This. Is. CHINA. (contributed lovingly by Esack)

Shanghai was a different experience entirely. My great ally-in-the-Orient, Lord Vor (note from Julia: that's our friend Trevor Smith who we know from Iowa), met us at the airport, so there was no “where the hell are we?” period. This was a good thing. In the other cities we’ve seen so far there was definitely a feeling out process, a sort of wandering around time. It was necessary to cut this out in China, as any sort of aimless strolling would see us mostly pretending to look at signs (not in English) and hiding our fear of the unknown (note from Julia: though we blended in very well). Thankfully, Lord Vor had our backs. That isn’t to say “where the hell are we?” wasn’t one of the first questions out of my mouth.

Vor had set us up with a hotel room for most of our stay. The most notable things about the hotel were the view, and the mattress. There was a lovely, large window which looked out directly onto a concrete wall. Not as in, we could see across the parking lot to a concrete wall, but as in: we could see a concrete wall less than a foot outside the window. I have suspicions that the mattress was also made out of some sort of concrete. I was told that in general, the Chinese prefer firm surfaces for sitting and lying down. I was skeptical about this only until our first night of sleep. I slept straight through the night and awoke feeling refreshed. The concrete wall gave the room a constant 7-in-the-morning vibe, even at our usual waking hour of noon (note from Julia: If we set an alarm…) Come to think of it maybe getting up at the crack of noon led to the feeling of refreshment…

We stayed up late and got up late. Honestly it felt like the right schedule to be on for Shanghai. By the time we got up Lord Vor was usually about ready to shuttle us around town. I wouldn’t recommend anyone go to China without someone who speaks Mandarin. You can definitely survive by smiling, pointing, and either nodding or shaking your head, but you would definitely miss a LOT of fantastic stuff heading around town without a proper guide. We got up earlier a couple of times to experience the Shanghai morning, but mostly we stayed out late. Probably never made it to bed earlier than 2 or 3 am. More than once it was 4-5 am. So, I think we can be forgiven for sleeping in a little.

If I had to summarize what we did in Shanghai, I would say that we ate. We ate all day, we ate everything we came across, and we ate oh-so-affordably. I mean, really affordably, most of the things we tried cost 7-30 yuan ($1-5). Noodles, noodles, dumplings and noodles. So many different kinds of noodles. I won’t tease all of you who don’t get to try the goodness with detailed descriptions of everything we ate. I DO need to mention a tasty little dish called chow see fun. No promises on the spelling (cut me some slack, they’re characters not words), but I can promise chow see fun is $1 you’ll never want back. Very simple, vermicelli noodles fried up in a wok with cabbage and fried eggs. It’s advisable to eat it with plenty of the hot chili and the vinegar sauce, condiments you can find at just about any of the eateries we tried. Also bearing mention, thanks to a learned friend of Vor’s we went to a little hidden restaurant with a chef serving the best unagi (Japanese BBQ eel) outside of Tokyo (according to Japanese folks, I haven’t been to Japan, YET). Seriously, truly and unbelievably delicious. (Note from Julia: also home to an amazing beef appetizer that had broth made by angels and what tasted like bread soaked in it.  Although for all I know I was eating duck brains).

I almost hesitate to mention the wang bars. Wang bar. The very name conjures images of scatological humor and a certain 80’s one-hit wonder. What do you do at a wang bar? You play computer games. “Who’s down for wanging it?” or, “let’s go wang it” were phrases frequently thrown around that hid the benign and undeniably nerdy intentions of the group. The game of choice was Warcraft 3. For those of you losers who have never spent 6-10 hours straight playing this game, it’s of the RTS family of games. Or, to the layman, you build an army and go attack the opponent’s army. I’m sure many of you readers will laugh, assuming that 6-10 hours is some sort of hyperbole. Not so beloved followers of this blog, not so. Seeing as I spent much of my childhood playing games like Warcraft 3 (including Warcraft 3), I wasn’t surprised (but “maybe” a little disappointed) with my capacity to drop that amount of time in a computer bar. What DID surprise me (any members of the Gouge family may want to skip this next part) was Julia’s capacity to do the same. Julia not only went along with the Warcrafting, she ate it up. Never in my wildest, lamest dreams did I dream of a girl who would spend 7 hours in a computer bar playing Warcraft with me. But spend the 7 hours she did, and I fell in love. Julia, Lord Vor and I wanged it hard.

This is where Esack’s contribution ends… mostly because he is napping.

Now, I, Julia must explain that wang bars are certainly gross, but I think anyone can admit there’s a certain appeal to hanging out in a place where you can veg out totally uninterrupted. Plus we always had supplies (milk tea, candy bars, seaweed crackers, and “Ethnican” flavored Inca chips).  The game is like the Sims, except you get to battle!  Why would I ever not like that?!

