Globetrotting
I’m back! After finishing school in Tokyo and traveling through China, Thailand and India, I’m taking my first opportunity to sit in front of a computer and write for more than a few minutes. Sarah and I have been extremely busy ever since she arrived in Tokyo on July 20th.
Kyoto/Kobe
The next morning we hopped on the Shinkansen for a trip to see Sarah’s friend Mai Murata and her family in Kobe. We met up with Mai in Kyoto and spent a day and a night there, checking out Kinkaku-ji, a 600-year old gold-plated pavilion/temple, and we ate at an insane theme restaurant called Locked Up. As soon as we walked in the place, the entrance was pitch black, and we walked down a hallway until a bright light popped on and a haunted house-style dummy jumped up out of a trash can with a blaring chainsaw. I walked into this place a few steps ahead of Sarah and Mai, so by the time I had finished my awkward, instinctive yelp of panic, they had run back out the door and around the corner. After we all calmed down (Mai was trying to call the restaurant to make sure there would be no more nonsense before we returned, to no avail), we walked back in, tripped the chainsaw-guy alarm and headed to the seating area. The hostess greeted us in a skimpy blue plastic cop outfit and knee-high platform boots, and asked which of the three of us had committed the worst crime, in Japanese. Sarah and I remained clueless about what was said and Mai pointed to Sarah, so the hostess slapped handcuffs on Sarah and dragged us all into a cell, complete with iron bar windows, fake brick walls and a wooden table. The drinks we ordered were served in beakers, test tubes and eye-droppers, and we were served a jellyfish snack and a "Russian roulette" appetizer: a revolver-shaped dish with six octopus balls, one of which was extremely spicy, and it was impossible to tell which one was "lucky" until you ate it (I got it, of course, but it was really good). Just when it couldn't get any weirder, alarms began sounding, and over the speaker system, the hostess announced that "monkeys" were attacking the city of Kyoto; within a few minutes, busboys and cooks dressed up as horror movie characters were jumping from cell to cell with fake machetes, scaring everyone to death. Soon after came the cops/hostesses, who shot the "monkeys" with cap guns, cuffed them and took them back to the kitchen. This was definitely the strangest restaurant I've ever visited, but we had a great time, and the food was excellent. Who could have thought up a jail/mad chemist/haunted house/horror flick/crazy monkey-themed restaurant?
The next day we saw Kiyomizudera, a beautiful, elaborate group of temples in the hills overlooking Kyoto, and then walked down a small, winding road and stopped at a pottery shop, where Sarah, Mai and I sculpted our own rice bowls, which Mai is going to ship back to us in the States when we return. I wish we had been able to spend more time in Kyoto, which was very well-preserved and had a lot of historical buildings and landmarks mixed in with its modern downtown area (similar to Boston); it's a lot better than Tokyo, in my opinion. Afterwards, we all took another train to Kobe and went to an amazing tempura restaurant with Mai and her family, where the chef fried seafood and vegetables right in front of us and served it all to us piece by piece. That Sunday we visited a 17th-century feudal castle called Himeji, where "The Last Samurai" was filmed, and had another great meal with Mai's family, this time at a sushi restaurant, where we ate several courses of eel, octopus, egg, and fatty tuna nigiri. We spent Monday exploring Kobe's underground malls and the seaport, and then I had to head back to Tokyo for school, while Sarah stayed back in Kobe with Mai and her family for another day.
Tokyo
I was holed up in the computer lab for the rest of the week finishing my final papers and preparing for my last final exam (unless I go back for the Ph.D. – HIGHLY unlikely, considering how schooled-out I am at this point). Sarah checked out Tokyo on her own, and she enjoyed being pampered as a guest of the American ambassador to Japan at his complex in central Tokyo; she stayed in the suite where Supreme Allied Commander Douglas MacArthur hung out for a few years following the surrender of Japan after World War II, which is slightly awesome. I got a chance to go see her place when the embassy invited us to a party that Friday evening for the release of “Superman Returns;” the ambassador set up a makeshift movie theater inside a ballroom at the house, where lots of embassy employees and their kids came to see the movie and eat hot dogs and popcorn. After the movie, Sarah and I met up with my class for a final embarrass-yourself-one-more-time karaoke night at an Italian restaurant, and on Saturday night Temple University Japan threw us a nice open-bar going-away party in Omote-sando.
