Month: February 2007

Taiwan calling

Fares to Taiwan Taipei, China this weekend are about as low as they have been, but much more available than they have been in the post- New Year work frenzy.  I might book for Thursday evening… it’s around 1400 HKD tax-in r/t to Taipei.  Hmmm.

The next weekend, I might make it to Yangshuo; it seems like the Sri Lankan delegation is considering it.  No Weekend Left Behind?

Making it out of Manila alive and richer (or, I shall return)

Dinner was at Café Adriatico last night (visit #5 for Trevor and Kerensa, #2 for us), followed by a calamansi juice or two at Hobbit House, before a few stern words with a meter-shirking driver.

This morning Trevor and Kerensa went back, and Nic and I walked around a bit.  We saw the waterfront (such as it and its really disgusting little strip of beach were) before walking back to the same café for a pretty good omelet breakfast.  Then we walked all the way back up Mabini to our dump, checked out, had another fight over the merits of the taximeter, and THEN the fun began.

We checked in quickly enough (after jumping through a few security hoops) to learn that our flight was grievously overbooked.  The offer for volunteers was P3000 cash (~US$60) and a free roundtrip ticket MNL-HKG or vice-versa.  We took it.  I guess I’ll be going back?  Boracay sounds nice.  We were offered all of the same again and a hotel room with transfers to abandon our new 6 p.m. flight, but we both had to be back before Tuesday.

The flight was roomy (exit row) and fairly normal, with a minor delay due to the offloading of the checked bags belonging to the 6 p.m. volunteers.  To my surprise, our bags made it on the same flight we did and showed up after just a little agonizing in HKG.  Scenic bus rides later, we were at Lingnan where I have a ton of work to do for tomorrow.  I have to choose a paper topic (or few) by 9:30 and give a presentation at 16:00, in addition to dealing with the paper and electronic pileup of the last couple weeks.  Good trip, though.

Going back to Manila: including Baguio, Sagada…

Since last blogging we’ve been pretty consistently on the move. In one marathon afternoon to night we made it off the pretty unimpressive beach at Panglao Island, from Tagbilaran to Cebu to the airport to Manila to a bus terminal to Baguio at 6 in the morning. The bus was nice except for the Beegees DVD played twice and the lights and the radio.

The Philippines is an interesting place and I’ve had lots of interesting thoughts, but I can’t remember them all. The Americana is eerie sometimes, and Baguio is full of country music. It seems that (other than the country music) the Philippines is one place that an American colonial presence hasn’t destroyed.

On our return to Cebu we encountered, amazingly, our first trouble with taxi meters. The cheeky bandits surrounding the ferry pier wanted something like P750 for a ride to the airport. We muttered a bit, walked around, and found one.

The flight was pretty normal.

Getting back to Manila, we lost P80 to some sleight-of-hand at the coupon taxi counter. Oops. We got to the bus terminal anywhere where we took our aforementioned hellish bus ride six hours north to Baguio, at the foot of the Cordillera mountain range (yes, that is a little redundant). There we took a taxi to Benguet State University in La Trinidad, the nearby capital of Benguet. We were escorted by security to the “executive house” and generally treated like kings as a result of the wheel-greasing by our host, Professor Mina, who had met Trevor at a student affairs conference in Hong Kong.

BSU is primarily an agricultural college, but also includes a teaching college and laboratory schools. They’ve done a lot with what look to me limited resources, including American-vintage buildings. They have a Marketing Center stocked full of delicious local produce, which we raided repeatedly. The pineapple-papaya jam tartlets are particularly good…

After a dinner with some of his colleagues and a very short night on the town (we were still tired) we left early the next morning for a less-comfortable bus ride on twisty mountain roads (not always sealed) to Sagada, in Mountain Province. Sagada was a nice enough little town. We had a ridiculous several hours in a couple caves, violating what would have been millions of dollars worth of safety regulations in the US and having a muddy and mostly fun time. It wasn’t so fun toward the end when the guides kept following the girls in the front and blocking the light from my next steps. My personal highlight was probably the dip in some bone-chillingly cold water.

The next day’s bus trip wasn’t any less exciting. This time I was in the back, needing to hold on to stay in my seat, and the bus was full. The views, however, of mountain passes and terraces, were no less spectacular. The whole region seems very… wholesome, down to the signs encouraging us to eat more vegetables and do no drugs.

