Business Class, Baby!

We made it to Toronto in one piece, and just for the record, the best part of the trip was, for the 9 1/2 hour Nagoya to San Francisco flight, being upgraded to Business Class. I don't know if I can ever travel with the unwashed Economy Class masses ever again.*

* Proving myself wrong before I even get started, I of course flew Economy Class from San Fran to Toronto, and it was fine. Also, perhaps, more suited to my long-term budgetary prospects.

pixxiefish on the road

I'm sitting in our hotel room at the Nagoya airport, watching Randal finish his packing (he's almost done). It's been a long day, but I feel pretty good. So far today, I have survived the following:

- waking up at 4:30 a.m.

- leaving our nice Bangkok guesthouse at about 5:30 a.m. in order to find a cab to take us to the airport for 6:00 a.m.

- making it on to our 8:10 flight to Tokyo with loads of time to spare (as opposed to, say, missing the flight entirely)

- sleeping most of aforementioned flight (except for when they tried to feed me a full fried beef, veggies, and rice meal at, like, 9:30 in the morning! yuck!)

- playing a mean-ass game of Tetris on the on-flight entertainment system when I was conscious

- transferring in Tokyo without any mishap

- a hop and a skip later, arriving in Nagoya

- reclaiming the suitcases that we left behind in storage a month ago, despite (of course!) being unable to locate the storage receipts

- repacking everything so that all the weight is evenly distributed between our bags, and in a reasonable amount of time so that we actually will be able to sleep tonight!


Now I am sitting in bed, using Randal's laptop (there's wireless internet here - how sweet is that?), while he puts the last few things away in his bags, and tomorrow, we start the fun all over again!

Tomorrow our flight is not till 3:25 in the afternoon - 2:35 a.m. for you Windsor-QuebecCity corridor-ites in the crowd.


pixxiefish will be back in the sea soon!

11 days???

I just glanced at my Countdown Clock on my blog, and it seems I am actually returning to Canada in 11 days. That's wild! And for once, I don't have a thousand and one boxes still left to pack (because I did that all in July when I left Japan - fun, fun).

We are still in Luang Prabang, and struck with indecision. Luang Prabang is very pretty and very nice - there are some wonderful temples and some tasty food - but there's not really much left for us to do here. We've visited most of the temples and we've eaten lots of the food. However, we're feeling unmotivated to move on. See, Luang Prabang is cheap. There's cheap good food, and cheap good handicrafts at the market, and our guesthouse room has satellite TV with HBO movies every night and... god, I'm a terrible traveler.

Anyway, all good things must come to an end, and we're going to leave Luang Prabang tomorrow. Or, well, maybe the day after. On Tuesday, there is an air-con bus going northeast to Phonsavan, which is the town near the mysterious Plain of Jars (on Monday, there is just a regular local bus). It takes about 8 hours to get there, or possibly more at this time of year (rainy season). We'll head up there for just two nights, so one full day to visit the Plain of Jars. That takes us to Wednesday or Thursday (depending on when we leave here), and then we plan on flying down to Vientiane, the Laos capital. Cheap flights. 4-5 days in Vientiane, then either fly to Bangkok on the 26th or 27th, or take an overnight train there, with 1-2 days in Bangkok before we fly home to, first, Nagoya (on the 29th), and then Toronto on the 30th. Wow. Crazy.

A little Heritage in my life...

So there hasn't been a lot of travel posting this time around, sorry. But there will (eventually!) be a lot of pictures!!! I promise.

We are now on Day 3 of Luang Prabang. This former capital of Laos is home to a number of World Heritage sites, and it's quite lovely. A little strange at first - I was expecting a small city, and got barely a town. It's quite small. You barely even see it as you approach by boat (the way most people get here). I don't think I've seen any buildings higher than 3 stories, and you can pretty much walk the entire town on foot...in about an hour. (OK, maybe two.)

Laos is a former French colony (they used it as a buffer for Vietnam from Thailand), so there are many buildings in the French colonial style. Some of the buildings look like they are direct descendants of some of the buildings in Vieux-Quebec, but many have a more "modern" colonial look to them (since Quebec was a 17th century French colony, while Laos was 19th and 20th). And did I mention it's tiny? I wasn't crazy about it at first - it felt like a built of a tourist circus - but it's grown on me.

