Unnecessarily Early

06122016

we woke up very early, packed, checked out and had the hotel concierge hail us a cab.

The embarkation tickets for the cruise had some text on them that said “...arrive 4 hours prior to embarkation…”

now, the army has only exaggerated my being punctual, and changed the way i read timelines. Where i come from, if you tell me to be there are 0700, I have to show up by 0650 at the latest, so for a 1200 embarkation time, 4 hours early is 0800, the concierge said the cab will take 35-45 minutes, means we should leave at 0700. This means we wake up at 0600 to pack.

The cab took us 25 minutes to get there, meaning we got there at like 0730, the cruise terminal wasn't even open yet.

We ent up sitting next to a bunch of the crew/staff, the HR manager approached us to give us the paperwork, at which point we realized we were in the wrong place.

so we chilled out for about 3 hours before finally getting our room keys and checked in, then another 45 min before boarding the craft.

getting our room key was a situation into itself.

they checked us into room 1810, as our ticket had stated, however, at some point since we printed that ticket (before we left for Asia) and the day of, we had been moved without our knowledge. so they checked us into this room, but none of the names were right on the paperwork, after a few minutes and a few different cruise agents it was straightened out.

turns out we were moved up a deck, i think it is the same size room, but we have a slightly better view.

we then napped, after having woke up so early, the idling of the engines put us to sleep.

we woke up to get some food. honestly i was unimpressed, it was buffet style food, that wasnt that great, certainly edible, but nothing as exciting as what we had been eating for the past 6 weeks.

we attended the mandatory safety briefing about where to stand around and how to put the life jacket on and how not to panic when the shit hits the fan.

it reminded me very much of army safety briefs.

we wandered around, stumbled into a canadian couple from the Toronto area that was very nice, and started some laundry in the self service launderette on board.

while watching our laundry spin another canadian couple ran into us. I guess they were also wandering about the ship checking out the nooks and crannies. wayne and ida, he was some kind of mechanical engineer, and she an english professor. She was as i understand an English Second Language teacher to professionals from all over the world that came to her university. She thusly made friends from all over the world and they have travelled pretty extensively.

we got late night room service, that was also pretty unimpressive, and went to sleep.

I don't think I've ever been to a nunnery before

05120216


We had great intentions for the day, we planned to walk up to Victoria Peak and get a view of the city, but after waking up, and peaking out the window, we decided to sleep an extra few minutes. It was hazy, and going to be very warm.

After stealing an extra bit of sleep, we got up, chugged some water, and headed out. We road the bus to the Nan Lian Garden which is a very nice curated park in the middle of the megalopolis that is Hong Kong.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nan_Lian_Garden

As far as i can tell it is either very new, it was built in 2006 or was overhauled at that time (later edit, it was built in 2006 as a joint effort between the government of HK and the Nunnery i mention below). Either way it was pretty spectacular.

They even had a “rockery” which is a rock garden of sorts. Apparently a new type of rock was discovered in China that has rock collectors going nuts. This park had a series of these rocks on display, with some aphorisms scrawled above them, that i think lost some of their poignancy in translation.

This park directly led us to a nunnery accross the road.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chi_Lin_Nunnery

we ate our quickmart pastries on the steps just outside the garden because the signs said no food in the garden.

This is an active monestary with shrines and nuns and monks roaming about. as seen in the pictures they also had some of those special rocks, they also had various bonsai trees, and lilly ponds.

I did not include any pictures of the shrines themselves, as again there were no pictures allowed. But mostly they were large wooden statues with gold leaf of various buddhist deities. The place smelled of incense and lillies, despite being very near a major thoroughfare it was very tranquil, and the shrines were large and splendid, but not as awe-some as the cathedrals of Europe I have toured. I think this is due in part in the differences in philosophy these institutions have developed into today.

alot of catholicism seems to be big for the sake of being big, peoples tithes, and state patronage build large often ostentatious displays of wealth, I interpret it to be an attempt to bring the splendor of heaven to earth.

But it seems buddhist temples are about honoring the deities themselves, people bring offerings in the form of food, and incense and money. they are certainly beautiful but not as awe-some (i over use awesome, when i use the hyphen i am trying to use the more technical dictionary definition of inspiring awe). The catholic (and many of its derivatives to include the bits of islam i have experienced) temples feel very imposing, but the buddhist temples simply are, and you experience them at your pace.

