We're fine

There is Paul in Tokyo :)

Discretion

It's the middle of the night. I'm quietly making my way to the bathroom in the dark not to wake up Oskar and Wolfram.

I sat on the toilet and suddenly it makes the sound of flushing. That's the feature to mask the sound of peeing. 

Might be a great feature during the day but at night it's making loud and clear that you are visiting the toilet.

Luckily no one woke up.

A very long trip to Tokyo

We woke up at 3:45am, got ready, finished packing and left the house at 4:45am.

15 hours later we were at the Hilton in Tokyo.

What happened in the meantime?

We flew for 7 hours.

We cleared customs and got our luggage - 1 hour.

Wolfram queued to activate our Japan rail passes for a very long hour.

We took the Narita express to Tokyo station - 1 hour

We picked up our wifi device in the hotel where we had booked initially near Tokyo station and then took the subway to Shinjuku station - 1 hour at rush hours. I won't elaborate on the challenge it was with all the people, the luggage and the limited number of escalators.

We finally took the hotel shuttle which were were lucky to only wait for 10min.

We were dead by the time we reached the hotel. Oskar had fever again after a day without. We quickly unpacked, ordered dinner and by 9pm the whole family was in bed.

Exhausted but happy!

We go? We don't go?

Two days before our flight to Japan Oskad started to have fever. Very high fever. Despite all our effort, we could not bring his temperature down. On the eve of our flight, Tess and I took him to the pediatrician. In the absence of any other symptoms, she concluded it was either viral and there is nothing we can do but wait or a urine infection. To exclude that possibility, Oskar had to suffer through a blood test and a urine bag for a urine test. Two hours later we had confirmation  it was not a urine infection or any bacterial infection. 

Net, it's viral and we can only wait until it passes. 

The question then is can we go to Japan or not? 

She said there is no reason why Oskar can't fly. If fever has not dropped by Monday, go see a doctor there. "It's Japan, they have good doctors."

Obviously Japanese doctors have a good reputation.

Still what shall we do?

Cancel the trip or power through?

After two hours on the phone with Expedia, it became clear that our so called changeable flight was in reality not changeable because first they say it had to be moved within one month from tomorrow, then it became within 14 days, and anyway they can only rebook us in a much more expensive fare doubling the initial cost. It was extremely frustrating to hear how the policy was changing as we were talking. Clearly their objective is to make money.

Note for self: do not travel with Expedia in the future and do get the travel insurance when traveling with a kid. 

200g or so

Pikachu is steadily growing now about 14cm head to bud and around 200g.

Like Oskar, Pikachu likes to kick, especially my bladder. For the moment, these are still gentle soft kicks. It will get more painful once Pikachu is bigger.

5 more months to wait...

Mango season

We may not have strawberries from Plougastel in the Singapore but we have mangoes!

Season just started and we are buying 8-10 a week. As everything else, it won't last forever so we are enjoying as many as we can :) 

Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve

Today, we went to the far North of Singapore to explore Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve. Practically, we took a taxi, drove 20min or so and we were at the North border of Singapore. Malaysia was just across the sea.
After establishing a few rules (after all, it is Singapore), Oskar lead the way into the wetland.

 

Yes, Oskar can read maps already!
The reserve is full of wild animals presented in the park brochure.

Our first encounter was... spiders. They were everywhere and especially hanging on their web just above your head. After several of them I decided to stop looking up.

The reserve is nicely set so that we could use the stroller while "exploring the wild". We were most a bit too late to see the birds but luckily, monitor lizards are very common in Singapore so they saved the day.

The big emotion came from having a glimpse at a crocodile. We were on the bridge back and suddenly, there is was in the water. No chance to take a picture, but wow, that was a crocodile in the river just beneath us. Not from the zoo, a real wild crocodile. When you think of it is kind of scary to know that they are just out there and I strongly doubt that the below suggested behavior will be of help should you face one on your path.

Because we were super lucky, we also saw a snake. Wolfram says it's a king cobra and I am having a hard time to believe we were only a few steps away from such a poisonous snake.

On top of seeing so many creatures of the wild, the scenery was simply beautiful. Here are a few examples.