Shanghai
About three hours later, Sarah and I were awake along with most of my class, reluctantly catching the 7:30 a.m. bus to Narita Airport to head to China for a week of sightseeing and corporate tours. When we arrived in Shanghai, we were greeted by our tour guide for the next few days, a crazy Chinese guy named Rainy who talked about Shanghai’s history as well as his drinking escapades to pass the time on our tour bus. We were pleasantly surprised with our hotel, which was directly across the Huangpu River from downtown Shanghai and the Bund, giving us amazing views of both areas from the 30th-floor lounge and breakfast restaurant. The Bund is a strip of buildings stretched along the western bank of the Huangpu directly across from downtown Shanghai; the old European-style architecture is a stark contrast to the futuristic, dramatic skyscrapers downtown. That night, the class set out in cabs to an area of downtown Shanghai called Xixiandi, with lots of western-style bars and restaurants, and Sarah and I ate Turkish food, which is probably the last thing we thought we’d be eating in China. Cabs starts at about 90 cents in Shanghai, and don’t go up much further from there, which was a nice break from Tokyo’s $6 starting price.
The next day, we all took a bus trip with Rainy to Yuyuan, an ancient temple garden in Shanghai’s old center, surrounded by shops and restaurants filled with people trying to get us to buy stuff. Each restaurant/shop had a guy standing outside talking to the passersby yelling “Hello! Delicious!” or “Hey pretty lady, look like you need handbag.” We picked up a cool Chairman Mao alarm clock from a souvenir shop, where I was introduced to Sarah’s cutthroat shopping bargaining strategy: name a price that is about a quarter of the vendor’s, and don’t budge. Eventually they always reluctantly gave in; we would be walking away from a store empty-handed and the storekeeper would often physically drag us back in, lowering their price until it matched Sarah’s. For lunch, we all ate a huge meal at a traditional Chinese restaurant, and my German buddy Dominik and I had the honor of eating the eyeballs out of our fish for good luck (Dominik later went on to eat an entire turtle in Beijing – he’s even worse than I am about eating weird stuff for kicks). Later on, after a corporate tour with my class, Sarah and I spent some time on Nanjing Road, a beautiful, brightly-lit, ultramodern pedestrian shopping district, where we were approached every few seconds by shady characters selling knock-off designer goods. We finally got curious and followed one of them off of Nanjing Road to a side street around the corner. At that point, we were able to see the huge difference between the faces put on Shanghai’s touristy public areas as opposed to the slums behind the scenes; we walked into a beat-up, dirty building and into a tiny apartment which was stuffed from floor to ceiling with designer handbags and wallets, Rolex watches, and even a set of Callaway golf clubs.
The whole class took a trip out to the suburbs for a corporate tour that Tuesday, and afterwards Sarah and I headed to a 4-story shopping mall filled to the brim with almost nothing but more famous Chinese knock-off designer stuff, including Samsonite luggage, Gucci shoes and North Face skiwear. Almost all of the inflated prices the shopkeepers threw at us could be whittled down to nothing, and they all had backrooms with the “real” stuff, which was nothing more than piles of better versions of the knock-offs in the stores outside. We left the mall with some classmates and headed to the Ritz-Carlton that night for a performance by the Shanghai Acrobats, a Chinese version of Cirque du Soleil. The next day, Sarah and I ate at the Pizza Hut on Nanjing Road (tastes exactly the same as it does in the States), did some last-minute shopping, and then caught our flight to Beijing.
Beijing
I’m pretty sure that the food on China Eastern Airlines (cuttlefish with beef and intestines in a brown sauce over rice) gave me the mild case of “Chairman Mao’s Revenge” that I’ve been dealing with ever since I set foot in Beijing a week ago. The class went out for dinner and drinks in an area called Ho Hai, a string of dimly-lit bars and restaurants on the shore of a small, willow-lined lake in central Beijing. At the entrance, there were about 50 couples waltzing to Chinese music on a dark dancefloor right next to the lake, which we all got a kick out of. We ate great Thai food and had some creative drinks, and then Sarah and I rented a swan-shaped paddleboat and took a short spin around the lake before heading back to the hotel.
On Thursday, my “ailment” prevented me from taking the corporate tour of a consulting firm’s offices in Beijing, so Sarah and I went to the Silk Market, which is essentially an even bigger, better version of the knock-off mall in Shanghai. The place was absolutely overwhelming – six stories tall and full of anything you could ever think about buying, whether knock-off or otherwise, with pushy vendors literally dragging us into each of the mall’s thousands of stalls. It was the Disneyland of shopping, and, ironically, capitalism; everything could be bought for a fraction of the asking price, so Sarah and I went to town for a couple of hours and then met up for dinner at a coffeeshop with my classmates and some Temple Law students who were studying in Beijing.
