“Venus in Fur” on the West End: It’s Sexual and Violent (Like Game of Thrones!)by Randi / October 26, 2017
Chinqui! After the nonstop action of our previous few weeks in Kyrgyzstan, a few days in Almaty provided the easy, relaxing tourism we needed for recovery and rejuvenation. I know what you’re thinking because it’s what I thought too: “No way you’re talking about Kazakhstan being the easygoing part of this trip.” I know! Mah wife! Against our (unfounded) expectations, Almaty was nice and perfectly boring. For the first time in a long time, it felt just like your average cosmopolitan city, with nice cafes, restaurants, buildings, and even recognizable brands. It was clean and modern and was the first place to remind us of London since Shanghai. Yep, Kazakhstan is just like London.
We breathed a sigh of relief (but not too deeply; the car exhaust/pollution problems in this region are big in this city) at getting a leisurely day to sightsee at our own pace. We decided to follow a walking tour around the city from the website Caravanistan, which was very helpful but took us literally six hours to get through. Granted we did stop a lot (at every single good looking grocery store; more on that later), but still, damn, what a town! We started at Republic Square, which was about 40 minutes from our hostel when you factor in how incorrect all my advance food-findings were (HappyCow is only as good as we make it, people!). At Republic Square we found the very very tall Independence Monument, which features a pretty f-ing badass man riding a flying snow leopard. HELL YEAH you fly that magical snow leopard into the SKY, Golden Man!
Great success!
Look at that stupid kid statue in front of you riding a regular old horse! HAHA LAME CHILD.
The Independence Monument stands in a big official looking square, with government buildings and the former Presidential Palace. Also nearby is the monument to the 1986 December Uprising, which is said to have been mostly students protesting decisions of Gorbachev. But there’s so much misinformation, as with everything out of the Soviet Union, that no one can agree on whether it was a protest for independence or just against his latest decision, whether it was planned or spontaneous, whether 200 people participated in the uprising or 40,000 (get your shit together USSR), or whether only a handful of people died or whether the death toll exceeded 1,000. FFS the Soviet Union really didn’t like facts. The statue below, honoring the uprising, is called Dawn of Liberty, because a few years after the uprising, Kazakhstan won its independence from the Soviets – even though they didn’t seem to want it. Apparently in 1991, 94% of voters voted to stay in the Soviet system? but then just months later they were granted their independence? What the crap was going on over there! Kazakhstan was the last country to gain their independence from the Sovs whether they wanted it or not.
Gypsy! Give me your tears!
We turned to walk down Dostyk avenue, which previously was called Lenin avenue. Still in the land of Lenin avenues and statues! Never leaving! There we saw the Arman Cinema with this amazing relief on the outside, facing the street. And yes, it’s connected to a Burger King. I know, it’s confusing to hate the sight of gross fast fooderies while also being excited to be in a place with names you know.
this suit is NOT black
In this area we found the statue of Tulebaev, a composer. Now that we’re outside of Republic Square and its municipal buildings and its concrete, you’ll notice how so much of Almaty is green and tree-lined. It feels like the whole city center is a park sometimes! There are bike paths and foot paths, so many fountains, and so many trees. A-nice!
Wave good bye to your clock radio, asshole!
I really liked the below monument to Zhambyl Zhabayev, the Kazakh folksinger. He played the dombura, which is not a Japanese food, and only sang in the Kazakh language. He lived to be just a week shy of 100 years old, which is pretty amazing for anyone but especially for someone born next to a river by Mount Zhambyl (which he was named after) while his mother was fleeing an attack on her village. I don’t think anyone seeing a baby born at the most inconvenient time in the most inconvenient place in the middle of such horror and tragedy stopped and said hey I bet that baby lives to be 100, or past 4. The internet has no reports of fun nicknames but dammit if he was never called Zhambalaya I will be so mad.
I had not come to Hollywood to fight with a man dressed as Hitler.
I was also a fan of the statue to Taras Shevchenko, the Ukrainian artist and writer. I like that his name is in the plural. I write many Taras! I like that he was Ukrainian and I found nothing relating him to Kazakhstan anywhere on the internet. But most of all I like that his statue is so f-ing weird. Why did they just make his face come out of an amorphous blob? Is it because he isn’t Kazakh? They being prankers?
I like!
Okay I’m mostly joking about the statues though. My real top sight in Almaty is, I think, the actual top sight in Almaty – the fountain based on the Chinese zodiac but bastardized by Soviet symbolism so it became just a wet circle of confusion.
King in the Castle, King in the Castle
It’s a great fountain, but at first glance you might just think the animal statues are of your standard choices. Especially if you know it’s supposed to represent the zodiac, you might recognize that oh there’s the lion, there’s a ram, there’s the…snail? Instead of cool things like dragons, the use of Soviet symbolism means we get things like the snail.
mah wife
The symbols used are thus kind of funny, kind of cute, and it makes the fountain even more interesting to know why there are such random animals featured.
Very nice, very nice! How much?
An important artwork for us to find was this mural (above) on the wall of a hotel (or office building) that was under significant construction. I hope they don’t hurt the murals! We wanted to find this painting because it represents us on our Silk Road journey! Okay maybe they were thinking more ‘actual explorers and adventurers from thousands of years ago’ and not two little whiteys but hey we felt pretty cool seeing it.
Everybody know it for girls!
