Countryside Trips
aka The Fun Part of Work! :)
I've been back to the countryside 4 times since starting my new job. Three trips were actually for work, and one was for fun on the weekend. I've been working for Threads of Yunnan for a little more than 3 months now. I wish I could spend all my time in the countryside. Ok, I might get tired of the lack of internet pretty quickly...but it's so nice up there, the stars are amazing, the people are friendly, and the food is good. It remains to be seen how often I will go in the future, but I hope it's more often than not. Probably once a month is good. Someone from the company usually goes every two weeks, so we're out there a lot and it looks like over the summer we'll be out there even more as there's a lot to be done. (It seems like there's always a lot--too much--to be done!)
In addition to the Threads of Yunnan embroidery project in Jijiezi and the surrounding villages, Danyun is also involved in other community development projects including building wells, clinics, and schools and a microcredit project which involves pigs. The family you see in the picture here is involved in the pig project and the mother is also one of our group leaders for Threads of Yunnan. Last time we were at their house, they had a brand new washing machine. I don't even have a washing machine in my apartment! Good for them; it's nice to see that our projects really are helping to raise the standard of living in these villages. Another one of our group leaders just installed an amazing s
hower at her house. It even has a solar powered hot water heater--the first in the village! She told us that she also lets others shower there. Awesome. When Danyun first started working with these women, they said they only bathed several times a year. Now they are excited to have their own shower they can use every day, so that's great. We're also planning to expand Threads of Yunnan to several new villages in the next month or two, so it'll be interesting to see how that goes. And by interesting to see how it goes, I mean, I (and my coworkers) have to figure out how to make it work. I'm definitely learning a lot about business, development, exporting, and product design (and so much more). It's certainly not a boring job, and I'm grateful for that.
The first trip for work was to meet with a contractor about the building we want to build in Jijiezi for the production unit we are hoping to begin this summer and to pay tuition for some of the village children that we support. The second trip was to Jijiezi and Shaoziga with a representative from one of our customers in the US. The third was to help the women with some new and modern designs we are doing for some new products. (My life never gets boring. It seems like I'm doing something different every day!) 
It takes about 4 hours or so to get up to Jijiezi. The drive is quite bumpy at times, but the views are great. The last time we went the terraces were especially green. We spend the night in a small place called Tianxin (translation: heart of the fields), which is sort of the capital of the county. The last time I was there, I ordered some shoes, which I think my coworkers are going to pick up this week. They're black with some embroidered pink and red flowers. I had to deal with the embarrassment of my big feet, but it was worth it for my $5 traditional Chinese shoes! There is also a restaurant on the way where we usually eat lunch. It's famous (but only inside of our company). We're not sure if the food is really good or if we're always just really hungry by the time we get there. One time I jumped in there to help cook my eggplant. Haha.
The weekend trip was to Da Ping Di, a Miao village (the same one that I wrote about before). We went on a Sunday for their big Easter service and lunch (though it was actually the week after Easter). It was awesome. The Miao minority group is known for their amazing choirs and they definitely did not disappoint! The kids sang a few songs and the adults as well. They have amazing voices! We also enjoyed the lunch, which included the yummy oat/buckwheat pancakes that you dip in honey. Man, I dream about those things. They are so tasty!!! I'm not really sure why they are green, though. Hmmmm.Anyway, those are just some random thoughts about my job and what we do in the countryside for some of you that have been asking what it is I do...I hope you enjoyed the pictures! I love the cute kids!!!
brought to you by Rachelle
1 cents from the peanut gallery
Monday, May 19, 2008Thailand (and Burma)
Bangkok, Chiang Rai, Mae Sai, Chiang Mai, Sukhothai, and Bangkok again
This post has been a long time in coming. We were in Thailand in February...better late than never, though, right?
Since we took Laos, Malaysia, and Singapore off of our itinerary due to a lack of time and money, we spent quite a while in Thailand and it was great. We never made it down to the supposedly beautiful beaches in the south, but we had so much fun in northern Thailand that we didn't really care. Maybe next year. That's the beauty of living in Kunming. Thailand is always so close and everyone goes all the time.
