On our second full day in Japan, we put our JR passes to good use and took a day trip to Hiroshima. Now, the most common question that I get about Hiroshima is “how do you say ‘Hiroshima’?” It may surprise you to find out that one does not need to actually visit Hiroshima to answer this question – there are resources one can consult. Still, in case you’re curious, it is roughly pronounced “Hee-roe-shee-mah” (not “Heer-aw-shim-ah”).

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about what we did that day.

Amelia, Kat and I had an early morning, though it wasn’t as early as Kat might have liked. Amelia and I slept in nearly every morning in China, and it looked like we’d be keeping that grand tradition alive in Japan. Still, it wasn’t long before we found ourselves meandering through Osaka Station in search of the Shinkansen to Hiroshima.

Now, the previous post about our arrival in Osaka had to cover a lot of ground, and I may have neglected one very important point: Osaka Station smells delicious. It’s fitting that the first thing that one detects when entering or leaving Japan’s culinary capital is the pleasing aroma of baked goods. Our noses quickly convinced us to grab a bite to eat before we left.

This bento box may not have been baked, but it was delicious.

The Shinkansen rocketed across the 300km to Hiroshima in less than two hours. On arriving, we were greeted by gigantic arrows pointing us towards the city’s major tourist attractions – Peace Memorial Park and Miyajima. We didn’t have time to visit Miyajima, which is a nearby island with a shrine built in the water next to it. It sounds totally awesome, but I was personally more interested in seeing the site of the bombing of Hiroshima.

Little Boy detonated nearly directly above a building that is now fittingly known as the A-Bomb Dome (or as the Genbaku Dome in Japanese). A streetcar runs direct from Hiroshima Station to the dome. The dome is technically preserved as a historical site, although (as a memorial to destruction) it is kept in a state of disrepair.

I’m not sure which word to use to describe the feeling of standing at Hiroshima’s ground zero. The purpose of this blog isn’t to get all weepy on you, so let’s just say that it was surreal. Beyond that, you’ll just have to look at the photos to get a sense of the place.

Life has sprung up around the dome.

It was actually a beautiful day, in a sombre sort of way.

The steel reinforcements were put in to prevent the dome from falling apart completely.

The rest of the park is immaculately manicured.

While snapping the above photos, I tripped over a root and dented my camera’s lens. Luckily, it still works. I also scraped a knee, which normally wouldn’t be an issue. Unfortunately for me, Japanese culture involves a lot of kneeling; we’ll revisit this topic in the next day’s post. Still, it’s hard to complain about a scraped knee while you’re walking around a place that has literally experienced more destruction at the hands of humanity in the space of one minute than most places on Earth have ever seen.

The Peace Memorial Park is more than just the A-Bomb Dome. A wide swath of land in the area has been converted into a park, and is covered in monuments dedicated to peace and to various groups of victims of the blast. We visited all of them, but I’ll just share the highlights.

The first was the Memorial to Mobilized Students. According to the audio recording stationed in front of it, many students were mobilized for the war effort, and so were in downtown Hiroshima at the time of the bombing doing labour in shops or factories.

The statue at the base is Kannon, the Goddess of Peace. Eight stone doves rest on the tower itself.

It is common in Japan to hang chains of paper cranes in shrines and at monuments. These are usually chained together in sets of 1000; such a chain is called a senbazuru. This practice is particularly common in Hiroshima, and it’s doubly popular with monuments involving children. The cranes are often arranged in attractive rainbows of colour, or made with particular patterns of paper so as to add a personal element to what is otherwise a fairly uniform design.

Japanese tradition holds that folding a senbazuru will cause a wish to be granted.

There were a number of other monuments erected by local organizations. Two of the more idiosyncratic monuments were a large black cylinder topped with four large lights (erected by the Hiroshima Gas Corporation) and a stone tablet engraved with a message that analogizes hair to hope, life and the spirit (erected by the Hiroshima Hairdressers’ Association). There were also smaller monuments featuring the likenesses of people who gave assistance to Hiroshima’s people in the aftermath of the bombing. These latter monuments were not as amusing.

There’s plenty more of the Peace Memorial Park for me to talk about, but I feel that I should point out that Hiroshima is not a dour city at all. In fact, Hiroshima is pretty idyllic. There are wide green spaces, clean streets, friendly people and a rich local culture (including a highly-recommended local variant of okomiyaki). There’s even a castle! We’ll be seeing more of that later on in the post, but I want to give you something to look forward to now, because this next part is pretty depressing.

Alternatively, just think back to this scene. You'll feel better right away, guaranteed.

The centrepiece of the Peace Memorial Park is the Hiroshima Peace Museum. Now, my understanding of Japanese culture is that they generally prefer not to remember all those times that they brutally oppressed POWs and civilians throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Apparently no one told this to the curators of the Museum, because it starts out by tearing a strip off of their ancestors for their various acts of aggression. The exhibit admonishes its Japanese patrons to avoid the sins of their forebears.

The bulk of the exhibit, however, is dedicated to remembering how terrible is was that time that Hiroshima got bombed. There are a number of artifacts from the bombing scattered throughout the Museum. This was sort of a big deal to me; actually standing in front of a battered wristwatch that was frozen in time at 8:15am, August 6, 1945 was even more poignant than standing at the dome.

Granted, the watch doesn't actually have dates, but the effect was not diminished.

The exhibit also hosted reconstructions of the city before and after the blast. The differences were dramatic, as I’m sure you would expect.

The red ball shows the explosion a fraction of a second after detonation.

Unsurprisingly, Japan is not crazy about nuclear weapon testing. Hiroshima, in particular, is a vocal opponent of this practice. Since 1968, the mayor of Hiroshima has published a letter of protest for every nuclear test, world-wide. To date, there have been 597 such letters, each individually and passionately written. Many refer to topical events – for instance, the most recent letter (to US President Obama) references the Fukushima power plant disaster.

To really have an impact, they should send these to leaders' mothers

The exhibit quickly shifted towards the immediate aftermath of the bombing. Featured prominently was a wax replica of people being melted by the blast. It was… unappetizing, although I expect that the curators’ goal was not to assist in our digestion.

Zero punches were pulled in the making of this exhibit.

Upstairs were a number of artifacts pulled from the wreckage, much like the wristwatch that I mentioned before. These ranged from children’s tattered summer uniforms to gristly photographs of charred citizens shortly after exposure but just before death.

If it’s all right with you, I’m going to skip those and focus on the items that were only mostly horrifying.

This tricycle did not fare well in the blast.

The faint shadow on the ground is all the remains of someone who was sitting on those steps.

The blast melted roofing tile and other materials, sometimes wrapping them around nearby objects.

These weren’t even the most distressing part of the exhibit. Those came at the end. The Museum stored video and audio recordings of the survivors of the blast (called hibakusha), as well as their hand-drawn images recording the explosion and the illnesses and infamous black rain that followed it. Those don’t carry over as well in pictures without the whole context, so we’ll just move on to happier topics.

You may be familiar with the story of Sadako Sasaki. She was a Japanese girl who got leukaemia from the blast in Hiroshima and took to folding paper cranes in the hopes that her wish to be cured might be granted. It wasn’t, and she died. Which … is not a happier topic at all, I admit. However, it is a much-beloved children’s tale, and the Museum hosted some of her original folded cranes!

Sadako is credited with the worldwide popularity of folded paper cranes.

Nearby the Museum, in the greater park area, is a monument to Sadako and the other child casualties of war. It is surrounded by thousands of senbazuru, and features a bell (in the shape of a golden folded crane) that visitors ring as a symbolic affirmation of their dedication to world peace.

Amelia and Kat rang the Children's Peace Bell; I saved my energy for the grown-up Peace Bell.

The centrepiece of the park is the Cenotaph, inscribed with these words: “Let all the souls here rest in peace, for we shall not repeat the evil.” This is the site where peace-related ceremonies and demonstrations are often held. From this point one can see the Eternal Flame and A-Bomb Dome.

The Cenotaph holds the names of all those killed by the bomb.

Now, there’s something that all foreigners ought to know before wandering in to Hiroshima Memorial Park. The place is crawling with tiny, adorable schoolchildren all sporting the same brightly coloured baseball caps. And they aren’t just wandering passively; these kids are on a mission. Of peace. And also grades. Mostly grades, probably.

These schoolchildren have been tasked to make peace-related arts and crafts and hand them out to foreigners in the park. In addition, to get English credit (and also world peace), the students ask you for your name, where you are from, how you like Hiroshima, and where else you are going in Japan. All of your responses get neatly printed in little notebooks. Once they’ve finished asking their adorable scripted questions, they pose for a photo and wish you a happy visit to Japan.

This was pretty adorable the first time it happened. By the third or fourth time… well, it was still pretty adorable. We could have answered those same four or five questions all day.

Amelia and I wandered off. There weren't many foreigners in the park that day, so Kat got mobbed.

The kids assumed Kat was American, due to her resemblance to Alaskan lobster.

We blended in with our mastery of local customs.

The Peace Park wasn’t solely devoted to monuments commemorating the atrocities of war. Just across the river from the A-Bomb Dome was a classical orchestra gaily playing upbeat accompaniment for the tourists.

The smiling conductor and cheerful music helped soften the blow of some of the more sombre monuments.

Across the park, there was another band playing near the monument to the Korean victims of the blast. Being as the band was composed of little children, it was adorable. Being as they were Japanese children, it was also very good.

What? Some stereotypes are positive.

"We were going to play Schoenberg's Violin Concerto, but we went with something more challenging"

By this time, we had filled our eyes, brains and ears with things both beautiful and terrible. Our tummies, however, were starting to feel left out. We elected to eat at an open-air riverside diner, located within earshot of the riverside orchestra (the grown-up one, that is). Upon seating, we discovered that the diner specialized in exotic cuisine – namely pizza and pasta. The red-headed waiter should have been a tip-off that we wouldn’t be finding much in the way of Japanese food. Still, we were not disappointed to have some familiar fare.

Our tomato-based food was almost as red as our lobster friend.

After lunch, we bid adieu to the Genbaku Dome and began walking towards Hiroshima Castle (Hiroshima-jo). It is not far far from the Peace Park. Being as the Peace Park is where the atomic bomb detonated, it should not surprise you to discover that today’s Hiroshima Castle is a reconstruction of the original.

The main keep poked out over the trees. A sensible choice, security-wise.

The castle itself was fairly small, but was surrounded by a reasonably-sized moat and substantial grounds. The grounds were home to a variety of structures, including a shrine and some barracks. The shrine appears to still be carrying out its traditional purpose (in fact, we saw a family carrying out a ceremony with an adorable kimono-clad baby), but the barracks and keep are now museums showcasing Japanese culture from Hiroshima’s feudal history.

The barracks mostly dealt with architectural techniques and styles over the centuries, as well as the political landscape at the time of the building of the original Hiroshima Castle. Apparently it was a pretty controversial construction, as it was built without the permission of the ruling shogunate (a big no-no at the time). At any rate, the Japanese have come to embrace it over the last 400-or-so years.

Apparently some of that rebellious history was having an effect on Amelia.

Kat experimenting with some tatami mats, a standard part of traditional architecture.

After viewing the grounds and barracks, we went in to the main keep. It is devoted to cultural artifacts, complete with swords, paintings, sculptures, and so on. We even saw a sword made by Masamune! Unfortunately, no photographs were permitted in the exhibition areas, so all I have for you is this photo of Amelia and Kat in totally-authentic period dress.

Kat gravitated towards the red dress. Birds of a feather, I guess.

From the top of the keep we could see out over the grounds and moat. It was apparent that Hiroshima’s got a pretty good thing going on.

I don't know if this is invasion-ready, but it sure is attractive.

It soon came time to leave the castle. We were headed towards the renowned Shukkeien Gardens to the east of the castle, though we stopped a few times for the sake of frivolity.

Just like the samurai of old.

This adorable dog wasn't Kat's only target; she also tracked down some cats.

By this point we were fresh out of cash, so we stopped at an ATM. I may not have mentioned that Japan is a primarily cash-based society. This was very surprising for me. I usually actively avoid carrying physical currency; if I can’t pay via credit or debit, I won’t be paying at all. This is easy to do in Canada, but is much harder in Asia, where credit cards seem to carry a stigma (at least among the middle class) and debit transaction fees are seen as onerous. I had expected this to be different in Japan, but such is not the case; the only thing a plastic card is good for is withdrawing physical money from a cash-dispensing machine.

This leads to a small problem for international travellers such as ourselves. Most ATMs in Japan work only with Japanese bank cards. The only reliable safe haven for foreign dollar-holders is 7-Bank, the foreigner-friendly bank owned by 7 & i Holdings, which also owns 7-Eleven. As a result, foreigners want to stay on the lookout for 7-Eleven convenience stores while in Japan; they’re your best option for your banking needs. I’m not making this stuff up.

7-Eleven basically runs all of south-east Asia, as far as I can tell.

Since we were already there to withdraw money, Amelia figured that we might as well buy some snacks. She found an adorable One Piece bento box. For the non-Japanophiles, One Piece is a popular series of graphic novels (“manga”) and cartoons (“anime”), among other things. It is heavily merchandized.

It looks… delicious?

We went from the 7-Eleven store to the now-nearby Shukkeien Gardens. It was at this point that we discovered that they were closed, and had been since before we’d left the castle (on this particular Sunday, they closed at 5 o’clock, and it was now close to 7). This was unfortunate, but we didn’t mind very much; it had been a busy day, and we were ready to head back to Osaka.

We headed back to the train station, where I decided to buy some unfamiliar snacks. They were wrapped in some fibrous plant matter that we assume is bamboo bark; this technique is popular for certain foods in Japan. The snacks themselves were similar to sushi, except that they were cooked and the lady selling them warned me that they were “spicy”. Perhaps the ones I got were defective, but I did not find them spicy at all. Maybe she was compensating for previous bad experiences with some westerners’ over-sensitive palates.

