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Euro Music Trip

May 2023 - May 2024
An open-ended adventure by Darcy Read more
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  • TravelerEuro Music Trip
    Day 362

    Hanoi with mum and dad!!

    May 3 in Vietnam ⋅ ⛅ 28 °C

    Ive officially reunited with mum and dad after over a year! It been great to see them again, so much has happened this year and theres been lots to catch up on. Weve been in hanoi for the past 3 days which has been super fun. Our first day was spent roaming around the old quarter where we're staying, we went to an egg coffee cafe (i got an egg beer which was quite weird but tasty), checked out den ngoc son temple and st joseph cathedral, and then had a really nice street bahn mi for lunch. On the way home Mum fell victim to the classic backwards blue direction radar on maps which meant we got to experience the cathedral a couple of times while we walked around in circles. After a year of that little blue thing sending spencer and i the wrong way constantly it was funny to see mum and dad struggle with it for the first time ahaha.

    For dinner we went to an alleyway bar where you sit right next to a train track! The alley is really narrow, probably only 5 or 6 metres wide, so when the trains came through they almost completely filled up the space. The bars set out tables and chairs over the tracks and then 5 minutes before a train was scheduled all the waiters would frantically pack everything up and make everyone squeeze right up against the wall, it was very crazy. Id love to meet the maniac local that decided itd be a good idea to open the first restaurant there, everyone mustve thought they were completely daft.

    The next day mum and i went for lunch at a restaurant thats very famous because obama and anthony bourdain had a meal there together. The restaurant is very busy and they have loads of copies of the same photo from anthony bourdain's instagram up on all the walls.

    In the arfternoon we went on a guided walking tour around the old quarter which was very interesting. The guide was really informative and took us to loads of intersting places including the cho dong xuan markets, "the best street donut stall in hanoi", some deep dark alleys where poor locals live, and a rooftop bar. We had no idea about the rooftop bars before the tour but ended up going to several more during our stay coz they were amazing! We also learned all about the billion different times vietnam has been invaded during the last 200 years, theyve been at war constantly which i never knew. For dinner we went to the insanely lively beer street and had a lovely time people watching from a bar with a balcony.

    Our third day was spent largely just retracing our steps from the previous day because mum and dad saw a shop on the walking tour they really liked but couldnt remember where it was. We never found it but the day wasnt a total waste coz we got to see a digger driver put his digger back on a truck using a technique thats going to put all ramp makers out of business. At night we went for a fantastic dinner at a michelin selected restaurant called highway 4, which we all absolutely loved. We ate crickets and ants and all kinds of weird stuff and it was delicious! I think well probably go back it was so good, we tipped the waiters and everything ahahah.    Read more

  • TravelerEuro Music Trip
    Day 358

    Fukuoka (baseball and surf beach)

    April 29 in Japan ⋅ ☁️ 25 °C

    Fukuoka was a perfect place to end my month in japan. Thereve been a lot of times this month where ive gone somewhere to eat or do something only to abort my plans because of a huge queue or the thing being sold out. Not in fukuoka!! ive been able to go around doing anything i want because there arent any tourists here :)). First day i went to a baseball game which was very interesting. I was a little concerned that the atmosphere at the game would suck because it was on at 1pm on a monday arvo but i needntve worried because the stadium was packed and full of energy, goes to show how crazy Japanese people are about baseball. The actual game got off to a slow start, i didnt realise how rare it was for batters to actually hit the ball in baseball but in the first hour i think maybe 3 people managed to do it. The game picked up heaps towards the end tho, the fukuoka hawks had been down by 2 runs for most of the game but ended up winning because a guy hit a home run when two people were already on base. Baseball is so exciting when people get on base, everyone in the crowd was on the edge of their seats whenever it happened (super rarely). Two other things that i thought were cool were the beer girls that walk around with big kegs of beer on their backs and that everyone in the crowd blows up balloons and then lets them loose at the same time when the hawks win. The beer girls pour a super frothy pint but I managed to sneak in two big cans of gin and soda so it was fine.

    The next day i got souffle pancakes again. Id been dreaming about getting more pancakes all trip coz the ones i got in tokyo were soooo good but id completely given up hope because every time i went to a souffle cafe thered be like a 2 hour long queue ... Cheers fukuoka!

