China day 8: It all ends with a mall. Or five.

Ahh, the final morning in China. It dawned sunny and fresh and relaxing. Today, I was on a mission. I had managed to get all the way though the trip without finding a gift for my Fiancee, and today I was going to fix that. But what do you get a guy who won’t eat anything produced in China, has a long torso that doesn’t fit Asian sizes well, and doesn’t really appreciate souvenirs unless they serve some practical use? There goes my go-to fridge magnet idea. Crap. Needless to say, all my friends were all taken care of and the one person I know pretty much better than anyone is getting nothing. So my plan for the free morning was to hit the malls and find him the awesome gift of awesomeness.

Our guide had said that all the shops opened at nine, and since I’m not really one for sleeping in, I left at 8 to walk through the bustling streets of Shanghai and find those mega shopping malls I had seen in the dark last night. I knew approximately which skyscraper they were near, so I just started wandering, getting a real taste for daily life in Shanghai. The streams of people pouring out of the metro stations, the people walking their small, well-clothed dogs (coveralls? Parkas? Adidas track suits with matching trainers? On a Pekinese? Really?), the shopkeepers rolling back their metal security screens… it was lovely. Incredibly peaceful to walk around in this incredibly non-peaceful city. I loved it. I also had thought it was going to take me longer to reach the malls, as it had seemed much farther away at night. So I found myself in a KFC playing Angry Birds on my iPad, sipping the drink I had bought simply to justify my using their bathroom and table. Side note – somehow I had managed to make it all the way to Shanghai without using a squat toilet. Pretty much everywhere had well-marked western-style toilets, or at least a wheelchair accessable one (turns out, disabled people can’t squat), and worse case scenario I’d had to wait a few extra minutes to get the stall I wanted. But Shanghai ruined my streak. Nice comfy seated toilets were a lot harder to come by, but it had been an unexpectedly good run, lol .

Turns out the shops didn’t open at 9. I was there, all ready and waiting, and all the windows were still dark. So I wandered the streets of Shanghai, observing, window shopping in closed stores, playing more Angry Birds in another KFC with another drink for another hour. Turns out that had been some bad information from the guide, as everything opened at 10am sharp. On the upside, I was now very familiar with all the streets around this particular area of Shanghai, so I had a very small chance of getting lost on the way back to the hotel. Time to shop, finally. There were 5 malls here, each larger than it’s predecessor, and all specializing in name brand everything. Minimum of 9 storeys per mall, times 5 malls… I went up and down all of them, not wanting to miss the one thing that would be the perfect gift, tucked in the back of the top floor. This sounds like shopping wonderland, but it wasn’t. The malls were hot, all of them, with no air conditioning (that was turned on, at least), everything here was expensive (this was the first plae we’d been where the Pradas were real, with real matching prices), and they all sold the same things. It doesn’t make sense to build another mall right beside the first, and then fill it in with the same stores and products, but they’ve done it. Five times. The only major difference from one mall to another is how modern it looks. By the time the last mall spit me out into the Shanghai sunshine, I was sweaty, tired, kind of dizzy from the countless escalator rides, and empty handed. There really was nothing here in my price range, and what was were household appliances. I just couldn’t imagine coming home and being all like “here, Babe, I got you a rice cooker. I know it looks exactly like the one you got at Wal-Mart, but it’s special because I got it in China”. I had battled and failed, and at this point I was throwing in the towel. He was getting nothing, and I had made peace with that.

Back at the hotel, I cooled off, changed, watched some Asian music videos and made sure all my final packing was done before checking out any joining the group for our ride to the airport. I didn’t want to pack, it meant we were leaving China, and I was having such an amazing time that I could have stayed for longer. But Canada meant I could sleep at normal times again… Right there in the lobby, seconds before we boarded our bus, I went on to aircanada.com and checked our flight status, and it said our flight was going to arrive 15 minutes early back in Vancouver. Great news. Forty five minutes later, as we were all queued up for check in, the guy in front of me mentions that our flight is seriously delayed. Not great news. A collective gasp rippled through our group. We were all overtired, somewhat homesick, and braced for an 11 hour flight across the pacific, so this did not sit well. One agent, missing her kids particularly badly, burst into tears. I was one of the lucky ones ending in Vancouver, but for a lot of the other agents, this meant massive flight rescheduling, overnight stays in Vancouver or red-eye flights across the country. For our patience during the 6-hour delay, Air Canada gave us CDY$70 (CAD$12) food vouchers. We made a bee-line to Burger King (basically, the only option that wasn’t the same meal we’d been eating twice a day for the last week), and went to town. Turns out Burger King in the Shanghai airport is super cheap. Hell, it wasn’t our money, so we were going to spend ever penny of it. Our tables looked like we were feeding a school group as opposed to just 10 people, with everyone adding side salads at at least two bottles of water per person to their orders, knowing they could pack them with them on the plane.

I like the Shanghai airport, I really do. It’s big and nice and clean and has wifi everywhere, but there is not a hell of a lot to keep you interested for 6 hours. I bought a bottle of whiskey for my Finacee at the duty free (real whisky, not that paint thinner stuff I’d had confiscated in Beijing), which actually made him very happy. Go figure, all that worry for nothing. We were going stir crazy, suddenly finding stupid stuff really funny, and pacing around just to keep the blood flowing before being confined to our airplane seats. It was after 11pm by the time our plane finally arrived at the gate, and the second we saw it coming we cheered. We then cheered for the people disembarking (hoping it would get them off faster) and cheered for the crews to load the meals and luggage as fast as possible. Hey, it was something to do. The flight itself was fine, and soon (but not as soon as planned!) we were back in Canada.

The fantastic China trip, AKA “the Amazing Race” was over. I hate this part, the goodbyes, the exchanges of email addresses, the wandering off into the night… but we made some amazing memories and have some incredible pictures. It was such a good trip, with the only complaints really being that it was too freaking cold in Beijing, they gave us too much food, and Air Canada delayed our flight home. In the grand scheme of things, that makes it pretty much a perfect trip. China was full of surprises, breaking all the preconcieved notions I had and just showing us an incredible time. I saw places that I never thought I’d see in person, biked an ancient city wall, seen snake on a stick, appeared in countless Chinese tourists’ photos… it was all good. If you ever considered visiting China, I strongly urge you to do it. You’ll love it!

Tags: Air Canada, Angry Birds, BlogSherpa, delayed, end, flight, home, KFC, packing, Shanghai, shopping

China day 7: Can I barter for a bootleg copy of Mulan?

“This morning visit the river town of Zhujiajiao” said the itinerary. Turns out it was right. Go figure. After a wonderful morning (at this point, anything not 4am was wonderful) we were on the bus, heading an hour out of Shanghai to a residential townhouse development. Well, that’s what it looked like from the highway turnoff, anyway. But one footbridge and we were in a different place, a village market type atmosphere with tightly packed souvenir stores lining even tighter alleyways, narrow old shop houses with decorative wooden eaves and gnarly trees planted outside. Merchants were sweeping their steps with brooms made out of branches lashed to poles, and rinsing the starch off their rice in the canals that bisected the town. This felt like small town China, and I’m embarrassed to say that I thought more of this trip was going to look like this. It was adorable and comfortable and just made you want to watch Mulan, but at the same time, this was clearly done for the tourist market, to give them a glimpse of how life used to/could be, and sell them some overpriced fridge magnets (which I, of course, bought). That didn’t make it any less charming, though, and on a warm sunny day this was lovely. A place like this just makes you happy, strangers were waving and smiling at us and everyone here just seemed to be in a good mood. We toured the classical Chinese garden, then took a relaxing ten-minute boat ride along the canals, feeling like floating royalty. Exploring the labyrinthine alleys during our free shopping time I found the amazingly named Bum Cafe (judging by the happy colours on the sign, they meant that in the anatomical sense, not the hobo sense), where you could order yourself a hot plate of “piggy steamed.” It was hard, but I passed on that, just taking a picture of the sign instead.