Or maybe my Jamaican heritage makes me immune.

The box in the photo above held maple-flavoured cookies. Maple flavouring is something I associate fairly strongly with Canada, but Japan also happens to be home to a large number of maple trees, and where there are maple trees there is maple flavouring.

I don't know whether it's safe to feed lobsters cookies. Don't try this at home.

We arrived back in Osaka just in time to grab a late dinner before bed. We headed to the trendy restaurant area that we’d visited the previous day, where one of the greeters that had been positioned outside caught our attention. We hopped in an elevator and arrived in a little place that was part restaurant and part tapas bar; their menu covered the usual breadth of a restaurant, but everything came in tiny, appetizer-sized portions. It’s an interesting approach.

None of these plates are much larger than a drink coaster.

Upon finishing up and receiving our bill, we discovered some surprise charges. On top of the food that we had ordered, we had also been charged a seating fee equivalent to about twelve dollars (plus the cost of a bowl of edamame - salted soy beans – that is apparently obligatory). We were informed that this was customary in trendier establishments. Amelia was inclined to accept this, but Kat and I were not. We were caught in a difficult place; we weren’t willing to pay for things that we hadn’t agreed to (we are, after all, law students), but we didn’t want to be culturally insensitive. To make things more challenging, the staff had limited English, and our Japanese is basically non-existent.

Kat and I ended up politely-but-firmly pantomiming with the manager for a while until he agreed to waive the seating charge. Well, I say “politely”, but Amelia informs me that our server (with whom we initially negotiated) was quite distressed by the end of it – Amelia tells us that she saw tears. Kat and I still feel pretty bad about this. We had been careful to remain calm and use (what we thought to be) respectful language, but we seem to have a lot to learn about the finer points of civil disagreement in Japanese society.

From that point on, we did not dispute any charges in Japan.

Although our day ended on a somewhat sour note, in retrospect it was pretty great overall. However, it pales in comparison to the adventure we had in the next two days. In the next post, we’ll explore Mt. Koya together.

I have a confession to make: This post does not begin in Osaka. It begins in Tokyo. If that concerns you, do not fret; I will get to Osaka soon enough.

We flew in to Tokyo’s Haneda International Airport on an evening flight via Beijing. Haneda was more-or-less like every other airport that we’ve passed through these last two months. The biggest difference was that there was less English than we were had encountered in Chinese airports, which was a little surprising. Oh, and also the airport bathrooms came with educational diagrams and required a technical degree to operate.

I recommend that you study up, or you may be in for a surprise.

It’s important that you know here, at the outset, that Kat had been out on a boat just a few days before, and was sporting a delightful cherry-red sunburn. This is important because I want your experience of Japan through this blog to be as close to mine as is possible. To that end, every time I mention “Kat” I want you to envision a giant lobster doing whatever it is I am describing her doing. Believe me, I was doing the same thing.

This is Kat with makeup on. She wouldn't let me get a picture of her without it.

It took us a while to figure out where to go, as the Tokyo subway rail metro system is mind-bogglingly complex. Fortunately, there was a lady stationed near the ticket kiosks who had a big “ENGLISH” button pinned to her vest. She was very helpful. We liked her.

We didn't get a photo of the nice lady, but here is an approximation.

We shuffled on to the next train into the city and immediately started gawking in amazement at the Pokémon theming that adorned the exterior and interior of the train. This pretty much typifies our entire trip to Japan – rapid vacillation between confusion and amazement.

I would have called it the "Pokémonorail", personally.

Amelia had told me that this (that is, anime-theming of trains) is something that happens in Japan. I have always secretly assumed that most of those wild “things that happen in Japan” that you read about online happened exactly twice and somebody just made a big deal about it. It turns out I was wrong.

Our Pokémon-adorned train was destined for Yurakucho. Upon arriving, we again found ourselves to be completely lost. We stopped by the station master’s office for directions. We told him where we were trying to go, at which point he left his post, guided us to the appropriate station exit, carried our luggage up three flights of stairs, and pointed us in the right direction. And, before we knew it, he was gone, leaving us with no photographic evidence of our own Japanese Peter Parker.

We got lost once more en route to our hotel, but we stopped a pair of Japanese gentlemen who kindly found the right route on their iPhones. They spent about 10 minutes carefully explaining how to get there (despite it being only three blocks away), and finished up by thanking us profusely for visiting Japan.

We found our hotel without further incident. We had taken an evening flight into Japan, so by the time we arrived it was time to get to bed. They had provided each of us with yukata, a traditional Japanese style of bedclothes.

Japan has a presentation-heavy culture. We'll be seeing more of that, trust me.

"I know kung fu!" – "Amelia, kung fu is Chinese" – "Do you want to anger a kung fu master?"

Kat (my lobster friend, recall) had her heart dead-set on visiting the Tsukiji fish market, the world’s largest fish market. She got only two hours of sleep before having to get back up and head out to catch the early-morning event. Unfortunately for her, it turns out that Tsukiji is a major tourist attraction; by the time she arrived, they were no longer admitting observers to the market.

This did not prevent Kat from wandering through the surrounding area, which was packed full of fish freshly pulled from the sea.

Did you know that octopus curl up into adorable seafood flowers? I did not.

Kat spotted these two former plumbers (and former Italians?) working the fish market.

One of the attractions of the fish market is that you can purchase sushi next door, prepared from fish that have barely left the sea. Kat, being part lobster, does not like raw fish – in my opinion, this is a cosmic injustice of the highest order.

Kat tells me that the sashimi was, and I quote, "OK". I weep at the thought.

Kat returned to the hotel just in time for Amelia and I to wake up and eat our complimentary “cultural exchange” breakfast. It was mostly mediocre Western food, but it did not require us to wake up after only two hours of sleep, and by that metric it was fantastic.

The three of us took the subway back to Tokyo Station, where we obtained our Japan Rail passes (Japan Rail is better known in Japan as “JR”). These passes are worth knowing about if you plan on travelling to Japan. For about the price of an average air fare you can get a pass that grants unlimited access to nearly all JR trains, including most Shinkansen bullet trains, for a week. This lets you get to most cities on Honshu (the main island in Japan) really, really fast.

Having obtained our passes, we booked some seats on an upcoming train, leaving us with some time to kill in the station. Amelia found an advertisement for her favourite anime character, the lead character from Shakugan no Shana. She was very excited.

Amelia had this face on for pretty much the whole trip.

We ate some delicious gourmet bagel-sandwiches at a small restaurant in the station. We had some confusion around the tipping process; we weren’t sure whether tipping in restaurants is a thing in Japan (it hadn’t been anywhere else we’d been in Asia), which resulted in a lot of awkward hemming and hawing at the till. The language barrier did not assist us. In case you’re curious: Tipping is not customary in Japan.

Anyways, the point of that story is that we missed our scheduled train by five seconds. The doors of the train literally closed in front of us. Amelia informs me that this is a very Japanese experience. Luckily, there was a very accommodating conductor nearby who put us on the next train.

First class, baby. We got power outlets and e'rything.

One of the beauties of the Shinkansen is that we can leave Tokyo in the late morning and arrive in Osaka in the early afternoon, about two and a half hours later. This gave us most of the day to see the city without getting delayed by airport security or waiting lounges. We arrived in the pouring rain, so we took the subway directly to our hostel without doing any sightseeing above-ground. This turned out to be surprisingly easy – the subway in Osaka is nothing like the eldritch horror that is the Tokyo metro map.

Our hostel was not constructed with 6-foot behemoths in mind.

Despite our hostel’s generous selection of complimentary twenty-year-old American VHS tapes, we only stayed in briefly to plan out our time in Osaka. Then we decided to head out and see a little bit of the city. Much to my excitement, this began with food. It bears mentioning that Osaka is sort of the Paris of Japan in this respect; Osaka is famous (in Japan, at least) for its food. In particular, Osaka’s Dotonbori district is Osaka’s main draw for food and entertainment tourists, so we hopped on the subway and made a beeline for Dotonbori.

Along the way, we discovered something interesting about Japanese subways – many of them have dedicated “women’s cars”. These cars have distinctive loading areas and interior decorations (all in a brilliant, eye-catching pink), so that women who choose to use them have an area where men are obviously not permitted to loiter. These are often towards the middle of the train, so we’re not entirely clear on the etiquette regarding men walking through these cars (or loading areas, in the subway itself) to get to other cars that allow men. We saw the occasional man walk through, so we suspect that prohibition has more to so with stopping and staying than it does with simply being in that area.

Kat decided to hop aboard just such a car. Apparently it is just like any other car, except pink. Since I wasn’t permitted in, Amelia (kind soul that she is) stayed with me in a mixed-gender car.

I guess the subway owner heard that ladies like pink.

We arrived in Dotonbori and discovered that we were surrounded by restaurants. Many of them were Big Deals in Japan. There was a crab restaurant with a gigantic, illuminated, mechanical crab above the door, a blowfish restaurant with a big inflated blowfish out front, and so on. Apparently these particular restaurants are famous within Japan for their high-class specialized cuisines, but we had just arrived in Japan and were looking for something a little more typically Japanese.

We found a small restaurant that serves okonomiyaki. It’s sort of a cross between a pancake and an omelette. Its name isn’t nearly as hard to say as you might think – unlike Chinese, Japanese phonemes are pretty similar to the sounds we have in English. Now, before I offend any Japanese-language experts, I should point out that they aren’t all exactly the same as English sounds; they’re just close enough that we could usually figure out the romanized spelling of the words we heard, and could pronounce romanized words off of maps and notes well enough to be understood. So, conveniently, “okonomiyaki” sounds like “oh-ko-no-me-ya-ki”.

Amelia prefers to call it "okonomnomnomiyaki".

Whatever it sounds like, it tasted delicious. It gets grilled right in front of you on a hot plate that runs the length of the counter, teppanyaki-style. The chef throws whatever you’ve ordered into the batter; this might be shrimp, chicken, cheese, bacon, or some combination of those or similar foods. Once it’s cooked and covered in mayonnaise, sauces and toppings, you cut it with a little spade-like instrument and transfer bits to your plate to be eaten with chopsticks.

We had a great time at the restaurant, which appeared to be a family establishment. Our chef seemed excited to be making us our first-ever okonomiyaki, and his wife kept making encouraging signs at us from the back of the room.

Our chef was very charming.

The rain had cleared, so we wandered out into the streets of Dotonbori in search of excitement. Our meal had been an early dinner, and dusk had fallen. We quickly came across a collectors’ shop that was chock-full of anime figurines, cartoon character plushies, novelty T-shirts and costumes, and all manner of kitschy memorabilia. They even had a whole floor of Star Wars stuff, which (to me) seemed sort of out-of-place in a Japanese novelty shop, but it’s not like it’s my job to go around telling people whether they’re being Japanese enough.

As with many stores in Japan, no photos were allowed inside.

I bought the one and only non-food item that I purchased in my entire visit to Asia in that store – a pair of chopsticks modelled after Darth Vader’s lightsaber. It became a Christmas gift for my Dad, but now we’re getting ahead of ourselves – there is plenty left to say about Dotonbori.

Our continued journeys brought us to a large bookstore, with something like six floors laden with tomes. Amelia, being a bibliophile (that’s a fancy way to say “nerd”), immediately descended into the basement to sample the manga collection. She was not disappointed.

"But… you can't read Japanese" – "Silence, mortal!"

Japan also has something called “love hotels“. These are something like a higher-class version of the no-tell motels of North America. We found a good number of them in Dotonbori. These hotels allow you to rent a room for a “rest” (a few hours) or a “stay” (overnight). Although the ladies were curious about what the rooms in such a hotel might look like – love hotels are known for their fanciful decor – the advertised rates even for short stays were high enough that we decided to continue on with our curiosity un-sated.

We're not sure how this decor is supposed to get a couple in the mood.

Speaking of cost, I should point out that Japan is not a cheap country to visit. Their local currency, the yen, trades at about ¥75 to the Canadian dollar. This might lull a thoughtless traveller into spending yen like it’s going out of style. It is not. Spending yen is very much in style in Japan, and that mentality will cause one to spend quite a lot of it. It’s better to think of ¥1 as being similar to 1¢, and thinking instead in units of ¥100 (assuming that you’re used to thinking in units of $1 at home).

The mathematically-inclined in my audience will likely think “hey, that’s obvious!”, but we noticed a peculiar effect while travelling through Asia. We got used to currencies with skewed conversion rates (like Hong Kong’s HK$7.5 to CA$1) typically belonging to countries where goods are cheap. Japan will break you of that particular association, since most things cost more (in absolute terms) than they do back in Canada.

Hey, you don't get all this bling for free.

Dotonbori is also home to a number of host and hostess clubs. This is something like a bar where you pay an attractive and charismatic server (a host or hostess) to flirt with you. These clubs often advertise their existence by having servers stand outside and, well, be attractive. In the area we were in we mostly we saw hosts (males), who stood out due to their ostentatious clothing and spiky, orange-dyed hair. Regular readers of my blog know that, by this point, I have acquired a bit of a complex surrounding asking Asian people for photographs, so we did not get any photos. At any rate, these guys stood around and acted cool, not appearing to notice anyone but each other. I guess you need to go in and pay if you want to get some attention. We did not.

The following morning we had breakfast at a corner store next to our hostel. Well, Amelia and I did – Kat has a rule about eating pre-packaged food. The rule is that she does not do it. It was her loss; Amelia and I had some delicious onigiri (which is like a large, triangular, inside-out sushi roll). I also bought a prepackaged local interpretation of a spaghetti meal, mostly out of morbid curiosity. Despite its use of ketchup for pasta sauce, it was surprisingly good.

