Sydney Throwback

It’s now almost 5 years since I returned from studying abroad in Australia. I keep having to dredge up swearing-free writing samples from the depths of history, so I figured I’d do a round-up here, along with some things I’ve learnt since and some commentary. 5 years and 7 countries later, most of them traveled alone, can give you quite a bit more perspective on life and travel. I must have been such a child when I first wrote these, so looking back is somewhat of a punch in the face. In addition, this was my first time writing in a somewhat commercial capacity (I don’t remember what the incentive was, if any, except for “experience” and “bragging rights”), and I remembered being torn between authentically conveying mine and my friends’ lived experience versus the company’s wishes. My time was mostly a good one, as it’s not hard to have a good time in Australia, but others weren’t so lucky. In addition, I came closer than I’d like to admit to failing one of my classes, something that I still have nightmares about even now.

 

Australia is like Australia

The first time I and my companions landed in Australia, we were surprised by how similar it is to places we’ve been; much of the first few days was spent drawing comparisons to places and things we know already.  Driving through the country calls up memories of family trips to Florida, and our weeklong trip to Cairns is not too different from Cancun.  Walking in Sydney is not dissimilar to walking through Pittsburgh or London or Seattle.  We spend so much time trying to come up with things that Australia is like, but in the end?  Australia is like Australia. Australia is its own animal, so it’s important to not write it off as being like another place.  The biggest island in the world, it’s entirely unique from anywhere else in the world, plants- and animals- and rocks-wise.  The people and the lifestyle here, most of all, are different here from anywhere else as well, and to try to compare it to something else is to reduce it to a lesser stature than it deserves.

I wrote this blog less than a month into my time in Australia. I didn’t know how much time I’d have to write, so I ended up lugging my heavy laptop all the way up to Cairns with me in a backpack (taking up valuable space I’d needed for a week’s worth of clothes) to attempt to write. I didn’t write anything in Cairns. Since all we did there was action-adventure kind of stuff like skydiving, scuba, and bungee jumping, I was reasonably starstruck with the country at the time of writing. Looking back on my time there as a whole, I really understated how active the lifestyle is, how hot the people are, the relaxed and fun drinking culture (so different from America’s, but not atypical in the rest of the world). The only thing I could put my finger on as different from anywhere else: the suspicious quality of light. Many days it seemed like somebody put a special Instagram filter over the world. I hadn’t been many other places in the world at the time, but now that I look back, Australia seems pretty darn similar to the US. A lot of the world seems to think so, too.

 

Comparing Australian University to American Colleges

The Australian school experience is actually quite different from the American school experience. On first arrival, most American students might get excited to see that they only need a 50% to pass, and rather than having constant homework and quizzes, their entire grade is based on just one exam and a major essay. American students get excited because there’s a bar on campus, which for obvious reasons is an impossibility in the United States. Most American students are drawn to studying abroad in Australia because they don’t have to learn a new language, among other things. But there are still plenty of struggles involved in studying, even when the language barrier isn’t an issue.

As I started school, I was stunned to think that the Australian school system is totally different from that of the US (Australians call it “university” while the general term in the US is “college”). It turns out, the US is the only place in the world that is that astronomically expensive for basically the same education, and that in American colleges they definitely hold your hand more to make sure you “get it.” Our classes, in order to receive credit at my home school were pass-fail. You needed a 50% to pass. I got a 52% in my finance class. Needless to say, that self-directed approach did not agree with me at all.

 

On the Nature of Sport in Australia

At the end of the TEAN Orientation, our orientation leader suggested a few ways to make Aussie friends.  Some of these suggestions were quirky, some were practical, but one that really stuck with me was joining a club at university.  Naturally, I had only one club in mind: the swimming club.  “Everything will be okay once I join the swim club,” I kept saying to everyone.  Aussies are, after all, serious about their sports—they’re a country of swimmers, and I really like to swim, so I figured it would be a good fit. In general: I just really want to keep swimming.

Once again, the US is the odd man out (this is a theme in the lessons-learned of my life, and also throughout the world) with regard to our sports culture. We’re the same as Oz in that we encourage everybody to find his or her sporting niche, no matter what the sport is, and try to nurture it up as far as it goes. Most other places in the world are all about the club sports, and Australia is definitely chief among these. I’ve found that it’s much the same in many British Commonwealth nations. Sports are ingrained in the culture in Australia, and everybody is super fit. That’s how they turn out so many world-class athletes.

