Koreańskie żarcie

Wszyscy wiemy że żywność azjatycka jest niesamowita. Urzeka różnymi smakami i kolorowymi barwami. Zobaczcie z jakim jedzeniem spotkała się Sonya w stolicy Korei Południowej

Korea Południowa

Wikipedia

I made it to Seoul, South Korea, and this is the boat that brought me. So far Koreans are impressing the hell out of me with their tidy and efficient attitudes. Heck yes Korea! I gotta go hunting for some food, I’ll talk to you laterz.

A little Tug Boat that pulled us out of the dock. I’ve heard talk of Tug Boats my entire life but until now I never actually thought about what that meant. It’s very literal.

Cargo going onto the ship.

 

 

Space-age hair styling

 

 

 

No one in Tanggu could believe that I wanted to take a boat to South Korea, and I ask you; how could you not want to take this boat to South Korea? It was rad.

They had private rooms that groups would order big family style Korean BBQ meals to, sitting around eating, drinking beer, and being raucous. Then when they were finished with their meal they would order more beers, close the door, and fire up the karaoke!!! Hells yeah, on a boat with their flippy floppies! Chinese is a tone based language, so Chinese people naturally have perfect pitch (download the episode about it from Radio Lab) which means they’re excellent singers. The same thing cannot be said for Koreans, but by and large I have found them to be very charming, so I can forgive them their terrible singing.

Tianjin - ostatni przystanek

The magic of yesterday has run dry. This morning I took the express train to Tianjin from Beijing and thought I would magic my way into the perfect sleeping accommodations before catching the ferry to Korea tomorrow. I ended up walking around for an hour hoping to run into something special and realizing that Tianjin is nothing like Beijing, with a surprise around every corner. Instead I’m in a way too expensive place where the internet is behaving itself (meaning I can’t access google to search for the info I need because China is mad at google for not agreeing to censor itself) and I have no idea how or where to catch this ferry to Korea. I brought my little speaking translator to the front desk girls hoping to figure it out. They got confused enough to call up an English speaking friend on their cell phone and have her talk some sense into me. I have no idea what she said, but I agreed and thanked her for it.

I took this confusion as an opportunity to step away from ferry plans and rethink what I’m carrying around on my back, because it hurts. It’s funny how irrelevant all those “necessary” items start to feel when you’re a pack mule and carrying it every step of the way. Shampoo? What’s the point in clean hair anyway, what about all those essential oils everyone keeps talking about, do they count for hair? Soap? Who needs soap? We smell that way for a reason… right? That’s probably how that donkey felt at the Great Wall yesterday. Damn all these bricks and your cash from tourism, let’s just hang out and chew on some grass. I’m not sure what I’m talking about anymore.

This whole staring thing, while cute for a second, is starting to get on my nerves. Imagine you’ve just woken up, you’re hungry, you haven’t showered, no coffee or anything, and you’re wandering around in a world full of signs that are saying nothing comprehensible. You’re not on top of your game, while each and every person that passes you seems completely willing to miss their train to work just so they can stop dead in their tracks and stare at you while you plod down the street in your morning stupor. I have to constantly remind myself that almost everywhere in the world it’s considered rude to punch people. OK, calm down. I’m not going to punch anyone. I bet I could win, though.

Dinner was interesting. I went to this fast food place that Lonely Planet recommended. Their menu was full of pictures. Perfect. They sent over a guy who kind of knew some English and I asked him for something with chicken. He pointed at one and then stared to second guess himself. He said he wasn’t sure because it was really spicy, but it also looked like there was something else on his mind. I assured him I could take it, but he still seemed to think he should find another dish. He couldn’t find the right words to talk me out of it, so it was settled. The dish showed up and it was indeed chicken, cold chicken that had been sent through a meat slicer, bones and all. I had no idea how to separate the chicken from the bone with chopsticks. I started to use my fingers and then remembered I was already creating a spectacle just by existing, so I gave up and ordered a noodle dish. I took the chicken to go. It’s sitting next to me now. Maybe I should find some chopsticks and practice on it.

So there we have it. All my magic has dried up and I’m stranded in Tianjin where they charged me two dollars for a sixty cent beer and my talking translator only causes more problems. Send some good juju out into the air for me and maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow with all the answers. Smooch.

This is the view of Tianjin from my window. So far I have not found it all that exciting visually, but maybe I’ll wander around tonight and see if anything looks sexy in the dark.

Thank god for photo menus.

This is for Heather and Jill, who want to see what I’m eating.Nothing too special here; fried chicken.

               I’m still alive. Strong like cockroach. A smidge of information, a few English phrases, a dash of battery operated talking translator, and a good dose of magic got me to Tanggu where, on Thursday, I’ll catch a ferry to South Korea. I think there’s something to be said for planning light, but I’ve learned that in places where you don’t understand the alphabet and can’t say or understand even three words, you need to at least have most of the info for the next destination lined up before you leave behind your reliable source of internet access. I’ve found a good technique is looking up the names of where I need to go (train names, cities, hostels etc.) written in Chinese and then email them to myself. I save them to my iPhone and show it to people when I need to say where I’m going or what kind of ticket I need. It works. I wish I had done it before I left for Tianjin.

After many hours on the computer I was able to figure out that the ferry leaves from Tianjin Port, which is not in Tianjin any longer, but in Tanggu, an hour away. Then I had to figure out how to get to Tanggu and find the port, and probably find a place to stay, because it sounded like the ferry leaves every four days but the only schedule I came upon was posted in 2008.

I managed to talk the bus information out of the front desk girl. There’s one thing I can check off my to do list. Now I’m on the bus and have no clue what’s going to happen next, I’m just on the bus. I haven’t paid for a ticket and I don’t know what my stop is, but I’m pretty sure I’m going in the right direction… I think. I pulled out my translator and by a miracle I found the ready made phrase “Can I buy a bus ticket on board?” (This really is a miracle as it doesn’t have phrases like “How much is the room?” but is plentiful with phrases like “Forward my calls to…” Yes, forward all the calls from my Chinese associates to my nonexistent phone number so we can have incoherent conversations through my talking translator, but I’m not at all interested in how much you’ll be charging me to stay in this hotel.) I tap the guy next to me and show him what it says, and without looking at me he says, “OK, OK.” Like “Yeah, I know.” and looks away. What does that mean? Maybe he can’t read, I think.

I was starting to feel a little fucked. No one smiles. Everyone stares like I’m walking around with my head on fire. I don’t have a friend or a helping hand anywhere. I began to say little comforting things to myself; everything is going to be OK. You’re not lost; you’re here, blah blah. The guy next to me started doing a lot of texting. He reached over and on his phone it said, “What stop are you going to?”  I tell him. More texting, and then about five minutes later he shows me the phone again “Is someone there to meet you?” Through this method (Later I find out his girlfriend was feeding him the English.) he figures out I’m taking the ferry to Korea, which he thinks is a dumb idea, too slow. The stop came and we got off the bus. He paid for his ticket and mine as well. He started asking a cabby about the port. The driver said the ferry doesn’t leave until Thursday, which was my suspicion, so I’m set to walk around looking for some low priced dump to stay in. Tanggu has zero tourists, because there’s nothing to see really. So there’s no such thing as Hostels, just hotels. Bummer.

The guy seemed really worried that I had no place to stay. He couldn’t think of how to tell me where to find Internet or a hotel, so he just tells me to follow him home and puts me in his cab. I decided this was the mystery of magic at work and agreed. Plus; I wanted to see inside a Chinese apartment. The cab driver obviously thought the situation was hysterical. I couldn’t understand his words, but from his gestures I knew he was saying the boat is a crazy idea. It’s the same price and faster to fly. So we had a little sing language debate over it. I guess he won, judging by the fact that he got way more laughs out of it.

