OSAKA, Japan 大坂、日本

For tourists, we three (Scott, Jared and I) agreed that Osaka was no Tokyo. Not. Even. Close. What did we expect? Not sure, but going to Tokyo first made Osaka seem...well..dare I say, almost boring.

Upon arrival, we checked into the hotel and found more teeny tiny bottles of toothpaste, Japanese style. Dinner was sushi, sushi and sushi at Dotonbori, the street with the nightlife. Dotonbori was actually very cool: clothing shops, tons of restaurants and a lot of people too. Sushi was delicious, and the restaurant sported the funniest menu we had seen yet, with terrible Japanese-to-English translations such as, "A beefsteak. I wore roasted meatsauce," and "I sprinkled the soup which a crab was in to an omelet." Hilarious.

In the morning, we went to Osaka Castle Park. The park had several cultural attractions besides the castle, first of which was a Japanese temple (I'm still not sure which religion it was for, maybe Taoism? There was no Buddha present, so we had to think about it). There was a photoshoot going on, too, of a man and a woman in traditional marriage costumes. Osaka Castle was a museum about the castle, in the castle. It had like 8 floors, and at the top you could look out over the city.

The highlight of the visit to the museum was that on the 3rd floor, visitors could dress up in Japanese garb and take pictures. This was highly amusing. Jared got to wear a hat with antlers, Scott had horns on his hat and I wore a kimono with a flower in my hair!

By mid-afternoon, we had to check out of the hotel already because our flight was at 5 p.m. and we had to take a train to the airport. This plan worked out with a bit of difficulty because we had all run out of cash, couldn't find an ATM, and the hotel wouldn't convert my Chinese Yuan into Japanese Yen.

But, the train from central Osaka took us right to the airport conveniently, and our flight to Korea was less than two hours. The meal on Japan Air was a bento box (it tasted kind of weird, but it's the experience that counts).

Tokyo, Japan

After my last day in HK (my 21st birthday, kind of a big deal), which involved packing, shipping boxes home at the tiny Yau Yat Sen post office in Kowloon Tong, getting taken to dinner by Jared in the Midlevels and coming back to watch a movie in the park with a ton of friends and saying goodbyes, IT WAS OFF TO JAPAN AT 6:30 A.M.!

The flight, 4 hrs long, had the best food I've ever had on an airplane (thanks, NWA). Upon getting off, we were given swine flu declarations that we weren't sick and all that, and I was reading signs in Japanese (for what that was worth).

Jared, Scott and I took the airport train to the center of the city and on the way we saw the rainy countryside and Japanese homes. Getting from the airport train to the taxi was a total drag, but then we arrived at destination #1, the Peninsula Hotel (thank you Scott). The hotel was absolutely gorgeous!

Scott asked the concierge what was best to do in Tokyo, and where was the place with all the lights? The concierge said, that's everywhere. We took the metro to Shibuya, a really happening place where we looked for a place to have dinner.

Awesome fact #1 about Tokyo: there are some intersections where all the cars stop and all the people walk. In other words, well, there are no other words. EVERY MOVING VEHICLE STOPS and EVERYONE GETS TO WALK WHICHEVER WAY THEY WANT. You can walk in the middle of the intersection because no one can stop you. You can walk diagonally. You can walk sideways. You can walk in a circle. It was crazy.

We had dinner at a Japanese restaurant (duh) on the 7th floor of a building (like HK, everything in Tokyo is vertical). The sushi was GREAAAAT!! And we had edamame too, and some weird tofu things, and even some cheese with pepper on it, if I recall correctly.

Day 2 in Tokyo was a bit dreary and not so warm. We started out with the Imperial Palace , just across the street from the hotel, which was a really big park with a moat around it and some museums inside and traditional buildings. Next we took the metro to Harajuku, where we saw a girl dressed in all white who looked like a fake person. We had lunch at Pizza Express because everything is just delicious there.

Harajuku had tons and tons of stores and shops and restaurants and people. Later in the afternoon we went to Tokyo Tower, which is bright orange, tall and looks like the Eiffel Tower. We went to the viewing deck.

Tokyo did a much better job with their tower than did Shanghai (surprised?). There was a COFFEE SHOP at the top (WINNER DING DING DING). Shanghai's Oriental Pearl Tower just got crushed.

Dinner was late, and in Shinjuku. Jared tried this crazy omelette with NOODLES inside. We also had edamame, sushi, and another Japanese omlette (tamago) but with no noodles.

Day 3 was Fish Day and Bullet Train Day. We woke up crazy early at like 6 to get to the Tokyo Central Fish Market. We took the metro there and followed the tourists who were headed there also. The fish market was in a gigantic warehouse-like building, and at first it was like a wet market in Hong Kong with people cutting up fish, squid, octopus and other seafood, putting them out to sell.

But there were also people riding little trucks and farther back was the tuna auction. The auction took place in a room that was really cold, because all the tunas appeared frozen (and had their brains scooped out?). Men were really bidding on the giant tunas. I didn't know tunas were so big. They look like small sharks.
After the auction and all the fish, we headed out of the market and through all the sushi shops that bordered it. Sushi is EXPENSIVE. Well, everything and I mean EVERYTHING in Japan is expensive. Everywhere. Everything.

I had tuna sashimi over rice for breakfast. It was delicious and so, so fresh.

On the walk back to the metro, it was getting really sunny and bright out. We saw some Japanese schoolchildren in uniform heading to school. THey were adorable! All the working people on the metro were wearing suits. People in America don't really wear suits anymore, but people in Japan really dress up.

We walked around Ginza after a stop at the hotel. Ginza is much like 5th Ave. in NYC: name-brand shopping, big stores and of course, the Apple store.

THE BULLET TRAIN: tickets for the bullet train were, again, NOT CHEAP AT ALL! You'd think that for a 3-hour train ride on a train that leaves every quarter-hour, they would charge less, but they DON'T! Riding the Shinkansen cost as much as flying on an airplane, ish.

Unfortunately, Jared and I were spoiled after riding the Maglev in Shanghai and racing at 300 km/hr to the Shanghai airport from the city limits in 7 minutes flat. The bullet train was fast and all, but nothing I was astounded at. Anyway, we did get to see a bit of Japan as we flew past houses and towns and mountains and a body of water (ocean?). We finally got to Osaka.

BEIJING HUANYING NI! just like the song.

Jared, our Swedish friend Salle and I spent three and a half days in Beijing, China, from May 7-10.

Day 1: HouHai.

HouHai is an area in the center of Beijing that surrounds a man-made lake, where the Chinese teens love renting paddle or electric boats and spending the night in the somewhat smelly lake. The lake is surrounded by bars and restaurants, all of which are pricy for what things in China SHOULD be, and with English menus for tourists. After dark, the place looked really cool, with the neon lights reflecting on the water from the restaurants. The three of us ate at a restaurant on a roof, which was decorated with Christmas lights. Gluck's friend Manny, who's studying abroad in Beijing, met up with us up there. I got fried rice and after five bites I didn't really want to look at it anymore.

Something Jared, me and Salle have in common is that we don't like Chinese food.

Day 2: TIANANMEN SQUARE AND FORBIDDEN CITY!!!

What separates Beijing from China's other most famous city, Shanghai, is the amount of ancient culture. We soon realized that Shanghai is the financial and metropolitan city of China, and Beijing is the capital with all the culture and history, essentially.

We got off the metro (2 Yuan, 34 US cents per ride) at Tiananmen and found the famous entrance to the forbidden city with the gigantic portrait of Mao I had only seen in history books and pictures. I had pictured it so differently. Tiananmen Square is actually across the street, and I read in our little tour book borrowed from our French friend JC that it is the largest public square in the WORLD.

The Forbidden city was HUGE!!! Building after building was built in the same style and was impressively well-kept. The big halls, with names like "Hall of Supreme Harmony," had thrones and things from the emperors. There were also museums, many museums, with brass, clocks, precious metals, etc. The weather was nice and we took some absolutely fantastic pictures touring the area.

I think we spent three hours there. We made it all the way through to the back garden, which leads out of the Forbidden City, and we turned back around to walk backwards through the entire thing again.

We then crossed the street, after exiting, into Tiananmen Square, the symbol of Chinese Communism (well, to Americans). Okay, it was really big, and there were 2 statues with workers being all symbolic about the worker's struggle and the commoner.