Early on Friday morning, we all hopped on the tour bus with our Beijing guide, Jessica, to check out Tiananmen Square, which was huge and creepy, and the Forbidden City, which Sarah and I found to be kind of disappointing for an imperial palace – it was very big, very red, and very repetitive. We found out that the Forbidden City was forbidden to everyone except for the emperor, his concubines, and his servants, who were “not real men,” according to Jessica (translation: Eunuchs). Also, to start the day, Sarah’s brand new sandal was broken by a haggler trying to sell us baseball caps for the Beijing Olympics. Luckily, there was a convenience store right next to us, so we hobbled her in there and got her set up with a brand new pair of Pumas for about 9 bucks. Next, we all climbed back into the bus to for the ride out to a part of the Great Wall of China at a town called Badaling. I found the wall to be very beautiful and impressive, but it was kind of cheapened by all of the tourist crap being shoved in our faces every step of the way, as well as by the gigantic ad splashed across the mountain for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. On the way home, Jessica took us for a peek at the construction site for the new Olympic stadium, which she repeatedly called a “nasshole.” It took us a while, but we finally figured out that Jessica was telling us that the new stadium is roughly shaped like a “nest.” After the tour, we all had a huge final farewell dinner at an elaborately-decorated Chinese restaurant; although this meal was particularly good, the rest of the food in China didn’t really knock our socks off.
Bangkok
We flew back to Shanghai early on Saturday, and used our three-hour layover to ride the Maglev train into town and back. The Maglev (Magnetic Elevated train) reaches 431 kilometers per hour (267 mph) and hovers above a track on a cushion of air – it felt a lot more like flying than being in a train. Afterwards, Sarah and I, along with our buddies Tericke and Tony, caught our flight to Bangkok, where we stayed for one night on our way to Mumbai (Bombay), India. I showed the guys around Bangkok’s famous red light district, where we witnessed lots of great advertising and I snacked on some bugs. We all went to Chatuchak the next morning, a football-field-sized weekend market with thousands of vendors selling everything imaginable, and then Sarah and I headed back to the airport to catch our flight to Mumbai, where we are staying as guests of the American Consulate in a gorgeous vacant apartment right in the middle of town.
Mumbai
When we touched down in Mumbai, it was pouring down rain (it’s the monsoon season, so it’s been raining most of the time that we’ve been here), and neither of our ATM cards worked; luckily, I had one dollar crammed inside my wallet, which I exchanged for some rupees and called my buddy Ashish, who set us straight on how to get to our place. The cab ride was nothing short of insane: a soaked, pothole-filled, narrow, laneless road took us through miles of slums before reaching central Mumbai. The cab driver and the drivers around him seemed to have their hands glued to their horns, which Sarah and I noticed especially when we woke up to a chorus of incessant car and bus horns surrounding our building early the next morning during rush hour - Ashish calls it the “Soundtrack of Mumbai.” The terrible traffic and road infrastructure are unfortunately the first things we noticed about Mumbai, and they’ve left a lasting impression. It is a relentless, chaotic place where you have to battle to get anywhere, even just to cross the street – it’s vastly different from any place I’ve ever been. The low standards of living in the surrounding area and the extremely low value put on human life here (hundreds of people die each year on the railways alone) make even just visiting Mumbai a raw, nerve-racking experience. However, the Mumbaikers, as they are called, don’t really seem to mind any of this; I haven’t heard anyone yell at each other or lose their temper over things that would easily create riots in the States. Additionally, despite the poverty, dirt, traffic and general pandemonium, Sarah and I really have had a great time in Mumbai – it’s a beautiful place, the people have treated us well, we’ve had a wonderful time hanging out with my classmates Ashish, Divesh, Mukesh and Raunaq (all native Mumbaikers themselves) and the food is unbelievably good everywhere we go.
