Hangzhou

Way back in April...you know, when I used to post things on this blog...and when I used to live in China, the family and I took a day trip down to Hangzhou. There have been many people that have told us about how great Hangzhou is and so for our last hoorah in China, we decided to go to Hangzhou.

Since it was a day trip, it was going to be a quick trip to see just a couple of sites. The traffic was smooth getting there, until we got into Hangzhou...where, surprisingly, the traffic was worse then what we got in Shanghai. Believe me, I was extremely salty as we were heading to our first sight…and I thought to myself that this had better be worth it for all this traffic. We were on our way to the LingYin Temple and the Fei Lai Feng Peak to see the temple and buddha statues that have been carved into the side of the peak and it was definitely worth sitting in traffic. Along the peak they have stairs that one is able to climb to see the statues carved all throughout and, while I've seen my fill of buddha statues in China, these were the coolest ones knowing how long they have been here and how, when they were carved, there were no stairs for the carves to climb…Pretty Amazing. The temple was nothing too special, but this is definitely a place to go to see…even if there is a bunch of traffic while you are trying to get there.

After our first stop we headed to the famous restaurant in Hangzhou, Lou Wai Lou (Pavilion Beyond Pavilion). It is famous for the Hangzhou food of Beggars Chicken (chicken with spices, slow cooked in a clay mold), and sweet pork along with some of their other famous dishes. This was not the best Chinese restaurant that we have had during our time here, but the food was definitely worth trying, especially because many of the dishes are hard to find at places outside of Hanghzou.

After lunch we headed out and walked along the most famous sight of Hangzhou, the West Lake. It was a great day to walk around the lake and, for a lake, this is definitely a cool place to see. It is spring time, so seeing the greens around the lake coupled with the pagoda and pavilions that line the lake is a really cool sight. We got a boat for about $10USD to take us out for a quick tour around the lake. Best decision we made all day was taking this boat. Basically you have one guy that rows you around the lake and it was really relaxing plus it gave you a better view of things around the lake.

All in all, Hangzhou was a great day trip and a fun trip to end our time in China.

Nanjing Trip

My family and I are trying to fit in as much travelling as possible before we leave China. This past weekend we took a day trip out to Nanjing. It was a pretty packed day as there is a lot to see in Nanjing, but our day started out at 5:15am when we left our house to go to the Shanghai train station. After about a 2 hour train ride to Nanjing, the family and I left the Nanjing train station and took the #1 tourist bus to head to the touristy area on Nanjing.

After a bus ride in which our bus driver was the least aggressive bus driver I have ever had here in China. To put it in perspective, the driver would never try to go through a yellow light, he would stop at bus stops and read his text messages on his phone and he never once tried to make an effort to get us to our destination with enthusiasm. This is the complete opposite of any bus driver that I have had in Shanghai, so it was a little weird to be riding in this bus.

We started our day by going to Sun Yat-sen's Mausoleum and the touristy area that is around the mausoleum. The Mausoleum (as seen in the picture) has a bunch of stairs that leads you from the entrance area all the way up to the main mausoleum area. My kids were…unusually…excited about climbing all the stairs. This ended up being a great thing because they were really excited about all the activities we had for the day.

After walking around for a bit, we headed back to town for some lunch. We found a place that looked to be similar to Shanghai's Xintiandi, so we assumed we would be able to find a good meal. We ate at a place called Nihero, which is a Cantonese Style restaurant, for Shanghai it was a reasonably priced meal, overall it was a good restaurant…not the best…but good.

With full stomachs we headed over to the Nanjing Massacre Museum. At the time we were not sure if it was a good idea to go to see this exhibit with full stomachs, but it ended up being a good idea. Both my wife and I thought that we had heard that the museum was not for the faint of heart, but it was actually a really well done memorial for the people who died and was my favorite part of the trip. The tone of the place was obviously solemn, but the displays had a lot of taste and the exhibits were really thought through. The Chinese had a chance to do this well or really make it cheesy and overdo it, in this case they did it very well and tastefully.

After seeing the museum, we went back towards the train station and walked around the Xuanwu Lake and Park right outside of the train station before hopping on our train back to Shanghai. Overall, Nanjing is a really cool city with some neat and well done things to say…definitely worth the day trip from Shanghai.

