Mister Monty

Bonus picture of Monty that my friend sent to me because I'm missing him so much. Just look at that face!

Wrapping up in London

Sorry it’s taken so long for an update! We’ve spent the past few days traveling from place to place with limited access to wifi, so it’s been difficult to get a blog post up. To make up for it, I’ll post a few entries in a row. Let’s go back to where we left off.

Chiselhurst was quite fun, and definitely an unusual London thing to do. It was on the outskirts of the city and in an area that felt like true British suburbia, very green and quaint, where all the buildings are built of brick.

The caves were all man-made, and they spread out for a huge distance. It would be all too easy to get lost in there, and I was grateful for the guided tour. It was surprisingly cold down in the caves, and our only lights were oil hurricane lanterns, which added to the ambiance. Our tour guide was also great, telling us all about the history of the place, from chalk and flint mining by the Romans and Saxons, to being used as a massive bomb shelter during WWII, to a popular rock venue for concerts in the 50’s and 60’s, with performers such as David Bowie, Jimmy Hendrix, and Pink.

Nick in front of the map to the caves

Spooky

After Chiselhurst, we went straight to the West End to eat dinner at a fantastic burger joint and then see a performance of Midsummer’s Nights Dream put on by a company called Sh*t-Faced Shakespeare (sorry for the language, Grammy!). The idea behind the performance was that they take classically trained Shakespearean actors and every night one of them gets completely, totally, falling-down drunk. The resulting performance was rambling, lewd, and absolutely side-splittingly hilarious. Much humor was obviously rehearsed, but much of it was trying to keep the drunken actor on track as he slurred his way through his lines and went woefully off-book. Our drunkard was playing Lysander, but I would love to go back and see it again with a different actor under the influence. Wanting to get an early start the next morning, we went straight back to our flat after the play finished.

The whole audience was laughing from literally start to finish.

The next day we did indeed get an early start. So early, in fact, that we arrived at the Brick Lane Market a full hour before it was to open. But luckily all turned out for the best, as we found our way to an amazing breakfast joint and had our first Full English Breakfast of the trip. It all tasted amazing, but there was SO much meat. Definitely not something I could stomach every morning.

When the market opened, we wandered around there and the nearby Spitalfield Market for a few hours before heading over to the museum district. The afternoon was spent in 3 neighboring museums: the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum (the V&A).

In front of the Natural History Museum

First was the Natural History Museum, full of exhibits on dinosaurs, animal specimens, and the human body. Their marine life exhibit was especially good. Lindsay managed to give us a scare here when she showed up 30 minutes late to our meeting time because she had gotten the time wrong. Classic Lindsay.

Next was the V&A, my favorite museum in London. Not only is it chock full of massive collections of sculptures, art, and antiquities, but my favorite part is the Cast Room, a wing full of full size replicas of famous sculptures and architecture. Michelangelo’s David is there, as well as the reliefs that started the Renaissance, Trajan’s column, and so many more. It’s so humbling to see all of these great works of art in one area, and in some cases the originals have been destroyed, leaving these the only copies in the world.

Just a few of the specimens to be found

Michelangelo's David

Trajan's Column

Lastly, the Science Museum. Lots of technology, of course. Exhibits on space, agriculture, clocks, automobiles, you name it. The museum was massive, and we were running short on time so we had to go through it all pretty quickly, as we were on a time limit for a special surprise I had planned.

The “big surprise” I had planned for our last night was an escape room in the back of a pub in central London. An escape room is where you and a team of people are shut in a room and have to solve a series of puzzles and games to be released. The escape rooms are usually themed with a story of some sort. Our story was centered around the deceased Lady Chastity and her legendary ambrosia wine. Her very last bottle of wine was locked away behind four padlocks, and we had to solve a series of puzzles to unlock each one, including riddles, codes, secret rooms and compartments, and hidden messages, with the time limit of 1 hour. We ended up getting the wine with 15 minutes to spare, only 2 ½ minutes behind the current record!

Look at that fine vintage.

Everyone had a great time, made all the better by going into it completely blind. After drinking our hard-earned wine and basking in our success, we headed back to the AirBnB to get a few hours of sleep before heading out early in the morning for our flight to Ireland.

We're actually about to board our flight to Scotland now, so I won't be able to get the full Ireland post up until later, but I'll try to get it written down and posted later today, and at latest tomorrow morning! Off we go!

Cursed Child Part II

Well, the second half of the play was just as incredible as the first, but we'll get to that.

