I had no want or desire to go back into Global, so I stayed outside on the fifth deck for a short time and watched us sail down the Saigon River. Being this giant ship in this tiny river really is a sight to see. Much more of a sight than Global ever will be.
But nonetheless, I went inside as I think I would have been chased inside if I stayed outside. Believe it or not, Global wasn’t that bad today, as it was mostly Chinese history of the past fifty or so years, starting with the Cultural Revolution. What made Global doable today was that the vast majority of it was a video about Tiananmen Square. I’d always known about the incident that occurred, but I never knew the background story and details, and learning about it was absolutely fascinating. The story is heart wrenching and unbelievable what was done to the Chinese citizens. I never knew that it was that close to ending communist rule in China.
What is even more fascinating was something I learned at some point later. There’s a student on board that is from China that attends school in the states, and he said that he never knew about what happened in Tiananmen Square at all. It’s not taught, mentioned, or spoke of at all throughout the country. That astonishes me. That in today’s world information is controlled is a bit science fiction-esque for me.
After our decent Global (and I say that cautiously), we still had about two more hours to go until we exited the river and emerged back out into open water, so I parked myself on the back of the ship to watch the world go by again. I still kept a watchful eye in the event that we overturned any smaller fishing craft, but I did not see any of that happening, and I was watching our wake and some of the smaller boats. Some went for a ride, but it appears that all boats survived unscathed for the remainder of our exit of Vietnam.
By the time we were out of the river, it was time for lunch and I was a bit hot from sitting outside in the sun for the past few hours, so I went in to cool off and hold off for a few minutes before I headed over to what I was sure was going to be a stellar lunch. As usual, I was wrong, and it was far from stellar. Everything is tasting the same, and that’s not a good thing.
In the afternoon, I think I actually took a thousand pages of notes in my cinema class. It may have been a thousand. The professor put up slides that were so chock full of stuff that she told us not to bother writing it all down and she would put it on the ship intranet. Still, that’s a thousand pages of notes that I’d have to write down in the near future.
After my cinema class, I had a reaction paper to write for my cinema class. With available time dwindling as fast as a Vietnamese motorbike rider, I’m really finding that planning out my time is becoming more important, and subsequently exponentially difficult. Nonetheless, I was able to get that paper done; the prodding was that if I didn’t get it done now, it wasn’t going to get done for weeks.
Around 5, I had to go to the Union because two of my professors decided to show us all a video in lieu of going to the next class. Now that’s really killing two birds with one stone for me. I’m sure the video was about China, and more specifically I’m sure it had something to do with its history and art, as those were the two classes I was getting credit for by showing up. I also handed in the paper that I had just spent my afternoon completing. The video was almost an hour and the quality clearly indicated its age to be at lest ten or fifteen years old. The narrator was quite funny – but wasn’t trying to be. In the end, I think it was either about the Tang or Qing dynasty. (Those dynasties are only separated by about 100o years…)
A few of my friends were also at the video so we went straight to dinner afterwards. We’d decided that somehow this trip is beginning to bring itself to a close and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be eating every meal off the back deck as opposed to inside. We can eat inside when we get back home, but eating on the back of the ship, watching the sunset is something that’s going to go away, and we’re going to miss it when it does. There’s a few tricks to eating outside, and most involve where to sit and where not to sit. If you sit by the doors, every time they open a cold jet of air chills you, and if you sit in direct sunlight, and it’s early enough, it gets really hot and uncomfortable. So finding that butter zone of tables is quite tricky, especially if a bunch are taken when you get there, because there are far more people wanting to eat on the back deck than there are tables.
After dinner Tom, one of the RDs (resident directors), was going to show me and a couple other people how to make origami flowers. The kids on the ship were working on origami cranes to deliver to the peace park when we arrived in Japan. They were aiming for 1000. I was wishfully thinking for ~800 – one for every person at the Ambassador’s Ball. The idea being that each person would have one on their plate when they sat down for dinner. And to this point, I had not made one of the flowers, so needless to say, there would be a challenge sitting in front of me and my Ambassador’s Ball crew.
So, I met up with Tom and a couple other people to learn how to do this. To give you an idea, it took him about 10 minutes to get the first one done, and by the time I finally got one together, it was nearly another ten minutes later. This was not nearly as easy as I had expected it to be and really cast the idea of putting 800 of these together within the next few weeks into doubt. He had to depart after we started to pick up the idea, but a few of us stayed back to try to learn how to do this folding stuff. Those are really clever Japanese to put together an incredibly complicated series of folds to make a beautiful paper flower.
