Category: Trips

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2019 Summer Vacation Part.2

So, I have been giving you a rundown of my 2019 summer vacation. I have already wrote my first half in the Maldives, in the last post so please go and have a read of that as well. This post will focus on the latter half in Thailand. We were in Thailand from the 24th of July to the 29th. I had a totally different experience in Thailand than the Maldives, and was glad we put these two destinations together. We booked almost all tours and restaurants from Japan, however I don’t remember the tour company, but I kind of remember the tour names, so we will write those instead. (However, all of our tours were booked with some associations to Japan, even though some of our tours were in English.) In our family, my father is always the one looking for and booking tours, so my mother and me just ride on the journey.

First Day (7/24)

This day was the day we moved from the Maldives to Thailand. Because of that, we were quite tired so we took  it easy on that day and just went out for dinner. We had no plans for that day, so we just went out to the local mall and went straight to the food court on the top floor. This food court was mentioned in the guidebook we took with us from Japan, so we felt very safe eating there. This might have been a very famous food court, since we saw a lot of tourists there and the Thai food there was very good as well. (Thailand, sometimes have issue with the water quality, so please be careful when you are eating in food courts or street food, since it can influence your health.)

Second Day (7/25)

From this day we enjoyed Thailand to the max and we joined a lot of tour. On this day we joined the Ayuthaya Ruins & Light Up Tour. We went to the north of Thailand and went around many Ruins, but mainly Ayuthaya Ruins. We went through a lot of ruins in the same region, and at the end I became dizzy not knowing the difference from one another. (Mind you it was also a very hot and humid day.) A lot of the ruins were not in their perfect stage, because of past wars. The tour was supposed to be with another family, but we were very lucky and it was just our family. The dinner that was included in the tour, was very great as we got to eat Phu Patpong Curry which was something we were saying we wanted to eat. After that we went to one of the Ayuthaya Ruins which was lighted up and it was very different from the daytime. It was a whole day tour, but it was so much fun.

Third Day (7/26)

This day was another one day tour. I think we took a tour called “Bangkok Photogenic Tour”. Bangkok has a lot of shrines and temples that are worthy of putting on instagram, and this tour went to most of these places. However, even if you are not into these photogenic places, I think you will enjoy it. (My parents were enjoying it for sure.) I don’t remember every shrines and temples we went to but we did sure go to Wat Paknam and The One Ratchada. They were all really photogenic and I was glad that I had brought my SLR camera with me that day. (I also recommend to bring your cameras, because it makes a big difference in the nighttime.)

Fourth Day (7/27)

This day we went to see one of the floating markets. This was something I wanted to see when I went to Bangkok, so I told my dad about it before we went. However, this was not the one you will see up on instagram and it was just a very usual floating market. It was also for the tourists but it was not at all photogenic, and I ended up not taking a lot of photos here. However, it was a great experience since it was my first time seeing anything like this. (It still is on my bucket list, to see a real life floating markets some time soon.)

Fifth Day (7/28)

This day we went on a railroad tour. It was about the railway and a certain bridge at the end. And one of my father’s friend from university had done a coverage about this bridge, so we went to see it on the last day. The bridge was more of the famous part of the tour, and it was the place that the movie “The Bridge on the River Kwai” was set. This was a place related to the war, but now it was a famous tourist spot and there were so many people here. We could walk on the railroad tracks that is still been used today, so me and my father walked there even though it was a very hot day. However, the tracks were built high above a river without any safety feature, so it was a frightening experience for me. The tour was only for half the day, so we went back to the hotel and headed straight to the airport. Out flight left at 21:55 from Bangkok and arrived at Haneda the next day at 06:05.

So this was the end of the latter half of my 2019 summer vacation. I am really sorry that it has taken me so much time to post from the first half. During that time, I was able to come back to Australia for my studies. I couldn’t come back to Australia because of COVID-19, but I’m back after a year and a half. I have started to ease to the style over here, so I can promise you that I’ll start to upload more than I do now. That was my update about my life, but how is everyone doing?

I thought we were going to be able to go somewhere overseas for summer or winter vacation, but with me going back to Australia, things don’t seem to go that way. However, I will be graduating university next year or somewhere in the start of 2024, so probably my next big overseas trip will be my graduation trip. (I might have some trips here and there in 2023 though. This is something I hope for so much.) I just hope that everything will be back to complete normal by that time.

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2019 Summer Vacation Part 1.

A lot of people will think why I’m doing this right now, but please let me write this for my memories. So, I am going to write about my 2019 Summer vacation. My family always goes on summer vacation for about a week every year. Because of COVID-19, we haven’t had a chance in 2020 and 2021 to travel, so I would like to travel somewhere this year. To start we went to the Maldives and Thailand in 2019. This week I’m going to share with you the first half of the trip to the Maldives.

