Freaky & Weird

For sure it was worth to visit this country. Not only because of the cherry blossom but more to get a deeper view into this culture. And for me Japanese people are trapped between their traditions and the modern world. Their biggest concerns seems to be loosing their face by doing something weird. Hah, my country 😉

I also saw a lot of old (I guess retired) people who did meanless activities, e.g. guidung the traffic in a car park where only one way is possible. Or in a case where these men held up signs ‚watch your steps‘ Freaky for me. But later I learned that this tasks are very important for the retired people because they didn’t want to annoy their wife at home and they needed a structured day flow. So it makes sense in the Japanese culture but felt very weird for me.

But there are also things we could learn from them, hygiene for example. Especially the public toilets are super clean, desinfektion spray everywhere, and the toilets themselves, well, you saw the pictures. The other side of this hype was that approx 40 percent of the people had breathing masks, which was extreamly strange for us. It spoils completely the face mimics so you never know that the person you talk to really thinks. But maybe this was the real intention?

Something I didn’t thought about at the beginning was the language and the writing. It is Japanese. Point here for us, we have no chance to understand or even interprete a single word. And except in Tokyo most Japanese don’t speak English. But thanks to modern technology (mobile phone and google realtime translator) we managed this challange. And while thinking about the situation realized that for Japanese German and the German letters are also strange and not readable.

What I mostly loved in Japan was the side by side of old architecture like shrines or castles and modern skyscrapers. Faye did some pictures which show that perfectly. And even in Tokyo we found a lot of parks with very old trees so you could relax and forget where you are.

I‘m fully sure if we got the chance to see this country with a local, many of the ‚strange‘ behaviours would make more sense for me. So let’s see what the future brings 🙂

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The old and the modern

We really enjoyed this controversial and beautiful Metropolitan city! And our Hanami: sitting under cherry blossoms, like the Japanese, and having a lovely picnic 😀

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Definitely one of the most impressive days for me since we started our journey 4 months ago!!! Unbelievable how many cherry trees and how different and how beautiful … and we just had perfect Hanami weather 🙂

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イチホテル神田 by RELIEF（ICI HOTEL Kanda by RELIEF)
1-chōme-9-15 Kajichō, Chiyoda City, Tōkyō-to 101-0044, Japan
https://goo.gl/maps/S6Tw7AyksmK2

Unfortunately too cold for swimming in March, but great to look at.

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Here in Japan lots of things are handeled by rules. This is not that different from other countries (maybe except Thailand 😉 ) but the interesting thing here is that everybody takes care that everybody keeps the rules. An example:

Tonight we went to the landscape to a recommended pizzaria. The only way to get to this place was indeed by car. So we arrived and ordered our food, pizza and beer. The waitress refused our order because one of us has to drive home and therefore we can’t drink both a beer.

Never ever heard something like that in other countries.

The positive part of the fact that I needed to drink an alcohol free beer was that I got a flower with it. But not Faye with her ‚ordinary‘ beer :-p

Looks similar to the post from February, but it’s not.

Check it out here

Today we visited a very little but nevertheless wonderful and peaceful shrine. Sitting under a tree, enjoying the serenity of this place, I suddenly felt so much gratitude for really everything that has happened in my life so far. Good/bad, there was no difference, everything led to this moment right now. To this feeling of inner peace and gratitude and the deeply rooted knowing to belong to this wonderful earth.

So I decided to buy one of these wooden cards at the shrine shop and express my gratitude with a few words and hang it to the others on the line. The three elderly ladies at the shop tried to explain to me how these wooden cards worked and which one to use to get my wish granted. Somehow they thought I wanted to get another baby and tried to convince me to get the card that worked best for baby wishes. I explained that I definitely did not want another baby, but they still seemed unsure which card I should take. So they tried to ask me again in very simple words and with many funny gestures which wish I had so that I could decide which card I should buy. So I tried to explain, also in very simple words and with a lot of funny gestures that I did not have any wish to be fulfilled, that I just wanted to say thank you. They looked very puzzled and tried to convince me again to buy the baby card. And again I protested and said I only wanted to say “Arigato”. So the three of them looked at me like I was a little kid that just didn’t get it and asked me whom I wanted to thank. So I answered “I want to thank life for everything”! After that we all had a good laugh and they nodded a lot to show their understanding and when I finished my card told me how beautifully I had written it (Japanese politeness). The card I finally used was not the baby card, they promised 😀

…animals.

