June 2nd: Shrine & Tapas Molecular Bar

I was expecting crazy hair color, haircuts, and dressing already so i was not surprised when I saw it. It made me feel pretty under dressed and boring! Tokyo is absolutely beautiful and clean. Transportation is great (subway, bus system, bullet trains, taxis) and it is easy to walk everywhere. We took advantage of the JR Yamanote Line. We took the train & walked to Meiji Shrine. It was located in Shibuya, Tokyo. It is the Shinto shrine that is dedicated to the deified spirits of Emperor Meiji and his wife, Empress Shoken. We walked through botanical gardens beforehand. There was an Iris Garden. When you approach the shrine you stop and bow your head, drop change into the holes, and clap your hands twice. As expected it was breathtaking. You could also write your hopes and wishes on a piece of wood and place it on a hook. I was nosey and read a few. Many Americans asked for peace, health, and the war to end.


We took the train back to Ginza. We stopped by a Breitling shop. We walked out empty handed, thank goodness! We toured the Sony Building and drooled at all the high tech gadgets we do not have. The LCD HD televisions were huge! My 42" LCD Sony TV looked puny compared to the 72"! ha ha. We continued to walk around Ginza and by the time we got back to our hotel we had walked about 8 miles! I'm glad since we were going to stuff ourselves silly at Tapas Molecular Bar for dinner.
We had reservations for the 8pm sitting at Tapas Molecular Bar at the Mandarin Oriental. Only 6 per seating. We enjoyed 5 different glasses of wine & champagne to compliment the dishes. We were served around 28 different dishes. They were all unbelievable! The Chef would explain each dish and put it together infront of us. He went to school in NYC and moved back to Tokyo due to marriage. He said he missed NYC but the food (although more expensive) is much more organic & local/easily available in Japan. The world famous fish market is only a few miles away & Japan is covered in organic farms.


All of the dishes were spectacular but the dessert got even more interesting. As always I'm trying to become more health conscious and eat more vegetables and fruit. I'm absolutely horrible at eating fruit. My Dad eats an apple a day. I wish I would do the same. The Chef gave each of us a plate of fruit. Strawberries, lime & lemon slices, melon, apple slice, and orange slice. He asked us all to eat 2 pieces of fruit. Then he handed us a small red piece of fruit. He told us to put it in our mouths for 1 minute and then to swallow it. Next he instructed us to eat another piece of fruit or to drink some wine. I ate the orange slice. Holy crap! It was sooooo much sweeter! It tasted amazing and within 2 minutes I had eaten the entire plate of fruit. Even the melon, lime and lemon slices! The chef explained the fruit was called the miracle fruit. No joke. When I return home I am going to order some. It is fruit, so it is not unhealthy. It will definitely help me eat more fruit. Amazing!

June 1st: 日本へようこそ

We had an overnight flight to Tokyo on Japan Airlines. Even with flat beds & melatonin I still have problems sleeping great on airplanes. I enjoyed a Japanese breakfast and was so excited to arrive in Japan! Unfortunately the Narita airport is far away from Tokyo. We took a 1hr 20 min train ride to the subway in the city center.

We eventually made it to the Conrad Tokyo & took a nap. The room was amazing & we had awesome views of Tokyo from our large windows.
We decided to grab some dinner so we walked to a nearby area called Ginza. This was a major shopping area. The Sony Building was there as well. Obviously sushi is the thing to eat in Japan. We finally narrowed the 1000 sushi restaurants down to 1. We had to take our shoes off and leave them at the door in a locker. We also had to push a button/buzzer for service. Never experience this before. I wish we had buzzers at restaurants in the US so we'd receive better service! The sushi & wasabi were delicious. We enjoyed fried biscuits with butter and honey for dessert. I was beginning to fall in love with Tokyo!