We stayed in the back of the empty room until I noticed that it started to fill up with people. I figured that something was going on and we might have to leave, which was all well and good because there was a big global studies exam the next day that I really needed to start studying for. I soon realized that it was a community college thing – an informal talk the ship’s doc was giving about medical myths. I figured I’d stay around for a while because it sounded interesting. That, and I felt guilty leaving once everyone started coming in the room.
I paid attention while I sat in the back trying to remember how to fold these annoying flowers, and believe it or not the stuff the doc was talking about was pretty interesting. It was a bit about how some doctors don’t think that their patients are smart enough to make an informed decision and how the group he works for is a place that provides the patient with all the information about whatever they’ve got so that they can make an informed and proper decision about their health. One thing he talked a bunch about was prostate cancer and how some people decline the results of their test because they don’t want to know if they have it or not because they could have it, but go on to lead a completely normal and healthy life for another fifty years and never have a problem, or they could learn the results and possibly have a lower quality of life over those fifty years because they know they’re living with cancer. There’s much more to it and it was fascinating and lets me know what to look for in a doctor as time goes on.
All in all, I was very glad that I decided to stay and listen to Dr. Matt rather than going off to study for my global exam. It’s absolutely worth the lower possible score. It also made me think that there were a slew of other community college events throughout the voyage that I glanced over and now I’m thinking that I might have wanted to go to a few of the previous ones, but I’m not going to sit and bemoan about it.
After that, I actually had to get my rear in gear for studying and I hurriedly did as much as I could before I passed out, and I think that was coming sooner rather than later. I wouldn’t say that I was cramming because that would indicate that I stayed up late and tried to fit as much info in my head as possible. I didn’t do either. I went to bed shortly thereafter and stopped studying immediately when my head reached a saturation point.
When I woke up in the morning, I did some firm studying for the exam during breakfast and I was rather satisfied with what I was able to accomplish so I felt prepared for it. My location for taking the exam is the Union and it was more full than normal because we’re not in any rough seas. The last exam we took had some people go down for the count before the exam because the Union is the worst place on the ship to be if the seas are rough – unless you’re me and the seas don’t bother you at all and it all seems like a really fun ride.
I didn’t think the exam to be all that bad, and that could be a good sign or a bad sign. I’ll find out whenever scores are posted for the exam, which might be as soon as this afternoon if the past is no indication. As I usually do at the conclusion of an exam, I like to relax a bit and hang out on the back deck and let the joy of completing that exam wash over me. I don’t know why I started going out on the back deck, but this is the third of four exams and I’ve done it after both of the previous two.
But I couldn’t relax for long as I had a mission to accomplish with my Ambassadors Ball Seating Lieutenant Katie. Now that we had everybody signed up for the ball, and Kaite spent most of yesterday finding a table for everybody, we have to go through all 800 participants and make sure that they paid and that they’re assigned one seat apiece. Not two or zero seat apiece, just one. Because if there’s an issue with seating, this is where it might spring up. So, we have a long and tedious process before us that we’d like to finish as soon as possible so that we can post the seating arrangements.
One by one, Katie read out a name on a table from her spreadsheet, and I checked it off on my master spreadsheet. That way, along the way we will know if someone is in there twice, or not at all. After everyone is in, we compare my master spreadsheet with the giant packet of signatures for those who paid and make sure everyone assigned a seat paid the $25 fee. It’s not something that’s going to be quick to finish and it’s not something that I can say I’m really looking forward to, but it’s something I’ve got to get done with Katie if we’re going to have a successful ball.
Because I didn’t have my art class today due to the video yesterday about one of the Chinese dynasties, we worked through lunch and well into the afternoon to get as much done as we could on the list. Once we got about halfway through the list (about four hours later) we decided to call it a day.
Then I went upstairs to see if the exam scores were up, and they were. I got a 72 and I could not have cared less. The next item on my agenda was to find paper to use for folding those 800 flowers I decided to commission – an idea that is slowly become more of a regret than a brilliant brainwave. Everyday at sea a Dean’s Memo is published and it has all the important events of the upcoming days. It’s something I will have to increasingly use for ball stuff. But it’s printed on colored paper, and that’s ideal for the flowers. It’s recycling at its finest. The trick is finding the old paper. I scoured the ship and procured a decent amount that was still only about a tenth of the amount of paper we’ll need – but hey, it’s a start.
Being as busy as we are, being in port more than on the ship the past few weeks, my room has gotten a little on the cluttered side and I was starting to not be able to find anything, so I figured a little planned cleaning would be a really good idea. But I noticed something that suddenly seemed like it might be a problem. Laundry went out early yesterday morning, and for me to have sufficient clothes for my five day trip in China, that laundry would need to come back. I put absolutely as much as I can into each laundry bag, which means that I only leave a few days of clothing out while it’s out being washed. The thought that my laundry might not be back until after I have to fly out of Hong Kong was starting to creep into my head. I pushed it back out as I was sure that it would be back if not tomorrow morning, then the morning after. Surely it would.
