Archive for March, 2009

Hiking on the backs of dragons

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Our time in Hong Kong coincided with the start of the monsoon season and the skies were gray nearly our entire time there, further encouraging the Hong Kongers to stay inside their warm and well-lit malls. But we wanted to venture outside the comfortable consumer bubble and do some hiking. Looking at Weather.com we were told Wednesday would be “partly cloudy,” a big improvement from the “entirely cloudy” we’d been experiencing.

Hopping a bus to the south side of Hong Kong island, we planned a day of climbing the Dragon’s Back Trail, a hike that boasts spectacular views of beaches and bamboo forests and sonorous bird songs. We’ll have to take the guide book’s word for it though because “partly cloudy” turned out to be “rain with impenetrable fog.”

However, the rain did let up long enough for us to make our way down to Shek O beach where we picnicked on the rocks while local fisherman dipped their hooks into the heaving sea. Only a few miles from Hong Kong’s down town, it was great to get out of the city and feel a bit of solitude, if only for an afternoon.

shek-o-2-pano

Home of the Jetsons

The Jetsons come to Hong Kong

The Jetsons come to Hong Kong

My first impression of Hong Kong was that it seemed eerily similar to a scene from the Jetsons. The Hong Kong island side of the city is built on a hill, at the bottom of which the banking business community sits and at the top of which the banking businessmen have historically lived. These two parts of the city are connected via an enormously long elevator, which runs down the hill in the morning and up the hill in the evening, constantly ferrying ex-pats to and from their offices. Much of the rest of the city is connected via raised walking platforms. We discovered that trying to get anywhere by walking on the street-level is basically impossible as the city is planned around the raised pedestrian walkways.

20 feet above the sidewalk, moving through Hong Kong

20 feet above the sidewalk, moving through Hong Kong

The pedestrian walkways lead you from one mall to another, of which there is no shortage in Hong Kong (apparently subway developers also buy and develop the land above subway stations and build shopping malls, thinking that they are easy to access. Thus above every major subway stop there sits a shopping mall). These shopping malls put malls in the U.S. to shame. They are enormous, first of all. They also seem to cater to people who have more money than god. It would be as if Bergdorf Goodman’s decided to expand 1,000-fold and put a store on every corner in New York City. Only in Hong Kong would you find a homeless person create a shelter out of Armani shopping bags.

What does it mean when you can find Armani bags and no place to sleep?

What does it mean when you can find Armani bags and no place to sleep?

Hong Kong overflows with dichotomies. From the bamboo scaffoldings on skyscrapers to the poor Chinese paupers begging for change from the soon-to-be-poor Western banking elite. As we took the “Mid-Levels Escalator” down to the water on a Sunday for a dim sum brunch our wonderful host Pam prepared us for another interesting social juxtaposition. Every Sunday hundreds upon hundreds of immigrant domestic workers, mostly from the Philippines, line kilometers of pedestrian walkways. They were fully camped out, with seats and umbrellas and games of bingo and cards happening everywhere you looked. The photo below is just the beginning of a several kilometer long stretch of people doing the same thing — the image on the left is from Sunday, the image on the right is the following morning.

Sunday on the left, Monday on the right

Sunday on the left, Monday on the right

The people pictured are just a handful of the thousands of immigrant workers on Hong Kong island who are housed by their employers and find themselves without a home on their one free day, Sunday. Faced with a dearth of meeting locations and (I am assuming, because I had a hard time finding them…) affordable entertainment options, the workers have created a teeming (looking) community that arises every Sunday and leaves just as quickly at the end of the day.

Clowns, Gambling and Batman

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Our first order of business upon arriving in the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong was applying for new PRC visas. Once we’d dropped of our passports with the authorities we were free to explore Hong Kong for the three to five business days it would take to process our request.

We crashed with the wonderful and worldly Pam, a friend of mine from high school, who is working in Hong Kong as a producer at CNN. With a bookshelf full of travel guide books, Pam is a woman after our own hearts who had a number of suggested must-dos while we were in Hong Kong.

Our time in the banking capital of the world wouldn’t be complete without palling around with a representative from the banking elite. I reconnected with an old family friend, Dave, who I hadn’t seen in over a decade who, as luck would have it, is working for Duetsche Bank in Hong Kong. His bachelor pad, home to three i-bankers, is very “bull market” as Dave would say and has an amazing view of the city skyline. Dave and our new friend Kalina took us out for a night on local bar scene. But as Dave explained to us, the reckless hedonism is now fueled more by a fear of the collapse rather than a celebration of the boom.

