I woke up super early today to pack and leave for my flight from Tokyo to Hong Kong. Unfortunately, it wasn't early enough because I missed my flight. The blame lies on the Tokyo train system. You cannot take the same train to the airport that you can take from the airport. So, I attempted to figure out how to get back to the airport, but no one seemed to be able to help. Finally, through a variety of hand gestures I figured out that there are two parts to the station. To get to the train that I was trying to catch, I had to go out of the station and walk down the street a ways to a different part of the same station (Ueno Station). It was thoroughly confusing.

It definitely sucked missing my flight, but it worked out much better than I expected, in the end. It was only a $90 change fee and there was a flight 1 hour after my original flight. The only other problem is that I was supposed to meet Craig in Hong Kong at 2:30pm, but I sorted that out eventually.

I was still pretty tired from waking up early and sore from walking so much every day in Tokyo. To top that off, I felt like I was starting to get sick... you know, that feeling you get in the back of your throat just before you get sick. At least there is an infinite supply of hot tea everywhere you go in Asia! The flight was about four hours, so I was happy to get some extra sleep (especially since I didn't expect to sleep much in Hong Kong).

I arrived in Hong Kong without any trouble. This was the first time that I've flown on Cathay Pacific and it was great. They were constantly servicing the cabin and had plenty of attractive flight attendants to do so. All-in-all it was one of the best flights I've ever had.

After getting my bags, going through customs and taking the train to Hong Kong station, I met up with Craig. He picked a very obvious place to meet, the "meeting point" in the train station. It was certainly easy to spot. Back to the train ride for a moment though... It was a very smooth ride, but the most notable thing about it was the scenery. Hong Kong and the surrounding area is unique in my travels. It is the only place that I've been where you have skyscrapers in the mountains where it meets the ocean.



Craig and I headed off to his place in a taxi and caught up a bit on the way. His place is in a good location in SoHo (that's right, it seems like there's a SoHo everywhere). The apartment is a little small, but it certainly has great water pressure. It was a pleasant surprise. We dropped off my stuff and headed out.

Craig explained to me that since Hong Kong is built on a mountain there is the world's longest series of escalators going from the bottom of the mountain most of the way up. It's useful, free and used frequently by just about everyone. We started somewhere in the middle of the escalators in search of a bar for some cold drinks.



It's pretty hot in Hong Kong this time of year, but it's really the humidity that gets you. Most shops and restaurants are well air conditioned, which must cost them a fortune. Craig was telling me that he used to worry about sweating, but eventually you just don't give a shit any more.

We sat in a small place that was mostly filled with rugby fans watching a match between two European teams. We got a couple beers and were talking for a while. I was pretty impressed at the selection of beer around there area. They had beers like Boddington's, Stella Artois, Newcastle, Bass, etc...). In Tokyo, you'll mostly find Japanese beers, not a lot of imports (at least where I had gone).

One of the most striking things about Hong Kong (especially in contrast to Tokyo) is the amazing number of foreigners (mostly Americans or Europeans). It seemed like it was between 25-50% ex-pats in most of the places we were. I'm sure there were far fewer in other areas, but SoHo in particular was mostly made up of Westerners.

While sitting at the bar, by quite an amazing coincidence, we ran into two of Craig's friends from business school. Neither of them live in Hong Kong. One lives in Beijing and the other was just visiting on a trip similar to mine. They joined us for drinks and we discussed some plans for the evening.

Craig and I had planned to go to Victoria peak at twilight for a spectacular view of the city, but George and Gary had already been up there. It was also looking like rain and I was going to be back in HK with Dave at the end of my trip. Instead we walked into Hong Kong park, which was very small, but a nice change from the sea of concrete.



Besides looking around the park, I was marveling at the architecture of several surrounding skyscrapers. Hong Kong has some amazing buildings that are quite creative. In particular, there is a set of two buildings that I call the Tetris buildings (see below). George and I had a funny discussion about the extreme challenge the buildings must present to window washers.


