TravelStream™ news feed for member jmmadden on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/jmmadden en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:30:53 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jmmadden/2/1232687340/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jmmadden/2/1232687340/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jmmadden/2/1232687340/tpod.html Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:30:53 -0500 Back by popular demand

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Macau, China

Gary and I decided to take a trip to Macau rather than staying in Hong Kong a few more days.  Thursday morning, we took the ferry over from Hong Kong and collected yet another passport stamp. 


 


Macau is a strange place.  It was colonized by the Portuguese.  It has a great mix of Portuguese colonial architecture, modern Chinese buildings, and gaudy casinos.  It's much more laid back than Hong Kong, and there's interesting Portuguese-Chinese fusion food.  The Portuguese had a lot more fun with their colonies than the English did.   


 




After checking into the hotel, I went out in search of food.  Although a Brazilian I met in Hong Kong told me no one in Macau speaks Portuguese anymore, the first food place I found was a little Brazilian sandwich shop.  The Brazilian guy who ran it kept two young Chinese men around to translate into English and Cantonese for him.  From there, I set out exploring the historical part of the city.  Aside from looking at pretty buildings, the real attraction is the street food.  Macaunese street snacks are the best I've ever found.  I ate my fill and bought gifts for my Beijing friends.   


 


Gary and I headed out to the casinos at night.  We started at the Venetian, which is apparently the largest in the world or something.  It's probably too big.  The area has a lot of half-finished buildings and half-open casinos.  The Venetian was boring and didn't have Texas hold'em, so we went back to the older casinos near the city center.  Gary lost his money at poker while I lost mine at blackjack at the Grand Lisboa.  After that half-hour bad luck streak we moved on and bounced from one casino to the other people watching and catching random fountain and light shows.   Gambling is highly boring when you don't have very much money. 


  

We walked most of the way home, got lost, and took a cab.  Much of the city outside the casino area seemed dilapidated.  It was a shame to see beautiful colonial architecture just falling apart, especially when developers spent the last decade creating landfill and giant casinos around the island.  One night in Macau was enough, and I left for Beijing in the morning. 
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Hong Kong, China

The public housing tour on Tuesday was the last official part of the Shenzhen studio class.  Free of our responsibilities, the few of us still in Hong Kong decided to spend Wednesday touring the city.  I suggested the Planning and Infrastructure Exhibition and a housing development tour.  We did not do that.  




     
Gary, Pedram, and I bounced around during the day.  We went to the Mong Kok area, which is better known for its night market but was still a good place to grab some street food for lunch and explore a little.  After that, we headed to Hong Kong Island.     







The downtown part of the city is on the island, squeezed between the harbor and the mountain.  It's kind of like an extreme version of Montreal.  Much of the city is on the slope, so there is actually an outdoor escalator to get pedestrians up the urbanized part of the mountain.  A long, outdoor escalator is something that can't be passed up, right?  So, we went up.  And up.   



 




After the escalator ends, it's still a good way to the peak.  We got lost on the way to the tram and decided to just walk up the mountain.  It was not a good decision.  Even the guy coming down the mountain road on a unicycle looked at us like we were crazy.  




 

 
The long climb was worth it though.  The views from the peak were amazing.  The overpriced western food there was well appreciated too.   
 








 


From there, Gary and I went to the Causeway Bay area and explored a bit before meeting FACES people for dinner.  FACES (Forum for American and Chinese Exchange at Stanford) is an annual student conference US-China relations.  The program has a great alumni network, and I met up with some of the people I'd attended the Shanghai conference with.  There were also FACES people from other conference years.  They were all Hong Kong or Mainland people now living and working in Hong Kong.  They are ALL in finance.  Well, except for two.  They're lawyers.  Hong Kong has a lot in common with Manhattan.  All the same, it was a great dinner and we went to a classy rooftop bar afterwards.  I love rooftop bars in these giant Chinese cities.  A great feeling washes over me when I relax with a drink watching the city unfold below me.  
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Hong Kong, China

(Fair warning: This entry is full of urban planning nerdiness)   
I was really looking forward to seeing Hong Kong for the first time.  I'd heard stories about Hong Kong since elementary school from all the Hong Kong kids in Randolph and college.  Still, I wasn't really sure what to expect.  



