Weekend Travel Trilogy

After being on a roll with making several blog entries in a week, I went the other way and went an entire month without a a single entry. My excuse this time is a trilogy of weekend traveling.

It started three weekends ago when I realized that I've had my Wui Heung Jing card since April and haven't used it once. It seemed like such a waste to have this card which allows me unlimited entries into China without paying ridiculous American travel VISA prices. So I organized an overnight trip to Shenzen with some co-workers and a master student. Our first activity was dinner with Haibin, a former co-worker who lives and works in Shenzen now. Next, we ended up at a club called Cyber in Shenzen. Cyber's an infamous local club in HK. So when I saw Shenzen had one with a giant Star Trek-like flourescent spaceship in the front, I had to snap this picture. We ended up staying at a massage place that gives you a massage and then let's you sleep overnight. Given that we travelled with women, I was assured that this was a normal, safe place with no 'special' services. I've tried many sleep aids in my lifetime, but getting massaged to sleep has got to be one of the most bizarre ways I've fallen asleep.

The following week, my friend Aug from SF came to town. That weekend we went to Ghuanzhou to visit a few of his relatives. The same co-workers from the previous week came with us and we had a grand old time. A lot has changed since the last time I was there in 1993. When I was last there, I remembered dirty, dusty roads filled with an anarchy of mopeds and bicyles. Aug's cousin drove us around in her very nice new Jaguar and we saw what a modern city this place has become. We had some awesome noodles the first night, checked out the clubbing scene and shopped in an area with cool clothes by local designers. But strangely enough, one of the coolest places we went to was the fast food restaurant pictured here. Translated to English, the restaurant is named "Real Kung Fu" and Bruce Lee's image is everywhere. The staff wears a varation of Bruce Lee's yellow jumpsuit from "Game of Death" (Uma Thurman wears a homage to that jumpsuit in "Kill Bill") which I thought was so cool. When I asked the staff in broken Mandarin how I could get one, they all just looked at me funny. This chain has been around for a couple of years now and according to my HK co-workers the food was better than any Chinese fast food chain in HK.

Last weekend, I went to Singapore with Aug. During our first evening, we hit up a place one of those celebrity chefs from the US Food Network went to. That's where I snapped this picture with my camera phone. It felt very local and authentic and we somehow managed to get by with our broken Mandarin.

I've heard so many things about Singapore that I already had a preconceived notion of what it would be like. I imagined a very modern city with lots of modern conveniences, but not a lot of personality. Now that I've experienced it, I'd say that's only partially true. If you bother to venture out of the ultra modern, Western-like areas, Singapore does have an interesting flavor. For example, aside from the local cuisine from the first night, Aug and I also enjoyed the atmosphere and food of Little India. Luckily, several friends from HK were in town and showed us around the Singapore night life. All in all, it was a good time.

After, Singapore I returned to Kuala Lumpur for some business. I arrived during the last minutes of the final game of the World Cup. I snapped this shot in the hotel lobby which I thought summed up the atmosphere: Two bar girls passed out while a huge crowd was gathered outside for a street party. This is the first World Cup I've experienced outside of the US. Having followed it in HK, mainland China, Singapore and Malaysia, I finally experienced how big this thing is. The World Cup feels bigger than huge US sporting events like the Super Bowl and World Series combined. Yet Americans are barely even aware of its existence. I guess Americans aren't interested in championships where the rest of the world is involved...

So that was my weekend travel trilogy. I'll take a couple weekend breaks from travelling, before I head back to the Bay Area. Until then, I'm back to the hectic HK lifestyle.