Bricole's Day In

After the chaos of yesterday evening, we had a relaxing day at our hotel in Ubud. It has a very exotic look about it and walking around the grounds is like walking through Adventureland at DisneyWorld. Our hotel is not actually that large in terms of rooms, however. It has only 17 rooms or something like that, so it was easy to walk around without running into other guests.

Later on, a former student of mine from my flight instructing days had gotten on a flight from Jakarta to visit me just for lunch before heading back. He and his wife treated us to one of his favorite places nearby. We sat on pillows on the ground. After about 20 minutes or so, Nicole and I kept fidgeting in an attempt to get comfortable. I had Nasi Campur, a rice dish with a smattering of other things like chicken, egg, and peanut encircling it. Nicole had chicken satay. My student managed to eat half  a duck.

Back at the hotel, Nicole and I scoped out the pool area which looks nice for later relaxation. It has been overcast all day and seemed to be threatening rain, but the most it ever did was very lightly sprinkle.

As it came close to dinner time, we ventured out a little bit into town, which consisted of some craft stores, hotels, spas, and lots of white people. You see, Ubud is an interesting place because Nicole and I can't really figure out why it is even a tourist stop other than the fact that it is a tourist stop. But how did it become such a stop is the question for the ages. Perhaps Instagram is partially to blame. If you see any promotional materials hawking Bali, you may have seen a young woman on a swing blissfully swinging above the jungle canopy as if she did not have a care in the world. This is actually a thing one can do, and is apparently so appealing to instagram people that it costs $35 for about 12 swings, or almost $3 per swing if you do the math.

So that care-free image that someone posted on social media is in actuality very forced. If the camera had zoomed out, it would reveal a line of people ready to spend way too much money on something that is, in effect, a lie. Now, having said that, I do not want to imply that Ubud in Bali is a miserable place. In fact, quite the contrary. We are feeling very relaxed here. The point of my rant is to show the kind of people that are drawn to this place. And as your favorite snarky blogger, I'm not going to lie about what I do or what I see. Ubud is not some kind of cultural mecca for Indonesia and I am not going to pretend that it is. It's a relaxing place for tourists such as myself, and a healthy reminder that what's important in life is actual experiences that don't always have to be shared with the rest of the world. I could post this picture of Nicole on Instagram and do all kinds of ridiculous hashtags about being inspired to be like Indiana Jones, but in reality we are like Marcus Brody and just lost at our own hotel.

On that note, I leave you with a shot of the Blanco Museum, just a few blocks from our hotel. What's at the Blanco Museum you ask? I haven't a clue. I can only speculate that it documents the rich heritage of the white, western, tourist in Bali. It most likely begins around the release of "Eat, Pray, Love," and continues up to a $35 swing.

Tomorrow we plan to leave the safe confines of our hotel, and really explore. #blessed

Singapore and Beyond

It was a quick trip to Singapore and we had to check out by noon today. In the morning, we spent about an hour just trying to pay for a ticket to ride the MRT downtown. You see, despite a credit card slot, and despite a super fancy system of being able to use one's phone as a ticket (supposedly), neither method of payment actually worked. We went to an ATM and I thought the $10 SGD notes would be fine for paying for a $5.60 SGD metro card, but the machines refused anything larger than a $5 SGD note.

After going to a hotel for change, we attempted the machines once more and were finally on our way downtown. We had a short walk in the 90 degree heat to find the Merlion, a mythical creature symbolic of Singapore. After all of our efforts, and my constant vocalizing of the word, "Murrrr-lion," Nicole was suitably annoyed and perhaps thought this statue was a "Meh"-Lion at best. From Merlion park we walked to a different metro stop and headed back to the hotel.



Now would be a decent time to remark that in spite of Singapore's modern ambitions and the whole cashless society thing, it has really failed in areas of basic directional needs. The signage is poorly placed. Every time we were following a sign to something, the signs would abruptly end and you would have to make guesses at the next intersection. For example, if the last sign you saw said to go straight, you could reasonably assume that you are to continue straight until told otherwise. This is not the Singaporean thought process, however. You are to go straight until you end up blocked by a science museum, realizing you've gone too far, turning around, then noticing that only after making a u-turn, do yo see a sign oriented your way now telling you to make a right and go down an escalator, which then leads nowhere, until you reverse again and see a sign telling you that it meant the elevator, which is TOTALLY different.