Japan has the finest convenience stores in the world. I would kill for a Family Mart by my house.

We were in a hurry to see Osaka, so Kat chose to skip breakfast rather than dine on convenience store fare. We went to the nearest train station and got a one-day “Osaka Unlimited Pass”, which let us use the subway all we like and also got us discounts on tourist attractions. It wasn’t easy to find; the Station Master’s office was buried deep within the bowels of the subway complex. In true Japanese fashion, however, the staff took great care to direct us to where we had to go, which is why I am writing this now instead of forever wandering the halls of an Osaka subway station.

Our first stop was Osaka Tower, which is an observation tower near the middle of Osaka. It’s not actually very tall, but it doesn’t need to be. Nearly the whole city of Osaka appears to be composed of buildings with five to ten stories, which is quite different from places like Vancouver where the downtown is full of skyscrapers and the rest of the city is covered in low-rise homes and stores. Osaka does have the occasional high-rise, but the city just doesn’t exhibit the usual clustering of height. For this reason, the tower’s observation deck is only about 100m above ground, but from there one can still see most of the city.

Ok, so this is more "Amelia" than "Osaka Tower". I happen to like my wife, all right?

Outside the tower is where we first met Billiken, a lucky charm that is the brainchild of an American artist. Billiken is quite popular in Osaka; his likeness can be found all over the place.

Little guy's a hit with the ladies.

The tower was a bit of a tourist trap inside, but it included numerous coin-operated vending machines that dispensed anime paraphernalia (such as keychains and the like) alongside American movie posters and landscape paintings. We keep marvelling at how anime is legitimate pop culture in Japan, almost completely unlike the way animation is usually seen back in Canada.

We climbed the tower (by which I mean that we used an elevator – 100m may not be that tall, but it’s enough to get me to eschew the stairs) and got our view of Osaka. It is a lovely city.

Osaka, as seen from Osaka Tower.

After the tower, we wandered through downtown Osaka a bit and looked for a costume for Kat. Her birthday is the day before Halloween, so getting dressed up and going to a club is a big event for her each year. Since we will be in Tokyo for Kat’s birthday, she was hoping to dress up as an anime character. We found a costume shop, but buying an anime costume is Japan is not cheap – cosplay is a pretty big deal there, and the outfits of popular characters can fetch a pretty penny (in this case, hundreds of Canadian dollars). Kat did not get her costume that day.

As we wandered, we spotted a rickshaw runner waiting by his cart. Japanese rickshaws are a luxury affair (unlike in certain other countries), sort of like a horse-drawn carriage in Canada. In order to drum up business, runners don’t just stand while they wait; they jump. I suppose this reassures potential passengers that this runner has the energy to get you where you want to go.

Kat wanted to visit an onsen (a traditional Japanese spa, traditionally involving a hot spring), so we went to SpaWorld, a gigantic spa complex in downtown Osaka. Amelia and I preferred to go to Osaka’s Science Museum, so we deposited Kat and took the subway across town.

It's actually two museums: on the left is Science, and on the right is Art.

We had a grand time in the Science Museum. It was an awful lot like Science World in Vancouver, although we thought that the subject matter was a little more advanced. I’m pretty sure some of the exhibits would have been appropriate for upper-division science classes back in my high school.

Being simple-minded Canadians, we stuck to the simpler exhibits.

Amelia got this globe to hang in mid-air. I'm pretty sure that makes her an applied physicist.

When we were about to leave, Amelia popped into a washroom on the ground floor. This gave me a chance to observe an exhibit that consisted of turning a crank to store up electrical energy that was used to power a row of lights. Much like one of those games at a circus where you hit a button with a hammer, the number of lights that lit up indicates how much power you generated. Some little boys ahead of me were trying the machine, but with limited success – they couldn’t seem to manage more than one of the six big bulbs.

I think you see where this is going. Once they were done, I cranked that thing like a madman. The big white dude heaving and huffing at the front of this device drew a bit of a crowd of children and their parents. When all the lights flared up, they applauded. As odd as it may sound, entertaining Japanese children in Osaka’s Science Museum may be one of my favourite memories from the trip. There are, unfortunately, no photographs; Amelia left the washroom mid-applause, and had no idea it was for me.

We briefly stopped in at the Art Museum next door. It did not allow photographs, unlike the Science Museum. I think that difference, right there, encapsulates why I like science so much more than art. But we’re not here to talk about my prejudices – we’re here to see Amelia’s face in amusing cardboard cutouts!

We were allowed to take this photo near the entrance of the art museum, so we did.

I would like to tell you what I thought of the gallery, but that will require that I trot out some of my artistic prejudices. I’ll try to be quick about it: the Osaka Art Museum is better than every Canadian art gallery that I have been to. It is not better than the Louvre. The Canadian-Louvre scale is pretty much how I evaluate all art galleries. It’s worked for me so far. On the 1-10 scale of pretentiousness (a parallel metric), the Osaka Art Museum scored about an 8, which is pretty low for an art gallery.

Amelia and I returned to SpaWorld before Kat was done. Amelia was hoping to get Kat a session at the spa with some doctor fish (a kind of fish that only nibbles off dead skin cells) for her birthday, but when we explained that we wanted to buy a gift certificate or buy a session for someone else, they indicated that this was not possible. We’re guessing that there’s either a cultural difference at play or that we were simply not able to surmount the language barrier. Luckily for us, there was an informal concert outside where we could pass the time while we waited for Kat.

Kat eventually emerged from the spa. She got out a little later than expected due to a lengthy massage that, due to a conversion error on Kat’s part, ended up costing a lot more in Canadian dollars than she expected. She still hasn’t admitted to me how much she spent there, as she fears my mockery. She is wise to do so.

We travelled to the Umeda Sky Building (one of Osaka’s infrequent high-rises), which hosts the Floating Garden Observatory. The building happened to be hosting an exotic car-show at its base. We weren’t really in Japan to see Italian cars, but we stopped briefly to admire them anyways before ascending to the top of the building.

As it turns out, there were some Japanese vehicles at the show.

The Floating Garden Observatory does not actually have a garden. It's just a walkway.

After the observatory we decided to go to Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan, one of the largest aquariums in the world. Regular readers of the blog know that we are big fans of zoos and aquariums, so this was very exciting for us. We took the subway to the port area of Osaka (called Osakako), as the aquarium has very cleverly been placed next to an awful lot of water.

Along the way we grabbed a snack of takoyaki, which is basically fried balls of batter containing chunks of octopus. You may have noticed that both “takoyaki” and “okonomiyaki” end in -yaki; this means “grilled”. “Tako” means “octopus”. Curiously, “okonomi” does not mean “pancake”; it means something like “as you like it”, which sort of makes sense given that you can throw whatever you want into okonomiyaki. The lady who made the takoyaki taught us that “oishii” means “delicious”, which is a word that we got a lot of mileage out of (although Kat wasn’t too crazy for the octopus batter balls).

You might be wondering why I’m giving this impromptu linguistics lesson. At the time, we found it very exciting that we were picking up these bits of Japanese so quickly compared to our struggles with Chinese. Travelling through China lead me to think that maybe I just wasn’t cut out for learning languages. Being in Japan wanted me to pick up a copy of Rosetta Stone; Japanese is a lovely language, and actually having a clue about what was going on was very encouraging.

Anyways. Takoyaki. We bought some.

Almost as adorable as actual octopus.

Osakako plays host to more than the aquarium; it’s also home to the Tempozan Ferris Wheel, which was the largest ferris wheel in the world until they built a bigger one in Tokyo. We spotted it while walking towards the aquarium, but didn’t hop on; the aquarium would be closing admissions for the night soon, and we didn’t want to miss it.

Fun fact: The colour of the wheel is a weather forecast for the next day. Green means "cloudy".

We got in to the aquarium in time, and saw many adorable animals.

Halloween is a pretty big deal in Japan. Even the sharks get into it.

You may call them "otters", but in my mind they will always be "sea weasels"

We're all suckers for penguins. Every aquarium we go, we mostly just stare at penguins.

By placing a paper fish against the glass, you can get seals to love you. It's not cruel at all.

Apparently there was a shark feeding, but we had some trouble finding it. By the time Kat tracked it down, it was over. This was all right, since the aquarium was pretty great in its own right.

We stayed in the aquarium until the staff gently, politely asked us to get lost. It was past dinnertime and we had yet to eat, so we filed in to a nearby restaurant.

It was very charming.

No one spoke any English in the restaurant, but luckily for us the menus featured only photographs of food and their prices; most of them didn’t even have any Japanese text. We just pointed at food that looked delicious, and it was brought out to us.

The fried chicken (bottom right) is called "yakitori". "Tori" means "bird". Making sense yet?

As in China, restaurants often don’t assign servers to tables, and it is up to patrons to flag down servers. Being obviously foreign (and even more obviously clueless) helps, as servers seem to take a little more initiative with foreigners than might be customary in that area. This wasn’t much of a problem here, as the restaurant was small and there were only one or two other occupied tables.

We finished our meal, paid the server (still being somewhat awkward about tipping, as we hadn’t sorted that out yet) and headed back to our hostel. We had a day trip to Hiroshima planned for the following day, and we didn’t want to sleep in. But we’ll get to that in the next post. Go give your eyes a rest – if you’ve read all the way down to here, they’ve earned it. The next post won’t cover three distinct days, so it will be much shorter.

After our whirlwind weekend in Singapore, we decided to take it easy with a trip to Kowloon. Like Lantau, Kowloon is part of the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong, but is not on Hong Kong island. Kowloon is actually on the mainland, just north of Hong Kong island and right across the border from the city of Shenzhen.

We took the MTR to the ferry docks, which entailed a quick stop at the International Finance Center (or “IFC” to the locals). IFC is Hong Kong’s premier luxury brands destination, which normally is not the sort of tagline that is likely to draw me in. One of the luxury brands that they play host to, however, is Apple. The store there is brand-new, and I had to drop by for some repairs on my Mac.

As you’re likely aware, Steve Jobs recently passed away. The store’s entrance was surrounded by flowers, portraits, figurines, and other memorabilia donated by people and businesses in the area. In addition, the store’s outward-facing glass wall was covered with personal notes expressing individuals’ feelings.

The display was very endearing.

We hopped on a ferry and sailed across Victoria Harbour to the mainland. Upon arriving, we were greeted by a group of Hare Krishna dancers.

They seemed to be having a good time.

We walked along the waterfront towards the Avenue of Stars (colloquially called the Star Walk). We happened across a wedding party taking photos by the water. The photographer must have been a family member, as he was quick to enlist our help after noticing our fancy-shamncy cameras.

For whatever reason, he handed his enormous professional camera rig over to me, despite it being more similar to Kat’s device. She got stuck with one of the family’s basic point-and-shoot cameras, while I got to play with the Frankencamera 5000.

I took to my new role with gusto.

We also found time for some of our own photo-taking. The waterway offered plenty to see.

This boat was called the "Duk Ling". Hong Kongers have a sense of humour.

We soon found ourselves on the Star Walk, which was littered with plaques bearing names that we did not recognize. They weren’t all unknown to us, however – we came across Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Chow Yun Fat, and Jet Li.

As an aside, some of the star plaques had handprints pressed into them. This allowed me to discover that Jet Li has surprisingly petite hands. I’m pretty sure that he could still kick my butt blindfolded, though.

Fun fact: Rumour has it that Amelia's mom dated Bruce Lee briefly.

The Star Walk wasn’t all about honouring the greats of Hong Kong cinema. As in the rest of Hong Kong, enterprising locals had found ways to make use of public space for their benefit. In this case, that means fishing into the harbour.

This is so Hong Kong, you have no idea.

We began making our way away from the water and into Kowloon. Kowloon isn’t quite as small or as dense as Hong Kong Island, and this comparative luxury of space is reflected in its planning and architecture. Sidewalks are more generous, parks are more frequent, green space actually exists. If I were to describe it as a taller version of Richmond (building-wise, that is), Vancouverites would know what I meant.

If it wasn't for the second building from the left, you wouldn't know this was in Hong Kong.

We were aiming for the Hong Kong Museum of History, but stopped by briefly in a camera shop to drool over the latest and greatest lenses for our cameras. Well, mostly my camera. It’s a Sony NEX-5, which is part of a relatively new line of DSLR-quality cameras with point-and-shoot-sized bodies. Basically, high quality in a small, all-digital device. I love it dearly, but one of the downsides of this particular camera is that it debuted with only three compatible (and expensive) lenses. New lenses came out while we’ve been traipsing through Asia, and I’ve been eager to have a look.

Unfortunately, the camera shop didn’t have the particular lenses I was looking for, so we continued on our merry way. It wasn’t long before we found the museum. They took their “showing the history of Hong Kong” mandate pretty seriously – the exhibit started with the year 400 million BC.

Amelia was enamoured with the Stargate-style entrance, but could only lock one chevron.

We enjoyed the museum quite a bit. It covered geological prehistory, the history and societies of pre-colonial inhabitants, colonial history, wars, and Hong Kong’s recent history following its return to China in 1997.

The societies of pre-colonial Hong Kong were organized into four major groups. There were the Boat Dwellers (who lived their entire lives on fishing junks just off the coast of Hong Kong), the Hoklo (who also lived in boats, and dominated the salt-processing trade), the Hakka (a land-dwelling group of peasant farmers) and the Cantonese (who should require no introduction). Each group had its own exhibit.

History was crammed into every nook and cranny. Amelia was determined to find all of it.

Hong Kong’s colonial history got a fair amount of coverage as well. The British, being the commerce-obsessed rascals that we know and love, managed to get their Chinese colony into a fair number of scrapes over opium (multiple times!) and politics. Clever fellows that they were, they came prepared.