LEFT: Tetris buildings                RIGHT: One of Hong Kong's tallest and most fallic buildings

We proceeded to an outdoor market that had hordes of cheap trinkets and a ridiculous number of cheap watches (about $2-$10, without bargaining). It was a fun place to go for a half hour or so, but it became very repetitive fast. I don't know what it is with the Chinese, but they don't seem to understand the concept of variety. This theme was even more menacing in mainland China. I did run across a really weird dancing baby with a pipe! (see picture below). I also saw there Chairman Mao watches where his hands moved to tell the time. I thought was hilarious and was going to buy one for everyone at work, but never made it back to the shop.


This is one weird and creepy dancing baby (who smokes)

Besides cheap watches, clothes, backpacks and the odd dancing baby, there was a plethora of pirated music, software and most of all movies. They had movies that were still in the theaters, including Spiderman 2! I was suprised to find out that Spiderman 2 is extremely popular everywhere in Southeast Asia. Take a look at the picture of me below. We were walking through a mall and I had to get a picture of this...


LEFT: Another interesting building (remind anyone of a building in Boston?)    RIGHT: Spidey's in Asia!

I bought a post card at the market and we went back to George's hotel because nature was calling Gary in a very personal way. While Gary wrestled with the porcelain god, George, Craig, and I went to check out a nearby bar called Felix. It is supposedly one of the most chique places in Hong Kong. The elevator had these crazy textured walls (I wish I had a picture to show you) and the lighting dimmed in the elevator as we approached the 20th-something floor. It became immediately evident that some of use were under-dressed. Oddly enough, that did not include me. We were politely turned away by an absolutely stunning woman dressed in a tight fitting, sexy, yet very elegant and classy dress. It is one of the looks like beautiful Asian women seem to have mastered. We had a quick moment to look around at the ultra posh bar. It was a shame we couldn't have a drink, but such is life.

After we left the bar, we met back up with Gary in the lobby of the YMCA. I've been to a few YMCA's before and this one was undoubtedly the nicest I'd ever seen. According to George, it's supposed to be the nicest one in the world. That's kind of weird. It's like having a luxury Honda civic. There's nothing wrong with a civic, but it's strange to dress it all up as if it were a luxury hotel. It was a nice place though. With our four stomachs growling, we set out to find some food.

Someone read in a guidebook about a reasonably priced Chinese restaurant that was supposed to have excellent food. The food was good, but at $35 per person I wouldn't go back. If this had come at the end of my trip, $35 would have seemed like a fortune! One thing that I've realized from this trip is that the cost of living for comparable luxuries varies wildly between different parts of the world.

After dinner, we decided to go to this Ivy League mixer that Craig was invited to by a friend. It was on the 27th floor of some building with an awesome view of the city. Two of the walls were almost entirely glass and the room had many couches and small tables. The people were typical Ivy League MBA students, with the exception that most of them were Chinese or of Asian descent. Many of them were in Hong Kong for summer internships or some, like Craig, were there working in permanent positions.

Unfortunately, most of the people were not particularly friends or social. They seemed to be interested in talking to the people they already knew and that was about it. However, I did get to have a very interesting conversation with a friend of Craig's named Scotia. I was intrigued by her name (which I never found out if there was a story behind it). She had just come from the Yunnan province in the mainland where I was headed. She was nice enough to give me detailed travel advice. One of the places she insisted that I must see was Tiger Leaping Gorge. She was unable to make it out there because of the horrible rain which closed the road. Apparently a few people died from landslides. I found out later that those people died while driving because of the landslide (either hitting debris or being hit by the landslide). It is a real problem in that area.

Scotia's husband, Mike, has a cousin that was in Lijiang, but he would be gone by the time that we would get there. We talked for a while and she seemed genuinely interested in my travels and excited for what was in store. I gave her my e-mail address so she could send me some of the useful info (otherwise I would have forgotten most of it). She sent me a very useful email the next day.