After this we headed back into the shopping and market area of the city. We wandered around mostly aimlessly, just experiencing the sights and sounds and smells of the city. We found a few gifts to dole out when we get home, and a few snacks to eat while wandering.

Laura had discovered another good chinese restaurant via her blog/pinteresting that we decided to hit for dinner. The place was inside a mall, which i must point out is by no means a bad thing over here, just a noteworthy point.


The place was pretty good, we got an order of their sweet and sour cucumber skins, which were exactly what they sound like. They werent particularly spectacular, but they were an excellent palette cleanser for the spicy food that momentarily hit our table.

We got a spicy pork dumpling plate, and these were spectacular, very very spicy, but very tasty. and then for my main i had their Dandan noodles, and laura had a pork broth soup with more dumplings.

My noodles were delicious, it was very heavy on the peanut oil, so it tasted very much like spicy peanutbutter, by the end of my noodles i was sweating. Laura wasnt particularly enthused about her noodles, they were good, but i think we have been spoiled by the delicious porkiness of all the Ramen we had in Japan.

After this we were looking for some ice cream or gelato or frozen yogurt to soothe our stomachs, and we checked out the gelato place in the mall, it was was way to expensive, so we resolved to go home. On the way out we spotted a Yo Mama frozen yogurt place. If you know me well enough you have probably heard about how much i love red velvet frozen yogurt, and how there is a frozen yogurt franchise in milwaukee that has that flavor, that always seems to mysteriously run out, or get pulled hours before i show up to eat it.

So we had to check it out.



i dont think they are affiliated, and they didnt have red velvet, i had Hokkaido Milk flavor, and laura had Earl Grey tea flavor.

we ate this on our walk home, and settled in for an early night, as we had a very early call for the cruise the next day.

Nearing Nirvana, via pork.

04122016

Full day in Hong Kong, woke up early because there is alot we want to see here. We had the day essentially planned out before we rolled.

First sight of the day was the Ten Thousand Buddhas Monestary ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Thousand_Buddhas_Monastery ). The place is really impressive. In case you didnt know, Hong Kong is very mountainous, and an mostly an island, so getting around is kind of a hassle. The subway was going to take us an hour, and given we have so little time in a place so cool, we elected to take a cab.

The concierge hailed us a taxi, and the driver was super friendly chatting us up through his broken English. At one point he noted that the championship for some horse racing competition was here next week, and we could see it, dunno why he brought this up beyond the fact that it was one (of many) ads on the route accross the island. We asked if he liked horse racing and betting and he said "no, only eating" and made a chopstick to mouth gesture. I wasnt sure if he meant his only hobby is eating, or if he only liked horses to eat. And if he meant the latter, was he pulling our leg? or serious. Honestly neither scenario; eating horse, or horsing around seemed any more outlandish than the other.

The cabbie dropped us off and pointed us in the direction to go. The route is not very well publicized as right now they are doing construction and the HK government nor the monks want too many guests to be put in danger. We braved the danger...

The route up to the monastary is very steep in places, and is lined with many many golden statues. Given that we had no guide, and we cannot read Cantonese, i can only speculate what these things are. I think they are boddhisattvas, which are people that have reached Nirvana. I know very little of the buddhist faith or its derivatives, so you should probably go read up on it but i think these are people that reached buddhahood but refused to ascend to buddhahood so they could continue to benefit humanity in some way.

upon reaching the top we saw the monastary part (though we didnt see any monks, so it may not be a monastary, altar maybe?)

There were more statues, and the big pagoda. In the actual building is the mummified-and-gold-leafed body of the monk that built this place, along with over ten thousand buddha statues. There are no pictures allowed, and i figured i have enough ancient deities upset with me, no need to add more to the list. But it was pretty spectacular, the walls are lined from floor to cieling with thousands and thousands of 6-8" buddhas inset into the wall, with their own lighting.

after wandering around on top of the mountain we took an alternate route home, which took us past a troop of monkeys, and an active buddhist ceremnoy. The monkeys were loud, and thankfully avoided us. and the buddhist devotions were also loud, but much less frightening. The monk leads the congregation (if thats the right term) in song. beyond that i have no idea what was happening.

on the bottom of the hill we were a little hungry, so we stopped in an Ikea, because apparently their swedish meat balls are "bomb". unfortunately, this is Hong Kong, so they served the meat balls with macaroni-shell noodles, chicken broth and tomato sauce. So it wasnt that great, but it got us to our next meal.