 

Best of Sydney’s Haymarket

When we were told that our TEAN housing would be right on the fringes of Sydney’s Haymarket district, also known as Chinatown, I was ecstatic.  Most people say that you go to Australia for the adventures: exploring the city and beaches, learning how to surf and other crazy sports, and just roaming the outback and the bush.  But it’s not just adventure, there’s culture, too; living in Haymarket’s like having your finger on the cultural pulse of the city, it’s electrifying and there’s never a dull day.  Walking down a street where nobody is speaking English is so cool – you almost forget you’re in Sydney.

Since Australia, I’ve been to scores of “Chinatown” districts, as well as actual China. Living in the Haymarket district, among so many bustling (and cheap!!) markets was something I definitely took for granted. How different would my life have been if I’d lived in another area, like Surrey Hills, Woolloomooloo, Redfern, or Newtown? Another school I could have attended was the University of New South Wales, their dorms within actual spitting distance of Coogee Beach. I would have positively flunked out if I’d gone to UNSW, so I’m glad for at least a little distance from the beach.

 

Why Australian Coffee Is So Much Better Than American Coffee

Even though I’ve spent the last 5 months in a country that loves coffee (and has the self-proclaimed best coffee), I’ve also spent the entire time severely caffeine-deprived.  This unfortunate state is due to a combination of the different kind of coffee that is made here, the higher price, and the expectations involved in ordering and drinking coffee.  Coffee-drinking is a completely different animal in Australia in a few different ways.

(First I’ll start off by saying: sorry that I used “a whole different animal” even twice in this article. I guess I was just thinking about animals a lot when I was in Australia.)

I’m currently a barista, so this subject is a bit contentious for me nowadays. I’ve also had coffee from around the world, and know how to spot the good coffee from the bad. I’ve revised my declaration. Australian coffee is good, sure, but it’s one-dimensional. First of all, what kind of hell-country is as hot as Australia is and doesn’t “do” iced coffee??

People who insist on only brewed coffee, or only hot lattes, or only espresso or cappuccinos or whatever—while I envy them for having a regular order—I can’t relate to them. I think there’s room for coffee of all kinds. Traveling the world has taught me that. From South Korean iced Americanos to the Hong Kong-style half-tea, half-coffee drink, or bubble tea, from the Vietnamese condensed milk coffees to Japanese “flash-brewed” pour-over iced coffee, there’s room for all kinds of caffeinated drinks. I don’t have time for people who turn their nose up at whatever isn’t their preferred drink, because there truly is a time and a place for all those drinks.

What I’m saying is that, although most of the world knows us for mass-produced Starbucks and Dunkin’ coffees, that variety is actually super refreshing. Americans know that there’s a special kind of coffee for a road trip versus chilling at the diner with your friends. There’s a special coffee for studying all night at the library versus drinking on a date with somebody you’ve never met before. Restricting yourself to just a five-drink selection is really unnecessary and takes all the fun and color out of life. These days, nothing gives me more joy than recommending some special kind of concoction and getting that seal of approval afterward like, “I don’t know what you put in this, but it’s delicious!”

 

Small Victories: An Australian To-Do List

Right before I came to Australia I read a story in which the main character made a to-do list for his upcoming trip to China.  It included only very simple things, but encompassed a wide enough range of experiences that he would not get too engrossed in his work; it would force him to really “stop and smell the roses.”  I also decided to make a to-do list, and just recently I crossed the last item off my list, in preparation for going home.  I’m now back at school in Pittsburgh, but looking back on this list gives me mighty fine memories of my time in warm, beautiful Australia.

There’s something to be said for making a “to-do list” for the places you go, but only if they’re done a certain way. They should be more of a guideline, something to push you out of your comfort zone. They should not necessarily be  just a list of cafes you want to eat at or cities you want to visit (this is all in my opinion, in my experience). Feeling like you “got everything” out of your trip is hard, and honestly, it’s expensive AF, too. I did a lot more than I thought possible when I was in Australia, but I still have some regrets, like not going to the beach enough (I was dead-broke most of the time, so I would seldom buy train or bus tickets, only bike, and that was very time-intensive), not getting to the Gold Coast or Perth, not getting to go up to Uluru, or drive the Great Ocean Road, or not getting to visit Tasmania. But, I suppose, there’s always next time. That’s one more thing. If you leave something undone, there’s always possibilities for the next visit.