Back to Shanghai for what would be our last giant lazy-susan meal. Can’t say we were going to miss them, they had been good, though awfully repetitive, but this marked the beginning of the end. Our whirlwind taste of China was wrapping up, and we all raised our one free glass of Coke, Sprite, beer or water to toast to that. From there, the silk factory tried to sell us silk comforters and pyjamas by first showing us how they were made. Have to say, this one was a success and there were a few of our group having to pack very, very carefully to get their stuff home. Comforters, even vacuum-packed ones, take up a lot of room in your carry-on.

We came very close then to re-working our itinerary (we were really good at that by now) and adding in an hour-long river cruise past the Bund, but after assessing our financial situation and realizing that we would loose valuable shopping time by doing that, we headed straight on to the next stop, the Yu Yuan Gardens in Old Town. Prior to arrival, when I thought about must-see sites in Shanghai, this was the one spot that came to mind, and after touring it in person, it only cemented that. They are huge and elaborate and classic, with sculptures and amazing limestone formations and hundreds of different types of trees. The only downside is that they’re crowded, so they don’t have that calm tranquility that define most Chinese gardens. Two hundred Japanese school kids paraded past us at one point. There was no quiet time here. But some really great pictures to be taken.

Surrounding the gardens is a shopper’s paradise. An outdoor mall all done up in classical Chinese architecture to blend in with the gardens, you would think you had gone back in time until you look closer and notice there’s Dairy Queens, Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts everywhere you turn. This was a souvenir shopper’s wonderland, and you could barter for everything, even in the nice department stores. We spent almost two hours there, and no one went home empty handed. I’m not even sure if not buying something is physically possible here. Hell, I bought tiny silk baby pyjamas, and I don’t even have kids or know anyone who does. You just get caught up in it all and next thing you know you’ve bargained the price way down and are going in for the kill. The vendors come to you, too, so standing still away from the shops, you’re still not safe. They will find you. Between the time we regrouped and the time we got on the bus (max 5 minutes), half our group had bought more knockoff Rolexes and fancy pens.

Tonight we had some nice, relaxing free time and no giant Chinese dinner (yay!). Most of our group made a beeline to Pizza Hut, while a few others just wandered around the busy shopping streets that surrounded the hotel, enjoying the lights at night. Shanghai looks like a totally different place at night, with the skyscrapers lighting up, multicoloured or covered in LED twinkle effects, it’s like a permanent Christmas party. This one intersection had 5 mega shopping malls all right adjacent to one another, each brighter and with more dramatic lighting than the next, culminating with one having a thirty foot Plexiglas sphere laden with constantly changing neon. Speaking of Christmas, this was also the first city we’d really seen Christmas decorations in, and they looked more than a little out of place. Giant toy soldiers and a two-storey fruitcake in the middle of the French Concession, glowing bedazzled trees outside a Sephora, and a three-foot diameter festive steamed dumpling. All this juxtaposed against people riding bikes down the sidewalk meticulously laden with a hundred baskets and scaffolding made from bamboo lashed together, rather than the safer-looking (but probably not as strong) steel. Being a major corporate and banking hub, there was much more of a western influence here than I had expected, and seeing anything Christmas just cemented that. This I would have expected in Hong Kong, but not here.

Tomorrow we actually had nothing planned. Well, except for the flying to Canada part, but that wasn’t until late afternoon, so we actually could sleep in, chill out, rest our tired feet and/or explore at our leisure. That seemed such a strange concept at this point. But at the same time, not having more to do was somewhat bittersweet, as that meant it was over. I hate this part of a great trip, prepping for vacation withdrawl. The best way to get over it? More shopping…

Tags: BlogSherpa, China, Christmas., decrations, dumplings, lights, Old Town, relax, River, Shanghai, silk, Yu Yuan Gardens, Zhujiajiao

China day 6: Shanghaied!

The really disturbing part is that no one noticed the 4am morning anymore. I think the routine-ness of it, combined with a little jet lag allowed us to settle into a stupidly early morning groove quickly. If anything we were ready early this morning, early enough that we could sit back and enjoy most of our breakfast boxes in the hotel lobby before we even had to board the bus. The flight once again was effortless, and the onboard breakfast far less entertaining now that everyone already knew to avoid the congee. After the icy winds of Beijing and the murky smog of Xian, seeing both sunshine and fifteen degrees upon arrival in Shanghai made us ridiculously happy. Sunglasses! No gloves! A driver who won’t quickly learn “more heat” in English! Sweet.

We had thought we were going to the hotel like usual, but to our surprise the tour started right from the airport talking us directly to the Bund. At the time this seemed horribly inconvenient, as we all had our carry-on bags to leave on the bus, and the constant concern that something was going to happen to our valuables as we left them behind with the driver (nothing happened, they were totally professional and secure, but still, we worry). But this was before we had any concept of how big Shanghai really is. 23 million people in a space quite a bit smaller than Beijing, this is a city of skyscrapers. Everything is tall. More than 4000 skyscrapers dot the skyline, and anywhere you go, no matter what direction you face, it looks like you’re staring at a downtown skyline. It’s like Hong Kong with slightly more space in between the buildings, or Singapore time fifty. To drive anywhere here takes about an hour, all on super clean, neatly organized highways that snake through the city like tangled spaghetti noodles. Compared to what we had seen this far, this hyper-modern metropolis didn’t even feel like China anymore. It felt like a new planet. Picture every major city centre you can think of, then squish them all together and you get Shanghai. No wonder they took us straight to the sightseeing, if we had gone to the hotel, dropped off our stuff and driven back, we would have lost most of the day right there just in transit.

The Bund is amazing. The best first impression of Shanghai ever. We were all in love. A sunbathed waterfront promenade, marked by the massive white sails of the Monument to the People’s Heroes, with the futuristic Pudong towers on one side and the historic 1940’s era European concession buildings on the other. Old meets new and the only way to keep them seperated is to have a wide river in the middle. The Pudong side looks like Las Vegas. Mainly because it doesn’t look real, more like a computer-generated, brightly coloured cluster of surrealistic buildings. The SimCity version of reality. The star of it all is the TV tower, the iconic Shanghai Pearl, with it’s distinctive “pink balls on a stick” architecture, but behind that the massive “bottle opener” tower touches the clouds, and in front of it the convention centre’s glowing globe (literally). It’s one bit of craziness squished up against another, and the overall effect is wild. Makes for amazing photos, too, and while we wandered, at least five wedding couples, in full attire, were getting their formal pictures taken against the perfect backdrop. In sharp contrast, the colonial side is still exaclty as it was back in the day (not kidding our hotel had a portrait taken in 1955 on the wall, and aside from the addition of cars, it looks exactly the same today), with grand stone buildings topped with clock towers and oxidized copper roofs. This classical street would look incredible anywhere, frozen in time, but facing it off against the over-the-top eccentricity of Pudong only makes them more impressive. Seriously, google it.

Then the Shanghai museum. I’m sure this museum has a fantastic collection, unrivaled by anything in China. We saw about 1% of it. Not for lack of trying. Our guide took us there and gave us the twenty minute tour of the bronze section (fascinating, if not kinda similar to what we’d seen – and pretty much paid attention to – in Xian), then gave us free time to explore. But it was sunny and warm outside. Finally. And when you combine tiredness and a cool, dark museum, it’s not a good combination. We stayed inside for just long enough to use the bathroom (naturally) and then all congregated outside on the steps, stretched out in the sunshine. It was the pick me up the group needed despite being a horrible waste of a good museum.

The French Concession was next, old stone buildings and alleyways overflowing with trendy boutiques and pricey sidewalk cafes. We could have been in Cannes. The other agents went crazy, loving this place and it’s perfect European vibe. And 90% of the patrons at the cafes were westerners, too, so that seemed to be the overwhelming consesus. This was where the fatigue started to get to me, as I got really irritated that everyone was so excited to be in a district that was so un-Chinese. This is just a personal pet peeve of mine, but when I’m in Asia, I want to see Asia and all it’s colours and history and architecture. I love it over here, this is my comfort zone, and I keep coming back for more. So it drove me nuts when the others were thrilled to not feel like they were in China anymore. But then again, Europe might be their comfort zone, so they were equally as happy to find something soothing and familiar for them as I had been for the rest of the trip. It had to be the lack of sleep that caused me to internally overreact and have to bit my tongue the whole time we wandered the cobblestone alleys. I was glad from the French Concession we on went to the Jade Buddha Temple, because the peace and tranquility of a Buddhist temple never fails to calm me down and put things back in perspective.