We next moved into the war portion of our monument viewing. Above is the monument to two female heroes of World War II, Manshuk Mametova and Aliya Moldagulova. Manshuk was a machine gunner and the first Soviet Asian woman to receive the Hero of Soviet Union medal for bravery. She had been studying at the Almaty Medical Institute when the war began, and schools in various cities are named after her. Aliya was also awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union medal, for her work during the war as a sniper. Apparently she trained at an all female sniping school, which sounds incredibly badass. Does the US have anything like that or do they still not like having girlies in the military?
Below is requisite Eternal Flame, which we saw in every single place in the former Soviet Union. After that is the Glory Monument in Panfilov Park. It is dedicated to the 28 guardsmen of Panfilov. The 28 were a group of Red Army soldiers who fought in the defense of Moscow in 1941, and they all died in action. Most of them were recruits from the Kazakh and Kyrgyz regions.
sleeve of wizard
Kazakhstan number one exporter of potassium
On one main boulevard was the lovely opera house, which was also under construction and it took several visits to get a picture without a truck on its front stoop. A poster on the facade informed us that the opening performance of the season was occurring the night we left. Cool guys.
all other countries have inferior potassium
Thought we saw literally all the sights, we mostly enjoyed strolling amid all the greenery and taking pictures of buildings we liked even if we had no idea what they were. I’m guessing the below is a government building though. I know you’re impressed by my deductive skills.
Although Kazakhstan a glorious country, it have a problem, too: economic, social, and Jew.
We spent more than a few hours in the A. Kasteyev State Museum of Arts, a really interesting and neverending mix of good art, bad art, weird art, blue art. I recall that it was a maze that I couldn’t get out of fast enough to find a bathroom (horrible set up!). I also recall that there was a scary weird robot sculpture out front, and a CREEPY AF painting of Baby Trump inside.
this is the future nobody wants
IMPEACH! IMPEACH THIS BABY!
Next up is this church, the Ascension Cathedral, I am pretty sure, and look! It’s also under construction! It’s made of wood (anyone else just hear Uncle Joey’s puppet?) and claims to be the second tallest wooden building in the world but it lies. It’s a wooden building of lies. Just kidding buildings can’t tell truths or lies. They don’t speak! But I bet this was the second tallest at one time but other things kept happening and this one stopped growing.
The church was built in the 19th century when the region was called Turkestan which is the cutest lil word. It’s had other serious reconstruction works throughout past 50 years so I guess wood doesn’t hold up so good.
You know what also doesn’t hold up to the test of time? Random things named after deceased royals.
It’s weird, guys. As is this:
Not really sure what’s going on with this building but the people behind it REALLY don’t know what ‘disco’ music is because it sure as hell ain’t Vanilla Ice or Shaggy. No idea what this building actually was because we didn’t dare return at night but man I’m still really curious. What designer got away with this?
Shall we move on to food? That’s always my favorite part! The agenda item I was most eager for was the Green Market (or Zelenyi Bazar), the big produce market where locals buy their goods and where tourists like me can find Kazakhstan’s famous apples. Yep, I didn’t know before this trip, but Kazakhstan is famous for apples! We bought lots of their most precious varieties and had apples for daaays. Spoiler: They don’t hold a candle to my fave, the Fuji apple, which I can’t find ANYWHERE anymore. Kazakh varieties (varietals? when do you use varietals without sounding like a dick) are a little grainier than I’m used to, and a little sour, making my eyes go phrmmmph.
I will look upon your treasures, gypsy!
We bought apples and pears and plums and oranges and more apples. So fun. Pro tip: Oranges outside the UK are super expensive. I remember in China I bought an orange once (a mandarin one!) and it was like 4x as much as the rest of the grocery haul. Ridic!
LIke all the amazing markets we discovered on our travels, the Green Market had so many wonderful looking goods that we just couldn’t buy and carry for weeks longer in our packs, like these spices. The vendors are always like ‘hey girl over here buy my goods!’ and I try to say ‘I’m so sorry I would love to they look amazing but I’m backpacking rn and I don’t have the room or the ability to keep them from exploding everywhere and also customs??’ but just with an apologetic look.
Across from the Green Market was the Rakhat chocolate factory, which I was suuuper excited about, but which was a big letdown. It was mainly a little shop overflowing with people pointing to bins of candy in bulk and saying how many grams they wanted. And there was no list of ingredients visible for any of the candies, all hidden behind glass. I asked a clerk about one and she said there was no milk but like how could I believe you if you aren’t checking the ingredients yourself, clerk?! And I’d have to ask about each one? Blergh. I would happily read endless lists of Russian ingredients but I don’t want to make a clerk in an overflowingly busy little shop do that for me. I found my goodies elsewhere. ALSO, all the guides I read beforehand said that this factory made the whole neighborhood smell like chocolate so I was beyond pumped for that but it didn’t even smell like chocolate in the shoppe! J’ACCUSE!
Okay so the ‘I have no room’ excuse might not be entirely accurate regarding the spices…they can be simply little packets, after all. And I definitely made room for less practical goodies I found at my favorite posh grocery store in Almaty, called Interfood. Oh MAN did we score some amazing accidentally vegan totally unnecessary treats.
DA RISO ITALIANOOO! Ok i think i’m out of Borat quotes
The Ritter Sport Marzipan is RG, and you can find it all over the world. I don’t think I like marzipan in other forms (probably because of Gilmore Girls) but it’s great in this. But the real exciting part of this crop of goodies is that box of Speculoos Creme cookies! oh MAN I picked up that box as yet another futile exercise in self-punishment, expecting it to be laden with milk products, but it was accidentally vegan! I wish I bought more of those but I could barely fit one box crushed in my pack. The Rakhat chocolate bar was decent and satisfied my chocolate craving. The other one (the gold) is a gift for someone, haven’t decided yet! Who wants it?
