Back Home

We are back in Toronto. It’s May and it’s still chilly – but its home. We’ve been back for about 4 days now, catching up with family and steadily making our way around to many of you. The best part about it is that we can honestly say it feels good to be back. Eight months is quite a long time to be living out of a backpack and now we are home. We are constantly reminded at what we have missed whilst being away. Contrary to many of the places that we have visited, you can drink tap water here (it sure won’t kill you), and indeed, if you run the hot one, it actually turns out hot water. We marvel at how drivers still stop and let you cross the road rather than trying to mow you down. We can’t get over at how quiet it is at night without the car horns of India and Asia ringing in our ears. We forget how spacious Toronto is and how we don’t need to push and shove our way to walk along the streets. We are absolutely astonished at the luxurious feeling of owning and driving your own car in comparison to taking the public transport. Many things that we had taken for granted before our trip have suddenly taken on a whole new significance.

It was just 3 days ago that we were waiting at the London Heathrow airport for our connecting flight to Toronto. It was a weird feeling that we were back where we started. We remembered when we were first at the London Heathrow airport, with excitement and anticipation of our first adventure in a new city. Since then we’ve crossed 4 continents, traveling through 15 countries, and 36 cities (not including all of our other side trips). We can tell you that we are proud of ourselves for having lived our dream for more than half a year and having fulfilled a burning ambition while we still had the chance. We are thrilled at returning safely, with all of our limbs and most possessions intact, and with our minds filled with happy memories rather than regrets.

Perhaps the best part for us is that we have completed this journey together. We have spent more time together in the last couple of months than we probably will in the next five. We've grown as friends and our relationship has flourished as we've shared the moments, the emotions and the miles together. We'll be able to share and relive this journey and many more ahead, dropping in a "Do you remember when we were in ... " long after we've bored everyone else to tears.

But for now, the enormity of what we have firstly accomplished and have secondly left behind is still dawning on us. Will we ever see a sight so emotionally choking as the Taj Mahal? Are we ever likely to experience anything as haunting as being robbed at Placa de Cataluyna in Barcelona and trying to chase after the thieves? Or the chaotic, near death driving experience in Cairo? Will we ever again feel as hot and swarmed with flies as we did during the summer in Australia, or the bone chilling experience we had in Tokyo?

Had we undertaken this trip ten years ago, we would have felt far more isolated from family and friends. However, in this day and age, we never felt far away at all. We received phone calls, emails, website messages and texts in almost every corner of every country and for that, we owe you all a big thank you. Every message we received, by who ever, and by whatever means, genuinely made us feel that little bit closer to home.

Now that we are back in Toronto, we begin the next chapter of our lives. It's time to stow away our backpacks, get the suit and tie back out of the wardrobe and get on with relative normality. We need to find a job, and then a place to live. But that's okay... a new beginning is an exciting prospect. Even an office job in Toronto now seems like a breeze compared to the hardships we've witnessed others enduring. Can’t wait to see you all soon!!!

Moshi Moshi

Describing Tokyo to someone who has never been here is not an easy task. There just isn’t one word that can be used to describe this fascinating city. Our first impression of Tokyo was the sheer number of people everywhere within such a small area. There are approximately 12 million people that reside within Tokyo’s 1,288 sq. km. About one-fourth of the total population lives within commuting distance of the city. This translates into a mob of people that packs the subways, crowds the sidewalks, and fills the department stores beyond belief. In some parts of the city, the streets are as crowded at 2am as they are at 2pm. But among the busy-ness of the city, one can still find an oasis of tranquility and even a few windows on life as it used to be lived in the past.

The sheer level of energy is another striking aspect of Japan's capital city. It is an amazing example of what a country can evolve itself into even after WWII. However, despite its’ mega-construction, Tokyo hasn't fallen prey to supermarket culture yet: streets are lined with tiny specialist shops and bustling restaurants, most of which stay open late into the night. Close to the soaring office blocks exist an older kind of Tokyo - old wooden houses, small Japanese inns, old ladies in kimonos sweeping the pavement outside their homes. More than anything else, Tokyo is a place where the rush pace of consumer culture collides with the quieter moments that linger from the older traditions.

To sum up our experience of Tokyo, I wrote up a list of our favorite moments in the city. There is just too much to write about this city in one blog.

