Planes, Trains and Automobiles. And buses and scooters and boats and bicycles...

As my fellow travelers can tell you, we got around in China.  Also, we took some transportation.

To answer a popular question: the flight to Beijing took about 13.5 hours.  We headed north from JFK, up over the North Pole, and down over Siberia to land in northern China. (We did the whole thing in reverse to come home, but it took a little less time: a pleasantly brief 12.5 hours.)

Around China, we had a coach bus to lug us all from place to place.  It was lovely, but people really needed to pick their seat & stick with it.  I hated having to fight for seats every dang day.  It sucked, but it's fine. Whatever. Anyway, our transportation was rather boring.  The local folks knew where the excitement was:

Scooters.

I am familiar with carpooling, but apparently China has scooterpooling.  I would say about 40% of all scooters carried more than one person.  The best was seeing and entire family - Dad driving, Mom holding on behind him, and a kid sitting on the floor on Dad's feet, holding a small dog- all on one standard scooter!  Seriously, who needs minivans when you have a scooter.  Oh you know what else they don't need? Helmets. And at night-- no headlights! Are you kidding?? And the entire time, we only saw one accident. Statistically impossible, I tell you.  Safety shmafety.

And speaking of safety, although car seats exist, they are used about as frequently as diapers (more on that later).  While ripping down the highway, I looked out the window and saw this:

Yes, that's an infant pulling himself up on the window.  Remember, we were on the highway.  Going fast.  Oy.

Contrast the lack of confinement there, to this version of a taxi/paddywagon.  A passenger hails this "vehicle", then backs into it to sit down.  Look at that passenger in the second photo.  She looks like she's being hauled off to jail or something.

Bicycles were about as prevalent as scooters.  Check out this parking area at the Temple of Heaven.  The view out of the other side of the bus was similar-- rows of bicycles as far as the eye can see.  (Note the small paddywagon thingie on the left, and what looks to be a double-paddy in the foreground!)

If you feel the need for speed, China is the place to go for the Mag Lev trains.  Unfortunately we only got up to the snail's pace of 301 km/h (187 mph).  During peak times of the day, the train gets all the way up to 431 km/h (268 mph).

We took two boat rides too.  One on the Grand Canal (the one I've previously mentioned, with the dishes and the fishes and the pee), and a boat ride around West Lake in Hangzhou.  This is the start of one of my favorite jokes:  "A monk and businessman were on a boat..."

And when there wasn't a vehicle as a mode of transportation, feet did the trick.  Did I mention that we walked? A lot? We did. A lot.

Hotels: Your home away from home, but way nicer and someone else makes the bed every day.

I intended to cover the remaining topics in order as I posted them, but whatever.  I can do what I want.

So our hotels were included in the price of the package.  And they sure knew how to pick 'em!  The rooms were nice, on the super-nice end of the spectrum I would say. They say 5 star, I'd say 4 1/2 , again just because I can.

One thing I found interesting was the need to have the bathroom open into the main bedroom.  I don't know if it was feng shui or just because they thought Americans like to see the TV while they're in the shower, but still.  It was weird.  Paying the difference to have a room to myself was the smartest move ever.  I would have had to endure 9 days of stagefright, and that's just not good for one's bladder.

So here we go: the room in Beijing:

The next hotel in Suzhou was interesting.  Although the bathroom was a separate, normal, 4-walled bathroom with no peep glass, I ended up with a weird suite.

Start in the tiled foyer...

Move to the living room (note the office at the top left)

Spin around and check out the bedroom.

I would have taken a picture of the bathroom, but at that time, I didn't know the bathrooms here were magical.  Apparently, in the middle of the night (mostly to play jokes on those who have had too much to drink) the toilets have been known to move around the room.  And everyone knows hows hard it is to aim for a moving target while the room is spinning. Just ask the poor housekeeper who cringed at the simple, understated "Sorry" note, and a few extra dollars.

Moving on to the hotel in Hangzhou...this was interesting.  The seemingly solid wall next to the bed is obviously the wall of the bathroom.  However, upon close examination, it was easy to see that it once held a window. What the heck? Some rooms still had the peep shade.  I just don't get it.

This also confused me.  The toilet was in a stall.  A glass stall.  I can understand having a wall to keep the water in the shower, but a glass door felt like overkill.

We noticed that the hotel rooms were all registered to the tour group-- none of us had credit cards on file for incidental charges.  So at every check out, a member of the hotel staff would hurry to your room to check for damage and inventory the minibar.  Then our guide would walk up & down the aisle of the bus and have people pay cash on the spot.  Apparently, although the toothpaste was free, the condoms were not.  Further, it seems that we were just about the only rooms who didn't take the condoms.  Watching poor little Emily ask folks for $3 for condoms was priceless.  She tried to ask people quietly, and some laughed it off "Oh yeah! They were great souvenirs!" and other people crumbled and uttered through clenched teeth "I don't have any cash.  Just give her $3. Stop asking me why! Pay her and I'll tell you later."