And now that we have decided to enjoy our meals outside on the back deck, it was cloudy at sunset today. I’m hoping this doesn’t become the norm. After dinner I had another paper to write, this one for my history class. It’s not that it’s a tough paper to write, it’s just the act of typing it out that’s going to be tough to muster the ability to do.
While I was out and about during the day, I wore my Lost shirt with the numbers on it (4 8 15 16 23 42) and people kept thinking that they were some sort of pattern. I told everyone what they were, with one exception. My RD Dan was bent on figuring out the pattern because he loves that kind of stuff – and because he was on duty working the student life desk and was bored. So I didn’t tell him that there was no pattern and said I’d come back later. When I came back later, he still hadn’t figured it out, but he thought he was close. I told him what they were and surprisingly I don’t think he was annoyed. It gave him something to do while he was on duty.
And at the end of the day, even though we were sailing almost due north, we had to lose another hour of sleep. And each one always hurts more than the last.
In the morning I opened my door expecting to see my laundered clothes, but instead found my roommate’s laundered clothes. I figured mine would be back the following day, but I would be forced to take some precautions in the afternoon. We had another really boring lecturer in global. It’s too bad that this class can only have one interesting day per month. And we used that up two days ago.
For the remainder of the morning, Katie and I finished double-checking our seating and there were only two or three small issues that came up, but those small issues could have been much bigger if we didn’t double-check and let them slide. With that long, tedious, and arduous task behind us now, we should be able to post the seating arrangement after China, as a few people still need to be added to the ball, even though that window of opportunity closed before Vietnam. There’s always excuses.
In my cinema class in the afternoon, we’re watching a bizarre movie about children performers in China, and while it’s a film and not a documentary, the scenes of the children being beaten was a little too much for me to handle. I know I’m exposing myself to other cultures, but I’m thinking that this may have been a little further than I was willing to go. I didn’t watch vast portions of it and can’t really tell you what was going on. It’s all in Chinese, and when I’m not looking at the screen I can’t see the subtitles, so I lose that important element.
And it was an odd numbered B day, so it was my day to visit with the dependent kids. As usual, I can never seem to find something to do or a way to make best use of my talents, so I started folding the flowers again and then tried to show the kids how to do it, and their learning curve was about as long as mine was, but their attention span is far shorter. I knew that I had to learn how to fold these flowers, and the kids don’t have anything riding on it, so if they didn’t get it, there was nothing off their back. So by the end, I had another small tower of flowers that I’d have to keep in the room.
We did dinner out on the back deck again this evening, and somehow I always seem to position myself away from the sunset, so it’s always behind me. That’s incredibly inconvenient when I’m trying to eat and watch the sunset. There’s a lot of craning behind me. But we’re still holding true to our promise to eat out there and that’s what matters.
As always before we pull into a port, we had a meeting for our trips, and I was glad to see that I would have a bunch of friends on the trip, as well as having it led by Professor Simon and his wife Ann Claire, both of whom are wonderful. They were married just before the trip left. The trip we’re taking in China looks like a doozy. It’s the longest that I’m taking. Most other trips were four days, and this one is five. And instead of two plane flights, we’ve got three. It’s a big trip, then again, we’re going to China, which is its own journey in and of itself. Also on the trip is Dr. Matt and his family. Just like Brenda the nurse in India, having a doc on the trip is just that added bit of assurance that in case something were to happen, I’d be able to get well-qualified medical treatment. (And wouldn’t you know that this was the trip where I’d actually need a doctor. But more on that later.)
Because we were going on a five-day trip, I would need five days worth of clothing. My laundry wasn’t back yet and I had three sets of clean clothes in the closet. That meant that those two sets of dirty clothes in the closet would have to be washed in the sink, and I did that after the trip meeting and before preport, hoping that they’d be able to dry by the morning. Once off the ship I would learn that an effective way to start the drying of the clothes is to lay the wet clothing on a towel and roll the two together really tightly, squeezing them so the water transfers into the towel. I wish I had known that now. I hung the wet clothes up in the shower.
Once I finished washing those two sets of clothes, I started packing for the trip so I wouldn’t have to do that in the morning. The idea for this trip is that we’d be moving around so much that I didn’t want a heavy backpack. But because China was going to be the first country we visit that’s a bit cooler (Hanoi-like) I need to pack a few of the heavier clothes, so I needed to pack smart. I did as best as I could and was glad that I didn’t have to pack bug spray for once. I’m done and fed up with that stuff. I don’t want to have to use that again for anything. That stuff was just as annoying as the malaria pills.
