Regina Glei's Blog

The time to leave had unfortunately come, the ship would leave at 14:00 on Saturday the 5th of May. That gave me the morning to still do something. I checked out of the hotel and went down to its “home” beach, Miyanohama. Arrived there, I attempted to do a little hike to the neighboring beach, but guess what, it started to rain and midway to the other beach I gave up and slowly returned to the hotel. When I arrived there it stopped raining…

The hotel lady offered to drive me down to the ship terminal so that I could line up early and maybe get into one of the two “women only” rooms of the Ogasawara maru. I had only learned on my voyage to Chichijima that the ship offered such specialties.
On the ride to the pier I talked to my hotel lady and found out that she moved from downtown Tokyo to Chichijima with her husband 25 years ago, nice. She also talked about the water plane from the day before and explained that this is apparently a governmental, well, taxpayers service. If the hospital on Chichijima decides they cannot handle the issue, they call in the plane and the patient is being flown out and maybe(?) the patient doesn’t have to pay for that him/herself? Wow, that’s kinda nice to know.

Arrived at the pier I left my luggage there for a while. This is Japan, so you can totally leave your bags and suitcases somewhere unattended and be 99% sure that your stuff will still be there when you return. So that’s what I did and bought some lunch.
Then came the long wait for the boat and boarding. I managed to get into the women only room, it’s as full as the rest of the ship but at least you don’t have a snoring old Japanese dude in your face but rather a hopefully less loudly snoring girl!

The ship was even fuller than on the way to the islands. I learned that on the way here we carried 890 or so passengers, now it was 970, which is close to the ultimate limit of 1000. There was not one spot not occupied by a person or a suitcase.

The farewell from the island was interesting. Lots of people were gathered at the pier and waved goodbye and I thought that was it, but then all the tour boats gave us a farewell and rode next to the ship hooting and waving. Very nice custom. Also”my” pink dolphin tour boat was there. As a dramatic finish, one boat after the other stopped and some of the diving etc. instructors jumped into the sea! Wow, what a send off. Well, that happens when a third of the population of an island leaves in one go!

The sea was pretty heavy after all the wind and rain of the past days but thanks to anti-seasickness pills I was fine.
The night in the ladies room was astonishingly peaceful, at least considering the circumstances. It’s a bit difficult to sleep in such close proximity to people you don’t know; whenever someone turned around, the neighbor got bumped into, but I did manage to sleep somehow. The worst was the air in the closed room and I was quiet happy to get back on deck at about 6:30 in the morning. The new day had the best weather of the whole journey… Which needless to say was a bit annoying… Blue sky and almost no clouds, grumble.

That changed though, when we approached Tokyo, and the moment we left the ship there was a thunderstorm and I learned later at home on TV that tornadoes have been pummeling Ibaraki prefecture to Tokyo’s north. Wow, luckily they didn’t hamper our return to port. Despite the far from ideal weather, it was a great trip and I highly enjoyed the Ogasawara islands and who knows, maybe I’ll go back there one day again after all.
And here is a collection of pictures from the islands.

Oh miracle, the weather was fine this morning. Not perfect, but mostly blue sky, only a few clouds, and no rain. I took my bicycle again and went up serpentines once more to Mt. Mikazuki which, according to George, the whale watching boat Captain, had several beautiful lookouts.

The serpentines were quite a drag but I was rewarded by George being right. The first lookout covers the western half of the island from Minamishima in the south to Ototo and Anijimas in the north. Loads of people there though who had all come up the mountain in cars, busses and on bikes. Those lazy sandal wearers shied away from the mud path that led to the other lookout 750 meters away, but I had my mountain boots on and entered the jungle. Actually the path was only really muddy for a few meters

I soon came to another lookout (the tweet) revealing a bit more of Ototojima and Anijima and went on to the last lookout which towers over the inland side of the island and the view of the entire Chichijima bay was excellent.

I had breakfast at the spot and suddenly heard airplane noise. Airplanes? Here? The plane soon came into view and turned out to be a 4 propellor water-plane of the Japanese Self Defense Forces.
They have a tiny base at one end of the harbor. The water-plane flew around the bay for three times, at the fourth time it finally landed in the bay and I managed to take a pretty perfect video of its landing. I guess I had the best spot of all to film that landing.

The reason for the plane coming did not seem to be very delightful though. At the military base waited several cars, one of them an ambulance. I didn’t see the plane take off again, since I had no idea how long it would stay and left my perfect viewing spot, but in fact the plane stayed only for half an hour and I saw it leaving by the time I had again reached the first lookout.

