For the past 5 days I have been traveling around Korea with my girlfriend and her mother. We visited the port and beach town of Busan, the capital Seoul and took a tour to visit the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) at the border with North Korea.
The rest of my trip to Tokyo this year included seeing, touching, hugging, eating and buying Pikachus. Im serious, I did everything imaginable to those pikachus.
The city of Ibusuki is famous in Kyushu for its hot onsen and of course rejuvenating sand baths. To get a hands on (or buts on in this case) experience, we decided to make the Iwasaki Hotel our main holiday destination. The hotel itself is rather old, probably built in the 70s; the service is ok, nothing special; the food is mediocre and expensive; but the baths are perfect. It is hard to explain what I felt when lying on scorching hot sand (up to 55°C) while covered with hot (but not as hot) sand. Sweat was driving down my face, my chest was tight and my but was on fire (from lying on burning sand), but I felt relieved. Lying in this sand helped me relax and it probably has more healing effects on the body which I am not aware of, but it felt great overall.
There were also fireworks in our hotel and on the last day of our stay, after the typhoon passed, we were finally able to sunbathe. You can check out my photos right here:
And Amy’s photos here:
Exams are over, semester is done, time to go outside and have fun in the beautiful weather, unless you have a typhoon coming (yes we are gonna get hit in the next few days). My parents are one the way to me now and we are going to start our fun summer vacation. Unlike previous years this holiday will be rather different. First the length: we are going to start traveling now and only finish on the 31st of August, so thats almost a month. And second is Amy: she is playing part in this years travels, both with my parents and me with her parents. So here are our plans:
The september is gonna be very interesting as well, lots of free time to spend with my dearest person.
To my Sydney people I wish good luck with your semester, to my Japanese friends I wish you to enjoy your holidays as much as I am. And to my internet friends, there are always games to play and anime to watch.
Traveling sure is fun, isn’t it? You get to see and experience the world where we live in and get to be a part of the vast diversity of cultures that people have created for themselves. Most people don’t have the opportunity to explore the world, due to time or money constraints. I, on the other hand, had the time, and my family had the finances to support traveling to over 45 countries in our world. Ever since I was 3 years old, my parents would take me abroad, starting with nearby countries such as Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, etc.; but then expanding to places like Kenya, Brazil and even Australia.
Mentioning this to people who have yet to travel outside of their home country or have just traveled once in their life, surprises or even scares them. Not everyone has this possibility and that is why I am grateful to my parents, that they gave me this opportunity to visit a large number of countries on the Earth.
Here I would like to list all the countries I have been to so far in an order from left to right, based 0n the image above. Whenever I visit a new country, I will make a new map and a new post, so you can see the evolution of my travels.
Golden Week is a holiday in Japan which consists of multiple celebrations such as Showa day, Constitution Memorial day, Greenery day, Children’s day. It is the time of year, where pretty much all of Japan starts traveling around to visit places that they haven’t been to, or places that they would want to visit again. Even though neither Amy nor me are Japanese, we decided to embark on a journey of our own. From the 2nd till the 7th of May we went to Kansai (one of the central regions of Japan) and visited the cities of Kyoto, Nara and Osaka.
Today we went hiking in the mountains, walking up a mountain to be precise. In a car with 5 people we drove to Kirishima National Park and climbed (walked) to the top of Takachihono-mine mountain. After waking up at 8am, gathering at about 8:45, a almost 2 hour drive to the mountain, our walk to the top began. Tip for anyone who wants to go up mountains in Japan, buy these sock things that cover your shoes that prevent pebbles from getting in, by the end of our descent my shoes were completely full with pebbles and that was really annoying a bit painful. Unfortunately it has been really cloudy the past few days in Kagoshima, so we didn’t get any view from the mountain, but when we were going down, we got to see the crater of the volcano (the mountain used to be a volcano), which was at least something! We also visited a farm there, which is apparently really famous for their ice-cream, but we didn’t have any, we just bought some souvenirs (food).
It was definitely a fun thing to do, and I would love to go there again when the sun is out so I can take some amazing pictures! I did take some, so here they are:
(above image is from our previous hotel: Borei Angkor)
Now we have reached our final destination – Sokha Beach hotel in Sihanoukville. Here we will be spending 6 days just relaxing on the beach and eating fresh fruit. But I will be posting up more photos from the hotel and stuff later on (by the end of the trip).
For now, have some from our previous hotel:
You know Venice right? A city which lives on water. The photo above is not from Venice, far from it, it is from a small city (housing 10,000 people) on the Tonle Sap Lake in Cmabodia. People have lived on this lake for generations and will continue doing so, but one thing that separates this town from any other town is that during summer all you can see are poles, thousands and thousands of poles (and I do not mean people from Poland). Then, during rainy season, the water goes up 9 meters and floods everything in sight. Thats why these people had to build houses on such huge pikes as a foundation for their homes. Its an amazing sight, which you wont be able to see anywhere in the world.
After that we had a very nice spa massage and cocktails while looking at the sunset. This is the life.
Photos:
Yesterday, on the 3rd day we took a 1 hour flight from Ho Chi Minh city in Vietnam to Siem Reap in the neighboring country of Cambodia. Once we arrived in Siem Reap and got to our hotel, we were in for a little surprise. Apparently my dad’s agent booked us rooms in the so called Privilege Floor of the hotel Borei Angkor. What this means is that we get our own reception on the floor, free minibar refills, a bathtub in our bathroom, complimentary champagne in our bedroom and free access to the Damnak Lounge where we can have free cocktails while watching the sunset. Well basically we are living in a 5 ☆ hotel with like extra service. Even my dad was like: “I did not pay this much!” All the photos are on my flickr~
Today, we went on a tour of the Angkor temples. These buildings were built in the 12th century and are still mostly standing in tact! Seeing them left us speechless. We were constantly asking our tour guide: “How did they build them so well in those ancient times?!” There were a lot of tourists all over the place, which is understandable as this is THE most famous place in all of Cambodia. But even so there was enough space for all of us, that just goes to show how grand these temples are! Also it was scorching out there, around 35° C so we had to drink a lot of water and cover our heads. That didn’t help us from being drenched in sweat.
Photos here: