Living in Bangkok

We’ve been in our AirBnB for about 10 days now.  I am still struggling with my cough and the heat and humidity are rough.  I knew the heat would be difficult for me and it is.  While I don’t relish living in this type of heat for months at a time, in a way it is probably a good thing since we don’t have to rush around every single day and see all the things in a short amount of time.

We have been taking seeing the sights slower than we usually do, in great part because of my cough.  While I have recovered mostly from the flu (which Blaise never got), that cough lingers and is exacerbated by exertion.

What We Have Seen

The Parks

We have hit the 2 major parks in Bangkok: Lumphini and Benchakitti.  There is always something a bit special about enjoying a beautiful park in the midst of the chaos of a big city.  Blaise had seen lots of YouTube videos of both parks so he was excited to see them in person.  Of the two, we preferred Lumphini.

Benchakitti seemed to be mostly a walkway around a manmade lake.  Don’t get me wrong, it was beautiful and the flowers added to the beauty.  But Lumphini seemed a bit more sprawling with lots to see.  There we watched kids playing and people meditating and doing Tai Chi.  There were little ponds and lakes, walkways and trails.  I just liked the feel better.

Benchakitti Park (Didn't post these on Facebook so you get Benchakitti pictures and not Lumphini)

Blaise in the Benchakitti Dog Park, with no dog

Us at Benchakitti Park - Yes, I was hot!

Chinatown

Yesterday, we traveled to Chinatown.  I guess it was not our thing.  It is a destination here.  When you google things to do in Bangkok, it shows up on every list.  It is different than some other parts of Bangkok with lots going on, lots of shoe stores and stores with kitschy stuff from China.  But when you are traveling for 8 months and have most of those months ahead of you, shopping and buying things is not something you do.

The great thing about visiting Chinatown is we got to revisit the Chao Phraya River, taking a tourist boat to get there.  We road past our most-favored Peninsula hotel and remembered the days of pampering and relaxation there, only ten days prior. Blaise was particularly excited to be back on the river.  We even saw our little Peninsula boats.

Shopping Malls

The shopping malls here are next level.  While the shopping mall is nearly dead in the U.S., or at least in Texas, they are certainly alive and well here.  And they are pretty smart about it.  It seems most major malls are right next to or connected directly to a BTS station.

Because of the rain, we have visited a couple of them:  Terminal 21 and Siam Center (not to be confused with the Icon Siam (the one down the river from The Peninsula Hotel).

Terminal 21 was more interesting than the others.  Each level was fashioned after a different city of the world - Paris, London, Istanbul, San Francisco.  San Francisco was by far the coolest with a Golden Gate Bridge and a cable car with cable car tracks on the floor.

Golden Gate Bridge in the Terminal 21 mall (If you look closely, you can even see cars on the bridge)

Golden Gate Bridge in the Terminal 21 mall

Cable car in Terminal 21 mall

The view from the window in the ladies room at the Terminal 21 mall.

Travel Around Bangkok

We mostly use our feet and public transport to get around Bangkok.  We have taken Grab, from time to time.  Grab is their version of Uber.

They have two train systems: the BTS and the MRT.  The BTS is the elevated train system and the MRT is the subway.  So far, we have only had the opportunity to use the BTS.  We are a 17-minute walk (according to Google Maps) from the closest train station (On Nut).

The condo complex we are staying in has a shuttle bus to the BTS station for 15 baht (about 50 cents) one way.  It might also be called the shutter bus, it depends on if you believe the sign or the tickets you buy to ride the bus.  The bus leaves every 30 minutes for the BTS station.  However, for some reason, before 2 PM, it is only at the top of the hour and the bottom of the hour IF they have riders.  So if you want them to pick you up FROM the BTS station to take you back to the condo before 2 PM, you have to call them.  BUT they don’t have a WhatsApp number.  We never get SIM chips so unless we are on wifi, we can’t call them without incurring exorbitant international calling rates.  Therefore, we usually take the shuttle to the BTS station and then walk back from it when we return.  We try to do everything in the morning before the heat really takes over in the afternoon.

The shuttle bus is not what you picture when you think of bus.  It is a truck with open-air seating in the back.  Don’t picture a tuk tuk because it is not small like a tuk tuk.

Shutter bus?

Or Shuttle bus?

The BTS stations are clean and very well organized.  My favorite thing about the BTS trains is they are nice and cool and it doesn’t matter how many people are on the train, they are never hot.  I have never once overheated in a train here; a far cry from the Tokyo to Osaka debacle.  Blaise complains that they are too cold.  I would much rather they be too cold than too warm because once you walk off the train, you are immediately assaulted with hot muggy air!

