(andy's photos)
how are my peoples going back in perth? i apologise a thousand times for such a long silence in between blog posts. i've been a busy bee. and when i haven't been a busy bee, i've been a lazy and sick sloth.
unfortunately our little adopted angel, merv the puppy, went to puppy heaven last week. he was a very sick little dog and went through a slow and painful pre-death, until the time we put him down. even though he was not our dog, (we were only looking after him for a few months until he was old enough to be shipped back to sheila in canada) he was the sweetest, cutest little thing and i got so attached. i was very upset the day he died. his little cries of pain are still haunting my daydreams. and to vent my anger on a related issue, the treatment of pets in songyuan is pretty atrocious from what we've experienced. puppies are taken away from their mothers when they're just a few days old (and still in need of their mother's milk) and shoved into petshop cages/boxes with countless other pups. climbing over each other, given hardly any water and so on. no wonder merv was always falling sick. he was probably traumatised and not given enough nutrition in his first few weeks after birth. furthermore, it appears as though there are no professional vets in this city. "vets" are people who want to make money from selling pet medicine. they may open up a pet medicine store and claim vet status. we found it so damn difficult to get medical care here for the little nipper. if vets did exist here, maybe merv would still be alive.
in other news, last week andy and i went on a four-day sojourn outside of songyuan. we visited changchun, the capital city of jilin province, and harbin, the capital city of heilongjiang province (adjoining jilin). we took the bus from songyuan to changchun. the bus was crammed with people - they set up stools in the middle aisle for people to sit on. it would have been impossible for me to leave the bus for a toilet break, unless everyone else sitting in the aisle, also got out. when we got to changchun we browsed the stores for a while. in the evening i got mcdonalds for dinner. you're probably thinking this is a strange and minor detail for me to mention, but for me this was very exciting because there's no proper burger joints in songyuan. hence i've been very deprived of my beloved hamburgers for the past four months. i bought a big mac meal. oh dear god. big macs in china are THE SHIT! no, they're not SHIT. they're THE SHIT! you know those pictures of burgers they have on the mcdonald's menus? you know how they look too good to be true? well, you open a big mac box here in china, and the big mac is a splitting image of that photo. it is perfectly constructed - like a piece of fast food art. looking at my big mac made me want to cry. not a single slice of lettuce falling out of the bun. completely upright, not leaning a single degree to one side. the bun retaining it's full dome shape, not crushed in the slightest. perfection. plus they taste as awesome as they look.
ok, snap out of it. i'm gushing over burgers for godsakes. what happened after mcdonalds? we bought some vodka. western liquor is also another luxury we indulged in while on our break. we smuggled the vodka into an array of clubs that night. one club in changchun stood out from the rest. there was an awesome bottle-juggling/twirling bartender, a flaming bar, pyrotechnics and more. oh and a thick glass table accidentally smashing into a million shards in front of us, also added to the excitement.
we took a train from changchun to harbin. you would not believe how crazy the public transport system in china is. the long distance public transport sytem, that is. you know, when commuters travel from province to province, city to city. we must've spent at least half an hour standing in a huuuuge line to get our train tickets at the changchun train station. and that wasn't the only line in the station - there were about another 14 massive queues adjacent to ours and very much the same: long and slooow moving. once we got our tickets we went to the hotel next door and sat in the air-conditioned lobby drinking water and cold green tea (it was a blistering hot day), very hungover, waiting for our train to depart. while we were waiting andy asked a few people about our train tickets. we then discovered that even though we had tickets, it didn't guarantee us a seat on the train to harbin. apparently the train was very crowded and popular, and the amount of seats available was only determined by how many passengers decided to get off at that particular stop. so, when it was time to board the train, we had to line up at the entrance gate, ready to make a run for it. once the gate opened we had to push through people, and literally run down to the platform to stake out a position at one of the train doors. once the train expelled its passengers, there was a lot more pushing as people got on the train. there were no seats left, just standing positions. so we were doomed to stand on a train for 2-3 hours to harbin. fortunately, we bought this canvas shopping bag which made for a seat on the ground. andy and i alternated between sitting on the ground and standing up during the trip. chinese transport can be a harrowing experience for westerners.