Well, maybe they are not original locals, but as we do not understand the talking of the humans, we thought let’s try the other beings here …

There were more of them but we were not able to get in touch with them, unfortunately…

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… and rest at the Play Beach Section or view at the Rest Beach section 😛

…why I didn’t post something about Japan, well, I took my time. But at the end I‘m afraid my mind won‘t change. Japanese people are humans with two arms and two legs, and that’s all we have together. I learned from Malaysia not to build up an opinion about people just by watching some of them. But here in Japan I‘m pretty sure it is the different culture which split them from us. Being so kind in the front but so closed to themselves in the back is nothing I can understand. Giving retired people a task in the society might be a good thing, but let them stand all day long with a sign „watch your step“ is undignified. Just an example.

But this is (again) one of the biggest reasons for traveling (at least for us). Exploring other cultures and re-thinking the own thinking. And if the result is „I like my way of being more than the one from the others“ well, so it is. I do not blaim the way how the Japanese people live their life (especially as I don‘t realy know any of them !) but it‘s their way and for sure never mine.

So thanks for the experience, take care and keep calm…

To be completely honest I still feel like on a different planet here 😉 The apparent politeness of most people feels sometimes like a shield for me and I somehow lack some openhearted behavior or sincere kindness. So many reglementations wherever you go, even in natural environments (a designated one-way track through the woods for pedestrians … really?!) is opposite to my intuitive and freedom loving nature.

But I know these are my special kind of feelings and behavior and have to do with being very sensitive to the environment and people around me … it is not meant as a general evaluation or judgement of the Japanese.

And finally: these are very interesting experiences, too! And we recognize our deepest values the more we travel and the stranger the culture for us.

And to be even more honest: We don’t care what other people think about us or our kind of relationship. We know that we confront and confuse a lot of people here just by being as we are. But we don’t want to hide who we are and also not our love for each other and dare to show this sometimes … luckily there is no punishment by law for this here, we only get strange glances 😛 But we decided to live with that!

Yes, we try to adjust our behavior to the country we are in (at least most of the time ^^), but being reglemented all the time and also showing no loving emotions in public is just not our way of being and definitely not possible for us.

Somehow we sometimes even think that maybe we spread a little bit of our openhearted love to the people around us here. Let 95% of the Japanese people think how disgusting it is to show deep love for each other in public, but if we encourage only 5% to join us, that’s worth it!

So if you visit Japan in about 5 years and wonder why so many people walk hand in hand and show their loving affection for the Partner even in public, we started this trend 😀

Today we visited Daisekirinzan, a very old spiritual place in the North of Okinawa. One of these special days … full of magic, nature and silence as we love it so much! Andy was the stone troll, I was the tree fairy – like in real life 😉

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Christchurch: powerful hakas honour mosque shooting victim

After 3 months traveling and a lot of beaches we‘ve seen we have to accept the reality how it looks like nowadays in these areas: beaches that belong to a resort/hotel are mostly cared for and the rubbish is taken away. The other beaches look like this one below with plastic (mostly bottles) all over and a lot of dead corals … sometimes I walk such a beach with tears in my eyes and have to take care not to allow any kind of anger in my heart for the government/industries/people here, not caring for their environment and also anger for myself (using all that plastic stuff here), as it really really hurts to see our oceans and their inhabitants dying….