Decision-making

Firstly, I’m going to introduce you to how we decide on where we’re going. We start in the springtime during dinner on the weekends, talking about where we would like to go that year. When we go is dependent on my father’s job, so after the date is decided we start really discussing where we want to go. Usually, it is me and my mom saying dream destinations and we decide from there. However, recently I have been able to go where I wanted to and this time too since I was the one who wanted to go to the Maldives. Then my father decided to add Thailand to it and that is how 2019 was decided. We go to various places so we try not to go on the same kind of vacation two years in a row. By the way, 2018 was Kenya and Dubai and 2017 was Paris and Rome.

The Schedule

This trip was from the 20th to the 29th of July in 2019. And the 20th to the 24th was the time in the Maldives. The hotel we stayed at was the “Conrad Maldives Rangali Island” but I have no idea why this hotel was chosen since my dad chose it. However, I will recommend it to many people and I was so satisfied with my stay. I just strongly insisted on staying in a water villa and my request went through. We normally have a list of restaurants and activities to do before leaving Japan, but this time there was none for the Maldives. This is a feature of the Maldives but everything is completed in the hotel, so even if you don’t have any plans you will still get the full experience. It turned out that we had a trip full of activities.

Flight

I’m not going as deep as I did in my Japanese blog here since it was a flight from Japan to the Maldives. There are a few different places where you can transfer to get to the Maldives from Tokyo but we decided on Bangkok because we were going to stay there afterward. We went out via Haneda Airport at 0:40 on the 20th and landed in Bangkok at 5:00. From there we took another flight to the capital of Maldives but I totally don’t remember. From there it is totally different regarding the hotel you are going to stay at. For Conrad, there was a waiting area for the sea airplane and it was very comfortable. I think a lot of people will get car sick on the sea airplane, so I think you should be ready for it. I got car sick because of the smell of gasoline. 

First Day (7/20)

The first day was very long due to the time difference and the time of the flight. If you are someone that can sleep on the plane, I don’t think you will get jet-lagged. I think we checked in at the hotel and came to our room at around 14:00. During the check-in, we were told that the hotel had closed one of the two islands due to the number of guests. We got an upgrade due to that since we were supposed to be staying on the other island. After we unpacked and settled down in the room, we went out for a walk around the island before dinner. During that time we went to the activity center and booked some activities. 

Second Day (7/21)

We got up pretty late on the second morning and went out for breakfast and went around the island thoroughly. The characteristic of Maldives hotels is that the hotel is on the whole island and you are allowed to go anywhere you want. The water was so clear and beautiful and we found harmful sharks in the shallow. After that, we went back to our room and laid back around our own pool. We had a very activity full trip this time, but I think one of the good things in the Maldives is that you can just enjoy doing nothing. However, I recommend you bring something so that you don’t get bored. We brought some card games and plenty of books. In the late afternoon, my dad and I went out fishing and had dinner with the fish we caught. 

Third Day (7/22)

This was the day we had activities all day. In the morning, we went out on a snorkeling tour and in the afternoon we went on a dolphins cruise. During the snorkeling tour, I got to meet a turtle. Other than that, there were so many fishes and beautiful corals and it was so much fun. To everyone coming to the Maldives, if you can snorkel, I highly recommend you to go on a snorkel tour. Our tour was with other families, but there was a plan where you can make your own one. The afternoon was a dolphin cruise, but we were unlucky and couldn’t encounter one. However, the boat was crowded at the front but no one was there on the backside of the boat other than us. So we enjoyed a very elegant sunset cruise and a talk with the crew. 

Fourth Day (7/23)

On this day we had an activity in the morning. We went on a pretty long snorkeling tour and snorkeled at many spots during the tour. It was supposed to be one where we can encounter a whale shark, but we couldn’t. However, I was able to see a huge stingray and I got to swim with it. I ended up getting seasick and getting a sunburn on my left arm which was left out in the sun. I fought with this sunburn for about a year until it got back to normal. I am normally good at reapplying sun cream and don’t get sunburnt. After that, we went back to our room and laid back around the hotel pool and room. We went back to the room and got ready for dinner early, and went out to take some pictures. 

Fifth Day (7/24)

This was our last day. I thought it was a very fast trip but I think this is because we packed a lot of activities. We had breakfast and went back to our room to do our final packing and left Conrad via seaplane. We arrived at the main island of the Maldives and took a plane back to Bangkok, Thailand, and started the latter half of our summer vacation. 