more Bangkok photographs

May 30th: Snakes, Curry & Moon Bar

We were both pretty tired so we were slow moving in the morning. I wanted to check out The Snake Farm. Fraser looked at the map and thought it would be a short walk. The short walk turned into 3 or more miles! It was really hard to find as well, so we looked like the dumb tourists asking everyone directions. Unfortunately we were given incorrect directions several times... even from police officers. How rude! We finally found it. The indoor viewing facility was 2 stories and fairly small. Fine with me since they were poisonous snakes! The facility is only 1 of 2 in the world to house snakes to supply anti venom. We looked at the snakes behind glass & stuck around for the snake show at 2:30. My mother is absolutely terrified of snakes! My Dad is fine around them as far as I know and my brother put one around his neck at a snake show when we vacationed in Morocco. I was still in elementary school and too chicken sh*t to put it around mine. This time I did! Go me!
Finally it was not raining so we enjoyed a restaurant that was not inside a mall. Yay! We went to Curries and More. We sat outside on the porch and had a clear roof with water running over it. I love Indian food & curry, but this was my first time eating Thai curry. It was delicious.
We took a cab to the Banyan Tree Hotel. On the roof (61 floors) we had amazing views & enjoyed a great atmosphere at the Vertigo Grill & Moon Bar. It was not raining (for once!) and we were lucky enough to get 2 seats at the bar. It was pretty crowded since the views were unbelievable.

May 29th: Buddhas in Bangkok

Had to wake up early (8am is early!) and I was extremely tired at first... until I enjoyed the shower. The shower head was amazing. The shower head was a rain machine. The water pressure was amazing as well. I hope I did not waste too much water! We had breakfast inside the hotel. It was delicious. I enjoyed miso soup, grilled salmon, dim sum, pork rolls, curry rolls, etc... and best of all I got to enjoy sushi for breakfast! I used to always joke that I could eat sushi for breakfast, lunch, and dinner! Fraser dragged me away from the food and we started our trek around Bangkok. Thankfully it was not raining. We walked about 4 hot hot miles (Bangkok is soooooo humid! You thought Virginia was bad? think again!) to the Wat Pho Palace. We walked around and enjoyed the beautiful architecture. Next we saw the Reclining Buddha. It was enormous, 120 feet long! Absolutely beautiful.

We took a taxi to the Jim Thompson House. Our taxi driver was very talkative and asked us lots of questions. He was really funny. He did not have a gray hair on his head. I would have guessed he was in his 50s. He started complaining about the taxes in Thailand and how expensive it has gotten, etc. He then said he wanted to retire soon because he was 79 years old!!!!! What?!?!?! Unbelievable.

We arrived to the Jim Thompson House and had to wait about 10 minutes for the tour to begin. Fraser started talking to another guy who looked our age. Turns out he went to college at UVA in Charlottesville, VA. I told him I went to JMU and his sister is still an undergraduate there. Small world. He was on a similar around the world trip and was on his way to Cambodia. We enjoyed the house and the shade (cooled us off a little bit). We toured the house for about 45 minutes and then caught the sky train to our hotel.
Bangkok is dirty, smokey, streets are crowded with taxis and scooters, terrible driving, and a handful of business men and prostitutes late night in our hotel. 95% of Thai women are gorgeous (other 5% are prostitutes = nasty!).
The temples & palaces are absolutely gorgeous once you arrive there. The walk there is smokey and noisy... in the future we will catch a taxi instead. Thai people are very friendly. On the occasion you will get scammed. Fraser had 5 different men approach him who ironically had just traveled to England for 3 months and knew where his hometown was. Rightttttt. As soon as that line started we knew they were trying to scam us and we politely (since they were being polite in a sneaky way) say we had to go and walk away fast. The first scam was weird but the others became annoying and made us feel uncomfortable.
We cooled off in the pool and enjoyed Tiger beer. As we were getting ready for dinner the rain started again. This time the hotel next to us disappeared. It was raining the hardest I'd ever seen in my entire life. Unfortunately the rain was so awful we had to eat inside the mall again. We enjoyed a Japanese restaurant. We shared a large sushi dish and enjoyed Asahi beer and Saki. The service was awful. At this point we realized we needed to wave servers down to make an order, reorder something, and to get your bill. As expected, service in every country is different. These girls were younger and did not want to come to the table even if you waved at them! We ordered green tea ice cream with red beans. The red beans were gross and the green tea ice cream was pretty nasty too. I mixed the 2 together and it was delicious. Amazing how 2 foods can interact. Delicious.