After our final presentations on Monday morning, we took the Shenzhen subway to the border, walked across, and then got on the Hong Kong subway.  As the train rolled through the New Territories, I thought "I'm not in Kansas (or China, whatever) anymore."  I could see collections of 40-story towers set in valleys - more or less what passes in Hong Kong for suburbs.    

 



We got off the subway at the Shangrila Hotel - where several of us were lucky enough to stay in the 5 star hotel for $40/night - to drop our bags before going to the Hong Kong Housing Authority.  I was blown away with Hong Kong's public housing system.  Fifty percent, that's HALF, 50%, fully 1/2 of Hong Kong residents live in public housing.  What's more, most of the housing is pretty decent (if small by American standards), and the rents average 10% of income.  If the Boston area were the same, that would mean that almost everyone making under $50,000 a year would live in decent public housing and pay at most $420/month for rent.  The Hong Kong government doesn't even pay for it.  The Housing Authority made enough money off private developments on some of the land it owned (which was granted for free by the government) to self-finance (although there are some long-term issues). 


  
Our first day in Hong Kong was also Aditi's birthday.  We celebrated with a nice dinner near the harbor, drinks at the Fringe Club  which had a great rooftop bar and photo exhibitions, and dancing at some bar that Hong Kong friends later told me is "where the guai lo go".    



On the second day, we toured a development run by Hong Kong's transit authority, the MRT.  The MRT owns the land above its subway stations, and it develops it into commercial spaces and private housing to finance the system.  Like the Housing Authority, the MRT is self-financed.  No government appropriation needed.  Wow.  Just for starters, imagine if the MTA owned all the offices above Grand Central, or if the MBTA owned One Franklin.  Um, it might also help to imagine that they had good management.  Anyway, it's kind of turned the system into a giant network of shopping malls.  But, it also creates amazing pedestrian connections between the stations and nearby shops and housing.  From the MRT development, we walked around other developments in Shatin New Town.  All the walking in the area is pretty much one story up.  The traffic is below on the street.  It was a great feeling, and way better than walking along a sidewalk.  We also got to go up to the 34th floor fire refuge of one building and look out at the area.  Looking down from the building almost felt like looking down from the Cliffs of Moher.   



After the morning of touring, we went to a nice dim sum place.  I'd been looking forward to yum cha in Hong Kong for weeks.  The food was amazing, but it's good to know that the best dim sum places in Boston aren't really that far behind.    


             



The afternoon brought more urban planning nerdiness.  We toured the private, semi-private, and public housing developments in Jeung Kwan O new town.  Our professor, Tunney Lee, wanted to stay a little later to explore the public housing complex, and I stayed there with him.  I love talking with him.  We bounced back and forth between discussing Boston and Hong Kong - the two cities Tunney has called home.  He's as much old Boston as he is Cantonese, and the childlike fascination he shows for both cities when he knows both better than most people in the world is inspiring.  The development, by the way, was the same population as Randolph, MA but only the size of maybe 6 American city blocks.    
 



Cities just won't look the same to me again.  Even Beijing, where I am sitting right now writing this, seems like a spread-out, sprawling city now.   
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Guangzhou, Guangdong, China


Sunday brought a day trip into Guangzhou.  It was a relief to get out of Shenzhen.  Several of my classmates who were in China for the first time commented on how much less crowded it was, how little honking there was, and how little street food there was compared to what they expected.  Guangzhou fixed all that. 