The tallest building on the city’s growing skyline is the International Finance Center. The foreboding tower has a very Gothamesque look to it, which is probably why it was Batman’s perch in The Dark Knight during the Hong Kong scene. Check out the annotated image below the jump (as well as other photos) to see where Batman’s Hong Kong BASE jump occurred. Next time I’m in Hong Kong I’m totally bringing my bat’chute.
Continue reading ‘Clowns, Gambling and Batman’

Epic visa fail

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The above photo basically summarizes China’s current feelings on Crank and my presence in their country.

It all started when we got back from our glorious trip to Nepal and Tibet. Because we went to Tibet, our travel agent had canceled our old China visas and issued us a new one that included the permit to enter Tibet. This new, “group visa” (important later) expired just 48-hours after our train pulled in to Beijing, so we had little time to do everything we needed. Tanya, our contact at our new school, explained some of the bureaucratic hoops we would need to jump through in order to extend our visa (including opening a new Chinese bank account. Harder than it might sound), and we got to work.

Less than 12 hours after we stepped off our train we found ourselves at the “Exit and Entry Administration of the Public Security Bureau” office. We get to the visa office. We get new visa pictures, wait in line, are sent to three different people who don’t speak English, and finally land at the most dour and unpleasant woman I have ever seen. Truly, a woman who could curdle milk with the faintest of glances. I explain our case to her, that we had visas, they were canceled, we need to extend them because we are staying in China for another several months. I smile profusely the whole time, thinking it looks like she’s had a long day. After pleading my case, she looks at us with an expression of incredible disdain, and repeatedly screams, “LEAVE CHINA!”. Things did not look good.

After a number of unsuccessful communication attempts we find out that apparently the “group visa” which our travel agent had booked us cannot be extended. We were told we had 36 hours to leave the country or we would face criminal charges, a fine of $200 per day, per person that we were in China, and, of course, imprisonment.

Facing these lovely options we decided to pack our bags and head south to Hong Kong, which, for the intents and purposes of visas is out of the country. There we would have to apply for entirely new “L” (tourist) visas that would allow us to enter China again and remain there for 30 days. Whew. We were told by our school that once we got back to Beijing we would be able to apply for an “F” (business or cultural) visa, which would allow us to remain in the country for as long as our cultural exchange is going on. Of course each time we apply for a new visa we are required to pay a hefty sum of money, so Crank and I are now fairly sure we are holding up the Chinese economy in the face of worldwide economic collapse.

The latest chapter in our visa saga is that apparently starting in March 2009 (Yes. Precisely when we re-entered Beijing) China STOPPED giving out “F” visas. Just to spice things up.

Thus…our Epic Visa Fail is not over yet. Stay tuned for more updates on how long before we actually have to GTFO.

China by train

Our brief but incredible trip to Lhasa ended early in the morning as we stumbled to the city’s shiny new train station. China has put billions into making Tibet more accessible and the embodiment of its conquest-by-infrastructure is the recently completed Qinghai Tibet Train.

The train runs about 2,400 miles from Lhasa to Beijing. The tracks span permafrost and huge gorges and tunnel through countless mountains. At its highest, the train hurdles over the Tanggula Pass at 16,640 feet at 75 miles per hour.

Steph and I shared a four-bunk “soft-sleeper” car with two other travelers. We spent the 48-hour ride reading (I knocked off a couple of hundred pages of Shantaram), listening to episodes of “This of American Life,” and thinking about how hungry we were but remembering how bad the food in the dining car was.

All that said, we highly recommend traveling by rail. The bunks were comfortable, the views amazing and the price reasonable. Just bring a good book and some snacks.


View Larger Map

Pictures of the ride and inside of the train are after the jump.
Continue reading ‘China by train’

Food, glorious food. Part 3

Tuk ba time!

Tuk ba time!

Tuk ba is a traditional Tibetan dish that we experienced by accident. Because we visited Lhasa during the Tibetan New Year, Losar, many of the typical touristy sites were closed, including the standard “western-style” lunch restaurants where guides usually bring their tour groups. Our guide Tsewang tentatively suggested that we might eat a traditional Tibetan lunch in one of the nearby local restaurants and seemed genuinely surprised when we nodded our heads eagerly. Tsewang brought us to the Yundruk restaurant, close to Barkhor Square and the Jokhang Temple which we had been visiting. We walked up the back stairs to a sparsely furnished lounge-like space where dozens of local Tibetans were all feasting on tuk ba, the restaurant’s specialty (and also apparently their only dish — we didn’t see anyone eating anything else).

