Shanghai

Room at JW Marriott, 55th floor, is exactly as it should be for spoiled americans.
Shanghai, as Doris pictures show, a combo of NY, Chicago, LA, and Dallas.
Meaning not the best of all those cities, but all those cities schmushed together on one spot.
I'm sure there are some run down areas as well, so throw Detroit into it as well.
Newspaper headline yesterday said that China was going to complete 45 new airports in the next 5 years, about as long as it took the citizens of Ann Arbor to figure out what to do with 45 lizards or frogs or whatever held up construction of sky line high school.

Memo to D. Seals.  They have an express train from airport to downtown, same concept as has been threatened in Wayne County for 25 years.  8 minutes at 260 MPH, although they usually restrict speed to a more leisurely 250 mph.

They pretty much have everything, except of course Google, blogging, and self determination.  But the trains run on time.

Enough social commentary, back to topic number one. Me, and doris of course.


Met up with Japanese sister that had once lived in Michigan and two others from the Japanese group here.  We got the grand tour of gardens and shopping and ferries, and subways, and prominades, sky scrapers, etc.  For good measure we had Korean for lunch.
What else should americans and japanese eat while in china?

Her husband us in the evening and we went to acrobat show.  On the way had our first real crushing experience of our adventure.  We were crushed, literally, into what already seemed like an impossibly crowded subway car.  I was the pulling guard hitting the hole and making room for doris and Reiko, who is all of 5' , 95#.

After 90 min of ever more unreal contortions and trickerations we finished up with Shanghai DimSum. Next set of doris pictures will fill in the visuals

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shanghai port

Shanghai

Since all the citizens of Doris Nation have already seen pictures of every sand barge in China via her beat the chinese media blockade e-mail quasi blog, I'll just add a little text and commentary.

The ship's entry into the harbor was delayed due to extreme fog.  A sound decision since there are 7,468 ships all moving at once in a river less wide than between Detroit and Windsor.  Sort of 696 during rush hour, except with 100 to 100,000 ton ships.
Plus since the river has tides, one has to wait for high tide even to try.   Net of it was a 12 hour delay

This gave us another half day 'at sea'.  The upside was we got to watch the 6 hour passage to Shanghai cruise port during the day.  
Ship had two tugs, some sort of coast guard cop boat along side and a couple of river pilots on board.  I guess it wouldn't do to have a bunch of overstuffed cruise ship people run aground.

ps found a way to post a blog from here    hehehe

planes trains and automobiles

car, plane, plane, taxi, bus, cab, cab, cab, cab, cab, ship, van, ship, bus, van, boat, taxi, bus, ship, bus, bus, ship, bus, bus, ship, subway, subway, subway, subway, ferry, subway,ferry, ferry, ship, bus, taxi, taxi, bus, ship, van, ship, van,cab, ferry, subway, subway, cab, subway, ferry, cab, cab, van

how we've traveled to date.......

If its Tuesday, this must be....

If its Tuesday, this must be Okinawa.

A little Ann Arbor reunion. Yuri Kochi and two other sisters one of whom also lived in Michigan flew down from their homes around Nagoya to meet us for the day.
A local friend of Yuri's was the van driver. A van that they rented on our behalf, by the way.
Five Japanese sisters all with their cameras and me. ( for the purposes of this discussion Doris is a Japanese sister.). Much frivolity and jocularity ensued. There were an incalculable number permutations of who was taking pictures of whom.
They had arranged a trip to a quite large ocean marine park all the way at the other end of this island. The aquariums had lots of fish in them, all kinds of fish and other sea type creatures, many, many fish.
Fish seem to be a big deal around here.
As entertaining as watching fish swim around in circles was, watching the watchers of the fish was better. Swarms, or should i say schools, of camera wielding hipster Japanese youth, apparently college kids, completely decked out in hipster fashions (Abercombray and Flitch any one?) paraded around the vast grounds concentrating fully on taking pictures of each other in every possible combination.

Saw a lot of highway work very efficiently presided over by earnest workers, working with great Japanese earnestness. The guys holding the yellow warning flags tended to their mission with the concentration of a surgeon.

