July 19th, 2008- Arrive Yichang. Tango Bar Anyone?
We arrived pretty early into Yichang and set off for the hotel. Dragon had a coach (bus) that met us outside the train station and took us to "our" hotel. After about 20 minutes in the lobby and after a couple of us went up to some rooms, we were informed that we were in the wrong hotel. We then had to cab it down the road to the right one. Meanwhile we lost the English couple Yasmeen and Soujbie because their cab took them to the wrong hotel. They eventually resurfaced and we checked in. We had lunch at the hotel and then went off on our "orientation" tour which didn't consist of much because the town didn't have much at all to do. It was really just a stopping point before our Yangtze River cruise. We got to tour our first Chinese supermarket which was quite strange. There was no air conditioning so it started to get muggy real quick. The meat wasn't really refrigerated and it just smelled weird. They also don't really refrigerate any of their dairy products here either. The yoghurt is pretty warm even when you get it right out of their "fridge."And we headed back to the hotel.
We gathered downstairs for dinner at around 7. Dragon took us to this restaurant down the street from the hotel which he described as "cheap." So basically cheap meant gross. It was a banquet lunch where we shared the dishes and I only ended up eating like 6 potatoes because I couldn't really stomach the other stuff. Someone in America told me before I left that in China they treat their beef in formaldehyde to make it tender. So anytime we are eating beef I'm wondering about the formaldehyde thing and I quickly start losing my appetite. I'm not a frog, I'm not looking to be preserved. On the way out we walked back downstairs and had to go through the main dining hall where everyone was staring at us and this waiter/cook was walking with a live fish in his hand he just pulled out of the tank and I kinda shrieked because you could still see its gills moving. The Chinese have really taken the term fresh catch to heart.
The group wanted to hit the town. We first tried the hotel bar which was a let down because they had a spending minimum and not really any alcohol. So we headed to a place Dragon led us to. But first, Dragon stopped for a snack of duck necks at a local shop. He was then carrying them in a little plastic bag with him to the bar we ended up at called the Tango Bar. I can honestly say I've never seen anyone eat duck necks in a dance club before and then I came to China. We had to go through a metal detector which went off every time someone went through but the staff didn't do anything so it was kind of confusing. Maybe they saw a 50 Cent video and thought it would be a cute accessory to the decor because it didn't really seem to serve much of a purpose otherwise. They led us to a booth which was kinda like table service at an American bar. It was a little crazy because we were the only foreigners in there and the club was packed full of Chinese people dancing in their random style. They kind of just swayed side to side with the music. The music was a compilation of Chinese remixes of popular songs with mismatched videos being played on the TVs throughout the room. Then at separate times a guy and a girl would get on a platform and sing along to a track and they were actually quite impressive. The guy sang a remix of Backstreet Boys which was definitely a crowd favorite. Definitely a flash back to the popular songs of high school. Dragon sure danced his heart out. It was definitely a top night. The bar closed at midnight though so it was kind of an early night.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Yeah I Kick Ass and Cook!
July 17th, 2008- Nothing Says Chinese Culture Quite Like Cooking School and Kung Fu!
Julie and I got to sleep "late" until 8:30am because the first of our planned activities for the day didn't start until 9:30am. At Lisa's Mountain View Lodge you can book all these different activities and they send someone to pick you up to take you to the activity. The owner of the lodge, Lisa became quite infamous with our group because she did everything from book tours, to serve food, to do laundry, to run two separate hotels. She was pretty much amazing and if you don't believe me she was even mentioned in Lonely Planet and that is definitely an indicator of fame. So our first activity for the day was to go to cooking school. So our "head chef" who's name was Panda came to pick us up at 9:30am. The funny thing about Panda is she weighed maybe 80 pounds and was about 4 foot 10. She spoke really good English. We then headed to pick up our fellow chefs at another hostel. There were eight of us total; 4 English boys from Oxford, 2 Swedes and us. We were told to pick two meat and one vegetable dish between us from this list and we would cook the same things in a group. We picked sizzling beef, guang bao chicken and vegetable dumplings. But one of the English boys was a vegetarian and went and made things more difficult for Panda and wanted three vegetarian dishes all for himself to cook. I don't think he knows that there is no such thing as vegetarians in China, they'll eat anything and everything here (which we soon quickly found out).
What would a cooking school be without a trip to the local market to pick out our produce and meats? So off we went. Its hard to picture anything quite so grotesquely smelling and disgusting looking than this market. We were asked by Panda outside the market "who wants to see the dog?" (Yes they do serve that here and it really is only a big deal to foreigners). I thought I misheard her but she repeated it and I quickly said I would not like to see it so Julie and I were guided on a different route through the market by some of Panda's helpers. There was produce on the tables and on the floor. There were puddles of what could be water/animal guts gathered all over. The fish were crammed into buckets too small and looked like they were about to fly out. The red meat was literally nailed to the table and the same guy who was wearing no shirt and rubbing his belly was also cutting the meat with his bare hands and a cleaver. What a sight! The sickest part was that all the food served in this town came from that market so thats all I could think about anytime I ate again in Yangshou. This was the point where I started to want to become a vegetarian.
Then we were off to our cooking location which was actually the top floor of a restaurant off set on a patio in a nicely air conditioned room. We were basically cooking using a wok. The best part is we were given a hat and apron, which pretty much makes anyone an master chef. First came food prep for each dish then we would cook one, eat it then cook the next. It was a pretty good deal because it ended up being like $12USD for three hours of entertainment and lunch. But I did have a little trouble actually eating the sizzling beef after that market trip.
We then had to get ready for our next activity; Kung Fu. The thing about signing up for these classes offered by Lisa is that you didn't really know the details so basically anything could happen. This was exactly the case for Kung Fu. I thought it was going to be a nice little demonstration of some Kung Fu moves and we would practice them. Not in China. Instead it was an hour long Kung Fu cardio class. For this class, Julie and I weren't the only participants from our group. We were also accompanied by Henry (American), Sarah (English), and Hannah (German). We were met by our Kung Fu instructor in the lobby and we were escorted to his dojo. When we got there we met our other fellow participants. There was a little 5 year old boy with his parents, and two shirtless blond guys who turned out to be like 16 and 19 years old guys from the Netherlands studying marshal arts and learning English in Yangshou. A little eye candy never hurt anyone and they basically demonstrated the moves for us to perform. So the first thing our instructor does is tell us to jog around in a circle... and reverse. It was a pretty intense workout to say the least. The whole time the instructor was just kind of giggling to himself because I'm sure we looked ridiculous, I know I felt ridiculous. Oh did I mention he trained in Shaolin for 7 years. He was most impressed by Sarah because he could tell she actually had some practice in this whole marshal arts thing, she had studied tae kwondo for over twelve years. Sarah later told me that the Kung Fu instructor was also the Mandarin instructor for another class that Lisa offered.
Our next big activity was the Yangshou light show. Julie had read about it in her book and to say she was extremely excited for it would be an understatement. We knew it had to be good because Lisa herself had seen it three times and said it was "amazing". Our Kung Fu instructor said it was "perfect". So pretty much rave reviews from all the important locals. Our initial expectations was that it was going to be like us and three other sucker tourists who showed up to watch a couple lasers on a wall. Boy we're we wrong. It turned out that this light show is the biggest thing this town does. We had to take a mini-coach to the outdoor theatre where it is held. It was basically an outside theatre with around 2000 seats set up looking towards where the Lijiang River and Tianjia River meet with the mountains in the background. The place was packed full. It's hard to describe the actual show but Julie and I agreed it was basically an opera on water. There must have been like 150-200 performers in the actual show which was just crazy. The only drawback was that there were like 4 loud yelling Chinese kids behind us who kept re-arranging their seating and hitting me in the process. Apparently I was the only one who noticed how annoying they were because their parents sure didn't. Ahh China.
