China Boy

Day1+2: Outward Bound
The date was Friday the 7th of October and I was sitting in the office counting down the minutes till I had to leave for my first holiday in Asia. I spent the last hour doing my check list:

1) Passport
2) Cash (I was planning to change money at the Airport)
3) Credit Card
4) E-Tickets
5) Shades
6) Golf Clubs
7) Clothes
8) Directions and Chinese translations for key waypoints
9) Camera, Phone, Chargers, PSP, Book...

Check. All is sorted and Its Midday. Time to get the train. Get to the Airport Early and check in... I thought to myself "This is where the fun begins!!". I was right...

"Excuse me sir - I am secret agent". Ummm... hokay. I had just got into the Northwest (the airline I was flying with) check in section and was about to put my ticket and passport on the counter. Some old dude was standing there and since I was the only person checking in at the time he obviously felt he should take advantage of the situation. I still haven't decided if he really meant he was a secret agent, or if he just had a bad translation.

"Please step this way". I had visions of latex gloves and a table to lean against but thankfully he directed me towards two pleasant looking women with a laptop and a blank face. I was still confused as to the claims of 00pushingEighty so I wasn't sure what was next. It turned out they just wanted to know where I was going... Phew. I didn't know that yet. 10 minutes and a pat down later I was heading through security.

So through security, sit in the lobby, get on the plane, waste three hours playing psp and reading book, get to HK and start sweating like an Eskimo in a Sauna. Hong Kong is a very humid place. It sits at the southern point of China and suffers a permanent cloud of hot sticky vapour ready to make you put your anti-perspirant to the test. It was about 10pm when I hit the office to dump my bags... After an hour of chatting to work folks on the phone I decided to hit Lan Kwai Fong (see the results in "Honkey Tonk Man").

Its possible to find a place like Lan Kwai Fong in almost any city. Its the spot where all the tourists go, its full of bars and some good restaurants, the people spill out and drink on the street, there are LOTs of pretty women (Nev - I've been assured that Honk Kong's lady boys are conspicuous by their absence), LOUD music and a friendly atmosphere. Its a must visit for any traveler in HK. I spent about three hours on my own just walking around, listening to live music and drinking beer. I had intended to meet up with a GS colleague but my phone wouldn't work. It turns out I needed to switch on 'automatic network' before I was guaranteed a signal but I didn't realise this at the time. Anyway, it was fun and I got chatting to a few American tourists.

3am - right, off to the office, phone home, grab bags, head to bus terminal. I met Dave in time for the 4am bus to Shen Zhen. Shen Zhen is just over the border into china. It was a bit of an economic 'experiment'. In other words its a run down third world city with cheap clothes and the highest crime rate in China. I heard a story about two guys on a motor bike trying to snatch a purse from a woman who wouldn't let go. They chopped her _HAND_ off to get it! Fortunately, Dave and I were only passing through. We met up with Raymond (my boss) and Michael Pang. So it was straight off to the Golf course - which put into stark contrast the difference between rich and poor in China. It was strange to be driving through Shen Zhen's worst district only to hit the green pastures, wide plains and well manicured lawns of the golf course. They also offered a range of houses to sell to government ministers and business men. I wasn't complaining though - I was still a little drunk and feeling squeezy. The temperature at 6am was already in the twenties!

Quick change, drink some water, and onto the course. Golf in Asia is vastly different from golf in the UK. Take Japan as an example, you travel an hour to get out of the city, tee off around 7-8am, play the front nine, take your one hour lunch break, play the back nine (since you often have a beer at lunch this can be entertaining), have a wash, eat dinner in the club house and get home around 4-5pm. You also get your own four person golf buggy to get you around. If you want a caddy you can have one but its not necessary. China is different again: Get there early, play all 18 holes, wash and grab lunch. So you can play more golf per day in China if you want. Also, you _have_ to have a caddy, whom you have to tip afterwards. I wasn't bothered about this though because we got to drive the golf buggies! If there is one reason to play golf, its to get your hands on the golf buggy. Unfortunately the courses weren't well enough maintained to drive the buggies on the course in the morning so we had to stick to the path :-( Otherwise it would have become a Jackass Movie re-creation holiday.

So, by the time the golf was finished I'd been awake for thirty hours. There was no time to rest though - we had a flight to catch from Shen Zhen airport to Kunming. Get washed, get in the car, check in at Shen Zhen (no secret agents this time), grab KFC for lunch, get on the flight - it was only a 1hr hop to Kunming, get off, get Taxi to Kunming and check in at hotel, get changed and sleep... no scratch that last one. There was no sleep. We went out to take a look around and eventually we were hungry enough to find a restaurant...

The Chinese will eat anything. Thats a bit of a sweeping statement but Its a pretty vast country. Given its Fifty One ethnic groups, its possible to eat just about anything by traveling from one side to the other. Some of it is really unique. For example, there is a special meal where a live monkey is trapped neck up in a table, the top of its skull is removed, hot oil is poured over the brain and you eat the brain whilst the monkey is still kicking. Thats level ten. I settled for level six...

The restaurant we found serves a special kind of hotpot from the North. On one side you've got a nice broth with lots of veggies etc, and on the other side an extremely spicy soup. In typical Chinese fashion we were given a checklist of dishes. The idea is that you tick off the dishes you want to eat, the waiter brings them, you cook them in the hotpot to your liking and you use the same checklist to pay at the end. Unfortunately neither Dave or myself can read Chinese. Dave could recognise the broad categories - beef, pork, veg - but not the specifics.

Fatal assumption #1: "Order the most expensive dish - that means it'll be high quality" - Stuart Byrne. This felt like a safe assumption becase a) It always works in Japan, and b) the most expensive dish was five US dollars...

In true dumb foreigner fashion we did just that. Luckily, they realised Dave didn't speak Mandarin. They brought the only English speaking waiter over who brought the English menu... A quick check of what we had ordered revealed that Beef's Penis was the most expensive beef dish. Ooh er, just thinking about it made me queasy. Those things are THREE FOOT LONG for christ's sake! I later discovered its is served chopped, so its possible we wouldn't have noticed WHAT we were ordering!!

The english menu brought up some other intriguing choices. Number one being Dog. Yes, we ordered dog. It was a bit gamey, but tasted mostly like Lamb and Venison. Compared to the streaky beef, liver, and cow's stomachs we also ordered, it was the nicest dish on the table! Dave didn't enjoy it though.

After a couple of hours, a small poodle, another walk around Kunming (during which I bought a golf t-shirt), I finally managed to get to bed. Having ate Rover, I felt ready for what the holiday could bring...