2009-02 New Adventures in Asia--Shanghai

After arriving late afternoon, I walked from the hotel to the subway station to take the subway down to the Oriental Pearl Tower. As I got close, I looked across the street to see a reminder of my hometown--a Best Buy store in Shanghai. Luckily it was written in both English and Chinese so I knew what it said. I wandered through the local shopping center and had a bite to eat before heading back.

As I got off the subway to go back to the hotel, it exited to a fashion market, a large series of stands selling all sorts of clothing and gear at inexpensive prices--if you are good at barganing as they start their prices about 3 to 4 times higher than the final price. I did end up getting a Twins and Vikings jersey while I was there. Being an indoor market, it is a different experience than the previous outdoor market that we had gone to.

Around the hotel was nice shopping and eating area with various local restaruants and many food choices including Itialian, American, and Irish. There was also a lot of statues scattered throughout the area.

On the way to the airport, we decided to take the Maglev high speed train. It goes about 20 miles in just 8 minutes. It is a convenient way to get to the airport without any traffic worries. The maglev station is only about 5 minutes from the hotel.

2009-02 New Adventures in Asia--Manila

I arrived in Manila on Saturday afternoon, so I decided to do a couple of special sightseeing trips while I was here. The first was to the American Cemetery in Manila. This is the largest American cemetery outside of the US, with about 17,000 US and Filipino servicemen buried here. The grounds are immaculate. It is a circular shaped area with all the grave sites radiating out from the central memorial. The memorial is an open courtyard with a small enclosed alter on one end and then the names of the soldiers carved into a series of vertical stone tablets that form the ring around the courtyard.

Many people were at the memorial on this afternoon, including a church group of adults and children. Many individuals and couples were also wondering around, both at the memorial and through the grave sites. The grave sites were also laid out in a circular pattern and were visible from the memorial, which was at the highest point on the grounds.

I stopped for dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, and found it interesting that on a Saturday evening at 7:30 PM, there were tables galore. The band did not start until 9:30, which is when the crowds do become larger. Oh how nice it would be to go out on a Saturday evening and have no wait to sit down and eat in the US.

On Sunday, I went with his co-worker Greg and two of his friends Aaron and Ghenty to visit Corregidor Island, site of a famous series of WWII battles. We arrived at the pier about 9:30 expecting a 10:00 departure, but the actual departure time was 11:00, so we had plenty of waiting time. The boat was fully enclosed and had assigned seating with coach bus style seats. They played some historical videos while we were navigating across Manila Bay. The ride took about 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Corregidor was a strategic island during the war because it sits in the middle of the mouth of Manila Bay and could be used to protect the bay from attach. The US forces first started building on Corregidor in the 1910’s and made the island self-sustaining with water, electricity, housing, a movie theatre and YMCA. Many thousand men and some of their families were stationed on the island, even prior to the war.

After arriving we had lunch before boarding some open air buses for the tour. We would stop at various places and then have 10-15 minutes to explore each place. Our first stop was at the Pacific War Memorial. This is one of only two US WWII war memorials, the other being Pearl Harbor. It has a round alter under a football shaped dome, and the sun shines directly on the alter on May 6th, the anniversary date of the taking of Corregidor by US forces from the Japanese. As you keep walking through the memorial, you come to a large orange, metal sculpture that represents an eternal flame. The views from up here are towards Manila from the highest points on the island. From there, we started to work out way down the island. This was also the site of the parade grounds and the first landing zone for the US paratroopers when they came to recapture the island.

We then stopped at the mile long barracks (closer to 1/3 a mile, but still impressive). Over 5,000 men called this home at one time. It included a swimming pool (which is still visible) and bowling alley. Many of the buildings here are in some state of collapse, but we were still allowed to explore in the ruins. The buildings are all concrete, including walls and floors.. Nothing has roofs on it any more. You can see evidence of shrapnel and shell hits on all the buildings. Some have just craters, and others have actual holes blown through.

Our next stop was the island lighthouse. There are actually 2 lighthouses now, a modern taller one along with a smaller one, originally put in place by the Spaniards, although it has been rebuilt since its original placement. We were allowed to climb to the top of the original lighthouse, taking 52 steps to get there.

As we went further down the hill, we stopped and saw many of the large mortar guns used to protect the entrance to the bay. These had large diameters for shells up to about 10 inches. A pair of disappearing guns looked out towards the ocean. The unique thing about these guns was that they would rise up to fire and then settle back down below the wall upon firing their shells, making them difficult to spot from the water. They also had to switch out barrels after a series of shells as they barrels would overheat loose accuracy. The barrels were riffled to put spin on the shells to improve accuracy.

As we made it back down to sea level, we stopped at the pier that MacArthur left from to go to Australia to guide the war effort. It was from Australia that he made his famous quote “I shall return” in reference to the Philippines. A large statue has been commissioned in his honor at the docks. He led the troops and lived on Corregidor for much of the war. He was ordered off by the president to prevent his possible capture, which would give a big moral boost to the Japanese.

The last stop was the Malinta tunnel, a tunnel that was bored through the island for the purpose of storing munitions and supplies, and providing a protected and safe bomb shelter and working area. The tunnel has multiple side tunnels that go off at angles from the main tunnel. Two sets of train tracks run through the tunnel to aid in loading supplies. The tunnel is about 30 feet wide. The tour of the tunnel included a sound and light show with both video presentations and sculptures with audio narration in the lateral tunnels to give the history of Corregedor Island and the battles that occurred.

