Back from a month away. I was going to give an extensive travelogue-esque account of our wanderings, but life's too short so I'll give this brief rundown.
Back from a month away. I was going to give an extensive travelogue-esque account of our wanderings, but life's too short so I'll give this brief rundown.
On Feb 2 we flew to Hong Kong, spending a few days organising our China trip, buying new clothes (for Chinese New Year - it's an 'out with the old, in with the new' thing), plus one touristy expedition to see the Lantau Buddha again (they have gondolas there now... aweslome!).
Then we flew to Japan, spending several days in Tokyo, staying at Amanda and Michael's before we all did a jaunt to Hokkaido. The food in Tokyo was great, the sights were pretty exciting, the daft Japaneseness of it was crazy. Took numerous photos of oddities that may one day make it online. Got a bit tired/grumpy of the Tokyo hecticness towards the end, so we had a more peaceful day in Kamakura looking at temples. Ahhh.
Hokkaido was awesome. Snow everywhere. The Sapporo snow festival was agreeably strange. Yet still familiar. I guess with all the snow the natural reference point was more nordic or alpine rather than Japanese, but it felt familiar anyway. Strangely civilised. My favourite part of the jaunt was staying in Sounkyo, a small onsen resort featuring artificial ice igloo-caves and coloured lights. These caves often came with unnerving dagger-like icicles hanging off their ceilings. Others were set up as sort-of shrines with coins embedded in ice blocks. There was also bell to ring and you could drink sake and hire giant tyre inner tubes for sledding down a gentle slope. Quite festive, and all at about -6 degrees.
We also visited Abashiri, for the purpose of cruising through ice floes on an icebreaker, but unfortunately this was closed for bad weather. We did however go to a great museum, the Museum of the Northern Peoples (Ainu, Inuit, Eskimos, Lapplanders - except you're not supposed to call them that), which got me pretty excited. Nice museum, although it felt like it could equally double as a memorial to the northern peoples, since so many seemed pretty much extinct. Later we dined at a fine Nepalese(?!) restaurant, and in the evening at our rather nice hotel we had a magnificent banquet meal of mostly raw things.
After we flew back to Tokyo but before we flew back to HK we visited the crazy Shakaden temple of the Reiyukai Buddhist sect. Built in 1975 out of a hell of a lot of marble, this building feels a bit like something out of a 70s SF flick. I was incredibly impressed, although I concede some people might find this building a bit sterile compared to a traditional Buddhist temple. We were allowed into the inner hall, where a few people chanted Buddhist sutras. Or maybe it was Stockhausen's Stimmung. Anyway, it was all really awesome. The temple doesn't shoot lasers (sadly, the sect is more interested in promoting world peace), but it does have a large supply of emergency water in case of an earthquake.
Then it was back to Hong Kong for Chinese New Year. CNY is a bit like our Xmas, except instead of gifts people give each other small envelopes containing money. This money giving is a bit complicated, as whether you must give someone these envelopes (also known as 'red pockets' or lycee - not to be confused with the fruit) depends on your seniority, and whether or not you are married. As an unmarried gweilo I was eligible to receive, but not to give, which was rather good.
During CNY we hung out with Sally's favourite cousin, William. On the second day of CNY after a family yum char he took us to see The Protege, an excellent HK thriller. After that we went and saw the new year fireworks display in Kowloon. Later in the week he took us around Hong Kong Island, and up to the Peak, HK's traditional lookout over the skyline (a bit like looking from the top of the cable car down onto wellington, except maybe 10 times more interesting). When we went up there it was completely fogged out, but this was quite cool in its own way, so we took photos of the grey misty infinity beyond us.
I should say that as always, I was deeply impressed by Hong Kong. They really have infrastructure. The population density and wealth of the territory means that they have decent public transport and roading. I can tell you that trolley buses and the Hataitai fucking bus tunnel are a joke. And the bypass. They should flatten Wellington and start again. Hong Kong is also really good at mixed use urban design (in this case tall housing tower blocks on top of shopping malls - sounds awful, but it's actually not). Aucklanders should go there and weep.
Another great thing about Hong Kong is the public housing estates. Sally's grandmother lives in one, so we visited one of these several times. Housing estates in Hong Kong are crowded with people, but they are orderly, tidy, and safe. I got a few strange looks, but only because gweilos are a rarity in that area. There isn't the squalor of the UK housing estates, which I found bloody frightening. The reason for this I think is that the HK people have more values. They might be just as materialistic as chavs, but they still have some bloody standards. >westfold<If only the same could be said of our lumpen compatriots! >/westfold<
With the formal part of CNY out of the way we flew to China, where we joined a Hong Kong Chinese tour group. The tour was conducted in Cantonese, which language I know but a few words and phrases of the 'je m'apelle Stuart' variety. Sally provided translations, but it was a little dislocating. Even more upsetting was a severe case of the trots I developed the first night we were there.
As for Beijing itself, well it was staggering. The Forbidden City, The Summer Palace, the Temple of Heaven, the Mings Tombs, all were overwhelming in their scale. Confucian thought held that the earth should be modelled on how heaven was (imagined to be) ordered, so everything was built on a vast scale. Tianenman Square, though more modern, is similarly huge. I came to see all this as a bit of a drawback. You can't actually appreciate the Forbidden City from inside it, you have to go to the gardens on the hill facing it to actually appreciate its design.
In the end, what I enjoyed most about our tour of Beijing was our tour group. There was the old codger with his three hyperactive daughters, the three aunties, one of whom lent me some Danish anti-trotsky tablets (at least, that was our best guess as to what they were), the nuclear family with the son eager to show up his dad. On the last night we all went bowling.
The downside of Beijing is that their service culture, and the state of the amenities in general, is a bit dodgy. Nothing too terrible, but if they want to impress everyone at the Games next year as much as they say they do, they have more work to do. Especially with the spitting.
If I wasn't too impressed with the toilets or the waiting stuff, Beijing's dedication to building for the Games, and China's wider drive to modernise, cannot be faulted. We stayed in the Loong Palace Hotel, brand new and five star. It was posh as, and built for the Games.
We also witnessed the dark side of globalisation. For, one morning when we were waiting for some stragglers, our driver decided to put on a DVD of... Benny Hill. I guess his humour (sped up footage of depraved sex maniacs chasing half undressed tarts) crosses cultural boundaries, but even so, it's still awful.
Sally's favourite moment I think was climbing the Great Wall. She went all the way to the top of the section we were on, egged on by her tour chums. I fared less well. After three days of eating very little and crapping a lot, I was feeling pretty suss, so walking a very steep and uneven stairway, all the while contending with Russian and American tourists, pretty much did for me. A third of the way up I conceded defeat and retreated to the coach, feeling sorry for myself. If there's one reason to go back to Beijing it's to climb that section of the Great Wall to the bloody top.
We flew back to HK for a few more days, visiting wetlands (Sally severely bitten by mosquitos), and Hong Kong's indigenous amusement park Ocean Park (Stuart severely angered by slackjawed hordes of brutish Mainland tourists) before heading home. We spent our last hours in HK desperately trying to pack away all the stuff we'd bought. Somehow we managed to get 60kg of luggage home without paying extra.
All up, the trip was pretty full on, but packed with great moments.
Posted by stuart at March 11, 2007 7:29 AM