United Arab Emirates - Dubai Part II

On our first day in Dubai, we spent most of our time indulging in some of the amazing luxuries available in this cosmopolitan city like an indoor snow dome and high tea at the world's only 7-star hotel. Our second day in Dubai should be called the Emirate Heritage Day. We kicked off the day by taking the metro just a few stops to the Sheikh Mohammed Center for Cultural Understanding. I've said this before, and I'll keep saying it until any potential Dubai travelers heed my words. Dubai is not a walkable city! They have 2 metro lines, and they're building more, but the stops are essentially useless except for a few things (mostly malls). By day 2, the reality of this still hadn't sunk in yet. So, we took the metro across the sand pit from our hotel only two stops, but then still had about a 15-20 mins walk after that. (FYI - be very careful what kind of metro card you buy. I don't remember exactly what happened, but for some reason we bought the wrong cards and both had to pay an exit fee. This just goes to show you just how different countries and cultures can be. When this same thing happened in Thailand, they just smiled at me and waved me through. But that's another blog for another time. And I know what you're thinking. I need to pay better attention to what metro cards I buy! Yeah yeah...I know.)

We pre-booked a tour of the historical quarter and also a cultural lunch, but since we arrived too early for the tour, we went to the Dubai Museum first. For a country with very little history, they had a really nice display. 

Dubai Museum

After that we went back to the Sheik Mohammed Center for Cultural Understanding. Because we arrived a little early, we waited in the waiting area and read a rather disturbing article about Bush, Blair and the war in Iraq back in the beginning of the 21st century. It always saddens me to read articles like this that are published in foreign newspapers. I wish other countries didn't pass judgement on the American people based on the decisions of a few politicians. Yes, we elect our officials, but in a country with 200 million people, surely they have to understand that we all have differing opinions on things and shouldn't be judged the same. At any rate, we seldom suffer ill treatment when traveling abroad which always restores my faith in humanity.

Anyway, before too long we gathered together as a group, and took a very nice walking tour of the Bastakia Quarter. The guide explained their old architecture and wind tunnel system that they used before they had electricity. Given how hot it can get in the UAE, it fascinated me to see how the people coped with the weather extremes before modern conveniences like air conditioning.

Bastakia Quarter - Historical District - Dubai

After the tour, we walked around a bit until our cultural lunch at 1:00 inside the center where our tour began. We could only stay for the first half of the lunch, but the whole experience was very interesting and enlightening. We all sat around the food on the floor with our shoes off. When they uncovered the food, they said something on the order of, "now, don't expect us to select one side of the group to go first in an attempt to be organized and efficient about this. In our culture, its every man for himself." And with that, everyone looked at each other uncomfortably, and then slowly, we all started getting food. We enjoyed many authentic dishes. We ate chicken and fish with saffron rice, white rice, a chicken and vegetable stew, and sesame/honey donut holes for dessert. 

Just before lunch - Dubai Center for Cultural Understanding

Culture Lunch - Dubai Center for Cultural Understanding

After we all had plates of food, our tour guide rejoined us along with another lady and gentleman from the center. All of them were dressed in full covered Muslim attire, and they opened the floor for us to ask any sort of questions we wanted about their country and religion. They did a really good job explaining things from their perspective and took no offense to the questions we asked. They addressed all manner of things from having multiple wives to their opinion of the more radical Islamic terrorist groups. They insisted that they, along with their government, believed that Islam is a very peaceful religion and that groups and governments who try to use it to spread fear are doing so with political agendas. Having had little contact with the Muslim community and knowing next to nothing about Islam, I really appreciated how open they were to clear up many stereotypes and misconceptions of their religion and people.

Around 1:45, we excused ourselves from the lunch and hustled back to the hotel to change. One of the top rates activities in Dubai is going on a desert safari. Platinum Heritage Safaris were a little pricier than some of the other companies, but they were well worth the expense. What an amazing experience! (You can read my trip advisor review of them as well.) You may be asking yourself, just what is a desert safari? Well, my friends, I will tell you. 

A driver Fahad (or Jaquel - his nickname) picked us up at our hotel around 2:45. We stopped at 2 other hotels to pick up 4 more people; a couple from Germany (Marius and Francine) and a couple from New Zealand and South Africa (Paul and Angela). From there we drove about 45 mins to the Dubai Desert Conservation which is privately owned by the Prince of Dubai. Once we arrived, Fahad gave us all special head dressings to wear to help keep the sand out.  We loaded into old 1950s land rovers and began our trek across the desert. 

