Travel to Live. Live to Travel

We traveled from Kenting to Tainan yesterday, and the oddest thing happened. Right as we got off the train, we noticed there was an air raid siren going off. I thought maybe it was a firedrill or something. We only realized something was wrong when we noticed all the exits were sealed off.

A friendly local expat explained what was going on. It seems they fairly regularly have drills to practice what to do if they ever declare independence, since China has stated they’d blow Taiwan out of the water if something like that ever happened. We waited inside the station for about 30 minutes until all the metal guarders opened. I saw thousands of people pour out of the buildings they were stuck in.

I’m sure most Taiwanese people don’t live their lives wondering what China will do, but at the same time it was a pretty odd experience and a reminder of what a tricky political situation Taiwan is in.

We’ve departed from Hong Kong to Taiwan, thus ending our adventures in China (People’s Republic of) so I thought it’d be a nice time to do a little summary of my observations…

The Good:

- Most big cities were sparkling clean, you rarely saw a leaf on the street let alone litter.

- Bathrooms too were very clean (well, I mean, relatively.)

- Safe country, never once felt like I was in any sort of danger to muggings or kidnappings (unlike say, Thailand.)

- Delicious food for very, very cheap.

- Not one single stomach problem from said delicious food.

- Stumbling over 500 year old buildings etc pretty much everywhere you went

- The kindness and help extended to us by many, many people.

- Getting to view a nation on the rise up close and personal

- Being able to get around relatively easy due to our ability to read Japanese.

- Cheap and abundant taxis (in mainland China, at least)

- Excellent tourist support an facilities (in Hangzhou)

The Bad:

- The weird sort of haughty snootiness coming from mainland Chinese who spoke English and worked jobs that required it.

- Having my cellphone messages censored..! No “diversity” conversations allowed, I guess.

- The kind of bizarre screw-you-customer attitude some businesses take

- Being stared at, hell, literally stopping traffic simply for being an Asian woman walking next to a white male. They weren’t “normal” stares either, very unnerving and annoying sometimes.

The Ugly:

- Spitting in public and sometimes even indoors

This may be the first year that I have ever celebrated my birthday without a self-absorbed birthday blow-out.

Just Hugh and me, and the pretty night lights of Hong Kong.

Tomorrow: Taiwan. Three countries/special administrative regions down–4 more and 4 more months to go.

(P.S. I turned 27, for the curious.)

The weather was kind to us and it was a clear, wonderful night. We took advantage of our wonderful hotel (thanks mom & dad) and stumbled out into the daylight around 3pm. We wandered around the very excellent Hong Kong Science museum (full of touchy-feely exhibits and such!) for a few hours and the next thing we knew it was night…so we walked to the Avenue of the Stars for the lightshow.

The irony, of course, is that you need smog/haze to see the beams of light. Since today was clear and free of pollution, the show was less than what it usually is, but it was still fun. I love the Hong Kong skyline. I think it’s just one of the best in the world.

The best skyline on earth. That little tugboat in the foreground agrees.

And of course, no whirlwind tourist tour of Hong Kong is finished without having Indian food at the infamous Chungking Mansions–a derelict block of apartments that’s fairly notorious. There’s all manner of shops and hostels on various floors, and also lots of great Indian restaurants. It’s changed in three years–no more touters allowed. In the past, the minute you walked in a swarm of men would descend upon you and shove flyers in your face. You picked a guy and he lead you to a corner, to be passed off to another dude, to be shown to another man who would take you down dark, dirty halls and up a cramped elevator. Scary as shit. They did it so no other guy who intercept you and take you to his restaurant. None of that anymore. We actually witnessed a security guard smack a young man for trying to shove a flyer at us.

Anyways, The Khyber Pass, the place I ate before years ago, has now spread into 3 other apartments and was packed. Delicious food as always.

Perfect night.

It’s been a pretty typhoonrific (new word) season in Asia and while we managed to dodge one typhoon, the tail end of another one has come to put a bit of a damper on our trip in Hong Kong.

Hopefully the rain stops so we can see more stuff, but so far we’ve wandered nightmarkets, antique and curio shops, rode the largest escalator in Asia (or whatever it is)…

We haven’t had the internet for awhile so I’ve had to write back-dated entries so if you are reading this off LJ, you might wanna go directly to this site.