Kunming

Last weekend the family and I headed to Kunming to visit some friends working down in Kunming. The essence of the trip was to catch up with our friends, so we didn't make a significant amount of time to do sightseeing. On Saturday morning, the kids and I were free, but only had a couple of hours. As a result, we decided to go to Cui Hu (Jade Lake) in downtown Kunming. The park around the lake isn't anything too special, but it was a great day and we were able to rent a paddle boat and go for a paddle boat ride out on the lake. The kids had a great time chasing the ducks (although they were just sitting back while I was the one paddling to chase the ducks…and ducks are pretty fast), and they were all excited to run around the bridges in the park.

Over the rest of the weekend we spent time with friends and met some really cool people, actually I met some Norwegians, which are the first born and raised Norwegians that I have ever met in my life so that was pretty cool. One other thing that came out of the weekend was how I figured out what kind of great life we have here in Shanghai. If we were in Kunming our lives would be totally different and totally less western as compared to our lives here, so while people in the US think we are bold for living in Shanghai, we have it really good here, I take my hat off to the expats that are living in smaller cities such as Kunming that do not have all the creature comforts we get here in Shanghai.

One Day in Macau

As I already mentioned, I had a chance to spend one day in Macau a couple of weeks ago. This was my first visit to the small island, and most likely my last, not because I was disappointed, but more because I think I got to see it all. Macau is now famous for being the gambling mecca over here in Asia, but not being a gambler, I was more interested in seeing some of the sights.

After arriving, I headed right for the most famous landmark, the ruins of St. Paul's Cathedral. It was a decent landmark, but I was by far more blown away by the architecture throughout town. Macau Island is very small and so is very conducive to walking all over the place. This is good because it gives someone a chance to check out the different architecture around town. Macau was run by the Portuguese which contributed to the Mediterranean/Portuguese architecture that is found all over town. It is really cool to think about the fact that you are in China, but you get to walk down streets and feel like you are in the middle of Europe.

After checking out the sights, I went to the Venetian Macau, which some people suggest to go see as a tourist since it has so many cool aspects to it. The inside of the Venetian was nice, they did do a good job of putting in all the gaudy things to make it look like an old school Italian building, but it was a little too fake. I did get a chance to try Fatburger that has a location in the Macau, and it was just alright. This is one of those US West Coast Burger chains that have been really hyped up to me and to be honest, I was disappointed. There wasn't anything too great about it, in fact I'll take my US east coast Five Guys over anything that Fatburger puts out. It could be the fact that I was in Macau having it, but I probably won't be making a return anytime soon.
Overall, this is a nice place to go if you have an extra day after hanging out in Southern China or Hong Kong (which probably many of you don't have), but probably not a place that you need to go out of your way to go see on an individual trip as there is just not enough stuff to do (my total time on Macau for all the stuff I talked about above was less then 5 hours).

Beijing Day #3

It was raining the whole morning, so we decided to head out to this North Korean art studio, this place had a lot of funny things that included a book of Kim Jung Il (telling all his happy go lucky stories) and a book with the title "US Imperialists started the Korean War." Going there was definitely worth it just for the laughter.

We then went to a Sichuan restaurant, which was another great meal, so all in all, the food was great in Beijing, and the sites were also pretty cool.

Beijing Day #2

We started our day with going to Tiannemen Square and walking around there. We then went into a garden that was right next to the Forbidden City (one of my favourite places to visit) before heading into the Forbidden City. Being that this was my second time in the forbidden city, I guided Ray around and we basically spent the morning there.

After the Forbidden City, we went to one of the suggested duck restaurants, which was one of our best meals in Beijing, duck, while very fatty, is soooo soooo good.

We then headed to the Lama Temple, which had this huge Buddha statue that they claim was built from one tree trunk, this thing was huge, so it was almost impossible to think that they used one tree trunk, I mean this thing was huge.

Finally we headed to the Summer Palace, which was an absolutely huge park with pagodas and a lake, it started to rain so our time there was petty limited, but the place was still pretty neat.

We ended the night with a meal at a Tibetan restaurant, Makye Ame. The food was very good, although the homemade Barley Wine was the worst drink I have ever had in my life. The night was made right when a bunch of Tibetan singers and dancers came on stage to perform for about an hour. This was definitely one of the highlights of the whole trip. Some good food and a nice little Tibetan show, made for an all around good meal.