Then, much to my chagrin, we had an Ambassadors Ball meeting before the preport, and the attendance was quite low. At this point, I’ve disowned decorations and if we have any for the ball, it’s an added bonus. I’ve got more important things to do than beat people over the head to buy decorations. The turnout was also a bit disheartening if for no other reason than we’re in the home stretch now. Now is when we need the commitment, but drumming it up is becoming increasingly difficult.
Our ports being so close together now, we have combined logistical and cultural preport together. They’re really pushed together for the fact that it’s less for the deans to prepare and they get an extra day to do it. I’m not complaining – it’s easier for my schedule. I’m not saying that some parts of the preport were boring, but I found a number of opportunities to fold flowers in it. And towards the end, I was hoping that a dos and don’ts section would be included considering that it’s China and there have got to be at least a few dos and don’ts to know, but instead Julie Strand came out again and did her awful schpiel about music. The music isn’t the problem. Julie is the problem. And I can’t stand her anymore.
So, if you can remember way back, Joan is one of the lifelong learners whose son flew down to South Africa for the safari, and then flew back. And I met her daughter Cindy when I crashed the Lifelong Learner Sea Social. And tonight the whole family invited their adopted sea family, of which I am now apparently part of, up to their ‘penthouse suite.’ I call it a penthouse suite because the rooms are quite extravagant and large, being all the way up on Deck 7.
The rooms have got real stone in the bathroom, a bathtub, a king size bed, a sofa that converts into a pull-out bed, big television, a private outdoor deck – it’s essentially a very nice hotel room on a ship. So Joan and the real family had the sea family, about five of us up to her room for cookies. They ordered a tray up from the kitchen and I have no idea where these cookies have been hiding the entire voyage, but I couldn’t get enough of them. It was actual tasty food, albeit falling apart in my hand from the grease and fat content.
What was also fun about the night was that the Captain turned the exterior lights off so that we could look at the stars. While there were still some lights on here and there, the sky was very pretty. It was a very nice evening before we all go our separate ways again when we dock tomorrow. And Joan and her son and daughter could not be more polite and wonderful. I had a very nice time. I think she could have served broccoli flowerets and I would have had a wonderful time.
And because we pull into port tomorrow, I’ve got to get up early for the possible sunrise. So I promptly went to bed.
Hong Kong
There was no sunrise. It was cloudy and threatening rain, even at 6:30 when I woke up, which pained me to do so. I thought about going back to bed, but decided to stay awake and have breakfast instead. Maybe I’d be able to fall asleep on the flight. (Yeah, right.) It was a very eerie, misty, Hanoi-like atmosphere outside and I didn’t see any land, which is never a good sign when we’re due in port. With the exception being that I do believe there was fog and that was not all resultant from pollution – maybe some, but no Vietnam levels.
As each port we pull into is a completely different experience, Hong Kong was no different. I’m not sure of the waterways of the area, but as we moved through the water, there would be land on the port side of the boat and we would think that Hong Kong would be there, then it would turn into a sheer cliff face and then the starboard side would look like it could have really tall buildings coming up, then that island would end. So it became a very long process of looking back and forth and wondering when Hong Kong would present itself, and which side of the ship it would be on – we were taking bets. I’ve got some lovely photos of what I thought was the city, but turned out to be not the city.
Not Hong Kong:
(And please note when I refer to Hong Kong, I’m referring to the city portion. Everything you are seeing, and what I was seeing was the country of Hong Kong, but we’re looking for the world famous city.)
Even though there are buildings, still not Hong Kong:
Getting desperate, I turned the camera around to the back of the boat, and still did not find Hong Kong:
But finally, and those of you who selected the port (left) side of the ship won the bet, Hong Kong appeared:
What’s interesting about Hong Kong is that there is the city proper portion and then other areas around. Across the waterway, where we docked, is called Kowloon. Here’s a photo of me in front of the other side, Kowloon:
One of the students on the ship, who has lived in Hong Kong likens the relationship of Hong Kong to Kowloon as that of New York City to Brooklyn, if you know what I mean. And in case you haven’t already guessed it, it’s cheaper to dock in Kowloon than Hong Kong.
So often we feel like we’re on another planet on this trip because we are so removed from our lives. But this morning was something that reminded us we were on Earth. Just as we were starting to pull up to the dock, one of the professors said he was reading on-line about a shooting at Virginia Tech. Information was hard to come by and there was at best minimal to go on, but on a ship of college students, it all struck a bit of a chord with us. It produced a weird combination of feeling sorrow for what was happening in our country and the fact that we were just about to be let loose in a new country.
In lieu of a person from the consulate coming on board to talk to us before disembarking, it was decided that Desi would say a few words about what was happening back home. He was very eloquent and it felt right. Usually at the briefings, the attendance is low, but there was standing room only in the Union and satellite rooms. We were looking for information, or just a little centering. And we got what we needed, I think.
