Finally, craft beer

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Laziest day so far. We slept in and laid around until it was too late for us to get lunch in the hotel.

I did a bunch of transportation research, trying to figure out how to get to a craft Taphouse we spotted on the Internets when we first got here.

It required a train transfer and a bus. The buses are pretty easily navigable, And cost all of 1CNY.

Birdland https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g297442-d10456389-Reviews-Birdland_Craft_Beer-Suzhou_Jiangsu.html

This place was great, the beer was so fantastic, finally getting good beer in us was wonderful. We each had 4 Chinese beers, split a plate teriyaki chicken and rice, and a 12" pizza. And then on the way out we bought a bunch of Chinese beers for a sort of Pick-six. All for 600CNY.

The bus and trains took us home, we stopped for snacks, got back to the room eating the snacks and drinking some of the beers before passing out.

The Chinese upper crust, really liked their gardens

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Woke up to a beautiful day in Suzhou, 50F, sunny, limited smog, good day. We decided to walk to one of the very nice gardens, eat lunch, and hit up another garden.

The walk to the Lion Grove Garden took about 45 minutes, and introduced us to a different part of the city. The various canals make navigating without GPS pretty easy, as they are pretty significant landmarks.

This garden is nearly 700 years old, one of the very few that have survived the centuries. The signage in the garden claims the garden was "donated" to the Chinese government in 1949 by the family that had owned it for the previous decades, which is the same year that all private property was nationalized...

It is mostly a rock garden, similar to the rock seen in the Beijing gardens. These rocks are said to have looked like a lion, whch is where the garden gets its name. The garden was gorgeous, and very large. There were indoor reception areas, and tea drinking spots, and then all kinds of nooks and crannies outside, little man made caves and mountains, made of rocks stacked together and cemented together.

There were various informational points explaining that this spot was used for meditating, and this for observing nature.

After wandering around this garden we were ready for lunch.

I had spotted a place while we had the full google suite back in the hotel. This place was between the two gardens we intended to hit. When we found the place it was closed, more than closed for lunch, they were closed for business. BUT at the same time we were turning away, a Chinese couple was jut as surprised/disappointed as us, though they could read the sign... the place was no longer in business.

So we ate some street food. We had flaky meat pockets from a little storefront restaurant. We asked for meat, the kid behind the counter pointed at one, we asked for 2, he asked for 10CNY, and we went on our way. We think they were pork, but they were heavily seasoned with sesame, and they were pretty dry, the would however go very well with a beer, though we dont know what the open container laws are here, and Im not tryna be on locked up abroad ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banged_Up_Abroad ) for something as petty as drinking a beer on the street.

We made our way to the next garden, The Humble Administrator's Garden. This is a UNESCO heritage site, occupying over 50,000 square meters. The area has been a site of a garden of some kind or another since the 1150s, though it didnt become what we see today until the 16th century.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humble_Administrator%27s_Garden

This garden is what the architects of the Summer Palace in Beijing was emulating. It was pretty spectacular, a maze of paths and waterways, with more reception halls and minor residences throughout. They even had a bonsai garden that was very extensive.

At one point there was a gaggle of elderly Chinese tourists that were very excitedly taking pictures of a thing on top of a mini rock mountain. We saw them piling up to take pictures at the base, so obviously we took a picture ourselves. And then we walked around, and up the mini mountain to incpect more thuroughly. And there was nothing remarkable, no data plate telling us why poeple would take pictures of it. I think the key was in the tourguides...telling some anecdotal story that would mean alot to Chinese culture/history aficionados.

After this, we made the trek home, found a hotpot place, and ate. This was one of the moments where being a very obviously lost tourists is a benefit. The staff was super helpful, voluntarily busting out their phone to translate their Chinese, and help us along, while we had our phones out to translate our english to ask questions. We got a 1.5L beer, which came in a little table-tap, that tasted a little off. Turns out the Chinese cheat with their cheap beer like we do, but instead of using High Fructose Corn Syrup like we do in our PBRs and Milwaukee's Best, they use a rice mash in their Tsingtao and Snow beers.

We got a hotpot of bone soup, for extra flavor, then went to choose our ingredients. We went to the cooler/refrigerator (configured much like the egg/dairy section of a grocery store) to select vegetables and meats to throw in our pot. Everything comes on skewers to make it easier to cook, and to keep tab, as they charge straight up by number of skewers. After we ate some, one of the staff came over and offered to help us select what to eat.

Laura went with him to choose foods, and warned them that I cannot eat fish (i can eat fish, we just prefer to keep fishballs and other heavily fishy foods out of the hot pot, because the instant you toss a fishball into the broth, EVERYTHING now tastes like fish, pork belly now tastes like fish, cabbage; fish, fine sliced beef sirloin...fish).

The spread brought back was great, and the guy kept coming around and pointing out which stuff was done and ready to eat.

After clearing our hotpot, and our beer, we closed the tab, 105CNY, so $15 bucks, for 1.5L of beer and plenty of foods.

Not quite satisfied, we ordered cheap room service, partly because we have never done that before, inhaled the noodles that were delivered by the staff, and settled in to watch a movie.

Venice of the East

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Woke up late, packed up and checked out at the last possible moment before the train to Suzhou.

We took the subway to the Shanghai Rail Station, and made our way to the ticket office. We stood in line, and some guy just stepped right in front of us, i guess queues dont matter here. We realize the next window over has an english speaking agent, but not enough, the first question we asked (when is the next train?) he just waved his hands and pointed us one over.

This lady was able to help us, she said the next train was 1316, it was 1247. Given how difficult wandering around the Beijing trainstation was, we elected to take the 1400 train. Unnecessary, this station was much smaller, and security was much quicker, we made the rounds checking the food options, settling on a fried chicken place. I had a wrap and laura had a sandwich, both were pretty good, I honestly cannot remember the last time i had KFC or Churches or Popeye’s so i have no reference for good fastfood chicken. I was satisfied with the 4USD we spent on lunch.

We boarded the train, and 25 minutes later disembarked in Suzhou.

Suzhou is not a small town ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzhou ) metro area is over 10 million people. And when we got out of the station, it was even more “stereotypical asia” than anywhere we have been so far. there were scooters everywhere, ignoring traffic lights, laws, and safety. It was crazy, we saw some pedestrians come within 2 feet of getting hit by a bus.

We got to our hotel, a Holiday Inn, and it is pretty good. we got a high floor room with a view of the city, and the room is enormous. by far the largest room we have had in asia, and probably the largest non-suite hotel room i have ever stayed in.

We did some research and rolled out for a sweet pork place.

Maps are terrible here, whatever mapping company that has the ok from the PRC to map this area really needs to get its shit together.

We headed to the location the internet claimed this restaurant was at. It required us to walk a good two miles, some of which down a rather dark road parallelling one of the canals (yeah Suzhou was described as The Venice of the East). We didnt feel unsafe, like we were at risk of being a victim of crime, just at risk of walking into the canal or getting hit by a scooter.

when the pork place was NOT on the map, we resolved to go back to a noodle place we walked past on the way.

We walked in, and clearly couldnt read the menu, we asked for the hostess/waitress/co-owners recommendation, and she wiped out an english map. I had a beef and noodles thing, and laura had a rice noodle and beef thing.

Both were excellent, there were little round things in mine, that laura said we mushrooms, i ate one, noted the deliciousness and gave one to her, then ate another, and realized there is no way mushrooms would taste like this; this is beef intestines. I happily ate the beef intestines, and noodles, laura ate her glass noodles, contented, we resolved to hit one of the pastry shops we saw on the way here.

We picked up some sweets, and headed the 2 miles back home.