This part is really interesting: we had two different tourist maps, and one showed the man-made lakes as stretching all the way to this main avenue where the big Mao gate was. The other one showed the same area is being like, blank, I think. We were searching for what we thought was a nice big lake and a park to sit in, but instead we walked along a 12-foot wall for a HALF HOUR trying to find an entrace to this assumed park. On the way, I ased various guards at various entrances into this walled place where the park on the map was. They said, we couldn't come into this place. I said, "WHY?" and they said, no one can come in. Finally, a guard who spoke a little bit of English, said "It is like your White House."

That's when we understood that the Chinese don't even know what their government is up to. In Washington, you can go up to the gate of the White House, snap photos, hold protest signs. In China, you're not allowed to SEE it.

We used the maps to go to a REAL park, BeiHai park ("North Sea" park), where another man-made lake had an island in the middle that we ate dinner/lunch on. Well, Jared and Salle got a Beijing specialty, Beijing noodles--cold noodles served with soybean paste, cucumbers, sprouts, and peas that you put on by yourself. It was a really good buy for like US$3, but I got French Fries because Chinese food makes me nauseous.

The boat rentals in BeiHai were closing up for the day (or so we thought, because no one was nice about it) but Jared navigated our way back to HouHai, where we rented a boat and spent the twilight on the man-made body of water until it got dark and our hour was over.

Day 3: THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA

The Great Wall of China is something you've only seen in books. The wall is actually split into segments, some northeast of the city of Beijing, some northwest, and some that are probably even further.

The part of the wall we went to was called "Simatai." Most tourists who come to Beijing see the part of the wall called "Badaling," which was renovated in the 1950s to accomodate tourists in mass and is hardly an ancient artifact anymore, so we heard.

Simatai was located to the northeast of Beijing, if I'm not mistaken. It took more than an hour to get there, and upon arriving, we bought tickets to take a cable car up the mountain, then another lift to walk up and down the actual wall part.

Some parts of the wall were "crumbling" and it was a good thing we came prepared wearing sneakers for some real hiking up the rocks and down steep stairs. The wall was anything but crowded; there were some other white people our age and some Chinese people.

see this: http://photos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs019.snc1/4533_1174874815414_1334370021_30973704_7987318_n.jpg

The wall is actually like 20-25 feet above the ground, not grotesquely tall like you might assume it is. There were the little buildings every few hundred yards with windows and the roofs of them had places where soldiers once stuck their bows and arrows or cannons, depending on what year of the wall's long lifetime it was.

And how did we get down from the wall? I'll tell you. We ziplined from the end of the wall before the river, across the river, to then take a little boat back to the parking lot. The zipline was AWESOME, not so fast because it wasn't a real zipline (we didn't propel our own weights because the thing was on a pulley) but really thrilling that the ride was over water. It was actually a blast.

Dinner that night was a lucky pick from our mini-tour book. Chinese food was obviously out of the question (when in Beijing, do as the Beijing-ers do.. NOT!) and we chose an "American cuisine" restuarant that had a rave review.

"Grandma's Kitchen," the name of our destination restaurant, was in a district called Chaoyang, in the southeast quarter of the city. We took the metro there and stumbled upon the "silk market," a market like the one we'd found in Shanghai, full of fake clothing, bags, and the like. We only returned the next day to pick up DVDs.

I navigated our way to the restaurant using a map we had and when we got to the street, it was a neighborhood of diplomats and international cuisine. There was Thai food. There was an American-style diner called "Paul's Diner" and there was Grandma's Kitchen.

Walking into Grandma's Kitchen was like walking into a breakfast place in South Carolina. The best part was the tables and the wooden chairs, the little bar in the back, the homey feel, and the Chinese party of 10 on the side pigging out on American treats like fries and onion rings.

To me, the place was hilarious. It was what a chinese person thought was the epitome of a cute American restuarant. There were little wall-hangings on the wall that were the painted kind that say like "summer" "winter" "fall" "spring" and I said to some of the waitresses in chinese, "We've been looking for american food here! We're american! we're so happy to be here!"

Upon opening the menus, Jared and i were in HEAVEN. We hadn't seen an American menu in ages and page after page was salads, pasta, pizza, steaks, roasted chicken, omlettes, waffles, fries, mozzarella sticks, onion rings, pies, coffee, tea, beer, wine, EVERYTHING from a classic American menu. We seriously couldn't decide what to get, and so the three of us each ordered our own appetizer and main course. I got a chicken salad. Jared got a tuna melt with onion rings, and our friend Salle got a taco salad and garlic bread. We shared a bottle of red wine and just couldn't stop smiling

Jared was so happy he said he wanted to write the place a letter saying how glad he was to find it. The place was so adorable. I had an ENTIRE conversation in Chinese with our Chinese waitress (from Guilin! I told her I had been there!) and she was so sweet, with good English.

Day 4...

What we had in mind was going to the underground labyrinth, apparently one of Beijing's less talked about sites, but it was in the tourbook and looked incredibly interesting. Apparently in the 1960s, Mao decided the city of Beijing should have an underground hiding place for everyone in case of a nuclear attack from Russia... but there never was one, and now they give tours of the place.

But... we got there by navigating our way from the subway stop and went down a narrow street with locals and finally found the address in the tourbook. On the wall at the address was a sign that said the site was closed. Even stranger, it looked like it had never BEEN a tourist attraction and that no one around had any idea what we wanted nor that there had ever been anything out of the ordinary in this location. A man in a little booth essentially ignored us completely even when I asked in Chinese why it was closed and where did it go.

Completely disgruntled, we walked out of the neighborhood and to the "LG Twin Towers" mall. We had a pizza lunch and drinks, and then went to purchase pirated DVDs to support pirating in China (just kidding). We had all our luggage with us because we had already checked out of the hotel and finally just took the airport express train to the airport to be early for our flight.

Funny sidestory: I met a guy from Israel on the auto-pilot monorail transport thing between terminals. Zai jian, Beijing!

We got back to Hong Kong kind of late. The next day, I took an exam.

6 days left in HK!?

Yesterday was beautiful once again. 75 degrees F/25 Celsius (would you believe I still can't spell Celsius without the help of spellcheck?) and SUNNY, not a cloud in the sky all day. I couldn't study, so I set out to a destination I've had in mind, Chi Lin Nunnery.

I got off the metro and the helpful tourist signs pointed to Chi Lin Nunnery and Nan Lian Garden. Nan Lian Garden's entrance came first so I went there.

It was beautiful! Looked like it had just been built, or recently redone (all these places do) but in traditional style. It was immaculately clean as far as gardens go, every plant procured and picture-perfect. There was a big golden pagoda with a bright red bridge over a small lake with fish in it.

Then there was a bridge up to the nunnery, which was beautiful as well. There were lots of Buddha statues and important religious things, but you couldn't photograph them. There were also ponds with waterlillies.

Diamond Hill (the metro stop and name of the area) is 3 MTR stops past Kowloon Tong to the right, on the metro map. The scenery was mountains and tall apartment buildings, which interestingly sandwiched the garden and nunnery, but not too tightly.

Last night we also booked flights to Tokyo from HK, Osaka to Seoul, and SEOUL TO JFK! I'll be home the 23rd of May.

time in hk is winding down...

i've had this list of things to do in hong kong before leaving that i made a few months ago, and in the last day i've crossed several places off the list.

yesterday, i went with some friends to Monkey Hill, just a 10-minute taxi ride from campus. Monkey Hill is actually "Kam Shan Country Park" and is just home to lots and lots of wild monkeys. there are signs everywhere that say DO NOT FEED THE MONKEYS, and i had seen what happens if you feed monkeys in bali (they follow you). i actually almost had a monkey follow me anyway after i took some photos. we walked up a road that led up a mountain and at the top there was a view of hong kong island! too bad the weather was cloudy, or else the view would've been awesome.

today i went to pick up our tickets for beijing (very exciting). then i went to central, to the General Post Office, to ask about shipping our luggage home before we go to japan & korea. that wasn't so interesting, but the post office is pretty big.

from there i walked up D'Aguilar St., through Lan Kwai Fong, up the hill, to Hollywood Road. i was convinced not to ask directions to my destination, the Man Mo Temple, a Buddhist temple in the Mid-Levels. But on my way to this temple, I passed lots of Chinese galleries with statues and traditional artwork which was really cool.