Top Moments in Tokyo

1. Tsukiji Fish Market – It is one of the largest wholesale fish markets in the world. Every conceivable type of fish and flesh were on display, being diced, sliced, slapped and chopped into bite sized chunks, ready for the waiting public. I don`t think we’ve ever seen so many dismembered limbs and gushing blood in one viewing. In addition to the slicing and dicing, there are also men in black rubber boots rushing wheelbarrows and carts through the aisles, hawkers shouting and lots of the fishermen zooming around in electric carts carrying crates of fish. They drive those suckers as if they are F1 drivers! You have to watch out for them, they don’t stop for anyone. Kenny was a victim – one of the electric carts hit Kenny in the leg as it was zipping down the aisle and before we could look up to see who hit him, it was already zipping down another aisle. Crazy drivers!! But no visit to the fish market is complete without a morning breakfast at the nearby sushi bars. (Let me remind you that this was 6:00 in the morning) The sushi was cut right off the back of the fish and served to us at the bar. It was definitely fresh and real raw. So raw, it practically melts in your mouth. But I think it was too early in the morning to be eating such raw sushi as our stomachs were sending us running back to the hotel.

Fresh Tuna anyone??

Using an axe to slice open the tuna

It was one of these suckers that hit Kenny

Eating our Sushi breakfast

2. Buying meals from a Vending Machine. Vending machines usually bring to mind canned soft drinks, but in Tokyo, these machines offer meals such as hot noodle soup and Teriyaki Beef on Rice. These machines are great inventions. You choose the meal you want from the machine, it spits out a receipt and you go to the kitchen counter to show the chef, and your meal is ready in 5 minutes. Its fast and efficient and the food is delicious.

3. Shopping at the Daiso shop. Daiso shop is a 100 Yen shop (which is equivalent to our Dollar store in Canada). It is a 4 floor storey shop that offers a wide array of goods, including clothing, kitchenware, food, stationary, tools, household items, toys, and various Hello Kitty, and Winnie the Pooh items. The Daiso shop is ten times better than the Dollar store we have in TO. It actually sells very useful and cute items. Kenny and I always make a stop if we see one to find cool cheap gadgets and to try out the different snacks and drinks. Yah to Daiso!!!

4. Eating at the sushi bars in Shinjuku. It’s quite fun. You sit down at the bar and there in front of you are various dishes of sushi, maki, sashimi, and even soup moving along the conveyor belt. It’s fun to eat at these places because you actually get to see the various kinds of sashimi that is eaten in Tokyo and let me tell you that some of them are quite funky. Kenny and I were always adventurous when eating at the sushi bars, but then again sometimes we wished we weren’t.

5. Playing at the Pachinko parlors. Pachinko is a mix between a pinball and slot machine. Inside the parlor, it is loud & extremely smoky. There are rows of people (mainly men) sitting in front of the machines as they play with their balls. Kenny and I wanted to play a game and of course all the instructions were in Japanese. We tried to ask how the game is played, but no one spoke or understood English. So we said, “What the heck, lets just put in some money and see what happens” As we inserted the money into the machine, a number of steel balls were dropped into a loading area. We pulled onto the only knob there was, and a ball was released and projected by a spring (like a pinball machine). The ball then falls through a series of pins on the screen and into this special hole at the bottom. We were then rewarded with more balls. At this point, Kenny and I assumed that the aim of the game was to get the balls into the holes. The more you get, the more balls you will be rewarded with. Obviously, most of the time, the balls unsuccessfully fall through the pins to the bottom and never make it into the holes. We also later figured out that the knob was used to control the speed by which the balls are shot onto the screen. The balls that you win can be exchanged into goods that are available at the parlour. Most of the people there, had trays full of balls, wonder how long they have been playing at these machines??

6. Walking around Shinjuku, Roppongi and Harajuku at night. Tokyo definitely comes alive at night. With its bright lights and massive amounts of people on the street, you wonder what day of the week it is. It doesn’t matter whether it is a weekend or a weeknight, there are always people walking around at night shopping, meeting up with friends and eating. It definitely is not like Toronto, where the city is dead by 10pm on a weeknight.

Shibuya Area

Harajuku by day

Harajuku by night

Shinjuku Area

Roppongi Area

There are two things that we wished we did see in Tokyo which are 1) to see the groups of suburban Japanese teenagers sport outrageous fashions and costumes. We read in Frommers that they normally gather on Sunday afternoons, at the mouth of the Meiji-jingu shrine. However, as we got there, there was none in sight. We stuck around waiting for them to appear, but we were out of luck. It probably had something to do with the cold weather. I don’t blame them for not coming out when temperatures are only -2 degrees Celsius. 2) To see a live sumo wrestling match. We arrived in Tokyo at the wrong time. They only hold sumo wrestling matches every other month beginning in January and we were in tokyo in February....so sad!!

What we would have seen....

The closest we got to seeing sumo wrestlers

The puffer fish is known in Japan as a delicacy, but it takes a brave soul to eat it as it is poisonous and if not prepared correctly, you can die within minutes. It is the liver, gonads, intestines, and the skin that contain a neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin (the poison) Only chefs who have acquired a special license can serve the puffer fish. I read that during this exam, which only has a 25% pass rate, the chef must prepare and then eat a meal of puffer fish...scary!!!