Bangkok
The first time we arrived in Bangkok, it wasn't the best experience. We got in from Siem Reap too late on a Friday night and we hadn't made reservations, so we couldn't find a place to stay. Carrying all of our luggage around a strange city in a country that neither of us had ever been in before was not the best way to spend a couple of hours. Eventually (what seemed like forever) later, we found a place (on the other side of town from where we had started). It was one of the most expensive and most ghetto places we stayed on the whole trip...pretty sure it was a "pay by the hour" sort of place. The wall was paneled, but one panel was missing and we were afraid a rat was going to jump out in the middle of the night, so we put a plastic bag in there so we'd have a warning of an impending rat attack. Pretty funny. We were staying near the Hard Rock Cafe (it was about 10pm by the time we found a place to stay) and I wanted to go there for dinner, but they were having some sort of concert so there was a cover charge. We went to some diner type place next door and that was the end of our first night in Thailand. The next morning, there was a large roach in the bathtub. Luckily we had already showered, so we just avoided it and checked out. Then we had yummy donuts for breakfast, which somewhat made up for the crappy hotel. We had caved a couple of days before and actually bought plane tickets to fly from Bangkok to Chiang Rai. We were glad to be rid of Bangkok and so headed to the airport right after breakfast. As a side note, I had one of the most amazing salads ever in the Bangkok airport. It was roasted veggies and vinaigrette or something. It was so good...but expensive, of course, since it was in the airport.
Chiang Rai
We got into Chiang Rai and discovered that you had to pay a "cab" to take you into the city. There were no buses or anything. For this reason, they pretty much could rip you off, which was annoying. The funny thing about the "taxis" were that they were just normal cars. No taxi markings, but you could buy tickets to take them inside the airport. Strange. Again we arrived with no idea about where to stay, but we had written down a couple of places from Lonely Planet while we were at the airport. A couple places were full and we were worried about reliving the Bangkok experience, so we decided to call some of the places we had written. One of them had rooms and seemed good, so we walked there (small towns are nice!) and only got moderately lost on the way down to the river where this hostel was. Chiang Rai is a really chill town, fun to just walk around and explore, so that's mostly what we did for a day or two. We decided to go on an elephant trek, so we spent a lot of time researching that. We finally found a great guide and booked to leave with him on a two day trek the next day. He told us about some fair that was happening at the old airport, so we headed up there. It was really fun! We didn't see any other tourists and we bought lots of cheap food and other things (including a Life Magazine from 1967 that I bought for a dollar, some coconut mugs, etc etc etc). Each town in the area had their own sort of booth set up. It was totally a county fair! They were even selling fried stuff with sugar (not quite a funnel cake, but I won't complain)! They were also selling fried bugs. Awesome.
The most exciting part of the elephant trek day might have been the Super Bowl that morning. Haha. What a great game! I only caught the last quarter because I didn't realize that the bar across the street was going to open early to show it (the game starts at like 6 or 7 am on this side of the world). I heard people yelling, though, so I ran over there to watch and eat breakfast. There was this huge football player looking dude from Brooklyn there and he was totally freaking out. It was fun to watch. Man, I miss football. The second the game was over I had to run over to the tour guide's office. We took a little tuk tuk for a while, then switched to a boat for about an hour ride to the elephant place. You might feel bad for elephants having to schlep tourists around all day, but actually, the elephants used to be used for logging and stuff and now that's illegal, so tourism is a way the people who own the elephants can pay for their food and stuff. In case you haven't guessed, elephants eat a lot and are expensive to keep. I guess I won't be having a pet elephant any time soon. Man, their trunks are freaky too! They just curl and come towards you. Weird. We rode the elephant for about an hour, including through the river! Thankfully, they've been trained not to spray water on their backs or we would have been quite wet! Riding the elephant was uncomfortable after a while, but it was fun. We got to feed it sugarcane and bananas while we went along! After the ride, we ate lunch and headed out on our hike after a boat took us across the river and we had another short tuk tuk ride. We hiked for a couple of hours on the first day. A lot of the time we were hopping from rock to rock crossing and re-crossing a smaller river or going along the bank. It was pretty fun, but exhausting. Our guide made us pointy gnome hats from palm leaves. They were pretty awesome. There was a lot of uphill at the end. Finally we arrived at the village where we were g