I wanted to go back to Craig's place and crash since it was after 1am and I had an early morning flight. After the mixer, Craig was nice enough to make a trip back to his place and then he went back out and met George. I found out later that George was very drunk and had hooked up with a woman who was fugly. Craig didn't think much of it, until George called her up the next day. Lucky for Craig, when they met up the next day she had a hot friend.


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It's a good thing I didn't stay out with Craig until 5am in HK because I probably would have missed my early morning flight. I woke up, said goodbye to Craig and caught a taxi to HK station to take the train to the airport. They have a really nice setup in Hong Kong at the train station. You can check you bags right there at the train station. It's very convenient.

I had a great flight on Dragon Air, partly because it was a business class ticket. There was, however, some pretty strong turbulence at one point. I was sitting next to this younger Asian guy who had a long sharp pinky nail. That was pretty weird (probably for drugs), but not so uncommon in China. They were serving food and drinks and the guy got some hot coffee. Just after that we hit the turbulence and he got hot coffee all over him. It definitely sucked for him.

I have to admit that I was a little nervous about flying into mainland China. Chinese customs wasn't something that I was looking forward to. I had this vision of the Gestapo interrogating me, but it wasn't like that at all. I wasn't even stopped, so the worries were all for nothing. I walked through customs with my backpack (which went unsearched) and got a taxi.

I had practiced saying Camellia Hotel (wo qu chahua bingua) on the plane. The problem with Mandarin, well Chinese in general, is that it is a tonal language. The meaning of the word is determined as much by the way you say it as the letters making up the word. I found it extremely difficult to get the pronunciation correct. To make matters worse (as I'll get into later), people have different accents in different parts of the country so even if you learn to say something properly in one place they may have not clue what you're saying somewhere else. This is a problem even for the locals according to a few people that we spoke with. I did however get the Camellia pronunciation correct and the taxi driver understood and took me there. The windows were open in the taxi and when we were almost there some guys pretending to cross the street threw a bunch of cards into the cab. One hit me in the eye, which was a lot of fun. I looked at a few of them and they were ads for airlines, phone cards, etc... It was a pretty strange way to advertise.

I was supposed to meet my friend Dave at the Camellia hotel, that was as far as our planning had gone. When I got to the reception desk I had them look up his room, but they didn't show anything for Dave. I insisted that they look more thoroughly, but they did not find him in their book or the computer. I was starting to get a little worried that maybe Dave took off for another part of the country (or another country altogether). I was pretty tired from waking early and the trip, so I got a double, Room 206. I went over there to rest for an hour or so.

I went over to the hotel's internet computer room to check my e-mail. The room is a fairly small room with a desk for the hotel staff and 6 computers, 4 of which worked. All of the machines were very slow and old, but they worked, so what more do you really need. I didn't get any e-mail from Dave, so I sent him an e-mail telling him where I was and asking him where he ran off to. I was asking a few of the other travelers that I ran into if they'd seen a punk ass Texan, but no dice. Just as I was finishing on the computer, Dave pops in to the computer room. I was glad to finally meet up with him. My first impression is that he looks good, but really thin. I started calling him Mr. Burns!


Room 205 at the Camellia Hotel                                       Dave enjoying a Chinese Sprite at Aoma where Lychee works

I tell Dave the little story above how I couldn't find his name registered with the hotel. I also mention that I got a double, room 206. Dave, I find out, had already gotten a double and was laying down in there for the past few hours, room 205! We were next door the entire time! It was ridiculous and pretty funny. Dave wasn't feeling very well. Apparently, he went to the Speakeasy, a breakdancing club, and the friendly locals there had him drink "Chinese Tequila". It was a clear liquor that really didn't agree with Dave. He said, "I'm never going to drink again." These words have been echoed many times but rarely followed.


The Speakeasy, Dave's having a good time until the next morning...