I got a blueberry sweet bread, it was a sort of french toast bread, with blueberry jam inside, i will make every effort to eat this every day in Suzhou.

Full of spicy noodles and sweet breads, we went home to watch TV and go to sleep.

The Most Great, Victorious, Honorable, Progressive Peoples Republic of China

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Big activity for the day was attending the propaganda poster museum. This place was really neat, very much like the KGB museum in Prague, (see post from summer summer 2012).

It is in the basement of an apartment complex, luckily the security guys know that there is really no other reason a pair of Westerners would be here, so he handed us a business card with a lil map on it.

The place was set up in chronological order, starting with the anti-Japanese propaganda from the time Japan occupied China (wikilink here), and the Anti-Japanese War (which is what the modern communist chinese cal the period of 1937-1945, what we call the Second World War, and the Japanese call the Pacific War). The exhibit continues through to the Korean war era, the Cuban Missile Crisis, The Vietnam War, and more modern thawing of tensions with the US, and the commercial vitalization of the 1980s and 90s.

All of the posters had little cards with the english translation of major text, and a few placards around detailing what period these fall in. The end of the museum had older ads from the turn of the century, which was really cool. These ads were very cool because they predate the communists in China, and show how hard the West was pushing into China, specifically in Shanghai, all of these were for western products, some of them i recognized as in production today.

There were no pictures allowed so all i can do is link to their site. http://www.shanghaipropagandaart.com

I would recommend anyone in Shanghai visit this museum, especially if you have an interest in history/international relations/China/Communism/pop-art.

After this we were pretty hungry, and made a bad decsion, going to a shitty restaurant. They had honestly forgettable food, it took laura and i a few minutes to recall what it was. I had a beef and noodle dish, laura had a noodle soup, both were not that great.

Unsatisfied, we decided to try and find one of the pedestrian streets ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xintiandi ) we had been looking for before. We did ultimately find it, it wasnt as easy to find as the concierge made it seem. It was another very high-end shopping area, with neat restaurants that were very very expensive.

At this point we determined that Shanghai isnt for us. Its cool to visit, but it is a city of extremes. Either you go to ultra-swanky skyline bars and pay 25USD for a cocktail, and 55USD a plate at dinner, or you go to a basement restaurant where a couple can eat and drink for less than 10USD.

We certainly appreciate the inexpensive, but sometimes, we want a midgrade restaurant, a place where we get to sit on more than a stool under an umbrella, but less than a table with a special purse stool.

we did snipe the wifi at this mall to find a western style restaurant. It had prices much like prices we would pay in Chicago, I got a goat cheese torttellini, laura got a braised lamb shank, the lamb was all off the bone delicious, my tortellini was pretty good not spectacular, but pretty good. We also got desserts, two scoops of gelato, salted caramel, and baklava. The baklava tasted exactly like baklava, i dunno how they did it, but it was so accurate. the other desert we got was honey-ginger bread on a bed of poached pears. THIS was spectacular, the bread wa something i fully intend to emulate, so those of you reading this that have the occasion to meet me, look forward to eating my test-breads on this quest.

We also got a bottle of wine, this ent up being a 150USD dinner, mostly because laura messed up the math and that bottle of wine was 75USD, so it was expensive, but it was a very worthy meal.

Dont worry though, on the way home we picked up a <10usd bottle of wine from 7-11. It was chosen from the 7-11 Select Reserve, and was pretty good, way better than any quickmart wine has any right to be. so this helps to average our the wine spending...

We hopped a train, and unfortunately could not get all the way home, the subway shuts down relatvely early in Shanghai, so we had to walk the last 2 miles home.

When we got home we watched some TV and drank the wine. First we watched some Sumo with english announcers, which was pretty good, helping us understand what exactly was going on. I watched a 115kg guy go up against a 164kg guy, that is a 100lb diference, and he didnt lose immediately.

We also found a show that was basically “Japan why you do that?” It was a room of 50 non-Japanese people that posed explanations for why the Japanese do certain things, like not filling the coffee cup all the way, or why they sleep with their children for so late into their childs lives.

Watching this in China made it all the more bizzare.

We eventually fell asleep, for our last night in Shanghai.

Highs and Lows

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Another late start, I guess the downside of having a really nice hotel is how hard it is to leave.

We walked over to the French Concession area, once again looking for the cool shit our concierge recommended. This time, we found it. It does have some neat shops and restaurants and bars, though in no where near the density we were expecting. When someone says “this area has alot of bars” im thinking of a street where every other storefront is a bar, not each block has 1 or 2 bars on it. This is probably why we didnt find it last time, we did find it we just didnt know it.

We did stumble on a little museum. It was the house of Zhang Leping ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Leping ), who was a comic artist of China, who was used by the Chinese government to produce anti-Japanese propaganda, and later Communist propaganda. This was a free musuem, tucked away in a back street of this neighborhood, we found it purely by accident. It had a walk through of his life, and the works of his life. Upstairs in the house left as it was when he was alive.

After walking around a bit we settled on a beef noodles place.

This was one of the places where they hand pull the noodles, right in front of us. We could see the guy pulling the noodles from the dough before tossing it in the boiling water that would eventually be our meal. I had a noodle dish with a sort of tapenade of finely diced olives, beef, onions and other unidentifiable vegetables. Laura had a noodle soup with beef bits in it. In both dishes Chinese fivespice was prevelant. It was very tasty, proving once again that the hole in the wall places are good choices when over here. And all told our bill ammounted to less than 5USD.

After this we made our way to the Nanjing Shopping street looking for new shoes.

This requires some preface; In the Army i wore my issue boots all day every day, most evenings and weekends i never left the house, and thusly never needed shoes. The civilian shoes i had were some old beat up skate shoes that would not work for two months in Asia, nor look nice enough to sneak into nicer restaurants. So before leaving I hit up a few stores and settled on Saucony running shoes. It had good reviews on Amazon, and various other sites, and i figured running shoes should last for 2 months of heavy walking right? Runners will easily put on 10-12 miles a week, and they dont expect to be replacing shoes every other month. Apparently the same “runners” that reviewed these shoes as tough and durable are the people that wear yoga pants to the grovery store thinking they are "active".

Would these shoes stand up to the rigors of being a nurse walking around marbled floors all day? Or the lifestyle of an carpet bound office worker? yes

An actual runner? not at all.

Within the first 2 weeks, i had worn the primary grip from the soles away, and the memory foam in-sole part was pil-ing pretty bad, after 3 weeks the pil-ing turned into complete wear, the pad of my foot had pulled up most of the memory foam. Essentially at this point the pad of my foot was less than half an inch from the pavement.

The only thing good about these shoes i would like to point out, is they make acceptable climbing shoes, the lack of traction and significant insole meant i was able to boulder/climb the frozen Great Wall of China pretty well. So if you need some climbing shoes that arent climbing shoes, these work.

for 65USD I am very disappointed in these shoes.

Fortunately I am in the land of knockoffs and cheap shit, i found some “outdoor athletic shoes” from a Chinese brand ANTA that will survive at least the last 4 weeks of this trip.

After switching shoes we went to the Bund ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bund ) to see the city all lit up. The Bund is full of western style buildings, this is where all the western countries that “opened up” china set up their trading houses. accross the river from here is the new Shanghai, the part with all the super high ultra modern buildings. these buildings and 1800 put on a sort of light show that is pretty neat. after seeing the light show we intended to catch a river tour. The ticket agents werent very helpful, and observing the boats, it looked like a very limited tour, we decided to walk around.

after feeling confident we saw all there was to see on this side of the river, we hopped a subway to go to the new Shanghai and try to see the city from a high vantage point.

