Qingdao (part 2)

Picking up where I left off last time, I ventured further out into Qingdao and Tuesday. That morning, I tried to buy a train ticket to Beijing (for Friday), but found out I could only buy it starting the next morning. Already in downtown, I decided to check out the waterfront. It was another cool and cloudy day, but the beach was still packed with people. It's certainly not a tropical beach, either, with the mild weather. So I was plenty happy to walk alongside all the madness and watch from a distance.

I decided it'd be a good idea to walk all the way to the end of the peninsula that Qingdao sits on. I figured maybe there would be some nice views from down there, and the map seemed to indicate a big green area that might be a park.

Couldn't have been further from the truth. The further I went, the more run-down things became. The big piece of green on the map turned out to be nothing more than a walled-off field surrounded by run-down apartment buildings. But the views looking back to the city were pretty good, which made the walk at least semi-worth it. All told, I think I walked about 10 miles that day if I'm doing my estimates right.

A church, quite the rarity in China (outside of Qingdao).
I thought this one turned out pretty good, and the weather was a bit less hazy than the previous rendition.
Looking back on the city from land's end.

I stopped by the American Embassy (i.e. McDonald's) for a late lunch. The girl behind the counter gave me a scared look and said "My... English is... very poor." Luckily my not-so-expansive vocabulary includes "cheeseburger", "corn" (they offer a choice of corn or fries, which is kind of cool), and "Sprite", so I managed.

After that I hiked back up to the hostel and did one last bit of laundry. Went back down the hill a little later and found an entire underground shopping street (literally built underground) filled with things I'd never actually want to buy. By this time it was evening, and I was hungry again so I stopped in a little restaurant across the street from the hill my hostel's on. They liked to laugh at me until they found out I could actually read part of their menu, which was satisfying.

Wednesday was the main event: the town's namesake Tsingtao Brewery. I had originally planned on taking a cab there, but by the time I sighted an open cab I had already walked halfway there. In fact, I walked everywhere in Qingdao except for my trips to and from the train station on my first and last day.

Anyway, I was walking through a not-so-nice-looking part of town close to the brewery, wondering if I was in the right place. Turned the corner, and all of the sudden there was a big street lined with nearly-identical seafood/beer restaurants. And across from all this was the brewery. It seemed like a pretty standard brewery tour (although I only have the Guinness factory in Dublin as reference), with beer history followed by a how-we-make-the-beer segment, and topped off with a bar at the end. But this one had two key differences: they actually still bottle beer at the plant, which we got to see firsthand---that was really cool. And second, the free samples provided at the end of the tour are limitless. Basically it's ￥50 ($7) for a tour and unlimited free beer. I thought that was pretty nuts. But as it was just me and it was around 4pm, I only had about a pint before setting off again.

I decided to try one of the seafood places across the street. Had a little trouble reading their menu, as I'm not very good with seafood vocabulary. So I ended up with a plate of spicy shellfish, which fortunately turned out to be very good. I decided to have another beer, too. She showed me the menu, with five different types of Tsingtao. I just went with the standard one, for ￥10. Turns out this was ￥10 for a pitcher, as that's the smallest unit they dispense there. Wasn't able to make much of a dent in this before I finished my dinner. The waitress asked if I was going to just leave the beer, and I said "yeah, you can finish it". This all made paying ￥40+ for a pitcher in Beijing seem like a really stupid idea.

Below are some pictures from the brewery. On the history part: basically, the Germans got Qingdao on a 99-year lease in the 1890s and figured they'd be there for awhile, so they started the brewery. Awhile later they lost control of the place to Japan, which kept the beer but changed the name, etc. Eventually China got it back, and now it's Tsingtao beer again.

Tsingtao Brewery, exterior.
Big stack'o'beer.
The bottling plant portion of the factory, and the last photo my camera will take this trip (read below).
Wall of different can/bottle types.
This thing was about 500% more technical than all the other information presented in the tour. The tubes of light move (quickly) to represent the beer process, and it gets pretty out of hand by the end.
Apparently they like beer, too.
The old manufacturing facility.
And the new (behind the glass, of course).

