14. Get Off Continent.

Finally made it out of North America and my first stop was China!

I was here for roughly 4 months so I’ll try my best to get to the gist without leaving out too much.

My trip there was the first time flying to a new Continent. I had, in the past, imagined the day I left Canada and moved to a new country as being really exciting and full of amazingness, fully ready to soak up a new culture and mindset. Unfortunately when I did leave I had a crazy flu, was super sleep deprived (maybe 3 hours of sleep in the previous 36), and other than being able to ask for water or beer or count to 10, I was unable to  speak a of a lick of Mandarin. To top it off I OVERESTIMATED the exact effects of travelling over the International Date Line and told Claudia (who was living there already and meeting me at the Airport) that I was arriving on Sunday, at 11:00pm. Half way through the flight I found out it would be in fact Saturday in China when I arrived.

I spent about 2 hours in Shanghai trying to figure out how to make a phone call so I could tell Claudia about the mix up. Seriously. Keep in mind I’m borderline hallucinating from a serious lack of sleep and too much Nyquil, not to mention I can’t read half of what is written.  Exasperated, I finally got  help  by waving at someone and  pointing at the phone saying “Wa May-O”. Which sorta means “I Don’t Have”.  If I only I could have said “.. a fucking clue what I’m doing.” Then it would have been complete.

I could go on and on, but that’s like the first 4 hours of the 4 months I was there. I could honestly type 100 pages (easily) on the whole trip, but instead I’m just going to highlight each place I saw.

Dalian – 

Above: Zhongsan Square in Dalian. I'd often meet the lady I tutored here.

Super nice city,  but we we’re living about 60km away and the Qing Guay (train) there only ran to about 6:30pm. I’ll never complain about the Vancouver skytrain 1:05am last train again! It was pretty cold with the Siberian winds coming down from the North, but I found the people pretty nice for the most part. The Maple Leaf crew (the school where Claudia was teaching at) were super friendly and helpful and made my arrival there very easy. Finding work was very difficult but I managed to get by teaching some kickboxing classes and doing some tutoring. Thankfully, a little bit of money can go pretty far there.

Shanghai- Man, 3 days here was amazing, and if I don’t make it to New York or any of the other places on my list then I’m ok with that, since this is pretty much all of them in one place. Well, if you go by population - Over 20,000,000 people live here!

We spent out time in the Pudong district where we stayed at some hostels. Our first night there was in a bit of shady hood, with a few pimps and “professionals” hanging around the area. After that we re-located to a different hostel a bit closer to the Bund. When I say  “We” I mean our friends Magda and Luke (who had also just recently arrived from Canada) along with Claudizzle and myself. Being there with Luke was pretty funny; he’s 6’7 and everywhere we went the locals would point and smile at him. If they said anything, it was “So Tall!” to which he would respond in his best Chinese accent “So Short!”

New Years Eve was awesome. After running around trying to get to the right address, we made it to a bar that had all you can drink for $16 CAD! Getting there wasn’t easy though, as there were a bunch of other people with us and we couldn’t get cabs for everyone. Most of the crew got into 2 taxis, and Timio and I hopped on the back of 2 motorcycles and got them to “Go! No Stop!” And No Stop is almost what they did! They drove against traffic in the wrong lane, onto sidewalks and through pedestrians. It was almost like a car chase scene out of a movie. Except with two laughing (and possibly a bit drunk) Chinese guys. The only thing that was funnier then the ride was  Timio’s reaction when they tried to charge us 400 CNY for the ride. We talked them down to 50.

Haggling is a very common practice in China (and other places in Asia as well). They’ll often jack up the price so high that even when you haggle them down they are still making a good profit. As one of my buddies said, “If they accept your first offer, you still got taken!” A good example of this was talking an owner down on a pair of gloves. The original price was 500, and I got them for 30. It’s a bit of pain after a long day, but it’s kinda cool, too. You just have to be in the right mind frame.

Shenzen/Hong Kong- Here we met up with Claudia’s Dad, Don. He’s pretty cool and showed us around Shenzen a bit.

He also hooked us up with a sweet hotel when we came back from Thailand. We were super tired and were only there for a few hours before we had to fly out again, but we stayed up pretty late and made the most of the experience. Though we didn't try out the complimentary gas masks:

Hong Kong was pretty cool too. Not too much different than other big cities in China, other than here they speak Cantonese. This made things a bit trickier for us as Claudia is pretty well versed in Mandarin, but doesn’t know any Cantonese. Not that it matters too much though. Most people here speak a bit of English and it’s not too hard to get by.

That’s it. I have a couple more long ones (Thailand) but in the mean time I’ll put up some of the other things I’ve managed to get done.