When we returned we went for dinner to the same place as the night before. We then took a stroll through town and I finally got the courage to get my t-shirt done. I basically sat on a stool on a street while an old Chinese guy painted my face onto a t-shirt while all these people watched and stared. I had my hair back in a pony tail so the guy basically painted me with extremely short hair. Besides basically looking bald it kinda looks like me. I even signed my name at the bottom. I'm not sure who I'll be giving that to as a gift when I get back.
July 18th, 2008- Flying Dutchman. Not just the name of a ship in the Pirate's of the Caribbean.
We only had till the afternoon in Yangshou until we had to catch our next overnight train headed for Xi'an. So Julie and I decided to grab breakfast down the road at the Flying Dutchman Cafe. I of course ordered the All-American Breakfast which wasn't very American at all. I received some weird yoghurt (yes that's how they spell it here) with Museli in it, eggs, bacon, toast and the seasonal juice (which literally turned out to be blended pieces of watermelon in a glass, seeds and all). After lunch we booked ourselves some massages. I personally have never had a massage before so I didn't know what to expect but we talked to another woman on the tour who went and got one the previous day and it didn't sound like they were too invasive here in their methods. So we once again booked it at Lisa's and a younger woman who spoke pretty good English came to get us this time and she took us to Dr. Ling's (who apparently specialized in so many traditional and herbal specialities that she wasn't actually available to perform massages listed in the brochure so we got some other subsitutes). So we were taken to a room upstairs and were followed by a guy and a girl. The woman who lead us there asked us "who wants a harder massage" and when I repeated the question to Julie, this conveyed to her that I wanted it, whoops on my part. So I was assigned the guy and Julie was assigned the girl. We were in the same room at least. It was definitely a hands on experience to say the least and I'll leave it at that.
We had a little time before our scheduled tutorial of majong (you know, that cool tile game you see in pictures) at four so we took a walk down by the Li River. When we returned for our majong lesson we were informed the instructor was running behind so someone else would take us over to the location. The location ended up being Lisa's other business; Lisa's Cafe. It was weird because we just sat there for a bit and then these like 18 year old boys came to teach us. So majong pretty much was like a clever, all out version of rummy with Chinese tiles. It was only an hour lesson so we didn't master it quite yet but it was pretty much amazing anyways.
We then met up with everyone to catch our coach back to the train station in Guilin; same fun, different train. We once again tried to hit up the dining cart but were shut down immediately and had to trek back 8 carriages in the dark, lame one China. At this point we were starting to feel like they didn't really like foreigners in this country.
Julie and I got to sleep "late" until 8:30am because the first of our planned activities for the day didn't start until 9:30am. At Lisa's Mountain View Lodge you can book all these different activities and they send someone to pick you up to take you to the activity. The owner of the lodge, Lisa became quite infamous with our group because she did everything from book tours, to serve food, to do laundry, to run two separate hotels. She was pretty much amazing and if you don't believe me she was even mentioned in Lonely Planet and that is definitely an indicator of fame. So our first activity for the day was to go to cooking school. So our "head chef" who's name was Panda came to pick us up at 9:30am. The funny thing about Panda is she weighed maybe 80 pounds and was about 4 foot 10. She spoke really good English. We then headed to pick up our fellow chefs at another hostel. There were eight of us total; 4 English boys from Oxford, 2 Swedes and us. We were told to pick two meat and one vegetable dish between us from this list and we would cook the same things in a group. We picked sizzling beef, guang bao chicken and vegetable dumplings. But one of the English boys was a vegetarian and went and made things more difficult for Panda and wanted three vegetarian dishes all for himself to cook. I don't think he knows that there is no such thing as vegetarians in China, they'll eat anything and everything here (which we soon quickly found out).
What would a cooking school be without a trip to the local market to pick out our produce and meats? So off we went. Its hard to picture anything quite so grotesquely smelling and disgusting looking than this market. We were asked by Panda outside the market "who wants to see the dog?" (Yes they do serve that here and it really is only a big deal to foreigners). I thought I misheard her but she repeated it and I quickly said I would not like to see it so Julie and I were guided on a different route through the market by some of Panda's helpers. There was produce on the tables and on the floor. There were puddles of what could be water/animal guts gathered all over. The fish were crammed into buckets too small and looked like they were about to fly out. The red meat was literally nailed to the table and the same guy who was wearing no shirt and rubbing his belly was also cutting the meat with his bare hands and a cleaver. What a sight! The sickest part was that all the food served in this town came from that market so thats all I could think about anytime I ate again in Yangshou. This was the point where I started to want to become a vegetarian.
Then we were off to our cooking location which was actually the top floor of a restaurant off set on a patio in a nicely air conditioned room. We were basically cooking using a wok. The best part is we were given a hat and apron, which pretty much makes anyone an master chef. First came food prep for each dish then we would cook one, eat it then cook the next. It was a pretty good deal because it ended up being like $12USD for three hours of entertainment and lunch. But I did have a little trouble actually eating the sizzling beef after that market trip.
We then had to get ready for our next activity; Kung Fu. The thing about signing up for these classes offered by Lisa is that you didn't really know the details so basically anything could happen. This was exactly the case for Kung Fu. I thought it was going to be a nice little demonstration of some Kung Fu moves and we would practice them. Not in China. Instead it was an hour long Kung Fu cardio class. For this class, Julie and I weren't the only participants from our group. We were also accompanied by Henry (American), Sarah (English), and Hannah (German). We were met by our Kung Fu instructor in the lobby and we were escorted to his dojo. When we got there we met our other fellow participants. There was a little 5 year old boy with his parents, and two shirtless blond guys who turned out to be like 16 and 19 years old guys from the Netherlands studying marshal arts and learning English in Yangshou. A little eye candy never hurt anyone and they basically demonstrated the moves for us to perform. So the first thing our instructor does is tell us to jog around in a circle... and reverse. It was a pretty intense workout to say the least. The whole time the instructor was just kind of giggling to himself because I'm sure we looked ridiculous, I know I felt ridiculous. Oh did I mention he trained in Shaolin for 7 years. He was most impressed by Sarah because he could tell she actually had some practice in this whole marshal arts thing, she had studied tae kwondo for over twelve years. Sarah later told me that the Kung Fu instructor was also the Mandarin instructor for another class that Lisa offered.
Our next big activity was the Yangshou light show. Julie had read about it in her book and to say she was extremely excited for it would be an understatement. We knew it had to be good because Lisa herself had seen it three times and said it was "amazing". Our Kung Fu instructor said it was "perfect". So pretty much rave reviews from all the important locals. Our initial expectations was that it was going to be like us and three other sucker tourists who showed up to watch a couple lasers on a wall. Boy we're we wrong. It turned out that this light show is the biggest thing this town does. We had to take a mini-coach to the outdoor theatre where it is held. It was basically an outside theatre with around 2000 seats set up looking towards where the Lijiang River and Tianjia River meet with the mountains in the background. The place was packed full. It's hard to describe the actual show but Julie and I agreed it was basically an opera on water. There must have been like 150-200 performers in the actual show which was just crazy. The only drawback was that there were like 4 loud yelling Chinese kids behind us who kept re-arranging their seating and hitting me in the process. Apparently I was the only one who noticed how annoying they were because their parents sure didn't. Ahh China.
When we returned we went for dinner to the same place as the night before. We then took a stroll through town and I finally got the courage to get my t-shirt done. I basically sat on a stool on a street while an old Chinese guy painted my face onto a t-shirt while all these people watched and stared. I had my hair back in a pony tail so the guy basically painted me with extremely short hair. Besides basically looking bald it kinda looks like me. I even signed my name at the bottom. I'm not sure who I'll be giving that to as a gift when I get back.
July 18th, 2008- Flying Dutchman. Not just the name of a ship in the Pirate's of the Caribbean.
