hilt hilt hilt hilt!

view from the roof of the dorm building



Train stations in China are a crazy mess I've decided. It's pretty much a free-for-all and the only way I could figure out how to get to my train was by following a small sign with what I assumed was my train number through the swarms of travelers shuffling through the smokey halls of communist construction. Small miracles like this make me laugh because no matter how confusing and insane it seems, magic happens and I find myself in the right carriage on the right train to the right place.13 hours of pretty much overnight boredom, with a bit of broken Mandarin thrown in trying to make friends with the other people in my booth. Getting to Nanning at 6am in the dark and having no clue where anything is, I was a great target for a classic rip-off. I point to the address, get told Y20 before getting in the cab and when I get just a few blocks down the road, hey presto! I arrive and should have settled on a meter fare of only Y8...ah well. Gotta happen at least once I say.

When Joel meets me at the door its still dark so a few hours kip and its off to meet everyone staying in this building, which by the way, is like a clean budget hotel on the Uni campus. Big room, TV, kettle, clean sheets....luxury compared to the moldy sock room I just left behind. I find that everyone here is studying acupuncture and after a few hours already suggestions are being flung my way about going in for a treatment....hmmmmm.

It turns out that almost everyone has bought a bicycle to get around from the 'black market' ranging from Y60-120 (AU$15-30) all stolen of course, and furthermore, they almost got busted by the cops because Joel was browsing for too long and had attracted too much attention. He also ended up with the shittest bike. I had to go, no way I was missing out on this. So that night with a translator and one of the other Aussies, Kate, we head into the darkness in search of a steal...haha, steal. It was quite uneventful for us, but after a few turn-downs on really small or shit bikes, I ended up with a nice Y85 black beauty named Betty, my new steed. The next few days are spent just exploring the city and getting to know my way around then on Wednesday I decide the time has come for some acupuncture.

I'd heard from all the guys that here their style is really different and that the practicioners show no mercy when it comes to needling. In Australia the needle usually only just breaks the skin, is inserted just a little to stimulate the muscle and nerves then left for a while. Here in China, they insert it all the way to the hilt and this has become the quiet chant for Joel, Heather and Dave (all the students are in learing groups of three with a translater) "Hilt, hilt, hilt, hilt." Imagine a 25-35mm needle inserted into your temple or bridge of your nose all the way to the hilt....where do you think it goes? You reckon I was a bit hesitant? I ride in with the guys through the mayhem of Nanning traffic (more on that another day) and get to the hospital bright and early. I've decided to get some work done on my right knee to try to fix up the torn ligaments and constant ache on the area. While I'm on the bed going through the symptoms of my 'disease' the professor is prodding and rubbing the knee, somewhat oblivious to my 'ahhs' and 'oohhs' when he hits the tender bits. "Yes" he says, "we will do four to five treatments and insert here, here and here" then out come the needles. Joel busts out his camera, and then fun begins. I've never felt that kind of uncomfortable pain before in my life. Jabs and shots of fire through my leg and knee and when they ask if it hurts, its almost like a joke. Are you for real?!?! YES IT HURTS! These needles, I'm told later, were pretty much tickling the bone. Right through the ligament and into the 'Chi' locations all the way to the hilt. Oh man, four days of this? Then they hook up the electrodes. Now before I continue, picture this: a Chinese medicine hospital is not like any Western hospital. Just erase that image right now. It does not have squeaky clean floors and walls, it does not smell of disinfectant and it certainly does not give one the impression of a sterile environment. The floors are dirty, the ward that I'm in is just one of the many acupuncture wards and the room is filled with smoke from the moxa (a medicinal mixture burning to create heat for treatments), the bed I'm in has a stain that looks like blood drop, but I'm hoping that its betadine. The building looks that wings have been added in in different periods of time with no regard for continuity and I'm told that there is a hall where the floor has a slow incline, but the ceiling stays the same height, so when you get to the end, the doorway is about 2/3 the size of a normal one.

