Xuzhou -> Kaifeng
8.31.2006 : 15:57
The bus to Kaifeng (pronounced "Kigh Fung") wasn't comfortable but it was tolerable. It was a smaller 30 passenger bus that looked like it had seen some action and could use a little cleaning. I don't remember how long the trip was but it seemed like half a day. There was some confusion when we arrived because they told us to get off, but when I stepped off the bus we were in the middle of nowhere. I kept asking "is this Kaifeng?" but the driver hurried me to get my bag and then I realized that we were being traded to a different bus. I'm sure this isn't standard practice but I trusted the transportation system and we got on the second bus. The second bus was very similar to the first except they had a TV that was playing Cai JoLin videos (the latest Britney Spears of China, or maybe Kelly Clarkson, whoever is the new hot singy chick) and was totally packed. After a little while longer on a bus we rolled into the sleepy little town of Kaifeng.
As we made our way to the bus station the sun was going down and Kaifeng looked pretty much like China. That is to say that it looked like hundreds of other small town I've been through but never really looked at. But as we got further into the city I started to notice something, that everyone was outside. Now this often happens in China as people are much more social (as in they hang out with their neighbors) than in the US, but even for China it seemed like everybody was outside. Men were playing cards on turned over boxes while women talked and kept an eye on children who ran around the whole scene. And I have never seen so many dogs in China. It seemed like everyone had a dog. Over-all Kaifeng seemed like a very simple, comfortable, and welcoming place before I had even got off the bus.
The bus station was on the far south side of the city so we got a cab to a prospective hotel. After inspection is was not a terrible hotel, but perhaps slightly below our standard. The surprising part is that the hotel manager actually gave us directions to another hotel we could look at (albeit in Chinese). We then tried the simply named Kaifeng Hotel. Although it was a little expensive for our budget (200yuan/night) it was one of the coolest hotels I've ever stayed at in any country! The front gate of the hotel is a massive red door done up in ancient style and as you step into the court yard every building appears unchanged from the years Kaifeng spent as an ancient dynastic capital. When we got to our room we were pleasantly surprised to find out that there was nothing ancient about the accommodations. The rooms were very nice (by Chinese standards), but by any standard they were clean and comfortable. It's really almost worth a trip to Kaifeng just to stay in that Hotel.
The next day we stepped out to see what the town had to offer. Like many ancient Chinese cities, Kaifeng has a wall partitioning the central old city from the more modern new city that has grown around it. Usually the old city is the stuff you want to look at so we headed for the middle as best we could. Any pictures you see of old looking stuff is probably around the center of the city, which is really where we spent most of our time. Kaifeng has lots of history, but unfortunately I can't tell you any of it.
Well we had heard that there were night markets in Kaifeng (that is markets that only come out at night), but at night Kaifeng become on big night market! It was the strangest thing to walk through a part of town and then come back after dark and the same street become unrecognizable. A few days later we were walking around and noticed an extremely long line of carts with all manner of things on them that just appeared around 6:30pm. They seemed to all be waiting for something and as we got to the head of the line there was a policeman minding his watch. As it got to some exact minute he waved his hand and hundreds of street vendors flooded the area. Highly entertaining.
In a certain part of town the streets become nothing but food stands as far as the eye can see and this is some of the best food I have ever tasted. They of course have the random meat or vegetable cooked over an open flame you can get on any street in China, but they also have homemade ice cream, this crazy sort of sandwich made from a sort of pita bread with fried ingredients on the inside, jiaozi (dumplings), baozi(bigger dumpling things), kettle corn, eight treasures rice, and countless other things. Again one more reason to come and see Kaifeng.
Another thing that struck me about the city is that it seemed educated beyond its economic level. What I mean by this is that Kaifeng seems like any other poorish, run-down, smallish city in China but around every corner there is a bookstore. Lining the streets are street vendors with used books for sale and we met some very interesting English students. Once riding a bus an elderly lady started up a conversation in English and said she was a part time English student as Zhengzhou university. I was shocked. Also we met an unexpected number or random citizens with pretty good English. Unfortunately that doesn't mean that most people speak English, but Kaifeng does better than most places.
Well, we decided to try and be touristy by going to some theme parks (although I'm not sure what the theme was). The first one we came to had a giant building shaped like a peacock which looked fun, but it was a little overpriced. So we went up the road to another that looked almost exactly the same but a little cheaper. Aside from the fact the park was almost completely empty, it's wasn't too bad, 5 minutes into the park we found some swings so we did that for a while. Later we happened upon some sort of mock Shao Lin training ground. I of course had to prove that my Kung Fu is best so I proceeded to accept all the challenges. Elizabeth even tried a few, but she got much more entertainment out of impersonating the painting on the wall.
