Tokyo calling

“This is the last call for Mr Rishi Raja and Mrs Anjali Raja on Flight AX321 to Tokyo.. ”

Aaah, that’s us… Shit, ruuuun…

… Sorry we’re late, sorry, sorry.. Phew… Cannot believe that we nearly missed our flight to Tokyo because I was too busy looking for books to read! Hehe, jokes, at least we made it, but dammit didn’t even buy a book!

… We arrived in Tokyo at 10.30pm and I realised that if we don’t get to our hostel by 12, they lock the doors and count us as no shows.. Getting through customs and baggage claim took us till 11.25pm and the subway to the city centre takes an hour… This wasn’t looking good… Despite the help from the airport information desk, no-one was answering the hostel phones.. All we could do was turn up there and hope for the best… O wait the last train to our station has left,.. ‘Grr, guess we’ll have to take a cab’… as we made this suggestion to the staff at the train station, he looked at us in panic and told us to get on another train, get as close as possible to our hostel and then take a cab…. I understood why when we got our cab at 1am from Ueno station, 2kms from our hostel for which we paid £12!… You DO NOT take cabs in Japan… Literally as we arrived the hostel night staff was leaving… What an eventful welcome to Japan… Sign of things to come? … Naaah! Don’t be silly!

Someone had told us that arriving in Japan feels like you’ve landed on a different planet, and in some ways we certainly felt that… We’ve seen posters with Japanese writing and seen movies showing parts of Japan but being here and seeing every sign in the Japanese language really did make you feel like you’re somewhere very different.. The way the buildings are used is pretty nuts too.. You may pass what looks like an office block, but that 7 floor building may have restaurants on all seven floors so you have to check signs all the way up to find what you fancy! I had to restrain myself from taking photos of every little alley way we passed despite the signs and shop fronts making each turning look like a new work of art.

We spent our first 3 days in and around Tokyo and what a cool city it is too! Rishi and I both fell in love with it.. Lost in translation indeed!… Everything from the red light district in Shinjuku which has an equal number of boys for ‘company’ as women (hmm!) to Asakusa; the old school suburbia on the outskirts of the city.

We were totally sucked in by the fun vibe of the city and the evident love of fashion. It did mean we interspersed our sightseeing with quite a bit of shopping… Alright, alright, we interspersed our shopping with some sightseeing?! … Don’t judge, you’d do the same!!

I personally think we were shopping to compensate for the difficulty getting veggie food in Tokyo! We did manage to find an indian restaurant with a potato and bamboo shoot curry… No that was not a typo.. Was surprisingly good! And the rest of the time we ate pizza and pasta… Such a traumatic experience for me, all those who know me well, know I am very averse to such unhealthy foods! 😉

We did see some culture too! We watched the Hare Krishnas… Lol, yes I know in Tokyo!! They were on our way to xxx temple, a beautiful zen temple in the city.. Also we went on a worthwhile side trip to Kamakura, where you can see a different, more relaxed and beautiful part of Japan with many temples and the second largest Bhudda statue in Japan!

Tokyo is less about the sights though and much more about immersing yourself in the culture and lifestyle… You cannot beat a walk down Harajuku on a Sunday to catch the punks, knee high socks clad teenagers and tourists socialising, shopping and gobbling some delicious crepes! Or sitting in one of the little fast food style restaurants, ordering a ‘lunch set’… Or, you could just ride the Yamanote line (aka circle line) and just people watch. (Fyi, trains are on time here!)

Whatever you do, I dare you to try not to love this place and the amazingly friendly people.

There are so many places you go to and you know that if it wasn’t baking hot with the sun shining down, you probably wouldn’t enjoy it as much… But here in Tokyo, it has been COLD, I mean leggings under trousers cold, and yet it has been soo much fun… (Ok we were lucky that the sun has been out, but trust me it rocks)…

Definitely Japan is already leading the way as our most favourite place so far!!

Anyhow, next stop the mountain town of Takayama… We are taking a Shinkansen bullet train… Looks very cool!!

Wanna see an elephant with diarrhoea?

You sick sick people! Come on! Can’t believe you guys! Still….don’t worry to satisfy your cravings we took a close up picture of it 🙂 (ps Kish and Meera this elephant post is dedicated to you guys btw :))

Before we get to that, let me tell you where we are…we’re in Thailand, in Chang Mai, the land of the elephants!