I should also note that I found out the other day that I have lost one important thing thus far this trip: my camera battery's charger. The thing rarely needs to be charged, and the last time I remember doing so was in Cambodia, so that's probably where it is right now. In any case, it's gone, and the battery itself promptly gave out the day after I discovered it was missing, halfway through the brewery tour. I had no luck finding a replacement at an electronics store, but I can get one when I go home. So unless I buy a disposable, that'll be the end of new photos for this trip. But I have plenty of shots of Qingdao, and I've already been to Beijing, so I really didn't have many more photos to take, anyway.

Thursday I spent relaxing, and consolidating/repacking for the trip to Beijing and then back home. I also found an English-language bookstore with actual English books (not just English study aids), so I spent some time reading.

Friday morning (that's today), I was off to the train station early, checking out at 6am. When I finally did buy my train ticket at about 10am on Wednesday, the only seats remaining were on the early train to Beijing (there are three express trains every day). So while I had originally wanted to go on the noon train, I didn't have much of a choice.

I mentioned earlier how Qingdao's primary railway station just opened, and how I arrived there from Shanghai. Well, they're still splitting train routes between it and the secondary station, which had been the main station during reconstruction. Anyway, my train left from this secondary station, which was quite a treat. The place is basically a warehouse next to the tracks on the outskirts of town. That might actually be giving it too much credit.

So I sat on a bench in the gigantic, unadorned room that is Sifang "railway station" for about fifteen minutes. Then there was the characteristic Chinese madrush for the already-assigned seats, which I'll never understand. (They did this at the airport too, with people literally running around barriers and pushing to be the first on the plane, again with assigned seats.) As I boarded the train from the end of the line, I was pretty impressed with the second-class (lowest class) seat I was lucky to have gotten a ticket for. Traveling by train is infinitely more comfortable (and cheaper) than by plane, final decision.



This train was one of China's new CRH electric-powered bullet-train things, and it was very cool. Everything was brand new and clean on the inside, and the train itself tops out at 250km/h, which got us through the 900km to Beijing (with four stops) in a little over five hours.

As I wrote this, I was finishing up that train ride to Beijing. As I go back and post it now, I'm sitting in my room at the final hostel, only a few blocks from Tienanmen. At least one more entry to come on Beijing, where the skies are (somewhat) more blue than they were a month ago. Stay tuned...

Qingdao (part 1)

The previous post was written on Monday morning, as I arrived here in Qingdao. It's now Wednesday evening, so I've seen a fair bit of the city.

Qingdao's a lot different from Beijing. It's situated on the ocean, surrounded on three sides with water. There's a bay to the north, and open ocean to the south. So seafood and shipping are pretty big here.

This time, I'm staying in a place a little outside of downtown. It's called the Old Observatory, which I didn't think too much about before arriving. But it's called the Old Observatory because the place is a former observatory. So, for one, it's on top of a huge hill, barely accessible by car. It's easier just to get dropped off at the bottom and walk up, as most of the rest of the hill is a park. Also, it has a great view of the city from the observation domes and terraces on the rooftop, which are now a restaurant/bar. And they have real coffee at this restaurant. In short, another really awesome place, for $10/night.

The city is really hard to navigate, with no subway system. Plus, most of the terrain is very hilly, so streets are rarely straight. The weather is a nice change, though. This is the hottest time of year, and it rarely hits 80. In fact, the place is usually covered in clouds/fog and has a good breeze.

Nobody here speaks English. It certainly makes for good practice, but it's also a little scary. I have not spoken English to a single person since I arrived, aside from a few kids who wanted a picture with me.