This pattern continued at the airport, where we had some time to explore. It has been repeatedly ranked the #1 airport in the world by various publications. The bar had been set high for our expectations. Check-in was easy enough, especially considering we were flying standby. Nicole had a bit of trouble clearing emigration because her fingerprints from the entry did not seem to match her thumbprints on her way out. I kept close watch on her until they just shrugged their shoulders and released her into the terminal. In an unrelated note, all gum in her possession mysteriously disappeared and it's
unclear at which stage of our travels this occurred. My nail trimmers were confiscated as well. I rolled my eyes when told it was too sharp, which was a dangerous move on my part. One that is surely punishable by caning.

In any event, we had a few hours to explore Changi Airport, and it was fine, clean, and adequate, but it didn't knock my socks off. In many areas, the ceilings were very low and the carpeting was something out of the 70s. Places that had been promoted by the airport's main website underwhelmed. A cactus lounge, for example, an outdoor space with . . . cacti, was really just a smoking area. After killing some time, we boarded our KLM flight to Bali, a two hour flight away, which for some reason, required a Boeing 777-300ER to make the trip. After clearing customs, we were assaulted by taxi hawkers.

One basically followed me into the bathroom. I was very much losing my patience for this kind of thing, and I refused to reward their aggression. We approached a quiet older man standing next to a large sign with fixed rate cabs and called it good enough. After dealing with a surprisingly large amount of traffic, we arrived at our hotel in Ubud more than an hour after leaving the airport. It is our hope that the masses of crowds from earlier ended up just staying in trashy beach hotels and that we found a bit of an oasis up in the hills. So far at least, our place is very relaxing...

The H-Moon

Although United currently boasts one of the longest non-stop flights from LAX to Singapore, we elected to break up the long flight, by stopping off in Japan. We weren't entirely sure if we'd have another 7 hour flight in us after arriving, but ultimately decided it would be less stressful to just push on and not have to worry about going back to the airport the following day. We arrived in Singapore around midnight and took a taxi to our hotel, where we promptly collapsed.

After a night's sleep, we were recharged (at least temporarily) to go out and explore the city. We were about a mile and a half from the Gardens by the Bay attraction, which other than eating and shopping, is pretty much the only major thing to do in Singapore. Even TripAdvisor recognizes this fact and lists the MRT (the city's subway system) as one of the top things to do. By noon, we'd seen it all, including the Cloud Forest section of the park, which is an extra fee. It was quite hot and humid out, and Nicole was struggling with her shorts, which seemed to be a few sizes too big.

We walked aimlessly around the Marina Bay Sands Hotel/Resort and Shopping Center, but the stores were a bit high brow. Nicole was kind of looking for a belt so as to not accidentally moon someone (which is a crime punishable by caning presumably), but neither of us had the budget to buy a $1000 belt from a store like Versace. The Loft and the GAP certainly did not have a presence here. Singapore is kind of a crazy place. It's like the entire city was built in 2012. It's only in tucked away back streets, that a hint of old architecture seeps through. Everything else is just some kind of massive glass architectural wonder less than ten years old.

After recharging back at the hotel, we ventured out once again -- first for crepes at a French cafe nearby. Then we walked back to Gardens by the Bay because they light up all the fake trees at night. They also have a sort of light show that they do to music, but having been previously underwhelmed by such light shows, I didn't make it a point to sit around and wait for it to happen. The same could not be said about the hundreds of people that seemingly showed up out of nowhere to do just that.

Nicole and I kept walking to less traversed areas of the park to escape the crowds. We could still see the fake trees from a distance and could witness how one would periodically change colors or light up its branches every once in a while. It didn't seem like the kind of thing that was worth getting bumped into over and over again while simultaneously ruining 30 different selfies at any given moment.

We timed our exit from the gardens poorly and ended up in an ever growing mass of people who then merged with the crowds from the shopping center at Marina Bay Sands. Soon we felt very overwhelmed and the MRT kiosks would not accept credit card for a single ride and the line for taxis was about 100 people long. Luckily the line moved fairly quickly and we got dropped off near our hotel, where I grabbed a bowl of Hainanese Chicken Rice with Curry. I cleaned my plate and my sinuses before going back to the hotel to collapse once more. 

Time to Evacuate

We were up fairly early again, and fast-moving clouds were covering the city. I brought my rain jacket when we went for a walk. We had first walked toward the Kyoto Railway museum as I liked the idea that their gift shop might have a Shinkansen t-shirt that was also a character. Eyes, and nose, and a big smile, but ALSO a train. The Japanese sure do love characters . . . and so do I. Because we were up ungodly early again, the museum and store were still closed, so we walked to nearby Toji Temple instead.

As we walked around the complex, the clouds parted just enough to show a little bit of blue sky. And just a little bit. Within 30 minutes of these pictures being taken, it started to rain steadily.

