leg #2: travel China, intro to Haikou

When we got to Haikou, my friend was already kind of done. On top of the obvious and expected culture shock, we'd had a lot of people try to rip us off or screw us over, and then there was me and my general hot mess self at the time... altogether, the combination was no bueno.

We arrived, took a taxi to our hostel to settle in and hit the beach and then it started pouring. And the hostel was kind of depressing. And in an area of town with nothing to do. And staff that didn't really speak English. Blah.

So we wandered down the street, found ourselves some food and then went back to our room and said, "Screw it, this is miserable, especially for the beach portion of our trip, we're booking a resort." We found a reasonably priced five star resort (Chinese five star, mind you) and booked it for the remainder of our time in Haikou, so we'd only have one depressing hostel night. And thus my backpaker traveling mindset perished.

That done, we wandered the other way down the street to see what else was there was to see. Whilest traipsing around, I had to pee (I have to pee about every 15-30 minutes, it's ridiculous) so we decided we to sit, have some beers and people watch in a place with a bathroom.

As I said, there wasn't a whole lot around, but we walked up to what looked to be a restaurant not yet open for dinner. There was a table of people sitting there having a small meeting of sorts, so I asked if they had beer. One of the guys laughed and said yes. Another guy came out of the back and I ordered us two beers. Which we proceeded to sit there and drink.

After a while, we noticed that literally every single person that had been there was gone. The table of people had left, as had the few stragglers in the back. We were literally alone, in what was seeming less and less like a restaurant, drinking beers no one had ever asked us to pay for. It was just bizarre and funny. One of the guys eventually came back so we gave him some money, but I don't think it was a restaurant and I don't think they'd have been mad if we hadn't paid at all.

Eventually we went and had dinner as well. I ordered everything in Chinese and the proprietor was the sweetest and most accommodating guy. I was really happy that my friend was finally starting to get to see the things I love about the Chinese, not just the people that want to take advantage of a white face.

It got even better when we went to a produce market afterwards and were asking one of the vendors how to eat some fruits we'd never seen and he showed us how to eat them, gave us some and wouldn't let us pay. Plus, he had kittens for us to play with, which pretty much always ensures a good time when you're easily amused.

This, ladies and gentleman, is what mangosteen looks like. I see these all over the place but never knew what they were and I'd heard of mangosteen but didn't know what it looked like.

The texture of the skin was almost similar to corrugated cardboard, it was strange. The white insides were soft and in segments, like a citrus fruit.

This was the color of honeydew and tasted like it might be in the same family. The skin was much thinner though.

Because PBR really needed to get any lighter.

When we got back to our hostel, there were a bunch of Chinese sitting outside eating cake. Turned out it was the owner's son's birthday, so they invited/forced us to have some cake with them, take some pictures and listen to them playing guitar. They didn't really speak English, but they were nice enough. And there was cake.

Nooooot sure why they locked us in the hostel with a bike lock, but it took us a decently long amount of time to track down anyone that worked there to let us out the first morning.

random pix: camouflage, fortune telling & Obama in Shanghai

Why do all their clothes blend in to the walls?

You put a one kwai coin into this thing, choose your zodiac sign and it spits you out a Chinese fortune pellet. What this has to do with QQ (Chinese AIM), I'll never know. Nor why there was one on every table at a coffee shop.

Not sure if kids or monks put the little model city on this tree...

IXAT, duh.

Obama's got a restaurant in Shanghai???

random pix: amazing menus

These descriptions are priceless.

I'll BET Head Wang has a "classic" business package...

Flavor Grandmother?

Santa Juice closely followed by Love Juice? Confusing and dirty.

You better believe I ordered a Chinglish!

leg #2: travel China, Shanghai

After traveling Thailand for ten days with my boyfriend, I flew to Shanghai to meet a good friend from the States. She was my first visitor to China that came solely for me, so exciting!

She had some vague requirements of things she needed to do (see a big city, see a small city, see the Wall, see a temple) but that's about as much planning as we did. She kind of left it all in my hands as the Chinese "host" and I've been playing everything by ear, not planning much at all throughout my travels over the past seven months out here, so I planned to do the same with this trip. Basically, I dropped the ball a bit.

