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 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

China trip day 2: The Icy Toes of History

Gotta love jet lag. I was dead tired, barely functional the night before, and here I was waking up at 4am, wide awake and ready to go. Unwilling to conceed defeat to the sleep monster, I lay there for the next two hours, but ended up mentally going through the order teams had been eliminated from the Amazing Race, all 19 seasons, instead of getting more much needed shut eye. Up at 6, but not needing to meet the group until 830, I bundled up against the elements and went for a walk around the block. I love mornings like this in a new city, getting to see the place wake up, as the working class hits up the food carts (not the ones with the snake on a stick, or at least I hope not…) for their bag lunches to go, and parents walk their kids to school. I feel invisible, but that’s a good thing, as I don’t get the standard cheezy tourist treatment and can just enjoy the everyday life of this great place. Beijing was dawning beautiful and sunny, and the hustle and bustle was there, but still not the craziness or the crowds I had prepped for. Instead it was just comfortable, and being comfortable in a place is a huge, huge factor for me. When I, as a single woman, can walk around a city and just relax and enjoy it,  that is the best sign that a city is going to be fantastic.

After a giant breakfast at the typical Asian “everything you could possibly imagine – fish and pizza and congee and Cocoa Pops” hotel buffet (they always have Cocoa Pops. Every country I’ve ever been in. Go figure. For this sole reason they have become my strange vacation obsession), we loaded our gloved and scarfed selves into the minibus and headed for Tianamen Square. Our adorable guide Jimmy – if keeping him in our luggage had been an option, we would have kept him throughout the whole tour – paraded us around carrying a bright red fabric fish on a telescoping pole, which, despite the fact it looked ridiculous, was amazingly easy to see in a forest of tour groups whose leaders were all carrying identical flags. There were thousands of people here, and every one was with a tour group, all moving in little flocks through the vast expanse of the square. If you turned your back on your group to take a picture, you had to be careful that when you turned back you were still with the right people, as it was so easy to get swept up with another group and before you knew it you were on the bus with a bunch of Israeli tourists. The square itself is pretty plain, a big white expanse of concrete with some cool statues on one side, the Mao’s portrait-clad entrance to the Forbidden City on another, and the giant queue to see the refridgerated body of Mao on the other. The lines were too long, we missed him on this trip, but I’ll get it next time… We found out after the fact that there are a lot of plain clothed securirt patroling the square and the Forbidden City, but you’d never know it, it feels so open and friendly. Got some great pictures, the cloudless blue sky made everything look spectacular, but once again it was really cold and windy, so we spent a lot of time huddling together and trying not to die.

You’re going to notice a trend in these blogs – that we were freaking freezing. The whole time we were in Beijing it stayed subarctic, and, despite the fact that some of our group were from tropical cities like Halifax and Calgary, we just could not get warm. The wind permeated everything, and before going to the Great Wall we were even warned to really bundle up so to not loose toes to frostbite. There’s nothing more comforting than that. It got to the point that our drivers, who spoke no English, knew the words for “crank up the heat!!!!” by the time we were done with them. I’m from Vancouver, where we don’t really get weather aside from mild temperatures, sun and rain, plus I traditionally run a little colder than the average person, so I should get a free pass for being so cold. But the people from the Praries really have no excuse

Then through the underpass to the Forbidden City. This was the first of many surreal moments on the trip, seeing in person those iconic red buildings and carriageways we’ve all seen on TV a million times. It’s more like the Forbidden City within a city within a city, as you would pass through one massive gate to a giant plaza, explore that, then pass through another massive gate into a larger version of the exact same plaza, with a more gigantic courtyard and even grander building. One of the things tat really surprised me here was how 90% of the tourists were Chinese. I had expected the standard flocks of overbearing white people (ourselves included), but practically everyone (and there were a lot, despite it being low season. I, for the record, never want to be in China at high season, that would be insane!) was Chinese. That’s actually a really amazing thing, though, as so often we forget to visit the awesome treasures in our own country, and these sites are definately once in a lifetime, bucket list places. The second half of the Forbidden City, the residential area, definately has more character and less pagantry than the first half. Smaller spaces, the details still ornate, but more homey feeling, cute little courtyards with trees, and a beautiful garden with gazebos and giant limestone rocks (because a traditional Chinese garden is not complete without a rock). This is also where I learned that the best way to get a bathroom stall is to literally grab people and pull them out of the way (they didn’t seem to mind, everyone was doing it, and I’m bigger than the average Chinese woman, so I can take them, lol), and that the tip to always carry a roll of toilet paper in my purse paid off in spades, as I became the defacto supplier for the group, whenever someone ran out.

