Trip home

I was on a flight for the last 24 hours and now I have 10 hours left. I just want to go home. I don't have a home though. All of my stuff is in storage. . . more coming soon.

Day 31

Singapore
Tonight we are in Singapore with an overnight bag. Tomorrow California and back home. Whew! A long trip. If I can find decent Internet access tonight, I will update with some pictures. The hotel last night was fantastic with a private pool, DVD and HiDef TV. The pictures are pretty nice too. See you all soon.

Kuta Beach

We are ready to go home. It is too long to be away and we are tired of travelling, tourists and locals. Just want to go home. Today we came to Kuta Beach to meet Erin's friend who moved here from Winston-Salem.
****** STOP EVERYTHING ********
I just got a nasty virus on my camera memory card. Ohh Kuta is really a nasty place. The computers have STDs. I am smarter than this virus. I will beat it.
*******

Anyway, we are going to meet Erin's friend who lives out here and dates a guy in a reggae band. Exciting.
Tonight we stay in a smelly (sewage smelling) $30 place. Tomorrow, we stay in a nice place to get away from all the street vendors and raw sewage vents. Fun, Fun, Fun. We should have stayed in Ubud.

Day ? - Bali

Hi from Bali! Sam and I just finished up our stay at the Nusa Dua Beach Hotel & Spa. It has been very nice here...it is definitely a luxury hotel. The grounds are beautiful and meticulously kept. While we were laying out yesterday by the pool, I saw a guy picking up stray leaves off of the grass.

Bali is an interesting place: They speak their own version of Indonesian and are proud that no one else can understand them; most of the Balinese can speak English and Japanese or Spanish because working in the tourism industry is very important here. The price for everything is very cheap, yet they try and charge tourist what they would pay at home. The average salary is $2,500 a year, therefore a $25 dinner or souvenir is a 10th of their yearly salary.


The first temple we saw... I forgot the name of it.

Our first full day here, we checked in, took a walk and then had an afternoon tour where we were taken to a pearl shop, a batik shop, a temple, a rice field, a monkey forest with a gift shop, and finally Tanah Lot. Tanah Lot is a temple on the coast, swarming with tourist and more gift shops.

The Balinese at these touristy places are relentless. For example, I drew an interesting comparison between the monkeys at the monkey forest and our tour guide through the forest who led us back to her shop. The monkeys are completely spoilt and depend on the tourist who buy the peanuts and bananas to feed them every day.

Here is the monkey attacking me!

I was attacked by this one monkey who jumped on my head to get at the peanuts that my tour guide was holding. After the walk in the monkey forest, our tour guide led us back to her stall and practically begged us to buy an over-priced souvenir. It was one of the oddest and more disturbing experiences I have had. I felt sorry for the Balinese woman because she was so desperate to sell us something, but I was also really annoyed because I couldn't look at anything without being pestered and shown 20 of the same thing..."How about this...you like?" I already don't like being sold something, but this was too much!

Sam ended up buying a statue. He haggled her down from 350,000 Rp (~$35) to 190,000 Rp (~$19) and then pretended to only have 173,000 Rp on him and she ended up taking that. I was glad when that was over. I definitely don't want to take any more tours like that.

This is Sam buying his statue.

We spent yesterday just relaxing at our hotel. The Nusa Dua Beach Hotel has this wonderful breakfast buffet included with our room that I look forward to each morning. It is outside the hotel overlooking these beautiful carp-filled pools and they have everything you could want for breakfast. It reminds me of a wedding reception or the hotel breakfast up at the place we stayed in Big Sky, MT.

Sam usually gets an omelet from the omelet chef and I rotate between cereal (which I really miss), toast with jam and brie, or Indonesian breakfast of tofu with peanut sauce or rice pudding...sometimes I have a little of all three!