Our apartment is in a neighborhood called Kemps Corner, and it has spectacular views of the Arabian Sea to the west, as well as downtown Mumbai, Chowpatty Beach and the Queen’s Necklace to the southeast. We spent most of our first day in Mumbai catching up on all of the sleep we’d missed over the course of hopping between Japan, China and Thailand for the past week. It poured all day long, so we weren’t going to get much done anyway. I ventured out once for a spin around the neighborhood to find an ATM machine and to get some breakfast – I found a small bakery that sells chicken tikka masala and Indian veggie croissants, which has become the new breakfast of choice for Sarah and I this week. That afternoon, we met up with Ashish, who picked us up in his chauffeured car (it’s much more common than in the States, but still pretty awesome – all of my classmates here have drivers), and went to Café Mondegar in the Colaba area of south Mumbai for more delicious Indian food and Kingfisher beer, my new favorite beverage. Afterwards, we strolled through the shops along Colaba Causeway, using their awnings as protection from some of the heaviest rain I’ve ever witnessed. We got completely drenched as we darted through the rain from Colaba to the Taj Mahal, Mumbai’s most luxurious hotel, where we dried off in the lounge and drank masala chai tea, my other new favorite beverage. From there, the night took us to a shisha bar called Mocha and a pizzeria overlooking Back Bay and the Queen’s Necklace, which is a perfect half-circle of beach lined with high rise condos and hotels.
On Tuesday morning, Sarah and I met up with Tony and Tericke again and we went directly back to the Taj for more tea after checking out the Gateway of India and the Colaba Causeway again. We took a cab to Cream Centre for more great Indian food, and that night we took a cab up to Bandra for dinner and drinks with Ashish, his wife Neha, Divesh, and Raunaq at yet another outstanding Indian restaurant called Moti Mahal. Similar to Shanghai, we keep finding ourselves inside luxurious places which are a complete contrast to what’s happening outside; in Mumbai, however, reality is one step away, as opposed to around a shady street corner in Shanghai, as we are face-to-face with Mumbai’s problems the second we walk outside wherever we go.
Goa
Sarah, Tericke, Tony and I took another crazy cab ride the next morning to the Mumbai Domestic Airport for a two-night trip down to Goa, a city-state on the Arabian Sea in southwest India. Goa was settled by the Portuguese about 500 years ago and wasn’t ceded to India until 1961, so the area has a lot of European influence. Portuguese is still spoken by the older people in the state, and there are several historical Portuguese cathedrals and archaeological ruins near the capital, Panjim. The whole place reminds me a lot of the Caribbean, with shanties, bars and shops dotting the narrow, winding roads through the jungle, which is thick with palm trees and very green as a result of the monsoon season. We stayed at the Taj Holiday Village, a string of small, brightly colored cottages along a palm-covered green, overlooking the Arabian Sea and an ancient Portuguese fort called Aguada to the south. On Thursday we hired a car and driver to explore more of the area, and had lunch at an outstanding Mughul restaurant in Panjim (a gigantic meal for 4 cost us about $11). We toured some cathedrals and ruins and did some $2-T-shirt shopping back in Panjim, then went to Calangute Beach, just north of our hotel; it’s the monsoon season, so the beach was kind of depressing. Every place we visited in Goa, especially our resort, was very quiet as a result of the monsoons – I’d love to come back and visit during the tourist season, which we heard is pretty crazy. Thursday night we went out for another outstanding meal at a Goan restaurant on Calangute Beach and then had drinks at a bar on Baga Beach called Mambo’s. Goan food is a ridiculously delicious mix of Portuguese and Indian food, with lots of seafood and spicy sauces. Sarah and I feel like we’re eating ourselves stupid in this country, so it’s a good thing we’re leaving soon (unfortunately, we’re headed to Thailand, where the food is probably going to be equally outstanding).
Mumbai
After returning to Mumbai on Friday afternoon, we met up with Temple U’s next class of the IMBA program’s Mumbai cohort, where the guys and I shelled out advice about the program over more awesome Indian food and more Kingfisher beers. Sarah and I found out that night that there is a terror threat in Mumbai between now and when we leave on Monday, so we’ve unfortunately had to cancel our plans to see Elephanta Island and some of the more touristy parts of Mumbai, which is frustrating, but it will give us time to relax a little bit. Yesterday we checked out some more of Bandra and hung out with the guys at the J.W. Marriott, a lavish hotel on Juhu Beach, and today we’re at my friend Mukesh’s house for lunch with his family after seeing a Bollywood romance/comedy/action/sci-fi movie called “Krrish,” about an Indian superhero battling an evil genius and his computer, in a nutshell.
We’ll be in Cambodia on Tuesday through Thursday, Bangkok for a few more days, and then on Ko Samui with my cousin Chris next week, which should be a lot of fun, but I have no idea when I’ll be in front of a computer again. I’m going to add a ton of pictures to this posting asap (I’ve taken over 2,300 as of now), and hopefully I’ll be able to write one more entry before Sarah and I return home on August 25th.
