Strange Small World

A couple of weeks ago, I was in a line of a dozen people trying to get tickets to the NBA vs PBA game just before the clock strikes nine. (Ticketnet closes at 9pm). I noticed a lean girl with the built of a triathlete. What caught my attention was that her hubby was also fit and fab. I thought this couple can be both models for Men's and Women's Health.

Last Saturday, I was queueing for the security check in Mactan's Airport pre-departure area. And lo and behold, the same fit and fab couple were in front of me in the line. Strange small world.

And the guy ended up sitting beside us on the plane. I wanted to tell him about this strange coincidence but I chickened out. So I thought I won't have the opportunity to talk to them. But when I went to the washroom, there was only one other occupant and it was the girl! So I told her and she remembered me in the NBA line. These small world encounters are getting stranger and stranger.

   

Seoul

Before I went to Korea, I was not a fan of the country. With thousands (maybe millions) of them flocking here in the Philippines, going there to see more of them didn’t appeal that much. But a brief visit to Seoul changed that. What was that quote? To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries (Aldous Huxley)

Seoul has no particular landmark that will tell you right away that yes that is Seoul. Not a skyscraper or a mountain or a bridge. But this city has little charms which will surprise especially an unprepared visitor like me.

Incheon airport was impressive, it looked and felt new (to think it’s already 10 years old). My friend quipped it smelled of Germany. I wonder how Germany smelled like. The airport’s information system is as high-tech as one can get. Printed on the carts is this line “Incheon- World’s Best Air Hub”. I haven’t been to that many airports but I think this statement is not far from the truth. (After the trip, I checked some airport stats and indeed Incheon airport ICA has been on the top for the past three years beating its neighbors Changi, HKIA, Nagoya and KLIA in one survey by Geneva-based Airports Council International.) The top airports are all in Asia. Go Asia!

It was supposed to be the start of summer but we were greeted outside the Incheon airport by 12 degrees Celsius temperature. After having my best (and most expensive) Dunkin Donuts meal to date (at 5,200 won=P226 pesos), we took bus 6011 to our hostel in Seoul. The journey took about an hour and a half as we got stuck in morning traffic jam.

Grace and I with a an old friend Egay from UP and a new friend Simone from Italy

We stayed in Inside Backpackers, a hostel rated by Trip Advisor as the top specialty lodging house in Seoul. It was located in a university neighborhood with lots of restaurants, bakeshops and charming shops. If there’s one word I can describe Seoul with, it is charming. The city has little alleys with most shops looking as if they’re from a movie set interspersed with traditional Hanoks.

one of the side streets near Sam Cheong Dong

with Ian, a couchsurfer I met in Nagsasa Cove, Zambales

So aside from the friends I reconnected with, here are some of my experiences in a city sometimes referred to as the Soul of Asia.

• Foggy and very bumpy landing in Incheon (landing and take-off was bumpy)
• 12 degrees Celsius (supposed to be summer already) when we stepped out of the airport
• Uber high-tech Incheon airport
• Ultra modern airport information system (that's why it's the world's best air hub)
• Big new restrooms (uber clean)-smelled like germany according to gracie
• Required seatbelt on the bus
• Excellent Dunkin Donuts variety with misleading prices (discounts reflected on board rather than prices; when everything is in Korean aside from the numbers, how can one figure that out?)
• Singapore-like landscape on the road leading to the airport
• Kia and Hyundai rule in the road
• Tour van driver has been to Singapore (said it as if it's the most normal thing to do)
• Border with guard houses with guards everywhere
• Really young soldiers (20-ish)
• Entered the civilian contoured line
• Took forever to cross the unification bridge because of too many checkpoints
• No pictures allowed on the bus after the first checkpoint
• Watching the border like watching a war movie with no gunfire
• Really cold tunnel (North Koreans dug several tunnels going to the South, we went in the third tunnel)
• Seoul is a city with most number of train university stations I’ve ever seen
• Really young generation who knows how to party
• Cushioned train seats
• More complex train system than Beijing
• Noryangjin wet market has nice lights which made me think it was a furniture store
• Blind beggars walking around train with music
• Train platforms reminded me of Tokyo platforms (already tested by time yet extremely efficient)
• Seoul is less crowded than Tokyo and Beijing
• Seoul has better English than Chinese and Japanese combined
• Naver (play on the word Neighbor)-their version Google with its own street view
• Policeman in a small station used Naver to show us directions
• Changing of guards in Gyongbokgeung palace was made a spectacle for tourists
• I commented on a lady’s nice attire in Filipino thinking she was Korean “ang ganda naman ng suto ni Ate” and she quipped “Ay ako bay un, salamat”

Small World

What started this are my collection of small world encounters. So almost three years later, here I am paying homage.... In my last trip, I had two experiences which reminded me how small the world really is.




