Around The World in 105 Days:Tales of a Schnitzler: April 2012

China is my favorite stop on this voyage. It was the one I looked forward to the most, and I must say, it didn’t disappoint. I have a limited timeframe to write this blog, and classes are starting to heat up again since the semester is coming to a close so I can’t go as overly in depth as I want to, but I assure you this is going to be one of the longer blogs.

The first day we land in Hong Kong, I got up at 6am to watch us come into the harbor, and it was a hell of a view. Hong Kong and China in general, is a place I never thought I’d be. Hong Kong is gorgeous; I understand why the Chinese wanted control of it back in 1997. We took the star ferry across the river and jumped on the #15 bus up to Victoria’s peak. Victoria’s peak for anyone who doesn’t know is the mountain that is right behind the main city area of Hong Kong, and the view is amazing, literally amazing. There are few places in the world where you can climb a mountain and see a city from the top. And I’ve been to two of those places… Table Mountain in S. Africa and Victoria’s Peak in Hong Kong. There’s a cool little mall area up top with restaurants and all that fun stuff. We hung out up there for a little while and went back down to walk around looking for a restaurant in Hong Kong. We took the train down, which was kind of fun. It went pretty steep and reminded me a little of the cog train that climbs Pikes Peak. We got off the train and started walking aimlessly for some food.

We stumbled on an area of town called Lan Kwai Fung which is apparently pretty popular for going out at night. We went into a little back alley with a few restaurants. I found this little burger joint and decided that I wanted a burger; it was right across the alley from a place with Mexican food, so I grabbed a burger with Taylor and everyone else grabbed Mexican food from next door. The burger I had was the best burger of my life. Not even kidding, it was amazingly good. Gourmet Burger Union in Hong Kong guys, seriously go there if you are ever in Hong Kong. Get a KickAss Burger. Weekdays you can get a burger, fries and a coke for 58HKD. Which is about 7.50 USD. I actually think I may prefer a GBU burger to a chipotle burrito.

We finished up lunch and wandered back to the ferry to hang out on the island of Kowloon a little, and then we all went back to the ship to shower and get ready for dinner. Our friend Leah’s parents flew out to Hong Kong for the China parent trip, so they decided they wanted to take us all out for dinner. We all dressed in our new Vietnamese clothes for dinner. I wore my Purple shirt with white collar and cuffs, white tie with my vest and dress pants. Must say I looked super fly, we all did actually. But back to this dinner… it was extravagant. Leah’s dad is a cancer doctor and they are to say the least, very well off. We had Chinese food flowing out of every cavity in our body by the time we left that restaurant. Not to mention all the wine we could drink.

We bid farewell to Leah’s parents and went out to Lan Kwai Fung. This place is awesome, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen and reminded a few people of a bourbon street type of place. There were bars and clubs on both sides of the street, but the majority of the partying took place outside in the street. It was awesome; it’s probably one of my favorite nights out on this trip. And I’ve had some awesome nights out so that is saying something. We got back to Kowloon by our ship around 2 or so, grabbed some McDonalds (Just like home!) and got back on the ship.

The next day I had a flight at 8pm and no plans, so Kael, Benny and I decided we just wanted to walk. We walked all over Hong Kong, we got lost. Getting lost in a place like Hong Kong is awesome. There are so many random things all over the city, you never feel sketchy, or worried you won’t find your way back. We had another burger at GBU (still as good as the first day). We got back to the ship around 4pm, I packed for Beijing and got everything ready only to find that I was the only person to do so… the 4 other people had yet to pack and this gave us a time crunch in getting to the airport.

