As someone who has seen Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, China, and Japan, I thought I’ve seen it all in Asia, until I landed at Kathmandu… The landscape, mountain, people’s appearance and attire, food, language, monument, temple, religious symbol, daily life scene, everything seem so remote and different but yet we’re just across the Chinese border! There’s no lack of strangeness to see everyday in every corner of Nepal. But, after a while all the mountains look alike, all the temples seem like the same, all the food and menu seem like coming from one source, except one thing that always caught us in surprise is what we see on the road, especially when going long distance. Some of the toilets on our way must deserve a Guiness record for their… uniqueness… and diversity.

Nepal is a perfect place for taking photo. Every place and everybody are so colorful, and the nature as well. But that doesn’t beat seeing the sun rising from behind the Himalayas, inch by inch, seeing the starred dark sky turn orange then turn blue, projecting on the golden tip of the faraway range of Himalayas, seeing the fog rising from the bottom of your feet then turn into cloud, then at night seeing the moon coming out as the cloud clear their way to turn back into fog again, sleeping above the peaceful villages. Capturing that is not an easy task though, and rendering the beautiful scene on screen is even harder!  

After some missed shots for Xinjiang and Xi’an, the team finally decided to go to Xiapu during November. We were lucky, the fast train from Shanghai to Xiapu (2 stops before Fuzhou) was opened at then end of September, it is just a convenient 5-hours train to get there directly. Xiapu is located at the North East of Fujian province, somewhere in between Wenzhou and Fuzhou. It has a long coastal line of 400km, with a large portion of sea shore protected by mountains and rocks (calm and safe), making it perfect for fishers to establish since the past thousand years.

For the last couple of years, an emerging touristic activity is photography, which attracts large number of photo enthousiasts from all around China, and still growing. Large scale of floating village, infinite seaweed field, thousands of rows of bamboo planted in sea shore, endless number of fisher boats going to high sea, crew of fishers carrying their catches to the land, colorful sand, breath-taking sunrise and sunshine, those are unique and abundant things that Xiapu has to offer to every photographer. In addition, the cost of lodging and eating at Xiapu is a fraction of what is costs in Shanghai, beside having much fresher and better selection of seafood!

The 6 of us have hired a local guide, Mr. Zhang, who is member of the association of photographers of Xiapu. He was born there and have lived all his life there, so he knows the place, the people, the weather, the view, and the timing. We wouldn’t be able to shoot any great pictures if any of the 5 elements was missing! Under his guide, we were able to witness amazing tidal effect at the sea shore, within 30 minutes, a seemingly boring place “suddenly” becomes a spectacular zebra-like oyster field; a muddy place suddenly becomes clear white as water fill up. For all of us coming from city, this was such a great show given by Mother Earth!

One last thing worth mentioning is, 2 of crew members are new to our team, Perry and Momo, because Max and Roger were not able to join us this time. It turned out we had a great time together, eating and drinking every night, playing cards and singing too. It was a memorable trip, and probably one of the cheapest I ever had. It costed us only 2000 yuan per person, for 5 days in total, all inclusive!

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Once again, we booked our trip on ctrip.com, upgraded to a better located hotel right on Xi Dan street [西单街] where all the major shopping malls are found, and just 1 subway station from the Imperial Palace [故宫]. It was really worth the minor cost addition for all the comfort and time saving everyday after the guide tour is over. We had guided tour up to 5pm everyday, sometime earlier, so we had plenty of time to walk around the busy street, actually my mom has done quite some shopping there on her own, while I was skimming through my email inbox. To my surprise, I prefer to walk among the local “cheap shop” rather than the western-look modern malls, because those are all alike everywhere you go, they have the same recognized brands and same products everywhere, nothing special.

What I was mostly pleased with during this trip is the gorgeous clear blue sky, with a bit of pure white cloud hanging around, everyday. Sometime I felt like, staring at the blue sky is already worth the trip, or maybe I left Canada too long time to badly miss a clear sky. Also the weather was dry, around 28C, it was simply the perfect time to travel. I couldn’t ask anything more on this.

I was very pleased to see the great renovation being done on the major touristic attractions, such as the Imperial Palace, the Tian Tan Park [天坛公园], the National Theater [国家大剧院], etc. Photographying those sites was a pure pleasure, plus the good weather in the background, all the sites were at their best appeal in front of my camera! We were in small group, mostly just 4 people (including us) plus the guide. So we had plenty of time to talk and ask questions on the historical relics. Our time was flexible when I need to stop down a minute to take a shot, or waiting for people to clear out.

That was for the old Beijing attractions. The new Olympic attractions are the Bird Nest [鸟巢国家体育场] and Water Cube [水立方国家游泳馆]. I went there to shoot night scene on my own, and was really lucky to have found an excellent spot to shoot the Birt Nest. That photo alone was worth all the troubles and sweat. Unfortunately the Water Cube was not so nice to look at close, nor photographying, because it’s too flat with a messy surrounding, there’s no way to get a clear shot of that building.

To summarize, this trip has totally changed my perception of the capital. The warm reception of my special colleague (Cool) during Saturday night also helped this cause. Enough is to say, last time when I came, I almost swear that I’d never come to live in the capital. But after this time, I feel like I can take this very well, not only that, I’m considering maybe give it a try soon, whenever an opportunity shows up. Just to remind myself again, never say never…

Click here to see the entire album.

With that, I thought I would simply pack up and follow the crew and just take photos on the road. Then the next day Desmond asked me to review the plan and give feedbacks to Sandra, coz no one else is gonna do it… I said to myself, ooops, have to do homework after all. So I took a good look at various websites, including Wikipedia, Google map, visitscotland.com, etc. Three days later I had a rough idea of what I’d like to cover in this 7 days trip. So I responded with a proposition to cover a larger area of Scotland, from Edinburgh to St-Andrews to Pitlochry to Banffshire to isle of Skye to Inverness. The good thing about doing the homework is that I didn’t feel lost on the road coz I had some idea about the Scotland geography.

After about a dozen of plan adjustments over 3 weeks, we basically settled down on all aspects of the trip, including itinerary, golf courses, restaurants (for Desmond’s birthday) and B&B, with reservation and everything. In parallel, Henry did much of his part in updating GPS, register the destination addresses and reserve the car for the crew. Graham promised to bring us some unbreakable rain gear as weather forecast was pretty dim.

As we approached the 2^nd July we were all feeling more and more excited to go, while I was just returned from another trip to Shan Xi 4 days ago with colleagues. At the time we had to leave for the airport, Desmond had a business diner that last until the very last moment, then there was unexpected road construction on our way to the airport, traffic was stuck at 9:30pm after the bridge, for a moment we thought seriously that we might miss our flight and call the trip off… Luckily we arrived at the Pudong airport exactly one hour earlier (instead of 2.5hrs as demand) at the check-in counter, no problem, we were in, for sure! Luggages checked in, golf bags checked in, calm was restored among us.

A dozen hours later, fully packed in the KLM budget flight with kids in front and behind our row, we arrived at the Edinburgh airport in relatively good shape despite our inability to get a cup of coffee at the Shiphol airport at Amsterdam because of the very early hour of our flight transfer. Few minutes later we were able to meet Henry in the aiport as it is a quite small place. We had a quick breakfast and a pint of ale while waiting for Graham to arrive two hours later. Beside Graham’s delayed golf bag, everything seems to be aligned for a great trip to get start.

Summer at Scotland could easily be summarized as one word: green! There is greenery everywhere we were, the mountain, the pasture, the highland and the golf course. For this tiny country there are over 500 golf courses, which is more than what the entire China has today! Obviously there is a deeply rooted culture of golfing at Scotland tracing back to 500 years ago, which was first played somewhere around the Old Course that we visited immediately at our arrival at St-Andrews.

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St-Andrews is a small town, but a well polished one that makes visitors feel comfortable and welcomed. For a crew accustomed to megacities, St-Andrews is a nice peaceful retreat that suddenly wash away the work stress. We really enjoyed taking a walk on the Old Course fairway, with the imposing club house in the front view, the blue sea and blue sky as a large canvas. The grass of golf courses at Scotland are the greenest I’ve ever seen so far, the purest and best maintained as far as I can tell.

A dish of fish & chips and a pint of ale after a game of golf is the best fast food money can buy, and relatively healthy too. I truely admire and enjoy the respect of Scottish toward golf, as a sport, as a social activity, and as tourist attraction. It was really exciting but also so relaxing to play golf in such beautiful surrounding with such amazing golf buddies. We all have different background and specialties, but we speak many common languages and have many common interests such as golf, photo, traveling, food and wine. Though all of them have developped a great degree of addiction to whiskey, I haven’t really gotten into that yet, still trying to remember the very few whiskey names during our tasting session. But at least, we all bought a bottle of 30-year Talisker at isle of Skye, signed by all of us and sealed for “very special occasion”. The default delay is to open a bottle every three years, unless that “special condition” happens before the target date.

