Shanghai: The Mouth of the Dragon!

A new Post! it always seems like so much time passes between these things, I guess it has been about a week. Well when we last left you we were huddled in an internet cafe in shanghai, hiding from the rain. At that particular moment, our outlook on Shanghai as a city and China as a nation was probably at its nadir. Shanghai is no Tokyo. It is, as an architect we met in Japan put it, a "megacity that doesn't work". This is apparent the moment you first try to cross a street. Traffic laws are non-existent, and motorcycles frequently rip down the sidewalks, laying on the horn, rather than braking, when encountering pedestrians. This, needless to say, took some getting used to. I think that to a couple of kids raised in Western Canada, where cars stop if you look like you might be considering crossing the street, Shanghai is a little unnerving. It really does seem as if the drivers are trying to kill you. I'm happy to say, however, that we really did get used to it after a while, and with time learned to negotiate the traffic, panhandlers, scammers (more on them later) and more honest street peddlers, which allowed us to take in a few of the impressive sights Shanghai had to offer.




Shanghai's 'Old Town' Or the part which remained largely Chinese during the years of European occupation. We found this while walking around in a daze on our first night in town, we were sufficiently impressed.









The Bund: former center of the European occupation, now sight of Dolce and Gabbanna outlets and chic restraunts, also, fairly pretty.






This is Pudong area, across the Huangpu River from the Bund. Notable things, the bizarre 'pearl' tower on the left, (there are more spheres obscured on the top), the fact that all the tops of the buildings are obscured by ever present smog, and the fact that in 1990, that entire area was nothing but a broad marsh with a couple of farms scattered sporadically on the outskirts.

The amount that has been built in Shanghai in the last twenty years is truly incredible, its no wonder nothing works properly, the city's primary concern is constant expansion. An impressive endeavour, but leads to some hit-or-miss concepts. For example, the 'Bund sightseeing tunnel' which visitors can take in lieu of a subway ride between the Bund and Pudong.




It was actually kind of fun, but really not much of a tourist attraction. The locals in the tram with us seemed unimpressed, we think they were just using it as an uncrowded alternative to the regular subway. Not that anyone could blame them for avoiding the Subway. Despite the fact that the Shanghai Metro really is the best way to get around the city (no one trying to run you down!) The crowds can get a little intense, and North American mores for proper subway etiquette don't seem to have jumped overseas, as soon as the doors open at a stop, the crowd at the platform pushes there way in to the train, which doesn't help the equally large crowd trying to leave the train simultaneously. This often creates a 'three stooges' effect wherein people are jammed in the doorway for a few minutes until the shoving resolves.


SHanghai offered some historic sights as well, from the summer palace gardens of a song dynasty emperor, to a buddhist monastery chock full of jade sculptures.







So Shanghai turned out to have some very interesting sights to offer. We also stopped at the Shanghai museum, which has been hailed as a revolution in Chinese Museums, we both found it a bit drab to be honest. There was very little exposition of any of the items on display, and we found it hard to appreciate much of it without context. The Museum sits in Renmin Square, which is supposed to be sort of the beating heart of Shanghai. Sure enough, there certainly seemed to be a lot of Chinese tourists there. We were approached three seperate times by students 'from out of town' who, after a brief, friendly chat in broken english, offered to bring us to any number of special 'cultural events' from a tea festival to an acrobatics show. You may have gathered from my extensive use of quotation marks that these 'students' were not entirely on the level. We, being the distrusting, antisocial beings that we are, turned down all the offers and proceeded to a local vegetarian restaurant (more on that later.) We would later run into a couple of travelers who had taken an offer to head to a tea festival. Six cups of tea and 500 yuan later, they realized their mistake.

Our final day in Shanghai was intended to be a day long jaunt out into an old restored fishing town on the outskirts of the city, followed by a (parentally funded) drink at the exclusive M Bar on the Bund. These plans, however, were sent awry by our decision to eat at an amazing vegetarian restaurant the night before. The restaurant, 'Godly Vegetarian Restaurant' specializes in simulating meat dishes with all vege ingredients. The food was delicious and plentiful (and cheap!) and the decor was an elegant recreation of an outdoor buddhist garden made from marble and wooden pagodas. The restaurant was such a steal that they even included in the price a small additive that wasn't on the menu, a small virus that caused Tom to regularly vomit for the next 24 hours. That, dear readers, is Shanghai in a nutshell.

