Disneyrando

"Welcome to Disney Rando!", "IRASHAIMASEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
The japanese certainly like to make you feel welcome. Having arrived at Julia's apartment and had a slightly deflated night's sleep (the double air matress had a slow leak, so we were lying on the floor boards by morning), we set off to tackle Disney Land. Though having worked there for nearly 6 months, she had not been into the park as a guest.

We got to the gates just after 10am, and the place was already swarming (and warming up...heading for 30ish and humid). We got a FastPass for the first ride we wanted to go on, which means you can come back within a time interval on the ticket and skip the queue. The next available time interval was in just under 2 hours! The next ride we wanted to do was only an 80 minute wait (according to the sign) so we decided to queue up. The queue didn't look that long and seemed to move fairly quickly. However, we soon discovered they are the masters of making queues look shorter that they are...they wind and twist and go on and on around the corner forever! Finally we made it to the front of the line and had a front row seat for Splash Mountain. It was an exiting and somewhat damp experience (especially for the front row), but we decided not to do anymore big queues and instead try and FastPass (which you can only do once per hour).

The next hurdle was finding decent food. And yes, you had to queue for that too...especially the halfway decent stuff. So we ended up cruising through the day on a bit of a sugar high, topped off by getting fairly dehydrated (though not sunburnt! Yay for 30+ sunscreen).

We went other rides, including Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain, Buzz Lightyear Blasters, Haunted House, 3D Micro-adventure, Gadget's Go-Coaster and Pirates of the Caribbean, and saw a few shows and parades. One Man's Dream II was on a big stage and had a kind of "story" that linked in almost every Disney character you could think of :-)

Having started out the day thinking we would make it on to about 2 rides all day and spend hours and hours queued in the sun, we made it on everything we wanted to and survived! It is definitely in the category of "an experience" rather than a "whole lot of fun" (ie. I probably don't need to do it ever again)...but it was fun having Julia as our psuedo guide and taking all the cheese that Disney turns on so well. Say-o-nara to freaky fans and costumed kids (big and small)!

Millions of Foxes

We arrived in Kyoto only to discover that it was a long weekend and accomodation was a bit scarce. We managed to book a Ryokan at the International Tourist Information (9th floor of train station building) and even managed to find it without too much walking around (which would be a feature of our time in Kyoto).

The Kyoko Ryokan is a slightly old, but pleasant japanese style inn. You leave your shoes at the door, change into a simple kimono gown and sleep on futon mattresses laid out on the tatami floors. The location is great (near the station) and the is a great little udon shop across the laneway.

Our plan was to do the 2 hour Fushimi Inari walk through hundreds of tori (shinto shrine archways for the rice gods) and up to the top of the nearby hills. I think we took as many photos of fox statues as we took on The Great Wall (photos later)!

The weather was surprisingly warm and the guide book had poor instructions and a tiny map, but we managed in the end and were rewarded with good views and an interesting survey of tori and foxes. And 4 hours later we made it to the end.

Ship from Heaven and Hell

The ship from Tianjin to Kobe turned out to be quite a decent kind of vessel. Though probably a little old, there were plenty of life boats and those kind of important things. The Deluxe Suite we booked was very pleasant indeed (for a boat), and though the smaller private twin rooms would probably have been sufficient, it was nice to have a queen size bed and a bit more room...especially since the Chinese onboard smoked like a chimney.

The first 24 hours or so went by smoothly. We had some adequate food from the restaurant, we enjoyed a sunny afternoon up on deck, and the ocean was calm. And we had been taking ginger tablets, which helped combat any mild sea sickness. Then things went down hill. Kiera got food poisoning and all she had eaten needed to make a rapid exit via both ends and I felt significantly sea sick (but didn't vomit, yeah!). Time cured Kiera and some Kwells seasickness drugs helped me - combined with just trying to sleep through the worst of it. Breakfast options didn't help either: salted boiled egg, congee, plain balls of dough and strange plates of cold appetizers that weren't. Oh, and the open ocean we were now passing through was rolling the ship a lot more and it was raining outside so we couldn't go out on deck :-(

But we met a friendly japanese Woman, Mizumi, onboard who has invited us to stay with her down in Hiroshima. And we planned (roughly) our time from Kobe to Tokyo. We arrived, cleared customs without a problem, and hopped a local train to the JR line and on to Kyoto.

If you don't mind ocean voyages, then the ship is probably worth doing as an adventure - but one-way is probably enough.

Ready, Set, Ship

Today was our last day in Beijing. Being the weekend, we got to hang out with Gabe and ambled through a few parks. We tried another new restaurant for dinner (Yunnan style), which included plenty of chilli....and unfortunately a lot of pig fat with the mushrooms.

We'll we are packed now, have cash for the car tomorrow morning and the ship, so there is nothing left to do but have a final foot massage....ciao from China.

