Honkyland

Arrived in Hong Kong last week. The motherland - where the food is cheap, yum-cha starts at 8am, and my mobile network name is called "Peoples".

"How many peepos?"

Alright backtrack ...

Went to my first proper Chinese wedding on Saturday - was lucky enough to be chosen to be one of the "hing dai" of the groom (translates as 'brothers') who was one of my "kul foo" - I think its a cousin of some sort. For those who don't know (I didnt either until I was asked), a hing dai the equivalent of a bridesmaid for the groom.

A lot of ppl seemed to say it was one of the more extravagant weddings they had seen - will try to send some pics over once the professional photographers burns us a few (there were 5 hired photographers/video dudes following us around that whole day!). I saw the bill after - it was for $400,000! .. I think thats about $70K AUD!. This is not even including the hundreds of red packets, the gifts of gold to the bride, hiring of staff/photographers/videos/cars/hotels/clothes/entertainment/licenses/yumchas!

Yul moe garl chor (kind of a Chinese version of wtf) indeed

Basically the day went as follows:

• Woke up at 6am after about 2 hrs sleep (had spent previous day helping groom get everything organised). Had yum cha naturally and met all the other hing dai. Was almost sick from eating so much. Decorated the three cars for the groom and jetted off to hotel where bride's family was getting prepared.
• Went to the hotel where the bride, all the "ji mui" (bridesmaids) were waiting. This is where it gets fun ..
• Chinese tradition is the groom has to pass all these tests see the bride (as opposed to seeing her for the first time down the aisle). But the groom can pass these tests off to his hing dai. Some of the tests included: taking photos with random hotel patrons whilst dressing up in furry bras with matching g-strings ; eating curry powder + wasabi filled boiled-eggs ; getting make-up put on our faces (ie. lip-stick + nutella) before having to passing a piece of plastic from lip-to-lip between us hing dai. Naturally, there was a good 10 seconds of video footage of me doing the latter - and is shown at the banquet in front of 328 guests.
• Then we had to negotiate a price for the "lai si" (the red packet) before we could pass this red ribbon to see the bride. Started off at $99,999 and went down to about $100. Honkies know how to bargain. ("for you... $34.50!")
• More yum cha. Shark fin soup and fried stuff. I had to keep making toilet breaks 'cos I kept getting forced to finish off plates.
• Managed to sneak in half an hrs sleep, before heading off to official courts where the signing of marriage certificates took place. Apparently it was a good day for weddings (something to do with the lunar calendar), so saw a lot of couples there. I was told that some couples forget to bring their birth certificates/rings/hongkong-id's and they have to do the whole thing all over again. Lots of grumpy relatives.
• Meanwhile through all this I'm asking lots of dumb questions like - "Where's the altar?". And calling ppl by all their wrong titles; I think I called the bride my grandma.
• Finally got to dinner at around 8pm. 'Peoples' started piling in after mahjong.
• Started eating. Meanwhile the bride and groom are still taking photos with all the new guests and pouring tea for them. I think at the very very least, they took 4000 photos that day. I'm not exaggerating either - even I personally took at at least 200 with them that day. The guests receive a towel of some sort in exchange for gold ... sounds like a good deal.
• Ok this part you would only get if you heard of Mcdull (one of the most popular HK cartoons about a little pig). Well there's this song about "siu larm yook" (roast pork) thats sung by all these little kids to the tune of a piece by Mozart. Well the first course came out once everyone was seated. Suddenly the lights went out, then 32 waiters filed out carrying these enormous roast pigs with flashing red lights in their mouths, while the "siu larm yook" song was blaring out in the background. Awesome!
• We started organising games throughout the banquet, to get all the guests involved. One was for each table to count the number of items that contained the number "99" in them - for example, a credit card with the consecutive numbers would count as an item. The game was won by a group of mainland big bosses (each is a head of a village or something) that were friends of my uncle ... each carrying the equivalent of $5000 in hundred dollar bills, and each was printed in 199-something. They won little mobile phone cords.
• Ate lots. Drank more. Bride changed dresses five times. Drank more and began thinking I could speak Chinese a lot better than I thought I could - then realised people probably didn't understand a word I was saying. Finished at about midnight. Slept for 10 hrs and back to yum cha.