We only had till the afternoon in Yangshou until we had to catch our next overnight train headed for Xi'an. So Julie and I decided to grab breakfast down the road at the Flying Dutchman Cafe. I of course ordered the All-American Breakfast which wasn't very American at all. I received some weird yoghurt (yes that's how they spell it here) with Museli in it, eggs, bacon, toast and the seasonal juice (which literally turned out to be blended pieces of watermelon in a glass, seeds and all). After lunch we booked ourselves some massages. I personally have never had a massage before so I didn't know what to expect but we talked to another woman on the tour who went and got one the previous day and it didn't sound like they were too invasive here in their methods. So we once again booked it at Lisa's and a younger woman who spoke pretty good English came to get us this time and she took us to Dr. Ling's (who apparently specialized in so many traditional and herbal specialities that she wasn't actually available to perform massages listed in the brochure so we got some other subsitutes). So we were taken to a room upstairs and were followed by a guy and a girl. The woman who lead us there asked us "who wants a harder massage" and when I repeated the question to Julie, this conveyed to her that I wanted it, whoops on my part. So I was assigned the guy and Julie was assigned the girl. We were in the same room at least. It was definitely a hands on experience to say the least and I'll leave it at that.
We had a little time before our scheduled tutorial of majong (you know, that cool tile game you see in pictures) at four so we took a walk down by the Li River. When we returned for our majong lesson we were informed the instructor was running behind so someone else would take us over to the location. The location ended up being Lisa's other business; Lisa's Cafe. It was weird because we just sat there for a bit and then these like 18 year old boys came to teach us. So majong pretty much was like a clever, all out version of rummy with Chinese tiles. It was only an hour lesson so we didn't master it quite yet but it was pretty much amazing anyways.
We then met up with everyone to catch our coach back to the train station in Guilin; same fun, different train. We once again tried to hit up the dining cart but were shut down immediately and had to trek back 8 carriages in the dark, lame one China. At this point we were starting to feel like they didn't really like foreigners in this country.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Welcome to the Real China.
July 15th, 2008- Bye Hong Kong..Hello Overnight Train to Guilin
We were leaving for our overnight train at noon so my main mission was to ship a package of my clothes and stuff I didn't need to the hotel we end at in Beijing so I wouldn't have to carry it throughout the whole tour. I found a DHL shipping point in a metro train stop. After like a 20 minute ordeal I ended up shipping my package for $768 HKD which is over a hundred American. I was a little pissed about that.
We met up with everyone in the lobby, took taxi's to a train station, then took a train to the border of China, went through a sketchy customs checkpoint, and ended up in the Shenzhen train station where we had to wait 3 hours for our first of five overnight trains on the tour. We ended up finding this weird restaurant in the train station to have lunch before we got on the train. They kind of took us through this backwards entrance and put us in the back. I ended up getting fried beef noodles. The translated descriptions of the entrees were hilarious. For instance you could choose the "The silver tooth shredded meat fries the rice noodle." Or maybe you'd prefer the "According to burns the chicken to dig up the sandwich." Or one of my personal favorites "The ham intestines young fries the double egg." It was hard to concentrate on what to actually order because the names were so ridiculous, thank goodness for picture menues. None of them really made sense. I took a picture so I post that when I get back. We waited for the train and played a lot of cards. The Chinese people, mostly the children, just stared at us openly. The best part of this train station was that it was our first experience with a squat toilet. These bathrooms made port'o'pottys in America look like a Ritz Carlton bathroom. You could smell the ammonia a mile away. People did all their business in these and did not really flush anything. It is basically like a rectangular hole in the ground and you squat over it. Just one of China's many pleasures.
The fun part came when we had to board the train. We were right at the coral entrance and as soon as there were like 5 mins out from boarding all of a sudden like 300 people just appeared and started forming a mob, there are no such things as lines in China. Then they let us in and it was like a mad dash. Meanwhile I was dragging my suitcase. Our train car was way down the platform. The sleeping births in the train that we had were hard sleepers which consisted of six beds, three on each side and they were solid, key the name. There are 15 people on the tour and one tour leader so twelve of us were together and then four others shared theirs with locals. Those were the fun spots. I was with the group but the ones sharing it with locals we also sharing it with a baby. You haven't experienced fun till you've seen a baby on a train for 12 hours. The kid would just cry its head off and then one of the group would try to calm it. There was also a lot of spitting on the floor and rubbing it in to the carpet. But hey spitting is one of China's favorite past times. America has baseball, China has spitting. Lights turn off at 10pm so the group went for a nightcap at the dining car. Everyone ordered beer except me because I decided to get a "cocktail." This cocktail turned out to be a milky, peppermint, egg type drink served in a small glass. It was pretty much disgusting.
July 16th, 2008- Arrive in Guilin, Bus it to Yangshou
Our train arrived at 6:30 am into the town of Guilin. It was early in the morning but there were tons of people standing outside the gate waiting for people to get off the train. This was our first experience of "real" china. As we boarded our coach to take us to take us to Yangshou. As we passed through town there were tons of people walking and squatting on the streets. The cars and motorcycles were driving in and out, there were no real lanes for people to stay in. The craziest thing was the motorcycles/scooters; there would be anywhere from one to four people on a single scooter. They would put a kid on their laps or wedged in between two people on the bike. It was definitely different than what I'm used to. We got to Yuangshou like an hour and a half later and were dropped off in the middle of the town. We had a little mix up on hotels and we ended up a Lisa's Mountain View Lodge. It was some pretty nice digs. As we drove into town you could see the mountains the Guilin and Yangshou are known for. It was definitely a nice site to see after being in the bustling city of Hong Kong.
We headed off for our orientation tour by our tour leader Dragon and our bike ride through the mountains. I figured this was going to be a short 30 minute bike ride around town. This turned out to be a 4 and a half hour bike ride with a stop for lunch in the middle and a couple stop for photo ops throughout. It was a little intense, and we managed to lose somebody pretty early on and Dragon had to backtrack to find her. One of the most notable events of the bike ride was when we stopped for lunch at the half moon cafe which was conveniently located beneath a mountain called the half moon because there was a hole through it that looked coincidentally like half of a moon. As we approached this cafe we had to go up a slight hill and all of a sudden there were like seven older Chinese women running up the hill with us. We had no idea what was going on or what they wanted but we parked our bikes and then they started to talk to us in very basic English and fan us. After a couple of minutes we figured our that they wanted our old water bottles because they would claim them for a return fee and they also fill them up with water and resell them. It was a little crazy to see these 50 or 60 year old ladies just hanging out in the heat to collect empty water bottles from the tourists who would roll up. For lunch I enjoyed a cheese sandwich, fries and a coke. I was pretty intimidated by the Chinese food selections that we could have had. We were also presented with the option to hike up to the half moon mountain (applicable fees apply of course). Not a single person was up for that. When we rode back I talked to this English guy name Alistair about rock bands and general pop culture for most of the ride which helped me to avoid thinking about the actual bike ride and then it came car dodging time. We had to dodge scooters, bikes, cars, trucks, pedestrians and other obstacles on the ride back into town. I almost got hit a couple of times. We were all pretty much soaked in sweat by the end of the ride.
For dinner we ended up at this very "western" bar/restaurant that looked just like a laid back bar in America. Sticking with my commitment to the Chinese delicacies, I ordered a margarita pizza which basically tasted like a frozen pizza. But they did have 2 for 1 drink specials but the one stipulation was that the drinks had to be the same kind of drink so Julie and I split some margaritas. We then ended up roaming the streets and ended up at Lisa's other property called Lisa's Cafe where we had a couple more drinks. On the way though there was a group of Chinese girls who asked to take pictures with us. It was quite funny. While we were sitting there, there was this stall set up where these guys were drawing people's faces on t-shirts. It was pretty similar to something you'd get at the state fair and they were only charging 40RNB which was like 6USD. I really wanted one but the lines were getting a little much so I decided to save it for another day.
We were leaving for our overnight train at noon so my main mission was to ship a package of my clothes and stuff I didn't need to the hotel we end at in Beijing so I wouldn't have to carry it throughout the whole tour. I found a DHL shipping point in a metro train stop. After like a 20 minute ordeal I ended up shipping my package for $768 HKD which is over a hundred American. I was a little pissed about that.
