Lady Boy Water Buffalo and Trekking

The ride from seim reip back to thailand was not so bad as the way in. I still swear they took us on another road. We arrived on the other side all dusty and reddish from all the dust blowing into the bus.

If you see an ad for an air con bus ride in cambodia, let me tell you it is fake. There are no air con buses in cambodia. They sell you and air con bus ticket, then tell you the air con is broken, open all the windows and then say " air con!" as they laugh to them selves.

I was not laughing, my hair and my lungs were ashy red from a layer of dust. Getting into Thailand was so good, the roads, the service, the buses. everything screams 1st class after you come out of cambodia. we got dropped of on the famous Khao san for like the 10th time now... and we made our way back to Sawasdee house, for like the 10th time now...???
i lost count. We di how ever meet to nice nihingos (Taike and Sho) they are "little bit famous" comedians from Tokyo. Sho has been on tv in osaka, so maybe we might have seen him. Then he could live up to his "little bit famous" title.

we invited them to the sawasdee house with us, and then we all walked the streets around our guest house. We chilled in Bangkok for a few days, spending our days at the internet, relaxing, eating street meat and pad thai. On the wednesday (i think) we booked a 3 day 2 night jungle trek up in the north of thailand. While we were waiting in the lobby we met Jess (from Tacoma), and the 2 Hollands (Sabina and Marilese) we all became fast friends and embarked on the 12hr bus ride to chaing mai.

We got to chaing mai at about 6 am, and i dont think any one was fully awak because some idiots kept talking/screaming on the bus all night. They loaded our packs onto the top of a truck, then put 13 ofus in a Sangthew ( a truck back with 2 benches in it) and drove us to some random guest house. Usually his type of situation has scam written all over it, but we've been very lucky. The guest house was very nice and not a rip off. we were alowed to go and shower and rest, and be ready at 930 am for our trek to begin.

On our trek we had a fun mix of people. I really think we were lucky to all be placed in the same group because we were all basically the same age and really cool.
Our group consisted of
Jan, shiv, Matthew (california), Marilou (Cali), Matthew (NZ), 3 Danes (Morten, Morten, Kasper (denmark), 2 Hollands (sabina and marilese), 2 koreas (Can't remeber their names), aviel (Isreal) Jess (Usa)

we started our day at a small camp lodge on a mountain where we had a lunch of fried rice and fruit, then we got set on walking up a mountain in the jungle. Our end point for the day would be a hill tribe village at the top. On the way to the village we stopped at a water fall. The hike was hard, but not too painful.

At the village we stayed in a wood hut, with 13 mats and blankets in it. it was really rustic, and we were able to walk around the village and see people doing their daily bit. It was really nice. Northern thailand gets SOOOO cold at night, so bring a fleece and hoodie. Me and shiv could have never thought it would be so cold. The warmest ting we brought were long sleeve shirts. So we layered, and have been layering our clothes for weeks now!

We ate an awesome dinner at the lodge and them our tour guide "jim" started out some "games" sort of like weird thai ice breakers. it was good weird fun. The next day we hiked to another village at about 10am, then hiked to an even bigger waterfall camp and had lunch.

After lunch we hiked to another lodge in the jungle and proceeded to have the stranges night ever. the night started out with dinner and chat, and then a crazy thai drinkking game ( where no one got to drink) ensued. If you got the movements wrong jim took out a big "used" dirty grease charred pot and put the greassy charcoal on your face. it was nuts! you also had to dance like a water buffalo while this was going on.It was also LOI KRATONG during the time we were in northern thailand. Its custom to light a big landern and watch it flaot up into the air, Jim said the lanterns go to burma, but i dont know? we also wrote all our names on the lantern and made a wish as it sailed away. After that we all jammed around a fire and danced the night away.

The next day we started of on another hike, that led us to an ELEPHANT FARM!! me and shiv were really lucky to have a great guide walk us there. He told us all about witch doctors and the village people. many hilltribe people still see a witch doctor, but more so as a secondary specialist after a regular doctor. In the past, many people only saw the withch doctor.
he told us how to know if an elephant is male of female just by looking at the poop and pee. As well we learned how to tell the age of an elephant just by looking at the poop or pee!
We got to ride elphants through the jungle. I dont know how to explain that expeirnce, but it was nuts! they are so smart, and actually talk to one another. we were on the dad elephant and jess and morten were on the mama, and we had a baby elephant come along inbetween for the walk. it was amazing.

