Had a day off in Japan, so I went for a stroll around Shinjuku. Nothing too special, had some lunch, took some photos, but here it is, documented in a Google Map.

If you click through to Google Maps, you can see the list of pins in order. If you’re still here though, start where the two closest pins are, and then follow the trail (anti-clockwise), clicking on the dropped pins as you go to see what I did, and any pictures I may have taken. Feel free to click the pictures to get a link to larger ones on Flickr.

And that was my walk in Shinjuku.

Today I’m flying up to Shanghai, so that I can enjoy a rare weekend off up there, instead of sticking around in Shenzhen, which is sure to be less interesting.

I had quite a time trying to get to the airport though, and I figured I’d pass the story along.

As I was leaving the hotel with my luggage and a box full of samples in tow, I asked the doorman to tell the cab driver to take me to the Shenzhen Airport and also asked how long it was going to take to get there, as I knew I was low on local funds. He was polite about it and told me it would take about 15 minutes and that he had already told the driver the airport and terminal to take me to.

Well, unfortunately the cab ride was closer to 30 minutes, and when I got there, I was about 20RMB (about $3) short of the 90RMB ($13) fare. Well the cabbie decided to freak out about this, understandably as that much money could probably feed him pretty well for a meal or two.

Not knowing what else to do, I offered him all the RMB I had along with 20HKD ($2.50) and $4 (all the relevant money that I had, I didn’t think he would be interested in Euro or Yen) but he still wasn’t satisfied. There was no way that I was going to try and leave this cab with my luggage and samples safely locked in the trunk of his cab. So we sat there and stared at each other in silence for a moment or two, before he decided to berate me in Chinese that I’m sure I’m glad I didn’t understand.

Eventually I called the hotel I had just left and had a lady working at the desk tell this guy that if he came with my luggage to an ATM, I would be happy to pay him in full. He hesitated for a minute and then double parked his cab and followed me and my luggage inside.

As soon as we entered the door, he was obviously excited to see a police officer standing there and asked him to come along as well. I guess he wanted to ensure that I didn’t try any funny business.

Well we got to a Bank of China ATM and no matter what buttons I pushed, the combination of my card and that ATM did not result in money to pay the driver. I tried several times and eventually resigned to defeat pulled my card out, looked at the cabbie and shrugged.

Much to the confusion of myself and the policeman, the cabbie felt this was hysterical and he started laughing and laughing. It was such a reversal from the attitude he had just moments earlier I really had no idea what to think, but at least the mood was a little lighter.

After the first failure, the cop took us to a China Construction Bank ATM (sounds fake, but it’s a real bank), and I was able to pull out enough funds to last me the rest of my trip.

I felt so bad about the whole situation that I paid the guy 200RMB, and he looked at me quizzically as if he couldn’t make change. Then started scrambling in his pockets to find some way to make change. So I laughed and gestured for him to keep it, and his face changed dramatically. All sins had been forgiven and beyond; it looked like he was a kid on Christmas morning.

Anyways. That was my ride to the airport

I had a free day this weekend while in Taipei, so I decided to do a little sight seeing.

After consulting with a couple of the local Apple team, I was told to head to the National Palace Museum. The history of the museum itself is pretty interesting.

Apparently, when the communist “insurgents” were rising up, Chiang Kai-Shek decided that it was his duty to protect all the ancient Chinese artifacts from them and shipped them all to southern China and then off to Taiwan as part of his retreat. So in the end a lot of the stuff that was originally in the Forbidden City and other historical sites in China ended up being put in a museum in Taiwan.

I expected it to be an awful day to go to the museum as it was like 31°C and pretty humid, but I went off anyways as a day sitting in the hotel room watching bad movies on HBO Asia sounded even worse.

After glancing at the directions on the website for the museum, I hopped on the train and headed to the Shilin station. Unfortunately, the map at the train station of all the landmarks in the area left the National Palace Museum (the 15th most visited museum in the world according to The Economist) off the map. So I headed towards the hills because in the pictures it appeared that the museum was up in the trees rather than the city.

After walking a few blocks, I really wasn’t sure how far it was to get there and asked a group of a couple English speaking people where it was… after much debate they decided that it was 2 hours by car from where I was, and that I was “better off to go back to the hotel”.

That wasn’t quite good enough for me and after walking another block I stumbled upon a bus that had National Palace Museum written on it. Two stops and maybe ten minutes later I was on the steps of the museum.

The exhibits were actually pretty cool. It was interesting to see just how old Chinese culture really is. It was fascinating to see just how far ahead they were for so many years. We, as Americans, tend to think that we’re the most advanced society in the world. This may be true, but if it is, it hasn’t been for long.

