Sherlocked in Shanghai

 

With my Chinese Visa expiring at the start of March and me knowing I’ll be a bit lazy in renewing it, I decided to make an impromptu visit to Shanghai last Friday to visit 221B Baker Street Cafe, a cafe completely themed after the popular BBC series Sherlock. 

With me saving for longer trips in a few months and me already having visited Shanghai several times, I made this short trip a weekend affair. After meeting up with my friend who had recently moved there from Hong Kong, we headed off towards the establishment as two Sherlock geeks. I had some doubts on whether the cafe would just have a few decorations based on the series and not a full blown tribute liked I wished. Luckily, it was the latter. Holy cow, was it the latter. The cafe has a partial recreation of Sherlock and Watson’s flat from the series, a table full of his tools, shelves of the original Sherlock Holmes novels, walls decorated with Watson’s blog entries from the TV series and much, much more. After a 30 minute wait for being seated, my friend and I lounged at the bar for almost two hours, drinking Molly Tea (tasting Molly was FANTASTIC), amazing waffles and sipping the Sherlock Coffee.

It was definitely a perfect one-mission weekend travel trip.

 

Finally finding it.

 

Despite the cafe’s name, the actual address is 50 Ruijin Road.

Notice the chibi art.

My coffee.

The menu.

A closer look. As mentioned, I wanted some hot Molly in my mouth that day.

Some cool cards.

Working tools.

A bit of the shelves.

Figurines.

RDJ’s Sherlock sadly only got one sad, shadowy corner of space.

The cool room.

Merch.

Character shipping painted on the wall?

I was happy to see a bit of Mycroft love.

Beyond the Sherlock cafe, my friend and I also failed at trying to see a DIY screening of Nebraska and went clubbing for about 30 minutes before the bouncers made everyone stop dancing for some reason. I also got to see the Shanghai Museum on Sunday which was pretty cool. Here’s some extra pics of the weekend:

A bit of the street life while on the way to 221B Baker Street.

Came across a DVD of Captain Jack Harkness holding a peeled banana at a DVD store.

Saturday night’s dinner was at a Chinese Papa Johns. Tasted exactly the same as back home which was BEST.

And of course, the obligatory Bund photo.

 

 

Shenzhen, China

 

Not really sure if visiting Shenzhen for half a day counts as traveling but I did have to use my passport and Chinese visa to get there from Hong Kong this weekend, so I’m saying IT COUNTS. I mainly decided to check it out because I didn’t have anything really to do on Saturday and also because I’ve never been there. I mainly hung around the downtown area, which was a normal busy shopping district. From what little I saw of the city, it didn’t strike me much different from other Chinese cities I’ve already visited. The vibe was a bit different, however. People here definitely seemed somewhat more chilled out than people in Hong Kong and even some more friendly (a random local dude even sparked up a conversation with me in the MTR, which was pretty cool). I would definitely like to check it out again and see if there are more cooler things that it offers. I know a lot of people like to go there for cheap shopping but I’ve never been one to want to buy things simply because they are inexpensive.

 

This photo exists because Hong Kong 7-Elevens do NOT have slurpy machines.

Lighty.

Laojie.

Mae Taeng, Thailand

Being the type that always felt really awkward about having self birthday parties (I’m the guy in the corner, not the center), I escaped to the Mae Taeng district in Northern Thailand for my birthday weekend. It’s in the Chiang Mai Province and while my original plan was to spend three days in Chiang Mai city itself, with a large festival occurring that weekend, all hostels and decently priced hotels were already booked. So with just seven hours before my flight to go, I hounded Lonely Planet and Hostel World until I found this wonderful placed called Bamboo, a sort of forest lodge out in the woods, located about an hour’s drive away from the city.