Next we went white water rafting. In our raft was me shiv, matt , marilou and jess. we screamed all the way down the rapids, and got so wet. I think thailand is so good at introducing people to all these amazing sports and experiences, some of wich you can try again when you get back to your home country. cause i know i would never have tried white water rafting in alberta!

Next we rafted down the river on a bamboo raft. Shiv was the main paddler and he sang "the log driver song" it was really amazing. Shiv said it was like his all time boy hood dream to paddle down a river, it was very tom sawyer.

To end the crazy day we had pad thai, and bought photos of our adventures! every one has to get their hussle on!
so amazing was this adventure!

Ankhor wat and my birthday week.

we are staying at the Ankhor Hilton hotel. But it is not really part of the hilton chain of hotels, becaus its only costing us 5 USD a night, and the lizard on the wall comes with the room. We got in really late at night, so we were pooped. The next day we decided to venture out on our own. WOW! Siem reip is pretty much a sess pool once you leave the touristy areas.

We were in searchof a street called "bar streeT" is is sort of the back packery area of the city. i dont think we found it at first. but what we did find were heaps of garbage, so many dirty people. The poorest scene I had ever witnessed. all i could think was " no one would beleive us if we were to try and describe thjis sight"

But all the while, you feel frozen. i could hardly take a picture because you feel so bad. there were these women pushing these carts with what looke like chilli covered shells. They were spread out on a peice of metal roofing. We never say anybody buy these shells, but the shell carcasses were every where.

We did find some hostels/hotels and some backpapckers. The area was a little dissapointing, but the prices of accomodations made us happy that we didn't get scammed by the hilton Ankhor.

It was really hot, but decided to keep on walking will we came to the real bar street area. We say lots of street kids just playing in the temple coutyards and on the streets. Cambodia has some of the worlds chicest hotels. But they are completely fenced in. Once you check in, you levae the filty street scenes at the front gate and enter a world of luxury!
I think that idea, speaks for cambodia in general. You get beautiful places, fenced off and protected from the real gritty cambodia.

We did run into some Tuk TUk favoritism wars. We were unfairly quoted a price by one tuk tuk driver, and our friend andreas from switzerland got a much cheaper price for the same tour. In the end we ended up switching drivers, getting into a little argument and getting a pretty good price for a tour of ankhor wat and surrounding areas.

On nov 13th (cambodia time) (ps. my birthday eve) we went to ankhor wat to watch the sun set! wow! is all i have to say. not many words can explain or express ankhor wat. All i can say is that, visiting ankhor wat is probably the most expensive thing you will do in SE asia. and its completely worth it. Its just so hard to comprhend that human made structures could be so complex, and intricate, and long lasting.

Cambodia has been sacked in war so many times, yet these structures have some how survived until today. Its a testament to human engineering and strengh of sprit.
Cambodians have gone through so much, and every where you turn you see povery and loss of limbs. The war has been over for nearly 40 years but its still very fresh here. there are still places you cant walk. and people have lost brother, children, husbands and wives to landmines, sickness and genocide.

Its such a sad country, yet you find some really nice people that want to show you what their country has to offer. its a grimy place, with alot of life, but we are so glad we went.

The next day we did a full on tour of ankhor wat and ankor thom. Banyan and other temples. wow wowo owowowozers!!
it was great. you can climb on the ruins, walk through them, hike to the ruins. It was like the jungle cruise at disney land times 1000!!

for my birthday dinner we watched "in her shoes" on the movie channel and then went for an apsara dance performance and dinner buffet. i was in heaven.
Dinner, dancing and ankhor wat, i couldnt ask for more!

Ankhor wat and my birthday week.

Cambodia at first glance

AFter leaving Krabi, we took the bus back to bangkok. Bangkok is sort of feeling like a base now. We have arrived here 3 times now, and its starting to grow on me. We used our time in bangkok sort of like a rest, relax and compose our selves time.

We got into bangkok at 6 am, and decided to be brave and walk from the down town area to the back packery area of town call khaosan road. I was a little nervous. bangkok at 6 am is sort of grimy, all steel bars, and strangley vacant. We sort of knew the area, because we had been driven around that area many times by tuk tuk drivers in the previous weeks. We were lucky enough to run into this well traveled euro man that pointed us in the right direction, and after about 20 minutes, we made it! We checked into our trusty inn: sawasdee house. If any one is travelling to bangkok, i would suggest it! www.sawasdeehouse.com . We then proceeded to sleep untill the afternoon. That night we just lounged and got some grub, did the internet cafe thing and relaxed.