Amelia was eager to man the battlements.

Although the museum was not always enthusiastic about British rule, they had some especially choice words for the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong that lasted for most of the Second World War. By all accounts, the occupiers were brutal and food was scarce. However, it did give rise to some entertaining propaganda.

I am beginning to see why Japan has such a PR problem in China.

After we were done at the museum, we went to a nearby sushi restaurant. It appeared to be quite popular with the locals. The irony of this has only just occurred to me.

It was cheap and good, but sushi is cheaper and gooder in Vancouver. True fact.

After dinner we headed back to the waterfront. Every night Hong Kong’s skyline’s most prominent buildings take part in a light show. They paint the clouds with lasers and run rainbows of colours over LCD screens. Plus, it’s all set to music.

The best spot to view the show from is from the Kowloon side of Victoria Harbour. It was actually a little anticlimactic, given the degree to which the nightly event had been hyped up.

There was almost more light from camera screens than from the buildings.

By this point is was 9pm, but I was fighting off a cold and was exhausted. I caught the MTR home, but the ladies were just getting started. They trundled off to Kowloon’s night markets to hunt for bargains. They tell me that they had a good time. Amelia came home with a new dress, and Kat dragged in a wig and some computer peripherals.

The hunting grounds, from which the ladies returned flush with victory.

As chance would have it, some friends from school (including the guys we went to Lantau with) called us up while I was on my way home. They thought it was a good night for some cards. We agreed, which made my whole go-to-bed-early plan a little unfeasible. Still, we played long into the night and had a generally grand time.

This lackadaisical weekend was a much-needed refresher after the four-day sprint of Singapore, but Singapore was a restful nap in comparison to our next trip’s plans. Next week, we begin a two-and-a-half week expedition to Japan, the land of sushi, anime and large red dots.

Wish us luck.

We spent one of our generous four-day weekends in Singapore. Singapore is, for me, a hard city to convey through words and photos. It’s beautiful and modern and clean and organized and just generally impressive, but I feel like that only captures little pieces of the experience that is Singapore.

Singapore is not a particularly historic city, at least not in the way that our other Asian destinations have been. Prior to English acquisition it was home to a handful of Malaysian fishing tribes (and long, long before that it belonged to various sovereigns), and very little of that heritage remains. There are no ancient temples to visit, no monuments recalling pre-European events. Or, if there are, we could not find them – and we looked. Even its English history, which lives on in the language and legal structure of the nation, is given relatively little public attention (at least when compared to places like Hong Kong and Macau).

Not that there aren't parts of Singapore that aren't profoundly English.

Singapore is heavily invested in the present. The city-state has no natural resources besides the scenic beauty of its islands and the raw brainpower of its inhabitants. It revels in this deficiency. Every one of our tour guides mentioned with pride that Singapore survives only by dint of the information economy, providing high-quality legal, technical and academic services to the world’s governments and businesses.

Walking around Singapore is something like visiting a world from Star Trek – that mere fact that it exists, and that you can go there, is excitement enough. The local attractions are just icing on the cake.

I suppose “cake” is as good a segue as any. It’s about time for me to tell you about what we did in Singapore, and (as always) that begins with food. Don’t worry, there’ll be more photos of the city in a moment.

Amelia arrived in Singapore barely conscious – she had spent all night working on her thesis, and desperately craved a nap. Kat and I dropped her off at the hotel, where the two of us grabbed a bite to eat before heading out to find Kat’s favourite brand of tea.

The sashimi at the hotel's buffet was unlimited. That was where this country won me over.

We found the teahouse (TWG, a popular brand in Singapore), but did not find the particular variety of tea that Kat craved. We did, however, find macaroons for her to eat. This made Kat very excited.

Paris and Singapore are apparently the two great centers of macaroon-making.

Kat and I wandered around downtown Singapore for the remainder of the afternoon while Amelia slept. We took many photos of flowers, which are everywhere in Singapore. Singapore has taken advantage of its placement in a tropical rainforest to absolutely fill the place with greenery. Most streets are lined with trees or planters (or both), the columns and undersides of overpasses and raised walkways are covered in dense vines, and most buildings (as far as we could tell) had green roofs. Buildings often seem to be growing, organically, out of the dense foliage at ground level.

It might actually be more work to prevent these from growing.

Kat and I headed back, retrieved Amelia, and headed out on the town. One of Kat’s friends had put us in contact with his aunt in Singapore, so we arranged to meet her after dinner.

Meeting someone after dinner requires that you have dinner first, so we headed down to Clark Quay to grab a bite to eat. Upon arriving, we discovered that the Quay played host to scenic evening cruises. We were powerless to resist.

The cruise featured Singapore's lovely waterfront skyline.

After the cruise we had dinner at an outdoor riverside restaurant. Kat ordered Singapore’s signature chili crab (which came strongly recommended from our cab driver from the airport), whereas Amelia played it safe with some calamari. The ladies split a plate of frog legs. I was still full from the morning’s buffet (unlimited sashimi!), so I just picked at a couple of frog legs for the sake of novelty.

Kat's mixed her old love of crab with her new passion for spicy food.

Frog legs may be more exotic, but calamari makes for a better photo.

We met up with Kat’s friend’s aunt after dinner. She drove us to Singapore’s big hotel/casino/mall megacomplex, the Sands. I should mention here that every car in Singapore is fitted with an electronic wallet, from which money is deducted whenever the car drives through a congested road or leaves a parking lot. The cost of using a road is shown on large digital signs at intersections, and that price changes depending on the type of the vehicle and the time of day. Singapore was apparently the first place in the world to put such a system in place for the purpose of combating road congestion.

Maybe I am the only one to think that this is super-cool?

At any rate, we got to the Sands without incident. The Sands is an easy place to find – it looks like three buildings with a giant boat on top of them.

The flower-building on the left is the ArtScience museum. The rest is the Sands.

We wandered its gargantuan depths for a while, during which time the ladies bought a great deal of candy.

Traveling with these two can sometimes be a lot like living in a Cathy comic strip.

We eventually made our way up to the top of the complex, from which we could see out over most of the nation of Singapore. Well, that’s not entirely true; Singapore comprises some 700 square kilometres, but most of its 5 million people live in the densely-populated Central Area that we were overlooking. Regardless, we could see most of urban Singapore, and we liked what we saw.

There's more off to the right, but this is the money-shot right here.

Would you believe that our host gets seniors' discounts? We want her genes.

We headed down to the ground floor and noticed that the casino had a sign out front indicating that local Singaporeans must pay S$100 just to enter. The Singaporean dollar isn’t far off from the Canadian dollar (the exchange rate was about S$1.25 to CAD$1 at the time), so that struck us as pretty steep. Our local contact explained that the Singaporean government strongly discourages locals from gambling, and that most Singaporeans have never been inside of a casino.

Of course, we (as cash-flush tourists) were welcome to enter and lose our money in the traditional way. We did not choose to do so. Rather, being as it was just past midnight by this point, we took a quick stroll along the waterfront and our gracious, generous and impossibly youthful companion drove us back to our hotel.

The next day we took a hop-on-hop-off bus tour. Our first stop was the Singapore Flyer: “The World’s Largest Giant Observation Wheel”. It’s like a ferris wheel, except that each pod can carry two dozen people. Some of the pods are actually set up as dining rooms, though those tickets were a little pricier.

The wheel takes 30min to revolve once and doesn't stop, so you board it as it's moving.

The view was pretty OK, I suppose.

After the Flyer we took the bus over to Merlion Park, a small waterside concourse that features Singapore’s original merlion statue. A merlion, as you can probably guess, is half-lion and half-fish. It’s a combined reference to Singapore’s origins as a fishing village and its Malay name, Singapura, which means “lion city”. Funnily enough, lions apparently never lived in Singapore; it’s thought that the original settlers saw a tiger and mis-attributed the sighting.

This is my favourite picture of the merlion, despite the fuzziness of the statue.

We wandered along the water’s edge before hopping back onto our bus.

I told you it looked like Star Trek.

Along the way, we saw the Supreme Court building. For the law nerds among us (sorry, Amelia), this was very exciting. On top of the building is a circular glass disc that houses Singapore’s highest court. The glass construction is supposed to symbolize transparency, and the circular construction apparently represents impartiality. Mostly, it looked like a spaceship. Of law.

Gene Roddenberry's estate is going to have to charge them royalties if they keep this up.

Our bus whisked us to the Singapore Botanic Gardens. These were intense. I have so many photos of flowers, you guys have no idea. However, this blog is more about traveling than it is about flower photography, so I’ve picked three of my favorites shots of flowers.

A carnivorous flower from the Cool House.

This little guy was hidden away down a neglected side-path.

There was a VIP orchid garden. These are Margaret Thatcher's.

Technically not a flower photo. The flower is incidental to the portrait.

We spent most of our day in the botanical garden (it was so awesome!), so our next event ended up being the Night Safari. This is actually a zoo that is only open at night. It is located right next to the Singapore Zoo, which operates during the day. Despite being located on the other side of the country, it was only about a 40 minute drive from our hotel.

Being a Night Safari, our photos did not really turn out. The animals did not want to stay still. However, there was an acrobatic fire-eating show by the Thumbuakar, a Bornean tribe. It was very impressive.

Apparently the Thumbuakar fire-eaters are not against playing with their food.

The next day we went to Sentosa Island, which is Singapore’s resort island. We took a cable car and arrived right next to a cultural museum, which we visited. It was mostly directed towards the times during and after British rule, and was reasonably interesting to visit, although not particularly photo-worthy.

After that, however, we went to a butterfly and bird park!

This bad boy hung out on my shirt for a while, but fled at the sight of my camera.

Apparently I am quite popular with birds. Personally, I prefer delicious ones.

After enjoying the company of winged creatures, we decided to visit some wet ones. We spent quite a bit of time in Underwaterworld, Singapore’s signature aquarium. We got to pet dolphins and feed rays and sharks. Kat even swam with the sharks (another activity that your cost-conscious but completely-unafraid blogger elected not to do), and she was selected as a volunteer to give a hula-hoop demonstration during the dolphin show.

I kept calling them "manta rays", but apparently they are a totally different type of ray.

One of the many advantages of being the only blonde white girl in the audience.

We finally saw (and touched!) a pink dolphin, but Robbie is not off the hook.

The aggressive sharks were in a different pool, so Kat mostly saw rays and small sharks.

While Kat was getting suited up for her big dive, Amelia and I had a snack outside. We fed some french fries to peacocks before noticing the sign advising not to do that exact thing, so we decided to take on an activity that was more safe than shark-diving and more legal than unauthorized peacock-feeding.

Naturally, Amelia decided to manhandle a snake.

The photo's a little grainy; my camera was on night-safari settings for the whole day.

After our aquatic and reptilian adventures, we headed down to the beach to relax and take in Siloso Beach. We had a grand time, although our attempts to take a cross-island zip-line were thwarted by scheduled maintenance.

The signage was a little too avant-garde for my taste.

In the evening we returned to the Sands to see a play: The Lion King. We all enjoyed it a great deal. Unfortunately, they did not allow photographs. I should note that I object strongly to that rule. I think that disallowing photographs of a performance is backwards thinking, and I usually vote with my wallet by refusing to go to such events. However, being as visiting Singapore is a special occasion (and Amelia did so want to go), we went.

Not pictured: My bottled rage towards the show's producers.

We returned to our hotel. Amelia went to our room to work on her thesis while Kat and I spent some time in the hotel’s bar/lounge-thing. She ordered Singapore’s signature drink, the Singapore Sling, and enjoyed it so much that she demanded that the bartender teach her how to make it. He was happy to oblige.

"First, take some delicious juice, then ruin it by adding booze or whatever"

Having been saddened by our inability to take decent photographs at the Night Safari, we returned to the Singapore Zoo on our next and last day in Singapore. We had an amazing time.

We started off our day with “Breakfast with Orang-utans”, which is more-or-less what it sounds like – we ate breakfast, and there were orang-utans. We did not actually eat with the apes, probably because their table manners might embarrass them.

"Hey, have you tried that naan bread? No? Just… Just bananas, huh?"

Continuing on with food-related exploits, the Zoo also featured a number of feeding times that we managed to attend. We fed elephants, giraffes, rhinos and baboons. This was actually a tremendous amount of fun. The elephants had a habit of spraying water at people, the giraffes seemed to enjoy licking tourists as much as they liked eating food, and the baboons would compete for bananas by doing tricks (such as flips or handstands). The rhinos were pretty chill though.

Elephants get awfully grabby. No apples were safe.

Kat made a new friend, and may need to have an uncomfortable talk with her parents.

The rhinos were more my speed. They showed up, they got fed. No theatrics.

"Entertain me or starve, puny monkeys."

We had other chances to get up-close-and-personal with the local fauna. The hall of insects was hands-on, much to Amelia’s delight – she did minor in biology, after all. We also got to feed archer fish, who spit water at dangling food to make it fall into the water (they did this much too quickly to get a photo, unfortunately). Not being done with elephant-based amusement, we also hitched a ride on one of our well-fed pachyderm pals later in the day.

Before you make any comments, remember: the one on the right is my wife.

I'm not sure why we needed a driver; the elephant seemed to remember the correct route.

Now, I know earlier that I said that this blog isn’t really about photos of flowers, and the same thinking applies to photos of animals. That is why the above photos are all of us doing cool stuff with animals (insofar as “giving food to” is “doing cool stuff with”).

But.

We got some really amazing photos of animals. We took over 1700 photos over the course of 6.5 hours, and we dearly love just about all of them. With that in mind, here are four of my favourite photos of animals from our day at the Singapore Zoo.

I learned a lot about my camera in the half-hour it took to set up this shot.

Not a technically amazing photo, but it's full of adorable baby monkey!

"Pleasssssssssed to meet you."