On to the important part though. If the National Palace Museum is the “Smithsonian of Taiwan”, the Jadeite Cabbage would be the Hope Diamond. I stood in line for at least 30 minutes to see it, and boy was it something. I have never before in my life seen a stone so accurately carved into something resembling food.

In all reality, sure, the craftsmanship is nice, but I sure didn’t get it. The enthusiasm for seeing this was beyond me. However the “Meat Shaped Stone” is a whole different level of stones carved to look like food… Amazing. ;-)

On the way back I decided to hoof it rather than ride the bus, and it was a good idea as I came across Chiang Kai-Shek’s Shilin “Official Residence”. The residence was closed for repair, but the grounds were interesting. There were the obvious places, different rose gardens, Chinese gardens, and niceties of various kinds.

Cooler was when I decided to get off the beaten path and take some stairs up and around the the hill overlooking the entrance to the residence. There were no signs up here, and no markers around. I don’t think it’s the part of the residence that the Taiwanese government likes to promote. Up on top of the hill were snipers nests pointed right towards the entrance just out of sight from the memorial to Kai-Shek’s mother.

Coolest of all was what I saw on the hike down another route. At the bottom of the hill, in between a concrete wall and an outcropping of rock was a narrow entrance, it was peculiar looking so I checked behind it and found a gated tunnel that pointed directly towards the main residence. I’d bet my shoes that it was an escape tunnel in the event that the Communists invaded.

There were no signs, and no markings to indicate this, but with two snipers nests overlooking the exit to the tunnel, and a concrete barricade between it and the road, it all just fit.

Cool stuff.

Once I got done with that, I hopped back on the train and headed to Danshui just in time to see sunset.

(Feel free to click any of the pictures to see a larger version on Flickr.)

Had a surprise change to my flight plan when leaving Shenzhen airport on China Eastern Airlines.

I got to the airport early, as I usually do… I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not one of those that likes to run to the gate at the last minute. I prefer to take my time, find a little WiFi and relax before my flight.

Well today was not going to be one of those days.

I was sitting in a cafe above my gate relaxing a bit and checking some email, when, on a whim, I checked my ticket to verify the gate info and flight number. To my astonishment, the flight numbers didn’t match, and worse, the departure time listed on my ticket was a full hour earlier than the flight I was booked on, and I was already 30 minutes late.

Fortunately for me, the flight that I had been changed to was running about 40 minutes late, so I still made it.

It bewilders me why a gate agent would make a change to my itinerary such as this without notifying me of the change so that I could adjust and plan ahead? Especially because the flight was already boarding by the time I got through security and got to the gate. Had I spent any more time just idly walking around I would have never made it.

Thanks trying to help me out with a bump to an earlier itinerary gate agent man, but tell me next time.

I have no idea what goes through the head of some people in China. They have thought processes that are totally unfamiliar to me, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to understand what causes them to do the things they do.

Here goes a story to elaborate on this point…

I spent most of the day in my hotel room yesterday. No particular place to go, so I caught up on some stuff I wanted to get done on the net and video chatted with Naomi.

Well right before I expected Naomi to get home, the housekeeping guy showed up and asked me to clean the room, after realizing he didn’t understand “No” I threw out the little Chinese with a “Bu Yao” (“No Want”) and he got the picture and scrammed.

Later on I headed out to Hua Qiang Bei, the local electronics district, and left the do not disturb sign unlit hoping that when I got back they’d clean up a bit when they come through to do the turn down service.

I returned to realize that this was not the case. The room looked exactly as I had left it, or so I thought.

I had no indication that there was anything amiss until the next morning when I went to hop in the shower and realized that my towel was missing. I’m certain that I did not remove the towel, and searched the room quite extensively to locate any other towels… Settling for a hand towel as my only recourse I proceeded to hop in the shower, only to realize that in addition to my towel, they had taken all my little bottles of shampoo and soap from the shower. There was definitely enough in there for another round or two of bathing so I have no idea why they would have taken it.

What confuses me more, is if you’re only going to take the towel and shampoo bottles, why even bother coming in the, admittedly messy, room? I suppose they didn’t want to clean up the rest of the room because I had already refused service that day, but why take the towel and shampoo bottles and not replace them?

I may never understand.

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

adelaide adventures airline baja bottles cars china computers eastern engagement facebook family flight germany identity internet japan money moon naomi people photography potd shanghai shenzhen shinjuku taiwan ticket time timelapse tokyo toys travel video walk watch webdev work xpro

View Random Post
RSS Feed

Blog
Gallery
Login

Album: Hawaii Part 1

Twitter Flickr Facebook
andr3w.net
amdavidson.me
andromi.info