I got to Man Mo, and it smelled of incense; that was because incense was EVERYWHERE and in cool spiral forms. the temple was built in the 1840s. there were some people lighting incense. it's really interesting to see plain-clothes Hong Kongers taking part in such ancient rituals; it shows that Buddhism is really still alive, as far as old religions go.

then i made my way down to Upper Lascar Row, also known as "Cat Street," home to what tour books and websites call 'antique shops,' and they may be, but to me they seemed like random crap and lots of little figurines of buddhas and Mao figurines that I'd seen already in stalls in the huge Sham Shui Po market. So, I wasn't too impressed, and I didn't buy anything.

After I walked down all the steps and out of the mid-levels, the nearest metro station was Sheung Wan. So...I walked for 15 minutes to find a Central station and actually went in the same exit i'd come out of initially to find the post office. i realized i was totally pooped and went back to Kowloon Tong to get a fruit salad and played Uno with some friends on the lawn.

beijing on thursday!!

FINALLY as the semester comes to a close Jared, our friend Salle from Sweden, and I are going to Beijing Thursday morning-Sunday night. I've heard you need 5 days in Beijing to get it all but 3.5 is gonna have to cut it for us.

Everyone's so surprised we haven't been to Beijing yet.. but there was no other time to do it! Lots of exchange students took their Easter break to go to Beijing, Shanghai & Xi'An but to be honest, I think this is the perfect time. Beijing didn't get warm until mid-April and now it's 80 degrees there and will be ... 88 on Thursday, acc. weather.com? jeez. Hong Kong was 75 yesterday and I didn't mind it at all... weather any hotter kinda gets me.

But atleast we didn't go pre-April when Beijing was just bitterly cold. Going up to Shanghai was enough during March.

TO THE BEACH!

May has come to Hong Kong and suddenly, the sun has come out, the weather is warm and breezy, and it's time to spend time outside and go to the beach.

Thursday night was the 'farewell dinner' which entailed a 4-course meal at the City Top Restaurant, at the university, where some faculty said thank yous and goodbyes and 2 students were emcees, making remarks throughout the dinner and finally presenting a slideshow.

Afterward, everyone (and really, a ton of people) headed out to Hong Kong Island to a bar called Sevva, on the 25th floor of a building, with a big balcony that looks out at the Bank of China building and others. It was cold out there, but cool to do something special on everyone's last night "all together one last time," or whatever.

We stayed out in LKF until 4:30 on Thursday night. I know this because we arrived back in Shek Kip May Park at about 5 a.m., and it started getting light at like 5:30, when groups of senior citizens arrived in the park to do tai chi and early morning exercise. We watched the sun rise, and then it was morning in Hong Kong. It was BEAUTIFUL outside.

Friday during the day I tried to catch up on sleep and at 8 p.m. a group of 16 of us headed out to Shau Kei Wan to take a bus to Shek O beach! We picked up BBQ items and food and drink and took a minibus (all of us on one bus, which seats 16 as it is, so it was a private party trip pretty much) to the beach, where we sat down at a BBQ area and toasted marshmallows and chicken and steak until 1:30 a.m. when I fell asleep in Jared's hammock on the beach.

I woke up in said hammock and the sun was shining and we were on a beach, which was AWESOME. Our friends were sprawled in tents and on blankets and still sleeping. I slept again until a big Chinese tour group with a leader who had a microphone and a little amplifier started organizing beach relay games and obnoxiously woke us all.

We (the 8 left behind... 4 had gone to Big Wave Bay Beach already and 4 had gone back to CityU) took 2 taxis to Big Wave Bay Beach, a 5 minute drive from Shek O and even more beautiful because BBWB is surrounded more intensely by mountains.

As we got out of the taxis with our backpacks, tents, sleeping bags and stuff, we felt like visitors to this place, which was still in the borders of Hong Kong. We felt like backpackers in Thailand or something, finding paradise for a day somewhere we'd never been.

"The beach must be this way," we said, because from the parking lot, you couldn't see beach-- you had to walk down a road on a hill/mountain, past beachy stores and Chinese food and snack shops for beachgoers. We found our friends, and we found the beach, which was filling up at 12 noon, and the GORGEOUS weather could not have been better.

We spent ALL day at the beach. The water was a little cold, but didn't stop our friends from surfing. We played cards, we layed in the sun, people took turns napping in Jared's hammock, and as the sun went down we built things in the sand...... namely a version of the Ngong Ping Buddha, and then a big dragon. When in Hong Kong, do as the Hong Kongers do!

Guilin & Yangshuo, China

Let me start with the Guilin trip of May 2-6, 2009. I went with 3 English CityU friends, Ella, Katie, and Jordan, Ella's friend Sarah from England, and Elizabeth, who's from California. Our 9-hour bus ride to the city of Guilin in Guangxi province, which is west of Guangzhouo province, left us in the bus station of Guilin at about 8 a.m. and it was raining. It was also cold. We were also all cranky and had not eaten a real dinner the night before, so we looked for breakfast.

A couple on our bus that we met, a Greek woman and a Spanish guy, who said they lived in Guilin, showed us to a hostel that we should stay at. First, I should mention that we had met 3 guys who were exchange students at the Chinese University of Hong Kong on our bus--one was American, one was German, one was Finnish. It's too bad that tall people just get gawked at for being tall, because Martin (German) is about six foot seven. He's gigantic. He said he measures 2.3 meters tall. In China, he looked completey ridiculous.

We all ate a warm breakfast and got dry inside the hostel, which unfortunately was booked. But instead, the nice Chinese girls who worked there gave us the name of another hostel and also a place to stay for the next night in Yangshuo.

Guilin is a sizable city that's kind of in the middle of nowhere. People go there to see the landscape, which is both famous and breathtaking. Yangshuo is actually the place that everyone winds up because it is even PRETTIER than Guilin (okay, so Guilin wasn't entirely impressive and all we needed was 1 day there).

The nine of us got on a city bus with directions to a different hostel and a note written in Chinese to the bus driver to tell us where to get off, from the nice Chinese girl. We got off the bus at the right place and saw the first Guilin mountain. We were next to the river and it was raining, but there was a mountain. We went up to the railing of the sidewalk on the river and saw more mountains. We were in the right place!

Guilin has some really spectacular landforms. There's a rock that juts out from the side of the land into the river and it has a hole in it, so that it creates an archway in the water, but it looks like an elephant's trunk. I think its name is Elephant Rock or something, but it looked kinda crappy in the rain and the fog and the cold.

We finally reached the correct hostel after asking directions over and over again (I mean ME asking directions in Chinese over and over again) but it turned out that we had passed it. It turned out that they had just enough space for all of us to have beds that night and we were so relieved.

Guilin was particularly busy this weekend because there was a Festival of the Dead. This means that a lot of Chinese migrated to Guilin to wake the dead and set off fireworks and things so everything was more crowded than usual. What luck.

I didn't know this beforehand, but hostels are very all-encompassing in how they help out travelers (not to mention I paid about 5 dollars to sleep there that night). We arranged a FREE shuttle to take us to 2 different attractions that afternoon, organized by the hostel. The first was "Solitary Beauty Peak," a mountain that shoots up from basically nowhere in the middle of a park. The buildings in the park were once part of a palace or something, many years ago, and so there was a bit to see in terms of reading things like in a museum. The "solitary peak" was so vertical that you couldn't look up and see the top of it. Plus, there's no way to climb a vertical mountain.

.....But the Chinese had figured out a way. There are steps carved into this vertical mountain and by huffing and puffing you can make your way up to the top, where of course there are some chatchkes to buy and pictures to take. Unfortunately, the view would've been better had it not been so foggy.

The next place we went to was cool independent of the weather. We went to Reed Flute Cave, which is just a big cave in a mountain, once again, but the Chinese went all-out to light it up with colors and give names to the strange stalagmites and stalactites based on what they look like. The tour was given in Chinese so none of us really understood a word (not even me) but the best part was that there was a small body of water inside the cave, and with the lights on the wall with the stalagmites and stalactites the reflection was AWESOME.
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/176/467339996_329b745f16.jpg
If blogger was letting me upload photos, thats what you would be seeing. ^

And this is what I meant by "vertical mountain:" http://www.absolutechinatours.com/UpFiles/20082271061513895china-tours.jpg

See if those work, because they do the same job my pictures would've done even though I found them on google.

