INDONESIA - JAVA: SURABAYA, PART I (CITY TOUR)

 July 7, 2023

We made our way out of the jungle of Borneo and to the airport in Pangkalan Bun, a small facility with just one runway. I love the blue sign below. At first I thought it was a play room for kids--a nursery--but then I realized from the image that it is a room where mothers can nurse their babies.

We flew on Nam Air, an Indoneisan regional airline based in Jakarta.

Our flight from Sumatra to Surabaya on the island of Java took about an hour and a half. Surabaya's Juanda International Airport is the third busiest airport in Indonesia. In 2019, it had about 24 million passengers. Compare that to the 3rd busiest airport in the United States, Denver, which had 34 million passengers. The numbers are a lot closer than I would have guessed.

I was a little surprised to see Beard Papa's--a Japanese creme puff chain--in the Juanda Airport. Of course, we have them in the US too, usually attached to Asian grocery stores.

NEW YORK CITY: (MOSTLY) VEGETARIAN DINING

 July 21-22, 2021

Our son recently moved to the edge of Chinatown in New York City. For months we drooled over his descriptions of the new restaurants and dishes he and his girlfriend were discovering in the new-to-them section of the city, so it was fun to visit a few of the restaurants and taste some of that food. They are vegetarians, and we are trying to have a healthier diet, so we were happy to have someone guide us to the best NYC vegetarian eats.

We tried to cram in as many local eating experiences as we could during the two days we spent in the city. We even ate at two different restaurants on our first evening, beginning at Xi'an Famous Foods. (We had been to Xi'an in China and had some great food there, so we were excited to try this one!)

Knowing that our main meal was ahead of us, we tried not to over-indulge. The three of us shared an order of Spicy Hot Oil-Seared Hand-Ripped Noodles . . . 

. . . and an order of Chang'an Spicy Tofu.

NEW YORK CITY: BOWERY HOTEL AND BRONX ZOO

July 21, 2021

I hope to take a trip to New York City at least once a year to visit our son who lives there.  There is so much to see, and I love the city vibe. Our time this year, however, was mostly spent in Upstate New York. But more about that later.

We took our usual mode of transportation--a red-eye flight from LAX to JFK, arriving at 6:30 AM. I could definitely relate to the "never sleeps" part of the sign that greeted us as we deplaned.

My watch said I got over three hours of sleep, but some of that "light" sleep time was just "holding-very-still-but-still-awake" time.  I don't think I got more than two hours of sleep.

Luckily we were able to check into our hotel as soon as we got there, which was around 7:30 AM?. We stayed at the Hotel 50 Bowery in Lower Manhattan, just outside Chinatown. The hotel is snuggly nestled between a Chinese restaurant and a neo-Classic HSBC Bank.

We were really pleased with our choice.  It can be hit-and-miss in NYC if you aren't staying in an expensive hotel.  This was a hit! The service was great and our room was large (for NYC), clean, well-appointed, and had a great view of morning yoga on the deck below us. We will stay here again.

NEW YORK CITY: EATING IN FLUSHING'S CHINATOWN

February 17, 2020

We had to be at JFK Airport by early afternoon for our flight home. Andrew was at work and we had the morning to kill, so we decided to go grazing in one of our favorite neighborhoods--Flushing, which is located in the borough of Queens.

The more I learn about Flushing, the more I wonder why I had never heard of it before Andrew introduced us to it in 2018. For example, it has the third busiest intersection in NYC, behind Times Square and Herald Square. Even now that I know about it, I never hear of anyone else who has been there.

Until about 1970, the population of Flushing was mostly white with a smattering of Japanese and South Koreans, but in 1970 a wave of Mandarin-speaking Taiwanese arrived in NYC and started to settle in Flushing. At the time, Manhattan's Chinatown was inhabited by primarily Cantonese speakers, so it makes sense that a separate neighborhood was formed. Flushing is now substantially larger than Manhattan's Chinatown (72,000 and 48,000, respectively), and is in fact the world's largest Chinatown. By the way, there actually are several other smaller Chinese neighborhoods in New York City, where 6% of the overall population is Chinese-American.

On our first trip to Flushing two years prior, Andrew took us to his favorite dumpling spot, White Bear, a little hole in the wall on Roosevelt Avenue. 

NEW YORK CITY DAY 1: DUMPLING GALAXY, THE SCULPTURE CENTER, MOMA PS1, AND TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD ON BROADWAY

February 14, 2020

In February 2020, about a month before the Covid outbreak in the United States, we flew to New York City for our sixth visit. We had two main purposes for the trip. First and foremost, we wanted to see an art show in which our son had a major piece of work. Second, Bob had given me tickets to Hamilton on Broadway for Christmas (and after Christmas we also picked up tickets for To Kill a Mockingbird on Broadway).

We took a JetBlue red-eye flight, which is our standard method of travel to NYC, and made our way to our hotel in Queens, where we dropped off our luggage and showered. We met up with Andrew and set out to find some lunch in one of our favorite NYC neighborhoods: Flushing (the real Chinatown), which Andrew had introduced us to when we visited in August 2018.

On our way to lunch, we peaked inside the Flushing Post Office, completed in 1934, the middle of the Great Depression. The murals were painted by Vincent Aderente, an Italian-American muralist.