Fahad and our Land Rover - Dubai Desert Conservation

I'm not sure if I can accurately explain the concept of dune bashing, but take a look at my picture above. Imagine driving through the desert at a pretty fast (though still safe) speed and bumpity bumping all over the place. Because these vehicles are refashioned from the 1950s, they had some trouble restarting every time we loaded back into them, but that let us know they were authentic.

Fahad stopped often and made sure we saw lots of wildlife including orcs, camels, and antelope. He generously took pictures for us even though the company arranged for a special photographer to follow our car and other cars around and take photos that we could later buy. 

Wildlife in the Dubai Desert

Some more wildlife in the Dubai Desert :)

After dune bashing for about an hour and stopping often, we came upon a small campsite where a gentleman from South Africa performed a falcon demonstration. One of the falcons only had one eye, and the guy explained that this falcon required special training or else he wouldn't see the prey and fly off. Unfortunately, about 2/3 of the way through our demonstration, the one-eyed falcon got confused and flew off anyway. That cut our demonstration short because the guy had to go "track down his bird" as he said. Fortunately, the birds all had GPS trackers on them. I contacted the company when we got home and they confirmed from that he did, in fact, get the falcon back. That made me happy! 

Falcon Demonstration - Dubai Desert Conservation

From the falcon demonstration, we continued on to a Bedouin camp. The sun was setting, and we enjoyed traditional Bedouin dancing, camel rides, henna tattoos, and a delicious dinner. One thing we were all happy to see when we got there were bathrooms. Until that point, the guys had been able to find a private spot in the desert as necessary, but us ladies were stuck waiting until we got somewhere with accommodations. And being a desert camp in the middle of nowhere, we had no idea what to expect. Fortunately, the company was first class all the way, and the bathroom accommodations were amazing. 

Bedouin Camp - Dubai Desert Conservation

Camel rides - Dubai Desert Conservation

When we first arrived at the camp, we went for a short camel ride and then sat down to eat. They served us a variety of food on small trays. We ate everything they served us commenting among ourselves that while quite tasty, it wasn't exactly a terribly filling meal. Then to our surprise and delight, they called us over to the open flame kitchen and served us each a plate full of lamb and chicken kabobs with rice. Now after eating every morsel of the appetizers, we were beyond stuffed after eating the rest of our dinner. 

After dinner, we enjoyed some dancing, henna tattoos, and they passed around a pipe that contained some sort of cherry tobacco for communal smoking (which we didn't partake, but looking back on it, we probably should have at least tried it. Alas...I was too timid). 

Henna Tattoo - Dubai Desert Conservation

Like I mentioned above, they had a guy following us the whole time taking pictures. While we sat listening to the music and watching the dance, he came over to us and showed us the digital prints that he took throughout the day. We were very pleased with the shots he took, and since he offered them at a decent price (not like the penguin encounter from the day before), we bought them and got the CD. 

The whole desert safari experience lasted over 8 hours. We didn't get back to our hotel until after 10pm. From our morning at the cultural center, an afternoon of dune bashing, and an evening of amazing food and smells and getting to know the folks who were with us, we had a pretty terrific day. If only the next day would be just as good. Unfortunately, it wasn't. What happened? You'll have to read my next blog HERE.

Thanks for reading!

- Foxy the Traveler

United Arab Emirates - Dubai Part I

Welcome to the start of my trip to the UAE. In my introductory blog, I told you a big about why we picked Dubai and the UAE for our next adventure. This blog starts with our actual adventure.

Thanks to a 13 hour flight and a 9 hour time difference our first day was awfully short. Our flight landed safety at Terminal 1 of the Dubai international airport around 4:40PM local time. We weren’t even slightly hungry because they fed us 3 times on the flight (not to mention dinner at Wendy’s before we left).  We cleared customs without waiting too long, got cash out of the ATM and searched unsuccessfully for the Hyatt Regency counter to request a shuttle (which we later found out didn't exist despite what their website said at the time. You can read my full Trip Advisor Review on this hotel to give you more specifics). Instead we took the metro. Brand new and very clean but we were still scrunched in like sardines given the busy hour. When we got off the metro at our station and came out, we were right in the middle of a sandy field (absolutely no grass). It's almost as if they meant to build an entire station but didn't. That worked well for us, because when we hit the street level, the hotel was literally right in front of us (well, in front of us but across the sand pit that was about the length of a football field and smelled really bad). We checked in with no problems, and our room on the sixth floor was very large even though I bought the absolute cheapest rate I could find on hotels.com.