After the grandeur of the Forbidden City, it was time for the first of many massive Chinese meals. The drill goes like this – you sit in a private room, because they clearly don’t want us in the general population, around a big table with a giant lazy susan in the middle. There’s unlimited tea and one small class of water, beer, Coke or Sprite. Waiters just stary bringing giant plates of food and you eat whatever you want. Sometimes you don’t really know what it is, so you make an educated guess. Normally most of the dishes are a variation veggies and some meat, not really spicy, theres a bowl of egg drop soup, one bowl of plain rice, and dessert is always either watermelon or oranges. At this point in the trip, it was all new and exciting food, and we all went to town, so much that only 2 out of the 10 of us even bothered to have dinner that night.

Today was one of those “but wait, there’s more!” days, because everywhere we went there was always another stop on the itinerary, and they were all great. From Lunch we walked through Tientan Park and saw the awesome Temple of Heaven. Lesson learned, everything is bigger here than it looks in pictures. Especially on the nice sunny day we had, it looked really spectacular, and you nearly forgot that the chaos of Beijing was just meters away. An hour commute (which in Beijing commuter minutes is a really short drive) brought us to the Summer Palace. I had always thought this was outside of Beijing, as when they say in the guidebook it’s more than an hour from the city centre, you assume it’s out in the ‘burbs. But as I was coming to learn, Beijing is so expansive that to get to the ‘burbs you have to practically get to Korea. Instead of spreading up, like so many major metropolises (metropolii? Whatever), it spread out, and as far as the eye can see from the highest point you can get to, it’s still central Beijing. Back to that “everything’s bigger in China” thing. It’s hard to wrap my brain around just how giant this place is, and how many people are here, but I’m trying.

The Summer Palace, the tranquil garden escape of the “Dragon Lady” (look it up), is incredible. She may have been domineering and ruthless as she took over the Empire, but she did build a pretty sweet garden oasis. The fifteen foot stone walls really do keep the outside world out, and if you didn’t see the telecom tower in the background, you’d think you really were away from it all in another world. Vast, beautifully landscaped, with a giant lake, rolling hills and pagodas lurking off in the mist (read:smog), more classical buildings and pedal boats that would be a fun way to explore if it had been warmer. The highlights here are the sprawling riverside corridor covered hundreds of detailed paintings, each one different, and the marble boat, a gaudy, immobile boat used for the sole purpose of sitting in and sipping tea. The ultimate display of self indulgence. Personally, I would have added a slide

At 5 we were deposited back at the hotel. It had been a long day of sightseeing, but an incredible one, and we were all more excited and energetic than tired, bouncing around like caffinated hamsters. I set off for a little geurilla shopping, as I had an hour and a half to kill before meeting with the local Chinese sales rep I deal with all the time (super nice, sweet guy, great to meet him in person, boring to blog about), and a giant shopping mall to explore. Moving as fast as possible I hit up all the stores, only to discover China doesn’t carry my shoe size except in Men’s, at Sephora it’s easy to have an entire conversation with a sales clerk using nothing but hand signals to bridge the language barrier, and that I love tacky souvenirs so much that I chose to save my cash for them rather than spend it here on any of the actual functional stuff.

Now that’s what I call a good day. Tomorrow, the Wall!

Tags: Beijing, China, Cocoa Pops, Cold, Forbidden City, fun, huge, shopping, Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven

China trip day 1: Beijing-ga!

