David and Edel

On returning from Japan we had another day to spend in Hong Kong before the flight to Sydney – used it to go and see the giant Buddha statue on a separate island and made fun of how cumbersome it seemed to travel anywhere else after being in Japan. In Sydney the next day we met up with Teresa (Edel’s sister) who’s joining the trip. Edel had been counting down the days until she would arrive since roughly the 1960’s, and it was great to see another face from home. The one day we had in Sydney we checked the obligatory opera house off the list and went for a walk around the harbour and to the aquarium to see the two dugongs which is the latest addition there.

Next – time for another island paradise breakaway! Arrived in Port Vila on Vanuatu (halfway between Fiji and Australia) and found a backpackers in the outskirts of town. Vanuatu is really nice and friendly – people say hello to you on the street and everywhere is extremely safe – our room didn’t even have a lock etc. The language spoken here is Bislama – a fantastic mix of mostly English vocabulary with an Austronesian grammar, and a very phonetic spelling. A “No-smoking” sign we saw was written as “Yu no makem faea”! This small group of islands is occasionally voted the happiest place to live on the planet actually. And like Fiji it’s a great dive-spot – we signed up for some dives as soon as we could, and were out three of the eight days we spent in Vila before heading on to another island.

It was about 24 degrees in the water – not quite as warm as when we were diving on Andaman last but still pretty nice. While Teresa was working on her open-water certificate me and Edel went out with the boat to the dive sites around the island. One of the nicest sites was called Cathedral – a long canyon which we swam into with the current working against us until it got dark all around, then turning around to let the current carry us out back out while looking into the bright blue opening full of the silhouettes of dozens of unicorn fish. We also did a couple wreck dives – the first one was called Kunanda and it was the first wreck we’ve dove where it was safe to enter parts of the wreck. We could swim through the captains bridge and other areas and look out the windows into all the blue and fish surrounding the wreck. Quite eerie and very atmospheric. To complete the picture there was a real sea-monster of a moray eel slithering around between the hidden areas inside the broken wreck.

Dove the Semle wreck on a different day – the deepest we’ve ever been. The ship had been sunk purposely to create a dive site, but then one of the frequent typhoons had dragged it out deeper in 1987 so it is now really on the limit for recreational diving. The divemaster took us probably a bit deeper than you’re really supposed – we spend one or two minutes at 45-46 meters depth swimming through the open hull of the wreck and felt nitrogen narcosis (Jacques Cousteau’s “rapture of the deep”) for the first time. It makes you feel a bit drunk & happy – Edel looked like she was laughing whenever I looked over at her… Luckily it wears off quickly as you go higher again – at 34 meters we swam in again through the captains bridge to look out through the windows..being careful to not stir up to much stilt to cloud the visibility of the way out. This wreck didn’t have as much coral and sponges growing on it being at this depth, but it was interesting and a bit spooky to be down so far – couldn’t even see the surface when looking up.

Above land activities – one day we went to see a very nice waterfall higher up on Efate island. The colours were oddly bright blue from minerals dissolved in the water, and it was possible to swim in the pools below the waterfall – even swim in behind the fall into a small hidden cave. Also went snorkelling a couple times by the Hideaway and Iririki small resort islands next to Port Vila, and had some fantastic lobster pizza in the harbour. One evening Lorenzo – the charismatic owner of the backpackers where we stayed – took us to a nakamal or kava drinking place. Kava is a mild narcotic that is drunk all over the South Pacific, it’s made from a root and taste incredibly “earthy” or dirt-like. We had tasted a few coconut shells of it on Fiji on the last trip, but the Vanuatu variant is stronger. It makes you feel slightly drunk/stoned, and makes your mouth go numb. The nakamal (the word means “place for peace”) was really nice – perfectly quiet and located right by the water, very dimly lit so you could sit there and look up at the perfect star-filled sky (think I’ve only seen more stars out in the Bolivian desert). Lorenzo was telling us about his adventures, and about how to make a fortune collecting ambergris (something sperm whales puke out which, after floating around for years to degrade further, is used in the most expensive perfumes…) – he showed us lumps of it back at the hostel later!