Might do the rest of the update later when I remember to bring my dvds.

Ciao you char siu baus!

Allo

Allo my British friends.. wot wot wot

Gonna work backwards from here in this update, thoughts a bit random today.

So, I just watched TV show, called Top Gear (do we have that back in Australia?). This crazy dude on the show decides to test the new Porsche Boxter against one of those Mercedes SLK. So first of all, he compares the interior, the exterior, etc etc. But when he gets to the actual driving - well, you'd kinda be expecting he'd race 'em around a track or somethin, innit? Well, this geezer decides that the obvious means of comparing the two is to:

• Take to an abandoned German military test site, which basically reconstructs a war-torn German village during WWII
• Bring in a team of sniper specialists from the Ireland special forces (with the wall paint, camouflage gear, proper guns)
• Drive these sport cars, full speed, and drift through these unbelievable narrow streets while these Irish snipers are taking pot shots at him from the rooftops
• The car that gets hit the most loses.
  

How random.

Oh yeah, then I watched Neighbours, and felt really ashamed afterwards (I also had a Fosters the day before!). Haven't started wearing me opals though.

The British accent rocks. There was this huge bouncer telling this geezer off in the queue for a club last night. He proceeds to start yelling at the rest of the crowd, and attempts to convince us he could be "Really `orrible", and " `ow we should really be scared of `im" (he actually looked kinda mean, but he sounded so pleasant!). So naturally, we piseds ourselves laughing and got sent to the back of the line (we had been waiting for half an hour). Seems like a Brit could be making all sorts of fantastic references about mum's sexual encounters and you'd still think he's just being a really sorta swell guy.

On 1 hr sleep.. went to Ministry of Sound to watch Groove Armada the night before. Ministry was a ridiculous letdown - there were about a million people there and I think the venue was about the size of Home. So you get all these tossers wearing suits and flailing around on the dance floor like its a bloddy rnb joint ... we also got ripped off but thats another story. Morale of the story ... fug you very much Ministry of Sound.

To completely off-balance that night however, we went to this ridiculously awesome club last night, and had a unbelievable time. One of the top clubs in Britain, but apparently tourists don't know about it? Somehow found my way home at 8am in the morning, bloddy brilliant! Kept thinking it'd be awesome to have all you crazy bastards over here as well - I think you guys would've loved it! What's everyone's plans for New Years? Anyone up for Big Day Out in January?

I also had KFC the other day (I also had the wonton soup I've been craving for about 10 weeks.. woot). I got annoyed at the napkins. They were about half the size as the ones we get back home, and they didn't really clean very well.

Was at Oktoberfest before I got to London, only managed 5 Litres (5 of those steins?) by the last night. One of the best few nights I've had - everyone was really friendly and really drunk .. lots of falling over tables, singing lots of German songs. I even went and saw a flea circus!

Ok hope this doesn't turn out to be all gibberish. Ciao for now.

Futbol

Gday all, hope you're having a great weekend.

Its 6am and I just came back from a ridiculously great night out in Berlin. Anyway, brief update...

Futbol in Spain is nuts. Was lucky enough to get a ticket to see some of the football greats - Beckham, Roberto Carlos, Ronaldo ... Spaniards are friggin crazy about their football - pretty normal to hear some pretty nasty death threats (at least that's what I think they were) after a pretty standard foul by the away team (Madrid). Being a smart little Asian, I wore a bright red shirt to watch this match - forgetting that Spain (among many countries) don't really like red-shirted Koreans, particularly when they cheated their way to victory of the last World Cup (don't deny it kimchis, you know you did!) Despite all the star players from Real Madrid, they didn't seem to get much love from the home crowd. A couple of the Madrid fans who were sitting next to me seemed pretty reluctant to voice their support too.