After checking in and getting settled we explored the hotel complex and took a walk around the surrounding area. The hotel had several on-site restaurants, an ice skating rink (yes, that's right), and a minimart. Then we wandered through some local streets. The hotel is in Deira which is considered the "old" part of Dubai mostly due to its proximity to the gold and spice souks (old markets). Normally, I would gobble up this sort of thing (which is one of the reasons the location appealed to me at first), but instead we felt out of place and very uncomfortable. This area of Dubai while it might be the old section, was completely taken over with foreigners and very rundown. There were lots of men everywhere and very few women. I made a point of packing only clothing that would help me to fit in better in this predominantly Muslim country (or at least not be offensive). I wore long skirts everyday and almost always wore long sleeves. But even dressed as I was and walking with my husband, we got all manner of angry stares. We kept walking for about 20 mins and found the Gold Souks. Wow! You’ve never seen so many jewelry stores here in your life! And these weren't like American jewelry stores where there is a mix of cheap and expensive. You only had expensive and more expensive. Gold and diamonds everywhere! Unfortunately, we felt most unwelcome. The shop owners would stand outside their stores and bark at pedestrians walking past trying to get them to come inside. If you didn't acknowledge them and go in, as you walked past them, the tone of their voice got angry and instead of getting you to buy their gold, they started yelling curses at you and spat. We were terribly uncomfortable and started questioning what we got ourselves into.  After some distant window shopping we walked back to the hotel, got some snacks from the grocery store and called it a day. Perhaps our first full day in Dubai would be better.

Monday, February 18

Oh no! Our first day in Dubai is plagued with lots of haze! Since we went there in February the temperatures were decent the whole time but the haze was something we didn't expect. This will make seeing the skyline difficult throughout the day, but what can you do? That morning we hopped right on the metro and took the green line and the red line to the station closest to the Jumeirah Mosque which is one of the only mosques in Dubai that opens its doors to non-Muslim tourists. Unfortunately, the closest metro station still left us with over an hour walk. (Have I mentioned yet that Dubai is NOT a walkable city?) But being the early birds we are, we still arrived 45 mins before necessary. We killed some time by enjoying a skinny blueberry muffin in a starbucks. Because what does this timid traveler do when she's on the other side of the world? Find something that reminds her of home. 

Jumeirah Mosque - Dubai, UAE

At 9:45 we joined the other tourists and prepared for our entry into the mosque. For the ladies, this meant hair, arms, and legs covered. If you didn’t dress for the occasion, you could borrow local clothes and scarves. The mosque tour took about an hour. Inside the building was absolutely beautiful and not at all what I expected in terms of color and decoration. The tour included an introduction to the 7 pillars of Islam and a demonstration of the call to prayer. I found the whole experience fascinating and the people very welcoming and friendly. 

Inside the Jumeirah Mosque

After the mosque visit, we took a taxi to the Mall of the Emirates (not wanting to walk all the way back to the metro). At the mall (which was nothing spectacular after seeing the Japanese mega-malls just a year earlier) we got lunch at the food court. 

The biggest problem we had up to this point was currency. At the airport we withdrew 600 Dirs (about $300-$350). The ATM gave us 2 bills; AED 100 & AED 500. We had problems all day finding someone willing to change the AED 500. We even gave the taxi driver an American $20 because he couldn’t change the AED 500. (Very kind of him, by the way.) But a little sandwich shop in the mall graciously changed it so we ordered meat kabobs on flat bread sandwiches from him. 

After lunch we continued exploring the mall. We located Ski Dubai (an indoor ski slope and the only place to ski in all of the UAE considering the hot, desert climate) and had planned on doing the Penguin Encounter. 

Inside the Mall of the Emirates looking into Ski Dubai

Ski Dubai Penguin Encounter

When we arrived, we debated a bit whether or not to do it, but since we figured that this might be our only time in Dubai, we should make the most of every experience. First up, we had to acclimate ourselves to the subzero temperatures inside Ski Dubai. They helped us transition from the Arabian desert climate to the North Pole by giving us rental gear. Growing up in Pennsylvania, we are no strangers to cold winters. Our winter wardrobe is complete with hats, gloves, scarves, and all manner of snow pants, heavy coats, etc. In Dubai, however, no one in their right mind would ever buy apparel for cold weather, so at Ski Dubai, they had everything available for rent. And part of our admission fee included free souvenir gloves (because who wants to use after someone else has used them? Eww!). They even gave us booties that fit right over our own shoes. 

