The Amazing Race

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Right now we're watching "The Amazing Race" season 12 on AXN on our good ol' satellite tv courtesy of the Philippines ;) I love this show and it's about the only show I watch on TV these days. We are also watching "The Amazing Race Asia" Season 2. I just love it! I love the travelling aspect, I love the competition side, the psychology side seeing how people interact with their partner and with the locals, etc etc. Fun fun fun!!

Right now I'm playing a bit of TAR myself. I am trying to get myself to Taiwan to see my grandparents but it's been a bit of a headache deciding the dates let alone the route!

When we were little kids there were no direct flights from Australia to Taiwan and we always had to go through Hong Kong. Similarly, although there are direct flights between Sydney and Shanghai it is easier to get flights stopping over in Hong Kong. All of our recent guests came via Hong Kong. So, obviously Hong Kong is the logical place for me to stop if I'm going to Taiwan (since you cannot fly directly between China and Taiwan).

However, my dad's ex-classmates were telling us it's quicker and easier to get to Taipei via Jeju (Cheju)-do (island) in South Korea. So I had a look into this.. The first quote I got off a travel agent quoted me this route as being more expensive than via Hong Kong, but the second one quoted me as it being cheaper. Weird.

What to do, what to do? And then, I had another thought. I could go back to Okinawa and visit there again since I loved it so much last time. I don't think the cost would differ that much. ARGH I don't know what to do?!

Here is a map so you can see my three options.



Jeju

Pros: I've never been to South Korea, Jeju is apparently "The Hawaii of South Korea"!

Cons: I can't read or speak Korean! It'll be too cold to enjoy the island-ness of it all, don't know how to get around or what to do there

Hong Kong

Pros: I know my way around there, I have no problems communicating, it'll be warmer than anywhere else mentioned, I miss it funnily enough

Cons: I've been there so many times already

Naha

Pros: I've been there already and already know where I'd stay and what I'd do there, how to get around, etc

Cons: I've been there already, I can read Japanese but not speak it that well

The island of Okinawa

(above: the sunset that greeted us when we arrived in our hotel and checked in. The two pictures were only taken minutes apart).


Okinawa is a prefecture of Japan encompassing hundreds of islands, the biggest and most populated of which is... (funnily enough), Okinawa.

We flew into Naha, the capital, from Shanghai which took only 2 hours. Love a quick flight (living in Australia everywhere is a mega long flight). Since we had planned to go to the amazing Churaumi aquarium we needed to hire a car. The reason is because it is at least 2 hours away from Naha and the buses don't run that frequently. Also Okinawa can be a difficult place for non-Japanese as there isn't much English signage or international tourists around. It took me a bit of effort but after extensive searching on Google and getting nowhere I actually emailed the Australian consulate in Shanghai and they told me how we could apply for an international licence whilst not being in Australia so I sent off the forms, photocopies and photo and a few weeks later we got our international driver's licence in the mail, which enabled us to drive in Japan. Too easy!

So anyway, I thought it would be best to stay closer to the aquarium so we could get there from our hotel easily. I researched and researched, which was a hard task given most websites were in Japanese and most of the hotels were luxury resorts which were out of our budget.

In the end Mike agreed we could splurge and the hotel I chose was about halfway between Naha and Churaumi. We could also get a great rate with them and they were by no means one of the top end ones! So we ended up staying at the Renaissance Okinawa. We had had a great experience with the Renaissance in Kuala Lumpur (which by the way is part of the Marriott chain) and were in no way disappointed with the Okinawan one.

The resort was out of this world gorgeous. The room was spacious and we had a balcony overlooking the sea. We unfortunately did not have a room on the 'nice' side of the hotel but nevertheless we had a gorgeous ocean view and saw brilliant sunsets. The hotel seemed to be quite full and they did not have any double rooms left so we got a twin but they ingeniously put the beds together and it actually felt like a king size bed.

There were so many restaurants to choose from I don't know where to start. We ate at 3 of them and also had room service. Since the resort is located in a fairly isolated area there was no point looking elsewhere nearby to eat so we just ate, slept and played in the hotel grounds.

One of the main reasons for choosing this hotel too was because I had seen pictures on their website about helmet diving or sea walking. It looked like the coolest thing ever as I can't do scuba and it seemed like a cross between snorkeling, snuba and diving. Mike agreed that I should do it as he likes to get me to do anything sporty because I'm usually so non sporty.

As well as giving us each free buffet breakfasts they also gave us each 3500 yen credit to use towards any of the many water activities. Since the sea walk cost 6000 yen we used both sets of credits for this. Mike still had 1000 yen to use but didn't because he actually fell ill on our very first day in Okinawa!