There is much more to tell, we could probably right another post on the people of Shanghai alone, and we've already been in beautiful Hangzhou for several days, but Kat is already asleep on the couch and Tom is fading fast, so that will be saved for tomorrow night.


Hope everyone is well,
Tom and Kat.

Oh man, we're in China!

Hmm, it's been a crazy few days since our last post. We're in a little Chinese internet cafe in Shaghai right now, without the proper equipment to post pictures, so here's a little text-only update.

Some of the memorable events since then have been going to a "Humongous Pot of Soup" (aprox. 10 m high and 3 m wide. A crane lifted the lid off, and the spoons they stirred it with were basically boat oars.) festival in the tiny town of Yamagata. I guess it's an annual thing, community festivals seem to be a big thing in more rural areas of Japan. Being the only non-locals there, we were honored guests and even got free bowls of the stuff, although what was in it was anybody's guess. Tom ate it, I opted for a candy apple.

After a few days as guests in the tiny house of Kat's sister Tina, and going to huge rec centers, where you can basically rent out a living room, and have free drinks and massage chairs, we were off again.

We took the overnight bus from Tokyo to Kyoto, which was where Tom celebrated his birthday. Woo, bus birthday! It was a double-decker, and we were on the top which was pretty cool, and thanks to a little rum, the ride wasn't too bad. It's a lot harder to sleep on a bus than you would expect though, so we arrived in Kyoto at about 6 am and exhausted. Since it was too early to check in to our hostel, we went to an internet cafe, it had little rooms with soft mat floors, so we slept there for a few hours until we were feeling better.

Our hostel in Kyoto (K's house) was really nice. Kyoto is beautiful, full of gardens and temples, so many little peaceful escapes that make you forget you're even in the city. We had a nice Japanese birthday dinner, and some drinks in the bar below the hostel. The next day, we rented bikes, and biked around to the imperial Gardens. I got a little too enthusiastic and jumped over the little moat to look at a monkey statue, and set off the palace alarm, so we ran away and tried to look innocent as a police car showed up. How was I to know that those huge things everywher were motion sensor alarms? haha. Then we kept biking, went to more gardens where Buddhist monks were running around everywhere, got pizza, got lost, went for drinks, and went to sleep.

Then we were off to Osaka, our final Japanese destination. We felt like Tokyo was the future people in the 6os saw (clean, high-tech, slick), while Osaka is the future people today see (much grittier, darker, and more crowded). That might just have been our neighborhood though, we didn't have long there. Our hostel could only be desrcibed as super sketchy, but at least it was cheap.

Then came the infamous boat "Su Zhou Hao". It was a pretty neat little ferry. We both had a bit of a cold, so it was nice to take it easy.The restaurant wasn't the greatest, but they had vending machines that sold noodle cups and beer, which was all we really needed. :) We befriended the few other english speakers on the boat, which included: us, 2 swedish girls, an israeli couple, an aussie girl, and a japanese dude. (The japanese guy had grown out his beard for 3 months, so he would look poor. Apparently the Chinese don't like Japanese people, but he was hoping he'd at least get some pity, haha). Anyways, the boat was quite relaxing. We even all hung out in the boat's hot tub. Quite nice.

So that leads us to now. We arrived in Shaghai around noon today. I've never seen anything like it, apparently there are huge buidings but you can barely see anything because there's so much smog, and the river looks insanely polluted. This city is just bigger than anything I could imagine. We got our cab driver to drop us off in from of our hostel we'd booked, but there was just a sign that said "Closed". Apparently it shut down? It looked like a dump anyway though, so we consulted our trusty guide book, and found a nautical themed hostel called "the captain" and got ourselves a couple of sailor bunks. It's now pouring rain, and we're hiding in this internet cafe. We're excited to see what the city has to offer tomorrow. Once we're more organized, we'll post some pictures.

Hugs to everyone from China!
Kat & Tom

Tokyo Surprise!

