Soaked in Tokyo

Tokyo let us down on the weather front yesterday, it rained all day so we still didn't get to any parks. We did however meet some amazing locals who helped us find our hotel.

We got off the train with very detailed directions to the hotel in hand, our still rather large bags, in the pouring rain. We were doing well and knew that we were within a block of our hotel when we made a wrong turn, just as the rain got a little heavier. We were stood at a road intersection doing that lost tourist thing of peering at a map then a road sign, then turning the map round and staring some more.

A young couple came over to us and asked where we were going, we told them the name of our hotel and they looked a bit puzzled, they whipped out an iPhone got up a map and started to lead us off in what I guessed was the wrong direction. I think the woman thought it was the wrong direction as well as she kept trying to show the phone to the guy but he dashed off and started speaking to an older lady who happened to be walking past. After 5 minutes of chatting and checking of the iPhone the older lady started to lead all of us along a side road back to an intersection that we had past 20 minutes earlier, at which point I realised where we had gone wrong and realised where the hotel was. I couldn't explain this in Japanese so we waved goodbye to the old lady and carried on following the young couple. 5 minutes later we found the back door to the hotel which had a handy map showing us the way to the front entrance, after a chorus of Arigato's we parted from our guides and were soon in the dry.

We spent the rest of the day running in and out of shops and coffee shops around Ueno, Shibuya and Harajuku.

In half an hour we are back on the Shinkansen to Hiroshima.

See you later Taiwan

I have tried to think of a witty way to put it but I just can't think of anything that comes close to; Taipei is ace!

I am generally a big fan of travelling in Asia anyway it is true, but Taipei has been a really great experience, while we were here it:

• Rained a lot
• Was cold
• Was grey
• Veggie food was hard to find
• Was busy
• We had to travel 30 mins on the train to get to Taipei city centre
• Did I mention it was cold

I did say that we loved it didn't I?

Because we were so far from the city centre and the weather was a bit dodgy, we haven't seen many of the big cultural attractions, in fact we haven't been to a single temple and have seen only 2 museums. We have spent our time walking the markets, small districts and the odd mall. We have jumped on so many different tube and local rail trains it is impossible to count. This is what has been so great about Taipei, around every corner there has been something to catch our eye, sometimes just an interesting sign, or maybe a piece of street art.

This shop seemed to have no Astro Boy stuff at all, just this loverly poster

A mad cow sculpture in one of the markets

Aimee always enjoys a nice cat on a sign

A game full of Stiches

We ate at some amazing food courts (there are so many food courts in Taipei it is actually hard to find your way out of them) and unusual resturants.

Yes in this restaurant you really do sit on the toilet to eat.

Us enjoying Christmas dinner, Taipei/Italian style

Our Christmas rissotto

The best way to sum up our time in Taipei was our Christmas day. The things we needed to work worked and we were thrown a few nice surprises. We were really hoping to be able to speak to people at home on Christmas day via Skype and we were not let down by Taiwan's internet, it was the best connection we have had on the whole trip. Later we went into Taipei to grab something to eat and checkout the Christmas vibe in the park. As always the train arrived on time and was quick and clean, although packed. We found the restaurant we were looking for in the student district using Taipei's ingenious (when you get the hang of it) road system. But the restaurant was closed for Christmas day, no problem there were loads more to choose in the area. We ended up in an Italian style place with very friendly staff and a small boy sat in the corner playing computer games.

After dinner we headed off towards the park like we had planned, we had heard there would be some Christmas type events there, we never made it to the park. 5 minutes from the restaurant a group of students were putting on a free battle of the bands type event in the street so we stopped and watched that for a few hours until our feet were num. The music was good but even better was the atmosphere of everyone gathered together.

Waiting to sound check

She really was singing "Purple Haze",

Red boots playing "Purple Haze"... really well.

The American guy was invited to gatecrash Jizz Trio's set (really their name)

Singing a balled to his girlfriend who was sat next to Aimee

Taipei (and Taiwan) were not on the plan for this trip, it was a late night, sleep deprived decision and it was inspired. We are hoping to get the opportunity to go back one day, there is a whole island to explore.