We met up with everyone in the lobby, took taxi's to a train station, then took a train to the border of China, went through a sketchy customs checkpoint, and ended up in the Shenzhen train station where we had to wait 3 hours for our first of five overnight trains on the tour. We ended up finding this weird restaurant in the train station to have lunch before we got on the train. They kind of took us through this backwards entrance and put us in the back. I ended up getting fried beef noodles. The translated descriptions of the entrees were hilarious. For instance you could choose the "The silver tooth shredded meat fries the rice noodle." Or maybe you'd prefer the "According to burns the chicken to dig up the sandwich." Or one of my personal favorites "The ham intestines young fries the double egg." It was hard to concentrate on what to actually order because the names were so ridiculous, thank goodness for picture menues. None of them really made sense. I took a picture so I post that when I get back. We waited for the train and played a lot of cards. The Chinese people, mostly the children, just stared at us openly. The best part of this train station was that it was our first experience with a squat toilet. These bathrooms made port'o'pottys in America look like a Ritz Carlton bathroom. You could smell the ammonia a mile away. People did all their business in these and did not really flush anything. It is basically like a rectangular hole in the ground and you squat over it. Just one of China's many pleasures.
The fun part came when we had to board the train. We were right at the coral entrance and as soon as there were like 5 mins out from boarding all of a sudden like 300 people just appeared and started forming a mob, there are no such things as lines in China. Then they let us in and it was like a mad dash. Meanwhile I was dragging my suitcase. Our train car was way down the platform. The sleeping births in the train that we had were hard sleepers which consisted of six beds, three on each side and they were solid, key the name. There are 15 people on the tour and one tour leader so twelve of us were together and then four others shared theirs with locals. Those were the fun spots. I was with the group but the ones sharing it with locals we also sharing it with a baby. You haven't experienced fun till you've seen a baby on a train for 12 hours. The kid would just cry its head off and then one of the group would try to calm it. There was also a lot of spitting on the floor and rubbing it in to the carpet. But hey spitting is one of China's favorite past times. America has baseball, China has spitting. Lights turn off at 10pm so the group went for a nightcap at the dining car. Everyone ordered beer except me because I decided to get a "cocktail." This cocktail turned out to be a milky, peppermint, egg type drink served in a small glass. It was pretty much disgusting.
July 16th, 2008- Arrive in Guilin, Bus it to Yangshou
Our train arrived at 6:30 am into the town of Guilin. It was early in the morning but there were tons of people standing outside the gate waiting for people to get off the train. This was our first experience of "real" china. As we boarded our coach to take us to take us to Yangshou. As we passed through town there were tons of people walking and squatting on the streets. The cars and motorcycles were driving in and out, there were no real lanes for people to stay in. The craziest thing was the motorcycles/scooters; there would be anywhere from one to four people on a single scooter. They would put a kid on their laps or wedged in between two people on the bike. It was definitely different than what I'm used to. We got to Yuangshou like an hour and a half later and were dropped off in the middle of the town. We had a little mix up on hotels and we ended up a Lisa's Mountain View Lodge. It was some pretty nice digs. As we drove into town you could see the mountains the Guilin and Yangshou are known for. It was definitely a nice site to see after being in the bustling city of Hong Kong.
We headed off for our orientation tour by our tour leader Dragon and our bike ride through the mountains. I figured this was going to be a short 30 minute bike ride around town. This turned out to be a 4 and a half hour bike ride with a stop for lunch in the middle and a couple stop for photo ops throughout. It was a little intense, and we managed to lose somebody pretty early on and Dragon had to backtrack to find her. One of the most notable events of the bike ride was when we stopped for lunch at the half moon cafe which was conveniently located beneath a mountain called the half moon because there was a hole through it that looked coincidentally like half of a moon. As we approached this cafe we had to go up a slight hill and all of a sudden there were like seven older Chinese women running up the hill with us. We had no idea what was going on or what they wanted but we parked our bikes and then they started to talk to us in very basic English and fan us. After a couple of minutes we figured our that they wanted our old water bottles because they would claim them for a return fee and they also fill them up with water and resell them. It was a little crazy to see these 50 or 60 year old ladies just hanging out in the heat to collect empty water bottles from the tourists who would roll up. For lunch I enjoyed a cheese sandwich, fries and a coke. I was pretty intimidated by the Chinese food selections that we could have had. We were also presented with the option to hike up to the half moon mountain (applicable fees apply of course). Not a single person was up for that. When we rode back I talked to this English guy name Alistair about rock bands and general pop culture for most of the ride which helped me to avoid thinking about the actual bike ride and then it came car dodging time. We had to dodge scooters, bikes, cars, trucks, pedestrians and other obstacles on the ride back into town. I almost got hit a couple of times. We were all pretty much soaked in sweat by the end of the ride.