We had lunch at a place Andrew recommended named Dumpling Galaxy. New York Magazine calls it Flushing's best restaurant. It is located on the upper level of a shopping mall full of Chinese stores.

Just looking at the menu was worth the visit. So many yummy options!

SLEEPING AND EATING IN NEW YORK CITY, JANUARY 2018

Last January we flew to New York during one of the coldest weeks on record to visit our son, who is living in Harlem and whose art was being featured in a show in downtown New York City.  

We left from LAX, where we were surprised to see the invasion of a New York City staple. I don't think LA has sent In-n-Out to NYC yet:

We thought we'd be adventurous and stay somewhere new. On our last couple of trips, we had stayed just across the George Washington Bridge in a nice hotel in Fort Lee, New Jersey. On this trip, we found a private apartment in The Bronx on Airbnb. We were quite please with it:

This was our view of Wales Ave. from our apartment window.

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA: CHINATOWN

The very last stop on our great Alaskan and Canadian adventure was Vancouver's Chinatown. We have been in several other Chinatowns, including in Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco, and I've visited the Chinese Garden in Portland. It was interesting to note similarities and differences. The Vancouver Chinatown website notes that with 300,000 people, Vancouver has one of the largest Chinese populations in the world outside of China. However, the actual Chinatown--at least the touristy part--didn't feel as large as San Francisco's or New York's Chinatowns, which each have a population of about 100,000.  It felt more like the LA Chinatown, which has about 10,000 people. Maybe we just didn't explore enough, or maybe they just don't play up to tourists as much in Vancouver.

Every Chinatown we've been to has a grand entrance gate of some kind. There are two in Vancouver, the Chinatown Millennial Gate:

 . . . and the China Gate:

These dragon-decorated street lamps were added in 1979:

"The Monument of Canadian Chinese" is shaped like the Chinese character "zhong," which symbolizes Chinese, moderation, and harmony. The two figures standing on the base represent the local Chinese contributions to North America: a Chinese railroad worker and a Canadian Chinese World War II soldier:

SAN FRANCISCO PART 2: CHINATOWN

In January we spent some time with Andrew in Los Angeles's Chinatown, so we were excited to go to San Francisco's Chinatown and compare.  San Francisco Chinatown prides itself on being the largest Chinese community outside of Asia, as well as the oldest Chinatown in North America.  Wikipedia notes that it gets more visitors each year than even the Golden Gate Bridge.  Based on the day we were there, I can believe that.

A couple we struck up a conversation with in a restaurant on Saturday night mentioned they had taken a free "City Walk" tour.  When we got back to our hotel, I researched those tours on the Internet and discovered there was one in Chinatown available on Monday, and all we had to do was show up at the starting point, which was less than a mile from our hotel.  What a great deal!

Our tour guide was a retired high school history teacher with a love of the city.  He gave us the basic history, pointed out significant features and buildings, and took us down alleyways and into buildings we never would have ventured down and into on our own.  If you're ever in San Francisco and need a guide, we can recommend these City Walk Tours as a great place to start.

This is our guide (in the orange coat) and part of our group of about 20 walkers.

One of the entrances to Chinatown that happened to be located one block from our hotel

Our guide said this is the only "real" Chinese structure still standing.  Everything else is designed for tourism by American architects.

This mess of wiring didn't inspire confidence

Talk about prime real estate.  Chinatown abuts the poshest parts of downtown San Francisco's business district.

 Near the end of the tour, Bob and I were hungry and decided to branch off on our own.  We had seen lots of interesting food and were ready to try some.

If you need a live frog or turtle for dinner, this is your shop.  I was SO glad our hotel room did not have a kitchenette.

Bob selected some pork and a whole duck from one of the displays.  The shop's butcher cut it up into manageable-sized pieces for us to eat.

I think I would cut off my whole hand if I tried to use this cleaver.

We had some dim sum--Chinese appetizers--including chicken skewers, barbecued pork dumplings, and pork gyoza.

Tasty, beautiful desserts

While we were in the bakery eating our desserts, we noticed the banging of drums and clanging of cymbals out on the sidewalk.  As the ruckus got closer, we spied a dragon dancing in and out of the shops.  It had been the Chinese New Year celebration earlier that week, and we figured this was part of the tradition.  The dragon, a Chinese symbol of strength, power, and good luck, was bestowing his blessings on all the local business owners.  The drummers and cymbalists would stay out on the sidewalk making as much noise as possible while the dragon danced around in the shops.  When he came into our bakery, the women behind the counter made a point of reaching out to touch his furry head.

We did have one rather incredible experience.  As we were walking out of one of the shops at the Chinatown entrance near our hotel, we heard voice calling out, "Bob Cannon!"  It turned out to be Courtney Camp, a young girl from our ward in Redlands who has been attending the University of Utah and who was in San Francisco auditioning for the San Francisco Conservatory of Music graduate program in opera.  What are the chances?  It was a most auspicious meeting.  I think it had something to do with seeing the Good Luck Dragon earlier in the day.

All in all, San Francisco's Chinatown is fun, fun, fun!  We are looking forward to visiting a THIRD Chinatown in New York City in a few weeks.