Having had no trouble finding accommodation anywhere in six months, Kyoto finally caught us out and we spent our first day bouncing around tourist offices trying to find accomodation having drawn a blank on the internet. After a very long time we finally ended up in a western style hotel for one night and a Japanese 'Ryokan' for two more. The Ryokan was the full paper walls, roll your bedding out on the floor and try to squeeze your feet into tiny slippers experience and quite entertaining if a bit pricey. Apart from that we saw yet more temples, braved a [View Full Entry]

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Osaka is a bit like I'd imagined Tokyo would be. It's a tangle of flyovers, buildings, subterranean malls, neon, arcades and the occasional castle. You can quite easily spend a whole day lost underground. Anyway, we tried shopping but we're pretty rubbish at it and failed to get anything despite walking down a couple of the longest shopping arcades in Japan ( each around 2.5km of covered shops all in a row ). We briefly looked at the castle ( yawn ) and we went to the waterfront where we got very scared on what they almost dare to claim is [View Full Entry]

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Kanazawa is quite a nice little city. It has very twee gardens, old samourai houses, some nice shopping streets and a big castle that, like most ancient Japanese structures, has been knocked down and entirely rebuilt ( new is better - no, really it is - how many English castles have lifts ). Anyway, we did our usual wandering about, cooked our traditional eggy vegetable pancake dinner at an Okonomiyaki restaurant, were the only customers at a local bar and jumped up and down a lot to keep warm. [View Full Entry]

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Before we left the mountains we decided to spend a day or two in Nagano and its surroundings. We had a quick look at the local temple though we're starting to see a bit of a theme there, so maybe not too many more Japanese temples. The following day we headed out to Yudanaka Onsen famous for its bathing monkeys who seem to live a happy life of mostly sitting in hot springs up a snowy mountain. There were a lot of them and they were very cute especially when they threw poo at Sara. On the way back we stopped [View Full Entry]

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Well, it would be rude to go to a mountainous country in winter and not go skiing wouldn't it. So we hopped on a bullet train to Nagano and got a bus to the resort town of Hakuba. We found a nice little place to stay called Snowbeds and the owner kindly lent us a load of ski wear, hats goggles and all. Sara skied and I boarded. We had two days on the slopes of Happo One and one day at resort of Hakuba47. The resorts weren't quite as polished as those we have been to in France - older [View Full Entry]

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Arriving in Japan is a bit like returning home having forgotten how to speak and not only become illiterate but completely dyslexic too. Relatively few people speak English, most menus are in japanese - even the prices, outside large cities most ATMs dont take take foreign cards and tourists are a bit of an oddity, most signs are of no use to us and we cant read the maps anyway ( which incidentally have no North is up convention either ). Still, we quite like the place and are getting along just fine. Our first task was to buy some more [View Full Entry]

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A bus, a plane and three taxis later we were in Hong Kong. We spent three days here mostly just wandering about, going up to the Peak, catching trams and ferrys, visiting free museums, parks, markets etc. I managed to buy a new charger for my camera after mine was stolen from my checked in baggage at Bangkok Airport (Thailand so far being the centre of all world crime). Sara: I think the highlight was probably the science museum, not for any educational reason, but to try the fitness test. You will be pleased to know that we both have low [View Full Entry]

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A day of travelling took us North East to Kompong Cham via Sukon famous for its tasty Tarantulas. Sara, who had been bragging about her intention to try one, chickened out and didn't even go for a peeled frog. I gallantly decided not to show her up by refraining also. From Kompong Cham we hoped to get a boat to the town of Kratie. Unfortunately it turns out that the boat doesn't run any more so the next day we continued the rest of the way by bus. Kratie is probably most famous for being one of the last hideouts of [View Full Entry]

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Kampot is a quiet little town by the river with the French colonial thing more apparent than most places. Promenades with very French lamp posts etc. The French are still trying hard to keep their language in the second language spot for this country but they've completely failed and most restaurant owners struggle to read their own menus whilst speaking English just fine. Anyway, we decided to go on a day trip to the nearby Bokor Hill Station, a big French resort in it's day on top of the highest mountain in the area with views across miles of coastline all [View Full Entry]

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Another bus and we were back at the seaside down in Sihanoukville. We checked into a hotel with a pool and did very little for a few days. Yep, sat by the pool, read a bit, watched our movie channel, watched holidaying Cambodians swim ( generally fully clothed ) and that's about it. We were too lazy to even take any photos. Finally, feeling that we should probably do something we bundled into a share taxi for the three hour journey to Kampot. we paid for the 'whole back seat' of the small Toyota Camry that was the taxi but relented [View Full Entry]

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