As we were having great weather everyday, with sunlight from 5am to 11pm, we couldn’t resist playing golf everyday. Within 7 days we played 4 games of 18 hole and 2 games of 9 hole, at the 7^th day my middle finger of right hand really hurt that I refuse to play, that’s why we had a chance to visit Edinburgh after Henry and Graham left for London earlier the morning.

Our actual itinerary was like this:

Day 1: St-Andrews, golf at Jubilee’s

big diner for Desmond’s birthday

Day 2: St-Andrews, golf at Duke’s, got my first birdie there, hole 6 par 5, yee!!!

big diner for Henry’s upcoming birthday, and for my birdie

Day 3: golf at Duke’s again, couldn’t resist playing 9 hole while driving there to pick up my 7 iron, but terrible score…

Pitlochry, walk at pasture and the beautiful Pitlochry golf course

Day 4: driving on the road to Skye, breath-taking view of Scotland raw landscape

took the ferry at Mallaig, visited the golf course at Mallaig

arrived at Skaebost B&B, played 9 hole (too many mosquito…)

took crazy photos at night

Day 5: visited Dunvegan castle

visited Talisker distillery at Skye, had great oysters and mussels

driving back to Pitlochry, raining heavily

arrive late, golf at Aberfeldy until 10pm!

have Chinese fast food as diner…

Day 6: golf at Gleneagles, horrible score but beautiful course…

stay at B&B near Edinburgh airport, had diner in Indian restaurant

Day 7: drop Henry and Graham at airport early morning

visited old town of Edinburgh until noon

return car and left Scotland in a fully packed KLM flight, again.

This trip was memorable in many ways. We were all guys, had many common interests, enjoyed every activity that we did, had great conversation, had unexpectedly great weather everyday and had a smooth itinerary in overall. If I had to choose something to complain, it’d be that my golf score wasn’t good enough, but honestly I never expected it to be good in short term anyway…

At the end, we had some good discussion about the next destination, but there’re simply too many places that we’d like to go, together or separately, that make such conversation an infinite day dreaming chat. Actually I’d rather think of one spontaneously and just do it, rather than planning long time ahead!

With the rise of its reputation across China, the many scenic areas within Wuyuan have gotten together to create a multi-sites pass that costs 180 rmb, linking 12 sites in total. If you go to any of these sites, you have to buy the combo ticket, but you can use it for 5 days as many times as you want. To make sure you don’t resell this to another individual during the valid period, they record your fingerprint in the card during first use, and subsequent uses must be authorized by the same fingerprint. Smart, but potentially troublesome, and I suppose this doesn’t come cheap in equipment and maintenance. I just wonder how much more money are the site owners making in using such system… or maybe the money just go to the county touristic department first and they redistributed to the site owners, in which case I doubt they would receive their full entitlement…….

Well, the first 2 days were cloudy, as typical in the Jiangxi and Anhui provinces. The 3rd day was absolutely blue sky and great weather. During this trip I did see much more of Wuyuan, so much that I felt the villages were repetitive and basically indistinguishable in photos. With the convenience of a car, we drove back and forth among the 3 observation decks of the Jiangling [江岭] scenic area 3 times during the morning. We actually stayed one night on top of the mountain, allowing us to be at the observation deck very early the next morning (7am). But then we realized that people were much more crazy then us, they were there way before we woke up! When we got there, people were already filled up the place with tripods and long lens. Once again, the cloud was thick, sky was blue, what a wonderful world I told myself! Seeing a small village on the mountain dipped in the cloud, I couldn’t stop pressing the camera shutter, on and on and on.

Trying to capture different aspect of Wuyuan this time, I was pleasantly surprised by the Yue Liang Wan [月亮湾] scenic area. We were not aware of this place when we drove cross a crowd of more than 50 amateur photographers lining up beside the river. We decided to pull off and joined the crew, spent more than an hour of truely enjoyable shooting time. It was a really nice discover for me. I feel that I did shoot many different views of Wuyuan this time compared to last year, and I felt more comfortable in shooting with the new camera now. I feel that my framing skills have improved during this year too.

Click here to see the whole album.

The road from Quzhou to the Sanqingshan scenic area isn’t far, about 100km only, but serpented around a few mountains and getting there by the rainy dark night wasn’t exactly relaxing, but we got there safely and on schedule, despite my first time driving in China! We stayed at a hotel just underneath the cable-car entrance, so we were able to get there very easily and early at the next morning.

The cable-car took us to the middle height of the mountain, it was a thick foggy day. Then we started climbing the stair, which is neatly built and maintained, making the matter much easier than I’ve expected. I brought a tripod and big lens (70-200mm F/2.8L IS) beside my regular camera 5D Mark II and the 24-70mm F/2.8L lens. I’m glad to have two healthy colleagues with me to carry the extra equipment in rotation. An hour later we were able to get to the point of pretty scenic view but the omnipresent thick fog simply hide everything of 50m away from us!

Following the excellent open walk way like a long balcony literally hung at the middle of the mountain, we walked and walked and walked, then suddenly the fog cleared away, showing the tip of a far away mountain. By the time I took the camera out of the bag and powered it on, the fog had already gotten off half of the mountain, fabulous and astounding are just too mild to describe the feeling of seeing such wonderful natural view, and such “fog play” at such amazing speed. After about 5 shots the fog started to cover up the mountain again, and before I had time to find another angle (or get away from the tourists who insisted to be shot together with the view) the fog had already covered up the mountain entirely, then we were back to the same thick white view everywhere again…

Walking another 15 minutes we got another “fog play” at another place, we learned to be very quick and decisive. No more waste of time framing and adjusting camera settings, just clack click clack and move on to another angle! We got about 2 hours of luck that day. After that it started to rain badly, and we were hungry, and tired, and legs hurt, wet, geez, it was truely painful by moments… But whenever the fog cleared out and show some mountain, we instantly forgot about the pain and immediately got into action.

In overall, it was a truely memorable day seeing such wonder of this land, it reminds us of how this world is filled with little wonders in every corner of Earth to be discovered.

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The few days that we were at Lijiang and surrounding, the general impression is that it’s a pretty neat town with good weather, albeit very variable from minutes to minutes, good air quality and nice view everywhere. We mostly stayed within the Lijiang Dayan old town [大研古城] and also visited Suhe old town [速河古镇]. We didn’t spend any time in the normal Lijiang city. With its strong reputation inside and outside of China, it’s no wonder that the consumption price is very high in the old towns, almost comparable to prices at Shanghai!

As part of our package, we visited the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain [玉龙雪山], watched an outdoor show there, and also went to several touristic attractions surrounding the mountain. This mountain is considered a sacred mountain by the Naxi ethnic. Geologists also praise this mountain for being this and that, but as a simple person coming from Montreal and having seen many ordinary sky snow mountains there, I didn’t get any excited when seeing it for the first time, neither for the last time… Admittedly, the surrounding of this mountain is pretty because of large open green fields, but the mountain itself is yet to impress my girlfriend and I. We thought it is a must-see due to its reputation but would not pay for seeing it another time.

Out initial plan was to visit Shangri-La during 2 days. Driving distance from Lijiang to Shangri-La is only roughly 200km, but it took us almost 5 hours to get there because we had to cross many mountains. At half heigh of the Haba snow moutain there was snow all over the place. By then we knew that the place was hit by a week-long snow storm. Poor us going all the way there to escape the coldness of Shanghai, but finally hit but the worst snow storm of 2009! We stayed the night at the hotel at Shangri-La, sufferred from high altitude reaction, lack of appropriate clothes/shoes, bored to dead in the hotel room, then early morning next day we were brought back to Lijiang because all the touristic attractions at Shangri-La were not accessible. They were worried that the road back to Lijiang might be blocked if we didn’t leave quickly enough. That was out encounter with this famous place that was once called Zongdian county [中甸县] then renamed to Shangri-La at 2002 to attract tourists from all around the world!

Overall, we did enjoy the time at Lijiang, but everything else was not exactly exciting, considering the high price that we paid to go there even though it was considered low season. Given another chance, we would not choose to go there are that season, but rather at June as we were constantly being told by the locals. Now we know, and will remember forever, that Yunnan is far from being green at all seasons. That only happens at Kunming and part of south of Yunnan!

See the whole Lijiang album, Jade Dragon Snow Mountain album and Shangri-La albums.

We flew from Shanghai to Xiamen [厦门], spent a night at Gulangyu [鼓浪屿] which is a touristic island annexed to the south east sea of Xiamen. Although weather was excellent that day, it is still a Winter day and people were walking at the beach with Winter coat on, so there’s nothing sexy worth mentioning here. Small island with lots of tourists, sea wind, cold beach, salty smell, that’s about it!

