No plan trip to work exchange and met with great accompanies

Today is the 2nd day we reach into Okayama. I don’t know about it. I used to think Kobe is boring but then I love it into the 2nd days onward. So far Okayama hasn’t give me a reason to like it yet. The shopping is clustered near the train station and our hotel “the onefive Okayama” was 20mins walk away. Nothing special and there are not much 2nd hand shop for me to shop around. Tmr got an event in the evening and Sunday we shall go visit Aeon mall for shopping. 

We drew on the toilet of the homestay we are at

Leaving the house is a bit sad as we met really great accompany in the house. 2 German girls, Hannah and Marke and 2 France girl, Joanna and Julie. Each of us was very polite and had good initiative. We will help each other on simple task like fetching hot water. At night as it was so cold the whole house only the living room table is attached with heater so we will curdle together and discuss on all topics under the sun, religion, education, culture, breaktalk and everything German and France related. So fun to hang out with them.

Met up with Kiyonori san and his mum gave us all some tidbits in Kimono bag!

We had the extreme honor to be invited Kiyonori San church where he explained to us his religion, 天理教。Where they focus on living a joyous life be it living in a joyous life or helping others to feel joyous. So their mission is to host and give to people. Kiyonori’s mum gave us a pouch that is handmade by Kimono fibre and she also teach us hand by hand to do Okonomiyaki, which is kinda junk food and comfort food at the same time. And his mum also run her own podcast show on her own when now she is 83 yrs old. Kiyonori also show us how he do his own rocket burner to cook his water using abandon wood. 

Kiyonori san’s mum taught us how to cook Okonomiyaki

As we are nearing the end of the stay in the guest house, we are planning to travel to Okayama. Julie just happens to want to discard a converse shoes. So happen that her feet size is 42 which match with my foot. As you know I didn’t even own a shoes back home as I only travel with slipper all the time. I faster say I want the shoes as a memento. Julie is also glad that the shoes will be taken care by me so we both had a good timing where one wanna discard and I wanna keep. I will love this shoes very much and I will wear until it is very broken.

We pose as the converse shoes is gifted over to me

It was a great stay and we make sure the toilet is painted with our youtube channel so that the future volunteer will be able to subscribe to us and see the video we post for this house. I didn’t know that I have a talent in painting and received good review for my drawing.

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We are advocate for no plan travelling. Sometime if you plan and rush for the trip you will miss out in fun and often fall short on your expectation. If not for our no plan trip we couldn’t have went to the sudden last min recommendation for work exchange and will not be able to meet up with all these great people along the way. See you at Okayama

The funny part we talk in the cafe during work exchange

Friends from the guesthouse gets together for coffee

The “flow” in old Japanese cafe

Yesterday at the house, morning we had an outing where all 6 of us will walk to the nearest cafe to get our coffee for the day. Well, when I saw the lady boss is working in the kitchen I was afraid that she might assume our order as all coffee drink so I went over to clarify with her on our order. Apparently she told me “Chottomatte” please wait and get back to her work. I suddenly realise that I had interrupted their work flow again.

In Japan when you get into a cafe usually you will not be entertained to until when the owner is finished with her tasks one hand and ready to come to you. You will know it is your turn when the owner brings over a hot towels and then they will have to serve a glass of iced water. There will be the time you put in your order. I think any other time when you just interrupt them for order will be rude.

It is very different from Chinese people where they can multitask and take order while maybe cooking fried rice at the same time. All Chinese cares are about is turnover rate and collection of money as quickly as possible. But in Japan, you will get the feeling that they don’t care so much about the money but instead they are very persistence in their sequence and traditions. Which they focus more on well being instead of the peruse of material procession. 

Question for personality test

In the cafe they asked us 3 questions and wants us to answer them straight when we think of the question.

When you are walking in a jungle and;

1. You see a color and what color will that be? And why
2. You see an animal and what will that be? And why
3. You come around an environment and what will that be? And why

You can stop and think of these questions yourself and I will be sharing my answer below and what does it mean in the end.

My answer for the color have 2 answer to it. First thing comes to my mind instantly was yellow and my mind was changing it quickly to black. The reason was that yellow was what i used to like as a kid where it symbolise energetic and happiness, but as I grow older I stop liking yellow and love black. Black is the absent of color or I should say more accurately the presence of all colours. As I grew as an adult I felt a lot of emotion need to be contained and not expressed so I choose black as my favourite color.

The animal that come to my mind was cat as i liked cat most as I was attracted by the car attitude and for them respecting distance. They are cute and comfy to hold in. Sometime they give you a feeling that they need you and provide comfort for you and yet sometime they are just on their own doing their stuff and they will not require your attention at all. Furthermore, I love the arrogance attitude from cat as they know they don’t need you as long they had their food taken care of.

As for the environmental scene that I can think of this, standing at the cliff looking down on the sea in front of me. This scene was the one that Sandy, Tracy and me was in Danang. The feeling attached to it was that I was so small compared to the huge and board world in front of me. That was a sense of liberation and I describe that something was “holding back and suddenly got released”.

They laughed hard as the answer correspond to these is, color is what you think of yourself and animal is what you are looking for in a partner and last question on environment is what is your ideal sexual experience. So literal right?

Bread vs toast

You know me and Jackie just had a heated discussion on the difference between a bread and a toast. For my understanding, bread and toast is the difference in hardness. As long as the bread was placed in a toaster and removed moisture where you know it became hard and warm is a toast.

However for the German they had a philosophy on bread. Just like wine and coffee per se. There are differentiation between sour, sweet and bitterness in bread. The after taste and the initial taste so on. They really respected bread a lot. On the hand, toast to them is like “junk food” like any bread that has a shape of a square is a toast. Like all our gardenia bread is call toast even without putting in a toaster. They call it the untoasted toast. 