The dominant language of the power structure, Tagalog (rebranded as “Pilipino”) is not so popular outside of the Manila area. English is the lingua franca even when tribal languages are the L1.

We stopped by the executive house on our way back before checking out the fireworks display for the end of the local flower festival. Unfortunately, many of the festival’s purported half-million visitors were too, and only sheer luck and unmitigated gall (a favorite phrase of mine) managed to snag us a taxi to return to our bags at BSU. Security arranged for a taxi to get us from there to the bus terminal, where the same hordes were going to Manila. We got tickets on what seemed to be an older bus pressed specially into service.

This bus ride was mercifully better, and I probably slept through most of it. There was a minor snag at first as the bus had individually numbered seats up to 45… and tickets had been issued up to 48. It got ironed out, though, and there was no TV, and the lights were dimmed, and the curtains were quickly pulled over the air conditioning vents. I can’t complain at all about the ride, and I sat in the middle of the back seat (at the end of the aisle) which afforded me unlimited leg room.

Once in Manila, we made our way to and checked in to an absolute dump, the Mabini Pension, which I may write more about if all our stuff hasn’t been stolen while we’ve been out. Not recommended.

The Philippine version of the popular Asian squat toilet seems to be the seatless toilet. I’m not sure which is worse.

Right now, we’re in a massive mall having sought out a specialty hot chocolate shop mentioned in Cebu Pacific’s inflight magazine. Pretty lame. Earlier, after resting, we ate at the Shawarma Snack Center (not bad save the yogurt sauce on my pants) and walked around a bit of the historic walled Intramuros (yes, redundant again for the hispanophones) area, including the seemingly cursed Manila Metropolitan Cathedral (take 6, dating to 1958) and the San Agustin church (stone, dating to the 15th or 16th century, and obviously less cursed).

Assuming we can make it back to the pension and through the night safely, tomorrow should be an early morning taxi ride for Trevor and Kerensa and a lazy progress toward the airport for Nicole and your truly, flying at 1455. You’ll probably hear from me next from Hong Kong.

Since Manila: Taal, Cebu, Nut’s Huts, Tagbilaran

We’ve been busy since Manila. We first went to Tagaytay, near the Taal volcano, and ended up staying (somehow) at Taal city, on the southwest of the lake, in a hotel which was re-opened just for us. We had a good night’s sleep, except for the rosary recited in Tagalog from the cathedral between 5:00 and 6:30 a.m.—so we didn’t really get a good night’s sleep at all. Getting to Taal was quite an adventure involving a taxi romp around Manila, a set of jeepney rides, and a dramatic uphill tricycle race.

The next day we woke up early (obviously) and saw Taal before heading back toward Manila. We stopped at a lakeside restaurant (there’s a lake around a volcano around a lake) in Tagaytay and had a good meal, accompanied by a pseudo-mariachi string band. They played the Eagles and Simon and Garfunkel for us, and ABBA and La Bamba for others, but we sadly forgot to request Johnny Cash. We’ll do better next time.

Returning to Manila and Malate, we found our Internet shop and booked a flight for Cebu… four hours later, we flew to Cebu. In the mean time we’d eaten a rushed but very good meal at Cafe Adriatico (very western, very good, not so cheap) and enjoyed the typical gridlocked cab ride. Airport security (liquids and gels! not again!) forced us to check our bags, but we survived this time. In the Manila airport, frantic pay phone use won us a reservation at the Golden Valley hotel, a fairly nice business sort of hotel which managed to fit us all in one room with two extra beds for about P500 each. Under the circumstances, it was great.

We watched Skulls that night instead of getting to sleep at a civilized time, so we barely escaped before the noon checkout deadline. More frantic calling later, we had a reservation at Nut’s Huts in Bohol. After a few very hot hours trying to find the right pier and a soon-to-depart boat, we made it to Bohol’s main port of Tagbilaran.

Tricycles wanted an impressive P250 for the trip to the bus terminal. The posted fare a few feet away was P17. We paid less after splitting a metered taxi—four is a good size for a group if you like to take cabs.

Nut’s Huts was… unique. 750m and endless steps off the roadside (we took a bus), it’s a set of… well, huts along the green waters of the River Whateveritsnameis. The restaurant had amazing, fairly priced food, and it looks like it would have been a neat place to stay if one were planning on making use of their hikes and boat trips and other activities. For me, it was a bit hot and sticky and insect-infested, but the food made up for it.