We arrived and headed up to the apartment. I think my host was feeling a bit flustered because he stopped at the wrong door and started looking for the key under a mat and a door that did not resemble his at all. We made it to the right door, took our shoes off, and he brought me a pair of slippers. This instantly made me feel odd. I’m guessing they belonged to his girlfriend. I imagined her coming home to see this strange alien lounging on the sofa in her soft red slippers. It didn’t seem right.

We did some Internet searches for hotels, but he was hungry. He said I should wait for his girlfriend. She speaks English and will be home in five hours. OK, I guess we wait… He asked me if I was hungry and went out to get some things for lunch. I was excited to have some Chinese home cooking. I posted up on the couch and started to discreetly look around the apartment. All of the appliances, the computer, television, water cooler, and telephone, were wearing lacy little outfits, custom sewn coverings with frills and bows. He came back fifteen minutes later with a plastic bag that was full of something alive, flapping around inside. Fish.

It turns out the water had been shut off, so he wasn’t able to make lunch.  He put the fish in the freezer where they continued to bang around until they slowly suffocated, while he watched TV, and I fell asleep on the couch. When I woke up he handed me a little sausage shaped package of bologna with an excited, cartoon penguin, wearing a scarf, on it, and a bottled “Juice Milk Drink.” They seem to be wild about milk here. My Japanese roommate on the Trans-Siberian Railway turned into a party animal on his last night and drank a fifth of Vodka mixed with milk. I make no judgments. I just declined to partake. This apple milk drink was not as weird as I expected. It was actually kind of pleasant.

He left the apartment again and about five minutes later someone was banging on the door. Oh god. What should I do? I tried to open it but had no clue how. It was some strange system of dials and moving bits that I’ve never seen before. The person on the other side started shouting, sounding kind of angry and scary. I answered back in English and they shut up. Seconds later my host (I still didn’t know his name) comes in with the shouter, his girlfriend. She smiles and says her name is Claire (I’m not sure I believe her, as it was very difficult for her to say. I’m guessing she did that for my benefit, as I probably wouldn’t be able to pronounce her real name). She also told me her boyfriend’s name, and I still have no idea what it is. They went into their bedroom, without another word to me, and she starts doing something that sounds like shouting again. I can’t say for sure though. I don’t fully understand the cadence of Chinese. I think people are arguing with each other but when I look, they’re smiling. So, they were in there, fighting, not fighting, having a lovely chat, who knows, for about thirty minutes. Finally I decided to knock on the door and move things along.

Claire tried to get me into an empty room at her uncle’s house, no dice, so they walked me over to a hotel nearby and sort of gave the staff the run down. “Look, we found this white girl at the bus station and didn’t know what to do with her. She thinks she wants to take a boat to Korea and we couldn’t talk her out of it. Can you take her off our hands until the ship sets sail on Thursday? She doesn’t know how to do or say anything on her own, which is fine for you, because you can talk about her while she’s still in the room.” They took me. They took me and put me in a windowless and unventilated room that has had ten million cigarettes smoked inside of it, and the “bed” is a box spring with a fitted sheet over it, but it’s clean and they let me drink beer and eat chicken in there, so I guess I won’t complain.

Through another series of fortunate events, with helpers and participants, willing and unwilling, I was able to get to Tianjin Port and purchase my ticket. I was flashing my talking translator at this cab driver, trying to negotiate a price, when one of the guys from the hotel ran out and cleared some things up with him. He named a price for the roundtrip to make sure I got back to the right place. It was a good thing. Once at the port, the cab driver ended up following me in. I think he wanted to make sure he didn’t lose me, and his fare for the trip back.  Although he was a complete curmudgeon and totally unhappy about it, he explained things to the Port Authority, figured out the ticket office was, actually, miles away from the port, up into this big building on the 5^th floor in some tiny, dark, corner office. I never would have been able to figure that out on my own.