The next day we woke up and had one of the most amazing buffet breakfasts I have ever seen. The variety was endless and covered Japanese food, Chinese food and typical Western/American food. There was also a cute little low stand for the kiddies. They also had freshly made pancakes, any kind of eggs you wanted, and delicious dessert treats.



(Part of the amazing hotel. There are two restaurants inside the hut.)

After that we headed back to the room for a short rest (we both hate early mornings but had to be up so we could have the breakfast which finished at 9:30am) then I went out to do my sea walk.

Then, I realised that the Japanese are extremely punctual and although I thought I was on time I was in fact late. Major embarrassment! They were still polite and helpful as ever and quickly got me to sign the waiver form, gave me a wetsuit and told me to put it on. The others had left and were on the little floating pontoon thing already.

I was personally escorted by boat to the pontoon. I felt really special. I also had my own personal instructor and demo with his very limited English. On the pontoon we were also asked to take off our thongs and put on the booties.

All I knew was that I had to equalize the pressure inside my nose and go down the ladder slowly. I actually started panicking on the inside thinking what if I missed some major thing and didn't know what to do if something went wrong?

There were 7 in our group including me (they allow up to 12 people per time slot) and one by one we descended down the stainless steel ladder. At the top of the ladder I actually started freaking out. I am actually scared of deep water and it was 3 metres deep.

I took the ladder really really slowly and when the water was around my chin level they plonked the 30kg helmet on me. Due to the buoyancy effect the helmet didn't feel anywhere near that heavy though!

I went down the ladder one rung at a time, each time letting my ears adjust. It was a really weird feeling. My breathing also sounded really slow and loud. Like that moon walk. In fact when I got to the bottom the effect was exactly like the moon walk!

You cannot walk normally. You can only walk really slowly and you sort of 'bounce' along barely even touching the floor. I really did feel like Neil Armstrong for a while. You breathe normally and your face and hair are actually completely dry. Amazing! Anyone can do it and the only discomfort you feel is the pressure in your ears constantly changing but it's by no means painful just a little weird and annoying.

We fed the fish and saw some Nemos and sea anenomes. Our guide had a waterproof magna doodle type whiteboard which he used to communicate to us, and even wrote in English just for me (I felt special!)

After around 10 mins our time was up although it felt much much longer than this and I wanted to stay down there forever. It was just so much fun I really recommend it to anyone who wants to experience the underwater world but can't scuba dive.

Okinawa day 3

Well unfortunately Mike:s cold got worse so he was not very well and coughing and sneezing and this germaphobe was scared!

Anyway we trudged along and made it to the aquarium (1.5 hours drive from the hotel). It was really really hot! Much hotter than the 2 previous days. It was about 30 degrees and the sun was scorching like a hot summer:s day in Australia. Luckily, we were inside most of the time.

The Okinawa Churaumi aquarium is the second largest in the world and one of three to house whale sharks (the other two being the Georgia Atlanta aquarium and Osaka Kaiyukan).

It is located at the most north-westerly point of the island of Okinawa in a specatucular location. The aquarium is nicely set out so you follow a path and you get to see everything (unlike museums and such where you kinda wander around aimlessly and are bound to miss stuff!)

About 3/4 of the way throught we were at a mini theatre. By luck at that exact time we arrived at the theatre a movie was about to start in less than 5 minutes. So we took a seat, put on our English headsets (as it was in Japanese) and watched the documentary. It was really really interesting and showed the beautiful scenery and abundance of life that lives under the ocean. The film ended by the curtains being pushed aside, white screen lifted up and there was a huge window right there! Totally amazing. The window was the size of the cinema screen and we could see whale sharks and other creatures right before our very eyes. I was so awe-inspired I just stood there and watched until we were the last ones and had to be kicked out haha.

I needn:t have worried, the main viewing window was right around the corner. It is so huge, probably the size of an Imax screen? I am not sure but the tank we estimated would have been 10-15m deep. Also there was a scuba diver filming various fish and creatures and you could see that on the big screen next to the window - very cool! Several of the sea creatures seemed to be smiling at us.

I had a weird thought to myself - imagine what would happen if the glass was to crack? haha... I needn:t have worried. The glass is 603mm thick, apparently the thickest used in an aquarium and they had a square pole showing just how thick it was!

Towards the end we decided to take a quick tour of the 'backbone' of the aquarium where we could see the tanks from the top with the spotlights and water splashing down, and metal everywhere.. and well it wasn:t very pretty but fascinating nonetheless.

The dolphin show was on at exactly the same time so we missed it but after the behind the scenes tour we went outside to the dolphin pool and they were still doing tricks for us which was cool.. So we got to see them perform without the huge massive crowd around us.