Finally, some photos…

Hugh glances over our yum cha lunch

The smell of fish drying on the sidewalk hit us before we saw it...

Famous Macanese almond cakes. Taste great. Feel like eating talcum powder.

Ah yes, racially insensitive toothpaste. This used to say "Darkie" above the minstrel face (still does in Chinese)

I have to admit my greatest vice is gambling. I’ve been to Vegas more times than I can count since I was a child, and on my 21st birthday my parents sent me off to Vegas with their blessing. So naturally, I couldn’t go to the “Vegas of the East” without playing.

We played today at the massive Venetian — and immediately I was struck by the main difference between Las Vegas and Macau. Macau casinos are QUIET. Vegas is a cacophony of sounds — blaring, bleeping, ringing slot-machines, people cheering, background music. Your ears ring as soon as you leave the grounds. In Macau the slot machines are on low and the Chinese, being more restrained culturally, don’t cheer or boo like Americans do. It was definitely nice being able to have a conversation, but it just didn’t feel as fun without all the noise and the dealers cheering along with you.

I was also entertained by all the games that exist in Macau, but not in Vegas, most notably “Casino War” which is War…aka, high card. Amazingly boring game, but we had fun with it anyways. I also initiated Hugh into the wonderful world of video poker. Despite our grand plans for paying off our trip with winnings, we walked away $200 US down…thank god that’s all!
Btw, Happy National Day, China.

Night-time in Macau...

We left Guangzhou today and arrived in Macau. Macau’s this kind of underrated former colony of Portugal, but I’ve always loved it. The last time I was here was three years ago. I was stunned at how you could turn a corner and feel like you were in Europe, then another one and you were smack in China. There’s all these new glittering casinos standing next to really decrepit looking apartments.

But that’s all changed really in three years, the last time I was in Macau it was kind of this quaint backwater with one smoke-filled casino (Hotel Lisboa) which at night was full of Russian prostitutes on the prowl. Now there’s mega casinos all over the place and a large entertainment district called Fisherman’s Wharf that’s totally Disney-Vegas and bizarre.

I’m feeling eager to wander around the streets and have some serradurra, a Portuguese (or Macanese?) dessert that embodies everything I love in desserts — cream and simplicity. Macanese food is fun — a mix of Chinese, Portuguese, and Malaysian. It’s stuff like garlic shrimp, spicy chicken, coconut curry, etc.

Oh, and Hugh got rejected from the Wynn Casino because he had flip-flops on. Hah, classy place!

Taking the train to Guangzhou from Hangzhou turned out to be a nice way to spend 20 hours.  The cabins we comfortable, toilets were passable and our cabin buddies were two polite and quiet Chinese ladies.  The train carriages did however make frequent loud crunches as they banged together every 10-15 minutes.  Oh and the old men clearing their throats every couple of minutes got a bit old, I’ll never get used to that.  It’s pretty testing to brush your teeth while an old guy voluntarily coughs up his lungs making sure he gets every little bit outta him and into the sink.

Anyways, we are in Guangzhou now, it doesn’t really resemble the polluted sweat shop factory district it once was, it’s clean and has a fantastic subway system now (plastic coins replace card tickets).  It’s also filled with young trendy kids.

Checking out the pearl river area and pedestrian shopping/eating streets tomorrow and then Shiwan (old pottery town) the day after.

They say when Marco Polo visited Hangzhou in the 13th century, he declared it one of the greatest cities in the world. I’m not sure if that still rings true, but it is a spectacularly beautiful city.

The weather finally cooperated (well, except for the 30 minutes it downpoured) and Hugh and I took to the city on bicycle and bus. Hangzhou has this amazing public bicycle system where you can rent bicycles for a negligble amount of money (basically $1 a day) and drop them off at various stations located around West Lake. This is very handy if you, say, are super lazy and get on a bike outside of your hotel and cycle about 500m to the bus station and nearest drop-off point.

There are far too many places for us to see in a week, let alone a day, but from what I’ve seen Hangzhou is pretty much up there with beautiful cities I’ve been to. It’s also one of the cleanest cities I’ve been to. I know I’m not the only person who associates China with cleanliness, but neither litter nor errant leaf stays on the ground for more than 15 minutes here.

