Thailand '08

Meg and I took a trip to Thailand last week for vacation. Our trip started with a little adventure when our flight on Friday was diverted to Hong Kong due to small fire in the airplane's cargo system. The captain announced that "there was a small fire in the cargo system but, don't worry, it's been put out now, but I've made the decision to head to Hong Kong for safety reasons". We were somewhere over the East China Sea and you could see on the in-flight map that we did a 90 degree turn toward Hong Kong. When we landed, firetrucks and ambulances pulled up to our airplane, I guess to be super cautious, but it was a little disconcerting. We exited the plane and waited around for a couple hours before they put everyone up in the airport hotel for the night. We weren't sure when our final flight to Bangkok would be so the next day we had to wait around in the airport and couldn't go visit the city or anything. Eventually our flight left at 3pm on Saturday, same airplane model, same seats for everyone. We landed in Bangkok at 5pm.

So we lost one day in Bangkok, but we didn't have much planned anyway except for shopping and checking out a few of the sights. The first night we ate at a nice little Thai restaurant that was located in the middle of a strange dark street behind a gate. Once inside it was very quiet with many trees and plants. We sat outside on a wooden porch area. The warm weather was a nice break from the cold in Tokyo. On Sunday, we took the Skytrain to a shopping area and went to a tailor referred to me by a friend. I ended up buying two suits and two shirts and Meg had a dress made for her birthday party coming up in mid-May. The tailor shop was run by an Indian guy and his son who've lived in Thailand most of the their life. After shopping a bit more and walking around, we visited a temple known as the Golden Mount. We climbed to the top of it but reached the top just as it was closing. Oh well, still had a good view of the city.

Monday we went directly to the Grand Palace, where a few temples are located along with the royal palace of the Thai king Rama XI. The palace grounds were beautiful and we spent a while seeing all the different buildings and temples. After that, we walked to the river nearby and took an one hour boat ride along the river and through some of the canals on the west side of the river bank, opposite from the Bangkok side. Most of the houses along the canals were pretty decrepit, but it was very interesting to see and a relaxing ride.

Then on Tuesday morning we caught our flight to Phuket bright and early at 7am and we stayed there the rest of the time until returning back to Tokyo on Sunday. Our hotel was very nice and quiet, not in the more lively clubby areas. Pretty much everyday except one, we went to the beach or to the pool and laid out in the sun and read and ate fresh fruit (the mango was so good) and swam in the ocean. On Friday we visited the Similan Islands by taking a speedboat tour. It took two hours to get to the islands from Phuket but was well worth it, the water was very beautiful and the islands did not have many people, as they're designated national parks. I even got to see a sea turtle up close and hold onto (gently).

After the first day in Hong Kong, we had a nice relaxing time, ate a lot of good food, and got some sun.  

Niseko

Here are some photos from another ski trip I took with some friends to Niseko in Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan. The snow was good until the end of our second day when it began storming. A few of us found ourselves on the wrong side of the mountain and unable to get to our hotel, so we had to wait in line for a shuttle bus and got back to our hotel two hours later. The next day, because of the storm and high winds, they closed the mountain, so we took our time having breakfast and going to onsen, then decided to try to leave early to try to catch an earlier flight back to Tokyo.

We arrived to the nearby train station only to find out that the trains were not running, so we went back to our hotel to wait for our original bus to Sapporo. We got to the airport to discover that all flights out of Sapporo were delayed and some were canceled. The airport was packed full of people, many laying on the floors sleeping or preparing to stay the night. Some people were trying to get back to international destinations, like Australia, but were stuck there at the airport. Then we heard an announcement that our flight to Tokyo was canceled, so we began preparing our own little sleeping area for all fourteen of us, grabbing blankets, snacks, etc. But then a few of my friends spent a while haggling with the airline to get us back to Tokyo and eventually were able to get all fourteen of us on a flight with a different airline. We arrived back to Tokyo around midnight, tired and stressed, but glad to be home.