Sent: Sunday, June 01, 2008 10:04 AM
Subject: Day 10 5/30/08
I have a 10:00 AM flight this morning on China Eastern Airlines. Pu Dong Airport, Shanghai’s international airport, is about 50 km from the hotel and usually about a 1 hour taxi ride, but it can easily take longer so I decided to leave the hotel by 7:00. Riding through Shanghai, I am still amazed by the size of this city. A couple of years ago, Shanghai surpassed New York as the city with the greatest number of skyscrapers and they have not stopped building. Unlike New York, where the tallest buildings are densely clustered around Midtown and Lower Manhattan, here they are everywhere, but often with some lower buildings in between so you don’t really get the canyon effect, but you see tall buildings to the horizon in all directions if you are near the center of town, at least as far as the smog will allow you to see.
Pu Dong airport is new, modern, and one of my favorites to travel through – it is large but laid out efficiently so you don’t have to lug your bags excessive distances. There was an earlier flight available, a 9:00 so I switched to that one. It didn’t really help much in the end because we sat on the tarmac for nearly an hour waiting for air traffic control to allow us to take off, apparently due to storms in the Hong Kong area. The flight became pretty rough as we started descending into Hong Kong. The plane, an A330 was getting tossed around pretty good for such a large plane, to the point where we almost felt weightless a couple of times. In the end, we landed in Hong Kong around the same time the original flight would likely have. Oh well, as I always say, every flight that arrives is a good flight!
My hotel for today, the Novotel Citygate, is amazing. It has very modern rooms; opaque glass walls for the WC and the shower, everything sleek looking, and a soft bed – still no alarm clock though. I guess that blows the “concrete bed / no need for an alarm clock” theory.
My only plan for the rest of the day is to catch a gondola ride to a mountaintop on Lantau Island to see what everyone here refers to as “the Big Buddha”, which is a Buddhist shrine not far from the hotel. Lantau Island, adjacent to the airport, is mostly undeveloped, very mountainous, and green – tropical. The gondola ride costs HK$88, around $11 US and takes 25 minutes or so to reach the site. The view was amazing, at least until I reached the clouds. The shrine is at a pretty high elevation and it was rainy off and on. At the end of the ride, there were several shops and restaurants and a short walk to a long set of steps. You can see the Buddha statue from quite a ways away (when the clouds are not covering the mountain), it is huge, probably 30 feet tall, seated in the usual right hand up, left hand turned palm up pose. The steps, I would guess between 250 and 300 were pretty tiring and a bit wet and slippery, but I did make it to the top. I took lots of pictures.
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| The Big Buddah on Lantau Island |
After wandering about the shops for a bit, mostly killing time, I returned to the gondola and was informed they just stopped letting people on because of approaching thunderstorms – I guess the cars can get tossed about in high winds and they are afraid of injuries. There are buses and taxis available on the far side of the shrine, so I took off walking toward them, with the sound of thunder getting closer – being on a mountaintop in a thunderstorm sounded like a bad idea. I had to wait quite a while for the right bus, HK$16, about $2 US, and the ride took about 45 minutes, occasionally having to swerve on the narrow, twisting mountain road to avoid wandering cattle.
I arrived back at the hotel around 5:00 PM, showered again (third time today, pretty hot and humid here), and went down to the hotel bar to get some dinner and an adult beverage. The bar area had 6 girls working, more than they had customers at the time, most looked too young to be serving (I guess the law is less strict here) and were dressed in what looked like Catholic school uniforms. There is something strange about being served a martini by a Chinese Catholic school girl. I imagine someone with a very specific fetish would think he had died and gone to heaven. Anyhow, Mary Catherine Wong makes a mean martini.
The bar also featured a 2 piece jazz group with a black American playing piano and a Chinese bassist. The piano player was great, could play anything, actually answered his cell phone in the middle of a tune and kept playing with the right hand while he had a conversation, and never missed a beat – I can’t say that I have seen that done before.
Dinner was Salmon risotto – pretty good, I needed that, nothing with webbing, claws, or chilies. Starting to feel better finally.
Tomorrow begins the long trip home. This has been my third trip to China, and I must say I am not getting tired of this kind of travel. The trips are tiring, but there is so much to see and do, and much of it unlike anyplace else. Traveling through China, at least in the places I have been is not really difficult even if you don’t speak the language. Signs are frequently in English as well as Mandarin, you can always find someone who speaks as least a little English, and with a bit of planning, such as carrying something with the name of your destination written in Mandarin, you can even get by without speaking. There is western food available if you do not feel adventurous – I think there are more KFC’s here than there are at home, but the Chinese food is certainly part of the adventure – again it is nothing like the Chinese food we get at home, I have yet to see an egg roll, sweet and sour anything, or anything of the chow mein variety. Almost nothing is deep fried. I haven’t had anything yet that really tasted bad, just some things that are a bit strange to a kid from Kansas.
If something interesting happens on the way home, I will send a day 11. Otherwise, this will be it. Hope to see you all soon!
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