After spending 3 hours there (and as well as having lunch there) we decided to call it a day.

We drove about 2 hours to Chatan, a cute little town where there is an area called America-town and all these cool shops and restaurants. Actually we werent sure we could find it. I knew the suburb name and that was about it! Amazingly we found it, only because there is a big ferris wheel and we just followed that.

We had dinner there but didn:t stay long. Mike was really tired and we drove to the big town of Naha to our hotel. The traffic in Naha is insane. Imagine going at 40km/hr everywhere you go. It is that bad. Once again I thank my lucky stars I had pre-printed maps of exactly where the hotel was located prior to coming here. As we don:t really know how to input our destination what we]:ve been doing on the GPS is just using our finger to point to the spot on the map. However once we are actually in the right vicinity we still have to find the exact street! Nevertheless we made it without too much drama and luckily there is also a garage we could use too. It is really high tech, you park your car on an exact spot on this metal plate and a robot thingy 'deposits' it in a bank so to speak.

This morning we haven]t done anything except get up and have the free buffet in our cute little hotel. Very budget but it has everything you need, super clean, but it is sooooo tiny, very claustrophobic almost. Oh well. It is still nice and in a great location.

I'm in Okinawa! Yay!

Loving it here. The weather is perfect. Approx 23-27 degrees all day and the water is even warmer. The sky is always blue and the water a gorgeous aqua colour (my favourite). It is so different to China. Geez - where do I start?

For one thing, hubby and I had forgotten all about wearing seatbelts! We never wear them in Shanghai and realised that people here wear them (like back home in Australia) - haha.

Secondly, the people are mega polite and helpful, cheerful and friendly. If they don't know something they:ll ask someone else and find out for you.

Everything is so clean, orderly, efficient, user-friendly, yadda yadda yadda.. need I go on?

Right now we are staying at the Renaissance Beach resort on the main island of Okinawa, about an hour:s drive from Naha, the capital and the airport.

Yesterday we drove up but it took longer than expected because

1) We had to stop for lunch (in KFC where we had chicken wraps with bits of seaweed in it)
2) We passed a 100 yen shop and spent ages there. Well I spent ages there, Mike had to practically drag me out. Here they sold so many cool things ALL for 100 yen. I don:t know how they do it. I am not talking crap either, but quality goods. Some things I had looked for in China and could not find easily, or found and they were bad quality. eg
a) toe nail clippers where the cutter bit is straight and not curved
b) tongs for when I cook pasta (could not find in any supermarket in Shanghai)
3) plastic shield to prevent scratches on LCD screens on mobile phones, cameras, etc (yes I know they are common in Shanghai but I don't trust the quality and they are not THAT cheap)
4) hair collector for the shower so it doesn:t plug the drain and I don:t get told off by the plumber
and more..

All these niggly little things that only I would be searching high and low for, and wanting to buy.. such a chore to find in Shanghai at a good price and know it is good quality - it was ALL there in the 100 yen shop! They sold ordinary stuff too like bowls and cutlery, cosmetics, underwear, stationery, DIY supplies (hardware and crafts) etc ... Amazing!

I didn:t just get ordinary tongs either, they actually sold "spaghetti" tongs, I couldn:t believe it!!

Then, Mike and I have never actually used GPS in a car before. Imagine our accelerated learning curve when we had to use one in Japanese!! Hahaha. We were like two crazy contestents in the Amazing Race show - scolding each other when one of us pressed the wrong button and didn:t know how to get back to the previous screen! However, eventually, we figured the thing out. We ended up accidently setting a new destination which was rather frustrating but thanks to my very forward planning and actually printing out a good map of Okinawa before we left with our hotel:s location marked on it, as well as trying to read a map in Japanese we figured out the location on the GPS and pressed that spot on the screen. I thank my lucky stars I can still read some Japanese from studying it in high school 12 years ago!!

So, 3.5 hours after landing at the airport we finally arrived at our hotel! What an achievement.

The only bummer here is that noone really speaks English so there is a lot of miming, smiling, nodding, etc, involved. I can understand some but not confident enough to make out full sentences. A sumimasen, arigato, ohayo, konnichwa, hai, iie is all about I can manage at the moment!

This morning (our second day) I went on a 'helmet dive' which is where you put on a big white heavy plastic helmet with glass window and walk on the ocean floor (3m deep). It is for people who can:t or don:t want to scuba dive or snorkel. I can:t manage scuba (asthmatic who can't swim 200m!) so thought it was perfect for me. In fact, one of the reasons we chose this hotel! It was so much fun. I can:t even begin to explain what it felt like. It was seriously like walking on the moon. The deep heavy breathing that you can hear inside the mask (where your face is completely dry), the bouncy, slow steps that you take.. all really surreal! And I saw two Nemo fishes!

