1K words: You lucky bastard!! I always thought those things looked amazing. I love the idea of staying in a room which is surrounded by water - like a room-island.
Did it have a glass floor, or kind of window thing so you could see beneath you? I reckon I could sit and watch that for hours, like an aquarium but the actual living ocean right underneath you.
Best places I visited/lived:
Japan - utterly unique and seemingly endless cultural oddities to discover. I preferred the limited time I spent in the southern regions to the central big cities; Tokyo and Osaka can be fun, but too intense for long stays. Sharing a city with 12+ million people is a strangely isolating experience, no matter how many friends you have there. Well, that was my experience anyway.
Cambodia - not always an easy place to travel through, but I thought the people were remarkably honest compared to Thailand and Vietnam, and there are so many stunning places to visit, both natural (jungles and the most amazing waterfalls I've seen, with no tourists if you get off the beaten track a bit - just a few local kids splashing around) and man-made (Angkor Wat, obviously a stand-out). The towns and cities are a mixed experience. Phnom Penh has all-sorts, and can be confronting even for open minded, well-travelled people. I went to a club for locals (with a Khmer friend, no, not a prostitute) and it was surreal. There was a sign out the front saying "No hand-grenades allowed inside". Khmers like to drink hard, and they don't always handle it well. It can be unsettling when you know that a lot of people there are armed (with guns, hand-grenades had to be left at home
)
Indonesia: So diverse. So divided. So unstable. So corrupt. But takes my vote for the most amazing travelling I've ever done. Sumartra, Central Java, the Gillis (a little group of three (four?) tiny islands where anything goes. Absolutely nuts. Had my hardest and most profound mushroom trip of my life there. The effect was so powerful there was a two month afterglow and I have no doubt that it changed me forever, for the better.
Other places:
Canada - only got to see Vancouver, unfortunately, and while it's lovely in the summer, it's not exotic or interesting like the places above. Also, absolutely hated the tipping system, and the fact that the prices on the supermarket shelves don't include the local tax (their kind of GST thing), so when you get to the register it's more than you expected. Downtown Vancouver is a stunning city, but go a few blocks to the East side and suddenly you're in a ghetto of seriously down and out drug addicts, with many homeless people sleeping on the pavement and people asking for change EVERYWHERE. I haven't had a sheltered life, but I was pretty surprised at how shabby that area was. It wasn't dangerous, it just felt that way due to the abundance of drug-dealers openly dealing in broad daylight, homeless people face down on the concrete, people clearly affected by crack or heroin loitering around in groups, and many of the shops having bars across their windows.
Singapore - didn't do much for me. Weird that most people spoke English, but every time I caught a cab the driver would be a chinese-speaker and seem not to know a word of English.
Thailand - mixed experiences. Nice place for a holiday, but kind of touristed to death. Got very, very sick of having to fight not to be ripped off at every turn.
