East Coast of Taiwan, 21 Feb, 2007
I walk a mile with a smile.
I don't know I don't care where I am,
But I know it's all right.
Jump the tracks, can't get back.
I don't know anyone round here,
But I'm safe this time.
February 20, 2008
October 12, 2007
I Love Los Angeles
August 20, 2007
Beijing again, Vancouver again
After an uneventful return to Beijing (although I did have to see Hero 英雄 on a plane again), I rested for a day, didn't do anything and got ready to head back to Seattle via Vancouver.
Monday night, I was leaving dinner and got in a taxi where the driver didn't know how to operate a stick-shift. He appeared to be covering a shift for someone who knew how to drive a taxi properly. As we headed toward the 3rd Ring Road going 30km/h in 3rd gear, I realized that this would not do... and got in another one.
The next morning, I was taking a taxi (again - my life in Asia seems to be short periods of living interrupted by long rides in taxis, but I love it), and we got stuck in traffic 2 Km from the airport entrance. After about ten minutes of driving on the shoulder, I saw a five-car pileup in the left lane; three taxis and two passenger cars had collided.
Upon arriving at the airport, I saw a Turkmenistan Airlines jet readying for departure. Sadly, I couldn't get a photo of it.
Checking in at PEK is bizarre. Going into the Int'l Departures area, you first fill out a customs form, pass customs officers, then go to the ticketing hall to check in. If you're flying a major carrier, you have to search through many rows of check-in desks to figure out where your flight (and class of service) is checking in. After checking in, you then head through Immigation control, then security and presto, you're in the terminal.
My flight left on time and was pretty uneventful.
PEK airport logo
Beer left in the airport
Waiting in the airport...
PEK has a lot of cargo traffic across Asia
Air China tails
Yanjing Beer
Duck for dinner? Only on Air China!
Air China did show the worst movie I'd seen in a while - The Astronaut Farmer, a ridiculous, badly done story about a former astronaut who builds his own spacecraft in rural Texas. Say what?!
Beijing again, Vancouver again
After an uneventful return to Beijing (although I did have to see Hero 英雄 on a plane again), I rested for a day, didn't do anything and got ready to head back to Seattle via Vancouver.
Monday night, I was leaving dinner and got in a taxi where the driver didn't know how to operate a stick-shift. He appeared to be covering a shift for someone who knew how to drive a taxi properly. As we headed toward the 3rd Ring Road going 30km/h in 3rd gear, I realized that this would not do... and got in another one.
The next morning, I was taking a taxi (again - my life in Asia seems to be short periods of living interrupted by long rides in taxis, but I love it), and we got stuck in traffic 2 Km from the airport entrance. After about ten minutes of driving on the shoulder, I saw a five-car pileup in the left lane; three taxis and two passenger cars had collided.
Upon arriving at the airport, I saw a Turkmenistan Airlines jet readying for departure. Sadly, I couldn't get a photo of it.
Checking in at PEK is bizarre. Going into the Int'l Departures area, you first fill out a customs form, pass customs officers, then go to the ticketing hall to check in. If you're flying a major carrier, you have to search through many rows of check-in desks to figure out where your flight (and class of service) is checking in. After checking in, you then head through Immigation control, then security and presto, you're in the terminal.
My flight left on time and was pretty uneventful.
PEK airport logo
Beer left in the airport
Waiting in the airport...
PEK has a lot of cargo traffic across Asia
Air China tails
Yanjing Beer
Duck for dinner? Only on Air China!
Air China did show the worst movie I'd seen in a while - The Astronaut Farmer, a ridiculous, badly done story about a former astronaut who builds his own spacecraft in rural Texas. Say what?!
August 18, 2007
Typhoons and Hong Kong
Because Typhoon Pabuk decided to hit Hong Kong, I was stuck laying low in Tsim Sha Tsui over the weekend. Most things were closed, and it was really rainy. I was there mostly to get a new visa for the mainland, which I'd heard was easy to do in HK. Wrong. Previously, I had obtained my visa in New York at the PRC consulate there. I had asked for a multiple-entry visa, but they said that because I was studying in the mainland, I couldn't get one. Annoying, for sure. Cost of my same-day student visa? $80 USD.
So, after going to HK and Taiwan, I had to get a new 30-day tourist visa in HK. Usually these are around $800 HKD ($102 USD) for a one-day processing time. That's what it was in November, when I checked. Imagine my shock and horror when I found that a same-day tourist visa is now $1430 HKD (182 USD)! What a ripoff! I could have gotten the same document for $80 in the US. What a hassle!