oing to spend the night. It was a cute little place with animals running all around. There were two other groups of trekkers staying there too, but it surprisingly didn't seem too touristy (though I'm sure it kind of was). Our guide was really cool, so we just hung out in our little hut all night. I helped him make dinner (mmm, Thai food!) and we all just sat around and talked. The other couple with Jessica and I were from DC. Of all the places. We had hardly meet any other Americans on our whole trip and these actually lived about a block away from us on Wisconsin Avenue at one point (Jessica lived across the street from me). Small world. We also got some bizarre massages from the village women after dinner. It was pretty random. There wasn't much method to the massaging, but it was an experience. It had been light when we arrived and I hadn't left the hut at all until after dinner and massages and hanging out. It must have been 9 or 10pm by that point, so it was really dark. I left the porch to go to the outhouse and froze. The stars were INCREDIBLE. I have never seen such a thing!!! I think the sky was more white than black. I think I must have stood there and stared for about 10 minutes...until I realized that I really had to go to the bathroom. Haha. We slept on mats on the floor and then continued our trekking bright and early. I think it was about 6 hours total. Not too much to say about it. We just walked through the woods. We arrived at a hot spring in the end, which was a nice way to relax and then we took a tuk tuk back to Chiang Rai. We had decided to go up to Mae Sai (and Burma) on our own the next day, so we just walked around the night market and bought several pairs of cheap earrings, strawberry smoothies, etc.
Mae Sai
We hopped a bus from Chiang Rai without a problem and the ride to Mae Sai wasn't long at all. We arrived in another unfamiliar city with no guidance, but that had become pretty routine. We took a tuk tuk down the main drag (it's a pretty small place) and then walked down the river checking out a few places. We ended up at the Monkey Island hostel, which was pretty nice. It had a balcony that overlooked the river -- and Burma! We spend Chinese New Year there eating chocolate and hanging out on the balcony. We just walked around a little that night. Everything seemed to shut down pretty early because the only real attraction is the border crossing and that closes at night. We decided to go into Burma the next day. We weren't really sure what the deal was with passports and whatnot, but we just followed along. Some people kind of freak out that they keep your passport at the border. Oh well. Who really needs a passport anyway? We did have to pay money to the Burmese government to let us in, but I'll be honest, I'll sell my soul for passport stamps. It was no problem getting into Burma, but there's really not a ton to see. We took a tuk tuk around to a couple of temples and stuff and then did some shopping in the big market there. We also ate some food from street vendors. The food they had there was all fried (awesome!): spring rolls, samosas, fried potato pancakes, fried corn fritters, etc. Yummy. I'd apparently gain 50 pounds if I lived in Burma. We were probably only there for 4 or 5 hours total, but it was interesting.
Chiang Mai
The best part of Chiang Mai was definitely the all day long cooking class we took (although the laundry mat--with dryers!--was also pretty exciting). The cooking class was a little bit expensive, but we decided it would be worth it. It was. We had a lot of fun going to the market, learning about the different spices and vegetables (including strange things like aborted eggplants), and eating all the food we cooked. Man, we were so full by the end. We learned to make about 5 dishes (pad thai, spicy glass noodle salad, chicken and cashew stir fry, panang red curry, and mangoes with sticky rice)--including making curry paste from scratch with a mortar and pestle! Sadly, it's hard to find the ingredients to make all that stuff in China, though I did recently make a version of pad thai that came out pretty good!
Our other big tourist activity in Chiang Mai was going to a famous temple on the top of a mountain called Wat Phra That Doi Suthep. It's one of the most famous in Thailand, apparently. It was pretty crazy--packed with people lighting incense, bringing flowers, and doing some sort of pilgrimage walk around the main part of the temple. This was probably the most active temple I have ever seen.
The night market in Chiang Mai was pretty awesome. So many cool things! I didn't want to buy too much, but I did buy a few small things. We also got massages (which were way better than the strange/random one on our trek, haha!). Other than that, we ate at some good restaurants, including a really good Italian place, and walked around exploring random temples, etc.