I was in Tanggu for three days, going nuts trying to occupy myself. I finally saw the assless baby pants in action. This little boy suddenly stopped walking and got a far away look in his eyes, the kind my cats get when they’re using the littler box. His mom sensed it all and reached down to open the pants up a little bit and he peed all over the sidewalk. It was a little messy, some got on his pants and his mom, and when it was all said and done he was standing in a puddle of pee, but I guess the system works with a few quirks. Other than that I would walk around for hours in straight lines, so as not to get lost, taking photos of air conditioners, and hunting for Internet. The Internet was down at my hotel, so I’ve been out of communication. On my last night, I finally stumbled upon the big ass shopping area. People everywhere in the streets with neon lights like Vegas, street food vendors, and even a Starbucks! Tanggu was suddenly amazing.

Don’t fret all you China lovers; I’m not done yet. I’m coming back in a couple of months and I’m gonna get friendly with the pandas. Stay tuned.

Wszystkie zdjęcia zostały wykonane aparatem OLYMPUS E-P1

Wielki Mur

Plans are made. Plans are changed. I was going to take the bus to Hexi Village today and then find my way to the Great Wall from there, but yesterday I got a message from a Couchsurfer from Turkey, in Beijing on business, that had a personal driver taking him to the Wall and he offered for me to join. Yes! The driver spoke Chinese only, so there was some minor confusion about where we were going, but we sorted it all out and made it without too much drama. I ended up going back to Beijing in the car because hours of driving and hiking the wall sucked away any reserve of energy I had for finding that village. They were wonderful and took me back in rush hour traffic even though they didn’t have to go through Beijing to get home. So nice!

I had checked out of my Hostel in Beijing. I tried to go back and get a bed for tonight and they were booked. (Sad face. It’s a really awesome hostel. $7.50 a night!) They sent me down the road to another spot but I didn’t want to walk that far, so I took the recommendation of a girl and went to her hostel. All day I have been fantasizing about a private room but I couldn’t bring myself to do it ($20!) so I asked to be put in an 8 person dorm room. The front desk lady showed me to the room and the first thing that happened when I set my bag down was a new-born baby started crying. What? I thought someone was playing a game on their computer or something and I looked at one of the girls in the room and she looked at me like “You’re not crazy, there’s a baby in this eight person dorm room with us.” Oh Fuck.
I complain about shit all the time, but usually just to my friends. When it comes to customer service I try not to get too mouthy, because I get it. Working sucks. Jobs suck. Everyone has the rules they have to follow and things mainly are they way they are due to stuff that no one on the lower end of things can control, so I usually just suck it up, but after I saw that there was only one shower, the place was kind of a dump and more expensive than the last, and there was an unhappy baby in my room, I decided to ask for a refund. I sort of thought they might not give it to me. The front desk lady came the closest to shouting that I’ve heard any Chinese person come, but she handed over the cash and I got the hell out of there.

I walked to the other spot and asked to see the room. I was a bit scared now. The guy didn’t like that request at all and told me the room was like all the others and I could hit the road and look for another place. I couldn’t believe I was having my second argument in China within five minutes of the first one. I told him I’d take it and he gave me an unnecessary stare down, then charged me for the room. Once I got to the room, guess what? Empty!! It’s just me and six beds in here! Woopty WooT! Then I went down to the cafe to use the internet and it was as big a pile of donkey dooky as the last place, like dial-up. (Spoiled American whining here.) When I came back from dinner I plugged in all my stuff for charging only to find that I have this hella fast internet connection in my room! Yow! You’re only suppose to get wifi in the common areas. I don’t know how it happened. I’m going to tell you something, but you can’t tell anyone: I believe in magic.

I went and bought dinner and some groceries, this is what I got:
 
- Braised pork and rice for dinner

- A tall beer

- A huge bottle of water

- Two bananas

- One apple

- A package of cookies

- A three pack of apple fritters

Guess how much all that costs including the dinner?…? Hmm…?

FOURDOLLARSANDFIFTEENCENTS!!!!!!!!

It’s amazing really.