There was one point when we were walking along a causeway when I spotted a small pavillion atop a hill in the distance. It brought this sense of wonder and enchantment that I don’t recall really feeling since I first came to Japan when I was 16 and spotted temples hidden deep in the hills from a speeding bullet train…

Well, pictures describe it better anyway…

People crossing a bridge over West Lake

This dude is important, Hugh agrees.

Boats

An old restaurant on Qinghefang Old Town District...

A beautiful sunset over Leifeng pagoda...

I hope the weather clears up a little today. We’re in Hangzhou, supposedly China’s most beautiful city, but it’s impossible to look over the famous West Lake because it’s been so hazy (or smoggy, you choose!)

Tomorrow we leave for a 30+ hour train trip to Guangzhou. China proved more difficult than we expected and we’ve cut out some of the more tricky parts of our trip and decided to leave China a week early (we’re going to Macau and Hong Kong for more time–technically China, but so not.)

I have NO idea how people who can’t read Chinese characters manage to get around independently, but I salute you. We’ll go to travel agencies that advertise they book train tickets and speak English, but the minute we go there the staff rolls their eyes (before they even know I am non-Chinese) and then tell us to go to the train station (in perfect English of course) to book the ticket. Thanks guys, seriously.

I’ve realized that the “higher up” people are (English speaking staff, concierges, etc) the less they seem to like doing their job. It’s always been the people in the low-paying work who have been the kindest and most helpful. Waitresses who go out of their way to help us order things on menus, taxi drivers who gesticulate wildly to tell us how to cross a busy street, etc. Anyone we thought we could depend on to help us through things seems pretty unwilling to help, while the people we expected to be brusque and unhelpful have always been sympathetic. Go figure.

Once again, I thank god that I can read Japanese. It’s made buying train tickets (a challenge in line-jumping in and of itself) so much easier.

Anyways, the weather looks good (albeit humid) so that means we should be able to get some nice views of the lake and the city. The pagoda we visited yesterday (although it’s been rebuilt) was really, really beautiful. I spent awhile sitting in a bench by the lake, viewing the pagoda through wispy willow branches and thought, “Ahhh, China…” Views like that make it all worth it. It’s the sort of beauty I’ve never actually seen IN PERSON and I often think that maybe if I just steeled my spine some more I’d be able to see more beautiful things deeper in the country… but I guess I’ll just have to save that for another trip to China.

Hey, Hugh here.  Time for me to start writing my own entries. What better way to start than with a rant.

Ahh China.. Being here really makes me realise how good I had it in Japan.  The little things that used to get under my skin seem like nostalgic past times when compared to daily life in China.  I am not trying to say Japan is the perfect but China hasn’t been easy, and it makes me think about Japan and I miss it. I won’t bother mentioning line cutting and general shoving because I had prepared myself for that. I’ll start my rant with littering.  I have seen more public trash cans in China than I have ever all over Japan in 3 years but people here insist on dumping trash at any chance.  Finish your duck butt on a stick, toss it on the ground in front of you.  Needless to say, a street cleaner will sweep it up with their bamboo broom (they keep the streets clean, an advantage of having millions of people that will work for pittanse), but does that really give anyone the right to trash and disregard their own country, let alone the environment?

Littering is one thing.. spitting is another.  Doing it in your private home or on the sports field can be necessary and acceptable but doing it in public is gross.  I am not talking about releasing the watery moisture in your mouth, these perpetrators call up from the deepest and darkest part of their throat a wad of snot that hits the pavement with a thud.  The footpaths are all marked with fresh splatters, giving you something else to watch out for on the streets.  What really made me write this entry was a visit to ‘Watsons’ a large pharmaceutical chain outlet (like Walgreens or Mychemist) where I witnessed something truly remarkable.  While I waited in line at the register to purchase some insect repellent, a man dressed like a manager smiles at my action of purchasing and then creates a deep throat grunt as he loosens a big one.  As I say to myself ‘I guess he has to swallow that one..’ he lays it down on the floor.  In the shop!

SICK!!!

Well, after staying several nights in dingy hostels that were moldy and/or smelly, with sheets of dodgy cleanliness and showers that leaked into everywhere, I decided I needed a serious break and cancelled my remaining accomodations and booked us into an international standard-hotel (Sofitel, my fave.)

