My Shout

From right to left; Jared, Hien and myself while enjoying some drinks in Malacca

One bright morning fellow TP'er Hien picked us up from our hotel for a fun filled day of Malaysian adventure. After a spot of fish porridge for breakfast, we started our walk up the 270 something steps towards the Batu Caves. A very rewarding climb though!

As the day heated up, we hopped in the car for a two hour trip to Malacca, a historic Malaysian town which has previously been under both Portuguese and Dutch rule. Though the remains from that area are fairly limited, the town does has a very nice character. After finding second TP'er Jared, who had made the bus trip there from Singapore, we headed straight for a lunch of Chicken Rice; rice balls with some steamed chicken basically, all served by our 7 year old waitress.

Walking around town, you can still see some of the remaining buildings from the Dutch era and just one small portion of the old Portuguese fort. A wander down Jonker Street led us past numerous antique stores full of interesting stuff that would have been great if they could fit in a suitcase!

A Famosa - Portuguese Fort

Rickshaws at Stadthuys

Stadthuys

It was while we were on Tioman that we decided a truly good trip required monkeys, lizards and turtles. Well, I guess a panda would make it the best day of all. Perhaps we came to that conclusion because Tioman offered all those things to us with a bit of cheap Vodka thrown in. You can draw your own conclusions as to how much the Vodka affected this viewpoint.

Tioman is one of those places you go to bore yourself into relaxation. There are some activities like jungle treks that you could go on, but I got the distinct feeling that these were not the activities of choice for most people. Instead, a careful study of the resort's bars' happy hours would encourage you to spend the hours of 3-5 at the pool bar and the hours of 5-7 at the beach bar. For all-day happy hours, wander down to the town, Tekek, where you can buy a litre of Vodka for 45 Ringits (about 15 Australian dollars). Besides the cheap (though extremely limited) duty free shopping, a wander into town is also worthwhile for a bit of monkey spotting. We saw a few snacking on rubbish by the side of the road, which probably is the exotic equivalent of a mangy street dog.

Tekek Village

We did manage to break out of slothdom one day by going on a snorkelling trip of the island. They charged us the outrageous price of 60 ringitts (20 AUD) for this full day of entertainment! One thing you can't complain about in Malaysia are the prices. The day included no less than 6 stops, five for snorkelling and one for lunch. Of course divers would shudder at the thought of only seeing coral from afloat, but hey, we're lazy. Nonetheless, we certainly did appreciate the beautiful coral to be seen here and the abundance of fish. One of the stops was at the Marine Park which was so full of fish, you could just about reach out and grab them. Just about. I tried and believe me when I tell you it's not easy! Lunch cost us a hefty AU$6 for two people, including a whole coconut. mmm, I love coconuts.

But the highlight of the day was a picture opportunity with a turtle. Since the trip I have come to the realisation that the treatment of the turtle wasn't exactly friendly. Supposedly turtles don't like to be picked up like that and prefer to always have something for their feet to be in contact with. On the bright side though, this turtle was set free at the end and only had to endure our stressful tourism antics for a few minutes. And it left us even more enamoured with turtles than we already were.

The Berjaya Tioman Resort where we stayed does have a sense of seclusion from the rest of the world, much like any large resort would. The facilities are good though and certainly there are some pleasantries like a nice pool to swim in (though who really needs one when you have a beautifully warm ocean?) and several decent restaurants on the premises. A creek winds its way through part of the resort as well and in this creek you can almost always spot some very large and strange looking lizards. Not a bad sight on the way to breakfast every morning. Not an invitation to swim in the creek either.

The Lizard in the Creek

Renggis Island, just off the coast at the resort

All in all, a nice few days of peaceful holiday.

Certainly the most enjoyable city on our visit, Kyoto is all it is made up to be! A beautiful city with all the culture a visitor could possibly want to experience. We arrived, dripping with sweat due to the hot, humid weather, at the Palace Side Hotel. Not a bad place to stay, though the room, in particular the bathroom, was quite cramped. The reasonable price made up for it though and the service was excellent.

