Hanami

The cherry blossoms (sakura) have bloomed in Tokyo! Our apartment building is called Roppongi Sakurazaka Residence, and Sakurazaka I recently realized translates to Cherry Blossom Hill - as you can see from the pictures below, our street is looking pretty amazing right now. I know that in D.C. it's an event every year when the cherry blossom bloom, and while I've never experienced it there I can't imagine it compares to what happens in Tokyo. It's a BIG DEAL. I guess there is one tree in particular that officially signals the beginning of Hanami (literally "flower viewing") when it blooms. A friend of ours that has been in Tokyo for 4 years now mentioned that she can't get over how excited the Japanese people get for Hanami every single year, despite it happening, well, every single year. I'm sure you could say that about Americans and some events that we get excited for - opening day, 4th of July fireworks, etc, but here the excitement and appreciation just seems to be on another level.  Restaurants offer special sakura set menus and sakura flavored items pop up everywhere - Sakura Frappes at Starbucks and Sakura Fizz Floats at McDonalds, to name a few. Sakura themed merchandise is dominating the fronts of the 100 yen shops and grocery stores right now. Office workers all get together for organized breaks during the workday to go view the sakura and on the weekends everyone heads to a park to have a Hanami picnic under the trees. They spread their tarp out on the grass and sit eating and drinking all day long. 

Annie's class went on a sakura walk during school, and we took many walks down our street (Sakurazaka!) collecting cherry blossoms that had fallen to the ground. In related news, I've been vacuuming up dead flowers in our apartment all week. On Saturday we joined friends in Yoyogi Park for a picnic along with what seemed like half the population of Tokyo. It was fun to see all the blankets and tarps spread out on the green, and checking out the fancy bentos people brought. Not to mention the alcohol! My favorite was a tarp with 3 guys and 5 giant bottles of booze, nothing else.

Joe took a day off work last week since he was flying out that night on a business trip, so we took the train to Nakameguro just a few miles from our place as it's a popular place to view the sakura over the Meguro river. It was a beautiful day and the river walk was packed! Everyone was literally oohing and ahhing as they emerged from the train station and the trees over the river came into view. And, of course, everyone was constantly snapping photos - some with phones and some with super fancy professional cameras. I always wonder what people do with all those photos of cherry blossoms, year after year. Maybe post them to their family blog :).

We feel so lucky to live in such a great neighborhood with beautiful trees right out our backdoor - every day the girls are excited to look at the "beautiful flowers" (while they last) as we ride our bike or go for a walk. It's a great way to welcome in Spring! 

*side note: as I was finishing up this post I felt a tiny earthquake. Small ones happen very frequently and I most often notice them at night while lying in bed.  While I feel pretty much used to it by now, every time I feel the shaking start I always wonder, "OMG! Is this the Big One?!?! Should I run to the girls' rooms!?" But by the time I finish that thought, the whole event is over. #livingonafaultline

On the pedestrian bridge connecting our street to Roppongi Hills

Best we can do for a normal picture

Annie and a school friend at Robot Park

This street (Sakurazaka) runs along the back of our building

They found some piles of petals to throw into the air

It's raining cherry blossoms!

Annie insisted on posing like this

Robot Park, next door to our apartment building

Sakurazaka Residence/American School Early Learning Center

Sakura in Roppongi Hills

Nakameguro

Meguro River

It was sooo crowded!

There was a huge crowd gathered around this dog, everyone was taking his picture... obviously I joined in

For comparison, this was about a week before the rest of the pictures, just when the blossoms started to open

Part playground, part shrine

Investigating the shrine, pretty sure you aren't supposed to touch that

Cherry Blossom Hill

Love these gals!

Lizzy became the subject of a few photographs

Nakameguro

Lizzy and me at Yoyogi

Celebrating Hanami at Yoyogi

Operation Koh Samui, Part I

We took a short flight on Bangkok Airways from Krabi to Koh Samui, which was one of the more expensive flights of the trip at $337.47 all in for the four of us.  Bangkok Airways bills itself as a small "boutique" airline and had a lounge at the Krabi airport that was open to seemingly anyone on the flight, although it wasn't very crowded.  It was small, but had fresh made popcorn which the girls liked.