Hotel Oceans Nakijin
985 Nakasone, Nakijin, Kunigami-gun, Okinawa 905-0401, Japan
https://goo.gl/maps/CRBhZdzcY6m

Yesterday we landed in subtropical Naha, Okinawa (Japan), completely worn out and tired, but straightaway felt the difference to every other country, where we have ever been before. Starting with the extremely friendly and helpful Japanese people and soon facing the unusual handling of freaky toilets, then enjoying surprising (we couldn’t read a word of the menu) and very delicious food to the great old cultural background and variety mixed with a lot of freshness from the youngsters around there (taking selfies). We are really looking forward to our next 3 weeks here 😀

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Red Planet Okinawa Naha
3-chōme-1-4 Maejima, Naha, Okinawa 900-0016, Japan
https://goo.gl/maps/YntQh7bQsjB2s

… in 5 hours. First we will fly from Krabi, Thailand, to Bangkok, Thailand, 4 hours later from Bangkok to Tokyo and a few hours later further on to Naha, Okinawa (island in the very south of Japan).

„Beam us up Scotty“ would be so much nicer 😀

To our friends Tammy and Maik.

They went now to another island while we prepare our trip to Japan

It has not the best camera, but can make nice photos.

Was not that easy to make photos in the water, especially every water drop opened an App and the waves rocked me around

Unfortunately: NO cold beer or cocktail service 😉

We are so relaxed that we are much too lazy to write much, the Resort where we are staying until March 13th is just wonderful, even the monkeys in the morning stealing our oranges 😉 … but have a look for yourself:

Koh Jum Ocean Beach Resort
Krabi 81130, Thailand
https://goo.gl/maps/EetLsqjfpLA2

A whole kingsize bed in a beautiful apartment just for the two of them… while Freaky & Weird went out for a fantastic dinner celebrating their 30. wedding anniversary 🙂

Saturdays Residence by Sure
Soi Saturdays Tambon Rawai, Amphoe Mueang Phuket, Chang Wat Phuket 83100, Thailand
https://goo.gl/maps/roMBXW6rVPw

2 months ago, a strong, hard and brave fool walked through the palm forest and suddeldly he was hit by a dorn from a palm leaf at his feet. The dorn created a smal wound and a drop of blood came out of it. The strong, hard and brave fool did‘t care, because he was strong, hard and brave. So the war began…

Tiny little creatures, so tiny that a normal eye coulnd‘t see them, realized the wound of the fool and started immediately to run through it. The body of the fool started to stop them but everytime one of the tiny littles died, 2 new ones arrived. It was a real long and hard battle, no side could win even a millimeter. The strong, hard and brave fool had a felllow, a lovely fairy with magic features. The fairy tried to attention the strong, hard and brave fool about the war, but he didn’t listen. After 51 days, the tiny littles changed their strategy. They went away a bit and stayed calm so the wound got closed. The strong, hard and brave fool saw that as a battle win and he triumphed. But not his body. The body realized the trick and fighted in the underground. Also the fairy tried again to warn him, but he dind’t listen. The brain of the strong, hard and brave fool was so enthusiastic about the victory of the battle that he didn‘t realize that he was still in war. To warn the brain, the body got unwell, but the brain took this as a small flue, nothing to care about. Also the fairy tried again to warn him, but he didn’t listen. To warn the brain, the body created nausea und vomiting, but the brain took this as a bad dinner, nothing to care about. Also the fairy tried again, now really angrily, to warn him, but he still didn‘t listen. To warn the brain, the body created pain in the whole body, but the brain took this as a sign to „be strong, hard and brave“. The fairy got desperate and pleaded, but the fool still stayed strong, hard and brave. This battle took 7 days, 7 days where tiny littles got so powerful that they desided to leave the underground and came to the surface. On day 58 of the war, the leg of the strong, hard and brave fool was swollen, the skin got dark red, and very hot. The brain of the strong, hard and brave fool started wondering, if there might be something to care about, but his brain was very slow in realizing the reality. So the fairy took a last try, she said to him that he will die if he won‘t accept the reality of what was happening. The strong, hard and brave fool didn‘t want to die, so the heart took over and made all further decisions and followed the advice of his beloved partner. Together they went to the big magic healingstone where the old (still not nice looking, but closed) wound was reopened, cleaned and professionally closed again. A huge army of professional soldiers (called antibiotics) were released into the body of the strong, hard and brave fool. The tiny littles now had no choice, they got killed quicker than they could reproduce themselves, so finally the war ended by the victory of the modern healing stone and the endless love of the fairy for the strong, hard and brave fool.

