Bubba Gump (Manila, The Philippines)

Having never been to a Bubba Gump in the US, the experience was unique in Manila – a family restaurant setup, fully decked out with Forrest Gump merchandise, quotes, pictures etc. Prices were ok, drinks were great value and tasty, food was unique and clever, we thoroughly enjoyed our lunch here. The way to grab waiters attention is unique – a little license plate sitting on your table, flip it to “Stop Forrest Stop” to call their attention, and “Run Forrest Run” if things are okay.

The great thing about Manila is that menu’s are in English, so you’ll easily be able to decifer them. This is what we ordered and what we thought of it.

“I’m Stuffed!” Shrimp – large prawns, stuffed with a creamy crab mix, served on rice, 585 PHP per serve.
Sparklin’ Apple Cobbler – huge apple pie, delicious, 340 PHP
Plantation Punch – large alcoholic citrus based cocktail, 205 PHP

Two Waiguoren. Two Umbrellas. And a helluva lot of lightning!

Asia ~ China ~ Beijing

So I’m in holiday mode. Not going-around-the-world holiday mode, not crazy-busy-study-chinese-in-shanghai holiday mode, not bead-show-in-perth holiday mode, just plain HOLIDAY MODE! As such, I have very little of interest to write about. Every day has been a lazy crazy china kind of day…

Much of last week for me was spent in bed – turns out my body went into shut down at the thought of either a) dodgy chinese water/food or b) dodgy chinese hot weather and packed busses. Either way, I had a nice case of food sickness/heat stroke and spent most of my waking hours attempting to keep down the various Western Foods (combination of McD’s and Subway) down. Not nice. Feeling much better now – the question is, did I learn my lesson? Probably not, the dodgy chinese street food is soooo yummy, and it’s hard to stay cool on a crowded bus in Beijing’s summer.

Street food

We have spent most of the last week attempting to get to the various visa offices in Beijing. First stop was the Chinese Embassy to get an extension on Matt’s visa – it expires about a week before we’re due to leave China. Day one consisted of us getting up at about 4pm and realising that, even with superpowers, we’d never make the visa office in time. Day two we got up at about 3pm and realised the same thing. Day three saw us up at about 12pm – we were on the streets and down to our local metro station by 3pm, to find out that it is closed. For the next two weeks. Nice. Bus to the right area got us there by 5pm. Day four – we gave up. We’ll get the visa later. Similar story to us getting our visa for Mongolia (we’ve decided to head there for a week sometime soon) – except the visa office is only open 9am to 11.30am, not really convenient given our current predicament at leaving the apartment before dark.

We’ve spent our afternoons wandering town once the sun goes down, and we’ve seen some interesting sights. The other night, on our perpetual search for the perfect supermarket, we stumbled across a large group of mainly older chinese women dancing in unison. Maybe dancing is the wrong word – they were moving there arms and shaking their hips to popular western and chinese songs, with the vigour of an aerobics lesson. We joined the men on the grass as these women continued their exercise class for over an hour… Who would have thought that watching chinese women do the nutbush would be so entertaining.

Dancing to the beat

Today/tonight we finally ventured out of our apartment at 8pm, in search of food. Our search led us to Wangfujin, where we wandered and finally settled on Japanese, mmmmm. Unfortunately, our walk home was not so nice, when is started pouring rain. Not so bad, considering we both had umbrellas. And then the lightning started. There’s nothing quite like walking through a lightning storm with an umbrella to get the heart racing.

Hope the weather is being kind to you all… Catch me on msn 🙂

bobs

Bitten by a block of chocolate

Asia ~ Japan ~ Fukuoka ~ Kurume, Saga, Yame & Yufuin

Well, life back in Kurume is both fun and natsukashii – reminiscent of the past. I’ve spent the past 1 and a half weeks living with my first Japanese host family, and it’s been great, meeting friends from the past and catching up with everyone. Arrival in Kurume was great – I caught the train down to Kurume, and a taxi to Naoko’s house. In the taxi, I was actually able to communicate with the driver and give him directions – something I’m not yet able to do in China – a very satisfying experience. First night at Naoko’s was spent at the local Chinese restaurant, catching up with everyone and having a delicious dinner of Japanese Chinese food (much better than Australian Chinese food!).

