Cal's Guide to Asian Cities

This guide is very me. I've spent quite some time traveling around Asia, mostly to cities, and here is a wayward collection of experiences and opinions dressed up into a guide. All travel tips, pictures, puns, and snarky comments are mine. If you don't like me, you won't like this.

Bangkok

Minimum Time: 2 days

Linguistic Notes: Bangkok isn't the official name for the city. The official name comes from Pali and Sanskrit root words, ancient languages of northern India which were the scripture languages for Buddhism, similar to ancient Hebrew and Aramaic for Christianity.

Do: Bangkok has a lot going for it. There is a reason the city has often been the most visited city in the world. The Grand Palace is golden and grand as are so many temples. There are happening markets, riverboat tours, and so many malls. The food options are tremendous, with street-side vendors selling skewers and orange Thai Iced teas and many different regional Thai cuisines packing their own spices. Then the sun disappears and trucks open up Transformer-style into parked bars, night markets emerge, tourists and locals alike rage underneath expressways and interesting night shows shall we say take place. Bangkok is similar this way to Amsterdam and New Orleans - there's plenty to do culturally, but that's not why you're really there. 2 days is enough to scratch the surface, but especially when factoring hangover time, 3 or 4 is recommended.

Pun Factor: 10. While not unanimous, Bangkok is at least a Thai for punniest city in Asia. There's a reason schoolchildren ask "What's the capital of Thailand?" before punching you in the balls. "Let's go to the temple." "Wat Pho?" There's also a MRT station called Nana, which even locals find funny.

Beijing

Minimum Time: 4 days

NLGX

Linguistic Footnote: Beijing (北京) means Northern Capital. There is also a Southern Capital (Nanjing - 南京) and an Eastern Capital (Tokyo － 东京). 

Do: China has 5,000 years of history and a lot of it took place in Beijing. Large restored sections of The Great Wall are an hour away and are required for Chinese to "become real Chinese." The Forbidden City and Summer Palace preserve some parts of the last dynasty, and Tiananmen Square will invoke more recent Chinese history. There's the Drum Tower and other sections of the former city wall, numerous temples, other former imperial courtyards and gardens, upscale shopping, hidden Hutongs, crazy nightlife, Peking duck, the huge Summer palace, the 798 art district, Beihai park, Nanluoguxiang street, the CCTV tower, the Bird's Nest, the Olympic Sites and some of the world's worst air. The city as a whole is a great collection of tough people from all over China who have been through a lot.  Due to the spread of the city, you really need 4 days to do it properly.

Pun Factor: 4. I heart BJ, as well as heart getting Tanked in Tiananmen (original name of this blog).

Guangzhou

Minimum Time: 1.5 days

Linguistic Notes: Guangzhou has historically been known to the Western world as Canton. When the Portuguese arrived in the 1500s, there really wasn't a name for this city, but the province name was/is Guangdong. The Portuguese somehow transformed this into Canton. Oh don't worry, we will delve more into Portuguese trans-phonetics in this blog post.

Guang-tham City?

Do: Guangzhou is a historic center of trade, trading with the Arab world as early as the 9th century. There's some history to be found, like the former colonial enclaves and the church on Shamian Island, some old school Cantonese architecture and a museum dedicated to the father of modern China, Sun Yat-Sen from nearby. But despite the long history and its reputation as the birthplace of Cantonese culture, Guangzhou really disappointed me in the cultural category. It's modernized into any other Chinese metropolis. It sprawls into other cities with far too many people, and with road names like Jie Fang South Road divided by the same plastic white gates, Guangzhou typically feels like any other city in China. On the plus side, there are some cool modern residential buildings in Zhujiang New Town, and some cool teahouses and a very solid nightlife scene. The city is so big that if you actually do want to see the sights, it'll take a while, but the sights aren't all that special.

Pun Factor: 1. I cant(on) even.

Hong Kong

Minimum time: 2 days

Linguistic Notes: Hong and Kong do not actually rhyme in Cantonese.

