With summer coming to a close, I’m trying to sort everything out in HK before leaving for Shanghai to join Kim (yay!). Yesterday I spent the entire day on the phone waiting for someone from immigration to pick up. Today I’m going to wait till the UK wakes up to make a long distance call about my bank account. Frankly, I’m just wasting a lot of time, so here’s a blog entry about nothing exactly. Musica! Thinking about using it for one of my videos.
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Things are definitely picking up this week, and I’m a lot busier. Today I registered at the university and took my first placement test to put me into a class. I’ve got a meeting tomorrow about a possible internship. On Thursday morning I have to check out of the hotel, I have my final placement test, and in the afternoon I’m going to finalise the contract for the flat. Friday and Saturday so far have been designated moving in days, which includes going to Wal-Mart and Ikea. And then on Sunday is the university’s Opening Ceremony which is when I find out which class I’m in and my schedule for the next semester. Monday we start classes! So more on that to come! I would like to think that if I were back in Hong Kong right now that today would have been spent donning black, pinning a yellow ribbon to my top, carrying a white carnation, and walking the streets of Hong Kong in a rally demanding justice for the victims of the Manila hostage tragedy. But I would just like to say that the black travel alert that the Hong Kong has issued for the Philippines is ridiculous. the Philippines is now, according to the Hong Kong government, a more dangerous place to travel to than Iraq. According to the SCMP more than 500 people have cancelled their trips to the Philippines since Monday. But the Philippines is no less dangerous than it was before. I understand it’s a political ploy aimed at pressuring the Philippine government into launching an inquiry into the event, but it just seems rash and unnecessary. At the same time, I think it’s sad that the Beijing government protested the Philippine flag being placed over Mendoza’s coffin, and that the protest resulted in an official going to the wake and removing the flag. It’s just sad that a man who was once the most decorated police officer in the Philippines is now seen as a murderer and nothing more. Hopefully an inquiry into what happened will help appropriate blame to the right people, give the Hong Kong people the answers they are looking for, give the Philippine government the information they need to reform their police system, and help the families that were so horribly affected in what happen. You know that song by Albert Hammond, “It Never Rains in Southern California”? Peak at number 5 of the Billboard Top 100 in 1972? No? Well, I think the same can be said about Shanghai. “It never rains in [Shanghai], but girl don’t they warn ya. It pours, man it pours.” Cheesy, I know, but I guess the same can be said about any top 10 singles released in 1972. I’m just generalising here. I can’t name any other single released in 1972. The only reason I know this is because I just wiki-ed the song before typing all of this up. ANYWAYS, the point of all that was to say that it rained today. A lot. I even bought another umbrella. Well, the 15 yuan umbrella I bought from the old lady on the side of the road was a horrible umbrella. Not only did it turn inside out with the slightest bit of wind, it turned inside out when I was in my hotel room trying to open the poor thing. So I looked out of my window this morning as I was leaving the hotel and the skies were blue so I decided against bringing the waste-of-15-yuan out. I’m not quite anal enough about my skin to carry around an umbrella to shield me from the sun (my 50 spf sunscreen will do just fine thank you). I ended up investing in a 50 yuan umbrella at City Super (my love) at the new IFC mall (my other love). Pretty good idea considering it started pouring with rain as soon as I started my 20 minute walk back to the hotel from the metro station. That said, I’ve achieved a lot today. I put money down to “ding” a flat (the landlord agreed to the 6-month let), I then opened a bank account with the Bank of China (some confusion about my ethnicity here), I then went to the Bund and did some sightseeing. Though I went through the god awful sightseeing tunnel (I don’t recommend this). Basically gave some weird 4 minute light show with a commentary in English and Chinese about random things (I think at one point the guy said “HOT MAGMA”, and at another he said “SOMEWHERE BETWEEN HELL AND PARADISE (evil laughter)”).  ridiculous. and for 55 yuan! should've bought another umbrella instead. Not wanting to go through that again, I refused to leave Pudong by the same method. Instead I found my way into a new Shanghai version of my FAVOURITE mall in HK, IFC Mall (thank you Sun Hung Kai Properties for actively taking over the world). It’s not quite open yet, but I was very pleased to see that my favourite extortionately priced Japanese supermarket, City Super, was open and fully stocked with random shit (I wouldn’t have it any other way). But the day didn’t end on a high note because of the rain. Ugh.  