This afternoon Mike and I watched dolphins. Our hotel is the location of a dolphin research centre and there around five of these beautiful creatures living here. They swim, and jump and do tricks in the air - totally awesome stuff.

Tomorrow we are going to Churaumi aquarium, the second largest aquarium in the world to see whale sharks!

Islands and me...

Since I was a teenager I have loved islands and island life. I think the movies "Blue Lagoon" and "Return to the Blue Lagoon" (which were filmed in Fiji) started it all for me. How wonderful to live on a deserted island with noone but your mate.. swimming in the aqua blue waters, catching and cooking fish, drinking and eating coconuts, swimming in waterfalls. Of course it is fully impractical and I would miss 'civilization' after a while and probably be very sunburnt and get billions of freckles... so I have to get back to reality.

My favourite flower is the 'bird of paradise' or strelitzia. I liked it since I was about 10 or 12 or so, I liked that the flower looked like a bird's head. I also loved the bright, fun colours. My favourite tree is a palm tree. I don't know why but I love how huge and tall they get and they can bear fruit like coconuts or dates. It wasn't till recently that I put it all together. That for some strange reason, unconsciously my fave flower AND tree are both tropical island species!! Coincidence?

When I was in Year 9 (age 14), my geography teacher showed us slides of her family trip to Hawaii. I think everyone was bored but I was very interested and intrigued. I never forgot all about the things she showed us - the volcanoes with bright red lava, the beaches, the beautiful scenery/landscape...

When I was 19 my father took my sister and I on a trip up the east coast of Australia from Sydney to the Great Barrier Reef. We saw a heck of a lot of places in a short time! My favourite was our last stop. We flew from Bundaberg? or somewhere around there to Lady Elliott island. It was a strange place. The small island was covered in dead coral instead of sand, which made walking rather painful. But I loved it there. Most of all I loved that aqua coloured water (and I think that was when I decided aqua was now my new favourite colour). I couldn't swim very well and stupidly did not bring my swimming costume and had to watch everyone else having fun. I was determined that next time I went to a place as beautiful as this I would be going snorkelling!

I was fortunate enough to go to Hawaii for our honeymoon. It was a bit of a freak occurence because we actually planned to go to Italy (somewhere I am still dreaming about going to!) when I discovered some cheap airfares because a new Australian budget airline (Jetstar - who incidentally just won 2007 budget airline of the year award by Skytrax). I quickly called up my husband at work and asked him what he thought. We both agreed it would be a good idea and far more relaxing and cheaper too. The return tickets from Sydney to Honolulu are normally around $1000-1100 at the lower end, but I got them for only $770 odd. Had I been a bit quicker, I could've gotten them for around $500. Not to worry. I was glad I got some at all! The website was a pain to get into because there were SO many people trying to access it simultaneously.

So anyway we did a LOT of snorkelling in Hawaii. I am so addicted, it's the most fun you could ever have and the beauty is you don't even need to know how to swim because you just float naturally and breathe through the mask. I am a totally hopeless swimmer (can barely manage 25m) and I have asthma so there is no way I could do diving, so snorkelling is the closest I'll ever come to seeing fish up close. I also have a waterproof case for my digital camera and love to take photos and videos underwater. The case is so cool, I always get people staring at my camera wherever I bring it out in its case. Hehe.

In Sydney I lived less than 10 mins drive to the beach. And now, I'm in Shanghai miles away from any decent beach or island and have a craving for beach, sand, sun again. OK we had an artificial beach at Dino Beach water park but it's hardly the same thing ;)

And so, where is this boring post headed? Well, we are not only going to Okinawa (where few non-Japanese have gone before) but we are going to a lesser known island called Miyako. It was a hard choice since there are so many beautiful islands, with different landscapes but I think Miyako is one of the most beautiful, so I'm/we're really looking forward to it. They say that Okinawa is the Hawaii of the Far East. Well they said that about Sanya too ;) so we shall see! (and yes I will be snorkelling till my whole body goes pruney! yay!) :D

Taiwan and my grandparents...

Not long after I wrote my last post I got an email from my father saying that my grandparents were quite frail and ill and literally fading away. He told me that my grandfather (his father) was a mere 42kg and his mother was only 32kg. When I read this I felt very sad I started bawling my eyes out. I wrote an email to hubby saying that we HAD to visit them. SOON. We were originally going to visit them before we arrived in Shanghai but it would be too time-consuming and costly since we would then also have to stop in Hong Kong or some other place. When Mike came home that night he mentioned that their combined weight was about his weight!

