Visit to Macau, Day 1

Sunday morning bright and eary (actually, just early, it wasn't bright yet) I hopped on the MagLev to the airport and then to Macau. Macau is part of China now but considered a Special Administrative Region (SAR) after the handover from Portugal. The upshot of this is that internationally speaking, you have to leave China to enter Macau. This means that I had to go through immigration on both departure and arrival. So that's what I did.

Flying into Macau, I could see the amazing blue, puffy-cloud-filled skies. The peninsula and its islands are at the southernmost tip of China, way closer to the equator than Shanghai, so the tropical feel was to be expected. It was so tropical, in fact, that when I got off the plane and took out my camera, the lens and LCD screen were fogged up! I had to wipe them off with my shirt to take a picture.

After that, a cab pulled up and I got inside. My first thought: the driver's on the right side! Holy shit! I've never seen that before. But yes, in Macau (and Hong Kong also) they drive on the left side of the road. It's so different. I entered the car on the left side. Oncoming traffic was on my right, not on my left. Very strange. Obviously the drivers and residents are used to it. But not me! It was great.

Proof:





Macau is on the sea (probably even moreso than Shanghai, whose name literally means "on the sea") and and stretches across several islands (Taipa, Cotai) and the main peninsula that's attached to mainland China. So on the ride in from the airport, we crossed over numerous bridges, which again is pretty cool to me. All these intricate stone ropy constructions to get you from one place to another. I recall hearing about a family member of mine who was scared of bridges; not me. I love them. And I especially love them when the skies are blue, the air feels like the beach, and you've just arrived in a brand new destination.



Cities on the water look cool to me. I can't figure out why. I think it's because you have flat expanses of water edging up against towering skyscrapers, creating an extreme contrast in elevation. I think it's the contrast that I find intriguing. Macau and Hong Kong have that in spades.

Being a former Portuguese colony, Macau's maps and street signs all have Portuguese (in addition to Chinese and English) on them. This is a welcome sight as that langauge is superficially similar to Spanish, which I vaguely recall from two years in 7th-8th grade and three years living in Austin. So I know what "salida" means on a sign, even if it wasn't right next to the word "Exit" (or even the Chinese 出口, which I can read also. Happy days. An example of the tri-language signs:



However, most Macau natives speak neither Portuguese nor English, but Cantonese, which is an official language. Some might speak Mandarin also, moreso now than when Macau was controlled by Portugal, but it's overwhelmingly Cantonese. So right off the bat you've got four languages you're dealing with: English, Portuguese, Cantonese, and Chinese (Mandarin).

On my hotel's web site, they give the address as being on "Avenido do Dr. Rodrigo Rodrigues." So I assumed that I would be able to tell this to the cabbie and be on my merry way. No such luck. He didn't understand. I had a map with me that had the Chinese name of the street, so I figured with that plus the number, we would be good, but either my cabbie didn't read Chinese or he didn't know where it was. Luckily I mentioned the name of the hotel (in Portuguese, but it's simple, Casa Real), and the cabbie knew, so off we went.

I arrived at the hotel, checked in, and found my room in short order. I walked down two flights of stairs and knocked on Jen's door, and she came out. It's been 8 or 9 years since I've seen her, so we spent a little while catching up. She told me her friends were going to the Cirque de Soleil show Zaia, so I tagged along. Jen is touring China with a production of The Sound of Music, so I met some of the cast as they joined us. We walked over to The Sands:





From there we caught a free bus to The Venetian (where Zaia was playing). On the bus, Jen and I talked about what I should do on Monday. Her and some friends were leaving Macau at 7:30 AM to catch the ferry to Hong Kong and from there to HK Disneyland. I had no desire to go to Disneyland and had been planning to stay in Macau and do touristy things. But Jen convinced me that, in the couple days her and her company had been in Macau, they'd run through all the touristy things and that there wasn't so much to do, or at the very least, not much interesting stuff. After some discussion, I decided to go to Hong Kong with them, but just break off and do my own thing for the day.

We ate a late lunch at McSorley's, an Irish pub in the Venetian, watched some of the Olympics, chatted a bit, and then headed out to the show. It was pretty interesting. I liked all the clowns and the breakdancing green robot :-) I didn't take any pictures though because I wanted to enjoy the show, oh, and also because at this upper-class resort the ushers actually prevent you from taking pictures. (Not so at many other places in China.)

After the show, I joined Jen and some other kids for dinner inside The Sands. I was in Las Vegas once about four and a half years ago, and it felt exactly like what I felt like in Macau. Grand, sweeping displays of opulence, all ignored while people sit at blackjack, roulette, poker, so so many other kinds of games. We had to thread our way between slot machines and gamers to get to the cafeteria. I wonder why the gambling industry feels compelled to dress itself up in neon and put on this show of luxury? Maybe because people with a lot of money like to gamble?