All-China Tour: Zhangjiajie

In my original trip plans, I would stay 2 nights in Changsha and only one in Zhangjiajie. As I sat at my hostel café in Qingdao and later Shanghai, I didn’t see how I would be able to do a full day of hiking in Zhangjiajie without getting there the night before; it was one of the most remote locations I visited. Most of my fears centered around making it to the park, hiking to the top, and getting back to my hostel in one piece. Real talk: the only reason I wanted to go to Changsha is because it’s Zhang Yixing’s hometown.

I ended up going to Changsha for a bit anyway. Since there were no direct trains or buses from Shanghai to Zhangjiajie, I had about 4 hours to burn between trains. I walked around and stumbled upon an ahjumma’s shop, where I had some wonderful kind of beef-pepper rice bowl. I hung out in McDonald’s for an ice cream sundae and iced tea, even though I could never succeed in connecting to their wifi (both Starbucks and McDonald’s require you to have a Chinese phone number to connect to wifi, so I was SOL). The train trip to Zhangjiajie was stressful to say the least: loud notifications, little kids running around screaming, some dude’s movie playing with the sound at full volume. I finished my book 2 hours in and just had to stew in my worries for the remaining 4 hours, unable to sleep because of the noise and bright train lights. Most of those worries stemmed from the fact that I was using the most terribly incomplete map to find my hostel and no directions.

When I arrived in Zhangjiajie city, I actually asked a taxi driver to help me line up the map with my actual position. The walk from the station wasn’t all that long, distance-wise, but the hostel was set back in a confusing maze of streets, and I walked past it several times before eventually finding the right street. Let’s underscore: it is an absolute marvel that I managed to find this hostel given the map I had to work with. The hostel itself was pretty bare bones, but it’s all you need as a crash pad before and after hiking.

In the morning, I got a very decent breakfast and detailed instructions about visiting the park. For the record, this is the park on which the “floating mountains” in the movie Avatar were based. Even without that western pop culture context, though, they were a stunning natural phenomenon by themselves. I took the shuttle bus to the national park. Even with my student ID from Yonsei, it was still 160 yuan for entry. On the way up, I got attacked by some monkeys who were drawn to the swinging shiny things on my backpack and the promise of food. I let out the most ungodly shriek, amusing some old guys having their lunch in the main square. The hikers going up the mountain thinned out almost immediately. It was clear that most people would rather take a bus up to the top to see the sights instead. The hostel front desk guy had actually given me such thorough instructions that I felt that there was less potential for error in hiking than trying to ride the buses. It was about 3 hours to the top, where the jaw-dropping sights seemed unending. Palanquin chairs carried by teams of two kept passing by me, trying to get me to take a ride, but I was there for hiking, after all.

You can tell you’re nearing the top (the “Ecstasy Terrace” is the main draw here) from the sound. The crush of all the humans is almost deafening, but the sights are worth it. It’s a place where, if you weren’t surrounded by clouds of fellow tourists from around the world, you could sit there and gaze at the huge granite pillars rising up out of the mist for hours on end. Unfortunately, “ain’t nobody got time for that!”

I looked for a bus to take me to other sites, but when I saw the lines, I balked. I had seen what I came to see. Some taxi drivers harassed me to get a ride, and I, nearly in tears, resolved to hike down the way I came. Ironically, I didn’t get lost on the way there or back, but wandering around the terraces on the top of the mountain. Surrounded by hundreds of others, I felt more lost there than when I was in the woods alone hiking. Another stunning site I saw was the “first natural bridge,” a naturally-occurring arch hundreds of feet of the ground, protected by a man-made pathway on top of it and decorated by red ribbons with prayers written on them. I was wary going over this bridge, despite my geology knowledge. How many people go across this bridge every day? Was it made to withstand this kind of traffic or would today be the day it says, “enough!!”