For dinner we ended up at this very "western" bar/restaurant that looked just like a laid back bar in America. Sticking with my commitment to the Chinese delicacies, I ordered a margarita pizza which basically tasted like a frozen pizza. But they did have 2 for 1 drink specials but the one stipulation was that the drinks had to be the same kind of drink so Julie and I split some margaritas. We then ended up roaming the streets and ended up at Lisa's other property called Lisa's Cafe where we had a couple more drinks. On the way though there was a group of Chinese girls who asked to take pictures with us. It was quite funny. While we were sitting there, there was this stall set up where these guys were drawing people's faces on t-shirts. It was pretty similar to something you'd get at the state fair and they were only charging 40RNB which was like 6USD. I really wanted one but the lines were getting a little much so I decided to save it for another day.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Hong Kong we're done with you- Day 5
Our last full day in Hong Kong. We decided once again to do one of the walking tours we had in our book. So we went to Hong Kong Island across the harbour and started in Statue Square, followed by their Supreme Court, a garden/courtyard, the HSBC building (which had the largest free standing escalator so we rode that up and down) onto the last cour of appeals, St. Johns Anglican church, past the US embassy, up to the Botanical Gardens (which had an aviary, and a mammal section consisting of two very depressed looking orangutans, gibbons, and ring tailed lemurs) and down to the Victoria peak tram station. We took the tram up to Victoria Peak. It was pretty amazing cause at one point your almost going vertical up the mountain. When you get to the top, we had to take a couple escalators to get to what they call the Terrace which is this gigantic structure they built at the top so tourists would pay more money. Victoria Peak is supposed to be the most expensive real estate in all of Honｇ Ｋｏｎｇ。 Ｉｔ ｄｅｆｉｎｔｅｌｙ ｈａｄ ａｍａｚｉｎｇ ｖｉｅｗｓ ｏｆ Ｈｏｎｇ Ｋｏｎｇ。 Ｉｔ ｗａｓ ｔｈｅ ｍｏｓｔ ｃｌｅａｒ／ｐａｒｔｉａｌｌｙ ｓｕｎｎｙ ｄａｙ ｗｅ ｈａｄ ｓｏ ｆａｒ。 Ｗｈｅｎ ｗｅ ｗｅｎｔ ｂａｃｋ ｄｏｗｎ ｗｅ ｔｏｏｋ ｔｈｅ ｔｒａｍ ａｇａｉｎ。 Ｗｅ ｄｅｃｉｄｅｄ ｔｏ ｗａｌｋ ｔｏ ｔｈｅ Ｓｔａｒ Ｆｅｒｒｙ ｗｈｉｃｈ ｉｓ ｌｉｋｅ ａ ５ ｍｉｎｕｔｅ ｆｅｒｒｙ ａｃｒｏｓｓ ｔｈｅ ｈａｒｂｏｕｒ。
Ｗｅ ｈａｄ ｔｏ ｍｅｅｔ ｏｕｒ ｔｏｕｒ ｇｒｏｕｐ ｆｏｒ ａｔ ６：３０ｐｍ ｆｏｒ ａ ｌｉｔｔｌｅ ｉｎｔｒｏ ａｎｄ ｔｏ ｇｏ ｔｏ ｄｉｎｎｅｒ。 Ｗｅ ｅｎｄｅｄ ｕｐ ｇｏｉｎｇ ｔｏ ｄｉｎｎｅｒ ａｔ ａ ｓｔｒｅｅｔ ｍａｒｋｅｔ ｔｈａｔ Ｊｕｌｉｅ ｈａｄ ｒｅａｌｌｙ ｗａｎｔｅｄ ｔｏ ｇｏ ｔｏ ａｎｙｗａｙｓ。 Ｏｕｒ ｔｏｕｒ ｌｅａｄｅｒ ｗｈｏ‘ｓ ｎａｍｅ ｉｓ Ｄｒａｇｏｎ ｄｉｄ ａｌｌ ｔｈｅ ｏｒｄｅｒｉｎｇ ａｎｄ ｔｈｅｙ ｊｕｓｔ ｂｒｏｕｇｈｔ ｔｈｅ ｓｔｕｆｆ ｏｕｔ。 Ｗｅ ｈａｄ ｐｒａｗｎｓ， ｃｒａｂ， ｄｕｃｋ， ｔｏｆｕ， ｂｅｅｆ， ｆｒｉｅｄ ｒｉｃｅ ｗｉｔｈ ｓｈｒｉｍｐ，ｎｏｏｄｌｅｓ ａｎｄ ｆｒｉｅｄ ｔｏｆｕ， ｆｒｉｅｄ ｓｑｕｉｄ。 Ｉ ａｔｅ ｓｏｍｅ ｏｆ ｔｈｅ ｎｏｏｄｌｅｓ，ｔｈｅ ｂｅｅｆ， ｔｒｉｅｄ ｔｈｅ ｔｏｆｕ ａｎｄ ｔｈｅ ｓｑｕｉｄ ａｎｄ ｈａｄ ｓｏｍｅ ｒｉｃｅ。 Ｔｈｅｎ ｉｔ ｓｔａｒｔｅｄ ｔｏ ｒａｉｎ ｔｏｗａｒｄｓ ｔｈｅ ｅｎｄ ｏｆ ｄｉｎｎｅｒ ａｎｄ ｗｅ ｗｅｒｅ ｋｉｎｄ ｏｆ ｕｎｄｅｒ ａ ｍａｋｅｓｈｉｆｔ ａｗｎｉｎｇ ｂｕｔ Ｉ ｓｔｉｌｌ ｇｏｔ ａ ｌｉｔｔｌｅ ｗｅｔ。 Ｗｈｅｎ ｄｉｎｎｅｒ ｗａｓ ｏｖｅｒ Ｊｕｌｉｅ ａｎｄ Ｉ ｄｅｃｉｄｅｄ ｔｏ ｇｏ ｔｏ ｔｈｅ ｍａｒｋｅｔ。 Ｊｕｌｉｅ’ｓ ｍａｉｎ ｇｏａｌ ｗａｓ ｔｏ ｇｅｔ ｈｅｒ ｆｏｒｔｕｎｅ ｔｏｌｄ ｉｎ ｔｈｅ ｍａｒｋｅｔ。 The only guy we saw was the“ｗｏｒｌｄ ｆａｍｏｕｓ Ｓｔｅｐｈｅｎ Shum”。 Julie was looking to spend about 20HKD so we went up to ask the price and it was 150HKD which was like 20USD。 So that dream died really quickly。The market was the same as the others just selling knock off crap。
Ｗｅ ｈａｄ ｔｏ ｍｅｅｔ ｏｕｒ ｔｏｕｒ ｇｒｏｕｐ ｆｏｒ ａｔ ６：３０ｐｍ ｆｏｒ ａ ｌｉｔｔｌｅ ｉｎｔｒｏ ａｎｄ ｔｏ ｇｏ ｔｏ ｄｉｎｎｅｒ。 Ｗｅ ｅｎｄｅｄ ｕｐ ｇｏｉｎｇ ｔｏ ｄｉｎｎｅｒ ａｔ ａ ｓｔｒｅｅｔ ｍａｒｋｅｔ ｔｈａｔ Ｊｕｌｉｅ ｈａｄ ｒｅａｌｌｙ ｗａｎｔｅｄ ｔｏ ｇｏ ｔｏ ａｎｙｗａｙｓ。 Ｏｕｒ ｔｏｕｒ ｌｅａｄｅｒ ｗｈｏ‘ｓ ｎａｍｅ ｉｓ Ｄｒａｇｏｎ ｄｉｄ ａｌｌ ｔｈｅ ｏｒｄｅｒｉｎｇ ａｎｄ ｔｈｅｙ ｊｕｓｔ ｂｒｏｕｇｈｔ ｔｈｅ ｓｔｕｆｆ ｏｕｔ。 Ｗｅ ｈａｄ ｐｒａｗｎｓ， ｃｒａｂ， ｄｕｃｋ， ｔｏｆｕ， ｂｅｅｆ， ｆｒｉｅｄ ｒｉｃｅ ｗｉｔｈ ｓｈｒｉｍｐ，ｎｏｏｄｌｅｓ ａｎｄ ｆｒｉｅｄ ｔｏｆｕ， ｆｒｉｅｄ ｓｑｕｉｄ。 Ｉ ａｔｅ ｓｏｍｅ ｏｆ ｔｈｅ ｎｏｏｄｌｅｓ，ｔｈｅ ｂｅｅｆ， ｔｒｉｅｄ ｔｈｅ ｔｏｆｕ ａｎｄ ｔｈｅ ｓｑｕｉｄ ａｎｄ ｈａｄ ｓｏｍｅ ｒｉｃｅ。 Ｔｈｅｎ ｉｔ ｓｔａｒｔｅｄ ｔｏ ｒａｉｎ ｔｏｗａｒｄｓ ｔｈｅ ｅｎｄ ｏｆ ｄｉｎｎｅｒ ａｎｄ ｗｅ ｗｅｒｅ ｋｉｎｄ ｏｆ ｕｎｄｅｒ ａ ｍａｋｅｓｈｉｆｔ ａｗｎｉｎｇ ｂｕｔ Ｉ ｓｔｉｌｌ ｇｏｔ ａ ｌｉｔｔｌｅ ｗｅｔ。 Ｗｈｅｎ ｄｉｎｎｅｒ ｗａｓ ｏｖｅｒ Ｊｕｌｉｅ ａｎｄ Ｉ ｄｅｃｉｄｅｄ ｔｏ ｇｏ ｔｏ ｔｈｅ ｍａｒｋｅｔ。 Ｊｕｌｉｅ’ｓ ｍａｉｎ ｇｏａｌ ｗａｓ ｔｏ ｇｅｔ ｈｅｒ ｆｏｒｔｕｎｅ ｔｏｌｄ ｉｎ ｔｈｅ ｍａｒｋｅｔ。 The only guy we saw was the“ｗｏｒｌｄ ｆａｍｏｕｓ Ｓｔｅｐｈｅｎ Shum”。 Julie was looking to spend about 20HKD so we went up to ask the price and it was 150HKD which was like 20USD。 So that dream died really quickly。The market was the same as the others just selling knock off crap。
ps. I don't know why it started typing like this. Its China, what can you do?
Thursday, July 17, 2008
The Hong Kong Continues...Day Four
Day Four- Temple of 10,000 Buddhas and Market time
For breakfast we decided to stop at this place called Yoshinoya which seemed to be Japanese chain of fast food. I got like a chicken and vegetable bowl. It was pretty much chicken, rice, vegetables and their version of teryaki sauce. The chicken they serve in China is quite interesting. They pretty much use all parts of the chicken (including the feet) so you have to be careful which dish you order. This was just dark meat chicken but it had skin on it. So I think I ended up eating like 1 of the 8 pieces. The vegetables were good. I also had a Pepsi with ice. We were told the water and ice is okay to drink in Hong Kong but not in mainland China.