Qingdao has a pretty interesting history. It's Chinese, of course, but was occupied by Germany and Japan for the better part of the period between 1890 and the 1940s. The Germans contributed some cool buildings and the famous Qingdao (Tsingtao) beer, which is about the only beer in China worth drinking. The brewery is still here, and it was actually the only attraction I knew of before arriving.

So on the first day, I bought a map and tried to figure out where I was. As it turns out, I'm relatively close to everything but actually close to nothing... so I've been doing a lot of walking. That afternoon, I walked over to the governor's mansion, a big Western-style house where the German governor resided. Later, Mao would meet with his cronies there, too.

Even though I've seen a little more than this already, I'm going to stop here and break Qingdao up into two entries so it's not so long. Tuesday's and Wednesday's adventures took me to the beach and the brewery, so stay tuned for that.

Below are some photos of the city, most of them taken from the rooftop of the hostel. Also included are some pictures of the governor's mansion, and Qingdao's new railway station that I arrived at from Shanghai. It only opened a few days ago, just in time for the Olympics (the sailing events are held here).

The terrace, where I've been eating breakfast. They want ￥30 for a breakfast including a latte, which would be absurd if the coffee weren't so good. For reference, a Starbucks latte alone is over ￥25.
Looking the other way, at one of the domes and the little restaurant hut built on the rooftop.
City at night, from the rooftop.
During the day. Unlike Beijing, those are clouds/fog, not smog.
The governor's place.
Staircase inside.
Same foyer, different angle.
Foreword.
Solarium...
And Mao's meeting room.

Hangzhou -> Shanghai -> Qingdao

China's train ticketing system has a couple of quirks that made my trip a bit of a hassle. First, there's no central reservation system, so booking tickets online like you'd do with an airline is impossible. And second, any tickets must be purchased from the station that you're departing from. This is pretty much because of the aforementioned lack of central system--each station handles reservations only for trains leaving from that exact station. You can usually get an agent to deliver tickets to your hotel if you want to avoid the actual trip to the station ticket office, but this approach still requires you to be in the city you're departing from a decent amount of time in advance.

So on Saturday morning, I woke up in Hangzhou, hoping to be off to Qingdao on an overnight train departing Sunday. But Hangzhou doesn't have a train to Qingdao. This meant I had to get to Shanghai to buy a ticket to go to Qingdao, presuming said tickets weren't already sold out. Had they been, I would've flown, but it would've been a little more expensive. And frankly, I'm just sick of airports right now.

Luckily, trains between Hangzhou and Shanghai South are frequent, and it's quite easy to get tickets for the 90 minute ride just an hour in advance. The only little detail here is that the Hangzhou-Shanghai train goes to Shanghai South station, while my presumptive train the following day left from Shanghai's main rail station. So upon arriving in Shanghai, I first rode the subway across town to the other train station, before checking in at my hostel. Luckily, tickets were still available. I decided that first-class sleeper (~$55) for the 18-hour ride would be well worth the $15 premium over standard sleeper.

Having arrived in Shanghai around 6pm, I checked in at the hostel around 9pm. It was yet another really nice place, with a huge bar/restaurant filled with people around my age watching movies, drinking, and playing pool. To top it all off, I checked into a four-bunk room for $10/night and found that I had the whole room to myself.

The next day, I was woken around 8am by a guy checking in to my room. He was from Milwaukee, and had just arrived in Shanghai from Beijing via overnight train. We talked for a little bit, then grabbed some of the free breakfast in the hostel. After that I spent some time posting the Bangkok entry on this blog, then started repacking some of my stuff for the impending train ride.

I got to the station around 12:30pm for my 1:15pm train, and picked up a few things for the ride. My purchases consisted of: 4 bananas ($.50), 3 bottles of water ($.80), some White Rabbit Candy ($1.50), and canned "cafe latte" for the morning ($.40). I spent the rest of the time looking for an English-language newspaper, but was unsuccessful (and got several "are you crazy?" looks while asking at various newstands).

