autumn colours sanraku

hit the ground running upon landing in tokyo at 6am and had to navigate my way to shin nasu. the first part was easy, after all, any monkey can get themselves onto the narita express (OUCH SO EXPENSIVE!) into tokyo aeki but from tokyo aeki it was a shinkansen maze and i'm glad i asked the ticket vendor to write down the connecting platforms, train timings and final destination of each train i was to take, which made it easy peasy lemon squeezy in the end ;) the hard part was convincing the public bus driver to let me ride his bus though! when i reached nasu, the bus driver refused to let me board. telling me to wait, albeit three hours, for the free shuttle to the ryokan. because i was an impatient little thing, and the station was boring, i politely insisted on riding his bus. he politely insisted back, "FREE BUSU! FREE BUSU!" so i summoned my reserves of japanese and tried again. to my horror, i realised he was more familiar with a dialect i was unfamiliar with. but with sign language and one too many pouty-faces on my part (yes, i am ashamed) i boarded the bus and off we went! best part? he refused to let me pay for the ride when we reached my stop. saved me 1000yen, i must've looked so pathetic haha.

and the fall colours, were, as you can see, absolutely breath-taking. japan was off to a good start!

photos of the exquisite ryokan tomorrow :)

happier in bhutan

thankful for some certainty (just heard from the firm about the deferred start of the training contract!), i've stuck my long ears out and this is what might materialise come year end! 

Itinerary in brief –

·                 Day 1 - Fly into Paro and take the 1.5 hour drive to Thimphu (the capital city) for an easy day of exploration (e.g. visit to the local market) and cultural activities (such as making of zsa zsas, a traditional Bhutanese offering) as travelers adjust to the altitude, which – at 8,000 meters, is not bad, but for people from Singapore who are used to sea level, some may feel slightly short of breath if they move around too quickly the first day or two; overnight in Thimphu

·                 Day 2 – Leave early morning for the drive through Dochu La pass to Gangtey, which is a spectacularly beautiful valley in Central West Bhutan where travelers can observe the endangered black neck cranes, who return from Tibet and reside in Gangtey for the winter; overnight in Gangtey

·                 Day 3 – Enjoy a brief, early morning walk through the forests of Gangtey and leave by mid-morning to Punakha to attend the blessing Puja ceremony for the elder housing project; overnight in Punakha

·                 Day 4 – Start the day in Punakha Valley by taking a beautiful walk along the MoChu River - pass rice paddies and chili fields - to visit a new Chorten established by the four queens. Visit the Punakha Dzong, the most stunning dzong in Bhutan; alternatively, one can walk through the fields and visit Chimi Lakhang – the fertility temple. One can also simply relax at the Amankora Lodge, which is a converted old farm house and enjoy a cup of tea in the orchard

·                 Day 5 – Depart for a leisurely five hour drive to Paro, with stops along the way to visit Dochu La Pass and others; the evening will start with a performance of traditional dance and music and will be a black tie affair; overnight in Paro

·                 Day 6 – Visit the iconic Tiger’s Nest, the stunning temple that is built on a cliff face, or visit Kichyu Lhakhang- the oldest temple in Bhutan and make offerings of butter lamps; overnight in Paro

·                 Day 7 – Morning departure home via Bangkok and arriving Singapore in the evening

·                 The trip will be punctuated throughout with lectures on Bhutanese culture and Buddhism, making of zsa zsas and offering of butter lamps, hanging of prayer flags, as well as hikes – mostly gentle - through the countryside, picnics, and finally on the evening before departure, a special blessing ceremony for the travelers held at the Druygel Dzong - an old ruin that is lit up with candles for the night just for the group and a wonderful gala dinner in traditional dress that follows.

Weather – Early December weather is comfortably cool in Bhutan with blue and sunny skies. It’s perfect for walking through the countryside. Most of us are comfortable in a sweater or a light jacket. Night time can be cold but usually we will be cuddling up around cozy fires or tucked in comfortable beds!

Accommodation – Accommodation will be at the Aman lodges.