Our concierge recommended the Park Hyatt Bar, as it is the highest bar in the city, providing great views. Unfortunately this is a VERY swanky place, and two people wearing multi-purpose wind breakers, with scarves, wearing clothes packed in a backpack for a 9 week trip, are not the normal clientele. While waiting for the elevator we had some unreasonably snooty people throw shade at us.

getting to the top we realized we were underdressed for the venue, though in all honesty, that lady was being unnecessarily cunt-y, for all she knew we could be Silicon Valley CEOs that just put up an IPO for 5mil and were bout to buy rounds for the bar. We got out of there most ricky-tick and wandered around a park, and various above ground walkways taking in the view before heading home to go to bed.

A Scale Model of the entire city? yes please

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Without any concrete plans we slept in a little bit, laura woke up and researched activities for the day.

On our way out of the hotel we spoke to the concierge, and he hooked us up with a map, and his personal notes on things to see, and things to avoid.

We went down the street to a popular dumpling place. They were only making 3 types of dumplings that day. Pork and Egg yoke, Pure Crab, and a Crab Roe dumpling. We went with the pork, and a beer. It was very very good, and again very inexpensive, a dozen pork dumplings, and a 600ml beer for 33CNY.

We then headed to the Shanghai Urban Planning Musuem. This museum was built in preperation for the 2010 World Expo ( wikilink) and was updated in 2014, so it was very up to date. The first section was an overview of the river, and all the of the things built up around it. The next part was a history of the city, going back to early days of the area when it was just an agricultural county within the chinese empire, through the colonial period when the West opened up the city, to the modern ultra-modern megalopolis of today.

It had a 1:500 scale of the main city on one floor that was spectacular. I love scale models of things, so this walk around model was awesome.

The next section was the pre-human history of Shanghai, talking about the geological processes that gave the city its current landscape. Another section covered transportation, the growth of the metro, and proliferation of buses, traffic control and infrastructure development. And then the last section discussed the plans and current projects in Shanghai.

It was a very good musuem, informational, and visual, there was alot of stuff to read, and even more to look at. Our inability to read Mandarin did not limit our experience in any appreciable way.

We then wandered through parts of the French Concession (remember when i said the West opened up Shanghai )
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_French_Concession

We spotted the US Consulate, not as overt security as i would have expected, but certainly not a friendly welcoming place.

This whole neighborhood has been taken over by foreigners for 150 years, and it was apparant in the architecture and some of the businesses, to include hooters.

pic here

We hopped the metro back to our neighnborhood to research what to do for dinner, and was once againt almost mildly kidnapped.

As we exited the train station a young couple asked if we could take their picture, we obliged, they then engaged us, asking where we were from, and complimenting our English (i think it is wierd that they will ask us where we are from, and when we say the US, they compliment our english, buddy, thats the language spoken here, i dont compliment your Mandarin when you speak to me). They asked us where we were going, and what else we had seen. At first they seemed just really friendly, i was immediately suspicious, cause no one in the world is that friendly, but then they started talking about how they were planning on going to a tea house, and invited us to come with them. We were friendly and cordial, I wanted to see how much of their time we could waste without putting ourselves in danger. Ultimately the engagement lasted at least 5 minutes, only for them to walk away empty handed, and us with a good story.

We then made our way to dinner, a noodle place. I got a dry noodle dish, and laura got a tomato-sauce, and beef rib dish. My food was great, the noodles were tossed in a vegetable oil, and had a side of that same green relish that we have been unable to identify, and lauras beef was delicious, the soup the noodles were in was just ok. satsfied with dinner, we walked back through the market area we navigated to get here,

this place had meat, im guessing halal, because there were alot of lambs and no pigs.

I

it was interesting, not that i have any way to cook these things, but the meat looked good. One of the shops had little puppies that were eating scraps, and presumably keep the vermin away, laura was very excited.

We stopped at a grocery store to snag some sweets, and bought some bananas at a fruit vendor down the street.

We went home for an early night, so we can start the next day a little early.

Knock off highspeed trains, and GDP buffs

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Packed our bags to say goodbye to Beijing. The subway got us to the train station, it is near the airport, so it was the reverse of our journey a few days before.

The Beijing train station is huge, easily the size of a midsize US airport. There were at least 24 tracks, and the tracks were 2-3 levels above ground.

The engineering that went into this place was pretty astounding.

We got some pastry snacks for the train ride in the station, we noticed the fresh made stuff is DRASTICALLY less expensive than pre-packaged, the pastries were between 6-12CNY, but when you went accross the way to the packaged snacks area suddenly you were paying 28CNY for the mass-market version.

When going through security we showed our ticket to the guard, asking where to go, and he pointed up. We went up, walked around, and went back down thinking we were supposed to go around a certain point. unfortunately going down meant we left the secure area, so we went back through, and the guards laughed a little.

We eventually found our train, and our seat. These high speed trains are pretty great, definately on par with the high speed trains of Japan. The train, and line was designed to handle 380km/hr, but they decided 300km/h was fast enough, and actually more efficient. It is over 750 miles, and took about 6 hours. There were attendants walking around with snacks, as well as trays of food for purchase. There were toilets, trash, and a hot water dispenser in every car.

It was pretty swanky, we got the 2nd class tickets and the seats were slightly larger than US domestic flights, and all the other passengers were normal people, some kids, but no tantrums or crying children it was an easy trip.

The views outside were pretty interesting. Much of the route looked alot like middle america, big flat areas, with farmland as far as you can see in either direction. But unlike middle america, threa are random assortments of monstrously large apartment buildings sprouting out of no where. And I mean middle of no where, its like, if Manhattan, KS or Baraboo WI had 5, Fifteen Story apartment buildings in it. These tiny towns didnt appear to have enough jobs to support the 10,000 people that would be living in these complexes. On top of that, it appeared as though many of them were empty, entire buildings with no lights on, no shades down, no laundry hangng. It was eerie.

The Shanghai station is a little out of town so we didnt really see much on the way in via subway. When we popped up out of the subway near our hotel, we saw that Shanghai is indeed a modern metropolis. We got to our hotel, and we were greeted with a cup of tea. They also saw that i left a note in the hotels.com remarks section, asking for a high floor, so they gave us a room on the top floor.

This place is pretty great, here is the view from our room.

We did some research, and found a Szechuan place. This place had a similar menu to the Grandmas place, a big book with pictures, and a checksheet you order on. We had crushed spicy cucumber again, a dish of noodles, a basket of fried mushrooms, and a pork dish on a bed of pumpkin and millet. It was all pretty good, The pork meal was very interesting, the pumpkin calmed alot of the heat that is inherent in Szechuan food.

We wandered home and I passed out very quickly, while laura watched whatever was on HBO.

Ugly Americans, and ancient splendor

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Another early morning to make the bus to the tour.

Our tour guide picked us up from the hotel lobby, and walked us to another bigger hotel, with other tourists and the bus.

Our tourguide spoke very good english, and was very knowledgable about all of the sites, and Chinese history in general.

Our first stop was the Forbidden City ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_City ). It is the old imperial palace and administrative capital of the Chinese empire. It was started in 1406 and was considered finished in 1420. It was so called the Forbidden City, because the common folk were forbidden from entering, and the royal family concubines (of which there were many) were forbidden from leaving. This was the colloquial name, it was referred to as the Imperial Palace. We saw the various courtyards and throne rooms.


the courtyards were barren because the emperors were afraid trees or flowers would afford assassins cover.


The throne room was where the emperor recieved offical guests, and administered over the various religious functions.

