Last, Last weekend I took a trip to Beijing just to get away from Tongliao for awhile. I mean, it's great here, don't get me wrong. But after teaching classes 2 months straight after a great vacation - I needed a little pick me up in the big city. I managed to meet up with Steve and Elisa (a wonderful Italian gal that I met while I was in Zhengzhou. She speaks like 40 languages and is currently studying Chinese in Beijing. Smarty Pants City) and we just had a great little 3 days together to have fun, and do, as the Chinese say, "Chi Hao, He Hao", aka, EAT GOOD, DRINK GOOD! It was great fun.
I stayed at Elisa's apartment which was in the WuDaoKou part of Beijing, and right next to BCLU, the super famous Beijing University. (I forget what the acronym stands for - sue me.) If anyone ever is in the WuDaoKou area in Beijing, they HAVE to go to "Lush", a little restaurant/pub/bar near the subway stop. The food is unbelieveable, good prices, and just seems great.
We also managed to make some time to spend in SanLiTun, aka, Foreigner Central, which is kind of a bar street/outdoors shopping village smack dab in the middle of Beijing. I bought a copy of Harry Potter: The Prisoner of Azkaban. I'm almost finished it now, and I'm going to have to pick up the next installment concerning Harry's time at Hogwarts next time I'm in the city!
Which.. conincidently - will be tomorrow! I'm taking a train tomorrow morning into Beijing, and should arrive in the city around 10pm tomorrow night. I'll be staying at my good friend Kristin's place, and then waking up at the CRACK of dawn to grab a train (6:45am, ugh.) that'll bring me directly to Qingdao, China. Qingdao is supposed to be a very beautiful beach town on the Chinese East coast, and I've been dying to check it out. Now that the weather is beautiful (and I was told about 3 days ago that I have no class this week) I've decided to make the trek out there to see it for myself! Meg and Christina, two of the girls that I live with here at Tongliao #1 School have already made the trip, and highly recommended it. So here I am, updating my blog before heading out! UNFORTUNATELY, my camera has suffered a very recent death, and it's going to make documenting this trip extremely difficult. However, I'm sure I'll persevere, and find a way to remember the place that doesn't involve photographs! And maybe I'll just buy a new camera. Who knows.
So that's the long and short of things right now! Aside from that, I've been studying Chinese pretty hard lately. I'm getting happier with my ability to string together sentences, but I still get very frustrated with my listening abilities. It's very hard for me to listen to Chinese people speak their native language, and to completely understand what they're telling me. I suppose that'll just come with more practice and study, but still, it's frustrating to know what I'm saying, then to have no idea what they reply. Argh.
Alas! Hold fast!
Let's see who can figure this out:
我今天有新工作！一个高中在郑州今天告诉我。 妈妈，，爸爸，， 妹妹。。。我很想你们！！！ 但是，我知道我回到在美国八月， 仁厚我们有一个z大聚会！！！
Monday, April 27, 2009
... And everything else.
In lieu of the fact that I'm unfathomably behind on keeping this blog updated, I've decided that I'm going to bullet-point the rest of my vacation and note a few of the things that have been going on SINCE then, (rather quickly) so that I can try to keep things more current. I apologize for my inherent laziness in keeping this a tidy record of my travels and exploits!
So let's see.
- After Hangzhou, we took a plane to Kunming, Yunnan, China. It's a city in the south-west part of China, and is kind of a hub to go to other back packing desinations via bus or train.
- We stayed in Kunming a few days, at 'The Hump' Hostel, which is easily the best hostel I've ever stayed at. The view of the city, the bar, the people, and the funky feeling from the place was far and beyond the most enjoyable I've experienced in China.
- In Kunming we were able to celebrate the Chinese New Year!!! Fireworks exploding EVERYWHERE, people having a grand time, red paper lanterns floating in the sky - it was definitely a thing to behold. Lovely, bizarre, interesting, and beautiful. What a country!
- We met up with a traveling photographer, Jason, a Californian fella traveling through south east Asia, and decided to travel to a few places together to see some more of
China.
- He came with us (now it's Me, Steve, Dirk, Kristin and Jason) on a bus ride to Dali, which is an old, old, old town inlaid next to a massive lake that was unspeakably gorgeous.
- We took a donkey-back ride up a small mountain in Dali to see the view of the old city and further laying lake. It was breath-taking. But Dirk's donkey bit my leg. It's name was Nun-Chuck. My donkey was Bruce Lee.
- From Dali we took a bus (3 hours) to Lijiang, which is another back-packers paradise on earth. The old town is a web of old cobble-stone streets, shops, restaurants, and rivers flowing under your feet. It was again, completely beautiful. Our time spent there was culminated in having lunch on the 4th floor of a restaurant, overseeing the entirety of the town, and the large snow-capped mountain that silently watches the town. I think it was my favorite scenic spot all throughout China.