Manner are my favorite treats in the world so I was excited to find some milk-free wafer cookies of similar ilk. These weren’t very good (kind of tangy) but still, wafer cookies on any day are better than non wafers or something like that.
hehe they’re called Sultan waffles
But the best find in Interfood was this bag o’ Cat Tongues! Omg little cinnamon discs of pure magic. I would LOVE to find these again!
We found some great food in Almaty, although nothing matched our amazing Georgian dinner on our first night. My favorite was the little falafel joint a few minutes from our hostel, called Falafel Forever. It was GREAT! And so cheap! I love falafel platters. It’s my perfect set up – hummus, pita, falafel, and tons of fun roasted veggies and salads.
Across the opera house ( I think) was a Brooklyn-style burger place that Husband needed to go in, and luckily they had a really good cabbage slaw that I enjoyed. Of course I also had some of the great potato wedges and a fresh grapefruit soda.
For dinner one night, we decided to tourist it up and have our first Italian food in months instead of having more Soviet-era potato and cabbage dishes. We went into a trattoria called Del Papa right on the main square of a main boulevard (I wanna say near the opera house again) and got the best familiar dishes, including vegetable soup, a great panzanella salad, and a roasted veggie dish in amazing sauce.
Yum! So many good meals, so many apples, so many statues and stories! And SO much junk food in my bags! Shall we cap off our nice stay in Almaty with a shot of the sign hanging in the shared bathroom at Sky Hostel? Ok!
This is why I’m done with hostels.
Okay bye Almaty! Great success!
This is my country of Kazakhstan. It locate between Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, and assholes Uzbekistan.
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Shanghai, China: Why is Chinese London So Crowded…AND SO HOT?
Whenever I talk about Shanghai, I sound like Stefon. “China’s hottest city is…Shanghai. It has everything – street misters, yogurt jars, film noir, unidentifiable meat on sticks, toon bags – it’s that thing where they stuff a handful of toon into an edible sac and you try to eat the whole thing without choking.” And I mean ‘hottest city’ in all the possible ways. Shanghai was so cool and fancy and swanky, well, most of it. It had an incredible skyline that we could sometimes see through the smog, and the fanciest luxury stores and air conditioned malls EVERYWHERE. And, also, it was the hottest I’ve ever been. In fact, Shanghai was experiencing a heat wave of temperatures the highest they’ve been there in 140 years – just in time for us! It was rough. But, fortunately, the city has so much to offer that it was able to break through our sweat-fueled crankiness and impress us. Screw the Ozdust Ballroom; Shanghai is China’s most swankified place in town.
View from the Bund, of Pudong the financial center across the river
Because of all the big buildings, the excited commotion of a finance city, all the busy people, and all the English spoken, we immediately felt like we were in London. Out of everywhere we’ve been in the past two months, Shanghai is for sure the most Londrish. It was nice to feel a little at home. It was sort of welcoming! Like a big sweaty pollution-filled hug from people who smell extra terrible from the heat. Speaking of that heat, the over-100-degrees-Fahrenheit-every-day heat with high humidity so I look like Monica in Barbados just permanently now, it was rough. Luckily, like most big Asian cities, there are malls EVERYWHERE. I know the western among you are like ugh malls are trash. Yeah maybe in America, but in Asia? They have a very important purpose, and that is for respite from excruciating heat. Air-conditioned, bubble tea filled respite. Yes, there are malls in Shanghai, like in Beijing and Bangkok, seemingly on every corner, and we needed to go into every single one for a break. We’d struggle to walk a block while drinking a gallon of water, and then stop in the AC and find bubble tea (I’m obsessed). Then we’d struggle through the next block and go into the next mall to find another water bottle. Lather rinse repeat.
Shanghai was ready for this heat though, well, thanks to Pepsi, because as we started our walk down The Bund from our hotel, we passed the first item on the Stefon list:
and what about that fiiiiine miister
WATER MISTERS! The photo didn’t capture it, but the top section is shooting out mist to cool off those walking by. Such a great idea!
Our first order of business was indeed walking down The Bund, the famous river-adjacent street that was once the city’s Wall Street, where all the banks had grand historic buildings and is now filled with luxury brand stores. The water in the few convenience stores on the Bund is COSTLY, which says a great deal at least to me. One side of the Bund houses all the historic buildings, most of which have plaques sharing when in the grand old times this or that bank set up shop in what is now a fancy hotel or a Gucci. The other side is the Huangpu river and the view shared above, the famous skyline of Pudong, which has now taken over as the Wall Street-y section.
We decided after enough heatstroke-walking to get on the ferry to cross the river and go check out Pudong. A ferry ride seems like an appropriate early activity to see more of a city! There are of course expensive tourist boats that will take you cruising along the river, but, here’s a tip, if you just want to hop over to the other side of the city, there’s a regular commuter ferry that takes like 15 minutes and costs only 2 RMB! That’s like a quarter! Cheapest transportation I’ve ever encountered. I love loved the warning sign outside the non-tourist (but still fine for tourists to take) ferry.
For 2 yuan, it was as much tourist sightseeing as I needed! The windows were pretty grimy so the pictures of the city from the boat are blurry, but hey, it was fine. We got there.