Finally late afternoon we at last rolled into the Ramada Plaza Gateway hotel. By this time we were running on fumes and seriously needed some downtime to recharge. Really nice hotel, big (but probably classified as mid-sized in this city), with good sized rooms. Tiny bathrooms, though. This was the first place we’d been without bathtubs. After a short rest, during which I ran out and finally bought stamps for those postcards I’d been carrying around since Beijing, but just hadn’t had time to actually write or mail, we all regrouped for dinner. Apparently in my haste to get in touch with the people back home, I had missed the memo to dress up for dinner. Everyone came down looking really nice, a bit more formal with some more makeup than usual, and there I was in a hoodie and tank top. I felt like such a knob, but there was no time to change. At least it was my best hoodie!

One more identical dinner and then to the Shanghai Acrobatic show. I seriously cannot recommend this show more. If you’re going to Shanghai, go. Don’t ask, just go. It’s not that expensive, and is and hour and a half of pure entertainment. The things that these talented performers can do, like spinning a hundred-pound ceramic planter on their head, while balancing on a rolling beam, or soaring high above the crowd with no safety net, holding on one-handed to just a simple swatch of fabric and supporting another person by only their foot – we could not be sleepy during this show. “There’s no way they can do tha- oh my God, they did!” The finale was eight motorbikes riding formations inside a twenty foot sphere. We were seriously sitting there waiting for the scream the crash and the arrival of the paramedics. I’ll let you guess how that turned out. Needless to say, we were far more awake after this show than we were the cultural dance in Xian, and I actually managed to change into both halves of my pyjamas before falling asleep this time!

Tags: BlogSherpa, Bund, China, flight, French Concession, Jade Buddha Temple, museum, Pearl, postcards, Shanghai, skyscraper, sunny, tired

China day 5: Here come the Big Potatoes

Today was the second day this trip that crossed off one of my bucket list sights to see. I woke up Christmas-morning early, and then spent hours drinking my body weight in tea at the breakfast buffet as I killed time. I just wanted to get going! There was so much to see! I wasn’t the only one, though. Two of the other agents awoke at 4am, convinced we had another super early morning and in a total panic because they thought they had missed the wake up call and were going to be left behind. Luckily they called and woke up the tour leader (well, not luckily for the tour leader) before rushing downstairs. That would have been incredibly funny in hindsight…

An en route souvenir stop at a terracotta factory selling scale models to tourists (4 out of 10 on the nice bathroom scale), and then we were at the Terra Cotta Warriors museum. The excitement was palpable. Because, as the guide said, we were “Big Potatoes”, our tour van pulled right up to the entrance gates and let us out, a much shorter walk in than the normal one from the parking lot. Sweet. From the outside it looked nice, a cluster of modern airplane-hangar like buildings with a very clean, busy courtyard connecting them, but it was once you stepped through the doors of Pit 1 that it all becomes real. The vast expanse of space stretching football-field length out in front of you, with the dug-out rows of marching Terracotta soldiers and horses lined up in greeting. Damn, I’m really here. I kept reminding myself to put the camera down every once in a while and just drink it all in with my eyes, as there was so much to see and so many amazing photos to take. In person, they are even cooler than they look in the media. Individually, their details are striking, but seeing them all lined up together really is what makes this so special. In spots there are ladders and tables erected as workspace for the archaeologists who are still actively recovering more and more pieces and rebuilding more of the shattered warriors, and opened, unfinished pits show the piles of rubble (feet and hands and scattered bits of torso) that they have yet to work through. I can only imagine what this place is going to look like in ten years, when hundreds more of the warriors will be standing sentry and all the buildings would have to be extended to house them all. And keep in mind, they still haven’t unearthed the Emperor himself, the man of honour whom all these figures are guarding for eternity. He’s still somewhere beneath the giant pyramid of grass (it sounds silly, but it really is a huge, pointy grass hill), located a mile behind the warriors museum. This is a living, breathing wonder of the world, changing on a daily basis. Oh well, I guess I’m just going to have to come back…

After the short movie showing the history behind the statues, we explored the gift shop (did you have any doubts?) and picked up copies of the souvenir guidebook. What was really cool was that the 85 year old farmer who had discovered the warriors while trying to dig a well back in the 80’s (he’s one of 5 men who found them, and one of only 2 surviving) was there in person, signing autographs and posing for pictures. Hell, he didn’t make much from his monumental discovery (go communism, the land belongs to the government, so they just take it back for free), so earning a living this way is dramatically better than going back to pig farming. He signed and dated my book, and having that date in there, commemorating this forever, is awesome.

Another giant lunch (really good) and then Pits 2 and 3. They have a dramatically different feeling from Pit 1, more polished museum style, as opposed to active archaeological dig, but really well laid out and informative. Many more pictures to be taken and souvenirs to be bought. It’s funny, in Beijing most of the tourists had been Chinese, but here, about half of them were the standard North American/European tourists, all clad in their fast-dry “travel” cargo pants and millions of pockets vests, giant cameras around their necks and two bored looking kids in tow, heads down in their smartphones, oblivious to the amazing sights beside them. There is definately a more adventure/backpacker vibe, and because of it the whole city had more of a tourist atmosphere. You could tell that these warriors really are the only reason most people come to Xian, that it’s more of a once in a lifetime pilgrimage than a place to come and stay for a while. I could have spent more time at the museum, staring down each figure in detail, but with the crowds (once again, this was super low season) you really had to keep moving to allow everyone a chance to witness the spectacle.

Technically, the rest of the day was scheduled as “leisure time”, but we were on such a tight timeline and everyone had such big dreams of what to see and do, we actually just divided up into two groups for yet another adventure. Half of us went with our guide to get a foot and neck massage, while the other half (me included) went to the Xian city wall for a little bike ride. This was no Great Wall, it was actually more sturdy looking, wide and fat, gray stone with big decorative towers and guardhouses spaced intermittently along it’s top. We rented our bikes from the south gate (CAD$3.50 with a CAD$8.50 damage deposit – technically we could have taken these bikes home with us for only CAD$12) and were off. Sort of. The bikes were circa-1950, so it took us a few tries to find ones where the chain didn’t fall off every time you tried to pull the pedal, or where the pedals themselves were rusted still. Eventually, one girl actually just took one with no brakes at all because it was the only one close to her size, and she just carefully coasted to a stop when needed. Needless to say, no one took the bikes home. This was so much fun. It’s so peaceful up on the wall, you’re still surrounded by the heart of Xian, but you feel removed from it, safe up in your perch in the clouds. You can look down and see the hustle below you, then keep pedaling on in comfortable (relative, this is China) silence. And it felt so good to get some exercise and (un)fresh air. The stone pavers were really uneven, being built 641 years ago and all, so we were swerving around like we were drunk, trying to avoid the potholes. Mainly because we thought that if we hit one the bikes would just start falling apart beneath us. Tourists and locals waved and laughed at us as we rode past, gladly moving out of the way of the crazy Canadians.

We returned the bikes (they did give us one of those surprised “you brought them back?” looks, leading me to believe they go though a lot of bikes. So, if you’re ever in need of a rusted and barely functional piece of crap for your biking pleasure, Xian is the place to go!) then kept our legs moving by walking from there to the Drum tower, which is conveniently also one end of the Muslim Market. En route we stopped in at a McDonalds for some drinks and fries, as there is very little more comforting than McDonalds’ fries when traveling internationally, and to use the bathroom. McDonalds always have good bathrooms. The market shopping was good tonight, we found a quieter side street that was just as filled with stalls, but had a third of the crowds. We brought home a pretty sweet haul, let me tell you. Talking a taxi back from the hotel was an adventure, too. We found a minivan taxi that didn’t have any real seats in the back, so we just sat on wooden planks slightly raised off the floor, and hopped in hoping the driver knew where we were going. I had shown him the address written in Chinese and the little tiny map on the back of the hotel’s business card, both of which he had nodded “yeah yeah” to, but taxi drivers are notorious for nodding like that and then driving around in circles for weeks, trying to figure out where to go. I like to call this a “cultural experience”, which involves a lot of blind faith, but in our case it worked out, and for a ridiculously cheap fare, too

So back to the hotel for one last night in my giant room, filled with a lot of “oh my god, how am I going to fit all this crap in my suitcase?” packing. Yep, you guessed it, 4am wake up call tomorrow!

