we were back in Asia, where did the time go?

28 to 30 April 2005

As they say, “Time flies while you are having fun.” I guess we must be having
too much fun. Suddenly, we were already on our 249th day, in Tokyo.
And in a few more days, we would be back where we started.
One full circle. Back in Singapore.

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Time flew. And faster than ever too. We lost one day when we flew
from San Francisco to Tokyo.

That’s the business card of our hotel.
Very tiny rooms… Japanese-styled.

And the map is behind.

We walked a lot in Tokyo. But we didn’t walk to New York.
We took a Metro. It’s actually Odaiba with the Statue of Liberty.

It was the end of April 2005. Almost the end of our trip.

leaving USA, the big security search

26 to 27 April 2005

We were nominated for a 40 minutes security check at the San Francisco
Airport while leaving for Tokyo. We have to remove our shoes and our packs
were extensively strip-searched. Luckily we weren’t searched like our packs.
I almost thought we were going to miss our flight.

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And we were back to shopping…

…with some Castro sight-seeing…

…and our flight to Tokyo.

ups and downs and ups and downs and ups

23 to 25 April 2005

After two days of window shopping, we finally took some time off to sight-see. Golden Gate Bridge. Lombard Street. And it’s the usual sights in San Francisco’s hilly streets.

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My sketch of that famous red bridge.

We got a taste of Japan in Japan Town before getting to Tokyo
in a few days.

shopping days in San Francisco

21 to 22 April 2005

Our first two days in San Francisco seemed like shopping days. Just going from stores to stores to stores. Actually I was hoping to meet up with some friends here and go climbing in the nearby crags. But couldn’t find them. Sigh…

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We stayed in Ling’s friend, Tony’s crib. Saved us quite some money. Actually, quite a lot of money.

Trolley ticket. Muni tickets.

end of Mexico, end of Spanish

20 April 2005

We retired our Spanish today. We woke up in Mexico, and by evening we were in San Francisco.

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The Puerto Vallarta postcard.

BART ticket. It’s like the MRT in Singapore.