As I was waiting in line to board the train, I was approached by a guy about my age asking if he could talk to me for awhile (in English). This has happened a few times this summer, and invariably most people in China are at roughly the same English level: they know a stunning amount of vocabulary (no doubt drilled in by endless years of English class), but have great difficulty putting a sentence together. They'll quite openly tell you that they have very little chance to practice with native speakers. In speaking Mandarin I seem to have the opposite problem from most Chinese, as vocabulary is my limiting factor. That's not to say that my grammar is perfect by any means... it's good enough, though, as Chinese grammar is pretty damn simple. I also had Mandarin class this semester with a 5:1 student-teacher ratio, which helps.

Anyway, English-speaker-guy went off to his own car, and I went off to mine. The first class sleepers (more commonly "soft sleepers") have a standard bunk-bed configuration, with a lower bed and an upper bed. Two sets of these face each other to make up a four-bed compartment, which has a table, window, and door to the main hallway. There are eight or nine of these compartments per car.

When I got on, there were only two other guys in my cabin, although we'd pick up one more a few stops down the line. They started talking to each other about the train schedule (one of them didn't even know what time the train arrived), but then quickly turned to me and threw out a couple questions, probably wondering whether I'd understand if they talked about me while I was sitting there.

We ended up talking for a couple hours over a pretty wide (but predictable) range of subjects, mostly involving U.S. vs China comparisons of cities, food, cars, schools, etc. They, like many other Chinese people I've talked to, loved to talk about our impending elections, the war in Iraq, and our economy. I'm not stupid enough to start talking about similar subjects related to China, although I'd happily give them a piece of my mind if they ever came to the States.

I was certainly struggling through a lot of this conversation, and it was easy enough for them to lose me if they spoke quickly enough or with more complex words. Still, it made me happy that I took the train, as I got several hours of continuous practice for free.

Dinner was ￥21 if you took it to-go and ￥40 if you ate in the dining car, so I just took it back to my cabin. For those $3, I got a pretty good meal of chicken, rice, meatballs, and vegetables. By this time I'd already polished off two of the bananas, so I certainly wasn't going hungry. Two of the other three guys were getting off a few stops before Qingdao, and got to bed around 10pm. I was plenty ready to sleep by then, too. It might be the earliest I've gone to bed all summer, but sleeping off some of the remaining time seemed like a good idea.

Overall, it's a very comfortable way to travel. As I write this, I've been on this train for about 16 hours, and it's now 8am Monday morning. I slept until about 7:30, when the two getting off at Weifang left. We only have another hour or so until we reach Qingdao, although by the time you read this I will already be there, since there's no way for me to actually post from the train. I'm in Qingdao for the better part of the working week, leaving this Friday for a last three-day stint in Beijing before heading back home.

Another entry or two (with photos) from Qingdao will certainly be along, so stay tuned.
Interior of the cabin I was in..
The end of the line, in Qingdao.

Singapore

As promised, here's the entry on Singapore. Also, for those who read the Thailand entry yesterday when it was just text, scroll down as I've just added photos a few minutes ago.

We had a morning flight out of Phuket on Tuesday morning, and landed in Singapore a little after noon. A friend from school, Manling, was nice enough to meet us at the airport. Singapore was probably one of the easiest cities for us to navigate since English and Mandarin are the primary languages, but it was nice to have someone who already knew the bus/subway system. After five or six other cities' worth of public transport, I was starting to get a little confused.

The four of us stopped for lunch (fried chicken, eel, and sugar cane juice), then went to the hostel. It was there that it became apparent how relatively expensive Singapore would be compared to the other places we'd been. For about $15 a night we got three bunk beds in a room with 8 people total. There wasn't much else to the place, so it was good motivation to go out and see the city.