And they lived happily ever after…

The first thing most people comes to mind thinking of „Borneo“ is „Orang Utans“. True, there are only 2 places left where these wonderful creatures live and Borneo is one of this places.

So for sure we wanted to meet them and of cause not in a cage. Therefore we took a Grab-car (the Asian Uber) and drove 30 km to the wildlife park. Everybody (and a lot of signs) told us it is fruit season, so the chance to see Orang Utans at the feeding station is very very rare, as they get enough food in the jungle.

But we are the lucky ones, so we did see a mother with her baby and after a while another female Orang Utan. Here are some pictures of these beautiful animals. (But be sure pictures are never that impressive as the real world and we have only poor cameras at our mobiles)

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Additional a smal video to see them in action

Semenggoh Wildlife Centre
KM 20, Borneo Highland Road, 93250 Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia
https://goo.gl/maps/fqkzrcSHth72

As we arrived in Kuching 3 days ago our Grabcar driver informed us that Kuching (which means „cat“ in Malay) is not worth a visit, quite boring actually, doesn’t have anything to attract tourists … what a welcome and what an enjoyable honesty 😀

So we didn’t expect very much and were happy to have a nice hotel room. But it turned out that Kuching is quite lovely with its Riverside Waterfront, especially at night when the colorful lights are turned on!

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And here the namesakes 😉

Riverside Majestic Hotel – Astana Wing
93100 Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia
https://goo.gl/maps/keD1vdb3Q4G2

One of the reasons why I‘m traveling around the world (besides the fact that Faye convinced me to have a less stressful life) is exploring new cultures, meeting people and letting my mind calm down.

I believe if you have the time to be more mindfull in your daily being and if your mind is more quiet and peaceful you might find some secrets. So did I:

I already had a lot of experiences during our trip. The last ones in Malaysia where not that positive, neither the surrounding nor the people who crossed our way. So what my mind created was a picture of Malaysia. Often dirty, bad smelling, unfriendly people, no ecological mindset (especially for the ocean)… So not a country that I would recommend to visit. Now since 2 days we are at Kinabalu mountain, a place at 1600 meter height with pollution free air, lots of green and (mostly) no industrial noise. And guess what, the people here are so friendly and attentive.

So what is the lesson learned?

Most people (and also myself) are used to judge very quickly. Every experience it categorized in a box and we take this as overall and undisputed truth. I realised that this is bullshit. Life happens every second. If I like to have the truth I have to watch, listen, smell, touch every second.

Malaysia and their people are not bad, ugly or unsightly. It is as it is, a country with thousands of unique individuals and you can do millions of steps and each could be different. And every person and every step is worth to realize.

It was a real gift for me getting this eye opener and I‘m glad to share it or even keep it as reminder for myself 😉

After a 2 h drive we arrived at Kinabalu Park with it‘s astounding over 4000m high mountain. Strange to see jungle and then a gray freaky looking mountain top, knowing how high it is, but still we cannot believe it as everything surrounding it is so green and lush with big trees, but have a look for yourself:

Sutera Sanctuary Lodges at Kinabalu Park
Kinabalu National Park Kundasang, Kinabalu Park, 89300 Ranau, Sabah, Malaysia
https://goo.gl/maps/fCebZDtX19H2

Our next station in Malaysia is Borneo, home of the Orang-Utans. But before visiting them we took a relaxing timeout in Kota Kinabalu, a city with 1000 malls. Good for us, because Weird urgently needed new shoes (which he got today, the only ones in the whole shop in his size)

To get the best of relaxing we decided to shit on our budget and booked two nights in the Hilton hotel before going to the Kinabalu mountain. We enjoy it so much having a clean and not smelling environment and a shower which provides endless warm water.

