Day to Day

The hostel was suspicious! We had a plastic bag containing such essential items as Aoife's toothbrush and make-up remover callously stolen from our "private" room by the "cleaners". Aoife spent most of the following morning looking either one of (and sometimes both) (a): annoyed and (b): bedraggled - day old mascara is not a good look...

They were nice as pie in the hostel until we handed over the money. Once we had handed over the money we were informed that a mistake had been made and that the spacious room complete with fridge, tv, and private bathroom (door included - we'll get to this..) had been booked by someone else. Despite our most withering dirty looks we ended up fridgeless, windowless and bathroom doorless for the exact same price - hooray! We moved next day. Revenge was ours however! They may have ripped us off and stolen our toiletries but we have the last laugh... Wait for it.. We have given them a scathing review on the hostelworld website! How they will rue the day they crossed us...

Anyway, fresh from ruining one hostels future, we decided to cast our keen reviewers eye over another of Kowloon's snazzy establishments in the decidedly more authentically chinese sounding "ChungKing Mansions" which Lonely Planet describes as a "huge, ramshackle highrise dump in the heart of Tsim Sha Tsui". We are staying in the "Traveller's Hostel" on the 16th floor. Sure, we may not have a window or a bathroom door... but its a LOT friendlier, half the price, and we still have all our toiletries. And what do Lonely Planet know anyway...

On Monday evening we surprised one of Aoife's relatives (whom she had never met) with a phone call out of the blue. Harry (O' Neill) very kindly and gamely suggested we meet up that very evening (without even checking our credentials!) simply laughing and saying that this is the way Irish families operate. We all had very enjoyable pre-dinner pints of Clonmel's Finest (Bulmers) before heading across the road to a thai / vietnamese restaurant. The food was gorgeous (soft shell crabs, red snapper, duck, beef fillet, baby back ribs coconut prawns and in lip smackingly good spices and sauces). It was REALLY nice and to say that this was not the style to which we had become accustomed would be a gross understatement. The company was excellent too - the fact that we didn't know each other from Adam seemed to be no obstacle! If you are related to Harry (tenuously will do!) and in the area we recommend you look him up!

Back to noodles for lunch the next day.. (don't knock them - they fill the two of us up for the whole day for 7 euro (drinks included)!!)

Today we decided to try and squeeze in as much of the remaining Hong Kong tourist stuff as possible (we had already ticked off the Victoria peak tram and we are old hands at the Star Ferry across the harbour). Under Harry recommendation we made our hungry way to Maxim's Palace on the second floor of the City Hall for Dim Sum. Maxim's was full of crazy ladies zooming around the place with trollies groaning under the weight of food. Each lady will approach your table and offer quite insistently her "wares" (read food here). The background noise was provided by the hordes of people sitting towards the edges of the function room sized hall (we were seated at table 405) playing mahjong on special tables. The whole experience was both tasty and surreal (and we don't even want to think about what was in some of the stuff we ate as we were ordering blind). After our late lunch, having abandoned our plan to see the worlds longest escalator, we went on a whirlwind tour of the excellent (and FREE on Wednesdays!) Hong Kong Art Museum. We now know the difference between a Ming and a Qing vase (sort of). Since we had time to kill we decided to take a jaunt around the very high tech sounding Hong Kong Space Museum (also free on Wednesdays ). Our high tech aspirations were dashed within two minutes of entry. The fact that the place was opened in 1980 and had yet to be updated became apparent in the first video we came across which praised the new sci-fi movies "Star Wars", "Blade Runner" and "Alien" for their new and realistic special effects.. Other exciting exhibits included "How craters are made" (which consisted of dropping a "meteor" onto the "moon surface" - ball. Sand.), and the informative video of "modern astronauts" (apologies for all the inverted commas in this post!) complete with Tom Selleck moustaches and 70's haircuts. They should definitely re-brand the place as some sort of retro "Blast from the past" type affair - it would be so much better! We ended our days tourist activities by taking in the 8pm Hong Kong light and sound show. The show consists of all the buildings on the waterfront flashing various colourful neon lights and lasers in time with music. Another surreal experience of Hong Kong - was kind of cool though..

