Dingle Speaks

On the second day of the meeting in Minneapolis we took an afternoon off to go fishing with some of our local customers on Lake Minnetonka.

When I first read about the fishing trip I was a bit meh… I used to fish as a child on our local canal and have memories of long miserable days of drizzle sitting on the side of the canal catching 1 or 2 half dead gudgeon about the size of my thumb and then traipsing off home as it got dark. Then someone told me we’d be taking a boat out on the lake and my interest increased, maybe I could just skip the fishing bit altogether and concentrate on socialising with colleagues and customers around the beer cooler. Ah, but then we heard that we’d be taking small boats out for the whole afternoon with a maximum of three people on the boat and I was straight back down to meh… again.

Anyway, we finished the morning meeting and headed off to the lake in a minibus loaded with beer, stopping first at Lord Fletchers for lunch, which for the record was so-so, I made the mistake of ordering a Greek salad which was really poor (although the evening meal there later was damn good). After we’d all finished up we headed down to the boats and got the first look of what we’d be going out on.

Damn, we were going to be pretty exposed and the day was glorious, barely a cloud in the sky, unseasonably warm and I’d brought no suntan lotion, ah well, let it do its worst! (the pic above was actually taken after we got dropped off at dusk)

I paired off with an American colleague and one of the customers, loaded the boat up with beer and we headed out onto the lake with me sitting on the high front seat which made me feel like I was balancing on a bar stool at the front of the boat. Anyway, we cracked open some beers and sat back to enjoy the sunshine as we headed out onto the lake.

It turns out that lake Minnetonka is a little odd, it’s pretty huge in total but it’s made up of a large number of smaller bays that are interconnected by narrow channels, I think I read somewhere that it has 175 miles of shore but at its widest point it’s never more than about a mile across.

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He took it easy as we pulled away from Lord Fletchers and through the channel to crystal bay but as soon as we’d cleared the buoys the captain opened it up and I was in for a shock as the front of the boat raised up and we set off skipping across the lake with me desperately trying to clutch on to the bottom of the seat to prevent me from bouncing out, trying to wedge my feet in the two corners of the boat to push me into the seat at the same time as holding my beer and trying to stop my cap from blowing off (later I heard that my boss lost his coat and blackberry on the initial burst, he’d just taken it off and it blew straight out of the boat, fortunately the boat behind saw it happen and picked it up before it sank..). The boat absolutely flew, apparently it could get up to 70mph but the speed limit on the lake is 45 mph, I can’t tell you how fast we were actually going but if you’d asked me at the time I’d have sworn it was 150mph, I was terrified.

After a minute or so he let off the throttle and as we came to a stop in the middle of the lake he got out the fishing tackle and set us up one by one with a rod complete with a dangling earthworm at the end.

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It’s been a while since I posted again hasn’t it! All with good reason of course, I’ve had back to back business trips to Japan, Korea and the US (as well as a 4 day holiday in Chicago tagged on the back of the last business trip).

I got back to Shanghai from Chicago on Thursday evening looking forward to a nice long weekend to get over the jetlag before going back to work, only for my hopes to be immediately dashed away when I got an email on Friday morning asking what time I wanted picking up for work on Saturday morning..  Ahhhh… stupid Chinese holiday system, I’d totally forgotten about working the weekend..  So I was back in the office yesterday, but I’m taking a holiday today, I just can’t face a 7 day working week..

Anyway, where do I start with the US trip, well, how about the beginning and the complete mess I made of actually getting into the US…

I was travelling out from Shanghai on Sunday afternoon to arrive in Minneapolis (via Chicago) late on Sunday evening. My meeting was starting on Monday morning and I was presenting at 10am, which wasn’t giving me a lot of time to get used to being in a different continent but I figured that if I took some melatonin on the flight to get some sleep coupled with a fistful of ginseng with my coffee on the Monday morning I should get along just fine.

I spent most of Sunday slowly packing for the trip, said my goodbyes to H and jumped in a taxi to the airport at around 1pm. There was already a big queue when I arrived at terminal 2 and I must have waited for near on 30 minutes before finally being able to check in.

I placed my bag on the scales, passed my passport and e-ticket to the guy behind the counter and asked for an aisle seat. He started entering my info on the computer and asked if I’d completed my travel authorization.

