1. Osaka. Puncture wound through left middle finger from rusty brad nail in sauna. Tetanus booster was wise.
2. Tokyo. Mild abrasion on left elbow from screen door while hanging clothes to dry.
3. Shenzhen. Abrasion on right knee from scraping against hardest bed in China.
4. Shenzhen. Multiple abrasions on right elbow from fall in dark hotel room.
5. Langkawi. Mild contusion to head from lintel of hut front door.
6. Langkawi. Mild jellyfish sting on left ankle.
7. Langkawi. Laceration on left big toe while walking on sharp rock.
Notes: subject expected to make full recovery.
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Scooting vs. Posting
Hey folks, We hope our readers are not getting discouraged- please measure the infrequency of our posts against the time we are spending on a tropical Malaysian island. We have much to say, you can't imagine what it's like here unless you've experienced it, and as this is our first time in such a lush paradise, we hope you will forgive our neglect. Rest assured, there is a China retrospective and a Hong Kong post in progress, but right now we have bellies full of freshly caught fish and lemongrass, sautéed greens and Tiger beer, and we are going for a digestive scooter ride to a nearly secluded beach. Wish you were here.
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Shenzhen
Fourteen million strong and ablaze with giant LED screens, packed streets, and a relentless consumerist lifestyle, Shenzhen is like Times Square City. This is fitting, as we found ourselves here on New Year's Eve. Maybe it's the size of the population, maybe it's the city's temperate climate, but the sea of people we were immediately swimming in finally made real our vision of what we thought China would actually be like. The ebb and flow of the crowd was impossible to resist, and we were carried along, street after street, past endless retail shops, selling everything from meat sticks to mantelpieces, shoes to shoe-string french fries.
Using a public toilet will cost you thirty minutes of your night, but on the other hand, you can get on a carnival ride in thirty seconds. We know this because in the middle of all this commotion there had been erected a New Year's Eve dime store theme park in our neighborhood of Luohu. The rides cost $1.60 and there are no lines. I think Chinese people are afraid, but they loved watching the white people scream. We soon became the main attraction. In Shenzhen, more than any city we've been in, people gawk at us shamelessly. It's become so commonplace that we have accumulated a variety of ways to respond. "What the hell are you looking at?", "Quit looking at me", "What's a'matter? You never seen a white person eat meat on a stick before?" "Yes I know I'm too fat to fit into this skirt, I'm making fun of it, not trying to purchase it!", and so on.
Today we walked out of our dumpy but centrally located hotel to a radiant, glorious sunny day. Oh, how it warmed our backs as we walked to the Wal-Mart (a seldom exercised activity for us, in The States or abroad) to try to purchase budget sunscreen and bug spray for the tropical months ahead. No luck there, but we did buy peanut butter and jelly.
Afterwards, we went to People's Park, the most amazingly manicured and maintained park either of us has ever seen, even more so than the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ, though New Jersey could hardly sustain most of the exotic foliage that made the park so spectacular. Here in the park we uncovered yet another Chinese mystery. When we were in the Guilin train station we saw a baby who had split his pants. We laughed heartily, and expected his parents to join in, but they looked confused. There were many babies in People's Park, and they all had split their pants. Apparently this is an intentional design, and we got to witness more than a few times its ingenuity. No wonder they don't sell diapers at the Wal-Mart.
Now we are back in the room, listening to Louis Armstrong and sipping instant Nescafé, something that we have been for forced to become accustomed to, and have actually started to enjoy. Coffee snobs, shake your heads in disgust.
-Davida and Ken
Using a public toilet will cost you thirty minutes of your night, but on the other hand, you can get on a carnival ride in thirty seconds. We know this because in the middle of all this commotion there had been erected a New Year's Eve dime store theme park in our neighborhood of Luohu. The rides cost $1.60 and there are no lines. I think Chinese people are afraid, but they loved watching the white people scream. We soon became the main attraction. In Shenzhen, more than any city we've been in, people gawk at us shamelessly. It's become so commonplace that we have accumulated a variety of ways to respond. "What the hell are you looking at?", "Quit looking at me", "What's a'matter? You never seen a white person eat meat on a stick before?" "Yes I know I'm too fat to fit into this skirt, I'm making fun of it, not trying to purchase it!", and so on.
Today we walked out of our dumpy but centrally located hotel to a radiant, glorious sunny day. Oh, how it warmed our backs as we walked to the Wal-Mart (a seldom exercised activity for us, in The States or abroad) to try to purchase budget sunscreen and bug spray for the tropical months ahead. No luck there, but we did buy peanut butter and jelly.
Afterwards, we went to People's Park, the most amazingly manicured and maintained park either of us has ever seen, even more so than the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ, though New Jersey could hardly sustain most of the exotic foliage that made the park so spectacular. Here in the park we uncovered yet another Chinese mystery. When we were in the Guilin train station we saw a baby who had split his pants. We laughed heartily, and expected his parents to join in, but they looked confused. There were many babies in People's Park, and they all had split their pants. Apparently this is an intentional design, and we got to witness more than a few times its ingenuity. No wonder they don't sell diapers at the Wal-Mart.