We are booked on the 15:00 Not-So-Express to Beijing tomorrow (dispel any images of the comfort Bond enjoyed in "From Russia With Love" - this is not the Orient Express and we are in the hard sleeper carriages). We will let you know how the 24 hours on a train goes (Aoife loves confined spaces so i'm sure it will be a laugh)!

Hope you are all well,

Tadhg & Aoife

We arrived back in Tokyo on Thursday a little later than expected due to us missing the shinkansen we had planned for (they really do leave exactly on time!). We decided we would try and go to Tsukiji fish market the following morning (and planned to follow it up with some sushi - when in rome and all that..) so we lay fairly low for the day due to the early morning start that would be required.

The following morning we woke up at 10am - about 5 hours later than we had planned We managed to sleep through the alarm some how so that was the end of the fish market. Aoife was determined not to give up on the sushi plan so after a very small amount of searching we picked up two takeaway sushi lunch boxes from a place in Asakusa. It seems that eating on the street insn't really done so much in Japan so it took us a while to find somewhere to eat our picnic. We eventually found a bench outside a train station and so proceeded to gobble up our sushi (with death-defying chopstick skill I might add ) As with almost everything we ate in Japan - was delicious (except maybe for the piece with fish eggs on it - I had a bit of trouble with the texture of that one).

We then headed off to an english language book store to try and trade in our encyropedia britannica sized guide books for something either a bit less ungainly or some yen. We instead managed to leave he bookstore with 6 books and less yen then we entered with (although in fairness they were smaller books... )

For our last night we decided that a quiet and more sensible night was in order (given that we would be attempting to get up at 5am again) so we decided to call over to Emilie in Hatchobori. We acted the guinea pig and allowed her to ply us with various Japanese snacks which included a variety of sugar coated beans and peas (very wierd), and a triangle of rice filed with tuna-mayo (much more agreeable!). For our last supper we went out for something kinda Japanese - Yakiniku. Its basically a BBQ type affair where by you cook your own food on a charcoal grill built into your table. Was great fun and very tasty - definitely reommended. Made it home @ about 12:30.. Dragged ourselves out of bed the following morning and made it to Narita Airport with oodles of time to spare.

We were both sad to leave Japan - we really loved it and if we get the chance (or can manufacture one) we'll definitely be back!

We arrived in Hong Kong this lunchtime (Saturday). We have ditched the warm clothes for the time being because its about 26 degrees celcius here. We are staying in a hostel dormitory in the Kowloon area of Hong Kong (trying to offset the damage done to the budget by Japan! ).

Its an awful lot less dodgey than we were expecting. Our hostel is a bit suspicious (its on the 13th floor of a shopping centre called Mirador Mansions but I think they were being ironic when they named the building...) but otherwise it feels quite safe here and the food so far has been tasty. We our going to try and get some proper touristy stuff done tomorrow before we start planning for our trip into the great unknown that is mainland China. Should end up taking plenty of snaps tomorrow so watch this space...

hey hey! Apologies for the delay in updating this - we've been moving around quite a bit..! So since we last updated the blog we have moved on from Goa. The last few days of our time in Goa much the same as the rest of our time there - eating, drinking, sleeping, and getting eaten alive by bugs - Arrgh! (see photo of my mangled feet - WARNING - not for the faint hearted!).
We chickened out in the end and decided to get a flight to Mumbai (very decadent!) rather than face a whole day travelling to Mumbai on a train / bus. Mumbai was definitely a LOT more humid than we were used to but it wasn't unpleasant once we got used to it. What we saw of Mumbai (in one day) was great! A whirlwind day of sightseeing, rejecting roles in Bollywood movies (really! it did happen! There seems to be a place in Bollywood for us pasty Irish people!), good eating - the best of which was two kebabs that we procured from a street stall near our hostel (another religious link - was a salvation army hostel). We bid India a fond farewell and headed east..

