Return Trip

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The last day of our resort stay, we had elected for the late checkout, which included lunch. We hung out till the 1400 boat was to take us back to the ferry terminal. We settled our bill, and sat down for lunch. after eating the main portion of the lunch, and while our dessert was being prepared, one of the staff approached us apologizing for having forgotten to include an item on our bill.

They claimed that we had to pay for the lunch. We said we didnt have any documentation telling us that and we thusly refused to pay. At this point we were pretty disappointed with the Telunas Resort.

http://www.telunasresorts.com/

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g1778353-d7155295-Reviews-Telunas_Resorts_Telunas_Private_Island-Sugi_Island_Riau_Archipelago_Riau_Islands_Prov.html

We were staying in the Private Island portion, because it wasnt the Family Friendly portion.

According to the website we were supposed to be getting 2 course lunches and 3 course dinners every day.

As seen on the website, they cater to couples and young families.

No where on the website does it state late checkout incurs an extra fee.

The website does not accurately portray our experience.

The entire thing was no where near the romantic/private getaway the website would lead you to believe it is. So we were pretty upset before they tried to tack on the extra lunch. That was the thing that turned it from a disappointment to outright discontent.

Anyways, the long boat got us to the ferry terminal, we got on a ferry that got is to Singapore.

Customs in Singapore took well over an hour and a half.

We hopped a cab to the airport, got through security fantastically easily (there was no security at the front, you can get into the airport with a boarding pass and an ID, no metal detectors no wands, just walk right in, the real security happens immediately prior to getting on the plane). Inside security we hung out in one of the lounges for a little while prior to our 6 hour flight to Shanghai.

Did i mention the flight was scheduled for 2300? This was the start of a very long day, if you are keeping track we left our resort at 1400, got on a plane at 2300 and showed up in Shanghai at 0400.

The airport was barely open, we got through customs there quick, and waited at ticketing as there was no one from American to issue us a ticket. After a few hours of waiting I spoke to another One World partner, and he recommended we print our own passes from the business center to get through security.

Thats exactly what we did, and then proceeded to hang out in lounges until our flight at 1820. Which was a solid 12.5 hours.

we landed in Dallas at 1720 the same day. as in we left in the evening of the 27th and landed an hour earlier, on the 27th.

Then cleared US customs, got our plane to Chicago, got picked up by a friend and our dog (Sicily was in the airport, she certainly wasnt allowed, but no one stopped her), and went home.

With all the timezone changes, our travel started on Monday, and went through Tuesday, and then went through most of Tuesday again. Totalling about 41 hours of travel time.

Glad to be home.

Venice of the East

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Woke up late, packed up and checked out at the last possible moment before the train to Suzhou.

We took the subway to the Shanghai Rail Station, and made our way to the ticket office. We stood in line, and some guy just stepped right in front of us, i guess queues dont matter here. We realize the next window over has an english speaking agent, but not enough, the first question we asked (when is the next train?) he just waved his hands and pointed us one over.

This lady was able to help us, she said the next train was 1316, it was 1247. Given how difficult wandering around the Beijing trainstation was, we elected to take the 1400 train. Unnecessary, this station was much smaller, and security was much quicker, we made the rounds checking the food options, settling on a fried chicken place. I had a wrap and laura had a sandwich, both were pretty good, I honestly cannot remember the last time i had KFC or Churches or Popeye’s so i have no reference for good fastfood chicken. I was satisfied with the 4USD we spent on lunch.

We boarded the train, and 25 minutes later disembarked in Suzhou.

Suzhou is not a small town ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzhou ) metro area is over 10 million people. And when we got out of the station, it was even more “stereotypical asia” than anywhere we have been so far. there were scooters everywhere, ignoring traffic lights, laws, and safety. It was crazy, we saw some pedestrians come within 2 feet of getting hit by a bus.

We got to our hotel, a Holiday Inn, and it is pretty good. we got a high floor room with a view of the city, and the room is enormous. by far the largest room we have had in asia, and probably the largest non-suite hotel room i have ever stayed in.

