Tokyo and Kyoto

After Chris left, I had just a few days left on my Thai visa. The decision, to the question, "where to go next?", took me a while to answer. 

Two days before my visa ran out, I decided to take a plane to Tokyo.  For those who don’t know me well; I had been a big fan of Japan for years. Its culture, language, people and mega cities fascinated me since I was a teenager.

I cleaned out my place, packed my bags and of course had to leave a lot of stuff behind as it accumulated over time.

Anyway I did take a plane to Shanghai connected there, headed for Narita. 

I never experienced before, what I felt when I arrived in Japan. I was at first really excited but driving into Tokyo with the bus, looking out the window, I actually felt an adrenaline rush. Finally being in a place that I have wanted to visit for years and years. 

Tokyo is just amazing, so unbelievably huge, modern, different i any way and squeaky clean, almost sterile. There were no graffiti, no posters and no trash on the streets at all. The last point amazed me especially as they were lacking public trash cans as well.

 

In the next days, I experienced the difficulty of their metro system. It is not a big deal to find the right station and to figure out how much you’re supposed to pay, but if you have to change between different lines it can get tricky. 

There are several big companies running different lines of the metro, so if you try to change to a line of another company, you will have to pay again. So the cheaper price sometimes only applies if you take a longer, more complicated route.

This was quite confusing and hard to understand as a visitor. (Edit: Back then, there was also no smartphone app to help you with that. Now you can use: tokyosubway, tabimori or citymapper to name a few examples). 

Another thing that stunned me where the generally high prices for public transport that start at around $2 per trip.

Of course, as you might know, Japan is one of the richest countries in the word, right up there with my home-country, Switzerland,  which means it can also be quite pricey.



A lot of things are cheaper than in Switzerland, but some are much more expensive. Here a short overview of the price difference:

Object	Switzerland ($)	Japan ($)
Train ride from north to south	100	600
Meal (Restaurant)	15-150	5-80
Meal (McD or BK)	10-30	5-10
Book	20 - 100	10-50
Sandwich	5-15	3-4
Hostel (one night)	20-40	30-100
Cocktail (with nearly no alcohol)	15-18	14-18
Beer (in bar or club)	8	5

So be prepared to spend some money on your trip!

After two days in Tokyo, exploring Akihabara (the centre for electronics and anime/manga in the city), I moved to my friend Riku’s place in Hachioji.

His place is actually just 30 minutes from the city centre, but still very much at the centre of Tokyo. 

If you recall, Riku and me met in Hanoi and he offered me there to stay with him, while I was in town. 

He introduced me to some of his friends, we went to bars, restaurants and a hot spring together and he told me places to go for when he was at work. I visited the emperor’s palace, Roppongi & Shibuja disticts, some temples and gardens before I left for Kyoto. 

I had a nice Bus-ride in a high-tech Japanese bus, which had a SEGA console and TV screen in every seat to play games, watch movies or even TV during the ride. 

Kyoto was equally amazing as Tokyo, but in a completely different way. Kyoto being the old capital of Japan, and a much smaller city, it is loaded with beautiful temples, Zen-gardens, monasteries and amazing food places. Going to Japan, you simply can't miss this city.

I decided to leave Japan early, as I spent way more money than budgeted and even I loved the place, it was simply not sustainable for a long period of time.

I ran into some issues leaving the country as the airline required me to show a ticket out of Thailand to be allowed to fly. It was quite a hassle to try and argue with them, that as a backpacker, I would use land transport to leave the country which was much cheaper to book in-country. 

At last, I was allowed to sign a liability waiver so the airline wasn't liable if I overstayed my visa in Thailand, and they let me board.

I also had to pay additional $100 for my luggage because it was 8kg over the allowance, which was strange because I had the same weight on the way to Japan, with the same airline. So all in all this was a pretty frustrating end to my trip.

After getting back to Bangkok, I got a new apartment and started looking for jobs and informing myself about the possibilities to set up a business myself, as I decided to try and stay here for a while. 

Trip to Koh Samui

Alright then, Chris is off, on his way back to Switzerland, so now I've got some time to update you on our trip!

I waited an hour at the airport until Chris managed it to find me. We then took the BTS (Bangkok Sky Train) to a Ratchathewi station, right next to my apartment. 