Everyone finally got packed and we grabbed a cab to the airport. The airport was closer than we all thought, so we ended up getting back on schedule which was nice. We had a little time to hang out at the Hong Kong Airport, which is super nice, and we jumped on our flight. We got into Beijing around 11:30 pm and we made the mistake of not having a hostel or hotel booked. Rookie Move. We got an awesome cab driver named Jake who drove us all over. We hit 3 hostels and 2 hotels before stumbling on the Happy Dragon Hostel, whose owner, Lee was sitting behind the counted. Lee is our saving grace in Beijing. He called around to hotels and found one for us that would give us the same price as his hostel. He gave us a ride down the street to the hotel and translated with the owner everything. We ended up getting to bed at about 4am after checking in and filling out the necessary tourist papers. Its crazy how followed you feel at times in China as a tourist. You have to provide your passport at hotels within 24 hours of entering or else you need to check in with the local police station to tell them where you will be staying. There is a huge sense of the government fear in China.

Our first day in Beijing was nice, we woke up about 10am, found the Happy Dragon Hostel, booked our great wall trips with lee for the following day, and looked up train times. Hannah and Benny went to meet our other friends who took the train while Bailey, Max and I were going to walk to the Forbidden City. This was easier said than done. We couldn’t find the thing at all; we ended up going to the Lin Saun Gardens, which is a pretty cool area with huge pagodas that overlook the forbidden city. By this time it was probably 1 o’clock and we were meeting up with everyone at 3, so getting to the Forbidden City was looking less and less possible. We took a cab to the entrance, which I was unaware was Tiananmen Square. Since our time kind of expired on the Forbidden City, we went into Tiananmen Square instead. It is so weird to be somewhere like that. There was so much history that took place right where we were standing, and it will be a location of so much more in the future I am sure. It is huge. And its right smack dab in the middle of the city. I wasn’t ready for it, but it was so awesome. You will be sick of hearing this, but I can’t put it into words how cool it was.

We jumped back on the subway and met up with everyone at our hotel right when we were supposed to, which is awesome considering that was the first time that has probably ever happened on this entire trip. We went back to Happy Dragon to book our trains, and here is where the story turns south. I had to be back in Shanghai 2 days before the ship left, as I had an FDP that day. We had decided to take a train leaving Beijing at 7, getting into Shanghai at 11 then heading back to the ship. This is not what happened though. My group decided that they wanted to stay an extra night in Beijing, leaving me alone to get back into Shanghai by myself. I talked to another group of SAS kids staying in the hostel and they were leaving the same day as me, but their train was fully booked so the most I could do was leave for the station with them. Their train was at 8am, the next train was 8:38am, which caused me to lose an entire day in Beijing, one of the cities I really wanted to do everything in. I was essentially grassed by my group and I ended up losing that full day so I could be more confident in getting to the train station. I cut my losses and booked that ticket, but I was extremely pissed at my group, and to be honest I’m not sure if I will be as good of friends with them through the rest of the voyage.

That night we went to a restaurant recommended by the hostel. This place was very… interesting and not at all my cup of tea. I was still pretty angry at everyone so I went out and grabbed some food somewhere else before heading back to the restaurant. After dinner we went back to the hotel and had a few drinks and played some cards, we didn’t want to go out because after all, we were hiking the great wall in the morning!

The 2^nd day in Beijing is one I will never forget. We woke up early and headed over to the Happy Dragon to jump on a bus to the great wall! It took about an hour and a half to get to the great wall, but I was amazed at it. The great wall is truly great. We all were joking before that if it wasn’t we were going to call it the Just alright wall. Once we got to the wall, nobody ever made that joke again. It was amazing, and once again one of those things I will never be able to put into words. We went past the area we were supposed to, into the unrestored section of the wall. It was cool to see what it looked like before they went through and restored much of it.

It was pretty spotty, and there were parts where I felt like I could have definitely fallen off it. It was really tall too. And steep and I can’t wait to show everyone pictures. It was a tougher hike than we all expected. After hiking we got down a little before our Dem Sung lunch and shopped around for some neat great wall stuff with all the vendors. I bought a couple fun little things, a few gifts, and all that fun stuff. Our lunch was pretty good; I’ve eaten way too much sweet and sour pork and chicken through China though. Let me tell ya.