We met up with one of Matt's friends who also lives in Singapore, and she and Manling showed us around some of the places in the center of the city. The city/country is bigger than I expected (since it only appears as a dot on most maps), and it actually takes you well over an hour to get from one end to the other. But the subway system is very new and still relatively cheap, so it's not much of a hassle. The city operates on four languages: English, Mandarin, Malay, and some Indian language (Tamil, I think). Most people spoke English very well, and it was nice to be back in a country where Mandarin is an option, as well.

That first night, we went out of the city a little bit to the Singapore Zoo to do their "Night Safari", which was pretty cool. You get to walk around the zoo at night and wake the animals up, which is probably a lot more fun for us than it is for them.

One of the five people in our dorm who wasn't myself, Doug, or Matt snored practically the whole night, making this one of the worst nights of sleep I'd had all summer. Several of our roommates from Britain also were a little upset, as they thought one of us was the culprit. In the morning, we met up with Manling again and she took us to Sentosa, an island off the southern end of Singapore accessible by monorail. We sat on the beach and went swimming for most of the morning and afternoon, then headed back to town. We spent a few hours relaxing before heading out to dinner. After that we found a German brewpub on the river and tried some of their many craft beers. The weather was great, and being next to the river in the heart of the city was really nice. Singapore's a great little city, one of my favorites in Asia so far. It helps that it's very new and modern, combined with the fact that English and foreigners are very common. So it can be Asian if you want it to be, or not if you'd rather pretend you were in America. I tend to cycle through both those sentiments several times a day, so it works out nicely.

We slept in a little bit on our third day, with a long journey back to China in front of us. Had a late lunch in Singapore's Chinatown area, then watched a very good Chinese war movie called Red Cliff (which turned out to be only part one of a two-film series) at the mall before grabbing a cab to the airport.

We had a very bumpy 9pm flight from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, followed by an 8am flight back to Hangzhou, where all this madness began two weeks earlier. But KL's airport hotel is still under construction, and the airport itself is located a good hour or 75 minutes from the city. So we could've gone to the city to sleep, but would've had to turn around and check out only a couple hours later. Instead, we found a few couches in the airport and spent a mostly-sleepless six hours there. It was pretty bad. Actually, it was really bad. Our 8am flight was delayed a little bit, but I managed to sleep about three of the five hours we were in the air, which is probably a new record for me.

Landed in Hangzhou around 1pm and were relieved to discover that our visas to get back into China worked without issue. Grabbed a cab and found our way to yet another hostel, one of the best so far. I promptly slept until dinner time, and then we rode the bus into town to grab some dinner. Hangzhou is a really nice city, and our hostel was situated close to the main attraction--the West Lake. But I only ended up seeing the lake and the city at night, for reasons I'll explain in the next entry...

Apparently missed the memo on which direction we were supposed to be pointing in this photo...
The last three of the original 22, with (supposedly) the southernmost foot-accessible point in continental Asia in the background.
In front of the durian-shaped building.
The five of us. From left: Doug, Janice, Matt, Manling, and myself.
Doug at the night safari...

Bangkok and Phuket, Thailand

OK, so I'm a little behind on entries... sorry about that. This one's been in the works for a few days now (since we left Thailand on the 22nd, actually), but I just now finished it up and am publishing it. Photos should be appended to this one shortly...


Our flight to Bangkok was uneventful and short. We arrived in the late evening, and took a cab to yet another hostel. This place was as good as the Siem Reap hostel in some ways and better in others. It didn't have a swimming pool, of course, but it was very new and clean.

We spent a little time walking around the first night to see what Bangkok was like. As with Malaysia and Singapore, they drive on the wrong side of the road, which makes crossing the street a slightly more difficult task. We managed to find a night market not too far from our hostel, selling the usual items--t-shirts, DVDs, watches, belts, etc.

The next day we met up with our friend Bing who was also on our Beijing trip. He had gone straight from Beijing to Bangkok to see family, as he's originally from Thailand. Having a fluent speaker in Thai, combined with the broken English that most Thai people can speak, put almost no pressure on me to learn anything in Thai. I spent a total of seven days in Thailand and can only say "Hello" and "Thank you". It's a lot more uncomfortable than China in that aspect.