Even Komodo dragons can have lazy Sundays.

Having fully explored the Singapore Zoo, we returned to the airport and flew back to Hong Kong. Next week is an off-week, meaning that we’ll be exploring Hong Kong rather than travelling to even-more-exotic locales. We’re thinking we’ll travel to Kowloon, located in the north.

This week we mostly kicked back and relaxed in Hong Kong itself. Aside from generally getting to know our neighborhood, Amelia and I went to Lantau Island with some friends from school. Kat was in Malaysia for the weekend, so she was stuck in Kuala Lumpur with adorable monkeys and elephants (and Patrick, another friend from school) instead of hanging out with us. She won’t make that mistake again, I’m sure.

Lantau Island is like the Buddhist Rio de Janeiro, insofar as it has a gigantic statue of Buddha. Being as I know almost nothing else about Rio de Janeiro (aside from being reasonably certain that it is not in Hong Kong), I’m afraid I won’t be able to expand on that analogy for you. Instead of telling you how Lantau island is like or unlike Rio de Janeiro, from this point on I will just have to tell you what Lantau Island is like and let you take it from there.

I hear that Wikipedia has a pretty good entry on Rio de Janeiro. Maybe you can draw the comparisons yourself?

We didn’t leap right into Big-Buddha-viewing mode, of course. That would be like having dessert first – not something I would admit to in such a public forum. Instead, like the mature and responsible adults that we are, we scheduled our day so as to see as much of the island as possible, which required that the Buddha go last.

We first took the ferry across from Hong Kong Island to Discovery Bay, an idyllic tropical paradise on the eastern end of Lantau that is populated predominantly by expats (read: British Commonwealth expats).

Perhaps the Chinese lanterns have been put up as a cover?

It’s a little striking to go from the crowded, noisy, urban, sometimes-dilapidated and mostly Chinese-inhabited streets of busy Hong Kong to the pristine beaches and clean, open, modern spaces of mostly-European “Dbay”.

They actually call it that. I am not making any uncouth insinuations.

I don't get it. Why are there trees? Is there, like, a 7-Eleven hidden in the middle there?

We caught a bus across the island to Tai O, a historic fishing village on the western end of the island. It has, for the most part, resisted the push towards urbanization. As far as I can tell, this has mostly been by virtue of having few inhabitants and no money.

Guess how many expats live here.

We disembarked right next to the docks, where local entrepreneurs were advertising motorboat rides featuring pink dolphin sightings. Robbie, one of our companions, is a pretty enterprising guy himself. After negotiating a 20% group discount off of the roughly CAD$2.50 ticket price, he tried to finagle a guarantee of pink dolphin sightings. No such guarantee was obtained. This did not dissuade the emboldened Robbie from guaranteeing such a sighting to the group.

I think you know where I’m going with this.

We saw some lovely coastline, but dolphins were not to be seen.

As a consequence, we-the-group have decided that Robbie owes us a pink dolphin sighting. In particular, we’re now pretty sure that he is legally required to dress up as one for Halloween (which we will be meeting up for in Japan). I’ll let you know if he is a man of his word.

Rob is on the right, Eric (and his pills – more on that later) are on the left, and Thaddy's in the middle.

Despite its challenges, Tai O did not lack for charm. The tiny village housed a local heritage museum (mostly showcasing traditional fishing methods) and was jam-packed with street vendors and their wares.

Step 1: Get fish. Step 2: ???. Step 3: Profit.

The inhabitants clearly took pride in their village; their street-side shrines were well-tended, and they had a little Catholic Church that was startlingly well-maintained.

Relative to most of its Hong Kong siblings, this shrine is straight-up baller.

Actual name: Our Lady of Perpetual Help. The Catholic Church knows its market.

Amelia and I ended up buying some mystery meat and sharing it with our friends. After each of us had tried it, we decided that it was chicken (despite its somewhat pork-y flavor). This was for Eric’s benefit, as he would prefer to keep his mystery meats kosher.

As delicious as our mystery meat was, it was not very interesting to look at. Instead, here is a picture of something that we did not buy:

Googly eyes: Nature's most potent natural defense.

Having satisfied our curiosity and our hunger, we hopped on to another bus and were whisked away to Ngong Ping, which is the tiny tourist village next to the Po Lin Monastery. The Monastery previously built and currently manages the Big Buddha statue.

Ngong Ping's claim to fame: You can sort of see the Big Buddha from there.

Not having much interest in the tourist town, we made our way to the Big Buddha. We quickly discovered two of the consequences of building a giant statue on top of a mountain: (1) you have to climb the mountain to get to the statue, and (2) no matter how far you have to go, the giant statue always looks deceptively close. Luckily, the bus had taken us most of the way up the mountain, so we only had to climb for a long time (as opposed to a really long time).

See how happy I am? Well, I haven't climbed to the Buddha yet.

Amelia wasn’t feeling so well, but luckily Eric is not afraid of conforming to stereotypes. With the kind of foresight that only a hypochondriac can have, he had transformed his travel bag into a small pharmacy. With Eric’s (and Pfizer’s) help, the whole group made it up the mountain without complaint.

It’s hard to give a sense of scale to the Buddha. Suffice it to say that it’s pretty big.

Notice Amelia in the bottom-right. The Buddha is a fair ways behind her.

The dias beneath the Buddha houses a small museum and holy site. For me, it was actually the highlight of the trip; there were some really breathtaking figurines and relics. Unfortunately, no photos were allowed throughout the complex.

We headed down the mountain to the Po Lin monastery, home of a number of shrines and a reasonably popular vegetarian restaurant.

The shrines were very nice. We did not investigate the restaurant.

The shrines were decked out in lanterns and sculptures and all manner of ornamentation. Fortunately for us, photography was permitted in the monastery. I don’t know what this says about where the monastery lies on the spectrum of Buddhist holy sites.

The interior decorations of the monastery were pretty intense.

Three golden gods in one of the monastery's shrines.

This is a doorframe. They take architecture pretty seriously at Po Lin.

Craving food (and not considering vegetarian fare to be included in that term), we returned to Ngong Ping for delicious, meat-based dishes. We were not dissuaded from this goal even by the highly adorable animals that the monks had cleverly positioned near the village gates.

I know what you're thinking: Ox-tail soup would be amazing right now.

We had our dinner (Amelia and I had pizza and a lamb-and-chicken falafel, if you’re curious) and got in line for a cable car down to the nearest MTR station (which, as you may recall, is the subway in Hong Kong). There were two lines that stretched out of the cable car building, each apparently of equal length: the regular line and the Crystal Cabin line. We chose the Crystal Cabin lift, which was slightly more expensive but seemed to be moving slightly faster.

Once inside the cable car building, we realized that this was a mistake.

See all those people? All but the rightmost line are queueing for the Crystal Cabin.

It turned out that the Crystal Cabin line was much, much longer than the regular line. It took us over 90 minutes to get  into a cable car. Moreover, it turned out that the benefit of the Crystal Cabin was the glass floor – a feature not enjoyed by the afeared-of-heights among us, and not useful to the shutterbugs at that late and dark hour.

Our cable cars meandered above the forested mountains for some time before finding their way to the urban northern end of Lantau Island.

Note that we did not take these photos through the floor of our cable car.

The cable car station is situated near to the MTR station, but their proximity did not prevent us from stopping at a McDonald’s for ice cream. Having sated both our eyes and our bellies, we piled on to the MTR and headed home.

This was just one day of a relatively sedate four-day weekend. Our lax schedule was no accident. Next weekend we will be traipsing through Singapore for all four days, burning up all the energy we saved this week. Expect a lengthy post.

[Editor's Note: My computer was out of commission for a while, so I am even further behind on the blog. It's back in working order now, so there will be new posts, but I'll be in Japan for the next few weeks, so they might take a while.]

The Chinese know how to kick off a school semester – with a holiday in the second week of classes. And don’t say “What about Labour Day?” – I mean a real holiday, with celebrations and traditions and history. This week we celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival (or Moon Festival), one of the three big seasonal festivals in Chinese culture. It’s a pretty big deal here – it’s like an amalgamation of Valentine’s Day, New Year’s Eve and Thanksgiving, except that it has floating lanterns.

Not all of the lanterns floated, but we didn't hold that against them

Associated with the Mid-Autumn Festival is the consumption of mooncakes, which are often given as gifts. We ate a fair number of these cakes in the days leading up to the festival, though we didn’t get any on this particular occasion. The festival also involves lighting lanterns, putting scraps of paper inside them (they represent wishes) and letting them fly away. This connection to lanterns has led to some pretty intense lantern-based displays in the modern Mid-Autumn Festival.

This is the world's largest lantern sculpture. It had a Guinness World Records certificate and everything.

These bad boys were all over the place.

Since the festival happens at night, the day of the holiday is still a working day (although many employers let workers out early). Much like New Year’s Day, the celebrations are held in the evening and the day after the festival is a day off for most people, including students. And, much like Valentine’s Day, it is customary to engage in a little matchmaking between young single people during the festival. Families will lay out picnic blankets in parks, light candles, eat mooncake, send off lanterns and just generally have a good time.

I assume the matchmaking is a ploy to get the parents some quiet time together.

You may be familiar with those dancing dragon displays from Chinese New Year celebrations. They had those here, except that the dragons were built out of lit incense sticks. As a result, in addition to being fragrant, they were also on fire (albeit a subdued, ember-y fire). Due to the lighting conditions, my photos of this all look like orange smears above a sea of Chinese heads, so you’ll have to use your imagination. Or Google, which is pretty much the same thing.

Victoria Park was a popular spot for moon-related festivities.

We may not have been able to get the same level of enjoyment out of the festival as the locals, but we had an excellent time nonetheless.

The Mid-Autumn Festival was on Tuesday. On Wednesday we had our second (and last) day of classes for the week. This left us with four days in which we had no obligations and all of Asia to explore.

So, naturally, we went to Macau for the weekend.

On paper, Macau is a lot like Hong Kong. It’s an island city that is operated as a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (that’s code for “capitalist”), and it’s located in roughly the same place – only an hour away by ferry. There are notable differences, however. Macau was colonized by the Portuguese (not the British, as in Hong Kong), its population and land area are mere fractions of Hong Kong’s (roughly 10% and 2.5%, respectively), and it is absolutely covered in casinos. That last point has lead some to call Macau the Vegas of the East.

We had been planning on going to Macau for some time, so before leaving Canada we had purchased ferry tickets from Groupon‘s Hong Kong associate, uBuyiBuy. Unfortunately, we discovered that the ferry company in question had gone out of business the day before we arrived at the ferry docks. They posted a very contrite (and very upset) sign outside their ticket kiosk blaming ferry-licensing authorities for refusing to provide the licenses that the agency had apparently been promised.

Groupon followed up with an e-mail detailing how to get a refund, so all was well.

Luckily, there were several ferry companies at the pier. We purchased discounted last-minute ferry tickets from a nearby kiosk and rushed to our ferry. We had a short moment of panic while we looked for Amelia’s missing ticket (it was hiding at the Immigration desk), but we made it on with seconds to spare.

I think this captures our mix of excitement (Amelia) and exhaustion (Kat, behind).

Just an hour later, we found ourselves standing on a corresponding ferry pier in Macau.

The casinos were poised to snatch up incoming tourists.

We caught a shuttle to our hotel (it was free!), checked in, got a bite to eat, and caught a cab over to the Venetian. The Venetian is the largest casino in the world, and is the focal point of Macau’s casino industry. Macau’s 34 casinos collectively pull in twice as much cash as their Las Vegas competitors, so perhaps Vegas should be called the Macau of the West.

I assume that everyone in Venice has one of these in their lobby.

Despite being in the largest casino in the world, we weren’t interested in gambling that evening. We wandered the Venetian’s hallways for a while before succumbing to hunger. We stopped in at a Japanese restaurant called “Edo”, which is a discount sushi brand that we recognized from back home.

“Edo” is not a discount brand in Macao. In fact, as we would later find out, it is hard to find a more expensive Japanese restaurant in Macau than Edo. Of course, once our hungry and stubborn selves were seated, we were in it to win it. And, insofar as it is possible to “win” dinner, I think that we probably did.

Granted, the sushi was much better than Canadian Edo.

That evening we booked a tour for the following day and attempted to go to a karaoke bar. We asked Reggie, the concierge, for directions to the nearest karaoke place and – in case that didn’t work out – directions to the nearest “disco” place. Being as I left my zoot suit and pompadour back in Canada, I hoped that “disco” meant “dancing” and not “Saturday Night Fever”.

There were some slightly crossed wires, as Reggie seemed to be under the impression that we wanted to do both. As we left towards the karaoke place he ran after us, saying that he’d be off in five minutes and asking if we’d like him to come dancing with us. Kat, believing that he meant that he would be glad to guide us to the bar, said simply “No, we’re good.” Reggie, to his credit, took the rejection like a man. Amelia and I (mostly I) spent the rest of the night ridiculing her for her cold-hearted dismissal of our favourite concierge. Unfortunately, ”the rest of the night” was not very long at all, as we were thwarted by the nearest bar’s private-room-only policy (which was expensive for a group of merely three). Dancing seemed empty without Reggie, so we decided to turn in for the night instead.

The next day we went on a tour of Macau. It was very interesting. For instance, we learned that the first temple that we visited is called “A-Ma”. When Portuguese explorers arrived in the area, they asked the locals what the place was called. Assuming that the explorers were asking about the big temple, the locals responded “A-Ma”, which sounded like “Macao” to the Portuguese.

If I had a much weaker desire to live, I would make a joke here regarding the attentiveness of the Portuguese. I am sure that my half-Portuguese wife will appreciate my restraint.

The temple was pretty classy.