I’ve stayed in several guesthouses and hostels and I know to lower my expectations. It probably wouldn’t have been so bad if staff would be better. It really makes or breaks a place for me. In our current location (Mingtown Hangzhou West Lake) the people at the desk act like every act is some huge inconvenience to them. They sigh and roll their eyes when they have to do things like, sell stuff from their own fridgerators or check you into your room.

When I say “failure,” I meant it ironically though. I don’t think I’m failing. Maybe I’ll lose some uber-backpacker street cred, but screw those guys anyways. If you think a person can’t have an authentic experience just because they have 24/7 hot water and clean sheets, you are insane. Besides, what’s so authentic about sitting in the (foreigner) bar all day long and hitting on anything that moves.

We leave Suzhou today on a drizzy, miserable day…never fun with backpacks, but I digress. Lets talk about Suzhou!

Old, atmospheric canal district just oozing with character

Suzhou is a historic town situated on the Grand Canal (wiki that, it’s fascinating) and about 100 km from Shanghai. The entire city has either been designated a UNESCO world heritage site, or it happens to have an assload of them in the city — I can’t really tell because all the brochures I get in English make about zero sense.

However, you wouldn’t really know it if you weren’t in the right parts of the town. It’s a city of about 4 million, and this is a city on the rise, construction everywhere, new apartments being built, the usual. One really gets the whole “new China” thing when you’re in one of these smaller cities. So it’s full of the usual crap I’ve seen in Shanghai–Yet, it also has an absolutely charming old town district centered around canals.

Thankfully, our hostel (Mingtown Suzhou) was located in the historic district because otherwise Suzhou would be a whole lot less interesting. Luckily, we got to take leisurely strolls down narrow alleyways, get stared at by wandering old men wearing nothing but wife-beaters and boxer shorts, and just be enchanted by this bit of peeling wall or that roof with grass growing out of it (I am very easily amused.) I found a pile of dressforms (you know, mannequins without arms or heads) and took a picture of it and an old man laughed and said stuff in Chinese which I’m sure was, “you stupid little girl! Why are you photographing trash?!”

Pingjiang Lu at dusk, the view across our hostel

The canal district is being renovated and gentrified and there’s lots of cute little inns, galleries, and upmarket cafes. I love the mix old and new.

I wouldn’t be surprised if I returned in 5 years and this place was totally different… but for now, I absolutely love its old, worn, gritty feeling, yet while having all sorts of interesting cafes and shops to peruse. Gentrification can be nice, but I’ve never been a fan of Disneyfication. There’s got to be a way to bring economic progress without bulldozing over cultural heritage. It’s nice that this hasn’t turned into the newest Starbucks-infused strip (I mean KFC-infused. There’s a KFC every 100 yards here).

Thankfully, even the renovated buildings in the Pingjiang area have retained the qualities that make the area feel so authentic (well for now). And I doubt that much can be done to rid the canals of the smell of sewage, so you know, it may stay like this until YOU get the chance to visit.

Anyways, we leave for Hangzhou today. Hope the weather is better. Here’s a few more pictures of Suzhou’s historic Pingjiang Lu area.

Birdcage on a wall

Hugh walks towards a teahouse

Night-time along the canals, love those lanterns...

And ate at TGI Friday’s.

Funny that I have only eaten at Friday’s in America once in my life (over 10 years ago) yet without fail I run to one when I’m overseas.

Tomorrow we head to Hangzhou. We were planning on only staying there for two days, but we might stay longer… we’re both very tired physically and emotionally.

Pictures tomorrow. =) (or just check my flickr, they’re there anyways)

Seriously, stop staring at us.

What was cute at first has become really annoying. I know that China has only been open to foreign tourists for little over 25 or so years, but this is just ridiculous.

Everyone stares, but the worst offenders are men. There have been times where a guy on a bike can’t stop staring he’s almost killed himself by running into cars. Sometimes men will stop in their tracks and do a 365 turn as they follow us down the street. Random people will run up to us and I know they’re making fun of us somehow but I don’t know what they’re saying…

I mean, after 3 years in the Japanese country-side I thought I’d be immune to it, but I guess not.

