Inside Beijing Pt1

October 25-October 27, WED-FRI.

Shamik and I and our boy Mao Zedong

Elisa and I arrived a day earlier than the others, on Wednesday, although to some degree, the day was a bust with regard to sightseeing. We touched base with Miss Chay in the evening at RBL, which sits on the location of an outhouse that used to supply the forbidden city with ice. The next day was also something of a bust... as I slept in really really late, and only managed to wander around Qianmen looking for a Peking duck restaurant... no luck there.



Areas of note in Beijing: Tiananmen square (天安門) is centrally located in Beijing, in fact the entire city is oriented about the Forbidden city. It houses the Monument of the People, Mao's Masoleum, and adjacent to it are the People's Congress, a mueseum, Qianmen, and the entrance to the Forbidden City. That being said, the area appears very different between night and day:



1. In the morning, towards the Congress

2. Zhengyangmen 正揚門 gate at dusk

3. Qianmen 前門 archery tower near dusk.

4. Kite Hawkers in the square at night

The traffic around the square has been dramatically altered, and tourists and locals alike are steered out (somewhat forcibly, as large police vans speed towards you and direct you with no uncertain terms towards the exits of the square) around 8 PM. I would surmise that it is to avoid situations like this:



One complaint of significant note:

Chinese from all over China line up in the morning to view Mao's pickled body in Mao's Masoleum, shuffling past it quickly in regimented lines. No photographs are allowed.

That is, unless you are a foreign VIP. The guys and I got in line with the peasants and proletariants to shuffle on through, and while we waited, we saw a group of white westerners quickly sent up towards the Masoleum, bypassing all queues. Moreover, by the time we got to the body itself, the line splits. Everyone heads left. Unless you are of course a VIP, in which case you can stand there all you want and zap photos.

While I'm not a big fan of Mao, the Cultural Revolution, Great Leap Forward and Communist Revolution in general all seem like very bad ideas to me, I must say that Mao likely insisted on class equality, and this reeks of modern imperialism to me. 2cents.

Forbidden City: Not many pics from here, I got lazy and started taking video, Eventually it'll all make its way to the nets.


1. the View from Tiananmen Gate to the sqare

2. With Amanda in front of the gate. There is a bullethole in one of those lions, no joke.

3. Busting out the AZN in the Forbidden City. woohoo!

Outside of Beijing

Breaking the Beijing trip into chunks to make it a little more digestible:

OCT 28th, Saturday
The crew booked a small tour van through Panda Tours, to take us to the Summer Palace and the Great wall at Si1Ma3Tai2 司馬臺

The Summer Palace 頤和園, is located to the northwest of Beijing, and is the palace of the Ming and Qing emperors for summer administration, when Beijing become unbearably hot, they would retreat to their enclave.


The Place was georgeous, and we lucked out on the weather (it cleared up that day, it had been quite hazy/cloudy for the last few days were were in Beijing). It was absolutely crawling with tourists, but it was amazing to marvel and think about how this place must have been ~500-600 years ago. It one of the UNESCO world heritage sites... and it makes sense.

For more about it.. Wiki

The Great Wall:

It was a 3 hour drive to Simatai, winding through some of the windy roads on up to the area. It took quite a while, but it was worth it:

We got there and started climbing up this incline:

It was about comparable to a hike in the Gorge (columbia river gorge)



A few more shots of the distant wall...

and shots in the opposite direction:



If you're very discerning, you can see a zipline platform in this below picture, we took it to get across the valley quickly, it was kind of a rush. and only 35 RMB (4.50 USD!)


For more, see Flickr.

Saikung Seafoods

October 18th, Dinner in Saikung with the usual suspects. Food was good, and not too expensive. Score!

Kuala Lumpur Day 2

(Saturday, October 14th)

We kicked the day off a little late, but we headed to the Petronas towers in the morning to get our skybridge tickets. There were a lot of people there. We were booked for 1:50. We decided we needed to do things to pass the time:

• Batu Caves
• KL Tower
• Lunch

The caves were located outside of KL, and they were originally the sites of the local hindu temple. There were several indians there, as well as necessities for their community (showers, bathrooms, etc). The shrine exists at the top of several steps, as seen in the pictures, and contained bats and monkeys living in harmony. The critters were quite friendly and very active. The walk up was also somewhat tiring... but it could've been a lot worse.