We also voted (thanks to DemocratsAbroad) while we were there. Two more votes for Barack! (How on earth is the primary not over yet?! Seriously...). DemocratsAbroad actually has delegates for expats around the world that they send to the primary, so the vote really does count. I was excited to be able to vote--especially since my democratic vote in Florida wouldn't have mattered anyway.
Sukhothai
Sukhothai is between Chiang Mai and Bangkok, so we decided to st0p there and break up the long bus ride (into two still rather long bus rides) because we heard it was a pretty cool place. We rented bikes to ride around the ancient ruins and it was quite fun (although quite hot) -- especially when we road the bikes between the old town and the new town, which were much farther apart than we thought. We did stop for ice cream at KFC, though. The ruins at Sukhothai were pretty cool and if you are in Thailand and can't make it to Angkor Wat, I would definitely recommend going there. Of course, Angkor Wat is much bigger and better if you can make it over to Cambodia. It was an interesting place to spend a day, but I'm not sure I'd want to stay much longer.
Bangkok
We were a little worried heading back to Bangkok after what had happened the last time, but this time our bus got in at about 4am as opposed to late at night. The bus station was CRAZY! Even at that time in the morning there were hundreds of buses arriving, huge lines for taxis, etc. It was total chaos. As soon as everyone was off the bus, they pulled out to let more buses and more people flood into the station. We couldn't get a room right away because it was so early, so we sat in a 24 hour Burger King for 3 hours or so. Fun times. Then we found a place off of Khao San Road (the main backpacker area) that let us have a room around 8am, so we just crashed there for a while. The last few days we spent in Bangkok are kind of a blur now. To be honest, we were so exhausted from all the traveling that we didn't do much except walk around shopping and eat pad thai and/or falafel from street stands. We road the water taxis a couple of times. We went all the way to the last stop to just look around. We also went to the royal palace, but it was kind of expensive, part of it was closed, and they wouldn't let us in wearing capris, so we decided to go back the next day -- except we didn't go back. Oh well. We found a few random temples and poked around them. We also went to the National Art Gallery, which was pretty interesting (and air conditioned!). Like I said, I think the month of traveling was definitely catching up to us at this point. It's lucky we didn't find a hostel with a TV because I probably would never have left the room. We did get facials and pedicures, which was nice. We had a lot of fun hanging out and spending the last of our money. Seriously. The last. I actually went to a money changing place 
and changed $1. Hey, that 32 baht bought lunch. I also sold a couple of books I had read to buy a couple more pairs of earrings. Pretty funny. The flight back was pretty uneventful. I took the airport bus, got there really early, read some magazines at the news stand (how come every other country in the world has American/English magazines except China? I had to get my fix of People, The Economist, etc.), went into Starbucks just to get a big whiff of the coffee aroma (I had no money left, remember?), and then got on my flight--with several people I know from Kunming. Thailand is the popular destination for Kunming expats at that time of year and there is only one direct flight between Bangkok and Kunming every day. I was actually surprised I didn't know more people.
Well, that about sums up our Thailand adventures; after that it was back to the real world. I started working at my new job on Monday after returning to Kunming on Saturday.
This post has been a long time in coming. We were in Thailand in February...better late than never, though, right?
Since we took Laos, Malaysia, and Singapore off of our itinerary due to a lack of time and money, we spent quite a while in Thailand and it was great. We never made it down to the supposedly beautiful beaches in the south, but we had so much fun in northern Thailand that we didn't really care. Maybe next year. That's the beauty of living in Kunming. Thailand is always so close and everyone goes all the time.