After 24 sleep deprived hours and three suspicious airline meals we touched down in Tokyo. After blagging our way through the quarantine questionnaire ("Have you suffered from any of the following symptoms in the past four weeks?..." - we ticked "NO" in all the boxes as we wanted to avoid be placed in a plastic bubble for our 10 days in Japan) we wandered bewildered　about the airport trying to find our way out and onwards to the hostel. Super friendly stranger no. 1 helped us buy our tickets, super friendly stranger no. 2 got us on the right platform, and super friendly stranger no. 3 got us onto the next train safely. In short - everyone is REALLY nice and helpful. After wandering around Asakusa looking for our hostel we decided to ask directions from a man who was cleaning the outside of his shop. He started trying to explain the way in broken english, and then thought better of it when he saw the confused looks on our faces. One minute later he had retrieved his bicycle and was accompanying us to the door of our hostel (he also seemed to like that we were irish - "アイルランド!". Thats ireland in japanese..)

Our hostel in Tokyo has been great (The Sakura Hostel in Asakusa) - really clean, comfy beds, really friendly people, etc. We have, as of yet failed to do much sightseeing in Tokyo, mainly due to the influence of our official guide and entertainment coordinator Emilie Kearon. We arrived on Thursday night and just slept because we were totally shattered after all the travelling. We agreed to meet Emilie for dinner on Friday night so we muddled our way through the subway system (see photo) we met with her in Roppongi - the entertainment district. We met with some of Emilie's friends (Tim, Nisha and Nisha's father who had just dropped in to town for the weekend from London!). The restaurant was really cool (rumour has it that the restaurant inspired the set for the big fight scene in Kill Bill Vol. 1 - cool eh? :) and the food was fantastic (blackened cod was particularly tasty!). A great night was had by all and we topped it off with our first taste of cider (we don't count the diesel which was mislabelled as cider in Goa) since leaving the homeland. We are not proud of ourselves that we got the cider in an Irish bar (cliche or what?! But where else are you going to get cider...?!) but we did have a good reason - we were on an official scouting mission for a venue which would be showing the rugby. Scouting mission was a great success. As the subway doesn't run between midnight and 5am it transpired that we had stayed out too late (or not late enough...?) and we were forced to get a taxi home - BIG mistake. We had already stretched our wafer thin budget to death defying lengths to pay for our big night out and we were ill prepared for the financial blow that we were about to incur. Ouch. (but on the upside the taxi are dead fancy - they all have GPS and the doors open and close themselves. It really freaks the drivers out if you attempt to use the door in the old fashioned "Manual" way).

As a result of our late night out the next day was a total tourist right off. We stayed in bed until well after lunch time and we had to conserve our energy for the days main event - Ireland V England in the rugby. The match wasn't due to be on until 2:30am (or 26:30 as they euphemistically put it here) so we decided to get the last subway train into town and then get the first one home in the morning. Anybody who would be interested in the result will already know it but for the record - we whipped them! :D Needless to say the bar was jammed, patriotism was at a feverish level, and a great time was had by all (except the four english guys who turned up to watch the match - hee hee..). We met Darren and Deirdre from Dublin and ending up sitting and yapping with them until about 8 in the morning (the bar really should have been shouting "Are you right there folks, please!?" long before that..). With Egg McMuffin and portion of McNuggets in our greasy little hands we made our weary, but happy, way to the subway and home. We made it into bed at a sensible 9:30am. Needless to say, Sunday was also a bit of a sightseeing write off. We made our way to Harajuku to try and spot some of the Harajuku girls but we were waaaay too late (we saw one...). We met up with Emilie and Jose in a 300 yen bar (an excellent invention deeply appreciated by our wallets where by everything in the bar is, you guessed it, 300 yen) for a few drinks and a bit of tourist advice for our impending trip to Kyoto and beyond. We were quite sensible and managed to make it to the hostel before midnight for the first time since we got to Japan.

Monday morning we liberated ourselves from our rucksacks (deposited them in the hostel in Tokyo)and made our way on the Shinkansen (bullet train - sweet!) to Kyoto. We had a bit of trouble getting a place to rest our heads but after a wee bit of ringing around and a lot of walking around we found another nice hostel. That evening we didn't do that much - we pottered around Gion, spotted a few Geisha (didn't manage to get a photo - they can run pretty fast in those shoes!), and we spotted another Irish bar that we just "had" to visit. (no explanation - see photo).