The cave was great and all but frankly, we were tired. We took the bus back to the city, as the driver had given us directions since this was the end of our free shuttling, and it was 1 yuan (17 cents?). We got off in the middle of the city, as it seemed, and went back to revisit the Moon and Sun Pagodas, but at night, since they looked crappy in the cloudy daytime. At night, these 2 pagodas light up and are one of the most famous things in Guilin.

Pagoda picture

We walked back from the pagodas to the hostel, with our new buddy who we met at the cave, Ellie, a British girl, 26 years old, who was travelling Asia until she figured out where she wanted to settle down and teach English. On the way, Jordan and Ellie stopped for coconuts that some woman was cutting up with a knife (nothing new to me as I had had one in Thailand). We also discovered that the pedestrian walkway near the hostel was in fact a NIGHT market, which was why it had been dead during the day! There was stuff to buy EVERYWHERE and in addition to the stands with little Buddhas and Chinese things to take home and say you were in China, there were real clothing stores, restaurants and more.

We searched around for dinner and finally settled on a cheap place filled with local Chinese people (or maybe they were tourists, you couldn't tell). The menu was very, very interesting... I settled for egg fried rice but there were choices of dog and horse and terrible things like that. Everyone else who didnt try horse (only 1 of the CUHK guys did, in soup) got vegetable noodles... 6 yuan (1 US dollar).

I went to bed after that, real tired from sleeping on a bus the night before.

THE NEXT DAY... we took a boat to Yangshuo. It was a 4-hour cruise down the river in a type of boat I'd never been in, but you could tell they were so specific for this type of tourist attraction. The inside of the boat didn't have any seats except booth tables for parties of 8. Everyone had a table in front of him and lunch was included in the price of the cruise (please don't picture a Carnival cruise ship. This one held about 100 people).

The view didn't get good until about 45 minutes into the ride when everyone scrambled to the top viewing deck to snap photos and become glad that they were on a boat looking at mountains (really, that was what you were supposed to do). Lunch was a sausage, rice and cabbage. I ate the rice and some cabbage because I thought it was weird-tasting Chinese onion.

We saw some cool stuff on the way to Yangshuo besides mountains, nonetheless. We saw a man bringing 2 oxen into the water... some cows...and some children playing. We also saw tourists sitting on little boats and laughed because they had probably gotten ripped off, whereas we booked ours thru the hostel and ALSO bought the Chinese tour (again, no English here) because it was cheaper than the English one. We were 1 of 2 groups of white tourists on ours.

Arriving in Yangshuo felt like the final leg of the trip. We knew there would be a lot to do there, but we didn't know just how much. Getting off the cruise boat, there were things to buy and tourist attractions to be a part of. Yes, I took a picture with an old bearded Chinese man in a big wide rice-field hat who had two large birds on a stick, and I got to hold the stick with the birds while my friends snapped pictures. Jordan and Elizabeth did it too.

The walk into town from the river was LINED with stands selling all the same things: t-shirts, dolls, tote bags that said GuiLin in Chinese, fans, stones, you name it. We walked thru the town and finally found our hostel by navigating a business card map that the Chinese girl in Guilin had given us and made it.

The six of us (we'd split from the CUHK guys but made a meeting place) all shared a room in the hostel, which was eclectically decorated and the girls at the counter oohed and aahed over my Chinese skills. Our "dorm" room was bare bones with bunk beds and nothing on the walls but that's what you get for 4 US dollars.
That night we all went for happy hour at one of the many Western-esque bar/restaurants. Sarah, Jordan and Ella played hackey sack in the street. Then we split for dinner because some people wanted Chinese and I didn't, and Katie, Jordan, Liz and I ate at a coffee place that had a big dinner menu. I had chicken satay (a Malaysian dish) with frice rice (ugh, again) but we were warm and the place was cute.

That night we shopped around and I think it started pouring at about 10 when we all kinda headed back and showered and went to sleep to wake up for our big plans the next day: Katie, Jordan and I would be taking a cooking class while Liz, Sarah and Ella decided to go KAYAKING.

As per booking the cooking class thru a different hostel we had passed (same name as the one in Guilin, trustworthy) they gave us an included shuttle to the cooking school and first a 'tour' of a food market. This was not such a big deal for us Hong Kongers since we've seen markets in Hong Kong, unlike the other tourists who may have seen this for the first time, but I had never seen ..... dog.... in a Hong Kong market.

True fact: People in China eat DOG.

Enough of that because I don't want to think about it. The cooking class was amazing! It was about 15 people, and everyone was really nice and really interesting. There was a Canadian lady who was living in Bangkok, a family from England, a guy from Tasmania, and this guy David who was from....GREAT NECK, NEW YORK. We knew some people in common (given).

We cooked with woks and everyone got the same ingredients. The teacher showed us how to make the dish first and then everyone gave it a shot. It was SO MUCH FUN! We made chicken with cashews and vegetables, garlic eggplant, bok choy and "beer fish," a Guilin-Yangshuo specialty (I used water instead of beer for gluten sake)! Then they set a table for us and we all got to eat together. They gave us the recipes for what we had made and offered a cookbook for us to buy.

Afterward, we met up with the other girls and took David grom Great Neck with us. We walked around the shops on West Street again and found a place to rent bikes. I rented them in Chinese (yay!) for us, and Jordan and Ella took a tandem bike (what a gamble). Then, we took off onto the road that goes out of town and into the mountains.

On this road we saw PLENTY of other tourists biking and doing just as we were. We rode for about an hour out and then sun even came out for 15 minutes (and then went back in...so frustrating). We stopped at a restaurant to use the facilities and get snacks. Riding past the mountains was very cool, and put the icing on the cake for a mountainous vacation.

THis is what it looked like: Yangshuo scene

Dinner for me and Ella was the Meiyou Cafe, a reasonably priced but really big and nicely decorated restuarant on the end of West street, near the fanciest hotel in Yangshuo. It's reallyl unfortunate that the only thing I can really get on a Chinese menu is fried rice for some reason, but this time I ordered a cheese omlette. It really wasn't so good, and Ella had ordered fried rice so we just shared.

Our bus was to leave at 8:20 p.m. to Shenzhen, arriving there at 6 a.m. The good thing I've discovered about buses in Asia is that they are rarely late... for arrivals to the destination. We waited an extra half hour for the bus to show up in Yangshuo since it was coming from Guilin.

Upon getting on the bus, you were to take off your shoes and bag them, and store them in a compartment in your bed on the sleeper bus. I had never seen a bus that was so specifically for little Chinese people: picture a big bus, like a tour-sized bus--tall and with a high-ish ceiling. NOW, picture THREE beds across. Not two, THREE, and WITH 2 aisles between the 3 beds. There was no room to move nor to sleep, but I think i managed a few hours. A fuzzy blanket was provided, and the bus took bathroom stops throughout the night at gas stations (blech).

Coming back to Hong Kong from China is like no other feeling in the world. Hong Kong is so, so different from anything that is a Chinese standard. (Example given: the bathrooms in the HK side of HK-CHINA customs are Western toilets, and there are sinks. Several sinks. Also there are paper towels to dry your hands with. In China, there are 3 stalls with squatter toilets, 2 sinks, no soap, no TOILET PAPER, and definitely no hand towels. You get the point.)

We were on the metro by 7 am and back into our dorms at 8. I was okay with taking a break from China for a while, even though it's the only country in Asia where I can speak their language and actually get somewhere!

TRAVELS! WOW!

Mazel tov to me because I haven't touched this blog in almost a month and SO much has happened! For the month of april, I've been travelling outside Hong Kong for exactly half of the month. I went to Guilin & Yangshuo, China for 5 days and Bali, Malaysia, & Laos and a short stop in Bangkok for 12 days. Now I'm totally pooped and back with some sort of funky illness I got from having too many ice cubes made from tap water in the fruit shakes I had in Laos. I've seen the doctor at the university health clinic twice this week and I'm finally feeling a bit better, with 8 doses of the medicine left. I should be fine after that. The good news is that I don't have malaria. It could always be worse. Travel stories to come!

Inspiration: Engrish.com

Observe: www.Engrish.com

But, behold, I now am the owner of THIS:

They said Lan Kwai Fong would be crazy...