We got back to the Hotel and everyone went and grabbed coffee, and I went back to the room to shower and get ready for the night. We were going to the Olympic park! The Olympic park was one of the top 3 things I wanted to see in Beijing. I remember in 2008 when the Olympics were in Beijing, it really was the first event that began shaping my world view. The amazingness that was the 2008 Olympics was well, one of those things you can’t put into words. I saw the Birds nest, the water cube, the national indoor stadium, and my favorite building, the IBM building right off of the Olympic park. We spent probably 2 hours at the park and by this time it was 9pm and we hadn’t eaten dinner yet. We walked around the park and there wasn’t anywhere open to eat, so we walked into a super nice hotel and asked where to eat. We ended up in an area of town covered in Neon. It was interesting haha.

We looked around for a good looking restaurant and found a place with Hot Pots. If you’ve ever eaten from a Hot Pot, I think you should at some point. It’s an experience, and we really had no clue what we were doing. To the point where a couple people working at the restaurant came and helped us cook everything. It was a good meal. A tad expensive, but definitely well worth the money. But at the same time, a tad expensive for a meal in China is 12 USD, so I really should stop complaining. After dinner we went to an interesting bar district for a few drinks, and then back to the hotel, I had to get up pretty early to catch my train.

Day 5 in china was a transit day. I woke up at 5:45 to meet up with the group I was traveling to the train station with and took a bullet train to Shanghai. The train got up to 307 km/ hour, and it was oddly smooth, unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in a train before. I got into shanghai around 3pm and took the hour cab ride to the international cruise terminal. I was a little worried since I was doing it by myself, but I actually got a really nice cab driver, whose meter was actually set to count it less than we had in fact traveled which was a nice surprise. I got to the international cruise terminal and of course, we had been bumped to the Shanghai cruise terminal, which granted is just down the street, but an email or something from SAS would have been nice as I wasted over an hour trying to find where the ship was ported. My favorite part of this story is getting into a yelling match in Chinese with a guard at the international cruise terminal because he didn’t let me into where I thought our ship was!

I finally got on the ship, and the ship was dead since nobody was back on from their trips around China. I’m pretty stoked to say I successfully navigated from the hotel in Beijing to the ship in Shanghai by myself. That night I stayed on the ship since nobody was around. It was a nice little bit of recovery from the tiring time in Beijing.

The next morning I had an FDP I was actually pretty excited for, it was a Coca Cola Plant visit in Shanghai. This coke plant is the biggest in Asia and one of the biggest in the world. When we walked in the office it seemed more like Coca Cola world in Vegas if you’ve ever been. The office had a museum of Coke in Asia, a huge conference room with a wall devoted to every Coca Cola logo in each country, and all of this awesome coke memorabilia. The head guy for this plant was the one who came in to talk to us, and surprise…. He spoke 0 English! Our tour guide translated for us, and it was kind of funny, the coke guy would talk for like a minute and the translation would be “Coke is one of the biggest companies in the world”. They had a question towards the end and the winner would get a prize. The question was how long ago Coke was started. I knew from CSU’s strategic partnership with Coke that they just celebrated their 125^th anniversary, and that was my answer. I ended up being right! The prize that I won was a replica 1916 “root” bottle which was the inspiration for the iconic curvy coke bottle.

We got back from our FDP at about noon and I met up with some friends and headed off to the Yu Garden Market to see what kind of cheap stuff we could get our hands on. There was a lot. Some of my friends bought fake Beats, fake watches, everything. I found this awesome watch that was an automatic watch so it was wound by me moving, it looked super nice and for all reasons it looked like a real watch to me. I paid like 40 USD- 250 Yuen for it, and was pretty stoked on my purchase… until I really started looking at the wristband of the watch. When I bought it, it was covered in shrink wrap, but it had small scratches where the plated silver showed an ugly bronzy color. Then to top it off, there was a cut in the metal piece connecting the face to the wristband… I decided I was going to return it and demand my money back.

