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.

View Larger Map

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.

We cast in, he set the boat in reverse and we sat back enjoying a beer as the boat dragged the worms through the reeds in the lake. We didn’t have much to do other than let out line until we felt the gear hit the bottom, then pull in slightly to keep it just above, well, this was the theory but I couldn’t tell when the gear hit the bottom and was constantly reeling in and out trying to figure out where it was. In the end I gave up and just left it as it was and sat back with a beer.

This was the business, a warm day, sunshine, beautiful scenery and a beer, every silver lining has a cloud though and running in reverse meant that we were getting constant gusts of exhaust fumes as we sat and drank. After five minutes of this and no sign of any fish I was starting to wish I’d stayed on the bank.

We chatted and drank, but still nothing and 10 minutes later the captain decided that we should move on and try a different spot. We started to reel in, after a few seconds the other guys had fully retracted their hooks but I was still going strong reeling away, when I finally got the hook out it turned out I’d let out about 50m of line into water about 8 feet deep (which had the others ripping the piss out of me for the next twenty minutes “which bay were you fishing in” etc, no wonder I’d not even had a bite….)

This time I was better prepared and had my beer in the can holder, cap pulled on tightly, feet wedged in the corners, one hand grabbing the stool and the other holding the rod as we off. I almost enjoyed it this time as we skimmed across the lake but I was crapping myself again before long as we headed straight for the wake of a large boat and bounced across it without slowing down, the front of the boat smacked down hard in the water and my white-knuckled fingers almost ripped the foam cover off the seat. The boat was as stable as a rock though, my only worry was the large hook at the end of the rod which I’d not reeled in tightly enough and was whizzing around about a metre or so in front of my face, as we slowed down to go through another channel I hooked it onto one of the loops on the rod and reeled it tight to make it safe.

The lake was beautiful, the trees were just on the turn and were on the way from green through to a golden/copper colour

The boat stopped in another bay and we tried again, another 20 minutes went by with nothing. “Geez guys you’re not having any luck today at all” the captain said, “let’s try something different”.

He brought out some new rods with “spinners” attached, he reckoned we’d have more luck dragging them through the reeds and trying to entice pike and bass to take a bite. He handed over the rods and explained what we had to do, basically cast out and reel in at a speed which kept the spinner off the bottom but still in the reeds, then cast out again. Well, this was great except with every cast I was bringing in huge clumps of reed from the bottom and within 5 minutes I’d got so tangled that I lost the gear completely.. This sucked, the constant casting and reeling meant I couldn’t drink my beer and we were all too busy to chat, plus we were catching absolutely nothing. I’d just about had enough when Patrick (my colleague) let out a whoop and I turned to see him lifting a fish out of the water.

A bass as it turns out, a bit of a tiddler if you ask me but anyway, it did the job of getting me motivated again and after taking a photo I cast out again.. and again.. 10 minutes later I’d still not got so much as a sniff when Tim (customer) whooped and pulled out another bass, a proper one this time..

And then another..

And then Patrick pulled out a small pike

And then Tim pulled out another bass..

I was getting desperate by this point, the others were pretty much pulling a fish out every time they cast and I wasn’t getting so much as a sniff. As the guys dropped the fish back into the water I started casting directly on top of the fish hoping to get lucky, but nothing. I even got the captain to change my spinner again, it was the colour of my spinner you know, it was all off, frightening the fish away.. he changed it for me and WHAM!!! absolutely nothing..

We’d been out a few hours now and dusk was approaching, “well it’s almost time guys” the captain said, “let’s just try one more spot and then call it a day”.

We headed for another bay and pulled up close to one of the other boats where a couple of my UK colleagues were fishing, even as we were slowing down we could see them pulling fish out of the water, one after another, this looked like the spot.

Tim and Patrick started pulling in fish straight away but still I was getting nothing, I was getting tired with all the casting and reeling and started trying to cast as far as possible to increase the time between casts. Suddenly, after an especially long cast I got a bite and a strong pull on the line, I started reeling in, whatever it was it was strong. I started to regret casting so far, I’d figured it was a good idea at the time but the fish I’d caught was a long way from the boat now and struggling, I’d got a lot of line to reel in.. Eventually I got it in though and pulled out a large pike, our biggest catch of the day, I let the captain unhook it for me (there was no way I was putting my fingers anywhere near those rows of teeth) posed for a quick photo and threw it back.