Hopefully we will have the opportunity to ride the MRT before we leave.  Thus far, no trip we have taken in Bangkok has required the subway.  However, I looked into going to their big flower market and it requires the BTS and the MRT to get there.

The bus system here is call the BRT.  We are going to avoid the buses here after observing them.  It is not that we have an aversion to buses - we take them in lots of cities. We rode them extensively in Rome.  The buses here, however, seem a bit inconsistent in their quality.  Some are very modern and appear air conditioned, while others appear barely operational.  Like they are going to break down any minute.  Since we don’t know which version of the buses we are going to get, we avoid the options in Google maps that require bus rides, even if it means walking farther. We also see very few people on buses.  I don’t think people need to ride buses with all the tuk tuks and how reasonable the Grab prices are.

The AirBnB

Our AirBnB complex is nice.  Not super fancy, but safe and clean with a gym and swimming pool.

What we have learned (when I say we, I really mean Blaise with his expert research skills), is that the closer your AirBnB is to a BTS station, the more expensive it is.  A 17-minute walk to the BTS means a cheaper AirBnB than one right next to it.  Since they have the shuttle to the station, the condo being farther away from the BTS is not really that important.  

We are on the 5th floor of the building.  You have to use your key card to get into parking lot, whether you walk in or drive in.  You have to use your key card to get into the building and then when you get in the elevator, you can’t even ride to your floor without scanning your key card before you hit the button for your floor, and every person in the elevator must use their key card to get to their floor.

We are on the end of the hallway so we have more windows than other condos - windows on two sides of the apartment.  We also have a balcony but the balcony is more functional than some place to hang out and enjoy the view.  The balcony has the washer on it and the clothes drying rack, thus functional.

The view is really from the window in our living room which over looks the S1 Snooker club, a nail salon, hair salon, coffee hut, and where they dispatch the Grab motorcycles to pick up people.  Grab isn’t just cars like Uber; you can use a Grab motorcycle driver to take you where you want to go. It’s cheaper than the cars so lots of people take them.

View from our condo

I got my pedicure at the nail salon and Blaise gets iced coffee from the hut everyday and even brings me a Thai iced tea.  He gets a large and I get a small for 65 baht ($2.00) total.

Nail salon

Blaise's coffee hut

Further down the road is some tennis courts.

We have learned that the Thai people love their tennis and they love to Snook.  Snook is probably not the proper verb for people who play Snooker, but I like it so I’m going with it.

The VERY busy Snooker club

We have settled into a nice routine, exploring in the mornings and spending the afternoons and/or evenings doing laundry, reading, or watching the prior seasons of The Diplomat before we start the new season (since Blaise hasn’t ever watched a single episode before now).

Weather

This is the rainy season but we did not get any rain until last Wednesday.  Since then it has rained every day, usually in the afternoon and at night, so we try to be home by 2 PM which works out well since it gets so hot and muggy in the afternoon.

The other night, it rained so much, the street in front of the Snooker Club looked like a river - with a flow.  There must have been at least 6 inches of water, likely more. When we woke up the next morning, while the street was wet, there was no indication it had been a river just hours before that.

Food

The price of food is all over the map.

If you want to eat street food, you can eat cheap cheap cheap.  The day we did laundry while we were staying at the Peninsula, we passed a street food vendor and the smell was awful for Blaise and me.  It really turned us both off of street food and then I started thinking about the cleanliness of the vendors and then my bout of Montezuma's Revenge when in Greece in the spring.  That one is still fresh in my mind. I haven’t dared to touch the street food as of yet.  

Most of the malls and even the grocery store have street vendor-type food areas.  It is almost as inexpensive as the street vendors, but they seem cleaner.  We’ve eaten at those areas in the malls several times.

If you eat at a restaurant restaurant, the prices range from slightly more than the street vendors to much more costly.

What I have discovered is I can only eat so much Thai food.  There is a small subset of Thai food I enjoy eating on a regular basis - pad Thai, dumplings, and some (but not all) meat and rice dishes.  I hate to admit it, but I think I have the palate of a 10-year-old.

While I do not like Pizza Hut at home, I have eaten there twice since we have been at the AirBnB. I just can’t eat Thai food every day.

Bangkok also has an abundance of McDonalds, KFCs, and Burger Kings. I haven’t eaten at any of those yet, but I feel that I will.