Ready for the snow dome at Ski Dubai

We didn't actually ski while we were there, mostly because the indoor ski facility consisted of 5 "slopes" none of which were terribly exciting. For people with no other outlet for skiing, it's great. But we didn't travel half way around the world to ski inside. The facility itself, however, amazed us, so we looked for something else to do while we were there. Hence the penguin encounter. 

For $50/pp we spent about 25 mins learning about Gentle penguins and King penguins. They let us touch the King penguins who were calm enough and incredibly soft. Unfortunately we weren’t able to bring our cameras with us, and it cost AED 400 (about $150) to buy any photos. I even went back a few minutes later and asked someone else if that price was accurate because it cost us $100 for 2 people to do the encounter. Surely I misheard how much the pictures cost. But alas, they assured me that it was more expensive for the pictures of the experience than the experience itself. I’ll have to settle for the pics of us in our snow gear because I refused to pay that much money for a picture even in Dubai. 

After our picture-less penguin encounter we walked around the mall some more before standing in a very long taxi line to head up to the Burj Al Arab. No metro stop got us close enough, and since the taxi from the mosque to the mall was relatively cheap, we thought that was our best option. 

Burj Al Arab at night; Dubai

The Burj Al Arab, the self proclaimed world's most luxurious hotel and the world's only 7 star hotel. We decided not to pay the outrageous rates of $1,500+ per night for their basic room, but we still wanted to see this grand hotel. You can only physically get onto the grounds of the hotel if you are a guest or if you have a reservation at one of the restaurants. Now since the hotel rooms are just a little on the pricey side, you can imagine how expensive it would be to dine there as well. But you're only in Dubai once, right? Surely there had to be somewhere we could eat without spending a fortune.  

After doing a lot of research, I booked a reservation for high tea on the 27^th floor at the Skyview Bar. The idea was that you could see a view of the famous palm islands. And the reviews that I read about high tea assured me that it was worth the $275 for 2 people. (Ok, so I don't know that it was worth it, but it was pretty awesome!)

When you first walk into the Burj Al Arab, there are amazing fountains. The picture below shows a few stories of the hotel. The pillars that you see are gold leaf. What else would you expect from the world's most luxurious hotel?

Burj Al Arab interior

I know what you're thinking. For $275, the tea itself better have had gold in it. Fear not, my friends. The tea..most certainly did have gold in it. Don't believe me?

Cappuccino with gold flecks; Skyview Bar

Ok, so this isn't exactly tea, it's a cappuccino, but that shimmery stuff on the side of the cup, was gold flecks/dust. The hazy day made the view pretty terrible, and we could barely see the palm islands, but that didn't really matter. The tea experience itself was so fun! We had 7 courses, almost all of them being bottomless except for chef carving of the day. The first course started off with champagne and the traditional stuffed dates which they served all over the country. 

High Tea at the Skyview Bar; Dubai

The fact that most of the food was bottomless, made us eat our fill and help ease the blow of the price. Like any afternoon tea, one would expect finger sandwiches, yes? Well, that's exactly what we got, but not in the way we expected. They still had the little cucumber sandwiches on white bread, but then they also had bread with squid ink, salmon with caviar, sliced beef with some sort of delicious jellied sauce, etc. The waiter must have thought we were crazy, but we just couldn't get enough of the squid ink sandwiches, the beef wraps on a stick, or the salmon and caviar. But they let us eat as much as we wanted. 

High Tea at the Skyview Bar; Dubai

Unfortunately, we ate so much, that when they brought around the tower of scones, pastries, truffles, creme brûlée, and other tasty desserts, we were already stuffed. Did that stop us? (Chub chub chub!)

After tea, we walked down the street to the Madinat souk near the Madinat Jumeirah hotel. Now I see why some refer to Dubai as an Arabian Disney. This area very much caters to tourists and everything seemed very superficial and commercialized. Diera (where our hotel is)…not so much but then it also scared us, so pick your battles. We then took a taxi back to the Mall of the Emirates, got donuts for breakfast and then took the metro back to the Hyatt. 

