Reflecting on Shanghai

Why hello, I've made it back to the States in one piece. Ok maybe more like 3 pieces if you include my two suitcases

Here I am at 6:30 AM wide awake and recovering from a cold that I brought from Shanghai (no I did not catch SARS or the bird flu so please don't treat me like the Plague). I don't have a job to return to, or any other significant reason to stay on a regular sleeping schedule so I think it will take a while before I overcome the worst jet lag I have ever had coming back from Asia.

I guess this blog is a bit of a misnomer now that I am including Shanghai but I ended up spending about 2.5 weeks there, in and out of other countries and cities so it makes up a pretty significant portion of my trip. I still have mixed feelings about Shanghai, I was glad to have at least become acquainted with the city but not sure if I would ever want to spend an extended amount of time there again. As I mentioned earlier, as far as population and land mass goes, Shanghai is enormous, trumps Bangkok and even New York City. When it comes to navigating your way around, you need to know exactly where you're going otherwise you will definitely get lost and in some areas, people are not exactly the most helpful for directions. Shanghai is too big of a city to walk around trying to guess where things are, so it's good to have a map. My mother scolded me for calling Chinese people mean in an earlier post and even though I have met some nicer individuals in Shanghai, I still think it is still one of the least friendly countries I have visited but now I understand more why they are like that. I would compare being in public places in Shanghai to being in class with a bunch of ambitious, med school bound students. There are a lot of you gunning for a few spots (or goods, whatever the case may be), every man or woman for him/herself. If you aren't aggressive enough, someone else will have no problem taking it from you.

I should note that my parents came into Shanghai when I got back from Hong Kong which was a relief because they could relieve me of my Chinese speaking duties. A good thing because I didn't have to struggle so much but maybe not so good because then I wasn't practicing my Chinese as much anymore? They were under the impression that my Mandarin was really weak (although I would too if my daughter dropped out of Chinese school at 13 years old and barely passed Chinese in college) but I think I really surprised them when I actually did speak. I still have a long way to go but it is nice to know that I can at least engage in conversation with a native speaker and not sound like a total idiot.

This leg of my trip was really different from the SE Asia portion because instead of having a set plan of which sites to see in what city, I was living with my relatives who are obviously well integrated with the locals. While I was able to see the vast majority of the tourist sites in Shanghai such as the Bund, Jing'an Temple, the Yuyuan Gardens, Xi Tian Di, the shopping district of Nanjing Road, and so many other places that I can't even name at the moment, I also spent a lot of time hanging out near where I was staying in Pudong eating cheap noodles and getting cheap massages. We went to the massage parlor so often that the employees started to recognize us and would request to work on us so they could ask us questions about the U.S. Since the cost of about 10 massages in Shanghai could probably equal 1 decent massage in the States, I probably won't get a massage here for a long, long time. My muscles will definitely miss the special treatment.

Also in any typical Asian relatives fashion, I spent a lot of time in Shanghai EATING. Anyone who knows me knows that I like to eat. A lot sometimes. But even this became overwhelming at times. There is a lot of good food in Shanghai because you can find a range of cheap local eats to high end dining and I was fortunate to have access to this variety. Everyone knows about the delicious xiao long baos (soup dumplings) so I'm going to rave about their underrated cousin, the sheng jian baos (raw fried buns) instead. Unlike the xiao long baos which are wrapped in thin sheets of dough much like wonton wraps, sheng jian baos are soup dumplings inside a flour dough bun (those white bread-y buns like the tsa sa baos) and these buns are pan fried until they are crispy, seasoned with sesame seeds and scallions and dipped in vinegar. You have to be careful when you eat them though, the soup inside the dumplings take a while to cool down so you usually have to bite a small hole in the bun to let the hot soup vent. They are so delicious and I have little hope that I will find them in the States but if you are in Shanghai, be sure to search the local food stands for these mouthfuls of delight! I also really enjoyed the noodle shops near our apartments. They are run by a Muslim Chinese group and the noodles are stretched and pulled by hand so they are called "La Mien", meaning "pulled noodles". They cook very quickly so they come out hot and fresh.

We were able to visit the 2010 Shanghai World Expo while we were there and also visited the cities of Nanjing and Yangzhou but I will talk about them in future posts. Overall despite my mixed feelings, I still had a good time in Shanghai and was able to see many different sides of the city. Good to be back home though, I'll actually have time to put work into my blog posts!

Hong Kong Kid Tour

I don't know about you guys but when I think of Hong Kong, I think of urban, globalized, commercial sophistication. A lot of top businesses are concentrated around here, people in general dress pretty nice, the shopping is decent, and there is supposedly a nightlife worth checking out.