I took the way down at a much faster clip. I was all-too-aware that the last bus for Zhangjiajie city left at around 6, and the changing light made me nervous. I got to the bus with plenty of time to spare. There ended up only being 3 people on the ride back, bouncing over potholes of construction for an hour on the way back. I was wondering what I should eat for dinner on the way back to the hostel when some lady pulled me into her restaurant. It was a large family-style restaurant, and I was pretty stinky from hiking all day, but she seemed not to mind. She seated me at the other side of a big table where another foreigner had been similarly coerced into coming in. It was here that I had the best meal of my whole time in China. I wish I knew what it was called, but it consisted of this roast pork with black beans, so soft it came apart so easily in your chopsticks, rice that came in a big thermos-looking-thing, and as much bright-yellow buckwheat tea as we could drink.

The street outside on the walk back to my hostel was sticky for about 500 meters. I don’t want to know why. When I got back, I showered and went to bed early, and headed out after breakfast the next day, armed with a new book.

Shanghai << All-China Tour 2018 >> Chongqing

All-China Tour: Shanghai

Last year, some friends of mine went to go teach in Shanghai after being in Seoul for more than two years. After some mishaps with their new school (mostly due to an illegal bait-and-switch scheme on the employer’s part), they returned after about a week to Seoul. Shanghai is the biggest and best city in China, most people say, but the friends sparing in their praise about it. Many advised me not to take such a long trip in China in the first place, and certainly not to see any more than the bare minimum of sights and major cities. After a long stay in Shanghai, I moved west to the more remote areas in China, far less well-trodden than the coastal cities I’d visited thus far.

The train from Nanjing to Shanghai, now that I was not actively becoming sick like the last train journey, was far shorter and easier this time. I would have to decide how long I would ultimately stay in Shanghai and whether to skip the next city or two on the way west. The subway from the train station proved to be easy, easier than Beijing, but crowded because it was rush hour time. It was also easy to find the hostel (it’s painted bright orange). I searched the neighborhood for food, but ended up getting McDonald’s as everything was closed even at 8:30. It was a residential kind of  area where I was staying. At Macca’s, there was this stunningly ridiculous black-cone, matcha-syrup oreo ice cream sundae mess which, of course, I had to buy. It was too sweet, but it looked like Halloween, so I couldn’t not get it.

This hostel, too, was one of the best hostels I’ve ever stayed at. Great café with a beautiful common area, easily accessible, and knowledgeable staff. In addition, it seemed to be a traveler’s kind of hostel. Behind the desk were scores and scores of China, Shanghai, Beijing, Tibet, and other travel guidebooks, all in different languages. There was a noticeboard filled with posters and business cards of similarly famous hostels in different cities around the world. In addition, one of my goals for a trip like this was to bring a book, finish the book along the trip, and trade that book at the hostel. This hostel was the first one where I actually finished my book (Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84) and got to trade, even though most of the books there were in German, French, or Chinese and almost none in English.

While in Qingdao, at the beer museum actually, I stumbled on a phenomenal piece of good luck. I was scrolling through facebook in a rare moment of wifi access when I saw one of my friends from high school’s post. He was in Shanghai? Had he been here this whole time? I messaged him to find out. He told me we could meet up when I got to Shanghai, and to ask him for any advice I might need.

My first full day in Shanghai, the plan was to meet with that friend, Nick and check out some museums. I didn’t have much of a breakfast because I just snacked on things I’d picked up at the convenience store. I became addicted to this “salt” lemonade (maybe the salt was electrolytes?) during this trip, and it sustained me on many long days.

The first stop was the Shanghai Museum. In many ways this museum was better and more impressive than the museum in Beijing. There were many more facets of Chinese art history covered here (compared to some of the more propaganda-like communist art exhibits in the Beijing museum), and I enjoyed the exhibits on carved name stamps and clothes from ethnic minorities from Tibet, Mongolia, and elsewhere. I had some moments of pause here because I saw some art pieces (particularly a centuries-old painted stoneware pillow) that I distinctly remembered from a book on China that I had when I was a kid. How surreal to read about something like that in childhood and get to see it in person years later! But, I suppose, that was the point of the trip.

The second stop of the day was the Shanghai Urban Planning museum, which was a cool combination of maps, old and new photos, dioramas, and interactive exhibits. There was this unreal model of the city that lit up with the different buildings and rivers; it took up an entire floor of the museum and you could walk around it to see it from different angles. It was fascinating to see how much Shanghai has changed in such a short time—the comparisons are truly jaw-dropping.