Kyoto/Kobe
The next morning we hopped on the Shinkansen for a trip to see Sarah’s friend Mai Murata and her family in Kobe. We met up with Mai in Kyoto and spent a day and a night there, checking out Kinkaku-ji, a 600-year old gold-plated pavilion/temple, and we ate at an insane theme restaurant called Locked Up. As soon as we walked in the place, the entrance was pitch black, and we walked down a hallway until a bright light popped on and a haunted house-style dummy jumped up out of a trash can with a blaring chainsaw. I walked into this place a few steps ahead of Sarah and Mai, so by the time I had finished my awkward, instinctive yelp of panic, they had run back out the door and around the corner. After we all calmed down (Mai was trying to call the restaurant to make sure there would be no more nonsense before we returned, to no avail), we walked back in, tripped the chainsaw-guy alarm and headed to the seating area. The hostess greeted us in a skimpy blue plastic cop outfit and knee-high platform boots, and asked which of the three of us had committed the worst crime, in Japanese. Sarah and I remained clueless about what was said and Mai pointed to Sarah, so the hostess slapped handcuffs on Sarah and dragged us all into a cell, complete with iron bar windows, fake brick walls and a wooden table. The drinks we ordered were served in beakers, test tubes and eye-droppers, and we were served a jellyfish snack and a "Russian roulette" appetizer: a revolver-shaped dish with six octopus balls, one of which was extremely spicy, and it was impossible to tell which one was "lucky" until you ate it (I got it, of course, but it was really good). Just when it couldn't get any weirder, alarms began sounding, and over the speaker system, the hostess announced that "monkeys" were attacking the city of Kyoto; within a few minutes, busboys and cooks dressed up as horror movie characters were jumping from cell to cell with fake machetes, scaring everyone to death. Soon after came the cops/hostesses, who shot the "monkeys" with cap guns, cuffed them and took them back to the kitchen. This was definitely the strangest restaurant I've ever visited, but we had a great time, and the food was excellent. Who could have thought up a jail/mad chemist/haunted house/horror flick/crazy monkey-themed restaurant?
The next day we saw Kiyomizudera, a beautiful, elaborate group of temples in the hills overlooking Kyoto, and then walked down a small, winding road and stopped at a pottery shop, where Sarah, Mai and I sculpted our own rice bowls, which Mai is going to ship back to us in the States when we return. I wish we had been able to spend more time in Kyoto, which was very well-preserved and had a lot of historical buildings and landmarks mixed in with its modern downtown area (similar to Boston); it's a lot better than Tokyo, in my opinion. Afterwards, we all took another train to Kobe and went to an amazing tempura restaurant with Mai and her family, where the chef fried seafood and vegetables right in front of us and served it all to us piece by piece. That Sunday we visited a 17th-century feudal castle called Himeji, where "The Last Samurai" was filmed, and had another great meal with Mai's family, this time at a sushi restaurant, where we ate several courses of eel, octopus, egg, and fatty tuna nigiri. We spent Monday exploring Kobe's underground malls and the seaport, and then I had to head back to Tokyo for school, while Sarah stayed back in Kobe with Mai and her family for another day.
Tokyo
I was holed up in the computer lab for the rest of the week finishing my final papers and preparing for my last final exam (unless I go back for the Ph.D. – HIGHLY unlikely, considering how schooled-out I am at this point). Sarah checked out Tokyo on her own, and she enjoyed being pampered as a guest of the American ambassador to Japan at his complex in central Tokyo; she stayed in the suite where Supreme Allied Commander Douglas MacArthur hung out for a few years following the surrender of Japan after World War II, which is slightly awesome. I got a chance to go see her place when the embassy invited us to a party that Friday evening for the release of “Superman Returns;” the ambassador set up a makeshift movie theater inside a ballroom at the house, where lots of embassy employees and their kids came to see the movie and eat hot dogs and popcorn. After the movie, Sarah and I met up with my class for a final embarrass-yourself-one-more-time karaoke night at an Italian restaurant, and on Saturday night Temple University Japan threw us a nice open-bar going-away party in Omote-sando.