1. My friend Grace was the one who booked our hostel online, Inside Backpackers. When I told my Korean friend, Dong-ic-lee, where we are staying, he was delighted since the hostel turned out to be owned by his college friend, Jeong.


2. A couple of weeks after the trip, I got a message from a CS friend which says “OMG, you stayed in Inside Backpackers?” It turned out she stayed in the same hostel two days after we left Seoul.


Ok, it could be that Inside backpackers is that popular but I’d rather think the world is really small despite its apparent vastness.

3. A college friend Egay, asked me if I want to meet Jessica Z while she’s covering a rugby game between the Phils and SK (I think). Egay who is based in Busan was in Seoul for the weekend to help Jessica in documenting the game. Too bad I wasn’t able to make it to the game. Meeting her would’ve given an interesting “twist” to the small world adage.         

Beijing Day 2

We woke up early to go to Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City and explore a hutong near our hostel. The previous night, we ended up eating in a place near Happy Dragon which didn’t have a menu in English or doesn’t even have pictures. So I just ordered what the people in the next table are eating. Since it was already 11pm, only guys drinking beer were left in the place. So I just pointed at the guys’ pulutan or sumsuman. I told my companions to just point at anything. So they randomly pointed on an item on the menu. The randomly pointed dishes turned out good ones, representative of Beijing local food, spicy and oily. I liked the extra spicy vegetables served with beef. If only the guy on the other table stopped spitting on the floor, it would’ve been a really nice meal.

In the second morning, we had breakfast at the place near Happy Dragon. It’s a small eatery where old Chinese folks have their breakfast. They were only serving porridge and an assorted array of fried dough plus hardboiled egg. Each of us had porridge, a hardboiled egg and the fried dough and total cost was just P60. A P20 breakfast!

We then took a train in Line 1 and got off Tiananmen West station, one of the two stations (Tiananmen East) adjacent to the famous square. Since this is one of Beijing’s top attractions, I was expecting throngs of tourists and I wasn’t disappointed. Aside from tourists, the place was also sprawling of soldiers doing drills. It was one of the many grand production numbers Beijing has prepared for its visitors.

After walking around the square, we went to the Forbidden City or the Palace Museum which is just at the back of the square. The palace museum is composed of several palace-like (!) structures, which were used by the Emperor and his family. It is called Forbidden City because before only the emperor, his family and his close minions can live in the city.

The entrance to the city was intimidating. I felt like an intruder. The movie “Last Emperor” was filmed in this city. The entire complex is huge and it took almost two hours for us to get to the other side of the city without even lingering too much. After getting our fill of palaces (after a while everything looked the same), we decided to look for the Hutong where we’re going to stay for our third night. The place is called “Sitting on the City Walls”, a courtyard house in the middle of a hutong. It was adjudged as one of the best hostels in Beijing in 2008 and 2009.

But there was one complication; I forgot the map with directions to “City Walls”. Good thing, I was able to study the map before and somehow I had an idea of the general direction of the place coming from the Forbidden City. So we decided to explore the small streets behind the gugong, and fortunately we saw a tourist information center. We asked for directions from the friendly girls in the counter and fortunately they know where it is. The entrance to the hutong is a small alleyway beside a sports center where people play ping pong and some play some sort of checkers (probably Chinese!). The hutong is a maze of traditional Chinese houses. We ended up walking into a dead end with no signs of the City Walls. Then my companion found an arrow with a sign that says City Walls. The sign was so high up (probably two stories high) that you probably cant see it unless you were watching out for something to fall from the sky. I guess part of the place’s charm is getting lost in a hutong and exploring one of Beijing’s fast disappearing gems, the hutong.

It was Rick the owner of City Walls who gave us an orientation of the place and nearby sites. He gave us helpful tips where to go and eat. Since it was already our second day on the city, I was half-listening.

We decided to walk in the direction of Happy Dragon to get our bags. And all around, we saw parts of hutongs being demolished to give way to high-rise buildings. We had our linner (lunch and dinner) of mostly Cantonese cuisine in Nanluoguxiang, a quaint little street (over a kilometer long) is packed with bars, cafes, restaurants. What stood out are the very dusty tables in the restaurant, which turned out to be my first encounter with the dust from Gobi desert. Beijing suffers periodically from dust from the nearby Gobi desert. (And I thought the ladies were just too lazy to wipe the tables)

Upon leaving Nanluoguxiang, the weather turned nasty cold. So it was an afternoon of Gobi dust and Siberian breeze. We rushed to the nearest bus stop to take a bus to Happy Dragon. But alas, the signs were all in Chinese. Even the bus numbers were in Chinese. But a group of friendly non-English locals helped us. At first it was just the elderly traffic aide then a bunch of elderly folks and finally a young couple whose English vocabulary was limited to “Follow” and then several minutes after “Take Bus”. In the span of twenty minutes, only three words were uttered but those were enough.