    On the last day i took an hour long bus to go check out a beach i thought looked cool and to my surprise there was surf!! The spot was called palm beach and its on the coast that faces korea so it probably never breaks but its been pretty stormy here lately there so there was probably a pretty big swell. The waves were kinda like metams which was nice coz it meant i wasnt bothered that i didnt have a board. I was freezing as soon as i got off the bus because it was windy and rainy but i forced myself to go for a quick swim anyway coz i hadnt been for a swim in japan yet. For my last dinner i got sushi and splurged on some expensive bits of fatty tuna which were so soft it was essentially just paste, idk if i prefer it over normal tuna but it was good.    Read more

  • TravelerEuro Music Trip
    Day 355

    Okayama and hiroshima

    April 26 in Japan ⋅ ☁️ 22 °C

    Okayama was kinda refreshing, just in the way that it felt a bit less full on japanese than everywhere else ive been so far. They have loads of vietnamese and Italian restaurants here and therere no tourists or queues to get into the places i want to go to. I was incredibly slack here and only saw a park, a castle and the statue of the peach kid with the off centre penis (https://youtu.be/hshz2LhxuPY?si=dBAfRKU3WSFYVuTP). The highlight of okayama was the sashimi restaurant i went to, they serve a kind of deconstructed okayama style sushi (bara zushi) which is pretty much just a heap of pre sauced/seasoned sashimi pieces all heaped on a rice bowl but they put a bit of orange zest on the rice which makes it taste sooooo nice! The place was called fukuzushi and i ate there for both dinners coz i loved the orange zest thing so much ahaha.

    After okayama i went to hiroshima. The first thing i did when i arrived was go see the peace museum. It was filled with loads and loads of horrific photos and stories from survivors of the stomic bomb. The stories were heavy and some photos were super graphic. There was a section of the museum dedicated to objects that had been fused together from the heat of the blast which was really interesting, for example there was a clump of glass that used to be a tray of milk bottles sitting on someones porch, the blurb under them said they were sitting about 1km from the explosion and they were explosed to a heat of over 1000 degrees. Everything in the museum did a really good job of showing how insanely insense it all was. There was also a section dedicated to sadako sasaki, the paper crane girl we learned about in primary school. Some of the paper cranes she made were on display in the museum and they were absolutely tiny, apparently she grew so weak she couldnt do big folds so she used chopsticks and made tiny ones instead, which seems way harder but idk.
    By the time i left the museum i felt a bit numb and tingly so I stopped for a beer at a park overlooking the atomic bomb dome and the T bridge. The T bridge was what the pilot was aiming for when he dropped the atomic bomb. It was pretty surreal sitting there knowing that the most destructive force ever used was deployed right above were i was sitting. For the rest of the day i just roamed around and ate okonomiyaki. Hiroshima style okonomiyaki is probably just as good as the osaka style, its more like a crepe filled with lots of vegies and egg. They forgot to put kimchi in my okonomiyaki and were super reluctant to take it off my bill so i had to fight the waitress about that for a bit lol.    Read more

  • TravelerEuro Music Trip
    Day 354

    A night in a buddhist monastery

    April 25 in Japan ⋅ ☁️ 18 °C

    I stayed at a monastery in koyasan last night which was pretty neat. Getting there was awesome, i had to take a train and a funicular which went really slow through an amazing mountainous forest. I had a very thorough explore of koyasan before i could check in because i woke up at 5am and just went with it so i arrived at the monastery at 830 with nothing to do until 3.

    Again, there were a lot of shrines and temples that werent particularly noteworthy but walking through the okunoin cemetery was fantastic. It was a 400m path through giant Pemberton esq trees with moss covered shrines and the sound of gongs donging every now and then in the distance. It was a very peaceful stroll.

    Honestly my first impressions of the monastery werent great. Mainly because it was $165 a night and the room was literally just a mattress on the floor. They redeemed themselves with the food which I think is where a majority of the price comes from because dinner had about 20 different types of vegetarian monk dishes that i could tell were all prepared with a lot of care. After dinner i went for a nice warm spa in the monasteries onsen and then fell asleep nice n early with my belly full and my heart content ahaha. In the morning i woke up at 630 to take part in the morning prayer which was lowkey boring af and then had another great meal for breakfast (same as dinner just less dishes) before leaving to take a bullet train to okayama.