Shanghai
About three hours later, Sarah and I were awake along with most of my class, reluctantly catching the 7:30 a.m. bus to Narita Airport to head to China for a week of sightseeing and corporate tours. When we arrived in Shanghai, we were greeted by our tour guide for the next few days, a crazy Chinese guy named Rainy who talked about Shanghai’s history as well as his drinking escapades to pass the time on our tour bus. We were pleasantly surprised with our hotel, which was directly across the Huangpu River from downtown Shanghai and the Bund, giving us amazing views of both areas from the 30th-floor lounge and breakfast restaurant. The Bund is a strip of buildings stretched along the western bank of the Huangpu directly across from downtown Shanghai; the old European-style architecture is a stark contrast to the futuristic, dramatic skyscrapers downtown. That night, the class set out in cabs to an area of downtown Shanghai called Xixiandi, with lots of western-style bars and restaurants, and Sarah and I ate Turkish food, which is probably the last thing we thought we’d be eating in China. Cabs starts at about 90 cents in Shanghai, and don’t go up much further from there, which was a nice break from Tokyo’s $6 starting price.
The next day, we all took a bus trip with Rainy to Yuyuan, an ancient temple garden in Shanghai’s old center, surrounded by shops and restaurants filled with people trying to get us to buy stuff. Each restaurant/shop had a guy standing outside talking to the passersby yelling “Hello! Delicious!” or “Hey pretty lady, look like you need handbag.” We picked up a cool Chairman Mao alarm clock from a souvenir shop, where I was introduced to Sarah’s cutthroat shopping bargaining strategy: name a price that is about a quarter of the vendor’s, and don’t budge. Eventually they always reluctantly gave in; we would be walking away from a store empty-handed and the storekeeper would often physically drag us back in, lowering their price until it matched Sarah’s. For lunch, we all ate a huge meal at a traditional Chinese restaurant, and my German buddy Dominik and I had the honor of eating the eyeballs out of our fish for good luck (Dominik later went on to eat an entire turtle in Beijing – he’s even worse than I am about eating weird stuff for kicks). Later on, after a corporate tour with my class, Sarah and I spent some time on Nanjing Road, a beautiful, brightly-lit, ultramodern pedestrian shopping district, where we were approached every few seconds by shady characters selling knock-off designer goods. We finally got curious and followed one of them off of Nanjing Road to a side street around the corner. At that point, we were able to see the huge difference between the faces put on Shanghai’s touristy public areas as opposed to the slums behind the scenes; we walked into a beat-up, dirty building and into a tiny apartment which was stuffed from floor to ceiling with designer handbags and wallets, Rolex watches, and even a set of Callaway golf clubs.
The whole class took a trip out to the suburbs for a corporate tour that Tuesday, and afterwards Sarah and I headed to a 4-story shopping mall filled to the brim with almost nothing but more famous Chinese knock-off designer stuff, including Samsonite luggage, Gucci shoes and North Face skiwear. Almost all of the inflated prices the shopkeepers threw at us could be whittled down to nothing, and they all had backrooms with the “real” stuff, which was nothing more than piles of better versions of the knock-offs in the stores outside. We left the mall with some classmates and headed to the Ritz-Carlton that night for a performance by the Shanghai Acrobats, a Chinese version of Cirque du Soleil. The next day, Sarah and I ate at the Pizza Hut on Nanjing Road (tastes exactly the same as it does in the States), did some last-minute shopping, and then caught our flight to Beijing.
Beijing
I’m pretty sure that the food on China Eastern Airlines (cuttlefish with beef and intestines in a brown sauce over rice) gave me the mild case of “Chairman Mao’s Revenge” that I’ve been dealing with ever since I set foot in Beijing a week ago. The class went out for dinner and drinks in an area called Ho Hai, a string of dimly-lit bars and restaurants on the shore of a small, willow-lined lake in central Beijing. At the entrance, there were about 50 couples waltzing to Chinese music on a dark dancefloor right next to the lake, which we all got a kick out of. We ate great Thai food and had some creative drinks, and then Sarah and I rented a swan-shaped paddleboat and took a short spin around the lake before heading back to the hotel.
On Thursday, my “ailment” prevented me from taking the corporate tour of a consulting firm’s offices in Beijing, so Sarah and I went to the Silk Market, which is essentially an even bigger, better version of the knock-off mall in Shanghai. The place was absolutely overwhelming – six stories tall and full of anything you could ever think about buying, whether knock-off or otherwise, with pushy vendors literally dragging us into each of the mall’s thousands of stalls. It was the Disneyland of shopping, and, ironically, capitalism; everything could be bought for a fraction of the asking price, so Sarah and I went to town for a couple of hours and then met up for dinner at a coffeeshop with my classmates and some Temple Law students who were studying in Beijing.