From Efate we headed for Moso island and the Tranquility dive resort there. Apart from a traditional village on the other corner of the island the dive resort is the only thing there – it felt very nice and undeveloped and the small collection of thatch-roof huts had been built without felling any trees so approaching the island from the water everything looks green and you can’t see the resort until you’re practically there. Peter, a nice Aussie with many stories of weathering cyclones welcomed us off the pier – we would be the only ones staying there at the moment (they mostly bring people on boat-daytrips from Port Vila), but a couple more people arrived some days later. The place sported superb snorkelling right off the beach and I wasted no time getting in the water. While I was out there looking at 10cm colourful fish I missed the big whale though…some of the other people on land saw one – swimming right past the island just about twice as far out as I was! I was completely oblivious.. Snorkelling there was great though, big fields of coral – an anemone full of clown fish just below the surface right on the jetty even. We were out for hours every day and I got in to practising free diving to try to get down to where the buoys were anchored – managed to reach 16-18 meter without fins after a couple days but decided to stop once it started giving me nose-bleeds… My favourite sight when snorkelling is when there is a school of tiny bright-blue fish hiding between the branches of a staghorn coral – they all move in quickly when they get frightened, then slowly move out to fill the water surrounding the coral when they think it’s safe – with all of them moving in perfect synchronisation it’s like a big sphere of fish morphing in size back and forth around the coral. Very trippy…

We spotted some pelagics as well, since the depth drops quickly to 140m just 50m or so out from the beach – schools of strange big fish swimming in circles (or even eight’s!) with their mouth open filtering the water. Didn’t see a single reef-shark though, on either any of our dives or when out snorkelling – neither here or on Andaman.. We saw tons of both white-tip and black-tip on the last trip, in Fiji, Indonesia, Thailand…they’re just gone everywhere now it seems ( – and we saw why in Hong Kong and Macau). We did three more dives on our second day on Moso – one of them had a bit of current and I used up my air very quickly (Edel always uses less than me) but it was an interesting site, with an underwater thermal vent. A big black/white lion fish was hiding in the hotspring when we got there. The last dive was a night dive – we’ve only done two before – like the last ones it was a bit disorienting and me and Edel held hands to keep track of eachother in the dark – we saw a big moray with a nice pattern, beautiful red/white shrimps and a fantastic spotted white and black Cowrie shell. It’s amazing how different the same site can look in the dark, most of the coral fish gone, the parrot fish sleeping in the strange cocoons they build at night, the usual reef-fish all replaced by red squirrel and bigeye fish and many more crustaceans are out.

One of the days we joined the daytrippers on the boat from Port Vila to the other side of the island, then hopped off on a deserted beach to walk back. The beach was really nice and there were some big caves to explore right nearby – by the time we were on our way back it was already getting dark and they had sent out one of the Vanuatuans as search party for us… Went sea kayaking one day as well, and stopped by a different beach to look for shells and compete who could find a piece of broken coral that looks the most like a Chinese pickled chicken foot. In the evenings we (or at least I) usually went on an expedition to look for big coconut crabs. It’s an endangered species that lives here – like a hermit crab but grows to weigh several kilos (at that stage they stop living in a shell for protection). Peter had showed us some juveniles the first day, and there was a really big one living somewhere in a cave up the rocky hill in the forest behind our huts…I’d do a walk after dark each night hoping to hear some rustling in the dry leaves somewhere but I never spotted it. They can drag a full coconut with husks along with them, and then crack it open with their big claw. Other odd animals – a 20cm stick insect fell on top of my head one evening when we were eating..also a juvenile – they can grow to a fore-arm length here apparently!