We started the day touring - again, SIGH - some Vanke developments.  They were much better here than in Shenzhen, however.  The high-end development was much more natural.  There was water, open spaces, some natural landscapes left, and most importantly a vibrant public and commercial life.  After checking out the high-end development, we went to see Vanke's only affordable housing development.  It was an interesting place, based on the traditional architecture of Fujian's Hakka people.    


 
Late in the afternoon, we FINALLY got into a real city center.  We pushed through the crowds of Sunday shoppers to explore Guangzhou's central area.  Afterwards, we toured the Chen Family Shrine.  Once you've gone to one old Chinese temple/shrine/home, you've pretty much seen them all.  The small variations in this one put distinctly Cantonese touches on it.     



We picked up some bottle of local liquor for the bus ride home, and I even managed to get some work done for the next morning's final presentations.  
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Shenzhen, Guangdong, China

The second half of my week in Shenzhen was a lot of hardwork, namely doing planning proposals, translating during meetings with Vanke staff, and translating while the girls bargained at the night market.   


After the initial site visits and meetings with district planners and Vanke staff, we created individual proposals for long term planning in the Bantian district.  The next day, we had an intense day-long meeting with Vanke staff to talk through those proposals and get feedback.  It was perhaps the most exhausting meeting I've ever had since the subject was tough to start with and I ended up responsible for translating for a couple of my breakout groups.  It really stretched (snapped?) the limits of my Chinese skills, and I lack a lot of the specialized vocabulary for city planning.  By the end of the day, I had lost it completely.  I'm pretty sure I stopped speaking any intelligible language whatsoever. 

 
To recover from that, I went to Dongmen with the girls to get a massage and help them out with shopping.  I got one of the best massages ever - completely fixed my neck and back - for next to nothing.  Meanwhile, Aditi got her first foot massage and cracked up the room with her ticklishness.  After the massages, we went to Modern Toilet for dinner.  It's a themed restaurant that's supposed to be like a bathroom.  You sit on toilets, drinks are served in little urinals, dishes are served in little toilets, and the walls are made to look like a bathroom.  Ironically, however, the bathrooms are still squaters. 
 


After Modren Toilet, the girls went to the backroom bag shop for a second time.  I think they spent a total of $1000 and 3 hours there on designer bags that had somehow become factory runoff or something.  I spent a total of 2.5 hours chatting with the sisters who ran the front of the shop and another half glaring at them in the backroom to get the bargaining through with.   
 

On our final site visit, we split our time between interviewing the wealthy residents of Vanke's Fifth Garden development (amazing what $1M American can get you in Shenzhen), and walking the nearby urban villages and interviewing people there.   The urban villages are areas in Shenzhen that were once country villages but became surrounded by urban development.  The villagers sold their plots and the densest, crappiest housing in Shenzhen was built.  They are essentially slums, but still vibrant and much safer than most American neighborhoods.   

My individual project, at least for the moment, is looking at the health care infrastructure in the neighborhood.  The number one answer I got when I asked people what they do when they get sick? "I don't get sick" followed closely by, "I go to work."
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Shenzhen, Guangdong, China

So, after making the trip of a lifetime around Asia only six months ago I somehow landed myself another opportunity to come back.  I got myself into a planning studio class focused on Shenzhen. Thinking that this would bore you, I didn't plan on blogging again.  Then, everyone kept asking.  So, here are some ramblings...
I flew out of Boston the morning after Sean's going away party, which definitely made sleeping on the flight easier.  After 24 hours of travel, I arrived at the Shenzhen airport and caught a cab.  We drove past some skyscrapers.  Then some more skyscrapers.  Then some more.  It's my fourth trip to China, but the scale of things here is still mind-blowing.  I'm noticing it even more this trip since some of my classmates have never been to China or Asia at all, and watching them adjust reminds me of how I first felt four years ago arriving in Beijing.       
 