Our hotel in Shanghai might have been my favorite.  I love how the bathtub was just more than an arm's length from the bed.  Wooden panel doors slid around to separate the bathroom from the bedroom, but what's the point when you have no roommate? Nothing better than wrapping up a long day by soaking in the tub, watching HBO (one of the only English channels) and eating Peanut Butter M&Ms.

Not to mention the art above the toilet screamed "Dave Matthews Band" to me.

Like long lost cousins...

Unfortunately, probably the most sleep I got was on the flight home.  The window seat in the very last row of the plane was surprisingly comfortable, or I was exceedingly exhausted.  Either way, it was like the 5th hotel, but not as nice and you couldn't walk around in your underwear.

Food (Part 2): The locals

Sensitive folks may want to avert your eyes.  Things get a little, um, vivid, towards the end of this post so be warned.  I will put an alert before the particularly "cultural" pictures.

I love street food vendors.  I don't care if it's a NY hot dog, a jacket potato in the UK, or cantaloupe sold from the back of a bike in Shanghai.

We did have the opportunity to go to 2 different local food markets.  I only wish we didn't walk through the market on the way to lunch, and then get excitedly told that the ingredients for our lunch came from that particular market, that very morning.  I much prefer the shrink-wrapped, sanitized American supermarket.  But the veggies looked good!

There was a street vendor row which comes alive at night.  They serve everything imaginable, and then some things you can't even imagine.  We were informed by our guide to not eat or touch anything.  So naturally, we had some in our group who decided to purchase and consume the offerings.  No less than 3 of our party ate snake from a street vendor.  Then to add insult to potential injury, the one guy then LICKED HIS FINGERS!  Ew, do you have any idea what kind of crap we were touching all day?  That's just asking to bring home some sort of enterovirus as a souvenir.

,.-~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸-LOCAL CUISINE BELOW-,.-~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸

,.-~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸-(That means dead animals & parts which might be too much for Americans)-,.-~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸

,.-~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸-You Have Been WARNED-,.-~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸

Anyway, as much as I'm a fan of street food, I also enjoy food on a stick.  But somehow I found the inner strength to resist...

Grubs & Shrimp? Bubba from Forrest Gump never mentioned that.

I have no idea what is on the left side of this picture.  Scorpion maybe? Then a frog (lower left, looks blackish), snake in the middle, more unidentifiables, and a seahorse in the lower right! 

Calamari, anyone?

 

This is from the market, but I opted to slap it below the warning line: pig snouts & chicken feet.

Food (Part 1): An American view

Let's just get it out there-  Chinese food would have been awesome.  But Americanized Chinese food, made by Chinese folks who had never been to America, well that sort of sucked. I'm sure I would have been burnt out on whatever, eating the same thing for 9 days.  If I never see another Luna bar, it will be too soon.  However, some options were better than others.

Breakfast was (with one exception) always awesome.  They were at our western-style hotels, so they had eggs, something that resembled bacon, yogurt, etc.  The only exception was the day we had an early morning flight from Beijing to Shanghai.  They packed us breakfast for the road-- a hardboiled egg, bottle of water, and some sort of bologna & mustard sandwich.  Um, ew?

We did have Peking duck one night. Something new to me, and no one really knew how to properly eat it.  So the waitress came over, did a demo (slapped it, some onion, some bean sauce into a pancake, and rolled it up) and it happened to be on my plate.  Holy onion.  That was the only night that my stomach felt sketchy, and it was seriously just the straight raw onion.  Or it could have been that the duck was made out of fiberglass.

Without a doubt, the staple at every meal was rice.  We had to ask our guide what some of the stuff was (pork? chicken? duck? alien?) but it was somewhat identifiable.  Quizically, they often served tofu & chicken in the same dish.  So the vegetarian couldn't pick out the tofu since it had chicken juice in it, and I couldn't pick out the chicken since it had tofu juice in it, dang that soy allergy.

One night we attempted to get Pizza Hut after a particularly inedible dinner.  We asked our guide for a regular cheese pizza. When the delivery arrived, it was loaded with all sort of stuff: veggies, meats, you name it.  Apparently a "regular" pizza to Chinese folks means the equivalent of our garbage pie, and what we were looking for (cheese, sauce, crust) is "vegetarian."  Vegetarian to us means veggies.  Oy, it wasn't the end of the world and I happily ate a piece of Chinese Pizza Hut. Who else can say that?

Kudos to Kristin for telling our guide that we wanted coffee.  She took us to Starbucks in quaint little Hangzhou!  It was just as burnt and overpriced as it was in the States.  It felt like home.

Pardon the interruption

After a minor detour and a whole lot of sleeping, there are a few more topics to cover before I can put this China thing to bed.

1.  Food
2.  "Real" culture
3.  The bathroom
4.  Transportation
5.  Our hotels

Granted, the topics blend with each other and create a vicious Venn diagram (food + real culture, or real culture + the bathroom) but I'm sure you'll be able to follow along.

But wait, there's more!

A few folks have asked and no, I'm not finished blogging yet (For those who cheered at that, thank you. And those who groaned, well that's just rude. And I know who you are & you should be ashamed.)

I have a bajillion pictures to go through and post with short commentaries, so stay tuned. And yes, I will have a few posts & pictures of the bathrooms...