There is a 7-11 on practically every corner.  In the 17-minute walk to the train station, we pass 4 7-11s.  People go there all the time for food.  The food there is actually pretty cheap. I get bananas and yogurt there just about every other day.

Right by the BTS station is a Lotus grocery store.  You can get just about anything there.  It reminds me of the Disney Kroger by our house at home.  (Disney Kroger name attributed to Dana.) Other than the 7-11s and the grocery store in the Icon Siam mall, that Lotus is the only grocery store I’ve seen.

Blaise made the first visit to the Lotus by himself on the first day we got to the AirBnB since I was still feeling badly.  One of the things he got was frozen “chicken tendons.”  (Again, the palate of a 10-year-old) Of course, our thought was, it was like the “shutter bus” - they just got the wrong English word.  They have to be chicken “tenders.” The other day, I heated some up and discovered they really are chicken tendons.  They were gross.  Blaise and I were pulling all kinds of gristle and cartilage out of our mouths. They were icky so we tossed them.

The Queen Mother

On October 24, the Queen Mother passed away at 94.  The country is in mourning.  There are little memorials all over the city, including our condo’s entryway.

One of the Queen Mother memorials. May she rest in peace.

It also appears that businesses are required to post the same announcement/statement. They are everywhere, including the screen in our elevator at the condo.

Translation of the notice

What the notice looks like.  The top part is the same everywhere.

She lays in state through November 9 at the palace so we are steering clear of the palace until after that out of respect.  It wouldn’t be right for us to show up for a tour of the palace while the country is saying goodbye to the Queen Mother.  Blaise read that the country will have a 1-year mourning period.  That is a long time to mourn. But she is royalty.

Other Observations

One of the things we have noticed is that there are no street-sweeper machines.  It seems Bangkok actually pays people to literally sweep the streets with brooms.  Not push brooms or the brooms that we are familiar with.  The Thai brooms are made of some sort of straw of varying lengths - the end of the straw is not a straight line.  

The brooms they use to sweep the streets and really everywhere.

Also, someone from the Snooker club sweeps their parking lot every day and the coffee lady sweeps around her coffee hut daily.

They even start sweeping after it rains, sweeping the water into the drains so there are no standing puddles.  They do this on the streets and in parking lots.

Everyone seems to take great pride in whatever establishment they own, making sure the outside is clean and free of trash and water.

The trains are also mostly quiet.  Sometimes they get noisier than other times, but only on the weekends, it seems.  You also cannot eat and drink on the trains so that is probably one reason they are so clean.

Closing

We leave on the 14th for Chiang Mai.  I will try to write once more before we leave Bangkok.

Hello Bangkok!

It’s been over a week since we made it to Bangkok. Our flight landed around 1:30 AM Friday, October 17.  We stayed that night in a hotel by the airport. We did not fly into the big airport in Bangkok (BKK); we flew into Don Mueang International Airport.  When we leave Bangkok, we will fly out of the regular BKK airport.

Osaka to Bangkok Flight

The flight from Osaka to Bangkok was over 5 hours and left at 9 PM Thursday.  Leaving that late was our saving grace in that we were tired enough to sleep on the plane way more than we usually do.  We were in coach on AirAsia but the leg room was so much better than any US domestic flight so that also made things better.  The airline was fine. It was one of those where you have to buy everything that is not the ticket to get on the plane - seat selection, food, wifi, any luggage more than a personal item weighing more than 7 kilograms. I sure do miss the days when you paid for the ticket and you got to check a bag and they would feed you a meal for no extra cost.  That type of flight is hard to find in this part of the world so we went with it.

We did find such a flight when we were booking our flight out of Chiang Mai, Thailand to Da Nang, Vietnam in December.  Then we will be flying Emirates - a first for us.

We both probably slept 3-3 ½ hours on the way to Bangkok which is SO much more than either of us usually sleep on flights. Yay!

12 The Residence Hotel

Since we got in so early in the morning, we stayed at a hotel near the airport - “12 The Residence Hotel.” Not sure why “12” is in the name but it is.  The hotel was nothing fancy but it was clean and safe and the bed was comfortable. We spent about $40 on it.  I am sure some people will freak out thinking we were in some kind of seedy, dirty dive motel, but you would be wrong.  Prices are different here. I would actually have no issues staying there for several days.  The location wasn’t that great since it is not really near any of the sites we want to see, but maybe that is part of why it was cheap.  Don’t get me wrong, it was no Penisula Hotel, but it was just fine.