I wonder which health insurance company covers the Japanese Self Defense Forces flying you out of Chichijima on a water-plane… Hope the person who was flown out survived and has enough money to pay for this survival!
It was pretty impressive though to see this water-plane landing. Usually you only have that in the movies. Maybe that’s silly, but I might even upload the video onto YouTube. We’ll see.

At the first lookout I talked to an interesting American guy (with the plane being the conversation starter). He’s a marine biologist from Oregon and works in a 5 year program to track Albatross. He comes to Chichijima once per year (it’s some joint US and Japanese program) for a few weeks and tugs GPS devices onto Albatross feet and they track their migrations. The route of these particular birds seems to be from the Ogasawara region via Kamchatka to Alaska and back again.

The program was/is in its last year and he highly regrets that this is probably his last visit to the Ogasawara islands for some time. He had a day off, since due to that gale last night their departure for one of the (uninhabited) islands around was delayed by a day, he ships out tonight to sneak onto Albatross and tug GPS devices to their feet! What a cool job.

Next I dashed down the mountain on my bicycle and rode to the sea turtle center on the other end of the bay and watched some turtles of all ages and sizes swim around in their basins. The oldest was 23 and weighed 73 kg. Not bad. Then, unfortunately, it was time to return my bicycle and deprived of that I walked back to the hotel.

I might go on a final hike tomorrow morning before the Ogasawara Maru leaves at 14:00… I’d rather feel like staying here for a few more weeks…

Going to Hahajima meant getting up at 5:30 in the morning, not exactly my time… luckily sunrise is at 5:00 or so, meaning it was bright already, otherwise I doubt I would have been able to get up, especially not with that cold getting worse as it currently does. Anyway, I went through the sleeping town to the harbor and got my ticket to Hahajima with not much people around yet. The guy from the ticket office was very friendly and asked me whether I had something for lunch with me, I hadn’t.

He recommended I should buy something here, since it’d be doubtful that I’d get anything suitable on Hahajima. Okay… He even taught me the location of a bakery nearby that had already open (it opens at 6:30) which I had not yet discovered yet and I went there and bought some sandwiches.
At around 7 some more guests arrived but far from many, which again was probably due to the sucky weather, low hanging clouds and occasional rain.

The two hour ten minute journey to Hahajima was rather uneventful and I dozed a bit, but I woke up just in time for catching the glimpse of a whale again! Wow. It was gone too fast to whip out the camera (I saw one blow, then the dive) but that was a nice start in what turned out to be quite an animal day.

Arrived at Hahajima, the first thought was, jeez, what am I supposed to do here for four hours until the ship leaves again? Chichijima is brimming with activity by comparison. There is a fisheries goods store and a small, half-empty supermarket at the harbor and that’s it. It was raining a bit and I first went to the only real sightseeing spot in the town itself which is a mini (free) museum of a German (!) guy who first settled on the island in the 1860ties or so together with a US couple and started a sugar cane business that soon Japanese workers joined. Unimaginable how these people lived in those days…

I went back to the harbor and had breakfast under a resting place kind of thing and waited for the rain to stop, which it luckily did.
I wanted to go to a lookout point close to he harbor and on my way there I discovered a small sea-turtle birthing sanctuary and the five or so giant turtles shared the water part of the sanctuary with a bunch of sharks. Right next to the fenced off sanctuary, at an open bathing beach, were a lot more sharks (that’s the source of the tweets).

Amazing that they swim so close to the shore and that there were so many of them. Quite a different feeling to have them swimming at your feet as opposed to watching them through glass in an aquarium. Also big crabs were crawling around my feet and I took some nice pictures of those with my main camera. The crabs are rather shy, when they hear or feel feet stomping, they scurry away, but nevertheless, kinda spooky to have these crawly things all around you.

I went to the lookout spot after all and enjoyed the panorama view, but then it drove me back to the shark beach and I watched them some more.
I strolled down the harbor back to the Hahajima Maru pier and another animal shock awaited me, another beautiful shark directly below me (I was standing on the jetty wall) and a more than a meter big manta! No need to go even snorkeling on Hahajima island, you can see the attractions without getting wet. I whipped out the camera for those two but had no opportunity for the iPhone camera.