Before the rain... I’m not too sure what I’m going to do tomorrow. Today was meant to be day two of The Flat Hunt. Significantly less productive than yesterday. Yesterday I went to two different estate agents and looked at probably around 7 flats (I can’t be sure, they all merge together into one mess of a flat in my mind). And it was really great. I saw that there are quite a few okay flats available right now, and that I have a bit of time to decide which one I’d like to live in, and a bit more time to make sure I’m picking the right area to live in. So I ended the day on a positive note; not stressed out at all and fairly hopeful at being able to find a place. Today, I have no idea why I felt like that. None of the places I looked at turned out to be available for a 6 months lease, which is how long I plan to be in Shanghai. One of the estate agents said that I could sign a contract for a year, and they can find someone to sublet the apartment to for the remaining 6 months. But if that doesn’t work out, if I want to cancel the let then I’ll lose the two months deposit, or I can stay alone in a 2 month flat when in all honesty I do want to move elsewhere. On top of that I got over 10 calls today pushing me for an answer. I mean granted I probably got that many because I didn’t answer a lot of them (okay, I only answered two). But all the pressure to make a decision and sign a contract (that doesn’t even suit me!) is stressing me out. On top of that I can’t even speak the language. I mean how am I supposed to say “The reason I don’t want to sign a 12-month contract is because I don’t trust that you will definitely be able to find someone to take over the contract. I don’t want to be restricted by the contract”. I managed “我不要签十二个月。我二月象搬去北京。如果我们找不到别人，我不要留在上海。我只要签六月。” Essentially, “I don’t want to sign for 12 months. In February I want to move to Beijing. If we don’t find someone else, I don’t want to stay in Shanghai. I only want to sign for six months“. I think a lot of what I was trying to say didn’t end up making sense, but I probably came across as being both resolute and incredibly exasperated (that’s what I tell myself anyways). Anyways, she’s going to try and see if the landlord is willing to let the place out for six months and then she’ll get back to me. So I guess we’ll have to see how that goes. I didn’t see any flats today, I was too busy dodging calls (and then feeling guilty about it) and also trying to avoid the storm and the rain. Perhaps the most interesting thing I did today was buy an umbrella from an old woman on the street. The least interesting thing was that I had lunch at Pizza Hut. I don’t think I’m quite ready to be adventurous when it comes to food. I’m too scared it will come at odds with my vegetarianism. Also I’m worried I won’t be able to read the menu and will get laughed at by the locals. Increasingly I feel like I spend 80% of my time trying to fit into which ever culture I’m present in. SORRY ABOUT THAT. Okay, so after Bangkok, I went back to Hong Kong. The next day my mother and I flew to Kuala Lumpur to spend time with the family for a few days, and then I came back to HK. I’ve been here since, and worked this week teaching English as Anne’s substitute while she took a little holiday. But on Monday I’ll be jetting off to Shanghai. Our plans of going to Beijing fell through when I had problems getting a student visa with my UK passport because of my status as a Chinese national. The universities that I’d applied to in Beijing only accept foreigners into their Chinese language courses, so that meant I couldn’t attend them. The only university that I accepted me as a Chinese national was in Shanghai, and so on Monday I’ll be flying off to Shanghai! It’s a bit scary because of having to find an apartment to stay in and everything, so I’ll try and keep everyone updated when I go (we’ll see how that turns out). But yes, just thought I’d update everyone on what was happening. I’m just going to sum up these past few days since a lot has happened, but not a lot. Today I finished the PADI Open Water Diving course which means I can now dive up to 18m, and with experience will one day be able to dive to 30m. Pretty exciting stuff! We’re in Koh Tao because it’s meant to be the best place to dive in Thailand because they have so many dive sights. Apparently Koh Tao as a location issues the second largest amount of PADI qualifications a year. Occassionally there are meant to be sightings of turtles and whale sharks. This past few days the visibility has been terrible. When diving we could barely see a few metres ahead, and so perhaps the beauty of the coral reefs was a bit lost on us. But I guess in a way that means now I want to dive again, somewhere where I’ll actually be able to see. Today for our last dive we were meant to go and see a little wreck, and when we dived down the wreck wasn’t there. Apparently it moved only 10-15 metres away, but that meant that for our last dive we swam around some sand for 30 or so minutes and then went back to the surface. So not too exciting, but I did love it. And I would definitely