Return to China!

I am back in China as of today, June 20, 2008. It feels familiar, feels right, feels like home! Clearly my past weeks in China have been a positive experience overall. But first: a few words about the time before our return to China:

After leaving Tioman Island, Analisa, Maddy, and I traveled to Singapore for a few days, just for fun. Imagine our delight to find that our hostel, which was located in a bad part of town up a really grimy, filthy set of outside stairs, was immaculate, new, bright and sparkly, and had air-conditioning and free Wifi! Who could ask for anything more? We had a private 3-bed room all to ourselves, and we weren't very social travelers because it was so nice staying in our room, addicted to the free internet. We spent a lot of time at the Bugis Mall in Singapore, which is a huge shopping area -- both an indoor mall and an outdoor street market, which would have been amazing to me if it had been air-conditioned! The three of us split up so we could do whatever we wanted, and met for dinner in the food court the first evening. This was no ordinary food court: this was amazing! It had every type of food, Asian, and non-Asian, you could imagine, a "drinks court," a dessert court ... everything! I was in the mood for pesto, so we all ended up getting incredible pasta dishes that were cooked right before our eyes. Analisa and I topped the evening off with gelato, just because it looked so delicious.

On our last night in Singapore, we met up with Christine and her husband Danny for a highly-recommended Mexican meal and movies! The food was incredible, and these crazy people I am traveling with decided to go on a gigantic swing and bungy jump (in an enclosed cage). I don't know how to describe it, except that it was huge and very high in the air, and just thinking about it made my heart pound! I was happy to be the Friend-You-Hate* and just watch them, taking photos and videos. After the adventure, we all went to see movies at the theatre: Prince Caspian for 3 of us, and Sex and the City for the other two. It was a very Americanized evening, lots of fun!

After Singapore, we headed to Kuala Lumpur, where we met up with Greg and got our new hostel. No free internet there, but it was quite nice, our bedroom had AC, and I really couldn't complain about it. The best thing was the location: we were just around the corner from the huge Berjaya Times Square mall, which had Starbucks (free internet), Orange Julius, Baskin Robbins, Auntie Annie's Pretzels, Borders Books, all sorts of shopping, and an indoor theme park! The first thing we did in KL was buy tickets to the theme park and ride the roller coaster, which was my first ever upside down roller coaster! Nice to reach that achievement with this group of friends. We did more wandering, shopping, and eating, with one dinner at Outback Steakhouse and another at Chilis! So bad, but ... we're preparing for 5 more months in Asia, and we won't always have Americanized food nearby, so we needed the splurge. This was especially necessary after all those weeks on the island, where the food was incredibly good, but repetitive.

Today we left those two English-speaking countries and returned to China: Shanghai, to be exact. When we arrived at the Shanghai airport, I immediately felt at home: I couldn't understand what anyone was saying, and they couldn't understand me! How neat! I'm not joking -- there is some element of adventure and mystery in barely being able to communicate, and I hadn't realized how much fun that was for me until I left Singapore and Malaysia. This country feels so right to me, after all the time I've spent here. (There is something ironic about that, since our layoff is now officially longer than the time we spent actually on tour!)

We flew into Hangzhou and took a 3-hr "bus" ride to Shanghai. We purchased our tickets on the plane, and arrived to discover that our bus was actually a large van. There were at least 11 people, all with luggage (some huge, like ours), trying to ride this van, and I didn't think we'd get on, but after some clever luggage packing and stacking, we did! I was sitting in the back next to Maddy and a huge stack of suitcases and backpacks, very cozy .. but we made it! (China is making me more aware of my slight claustrophobia and people-claustrophobia: I don't like to have people all around me!)

We got dropped off at the bus station, where a taxi/van driver immediately found us and offered us a ride. While we were at the airport, we had had someone from the bus company translate our hotel name and address into Chinese characters, so we'd be able to show it to our taxi driver. He quoted a price (80RMB), and we were off! It was a pleasant drive. Unfortunately Number 118 Nanchang St was not a hotel -- he made me get out of the van and have a look for myself. After some phone calls, some map consulting (by us), and some yelling, we discovered that the bus company had mistranslated our hotel address: It was Nancang St, not Nanchang St, but we had no way of knowing that was wrong, because we couldn't read the Chinese characters! Finally, with a new price (a whopping 180RMB), we got to our actual hotel and checked in. We were sharing two rooms among the four of us. This hotel is rated 4 stars online, so we were pretty excited! I stepped into the room I will be sharing with Greg, and discovered the bathroom -- with one wall completely of glass! Striped glass, not frosted glass, so where the white stripes are not, you can see into the bathroom from the room: bathtub, separate shower, toilet, and all. Now I can see a romantic element to a bathtub with a glass wall, perhaps in a honeymoon suite, but a toilet that you can see from the bedroom? Is that ever necessary or desired? I doubt it. Clearly this was going to be awkward since I was sharing the room with Greg, who is like a brother to me. The tub was placed along the glass wall, and had a shower curtain, but no matter how you pulled it, it wouldn't cover the entire wall. Finally, we made several phone calls and were able to convey our (my!) problem, and we got housekeeping to hang a second shower curtain, so we can now cover the entire glass wall! It's still a bit weird, but private now. Thank goodness! Who puts a toilet behind a glass wall, I ask you? I do not understand.

Other than that little detail, the room is quite nice, although a bit small. No complaints here, for the price we are paying! We'll be here 8 nights, and I think we plan to take it easy and just enjoy ourselves, without necessarily scheduling things to do every day, in this remaining time before the tour starts again. I'm very excited to see everyone else, and to be back performing (and earning money!) again! It's coming so soon, just 9 days now.

This blog will hopefully be updated more often as soon as tour starts up again, so check back soon!

*Friend-You-Hate: a term I coined myself. Might have previously been used on this blog, but to refresh your memory, a Friend-You-Hate is not a literal meaning. It is a person who comes along on a trip or adventure and takes photos!