“Right guys that’s us for the day” said the captain, I’d literally caught a fish on the last cast of the day and gone from frustrated disappointment to a fully converted (and very relieved) fisherman.

To be honest we needed a bigger boat, but I skilfully landed it despite the inadequate equipment.

All in all it was a damn good afternoon, we’d had glorious weather, had plenty of fun bouncing round the bays in a lightning fast boat and I’d caught the biggest fish of the day, I was full of it by the time we got back to Lord Fletchers for well earned beers and dinner.

Would I go again? that’s a definite YES!!

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…

The business centre was at the far end of terminal 2. It was tatty but pretty reasonable, they charged something like 10rmb for access and use of their LAN. I paid up, sat at an empty desk and booted up my laptop, setting out my documents while I was waiting so that I could be as quick as possible. I entered the web address, clicked enter, and the screen began to load. It immediately looked a bit odd, there was a logo at the top and then a short paragraph of text underneath, much more simple than I’d imagined. I read the text “this website will be down for routine maintenance on Sunday 25^th September between the hours of 1am and 3:30 am EDT”. Shit.. I reloaded to make sure, once, twice, five times, it was down.

I searched the web for the EDT time zone praying that we were almost out of the shutdown, but no, EDT is basically 12 hours behind Shanghai, the site wasn’t due to come back up until 3:30pm Shanghai time, 10 minutes after check-in closed.. I searched for a back-up system or an alternative website for the application.. nothing… I browsed back to it and pressed reload, and again… still down…

No point in panicking I thought, just need to wait and see if it comes back online early, if not I’ll have to change my flight to tomorrow and miss the first (and most important) day of the meeting. I glanced around the room at the others, the guy next to me was staring at his computer and as my eyes drifted to his screen I was surprised to see that he was logged into the same ESTA front page that I was on, as I watched he clicked the mouse button reloading the page. I looked over my shoulder, there were another two guys using computers , they were also on exactly the same page, sitting, waiting, pressing reload..

I was relieved to find I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know about this and said so to the guy next to me, he was French. One of the guys behind me claimed to have found an alternative website for the application, I took a quick look and he was obviously wrong, it was some kind of visa-assistance website, “KWIKVISAS” or some nonsense, basically you fill in the form on their website rather than the ESTA website and then their guy enters your info into the ESTA website for you and sends you back the certificate. I told him what I thought of the website, he wasn’t having it, he submitted the form and paid a hefty bill for the service (something like 50USD, the ESTA costs 14USD) before the screen came up with a predictable “our agents will send you your ESTA certificate within the next 48 hours”, I felt smug, someone was even more foolish than me!!

Time was getting on now, it had just gone 3 o’clock, it was now or never, but I’d had an idea…. If there was maintenance going on then presumably there was a guy working on the website on the other end and he might be able to see that people are trying to connect to the website. Maybe if I just keep pressing reload over and over again he’ll realise how urgently I need to make the application and he’ll put it back online again a bit early for me (ok so I’d possibly gone a little insane at this point). So I upped my reload rate from around once a minute to around once every 5 seconds for the next 15 minutes, I even called H and asked her to do the same to double my chances.

Predictably enough 3:20 came and went, the site was still down. I shut down my computer and walked over to ticketing to change my ticket to the next day. Luckily there was availability on the flight so I could change without problem. The girl asked for my credit card, “errr why do you need my credit card??”, “for the extra cost for the ticket”, “what extra cost, I’m just changing the day??”. She went on to explain some ridiculously complicated system which I can summarise as follows: I’d booked my ticket well in advance and got a discount, to change my ticket to tomorrow I basically had to refund my old ticket and buy a new one, buying a ticket at such short notice has no discount, I have to pay full price. I tried to argue but she wasn’t moving, I had a choice, either pay up or no flight tomorrow. Defeated, I handed over my credit card, she handed back a stub for signing, the extra charge came to 3500 RMB… I nearly cried…  Just as I was finishing up my phone rang, it was H, “THE WEBSITE IS BACK ONLINE!!!” I glanced at my watch, it was about 3:35, I looked down towards the check-in counters, they were deserted, the staff had already closed down and left, “I’ll see you in an hour” I said and made my way to the taxi line.