Singapore Sling

I either caught a cold or I became allergic to Japan. I have serious sinus congestion. Well we left Tokyo this morning, and are in Singapore on a layover. The airport here is nice they have free Internet, video games and movies. Perfect for me. Not so great for Erin. She gets to look at the various gardens like the orchard garden and the fern garden. We were on the newest, biggest passenger plane -- the airbus A380. Really big. First class has private suites. And There were at least 30 movies and about 100 TV shows on demand so it was fun. I watched Damages and Dexter's Laboratory, Flifght of the Conchords and 10,000 BC (junk movie). Erin watched some romantic comedy or something silly -- nothing as highbrow as Dexter's Lab. I will put more pictures and blog updates as soon as I get access to a decent computer. Ciao.

Day 13

Last Day
Our last full day in Tokyo is a little sad. Yesterday, we were tired and ready to leave but today I feel like there is so much I still want to see. I guess I just get used todoing something and I don't like it to change. Today we are going to see akihabara where the technology geeks hang out. Then we might go to Sega Joyopolis a video game amusement park. I am not sure how much Erin can tolerate. Any we woke up late and now we will probably stay out late to absorb as much as we can before heading to Bali. Stay tuned.

Day 12

Tacky Tokyo
Last night we stayed at a love hotel. The Japanese have these places where people rent out the room for an hour. They are right next to all of the clubs, so people are in and out of there all night. We saw some people leaving and checking in. Anyway, you can rent out the room for the night after 10 PM. The room was only 6,300 yen - as cheap as the hostel. It was awesome even though I would not want to go in there with one of those CSI lights. It had Karaoke and movies and everything you would need to convince a drunk girl from the nearby club that this was not a sleazy situation. It also came stocked with everything you might need to get ready to go back to the club and meet another girl or boy. It had a jacuzzi hot tub, various soaps lotions and shampoos, a hair dryer, cologne, towels, kimonos, a refrigerator, microwave and light dimmers etc. I sang True Colors and To Love Somebody and then I fell asleep.

Today first we went shopping for gifts at 109 Shibuya where all the teeney boppers shop. Boy, are people slaves to fashion regardless of how ridiculous they look in them? I have never seen so many micro mini skirts and shorts in my life.
Then we went to Odaiba and checked out the man made islands. First we saw Panasonic's building where they display all the new technology. At one point they took us into a large room where one whole wall was a touch sensitive lcd panel. They would let me take pictures, but I snuck one in anyway. The demonstrator was playing piano on that huge screen and moving and resizing windows with her fingers. She also bounced a ball around the screen and when she pushed a window around it would move with the force of her pushing and slow down at an appropriate speed. It was cool. The most surreal thing was a huge screen with a woman singing Bryan Adams in Italian opera style . I didn't like the song in English. Her name was Jenkins.
Then we went to a crazy looking building with this huge saw sticking out of the ground like a giant left it there. The Japanese know tacky and revel in it.

Then we went to THE TACKIEST mall I have ever seen in my life. I should have realized I was in for a treat when we stopped at the station and there were at least 200 girls waiting. No men. Anyway it was modeled after some tacky Italian place maybe Rome, maybe your local Italian restaurant. Either way it was awful. The ceilings were painted like the sky and the lights changed to simulate night at times. Then we went to the beach. Yes, a man made beach with the statue of liberty. I don't get it, but this building was cool. The ball at the top is supposed to be a restaurant or an observatory or something. There were thousands of people there.

I played the new street fighter IV in the arcade. It was pretty neat. Each person gets his own screen and you sit on the other side of the arcade machine with your challenger. This is so he cannot see you. We played in an 8 floor arcade building.

This guy won all of that candy stacked up there. It only cost him about $10. The candy would have been about $4 in the store. I need a money making scheme like that. Something where people who can't do math gives me his money and nobody minds.


Next we went to see the blue man group. Erin had never been and I thought it might be cool to see them in Tokyo. Erin loved it but she wouldn't pose with the blue man. I think she has character phobia, because she wouldn't pose with Tokyo Donald Duck either. Oh well. We tried to find a Karaoke bar, but all we could find was karaoke rooms. Erin has heard me sing way too much I think. We went to a British pub after walking around Roppongi hills again. Then home and to sleep. Tomorrow is our last day in Japan.