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Jet lagged out and trying to wrap this up. This will be the last post for a while.

Hard to believe it’s been five months in Asia, but I feel right at home again. I’m 22 now. That was the fastest year ever.

I had some long-anticipated Taco Bell (duh) and drove the car around town. The streets are so wide! And… not congested! At least until I get back to Los Angeles, of course. But it feel great.

I love and miss Hong Kong. And yet… I don’t think I’d live or work there. The wages, while good for Asia, are generally low when adjusted for the US. The housing situation is pretty rough too. And though the people there are great, they’re just on an entirely different plane when it comes to their values and thought processes. It’s a cultural barrier I don’t think I’d ever fully adapt to.

But who knows? Right now I want to get a solid grasp of the Mandarin language. I don’t think I’d ever really come close to understanding Chinese culture until I got at least that far. Maybe then I’d do a better job of explaining cultural differences and stuff to you all, but for now I’m just too much of a foreigner.

Anyways, that’s enough chatter. Thanks for reading. I might continue writing about other travels in the future, but not here. The blog was for CUHK Spring 2007, so I think I’ll leave it at that.

Bye!

Taiwan Again

Last minute post before I fly back to San Francisco tonight. Since Japan I’ve been in Taiwan doing pretty much nothing, but it’s hot and I’m tired of traveling.

The exciting point of the week was, believe it or not, my little cousin’s elementary school graduation party. The elementary/middle school threw a concert where a bunch of Taiwanese pop artists performed, including…

Jay Chou!!! Singing and messing around with a basketball. The story according to the papers is that six years ago, Jay promised that he’d sing at his agent’s kid’s graduation, who happens to be in the same class as my cousin. What a good way to keep a promise, even after all his wild success. Lucky kids.

Other than that…

Eating Din Tai Fung!

And spicy beef noodles, the ultimate comfort food.

And good old late night shaved ice.

Ok so I realize this wasn’t really a post but I gotta run, I’ll see you on the other side!

Japan

First post in a while! I’ve left Hong Kong and went to Japan for a week with my family. Highlights of the trip:

People-watching the fashionable youth of Shibuya, one of Tokyo’s shopping districts. Sunglasses. Night. Weird!

Visiting lovely historical sites like Kiyomizu Temple and the Imperial Palace in Kyoto.

Keeping our eyes open for the ever-elusive geisha in Gion.

Eating meals like this…

And desserts like this…

Playing with costumes. Fear my samurai peacock helmet!

And staying in tatami rooms at hot springs resorts.

Japanese things always seem to be a little cute, weird, or both…

But I guess it’s just a crazy place.

I’m in Taiwan now. Jeff out.

Singapore

The bus from KL to Singapore took about 5 hours, but with immigration and transport, and problems with our room booking, we didn’t get checked into a hostel until late in the day. So I regretfully didn’t see enough of Singapore to give it a fair chance, but here is my very brief impression of the little city-state.

I did have to answer about fifty useless questions at immigration, and got my bags inspected on the MTR (which by the way is exactly like Hong Kong’s, complete with a multilingual “please mind the platform gap”), and I think I would get really irritated if I had to deal with it every day. I also thought the sunglasses-wearing soldiers with machine guns at the airport were just silly. I mean really, what do you need a machine gun for at an airport? Not that I tried to take a picture of them or anything.

Singapore feels very similar to Hong Kong, except it’s about twice as hot and three times as humid. Here’s something about the language there: many people there speak Mandarin or Cantonese as a first language, but the level of English education is so good that it seems like everyone just speaks to each other in English. So it was pretty different seeing a group of people who were clearly Chinese locals all speaking in English in a group so everyone could understand. They even spoke English to the flight attendant on my flight home, who probably understands all the languages anyways. Interesting.

Shopping and eating appear be the favorite activities here, as it is in HK, although things are expensive. It was the first time I’ve ever been to a McDonald’s that was more expensive than back in the States. Nearly gave into the temptation of Double Filet-O-Fish.

Luckily there’s always street food, which is a pretty interesting blend of HK, Taiwanese, and Malaysian dishes along with a few local specialties like stingray. We only ate there twice but our whole street smelled delicious. I think if I came back it would be mainly out of curiosity for the food, and then I could have some stingray.

Oh and the bakeries here are amazing. Among some of the best bread I’ve had in Asia, including one huge “Hidden Tiger, Crouching Bacon.” Eaten.

We walked a bit at night to see some of the buildings, but we didn’t see much. It was still pleasant.

I like staying at hostels, but mostly reputable, safe ones. I didn’t really like the one we stayed in at Singapore. There were no locks and no keys, meaning people could and did walk through our rooms at any time, especially because they had to pass my room to get to some of their own. And then I met this old guy who stays in the room next to me that I talked to for a while and turned out to be really creepy, and I’m not one to get creeped out easily by old guys. It occurred to me that I would be really mad if I made it this far only to die in Singapore, the safest place in Asia. But I didn’t die. I have returned.
Here’s Singapore. Looks just like HK but cleaner and more organized, no?

Only one more day left in Hong Kong…

Cameron Highlands

After a 4-hour ride into the mountains we got to Cameron Highlands. We passed a lot of really pretty farms and tea plantations along the way. Our chalet was quiet, away from the town, and had a lot of exotic-looking flowers. And some chickens! We found this great Indian restaurant where we ended up eating all our meals at. I ate a LOT of Indian food in Malaysia.

Cameron Highlands was a refreshing change to the tough weather of Malaysia; it was cool and dry. As a hill resort, people usually come to see tea plantations, strawberry farms, cactus and flower gardens, and butterfly farms. It actually sounds really lame but I liked it a lot.

We caught a bus in the morning to a some small road and walked a few miles to get to a tea plantation. You would think that a tea plantation is this little place with some tea plants but it’s not. The hills all around us were covered with tea plants before we got anywhere near the visitor’s center. The factory, where they still use equipment from the 30s, smelled delicious; it smelled more like fruit than tea. Being there really made me want to buy some tea, especially with deliciously tempting flavors like Lychee Rose and Lime & Ginger.

The other thing that Cameron Highlands is popular for are its strawberry products. They sell strawberry stuff everywhere and it’s all straight from the farm: strawberry ice cream, strawberries with cream, jam with crackers, dried honeyed strawberries, strawberry tarts, pudding, etc. I even had strawberry roti from the Indian restaurant that we ate at for all our meals. Really good stuff if you love strawberries like me, so it was a good day.

We took a long hike back into town in our flip flops and stopped by a few other places, like cactus and flower gardens. When we realized it was too far to walk, we got picked up by a taxi for 1 ringgit each, which was less than what the bus would have cost. So that was almost weirdly cheap but it got us into town where we had some nice strawberry and banana lassi to cool off our day.

That night we caught a bus back to Kuala Lumpur and stayed there for the night.