Still in China

I just wanted to post this so people knew that I am still alive and in China. The govt here blocks FB and blogs, which just happen to be my primary means for contacting people at home. Reporters are not allowed in Xinjiang and even international phone calls are blocked from Xinjiang.

I am currently in Xi'an and have thoroughly enjoyed my experiences here in China thus far. I will spend about a week in Yunnan before I cross the border into Vietnam. I will see the infamous rice paddies of Sapa and southern Yunnan.

I have been meeting lots of other travels and people. Traveling by yourself seems like a daunting experience, but I have enjoyed it a lot. Traveling alone means that you are more likely to meet locals and other travellers. I have not had any problems finding a sidekick for a day. Also, I think that by being a female the locals are much more receptive of me, even when I cannot understand one word of their thickly accented Chinese.

I will write a bit more about my actual experiences when I am out of China and in Vietnam. In my belief the censors are only harming the citizens of and visitors to China. They are even installing software on every computer sold within the country to quell the ability to get around the censors (like I am with a proxy) permanently.

Shanghai is Next

I managed to find a way to Shanghai, even though every single ticket for every single train is sold out. I bought a plane ticket, a little more expensive, but better than being stuck in Beijing for the next week. I cannot believe how hard it is, my advice buy ahead for any logistical stuff in China. After Shanghai, I will be heading to Xi'an and Guilin, and off to Vietnam. I pick up my passport on Thursday for my Visa and fly out on Friday.

I will get to see the eclipse after all!!

Beijing Beijing

So I have spent the last 5 days here, crashing at a friend's place. I have really enjoyed meeting so many people and attempting to navigate this enormous city. I have been to the Summer's Palace, Great Wall, Temple of Heaven, Lama Temple, Ritan Park, and other random places around the city. I like the city a lot,. but the pollution and transportation is a bit hard to handle. Transportation is only hard, because everything is so far from each other, it is like if someone took a suburb and stretched it so it could hold over 10 million people. The streets are wide and busy, and people are packed into every crevice. I imagine that Shanghai will be worse, but I like being snug rather than spending 20 minutes walking 'one' block.

China feels a lot more safe than I expected and some people are nice. People are very happy if you speak a bit of Chinese. But once it passes the basic level of daily transactional-stuff, it is beyond me. They speak very fast and with a 'r' that Taiwanese do not have. I have forgotten a lot of Italian and replaced it with Chinese.

I managed to negiotiate a taxi for me and 4 Poles I met to go to the Great Wall and all in Chinese. I love it, but often people are not patient. The rest of China will definitely be a trip, and each place is full of diversity, so different from the last place. I met a couple other really nice people and have no trouble meeting fellow travelers to hang out with for the day.

I hope everyone is well at home, and I hope I will be able to post again soon. I'm not sure how thorough the 100,000 people censoring the internet are with their programming. Let's see if I can get this to work.

Much love,

Erica

The Joys of Censorship

I am in China and as we all know that they have censors and make it incredibly difficult to post on a blog. I am fine and well. My local phone number is +8613436614082. If you want to get ahold of me please call or send me an email. I have limited ability to check my Skype and no access to Facebook after today.

I am using a friend's computer with a VPN to by-pass the censorship using a North American proxy. Sounds high-tech huh? Well, it's actually easier than you would think.

Keep in touch! I will try to post through email from now on.

Off to China!

By now I have taken tons and tons of pictures in Hong Kong, but will not have the chance right now to up load them. I am sitting in my friends apartment getting everything ready to head to China. I am a little nervous for the 24 hour train ride by myself. I still need to  buy food for it, but I have heard that I will be just fine. Still it's probably a good thing to be a little nervous, so that I will be paying attention all the more. I have spent 8 days here, and probably less than that is needed. I managed to visit Macau for the better part of a day and see all the highlights here. I will be visiting a couple friends in Beijing, so no worries. 

I'll be posting again soon!

Living Out My Dreams in Macau

Macau is self-proclaimed 'the City of Dreams'. I'm not sure if people dream about spending their time in sleazy casinos, or just dream about striking it big. Everyone wishes they would luck out, and never have to worry about money again. Macau was not exactly the city of dreams for me, but then again, I am not much of a gambler.

I managed to catch one of the 24 hour ferries to Macau and spend the better part of the day there. The TurboJet boat only takes an hour to traverse the Pearl River Delta (Hong Kong is on the exact opposite side of the wide mouth). As the boat slowed and began to pull up to the dock, I noticed that the water was opaque and murky, probably from deposits and erosion further up stream. The skyline is much less developed than Hong Kong, but considering that the population is only 1/20 of Hong Kong it is understandably highly developed. 

I caught the bus number 3 into the city of the historic district. The infamous Saint Paul church was destroyed in a typhoon, but one wall was left standing. This wall has become a symbol for Macau other than the Cotoi Strip (the eastern equivalent of the Vegas Strip). It was strange standing in Macau knowing that mainland China was less than a couple miles from me, yet I felt as if I was in Europe. Macau was a Portuguese colony and governed by them until the official hand over in the '90s. The official languages are Chinese (Cantonese) and Portuguese, albeit no one speaks Portuguese except a just a few. All signs were posted in both and sometimes in English. There is a tremendous selection of Portuguese and Chinese fusion restaurants. 

I managed to find one on a sleepy little street right off of Rua Campo named 'Rico's'. Part of the reason I wanted to go to Macau was for the food. I had baked vegetables in a Portuguese sauce with coconut sprinkled on top. It was delicious! I finished and walked around a bit more, even briefly hitting up the Casino Lisbon. After losing $3 USD to a slot machine, I had my gambling fix taken care of. I really wanted to play the table version of mahjong, but I could not figure out, for the life of me, what the rules were. After taking a free shuttle back to the ferry station, I hopped a ferry home.  

