My last full day in Tokyo, and I decided to not get up too early after four really busy days. To start, I took the subway to the Roppongi, a very upscale neighborhood with high-end clothing and other retail, as well as newer buildings – office and residential. Walking over to the Azabudai Hills areaContinue reading “Day 16 – An animated light show, a shrine, and some Swallows”
Category Archives: Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, & Tokyo – April 2024
Day 15 – Tokyo Seafood and Bathrooms (it’s not what you think)
For years one of the highly-touted things to do in Tokyo was to see the morning fish market (allegedly, the world’s largest) at Tsukiji – what was known as the “Inner Market”; each morning, it held a famous tuna auction where you could stand on the floor with the fish sellers and buyers to watchContinue reading “Day 15 – Tokyo Seafood and Bathrooms (it’s not what you think)”
Day 14 – Tokyo & Mt Fuji
Even though I’d committed to spend my entire five days in Tokyo, there was one day-trip I wanted to take: a chance to see Mt Fuji, the tallest mountain in Japan. It’s only located about 62 miles from Tokyo and can sometimes be seen from the city, but given its proximity to Tokyo, it’s easyContinue reading “Day 14 – Tokyo & Mt Fuji”
Days 12 & 13 – Tokyo
Day 12 was a travel day – a 7-hour flight from Bangkok to Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, the fifth busiest airport in the world. The majority of flying routes I had to choose from, taking me from Thailand back home, had me going through Tokyo, so I decided I’d visit Japan for a few days, aContinue reading “Days 12 & 13 – Tokyo”
Days 10 & 11 – Luang Prabang, Laos
Our guide here learned English in a buddhist school, which he attended for four years. His parents are illiterate, as they grew-up during the French colonial period, when only the elite were allowed to go to school. During the Vietnam War, Laos became the most bombed country in the history of warfare. The US droppedContinue reading “Days 10 & 11 – Luang Prabang, Laos”
Days 7, 8, and 9 – Cambodian Temples
Cambodia. We arrived here on April 10th, and we spent that afternoon, all of the following day, and the morning of the third day exploring the temples in and around Siam Reap. It’s a country of about 17m people; before Pol Pot’s “cultural revolution” and the killing fields (I re-watched the film on the flightContinue reading “Days 7, 8, and 9 – Cambodian Temples”
Day Six – Vietnam War-era Tunnels and an Exhilarating Saigon Experience
Not a tale of two cities, but a tale of two completely different experiences in Saigon. Our morning was spent visiting the Cu Chi Tunnels, about 1 3/4 hours outside the city. This is a sequence of over 75 miles of tunnels that date to the French War and that were used extensively by theContinue reading “Day Six – Vietnam War-era Tunnels and an Exhilarating Saigon Experience”
Day Five – Immersion in Saigon
It was a relatively early morning in Saigon when we took our rickshaw ride to see how the city wakes up; the population seems to be somewhere between 10m and 15m (it was about 3m in 1975 when the Vietnam War ended), making it the largest city in the country, with something like 6m scooters/motorbikes. Continue reading “Day Five – Immersion in Saigon”
Days 3 & 4 on Ha Long Bay
We started out around 8:30 a.m. on a two-hour drive east of Hanoi to Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that sits in the northern part of the Gulf of Tonkin. The Bay is made up of over 1,900 islands, jungle-covered limestone formations – named karsts – that, in some cases, appear toContinue reading “Days 3 & 4 on Ha Long Bay”
Day Two – Hanoi
A few little tidbits about Vietnam – it’s a country of 100m people, more than twice the population it was in 1975 at the end of the war. That means it’s pretty young, and the stat I’ve heard is that 65% of the population is younger than 35. So – for many of them, theContinue reading “Day Two – Hanoi”
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