After dinner, we headed over to the Macau Cultural Center. Jen left to get ready for the show, and I found my seat and settled in to enjoy the performance. I had never seen The Sound of Music, but now know that I've heard a number of its songs. (Especially The Vandals' cover of "So Long, Farewell.") I really liked the show; especially the historical context of being set in Austria before the German annexation in the run-up to WWII. Hindsight is 20/20, I guess. I wonder how much of that context was known to the Macauian (is that the proper term? Macauite? Macauvian? In Chinese it's easy; you just add 人 to a place name to denote its denizens, so these people would be 澳门人 or Aomenren) audience.

No matter: the performance was sold out (like most of the Macau performances have been, I learned), and the audience hung on every word. They laughed at the appropriate times and I even heard a couple people singing/humming along with the songs. The entire script was projected on either side of the stage during the audience, both spoken words and song -- whereas, during the Beijing opera performance, only the song lyrics were projected on the wall. During intermission, I took this picture of The Sands at night:



On the right-hand and bottom-left sides, you can kind of see how my camera lens was all steamed up.

After the show, we went back to the hotel. It was someone's fake birthday, so there was cake and a small get-together/party in someone's room. I met some members of the cast, including the guy who played Rolf and the guy who played Max, and some of the stagehand crew. It was pretty interesting talking to the actors and getting their perceptions of China. Obviously some of their experiences are vastly different from mine. They've been travelling around the country and have visited tons of cities like Chengdu, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Fuzhou, and so on. They haven't had to learn much Chinese, as they've got interpreters with them (or they will hire different ones in every they visit, I'm not sure). However, some of their experiences are quite the same, including many of the cultural and sociological differences that separate China from the United States. Anyhoo, talking to them was pretty neat.

I hung out for a little while, ate some cake, and then went to bed. I'd agreed to get up at 6:45 in order to eat breakfast at 7 and leave the hotel by 7:30 to spent the day in Hong Kong.

Tomorrow: Hong Kong by day and Macau by night. You can cheat a little bit and look at the full Macau picture set.

Pedicab ride in Beijing

Okay, I forgot this last video I wanted to post. This is the beginning of the pedicab ride that cost me a shitload more money than it should have :-)

Beijing: Final Post

Four videos from Beijing that I just finished uploading:

Impromptu choir at the Temple of Heaven:



View from the Great Wall:



Taking the zip line down:



Me eating fried scorpions:



All that, plus more Beijing photos.

My late-night snack:



Ten points if you can identify every organism in this picture:



Pics from around the 798 Art District area:











Olympic buildings:





All the rest are now uploaded at Beijing 2008.

Beijing: Day 3

Okay, so, yesterday's entry read "Part 1" but it's also the last part. I didn't do much after I posted; just went out to walk around Houhai, bought some more souveneirs, and ate dinner. Pretty relaxing, really.

Today though, I saw Mao Ze Dong.

Here's how it happened.

Mao's tomb is in the south-central area of Tiananmen Square, in between Qianmen and the Monument to the People's Heroes. The entrance faces north; the line starts at the north-west corner and wraps all the way around the west, south, and east sides before coming to the actual entrance. The line (I have some pictures up on flickr) wraps around the whole building and is five to six people wide. It is set off from the rest of the square by some rope, and there's about 50 feet in between the rope and the line, so we cut a narrow swath of people through an empty spot of the square.

I got to the starting point and it took about, oh I don't know, an hour? to get inside. I'm bad at tracking time in these situations. Luckily, at no point did we stand still. We were all just shuffling slowly forward. That kept the blood flowing :-)

So there's the line, which is like 5 people wide, as enforced by some painted line on the sidewalk. On either side of you are several dozen attendants, telling people to hurry up, move along, remove troublemakers from the line, and intercept people from crossing the open space in between the line and the rest of the square. (The orange twine is not a big enough deterrent, it seems.)

As you walk, loudspeakers enumerate the rules in Chinese and in English: be quiet inside, no picture taking, turn off your cell phones, dress respectfully (people with vests will not be allowed, apparently), and so forth. After shuffling forward around the building, you come to the front, at which point the line splits in two. Each half goes into a small bunker-like building in the courtyard. In these buildings, guards give you the airport-security treatment: metal detector, put your stuff in a plastic bin, wave the metal-detecting wand, etc.

When you're through, you go up the big steps in front of the building. At this point you can turn and look out over the square and get a sense of how many people there are milling around.