This is the end of our first half of the 2019 summer vacation. It was a very relaxing resort trip and very different from the latter half in Bangkok. If you have small children, probably looking into the activities the hotel provides is a good thing to do. If you are going to the Maldives, looking into the hotel is very recommended since the hotel is everything. This is a destination I recommend to everyone and somewhere I would love to revisit in the future. The ocean is just beautiful and clear, and you get to see a lot of fish and above all, it is so relaxing. Please be ready for next week’s Bangkok. 

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Dream Trip Destinations

When will we be able to travel again? I think for us in Japan, summer vacation is not going to be a good idea to travel, but how is it in your country? I actually live in Tokyo, the capital of Japan, so I was talking with my parents and it seems unlikely. Even if we were able to go anywhere it would be around September to October and it will of course be inside Japan. I would love to go to Kyoto, Kamezawa, or Hakone for a hot springs trip but we are not sure about that either. However, in today’s blog I’m going to talk about my dream trip destinations. All of these are places overseas, so when we can finally resume traveling to different countries I would love to go to all of them. When that happens I would definitely be posting a travel notes here on my blog.

South of France

Southern France has always been a place I wanted to visit even when I first visited Europe 3 years ago. However, it was my first ever time to travel to Europe so we went to the famous Paris and Rome. If I go specific in whereabouts in Southern France, it will be Côte d’Azur, Niece, Provence, and even though it is a different country Monaco. At first I thought it was a very beautiful place seeing photos from Instagram. I expect the trip to be very relaxing and refreshing for both my body and soul, looking at the landscape and enjoying a slow lifestyle. I didn’t like to spend relaxing holidays when I was young, but nowadays I started to think that it is a good idea sometimes. Even though I am saying this, the trip we took to Maldives last year was very busy, as we took part in activities from the first day to the last. I would like to experience something unusual through the trip and meet some great people.

Milano

Another city from Europe, Milano, the majority of the cities I would like to visit are in Europe. As I have discovered from listing all of the places I want to visit, there was a lot of cities from Europe as I expected. In that list there was a lot of cities from Italy, for example Napoli, Venezia, and Firenze but I especially want to go to Milano next. I saw some people going to Milano on Instagram and it looked so magical. I also saw someone, who I follow on Instagram, have their wedding around Lake Como and it was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, so I would love to go there as well. I want to make this trip to go somewhere elegant and spend some time indulging in expensive and luxury things to raise my spirits and to get some motivation to work hard again.

Shanghai

 Last place I would love to visit in Shanghai. I have only gone to Thai, Maldives, and Taiwan so I would like to visit more countries and cities in Asia. I haven’t even been to South Korea which I would love to go to, but I want to go to China the most. I really want to go to China in the next few years. I think the energy is so high and special in China now and rising so I want to go there during that time. I really want to go to Shanghai not Beijing because it is one of the leading financial city in China and one of my friends who visited said “The energy level is very different from other cities”, so I am excited.

This is the end of my dream trip destinations list. I want to go to Cape Town, Egypt, and Brazil other than on this list but the 3 places here are the places I want to go to the most. I don’t know where I’m going or even if I’m going anywhere this year but I would like to have fun anyways. Let’s look forward to when we can go travelling overseas for now patiently. (When is it going to be though?) Please tell me where your dream and recommended destinations are!! My recommendations will be Palau and Kenya probably!? I’m thinking about posting my past travels up on here. How do you think about that?

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2018 Summer Vacation -Kenya & Dubai-

My family always go somewhere in the summer. This is a family tradition that has been with us for my whole life and because of that I have traveled to so many places. This year we went to Kenya and Dubai. It was so much fun since it was the first time for us to go to Africa or the Middle East. We had a lot of new experiences and we got to know a lot of new cultures.

Kenya

We had a safari trip in Kenya and it was more than we expected. Just to run through our schedule, we landed at 11:00 in Massai Mara from Nairobi and had the evening safari. The next day we had 8 hours of safari and then we had the afternoon to just relax at the hotel. The next day we had the morning safari and left Masai Mara at 11:00 and went to Lake Nakuru and had the evening safari. The next day we had the morning safari and went back to Nairobi to go to Dubai.

First off it was Massai Mara National Reserve. It was so much fun and our guide was one of the best guides we could have asked for. Our guide could spot animals from the distance and he would tell us that he spotted it but none of us would be able to see it. He would drive closer to the animal and we would finally see it when the car came to a stop. It was really cool to see all the animals you will just see in the zoo or on nature shows up close and in the environment where they belong at, just doing their own thing and minding their own business. We actually got really lucky and saw everything we wanted in the days we were there. (Lions, cheetahs, leopards, rhinos, giraffes, jackals, hyenas, a lot of elephants, gazelles, buffalos, zebras, birds, and more)

Next was Lake Nakuru. Lake Nakuru used to be really famous for its flamingos. However, a lot of them have migrated to other lakes in the same district over the year because of climate change and many other issues combined. So, there was not that many things to see here. In all honesty, I don’t think it’s worth going here if you are not after something very special. However, there was a lot of monkeys and it was completely different to Massai Mara because it was beside a lake and there was more tall trees as compared to Masai Mara being a savanna.