We met an Indian fellow on the tour who was very charismatic. Apparently he runs some sort of business back home, and was taking a vacation to Macau to learn about the local culture. He discussed the benefits of salsa dancing and the power of prayer with equal fervor.

He was certainly enjoyable company.

We also went to a museum and stopped by the ruins of St. Paul’s Cathedral, which is really just the front façade of a cathedral that burned down in a fire a couple hundred years ago. Apparently it’s still a pretty big deal.

As a tourist, it's kind of like "Well, here's the wall. Now what?"

Apparently "due reverence" means no flipping pizzas. We begrudgingly complied.

We continued our tour at the Fisherman’s Wharf, which (in true Vegas style) is actually a series of chintzy one-block replicas of various European architectural styles.

Who doesn't love a little chintzy decor, though?

The wharves included a Coliseum-styled amphitheater, which was pretty rad.

"THIS IS SPAR– Wait, it's Macau, never mind."

While we were reliving the heady days of the Roman Empire, Kat was approached for more “Look, it’s a blond white girl!” photos. Even in Macau, with its history of European control, Kat appears to be an exotic commodity.

Perhaps Kat's choice of sunglasses is already affecting local fashions?

Up until this point we’d been having a pretty safe and relaxing day, so we decided to mix it up a bit by going to the top of the Macau Tower and jumping off. Although, to be fair, by “jumping” I mean “bungee jumping”, and by “we” I mean “Kat”. I will totally understand if you thought that I might jump as well, what with my persona of a fearless adventurer. It’s just that bungee jumping is expensive, you know?

Also, it involves heights, plus I have been lead to believe that high wind-speeds might muss up my hair. Suffice it to say that I had many legitimate and not-at-all-unmanly reasons not to go.

The signs advertised "no fatalities", but they didn't mention "disfigurations".

After Kat and I were finished with risking our lives (Kat to gravity, me to heart palpitations), Amelia lead us to a ice-based amusement… thing. It was actually pretty awesome. It was run by Russians, and the premise was “Look, you can be surrounded by ice (and go tobogganing!)”. As Canadians who were a long, long way from home, we found this very appealing.

They dressed us up in adorable red coats and boots, but neither fit me. Hence the Hawaiian look.

We went out that evening for dinner at a classic Portuguese restaurant called “Antonio’s”. We foolishly did not bring any cameras except for Kat’s point-and-shoot, which decided at that moment that it didn’t need a functional screen. This was unfortunate, as the chef actually came out and made dessert, crepes suzette, right in front of us. He even got Kat to pour various alcohols into the flaming pan, making our lack of reliable photographic equipment doubly tragic.

This is the best shot that came out of the evening. The rest are much worse.

The next day started out as a relatively lazy one. We slept in, had a late breakfast and went swimming in our hotel’s pool (or, at least, the ladies did – I’ve go blogging to do). Then we headed back to the Venetian to see Zaia, a Cirque du Soleil show.

Featuring a girl, a balloon, …

A little bit of whimsy, …

And plenty of costumes.

After the show we took a gondola ride down one of the Venetian’s several canals. Our gondolier, we discovered, is an Italian musician who had been brought to Macau for a six month contract by the Venetian. This was surprising, as we had assumed that everything was as fake as the canals.

Forget lungs, I'm curious about the kind of upper-arm strength one gets from this job.

Afterwards we ate at a gourmet place called “Kraze Burgers” (“REAL AMERICAN BURGERS!”). I am not joking about the gourmet part – Western food is thought to be pretty high-class over here. We then headed back to the Macau Tower so that Amelia could take a shot at risking her life.

The bay next to the tower was playing host to a fireworks competition between Austria and Taiwan that evening. We went up to the SkyWalk X to watch it. The SkyWalk X works like this: there is a walking platform encircling the uppermost part of the tower (in the same spot at the bungee jumping platform). There are no guard-rails or walls to hold you in. There is a rail above you, to which you are tethered. By locking your harness (did I mention that the tether is not of fixed length?) you can literally swing out over the city of Macau, with nothing but a half-kilo of rope keeping you from succumbing to gravity in a most distressing way.

Amelia swung out over Macau. Running start and everything. There was no platform beneath her, despite the fact that the platform had been placed there specifically for the purpose of being beneath people.

It may surprise you to discover that I, your intrepid blogger, did no such thing.

We couldn't bring our own cameras out, so here's one that a staffer took of us.

We headed down to catch the tail end of a public concert. We stopped to gawk briefly at some wedding photos. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before (Google tells me that I haven’t), but wedding photos are sort of a big deal in Asia. Almost everywhere we go, people are getting wedding photos taken. The Great Wall, for instance. City walls. Subways. The Coliseum, from earlier. And now, apparently, at a public concert at the base of the Macau Tower. It seems odd to me that the brides (and it’s always brides, we’ve hardly seen any shoots with grooms) don’t mind being photographed in the middle of a sea of people, but I suppose it’s just a different cultural norm.

Anyways, I chatted with one of the photographers. She told me that it was quite popular to stage additional wedding photos in multiple wedding gowns long after the wedding date (even years after). It’s a whole cottage industry; hire a team, rent a dress, and go somewhere fantastic for the day. This particular lady had wanted shots during the fireworks, so here she was. I can see the appeal.

Oh, right, the fireworks competition. In case you were wondering, Taiwan crushed it. No contest.

We wandered off and found ourselves in a bar with seating on the street’s edge. We ordered some appetizers and chatted for a while. Eventually Kat spotted a nearby table playing a dice game that she didn’t recognize. She went over, introduced herself, and learned to play. Eventually Amelia and I joined. We ended up playing dice and chatting until 4am.

They're only smiling 'cause I went easy on them in the dice game.

Our companions for the evening were three Japanese folks who all happened to work at a Japanese restaurant. They were, in fact, a sake-and-wine sommelier (Sachii), the manager (Taku), and a chef (Hiro); if you’re wondering which is which, they are arranged in the same order in the photo above. We compared notes on life as a sushi chef vs. the perpetual adolescence of postgraduate schooling. From the sound of it, Hiro’s training was somewhat more demanding than law school. The Japanese take their sushi seriously.

They’re opening a new restaurant in Hong Kong soon, so we’re hoping to make it to the grand opening.

The next day started even later than the previous one. It was also our last in Macau, so we only got one big activity in – a show at the House of Dancing Water, located in the City of Dreams (a multi-hotel complex on a similar scale to the Venetian). Like Zaia, this was an acrobatic spectacular. Unlike Zaia, the stage is a CAD$300 million aquatic contraption that manages to be a diving pool one moment and solid ground the next.

Clearly the choreographer felt obliged to include a lot of diving. And a pirate ship.

We all preferred Zaia to the House of the Dancing Water’s show, but I was the only one to find the latter repetitive and boring. Amelia enjoyed it quite a lot, and in Kat’s mind Zaia only won out by the thinnest of margins. Clearly my companions lack your humble blogger’s rather refined taste.

After the show we spent some time in the City of Dreams before boarding the ferry to Hong Kong. There was no drama this time – in particular, no shuttered agencies and no missing tickets. Our four days in Macau had come to an end, leaving just enough time to get in some course readings for classes the next day.

Amelia and I have adopted an every-other-weekend approach to traveling outside of Hong Kong, so next weekend we will be visiting the Lantau Island district of Hong Kong. I hear that they have a really big statue of Buddha there, so it should be pretty exciting.

We’ve now been in Hong Kong for a week (well, a week and a half), and it is treating us well. It has been a period of gradual adaptation and has featured markedly less adventure than the preceding weeks. But that doesn’t mean that there has been no adventure. We’ve been to Disneyland and mountaintops and all manner of local tomfoolery.

And I’ll get to those things. But our time in Hong Kong began with school, and so too will this update.

When last you heard from me we had just arrived via a late-night flight from Beijing. According to my calendar, the law school’s orientation was the following day at 11am. I left alone in the morning, as Kat was not feeling well – apparently all the travelling was catching up to her.

This left me with the task of finding a route to and around HKU. According to Google Maps (the closest thing to an arbiter of absolute truth that is known to humankind), the trip to the scheduled lecture hall should take about 15 minutes. I took an hour. There are two reasons for this.

The city seems so innocent. It is a facade. Not on the buildings though – that's legit.

 

The first is Hong Kong’s urban planning. It turns out that Hong Kong Island is actually a (presumably-volcanic) mountain with a thin outlying edge of level ground. The city of Hong Kong is clustered primarily along the northern (and to a lesser degree north-western) part of this outlying region. And I do mean “clustered” – they’ve managed to cram just over a million people into a 42 square-kilometre strip along the north end of the island.

Not everything is on this more-or-less level strip of land. HKU certainly isn’t. Some genius decided to put it mid-way up the north face of the mountain. The area immediately between our apartment and HKU is so steep that the roads running north-south from the waterfront (where we are) towards HKU are all interrupted by cliff faces or stairs. Buses cannot take stairs. This means that the route to HKU involves catching a bus to the east, and then climbing a mountain. Except that the mountain face is covered in buildings that double as maze walls. In short, getting to HKU was a real treat.

Despite taking longer than expected, I arrived at HKU with time to spare. This brings me to the second reason that the trip took so long.

I’m not sure how to describe the layout of HKU (and Hong Kong generally). I’ve been trying to think of a good analogy, but the best I’ve come up with is some combination of a fraudulently obtained certificate in urban planning and an architect who is blind and also hates me personally (and is maybe the devil?). Kat likens it to a school designed by Dr. Seuss. Amelia prefers to think of Hong Kong generally as a thousand jenga games played by a mad architect and absentee physics.

 

They have nice a nice garden in the centre square, though.

 

Anyways, I navigated the byzantine routes of HKU and arrived at the lecture hall at 11am sharp. At that time I discovered two things: (a) my time-zone math needs some work and (b) orientation had started an hour ago.

I had arrived in time to take in some of the lectures directed at first year law students. I saw the Dean’s Lecture (which included a fascinating discussion of China’s One Country Two Systems policy) and sat in on the first half of another lecture on legal reasoning and value systems in law. I stuck out like a sore thumb, being both noticeably older and caucasian. This inspired curiosity in both of the professors, who came by during a break to chat about differences between Canadian and Hong Kong law school culture (one of them was Canadian) and their general philosophy of teaching. Both professors noted that Hong Kong students tend to be a little timid at first, due both to their tender age (straight out of high school!) and the local culture. The class exercises all focused on getting the students to interact in groups other than their initial cliques.

I took part in the class, which means that I, too, got assigned to little groups. This gave the local students a chance to give in to their obvious curiosity – up until now, they had all been visibly afraid to make contact with the big, old, scary white guy. Once I got placed in a group, they were asking about Canada, my academic background, my travel plans, and my opinions on the various questions that we had been given by the professors. Especially that last one. I would soon discover that the students were articulate, intelligent, logical thinkers, but getting them to take the first step into making contributions to the group was like pulling teeth. No one wanted to look stupid. Eventually, after some prodding, they opened up and began saying some really clever stuff, which made me feel like a proud parent (in a totally non-creepy way, of course).

I’ve realized that I’ve reached that age where I’ve started being impressed by “the next generation”. They just seemed so smart, and they were so well-mannered, and their outfits were so adorable. By which I mean they were all wearing identical black-and-white suits, for which the instructors chided them.

 

Moments later, they'd all changed, or at least ditched their jackets. They're so keen, it's sweet.

 

I headed home, and proceeded to do just about nothing for the next several days.

 

Where "just about nothing" includes conquering civilizations and watching several seasons of Chuck.

 

We did leave occasionally for food and other sustenance.

 

Kat discovered that "food" has a slightly wider definition here. She was not unpleased.

 

Eventually Kat’s cousin, Iris (who you may remember) came in to town with a friend for a couple of days. We met up and went off to Victoria Peak, which rests atop the mountain that dominates Hong Kong Island. For one terrified moment I thought that this would involve walking up the mountain that has become my nemesis, but it turns out that there is a tram. It travels uphill at an absurdly steep angle, but at least there’s no walking. It also allows Chinese people on, which it started doing much more recently than you might think. Ah, colonialism.

Upon reaching Victoria Peak (or simply “The Peak”, as it is known) we strolled through its lush mountaintop trails and looked out over the city. We had a lovely time chatting, walking and snapping photos.

 

I promised you lush mountaintop trails, did I not?

 

The Peak has majestic scenery to spare.

 

There were also a number of private residences on the path. One of them had a statue out front.

 

Kat headed out to Lantau Island the next day with Iris. Lantau is home to Hong Kong’s historic airport and even more historic monastery and giant Buddha statue. Amelia and I were not so foolish as to allow our jaunt to reignite our passion for travel, however. We spent the rest of our weekend safely ensconced in our apartment, followed by the first law school lectures for both Kat and me. They were enjoyable, but are also the topic of another post entirely.

After the conclusion of our whirlwind week of classes we decided to celebrate with a trip to Disneyland. Amelia was very excited. Excited by everything, really. Excited by the train, excited by the train station, excited by the entrance gate, excited by the ticket kiosks.

 

The train to Disneyland seemed subtly different.

 

Can you see the handles hanging from the ceiling? The train was 100% committed to the brand.

 

Amelia hangs out (but not ten) with Mickey, Goofy and Monstro.

 

City Hall doubled as the entrance gates. No petitioners approached Disneyland's seat of government.

 

Those with particularly sharp eyes and keen minds will have noticed that each of those things lies outside of Disneyland itself, so perhaps you can imagine her demeanour throughout the rest of the trip.

Just in case you can’t, however, I will show you the twenty-odd photos (and three videos!) that best encapsulate our trip. There are many, many more, including several that each of Amelia, Kat and I dearly love. Trimming down the list to a digestible length has been a real challenge. I hope you appreciate it.

 

We had lunch at a café on Main Street, USA. The neighbouring table was very noisy.