In the first days, I tried to show him some local food and especially the pulsating nightlife of this great city. 

I actually don’t know if I described Bangkok already enough to you. Actually a lot of things here are very unusual or even strange for us Europeans. 

The strong smells from the canalisation, the chlorine smell of the water in the shower, the little, unhygienic food stalls (but to be honest I never got any stomach problems because of them), the motorbike taxis, temples and old, mouldy buildings to name just a few.  

But even if this city looks a little run down you can see a lot of progress, there are tons of new buildings and shopping malls everywhere. And tens of condominiums and office towers in construction. I am sure this city will look like a modern western metropolis in just a few years. 

So of you’re interested in a nice holiday apartment in Bangkok, you should buy now! There are plenty of them, and now they are still cheap in comparison.

Anyways... Chris and I explored Bangkok, did some sightseeing at temples and parks and of course also some shopping.  

After a few days we decided to take a trip to Koh Samui, an Island in south Thailand. We needed to get some tan and relax at the beach for a while.

We went to the train station one day before we wanted to leave and guess what? Yes of course there were no seats available in the next few days... 

Shortly decided to take a sleeper bus on the next evening. Said and done! The bus was quite comfortable actually. They call these VIP-busses here. 

I heard a lot of different stories about these busses; some of them have TV screens in front of every seat and only wide single seats for more comfort. Ours was more like a very comfortable normal bus, with reclyning seats.

After a long ride we arrived at the seaside somewhere in nowhere (of course there was a food stall owned by the bus company) and we had to wait there around two hours before we got picked up by another bus to get to the ferry. 

One of the busses was a luxury VIP bus but as the information flow was a little slow we couldn’t manage to get a seat in there. The other one was a typical Thai bus without AC or working fans inside. But it wasn't too bad of a ride.


We enjoyed the ferry on deck in the sun for two hours and after our arrival we needed to drive half around the whole island to get to the most famous beach. It turned out to be a very touristy place which I personally don’t like too much, but as Chris liked it, we stayed. 

If you only come to Thailand for a short trip, you surely will not mind the taxi drivers too much. But if you stayed in the country for a while and know the prices, they can make you furious.



I was really annoyed by the overpricing in Samui. The cost was 500 Baht (15$) to go from one beach to another and the normal price would maybe be 150 Baht (4$). Not much for Chris of course, as he still earns money in Switzerland, but too much for me as a long term traveller.

So what to say about Samui? It was a lot of fun! The first beach was not very nice but there was a lot of party and shopping to do.

After that we changed to a more quiet, beautiful beach and relaxed for a few days. We were there on the 1st August (which is the national holiday of Switzerland for those who don’t know) and we bought a lot of Chinese fireworks to celebrate. 

I went on this day to get a teeth bleaching and was in a lot of pain afterwards. So I took a handful of pain killers and said: "Fuck it, I can’t stay at home at the 1st of August!"

In the evening we had dinner and then lightened our fireworks, it was awesome!

Then, of course, we went to celebrate to the next bar. Which was not the best idea with the painkillers in my bloodstream. 

I was careful with the drinks because I knew it could multiply my reaction to the alcohol. 


I took one drink and after I waited 30 minutes to see if I still was Ok.. Yes and after the third drink I still didn’t feel any effect of the alcohol -------Black Out-------- 

I don’t know what exactly happened that night but Chris told me I was pretty drunk from one second to another and ended up being pretty funny for him to watch.

The next day we had to leave Koh Samui and I felt terrible. I almost threw up in the taxi to the bus station. But lucky for me there was a pharmacy and I could get some medicine for my stomach. 

Our bus this time was really awesome, one of those with the extra extra large seats, TVs and so on which I talked about at the begin of this text. I was able sleep like a baby on the way back to Bangkok.


In the last days with Chris we didn’t do too much, only of course a night out and then it was already over. I took him to the BTS and we said our goodbyes. I hope he enjoyed his trip here and has some good stories to tell back home!


When I sat in the back of the motorbike taxi, on the way back to my place, fast driving, moving into little gaps between cars, the dusty hot air in my hair, looking at the skyline of Bangkok in front of me... I realised, how much I love this city. Despite of its flaws.