Shenzhen is crazy.  It's a city of about 10 million people that was a fishing village of twenty thousand only thirty years ago.  That's like Walpole becoming the size of New York City by the time little Joey is old enough to drink.  Some of the clothes you are wearing, or the cell phone or computer you are using, or those Christmas decorations you just took down were probably made here or somewhere nearby in the Pearl River Delta.  It's strange experiencing a city that exists for no other reason than production.  Practically no one is from here.  Everyone comes from other areas of China to make money, and only to make money.   


I arrived a day before my class and spent it walking around.  Even though class hadn't started, I still mostly did nerdy planner-ish things like checking out the transit system, the border area with Hong Kong, some public parks, and some construction (which of course is everywhere).  The first place I went in the morning was a shopping area in the city center.  It was several blocks of electronics stores, including giant multi-story malls full of components.  Hip, young people were running around buying whatever the hell it is computers are made out of.  It was the first time I ever felt like Cartman might be right about China.   


The work began on Tuesday.  First thing in the morning, our class loaded into a bus and went out to the planning office of the Longgang district (kind of like going to the Bronx borough government).  I could hardly understand a word of their presentation.  It scared me to think that my Chinese was that bad, but later on talking with a Chinese classmate I found they didn't understand either.  I guess bureaucrats are just incomprehensible in any language.   


The rest of Tuesday and Wednesday were a whirlwind of site visits and group work at the Vanke offices.  Vanke is a huge real estate developer that specializes in upper middle class housing and is very progressive with its architecture and environmental sustainability.  They're somewhat of a trend setter.  They want us to examine a partially completed development in the Bantian district of Shenzhen.  It's an area with a density of Vanke developments and also a number of urban villages and planned improvements such as subway lines and highways.  Since we are not actually responsible for anything, we have the freedom to do some creative and long term thinking that the Vanke employees lack.    

I've really been enjoying the time with my classmates.  It's a good group of people, some of whom are from China, a couple are laowai who can speak Chinese, and some have never been here before.  We haven't had a lot of free time, but dinners have been fun and we made a trip to a night market.  Guangdong province is holding up its reputation for exotic food.  I haven't (and won't) go for the dog yet, but I ate some kind of small bird's head and God knows what else so far.  I've had some good conversations with some cabbies (the true philosophers of the world) and some shop keepers.  It's a bit sobering.  No one seems to like Shenzhen, but they all like that it's more developed and provides more opportunity than their hometowns.  As one cabbie told me, "Us laobaixing (ordinary people) can only have food to eat, a place to live, and work to do.  That's all."

PS - They eat some wierd, wierd stuff in Guangdong Province

]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jmmadden/1/1218421260/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jmmadden/1/1218421260/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jmmadden/1/1218421260/tpod.html Sun, 17 Aug 2008 22:37:45 -0400 Sweltering from Beijing to Bangkok

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Hua Hin, Thailand

Instead of heading straight back to Bangkok, we stopped for a night in Hua Hin. Hua Hin is the beach town that Andrew recommended to me, and it's where the king and queen vacation. Only 3-4 hours from Bangkok, it's to Bangkokians (Bangkokers? Bangers?) what the Cape is to Bostonians. It did have kind of a Cape Cod feel to it, gravelly sand, families shellfishing for fun, great seafood. We found a cheap guesthouse by the water and grabbed dinner with a British woman we met on the bus to Hua Hin. After dinner we took a walk along the beach. There were a bunch of stray dogs running around the beach at Hua Hin, like everywhere else in Thailand. They're wicked friendly; I guess since they survive off the kindness of tourists. I played with a couple that both looked like the late, great Seamus.