We left today via boat from the hut level, which was much nicer and included a detour to a neat set of waterfalls. Then we hired a very colorful jeepney (and driver, and tour guide, and… guard? we aren’t sure) for P2000. It was a great decision, as we got to leave our bags onboard and go rambling all over the place. We saw the “chocolate hills”, crossed the river on a precarious footbridge to see endless tarsier knickknacks, and (most amazingly) saw a few tarsiers in their sanctuary.

Look them up. We had one not more than two feet from our faces today. Wow.

We used the jeepney to return to Tagbilaran, where some frantic walking-in found us a nice three-person room with an extra mattress… and well over a couple dozen mosquitoes. It was a bloody hilarious afternoon. Since then, we found a laundry service and food and are getting ready for a lazy night (as laundry won’t be done before late morning) before going to Panglao Island tomorrow for some well deserved beach time. On the 21st we fly back to Manila, no doubt after some more frantic reservation attempts, and we’re hoping to get up to Baguio and surrounds until the 24th or 25th.

Manila

We were late to the airport in Hong Kong (not so late, we could have made it), but so was our plane. We were in the 95th row of 95 in an aging 747. The flight was surprisingly good, with an unexpected meal and complimentary beverages (of all sorts). Looking next to me, apparently “beer” meant “Colt 45,” and my wine was on the tongue-rendingly sour side. Get what you pay for.

Airport (NAIA 2) was shiny but not so useful. One ATM in the place, slow immigration, and all the usual. Taxi fare has gone up substantially since guidebooks were published, but we had a friendly driver who taught us a little promptly-forgotten Tagalog.

Nice if slightly pricy hostel, Pension Natividad. The taxi driver thought we were European, because Americans can afford to stay at better hotels. I guess not so many cheap Americans end up on holiday in the Philippines. ATMs are surprisingly hard to find, but I finally tracked down a friendly Cirrus machine (why does everyone else use Plus?). The limit is low though: 5,000 pesos, at roughly 48 to the USD.

We are going to try for the Taal volcano and surrounds today, once we get all our money-changing sorted. It’s not quite as easy to change HKD as we’d wish; most of the banks take only USD.

Similarities to the States are kind of comforting… the banknotes, for example, are precisely the same size. Same electrical plugs (but running 220V). English is everywhere at a quite good level. Time to look up some more ATMs… more later, depending on how easy it is to get online. Here in Manila, dead-easy… Fancy place, nice chairs, new computers, weeks-old software, webcams and headsets… Elsewhere, we’ll see.

outbound

At 3:00 this afternoon I’ll be heading for the buses to the airport.  Gung hei fat choy in advance, as I might not get back online that quickly.  I won’t be alone so I won’t be feeling the need to check in as often.

Text me if you really, really need to get hold of me.

I started packing about half an hour ago, and it’s 1409.  Ahh, planning!

Museum of Coastal Defence

Yesterday, I went to the Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defence as part of my efforts to make good use of my museum pass.  I was pleasantly surprised, though not as surprised as I was by the History museum in TST (which I’ve still yet to finish).  Part of the museum is actually outdoors… you can clamber around on top of the old fort and through a few old gun emplacements and defensive structures.

The views were nice too—although the warm, cloudless beauty of the past week has come to an end, I managed to find a few fairly clear moments atop the Redoubt with nice views from more or less the northeastern corner of the harbor (as are to be expected from a former coastal defense fort). 

I also got to try out a few new transportation methods (and those of you who know me will know that that was at least as exciting for me as anything about coastal defense).  I used a slightly slower and slightly cheapest way of getting downtown: 67M bus to Tsuen Wan MTR (HK$7.8), from where I rode all the long way to Shau Kei Wan (student HK$5.7) in Eastern where the museum sits.  Shau Kei Wan is also the eastern terminus of the Hongkong Tramways streetcar system.  I rode a “Western Market” tram all the way back from the terminus to Central, zoning out occasionally.