The building behind that is where the actual meetings with the foreign representatives and high level imperial officials. This is where the actual running of the empire took place.

Behind this are various chambers with various functions.

We then saw the actual residences of the emperor.

he had multiple entrances, the official front door, and two side doors, from which his concubines would enter, it was unclear whether he had to choose one or the other, or if the doors were a matter of convinience.

We then went to the womens area of the Palace grounds, which was behind an extra wall, as no one but the ladies and of course the emperor was allowed back there. Well, the eunuchs were allowed back there too. This area of the palace was rather large and entirely managed by the Empress.

I neglected to mention that it was freezing, literally freezing. it was unusually cold for this time of year, hovering around 20F, and then wind chill making it bone chilling. So we kinda hurried through everything, i snapped pictures, and we moved along.

(apologies the pictures might not be in order, i am uploading this late because China doesnt like google stuff, so i am throwing this up later, enjoy the pictures)

Hopping back on to the bus, we got a feel for the other people on the tour; there was a mother/daughter duo from the interior of China, a husband and wife from Korea, a quartet of 20-something girls from the Phillipines, a husband and wife with two daughters from the San Francisco area (henceforth the Bay Area) and a husband wife with a 19 yr old, 17 yr old daughter, an adopted 9 yr old chinese daughter, and a 13 yr old son.

I will comment on them after i run through the historical shit we saw.

The bus took us to a Tea house, as one of their sales pitches. We were presented with a “tea ceremony” it was really a mildly educational sales pitch. The attendant made 5 different teas for us to try, and extolled the virtues of each “this one helps with liver and eyes, and this one makes you sleepy” etc

She then released us into the shop. The one tea i was impressed with was the Black tea, which is very much like whiskey, it is aged, has a taste that needs getting used to, and gets real expensive real quick. It tastes a little smokey, and very earthy, it usually comes in these big pucks that you break pieces off of. They had 8 inch x 1 inch disks of this stuff ranging in price from 300CNY to 36,000CNY, thats a $5000 dollar brick of tea leaves…

Piled back on the bus to get to the Temple of Heaven. Again given the cold we didnt stick around long. The temple of heaven (wikilink here) is in the middle of a very large park, which we wandered around a little bit, it costs money to enter the park, and actually requires another ticket to get onto the temple grounds, given the cold we neglected to do this.

The temple was built originally by the same guy that commissioned the Forbidden City, Yongle Emperor doin work.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Heaven

The tour had arranged for golf cart-vans to take us through the park some and bring us to the lunch site. It was a restaurant in the park, and they served us another very generic, mundane chinese meal, again things obviously akin to what we can find in the US.

The carts then took us back to the bus, which took us to the second sales piitch of the trip; The Pearl Market.

This was pitched as being relevant, because the Dragon Lady (a certain queen i have yet to find the wiki page for) loved pearls, and it was she that did all the rehab on the forbidden palace and the Summer Palace.

It was a terrible sales pitch, the sales lady walked in and asked people if they were families and if they were students. We think this was to determine how much they could sell us. Laura admitted we were not students…

She told us a little about freshwater pearls vs ocean pearls, how to spot fake pearls, and then very abruptly stopped, and took us out to the sales floor. I think she may have been frustrated by the Bay Area family’s many questions (ill get to this). At the floor she told us of the deals and specials they were running, and handed us off to the actual sales people.

Laura and i very disinterestedly wandered around until we ran into our guide who said the bus was open. We immediately left for the bus, to sit in the back, and talk shit about the other Americans on the trip (this is coming up, just wait)

The last bus ride was a little longer, as the summer palace was on the outskirts of the city. Originally it was a little ways away from the city, so the royals could escape the city, but close enough that they could return within the day, and administrators could come and go with relative ease.

The summer palace was beautiful ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_Palace ), and actually is a preview of our coming time in Suzhou and Hangzhou. Apparently one of the emperors was so enthralled with the Westlake in Hangzhou that he had his architects emulate it when digging up the lake in the Summer Palace grounds. He was also enamored with a certian bridge in Suzhou, so he had his architects emulate it here as well.

We were unable to enter the actual administrative portions of the palace grounds, it was mostly a big park, with example royal residences from the 1860s.

this was about the time i started asking my own questions of the tour guide, trying to figure the timeline that this Dragon Lady was leading through, and she kept making reference to the “eight nations” which i later determined was all the gunboat diplomacy the french and british and russians and germans and americans were exercising in China at the time. By now it was warming up and we enjoyed ourselves a little more, however, this was essentially the end of the tour.

we piled back on the bus, and were taken back to our respective hotels.

The dinner we got was forgettable, we were looking for the DanDan noodles i had fallen in love with in Tokyo, and found them. Unfortunately the mall food courts here, arent as universally awesome as they are in Japan. The food was not very good, while wandering the mall we found another food court, that had examples of cuisine from all over China. We think this would have beem the place to taste a bunch of different stuff. Our mistake.

We then made our way home, and got to sleep early, making up for all the lost sleep with travel and early tours.

Those of you unwiilling to read my disparaging fellow americans should log off now…

Ho-lee shit these people on this tour is why people hate american tourists, these are Ugly Americans.

First experience with the Bay Area family, listening to the father quiz the daughter on vocabulary words. This family was Indian American, pretty clearly second gen, thuroughly americanized. I have been on vacation as an elementary student, i have done homework on vacation, but never forced, and certainly not in a manner as obstructive to those around me as a verbal quiz on vocab words. Listening to the girls responses, it was pretty clear she didnt actually have a grasp on these words, she would regurgitate an answer, that was certainly right, but it was pretty clear she didnt actually appreciate how the word was used and what it meant. Also, as she checked out the father continued to throw words at her, and remind her she had to learn these words by next year (as in next calendar year? or next school year?). It didnt seem as though these words were actually generated by a school, we got the idea that this was the parents trying to “give her an advantage” in school.

The other portion of their childrens learning upset me. The father asked a number of questions, many of which were unnecessary as the answer was given in context moments before. We got the feeling that he wasnt asking for his own benefit, but for that of his daughters, which again, is cool. but if you actually valued the knowledge, you would have been paying attention in the first place. I got the feeling that they were accumulating knowledge, or rather, forcibly pouring knowledge on their kids for the sake of knowing more, rather than understanding more.

But the real thing that got both laura and i, was their dietary choices. They are in China, they flew from the Bay Area to Beijing, China, only 3 days prior, and had already eaten at Subway, McDonalds, and hit Starbucks a number of times. They expressed excitement at going to Subway that evening. They neglected to eat just about everything on the very americanized chinese lunch.

Stay home, use google maps to visit the sites, thats all you want anyways, no one wants you here, and it seems like you dont really want to be here either. you make us (all Americans) look bad.

The big family was worse. They were from Atlanta area. And our first taste of them was discussing whether they would have Pizza Hut or McDonalds for dinner that night. It only got worse from there.

The 13 yr old son threw a tantrum at one point on the bus because his mother didnt buy him a souviner panda hat (that nearly all the gypsy ladies sell here). the 17 and 19 yr old daughters got into a pissing match about how smart they are, using reading level in 5th grade as the metric. the mother and father actively called their other kid (an older kid not present) “the bad one”. they ate almost none of the food at lunch, with the father and son commenting on how “wierd” the food was (as the phillipino girls, the korean couple, and me/laura ate it). The younger son and adopted daughter were running around the temple and generally being unruly.

they were just an all around shitty group of people.

If we had had another stop on this tour, i probably would have laid into the kid…

It was embarrasing, not only was the family embarrsing itself, and me adn laura, but embarrasing on behalf of the entire United States. These people (Chinese) do not see many Americans, when you come over here, and refuse to eat the basic food, throw tantrums over bullshit, and disrespect their fucking history, you make us ALL look bad.

