detour and all things Hong Kong style

So i left my little city to explore all that China (and Vietnam and South Korea) have to offer. First stop, Hong Kong!  i met my friend Ashley in the Shenzhen airport and took a giant charter bus with only four people on across the mainland border to the magical land they call a 'Special Administrative Region'.  It is so special!  Once you get on the other side of the double set of customs you have to go through you are not in China anymore.  There are double decker buses everywhere, they drive on the left side of the road, and Twix is available in the 7 Eleven on the corner of every street! i left Shanghai at 7:40 am and didn't reach my hosts house in Hong Kong until 7:30 pm!  so i was a little tired from the days travels... had to take a train to Hangzhou, go to the airport and wait for my flight, then fly to Shenzhen, meet Ashley, and take the bus through customs and HK traffic at rush hour... boo!  But we were welcomed by our couchsurfing host, Vincent, and had a free place to sleep and store all of our stuff during our stay.  We cooked dinner, even though we were both exhausted, and managed to go to bed by midnight.  

Visas, and more visas.  We went to get our Vietnamese visas and it took literally 15 minutes!  But the new Chinese visas cost triple and took four days, why?  Because being American means you pay for the shitty visa system that the US imposes on the rest of the world and thus when you travel you pay the consequences with outrageous fees and having ti wait for forever.  

But there are worse places to be stranded for an extra two days than Hong Kong.  So we met our host again in the afternoon and he took us and another American he had gone to lunch with on a nature walk/hike of the south side of Hong Kong island and we walked from 3pm until the sunset.

So we hustled down the mountain so we wouldn't be enveloped by the darkness and then walk down to the would-be quaint fishing village, Stanley.  Now, it's more of an upscale shopping center with some bars and extremely expensive Western Restaurants.  The Sunset was nonetheless beautiful and worth the long walk i was not prepared for as i wore a skirt!

We woke up early and headed for a 6 hour bike ride of the New Territories to explore some  more of the nature of the islands. 

 The weather was perfect, but my butt was sore after the ride, stupid mountain bike seats!  Then Ashley and i broke off from our extremely attentive host and went to downtown Tsim Sha Tsui to watch the light show opposite the bay on Hong Kong island.  It was cool but not 

overly awesome...

The next day we went to Golden Beach, again so lovely, not hot enough to swim but i did make a mean sand castle!  Then we went on another one of Vincent's nature walks. We had a picnic and on the way down the mountain we happened upon a small village of vegetable farmers and bought some farm fresh lettuce for dinner.  Delicious!  Finally our last two days we left Vincent and met my HK girls, Grace and Celine, whom i met while working at ACRS.  They are possibly the cutest and sweetest girls ever.  They took us out to dim sum and then we went shopping. We had a famous Hong Kong treat, called Egg Balls, which is basically like a flavored waffle. We had taro and coconut-sesame, yumm!  

Our last full day in Hong Kong we went to 

Lan Tao island, and took a ferry, but the weather was less than favorable and it was pretty overcast so the view from the ferry was mainly fog.  Once on the island we took a bus to the main attraction, Po Lin monastery and Tian Tan Buddha, aka the Big Buddha.  

It was amazing and so bright once we got away from the waterfront.  There was a French tour group at the Buddha and Ashley and i just sat around and people-watched and eaves-dropped.  We went to the monastery also, bought some incense and did a prayer to the four corners.

  We were running late to meet Grace and go to the Peak so we took the MTR back from the island and got ready and met her went up to the 'magnificent viewpoint' of HK.  It took half an hour to get up there winding around the giant hill filled with the houses of the rich and famous of Hong Kong, but we took a tram straight down and it took 8 minutes! It was so steep and packed like sardines.  We went to a bar street with Grace after a very tasty dinner and drank a shot in honor of the inauguration of President Obama!  Later, around 1am Ashley and i watched the inauguration live on the BBC.  I can't believe he's president, it was so amazing to hear such a change in message and direction for the country.  i'm so excited to see that he carries through everything... (so far it looks really promising!)  

Last thing, all tickets out of Hong Kong to Guilin were sold out or way to expensive so we had to get out of HK by going to Guangzhou, a mainly industrial city with not a lot to offer but we got to live a bit luxury there and stay in a gated community, fancy-pants apartment with another couchsurfing host, this time a cool couple, dude is from Portugal, David and the girl is from Poland, Aga.  They were super nice and had the comfy-est bed i've slept on in all of China!  We ate Turkish and bought our overnight bus tickets to Guiling from there... so that's next... i'm so behind!!!

good bye Huzhou...

hello long road home!  My last week in my home for the last four months was very eventful.  i got to see Huzhou on my own and without having to work and it was pretty enjoyable. i spent good quality time with some students and prettied myself for the (Chinese) New Year with Penny.  i got a more Chinese-y haircut and bought some new glasses as well.  i was impressed to find that i got a free eye exam upon entry to the Xin Tian Di Yan Jing Chang (New World Glasses City) and my glasses only cost about $30 USD! what? yes, that is right.  So Penny and i got haircuts at a new place, called Jing Mei, which means golden dollar, and we waited for like three hours because there was only one hairdresser for five customers!  But it was worth it because it was 10 RMB. 

i spent all of Saturday with two students, Jane and Candy, and we had a great time! We ate on the 5th floor of Zhebei Mall, which is a cafeteria of sorts

 and had some bubble tea and Tang HuLu (candies hawthorne berries on a stick).  