The next night was a little but more intersting. We find our self at a nice pub sat next to this british guy named adrian and his thai wife named cat. The evening gets a little foggy from here on out, but here are some highlights in the order that i remember.
1. Adrian and cat introduce themselves and warn us of the dangers of drinking thai beer (it is supposedly fill of formeldehyde)
2. They also warned us about thai cigarettes, doctors, hospitals and traffic
3.Cat is a huge fan of Linkin park and wanted adrian to compete in an air gituar contest to win tixkets
4. we are at a strange bar watching a small german man perform the maddest air gitaur routine to black sabbath??
5. The order many buckets of vodka and red bull
6. Fortune telling starts
7. Cat performs a feice air gitaur routine to red hot chilli peppers and wins the tickets to linkin park!
8.me and shiv wake up with white string tied around our wrists.

It was such a strange, but interesting evening. The next few days in bangkok, we spent at the internet cafes and sampling new food establishments around town.

We decided to book our tickets to Cambodia through sawasdee house, and Im sort of glad that we did because they were very helpful and literally "walked" us over the border.
Walking into cambodia was an experience like none other. The first thing i saw was this huge arch way that was carved so inticately like the archways you might find at the ruins of ankor wat. Surrounding the border crossing were so many people pulling wooden carts, and the main road leading away from the border was a huge red dirt road. The thai side is pretty much freeways, paved roads and shopping plazas. The cambodian side was dusty, smelly, and full of people wanting money, anything really to help them out just a bit. It was really heart breaking. I honestly could not belive my eyes. You don't want to stare, but its hard not to. And you want to give some children money, but when does it end. You cant give every street child money. And then it just perpetuates the cycle of begging and being dependent of forigners for money. It was so hard.

Our bus driver took us the long bumpy way to siem reip, The bus we were in was "defying the laws of physics" as shiv said, because it was basically "off roading", but we were on the high way. It was insane.

The thing about cambodia that has stuck in my mind so feircely was the fact that in the poor areas, there was hardly no light and the smell of wood burning. there were no street lights, no paved roads, no lights (as in bulbs), only candle light and the occasional lamp. You could se dinner being cooked out side on a fire and it just seemed that you had stepped back in time a good 50-100 years.

I wont forget that any time soon, as soon as you hit the out skirts of the city, the road is paved, street lights appear, as do the most amazing 5 star hotels I Have ever seen. Being part of the bangkok-seim reip scam, our tour guide was also affiliated with a guest house in Siem reip, so of course as soon as we get into the city, he drops every one off at his guest house.

Im just glad that the place was nice, clean and well priced. The aim is to have you arrive so tired and worn out, you will basically just pay waht ever they say because you are to worn out to barter or get a cab and try looking for a place on your own. We won out this time! and our room had hot water and the movie channel.

Facing our fears and the krabi moto diaries

hello all, welcome to a new and exciting edition of opertaion osaka, with me , your host : JAN!! (applause)

any ways, so we are here in Krabi. we split from mum and tabs on nov 6th and took a small/medium sized boat (the longserm) from thongsala port in ko phan ngan to surrathani. The boat ride to surrathani, started off well enough, and then the waves started to get insanely huge and start rocking the boat. It was mindly scary and we were sittinf on the stern with a really nice world traveller girl named laurie (from beantown). She had been living in china, she speaks chinese quite well. traveked from china, to vietnam, to cambodia, to laos, to thailand, and then to india and dubai and lastly her aim was to settle at a womens health clinic in ethiopia. all we could saw was wow!!

she was really great though, at telling us what we have in store for the next big leg of our trip to cambodia and laos. She honestly quelled a little bit of my fear/nervousness and replaced it with a higher percentace of excitement.

Then the rain started... we were forced off the deck and into the under part of the boat that had the seats. this would have been real nice, except that the seated are of the boat was sooo heavily airconditioned. The temperature was about 4 degrees celcius. it was nuts.Everu one was shivering like mad, and we got going on this rant about fleece and a warm fire and socks. The 3 hour boat ride was really fun, but fridgid. As soon as we saw land, a monsoon rain hit the surrathani area and we were basically drenched. I could hardly see 5 ft infront of me. we got inside the port station, changed into drier clothes, had some fried rice (my new fave food) and then waited for our van to take us to Krabi.