The time well spent with animal watching, I waited for the boat and witnessed a cute human thing too. The probably only English teacher (I guess an American) of the 400 inhabitant island was sitting at the pier preparing to go to Chichijima and more or less every islander that came by said hello to him. Must be a bit unnerving to have everybody know you and notice every move you make

The ship journey back was astonishingly wind free until short before Chichijima. Amazing how the weather changes and is localized. A big, fat gale pummeled Chichijima while 50 km further south we didn’t have that bad of a weather. There were some occasional drops but they never lasted long and didn’t really hamper the shark enjoyment. I spent some time in the Hahajima Maru’s waiting hall writing this and waited for the worst to be over to be able to return to my hotel. Blessed be modern technology like iPhones and portable and foldable keyboards!

Meanwhile I made it back to the hotel without getting soaked. I’m looking forward to sorting out all the shark, crab and turtle photos on my main camera and what a nice visit to Hahajima that was.

With the usual clouds hanging in the sky and rain forecasted for the afternoon, I jumped on my bicycle to use the few hours of agreeable weather and went down to the main village. From there I climbed some 300 stairs or so to the Okamiyama-shrine and the lookout spots on the mountain of the same name behind the shrine. From the three lookouts across the mountain ridge one has a nice overview over the entire Chichijima bay. As usual, photos will follow later after I’m back home and have sorted them out.

Back down from the mountain, I took the bicycle again and went to the mountain road that leads around the island. There are no settlements on the western half of Chichijima, only that one serpentine road winds itself around it until it comes back down to Ougiura. The slopes are too steep for settlements I guess. After pushing the bicycle up serpentines for about an hour, I reached my destination: the Nagasaki lookout point.

There is a very famous Nagasaki of course and the kanji are the same, but Nagasaki just means “long cape” and there are many “nagasakis” all over Japan. I tweeted a photo of this Nagasaki via the iPhone and will load some pictures made with my regular camera up on flickr too. It’s indeed a beautiful spot, rough and wild and lonely – just how I like it.

The weather was starting to get worse by the second though and I didn’t feel like slithering down the serpentines on my bicycle in full-out rain and left with the first drops falling. Down the serpentines was accomplished in 10 minutes As a side note: On the way up to the lookout spot lives a hermit. There is one single house half way up the mountain hidden inside the woods. Whoever lives there DOES like it lonely.

I was back down in the main village at around noon time and had lunch in a restaurant for a change rather than onigiri all the time. Soft rain had started but wasn’t bad yet and next I went on to the Ogasawara Fisheries Center. No staff was around, there’s no fee and you can just walk in there and watch local fish in some twenty aquarium tanks. They also have a seaturtle basin with a cute sign on it saying don’t be so stupid to put your fingers into the water, because the turtles will bite you! Okay the temptation is great though, since they look so cute and harmless.

Then it started raining for good and a bit frustrated with that I went back to my hotel, which was a good idea, since shortly after I arrived it was raining really hard and didn’t stop for the next two hours.

Tomorrow I will go to Hahajima (mother island) but I’m afraid I’ll walk around in the rain there too since that’s what the forecast says, sigh… Anyway, Hahajima it will be tomorrow.

I just returned from a great boat tour day, and am pretty tired but happy after all the adventures. I had booked a one day tour with a company called Pink Dolphin and they left from the Omura (big village) harbor at 9 in the morning. The boat had a maximum passenger capacity of 30 people and was fully booked thanks to Golden Week. I’ll post photos of the day later on Flickr when I’m back home and have sorted things out.
The specialty of the boat is that it has a glass bottom piece where you can look into the blue without getting wet.

At first we went to a dolphin watching spot and the little guys did us the favor and showed up, though they were not very playful, they just shot between the four, five tourist boats gathered and made no leaps and jumps. Seems that even the dolphins were not very fond of the weather, which was low hanging clouds with long periods of light rain. The ship’s captain later told me they were not the usual bottlenose dolphins but so called spinner dolphins that rarely come to the Ogasawara islands.

After dolphin watching, we went on to the South Island (Minamishima) which has the reputation of being the most beautiful of the some thirty islands around. There are two ways how to get there – one is via its most scenic spot, the Turtle Lake (Kameike), one is via the Shark Lake (Sameike). If you go via the Kameike you have to swim through a rock archway, into the Sameike you can get via boat if you are lucky.