Saturday night: a bunch of us exchange students hit the club scene again in Lan Kwai Fong ("LKF"), Hong Kong's most famous bar and club district full of streets that are built at 50 degree angles to the ground because there's only so much land on Hong Kong Island until one hits the mountain and must build on it.

But Saturday was a different story because this weekend was the Hong Kong Sevens.

I think I forgot to mention the absurdity of everything happening at the Hong Kong Sevens on Friday in Hong Kong Stadium. I had to ask a friend what proper attire is to wear to a rugby game and dressed presentably in case it was some sort of assumption to look nice at a rugby game, but turns out, people wore anything. Some girls were dressed up in heels and dresses, other tourists came in sneakers and sweatshirts. Anything went.

And SOME people were dressed up. There was a man dressed as the Hulk, who painted his body green. Others were wearing wigs, tie-dyed shirts, no shirts, Halloween costumes, you name it.

The parade of attire continued into Lan Kwai Fong for the 'afterparty' into Saturday night. I saw a man painted silver. As we were leaving to hit up McDonald's, I saw three Teletubbies.

It was pretty funny... people in the rest of the world really love rugby.

CityU Spectacles

The students at City University really like the clubs with which they associate and of which they are parts (long sentence but gramatically correct. phew).

I have just witnessed about 10 students standing on the balcony above the floor below the main concourse dressed in Viking attire or some garb that made them look ridiculous. They were holding a banner that said PEACE concert or conference or something and then there was a kid in a "cannon" made from gigantic cardboard boxes taped together and at the end of the chant, he "fired" at them and they all fell to the floor.

Really eye-catching. Really... strange.

Yesterday i saw a girl who was getting pushed around in a larger-than-life shopping cart made out of a cart of sorts. This was to promote some other event for some other club.

It's commonplace to walk out of class and see the members of the "Students' Union" having back-and-forth chants on each side of the escalators on the balcony. They're really loud. And they love banners a lot (I'm looking at three right now. Wait, make that five. Oh, six.)

Hong Kong Rugby Sevens

Tourbooks call it the single most important sporting event in HK all year.

The Rugby Sevens are an international rugby tournament held in Hong Kong Stadium in March every year. We, as exchange students, were lucky enough to land HK$50 tickets for the first day of the games, which was Friday (yesterday). The games go on until Sunday but tickets were very expensive for the whole weekend.

Hong Kong Stadium holds 40,000 and has a field with seats all around. We somehow landed front row center seats, all the exchange students I went with, I mean, because the first few rows were getting some of the rain, while the rest were pretty covered. So, I literally sat front row, center for the Rugby Sevens, which was about 8 15-minute games of world teams.

USA played Scotland, Portugal played Tonga, England played China, Australia played Korea and France played Samoa or something. Also contenders were Zimbabwe, Fiji, Wales, and Argentina. It was really interesting, seeing who of the world countries lands on top for rugby.

It was also cool watching the games with students from France, England and Australia, whose teams were playing. The French people all chanted in French and sang some sort of anthem at the end when they won.

It rained on and off but that didn't stop our dressed up friends from drawing attention to the cameras that were getting shots of people who were dressed up or dancing in their seats, like at a Yanks game. A man and woman came up to our large group and said we've chosen to get you on camera, so act crazy but don't do it till we say so!

The games went from 4 pm to 9:15 pm, when everyone, tired and drunk, headed in masses to the metro station or out to eat in Causeway Bay.

COLDPLAY live in Hong Kong

Last night was the long-awaited Coldplay concert!! It was at Asia World Expo, near the airport, and we took the bus (hooray, mass transit!) with 5 kids we kind of knew from the exchange program and also Jared's roommate Lawrence.

Upon arrival, we might have as well been in America or some place with a lot of white people. There was a line for food like hot dogs, popcorn, beer, wine, sushi (only in Asia), but NO FRENCH FRIES LIKE JARED AND I KIND OF WANTED!!! A concert with no fries? ABSURD! Well, not for Hong Kong. They don't sell sushi and noodles as snack food in America, do they.

Honestly, I think every white person, whether American, British, Australian or European, showed up to Asia World Expo for this concert. There were a lot of Chinese people too, but they were all pretty white-ish to like Coldplay, a British band. I actually HEARD some Asian people speaking English.

Something alarming was that there was NO security going on upon getting into the arena. We got our tickets ripped at that was IT. We brought in our own drinks blatantly in bottles and no one cared.

The show was great. You could tell that the band was excited for all the Brits in the audience--they said so. They did a considerable first set, then a 3-song acoustic set in the back of the arena which got the people with the crappy seats pretty excited and the people with the good seats pretty bummed, and then an encore set.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph7ABmXW40s

Temple St. Night Market

Sunday, Jared and I had finished an hour at the driving range and asked a man in the golf club office where Temple St. was. He pointed some direction and said it was so far we wouldn't want to walk it.

Apparently he either a) wanted to trick us or b) had no idea what he was talking about, because as Jared and I walked back from the golf club to the Jordan metro station, we turned down a street that had lots of people eating at open restaurants with tables set up along the sidewalk. We decided to give dinner a shot since we were seeing a movie in an hour and a half with friends, and trying new places to eat is always good. The menu at the first place was fine (fried flat noodles with beef! rice vegetarian spring rolls!) and we sat down, to find out that the name of the place was Temple Spicy Crab, and on the other corners of the intersection were Temple Street Crabs, Temple King Crab, and some other Temple Crab restaurant. IT WAS TEMPLE STREET.

The market was like the "Ladies' Market" (called that originally because it had ladies' clothing but now it has all kinds of stuff from knockoff bags and wallets to kimonos and I <3 HK tshirts and Chinese paintings and junk like keychains and souvenirs) in Mong Kok but more sedated. The stalls were shorter and therefore less intimidating, the salespeople were nicer from what I could tell and the prices weren't terrible.

Therefore, we found Temple Street night market. Actually, we returned the next day at 4 pm to get a battery for Jared's remote control helicopter but it wasn't even open yet. Hence, "night" market.

What I Saw at Lunch

Last week, I was sitting with some friends having lunch outside at the "cafe" on campus. We saw a Chinese girl who had finished her bowl of noodles or whatever and had proceeded to take out her nail clipper and cut her fingernails over her empty tray of food.

Grossss.

The Magical Sham Shui Po Market

Today, someone made mention of the Sham Shui Po "Apliu Street" market, and I said, "Oh, I was there yesterday!" He said, "Isn't it magical?"

And I said, "Yes, it is."

The Sham Shui Po market is 3 metro stops from Kowloon Tong, where the university is, and Jared and I went on our Friday afternoon, not knowing how long we'd actually spend there. The market is within 4 city blocks or something. Some of the market is organized into electronics stalls and electronics stores, or clothing stands, but other streets of it are completey random.

We saw a store with security cameras, and just tons of types of cameras. I saw 2 things I would've expected to find in a movie like Spy Kids--a necktie with a hidden spy camera and a wristwatch with a camera in it.

The clothes were really cheap... some were used, some weren't. Some you just couldn't tell but they were so cheap that people buying them might not care.

We saw toy stands with cheap toys, used toys, piles of toys... stands with signs like "OPEN" made with little lights... watch stands, keychain stands, wire stands, battery stands, pans and pots stands and stands with no rhyme or reason for anything being 'sold.'

Then came the street with all the Chinese 'authentic' goods like Buddha statues, stone bracelets, little jade zodiac animals, books with photos of Mao ZeDong and jewelery.

Asian rock bands

Oh yeah, and Saturday night I went with Katie and some people to see some live music at a place in Lan Kwai Fong. Several of the bands that played were Chinese people. I've never seen Chinese people play good rock. This one band competed in a competition in England and I thought they were real good.

the taste of Taste

Taste is the expensive yet most convenient choice for grocery shopping for the students who live in the residence halls on the CityU campus. There's also Wellcome (2 o them), a less expensive, un-classy, smaller supermarket with 2 locations near campus, one near the 'wet market' and one down Tat Chee Avenue near the post office and some apartment buildings.

Last night, Taste was unveiling their Easter display, complete with Easter chocolates and bunnies and the like. Last week, they had a gourmet Australian foods temporary counter, complete with an Australian man giving free samples of walnut-prune paste (it wasn't bad).