If you cant handle being outside your comfort zone, dont fucking leave it. Go to Chinatown in your city, fuckit go to Panda Express, you dont deserve “exotic” food, i dont want to run into you in Chinatown when im looking for good food.

/endrant

It really is Great

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Woke up early to brave the cold and see a section of the Great Wall.

Laura found a travel agency that had NO SHOPPING tours of the Great Wal (greatwalltour.cn). The no shopping part was important because we didnt want to waste time getting walked through a market or jewelry shop.

The guide snagged us from our hotel lobby at 0720, and walked us to the bus, which we rode till the outskirts of the city, then we transferred to a much smaller 10 seat bus for the rest of the trip. From this area to the Mutianyu section of the wall was about a 90 minute drive, we slept through most of it so we dont remember what was going on.


we went to this section that is well maintained. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutianyu


I mentioned it was cold, the temperature dropped over night, and the almost freezing drizzle turned into snow. By the time we woke up it was done snowing, but there was a dusting everywhere.

When we finally got to the Great Wall our little group on the microbus met with a larger group on a tour bus and we started heading up the mountains to the Wall.

We walked up some of the way, was shown to our lunch location, and given a no-later-than time to make lunch and the bus home, walked further up the hill and shown the cable car or hike up to the Wall.

This section of the wall is on a mountain crest, a very easily defended position. Cimbing a mountain with an Army and attaking a 5m tall wall that extends forever in each direction would not be easy, I believe this portion of the wall was less about defense of the State, and more about ease of transit and communication into the western provinces to/from the capital.

Anyways the cable car takes you up the mountain, and takes you to Tower 14. Along the wall, there are guardhouses every few hundred meters, on this section they are numbered 1-20. 20 is at the top of the crest, and i dont know where 1 is, because i didnt see it.

The tour guide recommended you turn left upin getting onto the wall, and heading to 20, from 14, and that would take about an hour, and then take your pictures, and walk back, taking another hour to come back.

When we got to the wall, there was a huge gaggle of people on the stairs leading to the actual wall top. When we fought our way up we saw why; ice. The wet snowy weather led to this area being slick with ice, and given the incline at that point, everyone was afraid to move.

looking left, towards 20, was a decline of at least 20 degrees, slick with ice for at least 15 meters, to the right was an incline of about 10 degrees, slick with ice for about 5 meters.

Laura was hesitant to go either direction, i was determined to walk the Wall, we travelled many thousands of miles to see this, we were gunna make the best of it.

There is a path that parallels the wall for most of its course, this path is frequently lacking a railing, and made of paving stones that were in pretty poor shape, from our vantage I had no way of determining if that path would get us back onto the Wall, looking at that decline, there was no way we would make it back up that length on the wall. So we went right. We hugged the wall, and used the gaps in the flagstones to climb through the icy spot, and made our way.

We walked all the way to Tower 6, at some points bouldering along the wall, Laura slipped at one point, but caught herself, scrapping her wrist a little, and i fell on my ass and slid about 3 meters, but we got there and back with all our fingers and toes, and some excellent pictures.

We took the cable car back down the hill for lunch. There we met up with some of the other people on the tour, a girl from Calgary (who made a terrible clothing decision, her primary trip was to Thailand, so she packed for Thailand, took an extended layover in Beijing and decided to check out the Great Wall of China, on top of a mountain, on the first wintry day in China), a guy from New York, a probably* businessman/diplomats daughter, a couple from Caracas, and a French Businessman. Chatting was nice about travels and what we have already seen and what we plan to do here in Beijing and China at large.

The food was acceptable, again if i wasnt kkeeping my diary on a blog, it was nothing to write home about. it honestly tasted alot like the shitty chinese food we have back home. it was good, but nothing spectacularly flavored or interesting.

The microbus took us home, we slept through the ride again, this time it dropped us off at a subway stop because traffic was so bad.

We once again ran into the Calgarian and New Yorkite, helped the canuck get to the airport as she was a little turned around. The train took us home easy, but we did get almost mildly kidnapped. As we were leaving the train, some lady heard us speaking english, and said wwe speak beautiful english, asking us where we were from, telling us she was from some other province of china on holiday, and loves practicing her english, she invited us to her favorite coffee shop to talk in english. obviously this is a bad idea, stranger danger n all, but Laura read about this scam in her prep for the trip. Apparently these people invite you to their favorite teashop, that is usually someplace youv never been, and has a friendly, large doorman. And the tea is many hundreds of Yuan, and you cannot leave without paying, because the doorman is large, and doesnt speak english, but knows you didnt pay...

researching dinner led us to a Peking Duck place near our hotel (Siji Minfu), with views of the Forbidden City. Getting to it was a little harrowing, it was nearby, but we had to navigate the hutong that surrounds our hotel, and then walk down a near completely empty street. After traversing all this East Asian capitals, being on an empty street was unnerving.

The restaurant had a very small frontage on the street, but it was a long swanky looking hallway, that took us to the restaurant proper. The Hostess walked us past the big wood ovens in which the ducks get roasted, and seated us with a view of the Forbidden City moat and wall.

The menu had a full list of stuff to eat, and index of professionally photographed examples of each. We ordered sauteed greens, which turned out to be lil baby bokchoy (the size of brussel sprouts) stuffed with a clove of garlic each, tossed in chili oil.

And of course the duck, we got a half duck, with all the fixins. The condiments came out first, it was a little platter with hoisen sauce, minced garlic, onion slices, cucumber slices, pink pickled things (which we have seen all over since Japan) green pickled stuff (again familiar, but no idea what it is), a pile of sugar and a palette cleansing fruit slice. Then came the pancakes, and finally the duck, on a plate that was set on top of a catering candle.

The staff correctly identified we had no idea what we were doing, and showed us. First you peel the pancakes apart, they are paper thin, then you put it on your plate, you grab a duck slice, dip in hoisen, place on the pancakes, then put whatever condiments you want on there, fold it up, and eat it. My goodness were these pockets of duck delicious, it wasnt greasy like duck usually is, it wasnt smothered in spices, all of the flavors compliments eachother, it was great. The sugar as we learned, is for dipping the duck skin in, which is also exquisite.

but, given the well deserved fatastic reviews of the roast duck, this wasnt even the best food they served. they had duck liver paste. I initially read it as “patte” laura corrected me, and we ordered it anyways.

This duck liver paste, beats out those green beans from the day before, in fact, it beats out just about everyhthing short of those DanDan noodles in Ueno.

I have never had a patte so creamy, it was like butter, duck flavored butter. But not overpowering like liver usually is. it was just subtle, savory, scrumptious spreadable duck on little squares of toast.

Very Very satisfied with dinner, we hurried out of the cold into our bed to fall asleep watching whatever was on HBO.


*given her life story, i gathered she is the daughter of a businessman or diplomat, no one is ethnically Columbian, grew up and identifies as Dutch, lived in London for a year, and has been on an extended trip to India, now on an extended trip to China SE Asia

Soo much food, for soo few monies

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We woke up in the hotel and immediately started looking for a hotel with a good concierge. Laura found a place that was very inexpensive, close to the Forbidden Temple, and had good reviews. We booked through Agoda, which is a booking site, but without an email we never got a confirmation email, we left the website open and hoped for the best.

The place was very easy to find, and the staff were immediately very friendly, and spoke pretty good english.

But they couldnt find our confirmation, and while we tried to see which name we used (sometimes we forget Lauras last name has changed recently), we lost the confirmation number. the staff worked with us, to call their corporate management, helped us call the agoda people, but no luck.