Dissolving trousers: Arriving in Kuala Lumpur

The days highlight - Indian sweets

We are currently enjoying the sites and sounds of Kuala Lumpur (KL to its friends) after arriving here a couple of days ago. As one or two people may know I came here a few years ago and there are plenty of things that I remember but most of it is just as new to me as it is to Aimee (I do have a very poor memory).

We arrived in KL on the bus from Melacca costing us the princely sum of RM12 each (or just 5 of your British pounds sterling) for two people to do a two hour bus trip. This was not a pickup truck with wooden benches and live stock; although the outside of the coach could have used a wash inside was very clean and included the delights of Under Siege 2 to entertain us, we even had armchair reclining seats with lazyboy style footrests.

We were dropped off at KL's new integrated bus terminal which makes The Jetsons look a little bit stone age; each bus bay has its own escalator to move arriving passengers to the air-conditioned main concourse which is well signposted in four languages and has information desks with real live staff and regular train connections to the rest of KL. If you are a public transport geek like me this place is a very shiny toy. It shows the best of what a growing economy can do when the need/money/red-tape triangle does not get in the way.

We rapidly left the space age as we got off the MRT in China Town, a metal walkway ushered us over a river of questionable aroma and out onto a chaotic intersection. With the road in near gridlock, buses and cars weaved slowly to get to their destination whilst mopeds squeezed through any available space. In typical Malay style the taxi drivers and guest house touts asked us politely if we required a lift anywhere and if we had a place to stay but did not push when we said that we were OK, one of the touts even pointed us in the right direction as we were puzzling over our map at a confusing intersection.

I think that we can be forgiven a slight amount of puzzlement as it is not often that your hotel is literally in the middle of a busy market. After being pointed in the right direction by the tout we made our way to the cross roads in the middle of the street market, stalls covered every inch of pavement and most of the street - pilled high with designer(?) watches and bags, gadgets and fruit. Behind the stalls were more shops and restaurants selling everything you can't get on the market - no sign of a hotel. Then I looked up, way up, and spotted a small sign in-between several large shop signs. Anyone who has had the misfortune to do anything strenuous with me will testify to the fact that by now I was actually dripping sweat to the point where my trousers were becoming transparent and sliding off. Navigating towards the sign whilst wearing a 22kg backpack, loosing ones trousers, through a crowded market place whilst being offered DVD's of questionable authenticity felt like a fiendish challenge from the Crystal Maze - at any second I expected Richard O'Brien's glimmering head to appear and offer some witty repartee to try and distract me from the task at hand. But we did make it to the sign, and then it pointed into a shop.

Market stalls with shops behind

So next we squeeze past a couple of racks of clothes to a glass door with the hotels name above it in beautifully polished letters. We open the door and our prize is a blast of chilly refrigerated air with the subtle sent of lemon cleaning products. The lobby and then our room are immaculate, the staff friendly and it is even possible to sit on the loo and have a shower at the same time (not that we have tried it but it is nice to have the option I guess). Cleaned and refreshed we headed out to find some food. Little India is not far so we got ourselves a curry fix before calling it a night after an eventful day. 

Me after shower and curry - notice the satisfied grin of a man with sweets in his bag

A funny thing happened the other day....

I am aware that I am one of those annoying people that tell incredibly long stories that are only funny to myself and the people who were there at the time. I really hope this isn't one of those stories because I really wanted to share this with you as I feel it sums up our time in Johor Bahru brilliantly. I hope you find it funny, it might have been the heat exhaustion that made us delirious but still....