Almost got pickpocketted too, I was walking around like a fobby tourist reading Angels and Demons by Dan Brown (whose cheap thriller-esque action-slash-poorly-researched-tripe-of-a-book I blame for all of this). Some douchebag pretended to fall on me in the subway, spilling an empty drink cup on me, and began to frantically wipe my jeans ... meanwhile another nice gentleman on my left is trying to pick my pocket. I shinkuu-hadouken-ed his ass of course. Worse thing though, is the entire subway was full of wide-eyed people - none of which thought helping a single person getting robbed is the decent sort of thing to do. Barcelona turned out awesome though, thanks especially to a awesome crew of Brits that I was hanging out with over there. Definitely one of my favourites so far on this trip.

Amsterdam is expensive - especially when u average like ... 6 meals a day. Cool culture though, there's actually stuff to see and do around there. Things I can remember:

• Walking down the red light district, and seeing no less than FIVE indian men come bounding out of a red-light window entrance (i'm assuming something must've happened because the blonde girl inside was waving goodbye and thanking them all). Everybody repeat after me ... "Wot-da-fark!?" (along with the appropriate Italian accent and gestures).And the funniest thing - I couldn't help but wonder if they went together to get a discount?
  
• During a particularly contemplative period, I began to wonder if there was a blue-light district. Where nice old grandmas smile and wave to you and offer you fresh apple pie ... yeah, dunno know where I was going with that either.
• Going to this crazy club and listening to some wicked music ... it was some sort of house music blended with jazz - can't remember the exact term but it was awesome to groove into. Thought the whole night that all the smoke inside was coming from those smoke generating things, and then realising its cos there were about 2 million people smoking in the club.

Berlins awesome ... got home from one crazy night not long ago. Basically started heading across from one side of Berlin to the other side. Stopped in the middle of this dodgy neighbourhood at, quite literally, a gap in a fence. Remember the rave scene from Blade? Where the entrance to this huge party is like through an abandoned warehouse (or was it a meat factory?) Well, it was about 3 and a half times more dodgy than this - upon climbing through said fence, we padded along down a completely dark alley, past some abandoned cars, until we stumble upon a red-carpetted entrance all lit up beautifully. The bar was spectacular - picture the nicest, classiest bar you've ever been in ... then add lots of white beds with fluffy pillows - and you got the idea. Last club we visited had about 3 or 4 lounges, with one of them having an indoor swimming pool connecting the rooms (also had bloddy rnb so ... bleh).

Auf weidershen (or something).

Hola

In Barcelona, Spain (came from Lourdes in France)

Spain rocks - so far Barcelona is a crazy mix of Spaniards, Indians and Pakistanis and lots of Chinese and Filos. Wish I could come back here or stay longer, the night life is unbeliefable (restaurants dont open for dinner till 8, and clubs open at about 1 or 2). Things are cheap and the city is huge - kinda reminds me of HK.

Just spent 110 euros soccer tickets to Espanya (the other Barcelona team) vs Real Madrid. Not going to eat out for a week just to compensate.

Absinthe is evil. Btw, they dont seem to drink Chartreuse here though. A lot of places seem to stock Fosters too.

Met a lot of crazy Italians from Naples. Havent gotten used to the whole kissing on both cheeks thing.

Met a few interesting ppl the past week:

• A 40 yr old Frenchman who we met on a pub crawl, who´s convinced that girls from Montreal are all fantastic in bed. He also professes to have no less than 4 girlfriends and a wife. His pickup line consists of walking up to every single girl and greeting them with a ¨Bon sua¨ (good evening in French.. i think) and proceeding to rub their back in a clockwise motion. The girls think he´s a seedy bastard and run away.
• An international chess master from Slovakia.
• A lady who had a bad cold a few years ago that wouldn´t go away. Upon diagnosis by a family doctor, they discovered she had malignant cancer - on her heart. After extensive chemo and radiotherapy they ended up finding her a heart replacement by some fluke of nature. Now goes around the world telling ppl that organ donation is important.
• A filo that had just turned 40. Looks like she´s 21.
• A gypsy that tried to follow me to Spain. Spoke about 2 words of english yet managed to have a one and a half hour conversation with me while we were waiting for the train.
  