Finally we just asked to book right there at reception. they gave us the same rate we found online, which was actually less than what we were paying for the hostel. we also immediately booked a guided tour through the Forbidden Palace, Summer Palace and Temple of Heaven.

We then wandered off for lunch, Laura found a meat pie place that had good reviews, and was very near by.

Reading the menu, we intended to orderthe duck meat pie, the pork meat pie, a plate of crushed garlic and chili cucumbers, and laura wanted the ot and sour soup.

the waiter told us the meat pies are very big, and only get two if we were very hungry. we decided on just the duck, with the pork in reserve.

the cucumber plate was delicious, i think they were pickled very lightly and then tossed with chili oil and minced garlic. It was a great starter, and a great compliment to the soon to arrive meat pie.

meat “pie” isnt accurate, the meat is ground with spices, in this case duck, and the most pronounced flavor was fennel, and the dough part was kinda like a scallion pancake. it was so very tasty, a little difficult to eat with chopsticks, but that just forced me to eat bigger parts. all this food, plus a liter of beer, came out to 12USD.

On the way home we got a little turned around and ent up in the couryard of the Forbidden City, and tried to get out the front. But the front is not an exit, so we had to walk back around to get out. At this point the drizzle picked up (did i mention it was very hazy and drizzling?), and i was getting cold (it was about 40F).

I should have gotten a jacket when laura did in Japan.

When we got back to the new hotel, we found another Uniqlo, and got me a ultra-light down vest thing to wear under my jacket. its basically wearing a woobie, and it is fucking great.

We then wandered around this shopping area to include the stereotypical asian maket. the narrow walkways with people selling cheap crap to tourists, food stalls selling all manner of food, and some things people wouldnt count as food.

this street, I think it was Wangfujin had a pervasive smell of steam pot food, and fryer grease, with the smell changing slightly based on what stall you were walking by; the pork steam buns or the squid-on-a-stick-fryer. here we also saw some of the more esoteric things for sale, whole starfishes, still wriggling scorpions, unidentifiable mammalian viscera. I didnt see many if any locals that werent working there, so i think that weird food stuff is just that; wierd food stuff to wow visitors.

after wandering around, we made our way back to the hotel to research dinner.

we warmed up and identified a very well reviewed restaurant, we ventured out again. actually, it was in the very mall we wrongly stepped into looking for the Uniqlo. The restaurant was on the top floor of the mall, and it took up easily ⅓ of the square footage up there. the place was unbelievably large. They had at least a hundred 4 person tables, and the kitchen to support it. the menu had over 100 items on it. You went through the big menu with pictures, and checked the box on the little paper the staff took. unfortunately the little paper was only in mandarin, so we had to recognize shapes and costs to ensure we were ordering the right thing.

we got soooo much food.

unfortunately the serve it to you as it comes out of the kitchen,

The first thing we got was roasted eggplant with barbecue bread crumbs on top, it was great, and a really good appetizer. Then a plate of mapau tofu appeared, it was good, but nothing to write home about (despite my actually writing home about it here).

Next was our dessert, we got a mango pudding that laura heard was good, and a peanut icecream. holy shit the peanut ice cream was great, the mango pudding was ok, not really my thing, but laura liked it, but that peanut icecream was everything that is great about Reeses “peanut butter” but without the “ “. meaning it was sweet and salty enough to bring out the sweet, but didnt taste like a series of chemicals designed to taste like the best peanut butter ever, it jut WAS the best peanut butter ever...in ice cream form.

but yeah, the desserts showed up relatively early in the meal, and melted a little bit as we ate the rest of the things i am going to list.

then was the ground pork in chili sauce on a bed of sauteed spinach, all tossed into a boat of fermented rice wine. this was ok, the fermented rice wine wsa the big flavor here.

Next was some fantastic chili and green bean stir fry. but it was not oily, like it was tossed very attentively in a dry wok. this was my favorite part of the meal. the chili had a low slow heat, but plenty of flavor, with the minced garlic it quickly rose to the top of my list of favorite vegetable dishes ever.

A dish of chow mein came out next. again not the best food ever, but there was alot of it, and it was noodles, pretty much cant go wrong there.

and the final dish that came out was a baarbecue pork dish that niether of us really liked, it was a little too smokey, and by the timeit came out we were pretty full.

To drink we got a pitcher of peach-pomegranate juice

As we were looking at the menu, particularly the prices and estimating how much food we would get. we were very wrong. each of these plates could have been a main for a single person.

so we ate alot of food, and it came out to all of $35.

Welcome to the Peoples Republic of China.

After this gastronomic adventure, we came home and rubbed our bellies until we fell asleep.

The Peoples Republic of China

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Woke up to our last morning in korea, packed up and immediately headed to the airport, we wanted ample time to deal with mass transit to the airport and to deal with customs.

the ride to the airport took us outisde the city during the daylight. the train went through the countryside, and we road through these big mud flat areas, that i think may have been flood plains, but without proper internet here in china, i cant look it up now. (ths is a later edit, somehow i am able to use google products right now, so here you are- they are indeed mudflats)

the seoul airport is HUGE, probably the biggest airport i have ever been in. ticketing was easy, security was a little long, i think i am used to getting priority with military, so maybe it wasnt that bad to a normal american traveller.

after security we still had a little over an hour before our flight and we made haste to one of the executive lounges that we have access to with the super-swanky credit card we got.

the attendant began checking us in, and then realized our gate was in the other terminal, and they had a lounge over there. cause incheon needs like 6 premium lounges. so we headed to the international terminal and checked in.

it was pretty impressive, ive never been in one, there were a bunch of big comfortable chairs, watching the kind of things businessmen watch on TV; financial news and golf. and then behind that was the whole reason we got the fancy-pants card; the buffet.

there was food, and we did our best to eat our monies worth (we didnt pay anything to get in here). they had a salad bar, and wine and liquor and a beer tap (that was unfortunately unoperable at the time), those were our favorite parts. we havent had a big leafy salad since we got to Asia, and of course free booze is awesome.

other food included some chips and crackers and pretzels and cheese, a few steam tables of fried rice and stir fry like things, some sammitches and instant noodles. we ate atleast one of everything, and a bunch of some things.

after probably embarrasing ourselves clearing 10 or so plates, we rolled to our gate, and pretty much right on the plane.

i immediately fell asleep.

woke up for the snack, and went back to sleep.

and woke up to land, unfortunately it was near dark, and between the weather and the pollution (ill get to that in a second) couldnt see anything.

Beijing airport is also really big, got through immigration without a problem, and went to change money and hop the train.

Laura checked in with what appeared to be an information desk, while i went to a currency exchange.

I wanted to turn over all my leftover korean won into chinese yuan. after trying to figure out the rates, in USD, and it turned out they were going to charge me 60USD to change 170USD worth of monies, so i walked away. and now i have like 30USD, 500JPY, 152,000KRW, and some odd few hundred CNY in my pocket.

Simultaneously, Laura was struggling with this “information” she was trying to confirm how to get to our hostel, and the lady behind the desk said “oh, that is very far away, we have a car that will take you, 500 RMB, very easy” no thanks. turns out this was not an information booth, it was a tour agency.

so welcome to the Peoples Republic of China.