That big chunk of money ate up most of my budget for my weekend in HK. While it is an expensive city to live in, eating local food and riding public transit to go take photographs (which is what I like doing there anyway) is super-cheap. But, because of the typhoon, this was largely scrapped, as many restaurants and most public transportation was severely disrupted. I did get to watch some fun tv, though.
After the typhoon, the buildings were postively luminescent. It was crazy light, but I loved it
Looking across the harbour
Entertainingly (and with great timing), the cheeziest competition in town, Mr. Hong Kong 2007, was on tv during the typhoon. I love the expression on the judges here.
Flying Out
Flying out of Taiwan Taoyuan International Aiport for Hong Kong...
The old Terminal One, captured in a wide-angle lens. It's modelled after Dulles International Airport in DC.
Good Morning, China Airlines! Lots of big planes ready for a busy day of flying...I love airports in the morning. The light is great and there's this newness in the air...
My reflection in the airshow display, showing me clearly over the Taiwan strait.
Flying through a typhoon, we were at 38,000 feet and still in clouds. It was crazy, and bumpy.
But I still got my "Oriental" vegetarian meal [1]
[1] I'm not a vegetarian, but I think meat doesn't travel well on airplanes, especially long-haul flights. It just gets gross at the end. I'll soon blog my encounters with duck on an airplane flight. Yuck.
Tainan Photos
Some random photos I took around Tainan.
Not paying enough train fare, due to a mistake I made, I needed to make a fare adjustment
This sign rocks.
Have you had your morning boob cow?
This one's actually Taoyuan, but no one needs to know that. :-P
Gaoxiong Dream Mall
I had a dream about this mall in Gaoxiong (Kaohsiung). I also had a dream I got my university diploma delivered to my house, but it was wrapped in plastic, like a newspaper and I found it on my front lawn. needless to say, it was the best dream I've had all year. The feeling I had when I woke up was crushing.
August 16, 2007
Xi'an, or the Airport that Wouldn't Let Go
I have put this off for too long... but I need to tell the story of my experience at the Xi'an Airport.
I arrived plenty early for my 9.45a flight to Guangzhou and checked in. I cleared security with no problems and sat, waiting for my flight to board. At 9.35a, an announcement was made: my flight was now delayed until 2 o'clock!
I had been making all of these snotty jokes inside my head about how China Eastern flights are ALWAYS late. It's kind of true. Go to any airport that has MU flights and you'll soon see that their flights are the ones that are massively delayed everywhere. At Xi'an, the announcements were even better - "MU flight blah blah blah to Bayjin (sic) is delayed due to airline." Ain't that the truth. It was also rather odd that the announcements, clearly done by a native Mandarin speaker and non-native English speaker pronounced Beijing in a way I've never heard. Only when I heard the announcement in Japanese did I get it.
That'll teach me to make jokes at other's expense! Seriously!
After an hour, and some discussion with the non-English speaking staff, I decided to wait for my flight. Around 10.30, a man rounded us up and told us we were going to a hotel as the flight was now delayed until tomorrow... or whenever.
Since I had confirmed reservations on China Airlines from Hong Kong that evening, it was imperative that I get to Guangzhou as early in the day. I made my way out to the ticket counter and worked my way into the throng of people. At the front of the clump, a man was yelling at a ticketing agent, and not getting much response from her. In frustration, he grabbed a stack of plastic cards off of the desk and threw them at her. Unphased, she kept typing away. A woman on my other side was screaming at full volume into my ear about her ticket. No one was helping her either. After a few minutes of this, I turned to the screaming woman and told her to "shut up! No one is listening to you!" She got quiet. I turned back and realized that everyone was staring at me.
I walked away and decided to go to the bathroom for a few minutes and wait for things to calm down.
After a bit, I was able to change my ticket to another airline (by getting one ticket refunded in cash and passing the cash to the next ticket clerk) and paid 300RMB more to go to Shenzhen, a few miles south of Guangzhou, instead.
My noon flight to Shenzhen left on time and was quite pleasant. There's a reason why they call China Southern the best-run airline in China.
On the plane, however, I was seated next to a stinky 80 year-old grandfather who had never been on a plane before. He didn't speak Mandarin or Cantonese. He was very much out of place. I had to put his seatbelt on for him after he tried to buckle it backwards... it was bizarre.