- In LiJiang we stayed at 'Mama Naxi's', which is a little hostel run by this old woman, Mama Naxi, and her 4-5 daughters. The place was extremely comfortable... Mama Naxi cooked us a big dinner, and gave us Naxi (a kind of Chinese nationality, or zu) good luck charms and big hugs when we left. She rocked.
- From LiJiang we took a bus back to Kunming so we could grab a train the next day to shoot up to Zhengzhou, the city that Dirk and Steve live in. I planned on staying for about a week to check things out.
- The train ride, we thought, was going to take 20 hours. Long indeed, but certainly do-able considering some of the things we had gone through so far. Turns out the ride was 36 HOURS. It was hell on wheels with an engine. I have the transcripts (an hourly journal I kept during the trip) to explain what we went through. I'll post it at a later date, for giggles.
- Zhengzhou was great, I went to a couple of Steve's classes, enjoyed staying at his apartment, and got a real feel for the city. We also had dinner at Mama Yao's (Kristin's mom's home) which was ultra delicious.
- While in Zhengzhou, I decided to take a short trip by myself to the Shaolin temple (ShaoLin Si) to see the birthplace of Kung Fu and all. It was fantastic. I got the opportunity to meet some kids who had been training, and to actually get up on stage and make a big ass out of myself in front of a Chinese crowd by trying out some kung fu moves with a master. Hoo boy.
- After my ZhengZhou adventure, I took a train back to Beijing, met back up with Jason (who had gone his separate way when we arrived in ZhengZhou) for a night of fun, and finally took my train back to Tongliao, to rest for about a week until classes started back up again!!
WHEW!
If you have any questions about anything (I'm sure I missed way too much) don't hestitate to leave a comment or ask! I'd be happy to ramble on about my time out here in China.
Okay - from here on out I'll do my best to keep this thing current, even if the posts are quite short. Hope that's okay. Alright - good talk. See you out there.
Ricky
So let's see.
- After Hangzhou, we took a plane to Kunming, Yunnan, China. It's a city in the south-west part of China, and is kind of a hub to go to other back packing desinations via bus or train.
- We stayed in Kunming a few days, at 'The Hump' Hostel, which is easily the best hostel I've ever stayed at. The view of the city, the bar, the people, and the funky feeling from the place was far and beyond the most enjoyable I've experienced in China.
- In Kunming we were able to celebrate the Chinese New Year!!! Fireworks exploding EVERYWHERE, people having a grand time, red paper lanterns floating in the sky - it was definitely a thing to behold. Lovely, bizarre, interesting, and beautiful. What a country!
- We met up with a traveling photographer, Jason, a Californian fella traveling through south east Asia, and decided to travel to a few places together to see some more of
China.- He came with us (now it's Me, Steve, Dirk, Kristin and Jason) on a bus ride to Dali, which is an old, old, old town inlaid next to a massive lake that was unspeakably gorgeous.
- We took a donkey-back ride up a small mountain in Dali to see the view of the old city and further laying lake. It was breath-taking. But Dirk's donkey bit my leg. It's name was Nun-Chuck. My donkey was Bruce Lee.
- From Dali we took a bus (3 hours) to Lijiang, which is another back-packers paradise on earth. The old town is a web of old cobble-stone streets, shops, restaurants, and rivers flowing under your feet. It was again, completely beautiful. Our time spent there was culminated in having lunch on the 4th floor of a restaurant, overseeing the entirety of the town, and the large snow-capped mountain that silently watches the town. I think it was my favorite scenic spot all throughout China.
- In LiJiang we stayed at 'Mama Naxi's', which is a little hostel run by this old woman, Mama Naxi, and her 4-5 daughters. The place was extremely comfortable... Mama Naxi cooked us a big dinner, and gave us Naxi (a kind of Chinese nationality, or zu) good luck charms and big hugs when we left. She rocked.
- From LiJiang we took a bus back to Kunming so we could grab a train the next day to shoot up to Zhengzhou, the city that Dirk and Steve live in. I planned on staying for about a week to check things out.
- The train ride, we thought, was going to take 20 hours. Long indeed, but certainly do-able considering some of the things we had gone through so far. Turns out the ride was 36 HOURS. It was hell on wheels with an engine. I have the transcripts (an hourly journal I kept during the trip) to explain what we went through. I'll post it at a later date, for giggles.
- Zhengzhou was great, I went to a couple of Steve's classes, enjoyed staying at his apartment, and got a real feel for the city. We also had dinner at Mama Yao's (Kristin's mom's home) which was ultra delicious.
