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Dear Readers,

Things continue swimmingly here in the Greyest City in the Universe. Today it was Westminster Abbey and getting kicked out of the Bank of England Museum. Earlier this week it was Saturday Night Fever (yay Disco), the Transport Museum (OMG, I loved it), an exhbition of random stuff called the Gilbert Collection (micromosaics are so cool). Tonight we are going to see a show, Acrorn Antiques, based on a sketch from a comedy show on TV. It is the hottest ticket in town and Steve’s flatmate was able to find us some seats. Very nice bloke.

I’m now at the midway point and I am feeling like I have done a good deal of stuff. Next on my list is a lunchtime concert at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the London Eye Ferris wheel, and the Science Museum. Steve and I are going to check out Selfridges this weekend I think, that should be fun. I still have to buy gifts, too.

Cheers, Lars

Dear Readers,

I long to have the subtle snarkiness of the English, they are truely my comic heros (save of course, John). Last night Steve and I watched some comedy show on the BBC, which I thought was quite hilarious and Steve thought it was not at all. Oh well, it’s OK, I like him anyway (even if the caricature doll of Camilla didn’t make him roll of the floor).

Anyway, so far it has been a very good trip. I got in on Friday and took a nap for most of the day seeing as I couldn’t get any sleep on the plane on account of the girl next to me slapping me in the face with her pillow every time I was about to doze off. (side note, I still do not undertsand the physics of her repeatedly hitting me about the the face and neck with that damn thing.) On Saturday we went out and about for a bit and then go tired and took another long nap. Entirely too long it turns out, as I didn’t sleep much that night.

Yesterday Steve and I went to the Cabinet War Rooms, which I highly recommend to anyone in London. The CWR are a warren of underground rooms converted in 1938 for use by Prime Minster Winston Churchill. According to the museum most of the rooms are just as they were when the rooms were sealed up a few days after the surrender of the Japanese in 1945.

Today I had to entertain myself as Steve has to work, so I wandered around starting at Hyde Park and ending up in Westminster. The park is very nice, even in the winter. I especially like that because it is a royal park they have a dirt horse trot around the outside for riding. How aristocratic. Hyde park is directly adjacent to Kensington Park, where I nipped in to take a look at the Albert Monument. It’s huge and ugly. You have to see it in person to really grasp it’s giant ugliness, actually. But it was interesting — Queen Victoria was not kidding when she said she loved him and maybe missed him a little.

I was planning on going on the tour of Westminster Abbey but it closed before I got in, so I will have to go later in the week. I also didn’t get to go into the Starngers’ Galleries in the Houses of Parliment because the lines were too long, but I want to try and get in sometime. Question Time is apparenly impossible to get tickets to unless you plan in advance, so that’s out — it would have been fun to see the House of Commons bicker at one another though, I wish the Senate would do some more official bickering for my personal enjoyment.

Anyway, in a bit we are going to see Staurday Night Fever. No Mary Poppins was available, which is sad, but this should be fun too.

Cheers, Lars

For those of you not among the 50 people I called while I was waiting in the insane JFK cab stand on Sunday afternoon, I am back in New York. You can rest easier knowing that I am safe in a non-Communist country with free speech, freedom of religion and legitimate elections. Not that I didn’t have an amazing time while I was in China because I did and I hope I will get to go back again some time. I will miss the great food and the inexpensive living, which really can’t be beat.

Some have complained that my posts have not covered all of my trip’s activities, and that is true. We kept pretty busy and my connection to the Internet wasn’t as reliable or as free in Beijing as it was in Hong Kong, so my posts were less frequent. We also did so much that I simply didn’t have enough time to write about everything in detail or I figured that lots of it just wasn’t interesting to other people (much as this post isn’t interesting).

I will try and add some details in the next few days and I will also be working on a real, working photo album for my huge collection of pictures. But it could be some time since I have a job and an internship and other life-stuff to take care of too.

Keep checking back from time to time and hopefully I’ll have some new stuff to say.

While I was in Hong Kong I picked up some Cantonese (the Chinese dialect spoken there). Here’s a little sample:

• “tsa siu fan” — roast pork with rice
• “dong lai cha” — iced milk tea
• “bolo bao” — sweet roll (topped with shredded pineapple)
• “mmm goy sai” — thank you
• “tsa sui bao” — roast pork roll

… what did you do today? Uh huh, that’s what I thought.

But seriously, this is amazing! The Forbidden City has been on my Ultimate Places to Visit list since I was a little kid and watched the movie The Last Emperor at one of my sister’s friend’s houses. (Mommy made Kj take me I think. But Kj’s friend’s mom was nice to took pity on me.)You shoudld all see the movie if you haven’t yet. It is a historically fictional account of the life of the last Chinese emperor Puyi, who was forced to abdicate in 1912 after the nationalist revolution. He was allowed to live in the Forbidden City until he was in his 20’s.

