Valentine's Day is another one of those holidays that is not celebrated, yet still celebrated in Asia.

While the atmosphere doesn't reach the Western onslaught of pink hearts and candy, it's still possible to see blushing couples carrying bouquets of roses and to find big heart-shaped boxes of chocolates.

Dan and I decided we'd have a day out in Guangzhou, which is a short distance from Foshan, to celebrate our eighth Valentine's Day together.

We started the day with the lunch buffet at FOODS, at the Ritz-Carlton.  Okay, backtracking a little, we started with Bloody Mary's in the lounge and then the meal.  Mostly, we planned it because it was fun to say that we were "luncheoning at the Ritz, dahling" in fakey British accents and the lunch buffet cost about 250 RMB (about 40 USD) each, which was in our price range.  However, while of course bringing up the Ritz in random conversation for weeks is priceless, the buffet was fantastic. The only better one I can think of was in Las Vegas for my birthday in 2010, but we'd been drinking all day and my memory of that one might not be accurate.

The best part of the buffet, surprisingly, was the desserts. Usually at buffets you find one or two good things and then you're so stuffed by the end that the desserts are unnecessary.  Not this buffet. We liked everything we tried, and we tried almost everything. The ox tongue wasn't a favorite, mostly because we misunderstood and were expecting it just to be beef.  But the desserts, man oh man, the desserts. They made hot chocolate cakes a la mode, served up cold guava soup and had amazing tiramisu.

Also, at the end, you could take a complimentary box of gummy candies.  Outstanding.

After such an awesome lunch, we didn't do much for the afternoon. We'd found a good deal on a hotel on Agoda.com, which is my favorite booking site at the moment, and watched TV and digested until the evening, when we took a walk around the Zhujiang New Town area and the Canton Tower and had dinner and drinks at The Brew.

Not a traditional Valentine's Day, but what an amazing buffet!

[Editor's note: Please welcome Dan, the usually silent "kangaroo" part of "Alaskankangaroo," as he guest posts on his excursion to watch the last local Chinese Basketball Association game of the season.]


By Dan P.



Tonight I went to watch the final local game of the basketball season, the Foshan Long Lions versus the Qing Dao Double Stars.

While I am not a huge basketball fan, when I was a boy we would watch the local team, the Perth Wildcats, on TV. and I would get excited over the games I watched. During these games, I learnt the rules and some of the strategies of how to play basketball. So, when I saw a poster in the CITS travel agency window advertising the local Foshan Team, the Long Lions (lit. Dragon Lions), I knew I had to go and enjoy my first live game of basketball.

Tonight's game was close until the end, with the Long Lions winning in the game 107 - 101. There were a couple of calls that made the audience erupt in jeers and feet stomping! There were even a few slam dunks. The fans all beat their plastic clappers together, which was entertaining to watch too.

While televised basketball, especially NBA, is popular all over China, I asked a lot of people I knew if they had gone to see the Long Lions play live and they said they hadn't. This is probably because the team isn't at the top of the ladder. However the game I saw was exciting and fun.

There were even cheerleaders! Yes, little dancing princesses in pink bikinis twirling pom poms! The cheerleaders were ready to entertain at every break and time out—though the music was a little dated and uninspired. Also, everyone standing up for the Chinese national anthem at the beginning of the game was great! I like it when I see people being proud of their country.

The season's over now, but next season, you can get tickets from Qionghua Da Ju Yuan,( 佛山琼花大剧院 ) it's on Zumiao Lu. Just ask for lan qiu piao - basketball tickets. I got third row seats for 180 RMB. VIP tickets, complete with player's sweat, are 500RMB each and basic tickets in the back somewhere start from 60 RMB.


I think everyone should go see the Foshan Long Lions, and take their friends with them! We should support the local team, and even if you are only mildly interested in basketball, it's a live sporting opportunity afterall and it's the CBA—just as important here as the NBA is in the USA. You just never know. You may get to watch the next Yao Ming or Jeremy Lin in action.


Long Lions 加油 jia you! Long Lions 加油 jia you!

Just when the West thinks it's all over for the holidays until next year (with the exception of a card for Valentine's Day or a good Halloween party), Asia is gearing up for Lunar New Year. Called by various names like Spring Festival or Chinese New Year, this holiday signals renewal, rebirth and another chance at a lucky year. This Monday will begin the Year of the Dragon, and, as usual, decorators nation-wide (well, probably continent-wide) are going nuts for Dragons. 

I've found the debate in the China Daily newspaper over whether Chinese dragons should be fierce or cute to be very interesting. Here's some more links if you'd like to check them out.http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2012-01/18/content_14465416.htm, and  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-16422945

Also, near our apartment, the city has set up its yearly Flower Street, where entrepreneurs and school groups man booths to sell flowers and trinkets to people before the New Year. Prices were high when we checked out the street on Thursday.  If there are any left, we may go back when the street is winding up on Monday and buy some jonquils and chyrsanthemums for half price.

Happy Chinese New Year! 新年快乐！

I often see some strange English translations around town. When I have the camera with me, I take a picture of it:

This year has just zoomed by, while we tried to be stationary here in Foshan, China.

I hope all our readers also had a great 2011.

Happy Travels!

Hello everyone!

Yes, the rumors are true. Alaskan Kangaroo has made it back, full circle, to China.

While the Big Trip through SE Asia and family living rooms has eaten its final pad thai, we are still living life in 'travel mode' although now it's on a neighborhood level and not a national one. 