What a wild first day in Dubai. Despite the first night, we were beginning to feel better about our overall experience here. Day 2 in Dubai features the historical Bedouin aspects of the small desert country. Lots more exciting adventures ahead! Click HERE to keep reading.

Thanks for reading!

- Foxy the Traveler

Introducing the United Arab Emirates

February 2013, it was time for another adventure. After spending 2 weeks in Japan back in April 2012, we had every intention of keeping our travels light in 2013. Instead of taking a nice, quiet trip somewhere in the United States, we ended up traveling internationally for over 3 weeks in 2013. Our first destination was the United Arab Emirates (UAE). A coworker of mine inspired me to research this country after a conversation about our shared love for Japan. I explained that traveling to Japan opened my eyes to the idea of traveling outside of Europe, and that I wanted to see what other exotic destinations were out there. He recommended Dubai. Knowing practically nothing about it, I started looking at the two most important things: cost and safety. 

The UAE shares borders with Oman and Saudi Arabia and is just a boat ride across the Persian Gulf to Iran. In case you don't watch the news, these countries aren't the most welcoming to American tourists. How could we be safe visiting a country that's only slightly larger than Massachusetts? But the UAE is a nation rich from oil profits with an incredibly stable government for its middle east location. The UAE is made up of seven independent kingdoms that all fall under the same governing body. Historically, the king of Abu Dhabi is the president of the country and the king of Dubai is the prime minister. Dubai and Abu Dhabi are the two more westernized and progressive emirates, which (in my opinion) helps keep the country balanced. We also learned that 80% of the population are expats from other countries. Only 20% of the population are citizens, and the UAE's don't allow permanent immigration. Once born an emirate, always an emirate. The UAE welcomes foreigners to live there and conduct business there, but they will never accept outsiders as their own. Strange, right? But convinced that we would be safe as American tourists, we embraced the idea of an Arabian vacation and started planning.

Unlike Japan where we city hopped, in the UAE, we parked ourselves in Dubai for the entire week (staying in 1 hotel the entire time) and took day trips outside of Dubai. This worked very well for us, except for the fact that we could only spend 1 day in Abu Dhabi which is something I regret. 

We did take note that the UAE seemed, at first, like it was going to be incredibly expensive. The famous Burj Al Arab hotel cost a cool $1,200/night for their basic room. Granted not all hotels were that pricy, but one could easily spend several hundred dollars a night on their hotel room. Dubai has tons of hotels and the more you're willing to pay, the more you get. I thought I scored big with our Dubai hotel, but it ended up being a huge lesson in where I failed to do my homework. I booked a 5-star Hyatt Regency hotel for 6 nights for about $210/night. I know, I know. I broke my own $200/night hotel room rule but for a 5-star hotel and for only 6 nights, I thought it would be worth it. Plus the hotel got great reviews, it was within walking distance to the metro, and it was within walking distance to the gold and spice souks (a major cultural and tourist attraction). I thought I hit the jackpot when I found a nonrefundable rate for so cheap. (Did I mention Dubai was expensive?) And based on everything I've ever learned about traveling so far told me that this was the place to stay. In Europe and Japan, walking distance to public transportation is key. What I didn't realize at the time was that the souks were terrifying and the metro was utterly useless. But more on that in later blogs. 

I booked 2 roundtrip, nonstop flights from Washington Dulles to Dubai for about $1,200/pp. 13 hours on a plane is a very very long time, but it was nice to get there without any layovers. It's worth mentioning that there were a large number of service men and women on the plane with us. Their final destination was not Dubai. Instead they would continue on from Dubai to Kabul, Afghanistan. It is because of their sacrifice that we are free. 

Even though we only went for a week, after seeing the flight and hotel cost, we worried that the trip could still cost us close to $10,000 like some of our two week vacations. In the end, however, it ended up costing a little under $5,500. This was thanks to the fact that many of our activities included food and other times, we found ourselves eating in mall food courts. But if you've read my other blogs, you know that I'm a super cheap travel eater. In this case especially, it saved us big bucks. 

So what about the UAE appealed to us? Why travel to the other side of the world to see such a tiny country? You'll have to continue reading to find out, but some of the highlights include the world's tallest building, high tea at the world's only 7-star hotel, dune bashing in 1950s range rovers through the Arabian desert, indoor skiing, and one of the largest and most opulent mosques in the world that features Murano glass lights, precious gems inlaid in the walls, and mother of pearl stonework. It was a week of highs and lows, and a blog series you don't want to miss!   