Do you want to be on TV?

While having a late (which has been common for us while here) breakfast at the Passby Bar we were asked if we would mind being interviewed for Chinese TV. The wanted us to say how GREAT Beijing is so all the domestic tourists will come. Fortunately, Gabe decided it was too early for that kind of shenanigans. The 5-minute interview he was after turned into a half-hour ordeal for the couple next to us.

With no more big ticket items left on list we abled from breakfast, via custard, to skewered meat, via shops, to Beihai Lake park. More rain that turned out to be sunshine, accompanied by strong wind to clear away the smog, meant we could see the mountains in the distance from the top of the hill (home to the dominating White Dagoba temple-like thing). We also got a great view over the Forbidden City.

We fitted in some more shopping (this time successfully making purchases!) before dinner at an amazing vegetarian restaurant run by monks. There was fake meat on the menu, but also an amazing range of fungus, nuts, and roots. We then made up for the fact that they didn't serve alcohol by heading for the roof-top Q-Bar and downing some martinis and margaritas. As one of the few funky bars in town, it attracts a lot of expats. I chatted to a south african chinese, a peruvian american and an indonesian. All were here to learn Chinese as well as pursue their careers. All were planning to stay a few years.

A dumpling start to the day

Dumplings are definitely a recovery food. They make a good breakfast too, especially when accompanied with cold eggplant smothered in minced garlic and tahini. This now being our third visit back to Gabe's nearby dumpling restaurant, things went pretty smoothly...in fact this time I just wrote our order straight on the piece of paper with the pencil provided. It was supposed to rain, but as we left the restaurant we walked into brilliant sunshine.

Our speed while walking down along the street is inversely proportional to the number of shops we pass. Luckily Kiera hasn't walked into a pole yet...it much be a woman thing to be able to window shop and keeping walking at the same time (all be it slowly).

We did finally make it to the Lama Temple, which is the largest lamasery in Beijing. We passed through the main gate, under the shade of huge ginko trees and wound our way through the many temples with different statues of buddha. The ticket also included a mini-cd (contents as yet known)!

After some more browsing we refuelled with pizza and iced coffee. They make iced coffee here in a cocktail shaker and serve it with sugar syrup on the side - a long black is the standard. Back on the street, we were ready to head for the Temple of Heaven park via the acrobatics theatre to pre-purchase tickets. The tickets are more expensive the further you are from the stage...admittedly you are higher up but you are still further away! Our 6th row centre seats cost us 150Y each, which isn't cheap given the cost of other things in China, but the performance later that night was awesome.

The troupe was from the Chinese Acrobatic Circus School and ranged in age from (I'm guessing) 7 to 16 - so roughly equivalent to the Circus Oz Flying Fruit Flies kiddies. Ignoring the corny "story line" delivered in Chinese by the two "teachers" (and displayed in English on big screens on the side of the stage), the show was very impressive. It started with about 20 kids pressing up into handstands on rows of "horse" benches and holding they for a good 4 minutes while doing tricks with their legs. But there was everything from diabolo, juggling while tap-dancing, tumbling and balance (up to 3 high while spinning poi-es), crazy syncronized tricks on bicycles ending with 12 girls on one bike, climbing poles and saulting back and forth, and a little girl doing amazing one arm handstand tricks (it must be the power-to-weight ratio giving her an advantage!).

Afterwards, we met up with Gabe, grabbed some great thai food for dinner and cruised over to a the Bed Bar (decked out with old opium den beds, but serving great mohitos). Another great day in the 'Jing.

The Great Wall of China

The alarm went off at 5:15am, but I had been lying awake since about 4:30am. I was anxious about sleeping in and missing the bus that was set to leave at 6:40am. Our adventure for the day consisted of a 3 hour mini-bus ride to Jinshanling, where we walked up on to and along The Wall to Simatai (booked at the Down Town Backpackers for 185Y ($31). We had were given 5 hours to walk 8km - which sounds like a long time, but The Wall is by no means flat!

Predictably, the road was asian caos. Our driver was very good, though a little daring in his overtaking (especially up the inside in the bicycle lane to overtake a slow truck). We managed to get the front seat, which though a little precarious if we had an accident meant we didn't get car sick. When we arrived we were given 2 tickets that would be checked along the way and sent our our way.

Our instructions before leaving the bus were simple: walk up to The Wall, turn left, walk for 8km passing 31 watch towers, and shortly after the suspension bridge turn right and walk down off the wall to the youth hostel. Despite this, everyone in our group except us went the wrong way - ending up on a shortcut along a road which cut off maybe 1/3 of the walk. We (and a French couple from a different group) headed up the right way and enjoyed a fairly secluded walk along the wall (as documented by about 80 photos and a couple of short movies).