Great scot! the van was airconditioned too. we basically felt like human popsicles. the good news is the ride was only 3 hours and when we got to the Krabi bus station, there weremany good prices (NICE!) guest house sales men to meet us. Score! we found a place called P's guest house and it has been a slice. great room, movie channel, hot water for 350 bhat.

the next day we booked a boat tour of 4 island and a snorkling trip. we were both really seas sick and drowsy from the boat ride the day before, so we took some gravol. bad idea. it made us really sleepy. The scenery was so nice, and we stopprd 1st off to railay beach and went to a cave that had really big sprit house in it. Thai people often belive that good sprits are all around us. They build these elaborate shrines and put them on their property. they put food, water, flowers, money etc.. into the shrine, with the hopes that the sprits will come to live and be happy and comfortable on their property. its great really!

After railay isand we went to poda island and it was a dream. it basically looke d like a movie set for a tropical isalnd. it was everything that i imagined a island in thailand to be. we were still really tired so we slept on the beach until lunch time. after lunch we got back on the boat and saw and island shape dlike a chicken (smartly named-chicken island). Then i thought we would go to a beach to do some snorkling, but the boat stops out in the middle of the ocean and the driver says this is where we will go snorkling.

ummmm... all i saw was really deep water, and i cant swim and am pretty much terrified of deep water. shiv was great! when i told him that i was going to stay on the boat and watch our bags, he was like "no, you have to try this!" and im so glad he made me get in the water and giv it a try. I was sooo scared, but i jumped in the water and i immeidieatly started to cry (very quietly) because i was so scared. the water was so deep and full of so many fish. i think i nearly broke shivs hand because i would not let go of it no matter what.

snorkling was such a distorted mind trip. under water the sea floor and coral looked almost like huge fish condo buildings rising up from the ground. then above water the sky goes on for ever. under water you almost forget you are human, and you feel like a fish in a huge aquarium. it is just wild.

Im so glad we did it. shiv looked like such a natural. It was scary for both of us, but im so glad we just jumped in and did it. go team. we got back in the boat and headed back to the main land. That night we went to a night market and had street vendor food and street meat.

The next day shiv did rock climbing at railay beach. i didnt go, but i saw the pictures from his day and they looked amazing. i will try and post them soon.there was one climb he didnt complete, but he took a picture of it, with the goal to complete i next time hes in thailand. I walked the town and did the internet cafe thing. Great day, and we wended it off with a huge grilled fish, rice and some changs!

Today we watched a supeb movie (aroundt the world in 80 days-with jackie chan) its really good. then we rented a moto and zipped around town. i feel really cool on the moto. but im sure we look more like the 2 guys on dumb and dumber. it so good though. we leave for bangkok this afternoon. 3 hours to surrthani on bus, then another 12 hrs to bangkok. im so excited. talk to you all soon.

big hugs from krabi.
love jan and shiv!

hustling the hustlers

So, I seemed to have missed out on our summer time in Osaka. But i will add those blogs later. What is really important is that we are in Thailand right now. We got here on the 25th of october and we flew from osaka to shanghai to bangkok.

It just feels so classy to say we flew via shanghai (dont you think )

well..our little taste of china was interesting. some things that stood out for us were the 20 minute tv commercials glorifying beijing and china and china eastern airlines. it was grand. the airport was super impressive, tons of stores,and i mean tons, selling the exact same over prices stuff. that was a little odd. but over all, the smog impressed me most.

we got to bangkok that evening and walked around the backpackers ghetto (khao san road) checked into our hotel, and the lady is telling us that our room is 800 bhat, when our online reservation says its 500 bhat. so we had a little bit of a scrummage with the lady and ended up paying the higher price cause she was very mean.

later on that night, tabs and mums flight arrived. i couldnt sleep, so i waited up for them to call our room. It was soooo nice to finally see them. It was like Skype 3D. there is nothing quite like seeing family after a long strech.

The next day we swiftly checked out of our comfy rooms and checked into more of a guesthouse type of deal. mine and shivs and tabs room would be what some might call (bare bones- cell room thai chic) it was grand. mum opted for the bathroom, room with aircon. shes not really roughing it. But i was suprised that she came with a hiking backpack. I never would have thought i would see the day mum would don a hiking backpack.

That day we got hustled into the tuk tuk world. oh my! you have to really experience the frustration, because its hard to type and really relay how frustrating, dirty, hot and ridiculous the whole system is. So, tuk tuks are like a motor bike that have a carraige attached. you can fit about 3-4 passengers on them , and 1 driver.
You ask them to give you a lift to a place, and they basically will take you to a jewelry shop, a tailor, a travel agency, or some other random place in order for them to get their gas coupon from the affiliated vendor.

