Happy Halloween! Unfortunately this post is about a week late, so I won’t actually be writing about what we did on the Halloween night. This night we spent in the plane from Vancouver to New York.

Day 47.

By the crack of ten a clock, we met David and his car by the Asian Arts museum. He had very kindly promised to drive us around the bay area, which turned out to be an excellent idea. The day was particularly gorgeous – almost no clouds on the sky. We popped by to see a wall painting by Frida Kahlo’s husband, on our way to Lombart Street, the 45 degrees street which you can only drive down in zigzag.

David took us to see the telegraph hill with Coit tower, which now a days, it’s known for the wild Parrots that have taken residence in the trees of the hill… There is a statue of Columbus by the tower, looking at the sea. Of course Columbus never reached the West Coast, but who cares…

After a short trip to the harbor and a second-hand bookstore there, we popped into a Chinese Post Office. We somehow managed to spend an hour sending two boxes home, thanks to the fact that there had been a change of regulations, which meant that we needed a residential address in San Francisco to send out the package… And the woman needed to type everything up to her machine as well. The American post will change this regulation by Christmas or they’ll definitely just die in the holidays post.

David showed us the area of the Palace of Fine Arts which I had seen on Monday, but of course it was much more impressive now, when it wasn’t pouring down rain. We fed the ducks in the pond with some white bread, but didn’t see the swans again. David then drove us by the shore enough to sneak gorgeous pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge, ending the tour to one of the three Chinatowns, behind the Golden Gate Park.

We had a whole Crab for lunch, from a local, Vietnamese restaurant. David said that when he was a boy (and crew up in the area), crabs could be fished by the bay area by children… he price of one was a dollar(!). Now a days the waters are too polluted, but you can get crabs outside the bay area apparently. This was a seriously good meal, all garlicy and wonderful. Certainly the best crab, I’ve ever eaten. Huge amounts of meat inside as well…

In the evening we had a date with our lovely hosts Fred and Fia, to see the Astroboy remake, which has just been out in the cinema. My husband is a Japanese Animation expert and so is Fred, so this was a must-see-film for the foursome of us. I haven’t actually seen the original one, I am shamed to admit – but that perhaps gave me the opportunity to look at this one objectively as a child of 2009. Of course I am 28 years old woman, which doesn’t exactly make me the target audience.

I thought that Astroboy was quite moving – specially the relationship with his father, who first makes him like Frankenstein, but then abandons him. However, I did think that for this piece being released this year – there has been a lot of competition in the animation lately… And Wall-E is not that different, but it is globally recognized as the cutest Anime that has been out lately… So the bar is high. Never the less, I was entertained – would I watch it again? Well, probably if I had kids who demanded it to be in the dvd player all the time. Certainly not voluntarily on my own.

After cinema, Fred and Fia took us to an amazing Chinese restaurant, which served the most incredible garlic beans as well as fried chicken that I have tasted. We were really lucky to get a table or to get served at all since they were just going to close the kitchen in the next two minutes. However, we were once again not home to mr. Cock-up and left happily with our stomachs filled with Chinese goodness. This was our last night in San Francisco as well, so we reluctantly said goodbyes to our wonderful friends. I will certainly be missing these two a lot.

Day 44

We decided to check out the park next to our residence. Our friend told us that it’s a good ride if we want to experience some fun and exercise as well. It turned into a three hour walk in zig-zag. The Golden Gate park is not exactly small… It’s 20% larger than Central Park, but as you can imagine, it’s often used in similar purposes. My husband refused to go into the public toilet there… Perhaps that was for the best. We also stumbled on many needle sights as well as forests with good bushes for shagging, which clearly had taken place only hours before. Btw, those who think Golden Gate is the name of the bridge – think again, it was first the name of the whole bay…

We walked through a huge Children’s playground, a granny art house name ‘Sharon’, and came into a Shakespeare Garden. This particular part of the park was filled with benches dedicated to dead actresses. We fastly skipped the museum of Absolutely Everything, which had a Tuthankamun exhibition going on. We can see the mummies back home in London.

The park gave all kinds of experiences. There is a set of lakes with wild birds, including geese around. There is a water wall and a Japanese Tea Garden, which we also skipped because we’ve really been in Japan for almost a month and not into tea anyways. There is a huge area for Bisons, which we first thought had been taken away, but then spotted over the hill. Huge animals… There was a guy in Finland, who tried to have a Bison farm around where I used to live. I don’t think it did very well, even though the Bison can tolerate cold pretty well.

After we finally reached the Ocean Beach, we sat down to have a Thai Curry for lunch and got the tram back uphill to Carl Street. We had a dinner engagement with Fia, on the other side of the bay, which we got by taking a very exciting route with a tram and a bus over the Bay Bridge (not the Golden Gate) and its new and controversial S-curve. This bridge took something like three years to build, but they have realized that if there is an earthquake, like the 1906 anytime soon, only half of the bridge is going to survive. This means that they have a 30-year process of enforce it…

Fia and Fred have an incredible house on the other side of the bay. It’s very elegantly decorated with lovely Chinese things meeting the modern world. She had also cooked us a wonderful meal, completed with a home-made lemon jella. We also got to meet Linda and David, who are Chinese immigrants, but lived most of their lives in San Francisco. We had such fun together that David, who is now retired and one of the investors of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, promised to take us around it tomorrow. What luck we have with such amazing people!

