Photos

Most of the panda pics are up...

You will NOT believe this...

So I signed up for a cooking class offered by the hostel. I thought, "Oh, I'm in Chengu, where else would I learn how to cook traditional Sichaun food?" So I jumped at the chance - It's $8, I get to eat the food, and I get a free beer.

It wasn't until about two minutes before the class started that I thought, "I'm going to have to touch raw meat."

I figured that it was time to just deal with it. I had to butterfly a piece of chicken before cubing it, and slice a piece of pork into very small pieces. I have survived... And I did like the little hats...

I did eat up afterwards...

email address...

OK. So my father has pointed out a quite large blunder... All of the cards that I handed out before I left have the wrong email address. My correct email address is

mshayes1 at gmail.com

Apologies if you've been using the other email address.

Pandas

I saw the pandas today. With a little work, I should have the pics posted in the next couple of days...

MH

Photos

I've put up some photos and added the captions. I'll try and do some more while I'm in Chendu. Connection isn't great, but the menus are in English. So I may try to compress and post...

Click on the "photo" link to the right...

Blog issues...

Since leaving Beijing, I have not actually been able to view the blog. I can access "blogger.com" to add posts, but I can't reach wheresmarcia.blogspot.com.

I get the traditional IE error message page about not being able to find a server.

I can't read any of the comments that you've left since last Friday, as I can only see these on the site. I have set it up to email only me when a comment is added to the site.

I'm not sure what to do about this. If you have an idea, please email it to me...

Next steps

I am currently in a hostel in Chengdu. There's a nice temple nearby. It's mostly just a place to hang out for a while before moving on. There seem to be a lot of people congregating here. I'll be here at least through Friday night.

Next two steps:
Guangzhou will be my next stop, as it's just across the "border" from Hong Kong. I plan at least two days in HK before I fly out on 6 Nov.

Hear no evil...

For those of you that don't know this, I was a sophomore in high school before I knew that there were only three "no evils" - hear no evil, say no evil, speak no evil.

Why would I have fostered such a misunderstanding? Growing up, my parents had a curio cabinet containing four monkeys sitting on a piece of wood. They demonstrated four evils - hear no evil, say no evil, speak no evil, and do no evil. "Hear no evil" monkey covered his eyes, "say no evil" monkey covered his ears, etc.

Walking through the market in Xi'an, I fulfilled a life long quest - to find a set of said four monkeys for myself.

Rambling....

Here's where my Western eyes really discuss what I think I see...

Capitalism has won. You walk down the streets of Beijing, and, other than the lack of Roman letters, its the same as any other large city. They are pioneering new (to me) methods of advertising. Imagine sitting in the subway, and having a series of TVs placed at such a distance from each other that your eye views them as one image. (There's some physics thing with the train velocity and eye imaging that I'll leave for someone else to comment on.) I saw Nestle advertising milk, and other things I personally didn't understand.

It's loud. Everywhere, it's loud.

The trains: Wow. It was like an out-of-China experience. The train to Xi'an left PROMPTLY. No one spit. No one could smoke (The Surgeon General apparently issues no warnings here.). The bathrooms were clean. They had toilet paper. They were quiet, at least more so than the ones in India. The speakers played classical Western music. At a reasonable volume.

I feel so lost in this country. The language thing. It's not like in Europe, where I would at least feel more at home with the Roman alphabet. It's frustrating that I can't even ask why there's such a long line. Or make small talk waiting in said line. The phrasebook has been indispensible.

I think that's all for now. Probably more will occur five minutes after I log off...

Eating

I always thought that I was an adventurous eater. Not that I wasn't fastidious about its preparation, but that there weren't a lot of things that I wouldn't try.

China has proved me wrong.

I was willing to eat the octapus on a stick (cooked in front of me at a roadside stand) but pidgeon, no. Not even the eggs. Shark fin, no. And those were the things identified on a menu. The things I see in convienance stores, not even close. I'm a little disappointed in myself.

I ate the green tea flavored potato chips. I didn't really care for them. The taste was just too incongruent with the food. I like green tea. But in a potato chip, it's just too disconcerting...

Duck

Being in Beijing, I had to try the Peking duck. It was quite the experience. Fortunately, they slice it for you. It comes in small pieces.

Imagine a thin tortilla, five inches in diameter. You dip the duck in plum sauce, spreading it on the wrap. This, I found, is key.

Top it with garlic, cucumber, and purple lettuce, and youçre good to go. Imagine completing the following with chopsticksÑ

Fold the wrap over the contents to form a semicircle
Using your chopsticks, form a ÇVÇ over the contents.
I cheated, and used more plum sauce at the ends of the semicircle for use as spackle. Fold the ends over the middle, pick up, and eat.

Remember, this is ALL with chopsticks.

I was given a demo. Nothing ended up on my shirt, but it wasnçt pretty.

MH

Details...

So I found out today that the charger for my cell phone works in the US only, not the 100-220 V that I need. I really thought that I had looked at this, but obviously not.

A taxi ride later, I found myself in a mall. Or rather, a large department store. A few observationsÑ

?Forgive the punctuation, as I think the keyboard is set to some other language... AnywayÑ

- Signs that point the way ÇaheadÇ - ie bathroom this way, in the States, use an up arrow. Here, itçs a down arrow.
- There were no places to sit down.
- Outside, there was a display and presentation to encourage people to travel to Korea. That would be South Korea. Captialism is alive.