“My what?”

“yes, your ESTA, your pre-authorisation to travel”

I rolled my eyes and pointed to my passport, “I’m British, I don’t need to do anything like that”, to which he passed back all my documents and replied, “you can’t travel if you did not complete this application, even if you are British”. “He’s so wrong” I thought, “he’s going to feel like such an idiot when he realises”, but no, he wasn’t moving on it, and now here comes the supervisor backing him up and handing me back my luggage..

“Don’t worry” he said, “it’s a 10 minute online application”, he pointed down the aisle, “walk down here and you’ll find a business centre, you can use a computer there, complete the registration and then come back”, he wrote down a web address for me on a piece of paper (https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/) and off I went, “CHECK IN CLOSES AT 3:20, YOU MUST BE BACK BEFORE THAT” he shouted after me. I glanced at my watch, it was around 2:30, no sweat, plenty of time… continue reading…

No, I’m not talking about the tour groups, although you wouldn’t be far wrong, I’m talking about the ACTUAL freakshow on Gulang Yu, you know, the one run by a dwarf with a megaphone..

We’d just about walked to the middle of Gulang Yu (tour group hell) when I spotted the scene above, having absolutely no idea what it was I said to H “I want to go in here”, “oh, it’s a show of freaks of nature” she replied, “AWESOME!”.

So, we paid our entry fee, something like 10RMB and made our way to the left to the animal enclosure. It started off with a series of filthy, dark cages with a real random mix of live animals, everything from squirrels to frogs and snakes, these weren’t particularly interesting and with it being so dark we could barely see anything anyway, then we came across this huge turtle.

We couldn’t decide if it was dead or a rare albino but we must have stared at it for a full five minutes without a single movement, we concluded that it must be dead..By the way, if you own a turtle such as this and are trying to calculate the size of aquarium needed you need to calculate as follows, measure the length of the turtle and multiply that value by 1.1 (or 1.15 if you want to allow a little growing room).

Then it all started getting really weird, with various, badly stuffed and poorly kept examples of animal birth defects. First up, a tatty cat/kitten? with two heads

ROFLCOPTER goat, seriously, what were they thinking...

Mouldy chicken with two sets of wings, pretty much highlights the dreadful condition of everything there..

baby pig with two sets of legs

Pig with two faces

They actually had a live exhibit too, a duck with an extra pair of legs hanging to one side, but it selfishly refused to turn around and show us, infernal creature…

All in all it was pretty rubbish but at least we escaped the tour groups for 10 minutes…

“Hey, would you like to visit a maid cafe?” my colleague (let’s call him K) asked as we chomped down the last of the sushi at a small restaurant near Akihabara station.

“Of course I would” I replied without actually having any idea what I was letting myself in for. As he’d said it an idea had formed in my mind of a small Cotswold style tea room staffed by elderly Japanese ladies in black and White pinafores serving up buttered scones and marmalade with pots of tea in hand-knitted cosies, maybe even a selection of fairycakes in one of those tiered cake stands with frilly doilies.. My mouth was watering at the thought of it, apparently I’d forgotten that I was in Japan…

We’d been in Akihabara so that I could salivate over expensive cameras in Yodobashi camera, a single electronics store six stories high that’s probably bigger than the whole of cybermart on Huaihai lu. I’d met with one if their Canon specialists and managed to negotiate a damn good price on a 5d kit (who said there was no bartering in Japan??) and was in the mood for celebrating, a maid cafe sounded the perfect start.

So, after paying for the sushi we headed back to Akihabara station, walked straight through and back out the other side onto one of the streets lined with electronics shops. Almost immediately we were approached by a girl dressed in an exaggerated French maid outfit with a short skirt, petticoats galore, an enormous bow in her hair and furry cat ears, she pushed a flyer into my hand..

Some typical Akihabara maids, I didn't take a pic myself, it was dark so I nicked this off the net and then lost the link, if this is your pic please let me know and I'll restore the linkback!

“Ah, this will do” says K. I looked at the flyer:

“Errrm, what kind of place us this again???” I asked. We’d walked past a Hub a couple of minutes ago (British style bar that sells crisps and pints of bitter) and was starting to regret not just popping in there. “oh it’s fine” he replied, “it’s a type of manga cosplay” (costume play), don’t worry it’s not what you think.