The next day we drove west to the mountain side of Fujian where most Tulou are located. Over the next 3 days we hoped from one to another Tulou all over the places. We saw round, square, large, small, new, old, solid, collapsing, semi-finished, at any shapes of Tulou that could possibly exist. Not that we’ve gone through the 3,000+ Fujian Tulou, but we’ve been through two dozens of them, and passed through hundreds of them on the road. So much that at the end of the trip, we were no longer excited to see one, and we could judge by the outside surrounding whether it’s worth stopping down and go in visiting.

Though mentally tired we were, the large Tulou are spectacular to see, outside and inside. What’s truely amazing is that, despite so much dramatic changes occurring over the last thousand years, there are still more than 20,000 Tulou in active use today at Fujian and surrounding! Many of those were built during modern time. Although today’s Shanghai is so different than 20 years ago, the people living in tulou have barely seen any major changes in their life over the past century. There are many old people over 80 years old (mostly females) living in tulou, I wonder in their eyes what was the most dramatic change between today and 1920…

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During the weekend trip, I went to 3 places:

1. South Eastern Hundred Herbs Garden [中南百草园]
2. Tian Xia Yin Keng [天下银坑]
3. Hidden Dragon Waterfalls [藏龙百瀑].

The first place isn’t so interesting to visit, except maybe for corporate annual celebration or team building. The second place is actually quite small, but it hosts 4 movie shooting attractions. The one that interested me most is the movie site of The Banquet [夜宴]. I had to climb on a special spot to take an overview shot of that “house”, but it was worth the trouble, I’m quite happy about that.

The third place is actually nice, small mountain with waterfalls of various sizes and shapes at various height. But for someone who has seen many times the world’s biggest waterfalls, the Niagara Falls at Canada, I wouldn’t say that I was impressed by this one, at all. Once I arrived on the top, the view is actually quite interesting, a faraway green mountain chain with a small road between them. That road actually has a very fancy name, just like many touristic sites at China, it’s called Nine Dragons Street [大溪九龙街].

Overall, I was very impressed by the scale, density and omnipresence of bamboo everywhere in Anji. The bamboo are so large that I cannot encircle it with both palms together. Unfortunately many bamboo are engraved with tourist names on them, while others are marked in black pen with their date so that the farmers can cut them off eventually and sell off for making furniture or bamboo plywood. So it was not easy to take pretty photo of them…

Click here to see the full album.

One very memorable thing was the returning day. We were supposed to leave the island around noon, just before lunch. It turned out there was a big typhoon announced by the weather channel at early morning, we rushed for the breakfast at 7am, went to the pier at 8am under heavy rain and strong wind. It was like a scene of running for your life. Arrived at the pier, there were not only our tour group but also other villagers who want to leave the island that day in afraid that there might be only one boat available for the day. So the line up was messy, they were not allowed to embark on the boat because it was arranged specifically for our group (because we pay more in advance) but those guys insisted on embarking and deliberately blocked us. The scene was like families fighting for their lifes to leave a war torn island on the last boat………

Then after the painful embarcation, the boat was overloaded with too many stocks and people, there wasn’t enough seats for everyone, and before the boat leave the port it was already rocking because of the big wave. Fully packed, uncomfortable seats without air conditioning were all conditions to make everybody feel worse than usual. Many ladies started to take seasick pills early, but that didn’t cure them in any way. Fifteen minutes after the boat left, all those who usually had seasick have a plastic bag in hand, some already filled 1/3 of the bag… Fifteen minutes later we ran out of anything disposable that could hold liquid… Ten minutes afterward all those who usually have no seasick were feeling bad too because of the sight and the smell of all those half-filled plastic bags………

Weekend outing to Shandong Lingshan Island	Weekend outing to Shandong Lingshan Island	Weekend outing to Shandong Lingshan Island
Weekend outing to Shandong Lingshan Island	Weekend outing to Shandong Lingshan Island	Weekend outing to Shandong Lingshan Island
Weekend outing to Shandong Lingshan Island	Weekend outing to Shandong Lingshan Island	Weekend outing to Shandong Lingshan Island
Weekend outing to Shandong Lingshan Island	Harry Potter in China	World-class model shot

At the moment where I could no longer hold my breath… the boat luckily arrived to destination and stopped rocking, I arrived alive! It was a memorable trip for every single member of our group, we didn’t stop talking about those plastic bags during the lunch and returning road. Finally, I got home at 11pm, home sweet home!

Click here to see the full album.

Wuzhen [乌镇]] is one of them, situated in the Zhejiang province [浙江省], midway between Shanghai and Hangzhou. One of the reason these villages are popular to local tourists is the accessibility from large cities which make them ideal for a one-day trip. You don’t need to prepare anything, just drive there (or train, bus), have one or two meals, walk around, and return home, no planning required. If you want to stay overnight, hotels are plenty available.

So far I’ve been to Zhou Zhuang, Zhu Jia Jiao and Wuzhen. They all have their unique history and heroes, but in terms of touristic attraction they’re all same. A tiny 2 to 4 square kilometers with a small canal and gondola as the main show. Restaurants and small craftman shops are all around, local snacks, a few mini-hotels and many tea houses, that’s about it. I think Lijiang in Yunnan falls into this category too. The difference is, as far as my observation goes, how much money have been invested to polish the site. I was at Zhu Jia Jiao [朱家角] just last month, it was ugly, dirty and badly maintained, although it was flooded by tourists that day. There were many red lanterns hanging around the businesses, but none of them were truely red or clean, the color have faded so much that it’s not even orange, it’s like grayish, all of them! I have taken 4 photos in total at that site, portrait snapshots mostly!

Wuzhen is the opposite, it’s well maintained, very accessible from highway, clean, newer, much larger, except there weren’t much people the day I was there, which is normally a very good thing for taking photo. However I can’t help wondering why there were so few tourists there while government have invested so much money to build a new west fence [西栅] recently. Most tourist bus still bring people to the older east fence. Compared to Zhou Zhuang, Wuzhen have very few western tourists, I guess it takes some big events for westerners to know it. Wuzhen is hometown of a communist intellect and an unknown Qing Dynasty army general, there’re not much story to tell to westerners so far!

So there I was with my friend Thuy Ni. We took the train from Shanghai the morning, stay a night there and returned early next morning by bus. Taken advantage of the rare tourists, I’ve shot many photos where there was no distraction, surprisingly.

See the full album here.

As a once glorious capital of China during the beginning of Ming Dynasty [明朝], and then capital of Republic of China during the Japanese puppet Kuomintang [国明党] government, I was a bit disappointed by how this city is now under developed and kinda dirty. In terms of popularity it is certainly as well known as Hangzhou, but clearly it doesn’t attract as much tourists as Hangzhou, so the touristic spots are relatively quiet, which is actually good for visitors…

Mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-sen	Mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-sen	Mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-sen
Mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-sen	Mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-sen	Mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-sen

So, we went to visit the most popular touristic spots of Nanjing: the mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-sen [中山陵], the Confucious temple [夫子庙] snack street and the Yu Hua Tai [雨花台] martyrs meseum. It just happened that we stayed at the hotel next to the train station, which has a window view of the Xuan Wu lake [玄武湖], so I can say that I’ve visited that too…

Confucious Temple	Confucious Temple	Confucious Temple
Yu Hua Tai Martyrs Museum	Yu Hua Tai Martyrs Museum	Yu Hua Tai Martyrs Museum
Yu Hua Tai Martyrs Museum	Yu Hua Tai Martyrs Museum	Yu Hua Tai Martyrs Museum

To be honest, there’s nothing really that I can say “whoa….” at Nanjing. Been there done that, back home next day. I don’t think I’ll return there for another decade, unless for work or something really special.

See the whole album here.

Xi’an has been capital of China for about 2000 years, from 1100 B.C. to 900 A.D., thirteen dynasties, hundreds of emperors have chosen that region as their base. Visiting Xi’an is like reading a history book of ancien China, but it’s only amazing if you have some prior knowledge of Chinese history. If you have no idea of the chronology of Chinese history or no idea of the famous emperors, then you might not feel a “connection” with what you’re seeing, and you might not appreciate that much for seeing some broken bones and jars and terra-cotta soldiers. I think it’s very similar to visiting Greece without knowing antiquity history, you see some fallen rocks and walls, but there’s nothing fancy about that… As the tour guide put it, visiting Xi’an is 70% about listening and 30% about seeing, so next time you go there, make sure you book a tour that you can understand the language well. I see a lot of western tours where the guide barely speak English or French or German, very superficial, so they miss a lot of details.

