Singapore – 2019 – Gardens by the Bay

The good thing about the Singapore Grand Prix being run in the evening is that there is no rush to get up and head out first thing in the morning. The most urgent thing before lunch is making sure you get to the hotel breakfast before they stop serving.

It also means when you do eventually head out at a reasonable hour you have time to do tourist things before heading into the Grand Prix.

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Singapore Grand Prix – 2019

Part I

The last time I was in Singapore was just a few months ago, after my 6 weeks in Europe. I had planned to do a few things in Singapore on the way through back to Australia but I ended up spending most of the time in my hotel room after eating a dodgy bread and butter pudding and getting some nasty food poisoning – this trip was much more enjoyable.

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China – Part 1 – Food and shopping

I studied Chinese in high school, all the way to year 12, though I barely remember any now. I’ve eaten with chopsticks since I was a kid. I just remember chopsticks being in the cutlery drawer with everything else, like the little cake forks you use to eat cake. They’ve always just been there.

I’ve been to Hong Kong a few times, either as a 3 or 4 day stop over going to or from somewhere else, or for around a week with the school band, I played the bass clarinet. But I had never made it to mainland China.

Dad had been interested in going for years. Dad convinced mum to go by organising the trip through an agent with dedicated guides and drivers each day to take us around.

This was a very good idea.

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Looking for Mount Fuji and Confusing Americans

When planning our trip one attraction we did want to see was Mount Fuji. We read up on the best places to go and visit, I checked with a friend from work, and it definitely sounded like the best idea was to go to somewhere where we could see Mount Fuji, and get a good view of it, not Mount Fuji itself. There were options for a guided tour, or a bus trip from Tokyo, but we were confident we’d be able to do it on our own on the the trains. Mum wasn’t feeling the best in the morning, so dad and I set off with our JR passes on our own. Continue reading “Looking for Mount Fuji and Confusing Americans”

Nikko Tōshō-gū

There were two day trips we planned to do from Tokyo while we were there. One to see Mt Fuji (but not go to Mt Fuji) and one to the north to Nikko National park. We thought that we should be able to do the Mt Fuji trip ourselves on the trains, but the Nikko one would have been a little more complicated, and decided to get a guided coach tour for that. The tour group did hotel pickups from Shinjuku, but not ours. I’m not surprised I wouldn’t want to try and get a coach through the tiny street it was on. I rang them up to confirm the pickup location at Shinjuku Station, the hotel phones didn’t dial external numbers so I used Hangouts on my phone.

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