National Week 2012 Kicks Off in Jingzhou

Back in Jingzhou for 3 days before heading down to Guilin and Yangshuo
to hangout with our old colleagues Hedy and Alex.

Typical of China, but nonetheless still interesting to see.

An awesome parking job in front of Cathy's aunt's restaurant.

Cathy's friend's dog, McGrady.

Cathy's cousin of a cousin works at the Jingzhou Museum
and took us on one of her tours.  It was really busy there.

Whoever wrote this BS was one paranoid guy.  I read something like
"Dear Lord of the Afterlife, please allow this man to be an official in the Afterlife
because he was an official  in this life." Bit of stretch...

The second mummy in the Jingzhou Museum.
Somehow, I missed it last time I was there.
Note the embalmed innards on the right.

We went to see a classic musical performance.

Waiting around for our train to Guilin.

Never again will I travel on a Chinese train for more than 6 hours.
The train to Guilin from Wuhan was a nightmare.  16 hours of nightmare
to be exact.  It was crowded to the point where people were
standing IN the washroom. The seats were so uncomfortable, and I got
a grand total of 0 hours of sleep. I actually begged Cathy to get off at Changsha
so we can fly, but we ended up just taking the train.  Hands down my WORST
 experience in the PRC in the last 3 years...and it will be tough to beat.
Highlights included someone spitting on my pants and a kid
taking a dump next to me. If you take a Chinese train, go berth and not seat.

Siam

In Wuhan, there are no super-clean metropolitan super-malls. Cathy had no idea what these sort of malls looked like. Well, it so happened that Bangkok has a string of well-known super malls around the Siam area.  If alone, it would not catch my radar signal on my solo travels.  But we needed baht and a well-known currency exchange called Super Rich was in the Siam area.  We pinged that area on our maps for the day.

Cathy at Siam Paragon

Typical Asian traffic

After getting more baht for cheap, we went to scope out the various shopping centers around the area.  One of them had things that really wowed Cathy.  For me it was pretty normal, which just shows how spoiled we North Americans are with our material culture.

But honestly, I had fun.  It's been too long since I've been to such a mall.  Okay, okay, I was in such places in Seoul.  But I have to admit, it was pretty interesting to see how hard candy was made in Central World.  And the Vietnamese food that we had for early dinner made my day...well actually, more like month.  No such food exists in Wuhan, that's for sure.

A hard candy maker

Early dinner at Central World. We had Vietnamese food.

My sassy girl.

My favorite part was by far walking into Toys R Us.  Cathy was so impressed with the toys in the store, she decided to buy some for her baby cousin (see my Jingzhou posts).  She kept on saying that it's so hard for families to find such quality toys for their infants in China.  That, unfortunately, is a sad reality for early childhood parenting in China.  Toys are bad quality and sometimes even dangerous (Cathy and I watched an expose on TV a while ago about how some kids toys for domestic consumption in China were being made out of uncleaned, untreated, used plastic). Couple that with parents being too busy, some being too uppity to actually raise their kids, and the one child policy, that creates one neglected population of kids. Good thing for grandma and grandpa, that's for sure!

Ironically, half the stuff in the store was made in China. Export quality products.

But I digress.  Back to Siam.  For me, I really liked looking at the board games since Wuhan is devoid of stores with board games.  I didn't buy any because I didn't want to lug game boxes around Thailand, but staring at them reminded me of my brother's vast collection of awesome games.  We used to play many rounds of various games back when my brother visited Vancouver.  Sometimes I sat out because I got bored of playing, but now I really miss those fun times.

Being in Toys R Us was a uncanny experience.  For a fleeting moment, I felt as if I was back at one in Metrotown in my native Burnaby.  Ah, the bittersweet taste of nostalgia....but whatever bitterness I had was soon replaced with sweetness once Cathy and I got some REAL ice cream!

This stuff was rare in Wuhan until just recently.

Siam by night. We left Bangkok shortly after.

We took the rapid transit train to the long distance bus station once the sky turned dark.  We then boarded the last bus heading northbound.  Cathy tried to get some shuteye, unimpressed with the uncomfortable seats and the blaring Thai pop concert on the TV screens.  However, I stayed up watching it.  I learned that Thongchai "Bird" McIntyre was a pretty powerful force in Thai pop culture.

