Travel Tour

Continuing our Hokkaido tour, my wife and I, together with the rest of the tour group, arrived at the picturesque town of Biel one warm afternoon. Biel is famous for its magnificent fields and plains sloping beautifully complementing one another on the different mixes of colours against the backdrop of majestic mountains, simply breathtaking, it was just like a giant rainbow palette! Just look at the photo below! My wife and I were thrilled at arriving at one of these farms (not too sure the name of this farm, but believe t is near Tomita farm) and experienced the sights and aroma of the plethora of flowers in a myriad of different colours. My wife and I were particularly attracted to the Lavender flowers, which is famed in the region. Prior to visiting Hokkaido, I have only paid fleeting attention to Lavender, only knowing that the flower has romantic connotations. Coming to Hokkaido, I was fully enlightened on the usefulness of the flower, how these aromatic flowers are being harvest...

On the last night of our Hokkaido tour, after a frenzied shopping trail trying to cover as much of the shopping malls, streets and sights in Sapporo, the largest city in Hokkaido, my wife and I arrived at Susukino, the largest entertainment as well as red light district in Hokkaido! We stumbled on Susukino innocuously and left with ‘eyes wide open’! Save for the brightly-lit buildings and neon lights of the billboards of the towering buildings, we found the district a tad dimmer than our Orchard Road or City areas, that was a bit surprising to me as I thought that an entertainment as well as a red light district, even billed as the largest in Sapporo, should look quite bright like our world-(in)famous Geylang red light district. When you are at Susukino, do not ever think of seeing dozens of young, pretty and sexily-dressed Japanese girls at the roadside, beckoning to you, brazenly and boldly dragging you for a ‘discussion’. No, there are no such things in Susukino and we were briefed ...

When my Dear and I were at Hokkaido, the days of our tour flew really fast! There are a couple of reasons for this. First, with Hokkaido being near the north pole, days start early and nights come fast. When my wife and I woke up on the mornings of our hotel stays around 5.30 am, it seemed dark like in Singapore around this time but as we opened the thick curtains, we were surprised that the skies were already as bright as 8 am, in Singapore! Our six days in Hokkaido passed really fast as nightfall comes around 530 pm as the skies start to get darker. With a bulk of our tour everyday spent in tour coaches as we got from one place of interest to another, departing from 8 am from the hotel everyday, it is really a blessing that the weather was kind to our tour group on whatever precious little time we had at each travel destination except the last day when it was drizzling. If it were rainy, some mountain ascents would not have been possible and it would be indeed inconvenient to c...