It was an uneventful flight and we were quickly at the Koh Samui airport, which is beautiful and mostly outdoors.  Joe had arranged for transportation via a private company called "Mr. Samui."  He had read about it on some message boards and it got very good reviews. Although a few minutes late in picking us up, a very friendly female driver took us in a nice SUV to the Conrad Koh Samui. It was about a 45 minute drive from the airport and the island of Koh Samui (just Samui to the locals) was a bit reminiscent to me of Hawaii. From what I understood there was basically one main road around the island and the driver said it would take about an hour and a half to drive the whole thing. 

The driver asked us if we wanted to stop at a convenience store before getting to the resort, so we stopped at a 7/11 and grabbed some snacks.  The final 5 minutes of the drive to the Conrad were up the STEEPEST hills we have ever seen, and our driver told us that the Conrad sat on the highest point on Samui.  We saw a few little shops and restaurants before starting the ascent to the Conrad and naively thought we could do a quick walk from the hotel to check them out. The crazy hills, plus the roaming wildlife (buffaloes and wild dogs!) were enough to deter us.  The road was also so narrow that there was only room for one vehicle to pass at a time, so we had to wait for an all-clear signal before proceeding.  

When we finally arrived at the lobby it felt like we were on top of the world and completely isolated. The expansive ocean views were breathtaking and the layout of the hotel was unlike anything I could imagine.  Pictures don't do it justice and we arrived on an overcast afternoon, so the best views were ahead of us.

Breathtaking lobby

We had two free nights at any Hilton from the sign up bonus from the Citi Hilton Hhonors Reserve credit card and were very excited to be able to use them here since it is one of their top properties.  The third night was reserved using a fairly reasonable cash and points redemption of around $180 and 38,000 Hilton points.  For the three days we were there, the cash rate would have been over $3,000, so this was a great redemption.

Having that credit card also gives you automatic Gold status, which at this property was nice because it gave us 2 free drinks at the pool as well as daily breakfast, which was worth a fair amount since there really weren't any other accessible options.

After completing the check-in formalities, the four of us were taken on a golf cart to our room.  Given the layout and hills, most areas are only easily accessible via golf carts, which always seemed readily available. 

Underside of a hillside villa - they all looked out over the ocean

Golf cart path

Home sweet home for the next three nights

We were assigned villa 213 on the second with wide open views of the water and the five small islands off the coast.  It was one of the nicest rooms we have seen, made more incredible coupled with the views.  All four of us were happy to see they had the Disney Channel.

They had the Disney Channel

The room was well thought out, spacious, and great for our family.  The bathroom was gorgeous and it was great to have a giant bathtub to put the girls in once it got a bit cooler at night after swimming.

Even the bathroom was designed to give you an ocean view while you used the sink

The girls ate most of their room service meals on the couch, which we turned around at night to make a sleeping area for Lizzy.  She loved it.

Room service lunch and TV, common theme of the trip

Ocean front dining

The infinity pool off the living area was the highlight of our time in Koh Samui, and maybe the entire trip.  The girls loved it so much, and since Annie had just learned how to swim on her own earlier that day in Krabi, we got lots of use out of it.  The backdrop was stunningly beautiful and we definitely felt lucky throughout to be able to be there with the girls.

A Diet Coke I brought from a Malaysian 7/11

Annie got more confident by the minute, and worked for hours on perfecting her belly flop

Annie loved being thrown, while all Lizzy wanted to do was put her head in and look at the bottom

Lots of night swimming

We had them bring in a roll away for Annie which worked out really nice.  Everyone was always so tired by 6pm that bed time never was a challenge, even when sharing most of the common spaces.

There were numerous things to do around the resort, which we hope to update on soon!

Krabi

The flight from Kuala Lumpur was about an hour and we arrived at the Krabi airport, which was much more substantial than we were expecting.  We got in the customs line (thankful it was the last time we would have to do that until we got back to Tokyo) and the girls had a really fun time joking with some Eastern European ladies behind us in line and playing with their passports.