 

Most of my photos focus on Amelia (hey, she’s my wife, it’s my prerogative), but I’ve got some photos of Kat too.

 

Not pictured: Kat planting a kiss on Mickey's cheek. It seemed wrong – he is much, much older.

 

We moved from the central Main Street, USA, portion of Disneyland to one of the three outlying themed zones – Tomorrowland. It was, as you have likely guessed, futuristic.

 

We fought the Zurg Menace. It was a scored ride, and I won. Pew pew.

 

There was an “Autopia” ride that let you drive around. We realized, too late, that Autopia would only really be interesting to children. For us big folks, it was just driving a very slow, rail-guided car.

 

The fact that the car was guided by rails did not seem to make Amelia's driving any safer.

 

We left Tomorrowland and ran right in to the daily Flights of Fantasy parade.

 

These ladies were a big hit. They're just crazy about Disney princesses in Hong Kong.

 

 

After the parade we wandered in to Fantasyland’s Storybook Theatre to see “The Golden Mickeys”, which is a musical masquerading as an awards show. Despite referring to things like the “Award for Best Hero”, none were handed out – the announcer kept getting distracted.

 

Part awards show, part musical, part idol-worship.

 

Kat and I had both been scarred by “It’s a Small World After All” rides as children, so we got Amelia to ride it. She actually enjoyed it. Perhaps it only truly affects the tender-aged.

 

As excited as Amelia was, she still did not feel like a giant. Because she is not very tall; get it?

 

We snacked on ice cream just outside the Small World ride.

 

We rode on the Mad Hatter's Teacups. I was very excited to get whipped around at high speeds.

 

 

Amelia rode on her first carousel with grace and poise. Also a stabilizing pole.

 

We saw Mickey’s Philharmagic. It was a musical attraction in a specialized movie theatre. The theatre was pretty great. It came with classy 3D opera glasses, but that was only the beginning. When Donald held out a pie, the room filled with the scent of apple pie. When magic mops swept (mopped?) across the screen and dumped buckets of water on poor Donald’s head, we got sprinkled with droplets of water. When Lumiere’s candles got blown out, we received a gust of wind. It was very cleverly done, and we were thoroughly impressed.

 

Unfortunately, I do not have any photos of the pie-smell or wind-gusts.

 

There was a photo op with Tinkerbell outside. Kat is a big Tink fan, so we queued up and I snapped some photos of the ladies. Tinkerbell asked if I’d like to be in a photo, and I declined. She was having none of that business. In true Tinkerbell fashion, she stormed right up and ordered me into position.

 

I think this photo pretty accurately reflects the ladies' opinions on my party-pooping.

 

We hopped into a honey pot and experienced a very gusty day.

 

We left Fantasyland and headed in to Adventureland. We had, by this point, been in Disneyland for most of the day, and it was starting to get dark. This was OK, because Adventureland is looks best at night.

 

It was like a jungle cruise, only with more security and less malaria.

 

We took a ferry across the water to Tarzan’s treehouse. Stop for a second. Think about that. We took a ferry to a treehouse. How intense is that?

 

I hadn't known that Tarzan was so familiar with local building codes.

 

Amelia made a friend in the treehouse.

 

Kat also made friends. It was a tearful good-bye.

 

Fun for the whole family. Even your gothy, death-obsessed teenager.

 

As the day came to a close, we filed back in to the centre of the park, where Main Street, USA, meets the various themed areas. This is where Cinderella’s Castle (better known as Disney Castle) is situated, and it is above that castle that the nightly fireworks display occurs. Tonight was no exception.

 

They had a light show on the castle's exterior running up to the fireworks.

 

 

After all the excitement we stopped by a souvenir shop, where Kat bought some things. While Amelia and I were waiting by the counter, we noticed that the lone pair of hats sitting next to us carried a special message from the universe.

 

It might look like there are two L's, but the second one's definitely an "i". Clearly, we are meant to be.

 

And with that, our visit to Hong Kong’s Disneyland was over. There will be more – one-year passes are only about 10% more than one-day passes for students, so we paid the tiny premium for a-la-carte magic.

We took the subway back to Hong Kong, where we had a lovely gourmet Italian meal to celebrate our adventure. We were seated on the terrace and had a lovely view, but the photos did not turn out. More’s the pity.

And so ended our first frenetic, lofty, stomach-churning, culture-observing, photo-snapping week in Hong Kong. Well, a week plus a few days. Returning mid-week means that the numbers need to get fudged somewhere.

Now that we’ve learned about living on mountaintops and fantasy worlds, perhaps we’ll learn a few things about living in Hong Kong in the weeks to come. I’ll keep you posted.

We took it easy on our last day in Beijing. Our flight was scheduled for 8:30pm, meaning that we could spend most of our day wandering around the city.

We checked out of our hotel, stowed our luggage with reception, and headed out in search of food. We wandered down Wanfujing Road, a major thoroughfare near our hotel. It was there that we gave in to temptation.

There are a few Western fast-food brands that seem to be doing very well in China. Regular readers of this blog have already seen our visit to McDonald’s. The golden arches are everywhere, which is hardly surprising. What is surprising (at least to me) is the ubiquity of the Colonel. KFC is everywhere, and their locations are always packed. It was just such a venue that we decided to explore for our last breakfast in the PRC.

We were so busy fighting for seats that I didn't even snap a decent photo.

KFC outlets were everywhere in the cities that we’ve visited in China. They appear to be far more numerous, and far more densely packed, than they are back in Vancouver. The success of KFC is dwarfed, however, by the ascendency of Häagen-Dazs. Never before in my life have I seen so many ads for gourmet American ice cream with faux-Scandinavian branding. They sell it in nearly every grocery and convenience store that we’ve seen, and we’ve managed to stumble across several retail locations in each city we’ve been in. Häagen-Dazs is inescapable here.

As it happens, Kat and I stopped in to a Häagen-Dazs store to cap off our first full day in China. A combination of poor memory and chocolate-induced coma prevented me from informing you of it at the time. I suppose that now is as good a time as any to redeem myself.

Häagen-Dazs loves chocolate almost as much as it loves linguistically-questionable umlauts.

Where were we? Right, KFC. It was all right. After feasting on a variety of deep-fried-chicken-based products we went in search of improved luggage for Amelia, who had arrived in the PRC with a duffel bag that was more hole than whole. We found a fancy department store just down the street. Wanfujing is a fairly fancy street, which (in China) is not mutually exclusive with being covered in KFC outlets.

The store used a federated structure that I’ve seen a lot in China. Unlike the Bay (a popular Canadian department store), where all employees are Bay employees, each section of floorspace was dedicated to a single brand, and a brand representative did the job of trying to sell you the goods. I imagine that this is a somewhat-more-aggressive version of how high-end cosmetics are handled in Canada, except that the whole store operated like this, including the candy and luggage areas.

Anyways, Amelia ran the gauntlet of luggage salespeople, chose a piece, and headed back to the hotel to consolidate her luggage into this new container. Kat discovered that the ground-floor lounge served drinks and I discovered that it came with free wifi, so we resolved to rest in air-conditioned bliss for a little while.

Well, I rested. The ladies got to packing.

While we were there we put in a Skype call to our good friend Shawn Nakashima, who is far too hardcore to be asleep at 2am (in his local timezone). Amelia and I were very excited to be able to talk to our good friend back home. We talked about our trip to China as well as our upcoming trip to Japan. It would be awesome if Shawn (or, as he is better known, Naka) could join us.

After repacking and Skyping and so on we decided to head out in search of a highly-recommended night market that apparently opens at 3pm. I suppose “afternoon market” doesn’t have the same level of caché. We did not find it, but we did find some bikes where we thought that it should be.

If the bikes had been for sale, we could have called this a partial success.

We returned to our hotel defeated, but in good spirits. Hoping to miss Beijing’s rush-hour subway traffic (which appears to last for five hours), we decided to head up to the airport early and relax. So we did. Soon we were lounging in a café situated next to our departure gate, eating lasagne and melon and burgers and such.

The Western food soothed our souls.

We got on our flight, which was uneventful. It did have one highlight, though:

I told you, it's inescapable.

Our plane touched down in Hong Kong mere minutes before midnight. From this point on, Kat and were practically old hands. We hailed a cab, got to our apartment, and went to sleep.

Tomorrow is orientation day at HKU. We’re hoping to take things a little slower once we’re in Hong Kong, so I’ll probably be transitioning to a weekly update schedule.

I’m cheating a little bit here, because our story actually begins on the previous day. After returning to the hotel, but before going to sleep, we set to work arranging our transportation to and from the Great Wall for the following day.

This was far more stressful than we had expected.

Kat’s Lonely Planet guide assured us that hiring a car (with driver) for the day should cost no more than ¥400 (about CAD$65). We asked at our hotel’s reception desk if they could arrange a car for us in the morning, but they told us that bookings could only be made through the hotel’s business centre. Upon enquiring at the business centre, we were told that they only did car bookings through one company, and the cheapest car was ¥800 for the day. We (by which I mean Kat) attempted to negotiate a lower price, but they were unyielding.

Our alternatives were to head to a different hotel the next morning and hope for a better deal, or catch the public bus and spend a few more hours of our day in transit. I was in favour of swallowing our pride and paying the inflated price in order to maximize the use of our remaining time in Beijing. Amelia wanted to try heading down alone and seeing if she could get a lower, Asians-only price. Kat, on the other hand, was fed up with being scammed, and began to succumb to what she termed “culture shock”. The culture in question was the one that appeared to be constantly trying to lie, cheat and steal its way into our wallets. Perhaps “severe culture aggravation” would be a better term.

Perhaps ignorance would have been bliss.

Sleep being nature’s best coping mechanism, we left the planning for the morning and went to bed. Upon waking, Amelia headed down to try to get a lower price. She did not, so we paid the full fee, went to breakfast, and then hopped in our rented car.

We arrived in Mutianyu, which is about an hour away (by car) from our hotel. The Mutianyu section of wall is mostly restored and is relatively well-frequented by tourists, although it is apparently not as ridiculously crowded as the Badaling section of the wall. Be that as it may, the Mutianyu section of wall is certainly popular enough to ensure that the area leading up to the entrance is stuffed full with vendors selling clothing and knick-knacks.

The two white folk were like fish in a barrel. An adorable barrel.

Although we did not buy any goods on our way up, the ladies did employ the services of a costumed man for some photo ops. He was dressed as a soldier or warlord or some such thing. He posed, engaged in mock combat and was generally a good sport.

Can you spot the non-historical element of this photo?

Amelia will take any chance she can get to hone her ninja-assassin skills.

We passed through the toll-booth entrance to the path that leads to the Great Wall. We weren’t sure what we were expecting, but it certainly wasn’t an immaculate garden with waterfalls, bridges and ducks.

I guess the Wall was put up to protect this great garden.

We took some time out of our Wall-seeing to gawk at some ducks.

Much like the Summer Palace, the entry garden also featured caverns. These ones were more explicitly tourist-oriented, with artificial lights, pathways and even electrical outlets installed. The stalagmites and stalactites looked legit, though, and we greatly enjoyed ourselves.

I don't think that the signage is the result of a natural formation.

We left the cave and found some stairs that lead to the Great Wall. Actually, “some stairs” might not be entirely accurate. The Chinese generals who supervised its construction appeared to believe that it was a good idea to put it on top of a bunch of mountains. On the one hand, this made it awfully difficult for enemy troops to approach the walls from their side of the wall. On the other hand, having to scale a mountain in full armour just to go to work seems like a pretty raw deal for the wall’s defenders.

Long story short, there were a lot of stairs to climb.

There were some comically small tables mid-way up the climb, so Amelia and Kat stopped to discuss military strategy.

Amelia also negotiated Kat down to two llamas in exchange for Kat's first-born child.

We eventually arrived at the Wall, exhausted but not defeated. We were greeted by a vendor who looked like an Asian Luigi. He sold cold water for ¥10 a bottle (roughly CAD$1.65, about three times the usual price). He asked us where we were from, and gestured enthusiastically at a Canadian pin on his bag upon hearing our response. His admiration of our homeland might have seemed more genuine if there weren’t dozens of other national pins surrounding that one.

There were similar vendors at each guard tower (although the resemblance to Luigi varied considerably from tower to tower). They were all very friendly (and well-equipped with national pins), and all sold the same goods for the same prices. If you dawdled too long by one vendor, he or she would try to further build rapport by posing for photos with us and getting us to try on hats. This was all part of a ploy to get us to purchase commemorative “I climbed the Great Wall” plaques with our names engraved. Kat’s Lonely Planet guide warned us about this, as these plaques are very expensive (and you learn the price after your name has been engraved, natch). We did not buy any plates.

We did take the opportunity to pose for some photos on the Great Wall. It seemed appropriate, given the circumstances.

Kat would like you to know that she was on the Great Wall. Here is proof.

Amelia was pretty stoked about the whole thing.

I wore my best shorts for the occasion.

We set about the serious business of exploring the Great Wall. We took to our task with gusto.

Fact: Kat's camera is the "Rebel" model. I mention this for no particular reason.

Amelia and Kat planned their stealth assault.

The ladies were successful in seizing the guard tower.

The Great Wall was spectacularly picturesque. We took over 1,000 photos over the course of the day. Here are some of my favourites.

Here's some scenic beauty for you.

I don't know if you knew this, but the Great Wall is quite attractive.

The view from the Wall. Click the photo to enlarge.

There's an awful lot of wall to take in. Click the photo to enlarge.

All told, we spent about five and a half hours on the wall. It was a full and exciting day of sightseeing. All good things must come to an end, however, and we soon found ourselves catching a cable car down to the base.

The car had a lovely view.