As soon as I arrived, I was greeted by the owner and a young Australian couple who were about to head off for zip-lining in the woods and over some rivers. That was just the start of an awesome weekend which included:

• ATV driving on a crazy road, cliff edged road.
• Hours of wandering the main road on Day 2 through villages and countryside.
• Bamboo Lodge’s owner’s wife cooking home-made Thai meals for us nightly and in the morning (BEST orange juice I’ve ever tasted!
• Hearing the sounds of the forest again and seeing shooting stars. It was very reminiscent of my summers in Yosemite.

 

A rad bridge.

Zip-line POV.

Upside down fun.

Coming down fast.

Sunny.

Crossroads.

The gathering of the ATVs.

YEAH

Cool fields.

A random shack.

Me.

Crossroads again.

My home for the weekend.

Bamboo Lodge’s entrance sign.

More awesome countryside.

And more!

Saw these cool little houses (bird houses?) while wandering around on Day 2.

Elephants!

Loved these guys.

Loved her too.

Elephant ridin’.

Hugs.

Inside my hut.

Dusk!

The lodge owner’s wife cooked our meals nightly. This was a special festival treat she made for us.

The eating area at Bamboo after a long night of chatting with the other peeps.

And on the flight back to Hong Kong, I lived the airplane dream.

Quick Stops in Beijing and Seoul

 

My homecoming visit to L.A. was something I was totally excited for but I had a long week of travels and transfers before I was allowed to touch down on Californian soil. First up was my job sending me to Beijing for a few days for some event filming at Peking University. It was something I was looking forward as I am an editor and had been interested in learning some camera work. With the actual event occurring the day after my Beijing arrival, I had one day to myself. This was great, as I originally did not expect to be in Beijing so quickly after my week stay there earlier this year. With not a lot of time, I decided to go to my favorite area of Beijing, the 798 Arts District and do a walk by at the Forbidden City since I was curious on how it looked at nighttime with all the lights. It was nice wandering around 798 again and saw some nice sights. I won’t post any pictures of the main area since they are already in my previous Beijing post, but I did wander over to some old warehouses towards the end of 798 which were pretty awesome. That area was pretty empty except for some amateur photographers and models doing some photo sessions (some of which looked quite hilariously bad).

 

I returned to a rainy Hong Kong two days after my arrival in Beijing. I rushed to Causeway Bay to drop off the camera equipment, headed back to my apartment in Kowloon, packed, ate lunch, caught an evening screening to Before Midnight (★★★★) with a friend, returned to my apartment to grab my backpack and headed to the airport to my late night flight to Seoul for connecting to Los Angeles. However, my connection wait time was 10+ hours.

I arrived in Korea around 5am and contemplated sleeping in the airport and wandering around the city. I literally walked through the transfer waiting area before shaming myself for almost not taking the opportunity to see a bit of Korea as it was my first time there. I found an express train to the city and after a sleep-filled 40 minute ride, I arrived in Seoul. I spent the entire morning wandering around and came across a lot of really quaint looking coffee shops and cafes. For breakfast, I stopped by a spicy noodle joint and it was delicious.

The place on the left is where I had my breakfast.

Mega spicy.

Simon and Garfunkel in Korean!

There was a huge traditional dance a few minutes after taking this photo. But them just standing there looked cooler.

 

I definitely would like to return for a proper Korean stay soon, without a tight flight deadline and sleeplessness being on my side. But it was definitely an awesome morning. Around noon, I took the train back to the airport and was finally on my way home for the first time since New Year!

 

Kam Tin

 

 

Like I mentioned previously, the hills and village of Kam Tin caught my eyes from the MTR a few weeks ago and today I randomly decided to do some wandering in that part of New Territories. I made my decision pretty late in the day, so unfortunately it got dark pretty fast. But wow – this is such a nice area, completely with several paths, creeks and even a small town-like-center (pic below).

Mission in Tin Shui Wai

 

After a quick online search showed me that the current book I am looking to check out from the library is only available in Tin Shui Wai, which is an area in New Territories, I headed out to claim my prize today. Unfortunately, I could not find the library friggen anywhere! Thanks a bunch Google maps. Though I was not entirely disappointed as I found Tin Shui Wai to be quite a beautiful area and even got to ride the light rail for the first time! I also took some time out of the day to see some sights in Tsuen Wan West (top picture).

