China - Beijing Edition

As we got off the fast train in Beijing and boarded the subway (using a ticket that was bought for us by a complete stranger), we had our first taste of something that would soon become all too familiar. This experience led us to use a word that has since become synonymous with China in our minds, especially Beijing. Rammo.

rammo / adj - completely and utterly jam-packed and filled to bursting with people.

Not to be mistaken with the all-fighting, gun toting, terrorist killing Stallone character Rambo. One can only understand the true meaning of rammo after visiting a country where a population of seven million constitutes a small town. 1.4 billion is an inconceivable number but when nearly a quarter of our over populated planet is in one country, you get to experience rammo like never before. Packed into the subway like sardines being steamrollered while simultaneously being crushed into a black hole, we were greeted by a drunkard who vomited on the floor right next to us, narrowly missing our bags.

The generosity of a stranger buying us our subway ticket, followed by the vomiting man mere moments apart is like coming home to hear Mila Kunis calling you from your bedroom, only to open your bedroom door and find Meg.

Rammo Train Station

We got to our subway station around midnight and needed to find our hostel. While Shanghai had a modern, somewhat cosmopolitan feel to it, Beijing's atmosphere was slightly more...authentic. This is my attempt at politely saying it's more run-down.

For me Shanghai is like a successful night out on the hunt when you get with a classy bird, while Beijing is the hung-over realisation the morning after that perhaps she wasn’t the supermodel you drunkenly thought she was. In other words, it's grimy...

So as we followed the directions to our hostel, down dark alleys and past red neon signs reading "XX", I did start to feel at home - I went to university in Manchester, remember! Dave was fine, marching on ahead but with my huge backpack on I couldn't help but feel a bit vulnerable. You know the amusing sight of a turtle on its back, trying to flip back over? Well little old me with 15kg on her back would be in a similar predicament!

But we arrived at our brothel, I mean hostel, and had an interesting night of drinking with some sleazy Turkish French man and some students.

Ok so now let’s talk about the sights in Beijing, otherwise this blog is going to turn into a novel:

The Forbidden City
This ancient home to past emperors is smack bang in the middle of the city and is therefore busier than a bee, studying at Oxford, while working nights at a bar to pay for his weekend classes in multi-tasking. The first time there, we went to a garden off to the side and it was calm and relaxing. We got to see soldiers training, which was interesting, and I took loads of pictures of Katie in a rockery. The Chinese seem to love rocks, always giving a receiving them as gifts… very bizarre.

The second day in the Forbidden City, we paid for the main sight seeing part and I had an automatic audio-guide who would shout in my ear for several minutes, rambling on about the significance of every paving stone we passed. The most interesting thing I learnt was that a temple’s holiness is indicated by the number of little animals they have on the roof arch. 

Anyway, the Forbidden City was so busy - they kept cramming people in like flumps into a fat boy’s face. It was rammo. Overall we felt that it was beautiful, but ruined by the crowds. It's also HUGE - we didn't look at every nook and cranny but it would have taken at least 5 hours to do so. As it was, we were ready to go after 4.

Holyiest of the Holys

Snack Streets
We then went to the two major snack streets, which were very very interesting. In Asia, they love meat-on-stick and it soon becomes every traveller’s staple snack. But in China, they put all sorts on sticks. We saw snake, live scorpions, silkworms, dog, cat and even sea horse. The first video shows a length of road dedicated to all these culinary treats. We also watched a man make animal shapes using melted sugar and the power of a child’s lungs – see video.

Live Scorpions and SEAHORSE on Stick

WATCH IN HD - Change resolution by pressing youtube

Hope you enjoyed the videos – see ya soon!

China - Shanghai Edition

On Sunday, we returned from our holiday to China and we haven’t looked back… until now! The next few blogs will try and summate our 15 night epic adventure. So sit back, relax and fasten your seatbelts because as with most holidays - ours started with a flight.

