Life: beijing china hangzhou shanghai travel
by Cliffano Subagio
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China Trip 2010
I visited China in August 2010 (yay, this post is only a year late), I arrived in Hangzhou by plane, took a train to Shanghai, then a domestic flight to Beijing, and flew out of China via Tianjin. China was quite an experience… the cultural differences, the language barrier, the scorching heat, the extremely crowded places, all took me out of my comfort zone, but hey, that’s traveling at its finest.
Hangzhou
Hangzhou felt more traditional compared to Shanghai and Beijing, and people were somewhat nicer there. The main sightseeing area in Hangzhou was the West Lake, a gigantic lake which was just recently listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I circled that lake on foot, it wasn’t the smartest idea.
The best part of Hangzhou was the delicious home-cooked style meal I had at a small restaurant on Santaishan Rd, herbal chicken soup and stir fried veggies brought back lots of childhood memories, but this time with a bottle of light beer.
One of the most unforgettable experiences I had during the whole trip was the last day in Hangzhou. We were supposed to figure out a way from Hangzhou to Shanghai by train, and I literally meant _figure out_ since we didn’t book any ticket and we didn’t even know whether there was going to be a train to Shanghai that day. It was very crowded at Hangzhou train station, we had to queue for a long time to buy the tickets and several times had to turn a blind eye at some people cutting the queue.
With tickets in hand, the next challenge was squeezing ourselves through hundreds of people trying to get through the main building’s small entrance. And surprise, surprise, once inside, next up was another round of pushing and shoving just to get on the train. But there’s more, it turned out that our tickets didn’t cover for a seat on the train, so we had to sit on our luggage, next to the toilet, for 2 friggin’ hours! Like I said, it was an unforgettable experience.
Shanghai
Shanghai was very modern, it’s a totally different face of China compared to Hangzhou. I was amazed by the lights at The Bund at night, I declared that part of Shanghai the bling of Asia. My favourite spot in Shanghai was Xintiandi, specially the area with Shikumen architecture, a fusion between the Western and Chinese styles. Had a really nice brunch there.
It wasn’t part of the plan, but we also ended up visiting Shanghai Expo 2010 and checked out what the China Pavilion was all about. The Expo was covered on TV day and night, everyone was talking about it. But to be honest, I still don’t get what the big deal was, I was impressed with the pavilion’s sustainable design more than anything else there.
The best food I had in Shanghai was everything that was served at Xin Wang restaurant, seriously, I still remember how delicious the food was!
On the last day in Shanghai, we took a train to get to Shanghai airport. That train line branched out into two lines, and according to the timetable, our train was supposed to take the top line with the airport nearby its last stop. But as bad luck played out, the top line was closed that day and our train was directed to the bottom line, fsck! We got off at the last stop, not knowing where we were, we had to get a taxi and that involved crossing a busy Shanghai highway while carrying two bags each, let’s just say that it was not something I would like to do more than once in my life.
Beijing
The first thing that I noticed when I arrived in Beijing was the grey sky, it was never blue, just shades of grey for days, pretty gloomy. Beijing was very crowded, the streets were never empty, there were just people everywhere, walking, talking, non-stop.
To give you an idea of how crowded it was, have you ever been to a McDonald’s where you have to queue for half an hour outside of the building and they have to limit the number of people inside the building and how many of them are allowed to place an order at one time? Well, the McDonald’s at the Olympic Park was where I had that exact experience. And after getting our meal, there was no free table, we ended up sitting on the curb and ate the burgers and taro pies there.
The most unforgettable part of Beijing was walking on the Great Wall of China, I couldn’t help wondering how on earth could mankind build such a massive piece of structure, it was just beyond belief. The fact that I did the Crank That on the wall was, of course, not that important.