We did some research and rolled out for a sweet pork place.

Maps are terrible here, whatever mapping company that has the ok from the PRC to map this area really needs to get its shit together.

We headed to the location the internet claimed this restaurant was at. It required us to walk a good two miles, some of which down a rather dark road parallelling one of the canals (yeah Suzhou was described as The Venice of the East). We didnt feel unsafe, like we were at risk of being a victim of crime, just at risk of walking into the canal or getting hit by a scooter.

when the pork place was NOT on the map, we resolved to go back to a noodle place we walked past on the way.

We walked in, and clearly couldnt read the menu, we asked for the hostess/waitress/co-owners recommendation, and she wiped out an english map. I had a beef and noodles thing, and laura had a rice noodle and beef thing.

Both were excellent, there were little round things in mine, that laura said we mushrooms, i ate one, noted the deliciousness and gave one to her, then ate another, and realized there is no way mushrooms would taste like this; this is beef intestines. I happily ate the beef intestines, and noodles, laura ate her glass noodles, contented, we resolved to hit one of the pastry shops we saw on the way here.

We picked up some sweets, and headed the 2 miles back home.

I got a blueberry sweet bread, it was a sort of french toast bread, with blueberry jam inside, i will make every effort to eat this every day in Suzhou.

Full of spicy noodles and sweet breads, we went home to watch TV and go to sleep.

The Most Great, Victorious, Honorable, Progressive Peoples Republic of China

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Big activity for the day was attending the propaganda poster museum. This place was really neat, very much like the KGB museum in Prague, (see post from summer summer 2012).

It is in the basement of an apartment complex, luckily the security guys know that there is really no other reason a pair of Westerners would be here, so he handed us a business card with a lil map on it.

The place was set up in chronological order, starting with the anti-Japanese propaganda from the time Japan occupied China (wikilink here), and the Anti-Japanese War (which is what the modern communist chinese cal the period of 1937-1945, what we call the Second World War, and the Japanese call the Pacific War). The exhibit continues through to the Korean war era, the Cuban Missile Crisis, The Vietnam War, and more modern thawing of tensions with the US, and the commercial vitalization of the 1980s and 90s.

All of the posters had little cards with the english translation of major text, and a few placards around detailing what period these fall in. The end of the museum had older ads from the turn of the century, which was really cool. These ads were very cool because they predate the communists in China, and show how hard the West was pushing into China, specifically in Shanghai, all of these were for western products, some of them i recognized as in production today.

There were no pictures allowed so all i can do is link to their site. http://www.shanghaipropagandaart.com

I would recommend anyone in Shanghai visit this museum, especially if you have an interest in history/international relations/China/Communism/pop-art.

After this we were pretty hungry, and made a bad decsion, going to a shitty restaurant. They had honestly forgettable food, it took laura and i a few minutes to recall what it was. I had a beef and noodle dish, laura had a noodle soup, both were not that great.

Unsatisfied, we decided to try and find one of the pedestrian streets ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xintiandi ) we had been looking for before. We did ultimately find it, it wasnt as easy to find as the concierge made it seem. It was another very high-end shopping area, with neat restaurants that were very very expensive.

At this point we determined that Shanghai isnt for us. Its cool to visit, but it is a city of extremes. Either you go to ultra-swanky skyline bars and pay 25USD for a cocktail, and 55USD a plate at dinner, or you go to a basement restaurant where a couple can eat and drink for less than 10USD.

We certainly appreciate the inexpensive, but sometimes, we want a midgrade restaurant, a place where we get to sit on more than a stool under an umbrella, but less than a table with a special purse stool.

we did snipe the wifi at this mall to find a western style restaurant. It had prices much like prices we would pay in Chicago, I got a goat cheese torttellini, laura got a braised lamb shank, the lamb was all off the bone delicious, my tortellini was pretty good not spectacular, but pretty good. We also got desserts, two scoops of gelato, salted caramel, and baklava. The baklava tasted exactly like baklava, i dunno how they did it, but it was so accurate. the other desert we got was honey-ginger bread on a bed of poached pears. THIS was spectacular, the bread wa something i fully intend to emulate, so those of you reading this that have the occasion to meet me, look forward to eating my test-breads on this quest.