The next day was less eventful than the first. We had all stayed up late after the play, hanging out at a nearby pub and chatting with Casey and Kjelsie. And Niko and I both stayed up after that till nearly 2 AM to wait for Nick to arrive from Germany. But now he's here, and nothing could be better! A Harry Potter play and the arrival of Nick all in one night, pretty sure it was one of the best nights of my life.

We all slept late into the morning, and then while the others went off to see Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, and Camden Market, Nick and I spent some time together, wandering around the area to buy things Nick needed, and just walking and talking. We tried to meet up with the rest of the group at Camden Market in the afternoon, but just missed them.

At Camden Market, we we spent the rest of the day in a desperate search for a blanket. Due to a miscommunication with Nick, he hadn't brought a sleeping bag with him to London. Since our room is technically only booked for 4 people (shh, don't tell!), one person was supposed to be sleeping on the couch with his sleeping bag. But at 2 AM in the morning in the morning, with nothing at all to use as a blanket, we ended up using one of the bed blankets on the couch and taking down the curtain from the window and using it as a makeshift blanket for the night. Needless to say, we were determined to find a blanket the next day.

When we eventually did fine one, it wasn't in Camden Market at all, but at a store called Argos down the way, where you "shop" on an in-store iPad, while workers retrieve your items from the massive storehouse in the back. 

But it ended up being such a wild goose chase that we had to buy it and then head straight over to the theater. Dinner was some delicious Thai food, and we had just enough time to stop by a tiny Harry Potter pop-up shop/museum and then onto the show.

As stated before, the play was just as wonderful as before, with some moments that truly moved me to tears near the end. While I’m glad the script is being released for everyone to read, but there will be so much missing by just reading the words: the emotions of the actors, the indescribable experience of seeing magic unfold on stage. Of course, I’m sure the play will go on tour, and I would have seen it eventually, but to see it like this with no preconceptions or expectations was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

Right before the show, too bad Nick had to wait outside!

After the play was finished, we all went out to wait by the stage door. We all got autographs from most of the actors and pictures with some of our favorites. They were all very patient and warm, taking the time to talk to every single fan who had lined up. That’s one thing I love about British theater: the actors’ appreciation for their audience. You could tell they knew how much this play meant to some people, and acted accordingly.

Me with Harry Potter

Lindsay and Albus

Lindsay and Hermione

Brittany and Scorpius Malfoy

After that, we found another pub (a difficult endeavor on a Friday night in London), sat and chatted for a while, and finally went back to our AirBnB around midnight…which brings me back to our AirBnB debacle. Let me fill you in on the ongoing saga of our pit of a room.

First was our arrival. When we came inside the building, we were exhausted from so much travel and were greatly looking forwards to some much-needed rest…only to find that all of the doors were locked. After wandering up and down the stairs for a while, finally we found someone who turned out to be a kind of live-in helper at the building. He seemed VERY confused about our booking (not a good sign) and ended up having to call the manager. Turns out, they did not have a room ready for us at all and told us to come back between 6 and 7 PM to get into our room.

We went out, hung out beside the canal, ate some dinner, and returned just after 6 to find our room empty, but they hadn’t even begun to clean it yet. Great.

An hour later, our room was finally ready, and guess what? It was actually better than expected! Four separate beds, meaning that Nick wouldn’t have to bring a sleeping bag, and an ensuite bathroom! Sure, the bathroom had a little black mold growing in it, but we could live with that. But I’m sure you know this is not where the story ends.

When Lindsay came back early the next day because of her knee, she was lying down to take a nap when there was a knock on the door. Outside was a confused looking Swedish family saying that they had this room reserved. Sure enough, on their reservation was a big “Room #3” which WAS the room we had been staying in. Turns out, the hosts had put us in the wrong room. After talking with the manager, Jonathan (and he acted totally surprised we were in room #3 even though that’s the room he told us to go into), we were moved into a room on the first floor. A tiny, depressing pit of a room.

Some of the highlights: a chirping, low-battery fire alarm right outside the door. Sheets with tiny blood stains on them. Nail heads popping out of floor boards. No openable windows except for a tiny square high in the corner of the room. Only two beds and a couch, thus the need for Nick’s missing sleeping bag. But even all this we could live with. We figured that we were really only sleeping in this room, and out and about all day long. Everyone seemed to take everything in stride, and we settled in to our new abode.

And that’s when the leaking began. Two separate spots in the ceiling leaked water whenever someone used the shower or the sink. We had to move all the furniture to the center of the room just to avoid our beds being dripped on, and this is not just a small little drip, it’s a steady, constant, dripping all along a whole line of wall. This was finally the breaking point.

