Asian Edition
Mike and I recently took a vacation in Japan and China. We went to Japan for my friend Yuka's wedding. We flew into Osaka, and spent about a day exploring Osaka before we took a train to Kyoto to meet Yuka. Trains in Japan are great! They're fast, and run frequently. We arrived at Kyoto station in no time... and then as we were walking off of the platform, I realized I didn't see Mike carrying one of my bags (that he'd graciously agreed to carry for me). I asked him about it - and he immediately ran full speed back to the train. It's a wonder he made it back on - and by some travel miracle he made it back off before the train started moving again - bag in hand. "Don't leave my stuff on a train" became the running joke for the rest of our trip, and now has loaded meaning in our house. It wasn't until about 3 days after we returned home that I realized my house and car keys were in that bag, and were nearly lost forever.
About a week later we returned to Osaka, and caught a boat to Shanghai. The boat ride took two days, and we discovered that one of us (me) does just fine on the open sea, and the other one of us (Mike) gets sea sick. (probably karma getting payback for nearly leaving my comfortable shoes, novel, and keys on a Japanese train).
While in China we took a weekend trip to visit smaller towns near Shanghai. One of the places we visited was a great little place called Suzhou (pronounced Sue-Joe). We stayed in a 400-year old home converted to hotel, complete with amazing antique furniture. It was a dream hotel room! We arrived early enough in the day that the room wasn't quite ready for us, though. We were able to drop off our bags, and then left to explore the town. We stopped at a very cute little tea shop nearby, and while relaxing with a particularly great cup of ice tea, Mike turned to me and asked the following: "Have you noticed there are a lot of people here, and they're all Asian?" (that's literally word for word what he said). I just stared at him for a moment.... then replied "you know we're in CHINA, right?" what a nut.
When we returned to Shanghai, we stayed outside of town at a farmhouse. These (farmhouses) are difficult to book for a non-native, but we had a local (Quincy) assisting us, which turned out to be a huge blessing. As they don't see foreigners very often, no one at the farmhouse spoke English. Quincy's assistance when we got to the farmhouse was invaluable. I don't know how we ever would have been able to figure much out without her. With her assistance, we knew that we would need to catch a bus the following morning, which we could take straight into the city, to meet back up with her to see the sights. The following morning we enjoyed breakfast, then tried to ask the staff to help us figure out how to get the bus. We knew we should catch it at the gate, but didn't know if it would automatically stop when it saw us, or if we needed to flag it down. We knew how much it would cost, but didn't know if we needed exact change. At this point, Mike decided to try his miming skills to communicate with the hotel staff. I learned that when Mike does this miming to communicate with someone who speaks any language other than English, he also starts speaking disjointed Spanish. We took one of the flyers that they had on the desk, and Mike was able to figure out that the phone number on the flyer was indeed the hotel phone number - which we thought would come in handy later if we took a taxi back. Then he proceeded to try to ask about the bus. He got what he considers a brilliant idea - to turn on his cell phone and point at the icon for some kind of app he uses at home to figure out the bus system. supposedly the app's icon looks like a bus. the poor girl behind the counter saw him pointing wildly at the icon, took the phone, and clicked on it (it didn't do much, as we had no internet connection and kept our phones in airplane mode to save the batteries)... so the whole thing only confused her. i took a look at the icon he was pointing at, and was nearly as confused as she was! I finally just took out the guidebook, opened up the phrasebook section, and pointed at a couple of phrases that had something to do with a bus. She understood instantly - then lead us out to the gate and flagged down the bus for us.
te gusta.
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