Sunday, September 14, 2008
Final Thoughts on China
Our Final Night
which leads me to believe that it wasn't an area of town that the locals hang out in. The only thing I did like was the fact that in one of the bars there was a sign posted that clearly showed that no dancing was allowed, which I thought was a great policy.
After a short while we told Mike's friend that we were going to head back because of our flight the next day, and headed home.
Lantau Island

After our bike ride we headed on a bus to see the largest seated bronze Buddha in the world. It was kind of impressive, but I think the giant Buddha we saw in Jinan was more impressive, and the temple thing has obviously grown very old. The nicest part of this island was the way back. We found a chair lift that took us home. This was just gorgeous. We were suspended above the whole island and were able to see everything. If anyone goes to Lantau I would say this is a can't miss activity.
Hong Kong
The coolest thing about the city is that there are walkways above a lot of the streets so that you don't have to worry about traffic while walking. While that's good, the best part is that in order to combat the uphill nature of the city they have installed escalators all over the place in side of these walkways. So one doesn't need to walk up hill. You can just take the escalator up the block.
Upon our arrival we were met at the hostel by an all Cantonese speaking staff. They looked confused and disorganised, and told us we were going to have to wait an hour or so for the boss to show up. I was a bit worried because I had booked in May, but had booked the wrong dates. While I emailed and changed the dates in early June I was worried that something had been lost in translation, and that there would be an issue. We decided that we would check out the town and come back to check in in stead of waiting for the boss to show up.
There aren't too many sights on the island, or the Kowloon peninsula. We began by just walking around the island, and checking out the SOHO mid level escalator area. This is kind of like expat row. This was the area of town that had all of the western style food. After that we headed back to our hostel.At the hostel we were told to check in to a room with two beds. Now, obviously this was a little awkward seeing as there were three of us. We argued, but they swore that this is what we booked (I assure you it wasn't). The hostel was having issues talking to us because they didn't speak English. So, the hostel owners called HostelWorld.com to have them translate. Once on the phone we discovered that the issue was with HostelWorld's system error.
This was relieving because I assumed they would make it right. Well, I was wrong. They didn't at all. They refused to pay for a third room despite admitting fault. Things were looking pretty bleak and we were getting upset (more Mike and I, I think Jake was annoyed and would have just settled for the two beds). However, the hostel was able to recommend another one to us that gave us a three bed room for the same price as we had agreed to. Unfortunately the new hostel had a toilet in the shower, and a see through door, which made for awkward poops.That night we headed up Victoria peak. It was very picturesque and well worth going. We were there for sunset and really enjoyed the view.
The next day we headed to the peninsula and checked out all the different markets. There was an entire market for just goldfish, one for just birds, one for just sporting goods, one for just women's clothing, one for just jade, and one called the junk market. All of the aforementioned markets were exactly what you would think. It was a place with shanty tents and booths set up outside selling just the specific item the market was named after. The bird market was a little strange, just because it was also a bird park where old men came to display there birds and discuss them with other old men who apparently love birds. The second most unique market was the night market, which was cool because it only is run after dark. It was cool, but kind of dirty. There were way more booths selling sex toys than I would have liked. The prices were also kind of high compared to the silk market of Beijing.

Thursday, September 11, 2008
Macau
Macau was really crazy, but nothing like I had imagined. I had been told in the past that Macau was a seedy terrible place, and I really didn't find it that way. Of course compared top the rest of the world it's awful, and dirty and seedy, but compared to main land China it isn't too bad. The island has two different worlds. The casinos and the rest of the residential areas. The casinos are plush and great, while the other areas are terrible slums. The island has also kind of become too touristy. The old Portuguese area has just become a Mecca of touristy crap, so it's lost a lot of the appeal.We headed to the casinos the first night we got there, and yes, we wore the matching suites. We looked ridiculous, and everywhere we went people actually pointed and laughed at us. It was really awkward at first, but after a while you get used the pit bosses calling over people to look at us, and once they came they would burst out laughing. It was like a scene out of Dumb and Dumber. What made it more ridiculous is that we all had dirty gym shoes on, and were always playing at the lowest possible limits available. Overall it was embarrassing, but we got over it and ended up enjoying ourselves.