I went back to the shop where I bought it and gave it back to the guy who said he couldn’t give me a refund. I think the thing that really worked in my favor here is that he was selling a guy 2 watches when I walked in and I pretty much scared this guy away because I showed him the crappy quality I got there as well. I got pretty angry with this shop owner because he wasn’t going to give me my money back. Only another watch of my choice. I threw out some pretty funny threats now that I look back on it, I told him I was going to be in town for 3 more weeks and I had no plans so I could sit outside of his shop and tell customers not to go in there, I told him my cell phone could access the internet and I would post pictures and blogs about how terrible his shop is. Finally, after a solid 10-15 mins I got 220 Yuen back. I essentially got all but $5 back, and that 5 bucks is easily worth the story.

The Yu Garden market has some really weird areas. There is a built in Taoist temple which was pretty unique and crazy, as well as what I’m assuming is the Yu Garden, it was all written in Chinese so I have no clue what it is called. But the Yu Garden is picturesque China. Pagodas, ponds with tons of fish, it was a really cool area. Unfortunately we were all a bit tired and decided we were going to go find somewhere to eat.

We ended up at a pub place where I got a halfway decent pizza. We had bought some lanterns at the market and thought it would be really cool and pseudo romantic to light them at night like they do in the movie Tangled. Well, that’s a load of crap! Those damn things are so hard to get into the air! Not to mention the fact that we are in the middle of a city! We finally got one up, and it went B-line for a building, so consequently we all started running haha. It was pretty funny.

By this time it had gotten pretty dark and we had met up with our friend Leah again, the one whose parents took us out to that crazy dinner, and she was staying in the Hyatt Hotel with her parents. The Hyatt hotel has this awesome bar on the top floor called Bar Vue which has the most amazing view of the Shanghai I have ever seen. I got some awesome pictures, and paid 12 USD for a long island. Lol. We went back to the ship to change for the night and headed to some pub that was really close and had 10 USD for unlimited beer; it was pretty fun, live band, chill atmosphere, my kind of place.

We hung out for a few hours then everyone decided they wanted to go out to some club. Shanghai knows how to party. Some of these clubs were crazy. I only went to two, but they were ridiculous. I wish I brought earplugs because it was louder than most of the concerts I’ve been to. I got back to the ship at a semi reasonable hour and got to bed. I really wanted to explore the city on the last day.

And explore the city I did. I woke up at about 9 am and threw my headphones in and walked. I walked up past the Bund, took a train over to downtown, walked all over downtown, it was awesome. Shanghai and Hong Kong are both places I could totally see myself living in at some point… given I learn some Chinese, which I now have a huge desire to do so. I need to get me some Rosetta Stone!

Like I said, China was by far my favorite port we’ve been to. Minus the little being screwed out of a day in Beijing deal, I had the time of my life in China, and it is somewhere I will visit again, hopefully sooner rather than later. The one thing that really sticks out to me about china though is that it seems to be a nation struggling for an identity, especially parts of Beijing and Shanghai. In Beijing their identity for the past 10+ years has been the 2008 Olympics. The Olympic rings are still painted on their streets, their street names are still 1^st ring road, 2^nd ring road and so on. The Olympics brought a ton of modernization to Beijing, but what I see when I look there now is a city struggling for an identity. They have a ton of history; there are huge world events that have happened in Beijing.

But it’s not just Beijing I feel this in, it’s all over. China is going through some crazy expansion right now, and they’re becoming a massive world power. I don’t want to say it worries me to have such a huge player in the world economy without an identity, but it is definitely a little disconcerting.

China is amazing; I can’t wait to go back.

Much Love,

Matt

Monday, April 30, 2012

Alumni Ball!

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Alumni Ball!

Monday, April 9, 2012

China and Hong Kong- I Will Be Back!