I called the manager in the morning, demanding that we either be moved or get a full refund for our time here. Nails, we can deal with. Dripping water soaking our stuff? Not so much. And so later today we’ll be moving rooms. Thank goodness!

Now, we’re on our way to Chiselhurst caves, a series of tunnels underneath East London which were dug by the Romans and Saxons, and used during WWII. Should be interesting!

Arriving in London

It all began with snagging tickets to a play. Not just any play, of course. It was Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, written by good ol' J. K. herself, next installment in the series, and completely canon. How could we not try to buy tickets?

At the time, I hadn't even expected to get them. The whole system for buying tickets was lottery-based, and I had to wake up to 3 AM in the morning to get into the queue. Once that was accomplished, I had to wait for one and a half hours until my number came up, as I was over 10,000 in line. At that point, I nearly gave up hope of getting even the worst of seats. But, here we are. Once my turn in line came up I managed to get 6 tickets (that was the max) to a preview showing in July. All that was left was to find 5 people to go with me and plan an entire trip to London. Piece of cake, right?

Those people turned out to be my siblings, Niko and Lindsay, my cousin Brittany, a friend from college, Casey, and his friend Kjelsie. Ever single one of us huge Potter nerds. My family members and I decided to extend the trip into a short tour of London, Ireland, and Scotland, and our journey is just beginning.

We all met up at the airport with little issue, but all exhausted from a long day of traveling. The tube ride from Heathrow to our AirBnB was one of the longest hours of my life. Looking forwards to arriving at our flat and crashing, we were sorely disappointed. Things with our AirBnB have been...tumultuous, to say the least. Luckily everyone has been enormously good sports about it, and it hasn't dampened anyone's spirits in the slightest. I'll get into the AirBnB later in this post. In fact, it probably deserves a post all of its own.

Regardless, we spent the first day just attemptint to relax. We left the AirBnB in search of a peaceful park, which proved a bit of a journey. The nearest park we found on google maps turned out to be a swampy wildlife reserve full of ducks, squirrels, and lots of bugs. But we eventually ended up at a little grassy steppe nearby a canal, where we wiled away the time with cards, books, and naps. We ate dinner at a nearby Ethiopian restaurant which had huge flat pancakes that you used to pick up and eat various saucy dishes. Sorry I don't have any pictures of this day...we were all pretty near passing out at this point. 

It was near 7 when we got back to our room, and 15 minutes later all 4 of us were completely passed out, sleeping for 12 hours straight.

The next day we headed off into London! Our first stop was the Palace Theater, where we picked up our tickets for later that evening. 

Next was off to Trafalgar's Square to see some of the famous sights of London. We spent the morning wandering around the National Gallery, an amazing art museum in central London. I forsee us visiting plenty of museums in the next few days, as they are completely and totally FREE, one of the very best things about England, in my opinion.

The National Gallery

Monument in Trafalgar's Square

After that is was we walked Central London, visiting the most famous tourist sights: Big Ben, Westminster Abbey and London Bridge.

Lindsay, Niko, and Brittany hanging out in front of Big Ben

Note, this is not London Bridge, this is Tower Bridge (the veiw from London Bridge)

Turns out London Bridge is actually pretty boring, who knew?

Last part of the day before heading off to the Cursed Child was visiting St. Paul's Cathedral. This one we had to think about because unlike all of the museums in London, the cathedrals are NOT free. Entry costed a whopping 18 pounds, which was enough money to give us pause. But entrance got you access to the cathedral itself, as well as the crypts and the upper galleries. Lindsay ended up heading back to the AirBnB as her knee was hurting and she didn't want to climb all the steps, but Brittany, Niko, and I headed in and it ended up being my favorite part of the trip so far. Unfortunately, no photos were allowed inside, but the outside can give you a small idea of the magnificence awaiting us inside.

The whole thing was just amazing: huge marble statues, gold enamel on everything, huge paintings and glittering mosaics on the towering ceilings. The building was absolutely massive, and its size combined with the jaw-dropping decor was awe-inspiring. Going down to the crypts, there were massive grave toppers, and people buried both in the walls and the ground. And the exhausting climb into the 3 different galleries made the amazing view of London from the top that much sweeter.

You can't see it in the picture, but we're all soaked in sweat.

We spent so much time wandering around St. Paul's Cathedral, that we only had time to stop quickly by the AirBnB to change, and then headed straight over to the play.

You're darn right I wore my Gryffindor tie.