The dive resort runs a little hawksbill sea-turtle conservatory – raising them from hatchings until they’re about one year old and have a much better chance of survival. Like the other sea turtles the hawksbill is endangered because we like eating their eggs, making combs from their shell and throwing lots of plastic bags into the ocean which they mistake for jellyfish. The dive center had four tagged and ready for release at the moment so we sponsored one together and got to release it on the beach – when we went to the tank to pick one out there was one who seemed particularly eager for freedom, climbing on top of the others and trying to scale the walls so he pretty much picked himself, and was named Saoirse for freedom in Irish. Teresa let it go on the beach, and it first looked puzzled for a second about the size of its new tank…then made a run for it! We saw it come up twice for air before it disappeared out into the turquoise waves.

video of Teresa releasing the sea turtle

Asia Highs

Nepal: Annapurna Trek

What better is there to spend your birthday than 10 days of profuse sweating in the Himalayas? The scenery was breathtaking, the villages were picturesque and our guides Shiva and Deepak were two great lads who showed us a few Nepali card games and picked us wild strawberries on route. What are the advantages of climbing 1500 meters every day for 10 days I hear you ask? Guilt fee Mars-bar rolls that’s what 😀

India: Spiti Valley

Unpaved landslide covered roads, 1000 meter drops, sweaty palms, 2000 year old villages, chanting Buddhist monks who made us tea and adorable but hysterical kids stalking us in tiny remote mountain villages – this was Spiti Valley.

India: Andaman Islands

Even a heathen like David had to admit that diving with 5 meter Manta rays was a religious experience 🙂 When we weren’t under the water we spent the days on Beach number 7 which is still rimmed by pristine rainforest, and eating out at the aptly named World Class restaurant where the woman of the house cooked for all of the foreigners on the island on one gas ring…

India: Bandhavgarh National Park

We were rewarded for bearing the 50 degree heat and having to live in what can only be described as a bunker with close ups of wild tigers, which these days is a very rare experience.

Tibet: Everest Base Camp

With all the craziness and history that goes along with Everest you can’t help but be in awe when you do finally see the mountain.. Admittedly we arrived at EBC the lazy way – by jeep – but still to get there at all is an achievement, right? We spent the night in a tent at 5200 meters, David braved the yak butter tea and next day watched the sunrise over Everest. Good Times.

India: Dharamsala

After the initial slap in the face that was Delhi it was a great feeling to arrive in Dharamsala. Before I left for India I was a bit anxious about even bringing a mobile as the more stuff you generally bring the more stress you have trying to take care of it. I need not have worried, every single Buddhist monk we saw sipping cappuccino in Dharamshala had a newer phone that made mine look like a fossil. The village itself is a great mix of locals, Tibetan refugees and hippy dippy Westerners. A lot of people get so comfortable here that the end up spending 3 months and forgetting about the rest of India.. We got out after two weeks and luckily caught the man himself, the Dalai Lama at a public appearance before we left which was a great honour.

Japan madness with Avril

We arrived, we covered her apartment in volcanic ash from Mount Fuji and she made us proper tea with milk in it. 😀 More Japan under “culinary highlights” below. 😀

Tibet: Namtso Lake

Perched at 4720 meters Namtso is the highest salt-water lake in the world. It is also regarded as one of the most holy lakes in Tibet where many Buddhist pilgrims do a 16 day circuit of the lake prostrating every third step.. The lake itself has that straight-from-a-fairytale azure blue which along with the altitude left us breathless.

China: Longji Rice Terraces

Longji was a little gem of a village that we came across just before we left China. We spent 3 days here wandering through the amazingly complex rice terraces and seeing hardly any other people which is quite an amazing feat in China. Apart from the two old ladies from a neighbouring village who stalked us for a few hours and kept asking me if I was pregnant we were left in relative peace! This was the last stop we made in China so we were delighted to leave on such a high note.

India: Varanasi

The word “confronting” is the best I can come up with to describe Varanasi. We arrived late at night in the middle of one of the frequent power cuts which made negotiating the maze of tiny little alley ways to our Hostel very interesting indeed. When we eventually did arrive at the hostel after doing battle with several territorial sacred cows we discovered that the last time that it was cleaned was probably when the city was founded as a Hindu pilgrimage site some 2000 years ago… We spent the next days wandering by the banks of the Ganges in the 40 degree heat watching Holy Men zipping up and down in speed boats, people washing clothes, fathers teaching their kids how to swim, people being cremated, pilgrims cleansing themselves and gurus performing religious “puja” ceremonies. We too spent time praying – praying that the electricity would come back for just 5 minutes so we could cool down in front of the fan..