Emperor Qin Shi Huang	Terra-Cotta army	Terra-Cotta army
Terra-Cotta army	Terra-Cotta army	Terra-Cotta army
Terra-Cotta army	Terra-Cotta army	Terra-Cotta army
Underground tomb of Emperor Qin in reduced scale	Reproduction of Emperor Qin's tomb based on ancien text	Reproduction of Emperor Qin's tomb based on ancien text

Four important dynasties have established at Xi’an and neighbor: Zhou [周], Qin [秦], Han [汉] and Tang [唐]. The Zhou Dynasty has been there for longest time, but there is no visible physical trace remaining. What it has left to Chinese was all the philosophers and their teachings, collectively called the Hundred Schools of Thoughts [诸子百家] which still remain firmly established in Chinese society today.

Underground tomb of Emperor Han Jing Di	Underground tomb of Emperor Han Jing Di	Underground tomb of Emperor Han Jing Di
Underground tomb of Emperor Han Jing Di	Underground tomb of Emperor Han Jing Di	Underground tomb of Emperor Han Jing Di
Underground tomb of Emperor Han Jing Di	Underground tomb of Emperor Han Jing Di	Underground tomb of Emperor Han Jing Di

Qin, Han and Tang have left very large physical footprint in the region, but they were all destroyed by their following dynasties, some rare religious establishments collapsed and were rebuilt during later time. Bottom line is, the best preserved physical traces of those eras the emperors’ tombs. Many of them have been rioted or robed, but even that, many were still secretedly preserved because they were well built hidden, so geniusly constructed that even with today’s modern ultra-sound and super-laser technologies we’re still not able to find the tomb’s entrance, nor do we feel confidently capable of preserving the shapes and colors of objects inside the tombs if we ever uncover them.

Big Wild Goose Pagoda	Fa Men Pagoda	Fa Men Pagoda
	Concubine Yang Gui Fei	The famous hot spring bath used by Yang Gui Fei

Regarding the modern city of Xi’an, some noticeable things are the well preserved city wall that wraps around the central part of the city, the Bell Tower and Drum Tower at the middle of the city, and a lively street full of Hui ethnic restaurants and snacks. The rest is like any other cities of China, a few pagodas here and there, a museum, a shopping street, and so on. We didn’t go to the nearby Huashan [华山] because of the tight schedule.

Xi'an city - Bell Tower	Xi'an city - Drum Tower	Xi'an city - Shaanxi Museum
Snack street of Hui ethnic	Snack street of Hui ethnic	Snack street of Hui ethnic
Snack street of Hui ethnic	Snack street of Hui ethnic	Snack street of Hui ethnic

Overall, I’m very happy to have been to Xi’an finally, and having seen the Qin terra-cotta army is a long time dream of mine. There are many must-see sites in China, the Great Wall and this one are two of them.

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Among the tour members there are campers and amateur photographers. The campers are supposed to walk all day long across mountains to admire more raw landscape, while the photographers, including myself and two colleagues, would take small bus to cross the mountains, thus leaving more time and energy to take photos. At night, the campers would — naturally — camp somewhere in the village while we’ll sleep in some farmers’ houses. We had breakfast and diner at the farmers’ houses as well. Wuyuan is usually very humid, especially during this period of the year. I rarely see a photo rapeseed flowers in sunny day here. Everybody literary brings umbrella or rain suit.

Ancien villages

Wuyuan is not only a unique place with huge rapeseed flowers landscape, but its beauty is greatly enhanced by the presence of many small villages embedded inside the rapeseed fields. This adds a great deal of punch when viewed from far away or from a high vantage. Most of those ancien villages were built amost a thousand years ago, based on the Hui architecture [徽派建筑]. While the bigger houses are now built on modern architecture (or the lack of one), they still maintain the grayish wall and black tiles, so viewed from far, they blended in quite nicely.

Life in those villages is generally very backward, no air conditioning, no hot water, no flushable toilet. If the electricity lines and TV antennas are taken away, those villages would look like how they were 500 hundreds years ago! Many villagers still wash their clothes at the small river, and wash their foods at the same river. I have no doubt that drinking water also comes from there directly. Some farmers still keep the toilet remains for using as fertilizer……. This is not my first time travelling to rural and poorer regions, but seeing it still make me feel uncomfortable, or maybe I don’t see it often enough.

Chinese tourists

The tourism industry in China is in booming period these days. Most of the white colar workers can now afford bus, train and flight tickets to the remotest region of China. Since those remote and backward regions are still very poor, the cost of staying there is very low and therefore making them very affordable at the same time very refreshing to citizen (people living in big cities). On one hand this is good for the poor regions, to have tourist business and bring new construction into the area. On the other hand, as soon as these places become popular, rapid development quickly destroys the authentic rural atmosphere while villagers also adopt modern lifestyle comfort and fashion. Suddenly you see electricity poles and lines everywhere, TV dishes and sun panel heater on roofs, snack garbages everywhere, and worst of all, a flood of Chinese tourists that destroy everything on their way, for their love of taking photos of themselves on or in the main attractions. Many of them won’t think for a second when stepping in the flower field or standing on the stone, if that’s the main attraction that they’re coming for.

For example, the village of Xiaoqi [晓起] has convenient highway and bus station, so now it’s packed with farmer-style restaurants as well as big commercial restaurants and hotels. The old village is so packed of tourists that you wouldn’t believe you’re in a remote village, you can’t see anything but heads when visiting the ancien houses (kinda like in Zhou Zhuang). 30km away, a small village called Qingyuan [庆源] still has no convenient road to reach it, so it still maintains part of its calm atmosphere and charm, but that’s about to end next year when they’ll complete the road that allow tour buses to flood it with thousands of tourists everyday! By that time, farmers will give away farming and get on the tourist business and this place’s fame will be over forever!

Sometime I wonder if we shouldn’t make a beautiful place popular as that certainly will destroy it…

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Tokyo view from Cerulean Tower - We can see the Tokyo Tower at far left.

Tokyo view from Cerulean Tower - Quite messy actually

We went to an isakaya [居酒屋] that night with a dozen friends of Desmond, at Shibuya area naturally, and later to a pub at the corner. Around 1:30am I was so drunk that I could barely walk back to the hotel room by myself. The next morning (it was more like noon) I heard that the other guys came to our room for sleeping until early morning, but I had no idea about that… Anyway, it was nice to know all those guys and gals. I hope they’ll come to visit Shanghai very soon.

After checked out, we had a ramen at [博多天神] and went to visit the Meiji Shrine [明治神宫]. For those who don’t know it, a japanese shrine is a place for meditation and prayer, just like a church or a temple, but it doesn’t have any god figure or any human symbol, it’s just a quiet place to pray, zen style normally. At new year eve people would go to their favorite shrine to pray, and bring back an arrow distributed by the shrine, if one can be ahead of the pack to get it.

Meiji Shrine	Meiji Shrine	Meiji Shrine
Meiji Shrine	Meiji Shrine	Meiji Shrine
Meiji Shrine	Meiji Shrine	Meiji Shrine

At evening we drove to Moichi’s home at Sayama [狭山] and stayed one night there. We were greeted by a very warmhearted and welcoming family that is The Tanakas. We were served delicious japanese foods, great wines and excellent snacks such as fried grasshoppers which is perfect with cold beer or whiskey! For the first time in my life, I had a chance to taste a bottle of Opus One, probably the best California wine out there. In addition, I also had a rare chance to taste one of the best shojiu [烧酒] that money can’t buy, Hanatare, unless you know someone in the company. Around the table, we had great and lengthy conversation with Moichi, his father and his brother-in-law (the full-time drinker and part-time surgeon). It was all interesting to learn each other’s culture and perspective.

Diner at Moichi's home

Hey watch out! I'm holding a magnum bottle of Opus One, 2000.

I'm holding a bottle of Hanatare, one of the best shojiu out there.

New Year Eve

At the night of 31st December, Desmond was so exhausted (after 4 nights of alcohol) that he returned to sleep at 8pm after our diner at Daidaiya [橙家], at Shinjuku [新宿]. So I went for a walk at the Meiji Shrine on my own. I heard that this place would be packed by huge crowd around midnight, that it would take 4 hours to make a round and get out, therefore I wanted to be there early to avoid the trap. There were indeed a scary atmosphere as one can see large number of policemen standing at every corner. I can easily count a hundred of them, visibly standing outside. I don’t know how many more are sitting inside. So I made a quick round and came out, within 30 minutes.

Meiji Shrine at new year eve

Meiji Shrine at new year eve

Meiji Shrine at new year eve

From there I took the JR train to Shibuya to see some street action. Expectedly, at midnight people go crazy, they all come outside for the countdown, hug each others (between strangers), jump around like if they just win lottery, and holding a bottle of alcohol. I can smell alcohol everywhere on the street, whereas japanese street is usually very clean and smell-less. But then, 1/3 of the crazy people are tourists, so that might explain the liberal behavior! It was a rather lonely new year eve for me, my phone didn’t work at Tokyo so I couldn’t phone anyone to wish happy new year, neither could I receive any wish… But it was a special moment standing beside those crazy youngsters at Shibuya, seeing all the policemen and special armed force.