At the end of the trip, we took a bullet train from Beijing to Tianjin to catch the flight home. I still remember the ticker showing 320kmph, which was the speed of the train, faster than the shinkansens in Japan! That right there pretty much summed up the unbelievable economic progress China made in the past decade, the infrastructure followed suit, technology, life. Sure it’s not perfect, there are still numerous issues that the western world would like China to improve. But there’s one thing for sure, the China today is better than ever for the rest of the world.
Ghibli Museum Mitaka
As a huge fan of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli (think of an older distant Japanese cousin of Pixar), I had always wanted to visit _the_ Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, Japan, and I finally made it there nearing the end of my Japan trip this year.
We took JR Chuo Rapid line from Tokyo station to Mitaka station, then followed by a ride on the museum’s bus which took us directly to the entrance of the museum. Ghibli Museum was not your typical museum with exhibits that you could only look from a distance. There, the visitors were encouraged to explore everything throughout the museum.
The view right after getting off the bus. You can see the giant soldier robot from Castle in the Sky on the rooftop.
These animation cels were used as tickets to watch Studio Ghibli’s short films, exclusively screened at the museum’s Saturn Theater. They were showing Pan Dane to Tamago Hime at that time.
The best part of the museum for me was the Preproduction Room display, specially the imageboard sketch drawing desk. I also enjoyed spotting references to Porco Rosso, my most favourite Studio Ghibli film of them all. The food at Straw Hat Cafe was surprisingly delicious and quite filling.
Actually, we almost didn’t make it to the museum. Following the earthquakes and the nuclear power plant incident, we cancelled our plan to stay in Tokyo for the second half of the trip, i.e. no Ghibli Museum visit.
Four days before the end of the trip, we were supposed to return to Kyoto from Hiroshima. But then we thought, what the heck, let’s go to Tokyo for a day just to visit the Ghibli Museum. So we did, we took the shinkansen all the way from Hiroshima to Tokyo early in the morning, visited the museum in Mitaka, then caught the last shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto. It was worth it.
9h Nine Hours Kyoto Teramachi
Right after the tiring 30 hours extended journey from Melbourne to Kyoto, I spent the first night in Japan at an awesome capsule inn called 9h nine hours Kyoto Teramachi. I found out about nine hours from Trip Advisor, and was soon sold on the idea of staying there after checking out nine hours website and saw the photo gallery – seriously, you have to check out those pictures.
What I liked the most about nine hours was its simplistic and really well done interior design in such a limited space, the fact that I had one of the best sleeps of my life ever, right there inside one of those capsules, was secondary.
I’m one of those people who have a thing about proper spacing in a simplistic design, so being there at nine hours was like being in a mini sanctuary for me. Everything was properly designed, the signs, the lockers, the mini lounge, the colours, the elevators, the doors, the capsules, the water bottles, the sleeping jumpsuits, the showers, the tiles, and even the toilets. I took dozens of pictures of the little details of this place, but as luck played out, I lost pretty much all of them when my laptop was stolen :(.
And here are a few that survived. Let’s start with the inside of the capsule.
My favourite feature of the capsule was the ambient light that could be configured on the black panel. The light gradually turned dark when I was ready to go to sleep, and gradually turned bright moments before my wake up time.
The corridor with the capsules on the left. The cyan lighting did give the impression that a drone from the Borg collective was going to show up from the other end.
The reception area in the morning, notice the graphic signs on the floor. Various graphical signs were scattered on the floor and on the wall of nine hours. Those signs were cleverly designed that they were descriptive enough without any textual explanation.
Minimalism and simplicity at work!
Narita To Kyoto Via Tokyo
My 3-hour transit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, turned into an 8-hour one after the tsunami hit Sendai right before I arrived in KL. Thanks to Starbucks and KLIA for the free wi-fi, thanks to Twitter for real time news (RIP Google News), thanks to family and friends who messaged me and Latte Girl via SMS, Facebook, and Twitter (RIP email).