Since then, I’ve been taken around to see the many sights of the area by a good many friends. We went to Yanagawa to do a boat cruise on the canals and had an amazing 60 year old man as our navigator/driver/entertainer. He sung songs (often with my name in them) and continually made jokes, of which I understood about half (his accent/use of slang was extremely strong). He even had me up on deck steering the boat… The boat itself was unique – it was steered and propelled by the driver at the back with a long stick (no motor here) and had a table in the middle which we sat around. The table had a blanket over the top, under which we stuck our legs. Under the table were big pots of hot coals, which kept the boat (and our legs) nice and warm. After our cruise we sat down for a lunch of eel and rice – yum! I also went to Saga with the Yoshida’s, to go to the local onsen – Japanese hot spring bath – a fantastic treat on a cold winters day.

Directing the boat where to go...

Exploring Kurume has been fun and kind of sad – everything is changing dramatically. All the shops around where I used to hang out every day after school are closed – they have moved to the new shopping center that is out of town… Back at my old high school was interesting – I met up with my old homeroom teacher and English teacher, and met the two current ALTs (American English teachers). My old homeroom teacher had me go to his class and introduce myself in English (they are 3rd year students – grade 12 – studying English)… I gave a quick introduction – my name, age, what I’m studying etc and asked if they had any questions. Only one, from a loud boy in the front – ‘are you married?!’ (in Japanese). To which I replied, also in Japanese, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand Japanese, if you ask in English I might be able to answer’… No response!

My old highschool, Kurume Koutou Gakkou

I visited with the Hashizume family and went up to Kiyomizu to see the temple (imagine all the steps you’ve ever seen in your life, then double it)… and afterwards we went to a sushi ‘train’ restaurant to grab lunch – YUM. Dinner was again raw fish – this time at a favourite restaurant of Naoko & Hirosuke, with friends of theirs. The difference being that the raw fish I tried that night was fugu – the deadly pufferfish. And it was delicious (we also had it served as fried fish). Yesterday and this morning was spent at the Onsen resort in Yufuin – a fantastic place that we had all to ourselves – my belief is because it was so damn cold. But the hot baths were fantastic, and the dinner incredible. After dinner Naoko and I relaxed in my room and polished off a bottle of Australian chardonnay, a perfect end to my Japanese part of the trip.

Well, now I’m getting ready to head back to China – tomorrow I’ll be on a ferry to Qingdao – from there I’ll head up to Beijing to spend a bit of time shopping (and freezing my butt off!).

Naoko, Hirosuke & I, standing by Yufu Mountain in Yufuin

Take care all

xo bobbi

p.s. watch out for the deadly swiss chocolate – it nearly snapped my finger in half when i tried to break a piece off – now i have an awesome bruise under my nail – why does this type of thing only happen to me?!

Brrrrr

Asia ~ China ~ Shanghai

My fingers are soooooo cold. What’s making me even colder is the knowledge that we aren’t even really into winter yet – it’s going to get a lot colder! I don’t know the exact temperatures, but they have definetley plummeted in the last few days. I haven’t resorted to my thermals yet – but it’s only a matter of time. Discussions on where to go for dinner, when to leave for class, what to do on the weekend all center around one thing – what will be the warmest way to do it (I can foresee a lot of 2 minute noodles being eaten in our room!). For some reason, the heating in our classroom isn’t working so well anymore, and it was almost icy today. To top it off, my cold is progressively getting worse, so I’m madly sucking on cough lollies to try and get rid of it. I’ve run out of mouthwash (dad’s suggestion on how to get rid of the cold quickly), and have – as per dads suggestion – gone out and brought myself a bottle of cheap spirits to gurgle. I forgot that I had ‘experiences’ with baiju last time I was in Beijing – I nearly throw up every time I attempt to gargle it!

As per normal, we’re continually exploring the different food options. Today, we discovered that there is an upstairs part to our dining cafeteria – and it is so much better than where we’ve been eating. We have a sneaking suspicion that upstairs is only for the 3rd and 4th year students, and the teachers, but whenever anyone looks like they are about to approach us to tell us off, we just play dumb and keep eating. I have dumplings and fresh noodles for brekky – only cost 4.5 yuan (about 75 cents Australian). Tonight we are going to head out to our new favourite local restaurant – it has pics on the walls, so we just point at what we want – 3 yuan (50 cents) for a plate of dumplings. We’ve noticed a lot of the long term students that are staying at our hotel down in the lobby at about 7pm, waiting in their pyjamas. Turns out, most of the local restaurants will home deliver for free, and it’s just a matter of meeting the bike rider (‘delivery man’) at the door – now how do you say home deliver dumplings in Chinese?! Might just be the next thing I learn…

