bus to Nijo castle. This castle was built in 1603 as the official Kyoto residence of ... read more

We went to breakfast a bit earlier today and there was a different crowd. But we ate well and checked out and set out on the next leg of Bec’s journey. It was raining this morning but we didn’t care. We had had two great days experiencing Tokyo without getting wet. We had to negotiate our bags on the subway in peak hour to get to Shinagawa where the shinkansen (bullet train) left from. Happy to say we survived and had a few minutes to spare. We took the Shinkansen to Odawara and then transferred to Hakone Yumoto where we were spending the night. We booked the last row of the carriage we were in as there is storage behind the last row for suitcases. The trip took only ½ hour and was very smooth. Once ... read more