The term ‘departure upon arrival’ seems odd, but it applied to me. My China trip had to leave the ship first, before anyone else was to be let off at all. We had a flight to catch. This is the kind of morning where I wonder if the ship is going to dock on time, but it appeared that we were going to be on schedule, and I wasn’t concerned for some reason. It was a welcome change of pace.
Once the ship was cleared by immigration, we departed – having just arrived in port. I would have really liked to have seen more of Hong Kong than just the view we got from the ship on the other side of the waterway, but I’ve got bigger stuff to do on the way.
Instead of leaving the ship on Deck 2, we left on Deck 5 – but! – we did not have to walk down the giant staircase as Hong Kong is civilized and has a walkway that extended onto the ship. Unfortunately, it extended onto the area reserved for the smokers, and they were in full force when we were leaving. Aside from that unpleasantness waiting in line to leave, I was off the ship yet again, ready for another new adventure. (And what an adventure this trip would be…)
We loaded up onto buses and I was hoping that we would be driving through Hong Kong to get to the airport, but it turns out that we have to drive a half hour in the opposite direction, so there went Hong Kong. We did pass the exit for Hong Kong Disney along the way though. I had a few friends go there and they said that they had a good time and it was fun. Anyway, I was hoping for some scenery on the way to the airport to take photos of. This is the best I could come up with:
Needless to say, if there was stuff to see, I either missed it or was unable to get my camera on it fast enough. So, we get to the airport, and after months of the ship people telling us about travel restrictions and airport security, we finally arrived at an airport that seemed to actually have tight security. They checked our bags for liquids and had us bag them (a first,) they had us go through two metal detectors that we both operational (a first,) and they would not let us bring liquids on the plane at all (a first.) If that happened in some other countries, I may have been in trouble.
Nobody seemed to know what was going on, but moreso than usual. The security threw us all for a bit of a loop. The group consensus was that we would all meet at the gate by boarding time, and we had a couple hours to kill until that happened. So my group and I wandered around looking for something to entertain ourselves with. And then we found our salvation: the food court.
Hong Kong is a lovely country if for no other reason that they have Western amenities, like a Ben & Jerry’s (Penn State grads I might add.) I think the rest of my group went to Burger King for lunch, but that’s one Western amenity I can do without. Ben & Jerry’s for brunch sounded lovely to me. And, with my cup of ice cream, I get a free cookie at the store two spots over. Is that a deal, or is that a deal?
After we enjoyed our brunch, we looked at our watches and figured that it looked about time to start walking to the gate, wherever it was. First, we had to go down to the lower level where all the gates were, and when we stepped off the escalator, we came upon a rather odd-looking vending machine.
We moved closer to look what was inside, and we quickly came to realize that there was no food inside the vending machine…
…there were purses. What a country! Purses in a vending machine!? What will they think of next. We didn’t need any extra purses, so we didn’t need to purchase one. But we came to understand why purses were being sold – we passed just about every store there was on the way to the gate, and it just so happened our gate was about as far away as it could be. And if you know airports, that’s quite a long distance. But we budgeted time for that so we weren’t in any kind of rush, and that’s why we went in and out some of the stores.
Asia is known for having some really cool technology stuff, so we ducked into a high-tech looking store, and while the stuff in the store looked fun, something struck me as odd. There was a display case with the most popular CDs and DVDs, and the same person was at the top of both – Madonna. I had no idea that she had such a large following in Asia. And on every television in the store was the Madonna DVD playing. It’s like she’s some kind of demigod out here.
Eventually we schlepped all the way out to the gate, where most of the rest of the group already was. Apparently they didn’t see the need to eat or be entranced by Madonna along the way. We still had about fifteen minutes before boarding was supposed to start, but because we were flying, there was no way this flight was boarding on time. I don’t understand the concept of not boarding on time. To pass the time there was a bookstore across from the gate and I bemused myself there for a while. You would think that we were back in the US – nearly all the titles were in English. I would have bought one if I didn’t already have one, and had the gusto to want to lug one all over China. But if you looked around, you could tell we were out of the US – the newspapers were not in English, and there was a fairly large ‘dirty’ section, if you know what I mean.
Once boarding started, everyone again jumped up to get on line, and I sat back with my group telling them that there was no reason to stand in that long line – unless they really needed sufficient room to stow their backpacks. Because that’s actually what you lose when you wait to board. We forgot about that at the time, so our stuff crammed under the seat in front of us and gave us no leg room.
To my delight, we were in a big airplane – apparently Hong Kong to Beijing is a popular transit. The seats were arranged 2/4/2, which seemed like an unusual configuration to me. Why not 3/3/3? I guess that means that the most people you’ll have to climb over is one, but that takes all the fun out of flying.
