A weekend in Kuala Lumpur

It just so happened that our second weekend in China fell on Mid-Autumn Festival,  a nationwide holiday that most businesses shut down for. It worked out well for us since we went into this trip with the intent to make the most of our time in Asia, as best as we could.

There were a handful of spots we could fly direct to from Wuhan, and Kuala Lumpur was one of them. (Tokyo was also one, and as tempting as it was to go on a sushi-eating weekend bender, the flights were surprisingly pricey for such a short jaunt over the East China Sea). A few Pinterest searches confirmed it had seemed to have enough cool spots to keep us entertained for 3 days, so we booked a couple seats on the ol Airbus.

China’isms – Part One

Today was bring your wife to work day! We’re on the outbound to shanghai by way of train – supplier visit – train – supplier visit- train. Since we checked out of the hotel room this morning I tagged along to LongChen and hid out in the corner of their conference room sucking up the free WiFi to push peanut butter whiskey on the masses while they plotted a world takeover one EGR valve at a time.

Oh China…

China is a challenge.

 

That’s the best way I think I can sum it up. Some of you are probably sitting there going, ‘well, duh, Chelsea… what did you expect?’

Wuhan, China: giving the street food of Hubu Alley a shot

Yesterday evening we decided to pay homage to Anthony Bourdain and venture over to Hubu Alley, a well known Mecca of street food here in Wuhan with over a hundred vendors hawking their fares.

We had been doing a little shopping beforehand so we hopped in a DiDi (China’s version of Uber) and got to Hubu right as the hustle and bustle was beginning. Vendors were all just starting to set up their carts and it was CRAZY the difference an hour made. It went from an open alley where we could walk pretty freely to being shoulder to shoulder packed, with a high chance of getting accidentally impaled by a haphazard bump into a skewer.

An afternoon on TanHuaLin, the boho hideout of Wuhan

I first heard of Tan Hua Lin in a blip of an article talking about cute, local coffee shops in Wuhan. If I remember correctly, the author described Tan Hua Lin as a “bohemian, artists’ street” and it was immediately clear I would be making my way there at some point during this trip.

After breakfast while lounging around the room, I realized this was our only true free weekend in Wuhan, so Tate and I decided it was time to head out of our little Hilton home-away-from-home and see the city.

Preparing for The People’s Republic

Two weeks from today, at about this exact time, we will be touching down in Shanghai.

Directionally challenged in the East China Sea

They say you learn the most about your partner when you’re abroad. Strange foods, foreign landscape, don’t speak the language…. really brings out the best in yah.

Tate often takes the lead as navigator, partly because he claims to find it “fun” to look at maps (freak), partly because he knows if he lets me lead we will inevitably wander along every which way, stopping to gander at anything and everything and that’s basically the antithesis of a good time in his eyes.

It’s not that I don’t know how to get from point A to point B without interruptions, it’s just that I enjoy a detour or two along the way. The scenic route, if you will.

If you give a deer a cookie… [Nara Park, Japan]

If you give a deer a cookie, he’ll wanna nuzzle your nookie.

Somewhere around the time Tate sat me down and made me watch some YouTube video of bowing deer and insisting we go see them whilst in Japan that I realized he really, truly did have my best interests in mind.

Kon’nichiwa, Japan [Volume 1: Osaka]

Osaka. The Nation’s Kitchen. Bright lights, bustling with tourists, gimme ALL the sushi.

(True to my namesake, here I am at IND with my carry-on… thanks for the airport dropoff, Mom!) The last time I had spoken to Tate before taking off from SFO and properly stowing my electronic devices, he told me he would be waiting for me past baggage claim in Osaka and (I quote) there’s no way I would miss him.

I didn’t think much of it, assuming he just meant it was a small airport and he’d be the only American. Little did I know he meant that he had flown a giant cutout of my head over on this business trip with him and drug it around this whole time just to whip out during my grand arrival.  To this day, my biggest regret in life was not having my phone handy at that moment. Anyone who knows Tate knows he is NOT the kind to draw attention to himself, thus he refused to recreate that moment, and immediately folded jumbo-Chelsea-head up and discarded her into the nearest waste bin. What a way to kick off my Friday.