Shenzhen, city of Whores and Thieves, was pretty. Good weather had left the Pearl River Delta with a lot of clear skies and I was shocked, after being in Beijing and Xi'an, at how blue the sky could be. I really felt like things were looking up for me. But, alas, how wrong was I...
August 05, 2007
Xi'an
Bell tower.
August 03, 2007
To Xi'an, or the Train that Wouldn't Go
I left Sunday night on my way to Xi'an. It was quite the trip.
A few days previously, I had booked myself a train ticket on the nicest train and a lower berth, for 767 RMB. I arrived about an hour and a half early at the unbelievably massive Beijing West Railway station, a new structure that is already falling apart (Bangkok airport, anyone?). After getting my bags x-rayed and passing through a metal detector, I entered a massive waiting hall full of people busily passing into the station. For 8 o'clock on a Sunday evening, it was quite busy.
I waited for the train in a crowded waiting room with Rielly, my BFA roommate, and we shared a few beers as we waited (it's often cheaper than water). After a while, my train was called, and he came down with me. The train was nice, relatively new, and my "Deluxe Soft Sleeper" compartment came with an overstuffed chair, a table, two berths and a small airplane-style bathroom. I got settled in and a few minutes later, my roommate, a businessman from Xi'an arrived.
The train left on time and I heard an announcement that dinner was ready to be served. In the dining car, there were quite a few German and Dutch tourists and a few locals. The only dish anyone seemed to be eating was pork and vegetables with a steamed bun. As the fuwuyuan sat across from me and asked "what do you want?", I pointed and said "that looks good."
A few minutes later, I had a not-terrible dinner (actually better than almost anything I ate in Beijing) and read Newsweek for a while. I sidled off to my compartment and relaxed on my bed. There was a tv, but of the 5 or 6 channels, none of them showed anything remotely interesting and they looked like they repeated endlessly anyway.
At this point, the train had stopped at a station called Baoding. I fell asleep. Later, I woke up at 3.45a as the train started moving again. The next morning, I awoke at 8 a.m., and found that we were passing through the city of Shijiazhuang, which is only about 180 miles from Beijing. In 11 hours, we'd gone very little distance!
Throughout the morning, the delay got longer and longer. The train was going to arrive at 1 p.m. I would have time to go see the stone warriors - my only reason for visiting Xi'an. Then, it would arrive at two. After another long delay, the train ran out of food. Around one o'clock, they announced that the train would be arriving at five. A Dutch package tourist next to me started crying. Like me, it was her group's only day in Xi'an.
After a while, the train stopped again. This time, workers started running around and brought on more food - and more beer (it gave me and the Europeans something to do). We finally arrived in Xi'an at 5 o'clock, victims of the worst flooding (supposedly) that China has had in ten years.
While in the taxi queue at the Xi'an train station, an old woman with no left arm and a stumpy right arm came up to me. I was pretty frazzled anyway, and when she took her stumpy bare arm and rubbed it against my arm quite forcefully and asked "muunnnnnnaaaaayy... muunnnnnaaaaayyyy...." it was all I could do to not scream and freak out completely.
On the upside, my hotel was nice. I had picked it because it was a bit silly-sounding. They had replicas of the famous tourist attractions around Xi'an somewhere in the hotel. If you didn't have time to go sightseeing, at least you could experience Xi'an's attractions. Originally, I thought that was kind of funny, and well, very Chinese. Later, I realized how useful it could be.
... TO BE CONTINUED in Part 2 - Exit from Xi'an, or The Airport That Wouldn't Let Go
July 28, 2007
big travel
I'll be travelling around greater China the next two weeks:
7-29 Train to Xi'an 火車... 在西安
7-30 around Xi'an 西安
7-31 Xi'an - Guangzhou - Hong Kong - Taipei (HK to TPE on China Airlines, no less...) 西安. 廣州. 香港. 台北... 在中華航空. 我愛中華航空... ha
7-31 - 8-10 Taiwan (all around) 在台灣
8-10 Taipei - HK 台北 - 香港
8-10 - 8-12 HK 在香港
8-12 - 8- 14 Guangzhou 在廣州
8-14 Guangzhou - Beijing - Vancouver - Seattle 廣州 -北京- 溫哥華 - 西雅圖
If you're in any of those cities and want to catch up, let me know!
Edit: Added some Chinese in there, since some of my friends are lovely, but a bit retarted ;-)