It took a total of 8 hours from Melbourne to KL + 8 hours transit in KL + 7 hours from KL to Narita + 3 hours from Narita to Tokyo + 4 hours from Tokyo to Kyoto = 30 hours all the way through, but we eventually made it to Japan!
At Starbucks, nervously reading the news about the tsunami and the earthquakes before deciding to continue the flight to Japan at the very last minute.
Arrived at Narita airport at 12 noon local time. There were piles of sleeping bags (with Japan Airlines logo) and mineral water bottles at several spots in the terminal.
After immigration, I took the elevator down to the baggage claim area. There were several cordoned off areas with wet newspapers on the floor and water leaking from the ceiling. Damages from the earthquakes?
At the arrival hall, I saw more people stranded due to flight delays and cancellations. The situation was quite calm, the airport staffs were awesomely helpful.
Queuing for the JR train to Tokyo. I was glad to find out that they let people enter the train station in batches to avoid overcrowding the platforms.
Ken Watanabe look-alike was very helpful, translating the the announcements over the PA system into English, apparently the train was delayed by an hour and would run slower than its normal speed.
The crowded train. I was lucky to get on a direct train to Tokyo as several people got stuck at Chiba station trying to get on the Tokyo-bound train to no avail.
The queue at JR ticket office at Tokyo station was rather long, but the shinkansen service between Tokyo and Kyoto was operating as normal. Took a couple of hours of power nap on the bullet train.
Finally arrived at Kyoto station and had a bowl of ramen for dinner. It was weird how it felt like returning home instead of starting my holiday, the most mentally tiring 30 hours ever.
It’s now been a week since I arrived in Japan. We’re fine in Kyoto, it’s about 500km+ to the west of Tokyo. We’re getting used to the earthquake news on TV at night and even experienced a 2 magnitude scale tremor from the Shizuoka earthquake (no injury, no damage) 3 days ago.
The Sendai tsunami was a tragedy, my heart is with those who are affected. The Fukushima nuclear power plant incident was disastrous, but if you’re outside of Japan, please don’t buy everything you read in the media. The last 7 days proved how much The Age over-sensationalize the news about Japan, so, wanted: a decent Australian news website to replace The Age on my daily readings list.
Albury Getaway 2011
Happy New Year all! (all three of you my faithful blog readers)
I started 2011 with a 3-day trip to Albury, New South Wales. Right on the New Year’s Day, I took a V/Line train from Southern Cross station to Seymour followed by a bus ride to Albury. It was my first time visiting countryside Australia.
Albury was a small city right at the border of Victoria and New South Wales. It was a quite and relaxing place, the CBD wasn’t crowded, and I really enjoyed walking along Dean St and Hovell St. I was also surprised to find a Thai restaurant serving IMHO the best Rat Na in Australia, the Siam Orchid Cafe.
Albury Botanic Gardens wasn’t big but it was nice. We were greeted by this warning sign at the entrance gate, I calculated the risk for 5 seconds before deciding to enter anyway after seeing a family with 4 little children happily entered the gardens as if there’s nothing to worry about. Surprisingly, I wasn’t worried that much and actually took a short nap on the grass.
The following day we went for a trail walk along a section of the Murray River. I was all relaxed during the first hour of the walk, that was until the trail got narrower and narrower, then we saw this warning sign. Decided not to continue on the trail, and on the way back, I learned from Wikipedia that Eastern Brown snake was the second most venomous land snake in the world. No sh*t, auto switched to alert mode, holding a wooden stick as if I knew how to use it if I encountered an angry Eastern Brown. (Note: There’s only a few death cases caused by snakebites in Australia per year. It’s my rule of thumb to avoid becoming part of the statistics.)
Despite the slight adrenalin rush, the best parts of Albury were the friendly locals, the little shops and cafes in the CBD, and the old railway station (built in 1881 with 450m long platform). Next countryside getaway shall involve no Eastern Brown, preferably something tamer like whale watching.
tl;dr: Some city folks visited the country, clueless about snakes.