Thanks for reading!

- Foxy the Traveler

Konnichiwa - Japan Part VII (Tokyo Part II & Hakone)

Well friends, we've arrived at my last blog post on Japan. I know that 7 individual blogs about a single country might seem excessive, but I just had so much to say about this amazing country. This final installment features the last 2 days of our trip that we took in April 2012. Earlier in the trip we visited Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Nara, and Hiroshima. During the last 2 days, we traveled back to Tokyo and then spent a day about an hour south of Tokyo in the town of Hakone. 

Home seemed light years away yet with fewer and fewer vacation days to think about, we started to remember reality. We awoke in Hiroshima morning, ate our breakfast of cinnamon croissants and made it to the Shinkansen for our 6:30AM train back to Tokyo. This 5 hour train ride went surprisingly fast (literally. The train was going about 200mph). We used the down time to catch up on some sleep, I read over my lines for the play I was in back home, and we enjoyed the scenery outside the window. About an hour outside of Tokyo, we were able to see Mount Fuji off in the distance. We arrived at Tokyo Station around 11:45AM and dropped our bags once again at the Hotel Metropolitan Marunouchi (where we stayed before), and headed out into the city. 

Having eaten sandwiches and other Japanese mini mart snacks on the train, we headed straight for Ueno Park. If you remember from the our earlier days in Tokyo (read about them here), Ueno Park was empty and the trees were barren. Here's a picture in case you forgot. 

Ueno Park on Day 1

Having seen cherry blossoms all over Hiroshima and Miyajima, we were excited to see if the trees in Ueno park has bloomed too. This time the cherry blossoms were in full bloom and the park was mobbed with people. But what a sight to see!

Cherry Blossoms in Ueno Park, Tokyo

Cherry Blossoms in Ueno Park, Tokyo

It was beautiful everywhere, and people on the sides were picnicing. Then we walked the mile or so to Asakusa (again) to junk shops that were also closed the last time we were there. I bought some more souvenirs plus some ice cream and a veggie meat pie from a street vendor. Then we did a bit of window shopping in Ginza (Tokyo's equivalent to 5th Avenue, NYC). We passed every designer from Armani to Prada and even browsed a multi-story Louis Vuitton (Quick side note. Japanese ladies love their designer bags. The majority of women that we saw walking around the major cities carried a designer bag. The most popular being Louis or Burberry). As much as I wanted to tell myself "when in Rome..." the prices of at Louis Vuitton, even in Yen, were just as expensive as the USA, so if I'm ever going to drop that much cash for a purse, I can do it in the states just as easily. 

Instead we came back to Tokyo Station, checked into our hotel, relaxed a bit, and found dinner. After dinner, we went back to Ueno Park to see the blossoms at night with the lanterns lit. Still just as crowded as the daytime, but a memorable sight. 

Ueno Park at Night, Tokyo

Then we found some breakfast in Tokyo Station for the next morning, and called it a night. Tomorrow would be our last full day in the trip, and also...Easter Sunday. While planning, we took a moment to consider that things might be closed, but since Japan is not a Christian nation, and since Easter is not a state holiday, no one but us had any idea it was Easter.

Our last day was quite an adventure (as if we didn't say that about every day)! We got an early start to catch our 7:30AM Hakuri Shinkansen to Odowara (about 1 hr south of Tokyo). In Odowara we bought unlimited transportation passes for Hakone. Hakone is an area with natural volcanic hot springs that you can tour in a loop using a multiple forms of transportation (train, ropeway, and ship). We started out on a local train that went forward and backward when the tracks “switched back”. We got off two stops before Gora (the main stop) to walk about a mile to the Hakone Kowaki-en Yunessun hot springs hotel. They offered an onsen where you could wear your bathing suit. (Most onsen throughout Japan were gender specific and nude. Not wanting to miss this traditional Japanese experience, but also being terribly shy and modest, we searched out one that was both co-ed and permitted bathing suits. We were delighted to find this place. The only oddity about it was the big sign above the help desk that said they didn't permit anyone with tattoos. Weird, right?)