I cancelled my room with the hotel and registered under 205. I set my stuff down in the room and Dave and I went to go eat. We went to Dave's favorite place to eat in Kunming, Aoma. There is this waitress there that Dave liked named Lychee (which is a type of fruit in Southern China). She was very friendly, always smiling. The food was good and the people were very friendly. Dave and I caught up with each other and then headed back to the Camellia and watched a really shitty horror movie on TV. After the piece of crap movie, we went to sleep.

We slept in a bit, which was a nice change from the past several days. Many places where people stay have a breakfast included in the price of a room. The Camellia had a breakfast buffet that was pretty good. Dave recommended that I try a type of sausage that he "really likes." It tasted like crap and then Dave thought that maybe that was not the same thing he tried. I'm guessing he didn't want to be the only one that ate the crappy sausage.

I decided before I came to China that we should go see Shilin (the Stone Forest) just outside of Kunming. There are actually several different stone forests, but this one is probably the best. We took a taxi from the Camellia to the bus station and eventually figured out which bus to take to Shilin. On the bus, we met a younger girl (maybe 18), Sun hong Li (or "Lisa" as she wanted us to call her). Lisa had been studying English for 9 years. She spoke very well, but not as good as I would have thought after 9 years. When you hear someone speak English to you who has only spoken and listened in a classroom, it is funny to hear how proper their English is spoken. Lisa often started her sentences, "Excuse me, may I ask you..." even after we'd been speaking for some time. She was very nice and eager to try out her English on some Americans. The bus trips tend to make people sick, so they have a bunch of plastic bags for people to throw up in. While we were talking to Lisa, the younger boy next to her threw up. I know that I shouldn't laugh, but it was pretty funny that his grandfather gave him a plastic bag to throw up in, but instead of didn't open it up and just threw up ON the bag (which didn't go very well). There would be much more throw up to come on future bus rides. Stay tuned for the "throw up bus" later on in the trip. :-)

We walked to the entrance of the park where we were approached by "Guides" in traditional dress who wanted to swindle... I mean show us around the park (see pictures below). There was no need for a guide, so we politely declined (again and again). The entrance fee to the park was quite a lot by relative standards ($10 US), which had Dave pretty pissed off. Many other Southeast Asian countries were less money grubbing. I convinced him that we should go in anyway.


    Guides are in traditional attire to aid in their attempt to scam you.

At the entrance and just inside the park, there were a plethora, nay, a horde of Chinese tourists. It was a crazy amount of people that we were not expecting. We quickly learned a lesson that would be reiterated throughout our trip, Chinese tourists are very lazy. We started hiking through the park and after hiking a very short distance (maybe 10 minutes) we were alone except for one French family and one or two other people along the way.


    A scene near the entrance of the park.

Here is a description of the Stone Forest on the map we had, "The Stone Forest is a typical karst landform with groups of stone peaks, standing erectly, thousands of high peaks covered with green and strange rocks in various shapes. Being peculiar, serene, elegant and breath-taking, it is called the miracle under the sun. It has been scientifically proven that this place had been under the sea 230 million years ago.... the rocks were mainly limestone..."










       Various pictures from Shilin

I've included some pictures, but there are many more good ones that I'll make available soon. Looking upon this sea of peaks was an interesting sight. The trail around the park that we were following was very well marked (paved or layered with stone slabs in most places), but it got extremely narrow in a few places where we had to squeeze between two rocks. (see below)


       Suck it in man so you can get through                                         This was the best dragonfly pic believe it or not

The were many spiders and butterflies all around the forest, but most notable was the staggering number of dragonflies. I tried to take a picture or two, but the picture did not come out well (see pic above on right). There were many mildly interesting insects that we saw throughout the walk including a green praying mantis (Tang Lang in Mandarin). Dave got a great picture of a cool bug on a leaf. Speaking of leaves, there's another picture below of some giant leaves (maybe 3 feet in diameter)! Another strange thing that we came across was this shriveled up algae setting in the pits in the rocks. We came across a pit that had some water collected from a recent rain. This algae looked very much alive (see pictures below).







