I figured, as I did when I studied abroad, that a last hurrah trip was in order. Unlike study abroad, I had no one to travel with. Fortunately, unlike study abroad, I had a place where people I knew lived: China.
Also, further fortunately, my close Japanese friend was also going to be working there during my time there.
If you remember back, the last time I tried to go to China, I came to realize what visas really were and that I needed one.
This time, I actually got my visa. It wasn't particularly difficult, but I did have to go all the way out to Fukuoka and during the times they were open.
I didn't want to have to figure out how getting in and out of Hong Kong worked, and the only direct flights were to Shanghai, so I was glad to hear my one Hong Kong friend was going to be in Shanghai anyway.
I booked my trip to Shanghai and Beijing. I had to flip the days around when I realized that my friend had his schedule flipped on him so that I would fly to Shanghai, leave the next morning to Beijing, stay there for a few days (my friends recommended I spent most of my time there), then return to Shanghai, stay there for a bit before flying back.
When trying to decide how long to spend in China, my friend seemed to insist than any timeframe I gave her was too short. I eventually decided on two weeks.
One night in Shanghai,
seven nights in Beijing,
then five nights in Shanghai again.
I said my good-byes to everyone and prepped to head out.
I realized it'd be kind of difficult with all my luggage and everything. So I had to take a bunch of stuff I didn't need, like my hat (I really should have just left that), but my friends let me store my large suitcase at their place since I was returning before my final flight home.
I used the last night to complete one of my goals in Japan I had been putting off: Pachinko.
Yes, pachincho. I'm not much of a gambler, but the Japanese are. These places are everywhere. There were at least four just outside my apartment. I mostly just wanted to see how the game was played and what made it so addicting. I wasn't planning on spending much.
And successfully completed that goal!
There were lots of prizes (which you then sold back to a place connected to the building as a way to circumvent gambling laws).
Naturally I chose the Hokuto no Ken machines.
They had all kinds of fancy machines and it took me forever to figure out how to get what I needed to play.
I wanted to avoid drawing an attention to myself and I knew I needed to avoid putting the card into the wrong slot, yet my handed guided itself and I ended up having to have the staff come open the machine.
(Then later come help explain how the hell to get the machine to do anything).
I spend half my card (so $5) to get a tray full of metal balls. The balls are typically 1 cent each, so I got 500 of 'em.
A lot of things happened on screen which was beyond my comprehension. It seemed like it was part slot machine, part something else. I couldn't figure it out. Basically you need to turn a knob to fire the balls at different speeds to make them hit pegs and land in a certain place. (Places?)
Here it is in video format!
Look what I won!
Then I left (later realizing I left my card with my remaining $5 in the machine).
I then set out to Shanghai, where my journey would begin and end. I tried to distribute the weight of my luggage so that it wouldn't be too terrible to travel to China, but also without making piles of my stuff at my friend's. (Still it was quite a lot.) Also, got an envelope full of China money (which we had a lot of difficulty naming as the Korean people I met wanted to call it "yen" and obviously that'd be confusing to me [especially when I talk about converting], so we just agreed to call them "Mao Bucks" as his face is on all the bills [except the bills worth coin values]).
One of the first things I noticed was security. You need to scan your bags for every train you board (including subways). Also, there are guards all over the place. Some of them are even dressed in civilian clothes for whatever reason.
Most of my pictures were pretty terrible. A lot of pictures of trains and signs of American restaurants with Chinese characters. I figured I'd be back so I wasn't too concerned.
I checked into my hostel place. I had nothing better to do, so I wandered the streets. I stumbled across a bunch of fruit stores and eventually saw a durian. Ever since Super Mario Sunshine, it has been my goal to eat one / kick one around. I tried to get as small of a portion as I could using whatever Chinese I could write, but I could only get halves, so I got a half. She tried to put it in a plastic box, but I insisted on just carrying it. I had to balance it above my palm with my fingers as it was incredibly pointy.
It took me quite a while to figure out how to eat it and what part. It took a bit of cutting to find the actual part I was supposed to eat. It was pretty good though. It did look rather alien though.
I also stumbled on a tiny, weird Chinese sex toy shop, but before I could get a picture, the old lady running it tried inviting me in so I kept walking. I figured I'd be able to come back later (which I did [with better lighting as well]).
Then I basically left in the morning for Beijing. I had to wait in a long line to get my ticket, then wait a few more hours to get one the train.
I had way too much free time, so I spent some of my plentiful (I thought) Mao-bucks and got a table at some fancy wifi place inside the station when I was looking for wifi.
Then I hopped on my train and was en route to Beijing!
No comments:
Post a Comment