So after arriving through our flashpacker methods (flights)- we decided the best way to start is to go and see ourselves a Muay Thai boxing night!

To give you an idea of the atmosphere at the boxing stadium, there’s a ring in the center of a massive warehouse kinda room with concrete flooring all around, foldable chairs on 4 sides of the ring, and a drinks bar and food stalls surrounding. Bookies are moving around shouting and trying to push people into betting against them, and there’s some crazy clarinet style instrument playing constantly in the background, even while the fights are on. Completely raw and pretty cool!

Me and Anj had reserved our seats and had center view to watch a total of 7 different fights!  As we watched each battle in the run up to the main international fight, it was crazy to see how intensely each of the fighters went at one another…

A few fights stood out though. A junior match involving probably 12 year olds where one got seriously injured is one. People were taking photos, cheering and shouting abuse, but to us, it seemed pretty bad to be making money off two kids brawling in a ring! But that’s competition I guess!

Anyway another special fight was set up for fun, where it is like a royal rumble – 4 fighters in a ring with a referee, but here’s the kicker the 4 fighters were all blindfolded. They all went at each other like mad men, but the funny part, because they couldn’t see each other, the person who got beat on the most was the referee! Lol… Too funny, hmm maybe it’s one of those you had to be there moments!

Finally we arrived to the main event; an international fight with Spain vs Thailand. The Spanish fighter had his massive entourage supporting him in the corner as he entered the ring looking pretty confident.

Now, before each fight starts the fighters do a little warming up and some dance to the music. The Thai fighter did his bit pretty quickly and went into the corner…the bigger Spanish fighter though took literally 10 mins as his entourage cheered him on. He was so cocky, he decided to start showing off with his dance moves and trying to psyche his opponent out!

Finally he finished, the bell rang and the fight began….and yep within a minute the spanish guy was down on the floor, writhing in pain! So funny – A First round knockout! And that ended our night!

The next day was our elephant jungle trek! This involved us taking bamboo rafts down the river, seeing a beautiful waterfall, trekking and the piece de resistance; riding on elephants within the jungle up and down hills.

This part was amazing. We arrived to find 6 elephants waiting for us and one baby elephant. It was sooo cute and would follow you around.

So after our little play time, we got on these sort of thrones which sit on the elephants backs to be taken into the jungle. This is no normal elephant ride. Its hilly and the elephants are inclined to do their own thing, like suddenly stopping to eat random trees or sniff at poop on the floor. We were literally getting thrown all over the shop and holding on tight for dear life…

Then our ‘driver’ asked me if I would like to sit on the head of the elephant, where he was sitting…there was no way I was gonna turn down the opportunity (as none of the other people with us were given this chance), so on I got whilst the man went and sat at the back, on the throne, next to Anjali!

The next 40 mins were insane. I was holding onto the elephant’s head with every muscle in my body and honestly did think I would fall off. Anj I think was scared for me, which is really cute :), but I kept my cool and held on. However, a couple of times, Anj did nearly fall off herself and kicked me in the backside! Thanks Anj! 🙂

Anyways whilst I was on the head, the elephant in front kept pooping big lumps of mushy poo and farting like a trooper (as Anj says) in my face. Serious case of diarrhoea. I would like to say I turned away and closed my nose, but noooo I took a massive whiff and Anj took a picture…NICE…yep we enjoyed every minute of it!

Afterwards Anjali got the chance to feed the elephants bananas…it was so much fun and we kinda bonded with the big guys…gonna misss them…Then again we have our own pair of Hathis at home ;)!

Finally the last day of our action packed Chang Mai experience involved a Thai cooking class at the Asian Scenic School (Mitan, or as Anj calls him Moogle our very own SE Asia Google guide, convinced us on this one). We went to the food market, learnt about what types of veggies to pick out and the main thing, how to make Thai food like spring rolls from scratch, papaya salad, pad Thai (even though the dish “raad na” sounded interesting), green curry, massaman curry and veggie tom yum soup.

A really enjoyable and tasty experience, though I was a bit slow! Anj on the other hand smashed it; her papaya salad and soup were incredible! Know who’s doing the cooking at home when we get back! 🙂

Well…what a great end to Chang Mai…next is Phuket and our luxury part of the trip, the Kho Phi Phi islands! On and away with our flash packer trip – yep we taking a flight again! Bring it on!