Blursula through the window of the ferry
We decided to lose all our street cred from taking the commuter ferry and instead become full-on tourists by visiting the Shanghai Tower, the tallest building in China and, at least in my opinion, the tallest building in the world. Why in my opinion, you are probably wondering? At 121 stories and 632 meters tall, the Shanghai Tower comes in second in the world rankings only to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. BUT, like most megatall buildings, the top of the Burj, the tip of its height, narrows into a spire! SPIRES DON’T COUNT FOR ME. It’s SO cheating to build a tall building and then after you build actually usable space to go wait but I wanna win the competition, so here’s a 100 foot long metal rod to increase my numbers. DISQUALIFIED. The Shanghai Tower actually has the highest occupied floor in the world, which is way more impressive to me than all these buildings counting the height of their antennae and thin little completely unoccupied towers and stuff. No dice, Burjess Meredith!
How cool is this building? The whole body of it twists and turns in a corkscrew, which is so impressive. This shape actually helps save $58 million USD in construction costs because it reduces wind loads, whatever the crap that means. Also, using all the glass (the entire outer skin is glass) saves energy costs because it allows in so much sunlight. It was designed by a US architecture firm. Good job America! I love that the skyscraper next to it looks like a baby in comparison. Tickets up to the observation deck are very expensive, if I recall correctly 180 RMB each, so about $25, which is normal for such a sight in the USA but like the most expensive activity in months for us! We wavered for a minute on whether to get them, but considering this is like A Big Deal and supposably totally worth it, we went for it and I’m so glad we did! I usually get so scared of heights (I almost passed out at the Sear’s Tower (I refuse to change the name) when I stood on the glass floor) but I felt very safe in this one. Oh also, you can pay extra to get in through the Fast Track line. Do that at Disneyworld or whatever. Don’t do it here. We went at like 2pm right in the middle of the busiest tourist season (July-August) and no one was in front of us in the regular line.
Not only does the Shanghai Tower have the highest occupied floor in the world, but it also has the fastest elevator in the world, designed by Mitsubishi, and the world’s tallest single-lift elevator. I don’t know how they are different, but they are. ALSO, most importantly for tourists, it has the world’s highest skydeck, or observation deck! Amazingggg.
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That elevator is NO JOKE. Before I even realized we were moving, I noticed the screen and saw we were already at Floor 60. You don’t feel ANYTHING. Then I blinked and we went another 50 floors in an INSTANT. Now that is Japanese brilliance.
the sign on the escalator as you go down to the lift (kind of counterproductive but whatevs)
Once we got off the elevator at the observation deck, we were struck by the brightness and cleanliness of the big, bright space. We were so excited that we had such a sunny day for our viewing pleasure, and we made our way towards the big glass windows encircling the whole space aaaaand saw that we were oh yeah still in China and it was all smog all the time.
On A Clear Day You Can See FourFeetInFrontOfYou
I’m picking the very best of our pictures to share, because some of the sides were just full on fogginess. I wasn’t upset though! It’s not like we had bad luck that day, that’s just how it is! And we still got to see a good amount, and it was so cool. It’s just, you know, Shanghai abruptly ends! Shrug emoji!
From one side, you look straight down into the bottle-opener section of Shanghai’s other famous megatall observation tower, the Shanghai World Financial Center. The tickets to go to that building’s observation deck cost the same as the tickets for the Shanghai Tower, which seems silly considering how much higher, and cooler, it is from the Tower. I mean not to crap on the Financial Center, I’m sure you are very important, but if you are going to go up one Shanghai building, do the big one, right?
looking down onto the bottle opener/Shanghai World Financial Center
Around the bend of the observation deck, you run into a set of stairs going up to ANOTHER floor of observing! We kept getting higher! I’m king of the world!
We were also super hungry – we hadn’t eaten all day because HEAT but now it was like 4pm. Luckily, because this is Shanghai, the bottom floors of the Tower composed a retail space with lots of food court spaces. They even had a Bassett’s ice cream cart, straight out of the Northeast USA! I found a ready-made salad place that I didn’t realize wouldn’t make new ones, so when I asked for the vegetarian one with no egg, they just took the egg out of the container. Lol. Oh well, roll with the things like this that happen while traveling, and give the parts that were touching the egg to the husband.
It was a really good salad! Full of purple sweet potato and quinoa and pumpkin and falafel-pretenders and lettuce! I was so excited to have a good salad since we had just gotten off a train that very morning and travel makes me crave lettuce and vegetables.
Oh, side note, that train, from Beijing to Shanghai! I didn’t write a diary entry because it was just midnight to 8am. It was the fanciest train since St. Petersburg, very nice and clean, not smoky, and completely different from the other Chinese trains. They had slippers for everyone in plastic wrap! Each bed had a TV on the wall! If you book Chinese trains, try to get the G trains! (I think this is our only G, so sad.) So nice! BUT. But. We had the beds that were very first in our carriage, along the wall next to the door of the car. And for some reason, that means that the bones of the train, whatever fills the walls on those things, continued under our beds. So we didn’t have storage! There was nothing under my bottom bunk but like metal! So infuriating, we were the people with the most luggage on board! Luckily, the other people in our cabin didn’t have much so we stored under their beds. Not so luckily, one of those people had a child. See, in China, there are no laws, and so people do not buy seats or beds on trains for their children. (Oh is there a doozy of a story in this fashion coming soon.) So instead of sharing with two other people, we were sharing with three. (We also heard horror stories about how Chinese couples often don’t buy two beds but will share one tiny bed, which is much worse and super inconsiderate to force a whole nother adult into a train compartment.) But the young man who was in the other bed was NOT excited to be forced to sleep with a baby, so when he realized that, he peaced out! I guess he got the conductor to find him a new spot because we didn’t see him again. The baby was fine though. Cute! He made some noise in the night but like, so do I. That’s all I have to say about that.