We then made our way to the Hong Kong Heritage Museum ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Heritage_Museum ), which this time around was dominated by a Bruce Lee exhibit, and an exhibit about the Qing Imperial weddings. The majority of the museum was free (only the wedding part cost money, and between the cost and how hungry we were we skipped it). We started with the Bruce Lee exhibit, it was exhausting, with relics from the earliest days of his life, to his last, they had copies of both his birth, and death certificate. It went through the narrative of his life; being born in San Francisco, being a child actor in the Cantonese movie scene there, moving back to Hong Kong, more movies, writing and directing his own movies, his wife and kids, his training regime, his library. It was really interesting.

The next part of the musuem was more classic museum content, a bunch of really old pottery and jewelery, some bronze, some of the stuff dated back more than 2,000 years, most was more recent, only 500 years old.

The final part of the musuem we actually went through was dedicated to cantonese opera, which is a traditional chinese art form, with singing and dancing and costumes and all the things that go into the opera that westerners are more familiar with.

After the museums we hopped a train to get further south into the denser downtown like area of Hong Kong (which is pretty rediculous because ALL of Hong Kong is hyperdense). We headed to a famous, Michelin Star holding, Trip Advisor top 10 for the past 5 years running Dimsum restaurant. It is very busy, and they squeeze you into whatever table they can, we started at a 4 top, with an old Hong Kong lady, and then a single Western guy joined us. We all ate our respective foods, exchanging smiles occasionally, but mostly eating.

We ordered a few things, shrimp and pork shumai; these were really good, fantastically hot, like should have started the bamboo steampot on fire-hot, vermicelli noodle wrapped beef; ok, pork ribs; also pretty tasty, boney but flavorfull, pork and vegetable wonton soup, im not a fan of soup, but laura liked it. Finally the last thing to come out, and the best thing by far: pork steam buns.

These were so good, the bun was sweet, dusted with sugar, and the shredded pork IN the bun was suspended in a sort of jam. The savory sweet combination was perfect.

Now full of pork, we wandered all over this part of Hong Kong. We went into some of the indoor markets for toys/model kits. I had a few kits still on my list, and i spotted one, but it was only a few USD less than what i can get shipped to my home in the States, so i didnt buy anything. The set up for these places were fascinating, each floor was crammed with stalls, each one with no more than 25 sq ft, and only they glass display to lure you in. You had to know what you are looking for, other wise you would quickly be overwhelmed.

We also waled around some of the street markets. These were finally the "Asian Markets" we expected. It was crammed with people shopping foreigner and local. The makeshift stalls were full of shit. knock off bags and watches, phone cases, shirts with engrish, stupid trinkets, just about everything could be found on the streets of Hong Kong. We tried some haggling, to buy a day bag (laura wanted something bigger and more comfortable than her purse for the excursions on the ship for water and whatnot). We found a shop, and we got them down from 120HKD to 75, the shop owner wanted 85, and tried giving us back 15 in change for our 100. So i was all keyed up, and when she handed us the 20HKD bill it was different than all the others we had gotten.

I immediately thought it was fake as we walked away, we resolved to try it in the subway ticket machine on the way to our next spot for the night... The machine spit it out, so we went to the information desk in the subway, i was looking for them to get the police so we could show them the bad shop, at that point i wasnt even worried about the 20HKD (<3USD), i was just pissed they tried to get one over on us. BUT the very nice guy behind the info desk assured us it was real, and that Hong Kong just has a whole bunch of differenet bills, he made change for us in coins, and we got our tickets. We took the train even further south to the Victoria Harbor waterfront to see the light show.

this was awesome, way more impressive than the Shanghai light show, mostly because of all the lasers.