As far as our success went Jake won some the first night, but then lost about half of it the next night. I did terribly loosing each night, I very few winning hands along the way. I sat down to play black jack with 300 and placed 6 50 bets in a row and lost all 6. Mike won, but didn't really play. He would sit, play 2 hands. Win both and then stand away from the table. He's smarter for winning, but didn't really play too much.
That was about it for Macau. The Venetian and the rest of the casinos were cool, but not s cool as Vegas. The rest of the place was a slum, and we were laughed off of the island.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Shanghai
When we first got here we were bamboozled, and then went to the Bund, which is the scenic river front. This is a really cool place. It's like two lake shore drives on opposite sides of the river. All along both sides are either historical or really nice looking buildings, one of which is the famous Pearl Oriental TV tower (which we later went up). Later that night we kind of just walked around Nanjing Lu, which is the major shopping and late night stop for the locals. Its just this incredibly crowded condensed area, the likes of which don't exist in the states.Our walk home wasn't without action. Jake having drank a bit too much baijiu (a locally made liquor) at dinner, drunkenly ran into a biker on the rode and knocked her of her bike. He then claimed it to be her fault and that she had a hit out on him.
The following day we headed to the old city of Shanghai. Its a cool area but too refurbished to be the old city. At this point its an area that is designed like it would have been an old city 1500 years a, but is now just full of tourist shops. 
Following this we headed to Ohel Moishe (the former Synagogue of Jewish WWII refugees). On route our taxi drivers car broke down and he had to have us get out. It was odd, but kind of good because we ended up getting half way there for free. Once at the Synagogue we were greeted by people saying "Shabot Shalom" in heavy Chinese accents. It was a nice museum but nothing overly impressive. Apparently today there isn't a single functional Synagogue in all of China, and she estimated the entire Chinese Jewish population to b around 2000, 1000 of which are in Shanghai.At night we went to the top of the TV tower, which was a really nice view of the city, but kind of boring. However, there was a flight simulator, a roller coaster, and a movie where your seat sakes in the tower that was included in your admission. This was kind of fun and made the whole experience kind of fun. There was also a painfully large exhibit on the history of Shanghai, which was incredibly comprehensive, but may have been too big, because it took us nearly 3 hours to get out of there, and once we did we were exhausted and went to bed.
Today, we headed to an area full of Expats for a good western style breakfast (we are all getting sick of rice and noodles). Afterwards we walked through the ritzy former French Concession. Which is like a very trendy par of town. Almost like our Old Town or some areas of Lincoln Park.
We ended up walking for a few hours after that all the way from the far west side of the city to the Bund. Once there we got in a taxi and headed south to a fabric market. Tailors and fabrics are very cheap here, and we starting laughing about the possibility of the three of us going out in Macao in matching suits. Well, we bought three identical suits and three identical shirts. We are having them all custom made for us to fit perfectly. It should be really funny, hopefully funnier than our matching outfits at the wall. The best part was the price. For the whole get up we ended up paying around $65 each. Which is insanely cheap for custom made suites and a shirt (we'll see what quality we end up with).Tonight we are attempting, for the first time to go out to a bar or some sort of night life. We took a nap, and got up really late, so I hope we can stay up past 11 tonight.
Friday, September 5, 2008
I was shanghaied in Shanghai
After we paid they proceeded to walk us to the Bund (a touristy part of town). About three blocks into our walk they dropped us off claiming to have to meet up with a friend. It was at this point Jake told me I had been bamboozled. He was super angry. So angry he turned around and tried to find them. He did! Once he found them he told them he was on to them, and that they ripped us off. The three of them tried to protest and claim that they didn't, but Jake assured them he wasn't a fool. He told them he didn't want the money, and that he only wanted to tell them that he knew what was up and that they were all Assholes.
Apparently two of them looked guilty and the other continued to protest when Jake just walked away. When Jake caught back up with Mike and I he told us what he had done. When we asked how he could be so certain they tricked us he said that he saw a sign in the hostel warning us about just such a rouse. Immediately Mike and I busted out laughing, because if he had read that sign why didn't he speak up when we were being lead to the tea house to begin with? We spent the rest of the evening agonizing over our blunder. And screaming "Rich" whenever anyone approached us (Note: Rich was the name of the guy who arranged our Great Wall trip and tried to screw us. We have now named all Chinese con-artists Rich).In the end it really isn't too much money, its the fact that we were taken for a ride that bothers us.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Jinan and Suzhou
We arrived in Jinan yesterday, and headed to the thousand Buddha Mountain. It was really cool, but took us like five tries to find the correct cave. Every mistake ended up costing us 5RMB, so it was a pricey hunt. However, it was well worth the hunt. Inside this cave was 20,000 hand carved statues of Buddha. 20,000 was the number quoted to me by several people, and by the brochure,
I obviously wasn't able to check. The cave was spectacular, and not only had all of these statues of varying sizes, but also had elaborate paintings all over all of the walls and ceilings. Most of the stautes were life size people, or bigger. What made it even cooler was that the humidity in the cave was so thick that it created this haze all over, which combined with the darkness of
the cave made this very creepy dungeon feeling that only added to the experience. I think I found this to be more impressive than the Terracotta Warriors. The sad thing was that apparently during the cultural revolution Mao wanted to move on past this era of Chinese history, so he ordered many of the statues destroyed. So, you could see that some of them were damaged, while others went untouched (apparently Mao's army didn't do too good of a job). Honestly this may be next to the wall as my favorite site in China thus far.


