The following are my unedited notes taken on my iPhone on a two week trip through China and Japan: Beijing, Chengdu, Yangshuo, Honk Kong, and Tokyo. Reading through them I notice a few autosuggest errors, but also some that look like autosuggest errors but are really intended, just me being weird. I also notice that there is quite a bit that is not here, either because we were too busy doing things for me to type up, or because I didn't think of it as a thing to write, despite my memory now realizing it was a thing.
The actual itinerary was:
Day 0,1 Fly from Boston to Narita, Narita to Beijing, taxi to hotel
Day 2 Beijing morning - Tiananmen square, early aft - lunch, late afternoon Acrobats/magic show
Day 3 Beijing free day, walking around SanLiTun, local hu tong
Day 4 Beijing morning Mu Tian Great Wall aft/eve flight to Chengdu
Day 5 Chengdu morning Jin Li St, lunch Szechuan cooking, aft People's Park, evening Chinese opera
Day 6 Chengdu morning Panda Zoo, afternoon Chengdu to Guilin flight
Day 7 Guilin to Yangshuo, morning drive from Guilin hostel to Yangshuo, aft Li river cruise
Day 8 Yangshuo morning - bike ride along rivers, climb Moon Hill arch
Day 9 Yangshuo to Hong Kong travel
Day 10 Hong Kong morning - Victoria Peak, aft - Peninsula Hotel high tea
Day 11 Hong Kong, Lantau Island morning Buddha, aft - Tai O fishing village.
Day 12 Hong Kong to Tokyo flight
Day 13 Tokyo - WTC and bus/boat tour
Day 14 Tokyo - Joypolis amusement center
Day 15 Tokya to Boston flight
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China Japan
Day 0 (Jun 25-26)
Flight
A little more room than domestic
Ian port asks to trust. Cables everywhere.
Two people in back cabin w face masks. 3, no 4
1/2 of area of plane is 1st and business class
Already annoyed that I can't look up what actor that is in imdb
Day 1 crosses the date line in flight. Lots more flying.
Narita airport
By the time at Beijing airport I think I've seen every possible JAL entertainment option. Every movie even Japanese and Korean ones.
Fried rice at place downstairs from hostel.
Day 2 Beijing
Tian an men square huge but still people everywhere.
Women wear more dresses. Men spit. Some People sit on their ankles. Iranian and Nigerian tour group.
Guys rolling up their shirts to cool off. Ugly
Among the throngs of tourists. After TAM lots of hawkers but also lots of people asking for money. Guy with one arm
Restaurant not organized looking.
Little girls all dressed up
Big areas, but then smaller garden areas very nice.
Young Woman w cat ear head band
So many Chinese tourists. I thought I was special.
Breakfast bao zi, jiao zi, banana
Lunch kung pao chicken, chao Cai, vegetables, frog legs.
Bathroom at hotel has an toilet w water saving two flushes. Shower to open floor.
Dinner Peking duck, cabbage. Cauliflower, salt duck bones
Day 3
Breakfast at hotel. Meh.
Complicated subway trip to sanlitun mall area which ended up everything we wanted to see being closed. Complicated trip back. Raining hard by the time we got out.
Lunch at place across st duck and fried noodles. Really good.
Ping pong in public
Lao Beijing, I heart BJ, lots of public spitting by old men, clear g of throats
Small groups wearing monks or karate clothes
Electric mopeds that are entirely soundless
Day 4
Breakfast at place next door.
Road out of Beijing lots of nice new and old skyscrapers buildings. Plants decorating highway.
Cars look identical
English/pinyin everywhere almost always.
Everybody has an iPhone (everybody, or Samsung)
Lexus dealer
Road out of city is all tree and shrubs growing for sale.
Closer to mountains, very touristy but not many tourists.
Lots of isolated shrines (serious well decorated) just sitting in a field or on top of a small ridge
Great Wall - amazing. Someone forgot a level when building
Lunch - subway. Tastes the same everywhere.
I saw grape leaves growing. I smell... Cows? Pigs?
Lots of brightly colored exercise equipment next to playgrounds
Two camels sitting in bright green river basin. No water.
Our bus driver really likes passing everybody no matter what. He might slow down or speed up if a car comes the other way.
Roof top water heaters.
Everybody growing a very small crop of corn outside their walls
Gas stations seem empty even though highways full of cars
More people smoke but not everywhere. Female truck drivers
Dinner on airplane - measly Lang pao chicken. Seaweed salad muffin yogurt-thing sweet rolls (called bao zi)
Day 5 Chengdu
Breakfast baozi rice porridge bean sprouts savory flan
Jin li st cicadas yak meat rabbit heads, crossbow
People's Park-100 things
Cars go one way on one way streets but everybody else does what they want. Nobody is driving crazy but lanes seem optional. Safe but worrisome. Not speeding at all just questionable choices and behavior by cars, bikes, peds all.