We followed the smiling chatty girl (who unfortunately/fortunately, I haven’t decided which, only spoke Japanese) into one of the shop fronts to an elevator and went up to the third or fourth floor to an entrance hall. A receptionist rushed over gushing and giving such a hearty welcome that I had to check if she was an old friend of K’s, they’d never met… She handed over hot towels and explained the pricing, entrance was 1000 yen (8 quid) each and we had to order a minimum of 4 items from the menu (and strictly no photos of the maids before you ask why there’s so few pics), which included standard drinks and food (typical Tokyo pricing) and a number of “specials”, all of which were thousands of yen and all written in Japanese. We agreed to the pricing and were led inside.

My first impression of the place was of a strip club made of marshmallow, everything was pink. There were probably 20 tables with a central raised stage and an open kitchen/bar to one side, the place was staffed by half a dozen maids dressed identically to the maids outside talking in a constant very annoying high pitched whiney voice. I noted the clientele, a group of 5 or 6 ladies eating ice cream, a couple of amused/bewildered backpackers, several couples over at the far side and then a number of tables of “Otaku” (male anime/manga obsessives), some sitting alone and others sitting in groups.

I noticed that some of the Otaku had books on their tables (one had four or five, neatly stacked to one side), I don’t know what it was about them, but some of them made me nervous. The maid promptly led us across and sat us right in the middle of them, next to an overweight guy with a carrier bag of what i’d eventually figure out were Polaroid photos and a permanent smirk which became a full-on “here’s johnny” grin whenever one of the maids got into character, I made a mental note never to make eye contact with him and concentrated on the menu.

We ordered a couple of drinks and an ice cream from the menu and K started to explain more about maid cafes. Apparently they started around 10 years ago and as I understand it they have filled the gap that geisha left behind, with businessmen being replaced by Otaku and kimonos replaced by maid outfits influenced by various manga and anime. Some of the more popular “special items” include things like spoon feeding, where you order something like ice cream and pay a few thousand yen for the maid to tell you that it’s medicine which will make you all better while spooning it into your mouth (yes I was getting weirded out by this point…)

The maid reappeared with our drinks, knelt down next to our table and began talking in Japanese, K translated, “here are your drinks, I’ll help you to make them even more tasty with some magic, please follow my hand symbols and repeat the words after me”. She made us join our two thumbs and forefingers together in a heart shape and wave them round the glasses while chanting some unintelligible magic words which would apparently have the desired effect.  I was totally weirded out by this point, even more so when a couple of the Otaku on neighbouring tables chanted along with the maid and looked absolutely delighted with themselves, I’d just about had enough of the place at this point I was so freaked out, I just wanted to leave.

Shortly after our ice cream arrived. The maid had decorated it for us, as a cute puppy, of course that was only half the job and we had to help her chant a new magic spell to make it “super tasty”, the Otaku beside us was having the time of his life, I decided that I definitely wasn’t going to be ordering anything else, even if my life depended on it.

To be fair though the ice cream was pretty good and took my mind off the place for a while until some loud music started and one of the maids danced on stage while miming to the song, it was all very clap your hands, turn around, point to the right, point to the left etc. I was very confused, was I supposed to find it sexy? cute? or what exactly?? I certainly wasn’t finding it sexy..

Shortly after the song finished one of the Otaku must have ordered one of the specials, the maids all gathered round his table, a couple of them with cocktail shakers and sang a song while dancing shaking the cocktail, pretty much all of the Otaku joined in.

K reminded me that we had to order 4 items and we’d only ordered 3 so far, I was running out of options if I was to escape further humiliation when I noticed at the bottom of the menu that you could get your photo taken with one of the maids for 500 yen (4 quid), perfect for the blog I thought!

Well, of course it never works out as easy as you’d hope..K explained to our maid that I wanted to buy a pic and as I was glancing around trying to figure out which quiet, out of the way corner of the room the pic would be taken K nudged me and told me to hurry up, “what?”, “she’s waiting for you”, I looked to where he was pointing and my heart sank, she was up on the stage beckoning me up with all eyes watching. I got up on stage and stood next to her as another maid came across with the polaroid, she spoke in Japanese to everyone, there were giggles and nods of agreement, “she says that you look like Totoro” K informed me, “she says you must both pose as Totoro”, I copied her pose, there was a flash and I left the stage.