Asia Lows

Amoebic and Bacterial Dysentery

It is all fun and games until someone loses 5 kilos in 7 days … Thank you India 🙂

China in the high season

According to the July 2009 population statistics there are approximately 1,338,612,968 living in China. All of whom visited the Forbidden City the same day as us 🙂

Asia Culinary Highlights

Nepalese Dal Bhat

The “spuds and meat” of Nepal which basically consists of rice, lentil curry, vegetable curry and maybe some pickles on the side. Once you are finished the first portion the waiter will ask if you want more as is the custom which you will try to say no to but will give in in the end… Our guides on the Annapurna trek ate Dal Bhat twice a day every day and coined one of the best phrases we heard in Nepal “Dal Bhat – 24 hour power!”

All Chinese Food

Despite claims in certain rural towns in the West of Ireland I can confirm the Chinese people do not add Pedigree Chump to their food 🙂 In 2 months of eating out three times a day we had maybe two dodgy meals the rest were fresh and tasty (though quite possibly riddled in MSG). I would go back to China just for the food.

Macau

Asia is a bit slack on the old dessert options so we were delighted when we arrived in Macau and discovered that the Portuguese had left behind lots of tasty cakes especially the Pastel de Nata a little warm eggy/custardy tart.

Japan

We could probably have eaten supermarket sushi for the whole 10 days we were in Japan but thanks to Avril we discovered that there is more to Japanese cuisine 🙂 We tried Okonomiyaki (a kind of pancake with a bit of everything in it), takoyaki (fried octopus dumplings), curry udon noodles, skewered chicken hearts, Daifuku (soft bean curd cake) and green tea ice cream. Delish 🙂

And what have we learned from all this?

All beautiful sites are located at the top of a difficult climb.

Once you arrived to said beautiful site someone will have hung a powerline right in front of it. 😀

Now that we’ve wrapped up the Asia section of our trip it seems like a good time to collect some of the most humorous assaults on the English language we’ve come across on the road so far… While Japan is known for its Engrish it actually seems to have been mostly cleaned up by now, but luckily China has stepped in to fill the gap and take the art-form to dizzying new heights. The very best ones somehow manage to leave you with the feeling that even if the language and grammar was perfect, what they were trying to say still wouldn’t make any sense…

On our last trip the most memorable one we came across was an Indian restaurant in Vientiane, Laos, which promised “A forgettable taste of India”! I think this trip has been more fruitful though. Here’s our Top-Ten: 😀

#10

Drunk by the beauty of nature at the Leshan Giant Buddha

“Some expert of heritage of leshan is as impressive as seeing many of the other great cultural stone monuments such as the shyphinx.”

And also…

“Looking away from the place, you would find that the tree E mountains are calm and peaceful, and wagching the river running out from behind the hotizon, you would be drunk by the beauty of nature.”

#9

Cool T-shirts at the Chengdu train-station

T-shirts with English writing on them are very cool at the moment in China – it doesn’t really matter if the owner doesn’t speak the language, or if what’s written on the shirt wouldn’t even make sense to someone who does. One of the best one’s we spotted was worn by a young girl at the Chengdu train-station and sported this cryptic statement:

Bike Loveing A.
[picture of bicycle]
To punish their onw!

#8

The CCP helping you find your aim in life on Mount Emei

Probably the one bit of communism that still survives in China today is the public information campaigns with very specific rules on how you should behave in various aspects of your life…there was a list of a full 20 Do’s and Don’t published everywhere on Mount Emei (“Don’t put disorderly” etc.) as well as Socialist Viewpoints about Honor & Disgrace (“Take hard work and struggle as an honor, regard extravagant and dissipated as a disgrace“ etc.)…and this helpful little gem in a public toilet (also on Mount Emei):

“It is so civilized to take one more step further close while urinating.”