After what felt like the slowest movie marathon in history (why oh why can’t I sleep on planes? And why oh why did they actually make Bad Teacher? Has Hollywood run out of goos scripts entirely?), I finally touched down in Beijing, China. Home of the 2008 Olympic Games, at least a couple of pandas, and 20 million people. That’s almost the entire population of Canada squeezed into a space the size of greater Vancouver. I was, as I’m sure the 9 other people travelling with me were as well, braced for a culture shock. Sure, I’d been to Asia before, but everyone I talked to said that everywhere paled in comparison to mainland China, warning that it’s so crazy/loud/overcrowded/aggressive/smelly/overwhelming/etc. Admittedly my first impression was at night, so I couldn’t really make out the details, but on the drive from the airport to the hotel, it just looked like a medium sized city. Pretty and pedestrian, with wide tree-lined boulevards. Traffic was bad, and the cars and buses swerved and changed lanes at will, barely avoiding collision, but all the buildings were no more than 20 storys and not all squished together like they are in Hong Kong. Huh? Beijing is supposed to be super crowded, but yet it looks like Vancouver, just outside the downtown core? Where am I? And more importantly, where are all the people?

Still puzzling over this, we were delivered to the Crown Plaza Beijing Wangfujing, a really nice, modern hotel. The only sign in my large, fantastically generic hotel room that I was in China at all were the gas masks in the red canisters in the closet. The packaging was so innocuous, though, that one of the other agents thought they were containers of tea! Note for future travellers, please do not try to steep and drink the gas masks. Horribly metallic flavour. Kidding. After a few minutes to freshen up, we met up and hit the streets. Wangfujing, the street our hotel fronted onto, is one of the main shopping streets in the city, and was lit up with giant jumbotron billboards, giving the whole area a welcoming, festive vibe designed to entice visitors to part with their hard-earned cash. And judging by the giant 8 level mega malls there, they do pretty well. Half a block away, just as we stopped to take pics of a cathedral, loud Chinese pop music started playing (not what one would normally expect at Catholic Mass, but a definate bonus), complete with live singing on the front steps, and a big crowd of people materialized in the plaza and all started line dancing. It was a Chinese flash mob! Or maybe it was a normal Tuesday night in Beijing, because the participants spanned all ages, and everyone knew the routine. Whatever it was, it was awesome, and two hours later when we were walking back to the hotel, they were still dancing.

Then to the Donghuaman Night Market, just one block farther down. Otherwise known as snack street, this the best place in town to get something roasted on a stick, from the classic chicken, pork, tofu, to the exotic beetle larvae, squid, scorpion and snake. Yum. There are hundreds of stalls lining one side of the street, brightly lit with a line of red lanterns. On the upside, for vending carts, they are clean and the food was good quality. On the downside, every stall sells exactly the same stuff, so after the first ten feet you really don’t need to continue exploring, as you’ve seen it all by now. Like most tourists, we took photos of the sheer grossness and spectacle of it all, squealed, giggled, bought nothing and moved on. They must do a ton of business to be able to support that many stalls, but on a sub-zero November night, there wasn’t a big demand for snake on a stick. Plus, I can’t get that home though customs.

Damn it was cold here. For years I’ve been telling clients that Beijing’s weather is about the same as Vancouver’s but with more sun. As an approximation, it works, but when we were there, it was colder. By quite a bit. Minus 5 with a really strong windchill that made your eyes water and you sprint for the hotel screaming for the weather Gods to take pity on us jet-lagged Canadians. Honestly, that temperature is probobly what kept me up until 930pm, China time, after having been up for nearly 36 hours straight.  It helped me get into the local rhythm, but that didn’t make it any more enjoyable, and after a hot bath I collapsed into bed, cocooned up into my comforter and fell into a deep sleep.

Tags: Beijing, China, Cold, Crowne Plaza, Donghuaman Market, FAM, flash mob, Snack street snake, travel agent, Wangfujing

China!!

Travel update – in a few weeks I’m heading to China for the first time on business!  More fantastic, stupendous blow-by-blow blogs will follow, pictures included.  I’ll give you all the fantabulous details as they unfold.  Just got my visa today, and I’m super excited!!!  And even better, a Chinese Visa is way, way easier to obtain than a Dubai one !!!