Ah well…

It’s a bit hard to believe we’ve been here for 12 days (and blown about 18% of our alotted TOTAL budget for our 5 month trip–oops.) The other day I sat there and thought, “my god, I have another 5 months of this?!” but at the same time I’m extremely grateful to have the next 5 months to think about the future.

Anyways, our final day in Shanghai was spent with friends. An old college friend I had recently reconnected with took us to a Shanghaiese restaurant that was pretty popular with the expat crowd. The food was great and we then went to have stir-fryed soup dumplings (delicious) as a snack. After that we checked out Xintiandi, which was a really weird experience. I felt like I was in Los Angeles, but it’s not because it looked like it, per se. That’s just the only place I can think of that’s about 40% white, 40% asian, and 20% other stuff. It was hip, busy, modern and so unlike any of the other places in Shanghai I had been. We finished with a very cool, expat popular lounge.

All in all, Shanghai has been a fun experience. It’s been interesting seeing such a vibrant Chinese city that really does feel like its on the verge of something. Back in the 1920s, Shanghai was the jewel of Asia. It was a fashion and cultural capital. Then it slumped and became sort of a backwater…it’s really fascinating getting to see the city reawaken. There’s construction EVERYWHERE and I’m pretty sure the next time I come back it’ll be completely different.

My friend Adriel asked me what annoyed me so far about Shanghai (he asked because I’m a hater who finds faults everywhere I live) but I couldn’t really respond. It was hard to say. Yes, service sucks–but I expected that. I suppose the fear of dying in a fiery crash everytime I get into a taxi sucks, or maybe knowing everytime I cross a street a bus or taxi might run me over and keep driving is a bit annoying…but hmm.

Anyways, tomorrow we leave for the next stop on our little adventure, Suzhou. It’ll also be our first experience on a Chinese train, so that could be a fun entry for tomorrow. Haha…

I think it’s pretty fair to say that business in China is not generally described as “efficient, forthright, honest.” I’ve heard some interesting stories from Chinese friends or people who work in China, and while it’s not every experience, it isn’t uncommon to find yourself in a situation where a Westerner throws up their hands and just goes “WTF, seriously?!” In our ten days or so in China, we’ve been extremely lucky to have met some very earnest, kind, helpful people and have never had the inkling something weird was going on. Obviously it had to end sometime.

This is the part where I digress for awhile…

One of the things I have always wished I could be was a model. Being hot is not really an issue–most models aren’t. Talent and height mean more. Unfortunately, I don’t have the height (probably not the talent either, but hey ;p) So as a consolation prize, I’ve always wanted to have these Chinese-style model/wedding photo shoot done. For my birthday, Hugh indulged in my whims and we went with my friend Jon (who speaks Chinese, but is not from Shanghai) looking for photo studios.

We went to one, but were disappointed by the portfolios. I wanted something more haute-coutre and magaziney. Anyone could take a nice picture of me if we took enough photos, I wanted something unusual. We found one place and were immediately drawn by the photos on the wall of crazy Vogue-esque photo shoots. Everything seemed fine… but this is when the business side comes in.

So first, they forced us to pay ahead of time. In hindsight, we should have never agreed to do that. We were lucky it didn’t turn out worse than it did. Then they changed the dates on us and tried to change the times on us–which is annoying, but whatever. Realizing they were just messing with us because we are foreign, we had Jon’s Shanghaiese driver take care of us. He did a lot of yelling–but them being pros, we got nothing we wanted.

I was concerned about the day of the photo shoot, but the people at the studio were really helpful and lovely. However, the business end came back to ruin the night. After a staggering 14 hours (which Hugh and Jon very patiently sat through–thank you so much!) we thought we were nearly done…and then the studio tried to tell us we couldn’t finish that day and had to come back the next day. This infuriated me because they had told us we could finish on the same day, which was the reason they told us to change days in the first place. We refused and demanded we finish on the same day.

Then, of course, comes the part where they backed out on their contract because it wasn’t clearly specified what was included in the price (what does, “you get pictures on a disk!” sound like to you?) We should have checked more thoroughly, perhaps gotten it in writing–but would that have mattered? They were clearly quite used to this because despite having 4 people protesting at them in 3 different languages, most of them seemed completely unphazed and apathetic to it. It seems to be something they do everyday–couple goes in, couple finds out they only get 25% of all the shots they took, girl gets upset, boy buys pictures to try and soothe upset girlfriend. By the way, each extra photo costs $10. WTF, seriously? It isn’t even that expensive in Japan or America.