One of the more interesting things about the Stone Forest is that most of the particularly unusual rocks have been named with very Chinese names. For example, "An Eagle Soaring into the Sky, A Pair of Mandarin Ducks Playing in the Moonlight, A mouse stealing oil, One Can't Avoid His Enemy, Eyes Waiting for Food, Happiness of an Old Man and His Grandson, Golden Chicken Crowing." There are hundreds of them, some of them were very odd. Fill, you may remember us naming an unusual shaped rock when we were hiking in Mojave...

About half-way through the park, we met a young man named Caolei. He had been studying English and was very friendly and eager to talk to us. He did not speak English that well, but tried very hard. He first said hello to us and asked us where we were from (Megol, Mandarin for America). We walked away a bit afterwards, but he chased after us. He stayed with us the entire way back to the beginning of the park. I have to admit that I was sketched out a little at first, thinking that he wanted to scam us or something. Really though, he was just a nice guy who wanted to talk to us. He lives in Shilin, but his hometown is much closer to Lijiang, where we were headed in a few days. I'm sure that Dave would want me to mention that I am unable to say the word Shilin as it should be said in Mandarin. It was not for lack of trying, but there's just a sound that I could not get right. Dave got it almost on the first try (up yours Dave).

Near the beginning of the park, there are pools of water and some walls of rocky peaks (see picture below). It is a pretty cool entrance. There is also a bench inside of the labyrinth of rocks where Dave and I decided to sit down. After a minute or two something really strange started to happen. People, particularly little kids, but some adults too, would sit down right next to us and get up after only a few seconds. It was starting to get really weird, but then Caolei noticed us and quickly explained that the bench we were on was only supposed to be sat on for 3 seconds while you thought a wish (or something like that). Dave and I were pretty surprised since we'd been sitting there for a few minutes. We quickly got up and all the kids were laughing. It was pretty funny.


                 A glimpse of one of the pools of water                                        A random wedding happening near the entrance

We left the park (or at least the main part of it) and Caolei urged us to come with him to his father's shop. We found that the shop made and sold various silver jewelry. Everything was made by hand by someone in the shop. Everyone in the family seemed to help with running the shop. Caolei insisted on feeding us. He had his sister make us a bowl of noodles with meat. We were shown, once again, the unsolicited kindness of the locals. This is one of the most fun parts about traveling. Kindness from strangers who are genuinely interested in where you are from and what you are doing there is an enriching experience. It encourages your own desire to be kind to others and gives you hope that people aren't necessarily going to destroy themselves in the end. Maybe I'm going a bit too far, but genuine, unsolicited, unnecessary kindness has a pure quality about it that is hard to describe.


                  Caolei is writing our contact info at the shop                                          Dave and I just inside the Stone Forest

We left the shop, thanking Caolei for his kindness and giving him our e-mail addresses. We walked back to the bus lot to get a bus back to Kunming. Minibus drivers go to these lots and then try to get you to go with them. There was an extremely insistent lady who was trying way too hard to get us to get in their minibus. After we finally agree, she literally pushes us into the guy's minibus. I had to sit up front (or at least they were kind enough to let me) because I was too big to sit comfortably in the seats in back. I had a hard time figuring out how to get the seatbelt on because it was pretty much broken. The driver, seeing my inability to figure out the obvious, took the belt a looped it around me. I don't think it would have done much, but thanked him anyway.

Also in the minibus was a man, his wife and son. The kid was maybe 6 or something like that (I don't know how old kids are any more). My Mandarin was about at a 4 year old level, so I figured I'd give it a shot. With the help of our infinitely valuable phrasebook, I asked the boy several questions. I must have been getting better with the pronunciation because they understood most of the time. The boy was very surprised the first time that I said anything in Mandarin, but his Mother and Father urged him to answer me. After that, he seemed happy to talk with me. It was not a long conversation by any means, but he was amused and his parents seemed pleased about the whole thing. It was fun to be able to talk a little bit in Mandarin and have someone understand.