Man, those were waves around the Sameike entrance. I had taken another seasickness pill again before departure and was thus fine, but those waves were damn scary. There are rocks every 50 meters and the sea is going crazy at this spot and the boat was dancing and struggling and I couldn’t believe that the captain wanted to maneuver our boat through two very close rocks into the bay beyond. This had to be a joke, but it was not. Suddenly, the Captain increased speed, after he had maneuvered the boat into position, and shot through the two rocks at the entrance to the bay with literally less than a meter of space to either side of the boat. WOW. Then we were happily inside the bay where waters were calmer and he steered us directly for the rock from where we were supposed to climb on land.

We gently bumped into the rock with a tire at the boat’s front for a buffer and then the thirty of us (well, 28, two elderly ladies didn’t want to risk it) jumped from boat to rock and thus we had arrived on Minamishima.

A few words about our two guides, our Captain was a local called George, of American descent (I guess some Hawaiian/Polynesian there somewhere), born on the Ogasawara islands and was in his sixties, a very cool, bilingual guy who knows everything about the area. He was 19 when the Americans gave the islands back to Japan and he became a Japanese citizen. He has a Japanese passport but complained to me later that of course the Japanese don’t regard him as Japanese because of his looks and heritage and the foreign accent in his perfect Japanese.

The other tour guide who too care of the herd was a younger Japanese guy in his 30ties I suppose, and a “classic” case. He was born in Saitama prefecture north of Tokyo, worked as a salary man until two years ago he threw his job overboard and moved to Chichijima. He told me that only George dares to drive into Sameike with a big boat, there are many smaller boats that make the journey, but of the big ships he is the only one experienced enough and skilled enough to do that. I believe him!

There are 4 nature rangers on patrol on Minamishima, who take care that the tourists don’t stray from the designated paths of the island in a desperate attempt to conserve its plants and wildlife. You have to wash your shoes on board the ship before setting a foot onto the island, are not allowed to bring food, only a pet bottle with something to drink and your camera and that’s it. We hiked over the carst rock, which is sometimes razor sharp, to the famed Kameike and it is indeed a beautiful spot with yellowish, white and very nice sand (hope that’ll come out in the pictures). There are 3000 year old shells bleached by the sun lying around, which nowadays the rangers don’t allow you to take of course.

George said he has plenty of them at home, since when he was a kid, he came here with his buddies to camp and play, and back in those days there was no “nature preserving” or park rangers! Nowadays no camping etc. is allowed.

There is a third, real lake, the Seagull Lake (Kamoike), which has no direct access to the ocean and that consists of brackish water. It gets refilled by rainwater and during typhoon season it gets some more salt water, when house high waves clash over the ridge of Kameike…

Getting out of the Sameike wasn’t as bad as getting inside, since the waters inside the bay are calmer but it was impressive nevertheless to see George maneuver right between those deadly rocks, then step on the gas and rushing through and plunging back into the high waves.
The journey went on to Anijima (big brother island) north of Chichijima where lunch time was planned while watching the corals below us thanks to the boat’s glass bottom. That’s when I went up and started talking to George as well as the Japanese guide.

We anchored at a bay next to Anijima and George had another attraction for us. While the humans were eating, he put a dead fish into a steel net box and let it down with a wire construction, so that it would be below the glass window in the bottom of the boat. Thus we could see the coral’s inhabitants go berserk and eat the bait. The only ones that are able to penetrate the mesh are sea-snakes and the bits and bites they let fall other fish catch. It was quite spooky and gigeresque to watch those sea serpents coiling around the metal box and other fish dashing about around them.

Some people went into the water here too to snorkle, but with my cold still around I didn’t fell well enough to dare something like that. Then the news came in that with the tide change at about 13:00, whales were spotted off Ototojima (small brother island) and George urged the swimmers to come back on board.

We rushed for whale watching and arrived, we did more whale waiting than watching, but two whales showed themselves twice and a third one once. Hope I can distill a few good photos from the video camera. The Japanese drop out guide said that during January and February, when they are in mating season, the humpback whales jump out of the water and bash around with their rear fluke. Now they are not that playful anymore and we were lucky to see them at all. The whales off our list, we skippered back towards the harbor, looking for more dolphins but none showed themselves. But hey, we had dolphins in the morning. There are sperm whales in these waters too, but according to George they are off too far east in open water.

So all in all, despite the far from ideal weather, it was a great day, also thanks to the excellent boating skills of George! Hope all the video and photo stuff will turn out nicely.
Unfortunately rain it will be tomorrow again according to the weather forecast (in fact until Friday!) Let’s see how much hiking and bicycling I will do tomorrow under these circumstances.