I’m going to do a separate food post for Shanghai, but I’m sharing the Tower food court salad because it’s part of that sight and just makes sense. Guess what else that food court had? BUBBLE TEA! My favorite thing to drink after water! Weirdly, Shanghai..ians favorite drink is neither of those. Instead, you will see literally every single Chinese person on the street – in this heat – drinking little pots of white yogurt with a straw. Usually room temperature. SO GROSS. IT’S HOT OUT AND YOU’RE DRINKING YOGURT? MILK IS A BAD CHOICE! The yogurt pots are on display in every single food cart and shop window you pass all over town. It’s so weird.
The Shanghai Museum is shaped like a Chinese ding, a cauldron with three legs, I assume for cooking
Another day, we went to the Shanghai Museum, which our guide book highly recommended. The book said you could spend a whole day there, or at least a half day, which sounds like my nightmare and I was like hellll nooo but then I remembered that my husband likes to see everything in a museum so we were indeed there for an ungodly amount of time. Luckily, it was pretty interesting. There’s a bronze gallery, a sculpture gallery, a calligraphy gallery, a traditional furniture gallery, a coin gallery, a ceramics gallery, and more over four floors. Best of all, it pulls a London and is free! You have to wait in a long security line though to get in, and in the heat it was brutal. But, like malls, I learned that the best thing about museums (besides learning, I guessss) is that it’s a break from the heat! Hooray for air conditioning. Actually, the Shanghai museum was SO cold that I had to put a long sleeve shirt on! All this constant variation between the intolerable heat and the frigidness of air con is going to give me hypothermia.
Hilariously, my favorite section of this museum covering so much of Chinese culture and history was…the special exhibit sent from Hungary on Princess Sissy. Sorrynotsorry.
I also enjoyed some of the thousands-of-years-old Buddhist sculpture findings, like this cool slab.
slab fairy goddess
Getting to the museum is a bit frustrating because of police barricades all over People’s Square. You can’t just find the museum and head towards it. You get into the squarea around it by finding the correct underpass tunnel instead of just, like, walking above ground. Oh China. It was so annoying in this brutal heat to have to do so much extra walking but it was a very nice area, with big parks and nice views and trees and, all over Shanghai and actually most of China, recycling and garbage bins!
The coolest part of Shanghai (not temperature cool…it was never not sweltering, even in the middle of the night) was walking along the Bund at night and seeing the cool skyline of Pudong all lit up in its bright neon. It’s always incredibly crowded – 25 million people just living there, guys, not even counting visitors – but it’s worth it to enjoy the view.
We got to enjoy this view every night because our hotel was at the top of the Bund. We chose the Astor House Hotel because it is an important old historic building with lots of interesting history in its ballrooms and staircases. However, the oldness comes through, and it’s very clear that it was a luxury place one day, but one day long ago. The room was beautiful and comfortable and clean, but the hotel itself shows its age and is now very much a hotel primarily for domestic Chinese travelers, not international visitors. This was evident by the fact that, despite ostensibly speaking English, the hotel staff was impossible to communicate with. It was very frustrating. Incredibly, in our next stop, Nanxun, we stayed in a lovely boutique hotel where not one person in the whole town spoke English, let alone in our hotel, yet communicating solely via Google translate went much more smoothly and professionally than our attempts with the Astor House staff – which should not be the case for a place pretending to be a top hotel. Most of the time, every staff member on the floor had a badge that read ‘Trainee’, and they had no idea what they were doing. The lobby was chaos 100% of the time. Worst of all, the lobby had a grand cafe seating area that was very nice – but you couldn’t sit there unless you were ordering something. In the lobby! The only other seats for paying guests were just wooden chairs in a far corner by the front door, with no table or anything. Shame! Thank goodness we didn’t pay as much as the book says it costs. It wasn’t that bad for the price.
But the location was good, because it led us through the Bund all the time. One night on our walk home, we stopped at the other historic old hotel, the Fairmount Peace Hotel, which really has that 1930s Shanghai feel, that film noirishness, complete with a hallway of movie posters with all the movies about that era, including a family favorite:
Every night, the Fairmount has live jazz, but we didn’t realize that cover charge was exorbitant, so we left and went to the other live jazz show at the Peninsula Hotel, which just charges you for drinks and seemed just as good. They did the theme song from Coupling and I was soo excited I was singing along without realizing! I had these weird cranberry soda, white chocolate (sugar syrup), and black pepper (I know!) concoction that was really good!
As for other entertainment, I was gung-ho on seeing some Shanghai Acrobats, which I knew were special and unique and a must-see in Shanghai. The most recommended theatre for an acrobatic show was the Shanghai Centre Theatre, at the Shanghai Centre on West Nanjing Road. Tickets were expensive, like $40 or more, but we figured it would be worth it for some flying through the air with the greatest of ease and what not! But actually, I can’t recommend this show at all. It’s the biggest, most well known one, but as such it caters to tourists, and to the lowest common denominator involved, so it was dumbed down quite a bit and had like, 2 acts out of 8 or 9 that were actually strong acrobatics. Maybe 8 minutes of the almost two hour show was actually the kind of amazing physicality I wanted to see. The rest included a guy using one of those toys where you like hold a stick between two other sticks? That people do like on street corners? Another was a juggler. I mean it was impressive juggling but it was still juggling, and I didn’t pay for that. Another featured men throwing heavy vases and catching them with their ankle-crooks or necks or the tops of their heads, which the audience loooved and yes is impressive but again IS NOT ACROBATICS. The worst though, the thing that made me furious, was the magician. His main schtick? Turning everything into doves. He had five live doves hidden on him for that routine, and I think we all know what happens to doves in stupid shitty magic acts like that. I’m furious still and I have my strongly worded email to the theatre company ready to go if I can find out how to contact them.
