Deleted scenes: Year two

Another year's worth of photos, videos and blog self-flagellations that weren't good enough to be uploaded at the time, or just didn't fit in with whatever agenda I was trying to push.

Does not include South Korea, which has enough leftovers for a dedicated post.

Second first impressions

Drawn back to South East Asia by the lower cost of private rooms and paying people to cook all my meals for me (it really is all about that), the obsessive-compulsive, collector part of my brain is annoyed that there aren't many new lands left to visit in these parts, but the realistic part of my brain that occasionally speaks up reminded me that that's not important. It's not like I'm out here collecting passport stamps, this is my actual life.

Travelling extensively in this part of the world has taught me which countries I like and which are to be avoided, and there's always more to see - especially in countries I didn't visit for so long the first time around. Indonesia is an obvious choice, as even though I had some of my worst travel experiences in that country I've only been to two of its islands, but I opted for the Philippines again, which I really didn't see much of in 2011 thanks to arriving at the height of typhoon season. Maybe plans are useful sometimes.

I was so disappointed by the Philippines last time, mostly the fault of the typhoons admittedly, that I passed some time trapped in my rain-battered hotel room recalling my first impressions of all the countries I'd visited up to that point, to see whether my initial experiences coloured my overall opinion of a place. The jury's still out, so I've brought the list up to date with more first impressions of the countries I've visited since.

I checked the weather forecast for Cebu and it looked peachy, so I was optimistic that the Philippines would do better the second time around. I was wrong. But that's probably a good thing, as it turns out people enjoy my blog most when I'm angry, stressed, uncomfortable and generally not enjoying myself for your entertainment. Always glad to be of service.

Mm, that's nice too

Iiiiit's October 28th again, and you know what that means! No? It means I just noticed it's the pointless anniversary of a day when I presumably wasn't doing very much last year, so made a greatest hits compilation of photos of ace natural sights I'd seen over the previous year.

I'm not exactly running low on new things to show you - I've got almost two months of backblog scheduled in case I get hospitalised or something and can't provide you with your bi-weekly fix of disappointing, low resolution photos of things you'll have to trust looked spectacular when I looked at them with my eyes through slightly wrong prescription glasses. But a tradition's a tradition, even a pointless, non-existent tradition, so here's another year's worth of nice nature things.

Typhool me twice

Macau Tower on Sunday and Tuesday.

I wonder which photo they'll use in the tourism brochure?

If more evidence were needed that I don't learn from my mistakes, the inaugural event of the South China Sea Typhoon Season 2012 caught me by surprise, despite these same meteorological menaces spoiling my travel plans in the Philippines this time last year.

I wasn't the only one to be embarrassingly unprepared for the weather though, as everyone except the nonplussed locals seemed similarly unable to cope with these freak storms arriving precisely on schedule, crowding into doorways, looking around in helpless confusion like a doomed polar bear on a dwindling ice cap and bemoaning the effect this weather was having on their poorly planned holiday, while the fatalities slowly added up.

I wasn't so callously self-absorbed of course, mostly being in Macau because it was the next place along and having already taken most of my tourist photos in my first few days here when, if anything, it was a bit hot and dry. No, I was much more concerned with not being able to access the internet, which already required trips to cafes and government buildings in the city centre several times per day, thanks to my heritage hotel being too Luddite to even have sit-down toilets. How would I survive?

The dark side of Macau

I spent a little longer in Macau then I'd intended, having already booked my flight for the end of the month but cutting my time in the People's Republic of China mercifully short due to various stresses. I completely failed to make the most of this extra time though, and didn't even bother leaving the four square kilometres of the peninsula to check out the islands. There'll be more islands in other places - this was my China detox.

I always seem to end up getting stranded in these colonial outposts, and Macau is one of the nicer ones. For once, the colonists were Portuguese too, not British, so I didn't even have to feel guilty!

I don't really have a theme for these compulsory pictures of tourist sights. I notice all my pictures are usually taken in the day time, because my camera doesn't take very good night shots and I'm usually in bed by nine, so I stayed up late to get some blurry night time photos. Sorry to disappoint anyone who came here hoping to read about the disgusting stuff that goes on here - read this instead. But if you want a less depressing, conservatively bland experience, check out my photos.

Things I didn't like about China

I liked this

Here's a post that'll come back to bite me and threaten to expose the values I've tried to explain to / impose on others out here in less liberal Asia as a sham. Those frustrated English teachers blaming their host country for their own shortcomings, Malay girls dropping casual homophobia into unrelated conversations and internet trolls boldly leaving racist comments behind anonymous IDs will finally be able to point out my hypocrisy as I reveal why I didn't like China very much.