Luckily the weather was better today than on the day of the arrival, some clouds but patches of blue sky and plenty of sunshine too and I went with my rented bicycle around the main settlements of the island. The main village is called Omura (big village) followed by Okumura (the side village) and Ougiura (some complicated Kanji and I don’t know their meaning) There is not much difference between Omura and Okumura, it seems one village but then, beyond the little oil power plant of the island, the wilderness starts and Ougiura turned out to be just a couple of hotels and one kiosk for a shop and that’s it.

Island = mountains, there is a lot of up and down involved and stretches where I had to push the bicycle. The route leads along beautiful beaches and bays, one with a sunken freighter in it for an attraction and the scenery is more than beautiful. (I’ll sort out my photos and upload them to flickr once I’m back home). I am very glad that my hotel is just up the hill from the main village. Another candidate had been a super lonely place even beyond Ougiura where there is nothing but just that one hotel. They have a public bus running let’s say once an hour during daylight, but it would have been a bitch staying there without even a pet bottle of juice to buy nearby. I’m really happy with the way things turned out to be with the hotel that I am staying at.

The highlight of the day was the lonely beach Kopepe that has no hotel nearby and is just beautiful.
It strikes me that comparing Ogasawara to Hachijojima I cannot get rid of the image: current and past glory. Hachijojima is not a tourist destination anymore, hotels and restaurants closed down, many of the general facilities were old and neglected. Ogasawara is, also thanks to the newly gained status as Unesco world nature heritage site, on the rise and well equipped. At every beach is a toilet with running water, even the roads look relatively new. I wonder what it was like here 10 years ago?

Going back to the main village I did some souvenir shopping and also hit the supermarket. The latter had been frighteningly empty yesterday, today it was well stocked, looks like the load of the Ogasawara Maru needed a day to get distributed!

A bit of cold hampers the enjoyment at the moment, I bought a whole kleenex box that I am carrying around with me for my runny nose, but the throat scratching is gone and I hope the fresh air today and the exercise has scared the bacteria away.

Tomorrow I will go on a one day boat tour with the purpose of whale and dolphin watching. There are humpback whales and sperm whales in these waters, next to bottlenose dolphins. I hope the guys will show themselves! And I hope the weather holds. Unfortunately it seems to be going downhill. Tomorrow clouded and from day after tomorrow rain until Saturday?? I hope that’s not true.

For Japan’s golden week, the travel bug has sent me to the Ogasawara or Bonin islands. After I tested my seaworthiness last summer with a 12 hour trip to Hachijojima, this time I thought to go a bit farther and here is the first entry for this trips diary.
I am not an early riser, I’ve never been and presume never will be. So every time I have to get up early in the morning on a weekend and go somewhere I am wondering what the hell all these people are doing up and about on a Saturday or Sunday morning. My homeline was more crowded at 7:30 in the morning than on a weekday. Where do all these people go at that time, and what for?
Anyway, thus I fought my way through crowded Tokyo until the Takeshiba pier where the Ogasawara Maru waited.

The ship is the lifeline of the islands and its only connection to the outside world. It sails on average twice a week. During peak season they send it back and forth three times a week. More is not possible, since one way takes 25 and a half hours in good weather. Since during storms the ship of course does not sail, I guess it’s yearly average is indeed twice a week. It’s fit for some 1000 passengers and of course, over the golden week holidays it was fully booked (and it was quite a hustle to get a ticket).

Inside Tokyo bay the ship does not go full speed yet and the trip through the bay takes 3 hours. It is easy to believe that Tokyo Bay is the most crowded sea-space in the world. There is a LOT of traffic in the bay. The route goes below the rainbow bridge on to Haneda airport where quite dramatically planes are landing and starting right over your head. Then on with Yokohama to your left, then slipping through between Yokosuka and Chiba into open water. As soon as open water is reached, the ship picks up speed and the real waves and wind kick in. I had just eaten lunch and was in danger of getting seasick and admit to have bought some anti-seasickness pills at the ship’s shop. Then back on deck and staring at the horizon and the combination of that and the pills helped and now, well into open water and more than 5 hours at sea I think I’ll be fine
The 2nd class sleeping places are ridiculously small. I hope I’ll manage to take a photo of them. They were much wider on the ship to Hachijojima island last summer. Well, it’s just one night and I’ll survive it somehow.