Now we are back in the room, listening to Louis Armstrong and sipping instant Nescafé, something that we have been for forced to become accustomed to, and have actually started to enjoy. Coffee snobs, shake your heads in disgust.
-Davida and Ken
Night Train
The train from Guilin to Shenzhen is seventeen hours long. Our's departed at 9:18p so we were in for a long night. The hard sleeper cars are arranged in open berths each with six beds, two high, two middle, two low. These compartments are situated on one side of the car with a narrow aisle on the other. The bed is also the seat you paid for, so if you didn't get lucky enough to book a bottom bunk, sitting up is near impossible as there is little head room in the middle and top bunks.
The beds were barely wide enough for a westerner, but amazingly softer and more comfortable than many of the hotel beds we've slept in these seven weeks, so we ate noodles, climbed into our bunks and drifted off as the train rocked its way down the track. In the morning rice gruel was served as the sun came up over the Chinese countryside. This was a big deal, because we had not seen the sun for a long time. We knew by noon that when we did get off the train, the weather was going to be beautiful.
The beds were barely wide enough for a westerner, but amazingly softer and more comfortable than many of the hotel beds we've slept in these seven weeks, so we ate noodles, climbed into our bunks and drifted off as the train rocked its way down the track. In the morning rice gruel was served as the sun came up over the Chinese countryside. This was a big deal, because we had not seen the sun for a long time. We knew by noon that when we did get off the train, the weather was going to be beautiful.
Gettin' Outta Dodge
Yangshou's winding wet streets, mountainscapes and river views were magical, but a month and a half of cold gray days were wearing holes in our spirits and our socks. We needed to find the sun. By our second day we were plotting an escape route. Our desperation lead to a two hour online search for ways to somehow adjust our itinerary so that we could find ourselves on a tropical beach by the following evening. In the end, cost prohibitive flights and rooms already booked made this dream infeasible, and we were forced to call an audible. We left Yangshou with a nebulous plan to get to Shenzhen, a southern city in China on the border on Hong Kong, where the temperature might hit the mid-60s. This plan, according to our research, was going to be extremely difficult if not impossible.
First, we would have to get to the Guilin train station by bus, and then succeed in booking a same-day overnight train, unheard of in China. Add to this the fact that we had no lodging in either Guilin, in the case of a booking delay, or in Shenzhen in the event that we could board a train. Not to mention the fact that check out time in Yangshou was 11:30, the two-hour bus ride would land us in Guilin no later than 2pm, and we knew that the first train departing for Shenzhen would have us waiting for at least 7 hours.
We rolled the dice, found the bus, and jumped aboard. It was raining, of course, as it seems to every day we are in transit. After a near two hours of gastrointestinal discomfort from the previous night's hot pot and a screening of Baby's Day Out on the bus television, we lucked out by guessing our stop when all of the Chinese people got off. With minimal effort we found the ticket window, crossed our fingers and prepared for the worst.
After some pointing and picture drawing, we handed over our passports, 484¥, and were issued tickets for two hard sleepers for that evening's train! The teller seemed very surprised that we were buying a ticket for a train the same day, but don't believe the hype. It's possible, if only in the slow season. So with seven hours to kill, we hit the supermarket nearby to stock up on snacks. We got two instant noodle bowls, strange cheese and scallion savory pirouline looking things, coconut cookies, little oranges, caramels, and beer.
By this point it was so frigid and wet that after having a quick bite on the street for 10¥ each, we hit the waiting room and camped out there the six hours until our train came through.
- Ken and Davida
First, we would have to get to the Guilin train station by bus, and then succeed in booking a same-day overnight train, unheard of in China. Add to this the fact that we had no lodging in either Guilin, in the case of a booking delay, or in Shenzhen in the event that we could board a train. Not to mention the fact that check out time in Yangshou was 11:30, the two-hour bus ride would land us in Guilin no later than 2pm, and we knew that the first train departing for Shenzhen would have us waiting for at least 7 hours.
We rolled the dice, found the bus, and jumped aboard. It was raining, of course, as it seems to every day we are in transit. After a near two hours of gastrointestinal discomfort from the previous night's hot pot and a screening of Baby's Day Out on the bus television, we lucked out by guessing our stop when all of the Chinese people got off. With minimal effort we found the ticket window, crossed our fingers and prepared for the worst.
After some pointing and picture drawing, we handed over our passports, 484¥, and were issued tickets for two hard sleepers for that evening's train! The teller seemed very surprised that we were buying a ticket for a train the same day, but don't believe the hype. It's possible, if only in the slow season. So with seven hours to kill, we hit the supermarket nearby to stock up on snacks. We got two instant noodle bowls, strange cheese and scallion savory pirouline looking things, coconut cookies, little oranges, caramels, and beer.
By this point it was so frigid and wet that after having a quick bite on the street for 10¥ each, we hit the waiting room and camped out there the six hours until our train came through.
- Ken and Davida
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Yangzhou
The hotel room was spare. It was poorly lit, there were few amenities and though not frigid as the days in Xi'an, the window was open when we entered and the damp chill mountain air was cold comfort. As we said, we piled on the comforters and crashed, a full day of buses and planes having drained our energy reserves.