My apologies that I wasn't able to update as frequently or as thoroughly as I had expected. I hope you were at least mildly entertained!

Gno-more gnomes!

The language barrier is something insane.  I've seen some great typos and signs which are just translation nightmares.

 

Favorite typos so far include Beauty Saloon (get drunk & get a perm?), "Protect our Caltarel relics" (someone had penciled in "cultural") and a wadding gown (you know, what the bride wears on her wadding day). 

 

This tranlsation of the sign near the garbage can in the Lingering Gardens was just quizical and comical though.

Tired of the gnome yet?

Yes, I have pictures without the gnome.  They're not nearly as much fun though.

 

Except the one of Hot Sauce sleeping on the sidewalk outside of the silk factory.  She and another of our traveling companions required naps more than they required knowledge of silk worm life cycle and growth.  They missed out, I'm telling you. (And no, I'm trying to be mildly respectful by not posting the photo.  I can be swayed though...)

I forgot about yesterday

Yesterday, we took a boat ride on the Grand Canal-- the oldest and longest canal system in the world. Houses were built right up on the canal, and it was sort of gross to see that, within 500 yards, someone was peeing directly into the water, someone else was washing dishes, someone else catching fish. 

 

We took the boat to traditional local market in Suzhou, and our tour guide offered to let us walk around for a half-hour on our own.  Everyone was panicked and wanted nothing to do with it!  The sights and sounds were a little overwhelming, and it makes you really think about the daily conveniences we enjoy. 

 

And one thing I forgot to mention yesterday. Since we had to be up at 4am to catch our flight from Beijing to Shanghai, we had a moment in honor of Clint: Second breakfast.  I think that man may be on to something.  Even though second breakfast was airline food, it was quite possibly one of the best meals I've had in nearly a week.

Cricket Leo

We had lunch at the home of a championship cricket-fighting trainer.  Seriously.  This guy trains crickets to fight each other, and people bet on them.

 

So anyway, we piled 35 people into his 2-room home and our table was in his bedroom.  His wife cooked like 10 different dishes on a 2-burner stove! It was interesting, and not something you can experience anyplace else.

Oh, silly Americans

I can't imagine what the poor guy in the tiger suit was thinking as we try to explain, in English, "hey buddy, can you hold my gnome?

It helps if I attach the photo

...

The Leaning Tower of China

I'm not kidding.  It's 200 years older than Pisa, but it doesn't have nearly as much lean.  But you can absolutely see that it's a little off-kilter.

Forbidden City

They made the movie The Last Emperor here.  Also, I think they made Kung Fu Panda here, too.

???

So apparently I can't do as much as I thought I could via the intertubes, and I'm disappointed that the updates aren't as frequent and as entertaining as before.  I can't access this website from where I am, so the updates have to come via email, which is a pain in the butt and I can't see if it's actualy working or whatever.

 

Regardless, and without further adieu, a summary of the last few days:

 

You guys know those Lord of the Rings movies?  I don't.  I mean I never watched them.  But I hear they involved a bunch of people walking. And then they walked some more. Well we hoofed it more than those little Hobbits could have ever done.

 

I sort of don't know where to start and where I stopped, but basically I really want mozzarella sticks.  There is no cheese in China.  If someone, anyone, would have told me that, it might have been a dealbreaker.  Anyway, no cheese, plenty of other random things.  Just ask the freaks who ate snake from a street vendor last night. (The gnome is standing in front of the back of the carts).  More random pics to follow, if all goes according to plan.

Great Wall!!

It took 3 tries to get this picture. He kept blinking.

I went about 1/2 way up. Kristin ran up the whole dang thing, then
let me negotiate the price on her "I Climbed the Great Wall" t-shirt
while she tried to recover feeling in her legs.

Ni Hao!

The last thing I expected on this trip was a stowaway! (Ok fine, it was a planned gnome-napping.)
The internet is silly. I have tried multiple times to send updates, but my password isn't working and the error message is in Chinese. Oh well...better late than never.

So the flight was long. The last 4 hours of the 13+ flight was the worst part. It's safe to say I'm not looking forward to the return flight.

However, stuff is pretty amazeballs. Yesterday we walked around the Temple of Heaven where the emperor would pray for good harvest. I should have prayed for something more than sauteed bok choy & unknown meat. This trip's corporate sponsor should be Quaker Oats, with the way I'm relying on granola bars to get me through the day.

Celeb sighting!

Trust me when I tell you that that is Academy-award winning actor Adrien Brody, sitting at a table in JFK, with his parents, and eating red peppers that he grew in his own garden.

Well everything after the JFK part may not be completely accurate. Except that he was eating red peppers. That part I'd swear to.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Same thing we do every night

On Friday, Kristin came over to my cell cubicle and proffered "Hey I'm thinking about maybe going to China this weekend.  Wanna go?"

For some reason, the Pinky & the Brain theme popped into my head. As you consider who is who, remember who is the card-carrying genius.

T-1 hour, 18 minutes until the group's bus departs from K-town.

Woo!

That's right, folks.  It's officially official.  The blog is back in action!

I guess I better start digging out some stuff to pack.