Do: I originally came up with the concept of "minimum time" to help tourists plan their trip to Hong Kong. Despite the often overwhelming density, Hong Kong (Skyscraper City) is arguably a better place to live than to visit. The main attraction is that skyline, as seen from the the Peak (take the tram up for old timeyness, or a taxi up waiting behind 100 people for a 100 year old ride isn't your thing), the Star Ferry, the ICC Sky bar, the Avenue of Stars, or one of hundreds of great spots weaved into the mountainside. First timers to Asia generally enjoy the Big Buddha statue out in Lantau, which is larger taller in meters (34) than it is old in years (21). There's street stall shopping in Mong Kok and Temple Street, colonial history in Tsim Sha Tsui and Sheung Wan, aggressive hooker bars in Wan Chai, a crowded materialistic public area creatively named Times Square, and the world's heaviest concentration of debauchery upon a steep gradient in Lan Kwai Fong (LKF). Because of the city's great transportation system, that can all be done in 2 days and still leave you time to spend way too much money on a purse. If you want off the beaten path, there's the park/outdoor museum in the former Kowloon Walled City, incredible hiking trails all over the territory, easily accessible beaches, charming streets in Sham Shui Po, an old tram that locals call the Ding Ding, the Asia Society's intricate connection to the mountainside, and so much great food that you might get too full to do any of these things. The connected elevated walkways in Central are also attractive to those who like urban design, while fans of skyscraper architecture could consider this their Mecca. My five favorite buildings here: 1) Bank of China 2) HSBC Building 3) K11 4) The Centre Building 5) Carnegie's.

Pun Factor: 5. Haters like to call this place Hong Wrong, fans like to call it King Kong, but I'm not sure how long you can keep these puns strong. I was proven wrong though, by this: http://mashable.com/2015/01/13/hong-kong-metro-puns/ . I would like to say I wish I came up with those, but I really don't. 

Kuala Lumpur

Minimum Time: 2 days

Linguistic Notes: Its name means "muddy estuary" but read my previous post for way more linguistic background on Malaysian Chinese than you'll ever want to know.

Do: Kuala Lumpur only developed as a major city out of a tin mine in the late 1800s.  The only must-see in KL are the Petronas Towers which splendidly stand out in a skyline that gives it very little competition. The Batu caves are slightly outside the city, still accessible by metro, and are very cool for the large statue 43m statue of Hindu deity Lord Murugan and the awe inspiring (and bat-filled) caves up the mountain. Chinatown is cool if you don't live in a Chinese city, Merdeka Square is nice but empty, several of the Mosques are notable, and there are some fairly epic malls (Pavilion, Suria KLCC) because no Asian city would be complete without those, and a surprisingly strong nightlife scene in the Golden Triangle, especially for a Muslim country.  The food though is the main draw, and I cannot underemphasize how good and varied the cuisine in KL is, from Nasi Lemak to South Indian roti to Bakuteh. Malaysia's tourism slogan is "Malaysia, Truly Asia" which I find pretty fitting (and better than the alternative: Malaysia, the Airplane Mystery State). The city is not only incredibly diverse with so many Asian ethnicities and languages visibly represented, but it also exhibits many of the forces facing Asian cities today, including modernization eroding tradition, religious tension, traffic problems and solutions, pollution and the smell of durian. Whatever your preconceptions of Asia are, you will probably find them in Kuala Lumpur. 

Pun Factor: 2. It seems like you got something to work with here, but I got nothing of kuala-ty. I just got a ton of bad ideas all lumpur-ed together. 

Macau:

Minimum Time: 4 hours

Linguistic Notes: Macau sounds nothing like the Chinese name for this city (Cantonese: Ou Mun. Mandarin: Ào Mén). It is possibly named after an A Ma Temple that used to be there (A Ma Gok), but my theory is that the Portuguese were just terrible at transliterating names. I mean, they thought that Canton sounded like Guangdong. Also the current Portuguese spelling of Macau replaces Macao which is confusingly still used, even in official capacities.