It’s good tram weather now (unlike when I first tried it) and getting on at the terminus let me avoid the overcrowding (HK$2 flat fare will do that) which is its other major disadvantage.  I don’t have much use for the tram normally because if I’m going anywhere on the Island I’m usually coming from far away (Lingnan) and there’s no point (or monetary advantage) to getting off the MTR in Central and finding the tram when I can just stay on and cruise to Wanchai or Causeway Bay.  I think I’d use it all the time if I lived on the Island.

Today I was thinking of seeing some things on Lantau (and maybe Peng Chau) but the weather got a lot less gorgeous yesterday.  It still feels nice enough, but I kind of wanted sun.  I guess that will have to wait (unless Monday afternoon is nice).  Unfortunately, I should really be working on a presentation (to be delivered the day I get back from New Year in the Philippines) instead of sightseeing.

I’ve started to realize how little time I really have left in Hong Kong (don’t laugh).  I’m pretty much gone from the end of this week until March with New Year, and I might yet scrape up the funds to look at a couple law schools Stateside in April or so.  There’s so much in Hong Kong that I’ve yet to see, never mind China, Korea, Japan… Myanmar…  Hmm.

Dafen oil painting village

I will be a little repetitive in this entry to try to get some information into search engines, as I had a heck of a time finding any beforehand.

This past Saturday I (and three tutors: Nicole, Nicholle, and Chloe) visited Dafen, a “village” in the greater Shenzhen area.  Shenzhen, for the uninitiated, is the shady border town of 10 million pressing on the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s mainland border.  Reaching this border from Lingnan is most easily done by catching bus 261 across the road from campus and riding to Sheung Shui KCR, where one can change for the one-stop-18-HKD East Rail ride up to Lo Wu.  You’ll need a visa, though, and a multiple-entry one if you don’t want to completely waste an entry on Shenzhen.

BEA bank cards didn’t seem to be working on the Mainland side of Luohu that day, but my American card has worked in those machines just fine in the past.  You will want RMB (renminbi) / Chinese Yuan, as these are now worth a little more than HKD and the days of Shenzhen-ers accepting HKD at par may be over for good soon.  Some Y1 coins (or notes) will be useful for the bus fare.

Though it’s in the Shenzhen… big whatever-it-is zone, it’s outside of the Special Economic Zone and a nice bottlenecky internal border.  Dafen (or Da Fen, or 大芬) village, Buji town, Longgang District, Shenzhen City.  You can reach it by local bus 106 from Luohu (3 RMB) or, I’m told, by taxi.  We took the bus, which you too can take by walking straight away from the border on the side of Luohu Commercial City (the big mall) and the coach station (right side of the big square) until you reach the local bus terminus.  It took about 30 or 40 minutes inbound, but on the way back we got clobbered by traffic from the SEZ border on, and it took us maybe a bit under two hours to make it back to Luohu.  Dafen ain’t no village, though: it’s more of a gated development surrounded by respectable-sized buildings.

It’s famous for replicas of Western art, often made in an assembly-line fashion, but we didn’t see that much of that.  Instead, we saw a lot of… more “Thomas Kincaidey” work, according to Nicholle.  There were some very interesting lacquer works and vases and… well, lots of artsy things, really.  All very nice, if you have a house (or even an apartment) to decorate, but not so good for me to buy.  Another widely-reputed Dafen product is the “oilshop,” where an artist puts you, your family, or your friends or victims into a scene of your choice.

There was a pretty good selection of politicians, from the obvious (Mao) to the surprisingly fresh-faced (George W. Bush, after drinking from the Fountain of Youth).  I am thinking of commissioning a portrait of 2008 US presidential contenders in Last Supper style, but I don’t know if they’ll all fit behind the table.

We had lunch at a little hole-in-the-wall dumpling place, where four large trays of dumplings and a bowl of noodles, meats, vegetables, and peanuts cost us 十七元 (17 RMB—I actually understood the Mandarin we were quoted, which was nice).

After our exhausting return (though there won’t be any signs to tell you, you can catch bus 106 back to Luohu at a stop roughly across the street from the one where you hopefully worked out that it was time to get off), we sat down for drinks in LCC.  A milk tea later, I was rushing down the East Rail to Causeway Bay for a dinner.  I think the girls were looking at tailors in LCC.  Good trip, and the start of a full day for me.  I hope that this entry will make it into Google and make it possible to find information like the Dafen bus number more easily, but if you have any questions about visiting Dafen from Hong Kong get in touch with me and I will try to help you.