Narita Airport, Chiba, Japan

ah ha! bet you all thought that narita airport or new tokyo international airport(apparently thats what narita translates to) is in tokyo right? wrong! its 2hrs away from tokyo(and i'm not just talking downtown tokyo here) and its in chiba county. fast fact.

so anyway here i am back in narita airport where i had started off my american trail blog. i'm really super duper wooper excited to be heading back to singapore. i don't think words will be able to substatially express that excitement towards the plans i have, the people i miss and of course the places and food i missed.

the plane ride here from chicago took 13hrs. it was absolutely uncomfortable, i dunno how i managed to tahan the whole ride considering i couldn't sleep a single wink. dunno how i survived the trip there too(must've been the excitement). anyway i got lucky(as always), flying alone has got its perks if you're willing to look for them, i was placed in the centre seat of a three-seater by the window. so naturally the three people seating there couldn't have known each other prior to the flight. but i guess we three were in a sociable mood so we managed to chat up. on my left was a japanese dentist(must be rich) who spoke fluent english, lived in tokyo and has lots to ask about singapore and say about japan. and on my right was a vietnamese canadian lady heading back to vietnam for the first time in 5 years who had even more to say about vietnam. she was headed for ho chi minh city. so it was nice to have their company all through the flight, there was alot to talk about wow about and laugh about...just in their company and i realised i've learned so much more about tokyo and vietnam.

eastern usa highlights

okie so i'm absolutely pissed that the blog i typed while in times square didn't turn out. had so much good stuff to write about but now its more of a monotonous narration of whatever i can remember.

so highlights were aplenty. lets see...

okie as far as i can remember, after our haagen dazs tour of duty, we left for philadelphia. its a really interesting city and it prides itself as one of the oldest cities in the usa dating all the way back when the united states of america only consisted of 13 states. so the tour of philly was a walking one for joe and i. spent the whole day on foot. we had parked our car at the airport(safest place we could find) and had taken the subway down for a whopping us$17. i think it was here that we walked the most in one day. possibly so. i dunno. still the highlight turned out to be an ugly one. we had walked so much that by the time it was time to go back it had turned dark. now i' gotta say that downtown philly is seriously one place you DO NOT WANNA BE when the sky gets dark. even the lonely planet tells you so. but no. we bopianz. hungry and ended up in mcdonald's. everywhere you see african americans. everywhere. i'm sure whatever estimate of their numbers after dark would be grossly underestimated since you can't see them all. okie so joe and i were happily enjoying our big mac meals when this hobo comes and ask us for money. xianz. i mean its bad enough that they harass you on the streets but in a restaurant? that takes the cake. anyway i came up with this whole bull dropping tale(then again alot of it as true) about how we're really poor students who have no money and live out of our car. so finally the guy relents and is willing to accept whatever loose change we've got and i give him a grand total of 11 cents, though he left pissed and even chided me for calling him `dude'. such gratitude. still it instilled enough fear in us to be wathcing our backs the moment we left the macs and for once in my life i was so relieved to find a train station. its weird cuz once we were in the underground, almost everyone down there was white! how queer. they probably have a secret tunnel to congregate there bah. wonder where all the asians hide?

so that was it for philly. we drove off early next morning. found ourselve sin atlantic city! the vice haven of the east. whatever you can think of drugs sex gambling, all also have. just not as glam as las vegas definitely. i wasted about us$40 in the tropicana casino but the main highlight was me getting chatted up by hookers both on my way to the hotel and from. it is good to note that we checked into a hotel less than 50m from the casino and i got chatted up a grand total of 4 times! forgot what they said exxactly but the most straightforward(desperate bitch) was something like "i'd love to suck that juicy cock of yours, big boy...". now how'd she know i was a big boy?

we left the next day and found ourselves in washington dc. whoo. nice place and its got all the monuments and memorials that you always see on tv. also the new ww2 memorial really looked very good and majestic. main sights included the reflecting pool and the abraham lincoln memorial where martin luther king jr delivered his "l have a dream..." speech, senator john kerry spoke out against the vietnam war, and where jenny waded towards forrest in the movie forrest gump. so it actually felt pretty surreal just to stand on the steps of the memorial and imagine how it all played out. also the mall, capitol hill, the white house and most memorably, the smithsonian museums. most of these places have got super high security. so it was a good thing we walked around without any bags. the museums i've gotta say are one of the best i've ever seen in my life and whats even better is that they were free! whoo! so we got to see alot of dinosaur bones and learn alot about american history and even see the hope diamond(does anyone know what that is?).

finally it was up to new york city! whoo! i can't gush about it enough. it just feels so right ot be there and i sometimes feel like i fit right in. just like in chicago. so the biggest gushing highlight that will make everyone jealous is that joe and i managed to catch 3 broadway shows in a mere 2 days! we watched mamma mia(abba fans will LURVE it), chicago(starring wayne brady from "whose line is it anyway?" - he was hilarious!) and the lion king(best propped theatrical ever ever ever - heck they even managed to put an elephant on stage!) and we spent on about us$63 on ALL 3 shows! thats the recommended price if you're willing to stand for over 2hrs per show. but with our strong legs, it was well worth it. cuz for us$20 you get to stand on the first level of the theatre, which are really small(like the one in raffles hotel) and they're right behind the us$80 seats. there's really nothing to complain about.

so we also visted times square alot, naturally since the theatres were along broadway and times square. times square is really like the billboard advertising capital of the world man. its amazing that you'd spend more time reading the billboards than noticing the stores beneath them. and there's an ultra HUGE toys'r'us there which has an indoor ferris wheel and 2-storey barbie doll house. wow. its been featured on the apprentice before. aside from that we went to battery park to see the tiny little dot that was the statue of liberty(no point taking the ferry to see it since it was so overpriced and the queues were crazy long). also went to ground zero. it felt kinda grim and surreal to be there and just trying to imagine all the drama and panic that went on in the final hours of the collapse of the twin towers was enough to keep us both in sombre moods while we were there. haiz. okie and then we saw the empire state building and the rockafeller centre. and then we spent a whole lot of time just walking the streets of new york. its really a joy to walk but a pain to drive. so if anyone of you's ever there, walk.

guess thats enough of recollection for one blog. i'm gonna go take a huge shit now and then go to my boarding gate liaoz. will be reaching singapore around midnight. can't wait.