Totoro, my new nickname in our Tokyo office

A couple of the Otaku wanted their photos taken too and got up after me, followed by the guy who had the 5 books on his table. When it was his turn he stood next to the maid and she told him how she thought they should pose. He disagreed, he had his own suggestion.. He promptly got down on the floor, curled up in a ball and asked the maid to put her foot on his head for the photo, which, hesitatingly, she did. The other maid took the photo and the guy left the stage looking very pleased with himself. Well, if I said I’d been weirded out before that was nothing compared to how I was feeling now… Some of the Otaku were talking to each other now and looking at the books, that’s when I realised they weren’t books, they were photo albums filled with polaroids from maid cafes, these guys obviously go from cafe to cafe collecting them. Some of these guys must have had a hundred or more pics and I’m just making a wild guess, there could well have been significantly more, it must cost them an absolute fortune!

Our maid came back with my photo, which she’d decorated for me and scribbled something which was supposed to be my name, I haven’t got a clue what she actually wrote

"Heavens Gate" was the name of the cafe, god knows what else she wrote

“Great, can we get out of here now” I asked K, “oh, the maid said there will be another dance routine soon, do you not want to stay for that?”, “errrrr… CHECK PLEASE!!!!”

We paid up and left and that was my maid cafe experience finished, I left none the wiser about what they were all about than before I went in, it was a little too odd for me, I just didn’t get it.

Mind you K mentioned that there’s one with a church theme where they all dress as catholic nuns! Maybe I could bear just one more trip, only for the blog of course….

Ok, this is the very last post on Xiamen (IIVB), I promise!! Oh, hold on, I just remembered something else, I might hold onto that for a while though before we all OD on Xiamen (IIVB)

You might remember from my first couple of posts about Xiamen (IIVB) that we’d been a little underwhelmed by it all, we’d got the distinct impression of just another Chinese city which happened to be on the coast and was largely inhabited by a temporary heaving mass of the dreaded bus tour groups.

Well, on day 3 we’d done the tulou tour, which had been awesome and as we woke on the 4th morning (a tuesday as it happens) we were a bit stuck for what to do next. In the end we decided to just pop for a look at Nanputuoshan temple, which was very close to our hotel and had been recommended by Tina.

The first thing we saw on arriving at the temple was a large pond with quite a number of people looking into the water. We wandered over for a look and ended up spending about half an hour there, the thing was positively humming with turtles (probably terrapins to be exact), I had no idea it was even possible for so many to survive in one place. The floating turtle coop in the centre of the pond was underwater due to the sheer weight of turtles, stacked 3 or 4 deep on top and everywhere you looked in the water turtles swam and I was surprised to see that somehow large catfish had managed to survive until adulthood and were competing for food alongside the turtles.

H grabbed some berries from a nearby bush and started dropping them in the water attracting a large group of turtles over towards us, several families started doing the same, the kids were having a great time pinging berries off the back of the turtles. After a couple of minutes H pointed to a group of turtles and shouted LOOK LOOK, I looked over to see that one of the large turtles had grabbed one of the baby turtles by the head and was pulling on it like crazy. Within a couple of seconds its head was off and then the other turtles all joined in tearing chunks off wherever they could, all the while being pelted with berries by the unimpressed watching kids. We decided it was time to take a look at the temple..

Not impressed with the berries the turtles quickly turned to cannibalism

Somehow we managed to get in without paying, there was a gate where people were walking through and we just kind of followed, then we noticed attendants at the gate who weren’t really doing anything as we walked past and that other people seemed to be holding tickets, it was all a bit late by this point though, we were already through, unchallenged.

The temple was nice enough, but having just been on a trip to Beijing with my family and visited the Forbidden City (for like the 4th time..) and the Summer Palace we were having fits of deja vu and quickly lost interest. The arrival of a couple of coach tours quickly made our mind up and after playing around throwing coins into the mini-pagodas (it never gets boring..) and taking a few photos we headed back to the hotel for lunch and a nap (well we were on holiday you know…..)