After a hot but smooth journey from Singapore through to Malaysia (my first border crossing in SEA) we arrived at our hotel in Johor. Through the swanky glass doors we arrived into a light, airy lobby. Eager to put our backpacks down we headed over to the elevator to get to our room on the 5th floor. The elevator doors were already open so we walked inside the 4ft by 4 ft space with Matt pressing the button. The doors creaked shut, those of you familiar with the Tower of Terror will know how I felt slowly being sealed into this death trap, bracing myself for the impending plummet to the basement, but nothing happened. Hmmm. Matt pressed the button again and eventually we started to move up to the 2 nd floor, a lady had pressed the button wanting to go up to the 7 th floor. Pushing the door shut again she pressed the 7 th floor button. And down we went, yes, down! 5 minutes later, 3 very cramped, hot people arrived in the hotel lobby, at which point the manager opened the doors for us with a sympathetic smile. 'Where are you going?' he asked simply, '5 th floor' Matt and I replied. He smiled at us, one of those hopeless tourist smiles and looked inside 'you have to tell the man!' he said pointing upwards. Then realisation dawned on us, there was, of course, a man sitting on top of our cubical smiling away, waiting to be told which floor to pull us up to! Needless to say, from then on, we took the stairs! 

Where are we going again?

I thought that I would use the age old literary device of a cliff hanger to build the tension.

So after a lazy lunch on 13th September we headed out for Papamoa on the Bay of Plenty, looking at the map I had guessed it was about 2-3 hours. Aimee programmed the sat nav and off we set, still relaxed from our foot spa.

After about 2.5 hours drive time, about 5.15pm we arrived at a large supermarket and stopped to buy our tea, we grabbed some crusty bread, cheese and veg to make a tomato sauce. I was guessing that we were near to our destination now as I had started to see signs for things we would be doing the next day.

Back on the road sat nav guiding us we carried on enjoying the drive as we went up and down mountains getting more and more remote, all the time the sat nav giving us directions. Something should really have clicked when we started to go over the second mountain but it wasn't until we saw the welcome to Rotorua sign that we clocked we might be going the wrong way. We pulled over and checked where the sat nav was actually taking us.

Rotorua town centre! How did that get in there?

After putting the correct directions in we realised that we about 5 minutes away from the camp site when we left the super market. We were now an hour away from our destination, the time was 6.45 and the site doors shut at 8.

There was much less singing and joking on the trip back over the mountains, each bend that had seemed so fun on the way out now felt like a deliberate attempt to slow us down.

We made it by 7.50 and were greeted by two very friendly reception staff who played us Stevie Wonder I just called to say I love you and made me sing the chorus back to Aimee (and gave us two of the most delicious golden kiwifruit).

No harm no foul but from now on I will be checking the sign posts as we go, just in case.

LA - a bit like olives

Hmmm, so Los Angeles, where to start? I think I better say that by the time we left LA Aimee still was not sold on it but that I had started to see the silver lining. I think that LA is a bit like olives; not many people like them first time round but if you eat enough you suddenly realise you can't put them down.

We really were in Hollywood

After surviving 3 trips across LA's mad traffic (see yesterdays post) and a full day at Disneyland (see Aimee's last post) we arrived back at our hotel around 1 am exhausted and ready to drop. Unfortunately Hollywood had other plans for us, our hotel car park was full so we had to venture next door to the cage, a private parking compound run by a group of rather tough looking gents dressed in black. Before we could even pull into the cage we had to wait for the burly gents in black to move three drunks who were sprawled in front of the entrance. Much like valet parking we then had to leave our keys with said burly gents as the cage was also full and they would need to move our car when some of the other cars were moved. Looking back I don't think that I would do this again but we were having trouble keeping our eyes open let alone think straight. Wondering if we would see the car again we walked the 20 feet back to the hotel, past a drunk who seemed to require medical help as he was hardly breathing and had fixed pupils. Back in our room still wondering if our car would reappear in the morning (in 1 piece) we tried to sleep with the sound of sirens and base beats thumping outside.

Everything looked nicer in the morning

The morning came bringing fresh donuts and the car still as we left it, dirty but unharmed. We spent the morning finding excuses not to go out before finally having the confidence to make our way to the brilliant California science centre, Hollywood it seems is a different place by day, far less threatening, even the drunks and homeless have a smile for you. The science centre will be getting one of the space shuttles in the next few months so the exhibits are a bit up in the air at the moment but there were areas looking at how science is part of our everyday lives and a very in depth look at the range of climates and habitats on earth and how they are being altered by climate change. The kelp bed exhibit was something that we have never seen before and had a really diverse range of demonstrations explaining how all of organisms work together to create the ecosystem. We had to be kicked out of the science centre when it closed we could have been in there for hours more we barely saw half of the exhibits.