This day was really Julie's day to choose the activities because I chose to do Macau and that didn't turn out too well. So she wanted to go to the Temple of 10,000 Buddhas. It was in Hong Kong but we had to take the East Rail Line to get there so it was a little on the outskirts. We got off at the Shia Tian stop and we actually saw a sign for it. So we had read that it was like 400-500 steps to the top of this temple. We went in the direction it pointed and along the way ran into two other Americans who were looking for it too. We walked up a hill to the large complex on the hill and figured it was it. We took escalators up which we thought was weird. We were walking throughout, taking a couple of pictures and then started to notice how much it looked like a mausoleum. We eventually asked and this lady pulls out a laminated piece of paper that basically said she didn't speak English, that this wasn't the temple of 10,000 Buddhas but that we were very close and it gave directions how to get there. We just started laughing because for this woman to have a laminated piece of paper stating this, she must get tons of people coming in there doing what we did. We eventually went in the direction she gave and man was it a trek. Julie was kind of hauling ass but me and the two guys were taking our time. All along the way up the steps were these statues that were supposed to be like wannabe Buddhas in all these different positions and with different features. When we got to the top there was this temple building and then all these other statues spread throughout like a guy riding a giant blue dog and other random ones. Then in the main building there were all the Buddhas. Apparently there are more like 13,000 Buddhas. They range from little one inch ones to ones that are like 1-2 feet tall. They are all along the wall up and down and then there are these giant ones in the middle. It was very impressive. We roamed around a bit and even went up higher but that just looked like a place where the wannabe Buddhas went to retire because there were a bunch of busted ones.
Eventually we headed back down the hill and decided to head for lunch. Our days usually consist of eat, activity, eat, activity, eat, sleep, and I think you see where I'm going with this. We were recommended by the Renaissance a restaurant in the Chinese cultural center for some dim sum. We headed in that direction. We saw a sign that said something about 2080HKD so we quickly decided to eat elsewhere. We wandered a little and found a museum cafe to eat at. Both Julie and I got chicken in soup with noodles. So it was basically a peppery broth with cabbage, red peppers, and slices of noodles with stringy gross chicken. I just ate the noodles and cabbage mainly. At this point I decided that maybe chicken wasn't the best option.
From there we sat at the harbour and planned our next event. I read in one of our books about a flower market so we headed to Mong Kok to go there. It really wasn't that impressive just a group of shops selling flowers on the same road. It was a nice smell for a change. When I was checking a map I looked down and noticed these two people holding a child and another one was holding a bag beneath it. So basically the kid was peeing on the streets. That was a sight. After the flower market we wandered into a bird market/hangout or as I call, the place to get Avian flu. It was basically a bunch of birds in cages for sale and a couple of locals hanging out with their birds. From there we headed to Goldfish market which was conveniently located down the road. It smelled so bad that we could barely go a block down the road so we took a couple of pictures and headed out. Then we went back down the main street Prince Edward West and saw another market for shopping. It was basically comprised of designer name knock off clothes, shoes, underwear, socks, bags of designers like Dolce and Gabbana, Guess, Burberry, Paul Frank, and tons more. We even saw a jersey that said 50 CENT on it. After that we decided to head back and take a nap and were planning on going out to the Temple Street Night Market and maybe a bar but never made it.
For breakfast we decided to stop at this place called Yoshinoya which seemed to be Japanese chain of fast food. I got like a chicken and vegetable bowl. It was pretty much chicken, rice, vegetables and their version of teryaki sauce. The chicken they serve in China is quite interesting. They pretty much use all parts of the chicken (including the feet) so you have to be careful which dish you order. This was just dark meat chicken but it had skin on it. So I think I ended up eating like 1 of the 8 pieces. The vegetables were good. I also had a Pepsi with ice. We were told the water and ice is okay to drink in Hong Kong but not in mainland China.
This day was really Julie's day to choose the activities because I chose to do Macau and that didn't turn out too well. So she wanted to go to the Temple of 10,000 Buddhas. It was in Hong Kong but we had to take the East Rail Line to get there so it was a little on the outskirts. We got off at the Shia Tian stop and we actually saw a sign for it. So we had read that it was like 400-500 steps to the top of this temple. We went in the direction it pointed and along the way ran into two other Americans who were looking for it too. We walked up a hill to the large complex on the hill and figured it was it. We took escalators up which we thought was weird. We were walking throughout, taking a couple of pictures and then started to notice how much it looked like a mausoleum. We eventually asked and this lady pulls out a laminated piece of paper that basically said she didn't speak English, that this wasn't the temple of 10,000 Buddhas but that we were very close and it gave directions how to get there. We just started laughing because for this woman to have a laminated piece of paper stating this, she must get tons of people coming in there doing what we did. We eventually went in the direction she gave and man was it a trek. Julie was kind of hauling ass but me and the two guys were taking our time. All along the way up the steps were these statues that were supposed to be like wannabe Buddhas in all these different positions and with different features. When we got to the top there was this temple building and then all these other statues spread throughout like a guy riding a giant blue dog and other random ones. Then in the main building there were all the Buddhas. Apparently there are more like 13,000 Buddhas. They range from little one inch ones to ones that are like 1-2 feet tall. They are all along the wall up and down and then there are these giant ones in the middle. It was very impressive. We roamed around a bit and even went up higher but that just looked like a place where the wannabe Buddhas went to retire because there were a bunch of busted ones.
Eventually we headed back down the hill and decided to head for lunch. Our days usually consist of eat, activity, eat, activity, eat, sleep, and I think you see where I'm going with this. We were recommended by the Renaissance a restaurant in the Chinese cultural center for some dim sum. We headed in that direction. We saw a sign that said something about 2080HKD so we quickly decided to eat elsewhere. We wandered a little and found a museum cafe to eat at. Both Julie and I got chicken in soup with noodles. So it was basically a peppery broth with cabbage, red peppers, and slices of noodles with stringy gross chicken. I just ate the noodles and cabbage mainly. At this point I decided that maybe chicken wasn't the best option.
From there we sat at the harbour and planned our next event. I read in one of our books about a flower market so we headed to Mong Kok to go there. It really wasn't that impressive just a group of shops selling flowers on the same road. It was a nice smell for a change. When I was checking a map I looked down and noticed these two people holding a child and another one was holding a bag beneath it. So basically the kid was peeing on the streets. That was a sight. After the flower market we wandered into a bird market/hangout or as I call, the place to get Avian flu. It was basically a bunch of birds in cages for sale and a couple of locals hanging out with their birds. From there we headed to Goldfish market which was conveniently located down the road. It smelled so bad that we could barely go a block down the road so we took a couple of pictures and headed out. Then we went back down the main street Prince Edward West and saw another market for shopping. It was basically comprised of designer name knock off clothes, shoes, underwear, socks, bags of designers like Dolce and Gabbana, Guess, Burberry, Paul Frank, and tons more. We even saw a jersey that said 50 CENT on it. After that we decided to head back and take a nap and were planning on going out to the Temple Street Night Market and maybe a bar but never made it.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Hong Kong…
Day 1- The Arrival- July 9th-10th, 2008:
Buildings Buildings Everywhere
After a twelve hour flight from LAX to Seoul, Korea followed by a 3 hour flight from Seoul to Hong Kong, I was ready to hit the town…not. I slept on both flights but I don’t know if that was the best idea. When I got in I found the way from the airport to my hotel Renaissance Kowloon quite easily. I refreshed myself and although I was extremely tired, decided I needed to get out and see something. I started one of the walking tours that I printed out from Frommers and it took be down to the harbor. I saw the clock tower, which was what remained of the old train station, which was right on the Harbor. The harbor was an amazing view. The only drawback was that the weather was foggy, cloudy, and rainy. Pretty much like Seattle but add 300% humidity.