I don't just travel so I can justify moaning, by the way (compare this to this). Sometimes I really enjoy my time in countries, but China wasn't one of those times. I haven't technically finished China yet, but I'm sure Macau will get creative with problems of its own that I can deal with elsewhere.

First I'll clear up that I don't have any problems with Chinese people, which should be taken as read. I've met nice Chinese people travelling in many places, who came from Real China as well as Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and other expat destinations. Of course I have - what country doesn't have 'nice' people? Except maybe England. That's right, I'm following the wrong assumption that slagging off my own country gives me a free pass to be mildly racist about another one.

Most of the problems I had with China are problems its Chinese residents have to deal with too, on a daily basis. And there are a lot of residents. And they can't even moan about it on Blogger.

Oh, Yuexiu sir!

If you've had the patience to follow these blogs for a while, I hope I've succeeded in making some of the major differences between China and other countries in this part of the world clear. Things that might not be so evident if you live in the West, where people don't seem to be very interested in absorbing much from over here except their cars and some of their food, but that can make spending any amount of time in China, Korea or Japan very different experiences.

But when it comes to public parks and other green spaces, the differences become less clear as you could really be anywhere in North East Asia. Things like old people exercising on playground equipment with impressive dexterity, middle-aged women dancing with an impressive lack of shame, pristine mountain trails, boring flowers painstakingly categorised, attractive old things to climb and no other white people in sight.

Really, it's only the constant, loud spitting right onto the footpath that reveals you're on the Chinese side of things, but let's put a lid on my bubbling Sino-stress until I leave this country and can let it foam out in unabridged borderline racist anguish. I'm already cheating the system to write these blogs on a German IP address, I shouldn't push my luck. Here are some pleasant parks.

You can Canton me

After the economic tedium of Shenzhen forced me to seek solace in model villages, I was happy that Guangzhou had a lot more going for it. Alright, so it's pretty much the same stuff I saw in Taipei when I first came to Asia almost two years ago, but at least that gives my time in this continent some kind of circular narrative. Like those circular doorways I'd been missing too.

Well, that about wraps it up for Earth

They really are big on the model village thing in Shenzhen. Not content with representing their own splendid country in miniature form, they've only gone and boiled down the whole world into 48 hectares of scale models and rides. Or rather, lots of nice places from Europe and some things they've seen in Hollywood films.

As with my trip to Splendid China, there was a more meaningful reason behind my visit than just wanting an excuse to pretend I was sixty feet tall. Alright, it was mainly about that, but I've also been putting a lot of thought into where I want to go next, now I'm through with this part of the world and my second tranniversary is fast approaching.

It didn't make my mind up, but it did strengthen my convictions.

Well, that about wraps it up for China?

Shenzhen may be southern China's commercial success story, but it doesn't have a lot going for it in terms of history and culture. That might be why they've over-compensated by cramming as many of China's greatest hits as possible into three square kilometres at the charming, impressive and amusingly named Splendid China. Grand!

I thought this would mean I could tick off essential sights like the Great Wall, the Forbidden City and those Avatar rock formations so I wouldn't have to see the real ones, but seeing these places in lovingly detailed miniature only made me want to visit more, like the sucker for advertising I obviously am.

If only I could find some way around these internet restrictions that are threatening my livelihood, I'd stay in China for a while. But today was a chance to leave those frustrations and malfunctioning virtual private networks in my hotel room and spend a sunny afternoon stomping around replica fortresses like a Godzilla without the excuse of having children in tow. I mean, child.

Anonymous Hong Kong eateries

This was originally written for my friend Jemma's food blog, because I wanted to try something different and failed. I'm mainly re-posting it here because it's annoying having it wafting around in my drafts.


Eating blind has mostly been a rewarding experience in the various non-English speaking countries I've lived in over the past 18 months, though it carries risks. I won't go into some of the disgusting things I've eaten by accident here.

But for a change, I was visiting Hong Kong with someone who spoke the dialect, and could help me understand what I was putting in my mouth. Unfortunately, it turned out she couldn't read Chinese, so most of the time we were back at square one with the blind leading the blind. At least our senses of taste were still working, so here are three random, anonymous dining options from Tung Choi Street in Hong Kong's ridiculously bustling Mong Kok district.

There's my goddamn escalator!