The City is about 710,000 square kilometers of nested courtyards, temples, gardens, residences, etc. And it is absolutely beautiful and a little overwhelming to take in all at once. We spent three and a half hours wandering on a straight path through the main gate (under a giant picture of Mao) to the last garden, without exploring the areas on either side of the center-way. For perspective, only about 30% of the city is open to the public and we saw probably half of that space. Nevertheless it was amazing and exhausting and I got a sunburn (even under the complementary umbrella) and a I had a great time! I am thinking I might go back on my own and do some further exploration. Who knows? There is so much to see.

After the Forbidden City a bunch of us took the subway (40 cents per ride, eat your heart out New York) to a shopping district called “Oriental Plaza.” Remember that we are not permitted to call things oriental anymore; this area doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo yet.

If you can get past the absolutely foul smell of the “stinky tofu” (which for those of you familiar with farming smells a lot like fertilizer) you can get to a great little china shop that sells famous porcelain from the Guangdong province in southern China. This is apparently primo stuff we are talking about here. Beautiful services of 56 pieces for ten people. The services are Chinese style so they come with a porcelain soupspoon and tiny bowl that is useful for nothing more than storing said spoon. We spent another three hours there, and a few of the girls made out with some great deals. One of the girls traveling with us is from Taiwan and she can bargain with the best of them. We can稚 leave the hotel without her because she bargains so well and because, well, you know, she speaks Mandarin.

More minor updates to come. Back soon.

Beijing is freaking huge. Beijing is teeming with people. Beijing has an odd lack of traffic lights—of traffic rules for that matter. The warned us that we would have to watch ourselves when we crossed the street, but this is ridiculous—there has to be some kind of system here people! But nope, it’s every car, bike, truck, and man for himself out here in the Chinese capital. Have no fear though, I look both ways as I am crossing the street!

Initial impressions of Beijing:

• wow, it’s big
• geez, there are a lot of people here
• holy crap, I almost got hit by 3 cars and a bus—all at once
• whoa, that’s cheap
• omg, this weather is so much nicer than Hong Kong
• dearest lord, I like fish—if I can meet it first
• you are kidding? that is CHEAP

On 23 May we took a bus out to Lantau Island to east of Hong Kong; it is one of the several islands that make up the Hong Kong SAR (Special Administrative Region). The mountains of Lantau are home to the largest outdoor sitting Buddha in the world. Apparently there are other indoor and/or standing Buddhas that are bigger, but I haven’t seen any yet, or even heard about them for that matter, they must be out there, though. The Buddha is located at the Po Lin Monastery and was built in the early 1990’s, so it’s not ancient, which would make it quite a feat considering the winding roads we used to get to it. I’m surprised I am still in one piece after riding a bus that navigated one lane roads at top speed against other oncoming buses. It was definitely a ‘had to be there’ experience.

Here are some pictures from the trip.

Buddha from the side.

Detail of a dragon on the pillars outside of one of the main temples at the Po Lin Monastery complex. Photos of the interior were prohibited.

A traditional dragon dance on the temple grounds in front of the stairs to the Buddha.

A flower from a koi pond on the temple grounds.

Koi from the pond. These were some huge koi, people. I tried to get one as it came to the surface to eat, but the buggers are quick.

View of the Buddha from the main temple at the monastery. The Buddha is at the top of a mountain, and it is about 350 steps from the monastery to the base of the statue.

Who knows. I am currently pretending it is a minor Buddhist deity.

More of the Buddha.

The stairway up to the base of the Buddha.

Me stylin’ some Dior glasses at out vegetarian lunch at Po Lin. You should see and taste the things these people can do with taro. Chicken that looks and tastes like chicken but is taro, ditto fish. Very yummy stuff.

Shot of our veggie lunch. Stay away from the lotus/poi dish, it’s not very tasty.

In my continuing effort to bring my friends and family tidbits of information that they won’t find anywhere else I bring you my latest finding—a review of KFC in China.

First of all, KFC is huge in Hong Kong, I am told. And it looks like that’s not far from the truth. Not only have I ran across tons of locations—as many as McDonald’s, in fact—but they are packed all the time. The Chinese seem to like our fair Kentucky’s most famous delicacy: fried birdie parts. Although, my feeling is that they are getting screwed in the deal, I found the chicken to be dry and tasteless. This is mostly due to the fact that it appears to be less greasy—those silly health conscious Chinese people, they don’t understand what KFC is all about: fat.

[This is for you Katie C.] Now for the best part; it is my pleasure to report that the KFC Twister I had last night at the Festival Walk mall (very chi chi) was at least as good as those found in Prague. They are about the same size as well, about the size of a small tortilla. There will always be a special place in my stomach for the Twister because Katie and I bonded over daily Twisters while we lived in Prague last year.