(is it just me or did that last line give you heart palpitations, too? :) )

berlin blues

almost a year ago, i went to berlin on my own. had the good fortune of staying at a friend's massive apartment in the heart of the city so i didn't have to rough it out for real. however, this apartment was also big enough to house an army, with over 5 bedroooms. problem: it was just me so i kinda boing-ed around all that space, not really knowing what to do with it. it was also semi-creepy at night because there i was all alone and any strange noises WERE NOT ME.

but to cut a long nostalgia trip short, i bumped into my very gracious hosts in town and they remembered that about a year ago i was in berlin in their apartment. and they asked if i missed berlin. at first i thought it'd be hard to miss a place i spent a short four days at. but they're right, i do miss it and the absolute freedom and independence i enjoyed. not like my rights are curtailed back home (haha). far from! yet the liberation of solo travel and being able to wake up, walk out into a brand new city, take in brand new sights, enjoy brand new experiences and create brand new memories, is one of my favourite things to do. new-ness is underrated. much as there is comfort in familiarity, there's something to be said for exploration.

plus i loved the christmas markets and spent hours wandering around every market i could locate in the greater berlin area. misanthropic and narcissistic as it may seem, i like my own company very much, thank you.

you can read more about berlin below, if you like :)

berlin calling

berlin laundry

day 34

friday 11 june 2010 madrid

finally hit zara after admirable restraint the past week. had recced while in barca but it didn't make sense to lug all my shopping with me as i bus-ed across spain. my patience was rewarded and i shopped till i dropped. thank goodness i was able to detax! and, even without sales (they're at the end of the year), the EUR40 blazers i bought retail for S$130 back home. teeeheehee :)

met friends for lunch at el tigre tapas bar. amazing atmosphere, everyone crammed into this tiny hole in the wall and with orders of sangria, we were plied with plates of complimentary tapas. tapas is great by itself, but free tapas with an order of EUR4 sangria is even better. so for EUR4 (yes, i can't get over it) i'd an entire meal.

after lunch and slightly inebriated, i went in search of iberico to bring as gifts for when i visited J in aix and the Bs whom i was staying with in Paris on my last night.

when i was done, i bought a stack of postcards, sat in the park and wrote to my heart's content. 

day 28

saturday 5 june 2010 barcelona

i climbed a mountain!

Day 3
Montjuic (1 metro ticket gets you to the metro and the adjacent funicular to montjuic) not to be confused with the cable car up to the castle €9. if you save € and walk up instead, it's only 15min and gradual incline.

Nice views from castle. Worth a visit.

well, not quite. but you get the drift. and when i reached the top, this is what i saw! i couldn't believe my eyes. it's no secret that i'm a big crystal cruise fan, and have been blessed to have gone on a baltic cruise in summer '06 (just before starting freshman year) and a mediterranean cruise in summer '08 (half-way through college). so technically, the timing would've been perfect for a summer 2010 graduation cruise but noooo, the parentals chose to go on a riverboat up the seine instead :( ok, really shouldn't complain. the seine cruise was awesome in its own right. but being the big fat softie i am, i sat on my little perch and watched the ship the entire afternoon, thinking about happy memories spent on board her perfectly polished decks. have countless memories of time with my family, and subsequently time with my family and with him on the crystal serenity that it was nice walking down memory lane at this particular juncture of being done with school. plus my friends were on board (also most coincidentally) and i was waiting for them to wave at me. haha. the things we do!

after some much-needed decompressing and me-time down-time on montjuic, i met up with some high school friends who happened to be passing through barca. like i said, so much for solo trippin'. being the text fanatic that i am, i'd sent out a mass text updating my nearest and dearest of my whereabouts and little did i know that Y would overlap with me in barca! along with S and 2 of their friends. again, the big softie in me was mega nostalgic because the first ever trip i did without 'adults' was with Y, S and some of our high school friends when we were fresh out of high school and applying to college. we took the overnight train to KL and it was such an adventure. we later met up in bangkok the night of the new years eve bomb blasts (new year '07) and saw the new year in together, after making sure we'd all our limbs with us. 7 months later, we went to phuket with more high school friends. so to meet up with Y and S in barca on my grad trip, unplanned as it was, felt as if we'd gone full circle. from clueless 18year olds, to slightly savvier 23year olds. i'm done with college, they'll be doctors next year. gee :)

oh yes so we crossed the bridge for some tapas then had the best sangria back at their hostel bar :)

day 27

friday 4 june 2010 barcelona

day 2

spent the morning at la sagrada familia. go early (before 11am) to avoid queuing for over an hour. i went at 10am and the queue was as long as my iberico sandwich (about 15min, but that's because i'm a slow eater).