We found the real, government sponsored inforation kiosk, and they were VERY helpful. They not only wrote out the directions in english and mandarin on how to get to our hostel, the agent called the hostel to see which was the easiest way of getting there. She told us the hutong (ill get to that in a second too) is closed, so we have to ask staff to get in. We took this to mean it was sort of a gated community, this was not the case.

the trains were too easy, between the english and our growing ability to recognize script completely alien to our own we got to the station within walking distance of our hostel.

emerging from the underground, deep into Beijing was quite the shock. First thing we noticed was the haze. Between the fall wet weather, and quite literally the pollution, there was a pall over accross the city. i say city, but i mean the neighborhood because we really couldnt see more than 500m away. also people, everywhere, and not all the high fashion young people of Tokyo or Seoul, the kind of people that get dirty for a living, the kind of people that live kinda dirty.

not unsafe at all, just less upscale than the Japan and Korea that we saw.

we basically made it to our hutong. hutongs are throwback neighborhoods, they were the ubiquitious housing/commercial areas of china up until the the 1950s and 1960s. they are tiny alleys and walkways, i mean tinier than the ones i have described in japan. some of what we saw could fit only 2 people shoulder to shoulder. ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutong ) unfortunately, we didnt know that we had found our hutong and walked around a little more.

we got to the entrance of what we believed to be our hutong, but the road was blocked by construction, we asked a guy that appeared very official, i think he was private security for something. he was very nice, and between gestures and smartphone translation applications he told us, that we were indeed in the right place, but we cannot go there because of the construction, and ponted accross the street at the construction.

so we attempted to get in from a different angle, walking around this neighborhood we saw all kinds of wild shit. people everywhere, eating food from the stalls, scooters and tuk-tuks speeding through the roads, and sidewalk and out of other hutongs. at one point we cought a glimpse in a room that was full of cops on break, or shamming, which was cool, until you finished the glance into the room, and saw a micky-mouse mascot head.

welcome to the Peoples Republic of China

we walked more, past a very heavly secured building with either military, or VERY well equipped private security, a myriad of restaurants and just closing shops, and hundreds of makeshift scooters and carts carrying all manner of things.

finally we resolved to just go into the construction area. trying to tell the one guy at the gate we had a hostel in there, he let us in.

the street was dirt, i dont know if it has always been dirt and is only now getting paved, or if it was paved and is being redone, but it is dirt. and it is covered, there is scaffolding built up, making a very long tunnel. The shops on either side are all closed because no one is coming down these streets, and it is impossible to see. some spots were very dark, where shadows of piles of dirt and bricks and refuse blocked the blinding light of construction lamps.

we turned off the main hutong street onto a much smaller one walking back and forth and back again, circling around and not finding the place. finally we stopped in a ricewine shop and more very friendly Beijingians helped us out, giving us the final hint to get us home.

As we tried to open the door and get INTO the lobby, i heard a clatter behind me, Laura knocked on the door while i peeked around the corner, and suddenly a shoe came flying over the wall of the hutong street, and landed on a bicycle leaning against the far huntong street wall.

What the fuck.

Welcome to the Peoples Republic of China

getting into the hostel, they expected us to pay in cash, but we didnt pull enough cash, so they let us just pay later.

we got to our room, the bed was great, and we had our own bathroom, so it was really all we needed physically, but digitally it was lacking. we couldnt do anything, no email checks, no searches, no blogs, no maps, nothing.

welcome to the Peoples Republic of China

we went to the lobby to find dinner, the internet worked a little better here, we decided on a hot pot place.

so we ventured back out, there were fewer people out and about but it wasnt a ghost town. we went to dinner, turns out it was halal, and all the meat we had was lamb. it was ok, like most hot pots, it got better the more stuff you threw in there over time

Stopped to grab some waters from a corner store on the way home, because I am not sure i trust the tap here…

When we got home it dawned on us that google, and everything therein is blocked here in china. No gmail, no google docs, no blog, no google search, no youtube, no googlemaps.

with that in mind, we started using bing, and apple maps, and contemplated leaving the hostel the next day.

We jumped into the deepend, and we didnt know how to swim. up to this point in the trip, we had been planning at most 24hrs in advance what we were doing, we had hotels and flights already booked, but what we were doing when we got there was researched and booked last minute. without our prime search source, and without email, booking was going to be near impossible.

we needed a concierge.

Despite the hostels fantastic bed, we were pretty sure we were going to move to a new hotel in the morning.

Ruminants and fermented rice

Asia, South Korea, Seoul



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Only real intention was shopping, eating and seeing another sliver of Seoul. Laura identified a number of brands that fit her stringent requirements of products worthy of going on her face, and I found since hobby shops in the same area.

Taking the train back to the college area we struggled to find the basement hobby shop, but in so doing found an Uninsured, an all natural cosmetics store that happened to be running a franchise wide sale.

Laura was very excited to finally find The products she was looking for, I was excited for her, I know how disappointing it is to go into shop after shop finding almost the right thing, but always walking away empty handed. She bought a bunch of stuff, at fantastic prices, the price rang up in wons, which we then knock 15% of because of the exchange rate (about 1120 KRW to USD at the time), then the sale discounts kicked in, and then no tax cause we weren't from and there.

An then we went to breakfast with some sheep

It's a cafe with fancy waffles and sheep outside, but kinda inside. This place was in the e basement of a mall, but it had an open air patio. and here, peotected from the elements but still getting fresh air were a pair of sheep, that were super chil, and mega fluffy.

I got an espresso waffle, i think espresso was actually in the batter, or dough, i dont know the semantics of waffle production, and it had coffee and vanilla gelato on it, and laura had the banana and chocolate waffle, with chocolate wafle, covered in bananas and ice cream. We also opted for smoothies, I a blueberry, and she the citrus.

the food was very good, and very comforting.

We then wandered through a few more cosmetics shops, before going to the last hobby shop, where i spotted some rare stuff, but held off on the big ticket items, and got a small thing to remember korea by.

Around there was a shopping district slammed with college students, bought more gifts for people, and then hurried home.

We hurried home because we wanted to hit up the post office and send back another load of stuff, because the Korean Post is very inexpensive, like half the price of japan for the same services.

we successfully mailed a box of candy to lauras work, and a box of stuff to the Olin household for ourselves.

Stopping in the quickmart in our apartment building we picked up some local liquor to try, spending 12USD we got a little bottle of rice wine, a bottle of blackraspberry wine and a bottle of some flowery stuff. for booze purchased at a convinience store, costing so little we were not disappointed,

a little drunken we walked up to a canal that has a fancy lighted cultural art installation thing. big inflatable caricatures from presumably korean myths and stories were in the middle of the canal. We stepped away from the canal to eat. we found a chicken place that was very full, always a good sign.

we ordered the glazed chicken, it was divine. essentially a wholechicken, scissor cut, fried up, and covered in their sauce. korean barbecue is strongly encouraging us to reevaluate our future residence considerations.

by the time we got out the canal lights were done, but we still walked the path all the way home.

going to bed a little early in advance of our departure from korea.

Consorts and Calendars

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(Warning the spicy wings last night fucked me up...)


First full day on Seoul, headed for the Geongbukgong Palace first thing in the morning.

Well first first thing was get coffee. There are coffee shops everywhere here. They are reading add prevalent all over Seoul as the trendiest neighborhoods of New York, Paris and Vienna.

This particular shop had bagel "sandwiches" we got blue berry cream cheese, it was delicious, it was a slightly toasted bagel smothered in house made blueberr cream cheese, so really nothing to complain about.

The train is much cheaper here than Japan was, with most rides costing about 1500 won. The bus dropped us off a little ways from the palace, but provided a great view.

The palace grounds are pretty impressive, they have era appropriately dressed gate guard, that attend stoic while people take selfies with them.

We planned to arrive in time for the English language tour. And we thought we would be bumped, because there was a huge gaggle of tourists, but that was for the Japanese tour, there were alot of them throughout the palace.