All this time I had been planning a trip for us during either late October or late November. Since it would be my birthday present it was my pick of where we could go. The only stipulation was that it couldn't be too far away as flying for long periods is the biggest drag and time waster (not to mention the airfares would cost more) and it had to be somewhere that neither of us had been to before.

I went through a whole list of domestic destinations: Hainan (Sanya), Qingdao, Xiamen, Jiuzhaigou, Yunnan, Zhangjiang and God knows how many more!? Then the more I read and the more I found out the more I was itching to go overseas. I had a brainwave! Okinawa!

Mike had been telling how much he had wanted to go there ever since he found out that "Mr Miyagi" the main (fictional) character from the 80's movee "The Karate Kid" 'lived there'. (In actual fact the Okinawa scenes were filmed in Hawaii and interestingly, we visited some of them while we went there, and saw the 'hut' they built for the film too.)

Yes, it would be perfect! Beachey and sunny (the only decent beaches in China are in Hainan but after seeing Hawaii I thought we were be majorly disappointed), pristine and perfect.

I started researching like mad... I poured over EVERY Miyako (Okinawa) related photo on Flickr.

Then, Mike had a brainwave. He had a lot of frequent flyer points built up and JAL is a partner with Qantas. It turns out he JUST had enough points to get us BOTH from Shanghai to Osaka and back!!

Unfortunately Okinawa required more points. Hmm.. what to do.. Okinawa or Osaka... Osaka or Okinawa? Oh well, can't decide - why not go to both? :D

So anyway, now with this news we somehow have to fit in Taiwan as well.

For those that don't know, due to political tensions between China and Taiwan you cannot fly or take a ship between the two countries. So by combining our Japan and Taiwan trip into one we would save money and time since we'd have to fly to another country in between anyway.

Once again I started researching like mad. I thought it would be 'fun' to take a ferry between Okinawa and Taiwan. Then, I read something I found interesting here.

Taiwan, which suffers increasing isolation in the world due to its conflicts with China over Taipei's sovereignty, is also economically marginalized due to its five-decade ban on direct trade, sea and air links with China. The bans have also hurt Taiwan's tourism industry.
In 2006, only 12 foreign cruise liners made port calls at the Keelung Harbour, prompting the harbour to offer incentives to lure foreign cruise companies to put Keelung on the route of their round- the-world cruise tours.
Analysts said that Taiwan, which sits at an ideal location, is shunned by foreign cruise lines because their ships cannot sail directly across the Taiwan Strait - from Taiwan to China or from China to Taiwan.
Andy Lew, Star Cruises' Taiwan manager, said Taiwan had great potential, but Taipei's ban on sea links with China was a handicap.
'From a long-term point of view, we see great potential here in exploring the Taiwan-China, Hong Kong market. If it's possible, we would like to launch services from Taiwan to Shanghai and Xiamen (China),' he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Because of the ban on sea links, foreign cruise ships visiting Taiwan must sail to a third territory, usually Hong Kong, before they can visit China, or vice verse.
In recent years, Taiwan, which has beaches, mountains, temples and wonderful food, has taken a series of measures to boosts its tourism, including the waiving of visa requirements to certain countries and giving fruits to foreign tourists, but the results have been limited.
While many countries' foreign tourists outnumber their population, only 3.5 million foreigners visited Taiwan in 2006, accounting for 6.5 per cent of Taiwan's 23 million population, according to the Tourism Bureau.
The number of foreign visitors in 2006 rose merely 4 per cent from 2005.
But out of that total, only one third, or 1.1 million, were tourists. The other two thirds were foreign businessmen, workers and maids.

I felt a bit sad reading this because I have been to Taiwan maybe 10 times now (most of my extended family live there) and it's a great country to visit. I have always felt rather puzzled why nobody in Australia wants to go to Taiwan for a holiday but will quite happily go to many other Asian countries: Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, China..

I asked my father about this and he said he wasn't quite sure either except that maybe they hadn't marketed and advertised enough in foreign countries. I have never in my 27 years of living in Australia came across someone who had been to Taiwan unless they had family there or unless it was for business/work purposes. It is rather a small country but not so small that you could quite easily spend two weeks or more exploring the whole country.

So getting back to before, planning this trip had taken a rather unexpected turn and there are so many limitations because we have guests visiting us in early October, early-mid November, and certain flights only fly on certain days, the ferry goes once a week, etc etc.. not to mention the hubby also says we have to do it for as cheaply as possible... ARGH it's all getting a bit too stressful!!