 

 

 

At one point during the MTR ride heading out to Tin Shui Wai, the subway went to ground level and I saw amazing view of Kam Tin. I definitely need to get off at Kam Sheung Road Station in the near future and do some proper wandering.

 

Cinematheque Thingys

 

I returned from visiting Xi’an on Sunday night and the trip was a success. The highlights of this week so far has been watching the mind-fuck of a season finale for Doctor Who and an awesome violent storm that occurred last night, complete with some of the most frequent lightning strikes I have ever seen in my entire life.

Today I stopped by Kubrick Cafe with a friend and saw that they are now selling some terrific new thingys: movie themed postcards! The two I immediately purchased were the Moonrise Kingdom and Annie Hall ones. Sweet!

 

 

 

 

2013 New Places So Far: Taipei! Beijing! Dubai! (and some Abu Dhabi)

 

Well I just booked my hostel to Xi’an and my end-of-this-week trip there is all set. Big kudos to Buddha for having his b-day and giving all us minions a Friday holiday. This will be my 3rd time this year traveling somewhere new for vacation and my 4th time in total (the most recent trip was for work). Since I have yet to post anything from my trip to Taiwan for Chinese New Year and both Beijing and Dubai from last month, here is one photo from each of those awesome destinations. Fun times were had.

 

Taipei!

 

Beijing!

 

Dubai (and Abu Dhabi)

 

That pizza photo? It was from a ROUND TABLE chain that gloriously exists in Dubai. I could contain my homesick excitement when I first saw in the taxi cab to the hotel.

 

 

Shanghai and Music Stuff

 

So an editing project at my job has sent me to Shanghai again. It was meant to be one week but now it will be two. Which is cool. But while it is a beautiful city, all the work has kept me from seeing anything new that I hadn’t see on previous trips here. Hopefully that changes this week. Though one cool place I got to check out was area called Tianzifang. It’s pretty much a maze of lit alleys filled with cafes, pubs and craft shops. Unfortunately, being the non-camera crazy guy I am, I once again forgot to bring my camera for photos. So to give you an idea of what it looks like, this will have to do. I shall definitely be retuning to this place while I am here..

On the night before I arrived in Shanghai last weekend, Beijing band Hedgehog returned to Hong Kong almost exactly one from their last visit. With them being one of the first bands I had ever seen in Asia, I had to go see them again. And I LOVED IT.

Though I won’t be in Beijing until later this month, I’ve still have been blasting their tunes in my iPod for the past couple days. They are GREATNESS. And did I mention I am in love with the drummer, Atom?

 

Weekend Wanderings

 

My younger brother had likewise been living abroad these past few months and had decided to visit me in Hong Kong this week before his return  to Los Angeles. Though I’ve been getting lazy with taking photos of Hong Kong life, his visit prompted me to show him around some awesomely scenic places, including Lantau Island, where we went to Tai O Village and the Big Buddha. Though I had visited previously visited Tai O during the late winter and the Big Buddha in spring, it was still cool to see these places again. This time around I hiked a small ways beyond the Buddha on a trail that goes to an area called Wisdom Path. It was pretty much a pathway upon a hill with large pillars everywhere. Some of them can be seen in the final two photos below. And yes – there was a cow!!!

There were many other hiking trails that area too, some of which that lead to some pretty epic scenery sights of the gigantic hills of Lantau. I plan on returning for an all day hike once the weather cools.

 

 

Other things I showed my brother while he was in town that I did not capture on camera included bicycle riding in Cheung Chau, hiking in Lamma Island, going to the movies twice at the Cinematheque in Yau Ma Tei to watch To Rome With Love and Moonrise Kingdom (review coming up), and hanging out at a hardcore band night at Hidden Agenda. It was a week well done.