Chilling with Ken, the owner of the Bookworm Cafe.

Adventures in Lamma Island pt. 2

So there I was, dripping wet in the rain under a rock, trying to protect my camera and journal from the howling rain, and wishing that I had decided to leave five minutes earlier. The voice over the intercom had stopped, and I could just barely make out the outline of the beach from where I was. Peeking out of my shelter to look up at the sky, I realized that the rain was not going to let up anytime soon. Steeling myself, I put my camera and journal under as many layers of clothing as I could, took a deep breath, and stepped out into the tempest. Locating the beach again, I made a beeline for the sand, praying that I would not fall on the now very slippery rocks. I managed to make it to the sand in one piece, and found a small restaurant with an awning near the beach where many of the other beachgoers had gone to find shelter. Finally out of the rain, my adrenaline levels slowly coming down, I realized that I was pretty wet. In fact, the only other way I could think of to get this wet was to jump into a swimming pool with my clothes and shoes on. Luckily, my camera still turned on and only half of my journal had gotten soaked through. I took off my jacket and hung it on a chair, hoping that it would dry a little. As I stood there, dripping wet and shivering in the wind, a really nice Chinese man who spoke a bit of English invited me to come sit with him and his family and bought me a bowl of this hot bean curd dish. We talked for a little while, and I learned that he was a teacher in the New Territories who was enjoying the weekend on Lamma with his family. We had a nice conversation, and after a while the rain started to die down a little bit. The man told me I should probably try and make my way back to the Bookworm Cafe before the rain picked up again, so I thanked him for the bean curd and started back towards the main street, shoes squishing with each step.

When I finally made it back to the Bookworm cafe, one of the waitresses named Elaine let me take my jacket over to her friend's shop to hang in front of a fan, and Ken told me I could wait (and dry) in the cafe. I ordered a hot chocolate, and later on Ken brought me some soup and tea which, while doing nothing for my clothes, at least stopped my shivering. It is amazing how fast wet clothes dry if you are wearing them. After about six hours of reading, tea drinking, and talking, my clothes were almost dry (except for my shoes which took the entire plane journey to Istanbul). At nine o'clock, the cafe closed to tourists, but by this time a bunch of the locals had shown up and we drank wine, talked, and played Uno until about ten, when we all migrated to a nearby restaurant to celebrate someone's birthday. I had time to eat a little bit of seafood with them and then, unfortunately, had to leave to catch the ferry. I waved goodbye to all my new friends, promising to keep in touch and thanking them for their hospitality.


It is funny how one of the most memorable moments on my trip happened on a layover, but I guess that is the way it goes. The more and more I travel, it seems that the people, rather than the places or the monuments, are what make the difference between good and bad travel, and so far I have been lucky to meet some extremely cool people.

The bay, before it turned into a churning mess...

Adventures in Lamma Island, pt. 1

I left Zhenghzhou in the morning for Istanbul, starting the last phase of the trip. I had a 14 hour layover in Hong Kong, so instead of spending in at the airport being bored, I decided to leave the terminal and take a ferry to Lamma Island for the day.

When we think of "Hong Kong" the picture that pops up in most people's heads is of Hong Kong island with the big buildings and Victoria Harbor in front. However, the actual territory of Hong Kong encompasses a peninsula on the mainland (comprised of the New Territories and Kowloon) and a bunch of outlying islands, Hong Kong island being the biggest and most known. Lamma island is a smaller island to the southwest of the main island that is much more laid back than its bigger brother. There are no cars on Lamma island, and although it is less than a few miles from the bustling financial district on the main island, it might as well be on the other side of the world. Anyways, after the hectic pace at the camp, it seemed like a good idea at the time to take a few hours and go to the island and relax, maybe go to the beach. Little did I know...