So back to the electrodes. They're hooked up to a couple of the needles to stimulate, I dunno, stuff. Just crank it up till you can barely stand it then we'll leave you there for about an hour, unplug it all and you can go home to repeat it all tomorrow. Now I know this shounds outrageously painful and barbaric, but its not that bad. Everyone is super friendly, I trust that they know what they're doing and after 4 treatments, my knee is actually feeling pretty good. Now I won't be running back for a treatment straight away, but in a few weeks I wouldn't rule out another one.

In one week here I've managed to get a traditional Chinese treatment, buy a cheap stolen bicycle, figured out my way around the city and just last weekend went for a hike in the mountains. More on that in another post, but at least I'll throw on some pictures of some of the stuff so far.


the crew out on the town happy camper

don't shit where you eat

It's about 4PM and I'm checking into the Guangzhou Riverside YHA, and so far its looking pretty good. Set right next to a park running along the river this hostel has a great foyer with couches, coffee tables and big floor to ceiling windows to sit back and watch the slow moving traffic go by. As soon as I drop off my bags in the dorm (which has an overpowring wet sock smell, most likely from the guy who left some soaking in the sink) and go back downstairs, I find some commotion going on in the front square. It turns out that a scene from a Chinese TV drama is being shot pretty much on the front door with everyone coming around to watch. From what I can gather, someone's been cheating on someone, then she gets beaten in public, but the handsome cop comes to the rescue...or something like that. I was secretly hoping that they might want some extras, but then again, I think most of the bystanders were wishing the same thing.

Guangzhou is a big city, known for its love of food. Strange, strange food. Its bustling with people, the air is full of dust and smog and there are all sorts of sounds and smells at all times of the day. Like most other Chinese cities I guess. As soon as I told Mike I was going there the first thing he said was "In Guangzhou they eat anything with four legs and its back faces the sun." Perfect since I can barely speak Chinese, not to mention read it, so ordering food is going to be interesting. The first few meals were mainly simple noodles and I could point to what I wanted in with them, and I'm guessing it was beef, or so they said. Again making some friends at the hostel we venture out to see the sights of the city and stumble upon a typical open air market for fresh produce. At first its all normal looking stuff - fish, meat, veggies. Then it's toads in a sack, pigeons in a cage, eels in a tank and my personal favorite - scorpions in a bowl, being swished around and prodded by old ladies with chopsticks before being pinched from the writhing mass and dropped into a smaller bowl to take home. Yummmm! I'll pass on that one thanks.

Working our way around and doing the tourist thing by foot is tiring, so we retire to a place called Shamian Island. It has old French and British Colonial buildings that were once embassies and commerce centres of the day. Great old trees line the street and everywhere we look there seem to be a bride and groom getting portriats done. Brides with jeans on under the dresses and grooms with sandals made to look like shoes. Fashion and sensibility at its peak. In China it seems there are public toilets conveniently located around town and this park is no exeption, so after a while I gotta go number one. As I come out I notice a door between the mens and ladies, and it looks like its the cleaners room and just as I'm walking away, my suspicions are confirmed when the cleaner comes out with a stool and a steaming bowl of noodles and sits right in front of her door, happily slurping away at her midday meal. I don't suppose she's ever heard the the term 'don't shit where you eat.'

That was Guangzhou day two. Day three was an adventure with my new Spanish mate Pau to a large park in the center of town. We get to this park only to realise that it is way bigger than we thought and walking is going to take a while. Alas, with nothing else really to do we set off and soon discover that this is no ordinary park. It is a childrens amusement park, excercise ground, fishing lake, dancing and singing stages, chess and table tennis, just all sorts of stuff going on. Kids are riding around on mini roller-coasters, motorised hippos and elephants with wheels under each foot like a mini parade float, and thats just the tip of the iceberg. Oldies are playing ping-pong on cement tables, and an entire corner is devoted to asian hacky sack. A couple of weights tied to some feathers and kicked from person to person. We give it a go and are useless. Put to shame by a few 50 year olds that make it look easy and get all tricky with the footwork. Enough of this public embarrrasment!! The journey continues through what lookes like getiatrics overwhelming a playground, but upon closer inspection the 'playground' is in fact colourful excercise equipment. Sit-up bars, waist twisty thingos, thigh rolleridoo, swing-a-leg-arounder and other clever stuff are all in use. In no mood for further excercise we walk away into a wall of high-pitched screeching/singing as some pair are trying to belt out Chinese opera to a less than enthusiastic crowd, but oddly enough clap and make no attempt to leave. Practicing for China Idol? YYYYEEEEEAAAAA CCCHIIIIII NIIIIIIII SSSSSOOOOOOOO WWWWEEEEIIIIIII...keep it to your homes I say.