Early on Friday morning, we all hopped on the tour bus with our Beijing guide, Jessica, to check out Tiananmen Square, which was huge and creepy, and the Forbidden City, which Sarah and I found to be kind of disappointing for an imperial palace – it was very big, very red, and very repetitive. We found out that the Forbidden City was forbidden to everyone except for the emperor, his concubines, and his servants, who were “not real men,” according to Jessica (translation: Eunuchs). Also, to start the day, Sarah’s brand new sandal was broken by a haggler trying to sell us baseball caps for the Beijing Olympics. Luckily, there was a convenience store right next to us, so we hobbled her in there and got her set up with a brand new pair of Pumas for about 9 bucks. Next, we all climbed back into the bus to for the ride out to a part of the Great Wall of China at a town called Badaling. I found the wall to be very beautiful and impressive, but it was kind of cheapened by all of the tourist crap being shoved in our faces every step of the way, as well as by the gigantic ad splashed across the mountain for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. On the way home, Jessica took us for a peek at the construction site for the new Olympic stadium, which she repeatedly called a “nasshole.” It took us a while, but we finally figured out that Jessica was telling us that the new stadium is roughly shaped like a “nest.” After the tour, we all had a huge final farewell dinner at an elaborately-decorated Chinese restaurant; although this meal was particularly good, the rest of the food in China didn’t really knock our socks off.
Bangkok
We flew back to Shanghai early on Saturday, and used our three-hour layover to ride the Maglev train into town and back. The Maglev (Magnetic Elevated train) reaches 431 kilometers per hour (267 mph) and hovers above a track on a cushion of air – it felt a lot more like flying than being in a train. Afterwards, Sarah and I, along with our buddies Tericke and Tony, caught our flight to Bangkok, where we stayed for one night on our way to Mumbai (Bombay), India. I showed the guys around Bangkok’s famous red light district, where we witnessed lots of great advertising and I snacked on some bugs. We all went to Chatuchak the next morning, a football-field-sized weekend market with thousands of vendors selling everything imaginable, and then Sarah and I headed back to the airport to catch our flight to Mumbai, where we are staying as guests of the American Consulate in a gorgeous vacant apartment right in the middle of town.
Mumbai
When we touched down in Mumbai, it was pouring down rain (it’s the monsoon season, so it’s been raining most of the time that we’ve been here), and neither of our ATM cards worked; luckily, I had one dollar crammed inside my wallet, which I exchanged for some rupees and called my buddy Ashish, who set us straight on how to get to our place. The cab ride was nothing short of insane: a soaked, pothole-filled, narrow, laneless road took us through miles of slums before reaching central Mumbai. The cab driver and the drivers around him seemed to have their hands glued to their horns, which Sarah and I noticed especially when we woke up to a chorus of incessant car and bus horns surrounding our building early the next morning during rush hour - Ashish calls it the “Soundtrack of Mumbai.” The terrible traffic and road infrastructure are unfortunately the first things we noticed about Mumbai, and they’ve left a lasting impression. It is a relentless, chaotic place where you have to battle to get anywhere, even just to cross the street – it’s vastly different from any place I’ve ever been. The low standards of living in the surrounding area and the extremely low value put on human life here (hundreds of people die each year on the railways alone) make even just visiting Mumbai a raw, nerve-racking experience. However, the Mumbaikers, as they are called, don’t really seem to mind any of this; I haven’t heard anyone yell at each other or lose their temper over things that would easily create riots in the States. Additionally, despite the poverty, dirt, traffic and general pandemonium, Sarah and I really have had a great time in Mumbai – it’s a beautiful place, the people have treated us well, we’ve had a wonderful time hanging out with my classmates Ashish, Divesh, Mukesh and Raunaq (all native Mumbaikers themselves) and the food is unbelievably good everywhere we go.