A really cool girl that I met on the plane helped me find the connection from the airport, and after running to the ferry from the metro, I managed to get the last spot. After a short ride in the ferry, I arrived on the island, and sought out to find the Bookworm Cafe, which was listed in my Lonely Planet as a good place to get quality food for a decent price and pick up some second-hand books. I found the place after meandering for a while, and when I stepped in, it looked promising. Bob Marley was playing on the stereo, and the ambience was really cool with the hippie decorations and row of bookshelves covering the wall. The food was really good, and relatively inexpensive, which was nice. I started talking with my waiter, Tony, and then with Ken, the owner of the place. They both recommended that I go visit the beach, and Ken said I could leave my bag in the back of the shop while I went exploring, so I went off to find the beach. After walking down a narrow road thick with vegetation on either side, I emerged in a small cove where there was indeed a small beach. Seeing some rocks, Iwent climbing around and found another, even smaller beach, but stayed up on the rocks.

I enjoyed the scenery for a while, wrote in my journal a bit, and watched the clouds go by...and get darker. I thought about how much it would suck to get caught on the rocks if it rained, so I decided it would probably be a good idea to start leaving and started to climb down from my spot up on the rocks. When I was about halfway down, I looked back just in time to see a really thick fog whip around the bay. As the "fog" hit the water, I realized that it was not fog at all, but a solid sheet of water, ETA about 20 seconds. As the wall of impending doom approached, whipping the ocean below it into a frenzy, I scrambled down the rocks as fast as I could, and tried my best to sprint across the rocks on the ground, but it was too late. I managed to find a little bit of refuge under a huge piece of stone that was leaning against the side of the cliff, but it didn't help much. The wall of rain hit like a hammer, and water was swirling everywhere, making a huge racket and reducing visibility to about 30 feet. Somewhere in the distance I thought I heard a voice on a loudspeaker calling to evacuate the beach...

Updates

Whew, it has been a while since I have had time to update this thing. Since a bunch has happened since I last posted, so I'll try and put a few stories up, but they will obviously not correspond to the dates that I have. (This pic, by the way, is the sun rising over the Qatari desert in Doha. The temp outside was 34 C at 4 in the morning!)

Memories of Songshan (Part 2)

I''ll skip through the bloody details of getting used to the place, no one likes to hear bitching anyways, and suffice to say that after about a week I settled down into a rhythm and started to get used to the place. Here is what a typical day would look like:

5:30a Wake up to the sound of the "Shaolong military march" followed by even cheesier Chinese music. Stumble out of bed, wishing that I had gotten to bed earlier the night before. Pull on some warm up pants and a t-shirt and stumble out the dooor.

5:45a Line up in front of the dorm building and attempt to stretch. After the last of the music has stopped, Sifu will have us march out of the complex and run alongside the 4000 other red-clad Chinese students. Thursday is long run day.

6:30a (except Thursday) Go either to the training hall or park and stretch out, maybe to some Tai Chi or breathing exercises.

7:00a Line up and are dismissed to go eat breakfast. Get to the cafeteria early, before the little brats toss food all over the stairway to the laowai (foreigners) section. Breakfast is usually (read, always) rice, beansprouts, and the signature Shaolong tomato and egg dish. Every once and a while, there are crunchy bits of sweet dough and/or rice porridge. After breakfast, return to room and try to catch a nap before mid-morning practice.

9:10a Wake up, put clothes back on, and line up downstairs again. Stretch instead of playing the warm up game (either touch or basketball) because people always get hurt playing the games. After the game is done, there is a group stretch, followed by general exercise (kicking or sprinting). Finally, we get to work on forms.

10:40a 20 minute break, then resume forms training until noon.

12:00p Line up and are dismissed for lunch. Lunch consists of rise, one or two vegetable-looking dishes, pumpkin if we are lucky, and tomato and egg. Maybe I will also buy something from one of the windows in the downstairs cafeteria. After lunch, go upstairs, update journal, and try to get in another nap.

3:30p Wake up, dress, line up, etc... Afternoon training is mostly forms, either Tai Chi or stick form for me, and acrobatics once and a while. Acrobatics is really fun, particularly headflips.

5:10p 20 minute break, followed by more training. On Monday and Wednesday, our group gets the dubious pleasure of Chinese class, where we learn useless words and phrases from quite possibly one of the stupidest people in China. Ignore the teacher and try to get something out of my own Chinese phrase book.