Just when the story couldn’t get any worse I eventually got into my hotel at Minneapolis late on Monday evening (10:30 or so) after getting the form sorted and flying from Shanghai on Monday afternoon. I emailled a couple of the guys as I arrived to see where they were, I knew they’d been off to watch the baseball that evening and was surprised that nobody was in the bar. I went up to my room and started unpacking, by 11:30 nobody had replied so I took some melatonin and went to bed.

The next morning I met Phil, one of the guys I’d emailled, “where were you last night” he said, “I never heard back from you” I replied, “I texted you” he said, ah.. I’d never given him my new number.. “We had an awesome night” he said, “we left the baseball and popped into this bar round the corner from the hotel, OMD were playing there” (OMD – Orchestral Manouvers in the Dark), “yeah right…you’re winding me up..“, “no really” he said, and sure enough he pulled out his phone and showed me a video of him and the others watching OMD playing “Enola Gay” in the bar the previous night. Damn… OMD used to be one of my favourites from the 80s and I’d missed out big time.

Then to top it all off he showed me some more pictures, “yeah, when we finished we came back to the hotel bar and the band turned up, they were staying here last night, they’re fellow scousers and we ended up drinking together and chatting until about 1am“..

So there you have it, I missed the first and most important day of the meeting, paid an extra 3500 RMB for my flight and missed out on the chance to see and meet some of my childhood heroes (which would have been golden blogging material too), I’d hit rock bottom, the trip officially couldn’t get any worse from this point on..

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…

“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….

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…..)

After a couple of hours solid nap we scanned the map and seeing where the majority of attractions were we promptly decided to head in the opposite direction, right across the island to the beach on the other side for a walk and hopefully a bit of P and Q. We jumped in a taxi outside the hotel, pointed to the beach on the map and headed off.

He dropped us off seemingly in the middle of nowhere on the side of a minor highway which followed the coast, he insisted that this was the spot we had pointed to but I noted that the point coincided with the only pedestrian we’d seen for a good few km and who happened to be trying to flag down a taxi. H had a few choice words with the driver but I could already see the beach and what I saw looked good (which I pointed out to H as she finally paused for breath) so we paid the driver and walked down to the beach.

The beach was nice, really nice, clean sand, palm trees at the edge of the beach and we almost had it to ourselves, there were literally only 3 or 4 people as far as the eye could see.

Looking North

We decided to head south, back towards civilisation as we weren’t sure how easy it would be to find a taxi later on, the flip-flops were off and we walked along the waters edge collecting shells for my niece. We had great fun standing in the surf, sinking slowly into the sand as the retreating waves leached the sand from under our soles, I couldn’t believe that H had never done this before, I guess beach holidays are primarily a Western obsession..

The beach eventually became pretty rocky but there was a really nice terrace over the rocks which you could follow round the coast, the tide was out though and we managed to find our way through without climbing up.

In the rocks we came across rock pools, I wanted to take a look but H thought they were pointless until we we sneaked up one and saw a large crab disappearing into a crack in the rock. We must have stayed there for 20 minutes, lying as still as possible watching the crabs slowly reappear, along with shrimps and small fish, I figure the last time I’d done this must have been almost 30 years ago, on our annual caravan holiday at Crantock (near Newquay) in Cornwall.

It started getting very rocky at one point and we ended up having to go up onto the terrace, leaving the rocks to a group of locals out collecting shellfish. After 100m or so things opened up again and we came down onto a beach, we could see groups of people ahead, apparently we were getting closer to civilisation.

The groups were all wedding parties, posing ridiculously to the instructions of the bored photographers, surely they have bets with each other on what ridiculous things they can make the couple do? One group in particular (who I wish I’d photographed) were posing behind two bottles of bright green Mountain Dew inserted so their necks crossed in the sand, with the photographer pretty much lying on the ground to get the bottles in the foreground. Surely ANYTHING would be better than mountain dew, even two bottles of Tsingtao if they can’t afford some fizz??