And speaking of that rain . . . remember the typhoon I mentioned in the last post? Greg and I had a bit of a chat about our airport options, flight loads, and all the things that normal people don't have to worry about. Due to pending tropical storms and such, there was a good chance that flights were going to start getting canceled. That prospect was a bit concerning since the backlog on standby passengers would surely overwhelm the system and we could be stranded.

Our best bet, we decided was to take the train to Osaka-Kansai Airport, which was the closest. It was, unfortunately, also in direct line of Typhoon Cimaron.

After doing a bit of last minute shopping near the train station, we bought train tickets to Kansai airport. The lady selling the tickets warned us that we had to leave by 3:00pm because all remaining trains for the day were canceled due to the typhoon. That statement made it all seem a little bit more ominous and real. I'd been watching the weather radar pretty closely, and it was a slow-mover, so I had estimated it wouldn't reach land until about 10pm, five hours after our planned departure. The fact that there would be no trains after 3pm was a bit disconcerting to say the least.

After our hour and a half train ride to Kansai Airport, we breezed through security and emigration control with the efficiency that only the Japanese could deliver. Even the airport felt a bit muggy. We ate our last meal in Japan with a bit of sake on the side. It wasn't very good, but it is also possible that I just don't like sake.

Then we made our way to the gate where we were relying entirely on United's numbers being wrong. It technically showed oversold seats, but I convinced myself that this was a lie.

Maybe this was wishful thinking, but I felt it a better option than going all the way back to Tokyo, whose loads were marginal at best. That being said, if we didn't get on this United flight out of Kansai, we would be stuck...

Fortunately, we got cleared into business class seats and after we reached our cruising altitude, the Captain reported that they were close to canceling the flight. Evidently, winds had already accelerated to 75mph within 30 mins of our departure. Some nine hours later, we landed in San Francisco and then back home.

Shinkansen to Kyoto

Greg decided to get up and take pictures early in the morning. He banged around all his camera gear and tripped a few times to make sure I was also awake. While I attempted to get some rest, my body refused to fall back asleep. When he returned, we grabbed some breakfast from the 7-11 down below and decided to head to the train station. We hopped on a Shinkansen to Kyoto and were in a new city hundreds of miles away by 10am. We left our bags at the lobby of our hotel, and went to Fushimi Inari Shrine. You may recognize this better as the place with the rows and rows of red torii gates. Many other people knew this as well. In spite of the selection of pictures I am choosing to display on this blog, it was nearly impossible to get a picture without someone's appendage sneaking into the the frame. We had to be quick.

Note the arm creeping into frame. People really do ruin everything. And yes, I understand I am part of the problem.










We hiked quite a ways up the mountain before electing to turn around. The heat was quite oppressive with humidity to match. The weather patterns in Japan have been very unusual this summer, with a record-breaking heat wave claiming human lives. There are a pair of typhoons moving in on the Japanese mainland bringing unstable tropical air, which has not aided the mugginess. If there is any bright spot, Japan has plenty of vending machines, even at the shrine, so we could try and stay hydrated.

We returned to our hotel to complete check-in. We are staying right at the train station, which is like its very own city. Not only is it the massive above-ground facility you see here, but it extends well under ground with an entire subterranean complex of food stores, restaurants, and shops which ultimately branch under the surrounding streets and connect to other massive department stores and shopping complexes. It's really quite an impressive engineering feat.

We ate at the top of the train station, where we had a sort of katsu chicken and rice dish. The gentleman sitting next to us explained, in detail, how we were eating the dish completely wrong. We were to crush the sesame seeds in a bowl with a special wooden muddler of sorts. Then we were to pour the tonkatsu sauce over the crushed sesame. The rice was to go in its own bowl. Basically, everything was supposed to be separated and organized. I had made the egregious error of wanting to mix everything together like a Hawaiian plate lunch, which brought a bit of a laugh from the gentleman sitting next to us. I wish I had pictures or video of this exchange, but I was too embarrassed -- hiding in shame like a Japanese schoolboy.

After lunch, we took a long walk to Kiyomizu-Dera Temple. You see, while the Kyoto train station is really impressive as a structure, it is a bit lacking in its actual rail network around the city, so I brought Greg, a fragile, and fair-skinned individual on a sort of trail of tears under the afternoon sun.

We never actually went in to the physical temple itself because it was under massive scaffolding and renovation, so we hung out on the outside and awaited sunset from our elevated position on the hillside. Misters spritzed a bit of water from a nearby shelter, but it all seemed to evaporate before reaching my body. As the sun disappeared behind the horizon, Greg and I started walking down the narrow pedestrian streets and encountered another pagoda shortly thereafter.

The pagoda was part of Hokanji Temple, and as we raised our cameras to try and capture it, 20 people in our vicinity decided to stop and do the same thing. Such is life...

