Holiday in Japan

After 2 weeks work in the boat we flew to Osaka, Japan. It was a long 7 hour flight on Air Asia without any movies! We spent the night in a hotel near the airport and then got the train to Kyoto the following day. The train was amazing, it arrived at the station, was cleaned (properly) and then magically all the seats changed direction so that they would all be facing forward. Far superior to UK trains.

Kyoto is lovely to walk around and the transport system is amazing and fortunately has announcements and signs in English! There are a wealth of temples and things to see so we had 7 days of full on sight seeing. Each day we visited a different suburb and where possible walked between temples and Zen gardens. One evening we went to see an open air 'Noh theatre' performance. We managed to stay for 2 parts of a 5 part performance. It is certainly an acquired taste!

By the end we had seen practically every temple worth visiting. We then got the Shinkansen train to Hakone. The Shinkansen is another amazing experience, they are so clean and so fast. The purpose of visiting Hakone was to see Mt Fuji. We got one glimpse from the lake but the cable car which gives the best view was closed due to seismic activity. The weather which had been amazing in Kyoto decided to rain so we left early the following day and headed to Tokyo.

We had 4 days in Tokyo. Out hotel was about 30 minutes out of the centre but it didn't matter as the transport links are so good. Again we visited a few of the suburbs and did a bit of walking. Unfortunately we had missed the Cherry blossom and the rhododendrons but did see a few azaleas and the start of the hydrangeas. Even so we loved the lovely greens everywhere.

We left Tokyo and flew via Kuala Lumpur to Yogyakarta in Java, Indonesia. We wanted to visit the temples of Borobudur and Prambanan which we had missed as we were sailing through Indonesia the previous year. Unfortunately Java was a bit too much of a shock to the system after Japan. Also we had got very travel weary and had perhaps tried to do too much at once. We did visit the temples but they did not have as much impact as we expected due to our recent visit to Angkot Wat. We used the remainder of the time to relax.

After flying back to Langkawi it was a few days before we finally re-launched the boat. Once the shopping was done we headed out of the marina to an anchorage. It was quite a shock sleeping on the boat in 35c with no air conditioning after spending months sleeping in air conditioned accommodation. We caught up with friends Sharon and Lindsay on 'Songlines' and our friend Nigel from the UK visited us for a week on his way back from NZ.

We headed back to the marina and got the boat ready to leave again. We flew to the UK on 15 July which is where we are now for 6 weeks. We have been getting to know our grandson' and are looking forward to Jon's wedding on 22 August.