We walked another kilometre or so until we reached a bundle of restaurants / bars on the side of the beach and decided to stop for a drink. Basically all of them were closed for refurbishment though, I guess this area must get quite busy during the main holiday season.. We were pretty tired by this point though (walking through soft sand is surprisingly taxing what what) and ended up just taking a taxi back to the hotel for a well needed shower.

That night we had an easy evening eating seafood and had an early night to bed with plans to rise early for a long morning walk around the botanical gardens next to our hotel before checking out at midday and then flying back mid-afternoon. Well, that all sounded like a good idea but we ended up sleeping in till 10am and by the time we’d packed and eaten breakfast we only had around an hour to see the botanical gardens. We nearly didn’t go at all, it was tempting just to sit in the room and watch tv for an hour (my preference over botanical gardens), but we ended up going anyway on H’s insistence.

Now, normally if someone suggested going to a botanical garden I’d look at them as if they’d just asked me if I’d like to jump off a high bridge and then ask if all the bars were closed or something, I guess marriage has tempered me though and H really wanted to see it so I relented and agreed to take her, let me tell you I’ve completely changed my mind now and I’m ALL OVER botanical gardens, they were awesome!

We barely had any time once we got there, just chance to walk round the very pretty lake and see a couple of other areas (bamboo area, rainforest etc) and then we had to leave. The place was pretty much deserted and we were pretty much by ourselves walking through dense, very picturesque greenery. At one point we heard music and found an elderly couple playing flutes in a shelter by the banks of the lake (they didn’t want their picture taken). The downside is that the place was alive with mosquitos and I must have forgotten to apply “qu wen” because I got bitten to death (not literally). Worst of all, because I was wearing flipflops my feet were bitten five or six times, which made walking in shoes agony for the best part of the next week..

As we walked round the pond to the building in the pic above we could hear an extremely loud woman talking, when we walked inside we found a middle aged woman pretty much screaming into the phone while trying to catch frogs in a smaller pond inside, presumably the noise stunned them because she’d already got a carrier bag with five or six sizeable specimens for her dinner pot..

H amongst the jungle creepers

Stripey Bamboo

Lazy tree which just can't be bothered with smaller branches and just grows berries straight out of the trunk. Either that or it's got scabies

We were really sorry we didn’t have more time in the end, we must have only seen a fifth of the gardens and there was a really cool looking cactus area on the far side. It was just too far away though, so we made-do with a slow walk round the lake and wandered back to the hotel to check out.

Hmm, 5 pounds to the first person who asks if I’ve “gone gay”..

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

someone's going to have to help me with translation again!

Oh, it’s worth mentioning that apparently Taxia is famous for it’s village temple and half moon pool, maybe it was the weather but it didn’t really interest me and thus, no photos, plenty of pics on the web if you’re desperate for a peek though!

So that was pretty much it, we got back into the car, tired and slightly wet and started the long 3 hour journey back to Xiamen just in time for the seafood I mentioned last week.

All in all it was a damn good day out., I’d definitely recommend the trip if you’re heading down that way, avoid taking a group tour though!!

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

And before long I was chasing round ducks and chickens to photograph, the whole while pursued by bikini clad locals selling postcards and brochures.

I’d spotted a couple of other square tulou on the way past in the car which were being completely ignored by the bus tours etc so I proposed walking the short distance to them to take a look. H was more than up for this, she’d overheard our driver talking to someone about what time he thought he’d be getting home, which was far earlier than we’d been planning, she was determined to prove him wrong.

H did tell me what all this said but I forgot to write it down and I'm writing this in Tokyo, so can't check with her, maybe someone can help? I remember there was a lot about a certain Chairman?

These tulou were pretty much the real thing, no fancying up for tourists, nobody selling anything, for me these were infinitely more interesting than Yuchanglou.

A number of smaller buildings had been built at the centre, mostly cooking areas and storage as far as we could see

Chicken stock, can't beat it

Another close-by tulou

I don't know how long this wood had been stacked outside but it was reduced to a mere skeleton, must be decades at least

The last tulou was a little odd, it looked clean and in good condition from the front but the path to it was completely overgrown to chest height. Still, being the nosy sort I wanted to take a peek so I cleared a path through and ended up ankle deep in marsh at one point, nearly losing one of my trainers..

