Entry #2: Playing Catch-Up

The Flying O’Connor Bros. have been in Australia for he past week and a bit, staying with our lovely relatives in southern Victoria. Now we’re settled in a home environment, the fact that we’ve been travelling since the 23rd of April and not logged any of it in the shiny, shiny Blog rears its head… Now this is tough. When you’re on the trip of a lifetime, it’s probably better to spend time actually experiencing the country you’re currently in - instead of being hunched over a computer screen - ‘cos you can spend plenty of time being hunched over a computer screen when you get back home. I should mention here that if this blog is ever rubbish it’s because we’re living by that maxim (for lack of a better word) detailed above. Sorry if it doesn’t make particularly interesting reading, we’re naught but sheltered farmboys all a gapin’ ‘n’ a blinkin’ in the big wide world.
Well, I am, anyway.

Back on topic. So far, we’ve been to Singapore, Hong Kong and mainland Japan. We’re going to throw some photos and erm, ‘vignettes’ up here soon, when we trawl through the 20 Gig harddrive/cardreader/mp3 player Tim’s got as storage for as many digicam pics as we could possibly ever take. In the meantime, here’s some short and vague sentences by means of travelogue:
Singapore: Equatorial, multi-cultural garden city. I gave up trying to figure out how the brand-new metro system from the airport to the city was bordered on both sides by trees and palms that looked about 200 years old. People here are diverse – Malay, Chinese, Indonesian, Asian and Whities too. Everybody is relaxed and friendly too… All signs are in at least three different languages. It’s bloody hot. Especially if you’ve just come from Heathrow early in the moring.
All in all, the one place where we both found ourselves thinking “Yeah, I could live here,” after we’d only been there a day.
Hong Kong: Is, all-in-all, a sight that everybody should attempt to see once in their lifetime, I reckons. It’s truly unbelievable. The place is a hive. Literally, a hive. I really can’t describe it here without going into pages of adjectives, but trust me, I’ll get back to it.
Japan: Ahh, Japan. I would have liked a good three months or so to prepare for a trip to Japan, but things often don’t work out the way you would have liked. A trip to Japan is better than no trip to Japan, though. We started off in Tokyo, mostly bewildered, cashed in Japan Rail passes that let you go anywhere in the country on the Shinkansen bullet train and went up north to the Bandai region. Climbed up a mountain. Went to Kyoto, daytripped to the cities of Osaka and Hiroshima. Nearly went to the southern island of Kyushu. A completely interesting and many-sided experience.

That’s yer lot for now, as a placeholder.
I’ve got it in mind to turn the notes in the back of my sketchbook into lil’ travelogue mini comic strips, and turn this into a text/photo/comic blog. You have been warned.
More soon.
Nighty-night.

- Lee.