In as few of words as possible: IT. WAS. AMAZING. I won't give a synopsis here because either you're reading this before the script is released to the general public, and in that case I'm not allowed to talk about it (#keepthesecret), or the script has already been released and you can look up a summary online that is probably far better than I could ever give. Suffice to say that the play takes place 18 years or so after the end of the last book, and centers around Harry Potter and his son Albus. Harry Potter is very much still Harry Potter, just grown up, and Albus is very much NOT like Harry Potter. He goes to Hogwarts, befriends Scorpius Malfoy, and they get up to all sorts of trouble, trouble which starts out light-hearted and funny, but which quickly becomes deathly serious.

The whole thing was just an incredible experience, it's difficult to put into words. I've always loved Harry Potter, I've grown up with the books and all that. So seeing the play, and seeing it done well, meant a lot to me. I was prepared to enjoy it simply because it was another part of the Harry Potter saga. But my expectations were completely blown out of the water by this play. The story itself was clever and engaging,. The actors were phenomenal and really captured the essence of the characters while giving them an older, more mature feel. And the stage effects were simply stunning. It felt as though you were watching actual magic happening on stage before your very eyes: characters casting spells with flicks of their wands, being sucked into telephone booths and bookcases, dementors swooping just above the crowd, people transforming via polyjuice potion right on stage. It was really unlike anything I had ever seen before.

More than just a good Harry Potter experience, it was a phenomenal play standing all on its own. Ending in a tantalizing cliff hanger, I can only hope that Part II proves to be just as thrilling.

The Kangding Saga

Nick had been here for a little over 24 hours when we packed up and left. We were headed for Kangding, which is in the west of Sichuan province and commonly known as the “gateway to Tibet”. I had never been to Tibet before, or to western Sichuan, so this was a new experience for both Nick and I, as well as for Brenna and James, who we traveled with.

Before leaving, I had warned Nick that Chinese transportation was not the most efficient, to say the least. Every single time I've left Pengshan to visit another city using public transportation, I have returned weary and jaded. This trip proved to be no exception. While our bus from Pengshan to Ya'an went suspiciously smoothly, the road from Ya'an to Kangding was a total nightmare. If you don't know anything about Chinese driving, you're a lucky person. In China, rules of the road are loosely enforced at best, and once you get out of the large cities they become virtually nonexistent. This particular road was even worse than usual, as it is the only “major” highway that leads into Tibet. I write “major” in quotes, since it is, in fact, only a two-lane road, which twists and turns through the mountains with nerve-wracking drops off the side. This does not deter Chinese drivers who are intent on getting there as fast as possible, which means passing people whenever necessary—and I mean whenever. Caring little about the dangers of passing in a curve, Chinese drivers will simply constantly honk their horn to warn vehicles coming the other way. I've come to approach driving in China with a kind of horrific nonchalance. “I probably won't die today,” I tell myself, boarding the bus and settling in.

The road to Kangding

With such a road and drivers, we inevitably did get stuck behind an accident about two hours into the trip. About four cars ahead of us, a large truck had been trying to pass right before a curve and had gotten t-boned by another large truck, blocking both lanes. Luckily, it seemed as though no one was hurt. We waited for two hours for the police to do something, but their participation at the scene mostly consisted of wandering around and taking pictures—much the same as the other many onlookers. In the end, it was another large semi truck that used some chains to tow one of the trucks out of the way. After this, I naively assumed that since we were only four cars from the wreck, we would soon be on the move. This was not the case. Cars in the other lane (which was still blocked) managed to scoot around the wreck first, and just kept on coming. Once again, the police officers did nothing to direct traffic, but instead we waited for the entire build-up of traffic from the other side to finish completely, before our side began to move. This took another hour and a half.

In the end, our entire trip there, which should have taken around 6 hours, took a full 10 hours, and we arrived in Kangding around 11 o'clock.

A kindly restaurant owner opened his kitchen back up to make us a late dinner. 

By this time, we were all wondering if we had made a huge mistake, a feeling that I have come to associate with public transportation travels in China. In the end, however, the trip was easily worth the nightmarish journey by bus.

I had never been to Tibet before, or to anywhere like it, so this was a new experience for both Nick and I, as well as for Brenna and James, who we were traveling with. We came into Kangding late at night and only stopped for a quick bite to eat at a restaurant before heading to our hostel to fall into bed. But the next day we were up early and ready to go.