We also got a bottle of wine, this ent up being a 150USD dinner, mostly because laura messed up the math and that bottle of wine was 75USD, so it was expensive, but it was a very worthy meal.

Dont worry though, on the way home we picked up a <10usd bottle of wine from 7-11. It was chosen from the 7-11 Select Reserve, and was pretty good, way better than any quickmart wine has any right to be. so this helps to average our the wine spending...

We hopped a train, and unfortunately could not get all the way home, the subway shuts down relatvely early in Shanghai, so we had to walk the last 2 miles home.

When we got home we watched some TV and drank the wine. First we watched some Sumo with english announcers, which was pretty good, helping us understand what exactly was going on. I watched a 115kg guy go up against a 164kg guy, that is a 100lb diference, and he didnt lose immediately.

We also found a show that was basically “Japan why you do that?” It was a room of 50 non-Japanese people that posed explanations for why the Japanese do certain things, like not filling the coffee cup all the way, or why they sleep with their children for so late into their childs lives.

Watching this in China made it all the more bizzare.

We eventually fell asleep, for our last night in Shanghai.

Highs and Lows

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Another late start, I guess the downside of having a really nice hotel is how hard it is to leave.

We walked over to the French Concession area, once again looking for the cool shit our concierge recommended. This time, we found it. It does have some neat shops and restaurants and bars, though in no where near the density we were expecting. When someone says “this area has alot of bars” im thinking of a street where every other storefront is a bar, not each block has 1 or 2 bars on it. This is probably why we didnt find it last time, we did find it we just didnt know it.

We did stumble on a little museum. It was the house of Zhang Leping ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Leping ), who was a comic artist of China, who was used by the Chinese government to produce anti-Japanese propaganda, and later Communist propaganda. This was a free musuem, tucked away in a back street of this neighborhood, we found it purely by accident. It had a walk through of his life, and the works of his life. Upstairs in the house left as it was when he was alive.

After walking around a bit we settled on a beef noodles place.

This was one of the places where they hand pull the noodles, right in front of us. We could see the guy pulling the noodles from the dough before tossing it in the boiling water that would eventually be our meal. I had a noodle dish with a sort of tapenade of finely diced olives, beef, onions and other unidentifiable vegetables. Laura had a noodle soup with beef bits in it. In both dishes Chinese fivespice was prevelant. It was very tasty, proving once again that the hole in the wall places are good choices when over here. And all told our bill ammounted to less than 5USD.

After this we made our way to the Nanjing Shopping street looking for new shoes.

This requires some preface; In the Army i wore my issue boots all day every day, most evenings and weekends i never left the house, and thusly never needed shoes. The civilian shoes i had were some old beat up skate shoes that would not work for two months in Asia, nor look nice enough to sneak into nicer restaurants. So before leaving I hit up a few stores and settled on Saucony running shoes. It had good reviews on Amazon, and various other sites, and i figured running shoes should last for 2 months of heavy walking right? Runners will easily put on 10-12 miles a week, and they dont expect to be replacing shoes every other month. Apparently the same “runners” that reviewed these shoes as tough and durable are the people that wear yoga pants to the grovery store thinking they are "active".

Would these shoes stand up to the rigors of being a nurse walking around marbled floors all day? Or the lifestyle of an carpet bound office worker? yes

An actual runner? not at all.

Within the first 2 weeks, i had worn the primary grip from the soles away, and the memory foam in-sole part was pil-ing pretty bad, after 3 weeks the pil-ing turned into complete wear, the pad of my foot had pulled up most of the memory foam. Essentially at this point the pad of my foot was less than half an inch from the pavement.