Shibuya streets at new year eve	Shibuya streets at new year eve	Shibuya streets at new year eve
Shibuya streets at new year eve	Shibuya streets at new year eve	Shibuya streets at new year eve
Shibuya streets at new year eve	Shibuya streets at new year eve	Shibuya streets at new year eve
Shibuya streets at new year eve	Shibuya streets at new year eve	Shibuya streets at new year eve

Golfing at 1st January

The next day we went to have a game of golf at Showanomori Golf Course, at the west suburb of Tokyo. On the highway I can see the Mount Fuji [富士山] with its signature white-top look. Everyone we talked to were surprised that a golf course was opened at the 1st of January. We fully expected that nobody would be there to play with us, but surprisingly, there are full of cars in the parking lot! Nevertheless, we had a funny twosome game, without caddy. It’s interesting that they build a monorail system to carry the golf bags all around the holes, with a remote control to advance or stop it. So we just walk around hand free, stop the train at anytime to pick a club. (see photo at page bottom) This is perfect for a small golf course where you don’t want 8 people to stand on the field.

After the game, it was a stressful drive back to Tokyo as we had to rush for returning the car before the rental company close for the day. Despite the very complex but stupid and user-unfriendly Panasonic navigation system that insisted on splitting the screen even though we only want the most basic functionality, despite we ran out of gaz and Desmond’s cell phone has only 4 minutes of talk time left and we need to call the hotel asking for information, we actually made it back to the car rental place 5 minutes before they close for the day! I keep reminding myself that I won’t ever drive in Tokyo myself, unless I can get an English-speaking navigation system. Tokyo streets are small and curving, highways split all the time, in such a way that is hard to tell which side is the main direction, and there’s toll booths at about every 15 minutes of driving!

That night we stay at Chisun Grand Hotel at Akasaka [赤坂], went to an isakaya around the corner with Desmond and Yume. We didn’t drink so much, 2 bottles of shojiu for 3 guys, but at the end I wasn’t feeling good… The next morning Desmond had to fly to Hong Kong very early. I woke up quite late, took a long shower, didn’t quite recover yet. Then around noon I checked out and went to Akihabara [秋叶原] to see show electronic shops. I got lost into a huge gadget mall of 8 stories. It’s really amazing to see the modern gadgets available in the Japanese market that you can’t buy anywhere else, smaller, bigger, slicker, more colorful than what is sold in China or USA. For example: the >100″ flat TV from JVC, Sharp and Toshiba; the 3mm thin 11″ OLED TV XEL-1 from Sony; the Sony mp3 Walkman that you can use to watch TV; the newest digital SLR cameras from Nikon, Canon, Sony; all the big gun Canon lens; about 500 choices of earphones; etc. I only had 2 hours to spend there, so only visited 2 floors. After that, I rushed back to the hotel to catch the next Narita airport limousine bus, and that concluded my new year trip!

Tokyo Metro

After running around the city few times by myself, I finally figure out how to go from the airport to Tokyo, inside Tokyo and back to the airport. Tokyo has very well developed subway and railway system. The subway system is operated by Tokyo Metro, and railway by JR. They are very similar in the perspective of a passenger, so I was confused many times thinking that I was in a metro station while I was in fact in a JR station. They don’t share the station, but are close to each other sometime. Together they make very good coverage of Tokyo, as you can see in the map below.

Tokyo Metro and JR map

Tokyo Metro and JR map

The biggest problem, I think, is the transition from kanji [汉字] to romanized name. Maps given by hotels to tourists have station names in roman characters, while the map at the station’s ticket machine is only in kanji, and there is no way to relate them. Normally we could look at the line color and figure it out, but there are so many lines, and in some maps there are also JR lines in the mix, so it’s like a puzzle to tourists… Strangely, inside the station, all the maps have both languages and very good letter+number indicators for every station. For example S01 is Shinjuku, G01 is Shibuya and H08 is Ginza station, so that’s no mistake. But at the ticket machine, they don’t put such updated map, just the simple map with kanji only! Anyway, now that I know it, I’m no longer scare to travel around Tokyo, very conveniently indeed.

Six hours later, I was back to Shanghai home, sweet home!

Three weeks before the trip, I had no idea that I would go to Thailand for vacation, that has never been in my vacation plan. We planned to go to a famous places in China, such as Xi’an, Tibet, Yunnan or Guilin, etc. But when I saw the photos taken by a friend on our trip to Hangzhou together, I thought to myself, it’s been really longtime since I didn’t swim at a real nice beach, I kinda miss blue sky, really! In the past I avoided Thailand because of the political instability, maybe I was reading too much newspapers and mainstream journalists tend to exagerate conflicts and threats. Coincidentally, I went there during the week of election, one year after the former Prime Minister was sacked by the temporary military government. If trouble is to happen, this would be a good time for that, but I was not aware of the election until I was there… It turned out just fine, no explosion, no mass protest on street, just a peaceful election, but messy results…

Phuket

We arrived at Phuket international airport at 11:55PM, by the time we got our baggage it was already Dec 16th, bad planning on our part. We easily spotted the ctrip shuttle bus, took us almost an hour to arrive to our hotel, Le Méridien Phuket Beach Resort, at Karon beach which is just south of the populous Patong beach. Upgrading our package for this hotel was the best decision we made for this trip. This is one of the best hotel that we’ve stayed at so far, excellent service, nice view, quiet spot, isolated but very close to Patong, excellent breakfast. But most important of all, it has a private beach behind it! You wake up the morning, go to the impressive breakfast, then walk quietly to the beach without crossing the street and hear all the noise, no need to bring anything because it’s all included (except coconut on the beach). You don’t have to deal with anyone to find a seat, no street sellers, no dogs running around, just kick back and relax!

Karon beach	Karon beach	Karon beach
Karon beach	Karon beach	Karon beach

My impression of Phuket is quite positive. The people are very friendly to tourists, most of them understand and speak some English, they don’t seem to cheat tourists like at Vietnam… Patong beach is nice and easy to walk around, plenty of excellent Thai restaurants, though a bit over priced I think.

We went to stay at Phi Phi island for one night, which was a stupid choice proposed by the package. By the time we got off the boat there it was already 5PM, too late to swim, and the section of beach in front of our hotel has too much raw sand, it’s plain dirty and uncomfortable, and too big wave. Then next day we had to check out early to catch the boat to return to Phuket island, so we’re checking in and out for nothing, didn’t have time for swim neither snokkering. Next time I’d rather staying at Le Meridien all the time, take a one-day trip to PP island, and another one-day trip for riding elephants. That’ll be smarter use of time and more comfortable.

Le Méridien Phuket Beach Resort	Le Méridien Phuket Beach Resort	Le Méridien Phuket Beach Resort
Le Méridien Phuket Beach Resort	Le Méridien Phuket Beach Resort	Le Méridien Phuket Beach Resort

Bangkok

From Phuket we flew to Bangkok afternoon. That night we went to shopping at Siam Paragon and Siam Discover Center, bought a special but unexpected gift and we were all happy! The next day at Bangkok was really a marathon day for us. We checked out at 9AM, took the subway to the terminal station close to the tourist attractions. From there, we got a really nice tuk-tuk ride (with help of a hotel worker passing by) to four smaller temples, including the Wat Benchamabophit (The Marble Temple).

The Marble Temple	The Marble Temple	The Marble Temple
The Marble Temple

Afternoon we took the boat to the Grand Palace and the fabulous Wat Phra Keoe (Temple of the Emerald Buddha). It really is an amazing temple, all golden and well maintained, but just a bit too crowd, naturally. We were not allowed to visit this temple in short, which I was wearing, so I had to borrow a pant from them, just like hundreds of other men and women did everyday, no charge! We didn’t have a guide explaining stories to us, so just walked around taking photos. That was the most interesting attraction of Bangkok to me.

Temple of the Emerald Buddha	Temple of the Emerald Buddha	Temple of the Emerald Buddha
Temple of the Emerald Buddha	Temple of the Emerald Buddha	Temple of the Emerald Buddha
Temple of the Emerald Buddha	Temple of the Emerald Buddha	Temple of the Emerald Buddha
Temple of the Emerald Buddha	Temple of the Emerald Buddha	Temple of the Emerald Buddha
Temple of the Emerald Buddha	Temple of the Emerald Buddha	The Grand Palace

We would love to see a floating market and Chatuchak market, but they were closed that day or too far to go. So we simply finish our trip with an hour of boating to the old-Bangkok. Yeah it is old, not pretty and poor, that reminded me of a lot of memories of my youth…

Bangkok river

Bangkok river

Bangkok river

Thai food

For the whole week that we were there, there isn’t a day that we were not eating Pad Thai and Tum Yum Kung, and drinking coconut. Thai cuisine is spicy, mostly fried, and garlic is found in almost every dish. We both love it since very long time ago at Montreal. There are lots of spices, curry, fresh vegetable and affordable seafood. Yummi!