The hotel had a 10 AM checkout time, which I thought was a bit too early.  Not sure I have been in a place with such an early checkout. After we woke up and got ready, we took a Grab to The Peninsula Hotel.  Woo Hoo! (Grab is like Uber and used widely in this part of the world.)  It was a 45 minute drive and cost us a little less than $7.00.  You can’t beat that!  We have taken Grab several times since we have been here and not one trip cost more than that.  We haven’t tried public transportation yet, but that is more a function of my getting the flu than anything else.

The Peninsula Hotel

Staying at The Peninsula was a splurge for us.  I hesitate to say how much it cost because it was A LOT!  We have never stayed at a hotel as nice as this.  We probably got close with La Fonda in Sante Fe, New Mexico and the Shangri La in Sydney Australia but they really don’t come close to the level of service we experienced at The Peninsula.  It is clearly a 5-star hotel. We figured if we were going to spend that kind of money, we better do it right, so we got a room with a balcony overlooking the Chao Phraya river.  We were there for a whole week and spent hours over the course of that week sitting on the balcony watching the boat traffic. The service was nearly impeccable.  I say nearly because on one day, they did not service our room until after 3:00 PM, and another, it was after 2 PM.  Not a big deal, but if you are going to use “impeccable” to describe something, things had better be perfect.

The Flu

While I would have rather not spent my time at the Peninsula fighting illness, if you are going to be sick, it is a lovely place to be laid up in bed. About that illness…

On Monday of our stay (remember, we got there on Friday), I decided to go see the doctor for the cough I had had since before we got off the cruise ship.  Having a chronic cough is nothing new to me.  Anytime I get a cold or some sort of bug, I get a cough that lingers for weeks and weeks.  But I had gone to a pharmacy Saturday morning and got some meds for the cough but by Monday it was no better, maybe slightly worse.  The doctor gave me meds and offered a combo flu/covid/RSV test but I declined thinking it was likely just another cough I could not shake.  But by Tuesday, I was achy, had chills, and the cough was worse.  So Wednesday, we went back to the doctor.  I had a fever of 101.6 so they recommended, not just offered, the flu/covid/RSV test.  The test came back positive for Flu A.  I was given Tamiflu and an anti-inflammatory and told to go back Friday so the doctore could listen to my chest again. The nurse gave me her WhatsApp and told me to text her my updates. In hindsight, perhaps I should have gotten the flu shot when I got the pneumonia vaccine back in August.  I can report that today, I am on the mend.  My fever broke Thursday morning. When I texted the nurse she told me to come Monday instead of Friday (yesterday) so that is what I am going to do.  I still tire fairly easily and we are taking it easy until I go back to the doctor.  Blaise is being very thoughtful and understanding but I am sure he is growing weary of my getting sick when we travel.  I hope this is it for a while.

One last thing about the flu - the doctor said right now there is a TON of flu in this part of the world - Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia.

Laundry

Because we were considered an “extended stay” at The Peninsula, they gave us 50% off their laundry services.  You would think “Wow! What a bargain!”  But you would be wrong.  On Tuesday (before I found out I had the flu), we decided to do the laundry.  I did the math and it was still going to cost us around $100 at 50% off.  I get, we were splurging staying there, but I am sorry, I am NOT going to spend $100 for fancy laundry service.  I would much rather spend $100 getting some sort of experience.  We were not going to get any cool experience out of a posh hotel doing our laundry.  I guess maybe they might have smelled really lovely.  Maybe.

Since Blaise and I both decided that is not how we wanted to spend our money, I found a laundromat a 7-minute walk from The Peninsula. We loaded our dirty laundry in our Celebrity Cruises tote and headed out the front door of the 5-star Peninsula Hotel to the laundromat.

It might not have been 5-star service, but the charming owner of the cleanest laundromat we had ever been to, came out and gave us a tutorial on how to use the machines.  It was as close to 5-star as you could get in a laundromat.  Chatting with him, we learned he spent 2 years with a host family in his teens in California, later living in Houston, working at Astroworld.  He was so excited we were from the United States and even more so when he found out we were from Texas. We enjoyed visiting with him.  Small world.

Cleanest laundromat you ever did see

Leaving The Peninsula

Yesterday, Friday, we said farewell to The Peninsula Hotel, as we headed out to our AirBnB for the next three weeks.  I am really going to miss the special treatment of The Peninsula but how special would a place like that be if you did it all the time?  We certainly would not be able to be gone for 8 months if we did that the whole time we are gone. As we got into the Grab to head to AirBnB, I told Blaise “We had a good run at The Peninsula.”