So anyway, Esack did a great job describing Shanghai.  My favorite thing we ate were called xiao long bao.  They are small steamed dumplings filled with pork and this absolutely amazing broth!  A friend of Trevor’s named Michaela told us that they put an ice cube of the broth in the dumplings before they steam, and voila!  Broth dumplings. (pictured below)

What was interesting for me about Shanghai is that although we stuck out like sore thumbs, sore white thumbs to be exact, I came to really love China.  We got plenty of stares, and heard murmurs of “lao wai…” (foreigners…) everywhere we went, the Chinese people we met were always put up with us and did their best to communicate.  I felt safe 100% of the time.  Now that Esack and I are in Russia I notice that I feel nostalgic whenever I hear Chinese.  It is a beautiful language and one that I’ve never understood.  I never thought I’d be interested in learning Chinese but I am!  It’s an entirely different way of communicating and it totally changed the way I think about language.  More to come on this as I work it out in my head.

Look forward to a Russia post coming soon. 

Thanks for reading!

Love,

Julia&Esack

Esack and Trevor in Hangzhou

Wanging it hard in the Wang bar

A boat on Hangzhou lake

A catfish from the collection of them swimming in a container just outside the window on the left

Xiao long bao.  Food from Chinese heaven.

Singa...rich

Hello! My goal is to do at least one post for each location of my travels. Tonight is only my second night in Singapore, although it happens to be my last as well. Esack and I arrived late from Auckland and we leave early tomorrow for shanghai so that left only two full days here. My first impressions of Singapore were very positive. It's hot and tropical, really close to the equator. It's clean and easy to navigate. Everyone speaks English and is helpful. It's safe and everything is cheap! I titled my post Singarich not because it's particularly over the top or anything, but really, it seems like most of the people here are wealthy. Im sure it doesn't help that one of the first things Esack and I did was go see art at the ritz-Carlton hotel. But anyway, the nice cars, well dressed people, plethora of banks, and sparkling streets all lend to an atmosphere of wealth. Unfortunately, it also lends itself to a resort-like, touristy vibe. Singapore in itself doesn't really have much local history, and it comes through. There doesn't seem to be much in terms of localness anyway. The whole city is representations of other cultures: Malay, Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Indonesian, and European. I'm sure Esack and I still stick out as tourists, but there are just as many white people here as everyone else. Everyone sort of looks like a tourist! I read online that the best place to get authentic Singaporean food is at the Chinese heritage center in Chinatown. Ok... I feel like Singapore has taken bits of other cultures, polished them up a bit, and then sewed them on to other cultures. It hasn't all quite blended together. I told Esack that this is what I imagine Dubai to be like. All this said, I really have enjoyed my two days here. I'm excited to go to shanghai and get a little terrified though. And Russia too. Scary. Will I miss the ease of Singapore in about a week? Most definitely.

 Esack and I are staying in an adorable hostel called pillows and toast, which has really comfy beds, free toast in the morning, friendly staff, air cnditioning, and a no shoe policy. I really like it here! We are staying just down the street for a street food center where we have eaten just about every meal. They have over a hundred stands and we've tried tons of new foods, like Rojak, fried bananas, popiah, sardine curry puffs, kachanga, and laksa. The most bizarre thing for sure was the kachanga, strawberry kachanga to be exact, which is a Chinese dessert. It cost about a dollar and twenty cents and is a huge bowl of shaved ice, with three different kinds of syrup on it, like an American snow cone, and then strawberry syrup over top. At first we were like ok, kinda sweet, not too bad. Then we dug down under the ice, and lo and behold, we discover spoonfuls of red beans and corn. Then we come up with three different kinds of gelatin treats, these white gelatin balls, red cubes, and black strips. It was SO bizarre. Haha Esack definitely liked it better than I did, but I think i was just psychologically confused. Taste wise, it really was pretty good. My strangest dessert experience to date.

 So the other way we have been spending our time and money is on the fresh juice! It's amahhhhhzing. There are the standards: orange, pineapple, mango. Apple, lime, mint, ginger, blah blah yum yum but then more unusual things like bitter gourd and honey, balonglong and sour plum. I wish I could try everything!

 We checked out the nightlife last night at a place called Clarke quay by the water and it was unbelievable! Full blown concerts going on next to each other, what seemed like hundreds of bars. So much live music, restaurants, everything. We ended up at a live blues bar and watched a pretty good band with a great guitarist cover al green, bb king, and lynyrd skynyrd. People watching was especially fun, particularly these two drunk guys who were just a hair away from moshing.

Then today, Esack and I spent most of our time at the botanic gardens where we walked around all afternoon and I took about 200 hundred pictures of orchids. For dinner we tried a new street food market which wasn't very good. I got very mediocre chicken biryani and Esack got decent nasi lemak. Disappointing, but then I got some good Indian tea, so no harm done! Ive also turned Esack on to the wonders of fresh coconuts, so we got those twice today. They're more expensive than in India, but sometimes tastier :) I have lots of pictures to upload and show you all, but unfortunately I can't do it from my iPad, somill wait until I can use esacks computer. Im sure I'll have plenty of time to do it during my two week stay in china. But look out for those soon!

 Love, Julia