#7

Warm Notice on Mount Emei

“Otherwise you’ll be seriously punished, which may give you an unpleasant tour.”

#6

Food flavoured biscuits!

…I had to buy a packet of course. Turns out they don’t taste like food at all – at least not any kind of food I know.. (..except perhaps fish food, mixed with lots of cardboard). I bought them in Lhasa in the “Family of supermarket common people“!

#5

Menu’s in Tibetan restaurants

Found this gem in a restaurant by Namtso lake at 4700 meters altitude…

Pork missed with garlic sauce.

Sold pork mixed with garlic sauce.

Cooled pork’s forgive mixed with chili sauce.

Roofs with vine gal sauce.

Pork’s stomach with viregal and chili sauce.

Saeef snshewnufs.

 

The same menu also had “Hot pot with pork’s guts”…

Here’s another one from a place we ate in two days later:

Shrellded Mest with Lattureroot

Fired Pork Srices with eggplant

 

 

#4

Something to do with sculptures on a Khajuraho temple signpost

“The temple stands on a modest. This is the only temple at Khajuraho which lacks erotic sculptures are three bands of sculptures around the walls and all the sculptures.”

…and just in case the 89-word sentence that follows this delightful short extract somehow still fails to give you a headache, the whole thing has been written in upper-case!

#3

May we remind you…

Quirky policeman on a sign-post outside the Temple of Heaven in Beijing thinks you’re definitely up to something…

“May we remind you: Please be self-restraint and be a good tourist to mold a well-mannered imagination!”

#2

Eggplant With Corporal Punishment in Beijing

So many delightful delicacies to choose from on this menu!

Couple Lungs

Blend Jellyfish

Pickled Pig Unguis

Fried Pignut

Pickled Elbow

Numb and Sore Chicken

Eggplant With Corporal Punishment

 

As well as a selection of various Entrails and Intestine -based dishes… Is the Eggplant With Corporal Punishment served separately or simultaneously me wonders?

Menu page2, page3.

 

#1

The careful roof falls the snow…

Poetic yet borderline informational at the same time, this Mt. Emei sign is our favourite so far 😀

Be careful of slippery.
The careful roof falls the snow.

 

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* Runner-ups…

Theretrdspectientower in Xi’an

The “Theretrdspectientower” can be found at the Great Mosque in Xi’an’s Muslim quarter.

 

 

 

 

Fire extinguisher

Granted, it is a difficult word to spell.. In fact every place that has one spells it in a different way. “Fire exting uis herbox” and “Fire Exting Atsher Box” are two fine examples.

 

 

 

 

 

More unexpected dishes in Xi’an

“Lettuces with Bacteria” – there is a picture even!

Learn English at the…

“Teaching Hotle” in Lhatse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unexpected levels of greatness at the Terracotta Warrior museum

“The museum devotes much attention to enhance cadres and staffs’ ideological level and professional quality, even makes great efforts on training a group of excellent personnel owning both ability and moral integrity, who have already accomplished different kinds of tasks outstandingly at their different working post.”

“All these brilliant achievements make museum progressive every year.”
(photo)

Nuts in Yangshuo

“Almonds. Please edible, avoid in change quality dampness.”
(photo)

Stay safe on Mt. Emei

“Being in wonderful famous mountain landscape under the sun .keeping the words of safe tour in mind.”

The flight from Macau landed in Tokyo late in the evening, and we got the subway in to town around 11pm just at the same time as the hard-working Japanese office workers were making their way home.. We checked in to a tiny room in the northern end of town with two mattresses on the floor and a shared bathroom for 50 euro/night – cheap for Tokyo. The hostel was a friendly enough place, and a nice introduction to some of the Japanese peculiarities such as the love for coin-operated things. The shower had a coin-slot, 100 yen for 5 minutes, as did the cooker, the washing machine and actually even the breakfast restaurant where you needed to first change your bills into 100-yen metal tokens (which weren’t coins but had the same size and value) in a machine and then pay with the tokens. We ended up in another coin operated restaurant in the city center an evening or two later – you’d order by a touch screen, put in the money and get a paper receipt to hand to the waitress who is standing waiting right next to the machine…