The New AirBnB

The AirBnB we checked into yesterday is small, but clean and safe.  The air conditioner works well, the shower is hot, and the bed is comfy. And it is about 20% the price we paid at The Peninsula for the 3 weeks we will be here.  The host met us in the lobby and showed us around.  The place has a gym and a swimming pool.  We found a place for breakfast this morning near the condo, but have spend the rest of the day relaxing as I continue to recover from the flu.  I hope by Monday, we will be able to start seeing the sites.

Our AirBnB for the next 3 weeks

The kitchen

Thoughts on Thailand

Thailand is much different from Japan and Osaka.  Thailand is grittier and not near as clean as Japan but Bangkok has been much cleaner than I expected.  It is not filthy by any stretch.

While the people were nice and helpful in Japan, it felt different than the kindness displayed by the Thai people.  I think the best way to describe the difference is the people of Japan are helpful and polite because that is what is expected of them; that is how the Japanese society operates.  They were taught from a very young age that polite society does very specific things and does NOT do very specific other things - a very strict set of rules.  Whereas in Thailand, it all feels like the kindness comes from the heart.  They are thoughtful because they want to be thoughtful, not necessarily because society demands it.  I am not even sure if that makes sense.  The end result is roughly the same; it just feels a bit different.

All that to say that thus far, we LOVE both countries!

One last observation of Thailand before I call it quits so we can have dinner.  While the Thai people are big bowers too, they add what I call the “prayer hands.”  It is called the “wai” - the placing of the palms together in a prayer-like pose and slightly bowing.  I find it a wonderful way to greet people but I love the whole bowing thing anyway.

Musings of Our Time in Japan

Leaving the Ship

Today is Thursday.  We left the ship on Saturday after 2 extra days at sea on the ship due to the typhoon. It was an easy debarkation with a free shuttle to the train station.  There was quite the line at the kiosks to purchase tickets with all the cruisers dispersing hither and yon.

The Trip to Osaka

I always feel pressure to be efficient at a ticket kiosk when there is a line of people waiting.  Fortunately, there was an employee there to help.  I showed him on my phone where we were going (Osaka, which is a 2-hour train ride from where we were once we got to the right station) and he purchased the tickets (with our money), letting me know he purchased general seating tickets.  Little did we know that this was a BAD thing.

After initially going the wrong way on the right line, we made it to the station where we picked up the bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka.  There was a bit of foreshadowing when we were trying to figure out what train car we needed to be on when a helpful American took a look at our tickets and said “Oh, you are in cars 1 and 2 for general seating,” as he looked at us like we were lepers.  Little did we know that most of that train had assigned seats and if you did not purchase that option, you were shoved into cars 1 or 2 like cattle.  There were seats but since our stop was not the origination of the line, not only were the seats all taken, so was most of the standing area.  It took us 3 trains to find one where we were able to push ourselves and our luggage into the car.  We were shoved in there like sardines and still more people were pushing their way in.  And so we stood for about 1 hour and 20 minutes before the first stop.  We could not move and I was sweating the likes of which you have never seen before.  If I had balls before that train ride, they would be gone because I sweated them off during that wretched ride.  Add to that, I still had my cough and was doing everything in my power not to cough.  I was the only one on that train sweating profusely so in addition to being absolutely miserable, I was embarrassed.  At the first stop, some people finally got off and were able to adjust with a bit more room.

I think it took us about 4 trains in total and a 20 minute walk to get to the apartment we stayed in.  (We used booking.com for this one.)

Our Osaka Apartment

The apartment was cozy if not a bit different than what we are used to.  You walk straight into a narrow galley kitchen that you have to step up into.  As is common in Japan, wearing shoes in the apartment was prohibited so there was a little area before you take the step up into the kitchen to remove your shoes, place your shoes in the cubby, and put on the slippers they provided.  You walk through the galley kitchen to get to the room with the table, love seat, bed and TV. Before you get to that room, the kitchen counter and appliances were on the right and the bathroom sink and shower room were on the left just as you walked in the front door and the separate toilet room was just past that right before the bedroom area.  The bed was comfy and the apartment was lovely and quiet.

I do have to mention the shower room and the toilet because they were different that what you see elsewhere.  The bath/shower room was designed to be a whole wet room. It had a bathtub with its own faucet but the shower head was not in the bathtub, but off to the left of the tub with its own faucet so if you wanted to, you could just run that faucet or the shower head directly onto the floor.  There was no shower curtain.  The whole shower room had its own fancy ventilation system with various options - drying, hot air, cool air, and 24-hour ventilation.  We actually used that ventilation to dry the clothes we washed.  Not sure if that was the intent, but that’s what we did.  The bathroom sink and clothes washer were right outside the shower room.