The monkeys were friendly... but not very smart. For more (and video) check my xanga.

moving on.



KL Tower:
Slightly taller in absolute terms than the petronas due to the fact that it is situated on a hill, KL tower is actually a communication tower. Sadly, due to the burning of the day, all we could really see was haze...

Then.. we went to lunch. back to the petronas.



Petronas Towers
The petronas towers have a skybridge linking them that is available to tourists as a little city skyline diversion. (See the abovemost picture) It does however, lead to some nice pictures of the city.


We went to Petrosains... a muesuem, as well. It reminded me of OMSI. Petronas is Malaysia's national petroleum company. Petrol and nat.gas are ridiculously cheap. A full tank of petrol is ~25 ringetts (about 6 USD) and a full tank of nat gas is about 8 ringetts (2 USD)

We grabbed dinner and enjoyed a cultural show, although we arrived somewhat at the tail end (mistake) And went out at night clubbing in Asian heritage row (cynna, the loft KL, etc.). It was pretty slick. It was completely chinese dominated. The girls were prettier than the ones in Hong Kong.


close.

Kuala Lumpur, day 1

(October 13th, Friday) After a hard night out (especially for Kathleen) Ro and I rolled to the airport and headed out for Kuala Lumpur and a weekend in the city whose name means 'muddy estuary'. Later we were to be joined by Elisa, Kathleen, and Shamik, but the first day was largely on our own.

General thoughts about Kuala Lumpur: fascinating city, definitely an up-and-coming. English speaking ability of the locals is fairly strong (residual effects of British colonialism, as well as a sizable Indian population). The ethnic and religious breakdown of the city/country are crazy as well. Kuala Lumpur, like many larger malaysian cities, has a slight Chinese majority, with Malays close behind, and Indians bringing in the rear. The country as a whole of course, is more Malay, but I know for a fact that Chinese constitute something like 1/3 of the population.

This leads to some interestingness - there is no doubt that the populace is multicultural, but the individual communities are large enough that they do not have to assimilate into eachother. To complicate this dimension, there are reglious considerations as well - Muslim, Hindu, traditional Chinese, and some Christians (british colony, etc). In any case, if I had more time, I'd love to have explored more.


After arriving, Ro and I ran right into the travelers' bane - hustlers and conmen. We thought we were smart; we had printed out a guide about how not to get cheated getting a taxi to town. We were wrong. Despite holding that guide in that hands as we bartered, we found out later that despite figuring that paying a slight (20 nett~5.25 USD premium) over the usually 70nett ride was reasonable to keep things sheriff, that we were doubly cheated by our driver.

About 5 minutes into our ride (the city is about 1 hr from the airport) the 'luxury taxi' driver told us to get out and hop into the budget cabs on the side of the ride, telling us that everything had been paid for and arranged. We were creeped out at first since he stopped on the side of the road and starts conversing with 4 large men (apparently bartering off our contract). We were scared that the men would approach, beat the shit out of us, steal our passports, money, and then urinate on us for good measure.

Anyways, we took the budget cab into the city thinking that everything was ok. But when we got to the hotel and started to walk into its sliding doors, the budget taxi driver was like 'yo, pay me'. We got into an argument, but fortunately we had gotten a reciept at the booking service's desk. After getting pretty irritated, we decided not to dick over the budget taxi driver (apparently he'd paid the luxury taxi driver 30nett to take us into the city on the assurance that he'd be paid 80nett by us) and paid him his 80nett, deciding to take it up with the counter when we went back to the airport on sunday. (I'm happy to report that after making a ruckus, they gave us our money back, disavowed all knowledge of the dishonest activities of the luxury taxi driver they commissioned and promised to fire him)

After that headache, we met up with Boris and his friend Eugene. Boris and Ro know eachother from Beta at Penn. We went out for dinner in Bukit Bintang (something of a tourist district) and then to a bar.


The story gets good here. If you're interested... let me know. But its not meant for public consumption.