Then you go inside, and if you're wearing a hat, signs tell you to remove it. The signs also say to be quiet and no picture taking. I had a hat on, and I removed it before we got to the doors. I didn't bring my camera, because I'd heard the rules when walking around the area yesterday, so I didn't bother bringing it. Guards (this time in nicer dress, with white gloves) hurry you along and shush you if you talk. It's an eerie atmosphere, because there are so many people in there with you but they're all really quiet.

The first room has a big scenic painting of mountains on the far wall. In front of it is a row of vibrant green potted plants/bushes. In the middle of this row is a large white statue of Mao, seated and smiling. There are bouquets of flowers at his feet.

As you enter the door each line hugs the wall and you move towards the painting. As you get closer you realize it's not the far wall but just a partition. You move behind the partition and through another small antechamber.

Then you arrive in Mao's actual tomb. You can see him now. He's in a large glass-topped coffin, draped with a Chinese flag so only his face is showing. A light is shining on his face. The coffin is inside a glass room that's inside of the room you're in. There are three guards standing at attention inside this smaller room. The attendants rush you past. You spend maybe a total of 12 - 15 seconds viewing his actual body.

Then it's back outside and down the south steps of the building, back into Tiananmen where Qianmen stands guard.

And that's that.

After doing this, I went back to the hotel to pick up my things and began the journey out to the Summer Palace. I took the metro out to Xizhimen and then hailed a cab to the Beijing Zoo. From there I walked east along Xizhimenwai Dajie until I got to the Beijing Exhibition Center. It was a long walk, as the front gate of the zoo is (understandably) quite big. And it was really hot and sticky out. I stopped for a nice meal of Wuhan spiced duck neck, stir-fried pork, and potato pancakes (not the ones I'm used to though, haha.)

At the BEC I told the guard I wanted to get to the Summer Palace. You see, my travel guide says that you can take a boat from the north-east corner of the BEC all the way up the river, to the Summer Palace. I thought this would be more fun than a cab, so I wanted to do it this way.

The guard pointed me in the right direction. As I wandered toward the dock, I encountered two expats walking away from it. Since I was unsure of where I was going, I stopped and asked them if I was in the right spot. They said yeah, the ticket office was just around the corner, but that some guy was trying to scam people into getting into his private boat, so they were going to wait until 2 oclock.

I got to the ticket office, chatted with the lady behind the counter for a bit, and then bought the ticket (70 RMB). Soon enough, a speedboat came along to pick up myself and like four other tourists. I got some pictures of the boat as it came to the lake, so I knew what to expect. We rocketed through the water, swerving this way and that, until about 10 seconds later we arrived at a dock on the side, of the river.

We all hopped out and I started to stroll around the grounds of our landing spot. However, something was amiss. I didn't see any pagodas or giant lakes. All I saw were ... rhinos! And tiger statues! And signs for the aquarium!

I wasn't at the Summer Palace -- I was at the zoo.

Crap. Did I just get scammed again?

I was pretty pissed off right now. Memories flashed in my head of my foolishness from yesterday, with the pedicab and all that. So now I was like, shit, I just got scammed again, and even after those expats warned me!

I guess I could have just given up and wandered around the zoo. After all, it's a fun enough attraction. And there are pandas there! But I didn't feel much like it after yet another failed attempt to go somewhere scenic without getting ripped off. I just pictured this woman, and the guy who herded me into the boat, laughing at yet another lao wai victim.

Instead, I decided to try and get my money back. I walked all the way around the aquarium until I got to the north gate of the zoo. I checked my map and saw I was on Gaoliangqiao Lu. Great -- I was really close to where I'd embarked from. So I began to walk along the street towards Xizhimenwai Dajie. It was turning into a really long walk - like 15 minutes at this point and I hadn't seen the street. It was really hot and sticky out, the street was really dusty and dirty due to roadwork and construction, I was sweating like crazy, and I was still frustrated about getting ripped off again. I was picturing, you know, going up to the woman and asking for my money back, and then what happens if she refuses, could I get help, and maybe I could call one of my co-workers and have them explain it to a cop, if I could mange to find one. Robert told me that yelling works really well in situations like these, so I was psyching myself up to yell (because it's not something I do very well, so I have to, like, prepare for it).

But as I was walking along, I thought, hold on a second. What if I misunderstood something, or I should have stayed at the dock, or something like that? Did I even buy the right ticket? Maybe I was mistaken. After all, well, I don't understand Chinese very well.

The walk was dragging on, so I hailed a cab for the rest of the way. He deposited me out front of the ticket booth, and I marched right up to the woman and explained myself. "I didn't arrive at the Summer Palace. I arrived at the " (and here I pointed to the Chinese characters for 'Beijing Zoo' since I don't know how to say it."