The shower room in our Osaka Apartment

The ventilation controls for the shower room

The toilet in the toilet room was super fancy and had a wash basin on the back of it and when you flushed, the water in the basin automatically ran so you could wash your hands.

The toilet in our Osaka apartment

Look at all the buttons we had to learn

Observations

We were pleasantly surprised with how much we loved Osaka.  We walked nearly everywhere we went, only taking the subway once because the castle was a hour and a half away from where we were staying if we had walked.

Here’s some observations about Osaka and Japan in general:

• They are very quiet in Japan.  You will see signs in many places telling you not to talk loudly or talk on your cell phones.  This is especially observed on the trains.  Hardly anyone talks on the the subway and if they do talk, it is in whispers. And most public places were quieter than public places in other countries.

• The streets in Japan are crazy clean.  You very rarely see litter and they do not leave their trash out by the curb like you see in most cities.

• In Osaka, each building has a fairly small bin to place trash into and they pick up trash every day, 7 days a week, not just once or twice a week.

• The trash trucks play music as they drive through the streets picking up trash - little electronic tunes.  One even played “Camptown Races.”  The trash trucks are super clean too.

Look how clean this garbage truck is!

• Except for that lady that got so angry when I touched cantaloupe stem, everyone in Japan is so polite.

• There is a rule for everything and if you don’t now what the rule is, they will certainly let you know, with most people being much more kind about it than angry cantaloupe lady. It is a rules-based society for sure!

• Most restaurant had a QR code for each table. You would then order using the QR code, rather than from a waitperson.  In some instances you would pay for your food at the time of ordering while other places you simply used this method to order and paid on your way out.

• Most places have automated payment machines, even if they have a person at the counter. For example, at the grocery store, a person checks you out, but you put your money in a machine that will then dispense your change.

• If they don’t have the money machine to pay, you place your payment in a tray rather than handing them the money directly.  Then they place your change in the tray.

• It seems the Japanese have worked really hard to make anything unpleasant, as pleasant as possible - the fancy toilets, the music on the garbage trucks.

• The escalator etiquitte is interesting.  In Tokyo you ride the escalator on the left so people can run up on the right if they are in a hurry.  But in Osaka, you ride the escalator on the right and run on the left.  It’s very confusing.

• They drive on the left in Japan, so you walk everywhere on the left too but there are enough Westerners in Japan to make that whole which-side-of-the-street-do-you-walk-on confusing.

• I love the bowing.  They bow for many interactions and I think it’s great. It seems kind and respectful.

Bathrooms

The bathrooms in Japan deserve their own section.

• It is always an adventure going into public restrooms.  You never know what you are going to find.  The restrooms are always clean with lots of instructions in the stalls - “Only put toilet paper in the toilets.”  “Set your kid here.”  “Flush here.”  “Don’t stand on the toilet.” (Whose standing on the toilet?) So many signs in the stalls.

• I have been in a public restroom where you can push a button and get water noise.  I don’t know if that is to help you potty or to hide that you are pooping.  Another public restroom had a button to play music “for privacy.”

• Yet another public restroom (actually 2 of them) simply had a hole in the floor surrounded by porcelain and a little porcelain lip that went up on one side. The porcelain was oblong in shape In the Osaka airport, one of their stalls was just one of those porcelain holes.  I should have looked to see if that stall had a bunch of instructional signs like the regular stalls.

• In many of the public restrooms, they will have a little urinal close to the ground.  I am assuming that is for the little boys with their mothers.

• It was also common to see nursing rooms.  The one in the airport was super fancy with a microwave and other items I could not identify as I passed.

• The Japanese have perfected the integrated bidet.  That whole separate bidet the Europeans have is so pedestrian and not nearly as useful as the ones in Japan.  Except for the holes, I haven’t been in a single public restroom stall that did not have some fancy bidet with miscellaneous features.

• It takes a while to learn what all the pictures mean on the buttons by the toilets, but once you do they make sense.

Summary

I am sure I am missing other cultural differences but those are the highlights.

Overall, we absolutely love Japan and look forward to returning in the Spring for the Cherry Blossoms.

On to Bankok, Thailand where we will spend a month.  I am worried about my tolerance for the heat but you never know until you try, right?