Tags: biking, BlogSherpa, bucket list, fun, history, museum, once in a lifetime, shopping, souvenirs, taxis, Terra Cotta Warriors, Xian, Xian City Wall

China day 4: Face down in the dumplings

4 am is just wrong. On so many levels. Especially when you’re traveling. Hotels just scream of sleep-ins and giant fluffy beds and lounging around in the complimentary slippers and robe, not hauling your exhausted ass up at 4am to check out and be on the bus by 430. About this time, we were are silently cursing whoever had booked us on the 8am flight from Beijing, and wishing the airport was closer. But at least the hotel supplied breakfast boxes for us, so we could get our systems started for the day ahead. Made it to the airport in plenty of time, lost my whisky at customs and waited. Going through customs in China is somewhat nerve-wracking. Because of CNN and BBC there’s always this horrible image etched in the back of your mind of the guards swooping in and hauling you off to a Chinese prison. In reality, the guards, even the one who had me open my bag and took my booze, were really lovely. He even offered to hold it for me if I wanted to wait and have my suitcase unchecked so that I could stick the whiskey inside it and keep it. But that would have taken forever and been such a hassle, so I forfeitted the CAD$3.20 and went on my merry way. Beijing has a nice, big, clean airport. Kinda looks like a Hong Kong’s in the International area and like Las Vegas’ in the Domestic. Needs more souvenir shops, though Side note – I love that, even paying airport prices, a bottle of Diet Coke here is only CAD$0.47! I seriously grabbed as many as I could fit in my purse and stocked my hotel minifridge when I landed.

Flight to Xian was fine, and we were thanking the Crowne Plaza Beijing when they served the in-flight breakfast of purple congee (that looked more than a little like vomit, just saying), a tea-boiled egg (one hard boiled egg out of the shell, but all the white was a disturbing shade of brown) a flaky bun with some unidentifiable meat on it, and an orange. The orange was awesome. Luckily I was still full from my breakfast box. Normally I really like airplane food. There’s something about a meal served in these little dishes on my folding tray that I enjoy. And the brownies/cookies are usually particularly yummy. Cathay Pacific has this green tea ice cream that is just fantastic. But congee + airplanes just doesn’t do it for me. I don’t actually like congee anyway (runny rice Jell-o with lemongrass or something? No thanks), but when I’m ten thousand feet above the ground, I don’t want something that looks like it came from my air sickness bag. This meal reminded me that I most definately was not in Canada anymore.

Our itinerary had originally said we were to have the balance of the day to sit back and explore Xian on our own, but upon landing our new guide Jerry advised us that we were instead going to do a city tour and traditional dumpling dinner today, and have our free time after the Terracotta warriors tomorrow, so we could get to bed early and rest up before our second 4am wake up call. At the time it seemed like a great plan. More on that later. The drive from the airport to the hotel was past industrial parks, numerous used auto parts markets and a giant coal-burning power plant. That plant, and others, filled the sky with this disgusting thick gray haze that made it look permenently overcast despite it being sunny and cloudless today. Not the best impression of Xian, and I was thinking that “this place is horrible and thank God we only have 2 nights here.” Where do they keep all 8 million people? The smog was so bad that from our hotel, the Titan Times, you could barely see the ancient Xian city wall (and we’re talking a wall that’s 12 meters high and 12 meters wide, not exactly your backyard fence) despite the fact that it was accross the road.

The hotel itself was incredible. I really think the reason it’s only a 4* and not a 5* is that the pool isn’t finished yet. For me alone I got an executive suite with a full bedroom, separate living room, bar and 2 bathrooms. This place was substantially larger than my last apartment. I felt like they had put me in the wrong room, that this room could easily accommodate 6, not just little ‘ol me. But we got a full tour of the hotel, and even the standard rooms were way larger than usual, so you really couldn’t go wrong with any room here. My room just made me want to throw open my arms, spin around (without hitting anything in this vast expanse of space) and dramatically dive onto the bed like they do in all those Princess-moving-into-the-castle movies.

There was just enough time to drop off our bags and sing a few choruses of “Movin’ on up” before we were back on the van and heading to another giant lunch. This was the only one we really didn’t enjoy, as the food was more generic (pasta reminiscent of Chef Boyardee, Campbell’s vegetable soup, and the standard array of bland veggie dishes) than we had grown accustomed to. We were seriously starting to sound like Survivorcastaways, lamenting about the lack of noodles and what we would do for a piece of “white chocolate cheesecake”, despite the fact that we had a giant table laden with food in front of us. It was pathetic, really, especially since we all left full, despite not really liking the food. The lack of noodles did surprise me – we had a total of ten of these identical meals, and we had three noodle dishes the whole time. When I think of mall Chinese food, noodles are ususally at least half of the options, and here we were in China, craving noodles. Even the rice was sparse. But I guess they know that when they give you so much food and such a large selection, you don’t need any of the filler to keep you happy, you can get straight into the good stuff.

Xian now looked nothing like it had on the drive in from the airport. Apparently our hotel was one of the first gateways to the modern metropolis that is Xian. It was your standard downtown core, with giant shopping malls and boulevards and Baskin Robins and Pizza Huts. Now this was more like it. Right in the middle of it all was the Wild Goose Pagoda, a funky leaning tower and Buddhist temple. On all my other trips to Asia I had been to lots of Buddhist temples. They are so ornate and expansive and important that they are mandatory stops on all the tourist trails, but here in China, where freedom of religion is a relatively new thing, you visit the important palaces and gardens instead. It caught me off guard how much I love the distinct smoky smell of the burning incense (they must have a standard “Buddha” scent, because it’s the same in every country), the familiar statues and carvnigs, and the orange and gray robes. There’s something about these temples that is comforting and calming and just makes me happy. Surrounding the temple is a giant shopping/movie/entertainment/condo complex that they’re almost completed building, though it is all done as a throwback to the classic Han Dynasty style, so in five years, when the paint has started to fade and weather, the whole area is going to look like it’s been there for centuries. Very cool. Like the Chinese version of Main Street USA at Disneyland.

Then the Provincial Museum. It was about 3pm at this point, and the 4am wake up was starting to get to us. The hotel had recommended shopping at the Muslim Market, so we had arranged with our guide to do the museum in 1 hour instead of 2, squish in an hour to shop, and then go to the dumpling dinner as planned. I’m a bit of an archaeology nerd, so I loved this stuff, but most of the group was propped up against the wall, trying not to let the cool, dark atmosphere put them to sleep. And our guide was amazing. He gave the most detailed, professional museum tour I’ve ever had, moving at double speed. It was as if someone had hit his fast forward button, and he powered through every important item and historical fact without missing a beat or getting frazzled. Total rock star. It was a good thing, too, as if it had taken longer, we would have had to go back and find our scattered group curled up in the fetal position in random corners, completely out. The museum itself was really, really well done with a beautifully laid out collection and fantastic modern displays. Definitely impressed.