Bangkok
The first time we arrived in Bangkok, it wasn't the best experience. We got in from Siem Reap too late on a Friday night and we hadn't made reservations, so we couldn't find a place to stay. Carrying all of our luggage around a strange city in a country that neither of us had ever been in before was not the best way to spend a couple of hours. Eventually (what seemed like forever) later, we found a place (on the other side of town from where we had started). It was one of the most expensive and most ghetto places we stayed on the whole trip...pretty sure it was a "pay by the hour" sort of place. The wall was paneled, but one panel was missing and we were afraid a rat was going to jump out in the middle of the night, so we put a plastic bag in there so we'd have a warning of an impending rat attack. Pretty funny. We were staying near the Hard Rock Cafe (it was about 10pm by the time we found a place to stay) and I wanted to go there for dinner, but they were having some sort of concert so there was a cover charge. We went to some diner type place next door and that was the end of our first night in Thailand. The next morning, there was a large roach in the bathtub. Luckily we had already showered, so we just avoided it and checked out. Then we had yummy donuts for breakfast, which somewhat made up for the crappy hotel. We had caved a couple of days before and actually bought plane tickets to fly from Bangkok to Chiang Rai. We were glad to be rid of Bangkok and so headed to the airport right after breakfast. As a side note, I had one of the most amazing salads ever in the Bangkok airport. It was roasted veggies and vinaigrette or something. It was so good...but expensive, of course, since it was in the airport.
Chiang Rai
We got into Chiang Rai and discovered that you had to pay a "cab" to take you into the city. There were no buses or anything. For this reason, they pretty much could rip you off, which was annoying. The funny thing about the "taxis" were that they were just normal cars. No taxi markings, but you could buy tickets to take them inside the airport. Strange. Again we arrived with no idea about where to stay, but we had written down a couple of places from Lonely Planet while we were at the airport. A couple places were full and we were worried about reliving the Bangkok experience, so we decided to call some of the places we had written. One of them had rooms and seemed good, so we walked there (small towns are nice!) and only got moderately lost on the way down to the river where this hostel was. Chiang Rai is a really chill town, fun to just walk around and explore, so that's mostly what we did for a day or two. We decided to go on an elephant trek, so we spent a lot of time researching that. We finally found a great guide and booked to leave with him on a two day trek the next day. He told us about some fair that was happening at the old airport, so we headed up there. It was really fun! We didn't see any other tourists and we bought lots of cheap food and other things (including a Life Magazine from 1967 that I bought for a dollar, some coconut mugs, etc etc etc). Each town in the area had their own sort of booth set up. It was totally a county fair! They were even selling fried stuff with sugar (not quite a funnel cake, but I won't complain)! They were also selling fried bugs. Awesome.
The most exciting part of the elephant trek day might have been the Super Bowl that morning. Haha. What a great game! I only caught the last quarter because I didn't realize that the bar across the street was going to open early to show it (the game starts at like 6 or 7 am on this side of the world). I heard people yelling, though, so I ran over there to watch and eat breakfast. There was this huge football player looking dude from Brooklyn there and he was totally freaking out. It was fun to watch. Man, I miss football. The second the game was over I had to run over to the tour guide's office. We took a little tuk tuk for a while, then switched to a boat for about an hour ride to the elephant place. You might feel bad for elephants having to schlep tourists around all day, but actually, the elephants used to be used for logging and stuff and now that's illegal, so tourism is a way the people who own the elephants can pay for their food and stuff. In case you haven't guessed, elephants eat a lot and are expensive to keep. I guess I won't be having a pet elephant any time soon. Man, their trunks are freaky too! They just curl and come towards you. Weird. We rode the elephant for about an hour, including through the river! Thankfully, they've been trained not to spray water on their backs or we would have been quite wet! Riding the elephant was uncomfortable after a while, but it was fun. We got to feed it sugarcane and bananas while we went along! After the ride, we ate lunch and headed out on our hike after a boat took us across the river and we had another short tuk tuk ride. We hiked for a couple of hours on the first day. A lot of the time we were hopping from rock to rock crossing and re-crossing a smaller river or going along the bank. It was pretty fun, but exhausting. Our guide made us pointy gnome hats from palm leaves. They were pretty awesome. There was a lot of uphill at the end. Finally we arrived at the village where we were g