- While in Zhengzhou, I decided to take a short trip by myself to the Shaolin temple (ShaoLin Si) to see the birthplace of Kung Fu and all. It was fantastic. I got the opportunity to meet some kids who had been training, and to actually get up on stage and make a big ass out of myself in front of a Chinese crowd by trying out some kung fu moves with a master. Hoo boy.
- After my ZhengZhou adventure, I took a train back to Beijing, met back up with Jason (who had gone his separate way when we arrived in ZhengZhou) for a night of fun, and finally took my train back to Tongliao, to rest for about a week until classes started back up again!!
WHEW!
If you have any questions about anything (I'm sure I missed way too much) don't hestitate to leave a comment or ask! I'd be happy to ramble on about my time out here in China.
Okay - from here on out I'll do my best to keep this thing current, even if the posts are quite short. Hope that's okay. Alright - good talk. See you out there.
Ricky
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Part IV - Hangzhou
The bus ride from Nanjing to Hangzhou was relatively harmless. After 4 hours on the road, we rolled up to a vacant lot that seemed like it could have been a pit stop, when lo and behold, it happened to be our final destination! Go figure. Welcome to China.
So we disembarked and stepped out into the Hangzhou night time air, and managed to procure ourselves a taxi that brought us to our hostel. Which was interestingly enough directly across the street from a large university (quite like our hostel in Na
njing.. hmm, a trend, perhaps?) Long story short, the hostel was nice, and had it's own little air and ambiance to it, as every different hostel will. It was also located about a 5 minute walk from the Hangzhou xihu, or West Lake. Now, a little explanation of what Hangzhou is like.
Hangzhou is actually a huge, bustling city, not unlike many of the other cities in China. However, the city is huge and bustling right up until it runs into the West Lake. Once the city hits the lake, it disperses into a
few roads, a couple smaller buildings, and then finally into basically only bike paths and forests that run alongside the lake. Ultimately, the entire city fades away completely, and becomes beautiful mountainous countryside from about halfway beyond the lake, and on. It's truly something to behold for yourself. Some people say that 'if you see one Chinese city, you've seen them all'. Well, I believe that to a point, but Hangzhou is most certainly a big exception to this rule.
The next
day we woke up late (tired from all of our travel) and gave ourselves some time to meander around the lake and city a bit, just to have a short look. One 'cool' thing about Hangzhou (cool to the tourists, at least) is that you can rent bikes for DIRT cheap, essentially anywhere in the city, and then return the bikes to any of the 'rent-a-bike' kiosks that you can rent from. That said, Dirk and I desperately wanted some physical activity, and decided to hop on a couple bikes to explore beautiful Hangzhou. After some heavy griping, Steve opted out of the ride. However, I loved it and we managed to cover a whole lot of ground in just about an hour or two. We mapped out the city a bit more, and circled the huge West Lake. Also we managed to sneak a peak at a couple far-away temples and pagoda's that we wanted to try and find perhaps the next day. Albeit it must have been a riot for Chinese people to watch two American guys peddle around the city on a pair of red bikes complete with handle-baskets and little ringy-ring bells... but it was pretty fun, I've got to admit.
The rest of the day we just did some laundry in the hostel, used the internet to re-connect with the rest of the world, and met a few people at the hostel as well. Primarily, a small band of British girls who had been traveling through Asia for a couple months, but had only recently made it into China. We gave them some pointers over drinks that night, and decided that the next day we would travel out around town to see some of the sights.
That next day - we walked about half the circumference of the hug West lake, and then wiggled our way to a passage that traveled up to what I think was the 'Dragon Stone Wood
Park', which was kind of a big hike up a ton of stairs to a pagoda that was on top of a big ol' hill, overlooking the lake. The view was gorgeous, and so was the giant pagoda. There was also a little hike up to a prime outlook spot, though a little hard to trespass, was completely worth it. It was maybe one of my favorite views of China up to that point. You could see the sprawling city to your left, the huge, gorgeous lake dead-ahead, and then the rolling Chinese hills and forests to your right. A panoramic masterpiece, if I do say so myself.
After two more quick trips to two less impressive temples throughout the city, we retired back to our hostel and got ourselves some rest. However, we did not get to sleep until we got our airplane tickets. Getting airplane tickets in China - bizarre. Let me spin you a tale.
So when we were still in Nanjing, Dirk had his girlfriend (who speaks Chinese) order us some plane tickets over the phone to fly from Hangzhou to Kunming. It seemed to go smoothly until she told us that 'we would get our tickets in Hangzhou'. So we mostly figured, 'oh fine, we'll get them at the airport'. Wrong. What happens is a random Chinese dude calls you and tells you that he's going to come meet you at your hostel between 5 and 8 at night so you can hand him a HUGE wad of cash (3 plane tickets at 800rmb a piece = $350), and hopefully he'll hand you three legitimate plane tickets in response. We were kind of taken aback by this whole situation, and decided it'd be best if we all met with this guy at the same time to make sure he wasn't SCREWING us over, like you hear horror stories about in foreign countries. We had the receptionist/boss of the hostel confirm the legitimacy of the tickets, and made sure that the guy actually was working for the airplane company. Which, actually, in fact, he wasn't. He was simply a courier. Either way, the entire situation was very sketchy to say the least, and the next MORNING we were going to leave by plane. So if those tickets were not viable, then our trip was essentially OVER.
