My Trip

Well I just got back from one hectic 8 flights, 10 cities total of 25 hours in direct flying time and equal in taxi trips to the airport and airport waiting time in 7 days and I'm buggered. I did Perth -- KL -- Jakarta -- Singapore -- Hong Kong -- Shenzhen -- Dongguan -- Shenzhen -- Shanghai -- Dongguan -- Guangzhou -- KL -- Seremban -- Perth in just 7 days and to say that I'm tired is the understatement of the year. In fact while typing this up I can still hear the roar of the aeroplene engines ringing in my ears. My body is still but the mind is travelling at 800 km/h at 36,000 feet. Seem like out of a total of 7 days, 2 full days were spent on travelling, although it seems more than that.

To add to the gruelling schedule one missed flight and one leg straight from the club to the airport with a total of 3 hours sleep over a two day period makes for one gruelling trip. I averaged around 3 hours of sleep per day and 4 hours if lucky, comprised mainly of late nights romps with friends followed by early morning flights to the next destination.

So what did I get up to?

Well the main purpose of the visit was to go to the World Expo and to experience the commerce in the southern Pearl River Delta economic region of Shenzhen and Guangzhou. The Jakarta trip was a last minute call we made due to some insistence of our friends in Indonesia who wanted to show us what their country had to offer. This meant that on the first day I had flown from Perth to KL (bypassing Jakarta), waited a few hours for the next flight back down from KL to Jakarta (another 2 hours) and another 1 hour wait for my ride to pick me up from the Jakarta International Airport due to the notorious jakarta traffic and another 1.5 hours back to our hotel in Mangga Dua. I had enough time for a quick shower only to be brought to a club to meet some other contacts who were supposed to be important locals who we were told were worth our time meeting up with. As the case is with Jakarta business men and being a Friday, we only managed to pry ourselves away from the group at about 5am, went back to the hotel and slept probably about 6am only to wake up at 9am unable to sleep any further, strange noises still ringing in my head.

The next day was some massages, a fantastic traditional Sundanese meal and a quick stop at the mall to get some sundries before heading off to meet some other friends at another club. This time round we had to wrap up the nights activities around 4 am to head straight to the airport to catch the 7am flight to Singapore onward to Hong Kong and straight into southern China via Hong Kong, not the best route but needed to be done as one our mates hadn't arranged for a China visa, leaving the Hong Kong -- Shenzhen border the only viable alternative to apply for a full China visa within the hour. It turned out this friend could not make the trip to China anyway, but our tickets were already purchased leaving the rest of us with valid visas to make the ridiculously gruelling trip anyway, when a direct flight from Jakarta to Guangzhou would have sufficed and saved us the pain. When you've only had 3 hours sleep in the last 48 hours, the last thing you need is to travel thousands of miles though cities which you don't need to go to, and a long wait at the airports for connecting flights which you should never be taking in the first place to get to your destination only about 6 hours away. The leg which started at 7am ended at 11pm at our hotel in Dongguan!!

Has China Progressed?

Economically, China has progressed as everyone knows but socially and behaviourally, not much. I was in China 5 and 7 years ago and China has progressed in how they behave due to the constant effort by the government to teach the people proper etiquette and behaviour but it's still quite common to see people spitting on the pavement, jumping the queues and atrocious driving habits. Signs in the World Expo reading "One Step Forward" in front of the urinals which I assume was meant to say "Please take a step forward" when doing your wee wee make me conclude that either they pee all over the place or they have short dicks. Other signs read "Don't Climb" on the railing guiding the long queues leading me to think it was intended for those who climbed the railings just to get ahead of the queue.

Driving in China

In Australia, you honk only if someones has committed a serious offence that would endanger the safety. In Malaysia, you honk if you think that someone is going to commit an offence that could be considered dangerous but in China you honk as you like all the time anytime. They honk when they're in danger, they honk when not in danger and they honk when in between danger and out of danger. They drive like drunks when haven't actually drunk anything and common sense is not so common when it comes to their driving. Cars swerve to the left then right for no apparent reason whatsoever. You'll see cars swerving to the left when just a second later they are heading to the next right turn. The safety aspect also leaves a lot to be desired, for example people riding bicycles on the road at night with no lights heading in the opposite road direction with their usual swerving all over the place.

Bad English in China

I can't say too much about this one as I can't speak Mandarin but you would think with the World Expo, China's opportunity to showcase their progress to the world, they could afford to pay someone $50/hr to do a proper check that the English was proper. Signs all over the World Expo with broken english, some of them causing me uncontrollable laughter until now. I can't remember all of them as they were too many but some of them include: "No Noising" and "Please be Mindful of Civilisation". One in the airport read "Please proceed to the departeur gate" leading one to believe it was meant only for the french traveller. They provided great entertainment for me when I needed it most.

People in China cannot walk straight

I kid you not, if you look at the majority of people in China and you see how they walk, they never walk in a straight line. Just like their driving and business ethics, the Chinese people walking is never straight. This made it quite challenging for me especially in the Expo where there were hundreds of thousands of Chinese walking crooked.

Finally...

My critical nature of China and its people reflect a mindset of Western Society thinking that I think fall in the 'less travelled' category and have only really seen their own backyards although I think it is more in my nature rather than being less travelled to be critical. This blog was started due to my inate urge to criticize and to vent my no holds barred thoughts without any filters. Westerners staying in China however, are less critical due to their understanding that different cultures, different upbringing and social environment more often than not lead to different social and behavioural habits and that's part of life not only in China but all over the world and as such tend to tolerate the bad behaviour espoused by the Chinese people in their everyday encounter with them more so than their Western counterparts who see the appallingness for the very first time.

All in all this trip was overdone and too gruelling for an ageing man like me but undoubtedly one of the most interesting and eventful trips I have ever taken. It has given me very fond memories to remember especially meeting many people in China and understanding them a little better and their quest to better their lives and that of their families. I would make a similar trip like this if I ever get another opportunity to do so, my strongest endorsement yet that this trip planned for us was a resounding success.