The best scam came when we hired this tuk tuk guy to take us to the grand palace, and we promised that we would go to a travel agents and "pretend" to iquire about a trip in order for him to get his gas coupon. In exchange we got a free(round trip) ride to the palace. In reality, we got used and hustled. we completed his part of the bargain, but he ditched us at the temple. we felt sweaty, used and dirty.

Bangkok is good for 2 days. the 1st day everything is new and amazing and exhilarating, the 2nd day the grime and everything starts to get to you, by the 3rd day you want to commandeer your own tuk tuk to get stuff done.

The food in bangkok was amazing, and Sooo reasonable. We met some really fun peeps around the area that we were staying. A highlight for sure was the party (tabs b day) at the Shell gas station. So after about 12 am, the shell gas station closes down and it turns into this cool out door club/cafe. live music and ridiculously cheap drinks. We found our selfs here after a dinner of grilled fish and 50 bhat chang beers. wE then proceeded to drink thail herbal wine and cheap sprits till the place closed down.

The next day we went to the floating market wich was really nice. we rented a boat and rode down the canals while people tried to sell us all sort of food, fruit and souveniers. it was great.

While in Bangkok we got hustled into signing up for a 8 day vacation package. At first he quoted us 750 cdn dollars per person for hotel,transportation and 4 days in phuket, and then 4 days in ko phanan island. Yes, that sounds resaonable, but you can barted down almost anything in thailand. We left paying about 100 dollars CDn for the whole 8 day trip. grand!

So here we are in Patong beach. its a sort of sunny beach town. lots of euros. no americans or canadians. wich is often refresging. But europeans are sort of weird, and love wearing speedos/being topless etc.. you dont know if you are winning or loosing really. We leave for Ko phan an tommorow and we are really excited!

We will keep ya'all posted.
xoxo

Fuji Rock Festival and being ghetto

me and shiv have many similarities, one of them is that we love rock music, and have been wanting to go to fuji rock since we were both in junior high. We both love the beastie boys (shiv loves their older stuff, i like their newer stuff) and we booked our tickets for FRF the same day that the beastie boys would be headlinig the event. coincidence, i think not!

So here is where the adventure begins. We let jan plan this tip because jan likes to be in control... i booked all of our transpotaion to and from the concert, but we i didnt book accomodations for 2 reasons. 1) we could probably find cheap accomodations if we needed to (its japan!!) we could stay in an internet cafe if need be. and 2) we are too cheap and ghetto to spend for hotels!!!hahah

so the trip to niigata from osaka was long, but we had a really nice bus so it was a classy trip all the way. we got to niigata, wich reminded us of edmonton for some strange reason. maybe the flatness, the lack of a down town core...hmm. But any way we got to nigatta and it was only 7pm. so we decided to keep on going, and try to get to echigo yuzawa. The main station before you get the shuttle bus to the concert. We got our tickets for the shinkansen bullet train!!! and away we went. The bullet train by the way was fantastic. It was full of genuine tokyo business men eating salty fish snacks peanuts and drinking beer. It was what dreams were made of. It couldnt have gotten any more japanesey in car #12 of that shinkansen!

We got to echigo yuzawa station, and luckily it was the FRF station we neede to be at. For a while we were scared that we had bouth tickets to the wrong station. but we saw the banners and we had finally made it. So next we decided we have to find a place to sleep. We went to the FRF info desk and asked if there was an internet cafe near by, and the lady said "no"
a hotel---NO
a ryokan--NO
is the train station open---NO
for real?? we were seriously with out a place to stay, the lady was genuinly concerned fot us and called every hotel and ryokan (inn) near by. they were either full, or charging about 7000 yen per person.
She couldnt seem to understand why we were still saying no to all of her efforts, at one point she offered to have us sty at her place.. for 3500 yen per person, wich is a deal for a ryokan, but not a deal for cheapsters like me and shiv!

So we decided, hmmm either we can 1) walk this small deserted mountain town till the AM then take the shuttle to the concert or 2) go to the concert, be with the people and see what happens.
we chose #2 and got on the next shuttle for naeba ski resort, where the festival was being held.

