We took a day trip to Yangshou, where the landscape is both beautiful and strange. Giant, narrow hills jut up, surrounding a small town and a river. It looks just like those traditional Chinese watercolors. It's a gorgeous, gorgeous landscape and because of this, tourists come by the busloads. Aggressive vendors sell kitsch at outrageous prices, often 10 to 20 times the price. It's a huge and dramatic pain to get it down to a reasonable price. It's better to just avoid dealing with it by not buying anything at all. Even the "beggars" were super aggressive. One guy, who was healthy and fit literally pushed me around--Mick had to confront him. Argh! My patience in China is running low. My experience so far has been a mixture of wonder, surprise and frustration.
The tourist-packed town is at the foothills of the mountains.
Having lunch on a second floor restaurant. Most of Yangshou's old buildings remain as they once were. Again, those mountains are so freaky looking.
Classic Yangshou landscape.
More of those mountains.
Mick attempting to do a fob squat and clearly failing. Too western, not enough immigrant.
Mick resting. We climbed to the temple on one of those mountains.
A demonstration of traditional paper-making.
Yahngshou at night. China sure loves its neon lights.
Clever paper-cutting of Mick's profile.
We arrive in Guangzhou by train and leave our luggage at the station so we can explore the city for the day. We accidently left our precious Lonely Planet guidebook on the Yangshou bus, so it was terribly difficult to get around without a map with western characters, our phrase book for pointing to and general directions on bus stations and train schedules. Guangzhou is the garment district of China, so there are a lot of foreigners there for the clothing business. That part wasn't all that interesting. There is a lake and a temple and a bunch of malls. We decided to head out to Macau earlier than we planned, a task that took us hours to figure out. We could not locate a bookstore that carried books in English. We could not find an agency that could speak English to book the train to Macau. In fact, we find out that trains don't go to Macau at all. We needed to take a combination of a long-distance bus and a city bus. Again, this was nearly impossible since no one spoke English, all the maps were in Chinese as were the timetables and none of the ticket offices understood us. By some miracle, we were able to buy our bus tickets. But the adventure only just began. With our luggage in tow, now fat with souvenirs, we had to walk (and I kid you not) half a mile down the street, up the stairs, on an overpass, down the stairs, cross another street, through an alley, up more stairs, across another overpass to the bus terminal. The freakin' ticket office and the terminal was that far away from each other--it took like forty minutes total. "This would never happen in America," I kept thinking to myself. Anyway, we get on the bus and for the time being it would be OK. After two hours, we're close to the border town of Zuhai. The bus stops, a cop gets on and starts checking the locals for ID. He kicks five people off the bus and they have to find a ride back. We have no idea why. Meanwhile, a man hocks up some phlegm and spits it into a plastic bag. Well, at least he's neat about it. When it was finally our turn to get off, it took us a while to figure which city bus to get on. Crammed into the bus with our luggage and teenagers riding home from school, we rode around the city waiting for some clue as to where the Macau border was. We had a piece of paper with the word "MACAU" written on it but the driver didn't read western characters. All the stops on the diagram were in Chinese. We sat and waited and trusted that we would get there somehow. And we did (after a few false alarms, the driver kept motioning us to sit down--he was on our side after all). We stop at what looked like an airport. The bus driver motioned us to go upstairs. "Macau," he says. Macau is upstairs.
We need some Kungfu fast food restaurants in America. The food was really good. I have no idea whether Bruce Lee's family authorized the use of his image.
A very cool design shop in the middle of the garment district.
Do they not have spell check?
Me petting dogs for sale in an alley. That man was not nice to the dogs.
View from the bus. The highway was high above the city and the skyscrapers seemed never-ending.
Me at the city bus station trying to get to Macau. It was all very confusing.
See? Macau really is only an escalator ride away.
OK, first of all, I thought Portugal gave Macau back to China. What's all of this border and passport control nonsense? We made the mistake of buying a single-entry visa into China when we should've gotten a mutiple-entry one because of Macau and Hong Kong. We had to pay another $200 for a second visa. After a crowded long wait on the Chinese side, we walked to the Macanese side where all the signs were in Portuguese. It might as well have been in English--we were so happy to finally understand something. The prices of everything in Macau jolted us back into reality. Judging from the BMWs and Mercedes all over the city, it was a fancy-pants place. We found a bookstore that sold English books, so once again, we are in possession of the ever-useful Lonely Planet China. Although the change was refreshing, two days in Macau were plenty for us. We're off to Hong Kong.
This is the Macau border. It looks like Europe, right? No one speaks Portuguese, everyone speaks Chinese.
There are big giant casinos everywhere. They call it the Monte Carlo of China.
Having our morning coffee overlooking the view from our hotel room. If you look closely, you can see a reflection of Mick in his skivvies (straight guys and relatives, ignore what I just wrote).
I'm only pretending to take a picture of Mick. What I was really photographing are those two monks in the background ordering food from McDonald's!!!
Look at the architecture and the cobblestones--nothing Chinese about it.
Macau is is still very dense though, like the rest of China.
Mick with a mouthful of western food. We're at STARBUCK'S, drinking a PERRIER reading a WALLPAPER magazine plotting out our trip with our brand new Lonely Planet guidebook.
As I was approaching this school, it sounded like several thousand kids were being tortured, but in fact, it was only recess break. Jeez those kids can scream.
A giant Cup o' Noodles at the Cup o' Noodles museum. Don't say we didn't get a little culture in.
Looking down from the top of Macau Tower. They were extremely proud that Charlize Theron visited there.
Our high-speed ferry ticket to Hong Kong.
01:38 PM // Tuesday December 05, 2006 // permalink