Stores - 100 things to say
Chinese opera -
Taxi cheap
Cheng du fancy, so many new buildings, luxury stores
Post-modern story within a story
Mask changing
Grating female opera voice,
Very traditional music and dress mixed with very modern music and effects.
Chinese english Korean Japanese subtitles
San guo, 108 stories
TV - stupid, just like US
Motorcycle repair on the sidewalk.
People tend to try to speak minimal English if they can.
Skyscrapers go on and on.
Day 6 Thu - cheng du Pandas
Tibetan restaurants/stores
Lots of subway stops
Business skyscrapers give way to apartment skyscrapers. I see a spot where they missed.lota of construction. Lots of mopeds
Cicadas at panda zoo
You want to hug a panda
Lots of kids with shaved heads but a heart or circle.
Huge outdoor mall area as first couple floors of skyscrapers
Taxi driver left us off a block away and then continued on past front of hotel ahead.
You can see the sky in Chengdu (not in Beijing)
People walk across the st without a care with cars coming on either side.
Roads have lanes for bikes/scooters.
Free condoms in lobby of hotel
Day 7 Guilin to Yangshuo
Raining
Potholes
Beautiful streets in Guilin (riverside hostel really nice along river)
Guilin dirt is red
Everybody has a smart phone
Banks everywhere
Motorcycles and scooters in rain doesn't stop them
Rice
Constant change in crops. Beautiful mountains
Patchwork crops
B landscape totally flat but scattered with limestone hills
Nice cars from everywhere. Volvo Skoda Mitsubishi BMW
Etc toll ezpass
Yang shuo new built buildings with no siding look abandoned in the middle
Li river cruise amazing. Pictures are a weak copy of reality.
Trash in water at harbor
Selling dried fish onboard
Taking pictures of the 20 yuan with li river landscape on bill and in background.
tourists are almost entirely chinese (again I thought I was special)
Talked with older couple about kids. A younger man tried to talk (in sorry but I'm shy. The language thing or the social situation)
Water buffalo, bamboo, edging on river, cormorants, houses along river,
Day 8 Yangshuo
Breakfast - noodles
Raining off and on humid
Bike ride/moon hill - too much to see
Rice paddies, continuous cultivation of everything, small villages w new concrete roads, poster with alternative medicine flames, dams, pet dogs not saying hi, fruit trees, melons, grapes, lotus, wildflowers, Palm trees bamboo exercise parks other tourists, mao shrine in house. Talking with tang up mountain steps
Moon hill natural arch - easy short climb through bamboo etc forest so muggy can't tell if rain or sweat.
Lunch - Ian said best yet, taro chips, peppers not as spicy as claimed, egg and tomatoes, potatoes, beef w onions and veggies
Driving - people drive very slowly. But don't seem to follow right of way, or rather they do but not lines on street. Horn honking is loud but meaning is polite, to tell you that I'm about to pass
Got a lift with a motorcycle 3 on. Totally safe except very questionable
Truck filed with dogs of same type
Shopping in Yangshuo - 'local market' of touristy things snack aisle had all sorts of vacuum packed fish or meat things, chicken feet.
Dinner - Nolan fried rice, Shohreh fast food buffet. Ian spicy noodles. Faux tiramisu, Black Forest cake, bowls in plastic vs buffet confusing.
Day 9 travel Yangshuo to hk
Yu long river
Building everywhere
Potholes!!!
Cell usage everywhere
Shohreh says How dare they have tolls on roads in China
G65 off 543
Less pinyin in guilin, lots in Yangshuo
How did hills in guangxi develop?
Xanadu Putao 535
Gas station teardrops on highway Sinopec
Hills go on forever in every direction
Little terracing of rice paddies I guess because everything is so flat between the hills
Scooters and motorcycles with umbrellas either attached or holding
Highway 2 yrs old
Bamboo scaffolding looks flimsy
Highway sparse
Red dirt
Er 508 exit near G72
Tree planting in grids like France
Rumble strips 3 3 2 2 1 1
Now lots of hills far off in the distance
Cloudy consistently so no sun, have to use compass
Hard to balance typing and looking
Hills shorter and less steep, connect together
Individuals working in fields not so quaint. Hard work
Cars mostly new. Mini work trucks look much older
Gravestones at base of limestone hill
Exit s22 01
Store fronts entirely open everywhere we've been, even large hardware groceries toys motorcycle repair
Shrubs along highways
Wide bike scooter paths along main roads
On train to Shenzhen
Little villages nestled within tall hills. Lots of new bldgs they don't want to put siding on many, some dirt roads
I see a non-chinese person and want to stare.