I met my friend Nick in People’s Square. It’d been so long since I’d seen him, and I was a bit jealous to find a friend who seemed to have his life so well figured out, to find a place that suited him so well. He certainly has a very solid and comfortable niche carved out for himself in the city, and intends to make it his forever home. We got bubble tea, walked through the park, and tried Yang’s fry dumplings. We walked through Nanjing Road to see the Bund, the famous riverfront park where everybody has to take their selfies with the new and bright buildings on one side and the historic buildings on the other.

There were some banking issues that I wanted to resolve, and mostly these stemmed from using the wrong ATMs and the fact that my bank didn’t know I would be in China. When I got back to the hostel, I asked the front desk girl where an ATM was, which she readily told me, but after an hour of walking around, I never found it.

I don’t know how I planned to stay only three days in Shanghai. There was a lot to do and I didn’t nearly touch the half of it. I’d seen some truly lovely pictures of Yuyuan Garden and bazaar, so it was my plan to go there. I didn’t consider two things: 1) that Yuyuan gardens is one of those crazy-busy places all the time, like Myeongdong in Seoul, and 2) that the day I was planning to visit was a Saturday. When I arrived, it was so crowded at the bazaar, when I finally made it to the entrance of the gardens, I didn’t even go inside. Something for the next trip.

A highlight of the Shanghai stay was the art compound M50. It took a while to find, but the walls covered in graffiti led the way like blazes in the forest. It was a very avant-garde complex set in an old factory with spaces set up for each artist or group of artists. Some were active studio spaces, others were galleries, some were installations, and some were a mix of all of them. There were little cafes and restaurants hidden in some of the spaces, too. I had some curry rice for lunch while I took some wifi. In the evening I found the neighborhood called Tianzhifang, another one of those historical districts like Nanjing’s Laomendong where there are no cars and the houses are all in the old grey-brick modular style. It was crowded there, too, with an insane amount of bars, eateries, and boutiques crowded within the small space. I ate chips for dinner at the hostel and extended my stay.

The next morning after my social media binge over breakfast, I went to Jing’an Temple. This is definitely one of the more resplendent temples that I visited in China (some would argue that I left out some of the most stunning examples, but I tried my best), with beautiful wood carvings and plenty of gold-painted details. The contrast between the traditional temple and the modern glass skyscrapers behind is what I think China is all about. Visitors get to light incense and try to toss a coin into the bronze tower in the center of the courtyard. I think real monks live in the temple, but I’m not sure. I got pho for lunch near the station, and afterward got my tickets to Changsha at the railway station. The last stop of the day was the Rockbund Art Museum, which I ended up having a blast at. It was a really nice modern art museum, and the explanations for the choices in art works were really thoughtful, too. I got some cute stickers for my laptop there and got an iced americano at the museum café while I curated some photos for Instagram. The station closest to my hostel was Zhangshan Station, and in the food court of the station I finally got some xiaolongbao, soup dumplings. I think I could easily eat these soup dumplings every day and never get sick of them, and these were definitely some of the best. After dinner and a nap, I’d intended to go to another neighborhood called Xintiandi but I was too sleepy. I formed a “snack fortress” and chilled out in the hostel bar drinking tea and beer.

The last day in Shanghai was a non-starter day. I slept in, had a leisurely breakfast, and did my laundry. I tried to get the soup dumplings in Zhangshan station again, but it was too crowded at lunchtime so I lost my nerve. I went to Xintiandi, but that ended up being a more highbrow version of Tianzhifang, just a very upscale lifestyle center that just so happened to have these extremely pristine historical buildings. There were lots of chic-looking cafes and restaurants on the block, but not much to do in the way of entertainment. In the evening I had a long Netflix session, camping out on one of the couches in the hostel café. The normalcy of that was very comforting.

I slept terribly that night, so I woke up even before my 5:40AM alarm rang. I was packed up and checked out by 6. Of course, in order to do so I’d woken up the front desk guy sleeping in front of the door to give back my key. It’s a rough life for a hostel front desk worker on the overnight shift. I was at the train station ready for Changsha by 7, and one of the most surreal parts of my trip was yet to come.

Nanjing << All-China Tour 2018 >> Zhangjiajie