Meet up with German and France friend at the guesthouse

 Today was a stay home day for us. We wake up for breakfast and lunch and then many people came. First is a Japanese neighbour came over and gave us orange and he told us that he is a priest from a church. 

Then we had another Germany Marke coming to join Hannah. So picture for the day is with these 2 girls. What is interesting is that Marke told us her encounter when she stayed at host house and it was funny. We spoke the whole night on different topics like housing, religion, politics and culture. Well it was very interesting to meet people and listen to their stories.

Hannah right and Marke in the middle

Later in the evening we are greeted by another 2 France girl whom have lots of stories to tell us. They are Joanna and Julie. A school teacher and a lawyer to be and they are travelling between their job. They shared with us the experience of doing a road trip in Australia where they bought a used Honda CRV with camping tent on the top and there are cooking wares and power in the back of the car.

Julie on the right and Joanna at the centre

The next day we bring the 2 girls to the Lawson and supermarket which is 35mins walks one way. We had a good talk and they detoured to a random temple along the way and they strongly recommended us to watch a Japanese cartoon later in the night. I am so impressed that the Germans are teaching their kids early to be independent. Like they will not help them to do things but will accompany them to let them complete simple task by themselves as young as 3 years old. France on the other hand is very lay back and chill where they are not really care about how people view them. They are more expressive in term of their emotion and opinion. Unlike Asian we are always trying to be nice and polite, many times i felt like we are putting up a fake skin and we care too much about how people view us.

Movie night in the house

At night we planned to watch the Japanese show Howl’s living castle which was recommended by Joanna. But we try connecting the old laptop with the projector and the speaker which we had difficult in sourcing enough electrical outlet from the house.Setting up the laptop was a slow and painful process as all of us watched patiently for Joanna to get the laptop up. Then we faced the wifi connection issue and then the Netflix browser is not supported and also prime video account can’t login so we had a series of issue and end up we still not able to get the video up working.

To every you I’ve loved before

Finally they gave up and I took over the laptop and proposed to watch another anime that is available on YouTube “To every you I’ve loved before”. 一头雾水。It is about parallel world theme suspend movie. End up we would never guess the outcome of the movie as ending we realised that the author broke up 2 separate story half into each movie. So the part we watch explain half of each story and it was super confusing. 

During we finally found out who Fred was. When we came to the house at the bathroom there was sign mentioning that watch out for Fred who will be watching you bathing if you are not careful. We had no idea who Fred was and the host gave us a clue that it has 2 eyes with 4 limbs. End up that night during movie we were greeted by a small little cute frog climbing around the house. And that was super cute.

Our Japan Osaka first week video was up and we started a new series walk the talk which we just speak while walking around Osaka.

And we had a short that I was walking along a stream near our guesthouse

Visit Hanoi 3rd time this year

First night at Hanoi, 26 Yen Phu

 Today we travel again to Hanoi. This is the 3rd time we go for one month travel in Hanoi within one year. I slowly like getting tired for Hanoi already. However, Jackie still like this place and promise that autumn is going to be nice then many of our friend say.

First night we didn’t book any hotel and only start finding one after 6pm. We end up choosing 3 days at Airbnb at 26 Yen Phu. The place is quite nice and we like it. All thing I need are there, warm shower, cold air con, balcony and TV with YouTube.. Somemore the price is reasonable considering that we are staying in Hanoi. $15SGD for one night. For 3nights + cleaning fee + platform fee, it cost us $64SGD for 3 night. Okie lah. 

Jon suppose to meet us here from Nha Trang but he has to leave the country to Thailand for couple of days to renew his visa. As a UK residence he is able to get 45 days visa free in Vietnam. Nice. We will be getting around to Ninh Binh these few days.

Once we landed at the airport, we took a grab car straight to Tay Ho Lake to find Mia coffee again. The cost for transport is 300k and the distance was 19km and rooks us 40mins. We met up with Tracy and she was slimmer since last time we met her at Ha Giang. Her cat also increase to 5 and she took out 2 small little kitten to play with us. She is so nice and she lend us her motorbike rent free. See this is good will goes around and comes around. Stay tune for the next few days for our activities. 

Kulai Work Stay 流连宿 打工换宿 - Day 1

打工换宿

Okie, exciting. My friend Ben for the ID firm recommended me to try 打工换宿. Interesting concept from crouchsurfing!!! You can literally work / volunteer and exchange for lodging at different country, hence experience different culture from different country. Therefore, we decided to start our first experience at 流连宿.

流连宿

This self sustaining farm at Kulai is owned by Tai Shun. He used to work in Singapore as a mobile phone retailer and other job for many years but he ends up returning to Malaysia to start a homestay. His idea is not to keep chasing for the money and wants a farm that is fully substainable. He learn all the skill like electrical, plumbing, construction, carpentry and gardening from all around the world. More of his stories can be seen here. 

Direction

From Queenstown MRT to Kranji MRT > take SBS 170x to JB central > T30 bus for 40mins to Kulai. I went during Tuesday afternoon 12 as it was off perk and so it took me 2 hours to reach Kulai bus terminal from Queenstown MRT. No jam and straight through.

Day 1 

Banana tree only grow one branch of banana and they will weed. You can cut off the stem and sucker will start to grow from the base near to the original plant.

Compost method using permaculture, which instead of more modern industrialization method, permaculture is adopting a more traditional or natural method。

Good place as a 2nd home

Crystal shared that Kulai is a good place to start a homestay beside the hot and sunny weather which is the cons.

• - 40mins drive to JB if you want to enjoy some city time
• - 15mins drive to JB airport (small) which connects to the rest of malaysia via domestic flight. 
• - as a semi rural area, they still have good amount of facilities like police, fire, school and hospital around.