Do: Count the number of face cards and non-face cards, and when the non-face cards outnumber the face cards by 10, start betting big. There's the Venetian, the Sands, the MGM Grand and the Casino Lisboa, none of which will kick you out for staring and all of which will let you slobber their free milk teas. Other than the the casinos, there are some cute European streets, a large historical Chinese house called the Mandarin House, the House of Dancing Water Show, the lovely Portuguese seaside restaurant Fernando's and the remaining wall of the St. Paul's Cathedral. Truth be told, Macau has had a rich and interesting cultural history, similar to Hong Kong, as an independent polity next to a turbulent mainland China. It was one of the earliest European colonies in Asia, and the most recently returned. However, unlike Hong Kong, Macau has ceased to develop it's own industry and has instead sold out to a comfortable quality of life financed entirely by mainland gamblers' losses. All that is left of the heart and soul of Macau is a burnt-out facade, which is physically manifested in the St. Paul's Cathedral.

Pun factor: 3. When introducing a local specialty item to Macau, what lazy name can McDonald's executives come up with? The Macau McCow.  

Manila 

Minimum Time: 1 day

Linguistic Notes: Most Americans just assume that people speak Spanish in the Philippines because so many Filipinos use Spanish names. But nowadays, nobody speaks Spanish

Do: Manilans will quickly tell you that next to Warsaw, Manila was the city second most devastated by World War II. This is used to explain why there isn't a whole lot of special visible history. There is a lot of Spanish influence in the background, in the old stone architecture and horse-drawn carriages, and a lot of American influence in the foreground, in the road signs and Krispy Kreme stores. There are aspects of Manila that fit into any leading global city, from the Mall of Asia to the clubs of Makati to the Fully Booked bookstore in Alabang. There also lots of leaky slums and crammed jeepney rides that show the poverty still rampant throughout the country. Rizal Park is worth checking out, as well as St Augustin Cathedral, Intramuros and Chinatown. See some of the sites, get to know some Filipinos and see why they're awesome and then leave the city to learn more about the country if that's what you want.

Pun Factor: 6. What do offices in Manila use? Manila folders. What do you call a white rapper from here? Manila Ice. Maybe it's true what they say: It's more pun in the Pilippines.

Mumbai

Minimum time: 2 days

Linguistic Notes: This city was called Bombay for many years before a 1990s belated decolonization name change, and is still referred to as such by many longtime residents, in a similar manner to how Aussies might call Uluru as Ayer's Rock. Bombay might come from the Portuguese words for "good bay", which seems kinda lame, or it might come from a brutal mishearing of the local Marathi word Mumbai. As we have established, the Portuguese are terrible with foreign languages. The city has historically been referred to "as Mumbai or Mambai in Marathi, Konkani, Gujarati, Kannada and Sindhi, and as Bambai in Hindi, Persian and Urdu." 

Do: One's experience in Mumbai/Bombay will likely depend on one's familiarity with India. Out of context, Mumbai can be a very overwhelming city, a dense dizzying array of people, colors, aromas and sporadic Bollywood dance numbers. The main sights include the city harbour with the Gateway to India arch, the adjacent Taj Mahal hotel, and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (call it VT). Other reasons to visit Mumbai include the beaches, the temples (Hindu, Jain, Sikh and Parsi are well-represented), the food and the museums. And the food is really, really good. If you can arrange it, a tour through the slums will provide a glimpse into the reality of over half the city's population. On the flip side, if you want to throw up, you could try to get a glimpse into the life of the 0.1% and see Antilia, the world's first $1 billion home.  Like several other cities in this list though, Mumbai is a younger city with far more to offer businessmen than it does tourists. 

Pun Factor: 5. The city was formerly the Bomb, but now is kinda mum. 