do it again. (I have absolutely no photos taken of our time in Koh Tao. It’s just been busybusybusy) Bit of a late entry since I couldn’t really get access to internet last night. Day Six (21st July) So we were picked up from our guesthouse and driven to a pier on the other side of Phuket. The pier was fairly long, so a truck took us from one end to the other – a bit excessive but what can you do. We were picked out to sit at the front of the truck with the driver which was excellent. We didn’t have to squish with everyone else. First surprise of the day was that you don’t actually kayak yourself. Rosie and I sat on an ocean kayak and a guy sat behind us and kayaked around. The ultimate lazy traveller experience really. The guy, James (“Bond #2″, according to him) was really nice and quite funny though it became pretty obvious that he was making the same jokes as the other members of the crew. He really liked us though (well, Rosie) so he was being super nice and helping us take loads of photos. The first stop was “Diamond Cave” or something like that. We were kayaked through a cave to see a rock that sparkled because it was filled with diamonds. And then we went into a lovely lagoon, but couldn’t get access to the other one because the tide was too shallow and we couldn’t get through the next cave. Then back on a boat to head to the second stop, which ended up being another cave and a lagoon. Then the third stop was James Bond Island. Which wasn’t as exciting as I thought it would be (though I should have expected as much, we were literally going to look at a rock). The boat stopped and we all had to clamber onto a longtail boat which took us to shore. There were tonnes of little stalls selling the exact same jewellery and touristy knickknacks (Rosie and I, separately, both got dragged to stores and ended up buying stuff). And then in a little bay was James Bond Island. Rosie and I got up to the water and swam towards it. A bit tricky since the water was so shallow you could stand, but disgustingly silty. You could stand but you wouldn’t want to. But at the end we made it, and we touched the island! So that’s pretty cool I guess (later we were told we shouldn’t have swum because there tend to be dangerous jelly fish in that area of the water, whoops). Then we got taken to a beach for some swimming time and to feed a solitary monkey that lived there. People kept on giving him bananas, I think when he finally ran away it was for fear of over eating. The whole experience was pretty fun because the boat crew were great (we both got given little roses made out of palm leaves). But in some ways the islands definitely weren’t as nice as in Koh Phi Phi, so the only thing for us that was new and exciting was going through the caves. Day Seven I’ll keep this short because the internet cafe is about to kick us out of the cafe. We flew to Samui, and then hopped on a bus, and then a boat to take us to Koh Tao where we were to begin our diving course. We started that evening by watching a painfully long 3 hour video covering the first three chapters of our Padi textbook. Day Eight Today we reviewed the chapters and went on our first dive. More on this later because I fear we’re going to be kicked out before I can publish this post. Hopefully photos will be added later!! Yesterday we were meant to go to Koh Phi Phi for the day and so we bought an open return boat ticket to the island from the friendly people who run the guesthouse we’re staying in. We got to Koh Phi Phi at 10am, and found out that the only ferry leaving for Phuket on that day was at 2.30pm. At first glance the island was already so beautiful that we didn’t want to leave so soon, so we decided to stay the night, get the whole day and leave on the 2.30pm boat the next day.  Our first view - not that nice of a day, but a pretty damn awesome looking island (Phi Phi Leh) We signed up for a half day island tour that was meant to take us around the two islands that form Koh Phi Phi – Phi Phi Don and Phi Phi Leh. Now just to jog some memories, Phi Phi Leh is where “The Beach” (feat Leonardo DiCaprio) was filmed. It looks stunning in the film, so we were pretty damn excited about it all. The long tail boat took us to see different sights around the island, including Monkey Beach (the only monkey we saw was a monkey that decided to show its face after only as our boat was leaving), Viking Cave (where birds nests are gathered for.. birds nest), we went to a beautiful cove to go swimming, another to go snorkelling (we saw an eel) and finally, to Maya Bay.
I wish there were fewer people. I forgot that it would be a tourist destination I guess. I mean I was expecting a handful of boats, but not the masses of people that were on the beach. But it was beautiful. A bit different from how I expected though since in the film the bay is depicted as being a lagoon through some clever angles. Today we woke up at 9 and took a boat to Long Beach, meant to be good for swimming and snorkeling. It was so lovely and secluded, and I think this was the first day we’ve had in Bangkok where we were blessed with proper blue skies.
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