The Muslim Market was nothing like I had imagined it to be. Firstly, I expected the Muslims to be larger, bearded, middle eastern men, not Chinese. It was a horrible stereotype, I know, but it was what came to mind and I couldn’t help wondering where all the Muslims were, despite the fact that they were standing right beside me. Also, it looked just like a nicer, cleaner version of the Temple Street night market in Hong Kong, with the crowds, the hawkers, the neon signs all over. I loved it instantly. Neon and cheap souvenirs, I had found my natural habitat. Four stalls in I spotted a Terra Cotta Warrior figurine I loved, and went in for the sale. Undoubtedly they were going to be ten times the price tomorrow at the Warriors Museum, and I had just seen one this size at the provincial Museum for CAD$25 (which was still a good price. Back in Canada, even a tacky sculpture that big would be around CAD$50). I got it for CAD$5! It was such a good deal that more of the people in my group went back in and did the whole “I’ll have what she’s having” thing and also got it for the same price. Now that has a featured place on my mantle We did some damage at that market, let me tell you, and made plans to come back the next day.

And finally, for today anyway, to the traditional Xian dumpling dinner and Han Dynasty cultural show, which were in the same place, dinner theatre-style. Really nice theatre, by the way. What makes Xian dumplings so special is that, depending on the contents of the dumpling, the outside is shaped like that animal/vegetable. The pork ones are little tiny pigs with sesame seed eyes, the duck ones have little tiny beaks, the cabbage ones look like cabbage. Super cute. I’m not a dumpling fan, so I found the taste fairly bland, but they were a big hit with the group and this was one of the lightest meals we had all trip, which was much appreciated. Immediately after dinner they clear the tables, sell you some overpriced sweetened popcorn and dim the lights for the traditional cultural show. This was beautiful, the costumes, the pageantry, the traditional instruments – we would have enjoyed it more if we had been able to stay awake. The combination of the happy, just eaten feeling, the dark room and comfortable chairs was all it took and pretty soon we were all doing the head-bob, “no, I’m awake, I’m awake” thing. There were people playing freaking gongs ten feet from us and it still could not keep us up! One of the agents took a picture with three of us sitting there with our eyes closed and a fourth with her head down, sound asleep on her plate. Brutal. We would pop up just in time to clap after each performance and then drop again. Needless to say after that show we crawled back to the bus and from there straight into bed. I literally woke up the next morning and discovered I was only wearing half of my pajamas, the other half were still on the foot of the bed where I had set them out to change into. It was one of those days.

Tags: BlogSherpa, Buddhist Temple, city wall, dumplings, Han Dynasty cultural show, Muslim Market, provincial museum, shopping, sleeping, Titan Times, Wild Goose Pagoda, Xian

China day 3:All in all we’re just another tourist on the Wall

This morning we were all up and rearing to go nice and early, partially out of excitement, and partially because we wanted to have a nice relaxing breakfast with enough time left to then go up to our rooms and add on all our bulky layers for the trip to the Great Wall. After yesterday there was no way we were going to risk loosing toes in China. We all had insurance (as everyone who travels internationally should. At all times. Without exception. Deal with it. That’s like CAD$30 that could save your life), but no one wanted to test it, we still had a lot more of China to see! When we packed onto the bus I swear all our suitcases were up in our rooms, empty, as we were wearing practically everything we’d brought withus. I was rocking the always sexy look of three pairs of socks, jeans, leggings underneath, a thermal workout tank top, hoodie, turtleneck sweater, down parka, scarf and gloves. All I was missing was a hat, but seriously, these locks do not handle hats well, and if I was desperate, every ten feet in this country someone is trying to sell you one of the plush panda hats, so it wouldn’t be hard to pick one up.

The typical “break up a long drive with a stop at a local handicrafts/tacky souvenir shop” stop brought us to a Jade factory. I understand why every tour operator in every country does this, I mean, over an hour into a drive, people will want to stretch, use the bathrooms, and get a drink, so why not combine that with stores that give kickbacks to the tour guide for every tourist that buys something? But after you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Gold in Costa Rica and Hong Kong, gemstones in Thailand and Singapore, pewter in Malaysia… I don’t care how you make it, polish it, or what the history is. Chances are I’m not going to buy anything more than a few dollars, so just let me look around in peace and then enjoy the bathrooms. Usually after one of these stops I can’t remember the presentation at all, but I will always remember if the bathroom was immaculate.

Like the over-excited travel nerds we are, the second we started seeing mountains we all had our cameras out and pressed to the windows for that first glance of the great wall. And there it was. Just a glimpse in the distance, and the road turned and it was gone. Then another taste, and it was gone again. And then there was the sturdy citadels of Juyong Pass and we were all thinking, “wow, we’re here!”, but no, the van just drove right through and back to the highway. A few minutes later, after being stopped to let some high ranking Nepalese official and their motorcade through, we were dropped off at Badaling, right beside the KFC. We come all the way to the Great Wall of China and find a freaking KFC? Can you get any less exotic? A short walk up through the giant gates and we were there, oohing and ahhing and spastically snapping photos, as every where you turned there was more Wall. It’s not that tall, actually, or maybe it’s the vastness of the mountains and countryside that makes it look small, but it is everywhere. No matter where you turn, there’s another section snaking the most improbable course along the mountain ridge, seemingly curling back on itself as it follows the angular topography. Right at the bottom we had our souvenir group photo taken (professional group photo with the Wall perfectly in the background, all nicely bound in the Great Wall souvenir guide book, for only CAD$15? Sold!), then divided into 2 groups to sightsee. Half of us wandered around at the bottom, taking pictures, shopping, stopping for hot chocolate, while the other half of us climbed. I climbed. There was no way I was coming here and not climbing the Great Wall.

No matter how cold it was, after about ten minutes, layers started peeling off. The combination of uneven steps and practically vertical sections warmed us up fast, and just when you think “this might be a good time to catch my breath” some little old lady in kitten heels(what do I wear to climb a wall? Why, my heels, of course!) saunters past you like this is nothing. Every few hundred feet there’s another watchtower, which were really fun (and if I was a little kid, would have made the coolest hideout!), provided some great photo spots through their arched windows, and opened up the wonders of a new section of Wall on the other side. After about 25 minutes of climbing and picture taking we had reached one of the higest points in the area, so we turned back, not wanting to get so engrossed in Wall climbing that we went too far, missed our bus and were stranded here. But that would have been so easy. I could have easily wandered along here all day if they’d have let me. It just stretches on forever, and no matter how far away it seemed, there were always the little specks of people walking up every part. It still seemed crowded, despite it being low season, but, as our guide pointed out, you could actually see space in between the people walking the wall, so it was an exceptionally quiet day. On a busy day this must be more like getting swept up in a riptide than actually walking, as the movement of all the people packed around you would propel you forwards. I wonder how many people a year are accidentally pushed off?

Now hiking up might have been hard on the thighs, but carefully walking down slopes and steps that steep is a whole ‘nother challenge. I started noticing that the sides are not that high, and the back of my mind began to nag that if I trip and fall, it’s an awfully long way down to the ground, and I think I’d bounce and roll a while… whenever a guard rail was an option, I held on to it. There was really no way to find a comfortable walking rhythm, as the pavers were so irregular, and we were getting frequently stopped for photos. Yep, like celebrities. Me, Brad and Angelina. Chinese people get really excited when they see white people, let me tell you. They just kinda grab your arm, point with their camera and you smile. There are going to be people all over China now proudly displaying my “random white woman on the Wall” photos on their mantles. This is ridiculously fun, by the way. By day 4 of the trip I had started grabbing random Asian people for photos, too, and they were just as excited

At the bottom we hit the souvenir stalls, where I discovered that you really do need to barter pretty much everywhere here. I got so caught up in the tacky tourist wonderland that I failed to realize there were no set prices here, and I ended up paying CAD$60 for my “I climbed the Great Wall” tee, fridge magnets and postcards, which I could have probably got for CAD$30. Damn you, bartering! Not my favorite thing to do, mainly because I feel like I’m cheating the vendors out of their money, when in reality they’re actively cheating me out of mine. Grrrr. That bothered me for the rest of the day.