After the mountain we headed out of Jinan. Sadly, we couldn't get a train to Nanjing so we just went straight to Suzhou thinking that we would just add an extra day to Shanghai (I hope the Chinese Government doesn't read this). Suzhou was sold to us as the Venice of the East, and let me tell anyone who wants to visit, the person who told us this had obviously never been to Venice. The streets are dirty, and the air is terribly polluted. The pollution was so thick you could taste it in the air. If you look at the picture at the very bottom of this it has spots, not because of the lens, but because there are particles of pollution in the air that my flash reflects off of and makes those spots appear. Overall the air quality is just gross. The pats ways are filled with horrible people selling sickly ducks or frogs for people to cook. There are very few restaurants, and only one block of nice looking touristy area. Overall the place is a dump. However, there are canals, and some beautiful gardens. We went to one, and it was nice, overpriced, but nice. As for the canals, they exist, and you could go on a gonadal ride, but it's more dirty and poor than cool and exciting.

At night the city kind of came a live a little more. The one block which was nice along the canal was lit up by lanterns, and some other parts of the city were kind of nicer at night. The only issue was that the make shift taxi drivers kept trying to take the three of us to prostitutes. We were harassed by no less than 4 people on separate occasions trying to tell us they could take us to brothels. Obviously this didn't bode too well for the city in general. The nice touristy part also shut down at 9, which was odd. We were trying to have a late dinner along the canal, and couldn't because everything was boarded up at 9pm. In the end I would recommend this as a day trip from Shanghai if you want to come. Come around 4-5ish see a garden see the canal a little and get out of here; there is really nothing worth touring, and the pollution is disturbing.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Beijing Concludes
Yesterday we went to Tian'amen square and the Forbidden City, which were cool. The whole think is kind of getting tiresome, because so many of the building look the same, so every temple/house we visit are identical colors and architecture. I get it, it's Chinese architecture, it has officially stopped impressing me. The only thing about Tian'amen square and the Forbidden City were the vast size of it. It was so huge that it seemed impossible for it to be one man's house.
Later in the day we went and got Beijing Duck, which was good except I accidentally took a bite of the head. The rest of the duck was very good, and served kind of in a musho style.
After lunch we went to the Temple of the Heavens, which was obviously similar architecture to everything else we've seen, except this was placed in a really beautiful garden, so it was nice to walk around. We were getting bored of all of the Chinese architecture, so we found actng as silly as possible helped pass the timeWe then headed to the Silk Market, which was one of the most insane experiences of my life. People were yelling at me, and literally grabbing my arm and dragging me in there stores. The weirdest thing was the pricing. Everything sells for around 10% of the price. I bought sunglasses, and paid 30 when the original price was 360. So, we haggled a lot. Overall we found some cool stuff and were having a good time negotiating with people. We ended up buying matching shorts from this one lady who was not having as much fun in the negotiation as we were, because she started to yell at us, and told Jake he was slow in the head. However, the matching shorts are pretty funny.
Then, at night we went to a performance. It was one of these variety sows, which was cool, except for the comedy act. Not only do I not know funny Chinese current events, but I don't understand the language, so it was all lost on us.

Today we arranged for some guy, Rechrd, we met on the street to drive us to the Great Wall. Unfortunately he didn't show up, but he did trick us into going with this other girl, Crystal, who was our "guide", but didn't speak English. However, she was impressed, and made it know to us, that we were all wearing mating outfits. She first took us to a art factory hoping we would buy something, but were disappointed when we didn't. Then we went to the wall. This was really beautiful. We took like a thousand pictures, because it was really scenic, buy I don't think the pictures do it justice. The wall is one of those things that everyone should just go to at some point in there life. We all really enjoyed it, and were glad to have hired someone to take us to a remote part as opposed to the crowded area reachable by bus. After the wall She took us to a restaurant (we didn't ask to go), which was really expensive. When we said we were unhappy they really didn't look like they were going to let us go without ordering, and were confused why we wouldn't order this extravagant lunch, so we ordered some fried rice; ate it and left. Overall while the "guide" was awful, and clearly just wanting to make a commission off of us the whole experience was nice.
Later in the day we went to the Antique Market, which was a much more tamed silk market, but they still negotiated with you. Mike bought a ancient Chinese instrument, and I continued my tireless search for double sided silk embroidery to no avail.
We head out early tomorrow for Jinan, so we're calling it an early night tonight.