oing to spend the night. It was a cute little place with animals running all around. There were two other groups of trekkers staying there too, but it surprisingly didn't seem too touristy (though I'm sure it kind of was). Our guide was really cool, so we just hung out in our little hut all night. I helped him make dinner (mmm, Thai food!) and we all just sat around and talked. The other couple with Jessica and I were from DC. Of all the places. We had hardly meet any other Americans on our whole trip and these actually lived about a block away from us on Wisconsin Avenue at one point (Jessica lived across the street from me). Small world. We also got some bizarre massages from the village women after dinner. It was pretty random. There wasn't much method to the massaging, but it was an experience. It had been light when we arrived and I hadn't left the hut at all until after dinner and massages and hanging out. It must have been 9 or 10pm by that point, so it was really dark. I left the porch to go to the outhouse and froze. The stars were INCREDIBLE. I have never seen such a thing!!! I think the sky was more white than black. I think I must have stood there and stared for about 10 minutes...until I realized that I really had to go to the bathroom. Haha. We slept on mats on the floor and then continued our trekking bright and early. I think it was about 6 hours total. Not too much to say about it. We just walked through the woods. We arrived at a hot spring in the end, which was a nice way to relax and then we took a tuk tuk back to Chiang Rai. We had decided to go up to Mae Sai (and Burma) on our own the next day, so we just walked around the night market and bought several pairs of cheap earrings, strawberry smoothies, etc.Mae Sai
We hopped a bus from Chiang Rai without a problem and the ride to Mae Sai wasn't long at all. We arrived in another unfamiliar city with no guidance, but that had become pretty routine. We took a tuk tuk down the main drag (it's a pretty small place) and then walked down the river checking out a few places. We ended up at the Monkey Island hostel, which was pretty nice. It had a balcony that overlooked the river -- and Burma! We spend Chinese New Year there eating chocolate and hanging out on the balcony. We just walked around a little that night. Everything seemed to shut down pretty early because the only real attraction is the border crossing and that closes at night. We decided to go into Burma the next day. We weren't really sure what the deal was with passports and whatnot, but we just followed along. Some people kind of freak out that they keep your passport at the border. Oh well. Who really needs a passport anyway? We did have to pay money to the Burmese government to let us in, but I'll be honest, I'll sell my soul for passport stamps. It was no problem getting into Burma, but there's really not a ton to see. We took a tuk tuk around to a couple of temples and stuff and then did some shopping in the big market there. We also ate some food from street vendors. The food they had there was all fried (awesome!): spring rolls, samosas, fried potato pancakes, fried corn fritters, etc. Yummy. I'd apparently gain 50 pounds if I lived in Burma. We were probably only there for 4 or 5 hours total, but it was interesting.Chiang Mai
The best part of Chiang Mai was definitely the all day long cooking class we took (although the laundry mat--with dryers!--was also pretty exciting). The cooking class was a little bit expensive, but we decided it would be worth it. It was. We had a lot of fun going to the market, learning about the different spices and vegetables (including strange things like aborted eggplants), and eating all the food we cooked. Man, we were so full by the end. We learned to make about 5 dishes (pad thai, spicy glass noodle salad, chicken and cashew stir fry, panang red curry, and mangoes with sticky rice)--including making curry paste from scratch with a mortar and pestle! Sadly, it's hard to find the ingredients to make all that stuff in China, though I did recently make a version of pad thai that came out pretty good!Our other big tourist activity in Chiang Mai was going to a famous temple on the top of a mountain called Wat Phra That Doi Suthep. It's one of the most famous in Thailand, apparently. It was pretty crazy--packed with people lighting incense, bringing flowers, and doing some sort of pilgrimage walk around the main part of the temple. This was probably the most active temple I have ever seen.
The night market in Chiang Mai was pretty awesome. So many cool things! I didn't want to buy too much, but I did buy a few small things. We also got massages (which were way better than the strange/random one on our trek, haha!). Other than that, we ate at some good restaurants, including a really good Italian place, and walked around exploring random temples, etc.
