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).

Gotta love the flavor of breakfast....

Outside of our hotel there was this advertisement for some "Breakfast Flavoured Milk." Now I eat many things for breakfast, oatmeal, yogurt, eggs, cereal, so I am not sure what breakfast flavour tastes like, but this really could not be good. As you can see you have Malt flavored and Walnut Flavored milk, I have never had walnuts for breakfast so that would not be a breakfast flavour that I would be familiar with, but maybe they should next invent Eggs Benedict, Oatmeal or Toast and Jelly…..yummm toast and jelly flavored milk.

Final Thoughts on Singapore

Friends of mine here in Shanghai always says that Singapore was so much better then Shanghai and that everything "just works" there. Not really knowing what that meant before I left, I know now what that means. Singapore is such an easy place for someone who is just visiting to get around, to see things, the people are great, the transportation is great, and everything does just work. We had no issues our whole time while we were there. Singapore is quite an anomaly in all of Asia in that it is a really easy place for a Westerner to go without having to worry about anything, and it is a great tropical island. The one story that I can use to sum up how awesome Singapore was; my colleague lost his camera in a taxi cab, the cab driver not only came back to the hotel to find my colleague, but gave it to the lost and found at the hotel. There is not one other country in all of Asia that I can think that a taxi driver would do this, most other countries, the driver would keep it for themselves or find someway to deny it was there and sell it off. Now this might not have happened with every taxi driver in Singapore, but based on my short time there, it probably would have happened with at least 9 out of 10 of those, and that is how Singapore "just works."

By the way, we stayed at The Regent Hotel and it was the best hotel that I have ever stayed in, so this definitely helped with the experience.

The Final Days of Singapore

We got a lot of what we wanted to accomplish in Singapore over the weekend and with us working during the day, we kind of took it easy for the rest of our time in Singapore.

One of the last things I wanted to do was go to the "Long Bar" in the Raffles Hotel to get a Singapore Sling, supposedly the place where the Singapore Sling was invented. Well we arrived and from the start I was not impressed, the bar wasn't nearly as "neat" as most of the travel books set it out to be, and the Singapore Sling at the Long Bar was not good at all. This was a very disappointing adventure and my advice to anyone heading to Singapore, skip out on this excursion. The Raffles Hotel is a neat place, but the Long Bar is clearly a touristy trap, you can get a better Singapore Sling and be in a better bar in many other places.

We walked around after the Long Bar and the night was redeemed when we passed by the "largest fountain in the world," the Fountain of Wealth. Actually this thing was a pretty neat fountain (or at least neat as fountains can get) and had a show and some dance music playing with it, which made it all the more fun to sit and watch water being sprayed out of a tube.

Singapore Day #4

We started the day with a traditional Singaporean breakfast of Kaya Toast, runny eggs, and coffee with condensed milk. The kaya toast is a type of bread with a coconut jam type of spread on it and runny eggs are what they sound like, eggs that have only been partially cooked (hence the runniness). This was a very very good breakfast, a great way to start the day of touring, although I wouldn't suggest eating this breakfast on a regular basis.

When we left we noticed that it was pouring outside, so we took the subway and rode the bus to our next destination, the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. By the time we got there, the rain had subsided and was mostly a mist or a light rain. Luckily the nature reserve had lots of…well…nature that protected us from the light rain. We hiked up the "mountain" (it is a mountain for Singapore, but it is more like a small hill for the rest of the world) and got some nice pictures of…nature. They had some signs saying that there would be a fine if you fed the monkeys, but my theory is that they just put those signs there to get people excited to see monkeys when in fact, there are no monkeys, just my theory. By the time we were leaving the nature reserve the rain had pretty much subsided, so we decided to continue our adventure and head to Chinatown.

Now I live in Shanghai, so there are not many Chinatown's that impress me, as I live in the biggest Chinatown in the world. Singapore's was okay, not too much going on there, just a bunch of stalls selling junk, the same junk that I can get in Shanghai for much cheaper (actually most of those vendors buy their stuff in China and then bring it back to Singapore to sell to tourists for an ungodly amount.

We moved onto to the other cultural center of Singapore, Little India. Here we walked around a bit and got the notion that gold is a really big thing in India as there were hundreds of stalls and stores selling gold stuff. We eventually made our way to an area that had a bunch of restaurants and found a nice Indian restaurant. The service was great and they had some really good food. The chicken tikka masala (a staple for me) was just okay, but the rest of the food was great, so it kind of balanced itself out into a really good meal.

We took a short break in the afternoon and then headed to the Night Safari. This is basically a safari/zoo that is only open at night. We saw the Creatures of the Night Show and that was pretty neat (nothing too great, but fun), and then we went on the tram ride through the park. There were some parts were the animals roamed free (mostly just small harmless dear), and most of the dangerous animals were in areas that were protected by moats. The best part of the night safari was going into the flying fox cage. When you go in, you go in through a bunch of gates that make it so that the flying fox could not get out and when you enter the flying foxes are jumping all over the place, to the point where they are jumping right over your head and it almost feels like they are about to hit you. Anyway, the Night Safari is definitely worth a visit. After the Night Safari (around 11:30pm), we just went back to the hotel to retire for the night. A long day, but a very good day.