This story is starting to sound like a choose your own adventure, but thats honestly what it was like the whole weekend.

we get to the ski resort and the town looks like a japanese version of jasper, quaint, but packed with people, tucked in the mountains. by the way osaka temperature is about 30 degrees and humid, and naeba temperature was about 17 degrees , no humidity, so a little chilly in comparison, and me and shiv only have on t shirts and have rain ponchos in my purse.

we decide to roam the town and look for a place to stay. after checking with about 20 places we start to feel like mary and joseph and relaizing there is no room at any inn for us. we have convinced our selves that we are about to be sleeping out side to night, when we see a bunch of earthy peeps going into this one ryokan. so we follow. and the man says sorry no vacancy...but we have showers for 500 yen... hmmm
what do we do 1) sleep outside 2) sleep in the shower alnight
we take his information and decide to get a cp noodle and think about it, on our way to the cup noodle we saw another ryokan with more shifty charachters, so we followed them.
Lucky for us we were greeted by a really drunk japanese lady that said something to the effect of. "this place is really nice, hot water..."
the door guy must have felt bad for us and gave us a coupon. we decided to stay at this place. it was a 24 hr onsen, so you can sleep in the water, or come to a common tatami room and pass out.

One thing about japan that is great is that there are so many people, it is basically written, that there will be some one in your very same perdicament. so we sat, ate our cup noodle, sat in the onsen, slept under the brigt lights on the tatani (in 1/2 hr spurts). The place was really full, and the lights were blaring so you couldnt really sleep, but it was nice to just lay down. we didnt have any blankets so we slept on our onsen towels. this ghetto ness would be the theme of our trip. i love it!

The next day we woke up nice and early, had a big breakfast of tonkatsu curry and headed to get some snack and then to the festival.
Fuji rock festival was worth every penny. it was in a valley that was intricatly decorated to look like a forest wonderland. disco balls in the tress, 7 music stages, tons of resturants, shops etc.. it was grand. even the rocks in the streams had been painted bright colors and had googly eyes on them.

The bands we saw were :hige, motion sity sound track, kula shaker, kaiser cheifs, !!!, lilly allen, feist , iggy pop and the beastie boys. My faves were feist, lilly allen, !!! and the beastie boys. !!! did an awesome performance that me and shiv try to reinact on a daily basis. check youtube for !!! in concert, you;ll see what we mean.

great day, but the night was coming and we had to make it back to echigo yuzawa station in order to get the 1st shinkansen back to nigatta so that we could make out bus back to osaka. phew!!

we took the shutte bus back to echigo, and tried to find a place to sleep, but echigo is way more dead that naeba. so we decided to follow people to see where they were sleeping/going. aftter many failed attemepts at following people, we decided to sleep in the park. we found a nice little park, it even had a foot onsen bath. we snuggled up on the park bench, covered our selvesin out towels and rain jacket and tried to get some sleep. Shiv fell asleep fast, but i remained awake, sort of like the muma bird i guess. well it was funny because as the time went by, more and more vagrants from the festival ended up finding a parkbench and falling asleep in the park. we were really homeless and ghetto, it was nuts.

so I finally drifted og to sleep, only to be awoken at about 3 am by a bright lfash light in my face. AHHH!!! was it the cops, no it was the fuji rock staff!. I was so excited, he was saying" sumimasen (exuse me) you cannot sleep in the residential areas of echigo" and i got so excited. I though he was going to take us to a fuji rock sleeping area, maybe even a ryokan.

But no... he took us back to JR echigo yuzawa station. he rounded up every one from the park, put them in a van and drove them to the station. me and shiv were laughing, and crying inside a little...

so the station alreadt had people sleeping there from the concert. so we picked a nice little place on the sidewalk, put down out plastic bag ( that had been carrying our garbage) laid down on it, used our towels as pillows and slept till morning.
so ghetto, so good.

the rest of the trip was luxury, nice bus and good food all the way to osaka. but after this trip, i will never look at my futon the same way, ever again.

FESTIVAL TIME!!!!

its summer and that means it time to go crazy and get sweaty. Osaka, has alot of festivals in the summer and they pretty much all include floats, costumes, drums and sake. we went to a nieghbourhood festival in bentencho. it was really nice, lots of dancing, drums and food stalls. The stalls sell every thing from eels, baby crab pets, rubber balls, tacoyaki, french fries. slushie cups, hello kitty parepheniliea and pet frogs. I so understand why japanese kids aren't afriad of insects. Its because from a young age bugs are treated like toys. In all of the "carnival games" you can win either toys or creepy crawlies. no aminal right here people. there was a "game" i kid you not. you have to stab the eel with a stake and if you "get it", you get to keep it. crazy heh? so kids just see beetles and spiders like a toy, fort of like a moving action figure. its crazy. here are some pics from the big gion matsuri in kyoto, we called in sick for this one, the tenjin matsuri, and the bentencho matsuri. xoxox