Beijing Day #1

Ray wanted to go up to Beijing during his time in China so we planned a 3 day trip up there. We arrived at the airport and headed right from airport to a portion of the Great Wall named Simatai. It took about 2 hours, but it was totally worth it. The Great Wall is one of the coolest places that I have been to in my life. This is one of those things that no matter how many pictures you have seen, the pictures do not do it justice, it was so great to be able to see it in person. We spent about 3 hours hiking up and down the wall, and were pretty tired when all was said and done, so we hoped back into our cab to head back to Beijing to check in.

All was going well when about 1 hour into the drive we got into a car accident. I saw it happening and new that the driver was not going to be able to stop, luckily neither Ray nor I were hurt in the accident, the only down fall was the fact that we had to wait about 2 ½ hours before we could leave the accident scene. This was a real big downer on how awesome the first part of the day went, so we hoped to redeem the day with a nice dinner. In regards to the food, we were totally dependent on the Lonely Planet guide book for places that we could go to eat, so we decided to try this place Xiao Wang's restaurant. We got there pretty late (thanks to the accident), so we were the only people in the restaurant. They didn't have rice, which was a huge strike, but they did have some good ribs and we got a really good vegetable. Their duck was not good at all, but the ribs made up for it, so the day was somewhat redeemed.

Shanghai Visit

The plans for the week were to spend Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday in Shanghai, with the rest of our time in Beijing. On Sunday morning we went for a bike ride to a little town outside of the city. This small town was a place that Ray could be exposed to China life outside of a big city. We rode through this town and to a small church that was still in use, but was clearly built a long time ago. We were able to convince one of the people watching the church to get inside of it and it was pretty neat to see how one of the small town churches works.

On Monday we did the Pudong Riverwalk, and then went to Yu Garden (typical itinerary for my guests). We then ended the day shopping at the fakes market.

On Tuesday we went to Suzhou to see the sites there. Our driver was not too familiar with the Suzhou so we had to pick up someone on the side of the road. As sketchy as this sounds, there are people that make their living off of standing on the side of the road and helping people navigate a town they are not familiar with. After one trial and error with a person, we then picked up this guy who we decided to call Chester. This guy not only got us into seeing some of the sights for free, he also negotiated for us to get on a boat ride with a tour group. He was an interesting character and it only costed us about 12 bucks for the day. All the sights in Suzhou were just as I remembered them, the boat ride was a nice addition to our last adventure. Thanks Chester for all your help.

The Invasion

So my wife's parents have been in town for about 3 weeks (although based on my blog, you can see that I was away for most of that that time), but the day after I arrived back from Singapore, my friend from the US, Ray, came for a visit. Now the house had my family, my in laws, and Ray, needless to say, our house was pretty full. We set up a nice schedule of touristy stuff to do while he was here in Shanghai, so our first night involved going to the famous pedestrian street, East Nanjing Road. It was a nice introduction to Shanghai in that the street has neon lights all over the place and he got a feel for what the crowds were going to be like during his visit (note that the first week of October is a weeklong holiday here in China).

Far Far Away

I'm currently away from Shanghai on business and missing the fam, but alas the blog must go on.

I am in a city called Panyu in the Guangdong province (southern China). Today is a Hong Kong Holiday, the Dragon Boat Festival, so while all my Hong Kong colleagues are enjoying their day off, I get to be working on an always fun client down here in the middle of nowhere. Actually the client is in the middle of nowhere, but they put me up in a hotel, the Panyu Hotel, that is in the middle of things, there is not only a McDonalds within walking distance, but there is also a Seven Eleven close. Some side notes to clarify this sentence:

• First, having a McDonalds close by is a huge thing because they are mostly in the big cities, so it is a huge deal to have one in a "smaller" town.
• Second, I am currently debating whether Chinese hotel food is better then McDonalds....conclusion, probably should starve myself for dinner.
• Third, I am visiting the Seven Eleven tonight, I have only ever seen them in Hong Kong, so I am excited to explore this one (please let them be experimenting with the introduction of Slurpees)

Anyway, Panyu reminds me of Hong Kong like no other city in mainland China, so it has the aura of familiarity even though I have never been here.