Our apartment is in a neighborhood called Kemps Corner, and it has spectacular views of the Arabian Sea to the west, as well as downtown Mumbai, Chowpatty Beach and the Queen’s Necklace to the southeast. We spent most of our first day in Mumbai catching up on all of the sleep we’d missed over the course of hopping between Japan, China and Thailand for the past week. It poured all day long, so we weren’t going to get much done anyway. I ventured out once for a spin around the neighborhood to find an ATM machine and to get some breakfast – I found a small bakery that sells chicken tikka masala and Indian veggie croissants, which has become the new breakfast of choice for Sarah and I this week. That afternoon, we met up with Ashish, who picked us up in his chauffeured car (it’s much more common than in the States, but still pretty awesome – all of my classmates here have drivers), and went to Café Mondegar in the Colaba area of south Mumbai for more delicious Indian food and Kingfisher beer, my new favorite beverage. Afterwards, we strolled through the shops along Colaba Causeway, using their awnings as protection from some of the heaviest rain I’ve ever witnessed. We got completely drenched as we darted through the rain from Colaba to the Taj Mahal, Mumbai’s most luxurious hotel, where we dried off in the lounge and drank masala chai tea, my other new favorite beverage. From there, the night took us to a shisha bar called Mocha and a pizzeria overlooking Back Bay and the Queen’s Necklace, which is a perfect half-circle of beach lined with high rise condos and hotels.
On Tuesday morning, Sarah and I met up with Tony and Tericke again and we went directly back to the Taj for more tea after checking out the Gateway of India and the Colaba Causeway again. We took a cab to Cream Centre for more great Indian food, and that night we took a cab up to Bandra for dinner and drinks with Ashish, his wife Neha, Divesh, and Raunaq at yet another outstanding Indian restaurant called Moti Mahal. Similar to Shanghai, we keep finding ourselves inside luxurious places which are a complete contrast to what’s happening outside; in Mumbai, however, reality is one step away, as opposed to around a shady street corner in Shanghai, as we are face-to-face with Mumbai’s problems the second we walk outside wherever we go.
Goa
Sarah, Tericke, Tony and I took another crazy cab ride the next morning to the Mumbai Domestic Airport for a two-night trip down to Goa, a city-state on the Arabian Sea in southwest India. Goa was settled by the Portuguese about 500 years ago and wasn’t ceded to India until 1961, so the area has a lot of European influence. Portuguese is still spoken by the older people in the state, and there are several historical Portuguese cathedrals and archaeological ruins near the capital, Panjim. The whole place reminds me a lot of the Caribbean, with shanties, bars and shops dotting the narrow, winding roads through the jungle, which is thick with palm trees and very green as a result of the monsoon season. We stayed at the Taj Holiday Village, a string of small, brightly colored cottages along a palm-covered green, overlooking the Arabian Sea and an ancient Portuguese fort called Aguada to the south. On Thursday we hired a car and driver to explore more of the area, and had lunch at an outstanding Mughul restaurant in Panjim (a gigantic meal for 4 cost us about $11). We toured some cathedrals and ruins and did some $2-T-shirt shopping back in Panjim, then went to Calangute Beach, just north of our hotel; it’s the monsoon season, so the beach was kind of depressing. Every place we visited in Goa, especially our resort, was very quiet as a result of the monsoons – I’d love to come back and visit during the tourist season, which we heard is pretty crazy. Thursday night we went out for another outstanding meal at a Goan restaurant on Calangute Beach and then had drinks at a bar on Baga Beach called Mambo’s. Goan food is a ridiculously delicious mix of Portuguese and Indian food, with lots of seafood and spicy sauces. Sarah and I feel like we’re eating ourselves stupid in this country, so it’s a good thing we’re leaving soon (unfortunately, we’re headed to Thailand, where the food is probably going to be equally outstanding).
Mumbai
After returning to Mumbai on Friday afternoon, we met up with Temple U’s next class of the IMBA program’s Mumbai cohort, where the guys and I shelled out advice about the program over more awesome Indian food and more Kingfisher beers. Sarah and I found out that night that there is a terror threat in Mumbai between now and when we leave on Monday, so we’ve unfortunately had to cancel our plans to see Elephanta Island and some of the more touristy parts of Mumbai, which is frustrating, but it will give us time to relax a little bit. Yesterday we checked out some more of Bandra and hung out with the guys at the J.W. Marriott, a lavish hotel on Juhu Beach, and today we’re at my friend Mukesh’s house for lunch with his family after seeing a Bollywood romance/comedy/action/sci-fi movie called “Krrish,” about an Indian superhero battling an evil genius and his computer, in a nutshell.
We’ll be in Cambodia on Tuesday through Thursday, Bangkok for a few more days, and then on Ko Samui with my cousin Chris next week, which should be a lot of fun, but I have no idea when I’ll be in front of a computer again. I’m going to add a ton of pictures to this posting asap (I’ve taken over 2,300 as of now), and hopefully I’ll be able to write one more entry before Sarah and I return home on August 25th.
posted by corbinski at 12:24 PM