We arrived at the base and ran the gauntlet of tourist trap vendors. Kat stopped to buy a fan, a dress and a bathrobe. This took some time, since commercial transactions in China are more of a bloodsport than a discussion. Amelia also bought a dress and a bathrobe, but could not find a particular speciality item that she has been trying to buy for a friend.

On the other hand, we did find the source of some of Fox News' political stories.

We headed back to the hotel, where the ladies got dressed up for a night on the town. Our plan was to go see the Chaoyang Acrobats at the Tiandi Theatre.

You may be wondering why this was taken in the Subway, rather than the Tiandi Theatre.

We left the hotel a little late (my fault – blogging takes time!), after which we got thoroughly lost. We did not see the acrobats on this particular evening. We cut our losses and caught a cab to a local restaurant that came highly recommended in Kat’s book of secrets.

Kat was on that watermelon like white on rice. Which is odd, as she doesn't care for rice.

With our cameras and bellies full (but feet still unmassaged), we returned to the hotel for our last night in Beijing.

Tomorrow we spend our last day in Beijing and fly back to Hong Kong.

Having already seen what we thought was Beijing’s big attraction (exclusive of the Great Wall, I suppose), we decided to spend a day relaxing at the Summer Palace. We assumed, from the name, that the Summer Palace would be smaller and less intense than the Forbidden City. After all, it’s only a part-time palace, right?

We were wrong. It was so intense. But let’s start at the beginning. As always, this means breakfast, because I love to tell you about what I eat. This morning we had our hotel’s breakfast buffet.

In terms of fanciness, our breakfast buffet was a predictor of things to come.

After breakfast, we hopped on the subway near our hotel. It was very crowded, but despite the hectic pace of the subway stations we found our way to the Summer Palace without much trouble.

Luckily we had Optimus Prime there to help. Also to remind us about the importance of calcium.

The Forbidden City was composed primarily of stone and arranged into gigantic, empty squares ringed with artistry and opulence. It was beautiful, in its own way, but the Summer Palace was stunning. It featured quiet paths meandering across green hills, canals cutting brilliant swaths through the landscape, spires poking up above the treetops and an enormous lake filled with dragon-shaped boats and lilypads.

All three of us agreed that the Summer Palace was our favourite destination so far. Which, if you’ve been following our previous days’ adventures, is saying a lot.

We entered the Summer Palace through the North Gate, which required us to take a bridge to cross the Suzhou Street canal.

There are only so many clever things that can be said about canals. This is not one of them.

We strolled down a forested path and came to the Gate Tower of Dawn Light. Apparently its name comes from an inscription on its east side that reads “Dawn Light”. The west side reads “Scoop up Coolness”, so I suppose this gate could legitimately be called “Gate Tower of Scooping Up Coolness”. I would be OK with that.

It could also be called "Gate Tower of Absurd Adorableness".

We passed through the gate and wandered down yet more wooded paths. We eventually arrived at the Hall of Serenity. It had two features that ensured that it remained serene: (a) a toll booth requiring a separate admission fee, and (b) lots of stairs, as this particular hall is a split-level.

"Serene" is much better branding than "empty" or "lonely".

We left the Hall of Serenity and discovered a small cavern right around the back. No one else seemed to be around, but we assumed that it was totally OK for us to just wander in and look around, because that it probably how things work in China. Right?

There were no signs saying that we couldn't enter, and it was so very inviting.

The cave turned out to be a short passage through to some canals. They were very nice, and no one told us to leave, although we did not see any other tourists there.

Fact: We never get tired of lilies.

We soon went back to the beaten path and wandered on over to the Garden of Harmonious Interests. It featured a series of open-walled covered walkways surrounding a fish-filled pond.

This garden is harmonious with our interests in lilies.

Kat found a tree hanging out over the pond. She decided to scamper up it for a photo, despite my protestations. I have attached here a photo of her precarious perch, mostly for the benefit of her parents. You are welcome, Mr. and Mrs. Spötzl.

I firmly believe that Kat would be less incorrigible with a good dunking.

Realizing that the Summer Palace is quite a bit larger in person than it appears on a map, we decided to plan out our route to maximize what time we had left.

Note to future travellers: It takes at least eight hours to see every part of the Summer Palace. We only had six and a half hours.

"It's a good thing that I took that Linear Optimization Problems course."

We continued on, and viewed a number of historical exhibits featuring gardens and buildings that were literally fit for kings (well, emperors). We found the whole thing very exciting.

We weren't the only ones to find it exciting.

Our increased pace did not stop us from having a bit of fun.

Amelia believed this statute to be Serious Business. Obviously.

It was finally Amelia's turn to put on a regal air.

Not only did we strike silly poses with statues and get to play dress-up, but we also stopped by an opera house to take in a traditional Chinese opera.

It was kind of weird running in to one of the dancers later, out of costume.

By this point we had reached the southernmost point of the Summer Palace. Since we had come down on the eastern side of the grounds, we decided to head back up through the middle of the park to see the big attractions, such as the Temple of the Dragon King and the Tower of the Fragrant Buddha.

Yes, those are real names. The Summer Palace (formerly the Garden of Clear Ripples) is awesome like that.

You can see the Tower of the Fragrant Buddha on the left.

We had been warned that major tourist destinations would be very busy on the weekend with out-of-town Chinese tourists exploring their national heritage, which is why we left the Great Wall for Monday (and saw the Forbidden City on a Saturday, when many people are still working). We had assumed that the Summer Palace was a lesser attraction, and would therefore not be too crowded on a Sunday.

Up until this point, we had enjoyed the illusion of being correct. We were disabused of this notion upon arriving at the south entrance, which abuts Kunming Lake (which covers over half of the grounds of the Summer Palace). It was much more popular than the north entrance through which we had entered. The place was swarming with people.

Clearly, we were not the first tourist group to make this trip.

Amelia made a trip to the loo (which was amazing in its own right – it came complete with waiting area and gift shop), so Kat found an unoccupied area of lakeside stone and snacked on some popcorn.

The popcorn was neither salted nor buttered. Truly a travesty.

We regrouped, ate some hot dogs, and wandered off towards the Spacious Pavilion, which guards the entrance to the Seventeen-Arches Bridge, which is itself the major causeway to the Temple of the Dragon King (which is on an island near the middle of Kunming Lake).

Guess how many arches this bridge has. No counting, that's cheating.

As it happens, the Temple of the Dragon King looked more-or-less like every other building we have seen so far, despite its awesome name and religious significance to the Emperors of old. It was, however, the spot where people grabbed boats across the lake, which just so happened to be where we wanted to go.

Come to think of it, the boats don't look that much like dragons.

We made our way across the lake. From our boat we could spy our destination, the Tower of the Fragrant Buddha. The Tower is located on top of the Hill of Longevity in the centre of the Summer Palace complex. It is also the central attraction; not only is it the tallest building in the Summer Palace, it also houses a number of major Buddhist shrines.

We took literally hundreds of shots of this tower. Most are obscured by fog.

We were running short of time, and desperately wanted to see the Tower of the Fragrant Buddha in person, so we marched straight there double-quick. However, since that moment is now past and we are strolling through the altogether-more-leisurely lanes of memory, I will stop at this time to tell you about two figures that kept popping up on the informational plates and exhibits throughout the Summer Palace.

First was the repeated mention of the Anglo-French allied forces burning down various buildings in 1860. The information signs were generally fairly blasé about this, merely pointing out that the buildings had been burned down and then they had been rebuilt. Nevertheless, it was hard to find a building that had not fallen under the harsh (if impeccably tailored) boot of the Anglo-French forces.

Second was the lionizing of Empress Dowager Cixi, who did (or at least ordered) the rebuilding of all of those burned buildings so that she could repose in style during Beijing’s scorching summers. She sounds like quite the lady, and whoever it was who put the exhibits together seemed to be quite a fan of her. The Imperial Navy, on the other hand, was less fond of Cixi, as she used nearly their entire budget to rebuild the ravaged Summer Palace.

The Navy was of the opinion that they ought to get at least one ship, being as their fleet had recently been reduced to a pile of driftwood. The Empress Dowager Cixi, having a wacky sense of humour, did build them a boat. Out of marble.

And she built it in a European style, just to add insult to injury.

Anyways, we made our way to the Tower of the Fragrant Buddha. The journey itself was pretty intense, as it featured bridges, squares, and stairs cutting back and forth across the lake-facing side of the tower.

Marble is not very combustible, so it makes sense that they'd use a lot of it here.

One of the few things in China that makes me look small.

Once we had climbed the tower we arrived at a shrine with a statue of the Guanyin Buddha. Guanyin is also known as the Goddess of Mercy. In one legend, in an attempt to free everyone from reincarnation, her head and arms were shattered only to be reformed into eleven heads and a thousand new arms. The shrine attempted to capture this form of Guanyin.

Apparently the sculptor wasn't a literalist, as this Guanyin has 12 heads and 24 arms.

The Tower of the Fragrant Buddha is built into the side of a large hill, so when we left the shrine through the back door we found ourselves on a rolling hill with more shrines and buildings. There was also a popsicle vendor selling his wares at a rate of about 50¢ each. We each bought one, and could not place the taste initially – they were sweet, in a sort of flavourless way. I concluded that they were probably just frozen sugar-water. Regardless, they were a welcome reprieve.

I’ll admit that the popsicles don’t make a very interesting shot, so here are some more picturesque buildings for you:

Apparently putting small pagodas on top of piles of rocks is a big thing in China.

Behind the tower was a small shrine with hundreds of little buddhas inset into the walls. Inside were three much larger buddhas. This was apparently a central site of worship, and it once housed thousands of miniature masterpieces along the walls and ceilings. Most of these were destroyed by the Anglo-French forces.

As I noted earlier, most of the informational signs located throughout the Summer Palace seemed to take the damage caused by the Anglo-French forces in stride. This exhibit’s signs did not – they described the damage as “savage” and “terrible”. In addition to the somewhat more caustic signage, there was a lady who was very aggressively enforcing the “no photos” policy, meaning that I can only give you a snapshot of the exterior.

Apparently the ones that were destroyed were not merely copies of these ones.

There was a pile of rocks nearby with a great view and a mass of “Do not climb” signs clustered around it. So, naturally, we climbed it.

Much like the tower, Amelia and I were also fragrant by this point in the day.

Our time at the Summer Palace drew to a close. We meandered our way through the gardens, saw a few adorable sights, and left the compound.

I don't know what this is or why it's here, but it is very nice.

Not even Tolkien is immune to Chinese counterfeiters.

Upon leaving the Summer Palace we were surprised to discover a small concert just outside the palace gates. We paused for a few minutes to take in the sounds. We took some photos, but a video really seemed more appropriate.

I should note here that Amelia has been playing a little game since she arrived in Shanghai. You see, Kat has a habit of running ahead to see the next thing, and Amelia has a habit of staying behind to frame a certain shot just so. As a result, Amelia often ends up a little ways behind Kat. She does not, however, have any troubles locating her errant companion.

And thus “Where in China is Kat?” was born. Amelia would like you to know that you may begin playing the Carmen Sandiego theme song in your head now. Anyways, it goes like this:

Can you spot her?

There are quite a lot of these photos, and I intend to make a Facebook album of them at some point. This one in particular is one of my personal favourites.

Feeling quite satisfied with our day at the Summer Palace, we resolved to find another restaurant that Kat had read about. This one was a vegetarian place run by a group of Buddhist monks, which sounded pretty great. Unfortunately, we sought, but did not find. We even asked, but the location of delicious vegetarian eats was not given to us. No monks’ doors were knocked on, and thus none were opened to us.

I’m pretty sure that my Dad is the only person who will laugh at that. For the rest of you, let’s continue on.

We ended up finding a place that looked nice and had signage solely in Chinese. We figured going to a place that catered to locals might be a fun and adventurous way to cap off the day. We lucked out, as they had a server who spoke enough English to get by, and their menu had large photos for each dish. We were in for a surprise though, as the place turned out to deal in Hunan cuisine.

It was a hot-pot place, to be specific. Kat hadn’t been too crazy about the hot-pot at the previous place, so she walked in with low expectations. Amelia and I saw the meat in the menus and fell for the place instantly.

It may not be served by monks, but at least it was full of meat.

I do not know whether you are familiar with Hunan cuisine. It is very spicy. Now, let me give you some context. My father is Jamaican, and through that lineage I have acquired enough of a tolerance to make it through most dishes. Although we asked for “no spice”, all our server was able to do was get us the least spicy hotpot on the burner. It was the spiciest thing I have ever eaten. My tongue gained sentience solely for the purpose of being angry with me.

But the lamb was delicious, so I ate it anyways. So did Kat and Amelia, both of whom had previously professed an intense dislike for spicy food. Kat found that she actually liked the spicy food, which was a startling revelation for her. Amelia, on the other hand, hated every bite, and continued on purely out of stubbornness.

Luckily for Amelia, we spotted her discomfort and moved her on to the unspiced meats that had been served alongside the lava-infused lamb in the hot pot. She enjoyed that much more – cooking the meats in the hot pot did not seem to give them the same spiciness that the lamb had, which gave Amelia a chance to enjoy her meal too.

We were also served some short, dense, uncooked noodles with our meal. I found that they were stretchy, pulled at one a bit and tossed it in a pot. Spying my ineptitude, one of the servers came over and stretched out our noodles for us. It was quite the display.

Dinner came with a show.

Kat nabbed one of the unstretched noodles just before the server came over, so she got to follow suit with her very own noodle. Amelia did not grab one in time.

We finished our dinner, each of us feeling full and satisfied. Although Kat and Amelia had been hoping to have enough time for a foot massage after dinner (and, indeed, had been hoping this for the last several nights), we found that it was very late and we were quite tired. We resolved to go back to the hotel and go to sleep.

Tomorrow we storm the Great Wall.