With some metal music on my ears I stayed outside for over an hour and got a nice spectacle. Flying fish. I’ve never seen any before and at first I saw one, then another, then whole schools of them. Unfortunately they are gone too quickly to whip out the camera. You can easily discern them from seagulls thanks to their tail. They flee the ship, dash to the side, skim over the surface of the water, sometimes flying as high as a meter, then they plunge into the waves with a vengeance. Looks very cool. I don’t know if they just spread their wings and sail on the wind or if they beat them too fast for the eye to sea. I guess they just sail on the wind, since I couldn’t see them flapping at all. I didn’t catch a sight of them during the Hachijojima trip last summer.

Our route takes us due south and leaves all the Izu islands to the right (west). We went too far west of Oshima for example to see the island. While the ship to Hachijojima stops at Miyakejima and Mikurajima, the Ogasawara Maru goes straight to Chichijima and that’s it.
The weather could be better, so far there were only some patches of blue sky, but at least it’s not raining.
The open ocean affects me greatly. It’s the last bit of freedom for humans on this crowded planet. Well, deserts too, but I prefer the ocean, the air is incredible and the waves have that way of rocking you…
I’ll go outside again and watch the waves to some more heavy metal

The night on board.
After dinner I went to the D deck where officially my seat was and luckily my elderly couple neighbors were not present, so I tried to make myself comfortable and indeed must have fallen asleep around 20:00 or so. At 22:00 was lights out and I felt my neighbors coming back and squeezing in next to me but I was too far under to care. Another thing was that my throat started to hurt… Too much nature I guess! = too much wind. At 23:30 I was suddenly wide awake and got up to brush teeth etc. when I came back my little space was more or less gone, the lady next to me had spread out and while it had been head on head already before, I just saw no way how to squeeze myself in there again and to be able to rest. I took my blanket and everything and wandered the ship in search for a place to rest my sleepy head! Many people had found the 2nd class spaces too squeezy and were lying all over the place on the floor with just a bast mat under them at the bottom of stairs, anywhere.

Then me lucky girl found an, oh miracle, unoccupied sofa, well it was only as long as my torso but you could put your legs over the things edge quite comfortably and extend them onto a small table with a fixed lamp on it. So I lay relatively comfortably and managed to more or less sleep until 6 in the morning when activity started around me again. Meanwhile my throat hurts like a bitch and I’m afraid I’ll spend my time on Ogasawara having a cold…

I had the most weird nightmare, I was dreaming of a constant earthquake which just wouldn’t stop, doubtlessly induced by the constant movement of the ship. I watched a house, not my place, but weirdly all my stuff was in there, at first have list then fall flat onto the street and all I worried about was why the hell it didn’t stop shaking and how I was supposed to get my iPad out of the fallen building! Interesting dream. I woke up without retrieving my iPad and realized: oh, I dreamt that because I’m on boat, things are moving… And went on to sleep.

While I ate breakfast, we were three and a half hours before our destination and had changed to the left side of the island chain because the harbor is on the western side of Chichijima.
The weather is cloudy and a bit rough, quite high seas but I’ve long gotten used to that and am quite seaworthy and looking out of the window of the canteen one can watch the occasional cormorant plunging head on into the waves hunting for fish which I presume are quite plenty around us. The middle of nowhere feeling is starting to kick in and I love it. Out on the ocean a thousand kilometers away from anything! Just what I wanted although I’d prefer it not to have a scratchy throat…

We arrived at the island in a rain shower and my hotel lady picked me and a few other guests up and drove us up the hill to the hotel, which is nice, clean and small. The hotel is on the northern edge of the island, down the mountain is a lovely beach called Miyanohama which faces the uninhabited neighboring island of Anijima and down the other hill is Ogasawara mura (village) and its one and only restaurant and shopping street.

I went down there to rent a bicycle and to buy some provisions. Then I went down to that beach and wandered a bit about there, a bit too tired and not the right footware to endeavor on the 3 km hike to the next beach one mountain over. I guess I’ll do that tomorrow.

Thanks to a business trip, I had the opportunity to go to Thailand for the third time in my life and for the first time since 2008. Back then I only passed through Bangkok to go to Pattaya (not for swimming or something else (…) but also that was a business trip). My first trip to Bangkok is as long ago as 1999 and after 13 years I of course did not remember much of Bangkok anymore. Even if I did, I would not have recognized much, since the city has changed a lot.