  
  

Fuggin' Nice

In Nice now.

Kinda funny, a couple of days ago getting snowed on in the Alps - yesterday spent the entire day sitting on a beach sunbaking on the Mediterrean coast. It was ridiculously unbelievable and I think its the first time on this trip I could just lie down and chill in the whole trip. Was lucky enough to meet a awesome bunch of British chaps (from Bournesworth) from my hostel - makes me kinda wish I had a cool accent too! By the way, beaches over here are all pebbly (no sand). Consequently the water is really clear 'cos theres no sand floating about, but had really sore feet every time I tried to run around.

Lots of wrinkly boobies too.

Heading to Cannes today, and then off to Lourdes tonight (I hadn't heard of these places till this trip either). Gonna bosh off down to Barcelona (after Lourdes) and meet up with the dudes from Nice, before slowly making my way up to meet some old schoolmates for ... Oktoberfest! 1 Litre steiners, and apparently they start drinking at 9 in the morning!

Also learnt a couple of new words today from my British friends -


bosh - jet off ("Bosh me a beer!" works too doesn't it Shaun?)
mosh - mate/friend
baltic - freezing
steamin' - pissed (drunk)
shout - call
doggin' - er ... well let's just say it doesn't mean the same thing when we say it in Sydney.

So to string it up -

"Let's bosh, mosh - it's bloddy Baltic."
"Good shout, let's go get steaming."

At least I think that makes sense.

Eat this Lonely Planet

Out of all the advice that I received before I embarked to Europe, the one thing that seems to resound are these pearls of wisdom given by Mum:

"Remember to shave. Else you'll look like a terrorist."

Recap

For those who haven't been receiving weekly spam from me, heres a quick recap.

Currently about 1 month (feels like so much longer though!) through an awesome trip in Europe.
I originally headed to Europe as part of a journey to the World Youth Day (http://www.worldyouthday.com.au/), with a whole bunch of fellow Australians. Since then, I've have been backpacking around mostly by myself for the past few weeks and having a insane time!

Already covered:

• Athens
• Greek Islands (Tinos, Mikanos)
• Turkey (Ephesus)
• Poland
• Prague (in Czech Republic)
• Cologne (in Germany) for the World Youth Day (along with about 1 million others - crazy stuff)
• Rome
• Naples (Pompeii)
• Florence
• Venice
• Vienna (in Austria)
• Budapest (in Hungary)
• Zurich (in Switzerland)
• Interlaken / Lauterbrunnen / Lucern
• Nice (in France)

Still to do:

• Work my way through France, passing through Monaco, Cannes, before arriving in Spain
• Buzz through Barcelona and Madrid
• Bounce across the border to Paris
• Blitz my way into Amsterdam, as well maybe Belgium
• Hop across to Munich (Germany) just in time for ... wait for it - Oktoberfest! (yeah the real one you UNSWers!) to join some old school-mates to get ridiculously hammered.
• Head to London where I will meet up with Dad who suddenly caught the travel bug. Will tour Europe for another month. Will probably visit Italy, France and Switzerland again.
  

Then, passing through Singapore to the motherland (Hongkyland) for a few months. Cousins wedding and a lot of of (window) shopping, because I'll probably have about $0.20 in my account by then. Depending upon what happens, may even visit Thailand. Woot.

Arrive back in Sydney sometime in January or February next year.

Phew.

Harlo. Welcome to Giordano.

Hi everyone - my name's Jonathan, and I've joined the ranks of the bloggers.

Just arrived in Nice (so veli nice) in France, and for the very first time in this trip - free internet! Trying to make the most of it, so I've decided to save you a lot of endless email spam and post up a journal of my adventures in Europe.

Going to try and post up at least something every 1 or 2 days, feel free to write comments, give me opinions, request photos etc. Peace outside!