But those two actual acrobatic acts were indeed amazing. One was two men doing a partner routine full of handstands on top of each other that were mind-blowing enough but that culminated with one holding the other just by the head, just with his hand. I mean. HOW. The other impressive one was a woman and man doing a very sexually charged routine on a pole, which was hilarious because 90% of the audience was children, but it was like a ballet, clearly telling a story and powerfully so. They did a lot of that ahhh-I’m-slipping-down-the-pole-I’m-gonna-crash-into-the-ground-JUST-KIDDING-I-STOPPED-MYSELF-WITH-MY-QUADS-AN-INCH-ABOVE-GROUND stuff. So I’m really glad I got to see those two amazing bits. I just wish the whole show was that and not stupid touristy drivel.
Speaking of stupid touristy drivel, we were seated next to an older New Zealand man and we chatted for a little before the show started. He asked us how we ended up here, and I proceeded to share every last detail about our trip – ‘we live in London and we flew to Helsinki and we took the Trans Mongolian train route through Russia and saw a lot of Russia and Siberia then we toured Mongolia and then we ended that train route in Beijing and we saw Beijing and now we’re in Shanghai also I had a UTI and diarrhea in Mongolia and my favorite thing is Broadway and puppies and I really love puppies and I really need to wash my hair tonight.’ Okay I didn’t say all of that stuff but it sure felt like it when I finished talking about our route, and his response was, “I meant how did you choose to see this show.”
I died, I am dead now.
The best part about the show was not even those two good bits though. It was the theatre’s location in the fancy pants Centre that we lovingly referred to as Expat Centre. It had EVERYTHING you could possibly want as an expat living in Shanghai, and I think that’s where lots of them do indeed live. First of all, the main part of the Centre is not the theatre, but is the giant Ritz Carlton Hotel – a beautiful fancy hotel (I used their bathroom of course) but it also has two residence blocks attached! Can you imagine being an expat in Shanghai and living in the Ritz residence building? Dayummm son! Okay, so not only is there that, but in the basement of the whole place is a fancy pants supermarket with all kinds of imported recognizable goods, and a Godiva ice cream stand. In the market. And a lot of fresh fruit and even green juice! Then, on one side of the Centre, is a Starbucks, several legit tea shops and juice stands, many fancy Chinese restaurants, many casual and good-looking Chinese and non-Chinese restaurants, a paella cafe, A VEGAN RESTAURANT (next post), an HSBC (our bank), a Parkway Health Clinic – the expat-focused medical practice I went to in Beijing!, a Parkway Health DENTAL Clinic, a massage parlor, a gym, literally everything you could want. If I lived there I would never leave the complex. I’d never have to! It was hilarious. Every corner we turned we’d find something else that would make us thing we were in London.
Not too far in the grand scheme of things (literally and figuratively) from Expat Centre was Xintiandi, an outdoor shopping complex that is suuper fancy. It’s like Rodeo Drive or something, a totally Westernized outdoor mall sort of thing but housed in beautiful old buildings reminiscent of Shanghai’s past. It’s pedestrianized as well as totally Westernized, with craft beer gardens on every corner, all the recognizable shops, Starbucks on every block as is the custom in China, and a complex-wide wifi (that I think only works on Chinese numbers, like most public networks here (and in Russia) that require you to put in a phone number to connect. Not a fan!). We didn’t spend too much time there since we weren’t shopping, and once you see the cool juxtaposition of modern brand shops being house in historic buildings, you get the point, but still it was cool to see. My favorite part is that pets are allowed, but as you can see in the picture above, they MUST be in carriages! What! Not even like, oh if your pet gets tired here’s a baby carriage for them. No, they MUST be in baby carriages. Oh China!
So, we really enjoyed our time in Shanghai overall, despite the heat, though we didn’t do that much in our limited time. We both agreed that we would happily (and relatively easily) return here from London in the future, if for no other reason than the food. The food was amaaazing. That’s the next post! You’ll have to read that one to find out what toon bags are!
Crossing the Torugart Pass: Our First Day in Kyrgyzstan
After our six weeks in China, we planned to leave the western Xinjiang region of the country and enter Kyrgyzstan, one of the harder ‘stan names for me to remember in the past that would soon become my favorite one. But the journey from ‘wait that’s a real country’ to ‘this is my favorite stan’ is a long one, one that doesn’t resolve in this post or even the next one – first we have to cross a scary mountain pass to enter the country, and then we have more time in yurt camps! I know! Again! That’s the next post; I know you can’t wait to read more about how terrible I am in the outdoors. Today, let’s talk about that mountain pass: the Torugart Pass, one of the lesser-known, lesser-traversed ways of going from Kyrgyzstan to China or vice versa.
the Chinese side was pretty
On this auspicious Monday, we woke up at 7am, after going to bed at 1:30am (so much repacking! and showering!) and not sleeping at all really because I knew I had to wake up for a thing (my worst habit), and we began our Kyrgyzstani journey. We planned to cross from China into Kyrgyzstan by one of the most complicated methods – the Torugart Pass. We are silly. We hired Kubat Tours (based in Naryn, Kyrgyzstan) to handle our crossing, and they hired Old Town Tours (based in Kashgar) to handle the Chinese end. OTT (yeah you know me) was actually 100x better and more professional than the Kubat guys, which is a shame because we only had the former a short time, while Kubat also arranged our first yurt camp night once we got through the border so we were stuck with the asshat from that company (Kubat’s son, it turned out) for longer.