The traditional noodle dish is a spicy soup served with small bits of yak meat. The dish is eaten with chopsticks, which we still have not quite mastered (especially for soups), so it was amusing to see the locals down their soups in a quarter of the time it took us.

Several hours in Tibet

Drepung Monastery overlooking Lhasa

Drepung Monastery overlooking Lhasa

We didn’t get Brad Pitt’s seven years, and even our 72 hours in Tibet was shaved down to 48 because of bad weather, but once we did make it to Tibet the struggle to get there was worth it. Our visit coincided with Losar, the Tibetan New Year, and while there were some in the city preparing to celebrate, the Chinese soldiers stationed all over the city in riot gear cast a pall over any revelry.

Touring the temples in PRC-controlled Tibet was like going through a museum where half of the exhibits are shrouded and all of the placards have been removed. Our Tibetan tour guide Tsewang gave us amazingly thorough histories of the palaces and prior Dalai Lamas but was silent about the exiled Lama or Tibet’s continued subjugation despite our questions. He continually forbade us from photographing the PRC’s military presence and told us not to leave our hotel at night.

All of these hospitable charms, plus the frigid temperatures, meant that there were no tourists around. Save a few monks tidying the prayer pillows and lighting the yak butter candles, the temples were completely empty. It was an eerie and sadly fitting experience to wander the ancient and silent halls where Lamas and thousands of monks had walked, prayed and meditated for centuries.

Continue reading ‘Several hours in Tibet’

Flying to Lhasa! (sort of)

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Saying our goodbyes to Rosie we headed to the airport, sad to leave Nepal and new friends but excited to venture on to Tibet.

Or so we thought.

We found our “gate” at the Nepal airport (note: not actually a gate. Actually a crowded room with no signs, filled with all of the travelers in the airport). We made it on to the plane. The plane took off. We re-crossed the Himalayas with beautiful views of Everest and the surrounding range. The small screen with the electronic map of our route showed us just reaching the outskirts of Lhasa. And all of a sudden our pilot came on the intercom to tell us that due to weather the plane was not actually landing in Lhasa, but instead continuing on two and a half hours to Chengdu. (You would THINK that maybe they might have mentioned the bad weather 45 minutes earlier, when we were sitting in the Kathmandu airport, but apparently not.)

We landed in Chengdu, where there was a surprising lack of people that spoke English, and after much confusion came to understand that there would be no more flights to Lhasa that evening, but perhaps there would be some the following morning. We were handed little slips of paper and ushered onto a bus that we assumed would take us to some type of hotel, presumably somewhere near the airport.

Continue reading ‘Flying to Lhasa! (sort of)’

To Pokhara by bus and boat

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Though one could spend a lifetime seeing, hearing, tasting and most certainly smelling the different facets of Kathmandu, Steph and I decided to venture out of Nepal’s capital city to explore the countryside. Waking up early in the morning, we taxied from Patan into Kathmandu proper to catch a bus bound for the resort village of Pokhara, nestled between Phewa Lake and the foothills of the Himalayas.

After traveling west for about six hours we were greeted by a very pushy throng of hoteliers before we even stepped off the bus. Awaiting their daily feeding, each innkeeper pushed and pawed at the busload of tourists, their eyes wide and their cabbies awaiting to whisk us off to their respective lodges.

We managed to push through the mob and caught a taxi for the lakeside where we took a boat across Phewa Lake so that we could have a better view of the Himalayas. “Other lake side” is far less crowded or touristy than “lake side” proper and we wound up finding the secluded Kopila lodge where there was only one other guest. We were sold on the place when we were greeted by the adorable Kiki, a mutt puppy with a clumsy teddy bear air.

Click below to read more of our adventure around Phewa Lake and for pictures of the area and puppy.
Continue reading ‘To Pokhara by bus and boat’

Kathmandu with friends

Yepsens to the left of me, jokers to my right...

Yepsens to the left of me, jokers to my right...

While in Kathmandu we had the great fortune to be visited by a one Ms. Elizabeth Yepsen, who came to us via her current home in Singapore. While she was here we visited Patan’s Durbar Square, explored Thamel, drank chai, shared a horrible bout of food poisoning, and of course checked out one of Kathmandu’s latest Bollywood offerings, Luck By Chance. We were all very excited about seeing a Bollywood movie on the big screen but left the theater a little disappointed. There was only ONE dance number in the entire movie. What does one watch Bollywood for if not the amazing dance numbers? At least there was a cameo appearance by Shahrukh Khan.

Click below for more photos from our Nepalese reunion!

Continue reading ‘Kathmandu with friends’

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