More on Shanghai...and a taste of Hong Kong nightlife!

Hello readers!

I find out every day more and more people who have been keeping up with our travels on our blog – so thanks!

We safely arrived in Hong Kong on Thursday afternoon, after the train ride from hell. It was a 20 hour train from Shanghai and I won’t get into details, but it was awful. Also, I ate something bad on the train – and ended up with a stomach bug for 24 hours. Luckily, we are staying with my friend Rachel “Patch” Adams in HK, so I had a comfortable place to be very, very ill. And, I am now recovered! Phew.

The rest of our trip in Shanghai was much better than that first day. If you take a trip there, I would recommend staying away from the touristy areas like the walk from People’s Square to The Bund. That is where we experienced all the craziness and people trying to scam us…everywhere else we went was just fine. We really loved the French Concession area and Taikang Lu area (which is a cute little maze of artsy shops and streets and restaurants where we bought cool communist propaganda stuff.) Also, on that Monday night, we at an amazing restaurant! “Lost Heaven” is the name of the place. It was in the French Concession and was probably our best meal yet on the entire trip so far! The food was from the Yunnan province and was very fresh- and the spices they used were so different than what we are used to. Although I stuck to TsingDao - the Chinese beer – this was the night Matt got patriotic and switched to Bud.

In any case, I would highly recommend Lost Heaven to anyone going to Shanghai.

One night in Shanghai, we went out with some of our friends from the ferry (see picture above). Kevin lives in Shanghai and took us to some really cool clubs which, even on a Tues. night, were pretty bumpin'. Yes, I said bumpin.

Since we have been in Hong Kong, we haven’t done too much (since I was really sick), but Patch and her friend Andy did show us around the bars in Central and took us to a great Peking Duck restaurant. Hong Kong is off the hook as far as nightlife goes. I have never seen so many cool bars all in a row! It was crazier than New Orleans – I’m telling you. It’s strange though, because the area they mainly hang out in is all ex-pats so you see very few Chinese people. That is definitely a change from everywhere else we have visited in Asia. Granted, we probably need to get out of the “Central” area and see a bit more of this city. Hopefully, we will do that today.

Of what I have seen so far, Hong Kong is a very, very cool city – a very clean city – and most people speak English. It is quite different from our other China experiences. We did expect the difference – but not this great of a difference!

Tomorrow, Patch has rented a junk boat for her birthday. About 15 of her friends will all be onboard and it will be a little food and booze cruise going around to 3 different beaches! The weather here has been great…so I’m really looking forward to it!

After that, we are off to Vietnam… we haven’t planned that leg of our trip AT ALL so we have a lot of work to do today.

- Miss you all -

PS Our RSS reader is only displaying some of our photo albums in the right nav. If you'd like to see all the photos, you can just go to: http://picasaweb.google.com/matt.d.tucker/

Toto, we're not in Japan anymore

In comedy, we often reinforce stereotypes...such as, blonds are dumb, Jews are cheap...or, of course - all Asians are the same. Well, fear not my Asian friends - you will NEVER hear us say that ever, ever again. Thus far, our experiences in China vs. Japan have been polar opposites.

First off, let me start on how we got here: The Osaka-Shanghai 2 day ferry! Ya know what? It was way better than we thought it would be. This, however, has nothing to do with the ferry really - and everything to do with the awesome travelers we befriended while on board. When we were first getting onto the ferry, we experienced the first difference between the Chinese and the Japanese... the Japanese patiently line up and wait for everything. Everything! The escalator, the subway...anything. There is always a perfectly patient LINE. While waiting to get on the boat to China, however, there was a lot of pushing, cutting, and just general disregard for other people trying to get on the boat around us. Once we got on the boat, #2 difference - help and hospitality. Tucker and I were split up immediately and put in different rooms - he in first class and me in standard. We paid the same amount and should have been in the same room but no one explained or offered to help or anything. It just 'was.'

In any case, the trip began. The views from the ship were beautiful. We were soon wondering what the HECK we were going to do to kill 48 hours on a boat. There was only so many rounds of Rummy 500 that we could play. Sooner or later, we met other travelers and had people to eat dinner and do karaoke with! The Karaoke was a blast. It was so different from how it is in the States. People REALLY appreciate good Karaoke singing. The "audience" claps in the middle of the song - like they are at a rock concert. I felt like a star! :)

The Karaoke ended at 10:30pm - and we didn't know what was left to do! A girl (from NJ!) said "go outside! The sky is beautiful and someone is playing guitar!" Soon enough, we were up on the deck of the boat - staring at one of the most star-filled, clear, and beautiful skies I have seen in a long time. The guitar playing continued and in a moment, you had people from the US, China, UK, Australia, Ireland, Poland etc all belting out the same Radiohead songs... It was such an awesome moment. You realize how simple things can be...and how music seriously unifies us all. It was truly amazing. (Videos of Karaoke are in the Traveling to Shanghai album.)

Some of the friends we met on the boat are Americans now living in China. THANK GOD we met them because they took us to lunch and to buy our train tickets when we first arrived in Shanghai. Their Mandarin really came in handy. (Also, they were hi-larious.) It is definitely much harder here to get around without speaking the language - AND the language is much harder to pick up or "fake."

It is Monday evening, and we just got back to our hostel after our first day exploring Shanghai. If I'm being completely honest - it wasn't the greatest sight-seeing experience I've ever had. First off, I'm feeling paranoid here. I mean... communism in general makes me paranoid! Second, our friends had warned us of tourist scams - and they were spot on. Person after person tried to scam us with the same offers over and over again. (Where are you from? Are you a student? We are travelers too! Want to go to this tea ceremony with us?) I felt very uncomfortable and was very glad I had Tucker there with me for safety!

Besides paranoia about scams, and pushing away people trying to sell us things - I am a tad paranoid about what we can consume here! Don't drink the water; check the bottled water to make sure it hasn't been tampered. Don't eat dairy because babies are dying. Don't eat fruits and veggies because they are washed in the water! Don't eat food from stalls. Ahhh!

Also, its just really dirty here. And it's not just in comparison to Japan. I mean, you can see and FEEL the pollution in the air. Also, you can be in the nicest area - and suddenly a terrible smell just hits and its so off-putting you have to cover your face with your shirt. People push. People spit. A LOT. There is a lot of smoking and spitting. Its definitely different from the past two weeks. :)

That being said, I don't want it to sound like things are terrible. We did have a good time today. Although I'm so skeptical about trusting ANYONE because of our experiences, we did meet one helpful man - so that was nice. Also, we walked around and took a bunch of photos, and had a lot of laughs. We went to the Yuayuan Gardens - and it was full of plants and rocks and temples. The signs throughout called the rock formations "Rockery." We had lots of laughs at making a mockery of the rockery...not gonna lie.