The park is all good, but home time calls and for me its now 13 hours on a train to Nanning. I know Guilin was on the list, but it's equally far away, so I take the easier of the two options and head to where I can wash clothes, sleep in a room not smelling like socks and figure it all out from there.

Oh, and I'll try to sort some pictures to throw on here soon.

that did not just happen!

I am pretty sure that a lot of people in Hong Kong have never really seen a sky filled with stars, galaxies and planets. The city is so bright that only the very strongest of celestial lights can penetrate the neon and flourescent blanket. It truly is a shoppers paradise with malls upon malls upon malls. As far as cities go though, Hong Kong is a pretty nice one, with parks through the city, surrounded my green hills and its super easy to get around. The moment I got off the airport bus, I remembered what it was to 'travel', and not 'holiday.' No real plans means no airport pickup and no idea what you're looking for when the directions say 'go straight ahead through the crossing and we are just there.' Well 'just there' means nothing to me when all the buildings look the same and I'm expecting a sign of somesort...nope, just a small sticker on the wall once you get to the right floor. Here we go, off into the unknown, wandering aimlessly through unfamiliar streets with a very vague idea of how to get from A to B. Somehow though, it all comes together and I get there in the end.

Once I made it to the hostel it was all pretty smooth sailing from there. Made some friends and ventured out into the glitz of Honkers, hitting most of the stuff from the tourist brochures. On one occasion we wandered near the Jade Market, and when we left a great screech and bang sounded just out of the corner of my eye. An old lady had been hit by a car coming arond the corner. The whole world stopped for a second while everyone took stock of what ahd just happened. Then all at once people started rushing in to help. It was luckily just a bump on the bum that sent her skidding across the road, there was no blood, nothing appeared to be broken, just bruised and shocked. The girl I was with, Rebecca, was covering her mouth is shock "That didn't just happen right in front of us!" The police ran up to help, the lady driving the car got out to help and it all dissolved onto the sidewalk and the crowd faded away, us with it.

Once we sort of got back to our own circle of life, and had a quick sit-down and gross coffee, we realised that once you've seen a few of the city sights and don't want to shop, you start running out of options to do anything. So it was beer'o'clock and we sat back on the docks with cheap 7-11 beers and took in the 8PM night light show. Pretty good really. Mike, the friend in Hong Kong, managed to play tour guide for a few hours and took us to a couple of really cool bars in the city that unless you live there or know someone who does, it'd be tough or just dumb luck to find.

Alas after a few days the road calls so off to Guangzhou by bus for a few days and see what old Canton has to offer.

a little today, a little tomorrow.

There are hardly any patches of open space left in Singapore, but out at Seletar, a small airport that used to be a military base, you can still find youself looking at open land and real houses. Out here there is a place called Jerrys, made famous by an American who has set up a restaurant at the end of the runway with a small kitchen, great big deck and a giant fig tree to cover it all. This out of the way place is known not only for its difficulty to find, but a range of buffalo wings that have a spicy scale of 1-10. Its said that if you can polish off a plate of a dozen level 10 wings, they're on the house. I like my chilli, I figure I can take it pretty hot, but once a while ago I tried a 6 and it was like eating hell shaped like a chicken wing.
On my last night in Singapore I went out there with my old man, my sis and her boyfriend and settled in to a jug of frozen margheritas and level 3 wings...unfortunately we must've got somewhere in the 4 or 5 range because these had a bit more pep than expected. Sweat poured, cursed flowed and the frozen alcahol did nothing to cool me down. Its the type of heat that will cause a little pain today and a little tomorrow... In the open space and no traffic around, this is the Singapore I remember from childhood and one that is unfortunately dissappearing. In fact, most of Seletar is being torn down to make an industrial park....idiots.