Bing and one of his friends took the four of us to see the King's Old Palace in the middle of the city. I guess it was roughly similar in purpose to Beijing's Forbidden City, but the architecture and decoration were completely different. Instead of China's ever-present crimson, the walls of most of the buildings were painted gold. The low-lying buildings of China were replaced with towering spires of Buddhist temples. And next to all that was a very British-looking building that turned out to be the palace itself.

On our second night, we went out again, but this time ended up in a different part of town. And this is where we began to understand just how weird Thailand becomes at night. But more on that later, as Phuket was even more bizarre.

On our last day in Bangkok, we went to go see the new Batman movie at the first showing. Not something I couldn't do at home, I know, but it was well worth the $6. After that, we grabbed some lunch and bummed around the hostel until the evening, when we headed to the airport for our flight to Phuket.

We landed in Phuket around 9pm, and got to our hostel about an hour later. It's rainy season in most of Asia, which means prices are incredibly low for accomodation. The three of us were able to get a nice room with our own bathroom for $20 total, and it was only about a quarter mile from the beach. I say "the three of us" because it was at this point that one of the other three headed back home, having gotten a call about a family emergency.

On our first full day in Phuket, we went to check out the beach. It was completely overcast, but the water was extremely warm, so it was still a good time. Spent most of the morning and afternoon there, then headed back to the hostel before going out to dinner. We ate at an Aussie-owned Thai place on the beach, then headed back into town to look for some bars. While we eventually found a decent place, we ran into about a hundred tailor-made suit shops, massage parlors, and "dance show" solicitations along the way. Part of the fun, I suppose, was thinking up creative ways to say "no" to the nicely-dressed Thai guy who tried to lure you into his tailor/DVD shop.

The next day while eating breakfast in a local cafe, we ran into a guy about our age named Keegan. He's of Scandinavian descent, born in South Africa, and living in the UAE. Having been to Phuket many times before, he was able to help us out in finding some of the better bars at night. Later that night, we were playing pool and drinking 40 baht ($1.25) buy-one-get-one-free drafts. It was a significant improvement over the previous night, both in economy and atmosphere.

Each day, we had a late breakfast and headed to the beach for the afternoon. The weather progressively improved throughout our five days there, until it was perfectly clear and sunny on our last two days. The beach itself was much better than I expected, and wasn't too crowded. The shelf extended very far out from the shore, so you could walk several hundred feet into the water and still only be up to your elbows. That said, the waves were big and the undertow pretty strong, so it would've made for very good surfing had we chosen to do so.

But even our five days in Phuket passed pretty quickly, and next thing we knew we were off to the airport for a flight to Singapore on the morning of the 22nd.

Below are some selected pictures from Bangkok and Phuket (from the beach photo onward, they're from Phuket). The Singapore entry will follow shortly, and then I'm going to try and catch up so you can learn how I got from the southernmost part of Asia back to Hangzhou and then Shanghai, where this entry was posted from. Enjoy!

Ronald McDonald greeting people in typical Thai style.
Temple/thing at the King's palace.


The beach in Phuket
Probably should read "if you're going to drive fast, be careful"
Looking inland from the beach

More

Cambodia

On Sunday, we got going at 3:45am to make our 7am flight, since Kuala Lumpur's airport is a good hour from the city. But the flight was quick and easy. Flying into Siem Reap was the first time this trip that I'd really stopped to wonder about what exactly I'd gotten myself into. The villages and farms visible from the plane were like nothing I've ever seen before (aside from maybe hunger relief commercials on TV), and flying over them in a 767 just made it even more ridiculous.

But we quickly found out that stuff like that is normal... there's a huge disparity between rich and poor here. The airport seems brand new and very efficient--we walked in, got our on-arrival visas in about 15 minutes and were out the door about five minutes later.