Taste carries a variety of Asian brands and foods and also American brands that I like from home. Actually, I've tried a few new 'western' foods from Taste, like multigrain corn cakes (YUM) and apple chips, in a cyllindrical can like Pringles come. I also got organic rice cakes and Grimway carrots, just like home.

But then there's the Asian sections of food and the products that have all Chinese that I can't read. The laundry detergents all have names in Chinese and only directions in English so you can't really tell what they are exactly. The noodle aisle has Chinese noodles, rice noodles, Thai noodles, Japanese noodles, you name it. Some are in English, some aren't.

Also worthy of mention is the sushi counter. Something I haven't seen at home is like, sushi fish cut all nicey but with no rice. I guess if I had ever seen it on a menu I just looked past it, and I don't think I've seen that in a supermarket. The sushi counter at Taste is as big as a meat counter would be at home; the sushi progresses from handrolls and maki rolls at one end to platters of sushi and the raw cuts of fish at the other end. Some of the types of sushi get real real pricy, too. My favorite is seared salmon with the mayo on top--it's honesty to die for!

Taste also has a nice alcohol section where all the exchange students flock to for a late-night beer pick-up, since Taste closes at midnight! It's really quite wonderful as a happy medium between every grocery need a foreign student might have while abroad, but it's a bit of a hazard to one's wallet.

Traveling

I'd say the most exciting part about being an exchange student besides living in a country that is not America, meeting people from all over the world and trying a plethora of new foods is travelling to lots of places. I haven't gotten to them all yet, or nearly half of the ones on the imaginary list containing many countries in Southeast asia, but I hope to get to them.

Class is getting in the way.

Working with the Local Students

For the remainder of the semester, I will be doing group projects with local Hong Kongese students. For 3 out of 4 of my classes, I am the only exchange student/native English speaker, and the class in which I am one of 3 Americans there will be no group projects.

Group project 1 is with a group of me and 4 Hong Kong local students. One lives in a dorm here and the other 3 are commuters. The project involves research and we've had a month to decide what we're doing, but everything started solidifying (almost) this weekend. Friday we had a short meeting that started 30 minutes after proposed time, but it didn't last too long so it was bearable. Yesterday, we put meeting time for 3 p.m. I arrived promptly on time to the spot where we'd meet to find 2 of my groupmates discussing the project. They got up 2 minutes after I sat down, saying they had to get lunch and it would be 15 minutes.

So began my half hour of hanging out and checking my mail and things about Beijing on a computer in the main concourse of the academic building. At 3:33 I got a text from one of the group members who said she would be there soon.

The two of us sat down at 3:40 only for her to decide that perhaps the other 2 group members were now in a media lab on the 7th floor in the Communication department. We arrived at the media lab to find that they were not there, so we started attempting to work. At 4:00, one other group member showed up, 1 of the 2 who said he'd get lunch, to report that group member #3 had bailed for the day.

Group member #4 showed up at 4:30, 1.5 hours after proposed meeting time, having not finished her research and saying she'd overslept and had to commute in.

At 5:30 I said I had to go, which I didn't, but mentally I couldn't take anymore, and I just let them discuss the project in Cantonese since it was easier for them and more efficient in terms of translating back to Engish and doing it their way. I gave my input of re-wording our main argument in good English and gave some suggestions. Then I left.

None of them responded to my desperate email asking when we'd have our meeting tonight, the night before the presentation. I texted 3 of them fifteen minutes ago. One responded saying there will be no meeting tonight, they're just finishing up the powerpoint and will send it to me. I offered to edit it for English and grammar.

That's what I wanted to hear.

Another day, another new food

Aside from the fact that today Jared and I had Yoshinoya for lunch (something I'd never done before. It's fast food Japanese, and I got a terikyaki chicken bowl. Not so special, but tasty), my roommate Carol just gave me one of her Red Rose Apples. They're from Thailand, says the package.

The red rose apple doeosn't taste much like a real apple. The texture was watery and crunchy and "light," as Carol described the reason for her liking them. It wasn't sweet--Carol said Western people don't usually like them because they taste more like vegetables than fruit for not being so sweet.

Shanghai, Day 3

Sunday we woke up to a tad bit of sunlight through the haze, which I have been witness to for the last month, it seems. I haven’t seen a blue sky since mid-February, and it appears that this is the Haze season in South/Southeast asia. The rain season should come next. Then the hot season.

I looked out our big hotel window at People’s Square, which is home to the Shanghai Museum, a fountain, bumper cars, some amusement park rides, and other park things. Our first stop was Shanghai Museum (but not before Jared got a picture with the Hershey’s sign outside a store). The weather was warmer on Sunday, and we found our way through the park to the Shanghai museum. Outside, people were flying kites and all around the fountain were small Chinese children and toddlers and babies. I wanted to bring one home.

The Shanghai museum was all old things and artifacts: pottery, jade, seals (the kind your dynasty has, not the kind in the ocean), metal pots, paintings, calligraphy and furniture. We kind of zoomed through the whole museum because there’s only so long before you want to stop looking at pots and seals but the paintings were really cool and I liked the traditional furniture room also. Oh, and the statue room—lots of Buddhas and a really old dog, from like the 5th century A.D.

Next….. The Yu Yuan (Yu Garden) and Bazaar area. The Bazaar was a more gentrified version of the 4-story fakes market—not too many fakes, just souvenirs and Chinese STUFF like artwork, robes, musical instruments, clocks, things to give as gifts from China. Jared was on a hunt for a gong and we found the musical instruments store, which had instruments ranging from guitars to lutes and wooden flutes. The bazaar continues over a man-made pond, which has a bridge from one side to the other. It’s called 9 Turnings Bridge or something crazy. The real Yu Yuan is a 500-year-old park that you have to pay to get into. The architecture is traditional and there are pagodas and rocks and ponds and trees and tons of fish in the water. It was really beautiful.

Back to the hotel, and the two choices for getting to the airport were taxi or ….maglev, the speedy monorail train that takes people from the city to the airport in 7 minutes flat. Taking a taxi would be easy, there was a taxi queue at the hotel and a nice guy who spoke English and translated directions to the drivers for the hotel guests. It was 5:30 and the concierge warned us that there’d be traffic. If there were traffic, that would make the taxi ride more than an hour and not much fun. My cousin Carolyn came to meet us at the hotel to say bye and send us back off to Hong Kong, and called a friend to ask where the maglev station is.

This is the part of the trip where we got on the Shanghai metro, right across the street in People’s Square, a literal hub for metro connections, as the center of a city might be. The metro was like that of Hong Kong, but with even MORE people; I didn’t know it was possible. I once saw a video on Youtube of people getting pushed into a metro chain until the doors closed. I saw people squeeze their way on like sardines in a can. People pulled each other into the train. Some guy like, dove in. And, as the train left the platform, someone’s sport bag was caught between the doors.

We took the metro for 20 minutes and the stop where we got off was connected to the maglev station. The maglev cost 50 RMB. It reminded me of the Disneyworld monorail. The train started off and accelerated steadily to 100 km/hr… 200… 250… 300 km/hr?! We FLEW past Shanghai and its outskirts and suburbs all the way to the airport in SEVEN MINUTES FLAT.

Then we flew home and said bye bye to Big China and hello to the ‘Kong, back to Cantonese land. The end.

Shanghai, Day 2

Day 2 started off WONDERFULLY with a delicious continental breakfast at the hotel. There was everything from cereal to dumplings and omelets and French bread. In short, highlights of day 2 were the Site of the 2nd National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which was a museum about Communism and everything was in Chinese.

Then, we had lunch at an Australian restaurant after passing through XinTianDi, which I thought would be old ruins or something but it was an upscale-ish outdoor shopping mall with restaurants and stores. Next, we walked to Jian’An Temple, a Buddhist temple surrounded by skyscrapers. I sweetalked the guys at the door in Chinese saying I just wanted to take a ‘little look’ because it was 5 p.m. and that’s when they close, so they weren’t letting us in. We threw some coins into the big tall metal pot thing for good luck.