The huge kelp bed

Weird things live down here

Hollywood and Vine Metro station

We used public transport to get to the Science centre as we were not feeling up to the traffic but found LA's public transport system a bit sparse compared to New York. To get to the science centre from Hollywood we had to go through downtown and although it was a Saturday the streets were eerily quiet, everyone that we met along the way was friendly but it was still a bit unnerving with the streets so desolate.

Back in Hollywood we found a Mexican restaurant that specialised in organic and fresh produce, we shared the restaurant with a group of diehard Star Wars fans who had their lightsabers (the long glowing kind) stacked on an empty table. Walking back to the hotel we saw some heavily pierced, tattooed punks coming out of Seven 11 chatting to a jogger. This it seems is that difficult to find silver lining in LA, that everyone just lets everyone get on with being who they want to be.

On Sunday we explored some of the buildings in downtown LA like the spectacular Disney concert hall and the beautiful Bradbury building. We stopped in Little Tokyo and enjoyed some tasty food from the supermarket sitting in a little square with locals reading Japanese language newspapers. On the way back to the Metro we wandered down a street filled with Mexican traders (mainly selling clothes and electronics). Outside of Little Tokyo and Mexico street downtown was again quiet, there seemed to be only us and homeless folks around. Maybe it is because most people drive in LA but it often seemed to have a slightly empty feeling.

Just spectacular - Disney concert hall

We spotted some extreme knitting

Chinese theatre Hollywood

We spent Sunday afternoon returning the car and visiting the famous sights of Hollywood along with all of the other tourists. This was anything but quiet as street performers and tourists jossled for possition on the sidwalks with LA's crazy traffic racing past feet away. We stopped to enjoy the circus going past outside and enjoyed an icecream sunday at the Disney ice cream parlour. Later on in the evening after freshening up we had tea at a Vegan/Thai/Japanesse resturant that we found recomened on the internet. It was up a tiny back street that you would easily have missed if not directed to it and it was here that I really got my taste for LA. Not only was the food some of the best we have eaten but the steady stream of customers were also interesting, especially the two guys who converesed none stop in a fluent mixture of English and French using whichever words seemed to best describe what they wanted to say. The resturtant was small having only six tables and the lady serving frequently came back to chat to us and ask us about England, she was very interested in how many vegans there were in Birmingham.

Johnny Depp

Harry Potter cast

Star Wars

Pantages theatre

Aimee did not really want her photo with this guy 

The experiences each time we arrived at a destination showed the best of LA, interesting, tolerant, friendly people who wanted to share something with us. At these times LA felt much more like the small towns that we have fallen in love with on our cross country trip.

Southern hospitality - Eastern Florida to New Orleans

One country many states

I know it is a cliché but since arriving in the US just over a week ago we have met some really amazing people and heard some incredible stories. Every time we have stepped away from the tourist hot spots we have found people who wanted to tell us a story and hear ours. Since entering Eastern Florida this has been steadily increasing with every gas station, restaurant and hotel. Whether it has been a bit of light banter about the length of the queue (sorry line) or a detailed description of the local attractions and where we can find some veggie food.

An ice-cream shop with a story to tell

After 2 hours exploring Mobile (Mo-beel if you ever want people to know where you are talking about), we stopped for a drink in a great looking ice-cream parlour. While making our shakes the girl behind the counter gave us the low down on life in Mobile, a sleepy Alabama town with loads of history and beautiful buildings. Then a local man comes in and joins the conversation telling us about his childhood feeding the squirrels in the park peanuts from the peanut shop (still there). He went on to tell us about his days in college, his four children and work with local charities before asking about what we do and our journey.

It is true that you can find a chain shop on most corners (but often not McDonalds or Starbucks) but the people you meet inside are always different.

Life seems just a bit slower in the South