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Last stop on the Tulou tour was Taxia village, which we almost didn’t make at all. We’d heard rumours about it being closed during the day because of “roadworks” on the way. Finally when it came to the time to move there the driver smugly announced that it was closed so we should head back. Foolishness when H was in the car, after a brief minute or so of “chat” we were on the road to Taxia (she pointed out that we’d paid for the day and we’d go back when we were ready, if we couldn’t go to Taxia we’d visit another cluster of tulou 80km further away from Xiamen… you’ve never seen anyone get the car started so quickly).

On the way to Taxia the driver told us the real problem (as he understood it). I mentioned on a previous post that apparently the villagers only get paid 200 rmb per year to endure their houses becoming tourist attractions and apparently at Taxia they’ve decided that enough is enough and are trying to get this increased by stopping the cooperation with the local government. In return Taxia is reported as closed by just about everyone until this is all resolved.

So, there were no roadworks and we basically had Taxia to ourselves for an hour… Unfortunately it had started raining quite heavily and we were already quite tired from all the walking at Tianluokeng and Yuchanglou so we didn’t explore as much as we might. Anyway, here are some pics:

Taxia is basically a large picturesque village of tulou located either side of a valley river

the tulou were largely uncommercialised

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Second stop of the day was at Yuchanglou Tulou, which is apparently famous for its leaning structure.

The first impression of this tulou was that it’s huge compared to the tulou at Tianluocheng, also it has an ancestral hall at the centre. As with a couple of the tulou at Tianluocheng it’s pretty commercialised, everyone has a market stall selling the usual nik-naks, there were signs everywhere saying that no tourists could go upstairs which was a shame but understandable I guess, if a coachload of tourists all went upstairs at the same time the whole thing could come tumbling down (as we’d find out a few minutes later). We took a few pics but there wasn’t much here to hold our interest, the arrival of a coach tour made our minds up and it was time to move on.

aggressive smoker

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On day 3 in Xiamen we went to visit some Tulou (traditional Hakka earth buildings).

These are quite a way from Xiamen (150km or so) so we actually considered a group tour for a short while, I blame a momentary lapse of sensibility, but after looking at their schedule we thankfully decided otherwise. They were all something like 3 hours of travel followed by a rapid visit of various tulou with about 10 or 15 minutes at each, an hour for lunch, then 3 hours back to Xiamen again.

Actually deciding which tulou to visit was the first headache, there’s something like 20,000 of these traditional Hakka houses in Fujian province, but we opted for Tianluokeng, which is a World Heritage Site and probably the most famous (as well as being a national AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA tourist site or something like that)

So H looked for a driver and eventually found us one at the reasonable price of 750rmb for the whole day (bearing in mind the distance to be traveled), which was obviously considerably more than the group tour, but without the rushed schedule, stops at silk factories/jade museums and megaphones, we could take our own time and decide our own agenda.

The guy picked us up at 8am and we set off for Nanjing County (not that Nanjing). In the few minutes before H took over the entire rear seat and fell asleep she had plenty of time to figure out the driver, “he is too pale” she said, “he must have some kind of disease”, which is Chinese for “I wish I was that pale”. Diseased or not he could drive reasonably well enough but had a dreadful taste in music which H soon put an end to as she was nodding off.

Anyway, let’s forget about the journey, nothing of interest happened apart from to say that it was a loooong journey. After 2 hours we started climbing and I figured we were nearly there, but we just kept going and going on a road thankfully devoid of coach tours (we’d timed the trip well for the first weekend after schools went back and this was the monday morning).

Roadworks on the way to Tianluokeng

We finally arrived and paid our 90RMB entrance fee to the Tulou area and continued driving for another 20 minutes or so before the driver finally pulled over and indicated the viewing point across the road. We got out for the first view of Tianluokeng.

Tulou are either round or square. The story goes that when the US first sent up the spy satellites they became convinced that China had constructed thousands of missile silos all over Fujian, all ready for it to kick off in Taiwan..

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Gulang Yu is a small island (less than a square mile) just off Xiamen island which is renowned for its beaches and architecture and also for having no vehicles/bicycles on the island. Everyone who’d been to Xiamen told us that this was the place to go, so we headed over on our first day after a loooong walk to the seafront (our hotel was as inland as it’s possible to get in Xiamen) and bought an 18rmb return ferry ticket from the terminal close to the end of Zhongshan walking street (basically Nanjing Dong Lu).