The abundance of things to do in Kyoto is almost overwhelming. We started with a visit to the Nishijin Textile Center. There are weaving demonstrations, people dressing up in kimonos, a large shop and perhaps most importantly, a kimono fashion parade (!) once an hour. And if you're really keen, you can hire a kimono for a day and walk around town in it. Naturally, we did not hire kimonos.

But we did walk around Kyoto, minus the kimonos. The Gion area is particularly good to just walk around. There are beautiful old streets lined with eateries, pottery shops and various intriguing shops that are only signposted in Japanese. We entered one shop so tightly packed with pottery that the old man in the shop had to get up from his chair in the walkway to allow us in.

An interesting shop

Entrance to Yasaka shrine

One drizzly day was spent walking the Philosopher's Walk, one of the most popular attractions in the city. And for good reason. The meandering 1.5 km cobbled canalside walk passes temple after temple, with a few souvenir shops dotted in between. The beautiful Ginkaku-ji temple, also known as the Silver Pavilion, has some incredible landscaped gardens to wander through. One of the things that Kyoto gardens are supposedly known for is their use of 'borrowed landscape', using the nearby mountains as part of their overall design and this is done to great effect at Ginkaku-ji. Another feature of their garden is the sand, carefully raked in lovely patterns with a nice little mound in the middle. And people take their moss very serious here.

Towards the end of the walk, the Eikan-do complex of temples are another great attraction. After taking our shoes off at the start, we followed the corridors snaking up the hill to the various temples. Of course, there are some lovely landscaped gardens to complete the picture and various golden statues, trinkets and chanting monks.

A little further down again, the Nanzen-ji grounds include an aquaduct from 1890 - a strange sight in Japan, but an interesting one nonetheless.

But the temples aren't the only World Heritage listed site in Kyoto either. Back nearer our hotel, Nijo Castle is a beautiful old structure. This castle is nothing like the Osaka or Himeji Castles, with far less grand fortifications. It is also missing the donjon, the large central building that can be seen at Osaka and Himeji, due to a lightning strike in 1750. The highlight though, is the Honmaru Palace, decorated splendidly inside with gold leaf paintings. And a little protection never goes astray; the Nightingale floors serve that purpose. The what floors you ask? Indeed, one of the first things you notice entering the building is the squeeking floors underneath. It's not the usual annoying squeek, more a gentle tweet, specially created to warn of intruders. Nice touch.

Various other shrines were visited while in Kyoto - too much to remember really. It seems they have some shrine for every occasion, like one that seemed to be dedicated to football. It's a great city to spend time in and if you're planning a trip, I would certainly join the chorus in recommending Kyoto as a focal point.

Shrine to do with football somehow

Nara

On our last day we decided to make a trip to nearby Nara, mainly for its giant bronze buddha, the largest bronze buddha in the world, housed in the largest wooden building in the world. But the buddha shares the limelight with 1000 wild deer and indeed they almost seem the more popular attraction. We certainly enjoyed watching them eating maps out of people's hands. Well, the buddha didn't disappoint either, it truly is gigantic. The statues to either side would even be considered large, if they weren't next to the largest bronze buddha in the world. Nara park includes more than deer and buddha though, indeed the whole park is quite enjoyable to walk around. There's a smaller temple near the giant one, a shinto shrine, a pagoda and even a pond full of turtles right on the outskirt!

Today we left Kyoto behind us and tomorrow we leave for Singapore. Our impressions of Japan have been very good. Perhaps a recap post will be in order sometime soon. I'll add a few more photos from Kyoto / Nara as well when I get a chance.

Arriving in Osaka, we were warmly welcomed at the Yamatoya Honten Ryokan with tray after tray of various delicacies, generally quite fishy; raw fish, fish dumplings, fish soup, fried fish and so it continued. We were stuffed by the end of it all! And for breakfast, guess what, more fish It was a pleasant experience, but we were glad we had only ordered that treat for one night!