All too soon we were back on the bus, and driving to a massive enamelware factory/restaurant clearly designed for nothing but foreign tour groups. We were like the 30th bus in the parking lot. That being said, there really wasn’t a hell of a lot else around here. This was probably the best meal we had all trip. The food was incredible, the service good, for the one and only time we had unlimited drinks and we discovered Chinese Whiskey. Ahh, Chinese Whiskey. Maybe that’s why we all remember this as the best meal… We should have known what we were in for when the cups they give you to drink out of are literally the size of thimbles. They looked like egg cups for Barbie’s dream house. Not kidding. This stuff was like 95% alcohol, smelled like nail polish remover (actually, nail polish remover probably has a lower alcohol content and is softer on your hands), and halfway though your thimbleful most of us brave enough to try it were coughing and sputtering. I have the alcohol tolerance of a gerbil, so I wisely chose not to partake. The only one in the group who could really stomach it was the one woman originally from Poland, and after three thimbles full, even her strong European disposition could barely handle it and she was bright pink. Rumour has it there may possibly be pictures floating around from this meal with a lot of us two-fisting Chinese beer, pink faced over the whiskey, and smiling like idiots. But that claim is unsubstantiated and if asked I will deny it. On the way out I bought some bottles of the Whiskey for CAD$1.60/bottle!!! for my bridesmaids back home (who have a slightly better alcohol tolerance. I should start preparing for my Bachelorette party now, lol), but they would later be confiscated by customs at the Beijing airport (I know, I know, I should know better, but a momentary lapse of judgment meant I put them in my carry on and now they’re probably being enjoyed in the lunch room of PEK), so sorry girls!

To the Ming Tombs, otherwise known as the tourist attraction least likely to be recommended by me or the other agents. Due to the season and the freezing weather (and the fact that Chinese don’t actually like to visit tombs, go figure), it was pretty empty, and we wandered around giant, somewhat unremarkable wooden buildings that looked an awful lot like the ones we’d seen yesterday at the Forbidden City and Summer Palace, looking for a bathroom. The bathrooms there are pretty good, by the way. It was so funny, there was this American tourist who clearly hadn’t read her guidebook flitting around the bathroom, poking her head in all the stalls in search of toilet paper. There are like three bathrooms in the country that have toilet paper in the stalls, most have nothing and you have to bring your own, and the rest have a dispenser on the wall by the sinks. This one went a step farther, and, like all the other Asian countries I’ve ever been to, had a table outside the bathroom selling packets of TP. The American woman, bouncing like she was going to wet herself at any moment, was wailing to her husband that “this can’t be toilet paper, this stuff’s for sale! You don’t buy toilet paper!” Welcome to Asia, Ma’am. Just go with it.

45 minutes of nice relaxing driving later we were back in Beijing. They really have nice highways here, though all major roads are tolls. We drove past the Olympic village and the Bird’s Nest stadium, snapping some pictures, though they didn’t turn out as well as planned as the clouds had rolled in, causing the heavy layer of smog to descend and sit on the city like a foggy blanket. Everything was hazy gray. Would have liked to see the Water Cube, but there just wasn’t time. We were supposed to go straight to our Peking Duck dinner (which, surprisingly, has not been renamed Beijing Duck yet), but we were all still so full from lunch and had money to burn, so we arranged a stop at a nearby knockoff market/shopping mall thing with an unpronounceable name. We wanted some hardcore bartering and cheap fake Fendis! Holy crap, this place was insane. 5 storeys, hundreds of tiny stalls packed in there like Lego blocks, and the sales clerks and buyers were both aggressive. You had to drive a really hard bargain, and I saw one sales lady grab a client by the arm and try to drag them back into her stall as they walked away. This was bartering in the big leagues. I mainly looked, as I’m not really one for knockoffs or hardcore bargaining, buying only a small souvenir painting (that I probably paid too much for, it was that kind of day), and then fled to the coffee shop for some hot chocolate. By the time we got to the Peking Duck dinner at 7 we were still not remotely hungry, and honestly I remember very little about this meal. There was so much food wasted on us, we started picking at our meals just to be polite, and tried the duck (I don’t even like duck, but this was pretty good, it tasted like roast chicken. I’m sorry if anyone is offended by that), but had we skipped this meal altogether and hand nothing but a granola bar, we would have been happy. Too. Much. Food.

Back at the hotel it was time for frantic packing, hot showers and getting to sleep as soon as possible, as we were tired from all the nonstop amazing sightseeing/shopping/driving and tomorrow was going to be a super early wakeup to get to Xian. I don’t know about the others, but I fell asleep with visions of the Great Wall dancing in my head

Tags: amazing, Badaling, bartering, Bird's Nest Stadium, BlogSherpa, bus, China, climbing, Great Wall of China, Jade, Ming Tombs, Olympics, Peking Duck Dinner, photos, shopping

Come to Vancouver – we have the best weather!

               Ahh, summer in Vancouver.   Perfect days with a rare cloud punctuating the pure blue sky, a gentle breeze coming in off the ocean, the majestic mountains surrounding us in a comforting hug, and the sun glinting off the glass skyscrapers of the downtown core.  Damn, right it’s the best place on earth.  And you should all drop what you’re doing and come now.  Immediately.  Vancouver wants you.  We have perfect weather, so take advantage of it before stock runs out! 

                Summer finally arrived at the end of June, after the longest winter on record.  Well, technically winter was exactly the same length as every year, but this year it felt like we skipped spring entirely.  But once summer dawned, it hasn’t let up one bit.  We’ve now had nearly a month straight of “coat?  I don’t even need socks in this weather” weather, and I’m loving every second of it.  Life should operate at this temperature every day.  I guess it does in LA, but here we don’t need to deal with nearly as much traffic, garbage, smog, noise…  you get the point.  As much as I appreciate (and boy do I appreciate) the chance to finally thaw, this weather also shows off Vancouver at its best, and everyone needs to take full advantage of it. 

               Right now we’re in the midst of the Symphony of Fire fireworks competition for four consecutive Wednesday and Saturday nights, which floods the shores of false creek with thousands of “ooooh”ers and “aaaah”ers.  Soon we’ll have the Dragon Boat festival, too.  We actually don’t have a deep pool of festivals and events, but the attractions we have year-round are pretty damn spectacular, and when you see them in this fantabulous weather, they’re even better.  You can immerse yourself in the native culture of the pacific coast at the UBC Museum of Anthropology and then get your nekked on at Wreck Beach; shop Robson Street’s trendiness and then finish off the day at a waterfront cafe on False Creek; bike Stanley Park’s seawall, feed the squirrels and enormous raccoons, then visit one of the best Aquariums around to splash with the belugas and dolphins.  A few weeks ago I did the bike thing for the first time since I was like 6 and it was great.  It’s a really smooth, relaxing ride, and a 2 hour bike rental from Spokes on Denman only cost CAD$10.00!    And regardless of what you do, remember to snag a funky twist on lunch at the world-famous Japadog gourmet Japanese hot dog cart.  Trust me, it’s worth the wait.

          But honestly, I’m here in the best place on earth, and I cannot recommend strongly enough that you should be too.  What are you waiting for, people?  We have sun!!!!

Tags: aquarium, best, bikes, BlogSherpa, Canada, fantastic, fireworks, fun, Japadog, Stanley Park, sun, vancouver, weather

ATVs are the new black – Costa Rica, days 8 & 9 – the finale.

So, I’ve discovered I like going fast and I drive like a madwoman.   Plus, I’m capable of doing them both at the same time.  On roads that are little more than goat paths and have ever expanding water features as the rivers roll over them.  All the while giggling like a mental patient and hoping my thighs don’t stick to the seat.  I’m totally okay with all of the above.

Got up bright and early and were picked up by Chino, our super sweet guide (who tried to broker a deal to have me as his fourth wife.  I passed, but I did promise to hang out with him next time I’m in Quepos, although something tells me I’m going to “forget” this) and driven out to London, Costa Rica, population, like, 80.  It was tiny, but cute, with chickens and dogs wandering the street more than people.  We pulled into someone’s driveway (this seemed a little weird until we saw the fifteen ATVs parked there) and, after a quick training course in the fine art of not killing yourself on an ATV, we were off.