I promise to get some more stories up soon...my goodness I haven't even posted the one I wrote about our trip to Vegas in December, or our 23-hour mad stopover in Tokyo, or the 100 beers on tap in Portland...until then, Happy Chinese New Year!

America.

Okay. I'm cold.

After five months in Thailand and more than a year in summer weather, 50 degrees Fahrenheit feels like stepping in to a freezer.

The guy at the airport whose job it is to help people on to the shuttle between terminals huffs and blows and stamps his feet in the cold. "You should have got here last week," he tells us. "It's cold now."

I'm wearing a thin but long sleeved t-shirt and Dan's got rugged hiking pants, but the wind is brisk and I can sense the air is different.

I taste fall.

***

America hits me in the face like a tradewind.

I'm blown away by the choices, by the noise, by the sound of the people talking.

I can understand everyone I hear. Strangest are the hispanic workers in the Mexican restaurant my friend Laurel takes us to on our first day in Portland. Like a song I haven't heard in years, I can hear them in the kitchen talking, and understand. Part of me I forgot existed.

Three days before we were in a Laotian village watching barenaked toddlers run and play on the dirt highway. One day ago we were in clean, orderly Tokyo watching business people calmly pedal their bicycles through storybook streets. Today we're in America, and it's a little bewildering.

First of all, there's the strain of talking so much. I love it but, Damn!, we are tired. And the issue of being polite—I'd known in theory, but in practice forgotten, just how many 'sorrys', 'thankyous' and 'haveanicedays' are required in American functional talking. I remind myself to home in on this in my lessons when we begin teaching in China again in February. In a lot of the world, I've gotten by on just my smile. Here, it looks like I've got to use my voice to go along with it.

Dan seems even more at sea. His accent confuses people. “What would you like on your sandwich?” the young woman at Subway fast food restaurant asks him. “Salt and pepper,” he replies quickly. She's confused. “What's pep-ah?,” she asks. “Pep-PER” he throws in. She nods and gives him the sandwich on a tray. “No, we'd like that takeaway—I mean, 'to go,'” he says. He learns fast.

* * *
Laurel is a great hostess. She's determined to show us a good time in her city. The first night features burlesque dancers and $4 Guinness. I start to fear Dan won't want to leave.

We accompany her to a lot of Portland eateries, thrift stores to buy warmer clothes, bars to sample microbrews (beer not made from rice! Yipee!) a Halloween party at a friends home. I meet up with my roommate from college. I can't believe 9 years have passed. Does her bathroom still look like a Mexican barfight? I forget to ask her fiance.

We are tired, hungover, freezing, feeling poor, but happy when my parents pick us up a few days later.

This is America.

Dan and I walk through a paddock inhabited by slightly angry cows. Then we climb a stile made of bamboo over a rickety fence and into a grove of banana trees still bearing fruit. We come to a stream bridged by long bamboo poles held together with twisted baling wire.


"Where are we?" Dan wonders as the path takes another turn.



"In Laos," is all I can offer him.



We are lost in Southeast Asia, gloriously lost, but at the same time we know that once we find our location, our long vacation is evaporating behind us even as the dust settles behind our knock-off Tevas.


This week we're still on vacation, and next week and next month too, but the 'endless summer' portion of our wanders is over.

Tomorrow, we take a bus to the capital of Laos, Vientiane, then the next day we train it down through Thailand to Bangkok. The day after we fly to Tokyo to spend a day looking for sushi. And the day after that we touch down in Portland, Oregon for a nice long visit with my extended family and friends.

I'm thrilled to go to the States (it's only been three years since my last visit) and happy to check out Tokyo, but as Dan and I walked down this Laotian path startling two-toned butterflies being stalked by the most patient of lizards, it occurred to me that this was really the end of our Big Trip through Southeast Asia. We're entering the visiting phase of our travels and ending the traveling phase of our trip.

We climbed one more bamboo stile over a barbed-wire fence, rounded a clump of particularly thorny bushes interspersed with the most delicate purple flowers and passed into the shadow of the limestone cliff that bordered the farmer's lands. We were headed today, mostly, for a look at a limestone cave and a dip in a river. On our rented bicycles we'd passed a hand-lettered sign that promised both, so we'd paid a man 10,000 kip each to come traipse through this field, jungle and cow pasture to do so.

As we stepped from the 1 p.m. sunshine into the shadow of the bluff I noticed a quick, distinct temperature change--at least 10 degrees difference Fahrenheit according to Dan's thermometer. After our sweaty bike ride in the near-100 degree heat, the suddenly cool breeze was refreshing. A few more steps down the path and it got nicer--a grotto with a pool large enough for us to take a dip in. We changed into swimming clothes and eased into the glassy pool, disturbing the muddy bottom only a little.

The cave-fed stream bubbled up out of the rocks behind us and went falling through a man-made weir through to an underground cavern we could hear but not see.

The cool water woke us up, took off the grime and sweat from our bike ride, and made me start to think about the sensations of heat and cold. After spending the last nine months in countries where the climate ranged from boiling to steaming, transitioning to North America at Halloween seemed a chilly proposition. New clothes are in order.

I looked up from the pond to the craggy limestone ceiling and out to the light green leaves of the jungle we'd just walked through. As gorgeous as I'd hoped.
We dried off with our t-shirts and put on our soon-to-be-obsolete clothes and then started off toward another cave on the way back Vang Vieng. If this was the end of the Big Trip, it was beautiful.