We then boarded the boat for the trip back to Manila. There were a lot of tired people on the boat, and many slept on the way home. Once we landed, we went out to eat a restaurant called Handlebars--as in motorcycle handlebars. One of the main features was there grilled meat special, that includes a cut of steak, or pork, or other types of meat, grilled out on the patio to your liking. It comes with a baked potato and fixings, cole slaw and beans. A real American picnic meal.

2009-02 New Adventures in Asia-Taipei

Although I have been to Asia many times, I had a little bit of extra time to visit some new areas in each of the cities I visited.

On Thursday, I took a subway to get to the downtown area. It was 6 stops away and only cost about 70 cents. I wandered around the area of Taipei 101, a 101 story building, and then ate dinner. The downtown area is bustling with people all evening, both working and shopping. There is small park right across the street from Taipei 101 and there was a group of people doing exercise, but other than that the park was empty.

After work on Friday, I went with my co-worker Lin went up the National Palace Museum, just north of Taipei City. This is a museum that houses treasures from the last 4,000 years from both mainland China and Taiwan. It has 4 floors and is divided up into various types of items, such as pottery, metal works, jade, etc. I am always amazed at the long historical window many of these Asian countries have, looking back thousands of years, when compared to the relatively short history of the US. Out front they had various cow statues painted by local artists, much like the various Peanuts statues that they ahd around St. Paul a few years back.

We did not have enough time to look thoroughly through the museum as it closed just 1 hour and 45 minutes after we arrived. We did, however have a chance to pick up a couple of geocaches on the grounds, and was able to introduce Lin a new activity.

From there we drove up to the area of Danshui, which is at the mouth of the Danshui River that empties into the Straits of Taiwan. There is a boardwalk area along the river with various arcades, shops and eateries along the river walk. We walked from the train station to the northern end of the boardwalk and then had dinner. All the indoor seating had already been reserved, so sat outside for dinner. It was a little cool and breezy, but they had the overhead propane heaters running to help make it comfortable. We then walked back to the car and headed back to the city.

2009-02 Chicago

We headed off to the Windy City for two college visits for Mariah, one at Loyola and the other at St. Xavier. Mariah brought along Hannah, who has also been looking at a school in Chicago. We left late Thursday afternoon and drove pretty much straight through and arrived around midnight.

On Friday, we got up and headed to Loyola. It is on the north side of Chicago and sits on the Lake Michigan waterfront. Lake Shore Drive cuts right through the campus, so there tends to be a lot of traffic to contend with as you make your way around. The campus covers about a 8 by 6 block area, and has the feel of being plucked into the middle of an old neighborhood. The newest building is a learning center filled with the latest technology for studying both alone and as small groups. It was a very popular location on campus for people to congregate. After our tour, we walked around a little more and headed to the bookstore, which seems like it is off campus as it is located in with several other commercial establishments.

Our next stop was at St. Xavier, located southwest of downtown Chicago. It is located out at the outer edge of Chicago proper, and also feels like it is in a neighborhood, but one that grew up around it rather than with it. St Xavier is much smaller than we expected as they have one main classroom building with multiple wings. It has mainly been a commuter school, and the oldest dorms are only about 8 years old. The campus has a lot of open area with a lot of the activities buildings spread out.

For the evening we headed into the downtown area and ate at the Hard Rock Café. Although it took a little time to get seated there was a whole unused upstairs area, apparently waiting for a large group to show up. After dinner, we went across the street to a huge 2 story McDonalds with a pair of escalators in the middle to get between floors. There was also a history wall about McDonalds, and it included a lot of toys and items that LeAnn and I remembered from our childhood in each displays of products from each decade.

On Saturday, we headed down to the waterfront area. Our first stop was Millennium Park, located in Grant Park, which stretches between the edge of downtown and the waterfront for a couple of miles. Millennium Park has and outdoor concert area, an ice skating area (which was very busy) and a sculpture called the Cloud Gate, also know as the bean. It is a highly reflective silver, kidney bean shaped object. Everyone enjoyed taking their pictures in and around it, and getting different aspects of the skyline in the photos.

From there we walked to Navy Pier, about 1.5 miles away. The weather was a little cool and the wind was blowing into our face on the walk over there. Navy Pier is a shopping and amusement area built on a pier out into Lake Michigan. There are outdoor activities for the summer time, but those were shut down for the winter, however, the Ferris wheel was still running. There is an exhibition of numerous stained glass windows that line the walkway towards the end of the pier. In the auditorium, there was cheerleading competition going on, so the hallways were filled with cheerleaders and their families and supporters. On the way back, Ray stopped to unload some of his issues with Bob Newhart. One of his issues is how embarrassed his kids get when he acts goofy--like talking to a statue.

Walking back to Grant Park was more comfortable since the wind was now at our back. We walked across a serpentine shaped bridge to cross Lake Shore Drive and continued on towards the Spirit of Music Gardens area of Grant Park to see the snow sculptures created for Chicago’s Snow Days. There were over 20 snow sculptures, all made with great details and representing real and fictional characters and scenes. The weather was cold enough that they were still preserved very close to their original state even though they were a couple of days old. A quick stop at Starbucks to warm up, and it was time to head back to the parking ramp and return to MN after a fun but quick trip to Chicago. With a lot of walking while we were here, there was a good amount of napping on the ride home.