First of all, it has a public transport system now. It only opened in 2001 or 2002 or so and the one thing I remember best from 1999 is the endless traffic jams. Those have not diminished in their intensity, but luckily you can now leave them behind by riding on the two elevated train lines that run through Bangkok, called the BTS (which probably means Bangkok Transport System or something like that).
Our hotel was located near the National Stadium and its respective BTS station right down the street from the huge MBK shopping mall.

A first impression of Bangkok on 2012 I got on the roof of our 25 story hotel a bar is located and where one of my colleagues and I had a light dinner in 30 degrees of heat, and that during the night. The thick, rich, tropical air felt like quite of a shock after a maximum of 15 degrees in an on the verge of spring Tokyo.
Our five day work seminar was indoors (luckily) and lasted every day from 9 to 6, which in effect meant that I haven’t seen much of Bangkok during daylight.

We had the evenings off and on the first night three girls (me included) followed a colleague of ours to Sala Daeng station on the BTS to receive a massage in a massage parlor our colleague knew around there.
Not remembering quite so well where the parlor was, we walked around for the better part of an hour through an open street market with tiny stalls to the left and right (and the cars rushing by beyond that). The atmosphere was incredibly loud, and dirty too. Above our heads were a few trees occupied by hundreds of chirping hysteric little birds that constantly shit down on the pavement. Every stall has its goods covered with birdshit-covered plastic sheets… not very inviting to shop, I must say. In between the stalls there is no protection though and one of my colleagues got hit by falling shit on the shoulder…

Also a giant cockroach caught my eye, as well as a quite fat rat amongst the chaos of the stalls.
Finally we found the massage parlor in a side street and I enjoyed the first foot massage of my life, which was quite nice and much less ticklish than I thought, though I did make the experience that my left foot is less ticklish than my right! Who would’ve known. After that we went to a Thai restaurant (inside) and had a good, dirt cheap but too spicy dinner.

If you are in Thailand you have to take at least a tuktuk at least once and we caught one to bring us back to our hotel. Although it being after 10 in the evening we got into some traffic jams and the exhaust fumes of your own as well as the surrounding bikes and other tuktuks and cars aren’t the most pleasant in the world. I think the life expectancy of a tuktuk driver cannot be that high because of those and also the danger of accidents of course.
Nevertheless we arrived safely in our hotel, hit our showers and fell into our beds.

The next evening was one to remember: Having had a nice foot massage, I wanted to get a shoulder and neck massage as well, which are always stiff from too much typing and dragged a few other colleagues to that massage parlor street again. We went into another parlor than the night before, which was probably a mistake.

Two of the other ladies of the group wanted a neck and shoulder massage as well, one more lady and two guys opted for foot massage which was downstairs. We shoulder ladies were led up into the second floor and put into separate rooms. The lighting was very dim and I was in a stall right next to where some guy was receiving special services… if you know what I mean. His noises were quite explicit and the lady who massaged me (not 100% sure if it was a lady or a ladyboy, which you can never really tell in Thailand) noticed of course that I noticed the sounds from beyond the thin wooden wall. She said something I did not understand and I asked her to repeat it, she said it again and I still didn’t get it because of her strong Thai accent and then she took my hand and put it into her neck saying “I’m so hot…”, Now I got her… I withdrew my hand and told her “no thanks”. Luckily she stopped and kept on regularly massaging me. But of course my calm was gone and I tensed up but she kept on with normal massage without proposing special services again and five minutes later the guy next door was finished with his business and left… that was a freaky experience! Well, I kinda find it cool that women are being offered special services as well, but nevertheless… yikes! She was actually pretty good at normal massage and my shoulders felt better. But for the moment I had enough of massages.
The dinner afterwards in a department store’s food court was quite harmless.

On the Third night shopping was the order of the day and six ladies including myself went to a station called Chidlom which constitutes the department store center of Bangkok.
I found those department stores exceedingly boring because they were not Thai in any way but international. All the Guccis and Pradas and Louis Vuittons of the world gathered and one of the ladies who didn’t care for this kind of shopping either and myself strolled around instead and found a lovely shrine where we sat down for a moment and watched people pray and also some dancers.

The fourth night was reserved for a common dinner of the entire group and we went to Thaksin station where a Mekong river boat picked us up and brought us to a restaurant by the riverside. We passed some great buildings, including the Grand Palace and seeing it by night was great, though it kind of made me regret that we were locked up in our hotel seminar room during the day. Nevertheless, also from afar and at night the Palace looks more than beautiful. The dinner was outside and much too spicy for me again and it was way too hot and we were all sweating and happy to sit on the cooling boat again after the dinner was over and we rode home by train.