The tour guide was great, had her script and mostly stuck to it, when asked a question it took her a little while to translate and then translate an answer. She was clearly very knowledgeable, the only hindrance was language barrier.

This was also our first taste of regional rivalry. See the Japanese invaded the korean peninsula in the 1590s, and then in the 1870s gunboat drplomacy-ed Korea onto a terrible treaty, and then invaded again in the1910s, and exploited the land and quite thoroughly during the WWII. The Japanese burned this place down twice. So the Koreans are rightly peeved about it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_invasions_of_Korea_(1592–98)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan–Korea_Treaty_of_1876

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_under_Japanese_rule


The reconstruction efforts have been ongoing since 1990, the present palace has been built up to about 15% of its former glory, and of that about 60% was surviving structures that just needed rehab.

It was built by the first of Joseon dynasty in the 1390s, who took over after defeating the previous dynasty. Like most palaces it was added to over time.

The big outer courtyard serves to impress guests, and provide security, back in the day there would have been stuff here, but now there are just some trees.

The inner courtyard has the throne room. This is where the king recieved official guests and conducted state matters and various ceremonies.

Behind that were the actual chambers for the king, and queen. Which were seperated. The king had maid-nurses to look after him and a half dozen concubines. The queen managed the palace affairs. They met once a month to attempt to create an heir, at the best time of the month according to the stars and moon. Meaning thy had astronomers and calendaronomers encouraging them to bang. If the queen didn't conceive, she would adopt one of the sons from the concubines and everyone pretended it was legitimate.

You might notice on these houses there is a sort of pit or door on the side that seemingly goes into a basement. This is actually a fire pit for the heating system. They would build fires here, and the smoke would run under the stone floor to the chimney, heating the room from the floor up. This also explains why Koreans sit on the ground, and have no furniture.

There was a great banquet area. Because you can't be a King without throwing gutwrenchingly ostentatious parties. It even is surrounded by a pond for boating, or when the Chinese envoy drinks too much rice wine and needs a quick dunk to sober up.

The palace grounds is also home to the first (according to the slightly biased your guide) use of grid-level electricity in East Asia. One of the forward looking crown princes installed electricity, in what today is the president's house.

We witnessed the changing of the guard ceremony.

I don't speak Korean, I wasn't in a XV century army. But I recognized the commands given by the captain of the guard, with a 10 minute warm up, I could have been one of these guys in costume (except for my green eyes, lack of wispy black beard and Brown hair). It's interesting how a XVIII century Prussian based drill and ceremony manual differs only in language from something born 5000 miles away and 300 years earlier.

After this we went the museum of all the relics and stuff that would have been IN the palace if it were in use. I made use of their toilets in a catastrophic way. The museum was free, it was a great museum, all the better due to the sans cover charge.

Here we learned about the day to day lives the king and queen and princes and courtesans and administrators.

The most interesting thing was the fastidious recording of everything. All the state goings-on were recorded, any official metric the king had, had court stenographers noting everything. These notes were kept up until today, the interesting part was the confidentiality of it, as long as the king was seated, these records were sealed, even to himself. And crown princes were strongly encouraged to read the chronicles of previous Kings, to learn the ropes before actually handling the fate of the nation.

Also administrators and beaureaucrats had to pass an exam before recieving the title and position they sought.

We intended to go to a dumpling place, but I was given the wrong address so we walked into a traditional neighborhood on a hill. With old timey though still occupied houses, very much like Kyoto, with very traditional Korean homes. Unfortunately, I was desperately looking for another toilet to desecrate, so after discovering this was the wrong address, we found a coffeeshop, with a toilet for me to defile. Fortunately upstairs from the cafe was a probiotics shop making smoothies with kimchi biotics, helped my tummy calm down.

We reassessed, and got ourselves to the dumpling place. Had a variety poster of steamed and fried pork dumplings of various varieties.

This shop was next to a craft mall, a multi storey open air Mall with handmade and probably-fell-off-the-truck stuff. We got some gifts for family and friends.

After this we went home to research dinner. We decided on bi bim bop, find a famous place. Went to it, and was underwhelmed. There was a stove bowl bibimbap a regular bubimbap bowl, and a soup. It was ok, wasnt bad, and it was alot of food for cheap. But given the supposed reputation of this place, we were expecting more.

After this we wandered into the Sinchon/Dongdaenun neighborhoods. This is the college area, there are at least 3 universities here, so the barscene is pretty great. We found a place with inexpensive beers, laura got some craft beer and I got the "house beer" which is akin to a black and tan. It's Beck's (who knew they had that over here) with Asahi Black floated on top.

After beers, we went home to bed.

Maybe a future home.

16112016

Had to pack to leave our hotel, Fukuoka, and Japan.

Checked out of the room, we checked our bags in the room and went to chase down those cosmetics. Laura ultimately decided to wait until Seoul, as they have more, and less expensive products. Also they have much cheaper post office international parcel services. Like half the price of mailing from Japan.

We also went shopping for a cooler weather jacket so laura doesn't die in the "freezing mainland" weather.

Not settling on anything we got lunch. Curry from one of the national franchises here in Japan Coco Ichi. It was k
Ok, definitely had the mass market taste, but was inexpensive and filling.

We then went to Uni Qlo and got laura a woobie jacket. And by that I mean it is a jacket, that is basically made out of what feels like a woobie.

We went back to the hotel to gather our things and roll to the airport.

The Fukuoka airport was super chill. But the smallest by far, but they had an international terminal that had 10ish gates.

While checking in there was a problem with Laura's passport babe matching the ticket, maybe we mistyped it, or maybe the system messed up her middle name/last name. The Eastar ticketing agents fixed it right up, took a little while. But I made sure we showed with plenty of time for all such inconveniences.

We then spent the rest of our yen change at the duty free, buying mostly odd flavored kit kats.

We boarded the plane and tried to Sleep. It was only an 80 minute flight, and they had to sling duty free cigarettes so there was alot of noise and lights.

When we landed the Korean lady next to us jumped up in her seat. Literally stood in the seat to get her bag out.

When I say landed I mean, the plane touched the ground, and reduced to teach speed, not reached the terminal, not slowed to a crawl while navigating tarmac traffic. Like just touched down.

The flight attendants yelled at her, she was all "no no, it's ok"

Flight attendant was having none of that shit "Maam, this is blocking the aisle" and just picked it up and put it back in the overhead. ***

Seoul is enormous. Much like Tokyo. It took us about an hour to get from the airport to our AirBnB just north downtown.

This place is great. It's a fully furnished brand new apartment. So new there is still plastic film on some of the door hardware.

Very hungry we found a 24 hour fried chicken place. The Koreans have their own take chicken, and it is great.

On the way to the place we went through the fashion shipping district. This shit is wild. It seems as though it is bushels and boxes of clothes that seem to have fallen off of a truck and found their way to the open air and claustrophobic warrens, alleys, and basements. Oh this place was full of people, even at 2300. We will investigate this further.

The restaurant was great, cheap, and had a variety of draft beers. It was everything we needed. I had a pilsner, laura head a nut brown ale, we had wings spicy, and wings garlicy. It was fantastic. The spice was just on the cusp of being too much, but still had an the flavor. The soy-garlic was a perfect compliment. The beer was good too, compared to the light lagers of Japan, getting even close to a craft draft beer was very exciting. We had 2 beers each, and easily 14-15 wings of each the spicy and garlic kinds. And it totaled 44,000 won, so 37usd.

We made our way home, for sleeps.



*** All of this is speculated dialogue, they were speaking Korean, I have no clue what was actually being said