The very first thing I noticed about Kangding is the air, the beautiful, wonderful air. After living in Pengshan for a year, I had become very accustomed to the grayish clouds that usually obscured the sky (partly from the natural fogginess of the area and partly from pollution). Even in other parts of China that I had visited which were renowned for their “clear” air, such as the fomous Bamboo Sea in sourthern Sichuan, I could still detect a faint smog in the distance. In Kangding, however, the high mountain air was completely untainted. In places like that, it is a pleasure simply to breathe.

Just look at dat air.

Beyond the air, the location itself was also gorgeous, with Kangding nestled right up against a beautiful moutnain range, a raging river rushing straight through the downtown, and temples and prayer flags dotting the hills around the city. Throughout the day, we visited several of those temples, which was also surprisingly novel for me. After living in China for over a year and visiting several times before that, I've become a bit desensitized to temples and pagodas. Yes, they are beautiful. Yes, the religion and artwork and architecture is fascinating. But after visiting the first few temples, they tend to blend together a little in your mind. Tibetan temples, however, had aspects I had never seen before in a typical Buddhist Chinese temple. For one, they were much more colorful, both with the prayer flags and the buildings themselves. The monks also seemed much more active in the monasteries and temples that we visited.

After spending the day hiking up the mountains and visiting various temple, we spent the evening walking around the downtown, visiting the shops and the main square. What I noticed most here was the people themselves. After living among a vast majority of Han ethnicity in the Sichuan basin, the Tibetan people were immediately distinctly different, both in their dress and their appearance. The women were most noticeably different. They were much taller than their Han cousins, and many dressed in the traditional Tibetan style—an elegant long skirt with bright trimmings on their clothes. On their head, they wore their hair in elaborate braids interwoven with colorful yarns, all wrapped up in a stylized hat. Their jewelry was equally elaborate, typically using aquamarine or reddish orange stones set in heavy silver. The men wore simpler clothes, with long pants and fabric jackets. Their defining feature was the popular cowboy hat, which was introduced to Tibetans by an American long ago.

As for their appearance, I found that Tibetan people look more similar to Mongolians and Native Americans than they do to Han Chinese. Their hair is commonly worn long for both men and women. Their noses are more defined and their cheekbones are high and sharp. Combined with the many cowboy hats all over the streets, I sometimes felt like I had walked into an old western.

Typical male Tibetan dress

The next day, we moved on from Kangding to Tagong, where the “old western” vibe only intensified as we entered herding country, though it was not cows that these people were wrangling, but yaks. The drive to Tagong, which took about two hours, was exceptional. We traveled through the rolling highlands of Sichuan, with yaks and herders' huts dotting the grass for as far as you could see. Sometimes explosions of colorful prayer flags would interrupt the peaceful green, other times white Tibetan script would be written onto the hillsides.

Tagong itself is a tiny town, and about as Tibetan as you can get. In many ways, it was a more authentically Tibetan experience than visiting Tibet itself, as you can only enter the country with a guided tour group and stick to a very specific traveling schedule. For our part, we were able to eat delicious Tibetan food (lots of yak), talk to Tibetan people, and visit any monastery or nunnery that we fancied. The first day, we wandered out to a monastery university currently in construction and then explored the town, which really consisted of walking up and down the one main street.

Some younger monks playing around

The next day we found out that, completely by chance, we had come to Tibetan China on the Dalai Lama's birthday. All the Tibetan restaurants in town stopped serving meat and Buddhist activity throughout the entire town was constant all through the day. A consistent stream of people turned the prayer wheels and a steady hum of prayer could be heard from the monasteries. After a disappointing short horse ride, we rented some bikes and went on a breath-taking bike ride to visit the local nunnery, which was also humming with activity as nuns scurried around the town.

Nick making new friends

In the evening we headed back to Kangding, which was also full of celebrations and excitement—and also full of military presence including firetrucks, ambulances, army soldiers in riot gear, and armored trucks. 

They were obviously well prepared for trouble that might occur, but luckily the night passed peacefully. In the morning, we were on our way back to Pengshan. The only hiccups on the way back were getting stuck in traffic for an hour, and eating a packet of peanuts at the bus station that later gave Nick and I terrible food poisoning that lasted for several days.

But despite the not insubstantial setbacks, the entire trip was a really amazing experience, and it was easily my favorite place that I have visited in China so far. The culture, the people, and the geography were completely different from any place I've gone, and I saw and experienced and learned so much over the period of only a few days. Given the opportunity, I would do the trip again in a heartbeat.

This time, though, I might splurge on a flight from Chengdu to Kangding, and I would pass on the peanuts.