Prior to coming here, in a nutshell:

Stayed in Bangkok for 5 days. Mostly wandered a lot, visited some wats (temples), shopped in some markets, that sort of thing. We are heading back to Bangkok in a few weeks and will visit the Grand Palace then. Then we took the overnight sleeper train to Chiang Mai which was as enjoyable a trip as I remember it being last time around (I love sleeper trains). I've been to Chiang Mai before, of course, but I didn't get to see much of the town - this time around, I got a much better feel. We were also staying at a great guesthouse called "CM Blue House" which was really central and uber-comfortable. We originally had planned to stay in Chiang Mai for 3 days, but we stayed 5.

Then, last Friday, we tore ourselves away from Chiang Mai and took a minivan to Chiang Khong, a small town on the border with Laos. That was a 5-hour ride, fairly un-noteworthy. We stayed overnight in a guesthouse on the Mekong River, and then the next morning, took a "ferry" (tiny boat) across the river to Houay Xai, where we crossed through immigration and into Laos. Then we were off to the slowboat docks, for the 2-day boat ride down the Mekong to Luang Prabang. You don't sleep on the boat - you spend the night about halfway down, in a small village called Pak Beng. We had a bottom-barrel guesthouse there - it was a room with a fan and twin beds, but the electricity was shut off around 11:00 p.m., so the room was SWELTERING. Not my favourite night. Anyway, it was clean, which is what's important. Day 2 on the boat was more enjoyable than I thought it might be, and then we got to Luang Prabang! We're been here 3 days so far, with the intention of staying 2 or 3 more. Right now we are trying to figure out the most painless way to get to Phounsavan, the town in northeastern Laos near the famous Plain of Jars site - there doesn't seem to be a painless way to do it (8-hour local bus ride seems to be one of our only bets) - and then after a day or two there, we head down to Vientiane, the Laotian capital.

You are now up-to-date.

I'm in Bangkok!

So as the title of this post suggests, I am now in Bangkok. Not much time to write, and we haven't done a heck of a lot yet anyway, so here's the rundown: We had a frustrating time getting out of Japan but now it is done. Flight over was excellent (I love free booze on airplanes). Took a cab into town and checked into our guesthouse (which was prebooked) with no problems. We are staying in a nice little guesthouse called Shambara just off Khao Sarn Road (THE road where foreigners go when in Bangkok - filled mostly with grubby backpackers, but there's lots to see and do), which is quite nice. Had an awesome Thai dinner last night (chicken and veggies in penang sauce with rice) - god I love Thai food. In bed by midnight, and today we got a late start, heading out only at noon, so, so far, all we have accomplished is lunch (I had pad thai with chicken, tofu, egg, and veggies) and, now, Internet. We are looking into going to a travel clinic this afternoon since we are both behind on our typhoid vaccinations (oops) and then some wandering. Dinner perhaps at a restaurant along the river - did I mention I love Thai food? Then we will discuss whether we are going to Laos or not (the other options are diving and/or Malaysia instead).

Yeah. It's a hard life.

On the road again...

I'll be on a plane to Thailand in just over 12 hours (yes, I should be in bed, Mom, and yes, I am headed there soon).

I wanted to post some thoughts about Japan and my year here and the like, but a lot has happened in the last two weeks, the wind has been taken out from under my sails, and I just don't have the time/inclination anymore. I will at some point. There's been a lot of introspection going on in my little head over the past while, and I just don't have the energy to get into it now.

But Thailand! Wow! This will be my second time there, and I can't wait. It is also Randal's second trip, but our first trip together. Our plan right now is 5-7 days in Bangkok, then up to Chiang Mai (northern Thailand) for a few days. We then may go to Laos for about 2 weeks, though recently we've both been waxing poetic about Malaysia (where we have also both previously been), so plans might change, who knows? Anyway, I will try to keep you all updated as best as I can via this blog, and we return to the Great White North (for those of you who are counting) on August 30.

Sayonara!

Déjà vu (more earthquakes!)