Great Wall

Today I took an organized tour offered by the hostel. It was complete with two stops for our purchasing pleasures.

For those of you not familar with this hustle, it works like this:

Start on tour with guide of questionable ability
Throw in system of kickbacks
Stop at various shops along the way. You get a little "educational" lecture on how difficult it is to produce the handicraft in question. Then you're set free to buy away.

This happened twice before we saw either site on the tour.

We saw the Ming Tomb, apparently the one that's really boring.

Then we went to the Great Wall. Let me just say that it is not ADA compliant. I did not roll down any sections of the wall. It was steep, and a lot of hard work.

Pictures and more explanation will be forthcoming once I overcome the language/computer issues (see previous post).

Geek help, please

I suffer from a SLOW internet connection. Therefore, I'm trying to compress the files for upload. HOWEVER, ALL menus on this computer are in Chinese Characters. It is "not possible" to change them to English. I've tried, but everywhere I turn, it's in Chinese.

So the question is... I need to find a way to compress all pictures in a folder, using only key strokes. Or, you can tell me to "choose the first column, second option down, right click here" type of directions. Is this possible?

Please advise....

Next steps

As promised, here are my next TWO steps:

I have booked a train (or rather, someone handled that for me) to Xi'an for Saturday night. This is roughly a 13-14 hour train ride. It is home to the Terracotta Warriors.

Once I get there, I will book a train to Chendu. There's a consulate there, so it can't be all bad. I'm hesitating a bit on this, as Chendu is way out there. The main reason to go there is to visit a park, which I am now able to pronounce, but not spell. That, apparently, takes a week. I fly from Hong Kong on 6 Nov, and want a few days there, so I'm not conviced I have time.

I'll let you know.

What I did today...

I wandered around. I decided to go to the Forbidden City. On my walk to the subway, I knew I needed breakfast, and had heard that there was a bakery on the way. I think I found said bakery, but it violated a rule.

Before I left, Yan advised me to find someplace small, with a LOT of people. No one was at the bakery, so I kept walking.

I found a nice hole in the wall with a line of people. Sounds good. I see people have soup and those white bread balls filled with tasty goodness. I don't know what exac form of tasty goodness was in the set I got, but it was good for me. I was complemented on my use of chopsticks. (Aside to Rhonda: I had soup made from that purple rice you have. It had no taste in the soup either.)

I did make it to the Forbidden City, and then to the Observatory. There was no admittance fee to the latter, as it was swarming with kids dressed in yellow sweatsuits. The kids seemed to perform; there was a dancer and a rap group. The adults seemed to take pictures.

Pictures should be up soon.

Pete- This Post's for you

So last night, I'm looking through the guidebook for a place to have dinner. I see the words "Belgian" and "beer" in close proximity, and feel blessed that such a place is within walking distance. It turns out that the street this place was on was demolished last year, but I did find a substitute. They serve Belgian beer and Belgian waffles. I had some of each.

They had Chimay, Duvel, Mort Subite, the Trappists, FOUR types of Hoegaarden, including the Grand Cru. They had many types of lambic in several flavors. They have the Hoegaarden on tap. Last night, however, the tap was out, and the keg stuck in customs. Such regulations.

I may go back.

Oh - please forgive the spelling. I want to point out that most of the web page is actually in Chinese. The help text, which normally indicates how I can check my abc's, is not so helpful.

Haircut

I got my hair cut today. I was wandering around some alley, and found someplace that looked like it would suffice. 10 Yuan later, I had shorter hair.

Hey All!

How's it going? I'm alive and well. I have found a hostel, found food, and even some oranges.

It was a bit odd. During my transit, I was freaked out, pretty much thinking that I had lost my mind. But then, when I landed, I sort of snapped out of it. I went into the "deal with the practicalities mode" that you all know and love.

I'll write more when I'm less jet lagged.

Automatic Emails

Most of you received an email with instructions concerning procedures to receive automatic updates on the contents of this blog. I've received reports of issues. Please cut and paste the email address:

MSH-Blog-update-subscribe@googlegroups.com

If you just click on the link in the email, it does not add the -subscribe and will give you an error message...

Marcia

The phone...

There seem to be a number of off line questions about the phone... Through a long trail, which I won't repeat here (I know it's shocking for me to leave out a detail), I found a web site that explained a lot of info about international phones in general - the frequencies, different companies, using an US based provider vs local SIM chips, etc.

I chose one of the two recommended providers. Incoming calls in Europe and China are free, outgoing is $0.50 per min. The other provider gave you a free SIM chip, but had much higher per minute charges.

The company that makes the sim chip is Riiing. I went to telestial.com to actually purchase the chip. They were mentioned in a few guide books as a SIM chip provider.

I purchased the phone on ebay for $85. It's a quadband unlocked Motorola V180. Nothing special, just does exactly what I want.

What do you want to know?

So I'm going to wander through far off lands. I want to know what you're curious about. What do I need to report on?

I already have one request to ascertain the availability of Diet Pepsi. I'm looking for things like that, or the "How did you figure out how to do..." kind of questions.

I'm thinking of collecting pictures of toilets and light switches, but I'm not sure if that will interest anyone else.

Let me know...

Maps

I've had a few requests to post a map of the places I'm visiting...

The X at the bottom is Bali...