The first day we hopped around in town to see as much as possible in a day, a temple in Asakusa with Buddha’s five meter sandals, the Edo museum with lots of samurai-time history, the Imperial Gardens and in the evening the 46-floor metropolitan building for some night-time views over the city. The subway network is very fast and efficient, but the map looks a bit like a rainbow put through a blender. It’s actually not too difficult to figure out how to get from A to B, but buying the right ticket can be as there’s different companies operating different lines and getting from one place to another might cost different depending on how you happened to transfer along on the way.. Even when we (..thought we) picked the easy option and got a day-pass it only had a random selection of the lines included. Luckily the Japanese are incredibly helpful though, possibly more so than anywhere else we’ve been. You only need to stand around for a moment somewhere looking like you don’t know your soba from your udon and someone will come up and offer their help. Once in the evening when we got out the wrong exit at a subway station a woman walked us for ten minutes just to make sure she sent us on the right way. People also do an incredible amount of greeting, thanking and bowing whenever you interact with them, and things like queuing function in a very polite and orderly fashion. We found ourselves wondering a bit what it must be like for Japanese people to travel when they’re used to this, to, say, picking a place at random….India? How do they avoid feeling like they want to kill themselves? Actually, come to think of it some of the Japanese backpackers we met in Varanasi had been out swimming in the Ganges which considering the polluted state of the river might amount to a suicide attempt… Apparently several Japanese tourists have to be hospitalized every year after visiting Paris and having their romantic mental image of the city shattered by rude waiters…there’s even a special Japanese word for “Paris syndrome”! Anyhow, while the Japanese might be the most polite and helpful people on the planet there is one exception – Mount Fuji – I’ll get to this in a little bit…

The second morning in Tokyo we started at 5am to visit the Tsukiji early morning Fish Market, the world biggest – it’s an amazing place to wander around and look at all the weird butchered sea monsters and big tentacles – I kept imagining that there must be something really strange I’d never seen before waiting just around the next corner – a Kraken or Loch Ness monster in pieces. I didn’t see anything I could immediately recognize as endangered at least – no shark fin (unlike in Hong Kong and Macau) and the big frozen tuna carcasses being worked on with band saw or special samurai-like swords seemed to be mostly yellow-fin and not the critically endangered blue-fin species the European fisheries seem determined to make extinct (the blue-fin belly fat is supposedly the best sashimi in the world and a single fish is worth tens of thousands of dollar – they’re using spotter planes to find and catch the very last few ones spawning in the Mediterranean at the moment). And thankfully no meat in sight from whales, dolphins or other animals with a brain bigger than a human’s.

After the fish market we caught a train to Nikko – a cute little town north of Tokyo surrounded by temples. Some of the statues and carvings of elephants in the temples are quite interesting – they’re famously made by someone who had never been anywhere close to one. Japanese temples are very atmospheric, with cute little mossy stone lanterns littered in between the trees around all the temple buildings. And very nice gardens – while European gardens can look a bit like military service for plants with everything in perfect straight lines the Japanese ones feel more natural, even though they’re every bit as manicured. Back in Tokyo in the evening we went to Shibuja, a busy area of the city which is full of neon and look like the hyper-modern Tokyo you expect before arriving. It’s where Tokyo people go to be trendy, and it’s full of young people with dyed hair and way too much makeup who are at least as brand-obsessed as the worst European teenagers.