So at 7am we said goodbye to Dominic at the Radisson Blu Kashgar and said hello to our nice driver and nice English-speaking guide from Old Town Tours, who would drive us the several hours through literal west-bumblefuck China from Kashgar to the Kyrgyz border. We prepared for the long day of car, police, thirst, and painful bladder as we ventured to cross the Torugart Pass, a mountain crossing from China’s Xinjiang region into Kyrgyzstan. The Torugart Pass is a Class II border – meaning only citizens of the two bordered countries can use it. So how do we and other tourists (not a lot, but still others) cross it? You must, and I mean MUST, hire a Chinese guide and car to take you up the one side, and you MUST hire a Kyrgyz guide and car to pick you up on the other side. I mean it. Well, they mean it. They won’t let you past even the first checkpoint (of many) on the Chinese side, I don’t think, if your Kyrgyz car hasn’t arrived at the border fence yet. The Chinese driver hands you off and you walk a few steps over the actual/final border into the waiting Kyrgyz car. There are a lot of times you’ll think you went through immigration for the last time, but you’d be wrong. This pass is not exactly a tourist hotspot, as you are not allowed in or out without this setup, in either direction.
The drive to the first border checkpoint was mostly dirt and mountains, and it was quite pretty. Well, first, we had to stop at OTT offices to reprint our very crucial documents because they had made mistakes in our names. You can’t see it, but I’m rolling my eyes so hard that it is probably dangerous. Every company we dealt with in China asked us repeatedly to make sure that we double and triple and 100-timesple checked our passport details because Chinese officials are very strict about everything being right, and of course despite sending copies of our passports multiple times, this company was the one to screw up and not us. ughhh. Anyway, we drove through Kashgar and I noticed a cab with its display reading ‘8/15/2008 18:58’ and I was like ‘sure that is close enough to the actual date, 8/28/2017 at 9am, this is probably a good sign.’
My first pee stop was behind an abandoned (so the driver said, but I don’t know) stone facade in a desert-like expanse that was already starting to look like Mongolia. Remember back during that trip, how I reacted the first time someone suggested I simply find a place to hide in order to pee? My how I’ve changed – stopping by this facade was my idea.
Soon we entered a more mountainous region with little to speak of besides a few random shacks and small farms, a region the guide called No Man’s Land. We stopped at a few passport control kiosks on the road where Chinese officials just looked at ours from the car. It was not exceedingly stressful.
the higher we went the prettier the mountains got!
Despite all the red tape, we were not the only tourists crossing the pass today – but we were at Chinese immigration with literally everyone else using it today! The timing of passing is very specific, so your driver will make sure to get you to the Chinese side by a certain time because outside of that window, you’re screwed. Or at least they are supposed to make sure of it. So all the crossing tourists were there at the same time. At about noon (China time, so 10am Kyrgyz time), we were at one of the final Chinese immigration posts, the kind you have to actually go inside. Once inside, we met the others, our first tourists in a while – a Dutch couple and a huge bus filled with senior citizens from Australian and New Zealand. That’s everyone who crossed the Torugart on this day. We had lots of time to chat with them because nothing was on when we arrived – like I said, this was it, no one had arrived before us or anything. So we had to wait while they found people to turn the machines on (turn the machines back on!!). Then the Chinese officials checked our passports – they did a check at a regular border-control-looking window as our bags were x-rayed (the extent of the baggage inspection, actually, for the entire day) but then after that, in the same place, our passports were collected and pored over by people in a secure room, for like 30 minutes or more, which was weird. This building had one squat toilet for each gender, and the stalls did not have doors.
While we all waited the long time for our passports, we also had to wait for our vehicles to make it through inspection. Apparently, we didn’t get there at a time that suited the Chinese officials (even though we were all there the same time, so, it seemed right) so they made the cars wait extra long before okaying them. Boolsheet. So we got to know our fellow intrepid travelers. The Dutch couple had booked with Kubat as well, so we were with them that evening in the yurt camp and got to talk to them a lot. The elders from Australia and New Zealand – traveling on a giant bus so maybe 40 of them? – were doing a big tour of lesser-known Jewish stuff around Asia, like visiting small synagogues and meeting Jewish communities in random places all over tarnation. They were all Jewish themselves, mostly linked from their community back home, and I said “Oh I’m Jewish!” and they said “Yeah we thought so.” Ummmm okay? Is it my frizzies around my hairline or my nose that gave it away? They told me about all the surprising Jewish communities from Beijing to Almaty and asked if we found any in China ourselves and I said “I found really good bagels in Kashgar! Did you try them?” I have a one-track mind. It was nice talking with other travelers though; I thought I hated other travelers but maybe I just hate yoots. One lady in the old Jews group was originally from the UK, so she knew our neighborhood in London and asked if we went up to Finchley or the surrounds at all – that’s the Jewish area of London – and I said “Oh I go to Golder’s Green a lot because that’s where the Kosher Kingdom store is and that’s the only place to buy good pretzels!” They smiled politely.
Finally we got the China exit stamp from this stop and drove an hour or two down to the next please-exit-China-here fence, but they were on their freaking lunch break. They said it could be a 90 minute wait. So this was our punishment from the last group of officials who held our cars too long; they knew we would then get to this stop on their lunch break. So frustrating. We took our lunch break (raisins and bagels that we luckily brought because OTT did not bring us food, or water) in the back of the van. There was an open toilet thank goodness; it was abysmal. Finally they finished lunch and opened the fence to let us out of China. GUYS NO MORE CHINA! 40 days and 40 nights is a lot! We out!