Yesterday we did our first actual sightseeing day (not bad going...?). We went to the Golden Temple (which was very striking and photogenic) and then on to Kiyomizu Temple (which was fantastic! up the top of a really big hill but definitely worth it!). We then walked around the old part of Kyoto, down lots of narrow winding streets all with traditional shop fronts and stumbled upon another temple (Chionin Temple - also very nice). Both culturally fulfilled and drenched (rained really heavily and made Aoife momentarily homesick.. hehe - just kidding...) we retreated to the hostel intending to update the blog. Priorities change surprisingly fast after a few beers and we forgot all about ye :p We got chatting with Zack and Paul who we met in the hostel and with Paul as our guide we hit the town again! The 200 yen bar was a great success! We made friends with two Japanese guys - Takaki and Masaki (again - no joke!). We had a great time teaching them english and them teaching us Japanese (didn't entirely trust all the things they taught me though because every time I said "okini" - was was meant to mean "arigato" or thank you - Takaki almost passed out with all the giggling he was doing). We recommended each other lots of different drinks and we all had a great time - even got to try some sake..

Today we came to Hiroshima (slightly later than planned thanks to last nights exploits) and made our way to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. We both would highly recommend a visit if in Japan - was an incredibly interesting and non partisan take on the whole affair (dropping of the first atomic bomb... in case you didn't know...). We could easily have spent longer in the museum but it came to closing time and we were shooed out (in an incredibly polite fashion - japanese style shooing). This evening we went to the cinema (the most comfortable cinema in the world!) and saw a very strange movie called "Klimt" with John Malkovich. Unfathomable.

Back to Tokyo tomorrow to try and actually see some of the city and then on to Hong Kong on Saturday. The adventure continues...

This is a test to see if the new gallery feature works..

On Monday we decided we had quite enough of Costa Del Goa so we set our sights on one of Goa's more tranquil and laid back beaches - Anjuna Beach. Anjuna is the next beach up from Baga so we got up early on Monday morning (Ireland's defeat the previous night in the rugby still weighing heavily on our minds..) and we grabbed a taxi. We found some basic accomodation - it has no hot water at all & shared toliet facilities, but its cheap and relatively close to the beach and the village.

We are very much enjoying life here in Anjuna. Plenty of good food and cheap Kingfisher beer to be found and the beach is lovely. It's an awful lot quieter than Calagute and Baga but there's still plenty of life around so we're not bored. There are also a lot less people walking up and down the beach selling things here. We even prefer the whole sales pitch employed here. They start by asking where you're from. When you say "Ireland" they always say - "Oooh - its cold there isn't it?" :) Then they insist on getting your name and giving you theirs. They then talk about random other things before eventually trying to coax you over to their stall. If you can't be coaxed immediately they then ask you to "promise" to visit it later. It's all very different from the "Alright love! Fancy a butchers?" shouted at us in a cockney accent that we got in Calagute and Baga..

The most bizarre salespeople so far been the Ear "Doctors" that seem to be all over Anjuna. They approach with much the same sales pitch as everyone else except that they have books full of testimonials stating how great a service it is that they are providing. It took us a good 5 minutes (until he produced his photo booklet of him peering into peoples ears) to work out that they clean your ears for you. Neither of us have yet been persuaded to go for the treatment. Will keep you posted though..

I haven't yet managed to bring my camera down to the beach to take any snaps so I had to borrow this picture from somebody else.. (looks exactly like this though!)

Wednesday is Market day here in Anjuna so we spent yesterday morning shopping in the (frankly sweltering!) heat. The market was great and not nearly as "mad" as books had suggested - great bargains were to be had. By about 1 O' clock (a mere two hours in) I was defeated by the ordeals of extreme shopping and was promptly deposited on a sunbed outside the Lillipot beach bar (so that the more serious shopping could continue). Ninety minutes later, and liberated of all her remaining shopping funds, Aoife returned triumphant.

It turned out that the ninety minutes for which I had been abandoned was not as kind to me as I had thought for I had gotten a little burnt again (not for want of Factor 20 I might add!).

The sunburn is all better today but am being sensible and staying out of the sun. Aoife is feeling under the weather today anyway so we are lying low in and around the hotel. I am currently investigating ways of avoiding either a 12 hour train journey or a 23 hour bus journey to Mumbai that we will have to take next week to catch our flight to Tokyo. Better get back to it actually..

Tadhg (& Aoife in spirit)