The third morning in Tokyo we headed for Kawaguchiko to climb Mount Fuji, Japan’s highest peak at 3770 meters, since we happened to be here during the July-August climbing season before it gets too cold. We started climbing from the 5th station at 2300 meters around 5pm, and planned to spend the night at the 8th station at 3300 meters to catch the sunrise from the top the next morning. Watching the sunrise from Mount Fuji even have a special word for it – “Goraiko” (the Japanese love to have a special word for things..there’s also special words for “looking at cherry-blossom trees” and “looking at cherry-blossom trees at night”..). We had emailed a few of the mountain huts at the 8th station in advance to try and book one of the 70 euro per person hard-mattress-on-the-floor they offer, but none of them had emailed back so we decided to chance it – surely in Japan of all places it wouldn’t be so disorganized that they allow more people to climb than there is space for and people end up sleeping outside… From the start at the 5th station you’re quickly above the tree line and the mountain is barren with ash and scree along the path – not much to see but the sunset on the way was very nice and the view afterward just the same – looking down on the city lights in the valleys below, even some fireworks far away and distant lightning! Climbing got very crowded as the path was narrowing higher up, and once it got dark it turned more into queuing than climbing – we were moving slow enough to get cold on the way wearing the one long-sleeve layer each we’d brought. Once we reached the 8th station around 9pm we discovered that not only was there no space to sleep in any of the huts, but also was this the one place in Japan where you can find rude people. The LP guidebook had said the huts usually let you sit around inside for a few hours at least as long as you order something, but that wasn’t the case – none of them would even let us in the door! One place with a restaurant even refused to sell us food unless we eat it outside in the cold sitting on the ground (..we decided to live off the dozen snickers bars we’d packed instead). Edel needed to take her lenses out from all the ash blowing in the wind, and while one place did let her inside for a minute it was only just inside the door and for as little time as possible. We ended up sitting outside one of the huts talking to a group of nice Filipino guys who were in the same situation – there was a small fire in a metal can that helped keeping us warm (it was used by someone in the hut who branded people’s walking sticks for three euro each). After an hour someone came out from the hut to push us away, but by now the fire had died anyway. One of the Filipino guys had the genius idea to ask the person inside the hut to brand all their walking sticks just as the fire was going out, to give us another hour of heat, but he refused. We did consider just going down instead of course, but didn’t want to climb down in the dark plus the down-route was elsewhere and there were still people coming uphill on the narrow up-route (some people climb all night timed for sunrise at the peak, presumably to avoid dealing with the hut-people..). And if we did climb down we’d just end up just as homeless but at 2300 meters instead. I wonder if there is a word for “Fuji-syndrome”?

We decided to climb the rest of the way to the top together with the Filipino guys, trying to make the climb last the whole night by going only a short stretch at the time to build up some warmth, then huddling from the wind wherever we found shelter for a few minutes before climbing another bit again. Reached the top at 1am – still many hours left until sunrise… There were a few building at the top, though none of them were open to take shelter in. Many other people were in the same situation up there, but me and Edel were probably among the least well dressed – no jackets and regrettably I had suggested to Edel before the climb to leave out her second long-sleeve as her bag was too full (..every single other climb we’ve ever done we brought too much clothes, though of course we never had to sleep outside on any of them..). We huddled between a couple of the buildings on the top in the howling winds for a couple hours together with our new friends, trying to sleep but not getting a minute in while the temperature touched 3 degrees C. Sometime in the night we decided to walk around a bit, and came across another big group of people standing around waiting outside one of the buildings – it eventually opened at 3am and we could get in and buy a bowl of noodles and wait inside at least for the next two hours. At 5am we had a quick look at the sunrise – cloudy – and headed down as quickly as we could. It was extremely busy with people on the way down, but we thawed as we walked lower and the sun rose higher. A while later I came across a Japanese saying “If you never climb Mount Fuji you are a fool – but if you climb it twice you are twice the fool!“.