Cutest snoopy town in the Harajuku district

Looks delicious doesn't it, but its all fake...Tonnes of fake food in the restaurant display windows

Keeping an eye out at the Shinjuku Station

The ever popular Initial D car showcase

Concept car found at the Toyota Car Showcase

The controversial Shrine - Yasukuni Jinja: it is a shrine where the spirits of Japanese war dead are enshrined and worshipped as gods. It is controversial because 14 "Class A" war criminals are worshipped here.

Tokyo Tower

Tokyo Dome - An amusement park right in the middle of the city. Its amazing how they fit all this into a tiny city.

Cherry Blossom Trees found at Ueno Park

Up close shot of the Cherry Blossom Flower

Nijubashi Bridge at the Imperial Palace

Operating Instructions for the Bidet

Difficult Decision

Currently we’re in Hong Kong now, (sorry will update my blog with our Tokyo trip later. Thought that this was more exciting news to tell first) and have been here for a little over a month. We have reached the 7 month point in our trip, and the realization that we only have a few cities left to visit have triggered mixed emotions. On the one hand, we are now exhausted by the endless journeying and dying to return home to family, friends and our own bed. And plus, our fountain of wealth is drying up fast. On the other hand, we are aware of how lucky we are to be here at all, how much there is still to see, and how much we will miss being on the road when we are back behind a desk in an office. These two conflicting emotions had been pulling us in different directions.... "Now we are in Hong Kong, should we work and settle down in Hong Kong for another 6 months or should we head up to Taiwan to teach English for a year or should we head on home to our own comfy surroundings??

Well, on the second week of arrival in Hong Kong, we started to look for work. We madly sent in our CV’s and cover letters to job agencies and to the companies. Before we knew it, we were going to interviews back to back with the biggest investment companies that we have dreamed of working for, such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Merrill Lynch. Going to these interviews, we soon learnt what the HK work culture is like. At all interviews, they warned us of the long working hours. You are at least expected to work from 9am – 7pm, that is if it is a good day. On a bad day, the hours can be from 9am-9pm or worse till midnight. The next most common asked question at the interview is, “How do you expect to balance your work life and personal life?” I think to myself, “is there even time for a personal life with work hours such as this.” All you do is get up, go to work, go home, eat dinner and then go to sleep. There seems to be no time for personal or family life in HK. I still remember the time while I was waiting for Kenny to finish his interview with UBS at around 7:30pm, I saw a lot of couples meet up at the lobby holding only their wallets for dinner. After that, they would head back up to the office. It seems sad to me that work consumes so much of their life.

I guess having been exposed to the Western work culture, which definitely makes the Westerners seem like major slackers in comparison to HK people, it’s hard to work in HK, when you know its easier back home. In Canada, there are better hours, less demand of the workers, not expected to work through lunch or dinner and most of all, there is personal time after work. It makes it even harder for us to want to work in HK, when we know it’s only for a temporary time. We feel bad on our part if we leave the company within 6 months as when they interview you, they have the whole team question you because they only want to recruit people that can get along with the team. Since you will be working with them for at least 10-12 hours a day, they don’t want to recruit any person, they want to recruit a “family member”. So we felt it wasn’t fair to the company as well.

So, YES, HK does offer better work prospects and pay, but the question is, is it worth aging through the long slave hours for just the name of the company on your CV? To us, the answer is NO. We are not here long enough to gain much valued experience to make a difference when we go back to Canada. Nor do we think that the pay makes a huge difference since the living standards in HK is high, after our rent payments, we will have little to save. Further, if you work out the extra hours you put in, the wages in HK end up to be equally the same or less than in Canada. So after considering all of these factors, we knew that working in HK would not suit us.

Now come the decision of whether we want to pursue teaching English in Taiwan. This decision was not an easy one to make. First of all, getting the Alien Residency from the Taiwan government would be difficult, as it requires an actual diploma as proof of your degree. Since the Convocation at UT was uncooperative and unwilling to help us in this aspect, we knew it was going to be troublesome. Secondly, is the timing right? Are we just trying to prolong our trip so that we don’t have to go home to face reality. It’s so hard to go home after having been away for so long, but it’s even harder to continue traveling when your funds are running out. So after weighing out our future goals, we realized that it wasn’t in our best interest to continue to be away from home for another year. (As if we got a contract in Taiwan, it would be for 1 year). Time is one thing you cannot buy back and that is what we are running out of. We need time to go home to save up some funds so that we can start thinking of expanding our family and pick up where we left off in our careers.

So what does this all boil down to, yes you are correct, we have decided its time to go home. Our arrival date to TO will be May 2, 2006. But until then, we still have some traveling to do. We will be visiting Taiwan and several cities in China. Our trip adventure is coming to an end and it’s sad but happy to know that we’ll finally be back home with friends and family. See you all soon!!!!