Coming off traveling with the bf in Thailand backpacker style, I had a really rough time switching into China travel mode. I had forgotten how much harder it is to travel in China than in Thailand, Laos or Cambodia. Everything in China is a struggle, just trying to eat can be an exhausting challenge (especially since my friend has some stomach issues).

I was really proud of myself, I ordered for us off this menu, using only Chinese, and got exactly what I wanted and expected. Win.

Combine that with the fact that I was having some problems in my personal life, and then one health problem, which turned into many health problems, and our first week was just kind of rough. We made a couple of hospital visits, luckily we found one for foreigners in Shanghai, but it was still difficult. Their English was not good enough to discuss health problems in depth and it's still Chinese healthcare, so treatment is never the easiest route. Almost a month later, I am still on meds.

Nothing instills confidence in a hospital like a Family Guy sign, lol.

I went into that leg of my trip thinking, "Oh, I live here, I'll be a great tour guide, it'll be really easy," and I felt really bad when it became blatantly obvious that nothing about it was going to be easy. Life in China can be, but when it's in a place you know really well, doing things you know really well and eating things you know really well. Even Lonely Planet can (and did, for us) steer you wrong.

We did a couple of cool things around Shanghai at first. I took her to the Bund, the French Concession Area, the pearl market and foreign food street (things I knew). The Lonely Planet fail came in on an afternoon trip to Songjiang, which basically had nothing to do or see.

After that, we made plans to head down south to Hainan, for the beach and the hot springs, up north to Beijing, for the Wall, and then back to Shanghai for a day before we both flew out.

random pix: stuff in Thailand

Chicago Sin Fries

SOMEONE's a little full of himself.

Tarzan, the welcoming committee at our Ko Samui guesthouse. He came to us like that, seriously.

Squid ink fettuccine!

Random Thai boy band mall appearance in Bangkok. It was everything you might imagine.

Ko Samui airport & Bangkok Air

Leaving Ko Samui and getting back up to Bangkok (where I was leaving Thailand from), we ran into the same trouble as when we tried to go to Ko Tao, basically all transport was booked. We ended up finding decently affordable flights direct from Ko Samui to Bangkok on Bangkok Air and had an fantastic traveling experience.

Oh yeah, "Master" is a title option on their website. Love it.

The Ko Samui airport is coolest airport I've ever seen. Most tourists don't fly there (or maybe it's that most tourists that go there are loaded?), so it's really snazzy. It doesn't look like an airport at all from the inside or outside, more like a picturesque, open air mall, complete with lounges, free wifi, free snacks and free beverages for all travelers.

Bangkok Air had a great intro/safety video. It was a music video, the flight attendants did a cheesy dance in it, it was hilarious. And they showed Looney Tunes.

Travel win.

Ko Samui

After Ko Pha ngan, we wanted to go to Ko Tao to do some scuba diving. I've never been diving before and it's supposed to be great and relatively cheap there. Unfortunately, by the time we tried to arrange it about two days out (which is typically no problem in southeast Asia) all transport that fit within our time constraints was fully booked, so we went to Ko Samui instead.

We went with another couple we had met on Ko Pha ngan. They were Canadian and definitely had that amazing/ridiculous Fargo accent, which was amusing but not good for my 'sconnie roots; nothing will bring out your accent and make you sound more like a hick than being around people with really heavy accents for a week.

We were all expecting Ko Samui to be completely different from what it really was. We thought Ko Pha ngan was going to be the more touristy of the two, but it turned out to be the complete opposite. Luckily, the guesthouse we booked was on the opposite side of the island from all the crazy touristy bs and literally right across the street from the beach.

While we were there we went on a fantastic hiking, boating, kayaking trip around Ang Thong National Park. It was some of the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen in my entire life.

We also tried to go see a muay thai fight. Muay thai is Thai boxing, kind of similar to kickboxing and UFC. We knew we weren't going to be able to catch a great fight on Ko Samui, but it was basically my last opportunity for it before leaving Thailand. The fight turned out to be crazy expensive... so we ended up at a lady boy impersonation show called "Moulin Rouge" instead. Equally entertaining, but definitely on the opposite end of the spectrum.

Five Beyonces, apparently they couldn't decide which one was best?