Best, there is a roof top swimming pool which is colouring at night.

And we again enjoyed the pool in the morning (before the pack of Chinese kids overrun the pool).

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We come to the point that we are more snobby than we thought..

Hilton Kota Kinabalu
Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman, Asia City, 88000 Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia
https://maps.app.goo.gl/58FC6

We really tried to give this „peaceful traditional fishing village“ (original statement on airbnb) a chance, but finally we just had to accept that we booked a house in the ugliest location we‘ve ever seen!

But have a look for yourself, if you dare … and thank God that we cannot bring the foul smell and the great heat that’s here (even at night) with the pictures 😉

If you look at the restaurant seats, you may guess why we never dined in this town. And we never stayed so much inside or drove great distances with the local bus for dinner as we have done this week. Now you can image how happy we are to leave Penang in two days and fly to Borneo 🙂

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Here some pictures from our Butterfly Farm visit today, it felt like magic sitting between so many of them and even have them on our hands 😀

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Today we visited the Spice Garden in Penang, so if you feel like missing some vitalizing green colour, here you are:

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Sometimes a picture says more than thousand words:

Indeed a good decision, wasn‘t it?

We are now in our 3rd Airbnb location in South Asia and we decided: this will be the last one. It is one thing to show detail photos of a location which looks nice but never show the whole picture which is in fact ugly. But offering fake reviews which guide people into wrong expectations is a really worse thing.

So here we are, 10 days in „the lovely village“ which is in fact a bad smelling, dirty old fashioned and poor infrastructured village. The locals are kind of strange and not foreigner friendly at all. If you come across a „restaurant“ (plastic chairs on a concrete floor and dirty tables) you are directly asked to take a seat. If you friendly refuse you earn bad wipes and not understandable murmuring. I realy can‘t understand how people can recommend such a place.

The accommodation itself is not that bad, nothing was really lied on the airbnb platform. But the way how it was proclaimed and reviewed guided us into much higher expectations which resulted in a deep frustration and dissapointment. Not worth to get into details…

Anyhow, we are traveling to make new experiences and THIS is for sure an experience we will never forget. So Faye decided to make the best of it and turned our temporarily home into an enjoyable place.

4, Lorong Hassan Abas Dua, Teluk Bahang, 11050 Tanjung Bungah, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia
https://goo.gl/maps/merhjjFGWe82

Today we took the train from the largest town in Malaysia to the 2nd largest town „Georgetown“ on Penang, an island in the North.

The most curious thing on this 5h trip was that the wagons were cooled down to approx 10 degrees (might be overstate, but we felt so).

So every 10 minutes we put another piece of cloth on and at the end we looked like this:

A really interesting experiance, especially because in Georgetown we needed to walk 1,2 km to our hostel. In 35 degrees. We were completely worn out and sweaty after the 20 min walk.

Chulia Mansion Hotel
413, Chulia St, Georgetown, 10200 George Town, Penang, Malaysia

https://goo.gl/maps/hMTPw8Lcxnr

After nearly 8 weeks we left Thailand this morning and went off to Kuala Lumpur. What a difference after such a long island chill-out!