We also voted (thanks to DemocratsAbroad) while we were there. Two more votes for Barack! (How on earth is the primary not over yet?! Seriously...). DemocratsAbroad actually has delegates for expats around the world that they send to the primary, so the vote really does count. I was excited to be able to vote--especially since my democratic vote in Florida wouldn't have mattered anyway.Sukhothai
Sukhothai is between Chiang Mai and Bangkok, so we decided to st0p there and break up the long bus ride (into two still rather long bus rides) because we heard it was a pretty cool place. We rented bikes to ride around the ancient ruins and it was quite fun (although quite hot) -- especially when we road the bikes between the old town and the new town, which were much farther apart than we thought. We did stop for ice cream at KFC, though. The ruins at Sukhothai were pretty cool and if you are in Thailand and can't make it to Angkor Wat, I would definitely recommend going there. Of course, Angkor Wat is much bigger and better if you can make it over to Cambodia. It was an interesting place to spend a day, but I'm not sure I'd want to stay much longer.Bangkok
We were a little worried heading back to Bangkok after what had happened the last time, but this time our bus got in at about 4am as opposed to late at night. The bus station was CRAZY! Even at that time in the morning there were hundreds of buses arriving, huge lines for taxis, etc. It was total chaos. As soon as everyone was off the bus, they pulled out to let more buses and more people flood into the station. We couldn't get a room right away because it was so early, so we sat in a 24 hour Burger King for 3 hours or so. Fun times. Then we found a place off of Khao San Road (the main backpacker area) that let us have a room around 8am, so we just crashed there for a while. The last few days we spent in Bangkok are kind of a blur now. To be honest, we were so exhausted from all the traveling that we didn't do much except walk around shopping and eat pad thai and/or falafel from street stands. We road the water taxis a couple of times. We went all the way to the last stop to just look around. We also went to the royal palace, but it was kind of expensive, part of it was closed, and they wouldn't let us in wearing capris, so we decided to go back the next day -- except we didn't go back. Oh well. We found a few random temples and poked around them. We also went to the National Art Gallery, which was pretty interesting (and air conditioned!). Like I said, I think the month of traveling was definitely catching up to us at this point. It's lucky we didn't find a hostel with a TV because I probably would never have left the room. We did get facials and pedicures, which was nice. We had a lot of fun hanging out and spending the last of our money. Seriously. The last. I actually went to a money changing place 
and changed $1. Hey, that 32 baht bought lunch. I also sold a couple of books I had read to buy a couple more pairs of earrings. Pretty funny. The flight back was pretty uneventful. I took the airport bus, got there really early, read some magazines at the news stand (how come every other country in the world has American/English magazines except China? I had to get my fix of People, The Economist, etc.), went into Starbucks just to get a big whiff of the coffee aroma (I had no money left, remember?), and then got on my flight--with several people I know from Kunming. Thailand is the popular destination for Kunming expats at that time of year and there is only one direct flight between Bangkok and Kunming every day. I was actually surprised I didn't know more people. Well, that about sums up our Thailand adventures; after that it was back to the real world. I started working at my new job on Monday after returning to Kunming on Saturday.
Labels: Photos, SE Asia, Travel
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1 cents from the peanut gallery
Saturday, May 17, 2008ditu.google.cn
Whoa! I just discovered that Google Maps exists in Chinese and for Kunming. It will actually give you directions and all that stuff, as long as you can type it in Chinese (sadly, it doesn't seem to work to use the English version to get directions in Kunming). I typed the name of my apartment complex and the name of my favorite restaurant and it gave me directions. Check out the screen shot. Wow! I feel like Kunming has gone big-time now. This is almost as good as if we had a Starbucks. I also just heard that they are planning to begin construction on the subway (mass transit system, not the sandwhich shop...sadly) by the end of the year. Yes, my friends, Kunming is the happenin' place to be! Labels: Kunming
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Monday, May 12, 2008Seasick in an Office Building
Well, as many of you have no doubt heard, southwest China endured a strong earthquake yesterday (2:30am EST Monday morning). It was 2:30pm here, so we were all at work. The quake was centered in Sichuan province which is to the Northeast of Yunnan and Kunming and registered between 7.6 and 7.8 on the Richter scale. Needless to say, a quake that big was felt all over the region in Yunnan, Guizhou, etc. For those of you who were worried about me (I received many emails and facebook messages), I'm fine. There was no damage here. To be honest, though, being on the 18th floor (of 28) was kind of scary. The building was definitely creaking and swaying back and forth. We all suddenly felt dizzy and like we were going to throw up, but we didn't realize right away what was going on. I think the building was rocking for a good two minutes. We just ran down the stairs (all 18 flights - ugh!) and thankfully people did it in a more orderly fashion than I would have expected in China. After staying outside for an hour, it was back to work. One ceiling tile fell down and that was the only proof that something had indeed happened. Many people on the ground didn't even really notice the shaking (it was apparently a rolling kind of earthquake).Anyway, all that to say that I am fine. Sadly, the people in Sichuan are not and the death toll is already estimated to be around 10,000. Please keep those people in your thoughts and prayers as rescue efforts continue. And the people in Myanmar as well. It hasn't been a good couple of weeks for this corner of Asia.