    The monks in japan kinda have it all figured out. Hyped up tourists pay them a ton of money to provide the most basic accomodation imaginable and then all they do everyday is just tend to their gardens, meditate in dope temples (the insides are super extravagant but youre never allowed to take photos) and turn the veggies theyve grown into amazing, healthy meals for them and their guests to enjoy.    Read more

  • TravelerEuro Music Trip
    Day 352

    Osaka n kobe n nara

    April 23 in Japan ⋅ ☁️ 22 °C

    I dont really have too much to say about osaka if im honest, its just another big japanese city where you can do the same sort of stuff i did in tokyo. The hostel im staying at has been pretty social, theres been lots of beers in the common area and we did karaoke the first night i got here. Everyone went out on saturday but i ran off to do my own thing because theres this super cool record store / club called compufunk in osaka that ive been obesessed with for ages and they had an event on. I pulled up to the club just after 12 and to my horror it was completely dead inside, there were like 10 people in attendance which sucked because the trains stop working after 12 and i was stuck there till 5. Huge dagger but i guess you cant win them all ://. Other than that the first 3 days in osaka were filled with food markets, busy streets and lots n lots of okonomiyaki (the noodley egg fritters). Osaka and hiroshima are the capitals of okonomiyaki and i could totally taste the difference, wasnt much of a fan in tokyo but ive had it almost every day here! Ive been frequenting a place that puts pineapple in it which is phenomenal.

    3 days in osaka was more than enough so i spent the last two days doing day trips to Kobe and Nara. I spent my day in kobe at Nunobiki which is one of the mountains that surrounds kobe. I took a gondola up to the top where there was a nice herb garden and shop. You can get the gondola back down too but the view was amazing on the mountain and theres a cool jungely hiking trail that you can take so i walked down instead. I ended up aborting the hiking trail halfway because the steps were ridiculously steep and the trees were covering the view. They had an icecream stand and a bunch of hammocks halfway down, i got a lavender soft serve and chilled on a hammock for ages until it was almost dark. I stayed in kobe for dinner and got a crab red curry ramen bowl from a place called crab noodle, it was so delicious i think it might be the best dinner ive had in japan!

    Theres a shrine in Nara that is believed to have been discovered by a deer god, as a result, deers are treated like gods there and they all just fleely roam the streets getting pats and treats 24/7. I love the deers in nara, theyre so majestic and nice and not bothersome at all. I was expecting them to be like big menacing seagulls harassing everyone for food but they were just delightful 😊. You can buy crackers to feed them which i initially wasnt keen on coz u shouldnt feed the wildlife but it looked like so much fun so i ended up doing it ahaha. If a deer is hungry and sees you walk past with some crackers it will bow to you to let you know it would like one. Apparently back in the old days (9th century) the nobles of the clan that resided in nara would bow to the deer and through generations on interactions with humans the deer have now learned to bow back.
    My favourite places to visit at the moment are japanese gardens, something about how they arrange the plants and streams is so satisfying to me, i just walk through and think "wow everything here is in just the right spot". The pictures attached are of the yoshikien garden, which was exceptional, its my favourite garden of the trip so far. There were a bunch of temples n shrines that i visited but im pretty over that kind of stuff so i didnt pay much attention, im a full on garden guy!! Kasuga taisha was also really nice, it was a thick, mossy forest area that i really liked because it made the deer seem even more majestic, they looked so in their element grazing on grass and leaves in the forest. After i had finished wandering around the lovely gardens and forest i walked up Mount Wakakusa (not a mountain just a big grassy hill), it was the perfect place to chill out for the evening and get a good view of the city.    Read more

  • TravelerEuro Music Trip
    1
    Day 346

    Kyoto pt3

    April 17 in Japan ⋅ ⛅ 24 °C

    Walking up all those steps and then reading with that awesome view at Hokokubyo (Mausoleum of Toyotomi Hideyoshi) was my favourite bit of Kyoto

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