Well, I don't have any stories about that side of Hong Kong because I totally did not do that here. If I were to summarize my trip in HK, I went to preschool, visited Disneyland, and played in the best kid's funhouse/obstacle course I have ever seen in a country club. Between my two cousins, there are four kids ages 7, 4, 3, and 1. We went to Hong Kong's wonderful world of Disneyland yesterday which is much smaller than the ones in the U.S. but since I hadn't been to Disneyworld since I was 10, I didn't notice much of a difference. We went on Space Mountain, It's a Small World (as cute as it was, my Women's Studies eyes made me look at the displays in a different light), a Buzz Lightyear shooting game-ride, and Donald Duck's 4-D screening. We even got to see the daily Parade where the announcements and some of the songs were sung in Cantonese but still entertaining. Today I went to a country club my cousin Vivian belongs to, which has the sickest obstacle course for kids. Much like Playspace, except a hundred times better! There were so many ropes, ladders, and cushions to climb, tunnels to crawl through, firepoles to swing down, and rotating tables to jump over. The best part were a series of huge slides, one of them requiring a potato sack and had bumps along the way. Another one had a vertical drop before ending on a slide. I don't know how little kids just went down this slide without any hesitation but my cousin-in-law Will had to push me down because I was too scared at first. It's like a 5-10 foot free fall before you land on a slide... so scary but fun! We ended the day going to the Wan Chai Market for some shopping, had some good eats and bought a Halloween costume which are so much cheaper here and they sell them year round and some leggings.

I will be leaving Hong Kong to go back to Shanghai soon and even though it was a short trip, I enjoyed seeing my cousins again and their young but growing families. If anything, I got to see what I get to look forward to in the future perhaps. No nightlife stuff this time but going down the scariest slide of my life was definitely worth it :)

Sorry no pictures this time, my computer is not reading my camera at the moment. And I will try and break the great firewall of China when I get back but it is likely I may not get to update this again when I return to the States which will actually be in less than a few weeks, yikes!

Hello from Hong Kong

So as it turns out I can't access my blog in Shanghai, which means I will update during my short time in Hong Kong! I'm mainly here to see my two cousins, Vivian and Livia and their families since this is my third time in the city. There won't be much sightseeing on this trip, which is fine because the exhaustion of traveling through SE Asia has finally caught up to me and I've been tired all day today.

I've spent my first few days back in Shanghai with Jaimie, who just finished a month long internship in Singapore and has been living in Taiwan pretty much since she graduated from college. The weather has been pretty sad and gray so we have been taking sightseeing pretty easy so far. We've visited the Super Grand Mall to eat some xiao lon bao, Shanghainese soup dumplings and walked around The Bund on the Pudong side to see the French Concession on the opposite side of the Huanpu River. It's pretty foggy out so we couldn't get the greatest view of the skyline but I can only imagine what it could look like. Shanghai has been gearing up for the World Expo 2010 starting in May so they have been doing some heavy duty landscaping and cleaning of the city. Haibo, the adorable little blue Expo mascot can be spotted at pretty much every corner and block of Shanghai, and now people on the street are selling stuffed and keychain Haibos.

The architecture in Shanghai is modern and glorious. The buildings just keep getting taller and more extravagant, definitely a sign that this city is growing and developing at a crazy pace. Maybe that's why the people here are rude. Yes, I said it. I don't think the people in Shanghai are very nice at all. I realize its part of the city's culture and I am uncomfortable with it because I am obviously not used to it but I've only been in Shanghai for a total of 4-5 days so far and I'm already sick of people cutting in line, refusing to help with directions, and walking around like they have a huge stick up their you-know-what. The most frustrating part is feeling helpless about it because my Chinese is not advanced enough where I can express my disdain for the rudeness (or at least tell off a person who just cut in front of me). I suppose it's not my place to say anything but isn't it also a universal thing to treat one another with respect?

Other than that, Jaimie and I have been able to practice our Chinese. We've known each other for a really long time (about 19 years!) but I don't think we have ever heard the other speak Chinese before. The first night we decided to go out the other night to the Jiang Temple train stop to grab dinner and check out the nightlife. It was a bit difficult to find a bar for some reason but we went into a club called Fame which had really good American hip hop music but no one spoke English there. Instead we sipped on Long Island Iced Teas and sort of talked to a friendly bartender who tried to teach us this dice game, which I still don't understand the rules to this day.

So no concrete plans in Hong Kong, except to spend time with my cousins and their little kids. It's supposed to rain for the duration of my stay so I'm not sure how much we will be able to do but I did leave some room in my luggage which means, I should go shopping at some point!