Then we went to walk around and ran into a dream come true: a camel in the middle of downtown Huzhou! i proceeded to ride said camel for a photo-op and it was glorious. 

 

We also managed to squeeze in some Da Tou Tie, which is like going to a photobooth, on crack! You can choose from hundreds of backgrounds and then when they print out the pictures it's usually on stickers or you can pay extra to have them made into hard plastic mobile phone bobble (which i did, you shall see...).  Later that same evening i went to Candy's Grandma's house for dinner and to witness her mad skills at ping pong.  

i said a very unceremonious good bye to the city that has been my home for the last four and a half months: i bid Penny farewell at a city bus stop and i will miss her a great deal, but we will stay in touch and i really want her to come visit me in America.  Then i sent a mass text message to most of my other Chinese friends, and i ended up changing my plans at the last minute (so not like me) and catching the last bus on Tuesday night to Shanghai to visit Nellie for the last time.  i had to drop my bicycle off with a friend to give it away for me, and therefore i had to ride downtown with my messenger bag in the bike basket, my purse on the back rack, and my giant orange duffle bag i wore like a backpack. i have a lot of crap to lug around for the next five weeks! i hopped in a taxi to the bus station and caught the bus with only two minutes to spare and almost peed myself before i got to Shanghai! So now my Huzhou days are over, and i'm on to bigger (literally, a lot bigger) and better (arguably) things!

class 704, no one's looking, except for Lucy

the boys of class 704

grade 5 classes are crazy, especially once i broke out the camera!

being tackled by a gaggle of first graders during red light, green light...

it (was) the holiday season...

Sheng Dan Kuai Le and Xin Nian Kuai Le!  Holidays in the Chinas were very interesting but above all really, really cold!  i attempted to cook some things for Christmas and they actually all turned out well: i made salsa, refried beans and chocolate chips cookies, all from scratch.  Our foreigners in China Christmas was a little hodgepodge, but enjoyable all the same. (to the right you should note by bootleg tree, decorated by lights and earrings...)

We watched some holiday themed episodes of Futurama and a show called Robot Chicken, which i've never heard of before, but was just gross enough to be hilarious.  We then migrated from Nellie's cozy apartment to an incredibly awkward dinner at a Western restaurant near my school. We fit something like 14 people at one table and, then began to chat with the click nearest us.  The group that had come from Nellie's was already sufficiently stuffed with bread, cheese, salsa and cookies that we didn't really want to eat, but were forced to order something, being that we were all in the holiday spirit, and had been invited to dinner.  There were Chinese, Australian, Canadian, English and American people at this dinner and the age range was from 55 to 16, so it was like an awkward family dinner, but with more international flavor and miscommunications. More foreigners showed up and we mingled about to do a gift exchange... drum roll please... a tin full of hard candies!  The conversations were interesting and somehow Nellie and i ended up putting tinfoil on our teeth for entertainment purposes:

S0 that brings us to New Year's Eve, which i'm happy to say all of China took a three day holiday for.  Unlike Christmas, while i did end up getting the day off, i had to work the eve and the day after and make up my classes during other days of the week.  For the New Year's holiday i went to, can you guess? Shanghai.  Nellie has officially moved there and has an amazingly cute apartment in the French Concession.  So Gino and i stayed on her couch/bed and we let the good times role!  We were all three suckered into paying 300 RMB for a schmancy party at a club on the Bund.  It was said to have a fantastic view of the fireworks display.  While the Bund did look amazing, the fireworks were partially blocked by a 19th century european building, bummer.  The coolest part about midnight, which for the most part can be very anti-climactic, was looking up at the sky and seeing hundreds of giant, fire fly-like paper lanterns.  People light them on fire and they float up to the heavens; they're beautiful.  

From the point of the evening huddled around space heaters out on the terrace, things took a turn for the drunkest.  The reason the party was relatively expensive was because there was free flow vodka and beer all night + champagne. So, long story short: i almost vomited, but danced my way out of the nausea and Nellie got hit in the face when a Turkish and a German guy got in a fight because the Turkish guy sneezed in the other guys mouth.  We made it back safely and then proceeded to sleep until 3pm and go out for Japanese to start the year off in China, go figure.

Hope your holidays were at least, if not more, eventful than mine... bring on the 2009!

(ohhh, communist/capitalist China...what's in a name?  at least they still have money to burn...)