Osaka

Minimum Time: 2.5 days

Linguistic Notes: People from Osaka have a distinctive accent in Japanese 

Semi-enclosed shopping way struck by lightning

Do: Osaka is the second biggest of Japan's metropolises and one if its former capitals, but suffered a lot of damage in World War II. The main site, Osaka Castle, is a "ferroconcrete reconstruction" and while an informative museum and nice view, does not take you back to the days of samurais and ninjas. Dotonburi with the famous running man billboard is very bright and sensory overloading, and the same can be said of the neighborhood of Namba, which launched a popular band of rotating female dancers/singers called NMB 48. Shitenno-ji Temple is worth visiting if you haven't seen too many Japanese temples, and a baseball game is definitely a good experience for those familiar with the sport. There is also a giant outdoor climbing wall in the shape of a bowling ball that hangs over a street. Osaka is a good introduction to Japan, known as a great city to eat and drink, from high end sushi to fried innards underneath a railway bridge. Walk along the beautiful canals, the covered shopping alleyways, eat the fried food and then take a train to Kyoto, Kobe or Nara.

Pun Factor: 2. O for Pete's Sake don't try.

Seoul

Minimum Time: 3 days

Linguistic Notes: Most places in Seoul and Korea have corresponding Hanja Chinese characters due

to the historical Chinese brought written language. Seoul did not and recently decided on a phonetic transcription of 首爾. However the Chinese name had been 漢城 meaning city on the Han River or Han City, which is kinda confusing because Han is also the name for the Chinese people.

Do: Seoul is a loaded functional city. It's divided by a river and develops into the mountainside, with old and labyrinthine neighborhoods in between.  For tourist sites, the regal palace is a B version of the Forbidden City, but all told the Five Grand Palaces in Seoul are great examples of classic Korean architecture. Seoul City Hall and Dongdaemun Design Plaza among the many curved compelling pieces of modern architecture in the city. Seoul has a ton of museums, notably the National Museum of Art, the National Folk Museum and the Samsung founder's personal project Leeum Museum. Seoul boasts shrines that the UN has deemed worthwhile, an Olympic park, the Banpo Rainbow Bridge (which both crosses water and spurts out water) and the most wired city in the world (wifi everywhere). There are so many great food options, including street side tents and even food without kimchee. The drink option are impressive as well, whether you want to cheers with English teachers in Hongdae or Itaewon, get drunk under the table by Soju-hardened Koreans in Sinchon, or go upscale and pay homage to Psy in Gangnam. You could do Seoul in 2 days (if you don't spend too much time hungover) because there aren't exactly must-dos in this city, but you certainly won't get bored with a 3rd day.

Pun Factor: 10. Whether you arrive via the Seoul plane or Seoul train or by the Seouls of your shoes, hope you make some Seoul mates and leave a Seoul survivor. But due to the existence of Bangkok, Seoul is not the sole leader of Asian puns.

Shanghai

Minimum Time: 1.5 days

Linguistic Notes: The Wu dialect that emerged from the surrounding area is the descendant of the Chinese language that most influenced Japanese Kanji. The pronunciations of these characters have all evolved, but they still sound closest when comparing Shanghainese with the Japanese.

Do: The touristy aspects of Shanghai are essentially contained within one panoramic shot from the Bund and a walk underground in the most touristy tunnel imagineable to the other side of the Huangpu and the Oriental Pearl Tower. There's Xintiandi, a rare example of a redevelopment of a traditional Chinese neighborhood into an upscale commercial pedestrian zone that does not make you vomit. Actually, I don't really know much about Shanghai because even though my dad lives there and I've been there over a half dozen times, he takes me to the same places every time.  If you want to take the James Lee tour of Shanghai, then get some spicy crayfish in the wee hours, jog around tourists to the Bund, dine at the TMSK restaurant for their fusion band, visit the exquisite wooden furniture by an acclaimed artist/architect at a store/exhibition called 半木, and go to that one Japanese restaurant where you have to duck your head to enter. Apparently there's the Zhujiajiao Water Town far to the southwest of the city; but if you're gonna go that far, you might as well go to Hangzhou. Other than that, go to Shanghai and enjoy the First World offerings. That might mean tasting a Coldstone Creamery in a mall, drinking martinis in a 70th storey hotel bar, gawking at the bottle opener building or the even taller Shanghai Tower, regurgitating lots of East meets West cliches, or stuffing your face full of Xiaolongbao.