To finish, you should try some Thai massage if you go there, it’ll stretch the hell out of you, but you’ll feel good afterward.

You can see the whole album here.

When we got out of the Hangzhou train station, we met two local women so sympathetic to us (new tourists) that they almost forced us to get on the bus instead of taking taxi to the lake. I tried but it was hard not to take their suggestion, so we obeid. Bottom line, we arrived at our intended destination an hour later than expected, as result of the missed train and taking bus.

It was a good day for sight-seeing but bad day for photo. The sky is all gray, a bit windy, all the lotus were long dead, some trees are yellow, or bald. I managed to snap around 50 shots, not much for a whole day trip at such a famed tourist attraction.

When I finally get to process those photos, it wasn’t as good as my previous trip to Hangzhou during Summer 2004. So I decided to convert some of the boring landscapes into B&W painting, I’m personally quite happy with the results.

Hangzhou - West Lake	Hangzhou - West Lake
Hangzhou - West Lake	Hangzhou - West Lake
Hangzhou - West Lake	Hangzhou - West Lake
Hangzhou - West Lake

You can see the whole album here.

But the moment I stepped out of the station, I didn’t regret about my misfortune. The city was so polluted that the smock was terrible, worse than at Shanghai! Visibility was extremely low, I’ve never seen such thick smock before. My plan was to visit the Liu He Tower [六和塔], which has a pretty view of the Qian Tang river [钱塘江] as well as the famous bridge of Qian Tang [钱塘江大桥]. Actually the name of the Zhejiang province [浙江省] was derived from the name of this river.

However, as soon as I got off the taxi and try to take a picture of the tower from across the street, I already had the impression that it’ll be a bad photo day… Nevertheless, I still try to shoot the tower as much as I could. I also climb on the 13-stories tower to take a view of the river, since I was already there.

A heavily processed photo of the Liu He Tower shot across the street, at a bad day...	Liu He Tower at close distance
Qian Tang river and its famous bridge built at 1959 as the longest and unique 2-floors bridge of that time.	Qian Tang river and its famous bridge built at 1959 as the longest and unique 2-floors bridge of that time.

Beside the barely visible view of the river, there isn’t anything interesting in the tower, so I got off there after only 15 minutes. But while walking around the tower, I found something quite interesting. There is a park underneath the tower which has a collection of miniature towers from all around China, the famous ones of course. I spend the rest of my short time hunting those towers. They were not built like a garden with clear sidewalk and clear view, they were built in the jungle, among the trees and at different spots on the hill, very interested I felt! The high density trees hide my view from the thick gray smock, giving me a confortable walk in the forest, and quiet.

Miniature tower	Miniature tower
Miniature tower	Miniature tower
Miniature tower	Miniature tower
Miniature tower	Miniature tower

Although touristic material still employs the ancien famous slogan that sings Hangzhou as the Heaven on Earth [上有天堂，下有苏杭] , I can’t help but thinking that, not only it no longer is the heaven, but I can’t even see the sky in Hangzhou now! Sadly indeed! But I think I’ll return there once again during Winter, hopefully the sky will be clearer next time.

I didn’t dare to drive the first day because the driver seat is at the right side in Japan. Why in the world do we need to have both standards? We don’t even have a map of Sapporo, lucky the navigation system in the Toyota Esteem mini-van seems quite sophisticate. And more fortunately, there are quite a large amount of Chinese words [汉字] in Japanese language. In some case we are able to understand a phrase if we know the context, just by reading the scarse Chinese words that we could understand. Many road signs, street names, city names, public signs and instructions have Chinese words that we understand. They might use those words in a slightly different way but it remains in the same context. For example they use the Chinese words 化妆室 (make-up room) to indicate a bathroom, which is understandable. They use 大丈夫 (big guy), meaning no problem, like in you’re big boy, no problem. They use 无料 (no stock) to mean free of charge, see, it’s not so difficult to understand when you’re in the right context.

Again our friend Desmond is quite familiar with Sapporo and Hokkaido as he has come here 5 times already. He can use the navigation system (in Japanese) without reading the words. I would have trouble using it myself, until the last day.

Sapporo

Sapporo

Sapporo

Sapporo

Sapporo

Sapporo is small and quiet city. Its downtown area comprises of ten streets down and across, that’s it! To my surprise, they have a subway system for this nearly 2 millions population city. I guess it’s really convenient for them during Winter, which I heard could be as bad as Winter at Toronto, or worse in mountainous areas. We spent the first day walking around the downtown, again ate like pigs and drunk like cows, several meals a day, sometime 3 meals at night, no kidding!

It must strike every first time tourist as to how polite the average Japaneses are, much more that the gentlemen at UK I bet! In North America people are friendly, in Europe people are snobs (or sophisticate sometime), in China many people are plain inpolite, especially the low end of the population, but in Japan everybody seems to be really polite and nice! I haven’t been bow to so many times in my whole life compare to one week here. I haven’t been said aligato gazaimaseta (thank you – politely) so many time in every single meal or shopping. I guess they must have said many other polite things that I couldn’t understand. At the end of our trip, I was already used to aligato everyone that I meet, and bow my head too…. If I stay a year there, maybe I would be stuck with that habit forever!

I think if there’s something nobody can beat the Japaneses, it would be politeness and hygiene! Every toilet that I’ve seen and used in Japan, in hotel, in restaurant (big or tiny), in public toilet, shopping mall, are all really clean and smell-less. It’s hard to complain about anything in their toilets, every little details are well thought of. You have to be there to really feel this. I wonder how Japaneses can stand it when they travel abroad to other countries, like those south Asia countries that even myself can hardly accept despite my pass experience there. Politeness, on the other hand, is something much easier to get use to. We normally respond in the same way we were treated at first place, that’s universal.

We spent a large part of our second day at Otaru [小樽], a little city 35km north of Sapporo. It looks almost like a tourist city, but actually it is a major port city of Hokkaido. I was surprise to see, on their main street, several excellent bakery and chocolaterie, litterary written in French. Beside this and the traditional glass-ware industry, there isn’t much thing to mention about this city. It was just nice to walk around and have seen it.

Otaru

Otaru

Otaru

Otaru	Otaru
Otaru	Otaru
Otaru	Otaru

The third day was really a special day for me! I started to get used to driving at the right side, and going to the other side of the street when turning right. So I drove, for the first time, at the right. It wasn’t so bad as I thought, I didn’t make any stupid mistake, but I was slower than usual, naturally.

Equally fun is our golf game at the Sapporo International Golf Club, a 27-holes public golf club that is absolutely impeccable and easy to enjoy. The only problem is that no one seemed to speak English there. We had to deal with the lady at the counter by writing numbers and Chinese words. We rent the golf clubs and the shoes. We had a lovely old lady as our caddy, she ride a small motorized cart with our equipments on it, kinda like a sophisticate lawn mower where she can stand on it, so it wasn’t exhausting as being a caddy during a PGA tournment. We enjoy the walk without anything to carry on the shoulder. The weather was perfect, it can’t get any better when you can walk under the sun of noon time without a cap and not feeling any discomfort! It was majestic!

Deeply in my mind, I was really worried that I can’t play a normal game because I have only practiced once since Summer last year… Then we didn’t have enough time after lunch to drive a bit before our tee time. We barely had enough time for 25 balls, and that was enough to bring back a little confidence in myself. So, off we go, following our caddy. She must be an experienced caddy, she can understand the basic golf keywords in English. She takes her job very seriously, following the golf rules rigourously, but without taking away our joy of the game. On a few occasions she suggested me to use a different club that I would have used, and she was right on the spot! Still, the strongest memory of her is how she call nice shot in almost a military order way… And also when a ball looks like going bad, oh… bunka!

And my score? I didn’t write it down… But I was happy with my performance, I did pretty good in the short game, using the rather cheap rental clubs, and I didn’t lose a single ball in the whole game! That’s almost the first time ever happenned to me. And obviously I wasn’t playing hockey, believe me…

Somewhere north west of Hokkaido...

Somewhere north west of Hokkaido...

Somewhere north west of Hokkaido...

The next day we drove (I did) to Jozankei [定山溪], a village of hot spring resorts where we would stay overnight. On our way there, we tour around the sea shore of north west Hokkaido. It was a pleasant experience to see the blue sea and blue sky, although going thru the many narrow tunnels across the mountains could become scary sometime, the 2-way lanes were really narrow and the trucks are big!

