Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Hong Kong

hi

so sorry if i havnt been writing, china internet blocks all form of free speech, ergo, no FB, no YT no blog.

however dailybooth works...

that aside i've been having a GREAT time; lemme give you a quick walkthrough of my trip here in the motherland.
(WARNING - HELLA LONG ENTRY, make some tea or coffee or our favourite drink before/while reading this)

Day 1 - 2: in nanjing, chill out post flight and getting ready for shanghai trip.

Day 3 - 17: Shanghai, i saw falling snow for the first time EVER... i was like a little kid.
we went to the Shanghai Financial Building (100 floors up, you can see all of shanghai), this place called "Fenshine" where everything was pretty dang cheap and probably fake to a degree; "The Bund" which was like the river side where you can see the Shanghai City Scape but bits of it were in under construction for this business conference later this year, The Shanghai Aquarium (pretty good) and Hooters... which was funny - a chinese hooters. (make the racial connection people)
We also had garbo's friends over (we stayed at her sister's posh apartment). we got introduced to the awesomeness of Squash and i felt very inadequate after working out with Garbo's friends Ian and Luca. We also had Christmas in shanghai - we ate italian food.

Day 17 - 22: Went to Beijing where we saw the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, Temple of Heaven, saw how Jade sculptures were made, had a tea ceremony, saw Peking Opera, Chinese Acrobats and did the Michael Jackson leaning thingie on the Great Wall (we went to the great wall on Jan 01 2010 :D ).
We celebrated the turning of the New Year on the roof of the Youth Hostel we were staying at, and it snowed that night and on the morning of the new year, the roofs of beijing were white with a light blanket of snow.
We also had a taste of fried silkworms, which tasted FOUL beyond words, ate shark meat (on a stick) and dog meat (on a stick). some guy tried to sell us Sheep Penis (or sheep cock or sheep dick - the guy's exact words) but we said no.

garbo wanted some as soon as we went away though...

Day 22 - 35 (i think): Back in Nanjing, but a couple of days re-packing in Shanghai first.
in nanjing we tried to get my visa extended (cos my plane ticket was booked for 2 months and 2 days), but were told that we had to have about $5000 AU either in hard cash or in some reserved form.
so i had to ask my parents (and sadly garbo's aswell) to help out with the money thing.
Which actually happened, we gathered around 26,000 Chinese RMB (more than the required amount) and just left it in my Paypal Acct.
We went back and was told that we had to fill in this form for temporary residency at the local police station, so again, we had to go back the next day.
the thing was, we thought that if we were filling out a residency form; the place where i'm residing (garbo's accomodation) required guests to be registered as to avoid future problems. well, we tried to do the right thing and instead ended up getting told to only stay there for 3 more days and then get out.
we filled the form anyway and thank God that the cops didnt/havnt check/ed.

to make a long story short - we got the application approved (after alot of stress that is...)

4 days ago from now, garbo decided just out of random to go to hong kong.
so i got my parents to wire some money and 3 days later: here we are.

so first night in Hong Kong, we walked the breadth and width of "Nathan Rd" (BIG BIG road) and went to "Ladies Night Market".

Today we got on the Ferry to go to Victoria Peak, on the way there we stopped to check on some Camera stores, because Garbo wanted a clear lens filter. on a particular store, i asked how much the Sanyo Xacti was and got told it was HK$1000 (which is quite cheap), i said "Oh, ok; thanks." and started to walk out. The man followed me and said, "$800 then" i was like, "i would, but i dont have enough money at the moment."

the man's face changed, he scowled "no money? Then why are you in Hong Kong? Go Back Home!"

douche.

anyway, we had to go on this tram that went up this REALLY steep incline to the peak and we just had a walk around, the place wasnt Awesome but it was still pretty cool, they had a Madame Tussaud's but we didnt go cos it was EXPENSIVE.
 when we got down and got back to the mainland, we went to "avenue of the stars", it's like hong kong's version of The Hollywood Star Walk :P

it was pretty cool, saw some hand prints of the chinese actors/actresses that i recognised and there was a statue of bruce lee (that i posed beside of).

afterwards we jsut went to a shopping mall to look for Lomo cameras and found a small shop FULL of Holgas.
Cheap Holgas.

planning to get one... hopefully, when i get money.

anyway that's pretty much it, thanks for sticking around reading this stupid arse entry.
i also kinda wanted to get rid of my previous emo entry.

Cya guys, till next time.