Pun Factor: 4. In this city, the proof of the pun is in the Pudong. It helps that Shanghai has become a verb in English, and that if you fly from Shanghai to Mumbai (analogous cities), you are literally going from Hai to Bai.

Shenzhen

Minimum Time: 1 day

Linguistic Notes: I got nothing here.

Can't we all just Paidui?

Do: If you want to know how different Chinese are from Westerners, all you have to know is that Shenzhen is a major tourist destination within China. Lots of Westerners living in Hong Kong would be shocked from this, because their experience of Shenzhen is usually something like the scene on the right, a mad scramble across the border to a much less polite city. In actuality, Shenzhen is one of the most developed and most Western cities in China, with a mind boggling skyrocketing pace of development. Chinese people enjoy seeing the fake Eiffel Tower in Windows of the World and the amusement park / European replica OCT East. More compelling to me is the 大芬油画村, a zone out in Longgang where artists are trained to copy classic works of art like the Mona Lisa. I've not been yet, but the place seems very cool and emblematic of the foundation of China's modern economy - copycatting. Shenzhen is no longer so economically tied to Hong Kong. Companies all over the world are flying in directly to do business with the factories, and the city is home to a burgeoning tech startup scene. Still, as a city barely 30 years old, there's plenty of ammunition to disparage the lack of cultural anything in Shenzhen, and I will stick to using a picture of Futian the one time it took me an hour and a half to cross back into Hong Kong.

Pun Factor: 0. Literally I got nothing here.

Singapore

Minimum Time: 2 days

Linguistic Notes: Singapore comes from the Malay word Singapura, itself from a Sanskrit word meaning Lion City. The Chinese name I knew growing up was 星加坡, which sounds like Singapore in Cantonese, but with the full on adoption of Mandarin, simplified characters and pinyin, the official name is now 新加坡, which sounds more better in Mandarin.

Pictures in Singapore look like architects' renderings

Do: The world's only shopping mall with an immigration counter has a million ways to make you forget about the poverty in surrounding nations. It's a great place to visit if you hate dirt and chewing gum, if you like toast and Milo, if you want to call your taxi driver "Uncle", or if you want to eat at a hawker centre but are too much of a hypochondriac to try in Malaysia. To Westerners, we call it Asia Lite, where the city collectively speaks dozens of language but really just uses English. Get a picture spitting with the Merlion, pay your way up to the top of Marina Bay Sands and marvel at the infinity pool, and go window shopping in Orchard Row. If you want a manufactured good time, venture out to Sentosa beach or Universal Studios or the Night Safari. But really just eat eat eat and keep eating, whether it's Malay food, Indian food, Chinese food, chili crab or western food. In truth, people like to give Singapore a hard time for its perceived sterility - in Singapore, once you've seen one, you've seen the mall. CNN even published a travel article "Top 10 Most Boring Things to do in Singapore." But we mock because Singapore is so functional and well thought-out, there are few outbursts of the organic craziness that expats grow to expect and love in Asia. People in China will see a collision of a truck carrying eggs with a moped on a pedestrian sidewalk and mutter to themselves "only in China" whereas people in Singapore will see ordinary citizens neatly line up for the opening of a new restaurant in the airport and mutter to themselves "only in Singapore." But deep down there's a lot to admire in a society that has lifted itself from poverty to the economic elite, dramatically raised health standards and lowered crime in its short 50 year history.

Pun Factor: 4. I mean, Singapore is a fine city. Was it ever a sunken colony? No it was a S'pore colony #starcraftjoke.