Got back to Naha in time to wander about their version of open markets. Its all kinda starting to look pretty much alike.

In honor of our time at the aquarium, i had a heapin helping of Sashimi, in their somewhat more sanitary version of a local food court.

Interestingly enough, despite having a gigantic American military presence all over the island, with all the typically kitschy trappings of a military town, like Beaufort SC, Fort Bragg NC, there wasn't a Starbucks in sight. What to make of this?

Got back to the ship with just enough time to take another 4726 pictures of each other.

It was a very nice day with amusing people.

Off to last stop Shanghai. I have high hopes that this will be the best stop, except for Hong Kong perhaps. Just not having to chase back to the ship will be a welcome change.
Unfortunately since the aparatchniks who run China have a general fear of openness and specific animosity towards google, there will likely be little blogging going on till we get to Tokyo on Sunday.

food food food

i'll stray away from chronological blogging to some thematic ones.

food in asia -

Taiwan

Taipei - Keelung

After a crappy rainy, windy day at sea we were greeted by a crappy rainy day in Taiwan.
Through Tamara via a brother in Boston Chinese via Terry an MTS grad from Pittsburgh we met up with a lovely lad named Monru in a Tapei congregation. He got up at 5 am to catch a cab to catch a 6 15 bus to meet the ship at 7. We finally got cleared to get off ship by 730 and we repeated the process all the way back to Taipei, just in time for their 930 meeting( mandarin).
The talk was outstanding and the watchtower expertly conducted. I know this cause they both ended on time.

This also happened to be Irinka (from back home) congregation. She about fell over when she saw us sitting in her hall.

Cong is a real stew of different nationalities. The wt conductor, wolgang, was a German graduate of the 50th class of Gilead, who had recently come off the CO road.
The public speaker was a japanese brother who grew up in LA. Terry, the mts grad, was from maryland but worked in foreign language territories in Germany for 17 years.
So here I am in the middle of Asia speaking German.

There is also a contingent of Spanish speaking friends, some from Spain, others from Panama who are learning Mandarin.

The actual locals are largely younger who all seem to be studying English at the local universities. This is the hook for all the Americans who can work 10 to 15 hrs per week as tutors and make a good enough living, including medical insurance, to pioneer.


Everyone we spoke with, including our tour guide is the first member of their family to come into the truth, and they did so in their 20's. This is what the US was probably like in the 50 and 60's.

Terry told me that they have 100 publishers of which 50 are regular pioneers and 25 got baptized last year.

Had a great lunch with a group and shopped in the Taipei version of a bustling street market.

We convinced poor Monru that he didn't have to go all the way back with us to Keelung to get us back to the ship. It was a small conflict of his guilt in not fulfilling his' assignment' vs his tiredness and the prospect of two more bus rides. Practicality won out and he pointed us to express bus 1813 which leaves every 15 minutes to Keelung.
Piece of cake. The bus stopped smack dab in front of our ship in the Harbor.
We even had time to wander through the Keelung version of a street market.

Hopfully internet will we swift enough for some more pictures
Starbucks assessment: Taiwan had more starbucks than Seattle.

Cruise people

We have stumbled upon a new demographic of travelers. Few of these folks are grumpy, line up at the feeding troughs 'cruise' travelers. certainly not the 7 or 10 day round trip fort lauderdale type cruise people. Many are only on their first or second cruise. These folks are largely adventure travelers who are on the ship in order to see places, not the ship. In fact we just met the first couple that isn't continuing on the ship for the next 12 day cruise or even beyond. There are people who've been on the ship for 45 days already or wont be getting off until the ship comes back to Europe mid April.

People at our table are so well traveled that we kind of just sit there and listen. I knew we were in over our heads when the conversation turned to the 'last time we were in Antarctica'.

The second british comic, after the obligatory 'who's from the UK' routine and his lame version of the vacuum toilet joke, asked how many people had been to Dubai, pretty much every hand went up.

So 'hey have you ever been to Macinac Island, it's really nice' only goes so far.

On the other hand, no one comes close to the theocratic connections we've had. 'we met friends in Singapore, Ko Samui, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Okinawa' has prompted some curious questions from our travel mates.