I MADE IT BACK TO THE USA! I have been home for a week now and am thoroughly enjoying the clean air, western style toilets, and law and order. Now that I have caught up on sleep and have put back on some weight, I am finally putting up all of the things from my time in China. During my stay I was not able to use Squarespace, Google, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter. So now I am doing a dump of all of the cool places I visited and photos I’ve taken.

Asia Trip: Day 135 - Chiang Mai, Thailand => Shenzhen, China 深圳，中国 (5/28/19)

Daily Highlights:

• Woke up at 6:30am, got to the airport at 7:45am and flew to Bangkok at 11:30am

• Had an eight hour layover

  • Put up some blog posts, watched videos, flipped coins and did pushups - bored outta ma gord

  • SO MANY PEOPLE AT MY GATE

• Flew to Shenzhen

  • I caught the woman sitting next to me taking a picture of me and sending it to a friend on WeChat

  • I leaned over and said 这个很好的照片！“That’s a lovely picture” in Chinese. Her eyes turned into the size of the moon, she profusely apologized and was silent for the rest of the flight

  • The other Chinese woman beside me and I started talking which eventually lead to playing Fruit Ninja. I started the game, got a new high score, and for the next two hours this woman played Fruit Ninja on my phone trying to beat my high score.

• MADE IT TO CHINA!

• I got stopped at Immigration because I do not look like my picture now (I look a little homeless at this point). It took these guys ten minutes and four geniuses to let me through immigration

• I took an hour long subway to the downtown area

  • I had no data, the English name of my hostel and no idea where I was in the city

• I took a taxi to a Sheraton Hotel and snagged some WiFi from their lobby

• Long story short - I took three more taxi’s, went through a lot of frustration and misery trying to find my hostel BUT I made it there at 3am and promptly passed out

Asia Trip: Day 136 - Shenzhen 深圳 (5/29/19)

Daily Highlights:

• Woke up and met Dor, a cool Israeli guy, and decided to chill for the whole day

  • We went to wonder of the world

    • SO WEIRD

    • It is a theme park made in the late 1990’s to promote international tourism. How do we get people to travel? We bring the world to them, but lets make it different. Lets make it better. Lets put the Eiffel towel next to the pyramids - GENIUS

  • Went to Dafen Oil Painting District

  • Went to the Hong Kong border area and wandered

    • I helped Dor buy a suitcase - I served as his translator and negotiator

    • Went to Shangri-La Hotel

    • Got roped into an impromptu business meeting in a mall

CHINA IS SO STRANGE! I love it here, but it is such a trip. There are so many cameras everywhere you walk in the city. No matter where I walked, there were always at least three cameras checking me out. I made a game out of it, trying to find less than three cameras on me. I lost. There is a real hush of silence, fear and obedience that is really palpable in the air.

There are so many bicycles and scooters here, they are everywhere and are dumped everywhere. It kind of reminds me of San Francisco. IT’S SO MUCH FUN PRACTICING CHINESE, I LOVE IT! It makes my heart so full and gives me experiences I would never be able to have in other countries. I think it brings a lot of the Chinese people happiness as well. We all just want to be understood in this world.

I don’t really know where my next stop is yet, which is a bit unnerving but only a little. I love it hehe. I think I’m going to Guilin => Zhangjiajie => Danxia => Gansu => Tibet but we will see.

CHINA IS SO FOREIGN. The last two days of wandering through the city, going through the subway and being at the hostel, I think I only saw five foreigners.

Asia Trip: Day 137 - Shenzhen 深圳 (5/30/19)

Daily Highlights:

• Wandered around the city solo for the whole day

• Worked out at a playground in the AM

  • The kids were thrown off by my long beard

• Went to the crowded living district

  • Got lost down the alleyways

  • Everyone and their mothers were playing this card game and I was curious what they were playing

    • So I joined a little group of old men for about an hour and became one of the guys

    • One of the guys followed me after I left, I was wondering why and I realized it was because he was showing me off as his new “American friend” to everyone in the neighborhood

• Got a HUGE dumpling soup for dinner

• I met some people in the hostel and went out for drinks

  • Some of the people lived full time in China. So we talked about living in China, dating in China and working in China. After this conversation, I was thoroughly convinced I would not want to live and work here.

Photos Above: These are from wandering round the city during the afternoon spent chatting with security guards, wandering down alleyways and seeing strange things.

Photos Above: These are from an entrance to a subway. I thought it was so strange that they had these big plastic flaps that reminded me of a freezer in a meat packing factory. So I stood inside for half an hour and this is what I saw.

Photos Above: I saw everyone playing this card game, wanted to learn more and sat with these guys for about an hour and a half. They gave me chewing tobacco, graciously brought me into their group and I became entertainment for the whole neighborhood.

Asia Trip: Day 138 - Shenzhen 深圳 (5/31/19)

Daily Highlights:

• I woke up at 10:30am and felt great

• I made a last minute train ticket purchase to go to Guilin 桂林

  • BUT I MADE IT FOR THE WRONG TRAIN STATION

• I went to and from Shenzhen North station twice

  • Once in the AM

  • Once in the PM with my bag

  • V frustrated, but I got a refund of my ticket, got my new ticket for tomorrow and learned to always double check with a 中国人

  • Oh it was also raining all day long

• I played pool, but it felt v strange

  • The table was HUGE, the balls were small, the pockets were small and felt like bumpers for pinball (I think this type of billiards is called snookers)

  
  

  *Strange Musing*

  While I was at the train station there were so many people cutting the line and going directly to the counter. Everyone was getting progressively more mad in line, but said nothing. After the third person cut the line, I yelled at them to get to the back of the line and wait. As soon as I chimed in, four other people echoed my sentiment and after this person was sufficiently publicly shamed, they sauntered to the back of the line. It’s all about the small wins.