harbin was the real highlight of the trip. harbin is really beautiful and is the tenth largest city in china. during the russian civil war in 1918, the city became a retreat for many russian refugees. some russian influence has remained, especially in harbin's architecture and russian script on ads and billboards around the place. we bought some russian vodka, chocolate and a matryoshka doll set (babushka dolls), from a little russian import store in the basement of a chinese department store.
we did a lot of other shopping in harbin too. harbin is awesome for shopping. the markets are my favourite, i'm a sucker for good markets. i saw two that were particularly good - one shoe market, which seemed to stretch on forever, and a clothes market, which consisted of many stalls in an airconditioned mall of many floors.
what else happened in harbin? oh yes, a crazy guy indecently exposing himself in front of a nike store. he was just pacing back and forth with his pants pulled down, exposing the top half of his package. we waited from a distance for a while, to see if any ruckus would break out, but nothing. no-one did anything. no-one even called the police. crazy stuff.
the two nights we stayed in harbin, we went to this amazing japanese restaurant. we'd be hanging out for japanese for about 4 months, so it was a godsend. a beautiful restaurant with the most beautiful food. we had sashimi (different types of raw fish), sushi (raw fish sushi), this beautiful pork katsu, tender chunks of beef that cook on a sizzling plate in front of you, two types of japanese salad, katsu oysters, sake and more. the sashimi was our favourite. such a welcome relief from eating oily chinese for so long.
we also got ripped off by these scamsters at a bar one night. a taxi driver took us to this hotel bar. upon arrival we had to enter an elevator to go to the top of the hotel. we should've realised then that something was dodgy was up. the bar assistants took us to a table and sat us down. the bar looked a little seedy, it could've been a gentleman's club. there were a couple of red lights inside, and the girls at the bar, although not dressed too scantily, had that skimpyish cheap barmaid air about them. we were the only customers there. we ordered two beers that costed 40 yuan in total. the waiter went away and came back with two beers. then about 5 minutes later he came back and sat down this mega fruit platter in front of us. we were puzzled. i said to andy, "do we have to pay for this?". andy called the waiter back and said we didn't want the platter because we didn't order it. they wouldn't take it away, they insisted we eat it. andy kept telling them that we had eaten and that we didn't order it nor want it. the waiter showed us the bill, they had charged us 188 yuan for the platter and a 80 yuan fee for the table charge, on top of the beer. madness. the bill total came to over 300 yuan, and by rights we only owed them 40. andy told them we were only going to pay 40 and said he was going to call the police. an argument ensued and lasted for about 15 minutes. the waiter called the manager. the manager also insisted we pay, he mentioned something about not being able to give the platter to any other customers because it had already been brought out to us. we had a lot of cash on us, but lied and said we only had about another 50 on us, other than the money for the beer. so we offered them 50 so they would let us go. after another 5 minutes they finally took the 50 yuan and we were able to leave. it was pretty traumatic. andy told me that he was scared that they were going to beat us up or stab us. they seemed like the type of dodgy bar owners that would do that sort of thing and pay off the police for their silence. that's china for you! no more seedy bars for us.
the next club we went to was a lot more westerner-friendly. it was a russian techno club. it was fun watching old chinese men bust out to techno music on the dancefloor. i can't imagine any old westerners doing that in clubs back home. the third club we went to was pretty good too. it was a giant pop/dance club and there we got quite drunk and danced by ourselves on a relatively empty dancefloor into the early hours of the morning.
the next day i was extremely hungover. we spent a good few hours that day lazing on a rug by the river, in the shade of a tree in the summer heat. we also rode cable cars across the river, then got some delicious supreme stuffed crust pizza from pizza hut, to cure my hangover. then we hopped on a bus, armed with our leftovers, and went back to songyuan.
so that was our trip. and in just under two weeks time we should be embarking on another trip. this time, one lasting at least 2 months long, and around china. we'll be riding bikes. because we'll constantly be on the road, i probably won't have enough time to update the blog regularly. but i will at least try to get on the net when i can to upload photos, if i don't have time to write entries.
on a final note, since back in songyuan i've been getting on board with the massages and facials. this is one of the best things about china. they're so cheap and so damn good. the facial i had the other day was one of the most relaxing, indulgent, blissful experiences i've had in my life. i'm addicted.
i'll add more changchun/harbin photos to photobucket soon.