Day 25/63

We took the morning taxi to the bus station and headed for Zhouzhuang, the lake town. They call Zhouzhuang the Venice of the east. I’ve never been to Venice, but I would probably beg to differ. We got harassed once again by herds of tat grannies, up to our necks. I have learned by now to put them in from one ear and out from another. It seems as any place of ‘natural beauty’ in China is almost impossible to enjoy thanks to someone hassling you on one arm trying to con your money.

The place itself was exquisite, even though we were there on a rainy day, you could see the canals going around, the old Chinese people sorting their fish and fixing their boats. For a second there, I pretended to be a fly instead of a big fat bag of foreign money, which really was my current status on the streets.

There are great big houses in Zhouzhuang, with up to hundred rooms with real agars to cook on, paintings on walls, furniture and statues to admire. There was a man with birds that he had a ring through their necks, using them to catch the fish and then making them to vomit it. The Chengxu Taoist Temple on the area was very impressive with huge lakes around it. It was built during 1086-1093 of the Song Dynasty and also known as Sanctity Hall.

There was an Opera hall at the site, as well as dozens of restaurants and gift shops. We found a local craftsman at his work and bought a wooden carving of a dragon and the phoenix. It pleased us both and seemed like something we’d rather buy instead of the tons of tat which they were selling on the streets. We got pretty bored pretty soon and had a nice lunch in one of those houses by the canals, where you can almost feel the age of the opium wars on the window blinds.

Afterwards we found a post office with a couple of very surprised men who sold me 30 stamps to Europe. That was five quai each so I had to buy two that cost 2quai and 1 of 1 for each. A lot of trouble for a couple of postcards to send back home. Did I tell you that the Chinese don’t have glue on their stamps you are suppose to provide your own?

It is sad to see that actually the only way to enjoy China, seems to be to go somewhere that tourists have not yet been, because trip to Zhouzhuang was pretty shit as it is like this. I am so ready to get off this land now. Luckily we are flying off tomorrow.

Day 20/63

We left Japan expecting it to be a culture shock. Even as we’ve been to both countries, we’ve never gone from one to another. We got the Maglev train from the Shanghai airport to town. This is a bullet train that goes 300km/hour, just because there are no rails, just magnetic tracks where it floats on. On curves, it goes kind of sideways, which is very spooky. The train journey to Shanghai only takes eight minutes, which my husband decided that we’d spend in the first class, as it was the whole of 10euros each.

We got a taxi from the other side of the river ‘Huang Pu’ to our hotel, which is the Astor House hotel, the first luxurious and modern hotel in the city, right on the Pund. The Pund is the area where the British settled down after the opium wars and eventually all the other foreign powers such as the Germans, the Americans and so on joined them. However, the French couldn’t live with the British, so they have their own area ‘the French concession’…

Our hotel the Astor House is rather impressive. Even as they are over 160 years old, they have gotten the hang of modern days. There is internet installed in the rooms for a small fee (very slow connection, but anyways) and the bathroom has hair dryers, the light switch is on the door so that you keep your key in a safe place and so on. The room reminds me of the room I stayed in Athens, wooden floors, huge bathroom… All very nice. You could even stay at a celebrity’s room, meaning where someone famous stayed like Charlie Chaplin, Bertrand Russell or Albert Einstein. What is more attractive to me though, is that in three metres out of the door, you get to a bridge which gives out the classic view over Shanghai with the television mast building. I’ll use that for some photos later on for sure.

Of course when you step out of the door, the misery of life in China immediately begins. You get the herds of ‘Hello Lady’s excuseme, would you lie to buy some tat?)… In here they are mostly pushing to buy watches.. Perhaps that’s the thing, certainly not postcards like back in Beijing. The best way to look at pushy sales people is not to give them an eye of any kind. You put your ‘ignoring’ face on and move along. I have been surprised on how they do come to you in English, rather than in Chinese. But I suppose this is the foreign area.

You can also see the foreign area in the prices of tat. We know that there are places, quieter streets, where the prices are about 20% of the prices here on the foreign area. We had a meal for 10euros, but we know, that is rather expensive for what we got, even if it was really good and three dishes with two teas. They have looked at the foreigners around and come to the conclusion that they *will* pay more. So why not charge more.

In any case, for our first day in Shanghai, we went walking around, shopping and photographing. I bought some really nice pashminas and we went a bit mental in a bookshop that had a DVD floor. The Chinese really like awards of all sorts, specially the Oscars, so they have fifteen different kinds of Oscar box sets, oscar films in different covers and so on. I recently watched all the best Picture winners, some of which were quite hard to find. Here they were all… Even “Wings” from 1928, for 1 euro… I bought some that I had not seen and some that I’ll rewatch, like “Mrs. Minniver”, which is a great film btw. These were not illegal copies of the films, even though those are also easy to get from the streets – normally with English and Chinese subtitles… We had earlier come across to one seller, but they have already gone to Blue-Ray… What kind of world is it, when the pirates have a format that you cannot play???

We eventually walked as far as the people’s square and then home again, through a detour that seemed to take forever. The pushy-yelling Chinese tired us out so much that eventually we got into a ‘Family-Mart’ (Japanese 7-11 chain) and got salad and sushi for dinner in our hotel room… This is how much we missed Japan! China such a difference to Japan, where politeness is *everything* and here you are expected to be as agnry, impolite, rude, shouty, pushy and merciless as possible. You should spit on the streets and lie and cheat. The whole consept of the society is so different… It’s like my husband pointed out. You feel like you are in Japan, but it looks like everything is falling apart. When you come back to your hotel, you feel like you are never going to wear your clothes again, because they are so dirty.

I think for tomorrow, I need to learn how to bargain and cheat… We are going shopping again in the French concession.