Strange apple juice that Kylie found at the supermarket, has black jelly 'pips' all the way through it, doesn't taste too bad

We spent last weekend getting to know a little of Shanghai… I had to get a visa extension, so we caught the metro to the right area, and I left everyone shopping, whilst I went off to find the visa place. I had asked my teacher where it was – and he wrote down the address and said to catch a taxi, it would be too hard to find. Stubborn as I am (and determined not to hand over the $2.50 for the taxi :)), I pulled out my map and walked. Took me 5 minutes, and it was sign posted all the way. I think Chinese teachers, just like their Australian counterparts, think that blondes can’t be trusted with maps… After a bit of shopping, our little group (Kylie, Paulina, Johnny and me) headed off to the Pearl Tower, where we spent the rest of the day. The Oriental Pearl TV Tower is a huge tower that can be seen all parts of the city (including from our bedroom window), provided the day is clear. From the top, you can see all of Shanghai and surroundings (once again, provided the day is clear, which is unusual). We managed to pick a fantastic day, and spent a great deal of time at the top, taking photos and just looking and looking and looking.

Oriental Pearl TV Tower

Classes are steadily getting harder, although I’m beginning to understand more. I’ve been feeling as though I’ve been picked on more by the teachers than anyone else – one of my classmates confirmed it yesterday. No idea why – there are heaps of people in my class the are basically fluent, but my name is easy to remember, and I’m sitting in easy view of the teachers. It means I have to always be paying attention, and am continually corrected, but at least I’m going to get the most out of this. It certainly is dispiriting when there are near-native speakers in the class (I’m only doing beginners Chinese, but some of the students have Chinese parents, and have been speaking Chinese in the home since they were kids), but everyone is struggling with writing the characters, so I guess it all evens out (I have some advantage in this area because of my Japanese studies).

Which reminds me – I have now successfully completed level 12 Japanese at Monash – woohoo! And with that note, I’m off…

xoxo Bobbi

Run little man, run!

Asia ~ China ~ Shanghai

The little green man in China doesn’t let people know they can cross the road safely – he suggests that they run as fast as they can to the other side – for that is all the traffic lights are over here – suggestions. The little green man not only runs – he also warns you just how many seconds you have left – 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 – and then a SLAM of oncoming traffic! Wrestling with the traffic is sometimes an adventure – in my limited Chinese I have made many friends – I attach myself to a local whenever attempting to cross the road, and once safely across, point at them and then me, and say ‘pengyou’ – friends.

Me and Mum munching on vegies

As usual, my trip has been centered around food – and what a feast we’ve been having! Dad and I have been making daily breakfast meetings, where we sample the different Chinese foods on offer – we’ve had dumplings for about 5 days in a row – YUM! The other night we went out to celebrate my birthday at M on the Bund, a well-to-do restaurant in modern Shanghai, where we dined on interesting, non-Chinese, menu. The drawing card of the restaurant was evidently the view, not the food or value. After our dinner, we all trotted off to the hostel that Tash and I stayed in last time, and had a drink from the roof top bar, fitted in a lot better!

View from the roof top bar

Of course we’ve been doing a lot of shopping as well, and my understanding of Chinese numbers is coming along in leaps and bounds, as are my bargaining abilities. Each day we have found a new souvenir to pack up and take home – my pack just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Best of all are the Chinese supermarkets – a new phenomenon over here. They not only contain all the different fresh fruits and groceries (including extremely fresh fish (i.e. live)), but also mini k-marts, with everything from bikes to dvds. School started yesterday, and it’s already a struggle. I’m rooming with a friend of Kylie’s, Ling, and we’re having a ball. We’ve been learning by trial and error all the different customs of the uni – from the smartcard food cards, through to where the supermarket actually is. And how to portray that to a taxi driver… Food on campus is good, average $1 AUD per meal, and there are also a couple of restaurants on campus, with more only a few minutes away. Weather has just turned cold, it’s gunna be a tough winter, thankfully we went out and brought scarfs, gloves and beanies yesterday. Classes are difficult, but should be rewarding.Kylie has now joined me and mum, dad and Chuck have just arrived back in Australia. It was a fun family holiday, but now it’s time to start living the life of a student backpacker – no more 5 star hotels 🙁

xoxo Bobbi