Somewhere north west of Hokkaido...	Somewhere north west of Hokkaido...
Somewhere north west of Hokkaido...	Somewhere north west of Hokkaido...
Somewhere north west of Hokkaido...	Somewhere north west of Hokkaido...

Somewhere north west of Hokkaido...

Somewhere north west of Hokkaido...

Somewhere north west of Hokkaido...

Somewhere north west of Hokkaido...	Somewhere north west of Hokkaido...
Somewhere north west of Hokkaido...	Somewhere north west of Hokkaido...
Somewhere north west of Hokkaido...	Somewhere north west of Hokkaido...

Hot spring is one of the healthy way of life of Japaneses, along with healthy foods and excellent hygiene, no wonder they’re ranked second in longevity in the world. This is how it works in a hot spring resort: they only let their hotel customers use the hot spring bath, no outsider. You check in the room, change for the traditional Japanese cloth (yukata). Relax in the hotel, go to the hot spring bath several times a day, about 40 minutes everytime. You would have all the meals in the hotel’s restaurant (included in the package). So, just go there and forget everything, relax. It is nice to do that once in a while, but if we have to stay more than one day, we would probably get bored quickly. This was my first hot spring experience, it was nice. We’ll try another resort next time, definitely!

Jozankei

Jozankei

Jozankei

Jozankei

Jozankei

During our 3 days at Sapporo, we had eaten so many fishes, mostly raw. The best that I can remember was the samma [秋刀鱼], served raw with a bit of gingered rice, it was the most delicious piece of sushi I ever had in my life! Simply melting in the mouth and fabulous taste! We also had toro, saba, bla bla bla. How can I remember all those fish names in such short time?

We also drunk uncountable types of sake [日本酒], sochu [焼酎] and umeshu [梅酒]. The one I can remember most is Otokoyama [男山]. That one is easy to remember, but we also had several other good sochu. Again, how to remember so many names in such short time? Need to drink more often, unfortunately Japanese wines are only good to serve with sushi or sashimi, it won’t fit with Chinese or western foods at all. Nevertheless, we have tried so many good dishes in Japan that we won’t miss sushi at Shanghai for a while.

Our plan is to return to Japan once again, with a tour guide, so that we could visit the attractions and understand something about them (reading book is too long). At least I want to go to the Mount Fuji [富士山], Kyoto [京都] and Osaka [大阪], and revisit Tokyo properly. I think there are many photo subjects there… You know what I mean………………….

Click here to see the whole album.

We spent the first 3 days in Tokyo (東京), and the last 4 days at Hokkaido (北海道) which is the northen island of Japan. In Tokyo we mostly shopped around, ate like a pigs and drunk like a cows, we didn’t really visit the typical tourist attractions like the Meiji Shrine (明治神宫), the Imperial Palace (皇居), the Tokyo Tower or the Mount Fuji (富士山). Instead we visited the shopping area of Harajuku (原宿), Omotesando Hills (表参道), Shibuya (渋谷), Ginza (銀座), Shinjuku (新宿), Asakusa (浅草) and the Sensoji temple (浅草寺). That was fine by me, actually visiting these places allow me to see the real Japanese live rather than seeing only tourists.

Sensoji temple	Sensoji temple	Sensoji temple
Kaminarimon gate	Shibuya 109 mall	Shibuya at night
Shibuya at night	Shibuya at night	Shibuya at night

In Tokyo we mostly travelled by subway. I estimate that their subway must be built around the same time as Paris’, it’s kinda old style, line transfer is sometime messy, but it’s very clean, no bad smell, and it goes to every corner of the city, so very convenient. The Tokyo public transport system is quite well developped and affordable, lots of people don’t need cars, so they have less road congestion than the other major cities around the world, like Paris or Los Angeles.

When walking on the streets or malls, it is striking to see how much Japanese women and men, especially young women, take care of their appearance. Every young lady is fashionably dressed, impeccable hair style, make-up, mascarat and nails, branded hand bag, and their shoes are incredible to say the least! In other words, nothing on their body is left to random, everything must be perfectly tailored to the latest popular style. I use to think that Shanghai ladies are stylish, and even care too much about their look. But that’s not remotely close to the Japanese ladies. Tokyo’s Shibuya is really the fashion place where every lady dresses and appears like the models on Japanese pop magazines! Actually I can’t tell the difference, maybe they’re actually the models. Nothing is too weird to wear, some girls dress like a princess in the fairy tale, other dress like the hero in some games, but that doesn’t seem to attract any special attention from passer-by on the streets. Maybe their cartoon culture has invaded their real life, manifested as cosplay in the real society.

Many of the following pictures were captured over a very short period of time, and I’ve miss many better opportunities because there were too many people on the streets. But nevertheless, it gives you an idea of this year’s trend in Asia, because everyone will be following the Japanese style eventually.

Trendy youth at Shibuya	Trendy youth at Shibuya	These young people may have money to buy LV bags and pretty shoes, but they still eat instant noodle on the street.
Trendy youth at Shibuya	Trendy youth at Shibuya	Trendy youth at Shibuya
Trendy youth at Shibuya	Trendy youth at Shibuya	Trendy youth at Shibuya
Trendy youth at Shibuya	Trendy youth at Shibuya	Trendy youth at Shibuya
Trendy youth at Shibuya	Trendy youth at Shibuya	Trendy youth at Shibuya

Trendy youth at Shibuya	Trendy youth at Shibuya
Shibuy station	Shibuya station

As for men, their hair style is remarkable, they all look like the characters in Japanese games or manga (漫画). They either wear teared-down jeans for going out, or black suit for work. I wonder if Men in Black isn’t a Japanese comics inspired by Hollywood. In the subway during rush hour, you can see a long row of men all wearing black suit, some grey suit, but never a colored suit. The same goes for cars, black, white and grey cars are predominant on the streets, I can hardly see a red or blue or green car out there. That’s the men world…

In constrast, in every lady shop, I was blinded by all the colored displays and labels, with pink being the predominant color. Everything destinated to ladies has to be cute, cartoon is commonly used for everything from avertisement to user instruction to packaging.

Where cartoon is not appropriate, such as beauty products or high-end consumer brands, you can expect an idol instead. Japanese idols are everywhere in public view. These quasi-perfect young ladies (and boys too, but relatively less frequent) have everything a young Japanese girl wants: they look good, they’re cute and they wear chic stuff. They’re used to promote everything that cartoon won’t fit. And among the 127 millions Japanese population, the marketing machines can easily produce thousands of new young idols every year, keeping the average age of idol below 20. So, they’re cute, good skin, naive, open minded, adorable and fresh. It’s like breeding a thousand of new Paris Hilton every year!

Actually the following annecdote would explain it all… While my tour mates were shopping in the 0101 mall at Shinjuku, I was exploring a small the street on the side. I saw several mini-casinos, actually there’re only slot machines, but lots of them! What striked me was in those slot machines, instead of the boring melon, cherry, apple, the bell and the 7 signs, what they put in there instead are the latest cartoon characters, the latest game characters, the latest TV show characters, and the hottest idols. Every mini-casino advertise their latest slot machines idols to attract players. I think that’s very creative, they must make lots of money out of those slot machines to justify changing the signs regularly, while even the fanciest casinos at Las Vegas still stuck with the century-old slot machine signs. I was really impressed, deeply impressed by how much their pop culture are found in every aspect of their life.

Slot machines using idol signs

Now, when we talk about Japanese cuisine (日本料理), that’s where the millenium long Japanese tradition remains very strong. In Tokyo, we had sushi (寿司), sashimi (刺身), ramen (拉面), curry rice, charcoal BBQ, tempura and donburi (丼). Our friend Desmond, who is actually our guide at Japan, probably knows more fishes than an average Japanese, and probably has tasted more sake (日本酒), sochu (焼酎) and umeshu (梅酒) than an average Japanese has. Under his guide, we tried many good Japanese foods and wines. We particularly enjoyed our meal at an izakaya (居酒屋, Japanese-style pub) at Shibuya, the atmosphere was good, the BBQ foods were tasty, the wine selection was rich, and it was memorable because Desmond celebrated his 4th wedding anniversary.

Revolving sushi

Stand up noodle restaurant

The last thing to mention is a rather unusual activity, Desmond and I went to the newly opened National Art Center of Tokyo to see Vermeer‘s exposition. It is a very stylish space-for-rent type of museum. We were there early the morning, sunny and blue sky, the interior view is really impressive. We also had lunch there at the very stylish suspended restaurant, Le Rond, founded by Paul Bocuse.

National Art Center of Tokyo	National Art Center of Tokyo
National Art Center of Tokyo	National Art Center of Tokyo
National Art Center of Tokyo	National Art Center of Tokyo
National Art Center of Tokyo	Restaurant Le Rond

Click here to view the complete album.