For dinner we went to an unfortunately expensive western style pizza and crat beer place. it was getting late, and being sunday many restaurants were closing. The food was very good, the beer was ok, but it was all too expensive, we got a sausage plate that had a 5 different kinds of hot sausage, a 12" pizza and 2 draft beers and it came out to nearly 70USD. I guess we learned to avoid the super-western eateries.

Walked ourselves home, and quickly passed out

Planes, Trains, Boats, Magnetic Levitation, Buses...all in 24 hours

03122016

Woke up early for a complicated route to the next step of our trip. We packed up and checked out of the hotel, swiping all the complimentary tea, coffee and toothpaste we could on the way out.

We headed to Hangzhou East railway station, which is not the one we came in through. We had to take the subway there, and given that we were leaving mainland china we wanted to use up all of our CNY. We took a "slow train" to Shanghai rather than the highspeed rails, it was cheaper, so we could spend more money on the route from the train station to the airport.

The slow trains are the older trains, the seats are described as "hard seats", "hard sleeper" and "soft sleeper" we went with the hard seats. The train station appeared as many of the Chinese stations do, very new and modern, the train was older, still in working order, but clearly worn, the passengers were more authentic Chinese. These were the Chinese citizens that paid 4USD to get to Shanghai fr the weekend, rather than 24USD.

There were a few smelly passengers (overall hygiene standards everywhere we were in China met with what we were used to, but it was clear that there are some areas of China that are either unable to meet "western" standards, or unawares all together), we were fortunate enough to get put in one of the last of the cars (there were atleast 16).

Being that these train cars were 20 or more years old, they reeked of cigarettes, no one was actively smoking on the train (i think it is prohibited) but it smelled very heavily of it.

The train got is into Shanghai a little early, I guess there werent many passengers getting on/off at intermediate stops. We took to subway to the MAGLEV to get to the airport.

The MAGLEV was a little pricey, but it got us there in 8 minutes 40 seconds. And more importantly we had seats, which is never a sure thing on the subway. It was really cool, we travelled at 300km/h, apparently the thing is capable of commercial speeds of over 400km/h.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Maglev_Train

The Shanghai Pudong Airport is also huge, on par with Seoul Incheon. We were checking in, and our flight was getting delayed, so they bumped us to an earlier flight (eventually our originally ticketed flight was cancelled). We are travelling with only backpacks, to expedite travel, so we neednt check bags. The ticket agent asked if we had any luggage, nope, just our backpack we responded. She then asked us to wiegh the bags...they were over twice the "limit" for carryons.

We were not ready to part with our bags, we had cash stashed away, our electronics, our books for airplane reading. They were not going to let us on the plane with our bags. So we gathered what we could, taking extra care to ensure we had the phone numbers for our Travel Insurance...

Later on, when we got on the plane i could not help but notice all of the people with their HARD SIDE ROLL-ON SUITCASES. When I saw this, i started crafting my complaint for the airlines.

Before boarding we stopped at another one of the Priority Pass Lounges, they didnt have food as nice as the one in Seoul, but they did have beer. And we drank beer, and ate instant noodles. I ate no less than 3 cups of Shin Ramyun cuo noodles, and we had a good 4 Heinekens in the hour we waited for our flight.

We did board our flight, and promptly fell asleep.

Waking up in the Special Economic Zone that is Hong Kong, we exited our flight, and entered customs without issue, and claimed our bags. Everything seemed to be fine (and now a day later, still have not noticed anything awry).

We hopped a bus right outside the airport, that basically took us to our hotel, checked in, enjoyed the full blown google-included internet and discovered a cell phone in the room waiting for us.

The hotel provides a cellphone for its guests. This phone has internet, mapping, and preloaded important numbers; the hotel; the police; consumer protection, tourist info, some other good numbers, it has some applications to help you shop. Also it has ads, but it is really great having an ACTIVE phone while oot-n-aboot.

We found a diner-esque restaurant nearby. Ate a bunch of greasy Asian food, and wandered around the neighborhood. Turns out there is a major university in this area, and on this particular saturday, a christmas bar crawl. So the bars were slammed with people, many of them in costume.

after wandering about, we got a little lost on the way home, but obviously found it (cause we didnt sleep under a freeway overpass) i updated the blog, took a shower and went to sleep.