They even accompanied us to our bus stop even if they were going towards a different direction. Thank God for friendly people randomly scattered in the streets. The couple's small act of kindness was the highlight is this day.  

At night, we explored The Egg (National Center for the Performing Arts)  and Qianmen St. The walk towards Qianmen also allowed us a night view of Tiananmen Square without the throng of tourists and soldiers.

Day Two was again an affirmation, every place you visit might have the best sights but at the end of the day, it's the people you meet along the way that makes a place more special. Random strangers with their acts of kindness.

 

Mike and the Mechanics

Lyrics from the band's song "All I Need is a Miracle"

I said "go if you wanna go,
Stay if you wanna stay"
I didn't care if you hung around me
I didn't care if you went away
And I know you were never right
I'll admit I was never wrong
I could never make up my mind
I made it up as I went along
And though I treated you like a child
I'm gonna miss you for the rest of my life

Bei Jing

Beijing is about 17,000 sq km (Manila is only about 636 sq km) with 13.9 million people. A couple of travel friends invited me to go with them to one of asia's megacities. I would've wanted to go to China longer but beggars can't be choosers. (We got really cheap tickets!) So three of us, off we went to conquer Beijing for four days.

This is my detailed account of Day One.

First impression, this city is huge, dusty and cold. I was prepared for tolerable cold weather. I saw the weather forecast, temperatures ranged from 10 to 23 degrees Celsius. I asked a friend who was based there and he told me to bring a light jacket. So I did bring one light jacket. (turned out it was not enough to ward off the cold cold spring in Beijing)

We knew it was going to get cold. But it was already spring so I anticipated Baguio-like temperatures. but I didn't expect the windchill that felt like cold cold winds of Siberia blowing. Seriously, it felt like winds coming from melting ice blowing on my entire body.

We were picked up from the airport by our hostel taxi. I reserved accomodations at Happy Dragon Hostel, which had good reviews in Trip Advisor and Pinoy Exchange. When we got out of the airport, there was a guy holding a placard with my name on it. He was standing just outside Terminal 2 so it was hard to miss him. We managed to get to our hostel solely by using sign language with our driver.

My first night at the hostel didn't go well. Despite having made reservations in Happy Dragon but we were informed that we are "temporarily booked" at their sister hotel.

The sister hotel wasn't at all nice. It was old and there were all sorts of clutter in the corridor. I could've given them an earful but it was at 2am and I was too tired to argue and I just wanted to sleep.

So we slept in their sister hotel and got picked up the following day to transfer to Happy Dragon.

Happy Dragon turned out to be quaint backpackers' place with character. There were writings on the wall. And the rooms were tidy and they have clean bathrooms.

So we just dropped our bags in Happy Dragon and zoomed our way to the nearest train station, Dongsi.

We bought train cards which was quite a challenge to look for.

What I discovered and liked about Beijing trains is no matter where or how far your destination is, you'll just pay 2 yuan or around 14 pesos.

So off to yuyuantan park we go, to see the cherry blossoms. People usually flock to Japan to see these elusive flowers but in this small park in Beijing, they were abundant too. The trees were actually a gift from the people of Nihon.

There were only a few tourists in the park. Most were Chinese walking around and hangin out in the park. Once we felt hungry pangs, we ate at the food booth in the middle of the park. We shared fried crabs, dumplings and chicken or something that resembled chicken.

After getting our fill of the rare blosoms, we proceeded to the Summer Palace. We had a hard time figuring out the summer palace's entrance since it was so huge. Once we got in, I borrowed an audio guide which was gps-controlled. It activates once I go near a landmark.

Summer Palace was huge. Most of the big palace structures are overlooking the huge body of water. We also climbed a hill to one of the huge structures. Afterwhich we walked a very long corridor with ceiling and columns filled with paintings with very intricate details. The corridor was almost a kilometer long. (They say this is the longest corridor in the world)

After leaving Summer Palace, we decided not to take a rickshaw with the word Subway on it just outside the exit. Instead, we walked for a half a kilometer in a street where we were the only ones walking. After asking a chestnuts vendor where the nearest train station is (thanks to BB translate), we figured we were walking in the correct direction. Then we transferred train lines several times to get to the Olympic Village (to see the nest and the cube). Despite transferring train lines countless times, we only paid 6 yuan for a journey that lasted for more than an hour.

While we were marvelling at the bubbles of the water cube, we met a photographer from National Geographic. After chatting with John for a bit, we called it a night.

Meeting John was a nice day to cap day one in Beijing.

Capacitance Factor

"The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering."- Ben Okri