Foot Massages and more…

No trip to Bangkok is the same without a good foot massaging experience. Luckily we bumped into Kenny’s friend, Chi Fong Luong and his girlfriend Tracy Ng. It was actually pretty weird, we were on the subway heading back to the hotel, when I heard Kenny scream out, “Chi, what are you doing here?” You would never think to bump into a friend halfway around the world. It was a pretty good feeling being able to see someone familiar in a foreign country. Well, it was Tracy that recommended us to go to the King and I Spa. They went the night before and told us that it was excellent. So we headed out there the next day, and signed up for a 45 minute foot reflexology massage. Let me tell you, it wasn’t the best experience at all.

First off, the masseuse starts by getting you comfortable in your chair. She then soaks your feet in warm, soapy water while gently getting all the nasty bits out between your toes (doing this with a smile on her face). After that your feet are dried with a fluffy towel and then the brutality begins. Menthol smelling lotions are rubbed into your feet while she works all your pressure points. It seems the moment she senses that you are nearly lulled into a deep sleep she pulls out a funny looking stick to get you back to your senses. The stick is made of wood that is ridged and ribbed at the end. Trust me, you are definitely jolted straight back into your chair instead of laying back in relaxation.She uses this handy little tool to rub all over the soles, the sides and even on top of your feet. The rather sharp point is used to press into the "head" of each toe – this is pure agony as she continuously presses into each toe and I am thinking I have 9 more to go. When the masseuse is done with your feet, she gets you to sit on a smaller chair in an upright position and starts pressing into your shoulders and neck to relieve any tension - dare I say tension caused by the foot massage. Yes, there are definite moments during the treatment where you think never again, but needless to say the benefits of having a thai foot massage are endless so I guess gritting your teeth every now and then is worth it. (we hope).

Kenny's Masseuse

Well Bangkok is not just a city of foot massages, it is also the transvestite capitol of the world where those with confused gender identities can live as they feel comfortable with little risk of open persecution or ridicule. It can definitely be confusing at times, I never know if I am looking at a man or a woman. And the funny thing is that some of them are probably the most beautiful ones you will ever see. We went to see the famous cabaret show – The Calypso Show at our hotel, the Asia hotel. As you enter the stage room area, you are seated at a little table with a complimentary drink. The show promises that all dancers are pure transvestites. And they sure were. Some of them actually looked like real women and some were just plain nasty looking. But throughout the show you are constantly reminded that they are men through their movements on stage. No matter how hard they tried to look and act feminine, they cannot hide the fact that they dance and move like men. As they dance, you can hear the hard feet movements on stage…. At the end of the show, you get to take pictures with the dancers. They pose in a straight line and ask you in for pictures. In the bright light, you can sure tell that they are men. Up close, they look like female giants. They are double Kenny’s height and some are actually scary to look at because of how hard they try to look like a female, but still look like a male.

Bangkok’s Khao San Road is backpacker’s haven. This is where most of the backpackers are situated when they arrive in Bangkok. This is also the only place where you can see the most foreigners hanging out in one place. It is never a dull moment here on Khao San Road. This is the place where you can actually get butter and toast for breakfast rather than noodles. But of course, because Kenny and I rather experience the true local culture of Bangkok, we chose not to stay at Khao San Road and rather happy that we didn’t. The area reminded us too much of America.

Only foreigners in Kao San Road area

We also went to visit the infamous Damonen Saduak Floating Market. Damonen Saduak is actually the name of a canal dug about 90 kilometers south of Bangkok. The market was definitely a spectacle. You pile into a rented boat and direct the pilot to paddle around, stopping to haggle at the various boats as you like. Most of the goods on offer are produce or other foodstuffs, with a few knickknacks thrown in. We were constantly held down by the sellers trying to sell us their hats and other souvenir items. I remembered this couple on our boat that bought fried bananas from a woman and they turned around and told us that it absolutely had no banana in it, but just fried dough. We bought fresh sliced mangos from another lady and as we bit into it, it was already the seed part. So, no mango meat but just three big seeds. Haa haa, that is what you get at such a touristy place.

At the Grand Palace

They say rubbing the heads of the elephant will bring you good luck

Some of the carvings found on some of the walls of the Grand Palace

(Left) Posing in between two deities at the Grand Palace

The giant reclining Buddha

Wat Arun (The Temple of Dawn)

Elephant Show

Ancient Ruins of the Ancient Capital City of Thailand - Ayutthaya
Old Reclining Buddha found in the Ancient city of Ayutthaya;

A Giant Buddha head was found in this tree in Ayutthaya

Congested China Town Area

Saw lots of the locals washing squid, not sure if its for cooking or drying? But it sure is nasty!

Lots and lots of yummy fishball and meatball on a stick



At the Suan-Lum Night Bazaar, lots of shopping and food

Rama VIII Bridge on the Chao Phraya River