Langus

We got up just in time for breakfast today and then got ready for our excursion. We were going to go for a 2 hour elephant trek through the jungle! It cost us 900 BHT each but I think it was totally worth it! Our elephant was the cutest ever. She kept randomly stopping to eat along the trail and every time the guide was like "Hey! Keep going!" she'd just grab a bigger branch LOL! Part of our trek was to go swimming with her at the end. She was SO excited to go swimming! Lots of elephant cheering and such once we hit the river. Hadeer and I had come prepared with our swimsuits so we were all set to go. We were't sure how the swimming part of it was going to work ... read more

We arrived to our hotel in Bangkok at around 3 AM from the airport. Getting here was pretty painless actually. The taxi was only 450 BHT and we'd been told it would be around 500 BHT so we were pretty happy with that. Our hotel is called Sunflower Place. It's a nice hotel even though it's located down a sketch alley that's hard to find. The staff are super helpful and the room is nice. It's well located too! After catching some sleep we woke up early to get some real Thai street food and explore the city. We didn't have a lot on our agenda for today - just book a bus ticket to Koh Chang for tomorrow, see Wat Pho and the Grande Palace and explore the city. If we saw some ladybois along ... read more

I've delayed writing this post for over a year, because it took that long before I could think of this mountain without a sense of aversion and dread. Maybe I'm exaggerating, but after the experience I had I think it's safe to say this is something I will only do ONCE in my entire life. Where to start... My good friend from home was visiting and on a whim we had decided that we would hike Mt. Fuji together. We figured it would be fun, exciting, and at the very least something cool that we could do together during her stay. We went into this venture well prepared. We'd made a list of everything we would need - food, lots of water, hats, flashlights, gloves, oxygen, mitts, change of clothes, rain ponchos, emergency medical supplies, sun ... read more

Recently I had the opportunity to stay at a Machiya house in Kyoto. Machiya are traditional wooden townhouses that were super popular in Japan during the 1800s. There aren't many of them left but this company we stayed with has been buying them up around the city and restoring them so people can stay in them for a night or two. We went as a group of 11 and ended up staying in a really nice place called the Nishi-Oshikoji Machiya near Kyoto City Hall. Because the trains take a while, I took the bus in with Phil and Mitzi to Kyoto early early Sat morning (7 am!) and arrived around 9:30. First on our list of things to do was to get pie. There is a great pie shop near the Machiya called Matsunosuke. The ... read more

We had the grande plan to wake up early this morning and take a bus to the Akiu Onsen and Akiu Otaki waterfall. The waterfall is supposed to be one of the most scenic in Japan and it was only a 90 minute bus ride so we figured why not? The bus, as it turned out, only went to the waterfall twice a day... And there didn't seem to be any indication as to WHEN the bus would be returning in the direction of Sendai station. So rather than risk taking a 90 minute bus ride to the middle of nowhere, with a chance that we might not be able to get back, we decided to hop off at Akiu Onsen resort area and find ourselves a nice onsen to chill in instead. It was a ... read more