Big empty train platforms (Guilin was full)
Guangdong flat broader bigger fields more taller bldgs
Large ponds with pumps in the middle
We had the kindergarten car. So many excited singing kids
Shenzhen metro
Little kid outed me as meiguoren
Littler kid has uber alles t-shirt
HK
2 customs
Ian says why do they need the same info that's in the passport copied onto a form?
Great air conditioning
So many mountains on the mainland side of HK
Jordan - like NYC smashed into 10squarr blocks. A seller in the night market swore at a customer for walking away. Great Japanese candy store.
Pakistan halal, Thai Vietnamese, doner kebab.
Multicultural: Malaysian, African Indian, southeast Asian.
Day 10 HK
Breakfast dim sum fulun restaurant
Cruise ship, modern mall
People are mostly very curt ad humorless
Skyline of HK island
Lunch at peak restaurant (noodles, turkey club, fried rice)
Peninsula hotel tea
No dinner (Ian had fried chicken, cucumbers, noodle soup) I had milk tea.
Day 11 HK
Bfast - McD's
Metro real nice try
Lantau islandvoiin
Cable car to Buddha - enlightening
Bus to Tai O fishing village - bust, false advertising. So many squid related food products.
Ian wonders that people still love like that.
Drivers are 'normal' here, drive faster, follow rules
Scenery great
Infrastructure for rural env really modern. Feels European.
Squat toilets ok w shorts.
Lunch
Subway (I had mango lassi and samosas from Ebeneezer's)
Dinner
Fulum fisher mans wharf restaurant
Yao had us wash our glasses and bowls and cs
Waitstaff surly and miffed by other waitstaff, walk away in the middle of the order
All mostly retired peopl
Misheard: ff7 sadder than titanic
Had laundry done at a chinese laundry
Day 12 HK to Tokyo
Bf cheap buns
Lunch on Cathay pacific al, sns pork
JR Narita line
Japanese rice fields much neater larger and fuller than Chinese
People dressed less casually (not formally at all) wait... It's rush hour, everyone is coming back from work.
A handful of masks
YMCA br room very 69's looking
Guy with masked sneezed terribly in elevator
Searching for sushi conveyor place we ended up at a ?hibachi? place
Dinner Sukiyaki - the travel shows never showed that at some places, pay at machine
7-11 had mostly people looking for convenience dinner
Day 13 Tokyo
Breakfast YMCA turnip/fish broth soup rice kimchi mini mushrooms
Always pay somewhere else first
Lunch at Hamamatsucho bus station cabbage salad
Everybody dresses the same. Everybody. Black pants, white collared shirt black or blue business suit. All work people.
2 Indian restaurants
Bus tour - 12m Tokyo, 30 area, 127m country
WTC
7-11 covers Tokyo too
Convenience stores, small restaurants everywhere
Clean clean clean
ATMs have english, but lots of places want cash or don't take
cc
Few bikes
Very modern concrete and steel bldgs (not much mirror siding)
Tour fact: most people follow both Shinto and Buddhist practices/beliefs
It raining constantly but people (and tourists) are still out.
Trains on time to the minute, and scheduled often
Chinese restaurants
Dinner at sushi manemura conveyor belt super excellent and cheap kind of loud 'not crappy'
People talk in restaurants, not on pub trans
Mistook tea for wasabi powder. Mixed with soy, really not the same
Review of Hanemaru ( in the Kitte building across from Tokyo station):
Conveyor belt sushi is a crass gimmick, like sprinkles on donuts or strobe lights at fireworks show.
But there's also the accompanying atmosphere and quality of the sushi. We were foreigners here but the conveyor belt was very practical for us, just take what looks good. Everything looked good.
And the war zone that was our table at the end with random stacks of miniplates and dribbles of soy sauce, all of us stuffed beyond imagination, only $15 a person. Luxury eating at regular prices
Day 14 Tokyo
Breakfast seaweed soup at y
Joypolis
Huge landfill developed area full of buildings k.
Urinals have video games, measures volume
Every so often a woman in a kimono or a young couple (just married)
Kabuki theater is such kabuki theater
Every joke has been made before
Dept store basements have the food shops
English (not just roman) on all transit.
Joypolis had written english instructions. Taxi drivers and info people and waiters very polite about no japanese speaking
Dinner selection of foods from food shops.
Day 15 Tokyo to Boston
TV shows have a small box in lower left or right of someone watching the same show and giving their reactions, just facial expressions
Cars just have a slightly different body shape.
Commercial Parking lot with space for two cars. That's it.
nobody has driers, everyone hangs laundry to dry
'Blonded' hair
House rooves some regular some 'chinese'. All small and shallow.
Taking pictures on a train is hard. By the time you realize there is something interesting to take, it's already gone.
Street and rail crosswalks everywhere and all used
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