To sum up the Kenya part of the vacation it was well worth it because of the amount of species of animals we got to see. I think it comes really down to just this part when it comes to safari and dealing with nature. To the people deciding on whether to go to Massai Mara or the Serengeti, I would highly recommend to go to Massai Mara because you can get more up close to the animals. This has to do with the regulations upon each national park but apparently in Massai Mara you can go more close to go to the animals then you can go to in Serengeti. Also, I would recommend you to go to Massai Mara by airplane because the roads are really bad and apparently there is nothing to watch during the road trip. However, going to Lake Nakuru by drive was good because you get to see the small villages in Kenya and how they kind of operate, so it was nice to see the culture of the native people. Something I also recommend is renting a high spec camera and a good telephoto lens with it if you want to take good pictures on your trip. (By the way, I rented the camera for this trip.)

Dubai

 We just had a tourist trip in Dubai and actually went to Abu Dhabi too. So, I will run you through the schedule for this one too. We arrived in Dubai at 22:40 and just went straight to the hotel. The next day we went to Abu Dhabi for a tour the whole day, the next day we had a tour of Dubai by my father’s co-worker. The next day we went to the mall for the former half of the day, went desert safari for the latter half of the day and came back to take the 2:40AM plane back to Tokyo.

So, the first day was Abu Dhabi. This was an awesome choice that we made to go to Abu Dhabi because although it wasn’t that different from Dubai it was nice to also see Abu Dhabi since we probably won’t be going back to the middle east for a while. There are some awesome places you would love to go to and I know it would have been nice to enjoy a few days there. The Sheikh Zayed Mosque was beyond the word beautiful and all the architecture were so amazing.

The next day was a full day of exploring Dubai, because we had our dad’s co-worker was the tour guide we got a lot more in one day than a normal tour can. It was amazing to see all the high and modern architecture that is being built really every year and getting higher and more gorgeous each building that is constructed. Also, there was some places in Dubai that you couldn’t believe it was in Dubai that everyone images. We got to see the diversity of Dubai and how it isn’t just about the image of Dubai everyone has and they also have the history of the people living there for many generations.

The last day was half a day of mall and half a day of desert safari. We went to the famous Dubai Mall and we had a wonderful day of shopping. In honesty if you were really going to go shopping half a day won’t be enough but we were just there to browse around and see the famous mall. I bought something for my friend’s birthday but didn’t buy anything other than that. But it was still a very fun time because just being there makes you feel luxurious. Then we went to the desert safari and it was great. The desert safari is quite different and the car will just go into the sand dunes and drive. It makes you feel like you are on a jet coaster because of the driving techniques of the drivers. However, be careful because it can make you car sick pretty easily. (I did…) Just tell the driver and he/she will choose a route that will be not that bad because they know those paths. It was really fun to go to these places in the same day because you can really experience the two parts of Dubai. The untouched part of Dubai with nothing just sand dunes and the very industrial part of Dubai with so many high technology, new architecture, rich people and tourists.

To sum this part of our trip up, I think you need to go to the middle east once in your lifetime and sooner is better. I know that Dubai might not be higher in the list of your travel places but it is worth going. It is really something you probably can only experience here and now because of how much money the country has and how they use it in the current situation that they are in. It is something that you can not experience and see and it is worth the look. Every part of this trip was very good and exciting because I got to see new cultures everywhere and understand where I stand in this world and how the world kind of works.

Just to sum the whole trip up, I think it was very good. It was one of the more adventurous trips we have done and some of the trips that I would not regret my whole entire life. The experiences and knowledges I gained from this trip will benefit me in the years to come and that is why I love to travel to anywhere in this whole wide world. How we paired up the two countries was just because Dubai happened to be where we were connecting flights from Tokyo to Kenya because we don’t have direct flights between these two cities. We decided to take the last few days in Dubai and explore the city. I think how we paired up these two countries were actually good because you have one country which is more focused on nature and still developing in multiple ways. When the other country is more focused on the architecture and they are having the biggest industrialization in their whole entire history. The difference actually made the whole experience way better since we got to compare the two totally opposite countries. Because of the size of my photos, I couldn’t upload it on this post. I would post it on my instagram so please go follow me over there too.

I don’t know where we will be going this next summer but I hope it can give me some experience and knowledge. I hope I can continue travelling at least once a year to keep updating myself about the Earth and other countries and cultures that exist. I will keep updating you guys on my life journey and where I go on vacation. Should I do a blog post about where I have been in my whole entire life? Come along my life journey!!