Tags: China

Disneyland smackdown – California v. Paris v. Hong Kong

           Yep, I’m a dork.  Let’s just get that out of the way right off the bat.  I unabashedly love Disneyland, have been more times than I care to admit - and counting.  It’s pure fun.  Hell, just hearing the Disney music playing as I wait to enter brings a huge grin to my face.  Through my travels I have been lucky enough to visit parks on 3 continents (Disney World in Florida and Tokyo Disneyland are still on my hit list, but I’m sure it won’t be too long before I have them chalked off, too.  I’ll keep you posted) and am qualified to compare them head to head in this, my first Disneyland Smackdown.  

           For the purposes of this smackdown, I’m going to stick with just the “Disneyland” and not include the California Adventure or MGM Studios Paris, as they are  each so unique, and would put Hong Kong, a place with only one park, at a disadvantage right off the bat.  Also, I’m going to focus more on the differences between them than the similarities.  This is because, to have the “Disneyland” title, there has to be a huge amount of similarities to keep the Mousketeers happy.  If the formula ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?  Every park has a Main Street, Tomorrowland,  Fantasyland, etc. and honestly, if you need a bathroom on Main Street, they’re in the same place in all three countries.  And so it begins…

          The first major difference any guest would notice is the Castle.  It’s smack in front of you and will undoubtedly require a photo stop at least once in every visit.  In California, the castle was intentionally built smallish and done in pastels as to be friendly and unintimidating to visitors.  In Paris, where the guests are going to be accustomed to insanely large and ornate realcastles in their home countries, the castle is much larger, more gothic in it’s architecture, and bright pink.  Oh, and it has a giant animatronic dragon beneath it.  Hong Kong tried to recreate the cuter California castle, and they did a good job, but it’s small-scale is highlighted by the mountains surrounding the park, making it seem, well, dinky.

           The coolest things to compare are the coasters.  Big Thunder Mountain in California is big and classic with the focus more on the animatronic goat chewing dynamite and bat-filled mines than the speed or the drops.  You just enjoy this ride, it’s not particularly thrilling.  Paris once again took this idea and cranked it up to the extreme.  Their Big Thunder is hands-down my favorite Disneyland ride in any park, as it takes up the entirety of the island in the middle of the Rivers of the Far West, and the start and end involves a dark, fast tunnel right underneath the water before you pop up on the other side. The “danger” factor is upped, too, as if you speed off the rails, you end up in the water.  They have the goat, too.    Hong Kong, unfortunately,  doesn’t have a Big Thunder yet, but I’m sure one’s in the plans somewhere.

                All three parks do have Space Mountains, though.  And all three are thrilling, fast and whip you around crazy turns in the dark.  For years the California one made me dizzy, as so many of the twists were in the same direction, but about five years ago they overhauled it, introducing new ride cars, a better soundtrack and new track configuration.  It made a huge difference in my books, as the dizziness is gone and it’s just a crapload of fun.  This is a great ride people who like the coaster experience without giant drops to contend with.  Hong Kong’s Space Mountain is a close counterpart here too, and the screamometer level is about equal to California, although this one, most likely due to the fact that it’s technology is only a few years old, feels faster and darker.  And then there’s Paris.  I went on this ride expecting it to be as simplistic (for lack of a better word) as the other two.  In hindsight, the over-the-head locking seatbelt should have tipped me off, but it didn’t.  This ride really goes up the screamometer right from the start, where they actually shoot you out of a cannon on the roof, going from zero to feaking fast in seconds.  Inside there’s also a full 360 loop and a corkscrew.  The intensity caught me so off guard that I bruised both knees bracing them on the back of the seat in front of me!  Once I knew what this ride was like, it’s great (still no big drops.  I don’t do big drops), but if you’re unprepared, look out :) 

           It’s a Small World (come on, you knew it was coming) is so synonamous with Disneyland that all three parks feature one.  You either love it or hate it, but everyone rides it.  Hong Kong was the first to deviate from the Small World mold, mixing animatronic characters from Disney movies (Aladdin riding his carpet in the middle east, Lilo and Stitch surfing in Hawaii, etc) with the ubiquitous singing dolls.  As someone raised on IASM(my mobile played the music when I was an  infant, no joke) I was worried this would detract from the simple joy of this ride, but it surprised me by being very seamlessly integrated into the classic format.  Now it’s kind of a “spot the movie characters” game as you go.  Especially great for the little ones.  As recently as June 09, California took a page from Hong Kong’s book and debuted their own new IASM, complete with the ”hidden” characters.  Paris, as of writing this, was still using the classic format.