Hey,

Welcome to our first actual blogpost with real content. We're on day four-ish of our little trip, and have had a lot of write-home-about worthy experiences already. So without further ado, here is a words-and-pictures narrative of notable parts of the trip so far.
We started out in Vancouver BC, with Kat joining me a few days prior to our departure to take care of a few odds and ends. Like getting our Chinese money.



The Vancouver stint involved a bit of fun too, as we got to catch up with the Vancouver peeps, as well as the Cullen/Howard parents, but it wasn't too long before we were due to catch our plane.

The plane ride was surprisingly eventful, first, our tv's didn't work, leaving us much time for solemn introspection over the next ten hours. Then we discovered the location of Mount Doom. Unsurprisingly, its in Siberia.




We landed, exhausted, some months later, and began our long quest to find our hostel. Finally, after a long sojourn through the Tokyo subway system. We arrived a Khaosan Smile Hostel. Exhausted, we stepped through the door and proceeded to the check-in counter. There, the friendly, bilingual staffer kindly informed us that we were, in fact, at the Asakusa Smile Hostel, which now stood in the place of the Khaosan smile, which apparently had closed not long after we had booked our rooms. Needless to say, they did not have our reservation.

Luckily, the Khaosan Hostel company is a chain, and they had another hostel not far away, after a bit more exploring, we found ourselves checked in to the Khaosan annex hostel. Our introduction to this hostel was inauspicious, as, upon walking through the door, we were greeted with the sight of an overweight European man playing Guitar Hero, wearing nothing but a Sumo loincloth. Not a pleasant sight.

Anyway, we finally got settled in and crashed at about eight o'clock. We awoke early the next morning for our first of two days in Tokyo.

The next day brought us to the Imperial palace Garden, a small but picturesque portion of which is open to the public year round. How picturesque? well...




(the moat)


Quite pretty really.

Anyway, after that we bummed around central Tokyo for awhile, before we found ourselves in the 'Electric City' which is a large, brightly lit madhouse of streets overflowing with cheap electronics, anime, and seven floor video arcade palaces.

The camera really doesnt do the place justice but...





Anyway, that day involved about 10 hours of walking around. So after the Electric City we settled down in our hostel with some Supermarket Tempura (Delicious!) for the night.

Day two started at an amazing Buddhist temple just around the corner from our hostel. We were interviewed by Japanese schoolchildren, schooled in the art of proper fortune telling, and even given our fortunes.

Tom's: Best Fortune, everything goes your way.

Kat's: Bad Fortune, very bad to make a trip, all your plans will fail...




After that, and a bit of a tour through a really cool marketplace, We found our selves at the Ueno Zoo. Which was the first zoo Tom had ever been to. Lame, but we corrected his deficiencies. He even gasped when he saw his first hippo.



After the zoo we were a bit tired, so we decided to take in a movie, in lieu of heading back to our hostel. This quest led us all the way to the other side of town, a quiet little neighbourhood called Shibuya. (aka: times square on crack)




We spent the next seven hours in the same three block radius, and saw just about everything urban Japan has to offer. We even got a private karoake room and found a few english songs to belt out (Rasputin!). Again, the pictures don't quite capture the scale and sheer overstimulation of the place, especially after dark.

Anyway, our Shibuya experience came at the tale end of our brief Tokyo tour, so we said Saynorah to Asakusa Annex and hopped a train over to Mito, near where Kat's sister is teaching English. Highlights so far include a Buddhist temple graveyard in Tina's backyard, Sushi-go-round (same as in Vancouver, but still tasty), and one of Japan's top three best waterfalls.



and that more or less brings you up to date. Kyoto and Osaka are next on the itinerary, followed by the proverbial (and in our case, literal) slow boat to China.
Just a few more days to butcher the language and enjoy the sushi!

Hope everyone's well
Tom and Kat

Tom and Kat's Big Day(s)!!!!

hello people and welcome to the travel blog, within these confines you will find adventure tales to tickle your fancy and open your eyes to a wider world. Please, join us for a harrowing ride through the darkest ports and highest peaks of Kat's imagination. Also Asia.


Stay tuned for the first exciting chapter: Tom and Kat's Big Day: Adventures in the Rainy City.


holla,
Tom and Kat