From there, we walked along Nanjing Road West toward the hotel, but first to find a market full of cheap stuff that everyone finds in China, right? All day we had been saying no, no, no to people on the street asking if if we wanted watches, bags or DVDs and finally Jared said yes, because on our map, this was the corner where the ‘Copy Market’ should be. This crazy lady led us into an alley, and then into a distressed building, through some turns and alleys, and into a little ‘store’ full of fake bags and watches and wallets. We stormed out because we’d heard about a MALL with this kind of stuff.

The lady followed us out, even though we said blatantly that she should leave us alone and that she lied, she lied. I told her in chinese that she lied because she was a downright liar, saying she knew where the mall was. She confessed that she REALLY knew where the mall was, and it was DIRECTLY across the street but the entrance was on the side of this building that looked legitimate so we had decided something so shady couldn’t be there. But it was. She asked us for money for doing us such a favor and taking us where we wanted to go and Jared gave her 2 or 3 Yuan and she looked disgusted but we walked in, to find exactly what we’d pictured: a 4-story mall of what you find in Chinatown New York: bags, wallets, clothes, jewelery, little Chinese dolls, postcards, souvenirs, Chinese wallets, pashminas, DVDs and more.

I had a blast bargaining in Chinese and surprising people with my Zhongwen (Chinese). In Hong Kong, people are more surprised that I speak Mandarin, because Mandarin is their 3rd language, maybe 2nd. Therefore, they tell me my Mandarin is better than theirs (I think they’re lying, but I’ve been studying it kinda intensely for 4 years now). They speak Cantonese first, they learn English, and a lot of the blue collar workers speak Mandarin before they speak any English (security guards, taxi drivers). I spoke to the taxi drivers in Shanghai in Chinese, told them where we wanted to go, had conversations, told them we were studying in Hong Kong, and they always asked what my guojia (homeland) was. I said America, and some of them asked how is it that I learned Chinese there.

We had Japanese food for dinner at a cool place where you can sit on the 2nd floor and look down at the kitchen. It was kind of like watching Top Chef, live. Then we met up with Carolyn and friends at a bar somewhere in the outskirts of the central city; the place was covered in graffiti all over the walls and once again, American music and lots of foreigners and students.

Shanghai made us realize what we like about Hong Kong: Hong Kong is organized. Kowloon Tong, where our school is, is the place for rich people who drive Bentleys and want to shop at the Gucci and Marc Jacobs in the mall. Mong Kok is for shopping at a 4-block long Chinatown-esque market, and the whole area is loud, congested, full of shopping. The financial district is for tall buildings and business people. Lastly, Lan Kwai Fong is like 3 square blocks of bars and clubs.

In Shanghai, it was different. The bars we went to were next to one or two, if any, bars, and then there was someone selling food on the street and a taxi waiting for people to get in for 20 minutes, because that’s where the closest interesting thing was.

Shanghai, Day 1

If you know me at all, you know I’ve always wanted to go to China. Sadly, living in Hong Kong for 2 months has gotten me spoiled and I no longer feel like I’m in a foreign country, let alone one that is a “Special Administrative Region (SAR)” of China. Hong Kong is more an economic zone than a political one, and it’s no REAL China, I guess.

I woke up at 4:45 a.m. to take a taxi to the Hong Kong airport with Jared. The Hong Kong metro only starts at 6 a.m. and the flight was at 8:00 so that would’ve been cutting it close. Instead, we took a taxi at 5:40 and got to the airport by 6, with time to kill and then we got on the plane and landed in Shanghai Pudong Airport.

Going through customs went perfectly—to go to Mainland China, one must obtain a Visa. Having a Hong Kong visa won’t get someone like me into China, even residing here for 5 months. The visa cost HK$ 2010, which is like 150 US$ or something. Mind you, Europeans pay HKD$ 220, which is about 40 US$. Sino-American relations, anyone?

The taxi ride to central Shanghai took about 50 minutes, and our taxi driver couldn’t find our hotel (turns out it’s located smack in the middle of a prime area of the city and it’s absurd he couldn’t find it. we gave him the address and everything.) So, he charged us every RMB for driving in circles around the area of the hotel and finally dropped us off, telling us to walk. I walked into the nearest store to ask where the hotel was and the lady said in Chinese, it’s next door. I felt like a clueless tourist.

The hotel is another story for another paragraph. We got our weekend getaway deal for about 275 US$ online through a site called www.cxholidays.com, where one can find sometimes fantastic deals for 2 night stays in nice hotels and round trip airfare included. It turns out, this deal was worth EVERY penny.

The hotel was brand-new looking and classy and awesome, I thought. A lady got in the elevator with us to press the button and lead us to the check in. The people working at the desk had good English but they really liked being thanked in Chinese. The hotel room was SWEET, and on the 36th floor, facing the People’s Square, a civic center for the city and a very busy place.

We grabbed our tourist map and our Lonely Planet Shanghai guide (in German because we borrowed it from friends…we used it for maps.) We set out on Nanjing Road toward the Bund, an area located along the river facing the famous skyline in Pudong, the area across the river. Nanjing Road is a pedestrian street for like half a mile or something, full of people, people selling things, non-Asian tourists, Chinese people, restaurants, stores and a little train-trolley that goes down the length of the promenade.

The Bund turned out to be just a bunch of buildings that were semi-important, so it seemed. What WAS important was the view of the Shanghai skyline—it’s really quite a sight. The Oriental Pearl Tower resembles a spaceship-esque structure, and seems that it was built for the purpose of tourism. It’s gigantic (Everything is bigger in China? Except the people.) It’s also like, magenta. There’s some other really tall buildings too. The river looked kind of murky but there were lots of boats and barges and then a boat came around with a huge TV-screen billboard. It was the billboard boat.

We took the Bund Tourist Tunnel under the river to the other side, Pudong, where we’d hit up the tower to get the experience and the view (think Toronto’s CN Tower but more colorful and ridiculous-looking). The Bund Tourist tunnel was no more than a tunnel with small cabin-cars that reminded me of something from Disneyworld or Hershey Park, but the tunnel was no more than bare tunnel walls covered in lights and corny mirrors with little lights and TV screens with bubbling magma or under-water scenes. It was about five minutes and sure enough, when we got out, there was Oriental Pearl Tower.

It was past 2:30 p.m. and we were STARVING so we opted for street food: flat noodles, fried rice and sweet’n’sour tofu. It was 5 US$ total.

The area beneath the tower was a tourist attraction of its own because everyone had to have their picture taken WITH the tower before they went up to it. There was a GIGANTIC sign that said “WELCOME” and “huanying nin (‘nin’ is the polite form of ‘you,’ pronounced ‘neen’), so I guess Shanghai really did ‘huanying’ us, just like I had hoped.

The view from the top was awesome. The elevators shot up to the viewing decks, which are in magenta bubble-like things. You have to see a picture to get it, if you’ve never seen the Shanghai skyline. It’s peculiar, to say the least. We went to three separate viewing decks: the tallest one was 350 meters (figure it out, I can’t convert to feet for beans). Turns out, Shanghai is the world’s 10th biggest metropolitan area with over 16,000,000 people and you could definitely sense how huge it was, from the center of it all.

After descending from the tower (inside the tower is a small rollercoaster, restaurant and outdoor viewing deck but it was too cold to enjoy the outdoor one) we went to the nearby mall (also big. And tall. 8 floors maybe?) for a much needed coffee, having been up since 5 a.m. Unlike Hong Kong, where Starbucks says “Starbucks,” Chinese Starbuckses say Xing Ba Ke in addition to “Starbucks.” It means “star” and the transliteration into Chinese of “bucks” (ba ke).

Before we went back through the Tourist Tunnel, some guy selling small glass models of the Oriental Pearl Tower accosted Jared and me and offered the little souvenir for 50 Yuan or something. Jared demanded 5 and the guy was like, 5? I clarified in Chinese that he wanted it for 5. Somehow the guy gave in and we just laughed. They sold them in legit form (nice glass, gold-ish ones, little towers with big glass crystals for the bubble parts) for much much more tourist ripoff prices.

Back to the tunnel, and when we got out we tried to get a taxi but wound up walking the ENTIRE way back to the hotel instead because it was rush hour and for some reason all the taxis were full.

Side note: Shanghai drivers are absolutely MERCILESS. Americans have the right of way. Hong Kongers don’t have the right of way. And Shanghai pedestrians have NOTHINGG!!!!! There are crossing guards in the street and the cars drive right by them and people have to dodge the cars and pray that they don’t get killed. Also, tons of people ride motorbikes and bicycles and no one stops for anyone else. Carolyn said that some girl last semester got her foot run over by a car.