I promise my other posts will not deal exclusively with the food available here in HK, although to be honest my main activities have been eating and shopping for bootleg DVDs, with the occasional academic trip thrown in for good measure.

Maybe you haven’t already heard, but I am a nerd. This may come as a shock to many of you who know me well, but it’s true. To prove my point I am about to expound on my sincere love and fascination with public transportation, specifically subways. Feel free to stop reading at this point unless you happen to also be a big geek, and find traveling at high speeds underground through small tubes to be highly enjoyable, as I obviously do.

Of the places I have visited so far, Berlin has the best public transportation. It is particularly well developed, easy to use, albeit expensive. But the Honk Kong subway has got Berlin beat—if not totally then at least as far as the quality of the stations, trains, announcements, etc.

You have got to see this to really understand the amazing quality of the subways here. If you have ever been to New York you know how a subway system can degrade and how poorly it can be designed. The HK subway is the opposite entirely; it is “fresh, clean, and tidy” as the announcements say. Granted the system is newer than and not as extensive the NYC metro, but there are a lot of lessons we can learn. Here are a few of the coolest features of HK’s system:

• Stations feel like you are inside a building, not underground, i.e. air conditioned, brightly lit, spotless, completely odor free.
• All stations are similarly laid out and signage is completely clear. Each exit is labeled with a letter and lists indicate which exit will lead to which landmarks.
• On the platforms in most stations the tracks are separated from the station by glass doors that open when the train doors open.
• All announcements are automated and clearly audible, plus they come in three languages—Cantonese, Mandarin, and English.
• Above each door on the trains a panel indicated direction of travel, all the stations in the system, the next stop, and which side of the train to exit on.
• The MTR trusts people—the paid parts of stations are only separated from the unpaid parts by a half-sized glass wall.
• Instead of swiping a magnetic card, riders use a card that they only have to hold next to a proximity panel, which avoids mis-swipes and saves a lot of rummaging in bags—you just hold your bag up to the turnstile.

I have some pictures of the stations that I will post sometime, I’m sure you are all desperately interested and can’t wait to see them. Stay tuned for more updates from HK.

If I never see another soupy noodle it will be too soon! Come on people, where is the fried rice, I thought I was going to China, but apparently the Italians all moved out here. Everything so far has been some sort of noodle dish, usually in a soup/broth of some kind. It has only been two days and I am already getting sick of eating Chinese food, which is surprising because I love Chinese food. Katie, you would be in absolute misery here, this is not like Chinese food from the States, we are talking hard-core stuff here. But I have been adventurous and am trying to eat everything—at least a little bit. Although i have not violated my ban on ‘swimmy’ things. Some lines are better left not crossed, don’t you agree?

The food has been an experience worth having all by itself though. We all talk about going to our favorite ‘hole in the wall’ restaurant to get the best food for cheap, but this morning I went to the ultimate in holes in the wall. It was a dingy area that looked like it was meant to be a public walkway, but a restaurant moved in instead. They serve other food I think, but we went to have ‘congee’ (pronounced ‘con’-artist ‘gee’-whiz) for breakfast. Congee is similar to porridge—us Norwegians can compare it to rice and green grut. It’s soupy and neutral tasting though. Then they add beef or pork or seafood to it as well as this fried bread (also tastless). It is really different, but tasty nontheless—and really filling.

Lunch yesterday was my favorite though, we had dim sum at a resturant on campus here at Hong Kong Baptist University, where we are staying. I had never had dim sum before but I had a vague idea of how it worked. Nothing could have prepared me for this though. It was incredible. We sat around a huge circular table with a large lazy susan in the middle and watched in awe as they brought in dish after dish after dish. Even the Chinese people that came on the trip were freaked out by how much food they brought out. There was no way we could possibly have finished it all, or even gotten close to trying. Eventually we had to ask them to stop bringing food, but they wouldn’t stop. It took our professor and his friend from the university 10 minutes to get them to stop. I am still not clear on exactly why they didn’t want to cut off the food flow. But it was yummy and I hope we get to have another go some time before we leave. I ate so much I had to be rolled out when we left, and I wasn’t interested in eating for the rest of the day.

Real Chinese food stick to your ribs, let me tell you. You all know how I like to eat… a lot. But for the last two days I have eaten twice a day and that is it, and I haven’t been really hungry for much more. It’s amazing, but my prediction that I would lose weight is most likely not going to come true after all. Oh well, I am going to enjoy myself anyway.

I have to go eat some of my newly-purchased Chinese breads now. I will have some more updates for you soon, and possibly some pictyures to show you as well. I know you are all dying to see me mugging in front of various places you don’t recognize. Pictures like that are always fun times for all.