This Is A Lake - A travel blog

And now for an unscheduled feature... I have returned to Japan! This is a bit of a different experience, because this time around (my third visit to this wonderful country) I am here for work -but I had a weekend before, and then afterwards I’m taking off on my own to unknown reaches. But first, let’s talk about a sunny Sunday in Tokyo! This was the only full day of sightseeing I had in Tokyo -the rest of the week I’ll be working- so I wanted to cram in as many different things as possible, and of course when you’re returning to a city there’s always the struggle of wanting to return to your favorite places vs. wanting to see new things (see also: London). So here’s what I came up with. I started with Akihabara, on a bright Sunday morning, mostly because I wanted to stock up on omiyage. This neighborhood specifically I have already covered twice on this very blog, and little has changed: the anime and electronics shops are still there, garish and bright and loud as ever, still crow

My last sunny, warm, beautiful day in Lisbon started with a dose of high culture: I took the metro to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, an art museum formed around an oil tycoon’s private art collection. It occupies two buildings surrounded by gardens, and a single €10 ticket gives you access to both. The first building, called “The Founder’s Collection”, contains ancient art, with a few extremely old Egyptian trinkets and sculptures (I was impressed to see a cup seemingly made from alabaster that was noted as dating from 2700 BC), Chinese pottery, Turkish tiles and carpets, and various European pieces of furniture and clothing. The diaphanous showing rooms, with all their straight lines and spotless wooden floors, made me feel like I had walked into the film  Columbus .  Aside from this wing, there’s another one for paintings, which didn’t interest me as much except at the very end, when I found a beautiful Singer-Sargent right next to a gorgeous Renoir. They also have a few British

After spending most of yesterday in and around central Lisbon, today I took it upon myself to visit the Western side of the city, namely the neighborhood of Belém, home to quintessential Portuguese landmarks like the Tower of Belém or the Monument to Discovery. Belém isn’t really served by the metro, so it’s best to go by bus. When researching different bus routes to get me there from my hotel in Avenida da Liberdade, I found a bus that in about half an hour would take me to the Palacio Nacional da Ajuda. You know that I love me a good palace, so I jumped at the chance, by jumping on the bus! The Palacio Nacional da Ajuda is the Portuguese Royal Palace, which is well preserved and open to the public for €5 a ticket. It was built in the 18th century, which makes it more recent than other European palaces, and which also means that it is entirely Neoclassical in its style. Shockingly, even though it’s a beautiful place and well worth a visit, I was the only person in the entire palace fo

This is going to be a closer, shorter adventure than others in this blog: I’m in Lisbon for a long weekend! I’d been meaning to come for ages so I’m super excited! I flew in last night from Paris, so I had all day today to discover the city. (Quick tips: I took the metro from the airport, which dropped me off at the city center in around 40 minutes. You can buy the local version of an Oyster card directly from ticket machines and load money on it, and then you can tap in and out of the metro, buses and trams in Lisbon.) It was sunny and warm today, but not hot, so I decided to start my visit with a nice long walk to get acquainted with the layout of the city. I walked down Avenida da Liberdade, through Restauradores and Rossio (two squares, the former big but rather empty, the second with a large fountain in the middle and a classical building at the head), and then I found myself right in the Baixa, the lower neighborhood of hilly Lisbon. The strets here are narrow, the buildings old

I got up bright and early today to be driven aaaaaaaall the way back to Krabi, to then be flown aaaaaaaall the way back to Bangkok, where I’m spending one last night in order to board my plane to Paris tomorrow morning.  To make my life easier tomorrow, I’m staying at a hotel near the airport (the Vismaya hotel), which has its own free airport shuttle, breakfast, beautiful enormous rooms and a pool to boot. The only downside is that, being close to the airport, it is far from everything else, so when I saw that I had an hour of travel time for my afternoon plans I was mightily tempted to call the whole thing off and just spend the rest of the day by the pool. But, eventually, my good judgement prevailed and I left to take the L to the city! My big plan for the afternoon was to check out Chatuchak Weekend Market, one of the largest markets in the world which, as the name suggests, opens for business mainly on the weekends (I say mainly because apparently there are some shops that do ope

My plan for today had been to go to Ko Phi Phi, but to my dismay Maya Bay (the beach from The Beach) is closed! Thailand had closed that and several other areas for around six months earlier in the year, to allow the environment to regenerate after the damage done by excessive tourism, and they were supposed to reopen in October; unfortunately, they have extended the closure indefinitely. It’s good that they’re taking steps to preserve the place... but it hurts to come all this way and not get to see it! Instead, my hotel redirected me to a Four Island tour, which as the name implies revolves around visiting four different islands around Ko Lanta. Once again I was picked up by a speedboat from the beach outside the hotel. Our first stop was Ko Ngai, a tiny island with a beautiful, narrow beach. They basically dropped us off to our own designs; I opted not to snorkel, since I did that all day yesterday and the water didn’t seem clear (not dirty, necessarily, but it had lots of leaves an

First day of the island! Today I was booked on a snorkeling tour of two nearby islands, Ko Rok and Ko Ha. I got up bright and early for my pickup at 8:00, only to be told that (despite what my voucher said) pickup actually started at 9:00, and by the way, we’re still setting breakfast buffet. Suffice to say that this did not endear them to me... Anyway, eventually a large speedboat approached the resort’s beach and picked me and two couples up to join around twenty people total on the tour. We rode for about half an hour to reach our first destination, the island of Ko Rok: a large enough island that seemed densely forested; it must be a natural park, because there was no development to be seen. The water was clear enough that you could see all the coral and rock formations from The boat stopped closed to the island, and simply let us swim and snorkel for a while. They provided us with all the equipment we needed and then some: some people put on flippers and life jackets, whereas I wa