After lunch, walk up Carrer de verdi towards parc guell. before that Lunch at plaza de grace (shadiest) plaza del sel and pl de la revolucio de Septembre

Walk up Verdi all the way until you see escalators on the right. Ride them to parc guell! Spend the afternoon wandering around parc guell.

i'd never have made it up without the magical escalators that just appeared out of nowhere and whisked me away. it was surreal! there i was huffing and puffing up the hill, cursing and swearing at the sun and my own poor choice of footwear (havis, way to go.) when suddenly, i saw 6 flights of escalators on my right. i thought it was a mirage! but i rode them, and at the very top i was gently placed on level with the parc entrance. who'd have guessed!

spent the afternoon wandering around parc guell and am very proud that i walked all the way there and back to the hostel. no public transport for me!

view from the rooftop bar of the majestic hotel

following up on the previous day's chance meeting, the very lovely L family invited me to join them in satiating their local food craving. they've gotta be mind-readers or something because by this time i was pushing 4 weeks without home food and about to implode in self-deprivation. had the best nasi goreng ever at the mandarin oriental along passeig de gracia. was initially debating between ordering pad thai (upon learning the chef was thai) and nasi goreng but went with the later and was well-rewarded for that leap of faith.

the rice came in a keropok boat so big it must've been on crack!

day 26

thursday 3 june 2010 barcelona

first full day in barca and it was full of surprises!

this is excerpted from my barca list.

Day 1

Walk south along passeig de gracia (sort of like champs élysées) and you'll reach la rambla (flower stalls, wet market called la boquaria, people in costume for you to take photo with). Nice to stop for al fresco lunch along the sidewalk. Most restaurants have a semi-decent set menu at lunch time, watch out for pricey sangria. Only order if you don't mind paying €9/mug. After lunch, continue southward along la rambla until you reach the old port. Face the sea and turn left, it's a nice walk. If you want to hit the beach, it's across the bridge at the old port.

When you run out of coast, turn left and head north inland through the barri gothic, historical part of Barcelona. Old roman buildings and quaint feel overall.

la bocateria off la rambla (random tourists)

life imitating art along the promenade

and this was the best part of barca! of all the zara outlets in the city, i bumped into some dear family friends at the zara off my street. didn't know they'd be in town, neither did they know i'd be around. but thanks to divine providence and their generosity, they invited me to join them for dinner at roig robi and i had one of my best meals on the trip :) enjoyed the balance of alone time and great dinner company.

i'm not a fan of processed food, or nitrate, but here's something i can't say no to.

iberico ham - the best or nothing!

day 25

wednesday 2 june 2010 skavsta to barcelona girona

hit the ground running bright and early on wednesday. took the 7am flight out of skavsta and was in central barca by lunch time. had a 5pm tea date with someone C (swedish friend) had very kindly set me up with so i familiarised myself with my hostel (mixed 8 bedder - initially shudder-inducing by not quite after i got used to it) and eased myself into the idea of solo trippin', for it was the first time i'd planned to be alone for such a long stretch. true, did 4 days in berlin all by myself (yay me!) last november but i helped house-sit a friend's empty apartment. this time, i was alone in a hostel. haha it's such a big deal for my sheltered psyche but yes, young girls travel by themselves all the time and i'm not really all that special, except in my head and to myself :) made friends with gustalvo the brazilian dude working at the hostel and went in search of food with my trusty map once i'd left my backpack all padlocked under my bed. see? paranoia knows no bounds.

tea date went swimmingly, and before i knew it it was time for dinner. most unfortunately, i'm a self-confessed glutton who lives from meal to meal and after dinner i briefly flirted with the idea of joining the hostel bunch on a pub crawl, but my aching bones weren't up for the trauma. although i did, very bravely if i may add, head out to buy some water from a nightshop 3 blocks away. past midnight. brave or stupid, i don't know. but i was staying on the main street and stuck to the big roads, kept my wits about me etc. still, cheap thrill if nothing else :)

berlin laundry part 2

(continued)

rather anti-climatically, i spent my last day in berlin doing laundry.

the lone instruction my host left me was to launder and replace the sheets so the next guest / the family when they're in town, would have clean bedding when they reach the apartment. he suggested that i leave 1-2h to do this.