The complex was enormous. They had numerous pools both inside and outside that each featured something different. The largest indoor swimming pool looked like one you would see in any hotel or public swimming pool, only the volcanic thermal activity underground heated the water naturally, so the temperatures felt more like a hot tub than a regular swimming pool. A salt water pool kept us afloat in another pool, and a sweet honey water pool tingled our senses. One pool especially creeped us out. Have you ever seen those pools filled with little flesh eating fish? This place had one! And there was a huge line. But once again...when in Rome...right? So, we stood in line (it actually moved quite quickly) until it was our turn to stick our feet into the ankle deep tub of carnivorous fish. Some ladies sat in the water with their feet and lower shins completely covered in these little beasts. The entire experience creeped me out a little too much, so I held my feet in the water just long enough for a few fishes to nibble, freaked out and then pulled my feet out of the water....and repeat. The only let us stay in that pool for about 5 minutes, and that was plenty of time for me. I'm glad I tried it once, but it was soooooo weird.

Outside, they had even more of these specialty baths, and the ones that had attracted us to the facility in the first place. Each small pool featured a different liquid. They had coffee, wine, green tea, charcoal and sake. Some were neat, but they were mostly foul smelling baths with bright neon colored water. 

Wine bath - the water in reality was neon pink and not dark red

We still had great fun even though we only spent 1-2 hours there. One of the coolest things from this place were the watches that they gave us. The watches served as locker keys, but they also acted as a bar tab. So you didn't have to walk back to your locker to fetch your wallet for lunch, you could walk into the food court and use your watch to pay. Then at the end, you turned in your watch and paid your bill.

After the hot baths, we continued our day around the Hakone loop. We took the same train from the morning to Gora where we caught the ropeway that took us up the mountain. At the top we could see Mt. Fuji and walk around the volcano with sulfuric gasses. 

Mt Fuji

We hiked around a bit, and chuckled at the signs that warned us of the poisonous gas that came out of the mountain and not to stay in this area too long. 

Toxic gas seeping out of the mountain

Since it was Easter, we spent 500Yen (about $5.00) for 5 black hard boiled eggs cooked in the sulfur water. Have you ever seen a black egg before? It started out as a white egg, but once they cooked it in the poisonous sulfur, it turned a dark black color. Inside the shell, however, it was just a normal cooked egg. LUNCH! Yum!

Sulfur cooked eggs - for Easter!

We did some souvenir shopping, took the ropeway over the mountain, and then took a pirate ship across the lake. Yes, a pirate ship. Think I'm kidding?

Hakone Pirate Ship

Once on the other side, we took an incredibly crowded bus back to Odowara and then the Shinkansen back to Tokyo. We dropped our treasures and wet bathing suits off at our hotel, ate our last noodle bowls and tempura for dinner, walked around the neon lights and gaming parlors of Akihabara one last time, bought some breakfast and settled in for our very last sleep in Japan. 

We were so sad to see this trip end. There is so much we love about the Japanese culture and the people. Everywhere we went, we found them so very kind, respectful and helpful. I highly encourage anyone to visit Japan who is interested in taking their first steps at exploring Asia. Having now been to Japan and other parts of Southeast Asia, I recommend that your first trip to the Asian continent be a place like Tokyo or Singapore over Thailand or Malaysia. Not that I don't recommend visiting those countries, but for the timid traveler like myself, Japan is a great way to get acclimated to this part of the world.

To sign off on my blog about Japan, I'll leave you with some funny signs that we came across throughout our 2 weeks in this amazing place. Sayonara friends! Stay tuned for my next blog series on the exotic Persian nation of the United Arab Emirates. 

Saw this inside a Starbuck bathroom

Posted in our hotel bathroom

Seen just about everywhere we used a public restroom. Really? Toilet paper for sale?

For those of you who need the sound of running water to lend a hand....

A sign of encouragement outside a temple.

That extra little "to" made us chuckle

We're pretty sure this sign was about cameras. ;)

I don't even know what they were trying to say here.

Thanks for reading!

- Foxy the Traveler

Konnichiwa - Japan Part VI (Miyajima)

Welcome to Part VI of my blog series on Japan. On our first day in Hiroshima, we spent our time touring historic Hiroshima, visiting the Peace Memorial and Hiroshima Castle. Our second day in the Hiroshima region, we journeyed off the coast of the main island to a smaller island called Miyajima. We "slept in" until about 7AM that morning, but since we went to bed the previous night around 8PM, we had plenty of sleep. (Remember, we were up around 4:30AM to catch the train from Shin-Osaka to Hiroshima, so we were exhausted that evening. 