Taipei

Minimum Time: 2 days

Linguistic Notes: Few countries have had as large scale a linguistic transformation as Taiwan, with the main spoken language of Taiwanese replaced by Mandarin within 2 generations. Taiwanese is still alive and well but there are many native Taiwanese, particularly those raised in Taipei, who are well short of fluent in it.

Do: Taipei is an easy and common weekend destination for Hong Kongers. Mainland tourists now have direct flights and get to enjoy speaking their native language while handling currency that doesn't have the same picture on it. Taipei 101 sticks out in what is really a short city, and much of the charm of Taipei is ground level. The night markets make this city famous, where the smells of stinky tofu are partially diluted by those of steamed balls and teppenyaki. The National Palace Museum is priceless, consisting of many of the most valuable works of art from the Forbidden City that were carefully taken away before the Japanese invasion and moved to Taipei during the Chinese Civil War.  I don't usually spend much of precious travel time in a museum, but this one is worth a good chunk of hours. Then go to Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall, because it's there, and Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, if you want more memories. Taipei is a good city to hike, with Elephant Mountain convenient and providing great views of Taipei 101, I mean the city skyline. If hot springs are your thing, there are several not far from the city. Besides these attractions though, Taipei is a great walkable city with lots of coffeeshops, cute alleys and bubble tea.

Pun Factor: 6. Just depends if you're a Taipei personality, or a Type B personality.

Yangon

Minimum Time: 1.5 days

Linguistic Notes: Yangon literally means something like "no more enemies" in Burmese and is translated as the End of Strife. The name of the first village to be at this site was called Dagon, which is still reflected in place names, including the city's famous icon Schwedagon Pagoda (Great Dagon).

View within Kandawgyi Park

Do: The Schwedagon Pagoda alone is enough to visit the city formerly known as Rangoon. The golden splendor of the most important Buddhist site in the land is among the more spectacular sites I've ever seen, and the city's streets are laid out to keep it getting seen. There's a lot of colonial history in the city, with more colonial-era buildings than any other city in Asia, but much of this is because the buildings are crumbling and the city has been too poor to rebuild them. Still, Yangon is a bustling diverse market town with Bogyoke market in particular trading some interesting spices, fabrics and jewelry. The jade market especially has exploded in Burma, due to demand from China, but I wish I knew about its devastating social consequences before I bought my amulet. In contrast to the daytime activity, the city goes all but silent after 9pm. Sule Pagoda is noteworthy on its own but pales in comparison to Schwedagon. The other main religious site, Botataung Paya is important historically, claiming to house strands of Buddha's hair, but was bombed in WWII and will not impress on travelers who have seen a stupid number of stupas. The city has a great park around Kandawgyi Lake which has a tourist-only fee that is still worth paying. Aung San Suu Kyi's house is reachable, but is no longer a site of demonstrations. My taxi driver literally stopped on his own and pointed out the house. Yangon's colonial history seems so removed from its modern construction, reflected its buried dead - the grave of the last Emperor of the Mughal Empire is here, as is a Jewish cemetery. And amazingly, the city is small enough that I was basically able to do everything on this list in 2 days and still check out the nightlife, which is so many levels below every other city on this list. Food-wise, I've documented how bizarrely bland Myanmar food is despite its culinary neighbors, but Shan noodles are worth a bowl.

Pun Factor: 3. How do you ask a Chinese person in Myanmar if he/she is cold? Brrrr 吗？


Of course, there are many cities in Asia I have not been to that are very worth visiting. The ones with the deadliest Pun Factors include Hanoi (puns can get Hanoi-ing very quickly), Penang (Punang), Delhi (cold cuts), Phnom Penh (Phnomenal), and of course, Phuket. While crafting this post, I was reminded how great Asia is. There are old cities, there are new cities, and there are interesting places that aren't cities. I was also reminded how I haven't written a travel recap post like this since: http://cal337.blogspot.hk/2009/01/recap-overratedunderrated.html. Anyway if you haven't visited Asia, come check it out. If I left anything out or really missed out on some city attractions, leave a comment below.