Shanghai is two hours from Busan and I have to say that I do not like two hour flights. I feel like they are a waste. Not because of the CO2 but the fact that you end up spending more time in an airport than you actually do on a plane. I feel cheated. I paid for a flight, not to sit in an airport lounge that could be any airport lounge in the world. Anyway after taking off, we got our meal, then were landing before I had finished chewing.

We travelled to Shanghai centre on the Maglev – the world’s fastest train. It didn’t reach its max speed however, but wikipedia assures me that the line is the fastest line in the world. We got as high as 301 km/h and it took 8 minutes to travel the 30 km. Please calculate the average speed and write it in the comments (show working).

Upon arriving in Shanghai proper, the first strange thing I noticed were the x-ray machines in the subway. Subways are pretty much the same everywhere but imagine people in Brixton putting their bags through the scanner? Yeah right! How about Brooklyn? No way girlfriend!

We carried our very heavy bags to Blue Mountain hostel in East Nanjing where we would be spending our first night in Shanghai. We were greeted by a sign saying there would be no running water from 8am to 8pm the following day because they were doing their yearly clean of the septic tank for the whole building… Dave immediately started worrying about where he would do his morning poo.

I was immediately worried about where I would do my morning poo. But apart from the lack of running water, the hostel was comfortable, clean, reasonably priced (20 pounds for a double room) with free wifi and a good atmosphere in the bar / lounge / beach party area. After we dropped our bags in the room, the friendly and helpful staff pointed us in the right direction to buy train tickets.

After an ordeal involving communication problems and me mistaking a woman for a man (not the first time :o), we booked a high speed train to Beijing for the following evening. With the most difficult part (or so we thought) of the holiday dealt with (booking trains in China gets everyone as confused as my great aunt with Alzheimer’s), we could finally relax.

We then had our first proper meal in China. We ordered a beef dish, which arrived after 10 minutes and was stone warm. We also ordered chicken / bones which came 15 minutes after the beef, and was followed 10 minutes later by the rice. Food in China arrives like buses should arrive in the UK – every 10 to 15 mins, not like buses actually arrive in the UK – all at once. 


I know a few of you reading this will be shocked and appalled at the lack of detail in Dave's description of that meal, but fear not! I will be satisfying all of your curiosity soon enough with my very own feature, dedicated entirely to the Grossman-esque rambling ponderfication, descriptifation, regurgitation and photographation of the many culinary delights we enjoyed over the two weeks. So stay tuned! 

We then went to the Bund and took some (50+ more like, with his new camera!) standard touristy but still impressive photos. The Bund really was a sight to behold, like Halle Berry’s breasts in Swordfish – magnificent, bold, not a let down, and added some colour to the evening. We snacked on our first meat on stick (more bones) and some aubergine on stick. The food was served by a good looking twenty-something man whose shop was 0.5 m2.
He looked as though he might jump out from behind his grill at any second and beat the crap (artistically of course) out of a bunch of troublesome triad members! It was brilliant...in my head.

Back in the hostel, we got drunk and bumped into a couple we know from Busan. It took all of 12 hours to randomly meet someone we know (we’re sooooo popular!) I had bet Dave on the flight over that we would meet someone we knew within the first 3 days of our trip...I'm still waiting to get the McDonalds bulgogi burger he owes me...now that is a tasty burger!

The next day we went to the French Concession, which is basically a French / European style area. We had lunch there and I dived into a taste of home – fish and chips. It was incredible, the fish batter melted in my mouth like a kitkat in your pocket.
I, of course, had spag bol and it was deliciously garlicy and cheesy...mmm!

And before we knew it, we were on our train to Beijing – Subway sandwich in hand, ready for our 5 hour train journey (820 miles). As I draft this post in my notebook we are travelling through a storm and lightning has just struck the ground about 300m away. I am worried I might need to use this notepad to clean my pants so if you’re reading this, appreciate the effort and grossness involved with recovering this rambling mess. 