When I was a kid, I loved escalators. Yeah, me too, you might be thinking. But you didn't love them like I did. You didn't get the same exhilarating feeling when you stepped onto the runway and watched it concertina up into a black, ridged metal step, now fully formed through a process of memory or mechanisms you couldn't understand.

Maybe because your nose was closer to the ground in those days, or you sense of smell hadn't been rendered impotent by too many microwaved cottage pies, in your memories you can smell the metal, before that exciting, nerve-wracking final stretch when the stair collapses in on itself and you perfectly time a death-defying hop over the curb or risk definitely going under like your mum told you would happen once and you unquestioningly believed, because why would she lie?

Maybe you did like escalators that much. The thing is, I liked them for a long time, well into my 20s and into my Edinburgh years, before a few too many trips to the desolate Ocean Terminal shopping centre in Leith, riding up and down the cobwebbed escalators while I waited for a friend to finish her shift at the Vue and get me in free to some shit stoner comedy film or other, finally destroyed the magic. Since then, I've ridden escalators much too frequently around the world in cities with subterranean transit systems, from Athens to Tokyo. The dream is over. Escalators are just moving stairs. I got over it.

So I was excited at the prospect of riding the world's longest escalator system in Hong Kong and trying to rekindle this childhood enthusiasm, because let's face it, I could do with a bit of that. This escalator turned out not to be affiliated with the Big Buddha after all, but located in the central district of Hong Kong Island, imaginatively called Central.

Where's my goddamn escalator?

At some point in the last 23 months, someone told me there was a big Buddha statue up on a mountain in Hong Kong that you can visit, and someone else independently told me Hong Kong was home to the world's longest escalator. I assume that's what happened anyway, but for some reason or other (wishful thinking or idiocy - probably a sprinkling of both) I'd been convinced for some time that these entities were one and the same.

Needless to say, as someone who had a genuine passion for escalators in his youth, I was pretty excited when I had the opportunity to visit this tantalising attraction myself, and crestfallen to discover I was absurdly wrong.

It was only when I got about half-way along the satisfyingly long, multi-tiered cable car ropeway to the mountain village of Ngong Ping (where the Buddha lives) that I realised how impossible an escalator would be in this situation, and how ridiculous I must have sounded when I arrived at Tung Chung station, disappointed to see no signs directing me to the escalator and getting my friend to translate 'escalator' into Cantonese to baffled silence. Oh well, the cable car ride was pretty good. Actually, it was ace.

Hong Kong - The Edinburgh of the East

So it turns out Hong Kong isn't 'the Singapore of the North,' as I'd been expecting, but bizarrely makes me feel like I'm back in Edinburgh. From paradoxical Scottish street names and First buses complete with distinctively unpleasant purple-n-turquoise interior decor to the city's persistent use of fireworks long after most people have become jaded by the expensive spectacle, this place made me feel oddly nostalgic for early morning work buses. I've got to get out of here.

The comparisons fall pretty flat after that, but that's fine. The lazy journalistic device of superficially comparing one place with another place is never obligated to stand up to scrutiny, though Hong Kong's history as a British colony at least means this comparison holds more water than Chiang Mai being 'the Chester of Thailand' just because there's a wall around it or Singapore being 'the Isle of Wight of Malaysia' just because it's at the bottom.

There are also more white people here than I expected, which always surprises me after I've got so used to being around Asian people. Though if you're racist, blind or an idiot, you could make a wry point about Britain basically being a Chinese colony these days, right? Ha ha! Please stop reading my website.

Down with this sort of thing!

Dave's certainly not happy about... something or other

Hong Kong hadn't been on my radar until recently, when I started to get the feeling that my time in Asia was drawing to a close and it seemed a bit remiss not to get China out of the way first. What with it being a bit big as well as massively influential on most of the cultures and countries I've seen over the past 18 months, which you're probably too racist to distinguish anyway. I've basically been in China for ages, right?

The main reason I didn't bother with Hong Kong until now is that I assumed it'd be very similar to Singapore, which is comfortable enough as a sanity/sanitary stop between jaunts in South East Asia, but isn't the sort of place I need to see repeated. But there's really not a lot of similarity, beyond both places wholeheartedly embracing capitalism to the most merciless degree possible. Oh, and they're both predominantly Chinese - but where isn't, right?

But there's just 34 years left before this Special Administrative Region is absorbed into the rest of China, and that might be what those gargantuan demonstrations and marches were all about when I coincidentally arrived in Hong Kong on the anniversary of the establishment of this weird and confusing one countries, two systems system. I don't know, I don't speak Cantonese, do I?