good thing i'm hyper-efficient and a little more kiasu than i care to admit. so i thought i'd do laundry first thing in the morning and then i'd have the rest of the day to explore more of the city before my late night flight. so i wake at 0730 and do the first load. incidentally, whoever had stayed in the apartment before me didn't do laundry because the sheets were used and i'd to change them when i arrived. so i was a little miffed that i'd two loads of laundry to do and it's not that i'm charitable or anything, i just didn't want my host to think i was a slob so it was more self-interest than altruism that prompted my industry. don't mind cleaning up after myself, just don't want to clean up after random person, for free! randomly, i'd probably make a half-decent cleaning lady, if given the opportunity. ok so i loaded the machine and set it according to the recommended settings (host had been kind enough to leave an english manual out, turned to the right page and indicated which program to use etc) and waited. two hours later, it was still on rinse. three hours later, it was spinning and only after four hours did it finally transition into dryer mode. by which time, i'd run out of things to do and was anxiously pacing the apartment before resignedly sitting in front of the machine and allowing myself to be hypnotised by the spinning drum. not fun.

when the first load was finally done, it was time to put in the second load. and i snuck to the bakery on the corner to buy lunch and walked around the neighbourhood to cool off but essentially i was held hostage by the washing machine, a prisoner of my own sense of responsibility.

and i thought i'd only be plagued by laundry woes in stockholm!

berlin calling

spent four days in berlin on a whim. ry*nair had free tickets (literallY!) and i jumped at the chance to skip the country yet again. was fortunate that a family friend invited me to stay at his (empty) holiday home and i thoroughly enjoyed the sprawling apartment. can you imagine 1 x me in 300 square metres of space? i was rattling around the place :D

it's the longest time i've travelled alone and i managed to get myself all the way to berlin and back without incident, save the potential conman at the s-bahn, but more about him later. was initially a little apprehensive about solo trippin', especially to a brand new city. was in osaka on my own earlier this year but i'd been before and was familiar enough with the city. my thimble of japanese came in handy, too. berlin was a completely different story! hardly anyone spoke english and i couldn't read the menu :( obviously my biggest concern was not being able to communicate effectively in case of emergency but filling my tummy.

that said, i went on an alternative berlin tour my first morning there to orientate myself with the different neighbourhoods and public transport and save talking to some american tourists on the same tour, i didn't talk to anyone else the rest of my stay. before you think i'm a hermit-in-the-making, i did talk to the girl in the bakery where i bought breakfast in the mornings but all very practical interaction, nothing voluntary or social, if you get what i mean.

but, solo travel's an underrated concept. i really enjoyed being alone and the time out i got in berlin. haha, as if my time in stockholm's in such great demand when really, it isn't. yet it was great to be footloose and fancy free, exploring a vibrant city without a care in the world. plus, i'm glad that i'm secure enough to enjoy my own company. or maybe it's not security but an inherent misanthropy cultivated over years of being an only child ;) my mother was unamused when i suggested that maybe i was like those wolf-children, abandoned at birth and raised by wolves without any human interaction though. oops.

was pleasantly surprised by how affordable berlin was. even in the christmas markets where one would expect a blatant mark-up of the prices, capitalising on yuletide spirit and good cheer, the gluehwine / fries / currywursts /crepes were inexpensive and i ended up grazing my way through the city every day without a 'proper' meal because there just wasn't a need for one, although i probably ate more without realising it because a kebab / bratwurst mit brotchen / crepe every hour probably adds up to more than three square meals.

found authentic chinese food too and very happily ordered enough for four people. the waiter was horrified. and even more so when he cleared my empty plates. oops again.

so that was berlin! safely back in stocks and i'm thrilled that it's the last i've seen of skavsta in a long while. yay!

oh! i was telling you about the conman. so this random guy approached me when i was at the ticket machine (EVEN THOUGH THE ARE NO BARRIERS ON THE METRO, I STILL BOUGHT A TICKET *shoots meaningful look at my less scrupled friends*) and asked if i wanted to buy a ticket. well, duh. and he tried to sell me a ticket that had already been validated but he'd sneakily validated it upside down so the timestamp was semi-obscured by the print. couldn't fool my perfect eyesight though and i returned the ticket with a dirty look. the would-be conman then started exclaiming in mock embarrassment and repeatedly berated himself for being 'stupid'. needless to say, i ignored him and he continued to bang his head against my ticket machine. weirdo.

berlin laundry

edit: turns out my iphone isn't able to type into the blog post box. apparently not one of it's 19284726 functions.

so, here goes.

i spent my last day in berlin doing laundry. and i thought that my laundry woes remained in stockholm.

back safe, will post proper when i'm more awake!

solo trippin'

off to berlin for:

1. strawberry yoghurt ritter sport

2. authentic chinese food

3. sleeping like a starfish

not your typical berlin finds, but we'll see.

photos and stories when i'm back!