It was fantastic.  The path was steep and rocky and wet in places, but that just let you really enjoy what an ATV could do.  This was supposed to be off-roading, and it satisfied. I thought it had been purpose-built for the psycho tourists like us, but after the fact we learned that this actually was the public road in the area.  Fourteen families had no other way in or out of their little isolated village.  Wow.  We had also brought a change of clothes in case we got muddy and messy as the website had warned, but I discovered quickly that if you went faster (and cheered, that was an important part) then teh water sprayed outwards and kept me all dry.

Midway through we stopped and had an hour walk through a beautiful forest and across a suspension bridge that was nothing more than a bunch of metal ladders trussed together a hundred feet up in the air to a waterfall.  This is a perfect place to play and swim, but as it was just the two of us, we opted to just take lots of pictures and dip our feet instead of making the poor guide stand around awkwardly as we splashed in the falls.  Then it was back onto the ATVs and retracing our route back to the start.  On the way back he knew we were capable drivers, so the speeds were much higher, topping out about 50mph.  Sweet.  Only once, when I was trying to avoid some horseback tourists, did I confuse the break and the gas and nearly go shooting off into the jungle.  Leave it to me to only make a mistake when there’s a crowd of people to see it!

Did not want to give that ATV back.  I tried to just drive off, but it just would have taken me too long to drive it all the way back home, and it’s hard to find a good parking space for your ATV in downtown Vancouver, so I left it.

Spent the rest of the day hanging out at the hotel to escape the heat and avoid the torrential downpour that left me epically soaked even under my umbrella when I walked down to the local bodega for supplies.  After that, we deserved a nice dinner, so we cabbed it to El Avion and we got to watch the lightning illuminate the sky from our table under  a plane.

The last full day in Quepos started early, as we had a 6am pickup for our mangrove tour.  They have to start super early to hit the tides at the right times.  Luckily, since the sun rises and sets at 5:00 here, your body clock gets you up early anyway to greet the sun and puts you to sleep early, so that wake up call was not too bad.  The tour group was us and a French family that spoke almost no English, and on our two and a half hour boat tour we saw a few monkeys, some vultures and a couple of skinny raccoons, but that was pretty much it.  Three years ago I had taken the same tour and seen so many animals it was incredible, but today everyone was playing hide and seek from us and they won.  It honestly felt like a colossal waste of time.  And it finished at 9am, so we still had the whole day to fill.

Like every woman, we went shopping.  We got a great deal on a taxi and headed right down to Playa Manuel Antonio, the beach paradise.  I’m far too pale to be a beach bunny, and the sun here fries skin in the blink of an eye (half the people walking around are a painful red colour, and that had already happened to me once this trip, so there was no way I was going through that again), but there’s a few cute souvenir shops and a street market where you can get some good tacky tourist shit (I love this stuff!) as long as you barter for it.  We got a great carved vase for half the price we would have paid in the stores in Quepos.  Of course, today had to be the day it decided not to rain in the afternoon and we tried not to melt as we shopped, took the incredibly cheap public bus back to Quepos, shopped more, and then got all packed up and ready to depart the next morning.

The drive to San Jose was kind of anticlimactic compared to all our other Interbus transfers, as the roads were, well, actual roads the whole way, including an extended stint on a brand new highway.    Our driver took advantage of this by driving super fast, which actually didn’t scare me as much as it should have, I loved the speed.  Clearly the ATV ride has broken my common sense when it came to speeding in this country.  Soon we were back at the Casa Conde, where we discovered our pickup time the next morning for our 10am flight was 515am.  Great.  So we dropped our bags, had some dinner, watched a tiny bit of TV and went to bed early to prep for our 430am wake up call.

Our airport transfer the next day was even early.  He showed up at 5.  Luckily, we were ready anyway, but that got us to the airport at 545.   Cranky and tired and hungry we checked in for our flight, cleared security and hit the food court for a giant cinnabon breakfast.  Normally I wouldn’t  eat 1500 calories of sugary goodness for breakfast, but it just seemed to be a fitting send off for our time in Costa Rica.  It had been a hot, sweet and sticky(with both sweat and rain) trip, and was thoroughly enjoyable.

Pura Vida!

Tags: ATV, beach, BlogSherpa, Costa Rica, crazy speed, hot, mangrove tour, Manuel Antonio, Quepos, sunny

I totally just ate under a plane! – Costa Rica days 6 & 7

I totally just ate under a plane.  I know I said that in the title, but that doesn’t take away from the awesomeness of it.   El Avion, a plane turned restaurant in Quepos/Manuel Antonio, is quite possibly my favorite place to eat on the planet, right up there with the seafood restaurant in the middle of Temple Street night market in Hong Kong.  What can I say, I’m a sucker for ambiance.  And this place has it in spades, because IT HAS A FRIGGIN PLANE in it! 

The plane itself is perched on the cliffside so that your table along the railing looks out over nothing but lush trees far below and the uninterrupted Pacific ocean.  We were even lucky enough to have a pair of Spider monkeys dine parallel to us on a tall tree limb, but that’s just de rigeur in Costa Rica   The building (if you can call it that, it has no walls, so it’s technically more of a roof) is constructed over the fuselage itself, complete with a little bump up for the tail fin, and you eat at tables around the engines and cargo hold.  Inside you’ll find the bar (I can just imagine the conversations that occur when people wake up the next morning: ”Dude, I was so wasted last night I thought I was drinking in a plane in the jungle” – “You were drinking in a plane in the jungle, Steve” – “Woah”), and the kitchen is downstairs.  In what I think is an ingenious space-saving technique, the kitchen is downstairs, and all the orders are lifted to dining level in a giant dumbwaiter constructed from parts of old, much smaller private planes.  Now you’re getting why I love this place, right?  The food is good, and not any more expensive than your standard meal at Applebees, but I’m honestly not paying any attention to the food when I’m here.  And I have a sneaking suspicion I may be back here again to eat before leaving Quepos.

Were picked up by Interbus for another life-altering drive down the “holy crap I’m going to die” roads from Monteverde to… well, pretty much everywhere from there, but we ended up in Quepos.  This is our longest stay of the trip, 4 nights instead of the 2 in the other cities.  It’s also the largest city we’re spending any amount of time in, although when we drove in I found myself thinking, “this is it?  Isn’t it supposed to be bigger than this?”  The other cities had grown up so much in the past three years, but Quepos really hadn’t.  It, as I discovered later, had grown out, so that the suburbs were larger and more developed, but the city center was the same two-hundred-foot square of shops and services as before. 

Our hotel, the adorable and friendly Hotel California, is nestled up in the trees, and, since it was low season and there was tons of space available, we got upgraded to an oceanview room.  That was pretty damn sweet.  I may be a travel agent, but I’m still too cheap to pay for something as trivial as a view, although getting one free rocks.   

OMG, it’s hot here.  After the chill and dampness of Monteverde, this heat is oppressive.  Came back into our room this afternoon and it felt freezing – we thought we’d left the AC on too cold until we checked it and discovered it was a chilly 27 celsius in our room!  It had to be at least 40-45 outside for 27 to feel that cold.

Spent the first afternoon wandering town, shopping and trying to get aclimated to this heat again.  This morning it was a very early wake up call for our Manuel Antonio National Park walk.  When in Manuel Antonio, this is a must - it’s called the most-photographed place in Costa Rica for good reason, it’s stunning.  Plus, there are so many animals that no two hikes are the same, and you never know what’s going to pop up.  The guides carry a big-ass telescope, and when they spot something (god knows how they do it, some of the frogs and lizards are so small you can barely see them after you’ve stepped on them, but the guides can do it at a hundred feet) they focus in and get you a great view.  Plus, digital cameras take pretty sweet pics through the telescope lens, so  you can get your pics home and tell everyone you really were that close to a sloth, eventhough it was sleeping forty feet over your heads!

Immediately following the tour and a quick lunch, it was on to tour number 2 – the Villa Vanilla spice plantation.  Cannot recommend this place highly enough (www.rainforestspices.com) the guide explained to us all about vanilla, chocolate, cinnamon, cloves, chillies, turmeric, oregano, and whatever I’m forgetting – holy crap these things are super labour intensive to produce.  It’s no wonder they’re so expensive.  And who would have thought that the second layer of bark on a tree would taste so good (cinnamon)?  Did they just decide one day to start gnawing logs?  After walking through the fields we were taken to a hut with another great view and given samples of all sorts of decadent desserts prepared with their spices by their own pastry chef.  Heaven.  I then proceeded to spend USD$40.00 in their gift shop and it was so totally worth it! 