The only thing good about these shoes i would like to point out, is they make acceptable climbing shoes, the lack of traction and significant insole meant i was able to boulder/climb the frozen Great Wall of China pretty well. So if you need some climbing shoes that arent climbing shoes, these work.

for 65USD I am very disappointed in these shoes.

Fortunately I am in the land of knockoffs and cheap shit, i found some “outdoor athletic shoes” from a Chinese brand ANTA that will survive at least the last 4 weeks of this trip.

After switching shoes we went to the Bund ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bund ) to see the city all lit up. The Bund is full of western style buildings, this is where all the western countries that “opened up” china set up their trading houses. accross the river from here is the new Shanghai, the part with all the super high ultra modern buildings. these buildings and 1800 put on a sort of light show that is pretty neat. after seeing the light show we intended to catch a river tour. The ticket agents werent very helpful, and observing the boats, it looked like a very limited tour, we decided to walk around.

after feeling confident we saw all there was to see on this side of the river, we hopped a subway to go to the new Shanghai and try to see the city from a high vantage point.

Our concierge recommended the Park Hyatt Bar, as it is the highest bar in the city, providing great views. Unfortunately this is a VERY swanky place, and two people wearing multi-purpose wind breakers, with scarves, wearing clothes packed in a backpack for a 9 week trip, are not the normal clientele. While waiting for the elevator we had some unreasonably snooty people throw shade at us.

getting to the top we realized we were underdressed for the venue, though in all honesty, that lady was being unnecessarily cunt-y, for all she knew we could be Silicon Valley CEOs that just put up an IPO for 5mil and were bout to buy rounds for the bar. We got out of there most ricky-tick and wandered around a park, and various above ground walkways taking in the view before heading home to go to bed.

A Scale Model of the entire city? yes please

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Without any concrete plans we slept in a little bit, laura woke up and researched activities for the day.

On our way out of the hotel we spoke to the concierge, and he hooked us up with a map, and his personal notes on things to see, and things to avoid.

We went down the street to a popular dumpling place. They were only making 3 types of dumplings that day. Pork and Egg yoke, Pure Crab, and a Crab Roe dumpling. We went with the pork, and a beer. It was very very good, and again very inexpensive, a dozen pork dumplings, and a 600ml beer for 33CNY.

We then headed to the Shanghai Urban Planning Musuem. This museum was built in preperation for the 2010 World Expo ( wikilink) and was updated in 2014, so it was very up to date. The first section was an overview of the river, and all the of the things built up around it. The next part was a history of the city, going back to early days of the area when it was just an agricultural county within the chinese empire, through the colonial period when the West opened up the city, to the modern ultra-modern megalopolis of today.

It had a 1:500 scale of the main city on one floor that was spectacular. I love scale models of things, so this walk around model was awesome.

The next section was the pre-human history of Shanghai, talking about the geological processes that gave the city its current landscape. Another section covered transportation, the growth of the metro, and proliferation of buses, traffic control and infrastructure development. And then the last section discussed the plans and current projects in Shanghai.

It was a very good musuem, informational, and visual, there was alot of stuff to read, and even more to look at. Our inability to read Mandarin did not limit our experience in any appreciable way.

We then wandered through parts of the French Concession (remember when i said the West opened up Shanghai )
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_French_Concession

We spotted the US Consulate, not as overt security as i would have expected, but certainly not a friendly welcoming place.

This whole neighborhood has been taken over by foreigners for 150 years, and it was apparant in the architecture and some of the businesses, to include hooters.

pic here

We hopped the metro back to our neighnborhood to research what to do for dinner, and was once againt almost mildly kidnapped.