The view through the front doors was curious, the inside was just as overgrown with vegetation as the outside

Sure enough, despite the front facade looked good as new the back half had completely collapsed, the whole tulou had been abandoned. Some nearby residents told us this happened around 5 years ago

That was pretty much it for this row of tulou, but it’s worth noting that one of the tulou has been converted into a hotel (YuChang Hotel)

We poked our noses through the front door and it looks reasonable enough, pretty clean and clinical, probably a good bet for those wanting to spend a night in a tulou.

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..

It’s a beautiful place alright, but here’s a quick question, how do you take a place like this and make it even more beautiful? Any idea?? Well, thankfully the local government has given it some thought and installed multicoloured flashing lights which they turn on at sundown, you’re kicking yourself now aren’t you…

I didn’t hang around to see the place looking like a cheap childs toy but here’s a pic I stole from the intrawebs, click to make it bigger

Anyway, I took a few pics just as a minibus tour group arrived to pose for photos (in orange baseball caps of course). We left and walked down to the village.

A little bit Hobbit no?

We could hear music blaring from the village from a long way off and it wasn’t until after we arrived and I snapped this pic that we realised the villagers were holding a funeral (for one of the elders who had passed away at 83 we found out later).

I didn’t take any more photos of the funeral proceedings (as tempting as it was, but it didn’t feel right, I did take a pic of the marching band though) but it was a fascinating affair, there were a group of about 15 villagers dressed completely in white (complete with KKK style hoods) and one girl dressed in a similar outfit made of sack cloth. The music came from a brass marching band in uniform who led the group round and round the coffin (centre left of pic) and the table of food offerings and then round the village.

How on earth did they end up with these instruments instead of traditional chinese erhu etc? and the uniforms??

After all this finished we wandered over to the tulou where all this was happening and found it was hosting a funeral banquet inside, we didn’t think they’d appreciate visitors at the time so we moved on to one of the others.

All the tulou are based around a well

Tulou are always a number of floors high and only have windows on the upper floor (for protection from bandits apparently), the ground floor is typically the kitchen, with bedrooms and food storage upstairs

One interesting thing we found out is that everyone in this village has the same surname, Huang. A proud villager told us that their bloodline goes back 24 generations at the village and their ancestor was a great emperor (or something along those lines). The same went for the next village, they all shared another common name (which I forgot to write down..)

Sun-dried flowers, presumably a local cooking ingredient

As I was taking this pic I noticed an impatient guy behind me from the tour bus, as I moved away he quickly snapped a pic and then sprinted to the next Tulou, they spent a total of 20 minutes at this Tulou cluster, that's 4 minutes per Tulou.. We spent closer to a couple of hours, chatting to the locals and eating lunch in of their places (20 kuai each, for reference their food is very salty, "so that we eat less" according to cynical H)

One of the locals we chatted to told us that the government gives each resident of Tianluokeng 200 rmb per year as payment for allowing the tour groups in. At 90 rmb per head entry fee that’s a pretty low cut of the profits.. It’s not surprising that some of the tulou are very commercialised with every resident setting up market stalls inside selling all manner of tourist tat, from local tea to paintings of the tulou, to paperweights, fridge magnets, wooden cars etc etc.. It’s a shame because it really spoils the atmosphere, but then who can blame them..

The two top tulou were very commercialised, every resident had set up their own market stall inside the tulou. Apparently this tulou has only been on the tour group route for about 4 years and it still manages to feel like a real working village, god knows what it's going to be like in a couple more years..

On the way out of the village we spotted this jolly chap in a shack of his own, we stopped to say hello and asked what he was doing, "making baiju" he replied. We asked if we could take a look

Baijiu-still running in the background over a log fire, he reckons he makes pretty reasonable baijiu but didn't offer to sell us any, there's still an innocence about the place

So we set off satisfied for the next tulou, but not before stopping further down the hill at the appointed area to take pictures from the approved platform.

More tomorrow (or maybe the day after) on the other tulou we visited, too many pics for one post…

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

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…