Through the conversation that followed I figured out the problem. It was my mistake. After arriving at the zoo, I was supposed to transfer to a bigger boat. That would take me to the Summer Palace. Duh!

The woman and the guy apologized profusely. They explained the situation to the speedboat guy who came by in like 5 minutes -- this lao wai got off at the wrong stop, he's supposed to continue on to the Summer Palace. Considering it was my fault, or whoever's fault it would be for me not understanding the directions (if they had indeed been given to me in the first place), they were very very apologetic. I of course said, you know, that's okay, it's my fault, I'm wrong, thank you, thank you, etc.

And off we went again :-)

This time when we exited the boat at the zoo, a staffer pulled me aside and led me to the front of another line a short distance away. I guess the woman at the BEC radioed ahead or something: "The next boat has a tall white guy on it, make sure he gets to the Summer Palace!" Man, I was so embarrassed. And it happened in front of a shitload of people, a vast number of whom were already waiting in line, too.

After like 20 minutes of waiting in the hot sticky sun, the next big boat came and off we went. It was me and maybe like 40 other people. The woman conducting the tour did so, and of course I couldn't understand much except for a couple numbers (dates) here and there. But it was nice to be on the way ...

and on the way ...

and on the way. This boat was S-L-O-W. I guess I thought it would be faster, given the speedboat ride to the zoo. But such was not the case. I'm not sure exactly how long we spent on the river, but we got off at one point to wait for another boat. That boat took like 20 minutes to arrive, during which time I met and talked with two English students at Beijing University. They were taking the boat back to their school, which is out near palace.

Finally the next boat came, and we started off towards the Summer Palace. After like, I don't know, maybe another 20 - 30 minutes on the water, we arrived. Finally! I was really really tired by this point, after expending mental energy on the accidental zoo trip and physical energy on walking, waiting, and sitting out in the hot sun all day. I'm not sure what time it was by now; probably like 3:30 PM. I think I'd started on the first boat ride close to 1. Talk about your slow boat to China ...

*rim shot*

I debarked and immediately took in Kunming Lake. My first thought was "Hey, this look a lot like Xihu." And I come to find out later that this design was intentional. Makes sense. But, having already seen and appreciate the original -- and having been so tired and beaten up about getting to the Palace in the first place -- I didn't really have the energy to appreciate Kunming Lake that much.

I started walking around the path, just kind of relaxing and settling down from the journey. Along the way I met an expat, Odette, and her mom. I guess I'd just been frustrated by poor or nonexistent English all day, so when I heard Odette and her mom speaking in, you know, actual English, I was like "woohoo!" Haha. So I joined up with them, and we walked around for a bit and took in some of the sights around the lake. We saw a little impromptu musical performance, which I made sure to capture on video. I made comparisons between KL and Xihu, not knowing at the time that KL was designed to resemble it, hehe.

The three of us went into one of the museums around the area, the Garden of Virtue and Harmony. It was here the Empress Dowager Cixi watched theater performed onstage just for her. We took in the theater building and the halls surrounding it, which contained pictures, imperial dinnerware, costumes, jewelry, and other items of the period.

After about an hour of looking through here, I was exhausted. Luckily Odette and her mom wanted to leave also, so I tagged along with them and we caught a cab back into the city. We all made plans to meet up for dinner later on. I came back to the hotel and vegged out, watching some TV and writing the first bit of this blog entry.

Our goal for the evening was to hit up Quanjude, a 100-year old restaurant that serves the most famous (but not necessarily the best, I've heard) Beijing roast duck in town. According to wikitravel there is a branch near my hotel, so they picked me up in a cab and we headed off. We gave the driver the address and he got us most of the way there -- or so we thought. After he dropped us off, he told us to take a left at the next street -- he couldn't drive there (we think because it's in a hutong).

Long story short -- we wandered around for about half an hour, asking person after person, haggling with pedicab drivers, to no avail. No Quanjude to be found. We have no idea why the cabbie dropped us off where he did, because we walked quite a bit farther down Qianmen Xi Dajie. Perhaps we were going in the wrong direction altogether. Anyway, I was a little disappointed, because I'd promised Adeline that I'd go. But it seems it was not to be. It's apparently really difficult to find -- especially when you don't speak or understand Chinese all that well :-) But it was an adventure, you know, the unexpected kind you have in these situations.

We did end up at another restaurant that served Beijing roast duck, so we did get to eat it. It's really damn good, the sauce especially. And the restaurant was nice besides. I'm planning on maybe trying to find it tomorrow for lunch, but honestly, I'm not holding out any hopes.

After dinner, we cabbed it back to our respective hotels.

And that's the end of Day 3.