Unfortunately the ferry doesn’t go straight across the narrow band of sea to the island (a few hundred metres) they take a 40 minute tour of the island. This would all have been very nice if there hadn’t been a a continuous commentary over the tannoy system by a particularly excitable crew member at white noise volumes instructing us to hire binoculars from them to see the beautiful scenery of the island barely visible through the mist just off the port side. This continued unabated for pretty much the whole trip and had us pretty much finished before we’d even arrived at Gulang Yu..

Splendid "mankini" on the ferry to Gulang Yu. You can pretty much see the guy on the right wincing from the volume of the tannoy system

Anyway, finally we did arrive and we quickly jumped off the boat and made our way around the island with the crowds. I took a few photos in the port area:

Local boatsman preparing for the incoming tide

With no vehicles on the island all the deliveries are done by a gang of local coolies and handcarts

Just about the first thing we saw after getting off the ferry was a McDonalds, then a KFC, even a Dairy Queen, all surrounded by hordes of megaphone-led baseball cap tour groups, this clearly wasn’t the idyllic peaceful paradise we’d been expecting..

We followed the hordes of tourists through the winding streets across the island, stopping to have a look in the odd shop here and there (mostly tat). We stopped off at Pearl World, which had been recommended by Tina and bought H some nice dangly black pearly earrings (which she promptly left in the hotel bathroom when we checked out..). Fighting our way through tour groups got pretty tiring though and we stopped off for lunch somewhere in the middle of the island and spent a relaxing hour eating some pretty fine seafood

There was a big thing with post-it note good luck messages on the island, H thought it was cute, I just thought it was a fire hazard and a waste of post-it notes.. BAH HUMBUG!!!

After making it to the opposite side of the island and seeing the crowded beach we pretty much gave up on the spot and jumped into one of the golf buggies to take us back to the ferry terminal. This took a tour back through some of the back streets which actually looked a lot more interesting than the bit we’d walked through and made us wish we’d spent more time off the main tourist route, not interesting enough for us to actually take a walk back that way though..

So, we headed back, tired and disappointed to Xiamen…

A pensive H on the return ferry journey to Xiamen

The food in Xiamen has been pretty damn good so far, although we’ve felt we’ve overpaid so far.

Last night we thought we’d try Tina’s suggestion of eating near BaShi market (for the second time.. on Saturday we couldn’t find it and ended up giving in and eating at mcdonalds..). We had a false start after following a taxi driver’s suggestion and letting him take us to another food street which was “much better”.

Of course this turned out to be nothing of the sort and on the other side of the island in the middle if nowhere, about a kilometer up a private path on the side of a hill. By the time we got out and paid we realised that the couple of stalls were actually the same place and their prices were ridiculous, fish we’d paid 98 rmb per jin (0.5kg) on expensive Gulang Yu were being sold at 250rmb per jin.

After a near brawl with their rude manager (he refused to call a taxi unless we ate and got aggressive quickly) we set off back down the path to the highway and eventually managed to find another taxi.

The new taxi driver seemed sympathetic about our predicament and gave H the info she needed to complain to the taxi ombudsman. He also had a recommendation about a food street, I didn’t want to be stung again but H reckoned we could trust him seeing as he knew we would follow through on a complaint.

Anyway, we struck gold, it’s a food street on heyang dong lu, close to hodai xi lu.

Now, I normally just say that I don’t eat seafood because I’ve had some dreadful stomachs, particularly after mussels. So unless it looks extremely clean and fresh I won’t touch it. It’s all looked good in Xiamen so far though.

The prices here were very cheap, so we ordered a good variety of dishes, which were all absolutely delicious, easily the best we’ve had so far.

Sweet and sour fish, 50rmb per jin (same fish we paid 98rmb per jin for on Gulang Yu)

Razor clams – 20rmb for the dish

Crab – 50rmb per jin, this cost us 60rmb in total

Those weird shrimps that have got a million legs. Yeah we cocked up here, neither if us like these. 38rmb per jin.

Total cost for the meal was 209rmb (including a couple of bottles of Sedrin beer) which I think is an absolute bargain.

Oh, on the downside we spotted this horseshoe crab on the way out, the manager rushed over, “this is an endangered species” he beamed, “come back tomorrow and I can sell to you for a very good price”.

Hmm, we’ll be back, but I think we’ll give the horseshoe crab a miss…