I was asleep as Dave didn't wake me to see the storm...he just revelled in telling me about it once I woke up, 5 minutes after we had passed through it. Needless to stay the stormy atmosphere didn't leave the train for a couple more hours!

Shanghai - Beijing - Faster than the Maglev

Festival Frenzy

Food, flowers, booze, mountains, rivers, music, nature – it seems to me that every weekend Busan hosts a different festival to celebrate…well pretty much anything you can think of. We’ve experienced quite a few since moving to Korea and this blog will give you some idea as to what they were all about.

First up we have the Suyeong Flower Festival. This was a very simple festival held in a small park by the river Suyeong. There wasn’t much going on in the way of entertainment while we were there but we did get some lovely photos of the arrangements that had been created in the grounds so here are my favourites: 

A couple of weeks later we attended a Makeolli Festival. For those of you who don’t know, Makeolli (with a variety of different Romanised spellings) is a traditional Korean drink made from rice. It’s usually around 8% and has a pleasant, but quite yeasty taste. It also comes in many flavours, of which mango is obviously the best. Anyway, it took quite a while to get to the festival site and I have to say it wasn’t that great – hardly any free samples and again, not much going on. However, we did eat some scrummy pajeon (a Korean spring onion pancake which I have learnt to make) and had a rather bizarre experience involving some traditional dancers and drummers. We had only been on the festival site for about 2 minutes when we were surrounded by about 15 people playing very loud instruments, wearing strange costumes and dancing round the two of us while 150 Koreans pointed and laughed at us silly foreigners. 

We danced with them while they circled around us and the whole thing went on for over 4 minutes before they let us go! I know it was this long because Dave made a video of most of it, which we will upload in a later blog.

After we got bored of the festival we moved on to a different part of the city, famous for housing a big university and thus lots of places to drink and party. There was a connected event going on here – a makeolli street party. We were given lots of free cups of makeolli, served out of a petrol canister, and we danced the night away under the stars to live music including, amazingly, some drum’n’bass!

The final festival in this post is perhaps best explained with pictures so I will keep the words to a minimum. It was the Haeundae Sand Festival – a festival of sand, held on Haeundae beach. Nuff said.

Great start - no sand in sight but clearly
I had to include this epic robo-pic!

There was loads of sand art moulded onto the sides of
big humps of...sand. It was pretty sandy.

Some was kind of odd...

...some didn't make much sense...

...Gulliver was there...

...and so were the ghostbusters!

This is my best impression of a mermaid.
You can't see in the picture but I have fins and a tail, honest!

Awesome dragon and Asian man dude.

Antz?

There was a Fairytale theme going on...

...hence Tom Thumb.

There were a couple of big ones that had been painted.

Sadly these guys got a bit lost since the Yellow Brick Road
kind of blended into the sand.

We have loads more pictures but I had to be discerning and just choose my faves. Anyway, it was dead good!

I'm sure one day we will catch up with the blogs but we're off to China in a couple of days and have had quite a few adventures the last couple of weeks with my family so it'll be a while until we're up to date, sorry!

Sweating up Jangsan

One weekend not too long ago, we took the bold step of hiking Jangsan mountain. I say bold because in June, the humidity is so high, it makes everyone look like the guy from Airplane!

Still can't believe Leslie Nelson is dead :(

It's also bold because of all the dangers that are present when hiking. Luckily there were some helpful posters that probably saved our lives.

Watch out for axe murderers. Beware of your wives cooking.  Danger, the trees fight back. Warning, drunk singing can cause deafness.

We went with our Canadian friend Tom and a Korean student called Jay. It was a fun, sweaty few hours trying to find the peak but instead coming across restaurants, military bases and minefields.

Towards the top, we started to struggle and began feeling as though our legs were on fire, much like London circa 1666...or 2011. But the leg pain was worth it, as when we reached the top we were greeted with the most spectacular views. Photos cannot do it justice, but here are some anyway.

Over and out.