Our meal in Osaka

The hotel is diagonally opposite Dotonbori Street, one of the livelier areas in town and we had views of it from our window on the 9th floor. I spent some time trying to pick tattoo'ed men missing fingers, supposedly a sign that they are members of the Yakuza, the Japanese maffia who call Osaka home according to our guidebook. Well, none were seen from such a height, but we did spot one or two tattoo'ed men while wandering the streets. Don't worry, I didn't test my very limited / non-existent ninjutsu skills on them.

The view from our room

Fancy puffer fish for dinner?

Osaka Castle was our first port of call as far as tourist attractions were concerned. The structure is quite impressive with the arched walls and grand building inside. Inside the main building is an exhibit spread out over 6 floors. Really, the interior of the building is about as exciting as an average department store, I guess somewhere along the line the original was 'renovated'. Conveniently, it does have an elevator, but inconveniently (for us), it is only supposed to be used by disabled people. The view from the 6th floor is quite nice though and not bad after you recover your breath.

One of the walls of the Osaka Castle

Not quite as nice as the view from the Umeda Sky Building though, where we headed the next day. 175 metres and 40 floors up, their Garden Observatory (no, there's no garden up there, just a few plastic plants) offers some fantastic views of Osaka. The place feels a bit like a spaceship with suitably spacy outfits for the various staff up there.

Not far from the Umeda Sky Building, we stopped for lunch at a little cafe, which as far as we could tell was called 'Cafe Bar', though that could be due to our lack of Japanese. It was a very pleasant place with good food at reasonable prices and a couple of very friendly hosts. Their English was broken, but they seemed to enjoy the opportunity to make conversation.. conversations like

'where from?'
'Australia'
'aahhh, you have ..' *she makes some hopping hand motions*
'you mean kangaroos?'
'aaah, yes, kangaroos, hahaha'

and so it went on. In fact it was quite pleasant and nice to have people take some interest. Kind of like the guy in Tokyo who approached us and started an interrogation routine; just to finally explain that he was practising his English!

Another stop in Osaka was the Folk Art Museum, not too far from our hotel. Lots of objects created by various Japanese craftspeople. Some nice pottery, weaving and bits and pieces.

Osaka Folk Craft Museum

Himeji lured us away from Osaka for a day, primary attraction naturally their World Heritage listed castle. Three metro stops and a Shinkansen later, we were presented with a quaint looking tourist bus bound for the castle. Instead, we hopped on the nearest public bus (because we've had such good experiences with them, ehem) and before too long found ourselves one stop too far. Oh well, at least it only cost a fifth of the tourist bus. Janelle was particularly pleasantly surprised that the temporary art exhibition she had previously seen on some flyer in Tokyo was in fact in the Museum we were now walking past. So, first stop was the Himeji Museum of Art. The exhibition was actually rather impressive with various takes on nature by contemporary Japanese artists. We particularly appreciated some charcoal drawings that at first glance looked like photographs, very impressive. Nice to appreciate some good art now and then. But ok, back on track and back out of the eirkon (that's Japanese for air conditioning), we headed up the hill to the castle.

The Himeji Castle is a great place to visit, though there is no elevator, leaving six flights of stairs needing to be climbed. The interior of the building is original with weapon racks, toilets and all sorts of other interesting nooks and crannies (dunno what a 'crannie' is actually, but there definitely were nooks) to look at on the way up. Just mind your head if you're anything over 140cm.. Outside the main building, the grounds are pleasant to walk around, though most likely more pleasant on a less hot day. There's a well that supposedly has a story attached to it that is the basis of the movie The Ring (see previous post from Tokyo) - if you want to scare yourself, you should watch this Japanese classic sometime.

And that concluded our stay in Osaka. I don't think we felt we needed to stay much longer, though it was a pleasant enough time. Onwards and upwards (if North is up, which it in fact quite often isn't on maps here) to nearby Kyoto.