Tonight we’re going to recover from all the walking today, because tomorrow we’re ATV-ing!!  I’m the girl who gets in trouble for her driving on Disneyland’s Autopia, so this is going to be interesting.  And awesome!

Tags: awesome, BlogSherpa, El Avion, Food, Manuel Antonio, national park, Quepos, Villa Vanilla

The land of the weed-whacker: Costa Rica Days 3, 4, 5

Because of the terrain here being so vertical and rocky, conventional lawn mowers aren’t even sold in stores.  But everywhere you turn there’s a guy with a giant weed-whacker showing all that rapid-growing grass who’s boss.  With that little hand mower, if you will, the Ticos will tackle any area, no matter how big.  We were 2km from pretty much anything on the way to La Fortuna and there were two guys on the side of the road just weed-whacking away.  They were doing the entire shoulder of the whole road by hand.  Damn, that’s a long job.

So today we ziplined.  One of my favorite things to do, the incredible feeling of flying without the fear of falling, as your harness really holds you securely up there.  Costa Rica is probably the best place on the planet to do this, and the company I recommend more than any other I’ve experienced is Sky Adventures.  Conveniently they have a great setup in La Fortuna,  with incredible views of the (still clear and erupting) Arenal  Volcano and Arenal Lake.  We were picked up early and driven up into the hills at the base of the Volcano, where they harnessed us up (there is nothing more glamourous than a climbing harness and a helmet, really) and loaded us onto the Sky Tram.  They have such a beautiful set up here, so clean, so professional and the platforms, guides and equipment are all top notch.  You never feel like you’re in danger or could fall off the flimsy platforms like some other operators, so if anyone’s at all nervous, this is a good place to start.

The tram takes you 20 minutes up above the dense forests (monkey-eye level) and deposits you at the first platform.  There’s always a great rush of adrenaline looking out at that first line, 200ft up in the air, and from the platform all you can see is the cable going off into infinity.  All the while you’re thinking, “I’m going there?!!!”  Love it.  There are eight lines total here, with the longest being 3/4 of a mile long, and they are high.  I don’t particularly like heights (I know, I know, but I love ziplining, get over it) so I focused on looking out over the unparalleled views of Costa Rica and Arenal more than looking down as I flew past at a top speed of  75kph.  There were a handful of very scared people in our group, with one girl getting off one line in tears, but once you cross that first line, there actually is no other way back to the entrance except to keep zipping.  The guides were really good with them, crossing with them if they needed the support, but we all tried not to get too over-excited to freak them out more.

Back at the hotel after the zipping we discovered I was sun burned.  Like, crispy critter burned.  I hadn’t been wearing sunscreen because all the platforms are completely in the shade, so the only time you’re exposed to the sun is while you’re zipping across, for a grand total of about 4 minutes in the whole 2 hours, but it was all it took.  I don’t get it, I go to Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore where it’s equally (if not more) hot and humid, never were sunscreen once and I don’t even get a tan.  But here, all it takes is 4 minutes and I’m stick-a-fork-in-me-done.  Couldn’t wear my purse on my shoulder for the next three days. All boils down to the positioning of the sun I guess.  Needless to say, I didn’t step out of the shade without a thick coating for the rest of the trip.

After a relaxing afternoon and night in La Fortuna, Interbus came the next morning and collected us to head up to Santa Elena and the Monteverde cloud forest.  This is where you really notice the biodiversity of Costa Rica, as you leave the tropical, semi-arid farming plains to enter the dense, steamy and dramatically cooler jungle.  The roads to get up here are mainly paved for the first half, and, despite being incredibly winding, don’t have you gripping the edge of your seat.  This changes after the mandatory bathroom and souvenirs break in Tillaran.  From there you’re essentially on what we would here call cattle paths, insanely bumpy, unpaved dirt tracks scaling nearly vertical hills with blind turns that leave you practically hanging over 400-foot cliffs.  They call it a Costa Rican massage, going over the bumps like that for two hours.  By the time you get out you’re vibrating.  And thankful you’re not dead.

Santa Elena is dramatically larger than last time I was here three years ago.  The downtown (if you can call it that) is still the same size, with like ten shops, restaurants, a grocery store, a church, a giant cement armadillo and a good ice cream parlour, but this time it’s paved, which was a pleasant surprise.  The biggest difference though is the number of hotels, which has at least tripled.  For such a small, remote place, Monteverde has a wealth of activities, from hiking, rappelling, sky bridges, butterfly gardens, bat forests, bird watching, to ATVs, horseback riding and whitewater rafting.  Our hotel was one of the new ones, the El Sapo Dorado (Golden Toad), and each room was it’s own private cabin set back amongst it’s own personal patch of garden that glows with thousands of fireflies at night.  I had never seen real fireflies before, only the fake ones in Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland, so that was super cool.  The rooms are really nice, though they don’t have a lot of the amenities you normally expect from a hotel, like any electronic devices and heat.  Yep, I said heat.  You get a fireplace and a box full of wood and the rest is up to you.

We spent the day exploring Santa Elena (we saw it all and had to go back to some places twice to fill the time) and had a cool dinner in the treehouse restaurant, which, as the name implies, has a giant tree growing through it.  You eat on the second level amongst the branches, and your tables and chairs are all random-shaped logs fashioned into dining furniture. I’m a sucker for cheesy ambiance, so naturally I loved this.  Took lots of pictures.

About now I was freezing.  I’m a really cold person on a regular day, and it rains every afternoon here, so after the tropics of La Fortuna, my system was not liking this.  You can see the weather coming in here, it moves in fast and just takes over, the clouds literally rolling down the main streets and in minutes you’re lost in the fog.  On the upside, I love fireplaces, though, and can sit and poke at one for hours, so you can guess how I spent my evening.  Had a slight problem with the smoke and kinda filled the room – my clothes are going to smell like fireplace for the rest of the trip – but the warmth was totally worth it.  Actually, all night it wasn’t as cold as I expected it to be and I woke up with warm toes.

Day 5 brought us more ziplining.  Skytrek has a course that I missed out on doing last time I was here, and, as the lines are supposed to be some of the highest out there, straddling the continental divide, it was actually the whole reason for trekking up here at all.  The setup is even more impressive then La Fortuna’s, and although the tram system is much the same, the view is dramatically different up here.  You’re very exposed, up on the spine of the mountain that, on a clear day, would allow us to see both the Caribbean and Pacific oceans at the same time.  We weren’t so lucky, as the grey clouds blocked out the water, but stayed high enough for us to still have an insane view of the jungle as we flew over it.  This was the only time I felt the altitude, as there were a lot of tall towers to climb to reach the ziplines, and by the time I reached the top my heart was hammering in my chest.  The zipping itself was great, although because of really high winds we had to go across in tandem for all the longer cables, just to have enough combined weight to make it to the other side.  This was a new experience for me, but it did allow me to get some pretty sweet video as my co-zipper did the breaking while I played videographer.

We could see the ominous clouds bearing down on us as we finished up, but miraculously we made it back into the van before the skies opened up.  And did they ever.  As soon as the rain started, it became pretty obvious that this was not a small passing shower and that our plans to visit a local orchid garden were going down the drain.  So instead we picked up dinner fixings at the supermercado and tucked into our cabin for the day, where we could at least stay dry.  Normally spending nine hours in a small room with no TV and radio in the middle of nowhere would be my definition of hell, but here it isn’t so bad.  I’m enjoying a couple of Spanish magazines, and have discovered that poking at a fireplace really can keep me occupied for hours on end.

Tomorrow it’s onwards to the sea again, and it’s going to be hot, hot, hot!

Tags: adrenaline, altitude, Arenal, BlogSherpa, Costa Rica, fireplace, Interbus, La Fortuna, rain, Sky Trek