We had been warned to bring food and water, so we were well prepared. We each had hydration packs with 2 litres of water, 500mL of frozen OJ, 2 tuna buns, 1 muffin, 1 banana, and 1 apple, as well as chocolate, nuts and a brownie loaf to share. We did not go hungry or thirsty - though we did enjoy a number of lovely picnic stops and made it through most of the food by the end!

The final thrill was taking a flying fox at the end to get down from The Wall at Simitai. For 35Y (about $6), we got strapped into a climbing harness and clipped onto a wire that ran down across a dam. It actually didn't go as fast as I though it might, but it was a cool way to end the day...ignoring the remaining 3 hour bus ride home.

Having made it back to the 'Jing we made a bee-line for the massage place and had another awesome Foot Massage (which lasts an hours and includes soaking your feet, having a neck and back massage, then feet and legs) for 38Y ($6).

After a shower and change, we ambled down the end of Gabe's street for a simple bowl of noodles and beer (28Y for three of us, $4.5)...and an extra 5Y for some skewered meat with a cucumber and peanut appetizer (the latter being a common and very tasty dish).

Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City

It was another hot and mostly blue sky day in Beijing. Kiera and I headed for Tiananmin Square first up with supplies (tuna and corn buns) from the Kiss 'n Bake. After a lot of walking around and taking lots of pictures with the new digital camera (which I am still getting the hang of), we ended up in the gardens next to the Forbidden City. This was a nice cool green place to recharge and relax before our assault on the city.

Twice today we had Chinese come up to us to have their picture taken with us! It was quite a novelty to be an attraction while being a tourist. I hope I was a good example of the "funny white guy" for the domestic tourists. They seemed to find us very amusing anyway.

The Forbidden City was quite impressive, though much of it was covered in scaffolding and was being restored. But there was still lots of golden tiles, cobbled squares, colourfully painted rafters and boring statistics (from the audio guide). The biggest problem was not being able to get anything decent to eat, so we were fueled through the day on a sugar high made up of Sprite, icecreams and pringles.

Finally we departed the walled city and caught the subway out to Gabe's work. We briefly gawked at a clothing market before heading to Hatsune for a fantastic (cheap) Japanese meal: agedashi tofu, tofu with mirin, seaweed salad, avocado and sweet potato maki, tuna and salmon maki, soba noodles with green tea, wasabi and raw quail egg, vegetable tempura, calamari, asparagus with roe and all washed down with miso, tea and asahi beer. Yum!

Hot Pot

After shovelling plate after plate of goodies into the pot of boiling broth only a few minutes were needed before the feasting began. The pot was divided into two halves: the spicy side and the plain side...and spicy means pretty spicy. For the meat-eaters there was finely sliced beef rolled up like cigars. And for veges we had: lotus root, potato, enoki mushrooms, spinach, tofu skin, tofu sponge and vege balls...the latter being my favourite!

Everyone had their own bowl of dipping sauce and chopped corriander, and a glass of beer to wash it down. Everyone was stuffed by the end and there was still some food left on the table. Only those who stuck to the spicy side had to contend with "hot pot belly" the next morning.

5 floors of cheap stuff

We ventured out today by ourselves for the first time. After a slow relaxing start to the morning, we caught the subway ($0.50 each per ride) to the shopping area Gabe recommended. We managed to get off at the right stop and even walk in the correct direction. We stopped half way to eat the mystery snacks we had purchased from the Kiss And Bake bakery...one turned out to be walnut fruit cake and the other (more surprisingly) was a bun filled with tuna and corn.

We refueled again with an icecream before entering the 5 stories of stuff. The top level was a food court, then everything else on the lower levels from suitcases to ceramics, handbags to Armani jackets. We spent a few hours wandering around, but in the end our only purchase was two pairs of CK boxer shorts for me. Luckily Gabe had told me roughly how much I should pay since their starting price was 180RMB and the price I got down to was 17.5RMB ($3). Everything else, though cheap, was the same stuff you can get in Melbourne. Admittedly it was cheaper ($12 for jeans, $5 for shirts), but there wasn't anything really interesting, funky or unusual.

We eventually left, a little disappointed and hassled, and strolled back to the subway. At least the cityscape had a beautiful blue sky backdrop (cleared of pollution by the previous evening's strong winds).

Food is good

Steamed egg and chive dumplings for breakfast with plum juice. Chilli oil fish which came still boiling in oil to the table; cucumber with peanuts, coriander and sesame oil; cold eggplant with minced garlic and tahini; fried corn and pine nuts; deep fried shredded vegetables wrapped in beancurd skin and crumbed. And all washed down with tea and beer.

Though much of the food is a bit on the oily side, the flavours are varied and interesting. With the help of Gabe the table has been full of tasty treats...and yes, even tasty tofu.

Today is our first venture out by ourselves....should be interesting, though perhaps a little more draining. There are not many tourists walking about and not much English. Time to hit the pavement.