What happened next?
STAY TUNED!!
So we disembarked and stepped out into the Hangzhou night time air, and managed to procure ourselves a taxi that brought us to our hostel. Which was interestingly enough directly across the street from a large university (quite like our hostel in Na
njing.. hmm, a trend, perhaps?) Long story short, the hostel was nice, and had it's own little air and ambiance to it, as every different hostel will. It was also located about a 5 minute walk from the Hangzhou xihu, or West Lake. Now, a little explanation of what Hangzhou is like.Hangzhou is actually a huge, bustling city, not unlike many of the other cities in China. However, the city is huge and bustling right up until it runs into the West Lake. Once the city hits the lake, it disperses into a
few roads, a couple smaller buildings, and then finally into basically only bike paths and forests that run alongside the lake. Ultimately, the entire city fades away completely, and becomes beautiful mountainous countryside from about halfway beyond the lake, and on. It's truly something to behold for yourself. Some people say that 'if you see one Chinese city, you've seen them all'. Well, I believe that to a point, but Hangzhou is most certainly a big exception to this rule.The next
day we woke up late (tired from all of our travel) and gave ourselves some time to meander around the lake and city a bit, just to have a short look. One 'cool' thing about Hangzhou (cool to the tourists, at least) is that you can rent bikes for DIRT cheap, essentially anywhere in the city, and then return the bikes to any of the 'rent-a-bike' kiosks that you can rent from. That said, Dirk and I desperately wanted some physical activity, and decided to hop on a couple bikes to explore beautiful Hangzhou. After some heavy griping, Steve opted out of the ride. However, I loved it and we managed to cover a whole lot of ground in just about an hour or two. We mapped out the city a bit more, and circled the huge West Lake. Also we managed to sneak a peak at a couple far-away temples and pagoda's that we wanted to try and find perhaps the next day. Albeit it must have been a riot for Chinese people to watch two American guys peddle around the city on a pair of red bikes complete with handle-baskets and little ringy-ring bells... but it was pretty fun, I've got to admit.The rest of the day we just did some laundry in the hostel, used the internet to re-connect with the rest of the world, and met a few people at the hostel as well. Primarily, a small band of British girls who had been traveling through Asia for a couple months, but had only recently made it into China. We gave them some pointers over drinks that night, and decided that the next day we would travel out around town to see some of the sights.
That next day - we walked about half the circumference of the hug West lake, and then wiggled our way to a passage that traveled up to what I think was the 'Dragon Stone Wood
Park', which was kind of a big hike up a ton of stairs to a pagoda that was on top of a big ol' hill, overlooking the lake. The view was gorgeous, and so was the giant pagoda. There was also a little hike up to a prime outlook spot, though a little hard to trespass, was completely worth it. It was maybe one of my favorite views of China up to that point. You could see the sprawling city to your left, the huge, gorgeous lake dead-ahead, and then the rolling Chinese hills and forests to your right. A panoramic masterpiece, if I do say so myself.After two more quick trips to two less impressive temples throughout the city, we retired back to our hostel and got ourselves some rest. However, we did not get to sleep until we got our airplane tickets. Getting airplane tickets in China - bizarre. Let me spin you a tale.
So when we were still in Nanjing, Dirk had his girlfriend (who speaks Chinese) order us some plane tickets over the phone to fly from Hangzhou to Kunming. It seemed to go smoothly until she told us that 'we would get our tickets in Hangzhou'. So we mostly figured, 'oh fine, we'll get them at the airport'. Wrong. What happens is a random Chinese dude calls you and tells you that he's going to come meet you at your hostel between 5 and 8 at night so you can hand him a HUGE wad of cash (3 plane tickets at 800rmb a piece = $350), and hopefully he'll hand you three legitimate plane tickets in response. We were kind of taken aback by this whole situation, and decided it'd be best if we all met with this guy at the same time to make sure he wasn't SCREWING us over, like you hear horror stories about in foreign countries. We had the receptionist/boss of the hostel confirm the legitimacy of the tickets, and made sure that the guy actually was working for the airplane company. Which, actually, in fact, he wasn't. He was simply a courier. Either way, the entire situation was very sketchy to say the least, and the next MORNING we were going to leave by plane. So if those tickets were not viable, then our trip was essentially OVER.
What happened next?
STAY TUNED!!
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