Snorkeling in Ko Maa

I can't believe this leg of my trip is almost over! We left Ko Pha Ngan this evening and back in Bangkok. I was sad to leave our little beach paradise but if I believe in fate, then all signs pointed to leaving the island....

The day after the Songkran celebration, I cut my heel on a sharp rock (same foot as the first cut from the water fight) probably because I was trying to stay off my original cut and put more weight on my heel as I walked on the beach. Still following me? With two cuts on the same foot, it was hard to walk in the sand because bits of sand would get stuck. Yesterday we took a songthaew up north to Ko Maa, an small island connected to Ko Pha Ngan by a strip of sandy beach known for its nice beaches and snorkeling. What should've been a 5 minute walk to Ko Maa from where we were dropped off turned into a 20 minute walk because I couldn't walk properly. It was well worth it though, my first snorkeling experience was.... eventful. We definitely saw a lot of colorful fish swimming and sea slugs, sea urchins, and possibly a sea cucumber hiding in some amazing geometric shaped coral. I felt like I was in the fish tank of some fancy Chinese restaurant and we didn't even have to swim out that far. We turned around to return to shore and I noticed the sea floor was getting really shallow so I put my hand down on a rock to stand up and ended up slicing my index finger and the side of my left hand. I didn't expect the rock to be sharp so I'm guessing I cut it on coral? My finger was bleeding quite a bit so our snorkeling adventure had to come to an end. Fortunately I brought a small bag of medical supplies so I was able to clean out my cuts and cover it with a band-aid but that meant no more trips to the ocean for me.....

Nevertheless we were sad to leave Harmony Beach Resort and its remote beach, yummy food, and awesome staff. We took a boat to Ko Samui from Haad Rin and had some time to kill so I got a really great Thai massage while Haj continued to read The Kite Runner (I basically shoved the book on to him when he arrived) next door. Fast forward a couple of hours and now we are back in Bangkok, where we are far from the protests and had a delicious dinner on the street. There are several street food vendors on our block and we came across a noodle cart with a friendly older man who was more comfortable speaking Mandarin to me since his English was shaky. He gave us egg noodles in soup with wontons, slices of bbq pork, fried pork belly, crab meat, bok choy and scallions. This dinner is worth mentioning because it was SO delicious, even though the portions were very small. I love wontons and this was one of the best ones I had ever had, it had a peppery flavor that was just right and texture was tender (weird but I think the stuffing of a lot of wontons can be too gummy sometimes). And Dad, it looked like the meat was prepared ahead of time and they just cooked the noodles and cut the meat up and added it to the soup. I wish we had more time to eat more street food! Oh yeah, then I walked across the street to get some mango and sticky rice. What a perfect last dinner in Bangkok...

Tomorrow's our last day in Thailand and we are still trying to figure out what to do so I'm not sure if I will be able to update this blog after today for a while. I would like to keep up this blog in Shanghai but I'm not sure if the internet in China will allow access to Blogger. We will have to see but if I can't update from Shanghai, I will definitely write some new posts in Hong Kong, where I will be from 4/21-4/24. Jaimie will be in Shanghai when I return so we will be hanging out for a few days, who knows what kind of trouble we will get ourselves into!

Happy Songkran!

Yesterday we engaged in the biggest water fight I had ever been in my life because of Songkran, the Thai New Year. Throwing water on the streets is the biggest and most obvious form of celebration of Songkran, and Ko Pha Ngan was no different. A bunch of us staying at the same resort piled into a songthaew to make our way to Thong Sala, the Southwest region of the island where the biggest water fight took place. The 4 km drive already had us soaked from people on the street spraying us with water guns, hoses, and dumping by the bucketfuls. Since it's pretty warm out, the water was quite refreshing, except for the occasional chilly water that gets thrown on you. Once we reached Thong Sala, we bought some water guns at a convenience store and joined the crowds. There were large buckets of water in front of most stores so you could refill and you just hit anyone from locals to fellow tourists, everyone was pretty much involved. I felt like I was living a childhood dream I never achieved, except this was ten times bigger and better than any water fight that I could ever imagine. Some of the locals had buckets of flour or colored baby powder that they would wipe on your face, another Songkran tradition.

Why throw water? Like I've mentioned before, April is one of Thailand's hottest months and while the water relieves us foreigners of this heat, water throwing originated from a way to pay respect to your loved ones, particularly your elders. People would cleanse Buddha images at home or at monasteries with water as a "renewal bathing ritual" then use this water to cleanse each other for the start of a new year. Somehow this evolved to young people throwing water at each other in the middle of streets and at passing vehicles but you know, whatever gets everyone involved right?