Now this is a short one because I'm in a hostel in Hong Kong with free internet and a line of moochers like me. 1st night here and a few to go, so we'll see how it goes.

do you come here often?

For anyone who's ever been to Singapore and knows about that blotch on the face of glitzy manicured Orchard Rd known as Orchard Towers, you can relate to this a bit. Tuesday afternoon JD arrived in Singapore for the night before heading out to Vietnam the next day, and never having seen Singapore, I decided on a bit of a tour that the tourist bureau won't broadcast.

We started out at Sim Lim Square, the mall that attracts shoppers for electronic bargains like fatties to a Krispy Kreme. We needed a cheap iPod wall charger and walked out $15 down with charger in hand. Next on the list, Little India and its reluctance to seem like a part of tidy clean Singapore. After a bit of a wander we get a bit lost, so time for a $3 curry and beers to help figure out where we're at and need to go. It's about 9 PM and the streets are still filled with shoppers and smells of spices and incense and not one Chinese face. Little India is just that...a small, most likely cleaner pocket of India, helping to desterilise the small city-nation.
Finally choosing a lucky direction and getting out of the hive of curry houses and sari shops, trading them instead for Arab St and its collection of carpet shops and shisha cafes. 'New style' Afgan carpets with AK-47's, Hind helicopters in blankets of flame and stinger missiles woven into the design are at the few open shopfronts.
Since most carpet stores are closed, shisa cafes open up and customers sit around low tables on ornate carpets along the street, in front of the iron lock-up grills of the carpet traders, sucking on water pipes blowing out clouds of strawberry, mango and grape scented smoke giving the area a sweet exotic air. Apparently grape is all the go, so for about an hour we sit and puff on our grape flavoured pipe and decide on the next plan of action. This now is where we decend into brand new territory....
I'd never been to Orchard Towers before, but had heard much about the place. Commonly known as the "Four Floors of Whores" this is a complex on Orchard Rd (strangely opposite Toys'R'Us) that is literally teeming with 'girlfriends for hire' in bars covering four floors. It's now about 11:30 and its just going off. The business spills into the street and as we walk up to the front door of one bar and push through the door we're greeted with a line of 5 girls waiting to be picked out by eager punters. It's like walking into a whorehouse from a wild west film, but a modern version where all the girls are asian, the music is actually pretty good and no one is playing cards. Grab-arseing is rife and any eye contact results in a new ladyfriend asking where you're from, stroking your arm and plying her assets on you. Beers cost more than the two meals we'd already had put together so we sip....very slowly. JD actually asks 'you reckon all the girls here are working?' For real??? ummm YES.
One latches onto him and we find out she's from Vietnam and as soon as I mention that JD is going there tomorrow, its all smiles and "We go now, I go with you." It takes a while but after convincing her we're not interested, and no, we don't want to both have you, she sulks away. After a while of asking "Do you come here often?" the joke (that they don't get) becomes thin and the directness of "We go hotel, I make love for you" isn't funny anymore. The creepy old guy sitting across from us looks like he needs to be back in his German retirement village and it looks like we get blacklisted since all of a sudden no more attention has come our way. Word must've spread, those two over there are not here for $60 love. Time to go.
So now its about 1AM and the hunger strikes and no where on Orchard Rd is open. There is an area on the way home I know of that will definitely be open, but its in the red light area of town. Sweet, from one seedy bar to a suburb full of them. This is a strictly food related mission now and as soon as the first corner stall comes into view, it's roast chicken rice all round please. Orchard Towers is a big expat hangout and Geylang district is more for the locals and this really shows with the ladies of the night ranging from Indians in full Saris, ladyboys mixed in with the usual short skirts and stilettoes. After our fill of dinner number 3, we get in a cab home passing lines of ladies, just waiting for a customer to pull up and pick one and I wonder if it ever feels for them like a kid at an orphanage when everyone else gets picked but one.

There ends the one night in the 'other Singapore' and lunchtime the next day JD is on the way to Vietnam before hopping on a bus to Nanning and gettin us a place to stay for the next few months.