From there I decided to go to Harbour City which was a shopping plaza (kind of) comprised of 700 shops. It was one of the most confusing places I’ve been. You could only access certain floors through certain parts of the building. There was like 3 of every store from Burberry, Chanel, Nike, and tons of other name brand stores. If there is one thing I have learned about the Chinese so far, it’s that they love their designer labels. I decided to have lunch in the most authentic place I could find; Pizza Hut. Definitely a strange experience. I ordered a sunshine pizza which was pepperoni and corn but minus the corn for me. The interesting thing was how the waiters and waitresses worked. One person took your order, a different person brought your drink, another person brought whatever part of your meal came out first and then another would deliver your bill but someone different would return with your change. Plus, they just stared at you the whole time waiting for you to finish your plate so they could take it.
Day 2- Disneyland- July 11th, 2008
Nothing is better than that slice of Americana in a foreign country. Hong Kong Disneyland is pretty much the same as the Disneyland in Anaheim but not as developed. They lack many of the key rides like Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, Splash Mountain, Peter Pan and others but they did have some awesome ones of their own. There was one called Mickey’s Philharmagic, which was a 3-D show similar to the Honey I Shrunk the Kids show at Disneyland Anaheim but this was better because it had smell a vision and Disney songs. They also had this really cool Lion King show that was in a 360-degree room and the action was in the middle of everyone. It kinda felt like an abridged version of a Broadway musical. We also took a little tutorial on how to draw Daisy Duck in Cantonese, which wasn’t that hard to follow actually.
We decided after Disneyland to head to the largest, outside, sitting, bronze Buddha in the world. There is this gondola experience that you can take that takes you all the way up there because it is on the side of a mountain. It’s called the Ngong Ping 360-degrees. The tourist’s books said it was one of the best things to do in Hong Kong. It closed at 6 and we got there at like 6:05 pm but they still let us go anyways. This had to be one of the scariest fucking things I have ever done in my life. This gondola literally went up the side of the mountain and then when you thought you might be there, it just kept going up and up. It was 30 minutes of hell. This thing had to have been at least 500 feet off the ground. We got so high at the end that we were in the clouds. But we survived it. Unfortunately, because we got there so late we didn’t have time to go all the way up to see the Buddha because the last bus down the mountain left at 7pm. We just snapped a few pictures and left.
Day 3- Side trip to Macau- July 12th 2008
This was another recommendation that the tour book talked up left and right, I personally wouldn’t recommend it. First, you have to take a ferry out to Macau from Hong Kong, which takes about an hour each way. The map in my book made it look like a small island; we quickly learned how big it was. It is called the Vegas of Southeast Asia. They have a Venetian, Sands, and a bunch of other Casinos. I mainly wanted to go to see the Macau tower because it was on the Amazing Race. Our plan was to see at least 3 to 4 sites because we had about five hours there; we left at 11:45 am and our return ticket was scheduled for 5:45 pm. The very first thing we did was find the largest chandelier in the world in the lobby of the Sands hotel. We headed for one of the things, which I can’t even remember the name of. It was what was left of a church, basically a facade. We were first going to walk and then seeing how big this island was we took a taxi. The best part was that they had these different blow up versions of the Olympic mascots in the front of it (strangely out of place) playing different sports. Really random in my book. We then walked to a bus map we found on one of our maps. There bus system was a lot more confusing than the lovely tourist book pretends it is. We wanted to go to a temple on the southwest corner of the island but instead we rode a bus for 20 minutes to the northern part of the island. We were pretty much pissed by this point. We had to walk to find another bus in the right direction. Another 30 minutes later we arrived at the A-Ma temple. It was very interesting and ornate. They had a lot of characters carved into the rocks surrounding it. By that time it was time to head back to the Ferry terminal. We finally found the right bus at about 5:20pm. By the time we made it back to the ferry it was 5:50 and we missed our ferry. The best part was that they don’t let you change the ticket once the time had passed so we were out another $20. When we got back we had to change hotels to the West Hotel that is the starting part of our tour. But we still have 2 more full days left in Hong Kong.
Buildings Buildings Everywhere
After a twelve hour flight from LAX to Seoul, Korea followed by a 3 hour flight from Seoul to Hong Kong, I was ready to hit the town…not. I slept on both flights but I don’t know if that was the best idea. When I got in I found the way from the airport to my hotel Renaissance Kowloon quite easily. I refreshed myself and although I was extremely tired, decided I needed to get out and see something. I started one of the walking tours that I printed out from Frommers and it took be down to the harbor. I saw the clock tower, which was what remained of the old train station, which was right on the Harbor. The harbor was an amazing view. The only drawback was that the weather was foggy, cloudy, and rainy. Pretty much like Seattle but add 300% humidity.
From there I decided to go to Harbour City which was a shopping plaza (kind of) comprised of 700 shops. It was one of the most confusing places I’ve been. You could only access certain floors through certain parts of the building. There was like 3 of every store from Burberry, Chanel, Nike, and tons of other name brand stores. If there is one thing I have learned about the Chinese so far, it’s that they love their designer labels. I decided to have lunch in the most authentic place I could find; Pizza Hut. Definitely a strange experience. I ordered a sunshine pizza which was pepperoni and corn but minus the corn for me. The interesting thing was how the waiters and waitresses worked. One person took your order, a different person brought your drink, another person brought whatever part of your meal came out first and then another would deliver your bill but someone different would return with your change. Plus, they just stared at you the whole time waiting for you to finish your plate so they could take it.
Day 2- Disneyland- July 11th, 2008
Nothing is better than that slice of Americana in a foreign country. Hong Kong Disneyland is pretty much the same as the Disneyland in Anaheim but not as developed. They lack many of the key rides like Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, Splash Mountain, Peter Pan and others but they did have some awesome ones of their own. There was one called Mickey’s Philharmagic, which was a 3-D show similar to the Honey I Shrunk the Kids show at Disneyland Anaheim but this was better because it had smell a vision and Disney songs. They also had this really cool Lion King show that was in a 360-degree room and the action was in the middle of everyone. It kinda felt like an abridged version of a Broadway musical. We also took a little tutorial on how to draw Daisy Duck in Cantonese, which wasn’t that hard to follow actually.
We decided after Disneyland to head to the largest, outside, sitting, bronze Buddha in the world. There is this gondola experience that you can take that takes you all the way up there because it is on the side of a mountain. It’s called the Ngong Ping 360-degrees. The tourist’s books said it was one of the best things to do in Hong Kong. It closed at 6 and we got there at like 6:05 pm but they still let us go anyways. This had to be one of the scariest fucking things I have ever done in my life. This gondola literally went up the side of the mountain and then when you thought you might be there, it just kept going up and up. It was 30 minutes of hell. This thing had to have been at least 500 feet off the ground. We got so high at the end that we were in the clouds. But we survived it. Unfortunately, because we got there so late we didn’t have time to go all the way up to see the Buddha because the last bus down the mountain left at 7pm. We just snapped a few pictures and left.
Day 3- Side trip to Macau- July 12th 2008
This was another recommendation that the tour book talked up left and right, I personally wouldn’t recommend it. First, you have to take a ferry out to Macau from Hong Kong, which takes about an hour each way. The map in my book made it look like a small island; we quickly learned how big it was. It is called the Vegas of Southeast Asia. They have a Venetian, Sands, and a bunch of other Casinos. I mainly wanted to go to see the Macau tower because it was on the Amazing Race. Our plan was to see at least 3 to 4 sites because we had about five hours there; we left at 11:45 am and our return ticket was scheduled for 5:45 pm. The very first thing we did was find the largest chandelier in the world in the lobby of the Sands hotel. We headed for one of the things, which I can’t even remember the name of. It was what was left of a church, basically a facade. We were first going to walk and then seeing how big this island was we took a taxi. The best part was that they had these different blow up versions of the Olympic mascots in the front of it (strangely out of place) playing different sports. Really random in my book. We then walked to a bus map we found on one of our maps. There bus system was a lot more confusing than the lovely tourist book pretends it is. We wanted to go to a temple on the southwest corner of the island but instead we rode a bus for 20 minutes to the northern part of the island. We were pretty much pissed by this point. We had to walk to find another bus in the right direction. Another 30 minutes later we arrived at the A-Ma temple. It was very interesting and ornate. They had a lot of characters carved into the rocks surrounding it. By that time it was time to head back to the Ferry terminal. We finally found the right bus at about 5:20pm. By the time we made it back to the ferry it was 5:50 and we missed our ferry. The best part was that they don’t let you change the ticket once the time had passed so we were out another $20. When we got back we had to change hotels to the West Hotel that is the starting part of our tour. But we still have 2 more full days left in Hong Kong.