On Friday, our last seminar day, we stopped at 16:00 and I hit the hotel’s pool for half an hour, which was gorgeous and on the 11th floor of the hotel (outside, constructed like a large kind of balcony). Then four of us went souvenir shopping in the MBK mall, which has an indoor cheap clothes and souvenir section. I bought some herbal shower gels and incense and the obligatory t-shirt and some Thai style summer pants and other knick knack. I liked the mall very much because it was indoors = air conditioned and much less crowded than I had expected. The stall owners are also less aggressive than those on the streets and allow you to search around in relative peace.

Last day:
Finally we had a day off and could see Bangkok in daylight, but alas, the temperature was so unbearably high that I gladly followed my Japanese colleague who had to pick up a jeans which she had asked adjustments for from the MBK shopping mall. We ended up staying in the mall until shortly before noon getting into shopping mood again and then returned to the hotel. The few meters from the mall to the hotel were torture in terms of temperature and I was glad I had not followed other colleagues who had been so brave to go to the Grand Palace. The heat was worse than Japanese summers and probably one of the worst temperatures and climate I have experienced so far.

After a short rest at the hotel, a Thai friend of my Japanese colleague picked us up by car (very happy about an air conditioned Nissan) and she drove us to a spa where she had booked a two hour course of massage for us.
Arrived there (inside, luckily) we went through a great massaging experience. After the disaster on Tuesday I had insisted not to be separated from my friends and we three girls shared one massage room where we were first thoroughly scrubbed for half an hour (felt very sandpaper like and was on the verge of being uncomfortable) then we had to take showers and next we were oil massaged for 90 minutes, which was divine. Our masseurs were female (we had insisted on that) and I got the sturdiest of them for the big foreigner who was apparently one of the bosses of the spa and she did a great job on me and I could finally really relax and enjoy being kneaded. She called my shoulders stone though and I wish she would have continued another hour just with my shoulders.

Compared to the disaster on Tuesday I could truly feel that this was a professional who knew what she was doing. I am usually quite ticklish but that lady managed not to make me feel ticklish one bit and she knew exactly where to put in force and where to be gentle and I could really feel the difference between the more or less skilled amateur on Tuesday and this pro. Great experience and well worth the 1350 bath, which is still very cheap for a two hour course, compared to Tokyo.

While we were being massaged, the weather turned and when we left the spa it was raining and thundering. Over those two hours inside, the air had cooled down and cleaned up and it felt like heaven to have only 30 degrees and some fresh air instead of 38 degrees and smog.
We drove back to the hotel, then walked down the street to a small canal with the Jim Thomson house, museum, shop and restaurant next to it. We did not really know how to get there and crossed a bridge to the wrong side of the canal and walked along its sides through food stalls and cats and goats and just a few meters away from the big streets this felt like a local neighborhood with a special flair. Our Thai friend said it was quite unusual for 31st of March to rain like that and so long and to get so cool but I highly enjoyed it. In the end we arrived at the Jim Thomson complex and strolled through its shop, the museum itself was unfortunately already closed and the restaurant not open yet.

In the restaurant we ate the best Thai food of our trip in my opinion, well, no wonder, we had a local with us who recommended stuff to us and who selected something that was not too spicy for our Japan used tongues. The food was excellent and still compared to Tokyo very cheap again, with under 2000 yen per person. The only thing about the restaurant was that only foreigners dined there, exclusively. the only Thai were our waiters and our friend.
We finished the evening in our hotel bar because it was still raining and we couldn’t get up onto the roof bar in that rain. A lovely day with great shopping massage and food and I felt quite decadent at the end of it

Sunday morning was tough for me since I am not a morning person and we had to get up at 4 in the morning, which is in fact in the middle of the night. When arriving at the airport at around
5:10 I thought, oh dear… Should we have got up at 3? They were queuing for Thai airways out of the airport building onto the street! Progress was in the end smoother than I had expected and although the airport is undergoing some reconstruction at the moment the dreaded immigration area where apparently at the worst time only 2 officers could do duty which caused 4 hours of waiting, was widened and well manned and gave us even some time for last minute air port shopping .

All in all it was a great trip, work-wise as well as travel wise and if it wasn’t for the heat I could well imagine staying in Thailand for a longer period of time, but alas, there is the heat! So I suppose my future visits to Thailand will be short
Sawadee