Stopping at a rest stop, I got out to take a look around.  The stop was filled with people eating and buying snack food despite it being about 3 AM in the middle of nowhere.  I took to the snack food, even though I saw some foreigners repulsed by it.  It all looked both familiar and delicious to me.

Thai snack food has an uncanny resemblance to Filipino snacks

Heart clogging pork rinds. Delicious!

In the early morning, we arrived in what would end up being our current favorite place in Thailand  - Chiang Mai!

PVG to SHA and being a hater.

The day's traveling around made me how funny things are here in China.  In the morning, the hotel I was at in Wuhan didn't serve me breakfast, even though they gave me a food ticket.  Luckily, Cathy's mom packed me some extra apples that I ate.

Another funny thing happened.  In Pudong, I walked into a bathroom that was so clean you could eat off the ground.  It wasn't crowded, but a middle aged man who really needed to go pushed past me.  He looked into a stall and then ran out of the washroom.  I glanced in quickly. It was an empty, clean toilet.  But it was a Western sit down toilet. He did not approve.

Coming out of Pudong, I went to the Maglev, only to be told to not go on the Maglev.  Instead, it was suggested I went on the exchange bus, which had a maniacal driver who got us to Hongqiao in a bit under 30 minutes, despite traffic. I nearly crapped my pants in fear of a spectacular crash and painful death.

It reminded me of an increasingly concerning issue in China that Cathy told me about, which will unfortunately affect school on Friday and therefore Cathy's work schedule on Friday.  Around China, the school bus industry are notorious for unsafe practices.  Some schools load up the school buses with kids to max capacity and then  some.  Once said buses have a head-on collision, which has happened around China recently...well...you get the picture.

My school has cancelled Friday school buses for the kids to go back home.  I've been on the school buses before and I must say that whatever company we use do a pretty good job not overcrowding them.  Perhaps during next term, more students will opt to stay on campus for weekends.  Cathy will have to stay longer after school on Fridays, which sucks because that's our eating out day.

Bus safety for kids or better quality times being with Cathy?  I choose the latter.  Aren't I a terrible human being?

...

Now for something completely different, I'm in Seoul.  I love this city.  More posts to follow.

The first 3 days

No pictures so far. Forgot my camera back at my apartment every day my tongshi ("colleagues" or "comrades") have gone out.

3 awesome things that have happened so far...

1. Earlier today, I went to a workout gym off the school grounds.  It was so humid, I was sweating buckets.  The gym itself was dark, dirty and old.  I think the weights on the dumbbells were rusted because people sweat on them too much.  It totally was a place for hardcore gym rats.  There was an Eastern European guy with boxer-t on that seriously looked like the guy in Rocky IV.  It totally would be the place Arnold would go workout back in the 1970s.

2. Walked down a road with some of my new colleagues. It looked like a bomb had hit it. It was broken, and dirty and had its share of "city farts," as my friend Jeremy would put it.  We had street food for lunch.  I ordered a vegetarian noodle stir fry cooked with sesame oil on a searing-hot iron wok.  It was so good!

3. My occasional affinity for whiskey and UBC Mandarin courses really paid off 2 days ago.  Had a night of eating and drinking with my colleagues, principal, and vice principal.  Most of the new teachers left the party early, but a few stayed.  Those that did stay (I myself included) polished off 2 bottles of bourbon whiskey. No baijiu just yet.

I decided to try and catch up with the next group of teachers that left, but got lost (the party was at an apartment about 40 min away by foot from the school).  I hopped into a cab and gave the driver the school card, but he gave it to the security guard at the gate of the apartment complex.  He tried to take me across the Yangzi River, which would be the wrong, and long way.  I guess it was his attempt to up the cab fare.  I yelled out "bu nali! Bu bu bu yao! Wo men qu zai nali?!  Minzu lu Zai Wuchang qu!!" (Not here!! No, no, no I don't want this!  Where are we going?!  Minzu Road in Wuchang District!).  The driver turned around and went straight to my destination within 5 min. I would've been lost without directions in a foreign city. Scary thought.  Next time I won't be so stupid to leave the school without 3 or 4 cards.  I'll never let them go either.

Lesson learned.