Unfortunately none of us took our cameras to Thong Sala because they would not have survived this soak fest. Towards the end of the festival, I cut the bottom of my foot on either a piece of glass or sharp rock. It's pretty shallow, like a paper cut but I couldn't really walk after that. For the New Year, there was a Black Moon party, located about 2 km away from where we were staying and I was worried about my foot but we couldn't miss a beach party while we were at Ko Pha Ngan! There was techno music blasting, black light artwork scattered, and fire dancers entertaining us by the water. I was bummed I couldn't be more active last night but at least we got to people-watch and check out the party scene.

My foot feels a lot better now, we'll see if I can stick it in the water today! Those of us back at home, we should really think about organizing an epic water fight this summer....

Island in the Sun

We are now at our last stop of the Thailand leg of this trip, Ko Pha Ngan, the backpacker's getaway island off Ko Samui in the Gulf of Thailand. It was sorta rough getting here, our speedboat from Ko Samui to Pha Ngan was delayed by almost an hour, then 13 of us were crammed in a songthaew to get to our hotels. We were a bit grumpy by the end of the night but looking out the window the next day to see that we are about 20 feet away from the beach totally made up for it. We are located between Haad Rin and Thong Sala, a remote stretch of beach and bungalows and for some reason, no one was at the beach today so Haj and I literally had an entire beach to ourselves! Maybe because it was way too hot out today? Every time the sun poked out from the clouds, I felt like I was in an oven. We spent most of the time in the crystal clear water, which was actually pretty warm. I'll admit, this is not the nicest beach I've ever been to (that would have to go to Miami Beach or Cabo San Lucas in my opinion) but the absence of other tourists and peacefulness makes this experience a winner.

Not sure if the rest of you have been doing this, but we've been following the protests in Bangkok all day. There is definitely some concern for returning to Bangkok since violence has taken place at this point and it looks like neither side is backing down. With the most recent news of the Democrat Party failing to report substantial funding for its election, I wonder what the PM will do but I hope no one else gets hurt in this protest.

No Timetables

This is the fourth day in a row that I've updated this blog, you're welcome!

No major tours planned for today. We met up with Stacey and Brittany to visit Wat Umong, a temple built in the form of tunnels underneath a large chedi (another term for stupa commonly used in Chiang Mai) around 1380 inspired by a monk who loved the forest. The Wat lies within a park of other forms of community gathering. We almost walked into some ceremony held for monks wearing white robes but there were living quarters for monks and a library on the compound.

In the middle of the heat, Haj convinced me to see Wat Chedi Luang, another one of Chiang Mai's most well known temples. There was a dazzling temple housing a large gilded Buddha but the real sight was the large pink brick chedi perched on a set of steep stairs. Half of the roof has been destroyed by an earthquake in 1545 and while it is not exactly known when the chedi was built, it has been estimated that construction began sometime in the 14th century. This chedi also used to house an Emerald Buddha, but since the earthquake this Buddha has been moved to Luang Prabang.

With nothing left on the itinerary, I decided to get my first Thai massage. I attempted to get one at the Chiang Mai Disabled Center but they happened to be closed today, I wasn't really sure of the reason but I was really disappointed as I had waited all day for the massage center to open (hours were 5pm-9pm). I just walked in another massage parlor and hoped for the best. I tried not to laugh when the masseuse pressed on my leg (I was really ticklish there) and I think Haj tried not to laugh when I was engaged in some wrestle-like position. I really enjoyed my massage overall, I feel like I got a good stretch out of it in addition to rubbing out some knots in my shoulders. I can't wait to get another one, but it'll probably have to wait until we reach Ko Pha Ngan.

Almost forgot to mention a dish that I really enjoyed today. Khao Soi is a bowl of egg noodles in a coconut Thai curry sauce, meat, pickled vegetables and onions, topped with a layer of deep fried egg noodles, a popular dish in northern Thailand. I can eat noodles every day if I had to, especially noodles in soup and I definitely tried something new and delicious today. If you are wondering why I talk about food all the time on this blog, it's mostly because my dad always wants to know what I'm eating over here. Except for the period I was sick in Vietnam, eating has been of the best parts about this trip, I wonder if I can call myself a travel foodie at this point...

As we returned to our guesthouse, we were sprayed by water by fellow backpackers, who had no idea that we were only trying to get into the guesthouse. Correction: water was sprayed AND dumped on us by the bucketfuls. It's still warm out and the New Year over here is coming up hence the water fights. I usually have a good sense of humor about this but the water was dirty and I was wearing a white dress. Thanks guys.