As we taxied out to the runway, the television screens came to life with what to do in the event of an emergency, and people acting out the events. There is nothing like seeing people in jumpsuits use the escape slide parachute. It’s something I hope to not see for real, especially if they’re going to make us put on blue jumpsuits before leaving the airplane. But after that message ended, and the flight attendants took their seats, we saw this:
If you don’t like looking out the window for take-off, having a view from the nose is scary. But Vietnam had screens at the nose, too. How was China Air different? Once we made it into the air, the camera switched from the front of the plane to look directly below us to watch the ground go by. Now that’s truly frightening. I couldn’t watch that one.
Leg 9: Hong Kong to Beijing, China
Since the horrific flights in Brazil, my flights since have been quite calm. That was bound to change. For such a large plane, it sure bounced around a lot. I started to develop a bit of a white knuckle grip on my seat. To make matters more interesting, I had no idea how long a flight from Hong Kong to Beijing would be. It could be an hour or three hours or more and I would have no idea. I forgot to look. So, here I am on a turbulent airplane for an indeterminate amount of time, waiting for something to get my mind off. Then the movie screens started to lower and a movie started to play. Figuring that I was in Asia, we would be getting some wacky film I’d never seen or heard of, and certainly not dubbed in English. But then came on The 40-Year-Old Virgin in English. No one was more surprised that me.
Apparently the flight was close to two hours because they cut the film off before it was over as we were preparing for landing. And I never found out how it ends! And I want to know. It was a good movie, too. I’m going to have to search for it now.
China
I was quite happy to be back on the ground – as well as watch the TV screens as we approached the runway. That’s a bit nerve-racking, and is why I’m not going to be a pilot now or ever. This is the one point in the trip where I go from one country to another without being on a boat between.
It took a short time to realize it, but soon I made it sink in that I was in China. Land of myth and legend, and one of, if not the oldest civilization on Earth. China did what the ancient civilizations of Rome, Greece, and Egypt failed to do – survive to 2007. I was in Red China. I think it really hit me in line at customs. In which I again picked the quickest line and was quite happy about that. I never like looking the customs person in the face, they never seem happy to be there. China was no different.
After customs we went through the maze that is part of every airport to get to the baggage claim area. Here, there were stations where we had to fill out what we were declaring and bringing into the country, and then we would hand these to somebody on the way out. I don’t get how some people wouldn’t put the wrong info on the card, but I don’t want to find out what would happen. I filled mine out honestly.
There were no signs announcing that we had to fill out these wacky cards either, apparently we just had to figure it out. But because we weren’t in Brazil, there were directions in Chinese and English. It seemed like we were there forever, but that might be because everyone wanted to make a pit stop in the bathroom before leaving and it was so far away – we literally had to walk three or four minutes to reach the bathroom, and then back again, so needless to say, it delayed us a bit.
Once we went through the area where we had to hand in our forms, our tour guides met us on the other side. In every other country (even in the Amazon) our guides had to wear official clothing of their tour company. When I was river rafting in South Africa, the guide changed from his suit to rafting wear, then back to the suit for the drive back. Here, our guides were dressed like college students. No identification, but they did have a flag on a stick. They were dressed more casual than we were. I didn’t get it. I figured China would be a country where we could almost guarantee the guides would be dressed professionally.
Anyway, once we all gather we head outside and I really make an impression. Less than a couple minutes outside of the airport, I was concerned the police would be coming after me and locking me into a prison, never to see the light of day again. So here’s what happened: we walked out of the airport and started meandering through the parking lot, and I was talking to someone and was looking around, and essentially was barely paying attention to where I was going. I snapped my head to look where I was going, and before I knew it, there was a short Chinese woman right in my way, and I was not going to miss her, and I barreled right into her. I did react in time to prevent her falling to the ground because I grabbed her shoulders in a death grip. Once we were stabilized, I could have let go, but was unable to. My mind could not process I bumped into this woman and resultantly forgot to let her go. So about five whole seconds of immobility elapsed before I let her go and started apologizing profusely – but in English. She had no idea what I was saying, so I digressed into exaggerated facial expressions in a very poor game of charades. She gave a light smile and kept walking. I finally was able to push myself to keep moving with my group. And they saw the whole thing and badgered me about it for the rest of the day. Welcome to China! As long as that woman didn’t send the police after me, I wasn’t going to worry. That’s why once the bus left the parking lot I breathed a short sigh of relief.
I’ve seen lots of rush hours around the world now, but China may take the cake. India rush hour was heavy, but everyone moved a speeds far too high for safe driving – and everyone was driving different vehicles – a veritable cornucopia of automobiles. Vietnam had motorbike-dominated streets, but because they’re motorbikes and everyone somehow understands the traffic patterns, traffic moves. In China, the volume was not nearly as high as India and Vietnam, and the traffic moved at a snail’s pace.