After going one stop in the wrong direction, we made our way to Miyajima by taking the JR ferry. I've mentioned before how great the transportation system is in Japan. This continued to be true in Hiroshima. Our JR passes weren't only good for city metros and intercity trains, but also for this ferry ride that took us to a completely different island. 

As our ferry approached the dock of Miyajima, we saw this awesome tory gate in the water. The ferry driver explained that in low tide seasons, you can actually walk out to it, but alas, it was underwater as we approached. 

Like Nara, the presence of tame deer shocked us! We saw them everywhere, and they passed us without any hesitation or alarm. Unlike Nara where little old ladies sold deer "cookies", we didn't see any deer food for sale, but the deer still didn't fear people like they do in the USA. We also noticed that finally, the cherry trees were blooming everywhere! The first 7/8 of our trip had barren trees and mostly cloudy skies, so it really excited us to see some blooming trees, even if only for a few days. 

We made our way to the Miyajima ropeway (think ski lift sans snow). Miyajima has a small town at the base of the mountain, and then hiking trails throughout the rest of the place. We'd been walking all over Japan for almost two weeks now, so our feet hurt every day, and our legs ached (want a secret way to lose 10lbs in 2 weeks? Eat only rice and noodle bowls for your meals, and then do nothing but walk for miles and miles everyday. I'm kidding! Although this is what we did, I don't recommend it for a long term diet solution. Haha!). On a normal day, we would have welcomed a nice long hike, but fatigue kept us from channeling our inner adventurers. Instead, we took the ropeway to the top of the mountain and enjoyed roughly a 1.5km hike down. 

One of the first things we noticed as we began our descent were the signs warning us against vipers. Vipers? Yes, the slithery, venomous snakes. Uh...on second thought, maybe we don't want to go for a hike. I don't like snakes anymore than Indiana Jones! But we convinced ourselves that we're only in Japan once, and that as long as we stick to the established path, we'll be fine. We actually did see a snake (not entirely sure what kind), but it was off in the grass and moving in the opposite direction of us. It's a good thing too, because if it were moving toward us, I would have completely freaked out. 

For those of you who are metric to english conversion experts, you know that 1.5km is roughly a little over a mile. And since we were walking downhill the whole way, we didn't expect the hike to take us too much more than 20-30 minutes. That is, of course, until we got lost. 

Up to this point, we didn't have many problems with the language barrier. Ordering in restaurants proved to be our biggest challenge...until we went hiking on Miyajima island. We assumed incorrectly that all paths led down. Well, maybe not incorrectly, but we misunderstood how to take the shortest path down. We had no reliable map, and all of the signs we encountered along the way, looked like this:

But as long as we kept heading down the mountain, we assured ourselves that we would eventually reach the bottom. After a full 90 mins of hiking downhill, our legs shaking, and our tummies rumbling, we saw this sign and completely lost all fatigue. Our laughter became uncontrollable and the sign forever cemented our love of this place. Now what you have to realize is that up until this point, we constantly chuckled at the misinterpreted signs throughout Japan. Wanting to be helpful, they would often try to translate Japanese signs in English, but they would lose just a few words that made the whole translation terrifically comical. This sign took the cake as our favorite. 

We finally reached the bottom, and the only thing on our minds was where to find food. We picked up some french fries and shrimp cakes from a food truck along the path back to town. We then stopped to visit the worlds largest rice scoop on our way to get some ice cream (chocolate and cookies and cream or as the Japanese lady said, "cookie and vanilla"). 

World's Largest Rice Scoop

We headed back toward our hotel around 3pm, and stopped at the massive Fukuya department store for some souvenir shopping and to find dinner. Aside from the horrifying dinner we had in Osaka, our dinner this particular evening was also pretty bad. We wound up at an Indian restaurant purely by accident and ordered chicken curry. This literally meant a bowl full of goo, about 4 small bites of chicken and a bunch of rice. It's not that it tasted bad, it just wasn't much food besides the rice. 

See anymore chicken in the dish? Nope? Me either!

After dinner, we picked up some breakfast for the next morning and headed back to our hotel. A high speed bullet train the next morning would take us back to Tokyo for the last 2 days of our trip. I would say they were 2 of our favorite days, but the whole trip was so amazing, it's hard to say which days we liked the best. The last two days, however, were pretty awesome! You can read all about them HERE. 

Thanks for reading!

- Foxy the Traveler