We enjoyed our walk through the old areas of the city. Sorry. I enjoyed the walk. Greg was suffering from blisters, and all sorts of ailments. He was limping along behind me like a whale struck by a harpoon. To ensure he didn't end up as sashimi in Tsukiji, I hailed a taxi to take us back to the station.

Romping around Tokyo

As is pretty standard with large changes in time zones and traveling, Greg and I were up at 5am. Most things didn't open until 10. We first walked through the periphery of the Tsukiji Fish Market. Each time I come, the restrictions become more and more strict on this famous market. I guess tourists such as ourselves are ruining the whole experience by standing in the way in the narrow aisles and slowing down the sale of fish with our cameras and instagram selfies with giant fish.

By now, things were starting to open, so we went to the Edo-Tokyo Museum. It covers a lot of history and has a lot of life-size structures to liven up the aforementioned history. Things got interesting in the 20th century. There was a temporary exhibit of photographs from the last 150 years. Naturally, this covered World War Two, and what was fascinating was not just the complete destruction of the city of Tokyo, but the fast pace at which it was rebuilt.

One thing I have learned about Japan in the 30s and 40s, is that they have a selective acknowledgement of world events. Unlike Germany, which has grappled with its dark past head on, Japan acts more embarrassed while at the same time denying through omission. The museum, for its part, did acknowledge the war and made light of poor tactical decisions on the Japanese side that led to so many deaths during the firebombing of Tokyo, but it fell short of really explaining the root causes of all these horrific events.

After the museum, we walked to the Akihabara, or electronics district. One of Greg's "must-sees" was Yodobashi Camera, which is not just a camera store, but a massive complex of anything electronic covering over 8 floors with anything from refrigerators to rice cookers, video games, cell phone cases, and Star Wars toys. Greg was having great debate over whether to buy a particular camera lens or not. He would save over $100 by buying it in Japan, but we had to weigh the pros and cons over a couple of beers and okonomiyaki (Japanese pancake with various stuffings). We ate at the top of Yodobashi after narrowing our choice down from the 20+ options of different restaurants. This setup is pretty common in Japan with self-contained shopping centers. And if the anticipation isn't killing you, Greg did decide to buy the lens. He was very happy.





We returned to the hotel and then proceeded to take some pictures at night from a nearby pedestrian overpass. Below is the outcome of that venture.

For our final act of the evening, I took Greg to Shibuya crossing, the busiest crosswalk in the world. I tried to get us an elevated view of the intersection, so I went into a multi-level shopping center in hopes of finding a cafe or restaurant overlooking the street. We had overpriced beers and parfait on the 8th floor of the building while watching the streets below. Then, after our unfortunately high bill, we discovered that there was an actual viewing platform on the roof that usually charges, but for whatever reason was now free. Oh well...I shall keep this in mind for next time.

Japan Again

Those in the know may be aware to the fact that I am fixing to be wed in a few months. As is customary with such events, I embarked on a so-called "Bachelor Party" to Japan. Super cliche, I know. I was originally thinking Scotland, but they seem to have a problem with midges and throngs of tourists this time of year. Thusly, I embarked from LAX to Narita with the gentleman in the blue shirt sitting behind me. He weaseled his way into United business class and insisted on following me through customs and would not leave me for the rest of the trip.

The gentleman in blue, whom we shall henceforth refer to as "Greg," remarked that he was very happy with the ubiquity of bathrooms in Japan as well as their overall cleanliness. These are things that are very important to him. While searching for an ATM, we were interviewed by a Japanese TV station and asked why we came to Japan. I did a bit of research on this, and apparently it's an ongoing segment every Monday.

They were intrigued with me because this was my fourth visit. When asked why I keep coming back, I said because people are very respectful, friendly, and I like all the buttons on their toilets. I'm not sure if something got lost in translation because it didn't elicit the chuckles I had hoped for.


We arrived at our hotel in Tokyo sometime  around 4:00pm. While "Greg" claimed he slept a lot on the plane, I did not. That being said, we set out to do a bit of exploring. We took the subway to Shinjuku to look at all the lights and take in the chaos.

From Shinjuku, we walked all the way to the Tokyo Tower, which is not particularly close, but we didn't also want to deal with rush hour in Tokyo and getting pushed with white gloves into a subway. We eventually got there, and it was a fairly calm walk once we got out of Shinjuku at least. We ate crepes underneath it. It was a complete pseudo French experience with Japanese crepes being eaten under an Eiffel Tower imposter.

We eventually made our way to a subway stop and headed back to Ginza, where our hotel is located. I had been awake for about . . . I don't know. I've been awake too long to do math. Until tomorrow...