Even after the walk I didn't feel like sleeping so I took a walk into town. I was drawn into an Irish bar (yeah, yeah...) by the sound of a live band playing Highway to Hell (that was the first song my brother learned on drums and the beat will forever be engrained in my skull). The band was a group of young Thai men that looked like they were straight out of 1970s America doing covers of 70s rock, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Hendrix, Deep Purple, ZZ Top, etc. They weren't particularly good, but man were they into it. I don't think anyone has played Smoke on the Water with that kind of sincerity since that first kid in 1978 figured out that it only took three chords to do it and decided it would sound good on tuba or bari sax too. So, I sat there at an Irish bar in the Thai royalty's vacation spot drinking Paddy Whiskey listening to a group of Thais play the songs my mother used to party to in 1970s Dorchester. Life is strange...
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jmmadden/1/1218153120/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jmmadden/1/1218153120/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jmmadden/1/1218153120/tpod.html Sun, 17 Aug 2008 22:20:21 -0400 Sweltering from Beijing to Bangkok

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Ko Samui, Thailand

Louis Black does a bit about the only reason people think New Zealand is so beautiful is that it takes them so f'n long to get there they'd find anything beautiful. Well, we had another one of our hellish overnight travel experiences (I'll save you the details) but I swear that's not why Ko Samui looked like paradise. I'll let a photo do the talking...











We chose to stay at Chawaeng Beach during our time on the island. It's the most developed beach in the area, so there was plenty to do once I'd gotten enough sun on the beach to kill an Irishman. Our taxi driver took us to a resort where he gets a kickback, but it turned out to be perfect anyway. For $12 a night, I had my own little bungalow about 50 meters from the quieter north end of the beach. To tell the truth, my first impression of the beach was that it reminded me of Wollaston Beach - I know what you're thinking but bear with me for a minute here. Is it possible to see a whole bunch of pale, freckly people and a smattering of Asians sunning themselves without thinking of Quincy? I took a walk all the way down the beach (it's a couple miles long) and found out I was wrong. Most of the people on holiday in Ko Samui were bronzed, athletic Europeans who looked like the only thing they were taking a vacation from was sunning themselves on some Mediterranean beach. After the walk, I took out a jet ski for a while and headed back to the bungalow.

Around town, the usual chorus of people selling stuff (mas-sa-gee! taxi! motobike! Looky-looky!) had a new twist. The main road was lined with tailors whose line to draw people into discussion and hopefully into their store was, "Where are you from?" But for me, they just looked and yelled, "Ireland!" At first I thought it was because of the tattoo, but it happened even when I wore sleeves. Sometimes I'd roll with it, sometimes I'd tell them I was from Boston. In two weeks in Thailand I did not meet one person who'd even heard of Boston, even though their beloved king was born in Mt Auburn Hospital and mostly grew up around Boston. By contrast, almost every person I talked to in China knew where Boston was because of those two schools up on Mass Ave in Cambridge.

I started my second day in Ko Samui refreshing myself in the ocean water (damn Thai whiskey from the night before). By the afternoon, I was ready to go to my cooking class. Most of you know I love Thai food and cooking is a hobby, so I'd always wanted to take a cooking class in Thailand. I know, I'm wierd. It really felt that way too when I was the only single person, the only American, and the youngest person in the class of 10 people. It was awesome though. I chatted with the British honeymooners across from me and cracked jokes with the absolutely ridiculous Thai instructor. I made chu chee curry with fish, deep fried chicken and prawn patties, veggie fried rice, and coconut soup with seafood. It came out so good, I swear they switched the food while I wasn't looking.

After the class, I went to watch some Muay Thai boxing at Chawaeng Stadium. I got a stool by ringside in the sweltering, open-air stadium. I could smell the tiger oil as the fighters prepared to come out (Muay Thai fighters get a tiger oil massage as part of the warm-up before a fight). The fighting was incredible. The first match featured two 85 lbs. 13 or 14 year olds, but they were fast, strong, skilled, and tough. All the fights were pretty well matched. I did a great job picking the winners, until I started gambling with a Thai guy. My first pick gambling was bad. My second dominated the first two rounds before being suddenly knocked out in the third by a kick to the throat. I managed to get some of my money back in the main event when a Japanese-born fighter demolished his opponent in the first round.