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Sunday, May 04, 2008The Stuff of which Nightmares are Made...
Scary math and Chinese characters!
I took a picture of my friend's Chinese math book. I think this is the typical college math course--what we would call calculus. I passed calculus and all, but seriously, combining it with Chinese characters might be my worst nightmare! Eeeek!Labels: everyday things, Oh China
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Tuesday, April 22, 2008Super Sexy Silver Speed Racer!
I bought a new bike!
Since I ride to work every day and often head to the other side of town, I thought a good bike would be a good investment. It's also good exercise. If you've ever been to China and been on a public bus during rush hour, you'll understand why I try to avoid them. If you haven't been to China, let's just say that sardines doesn't even begin to describe. Mostly, though, I just wanted a new bike because I wanted a new toy! Haha. Let me just say that my 18 speed silver and black bike is super sexy and super fast (as you might have guessed from the title of this post).
Yesterday I rode home from work in rush hour traffic while wearing a skirt and balancing groceries on my handlebars. That means I've pretty much mastered life in China. Bring on the next adventure!
Since I ride to work every day and often head to the other side of town, I thought a good bike would be a good investment. It's also good exercise. If you've ever been to China and been on a public bus during rush hour, you'll understand why I try to avoid them. If you haven't been to China, let's just say that sardines doesn't even begin to describe. Mostly, though, I just wanted a new bike because I wanted a new toy! Haha. Let me just say that my 18 speed silver and black bike is super sexy and super fast (as you might have guessed from the title of this post).
Yesterday I rode home from work in rush hour traffic while wearing a skirt and balancing groceries on my handlebars. That means I've pretty much mastered life in China. Bring on the next adventure!
Labels: My Life
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Friday, April 18, 2008A Whole New World of Chinese Culture
Stuff I never learned while majoring in Asian Studies...I've decided that since I live in China as a (relatively) young and (moderately) "with it" person, I really should know more about Chinese pop culture. Movies, music, TV, celebrities. I realized a couple weeks ago that I knew literally nothing about these things. I decided to start with music because, well, I love music. Too much of Chinese music, in my limited experiece, is terrible pop and is mainly beatiful girls singing love songs in fields (in their music videos). Well, that's not really my style, but I have discovered that there is a lot more stuff out there. I've only barely scratched the surface, but here are two of my favorite music videos (thanks China for unblocking YouTube) for your viewing pleasure.
This first one is my favorite song although the music video (MV in Chinese slang) is not that great. It's called 改变自己 (Gai Bian Zi Ji) which means "Change Myself." It's about changing the world by changing yourself. Kinda cheesy, but it's a fun song. The singer's name is 王力宏 (Wang Li Hong or Lee-Hom Wang, which I'm guessing is the Cantonese and Americanized version of his name). He's actually an ABC (American-born Chinese) and apparently his sisters go to Harvard or something.
This second song may have the best music video in the history of the world. Seriously. It's a song called 牛仔很忙 (Niu Zai Hen Mang) which literally means "Very Busy Cowboy," but is usually translated as "Cowboy on the Run." It's by a Taiwanese guy named 周杰伦 (Zhou Jie Lun or Jay Chou in English) who has been popular for quite a while. The song is about a cowboy who is very busy saving the ladies and whatnot, but only drinks milk in bars because beer would make him fat. He also likes to take buble baths so he can play with toys, only wears fake leather, and shoots rubber bands when he duels. I found a translation of the lyrics here, but it's really not very good. Until you've seen Chinese rocker cowboys drinking bottles of milk, you really haven't lived. Hilarious.
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