KYRGS! I SEE YOU OVER THERE!
On the other side of the fence was our Kyrgyz car and guide from Kubat Tours. The Dutch couple (the non-Jews) (hey hey hey we were the majority at the Torugart Pass! Map it!) also booked with them so we were all picked up by Kubat’s dumb son and another driver. The Son smokes a lot and is quite unfriendly. We drove to the Kyrgyz entry point, the four of us tourists now moving together for the rest of the day. We got stamped by a guy behind a window who clearly did not expect to have to work today, and I used another gross toilet despite being super dehydrated. Then we drove to another building onsite, and The Son, the driver, and a border guard who hitched the short ride with us got out, went in a building, and I think just hung out for 10 minutes because they are buddies. We just sat in the car and waited. So ridiculous and unprofessional. They finally came out with another guy who came over to the car and laughed at us and asked where we were from (a question that we hated by this point and that would enrage us beyond control by the end of our travels).
Finally we left and drove farther into Kyrgyzstan towards Tash Rabat, with just a few stay-in-the-car checkpoints en route. Tash Rabat is an ancient (15th century) caravanserai, kind of like a country inn for travelers to rest for a night during their travels but bare and made of stone and very Game of Thrones looking. It was pretty cool to see, and we were staying in a yurt camp within walking distance.
we were really in mountains!
so Game of Thrones right?
Tash Rabat
The coolest caravanserai on King’s Landing!
It was probably an hour and a half drive from the entry to Tash Rabat and I had to pee sooo badly. And it was suddenly super cold! It was such a sudden change like China had said byeee we are keeping all of our warmth from you now! But really, it’s because we were sooo high in the mountains now. Kashgar’s elevation was 1300 meters. Tash Rabat’s? 3600 METERS. I didn’t realize this until a few days later, but this was the highest elevation I’d ever been to in my life. It’s also at a level that could be dangerous for people who aren’t acclimated to it, so thank god I was okay. And I’m such a worrier that I bet if I knew in advance that this elevation could pose problems for a newbie like me, I would have for sure felt sick. Scary! So dangerous!
BURSTING INTO TEEEEARS
this is me hiding from King Joffrey (is he still on the show I’m behind). just kidding i’m blowing my nose and thinking WHY DIDN’T I BRING LONG PANTS
The Dutch couple from the crossing was staying at our same yurt camp, and they were sticking with The Son for a country tour for the whole week, while we luckily went off with the much better NoviNomad tour company the next day. The Son was so horrendous. First of all, he didn’t have water for anyone. Luckily we brought emergency 5L jugs but jesus, what about the people you are guiding for the week? He smoked endlessly, and right in your face. He failed to answer simple questions or act in any way like he was working. Maybe he wants to get fired. He spent the afternoon and evening hanging out with his guide friends and other Kyrgyz people by a small building in the yurt camp. I went over to him at 7pm or something and walked towards the group of guides and drivers and waved to him to motion that I had a question, and he just looked away and kept chatting. Dick. I asked what time dinner was, and he said, “It’s ready.” Thanks for telling us! I said, “Ok…where should we go?” and he just nodded at a yurt and kept talking to his friends. What a dickwad. Dinner was good, in that there was food for me, and a lot of us. There was a basket of good bread, and the first course was a rice noodle salad with carrots and then the main was grilled eggplant and peppers with rice. This was the first of nearly daily plates of grilled nightshades plus every version of carb. At dinner, we were sitting next to the Dutch, his more important clients, and we all asked him if there was any celebration or anything for Kyrgyz Independence Day, which was later that week and we’d all be there for. He blinked and then just kept eating. He ignored everything. We actually met Kubat the next day in Naryn and he seemed very professional and good, so I think he just has to fire his son as a guide because there’s no way anyone should be stuck with him in a foreign country for more than a day. Kubat let me use his toilet and as I left I said ‘your son sucks byeeees.”
So I know you all want to hear about my first night back in a yurt camp after all these glorious months of sleeping indoors near toilets. It was cold. The toilets were 190 paces away from our yurt, and they were actually okay. Squats, but in a building of three, so like, sort of real. And there was toilet paper! They also had a set-up of those push-up sink buckets that were always filled, so it was a lot better than we’ve experienced before. Still not fun, but at least I didn’t have to pour bottled water over my hands all the time (we didn’t have enough for that!) or pee in a fly-ridden tarp. Of course, at night, it was the coldest I’d ever been (until the next night!) and that mixed with the aforementioned 190 paces meant I was quickly back to my old habits of just peeing outside the yurt in the middle of the night (even with my headlamp, it was way too dark to make it to the outhouse safely). And despite the dehydration, I had to pee 10 times that night! One time, a guy with a flashlight was apparently doing security rounds or something, not that I really believe that that’s a thing but anyway, there he was and he was coming my way so I peed as fast as I could and made it back inside before he caught me. What a tremendous time.
all the cars had terrible exhaust that infiltrated my every waking moment
another yurt, another random child
The next morning, I put on all my clothes (all of them; I mostly packed for the previous three months of hot weather) and went to the food yurt for breakfast. They were all eating crepes and Kubat’s POS son forgot to tell the lady that I don’t eat milk or eggs so thanks, dickface. We left with the other driver and drove two hours to Naryn, where we had to pay Kubat, say ‘sorry for your son’, and then meet our NoviNomad guide who would show us the rest of the country over the next 8 days. Guess what – it all gets better! Stay tuned and think of me if you have to pee outside today! BUT DON’T. THAT’S FOR MONSTERS.