Monday, June 16, 2008
My Trip to LA to get Chinese Visas
My experience with the Chinese Consulate in LA.
I flew from Phoenix, AZ to LA at 6am (I eventually got in at 7:30 am and on the road by 8:30 am) just to get visas for my trip to China for Danielle, Julie and Myself. I have over planned my trip and thought I was ready for this little adventure. I was dearly mistaken. I looked at the Chinese Consulate website many times to see the requirements. I had the applications filled out correctly, the pictures were taken in front of the light backgrounds just like they asked and I even got people’s itineraries (even though I didn’t see that as required). I quickly learned that what the website says and what they want are two entirely different things. I got there at 9:30 am and wanted to do the expedited same day service so I had to turn the applications in by noon to get that processed. I waited a little over an hour to get a teller. The place was non-stop packed. I got to the teller by 10:40. None of us had the official passport photos you get at Kinkos or Walgreens but were taken in the manner they described on the website and cut to fit the application. But that is not what they want; they want those official passport photos. At first they were going to accept two (Julie and Mine's) out of the three but once the teller checked with someone in the back about Danielle's, they were all rejected. I pleaded the whole “I’m not from here mantra” but to no avail. I don't think I have begged and pleaded with strangers as much as I did on this day. The best part of this consulate is the only place to park is on the metered streets and there is always someone checking those meters and you technically can only do an hour. So between waiting for your number to pop up, you are constantly feeding the meter. I knew I should have brought someone with me as an assistant but my goal was to lower the costs of actually getting the visas.
The whole event was stressful. I then had to go to Kinkos and try to print what I could for Danielle and Julie because Danielle lives in Tennessee and Julie lives in Wisconsin. So I'm driving through crappy LA traffic, almost getting side swiped every second light to get back in time. So when I'm at Kinko's I'm literally printing off pictures from Julie's myspace page and ended up printing one of her eating jello, but with a little editing it looked somewhat legit. Danielle's on the other hand were a zoomed in shot of her face that were way larger than the dimensions they asked for, but that's all I had to work with. I went back with one of the official photos of myself and two make shift photos. I had grabbed a number on the way out thinking they averaged about 10 numbers a half hour so I could be in line when I got back. I ended up getting back at 11:56 am and they had picked up the pace so my new "clever" number of 73 was long gone and they were on 115. My new number was 143. I had pretty much given up hope and then luckily the security guard took pity on me and gave me a discarded number of 123 so I only had to wait 15 minutes to get to the teller again. Only this time the higher ups she needed to check with weren’t there and I was left to more waiting. She finally called my back up to the window and after profuse begging, they told me the applications were okay but still looked at me with disdain. All I had left to do was to come back after 2:30pm to pick up the visas. Or so I thought.
I hadn’t eaten in 8 hours so I decided to get lunch and I returned at 3:30pm. I ran into a Chinese gentleman in the hall and he asked me some questions and told me the office had closed at 3pm. He told me to come back tomorrow, and once again I begged saying I wasn’t from California and I couldn't. He took pity on me and let me in to the office. Only they wanted me to pay in cash because they’re credit card machines were closed. I personally don’t carry $480 in cash on me so I had to leave again and roam the streets to find an ATM. The teller woman assured me that she would listen for my knock when I came back. I found an ATM and after using three cards and $6 in ATM fees, I returned. I ended up knocking at least 10 times on two separate doors and no response. My breakdown commenced. I was about to give up and then the man from the elevators appeared from some door down the hall and let me in. I groveled and thanked them profusely. I felt like an idiot but at least I got the passports back. I definitely learned a lot from that experience. For instance, it’s much easier to pay a company to do the work for you. Or that you can never trust a communist country's consulate page for instructions on anything. They were a lot nicer to me then they had to be. If this is representative of how crazy it’s going to be when I actually get to China, it’s going to be an exciting trip.
I flew from Phoenix, AZ to LA at 6am (I eventually got in at 7:30 am and on the road by 8:30 am) just to get visas for my trip to China for Danielle, Julie and Myself. I have over planned my trip and thought I was ready for this little adventure. I was dearly mistaken. I looked at the Chinese Consulate website many times to see the requirements. I had the applications filled out correctly, the pictures were taken in front of the light backgrounds just like they asked and I even got people’s itineraries (even though I didn’t see that as required). I quickly learned that what the website says and what they want are two entirely different things. I got there at 9:30 am and wanted to do the expedited same day service so I had to turn the applications in by noon to get that processed. I waited a little over an hour to get a teller. The place was non-stop packed. I got to the teller by 10:40. None of us had the official passport photos you get at Kinkos or Walgreens but were taken in the manner they described on the website and cut to fit the application. But that is not what they want; they want those official passport photos. At first they were going to accept two (Julie and Mine's) out of the three but once the teller checked with someone in the back about Danielle's, they were all rejected. I pleaded the whole “I’m not from here mantra” but to no avail. I don't think I have begged and pleaded with strangers as much as I did on this day. The best part of this consulate is the only place to park is on the metered streets and there is always someone checking those meters and you technically can only do an hour. So between waiting for your number to pop up, you are constantly feeding the meter. I knew I should have brought someone with me as an assistant but my goal was to lower the costs of actually getting the visas.
The whole event was stressful. I then had to go to Kinkos and try to print what I could for Danielle and Julie because Danielle lives in Tennessee and Julie lives in Wisconsin. So I'm driving through crappy LA traffic, almost getting side swiped every second light to get back in time. So when I'm at Kinko's I'm literally printing off pictures from Julie's myspace page and ended up printing one of her eating jello, but with a little editing it looked somewhat legit. Danielle's on the other hand were a zoomed in shot of her face that were way larger than the dimensions they asked for, but that's all I had to work with. I went back with one of the official photos of myself and two make shift photos. I had grabbed a number on the way out thinking they averaged about 10 numbers a half hour so I could be in line when I got back. I ended up getting back at 11:56 am and they had picked up the pace so my new "clever" number of 73 was long gone and they were on 115. My new number was 143. I had pretty much given up hope and then luckily the security guard took pity on me and gave me a discarded number of 123 so I only had to wait 15 minutes to get to the teller again. Only this time the higher ups she needed to check with weren’t there and I was left to more waiting. She finally called my back up to the window and after profuse begging, they told me the applications were okay but still looked at me with disdain. All I had left to do was to come back after 2:30pm to pick up the visas. Or so I thought.
I hadn’t eaten in 8 hours so I decided to get lunch and I returned at 3:30pm. I ran into a Chinese gentleman in the hall and he asked me some questions and told me the office had closed at 3pm. He told me to come back tomorrow, and once again I begged saying I wasn’t from California and I couldn't. He took pity on me and let me in to the office. Only they wanted me to pay in cash because they’re credit card machines were closed. I personally don’t carry $480 in cash on me so I had to leave again and roam the streets to find an ATM. The teller woman assured me that she would listen for my knock when I came back. I found an ATM and after using three cards and $6 in ATM fees, I returned. I ended up knocking at least 10 times on two separate doors and no response. My breakdown commenced. I was about to give up and then the man from the elevators appeared from some door down the hall and let me in. I groveled and thanked them profusely. I felt like an idiot but at least I got the passports back. I definitely learned a lot from that experience. For instance, it’s much easier to pay a company to do the work for you. Or that you can never trust a communist country's consulate page for instructions on anything. They were a lot nicer to me then they had to be. If this is representative of how crazy it’s going to be when I actually get to China, it’s going to be an exciting trip.
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