30 August 2012
There is no museum
Due to being burnt and tired from yesterdays trek in the dusty city, today I decided to try and keep indoors.
First up I walked in the blazing sun for a couple of hours and spent a small fortune on coffee.
If you want to make 1000% profit, open a coffee chain in China. A cup of coffee from starbucks costs the same as a 3 course meal, yet all their stores are still busy.
Before anyone says try a local chain, there really isnt one. My hotel claims to make coffee but I think they add coffee creamer to coffee flavoured pudding cups. Theres Pacific coffee from Hong Kong which is too hit and miss, one time I think they forgot to put the coffee in, and theres Costa coffee from the UK that costs even more!
I did try a new place today, read on for that in the photos, it was a total failure.
Hence my travel tip, if in any asian country, Starbucks or brace yourself for an unpleasant new experience in beverage disasters.
After getting just a bit more burnt, I headed into the metro station for a game of station roulette. I studied the map for a while, and spotted the last station on one of the lines is called 'Aerospace Museum'. Double win for me, get to go to the edge of town and see some rusty old jets.
So I boarded the metro and settled in for the 30 minute or so ride, transferring twice.
Nearing the end of the line the train came up to the surface, amongst big fuel tanks, cranes, piles of asbestos and rubble and an endless sea of unfinished identical buildings. Strange place for a museum I thought.
Eventually the train got to the last station, and theres a sea of scooters and busses to ferry people beyond the reach of the metro. They eye me suspiciously.
I look around, and cant see any museum. I study the station map which is all in Chinese, and it seems to show theres nothing at all there, in fact theres really only 3 or 4 streets on the map.
Suspicious now, I head off towards the only large finished looking building I can see, passing what I think were pop up villages where construction workers live, in amongst some really old and small looking farms with old men singing to themselves looking after them.
The building turned out to be a concrete factory. As I head back, people are laughing at me, one guy crouching in the shadows speaks in perfect english.
Him: just admit you are lost already
Me: Never! You speak good English
Him: Yeah, Im from Chicago, Im here visiting my sick grandfather, I wish he would hurry up and die so I can go home
Me: OK...wheres the museum?
Him: I am pretty sure its one of those piles of rubble you are walking around, it was bulldozed a decade ago
Me: Fantastic.
Still one of my favourite buildings. There will be boring photos today as I never found my desired destination.
A sea of floating plant things in Peoples Square. Theres more to this square than I knew, including a fun park with a roller coaster, a waterfall, a lot of guys walking backwards, and guys who appear to be molesting trees.
My second coffee came from Marks and Spencer. It cost more than Starbucks. I went here because it was open, and the air conditioning was great.
Unfortunately, I dont think it was coffee. It tasted more like crushed ants. It certainly looks great, and I watched the guy using the manual machine freshly grind the beans, use the tamper, run water through it first, all the things you would expect. But wherever he got his coffee from, they must have accidentally cross bred it with ants.
This is my kind of street garden. Hundreds of metres of this street is lined with Chillies. I dont see any reason why you couldnt eat them? I could add them to my coffee to improve it.
Descending into the metro and there was a fancy underground mall with an excellent looking Xiao Long Bao place, and they were indeed excellent.
I only accidentally pierced one out of 10 with the chopsticks before it got in my mouth, which is a sign of good quality.
I also got a mystery soup, which I think may have been duck blood. It was very rich tasting, I added a lot of street chilli, ginger and vinegar.
The site of the former aerospace museum, now a transport hub and construction site. Why not change the name to FORMER aerospace museum?
I promised more waste management pics, this is the local recycling centre. People bring piles of cardboard and bags of cans, and get some sort of card stamped by the guy in the chair. I have seen my future.