Torrential rainfall throughout the night woke us several times, and finally drew us out of bed early. We stepped onto the balcony and stood agape as the conical limestone karst mountains loomed over us, to our left and right, partially obscured by fog and clouds, as the Li river, straight across from the hotel, surged from the night's rain. The street below was relatively quiet save for a few colorful umbrellas passing by. Just as we were laughing to ourselves recounting the previous day's terrifying lightning strike in flight, the deafening sound of firecrackers below our window precipitated a reliving of that moment with uncanny timeliness. Shortly thereafter, a six piece band clamoring away from inside a small SUV rolling slowly down the street signaled the opening of a store, the birth of a baby, the unclogging of a toilet or something of the like... the Chinese celebrate everything by detonating ordnance.
The days in Yangzhuo were gray but brightened by the picturesque scenery, a bamboo boat ride and the amazing food. Beer fish, a local delicacy mimicked throughout China, was the culinary highlight. It consists of a fish of your choice, in our case catfish, caught locally from the river, poached in beer, and served in a chafing tray over tealights with treasured Guilin chiles, peppers, onions and tomatoes. It was some of the spiciest food we've had since arriving in China.
-Ken and Davida
Torrential rainfall throughout the night woke us several times, and finally drew us out of bed early. We stepped onto the balcony and stood agape as the conical limestone karst mountains loomed over us, to our left and right, partially obscured by fog and clouds, as the Li river, straight across from the hotel, surged from the night's rain. The street below was relatively quiet save for a few colorful umbrellas passing by. Just as we were laughing to ourselves recounting the previous day's terrifying lightning strike in flight, the deafening sound of firecrackers below our window precipitated a reliving of that moment with uncanny timeliness. Shortly thereafter, a six piece band clamoring away from inside a small SUV rolling slowly down the street signaled the opening of a store, the birth of a baby, the unclogging of a toilet or something of the like... the Chinese celebrate everything by detonating ordnance.
The days in Yangzhuo were gray but brightened by the picturesque scenery, a bamboo boat ride and the amazing food. Beer fish, a local delicacy mimicked throughout China, was the culinary highlight. It consists of a fish of your choice, in our case catfish, caught locally from the river, poached in beer, and served in a chafing tray over tealights with treasured Guilin chiles, peppers, onions and tomatoes. It was some of the spiciest food we've had since arriving in China.
-Ken and Davida
Friday, December 28, 2012
The Karst Mountains of Yangzhou
The road from Xi'an to Yangzhou is fraught with bandits and dragons. The route is dreary, rainy and otherwise unpleasant. Alright, only some of that is true. It went like this: we left our lovely hotel room in Xi'an with our packs strapped on and walked fifteen minutes to the airport bus. The bus trip was over an hour long and the seats were cramped being that Chinese people are generally shorter than Ken. We sat at our gate for two hours then on the plane for another hour as we were forty minutes late for our scheduled take-off time, par for the course in China. We touched down in Guilin after a harrowing two hour flight during which the plane was nearly struck by lightning. Another bus awaited us at the Guilin airport to take us to the train station because naturally there is no train to the train station. There we were meant to catch the bus to Yangzhuo, a ninety minute ride. However, when we discovered that the Yangzhou bus bus would not depart until eight o'clock the following morning, we were crestfallen... and wet since it had been raining all evening.
We stood in front of a hotel in downtown Guilin and weighed our options. A cab would be three hundred yuan, around forty seven USD. A hotel room would be around the same amount and we were already booked in Yangzhou for the night. Not wanting to deal with more road time in the morning, we bit the bullet and grabbed a taxi. It was worth it. Darkness and wet roads lay before us. We had no idea where we were going and no orientation as to where we were. Over an hour later we pulled up to the Riverview hotel, a quaint residence on the banks of the Li river. Our room was spartan but spacious, and the balcony overlooking the river was worth the cheap upgrade.
It was late by this point, but the rain had abated. We thought about wandering the streets of Yangzhou to get a feel for our new town, but the ten or so hours it took to go door to door, the closed shop fronts and the chill mountain air made us take refuge under the three large comforters in the room. We called it a night and hoped the beauty of the Karst mountains would reveal itself in the morning.
-Ken and Davida
We stood in front of a hotel in downtown Guilin and weighed our options. A cab would be three hundred yuan, around forty seven USD. A hotel room would be around the same amount and we were already booked in Yangzhou for the night. Not wanting to deal with more road time in the morning, we bit the bullet and grabbed a taxi. It was worth it. Darkness and wet roads lay before us. We had no idea where we were going and no orientation as to where we were. Over an hour later we pulled up to the Riverview hotel, a quaint residence on the banks of the Li river. Our room was spartan but spacious, and the balcony overlooking the river was worth the cheap upgrade.
It was late by this point, but the rain had abated. We thought about wandering the streets of Yangzhou to get a feel for our new town, but the ten or so hours it took to go door to door, the closed shop fronts and the chill mountain air made us take refuge under the three large comforters in the room. We called it a night and hoped the beauty of the Karst mountains would reveal itself in the morning.
-Ken and Davida
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