As we exited the train station a young couple asked if we could take their picture, we obliged, they then engaged us, asking where we were from, and complimenting our English (i think it is wierd that they will ask us where we are from, and when we say the US, they compliment our english, buddy, thats the language spoken here, i dont compliment your Mandarin when you speak to me). They asked us where we were going, and what else we had seen. At first they seemed just really friendly, i was immediately suspicious, cause no one in the world is that friendly, but then they started talking about how they were planning on going to a tea house, and invited us to come with them. We were friendly and cordial, I wanted to see how much of their time we could waste without putting ourselves in danger. Ultimately the engagement lasted at least 5 minutes, only for them to walk away empty handed, and us with a good story.

We then made our way to dinner, a noodle place. I got a dry noodle dish, and laura got a tomato-sauce, and beef rib dish. My food was great, the noodles were tossed in a vegetable oil, and had a side of that same green relish that we have been unable to identify, and lauras beef was delicious, the soup the noodles were in was just ok. satsfied with dinner, we walked back through the market area we navigated to get here,

this place had meat, im guessing halal, because there were alot of lambs and no pigs.

I

it was interesting, not that i have any way to cook these things, but the meat looked good. One of the shops had little puppies that were eating scraps, and presumably keep the vermin away, laura was very excited.

We stopped at a grocery store to snag some sweets, and bought some bananas at a fruit vendor down the street.

We went home for an early night, so we can start the next day a little early.

Knock off highspeed trains, and GDP buffs

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Packed our bags to say goodbye to Beijing. The subway got us to the train station, it is near the airport, so it was the reverse of our journey a few days before.

The Beijing train station is huge, easily the size of a midsize US airport. There were at least 24 tracks, and the tracks were 2-3 levels above ground.

The engineering that went into this place was pretty astounding.

We got some pastry snacks for the train ride in the station, we noticed the fresh made stuff is DRASTICALLY less expensive than pre-packaged, the pastries were between 6-12CNY, but when you went accross the way to the packaged snacks area suddenly you were paying 28CNY for the mass-market version.

When going through security we showed our ticket to the guard, asking where to go, and he pointed up. We went up, walked around, and went back down thinking we were supposed to go around a certain point. unfortunately going down meant we left the secure area, so we went back through, and the guards laughed a little.

We eventually found our train, and our seat. These high speed trains are pretty great, definately on par with the high speed trains of Japan. The train, and line was designed to handle 380km/hr, but they decided 300km/h was fast enough, and actually more efficient. It is over 750 miles, and took about 6 hours. There were attendants walking around with snacks, as well as trays of food for purchase. There were toilets, trash, and a hot water dispenser in every car.

It was pretty swanky, we got the 2nd class tickets and the seats were slightly larger than US domestic flights, and all the other passengers were normal people, some kids, but no tantrums or crying children it was an easy trip.

The views outside were pretty interesting. Much of the route looked alot like middle america, big flat areas, with farmland as far as you can see in either direction. But unlike middle america, threa are random assortments of monstrously large apartment buildings sprouting out of no where. And I mean middle of no where, its like, if Manhattan, KS or Baraboo WI had 5, Fifteen Story apartment buildings in it. These tiny towns didnt appear to have enough jobs to support the 10,000 people that would be living in these complexes. On top of that, it appeared as though many of them were empty, entire buildings with no lights on, no shades down, no laundry hangng. It was eerie.

The Shanghai station is a little out of town so we didnt really see much on the way in via subway. When we popped up out of the subway near our hotel, we saw that Shanghai is indeed a modern metropolis. We got to our hotel, and we were greeted with a cup of tea. They also saw that i left a note in the hotels.com remarks section, asking for a high floor, so they gave us a room on the top floor.

This place is pretty great, here is the view from our room.

We did some research, and found a Szechuan place. This place had a similar menu to the Grandmas place, a big book with pictures, and a checksheet you order on. We had crushed spicy cucumber again, a dish of noodles, a basket of fried mushrooms, and a pork dish on a bed of pumpkin and millet. It was all pretty good, The pork meal was very interesting, the pumpkin calmed alot of the heat that is inherent in Szechuan food.

We wandered home and I passed out very quickly, while laura watched whatever was on HBO.