6:30p Line up and are dismissed for dinner. Dinner consists of rice, one or two vegetable dishes (with small bits of meat if we are lucky), and, you guessed it, tomato and egg. After dinner, trade stories/learn German swear words from my roommates.

7:40p Go back downstairs for evening roll call. Line up and count off. Afterwards are dismissed to go to free training.

8:00p Free training in the hall, where we can work on whatever we want to. This was only mandatory on Tuesday and Thursday, but my roommates and I went pretty much every night. This was the only place for me to learn Shaohan form (the prerequisite to the stick form) from the other students. Would sometimes also practice acrobatics, and later stick form.

9:00 Go back to room (building is locked down at around 9:30). Shower if water is still available, and try to get some sleep. Yeah right about the sleep. Normally fell asleep between 11 and midnight, then wake up bright and early the next morning...

Overall the camp was a really good experience and I was sad to go. In just under a month, I managed to learn two Tai Chi forms, a Kung Fu form, and the first stick form, not too shabby!

Still smiling...

A bunch of kidlets lined up in the square for evening roll call.

Memories of Songshan (Part 1)

Happy 4th of July! So my other travel journal is crap and is too hard to update and add pics, so I'll see how this works. Will update on the first part of the trip later, but right now here is an entry from my journal about the camp:

July 3, 2008 Zhengzhou

Left the Wushu school today. Except for getting sick, I was starting to really enjoy my experience there. It was sad to say goodbye to Sifu and all of the other students. Had lunch at Dicos with Ceddy for the last time, and then got a cab to the bus station. The bus was actually pretty nice, air conditioned and padded seats. I hopped on board and watched the Songshan mountains go by and then recede in the distance. After using every communication tool at my disposal, I managed to get a cab to take me to my hotel. The cabbie didn't seem to like the place and indicated something about me not staying there but I checked it out and it looked okay, so I went anyways. It is about what I expected, small room, but has a soft big bed, a warm shower, and a water boiler in the room, which is everything I need to survive.

So now I am sitting in my hotel room looking out across the rooftops and city lights, wishing that my cough will be gone tomorrow. The Billy Joel on my Ipod (along with the extra helping of sleep meds) is putting me in a reflective mood, so I think I'll talk about my experience at the Kung-Fu school before I pass out. I was't sure what to expect when I got to Zhengzhou, but I probably expected too much. The picture in my mind of the school was a sparse training camp high up in some pristine mountain in a remote area. I was partially right. After stepping off the plane and explaining to the immigration officials for the millionth time why the name on the front of my passport is wrong, I ran out to the waiting area 30 minutes late. As I scanned the half-dozen people holding signs at the baggage check, I realized that none of the signs had anything remotely looking like, "Kung-Fu School Here!" written on them, and I began to wish that my cell phone worked and that I had bothered to write down Yanlin's number. I wandered aimlessly around the exit area a bit, which turned out to be a good call, because a big, lost-looking white guy must have been pretty easy to spot. I was approached by a young, compact Chinese guy (who I later learned was named O-Shun and was one of the Sifus) and showed my (misspelled) name on a cell phone and asked if the name was mine. Relieved, I asked if he was from the Kung-Fu school, and he said yes and ushered me outside to a waiting van.

After about an hour of driving, we made it to the school, and I realized that although we were next to some mountains (were those mountains through the haze of smog?) the camp was much different than I had imagined. Trying to stay positive, I forced a smile as I walked up to the fourth floor of a dorm complex and was ushered into my room. Well, actually, O-Shun didn't have a key for me so we went through this dance where I had to go back downstairs and find one of my roommates, get his key, and then go up to the room and wrestle with the door lock for ten minutes before I finally got in. Anyways, I sat down on my bed...and realized that the box I had assumed was a mattress was...a wooden box with a sheet on it. Oh well, just go into the bathroom and wash my face and--crap, no water from the tap, and what is that awful smell? (I later leaned that the water was only available during certain, short times during the day, including the toilet, so the bathroom had a special "odor" for most of the day while the toilet waited to be flushed) I'll spare everyone the rest of my woeful complaining, but suffice to say that this place wasn't the Ritz. (coming up...part 2--adjusting to life at the camp)