Most of the vehicles were larger things like cars, buses, trucks and vans. To pass the time from the drive to the hotel, we started to observe some of the scenery. We found the electric company’s van.
As funnily as we looked at them, they looked back at us in an even funnier way. It’s like we were some kind of tourists taking photos of banal stuff. Oh, wait we were – I called it ‘returning the favor.’
Little did I know that the clear blue skies that began to disappear as the sun set would be the last time that I would see the sun in China. It was such a nice day that I figured that the next day would be like that also, but that would be an incorrect assumption as I would soon find out.
After what seemed like a very long time (because it was) we neared the hotel. But along with the traffic on the way, what else astonished me was the amount of KFCs about. KFCs are everywhere. You would think that Beijing invented the Kentucky Fried Chicken. It was unbelievable. I think I saw ten KFCs for each McDonald’s throughout Beijing. They were everywhere. And I couldn’t stand seeing it that often. The Beijing residents must clearly enjoy their KFC.
Finally we arrived at the hotel, here it is pictured below:
It was a nice place. Curvy but nice. It explains part of why the trip was as pricey as it was, I guess. We essentially had enough time to head up to the room, freshen up, then head back down to leave for dinner. It had been an eventful day so far, and it wasn’t about to end without a bang – and it’s coming…
For dinner, they took us to the place that they claimed invented the recipe for the Peking Duck. (For reference, Beijing is also known as Peking.) I’m thinking they invented their recipe for Peking Duck, which happens to be very good – from what I understand, this recipe predates most modern-looking restaurants. The restaurant was called the Beijing Hepingmen Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant. Or the Quanjude for short. The restaurant was named a China Renowned Trademark in 1999, so this is the real deal.
The eating area, for us at least, was on the fourth or fifth floor, and instead of waiting on line at the elevator, I decided to sprint up the stairs and then strike a Rocky pose when I got to the top.
As we walked down the corridor into the dining room, there were a number of photos on the wall. There were a few faces I recognized, but one of the photos that stuck out most to be was the one of Nixon, who ate here during his infamous tour of China back during his presidency.
Holding the Asian tradition true, we all sat at a gigantic table and ate off of a lazy susan. Do you think that whatever the Chinese call that spinning thing directly translates to ‘lazy susan’?
I thought that Peking Duck was just one dish, and it may have been, but we had five or six different dishes out, all holding what appeared to be duck. Also, we were supposed to eat one kind of the duck with something called a pancake, which was essentially eating the duck like a tortilla. I found a fork to be much more effective.
And so I had the duck. I thought it was okay. Although, all the while I was eating it I could not get the image of a happy white duck with orange bill trotting along the side of a pond as happy as could be. Who knew that when cooked it would be very oily and greasy? I tried as much of the duck as I saw fit, and noticed that everyone else was picking one or two of the dishes and sticking to it. I was eating whatever was sitting around, and maybe overdid it a tad, but certainly no more than a tad, if that.
I sat at a very large round table with a big group, but not everybody got a seat at one of the big tables, so there was a group of three or four that sat behind us, behind a column in the room, and the servers kept forgetting that they were there, and weren’t getting much food. Because if you don’t tell them right away, and they move on to bringing out the next dish, that last one is history. Our table started sharing our leftovers with the forgotten table.
Whatever the last dish brought out was, some kind of duck prepared in some way, it was by far the best, and we had none left to share with the forgotten table because it all went so quick on our table. The forgotten table was quite upset to have been forgotten.
Once dinner ended, we departed, but I did not leave before taking a photo with a replica of what I had for dinner sitting just outside the restaurant.
That was odd. Our guide gave us the option of taking the bus back to the hotel, it being after 10 o’clock by now, or we could walk back through Tiananmen Square and the surrounding area. A group of us wanted to walk back, so we did, and off into the night we went.
There was a group of about ten or twelve of us to start, and nobody knows what happened in Tiananmen Square, but we looked around and it was only myself and three other girls, and we had no idea where the rest of the group went. The square wasn’t empty, so they could have been obscured behind people walking through the world’s largest public gathering place. The sheer size may have had something to do with it. As well as the fact that we were stopping to take photos along the way. We may have been distracted.
