Disney Land and Money Changers: 21 – 23.10.2013

On our final day in Japan, Yuki – our couch surfing host – and I went off to Tokyo Disney Land to be in our element, whilst Jake went off to his version of Disney Land – Tsukiji Market area and the cooking/kitchen streets and of Tokyo… We left each other near Akihabara in the early morning and all three of us had an amazing day.

Disney Land was, to put it simply, incredible.Yuki and I had so much fun and walked around in a daze of pure joy, feeling like  children again as we queued excitedly for rides, squealed through the highs and lows of the roller coasters, pointed excitedly, marveled at the costumes, decorations and the elaborate Halloween parades, ate Mickey Mouse shaped ice creams and burgers, popcorn and onigiri, and generally had an incredible day. Yuki and I walked around with massive smiles permanently on our faces; putting culture aside, the day spent at Disney Land was just so brilliant.

When we met Jake late in the evening at the train station, he’d had a wonderful day too – eating at the very first Yoshinoya in Tsukiji, looking in knife and cooking shops, exploring and generally doing what he loved. Although he’d already eaten 280Y beef bowls twice that day, the three of us went together to Yoshinoya near by for a final meal of gyu don together… I will miss this.

Saying goodbye to Yuki that evening saw us both crying – we’d met a week ago as strangers and were saying goodbye as friends. I know we’ll meet again somewhere in the world…

We then took a train, a monorail, passed through customs and officially left Japan, took an 8 hour plane journey, passed through more customs, took a bus and then a train, finally arriving back at one of our “home away from homes” at our usual hostel in downtown Chinatown in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
We were home, for now, and needed ‘the usual’ – roti cannai and teh tarik from our local.

We had two days in KL basically as a transit between Japan and Myanmar; the only thing we wanted and needed to do here was get out an amount of crisp, perfect, clean, crinkle and crease free, new-ish (older than 2006) US dollar notes… $100 and $50 notes preferable. We needed enough to last us our entire stay in Myanmar.

We though this would be a reasonably simple task. Pay the Malayisan money to a bank or money exchanger and walk out with sparkling US dollars.
In theory it’s reasonably simple.
In reality, it was not.

Countless banks, money exchangers, dirty/old/stamped/stained/creased/crinkled notes that we had to turn down and cups of teh tarik, and finally, we had our US dollars… Now the challenge is, how do we make sure they stay perfectly flat and beautiful for the next month?

…

Two days and nights in KL and pretty much all we’ve done is eat, drink teh tarik and visit possibly every bank and money changer in the Chinatown area… and there are a lot!
But, we accomplished what we’d needed to and were pretty content… that was, until the alarm went off at 2:15 am on the morning of the 24th and we had to haul our packs onto our back, walk out into the dark night, empty streets and rain, hail a taxi and take a bus to the airport…

Finally, after much anticipation, we are Myanmar bound.