The other day I saw a guy sitting on a curb with a bowl of rice and some chopsticks. He had his lower lip resting on the rim of the bowl and was bulldozing rice in with his chopsticks, like not even stopping to chew. That’s what I’m doing right now. In my empty / babyless / internet hotspot dorm room, yo. Magic.

Chińczycy

 

Yesterday I was walking through Tiananmen Square and this couple came up to me and asked if I could take a picture. Of course I could. I go to take the camera and position them in front of something nice, but before I can get to it, the girl rushes over and puts her arm around me while her boyfriend starts snapping photos. Then they switch places. He’s got his arm around me while she works the camera. They were very giggly. I couldn’t help but be the same. I walked away a little confused. Then it happened again. And again. And again. When I started looking around, I realized I was being seen as a space alien; people doing double takes, stopping their stride to turn around and stare as I walked down the street. Babies that could barely walk were pointing and laughing. I wasn’t exactly sure if they laughing with me or at me. Regardless, I’ve continued to oblige, because they’re so nice about it. We should all laugh more. I’m happy to help

After a group of twenty grade school students in uniform came up to me wanting individual photos I was really feeling like an oddity. Then I spotted four black girls walking down the street, and I actually did a double take. Just then I realized that Beijing is full of tourists, but I would say about 95% of them are Asian, the remainder are white. People were losing their minds over these girls. I have no way to determine the underlying meaning of their looks, but they were powerful. The girls made an excellent show of remaining unaffected, but they were also, all four, wearing Daisy Dukes in a city full of people sweating it out inside jeans and sweatshirts in eighty degree weather, so maybe on some level they were digging the attention.

Aside from the photo takers, there’s another kind of attention that I’m still absolutely dubious about. It appears to be friendly conversation, always women, always out of nowhere, and contextually not making a whole lot of sense. It usually starts with a hello how ya doin’ then moves to whatever weird segue they have planned; “I like your tattoos and your body is very nice.” “You are very beautiful. Where are you going in the night?” Hmm… Should I tell her? Luckily I’m not very friendly, so I end the chitchat quickly and haven’t been robbed yet, but none of these ladies have been aggressive or disappointed when I go, so I just don’t get it. Maybe they just want to practice their English?

Something I really dig here is zero inhibitions when it comes to open displays of affection. I’m not talking about between lovers; I’m talking about between friends. In France and Italy I was always mesmerized by the girls in the street holding hands, the boys and the men with their arms draped over each other. We don’t have anything like it in the US. You only ever see heterosexual couples holding hands in public. In China it’s the same as in Europe; interlocked arms, hands on shoulders while walking, arms around waists. What are Americans so afraid of?

I’ve been testing out the street food here, and had some pretty great tasting stuff, but the locals are fucking with me. When I went to the Night Food Market one of the vendors called me over and said, “Do you know what this is?” I said no. He said “It’s cat.” He and his co-worker went nuts over the hilarity of it. Funny stuff guys. The joke has stuck with me in a very serious way. I went to buy a little bun sandwich that I was told was chicken, and I couldn’t shake the sense that it was actually feline. I had to think long and hard about eating it, and then I decided that it was ok as long as it wasn’t Skeeter or Olive. If it was cat I can tell you; cat tastes like chicken.

I’m impressed by the individuality of the Chinese. I would classify them as eccentric. They all seem to do exactly what they’d like with not much concern for what other people may think; funny exercises in the park, walking around with opaque scarves over their faces, and wearing whatever occurs to them. I can only described the fashion sense here as wacky; neon sneakers with black tights and white ankle sock, goofy hats and poofy skirts. There’s actually a lot of really interesting fashion going on, but all around it’s pretty off the wall, or maybe it’s just not making sense to my westernized mind that needs to meet a 90% quota of jeans and t-shirts a day to feel normalized.

This photo was my view from the Turkish toilet stall in the Summer Palace. The smell of urine was thick, but we must suffer for art, oui? 

Czerwone ulice Pekinu