Somewhere along the way, one of the girls in the group heard that there was a night market in the area on the way back to the hotel, so we figured we’d be adventurous and try to find it. Little did we know that Beijing is not the easiest city to navigate through…
We got lost. We had no idea where we were and had no real idea where we were going. So, we went into a hotel and tried to get directions (and use the restroom as well – western toilets!) I wasn’t really in on the directions because (aside from the fact that I didn’t plan to purchase much of anything) I was more along for the fun of the ride than the actual destination we were attempting to reach. So we left the hotel we stumbled upon and set off again to search for the night market. This is what we found:
And this was the nice part we found. And it wasn’t the night market. We kept walking trying to find anything resembling a market, but we just found dingier, emptier and more frightening alleyways where I decided not to take out my nice looking camera to capture for posterity. Just believe me when I say there were people standing in doorways watching me walk by with a group of three other girls. I was feeling the need to be very conscious of our surroundings for safety purposes.
There was one alleyway we went down that had opaque puddles throughout and one incandescent light bulb hanging from a lone wire in the middle of the alleyway. There was little sound, and only a few lights on in the windows we walked by, as it was now clear that we were nowhere near a market, or any type of vendor for that matter, because we had entered living quarters. I wanted to get out of there as quick as possible.
A few minutes later, and a few blind guesses as to a general direction to go, we wind up amidst a horde of people on a street with shopping. I don’t think it was a night market as much as it was just a street with stores that were open. And we’re not talking average stores – one of the girls wanted to duck (pardon the pun) into a jewelry store to look around, and this is what is looked like:
Not exactly a quaint place. I left two of the girls to the jewelry store and I went off with the other to look what was around the corner. We found a little grocery store. It seemed like a grocery store the locals would use, and while it looked relatively normal on the surface, a closer inspection would reveal otherwise.
I decided to peruse the aisles to find something out of the ordinary. About two feet into the first aisle, I found all I needed. Can you tell what I’ve found?
Can you tell now?
In case you can’t read it, the bag is labeled as Beijing Roast Duck, which is what I just finished having for dinner. I’m not entirely sure how the duck is preserved inside of the bag, but I had a feeling it was in the form of a dried out, chip-like thing. There it was – all I wanted to find was something that I did not think was sold in the average grocery store in the non-perishable section. And if that does turn out to be perishable, that would concern me greatly.
We departed the grocery store and went back outside the jewelry store to wait for the rest of the group to come out. Once we were all ready to go, the new challenge was to find our way back to the hotel. We could have walked out to the main road and then walked along it to the hotel, or did what we did and tried to follow some more of the back roads to find the rear of the hotel. What we did not realize was that the hotel would probably look greatly different from behind than we’re used to seeing it from the front.
Eventually, we did come to realize that we had no idea what we were looking for and found ourselves immersed back into the maze of back alleyways, beginning to lose our sense of direction. I say that because we were having a tough time finding alleyways to head towards the main road, which is a direction that is necessary to travel to eventually reach the hotel.
Somehow we juked and jived and found our way to the back of what we thought was our hotel. It was not. So we went up and over the arched driveway to the front and then ran into another problem – dissension within the group. Half the group thought that we had passed the hotel and needed to go back. And I thought that we had yet to pass the hotel and needed to move in the other direction. To make matters worse, nothing at all looked familiar to us. We knew we were on the main road, and that we had to have driven by where we were standing, but we had no idea which way to go. I did put myself on the line and convince the group to move my way.
I was hoping we would find something familiar along the way, but became increasingly worried as all it seemed like we were passing were advertisements for Windows Vista. Apparently Windows seems to think that China will be a big market for their new operating system. Then we passed what looked like a small mall, and that did not look familiar at all, but one of the girls said she thinks she recognized the area. Some of the monkey came off my back there.
And just a few minutes later, we happened upon the hotel. Our excursion from dinner had taken us to just about midnight, and I was glad to have made it back and not be lost at night on the mean streets of Beijing. We departed and went to the rooms, and I went to bed about quarter after midnight, and fell asleep pretty quickly.
At exactly 12:50, and I mean exactly, I woke up and knew almost immediately that something was wrong. There was a disturbance in the force. I sat up in bed and felt incredibly nauseous, moreso than I did when I woke up that first night back in Malaysia. And just like I did then, I went straight into the bathroom. And I sat there, feeling awful. And when I say awful, I mean about as low as I can go.
Ten minutes went by. Twenty minutes went by. I was starting to feel slightly better at some points, then worse the next. I wavered back and forth between feeling better and worse, and was not making any progress.
Thirty minutes went by. How did I make it through some of the toughest parts of the world – the Amazon, India, Vietnam – and then fall in Beijing? And it wasn’t like I let my guard down either. It just didn’t make sense to me.
Forty minutes went by, and I decided that this was getting silly. I wasn’t about to spend the entire night sitting in the bathroom, because we had a jam-packed day tomorrow that I wanted to be there for. I started to feel slightly better, so I stood up and instantly felt exponentially worse. So, I started moving around to agitate myself, and then out it came.
And without going into great detail, let’s just say that the duck quaked on the way out.