So, they made us pay ahead of time, they changed dates and times on us, and then they blatantly lied to us when they told us we would get all of our pictures. In the end, they tried to get us to pay $400 US for my remaining pictures but we refused. They tried to say things like, “Oh what a waste of a day, are you sure you don’t want to just buy the rest of the set?” They tried to nickle and dime us for everything and tried to force us to buy photos we didn’t want (for example, they tried to force me to buy an ugly photo because they “needed” it to super impose onto my hand for another shot–$10US for a tiny picture of me sitting in my own hand! Fuck you guys, really.) I refused to give them another dime, even if it meant giving up some nice shots.

Well anyways, lesson is–don’t go to Venus Wedding Plaza on Huihai Zhong Lu 568. Actually, since they swear every studio works the same way–don’t go anywhere on that road. Afterwards, Jon’s driver (who spent a good hour yelling at them for scamming us) told us that this is how it is sometimes, and they do it to everyone, but especially to us because they knew they could get away with it.

Oh well, I only got to take home 30 of my 120+ photos…but on a sidenote, the people at the photo studio (seperate from the people who run the business end in Huihai) were lovely and let us take photos even though we weren’t allowed to. I got to do poses that Jon and Hugh and I came up with (including tons of stupid ones) and not just some of the random cheesy stuff the photographer had me do. So screw you Venus Wedding Plaza and here’s a sampling of what I did yesterday I’m pretty sure I got more than $400 worth of ellicit photography ;P

Getting made up as a crazy fairy...

Who needs a professional photographer when I have Hugh to snap shots like this one

I love staying with locals when I go overseas–obviously it’s always nice to have cheap rent and language help, but also because of memories which can’t be made otherwise.

For example, today I gathered three friends that I knew from three different places. How many times can you even say that when visiting one city? Now, how many times will I ever be able to say I ate at a Thai restaurant while being seranaded by a Filipino cover band while in Shanghai.

The band was awesome, by the way. I told one of the guys before I was Filipino (I recognized his accent) so he squealed (he was flamboyantly gay) and had the singers sing in Tagalog to us. He then proceeded to hit on my friend Evan by telling him, “I like your breast! Do you work out?”

Later that night we bought drinks and games and played an epic game of Monopoly, Beijing style. Hugh and I won in the end with an epic land-grab real estate property merger. All the while we were taking shots of Chinese rubbing alcohol, aka, Baijou, one of the foulest things I have ever drank in my life. It smells vaguely fruity (or like feet, depending on who you ask), burns as it goes down, and left an oily aftertaste which was described as tasting like stinky tofu (which if you don’t know what that is, be glad. =P)

Oh yeah, and we watched a horrible movie called Teeth which was about some chick with teeth in her vagina which was, well, considering we were drinking whiskey+green tea (not as bad as it sounds) and 56% proof Baijou was fairly sobering. And disgusting. But comical. Go figure.

All in all, not a normal tourist night.

I’m currently editing a video of some of our eating adventures, but I thought I’d share a sneak peak.. =)

A mushroom base hotpot, tasty!

Lunch in Yu Bazaar, soup dumplings made with crab roe

Slurp, slurp...

We’ve been walking around Shanghai and having all sorts of random people shout, “Hello! How are you?” or “Hello! You are very pretty!” to Hugh and me. I read that this was common, and at this point it’s still cute and funny (and far more appreciated than, “hey man, you wanna watch? dvd? bag?!) In Japan you got people staring and saw people really wanting to talk to you (and sometimes people did) but for the most part people were too shy to test out their English.

However, it can be kind of alarming. I’m a cautious person, but I don’t want to be too cautious.

We had a couple conversations with the hollerers and we don’t know what to believe yet–are these just outgoing young Chinese kids who want to practice their English with foreigners their age, or is it just one of those scams where they try to get you to go to their brothers tea shop then hit you with a huge bill? Since my friends in Shanghai are Chinese they aren’t exactly getting this treatment so they don’t know. I mean, I don’t want to assume the worst…it’s entirely possible they just want foreign friends (there’s plenty of gaijin hunters in Japan afterall, who basically do the same thing.)