Back in “normal Japan” once more people were at once friendly and helpful again – someone at the train-station wrote down all the places we needed to change trains to get from the mountain to Osaka, and someone else onboard the first train helped us once it suddenly changed direction two stations from where we needed to go and I stood staring at the map with a puzzled (…and probably at this stage pretty tired) look. We arrived in Osaka in the evening after covering most of the distance on one of the hyper-modern 300 km/h Shinkhansen trains, and met up with Avril (Edel’s friend from school who teaches English in Osaka) who luckily recognized us despite us still being covered in ash from the mountain…and checked in to her apartment for the next five nights. Pure luxury (..particularly after the previous night) with proper Irish tea and everything! 😀 Nice to see a face from home after five months on the road. We went for okonomi-yaki in the evening, like a very thick pancake with squid, octopus and kimchi inside that you cook at the table – very nice and one of the places it would be very difficult to order without a Japanese-speaking Avril with you! The day after we spent around Osaka, visiting another temple and enjoying some sushi, then visiting a Japanese-style onsen bath-house in the evening. The onsen was a massive spa-complex, we spent some time first in the mixed clothed swimming area at the top floor with jacuzzi’s overlooking the neon city (and of course went in all the slides), then split up to go to the separate nude hotsprings. The hotspring baths were themed with all the great pre-medeival cultures; Rome of 2000 years ago, ancient Greece, Finland of today… 😛 With all the signs in Japanese I wasn’t 100% sure at first where to be naked and where not to, but once I figured it out my Swedish side was comfortable enough strolling around in the nip. Sat in a salt sauna until I had almost melted, then when I walked out and hopped into the nearest pool which I thought would be freezing it turned out to be 42 degrees.. Very relaxing once I found my way around the place in the end, and I went to all the features except the Finnish…

 

Kyoto the day after – went temple-spotting first and saw a handful out of the several thousand temples and shrines the town sports – the golden temple sitting by a lake fringed by bonsai-trees looks typical fantasy-image Japan. In the evening we went to the traditional wooden Gion district and tried sea-urchin and other oddities in a restaurant – and spotted a couple white-face-makeup geisha’s outside on the street!

 

 

 

Next day to Hiroshima to learn about some of the maddest days of mankind. There’s one ruined building still standing from the day the city was flattened – now called the A-bomb dome – which remained standing by being almost exactly below the center of the blast. Next-door is the Peace Memorial Museum which is very good and refreshingly honest (doesn’t shy away from mentioning also Japan’s war crimes, and doesn’t seem to overly victimize) – some parts are wreckingly emotional though, particularly stories of children dying of leukemia for years and years after. There’s one special memorial outside the museum with tens of thousands of paper cranes for one particular girl – I remember being read her story back in primary school actually by our teacher who was very Japan-obsessed (..we were making origami all day long when we probably should have been learning math). Very moving anyhow, while the museum was crowded everyone walked around in nearly dead silence. We felt pretty drained when we finally walked out.

More uplifting daytrips the next two days – first Himeji which has a very impressive castle high up on a hill and a nice Japanese garden called Koko-en. Then Nara – another town near Osaka with a collection of World Heritage buildings one of which – the Todai-ji temple – is the worlds biggest wooden building and houses a giant gold/bronze Buddha called Daibutsu. A little further out from town in the forest sits the Kasuga-Taisha temple, probably the most atmospheric temple we’ve been to in Japan. The forest and all the paths around are filled with mossy stone lantern shrines hidden below the trees – all of them are lit in the evening of one particular night every year which must be amazing. Back in Osaka for our last evening we went out for a drink and a walk around Osaka’s futuristic neon-landscape center full of big animatronic crabs climbing up the buildings (not joking!). Rounded off the evening with some tako-yaki octopus-balls which are a popular fast-food. Next morning we waved good-bye to our fabulous hostess who had made Japan a fantastic min-holiday from our rough backpacking days. 😀

For the second fit of poor planning on our part that I’d like to blame someone else for, the superb Japanese public transport system had spoiled us to the extent during the last two weeks that we figured 3 hours should be enough for the five hundred kilometer trip from Osaka to Tokyo airport… First it turned out we had to wait 40 minutes for the next 300 km/h train to Tokyo which we hadn’t quite calculated on, then 25 min wait for the next one-hour airport train…arrived at the gigantic Narita airport 55 minutes before takeoff but thanks to some swift running with the big backpacks on and more helpful Japanese people we arrived at the checkin counter with a full 8 min to spare before they closed..weren’t even the last people on the plane in the end. After the flight back from Tokyo to Macau we made our way to Vanuatu in the South Pacific via Hong-Kong and Sydney..four border crossings in five days but luckily Vanuatu is a good place to relax (the name of the capital, Port Vila, even means “rest” in Swedish).