Album of the year goes to...

Japan has JPop, JRock, and a lot of other music here. Tokyo has some of the best record shops in the world. I found a hidden gem that's guaranteed to take the U.S. by surprise. Step aside Usher. Here's the album cover:

Let's Enjoying Snow!

In Northern Japan, or Hokkaido to be specific, they hold an annual snow festival so we decided to take a gander. The festival had tons of snow and ice sculptures, some huge, some small, some of famous people and cartoon, just about everything for the whole family to enjoy. Except for..

The ice bars!!

Who is this of? Oh ya, it's that guy that was President before Florida got their hands on him.

Got some fresh Hokkaido powder in on the trip. Too bad I can't ski well enough to actually appreciate it.

Sapporo Beer Garden!! There are a few beer factories up there. 2 hours of all you can drink and all you can eat lamb/fish/seafood/vegetables. You didn't want to be sleeping in my room after this dinner.

Last Vietnam Post - Finally

It's 2 months since winter vacation and this is the last post about it. I'm a slacker.

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Hoi An

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Not too far from Hue is Hoi An. It is a small town known for its tailoring. They make inexpensive clothing made from expensive material for men and women.

I lied, this picture is from Hue.

Bitter Beer Face!!!

We ate dinner at this restaurant. Paying Homage to the family, although I'm not so sure about the last part of it.

The view at dinner

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Ho Chi Minh City aka Saigon

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We bought a sandwich from this lady. It was pretty good.

Next was the war remnants museum. It had all of the military equipment the US left behind. It also had a lot of pictures and continuously insinuated that the US was the most evil thing to ever exist.

Reunification Palace. This is where the US and S Vietnam based their operations out of during the war. When N Vietnam took over, it was all over. Now it's

Vietnam water puppet shows are part of their history.

My homeboy, 'Lil Puppet.

Sake Everywhere!

Ok, there is 1 more post for Vietnam, but that'll be next time. I'll discuss a little adventure we took last week. We hopped on a train for about 1-1/2 hours and went to a sake festival. $15 got you into the festival and your own little glass called 'My Cup'. This festival has sake from all over our island. You walk up to any and put some in 'My Cup' and go at it. It was held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. We got there at 1:00 and by about 1:30 there were Japanese people speaking to us like we were their best friends and like English was their native language. Alcohol makes everyone best friends!

The first table of 3.

Sake man (he was drunk off his ass!) and I. We were asking him for recommendations and he was taking us all over the place. Honestly, I think he was so drunk that he couldn't even taste the sake. Peace to Sake!!!

You know you're an alcoholic when you're the last man at a sake festival

The House that Uncle Ho built

Now we come to Northern Vietnam. Now that it has been 2 months and I can reflect, it was an interesting country. I'm not going back anytime soon, but it was good to visit.

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Hanoi

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First was Ho Chi Minh's hood. Uncle Ho requested to be cremated, but they love him so much there and Communists like to show off their leaders forever, so he is "stuffed" and on display. The line to get in was super long with locals coming to see the man. It was pretty cool to see him. Everybody just had to walk in a single file line through the room. No pictures. There were 4 trigger happy guards in the room so sneaking a picture was out of the question.


Uncle Ho's house behind me.
























Scooters and honking EVERYWHERE!























Bike Taxi guys waiting for some action.

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Halong Bay

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This is a 2-3 hour drive from Hanoi. Halong Bay is a place with these mountainy and rocky formations all over in the water. We were on the water all day. We got ride on our own personal junk [insert 25 cent joke here] for the day with some cool peeps from Toronto. We also went into a huge cave in one of the rock formations.

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Hue

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Next was an old capital of Vietnam, Hue. The main attraction here are the emperor tombs. They were pretty elaborate and cool.

Outside of one of the big tombs.

Inside the tomb

Cleaning ladies on the the old capital grounds (The Citadel)

A little more cambodia

They aren't too strict about the seatbelt laws in Cambodia

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A Biking taxi dude.

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Cambodia or Bust

Here are some pics of Cambodia:

Cambodia is definitely the poorest of the countries we visited. These pictures were near a big lake we rode on to get to Siem Reap. Not all parts of Cambodia were this poor.

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However, Cambodians were also by far the nicest and happiest of the people we met.

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A family painting the town red on their motorbike.

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What we came for: Cheap booze, hookers, and Angkor Wat.




They had carvings on all the walls to tell stories.

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Here's another temple near Angkor Wat. There were a lot of huge faces. Around 40.

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Another temple that had trees growing all over/in it. The trees were huge.

More Bangkok!

Ok, these are the last photos from Bangkok.

Ayutthya

(an hour from Bangkok, or 1-1/2 hours if your bus/van's rear, left wheel falls off in the middle of a busy freeway)

Ayutthaya is another old capital of Thailand. It had a bunch of old temples, 'buildings', and big Buddhas.


This was the big, main temple to see. Forgot the name... actually, I don't think I ever remembered it.

This is another reclining Buddha. This sucker is huge. That's me next to his feet. For those Street Fighter 2 fans, this is the Buddha on the Sagat board. I Tiger'd his ass just before I left.






























The last photo ever taken of these kids.


















This is a famous Buddha in which roots grew over his head.

































Superbowl party.


















It didn't feel like Christmas until I took this picture. Then I felt right at home in a Hong X-mas family picture.















The train back to Bangkok from Ayutthaya.



























This is the floating market about 2 hours away from Bangkok. Unfortunately it was very touristy but it was still cool. You can ride a boat down the river and people are selling things either on the side of the river or on boat. It was packed. The best part was running into other boats.