I spent my last day in Ko Samui relaxing on the beach, kayaking and eating. Oh, did I mention that every 50 ft or so on the beach there was both a bar and a massage place? And the massage places all included "after sun massage" with aloe vera? It's like the place was made for me. I tried the local lobster for dinner. It's a different species than we have at home, and they BBQ it. I'll take a boiled New England lobster anyday, but it was great.

The last morning we hopped on the high speed ferry for the mainland and for one night in Hua Hin before heading back to the city.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jmmadden/1/1218552420/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jmmadden/1/1218552420/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jmmadden/1/1218552420/tpod.html Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:57:44 -0400 Sweltering from Beijing to Bangkok

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Bangkok, Thailand

I arrived in Bangkok Monday the 4th. The plan was to spend two days in the city to get an idea of it and meet up with my future MIT classmate Andrew before he moved back to the states. After those two days, I would go to a beach town (ended up being 3 nights in Ko Samui and one night in Hua Hin) and return to Bangkok to meet up with Claudio for the last week of the trip.

From my very first bite of food here - at a random street stall that had better food than any Thai restaurant I'd ever been to elsewhere in the world - I started wondering why I bothered with all those years of Chinese and the semester in Beijing. I should have been here. This city is wild, and this country is amazing. It's definitely the reward at the end of a long trip.

I spent these two days in Bangkok wandering the city from the skytrain, on the river ferries, and through the streets. I ate a lot, bargained at markets to figure prices for the gifts I want to buy next week, and met up with Andrew at his favorite restaurant in Bangkok. Ironically, it was a great middle eastern restaurant in the middle of the Muslim area. You can actually see a photo of it in this recent NY Times article.

The first two days of Thailand flew by. But, with my feet on the ground I headed south to the beach.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jmmadden/1/1217783280/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jmmadden/1/1217783280/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jmmadden/1/1217783280/tpod.html Sun, 03 Aug 2008 14:40:16 -0400 Sweltering from Beijing to Bangkok

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Hanoi, Vietnam

The thing that stands out most about Hanoi is the motobikes. Endless motobikes swarm like bees at all hours. You step right into the buzzing swarm to cross the street. It's not a game of frogger like in China, they buzz around rather than expecting you to dodge them, but it's not a comfortable experience.

That aside, Hanoi is much more relaxed than I had thought it would be. On the way there I said, "All I want out of Hanoi really is to chill in the Old City with a good cup of coffee." Dream came true. Vietnam has some of the best coffee in the world, and after a month in tea-drinking China it was badly needed. Happiness shot up my spine at the first sip.

Saturday was the only really full day I had in Hanoi, Friday and Monday were travel days and Sunday was Halong Bay. I mostly spent the day walking around the old quarter gazing at the colonial architecture, stopping every so often for a drink and to people/moto watch.


The relaxation was punctuated every so often by someone trying to rip me off. There are a number of booksellers around Hoan Kiem lake. They have decent English and walk up to you with a stack of books, mostly on Vietnam and/or the war. They're kind of fun to talk to, and I eventually decided to buy a book from one. I couldn't bargain down to a very good price, ending up at about $4 American. After I handed him the 60,000 Dong, he took off with both the money and the book. I can't believe how fast the guy moved. I went after him, but I couldn't find him. What I did find, however, was one of his boxes of books. I grabbed three interesting titles and continued on my way. He saw that I ended up screwing him and suddenly reappeared behind me. I decided to be nice and trade the three back for the one I actually wanted (and my pack is heavy enough).

Saturday night, I went out by myself to Minh's Jazz Café. I walked in to a Vietnamese quintet playing Freddy Freeloader. The bassist tore his way through the changes, and whenever the tenor player took the solo something interesting would be happening above the bass too. I chatted with a businessman from Hong Kong as the Real Book kept unfolding with How High is the Moon, All of Me, and the Girl From Ipanema. I had to laugh out loud a bit with the Vietnamese vocalist doing her best impression of some American doing her best impression of someone from Rio. It is a small, small world.
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