           Naturally, the language is going to be different from country to country, but the Disney people do a great job of putting signage in multiple languages, and what isn’t translated is accompanied by pictograms to remove any confusion.  There is something that makes me giggle uncontrollably at hearing the PeeWee Herman voice of the robot in Star Tours entirely in French, though.  The Jungle Cruise in Hong Kong found a simple solution to the language issue by just running boats in Mandarin, Cantonese and English simultaneously.  All you have to do is make sure you get into the right line and you’re golden.

           Food is an essential part of any theme park experience, and, coming at it with a very westernized palette, I found this aspect a ton of fun overseas.  Sure, all three parks have the standards: hot dogs, burgers, fries, Mickey-shaped ice cream bars, etc. but the regional specialties make this interesting.  Hong Kong, for example, sells fish balls and Korean squid on a stick at the street carts right along with the hot dogs.  The Plaza Inn here sells wonderful Dim Sum meant to be shared in a lantern-lit restaurant.  Paris has frog’s legs and sells alcohol pretty much everywhere, so you can wander around with your wine and frog’s legs to your heart’s content. 

              In conclusion, the castle is bigger and the rides are more intense in Paris;  Hong Kong is smaller and newer with more of a focus on regional food and the smaller family-friendly rides;  And California is the original, so nothing can compete with that.  Plus, due to their age, they have the most rides per square foot.  But despite all their differences, Disneyland is still Disneyland, regardless of what country you’re in.  If you have kids or just like feeling like one, it will always be worth the price of admission.

Tags: BlogSherpa, California, China, Disney Specialist, disneyland and anaheim, France, Hong Kong, memories, Paris, roller coasters, theme park, USA

Hong Kong highlight: Ocean Park

               They rose like bubbles over the South China Sea, floating through the mist before disappearing behind the mountain.  I knew they were safe, transporting millions of visitors from the Lowlands section of Hong Kong’s Ocean Park up to the Headlands every year, but the gondolas just looked so fragile, clinging to the rock faces and rocking in the wind.  Once inside, though, the incredible view of Repulse Bay made this simple people-mover the best ride in the park.

I had to wonder what was it about this near-vertical chunk of rock that made the builders think it would be the perfect place for a theme park?  At first glance the topography didn’t seem suited to anything except mountain goats.  But it makes for a surprise around every corner, as you can’t see how high that roller coaster/how big that aquarium really is until you’re actually there.

The reason we had come to Ocean Park was so my Panda-obsessed friend could gawk to her heart’s content at four of the big, furry beauties, two of which had just arrived from mainland China, gifts celebrating the 10^th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return from English rule.  Normally solitary animals, the two newcomers were in the same enclosure and it was so cute to watch them sitting together, playfully fighting over the choice bamboo, their little black Shrek-like ears wiggling with every chew.

Another highlight was the Sea Jelly Spectacular, so popular with the locals that its lineup was just as long as the roller coaster’s.  The pitch-darkness, combined with  coloured neon lights and floor to ceiling mirrors gave the aquarium a “carnival fun house” atmosphere.  You practically have to feel your way through, and the strategically-placed mirrors made it look like there were hundreds of jellies (some more than six feet long) completely surrounding you.  They weren’t kidding about the “spectacular” part!

Part amusement park, part zoo, part aquarium, and all with incredible views, Ocean Park is not your typical theme park.  When you want to escape the hustle and bustle of this chaotic and congested city, all you have to do is climb into your bubble and let it transport you away.      

 - As originally published in the Vancouver Province

Tags: BlogSherpa, China, gondolas, Hong Kong, jellyfish, Ocean Park, pandas, published, theme parks