Bye Bye Hong Kong!

Even though I am primarily traveling by myself and meeting up with friends and others along the way, I have had no shortage of friends. I met up with a lady from CS for coffee, a Dutchwoman walking up to the Tian Tan Buddha and two Canadians that just arrived in Hong Kong. It's somewhat strange meeting people who are not adjusted to Hong Kong or Taiwan's cultural norms. I remember being so shocked and annoyed at first, it's not that I get all of it, but it just doesn't 'shock' me as much anymore. My broken Mandarin has even helped me a little here in Hong Kong, most people speak English as well, but if it's a pretty brief request, it is  almost more likely to communicate with success using a bit of Chinese. 

Hong Kong is a very nice place to live and visit, albeit a bit more expensive than Taipei. Hong Kong definitely is a mixture of old colonial influence from the British and Chinese traditions. To me the culture is a cross being Taipei and Singapore, perhaps including the best aspects of each. I do, however, miss my night market food from Taiwan. 

I have eaten so much food here though. Things I maybe would not have order in Taipei. I was a little weirded out at first when I had to rip the heads off the prawns and peel them (shrimp don't look quite that scary). I am not used to putting alive shrimp in boiling hot pot water, and seeing them squirm on their wooden stakes helped calm my hunger. (I got over it though and ate one of the really fresh bright pink shrimps). But the one that tops the cake is durian ice cream. I saw this at the store and was incredibly curious. But alas, I did not want to try this by myself, so I coaxed the two Canadians I met into trying it with me. Durian is a bit like rotten garlic and onions, sweet, feet, and smells like something I should keep away from my mouth. Some people claim that it smells worse than garbage, and I would substantiate that claim. I had a moment where I thought I bought durian gum afterwards. For the first second that the gum was in my mouth, I started to taste durian. I hope I never ever eat durian again, it's worse than stinky tofu for sure. 

There is plenty of food in Hong Kong that is just plain delicious as well. Such as dim sum, dumplings, wonton soup, clay pot rice on Temple Street, seafood, and there is such a variety of restaurants that you could eat cuisine from anywhere in the world. There is a large Indian population (a by-product of British rule) and some have been here for nearly 5 or 6 generations. Most are of Tamil origin from the southern half of Indian. There are plenty of yummy Indian restaurants here (I love Indian food, but I have learned to ease into the spice).

Hong Kong in Pictures

   

The harbor right before the light show, looking at HK Island.

No mooring!!

Prawns. I am not sure I have ever eaten this before. I had to watch Larissa to understand how to tear the shell off. 

Old HK money. HK has its own currency, but no central bank. Each bank issues its own currency as a guarantee of value, and this has been done for a very long time.

Outside the Hong Kong Museum of History. I found a lot of similarities between Taiwan and HK. The geography and aboriginal history are very similar. The museum is located on Kowloon and focused more on the cultural aspects of HK's history. 

I'll post the rest of the pictures later!! Happy 4th of July again!

China Visa

I went to go get my visa at the Chinese visa office in Wan Chai. I was incredibly surprised by how efficient the process was. They only issued numbers to those with a correctly and completely filled out form. Also, there is photo booth to get pictures. The visa is so expensive $1170HKD or $150USD (ouch). 

I was set and choose the express 3 day service. I was also able to purchase a train ticket to Beijing. I will start there and make my way south and west. I am so excited! 

Happy Birthday America or Freedom Day, whatever people want to call it. I am missing one of my favorite holidays and I hope everyone at home has a really good weekend :). We are going to have fun here and meet up with some American's at a British pub (ironic huh?). We meaning my Singaporean, Hong Konger and Chinese friends. :)

Livin' it Up Hong Konger Style

I made it to Hong Kong safely and after a bit of delay at the airport, I finally found my long lost friend Larissa from Italy. She was my roommate during my first exchange and has ended up here for work as a KPMG China tax consultant (very complicated and interesting). 

We had a nice first day getting reacquainted wandering about the city. I cannot believe that two years has passed since we last saw each other. We managed to catch up quickly, so strange that we meet again in Asia. When I left Italy I never pictured myself studying Chinese and ending up on a grand adventure through Asia. I was certain South America would be first (sorry Daniela). I feel like Hong Kong is a definite mix between Singapore and Taipei. There is a bit of modernness that Taipei does not have, but the same Chinese feel.

I have been getting lots of smiles from people here. I have the urge to speak Mandarin first, or the little that I do know. People don't expect it and I have been asking for phrases in Cantonese from Larissa. 

We saw the harbor light show at 8pm on Kowloon Island, the History Museum of Hong Kong, ate dumplings, Mong Kok street wandering and shopping, and basically just hearing tons of updates and reminiscing about old times. 

I am excited that the adventure has begun and I am just getting my bearings, but quickly. I'm not sure many are interested, but I finally ditched my dreadful travel bag (some remember me complaining about its awful design). I'll post pictures soon :). I hope everyone is well at home!

Planning for China

I have applied for my visa, should get it quickly. I cannot believe how expensive the visa is! For U.S. citizens it costs $131 plus a rush fee if needed. 

I have decided to take the 24 hour train from Hong Kong to Beijing and go from there. It looks like I will be in Beijing for about 5 days (I need to get my Vietnam visa there, I expect that to take 5 days) and then head to Xi'an. After 4 days there, I will head to Shanghai and Hangzhou. I think I will spend 5 days and then head to Guilin, Guanxi. I'll end up in Guangzhou and take the bus/train from there to Vietnam. I hope all goes to plan. I looked at flights and realized how expensive they are for getting around. I will probably bus a couple of the legs of the trip, but I look forward to nice train rides with amazing vistas.