By 8 or so, we were ready to take a taxi off to Carolyn’s school, Hua Shi Da, for short. In English, East China Normal University (do they have abnormal ones too?) It was a half hour away by taxi, and the driver dropped us off at the Hou Men (back gate), on a street with loads of food shops and informal restaurants. We were so hungry we looked for the first restaurant we saw with English on the menu and it turned out to be a Korean BBQ place. The food was eh but we got to grill our own mushrooms, onions, salmon and bananas. The tea was rice tea, Carolyn said, and it tasted a bit weird to me. Or, just different. Asia is all about different.

Carolyn met us at the restaurant with 2 friends and they took us back to their school. The American students on the abroad program live in a building with the NYU abroad students. Their building is fairly new, they all have double beds in double or single rooms, dressers, desks, shelves, spacious closets, heating, full bathrooms, the like. They told us that the Chinese students……. Live in rooms of up to 8 students with one table as a desk for all of them. They have no heat and no AC and there’s one bathroom per floor and they have to take showers in a separate building (and SHANGHAI GETS COLD!) and at night it’s so cold they sleep with plastic bags full of hot water and they have to refill them every 4 hours if they want to keep warm.

We met the Americans and went back out to the restaurant strip to go with Carolyn and friend to grab some dinner. Then we all went to a bar in the French Concession, an area that apparently was conceded by the French some time back, and it was full of white people and American music. I met someone from Denmark.

Golfing in HK

Today marks the third time Jared and I have gone to the driving range at the City Golf Club of Hong Kong. What's unique about the location of the place is that it's on the Kowloon peninsula, just a few blocks from the water, and you can see the entire Hong Kong Island skyline. You can't miss it.

The Chinese people are very, very skilled at golf. The old man next to Jared was smacking balls perfecty time after time. Jared complimented him and the guy said he was "just exercising."

Today the sun ALMOST came out from behind the clouds, but the clouds still didn't give. I haven't seen a blue sky in WAY too long still. At six p.m. tonight the sky got VERY dark. The thing is, today was 24 degrees Celsius (73 Fahrenheit) and humid. By 5 p.m. it had cooled down, and by 7 p.m. when my roommate got back from grocery shopping and saw me ready to take up my laundry in shorts and a t-shirt she demanded i grab a coat before heading outside. The sky got dark abnormally early but it still has yet to downpour (unfortunately but fortunately, sushi is on the agenda tonight and I may be walking in it).

Hong Kong Park, Happy Valley Racecourse & a Tram Ride

Today was a day full of new sights and travels:

1. Hong Kong Park: considered one of the "strangest" parks in Asia (the world?), Hong Kong Park has a small waterfall, Thai & Italian food restaurant, clock tower, the Museum of Teaware, a walk-through aviary, Tai Chi Garden, "Olympic square" and caged animals building. Additionally, there's a children's park, plant conservatory, squash & sports center and small ponds with fish and turtles. Pictured is the aviary, which is a nice-sized structure with tall trees, a running stream on the bottom, tropical plants and different kinds of birds. It was such a unique sight to walk through the aviary and see tropical birds perched on branches eating kiwis and mangoes with tall apartment buildings just beyond the park in the background. There were pelicans! We also went to the plant conservatory, which, in contrast with the one in the Hong Kong Botannical Garden, has two rooms--a "dry" room with desert life like cactuses (and an aloe plant!) and a "wet" room with tropical and rainforest plants and running water streams. Down by the entrance to the park are two ponds, one of which had coy fish, orange ones and silver ones, and the other had fish and TURTLES! We saw them sitting on rocks all together and swimming to the bottom and hanging out there. There's also a marriage registry at the park and we saw a bride and groom getting photographed.

2. Happy Valley Racecourse: finally, the raceway! Jared and I arrived past the 4th race, at 9 pm, with the daily paper's horse race guide for the evening. We came so late we didn't have to pay the HK$10 admission (turned out to be fine because we lost money). We immediately placed bets on some horses and I learned that you can place a bet for "placing" or "winning" the race for a given horse. I lost both times, but one of the horses on which Jared placed a bet placed in the first race we watched. The racecourse is HUGE, roughly 3 miles, we calculated, and everyone gathers near the fence if they're not sitting in the many boxes that are built vertically on top of each other so that everyone can see. We gathered with other race-watchers in a scene that was similar to a College Park tailgate in that there were white people everywhere drinking beers. Everyone watched intenty during the races, which were SO SHORT compared to the time we waited in between them, and the horses sped by. It was actually really exciting. You can see the entire race on the gigantic screen, along with the horses in the lead, and the type of winnings you get if a given horse wins or places.

3. Trolley! I decided today that I wasn't leaving Hong Kong without riding on a Hong Kong Island trolley car as a means of transportation from somewhere to somewhere else. Until today, I didn't have a reason to take one, but upon leaving the racetrack, our friend Jordan told us that the trolley cars are both cheap and would take us to where Jared wanted to buy a veggie burger. The trolley cars run on tracks on a main street on Hong Kong Island. We rode it from Causeway Bay to Central. The cars are very narrow, but double-decker! I think the ride was HK$2.

The Quest for Cheap Sushi Continues

Monday night we (10 of us) checked out a second sushi place that offers a half-off deal after 9:30 pm. The perk was, the ENTIRE MENU is half-priced after 9:30 p.m. The catch is, you have to wait on line just like the other place or you'll have to wait even longer just to get a seat. Someone among us thought the deal started at 9 but it was actually 9:30 so we stood in line enough to develop strong appetites and then ordered 500 HK$ worth of sushi rolls, drinks, chicken skewers, and Jared's miso soup.

It's nice to know that you ordered food that cost twice as much one half-hour before you sat down. It also makes me wonder, why do they do this half-priced deal? Do they like filling up the seats in the place late in the evening because it's a better use of time and money than shutting their doors after the dinner rush? Do they do it to kick the other sushi places' to the dust?

I'll keep wondering, but meanwhile, I can't say no to a satisfying sushi dinner for 10 US$.

Karaoke & Dim Sum: Some Hong Kong Firsts for Me

Karaoke: went last night with about 9 friends. there were choices of chinese, taiwanese, other asian genres and "western" music. a pretty funny time, hearing the british guys sing american tunes with their proper accents, everyone yelling into the microphones and dancing.

Dim Sum: went this afternoon to Maxim's Palace, a Cantonese restaurant inside Hong Kong City Hall. The restaurant is housed in a big catering hall-type room inside city hall, that converts itself into different table formations for events, as we saw toward the end of our meal.

Jared and I arrived at Dim Sum at peak dim sum time, about 1 pm. The place was packed and we waited a little while for a table (but really not long at all). It was also noisy inside, everyone chatting loudly, and there were a ton of people because the room is pretty big. We were seated, and immediately the ladies pushing food carts came one by one and offered us shrimp dumplings, pork dumplings and the like.

We opted for three types of rice vegetable dumplings.... they were actually delicious. We dipped them in spicy sauce. One type was conpoy and the other two types were mostly mushrooms, onions and carrots chopped up inside.

Dessert was coconut sago soup (gotta love chinese cold fruit soups..... and sago has a cool texture) and mango pudding! The drink was jasmine tea (the real tea leaves kind, in a pot.)

The place wasn't cheap, for the amount of food we actually ate, but it was the experience of the ladies pushing the carts who didn't speak English and offered us all the authentic cuisine (I didn't see the chicken feet dumplings but I heard they're popular on Dim Sum menus).

By the time we were nearly done eating and trying to get glimpses of the view of Tsim Sha Tsui through the fog and clouds, across the harbor, waiters were already dismantling the tables no one was sitting at to arrange and fold the circular tables into square ones and making long tables.

The place closes for dim sum daily at 3 pm. By 2:00, it was half full and people were leaving in groups. Dim sum isn't something you can wake up late for!

Bye, bye, fish

Update: All my fish have died. (And I was wondering who I would give them to if they outlived this semester. Hah.)

Maybe I over-fed them? It just looked like they hated the food. It always sank to the bottom. They had a good life in my dorm room while they were alive... I play nice music...
Well, this is sad. I guess it's only appropriate to have sushi for dinner tonight?...