May 28th: Bangkok, Thailand

Today was an early morning! We woke up at 5am and got to the Hong Kong Airport at 7am. The airport was nice and the Cathay Pacific lounge was pretty luxurious. We had dim sum for breakfast & then walked to the other lounge which was closer to our gate. The news was on so I got updated on all the horrible tornadoes, China earthquake, and Bush/McCain talking. Even on vacation it is impossible and selfish to ignore what is going on around the world. I could have done without the US political news though.
We boarded the plane and got delayed for an hour. Normally this is irritating but I wasn't bothered, until it got really hot. I can't remember if something with the ventilation while the plane is parked was broken or if the air doesn't start until the engine is on. Either way, it got really hot! The flight attendants tried to distract us with champagne. I just put the cold glass against my face! We had dim sum for breakfast again. Didn't bother me since it is delicious. I had a hard time opening the lotus leaf (wrapped around hot rice) so I cut open the leaf with a knife. The head stewardess came over and yelled at me for using utensils. I told her I was a chop stick professional, but this was my first lotus leaf. She laughed. It was a fairly short flight~ 2 hours and 30 min. I read the in flight magazine which wasn't the best idea. The opening article was about the deadly plane crash from Bangkok to Phuket! A survivor told her story~ only 44 out of the 130 passengers lived. The weather was bad and when they attempted to land the plane broke in half. As we were landing I finished the article. Thankfully we landing safely!
We took a 20 min taxi ride to our hotel, Conrad Bangkok Hotel. It was right in the middle of the city, and was amazing. Very beautiful. Our bedroom was gorgeous... huge bed, great decoration, and the bathroom was awesome. I'm going to try to design our future bathrooms in our future home like this.

We decided we needed to take a short nap. I set the alarm for 3pm which was only an hour and a half of rest. Better than nothing! Eventually I woke up and it was 5pm- whoops! At first I thought I was a complete dumb ass and did not know how to set an alarm clock! Thankfully the clock was set to AM instead of PM. It was bas ackwards so it was not my fault! We planned what we would do in Bangkok during our stay... then the rain/thunder/lightning started. Good god was it raining! We could not see anything next to our hotel! Thankfully we had options downstairs in the mall that was connected. Of course like every mall there was a food court but there were a few restaurants as well. We decided to try the Thai restaurant. It might have been equivalent to an Outback Steakhouse or something worse, but we did not have to walk in the rain. We were the only customers in there too! It was delicious! We had rice cakes and sauce to start, fried rice with grilled pork, crayfish (we thought we ordered shrimp!) with sauce. The crayfish were difficult to eat so I ate most of those. We also ordered beef with hot sauce. We had 2 beers as well. The total bill was $37! What a deal.
We walked a short walk and escalator ride through the mall back to the hotel. One of the most popular bars in Bangkok was in our hotel so we sat down, used the wireless internet, and listened to the awesome jazz band. Almost sounded like John Mayer except the man was Asian. We had to get up early the next day, but with the long nap we had I was not tired. We stayed downstairs listening to the jazz music for a while, and I had the pleasure of experiencing, I mean: seeing, Bangkok prostitutes. Thai woman are already beautiful to begin with, but when they get dressed up in tiny dresses and lots of makeup, wow! The most disgusting part (as if being a prostitute is not disgusting enough already) they were with fat, ugly, bald, white mean who were clearly business men from English speaking countries. Some men appeared they traveled all the way to Bangkok even if they worked at 7-11 to be with Thai prostitutes. I knew this happened, but seeing it with my own eyes astonished me. What a first night!
Me love you long tammeeeee!