We got our luggage and the ATM wasn’t working so we had to pay for the cab in Malaysia money since the line for the exchange was really long and we were ready to be on our way.  We paid for a standard car, got out into the cab area and again, some seemingly random person with a big van took us.  We again had no idea if it was legit, but got in and everything turned out to be fine.  It was a 45 minute drive and made it to the hotel around 4pm.  The room wasn’t ready so we walked around the hotel and checked out the two lounges, one near the lobby and one out by the beach.  Kids weren’t allowed in the main lounge so breakfast was provided at the main restaurant.

We knew when we left the Grand Hyatt that any room was going to be a disappointment in comparison, and the room was a big step down.  In addition, the safe wasn’t working, the drain was having problems and the room wasn’t really ready when they finally turned it over to us.  At the end of the day we were being babies and it turned out to be fine, but we were certainly a bit down the first few hours.

We spent a lot of time at the pools and the beaches, which were both very nice.  We also really enjoyed the outdoor beachfront lounge. We could order drinks and snacks while the girls dug around in the sand. In one of her more hilarious moments, Lizzy downed an adult sized Shirley Temple in about 7 seconds and then immediately asked loudly, "Can I get anotha one???"  

Ice cream break

Beach front lounge

Whoops, how did that get in there???

Diet Coke, I've missed you!!! (We only have Coke Zero in Japan)

Over the course of the vacation, I tried taking detailed notes of what we did each day, but as the trip went on they got more and more brief. Krabi notes on my phone basically read: Breakfast, Massage, Pool, Room Service, Nap, Repeat. I should also mention that at no point during our trip did I ever have any idea what day it was.... I think that's a definite sign of a good vacation. :)

Room service: Grilled Vegetable Sandwich and Steak Fries

These girls love cheap Southeast Asian room service, just like their daddy!

Main Lobby 

Maybe I am one of the few people who didn't know this, but massages are insanely cheap in Thailand. There was a massage hut (slash restaurant) on the beach adjacent to our hotel.  Once I discovered that I could get an hour massage for less than $8 US, I became a frequent customer. I felt guilty for how hard these women were working and how little they were getting paid, espcially because the restaurant (where you booked the massages) probably took a majority of the profit.  I made sure to personally give them large tips, which even when added with the cost of the massage was still ridiculously low by US standards.  I think they started to remember me because every time I would walk by they would yell, "What time, Ma'am? What time??" 

It wasn't the most sanitary operation in the world, but I guess what can you expect at those prices? I realized (after I was well into my first massage) that they weren't changing the towels the customers lied on unless the customer asked.  Joe almost threw up when I told him this and couldn't imagine doing that.  It was also just an open air hut with lizards crawling on the walls, but not a bad trade off for the view of the ocean and the sound of the waves.

On our last evening in Krabi, after my 2nd massage of the day, I ordered some Pad Thai from the adjoining restaurant and it was delicious! Actually, it tasted a lot like our favorite Thai place in Burbank, so that must mean it was authentic, right? 

There was a little shopping area steps from the front gate and it was nice to be able to run to 7/11 for snacks.  This was pretty much the extent of our cultural immersion outside the resort.

Drumstick cones taste the same in Thailand. Also, the chip flavors were strange even by Tokyo standards.

                           

                           


I found time to workout most days, either before breakfast or at night after the girls were in bed. Because of our Platinum status with Starwood, I was able to take yoga classes for free. Not that it's something I've done a ton in my life, but beachfront yoga is one of my all time favorite things. In fact, when in labor with both girls, my "happy place" (before epidural) was doing yoga with Joe on our honeymoon in a hut over the Indian Ocean.

Our pretty island girl

Having a blast at the beach right before dinner

Big girl without a swim diaper, because we ran out

It was quickly time to move on to the next destination so we packed up again, but took the girls to the pool first to work off some energy.  In one of the most exciting moments of the trip, something clicked with Annie and she was able to swim around the pool, taking multiple breaths and not drowning.  It was amazing to see her finally get it because she had made very little progress recently.

Things started out a bit rocky in Krabi, but we really loved our three days at the Sheraton.  It was relatively affordable and had one of the better beaches throughout the trip.  Aside from the cramped room, we would be happy to return here at some point in the future.

Sunset in Krabi