More to come on our next 2 days of exploration.


All in all, the trip was pretty slick.

Hiking to Tai Long Wan

(October 8th, Sun.)Rohit, Shamik, and I decided to take a trek out to the New territories and tackle the hike to Tai Long Wan. Having heard that its beach is pretty incredible, and looking for a small challenge for the afternoon, we grabbed some Thai lunch in Sai Kung proper and then flagged down a taxi to take us to Sai Wan Ting, which was the start off point.



The hike started off pretty gentle, with a nice view of the east bay and river with some small islands.



However, the pace picked up, and the tail end was a pretty steep climb and descent, up and down. In all, one way it was 1 hr directly to the beach, although there were a good number of sub-trails, and an alternate path back. Since we left in the afternoon, we decided not to take the subtrails, since they could be 1-2 hrs each way on their own.

A complete panorama of the initial hike, stitched together from 4 frames via Photoshop.


We found these curious looking little egg type things on the beach (which by the way, was pleasant, but the day was a little grungy, so we didn't play in the water). We figured they might be related to this little crunchy critter who was scurrying among them.



On the way back, we ran into this character:

I picked up a dead butterfly on the ground and threw it into the spider's web, and we watched our own pet Charlotte destroy it.


To wrap things up, we went back to Sai Kung to grab dinner. We had Indian food, which I'm quickly starting to appreciate much more. We also came upon this gem:



Yeah, we're juvenile.

From 2 weeks ago..

Continued from last week...

(Sept 26th, Tuesday) I'm not very good at getting pics with my paternal cousins... but here is my final maternal cousin. Frank Yu. Hong Kong is the first time we've run into eachother in a LONG time. After a bit of chatting at Hong Kong Brewery, and saying goodbye (he had to get up early the next day for a meeting) we headed to Dragon-I, a fairly posh looking night/social club up at the crest of LKF. A good time was had by all. Tuesday!


(Sept. 28th, Thurs) In commeration of a one ms. Ashley Chay being in town, we headed up to SoHo and went to the Peak Cafe. Food was a so-so international fusion (nothing out of this world), decent ambiance, prices acceptable for a SoHo location. After this we skated into a place called 'Bohemian Lounge', where we found a hookah and some live jazz. It was very good. I forsee this place becoming a more common haunt... especially on nights with live music. They played us some 'girl from ipanema' and 'summer samba' no problem. After this we skated around town. Hit up a too crowded bar called Yumla, and a nice little club called 'Pi' and D'Apartment. We ran into my roomate and his pals and took over the bar.

We drank way too much outside the 7-11 afterwards...

(Sept 29th, Friday) The weekend continued with another dinner out with Miss Chay, this time at Lumiere, a restaurant located in the IFC. The style of the place is Sichuan/S.American fusion. It was delicious. and it was tres expensive. Another live musician was there, and he was quite fabulous and extremely friendly. Hey guys.. if you ever need an entertainer for a bash back home, I got his card. He was just perpetually thrilled to be alive.


Cheers!

Despite its 100USD pricetag, the bottle of Veuve failed to impart a slight buzz, not even from drinking liquid gold.

Finally, Mr. Howard McCrary. Talented pianist, singer of American jazz and lounge classics, and even capable of Mandarin! Since our table of young'uns (we were the youngest in the restaurant by far, closet to us was a table of young bankers or something, everyone else was late 20's to 50's and rolling in the dough) was worshipful of him and rapt in attention, we got a few songs dedicated to us.

Earlier that Night, Ro and eye grabbed a few restaurant books. After Lumiere, we've dedicated ourselves to 'Hong Kong's Cheap Eats' :) It's been fun, and the cause of many other adventures.

(Oct 1st, National Day, Sunday) Hong Kong doesn't go as all out as Mainland China in their celebration of the great commie revolution, but there is one night of tremendous fireworks in Victoria Harbor. Going with Ro and Shamik to some of the cheap eateries on 'Hau Fook Street' in TST (just off Carnavaron), we happened to be in town when the booms started. We were unable to get primetime seats, but it still a pretty big deal.


A shot of Victoria Harbor on a normal night.


Till next time... I still got a week to catch up!