Wakayama Road Trip

Another road trip of the year. I think I told someone I'll try not to take any trip this year since I did quite some much last (academic) year already. But well... I still found my way to hit the road again. I guess it is in my instinct! haha.

This trip, I have to thank P'Taew, my really good friend here who organized everything for us. Also for the Senrioka House members to arrange transportation and P'Jung for our yummy food.

We crashed at Senrioka House for a night before taking off early morning on Saturday (6/25). After a few hours drive and got a bit lost, we made our way to Shirahama Beach, a white sand beach along the coast of Wakayama Prefecture. Someone said that the sand there is pure white because it's imported from Australia. How true is it? ;-) (I think it's probably true though.. hee hee) We spent I don't know how long at the beach swimming out there. It was actually my first time swimming with all those funky looking floating stuff. (It's obviously not the tube - how do you call that?!?!) We played some ball games and traced back to our childhood 'Balloon' game we meant to play at the Kansai Student Sport Day a few weeks back but unfortunately did not. It was pretty fun and yeah.. my team won too!! ;-)

After having enough of the sea water, we started moving our butts over to the hilly side of Wakayama. The drive we took was totally into the forrest and it took probably 2-3 hours for just a 40 kilo distance. But as you can see, there weren't that many cars around, so we had plenty of fun times taking pictures along the road. :)　The trees surrounding the area were SOOOO green. Really mind-refreshing! We ended up at 'Hyakugen Sankeidani Camp Jo' , our destination around 7 p.m. The place was super duper nice. We were so happy cuz it took us a really long time to get there, but it was in the middle of nowhere. So glad it turned out to be a very impressive camp ground. There were a few bangalows, but only 2 or 3 occupied when we arrived. The bangalow we rented was for 10-people use. The terrace was overlooking a beautiful stream with dining table enough to fit all 10 of us and the BBQ set. Actually there were BBQ area provided for us, but we prefered to stay at the back terrace and enjoyed ourselves more. It didn't take us that long to get settled down and started our long awaited dinner. P'Jung brought us raw papaya, so we had a REAL Som~ Tum (papaya salad). Just mention all the required ingredients - we had them all! :9

After filling up our stomach, you know what we did! ...
We also had an acoustic guitar session too. hee hee. Maybe that was how I lost my voice over the past week?!?! =P

The morning came... we got ready pretty fast in the morning and kept quite a good time control, meaning to leave early for our main dish 'rafting' at the border of Wakayama and Nara Prefecture. But well, unfortunately, we had to change our plan, so we ended up going to Marine City in Wakayama City instead. We stopped by this Fish Market nearby Marine City for lunch. The raw fish there was REALLY GOOD!!! You see it yourself! ;-)

After lunch we took a little walk around the fishing area, then enjoyed our soybean ice cream while resting for a while. On the way back, we stopped by Rinku Town for a little shopping. It was so interesting seeing how Japanese take care of the disables. Everywhere you go, there are always services for them. We got the wheelchairs for our injured Ae everywhere we stopped by that day, got the priority parking spot right by the entrance and so on. We jokingly said that the next time we go somewhere, we should make one of our friends the disable, so we could get all those priorities! nah.. nah.. it was just a joke. We aren't that cruel!! =P


We reached back to Senrioka pretty late that night, just right on time to return our rental car. I didn't get back home to Kyoto until nearly midnight. So exhausted, but yet a very fun and experienced trip. I think we got it all!

(Trip Details)
Destination: Shirahama Beach, Hyakugen Sankeidani Camp Ground, Marine City (Wakayama Prefecture) and Rinku Town Outlet Mall (Osaka)
Date: June 25-26, 2005
Trip members: pTaew, pTum, pJung, Ae, He, Taweii, Ple, Poy, Jill and me