So, at 11am we left home, taking the subway to switch to the high speed train (Maglev [磁悬浮] @ 430 km/h) to the Pudong airport, that would avoid any traffic problem. In the subway, suddenly Mary asked me “you said the flight is for 12:40 right?”, my reply was “I thought you told me that, I didn’t check… oops…” And for a moment we hoped at least one of us was right……. we were so unexcited that no one has confirmed the flight schedule before leaving! Luckly our assumption was right, we were on time for the flight. And I have to insist here again, Air Canada sucks big time, we were served instant noodle at one point, and honestly, that was the best thing we had during the flight, the other meals were horrible! There was practically no movies to watch since the screen is so badly positioned for us, and it was playing cartoon anyway. With Japan Airline each person has a screen in front of the seat, with several movies playing simultaneously, and some basic games also, that really does make the 13 hrs flight a little shorter. The only good thing about Air Canada is that the flight itinery is the shortest: Shanghai – Toronto – Montreal. Actually, flying between Shanghai and Montreal is really painful no matter what airline we took, unless maybe First Class would be better since we can sleep with a straight body.

When we got out of the Trudeau airport at 8:30pm, the first thing we noticed was the frest smell of the air. We took it for granted when living at Montreal, but now we really miss that, and the clear blue sky was so wonderful! It was good feeling to take a deep breath. We rent a Toyota Yaris from Enterprise Rent-A-Car, it is a cheap car, but no complain, it does very well for what it is worth. I would recommend this to anyone who only drive to work and back home, very economic in fuel and surprisingly good handling. Bravo Toyota!

We stay at Mary’s parents’ home, right in front of Parc Lafontaine. Early the morning I stand at the balcony enjoying the view and the fresh air. I can see the whole downtown and Mont Royal, and the park of course, clear blue sky, unlimited visibility. I took a few snapshot with a point & shoot camera, didn’t bring my own Canon 20D because I had too much to bring already…

Montreal downtown morning

Mont Royal and Parc Lafontaine

During the whole week we had to run like crazy, every day. It was good to see our family and friends once again, but we weren’t exactly in good shape. Wednesday we went to the long awaited French diner with Kim at Le Pégase, good wines and delicious dishes, but Mary were in such bad shape (because the alcohol of the night before) that she couldn’t really enjoyed the diner at all, I was ok but not perfectly fine neither. We had a lot of Pho (Vietnamese noodle), almost every lunch…

So, it was good to see people, but one week is way too short for a 12-hour jet lag. We were hoping to have time to enjoy several French meals, red wines and golf games, maybe next year….. We really miss our golf season, but we won’t miss Winter!

There are other water towns around Shanghai, but none of them are as close to Zhou Zhuang in terms of popularity and quality of the site, earning it the title of The Best Water Town of China or 中国第一水乡 —- 周庄. Every morning there’re at least 50 tourist buses pouring people in this village, all of them got stuck in the tiny allies and attractions of this tiny village not bigger than half a square kilometer.

The ticket for going into the “attraction section” of the town is quite expensive by China tourism standard, 120RMB, which was included in my tour ticket of ~200RMB, they came to pick me up at home and drove me back at the end. Needless to say, tour companies are not making much money in China, the level of competition is incredible and they’re eating each other’s profit.

The famous Twin Bridge of Zhou Zhuang	A quiet area of Zhou Zhuang
A popular attraction at Zhou Zhuang
This is your very truly... me!	These birds are not there for a rest, they're there for a fishing show at customer's request.
Every shop claims to be the oldest and authentic brand of porc's hand, but nobody knows for sure until they've tried them all...
Quan Fu Temple - A very big temple for a very small town	At one time the town of Zhou Zhuang belongs to Quan Fu Temple, now it's the opposite.

Click here to see the whole album.

On my way to go back to my usual spot on the bund, I found an unusual building: an old lighthouse turned museum at the floor level, and a bar at the second level, and an open space bar at the third level, facing the magnificient Yan An turn and the old building of the bund. This turn is named Asia’s best turn, for the magnificient view of old and new Shanghai in the same view. Many cars slow down as soon as they reach the turn, especially tourist bus, but taxi and individual cars are slowing down there as well, the view is simply too breath-taking to be ignored. In fact many police cars are circulating in that little segment to chase the car away, otherwise they would litterally stop there for the passengers to take photo! So, it’s always been my objective to find the perfect spot to shoot this turn, and now I finally found it, on this lighthouse bar! But it was a free spot, I had to consume at least 50RMB, and pay 100RMB (1$CA = 7RMB) to go up there take photos, but I think it’s all worth it. I had the shot that I always wanted to have, it wasn’t a nice weather condition but the shot came out acceptably good quality. With a little bit of Photoshop this is almost postcard quality…

Shanghai Bund Yan An road turn - the best turn of Asia

Shanghai Pudong night view

Old Shanghai meets new Shanghai

Regarding my new tripod system, I have a fiber carbon Benro C-158 tripod, a Really Right Stuff BH-25 LR ballhead and L-plate. I think the Benro tripod is really nice, solid, light and stable, for 1/4 the price of a Gitzo tripod. The L-plate is absolute perfect for its function, I can shoot landscape and portrait without turning the ballhead vertically, it’s light and stick to the camera body firmly. However, the BH-25 ballhead is somewhat too small and difficult to adjust for a panorama shot (multiple shots stitched together), as soon as I unlock it, with the weight of the camera it will certainly move vertically, so it’s hard to have multiple shots aligned horizontally for a nice stitch. I managed to have a photo stitched from 2 landscape shots, and another one stitched from 7 portraits photos! I also tried to stitch two photos manually using Photoshop, the result is better than the software, but very time consuming. In overall, I am happy with my current tripod system (~500$CA in total), but the ballhead is something I have to get used to, or get another one for local use. BH-25 is small and nice for travel.

Click here to see the whole Shanghai Skyline 2007 gallery.

I was supposed to return there at night for the lights, and then write a nice story around those photos, but after a month I still didn’t have a chance to do that. So I figure I’d better post them here rather then keeping them on my hard drive forever (like TTT uses to do)…

Starbucks is well established at every major Chinese touristic site, they're even willing to adapt their external appearance to fit the site, not like McDonald's!	Another Starbucks around the corner, at the same site!
The early-bird tourists	This site is well restored these days, last time I came here the color were fading.
The early-bird tourists	A big jewelry - there are many larger than them at this site.
Low-tech restoration: quiet and less disruption to the site, and cheaper actually...	Considering the tools that they use, being able to restore such a site is an achievement, just like to old time.
A steam machine? I really saw steam coming out at the top left of this machine.	Construction boots and helmet are optional...
No machine here, so they must be moving all these bricks with bare arms and foots!	Two large jewelries.
Another one on the other side of the street.	And yet another big one at the same intersection.
These two ladies would have been the role model of Maoism - they're making their own broom.	A very Chinese taste street.
Souvenir shops	The pear-shape music instrument is made from a natural fruit called Hu Lu, it could be used as a wine container as well.
Souvenir shops	Souvenir shops

At my third day, we went to a restaurant called Nan Xiang, the most reputated restaurant for Xiao Long Bao in China, actually certified by many Chinese top leaders over the years. There is something really unique about this restaurant that you don’t find anywhere else.

Xiao Long Bao	Server distributing buns as they are being made
8 people eating around a 1m x 1m table	People buying tickets
The making of xiao long bao	The making of xiao long bao
The making of xiao long bao	Entrance of NanXiang restaurant - under renovation

It has 4 stories:

• At the street level, people are lining up on the street to buy for take out, it cost 10RMB (~2.5$CA) for 16 buns. People generally eat right outside of the restaurant, or on their way back to the tourist car. At any moment of the day, you can see a few dozen people lining up for almost an hour to buy these freshly made buns.
• At the 1st floor, it costs 18RMB for 16 buns, but there are seats and tables available, if you can grap one. This is how it works: you buy ticket at the entrance for what you want to eat, you try to grap a seat or 2. On a typical 1m x 1m table there are normally 8 people around it, so if you complain about French bistro table too small for 2, think about seating 4 people around it! If all the seats are taken (quite often), you don’t line up in front of the entrance as usual, but you have to stand behind the seats that you feel will be finishing soon, and as soon as they stand up, you seat right on it. If they take too long to finish, it’s actually ok to talk bad about them or starring on them to put some pressure indirectly.
• On the 2nd floor, people do line up properly and wait for a table to free up, the buns are made a little better than the floors below, but prices are twice more expensive for half the quantity!
• At the 3rd floor, it’s where the reputation of this restaurant can be verified. They served the best xiao long bao ever made (well, taste differs with people of course, but most people agree this is best). It has more crab meat than pork, the skin is really really thin, very juicy, the soup is excellent, service is good too.

So, who said communist can’t have class? I think this is quite fair, you pay for what you get, but at least everybody have a chance to try the best xiao long bao of China.