So Randal and I are lying in bed last night at our hotel in Tokyo, watching the news about the earthquake yesterday morning in Niigata-ken. (We didn't have much choice - it was pretty much the only thing playing on any of the channels.) It was a substantial quake, about 6.6 in magnitude. Of course, the earthquake a few months back north of here in Ishikawa-ken was stronger than that (7.1), but it occurred farther off the coast, and Ishikawa-ken is also fairly remote, so a lot less damage occurred. Yesterday's quake killed 9 people and 1 more is missing (as of earlier today, so that may have changed). Dozens of homes and buildings were destroyed. Some of the damage was pretty incredible. And the mystery of this one factory-like building that we kept seeing footage of (the news was all in Japanese, so we could only guess at some of the details), is solved, but slightly troubling: it was a nuclear power plant where some barrels of nuclear waste were damaged (leaked? I'm not sure). That's not very encouraging.

There was also a strong aftershock in Niigata-ken around 3:30 that afternoon that was felt as far away as Tokyo, but we were in Shinjuku at the time and didn't notice a thing. Some neat footage from camera crews who were out in Niigata-ken filming the damage when this aftershock hit.

Anyway, so we're lying there, watching the news, when the bed starts shaking. Yikes! Another earthquake. It was 11:18. This one was quite long, at least a minute in length, and picked up in intensity for about 8 seconds, about 30 seconds in, causing Randal's jacket, where it was hanging from a hook on the wall, to sway somewhat moderately. Of course, the news shows all start reporting on this right away. It seemed it was yet another aftershock, but today, now that I am home, I checked the JMA website, and it seems to be its own separate earthquake, and, additionally, the weirdest one I've ever seen:



OK, even if you're not an earthquake nerd (like me), you can probably figure out what's strange about this picture. The red X marks the epicentre of the quake. Normally, the strength of the quake diminishes the farther you get from the epicentre (with some variation, of course, but this is generally how it works). This earthquake seems to have done the opposite. It occurred in the Japan Sea well north of Kyoto Prefecture, but was felt the strongest in places along the Pacific Ocean coast, like Tokyo (it's listed as a 2-or-stronger in the area of Tokyo where we were staying). And the strongest reading of the earthquake - at 4-or-stronger - was in Hokkaido, which is many hundreds of kilometres away!!! The only explanation that I, as a non-geologist, can offer for this is that perhaps it had something to do with the depth of the quake: It was 370km below the surface, which is really, really deep. Most quakes at that depth wouldn't even be felt, but this one registered 6.6 at the source. Tectonic plates are funny things, so maybe at that depth, it had more time to travel outward before it started to really be felt above-ground - ie., in places much further away.

To compare, here is yesterday morning's quake readings. It was 10km below the surface (quite shallow, which is partly, I think, why it caused the damage it did) and, as I said before, 6.6 at the centre. In Tokyo, where we were, it registered as a 2-or-higher. (They only give exact magnitude readings for the epicentre.)



And in response to Stuart's comment after the Ishikawa quake - yes and no, earthquakes are and are not a semi-regular event in Gifu. Japan is one of the most seismically active zones in the world - it's dangerously sitting on three different tectonic plates. There are probably anywhere from 5-12 quakes somewhere in Japan on any given day. Most of these, however, are barely felt. Some areas are more active than others - Tokyo, for example, gets a small quake probably almost once a week, from what I hear. Upon coming out here, we were told again and again to prepare an earthquake kit with emergency supplies. The Japanese themselves seem quite blasé about earthquakes, but (kind of) prepared - I guess they're like Californians - they know earthquakes will happen. In a way, actually, they're better off than Californians - the Japanese know that the majority of quakes will cause no, or very little, damage.

However, that statement doesn't include the reality for millions of Japanese living in the Tokaido area (which, incidentally, includes Gifu, though it's at the far end) - the area south and southwest of Mt Fuji - this area is about 20 years overdue for a major quake, and the longer the quake takes to come, the worse it will be. Japanese earth scientists are confident they can predict when the quake will strike, with the ability to give anywhere from a few minutes' to a day's warning. I don't know if that makes me feel better or not, if I believe their ability to predict an earthquake at all - a beast which is, by its very nature, quite unpredictable, at least to date. (They were so busy preparing for the Tokaido earthquake 12 years ago that they missed any apparent "warning signs" (if there were any...depends on who you believe) forecasting the devastating 1995 Kobe earthquake.