Our money goes a long way here. We're paying $8/night for our hostel, which puts the very nice Matahari Lodge in Kuala Lumpur to shame. The hostel sent two guys in tuk-tuks (motorized rickshaws, basically) to pick us up at the airport free of charge.

Driving in, we passed maybe a dozen super-luxury hotels scattered amongst common homes and shops. I can't imagine what those places are like if they're paying $50+/night, since we have everything we could ever want at our hostel. We have nice rooms with real beds, breakfast in the morning for $1, a clean swimming pool, a restaurant/bar, several common areas and game rooms, and a friendly staff that speaks pretty good English.

That's another crazy thing about this place: most people speak decent or excellent English, and the currency of choice is the good old US dollar. Their currency is the riel, which runs about 3750:1 with USD at the currency exchange, but all stores use a 4000:1 rate. So this means you actually get a worse rate if you pay in riel. However, all change less than a dollar is returned in riel (so you often get a combination of both).

Yesterday (Monday), we got up early to catch a ride by tuk-tuk to Angkor, a semi-preserved archaeological site that has the distinction of being the largest pre-industrial city in the world. Since it has an area of over 400 square miles and contains over 1,000 temples, we only had time to see some of the more important/famous parts. I got some great shots, but doing so almost always involved climbing the temple stairs, which were steeper than any stairs I've ever seen before. Getting up wasn't so difficult as getting back down, but we all made it intact. Having them designed in this way makes the temples all the more impressive... and it's even more impressive that so much of it is still intact nearly 1000 years later.

Siem Reap is a very cool little city. There are plenty of shops, markets, and a pretty good nightlife scene. Most people are really friendly, too.

So this afternoon we're going to walk around the city some more before heading to the airport around 6pm to catch a flight to Bangkok. As was the case with Kuala Lumpur (and will probably be the case with everywhere we go), I wish we had more time to spend in Cambodia. But we have to keep moving...

Enjoy the photos. Connection speed is worse here than it was in Malaysia, so there's no hope of uploading my big stack of photos yet.



The main entrance to Angkor Wat, the main temple of Angkor.

Another temple about 5 minutes down the road.

A little Cambodian boy who called himself "spiderboy" and spoke some of the best English of anyone we've met in the past few months.

Matt demonstrating the steepness of a standard set of stairs. These weren't too bad, but the ones that ascended 30 or 40 feet were a different story.

Shanghai -> Hangzhou -> Kuala Lumpur

This entry comes to you from Kuala Lumpur, where we arrived last night after a solid day of travel that took us from the east coast of China to a mere few degrees off the equator. We left our dorm in Shanghai at 7am to catch a 9:30 train to Hangzhou, which was quick, clean, and on-time. Our flight was scheduled to take off from Hangzhou at 2:00pm and arrive here at 7pm, but we didn't make it into the air until after 3:30.

The flight was fine, and we landed in KL around 8:10. From there, it was an hourlong ride to the center of the city, and then another 15 minutes to our hostel (the exterior of which is visible below, as the short pink building in the exact center of the photo).


Malaysia is a pretty cool place, as whatever local culture is mixed with plenty of Chinese and Indian influence. People are generally pretty friendly, and most speak good English in addition to Malay. Since this is essentially an extended layover for us, we spent a relaxing day today poking around a local market before heading off to see the Petronas towers. I've seen plenty of tall buildings in my lifetime, but these were much more impressive than I expected, especially given the surrounding cityscape, which ranges from ultra-modern to centuries-old.

We have an extremely early wake up call tomorrow, so I'm off to bed soon. Our flight leaves at 7:00am, and lands two hours later in Siem Reap at 8:00am (Cambodia is an hour behind China/Malaysia). You'll find some pictures from KL in this post, but as our connection is still a little slow, I have a pretty big stack of photos from the past 2 weeks that I haven't yet uploaded to Flickr. Stay tuned for more on our adventures....