After we drove back (maybe halfway) we took a little detour, stopping at this tourist site that looked like a temple that had been completely touristized. It was still pretty cool. You could see a part of the temple way up on the rocks that looked pretty awesome (see picture below). Dave and I were given 15 minutes to look around, so we went and bought some ice cream. There were a lot of Chinese tourists all around the place. I wouldn't have wanted to spend much time there even if we could expect perhaps to check out that temple in the rocks. We got back on the minibus and made it back to the bus station in Kunming, took a taxi to the Camellia and checked out. We went to get something to eat at Aoma and said goodbye to Lychee. We were a bit pressed for time, so we ate quickly and headed to the bus station.


     A couple pictures from the temple stop on the way back from Shilin

We didn't really plan much of the trip. We just decided where we wanted to go as we went along. This was a really fun and relaxing way to travel in many ways. Dave and I had decided now to go to the town of Dali. We heard it was a pretty interesting place to visit and it was on our way towards the general direction of Tibet.

We decided to take a night "sleeper" bus to Dali. I believe the bus ride was supposed to be about 9 or 10 hours. When we got to the bus station there were hundreds of buses and we had no idea how to find our bus. Conceding that we would have a difficult time finding it on our own, I asked for a lady who worked there to show us where to find our bus to Dali. I think Dave will agree that there was no way in hell we would have found the bus if we didn't have help. We walked and walked around tons of buses, through entire buildings to areas of more buses... It was really staggering just how much buildings and buses we walked through to finally find our bus. Even if I were Chinese, there's no way it would have been easy.

We boarded the bus and there was a lady who was sort of the organizer. When we bought the tickets we were asked if we wanted top or bottom bunks. We specifically asked for both of us to have bottom bunks (and it was somewhat indicated on our tickets). This lady was no lady, she was really a bitch in disguise. When we first got on the bus she tried to give us the absolute worst bunks in the bus. These are the bunks in the top back of the bus where you would be crammed with lots of other people. I wasn't going to take her crap, so I started arguing with her and after a while she gave up and we got the bunks we had reserved. However, that was not the end of the wench. She would come back several times trying to make us move somewhere else and argue more. I'm sure she was saying some pretty nasty things about us to other people, but I didn't care at that point. We put our packs under our bunks and tried out the bed. Dave's fit him like a glove. Dave is shorter than I am by 2-3 inches and apparently that's just enough. There was no physical way for me to fit in the bed unless I curled up because I was just too tall. I'm not that tall, but for a Chinese man I'd be pretty tall. Needless to say, I knew I was not going to have a very comfortable sleep, even by sleeper bus standards.


          I'm reading The Long Walk on the sleeper bus                                              Dave's view toward the front of the bus

Besides being kept awake by my short bed, I was also a bit paranoid. We had heard from some other travelers to be careful on the sleeper buses because of theft. Often times someone would cut a whole in a bag with a razor blade or knife and take whatever they could. Between this and my discomfort, I was half-asleep at best. During the middle of the night, I thought I saw something under Dave's bed. It's very dark so I sit up a little bit and look a little closer. After a minute or so I see a man emerge from underneath Dave's bed!! It was the weirdest thing. He stuck is head halfway out (which was just below where my head was) and then went back under and used a lighter to make some light. The lighter was set very high so it was like a torch. To recap, there's weird Chinese dude under Dave's bed with a torch. Dave is sound asleep. I wake Dave up and tell him what's going on just as the guy is leaving from his adventure under Dave's bed. Dave, who has been traveling almost a year now, is pretty much unphased and decides to go back to sleep. I have to say it was the weirdest bus ride I've ever been on. After a night of discomfort, half-sleep, and weirdos under the bunks, we finally arrived in Dali at 6am (or at least we thought it was Dali).


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