And: Woohoo, what a great city and so many friendly people! Enjoyed it really much to get some completely new vibes and impressions again 🙂

And best of all: we had a hotel voucher and stayed at the luxury Le Meridien, felt soooo comfortable and nice that for two seconds we thought about shortening our trip from hopefully 1-2 years to just one or two months and all the time just keep staying at such georgeous hotels 😀 … yes, a certain kind of uncomplicated luxury is really something we can appreciate! But that thought lasted only for two seconds ^^

Le Méridien Kuala Lumpur
2, Jalan Stesen Sentral, Kuala Lumpur Sentral, 50470 Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

https://goo.gl/maps/cNppeBMhaUo

Unfortunately Nelson doesn’t speek English…

If you like to have the outtakes (12 videos, 260 MB) just contact us 🙂

But we really needed a rest. Not kidding, one week in the jungle accomodation means one week – 24h over 30 degrees. We had only a fan which blowed the hot air around but gave no cooling. At night we needed to sleep under a mosquito net and this made it even worse (imagine what happens if you are under plastic without wind…)

35 degrees might be heaven for all winter driven readers but for us it was fully stress. We figured out that the human brain stopped working efficiently after a time. We took decisions which were fully nonsense (ask Maik and booking.com).

So now, after 3 days in an AC hotel room we feel “normal” again (sounds funny from somebody who call himself weird).

What I can tell for now, the next 2,5 months are 90% planned, scheduled, booked and confirmed. You think this is against drifting? For sure not. Lots of ideas drifted around us (especially Faye) and at the end we took the decisions. The teaser is still valid 🙂

… and also show the not so sunny sides of our trip so far:

• Sometimes really bad water quality (cold, brown, smelly, very little) in the shower 🙁
• Incredibly itching moskito or ant bites in the evening (even when you put spray on), esp. during sunset/lunch time 🙁
• Never knowing, if there are flavor enhancers (which I‘m allergic to) in my food as no one understands enough English to know what I mean 🙁
• Poisonous animals you have to take care of (yes, I am the anxious type of person), e.g. the box jellyfish (quite a view deaths in the last years here due to that) 🙁
• Sometimes it‘s just soooo f***** d*** hot und humid that my body just doesn’t want to do his job any longer, get’s shaky, completely powerless and nearly starts fainting (no joke!) 🙁
• Rubbish!!!! As soon as you leave the tourist area, the resort beaches that are being cared for, you find so much plastic rubbish everywhere, at the streets, beaches, in the jungle … unbelievable 🙁
• Cesspool smell (Kloakengestank), when you cross a river or at some ocean sites 🙁
• Really filthy seats, table cloths and menue cards (didn’t know until now how much I enjoy a certain kind of cleanliness ^^)
• Sitting at the most lovely beaches and then hearing the extremely loud motor of the longboats that bring new tourists all the time …
• Mega potholes on the roads! Not funny sitting on the backseat of the scooter, nearly fell off sometimes especially at night 🙁
• Trying to find a nice accommodation for little money, as the pics most of the time are at least 20 years old (or fakes) and you never know what you really get 🙁

So, that was just to show you that even when you live your dream, you still have ups and downs, good days, not so good days (and I even forgot to mention loud screaming and laughing women, often drunk, sitting or living right next to you 😉 ) .., but that’s nothing that really bothers us for a longer time and you get used to a lot of things after a while (not the screaming women, though) … and to be completely honest, up till now we never regretted even for one second our decision and enjoy every moment and our kind of life profoundly, the sunny sides and the not so sunny or even stormy ones <3

So let’s have a drink.

Can you imagine what‘s in the jungle?

Right, animals. Some outside, some inside. Here are the most harmless ones:

Outside

And naturally a lot of geckos, lizards, frogs and bigger & smaller insects

And the location is even not known by google

7°33’20.7″N 99°02’52.3″E
https://goo.gl/maps/fBgMXBXxmV62

Today we needed to leave the freaky pirat horizon bar. It was a wonderful and lovely week where we met so many people and listen so so many cool music.

Thank you all:

New friendships were made:

It was indeed a great time

Take care dear horizon, see you on the other side…

Lanta Horizon
45/3 Moo 6, Koh Lanta Yai, Tambon Ko Lanta Yai, Amphoe Ko Lanta, Chang Wat Krabi 81150, Thailand
https://goo.gl/maps/XfyfaqrkVe62