We went down to the train station to attempt to procure a way to our next unknown destination hoping to have better luck than Xuzhou. Kaifeng is on the rail line that runs through Zhengzhou into Xi'an so we actually had some options. We knew we were eventually going to Xi'an so a stop is Zhengzhou (another large city) would be pretty repetitive so we consulted the guide book and chose another small city on the other side of Zhengzhou at random and bought our tickets. Since the train station wasn't that close to our hotel and the train was leaving pretty early we thought it would be a good idea to find a hotel closer to the train station. And since we had splurged on the Kaifeng Hotel and were only staying one night we decided to take the rock bottom option. I don't remember the name of the hotel we got a room at, but I do remember that it was 60 yuan a night (that's about $7.50, for those of you who like to know that sort of thing). I can safely say it was not a nice hotel room, but Elizabeth will say that is was the worst night we've had in China. I can think of a few to rival it, but the fact is it was hot and the A/C didn't work well, the bathroom was kinda' funky and in serious need of hot water, and they bed had bamboo sheets. I've seen the bamboo bed before in China and I must say I think it's a good idea in theory. If you had to sleep in a room that was something like 95 degrees you probably wouldn't want to wrap up in sheets and blankets. So for summer most stores sell a kind of bamboo mat that goes over your bed and another bamboo mat you can use as a sheet and yet another that goes over your pillow for a pillow case. This is much cooler than sheets, but the downside is it doesn't help soften an already seriously hard Chinese bed. After getting up and working the cricks out of our backs we checked out and had a breakfast of some sort of cold rice noodles in like a peanut sauce (actually quite tasty) and stumbled our way to the early train bound for Huashan (pronounced "HooAhh Shan rhymes with Swan").
_Nathan
The bus to Kaifeng (pronounced "Kigh Fung") wasn't comfortable but it was tolerable. It was a smaller 30 passenger bus that looked like it had seen some action and could use a little cleaning. I don't remember how long the trip was but it seemed like half a day. There was some confusion when we arrived because they told us to get off, but when I stepped off the bus we were in the middle of nowhere. I kept asking "is this Kaifeng?" but the driver hurried me to get my bag and then I realized that we were being traded to a different bus. I'm sure this isn't standard practice but I trusted the transportation system and we got on the second bus. The second bus was very similar to the first except they had a TV that was playing Cai JoLin videos (the latest Britney Spears of China, or maybe Kelly Clarkson, whoever is the new hot singy chick) and was totally packed. After a little while longer on a bus we rolled into the sleepy little town of Kaifeng.
As we made our way to the bus station the sun was going down and Kaifeng looked pretty much like China. That is to say that it looked like hundreds of other small town I've been through but never really looked at. But as we got further into the city I started to notice something, that everyone was outside. Now this often happens in China as people are much more social (as in they hang out with their neighbors) than in the US, but even for China it seemed like everybody was outside. Men were playing cards on turned over boxes while women talked and kept an eye on children who ran around the whole scene. And I have never seen so many dogs in China. It seemed like everyone had a dog. Over-all Kaifeng seemed like a very simple, comfortable, and welcoming place before I had even got off the bus.
The bus station was on the far south side of the city so we got a cab to a prospective hotel. After inspection is was not a terrible hotel, but perhaps slightly below our standard. The surprising part is that the hotel manager actually gave us directions to another hotel we could look at (albeit in Chinese). We then tried the simply named Kaifeng Hotel. Although it was a little expensive for our budget (200yuan/night) it was one of the coolest hotels I've ever stayed at in any country! The front gate of the hotel is a massive red door done up in ancient style and as you step into the court yard every building appears unchanged from the years Kaifeng spent as an ancient dynastic capital. When we got to our room we were pleasantly surprised to find out that there was nothing ancient about the accommodations. The rooms were very nice (by Chinese standards), but by any standard they were clean and comfortable. It's really almost worth a trip to Kaifeng just to stay in that Hotel.
The next day we stepped out to see what the town had to offer. Like many ancient Chinese cities, Kaifeng has a wall partitioning the central old city from the more modern new city that has grown around it. Usually the old city is the stuff you want to look at so we headed for the middle as best we could. Any pictures you see of old looking stuff is probably around the center of the city, which is really where we spent most of our time. Kaifeng has lots of history, but unfortunately I can't tell you any of it.
Well we had heard that there were night markets in Kaifeng (that is markets that only come out at night), but at night Kaifeng become on big night market! It was the strangest thing to walk through a part of town and then come back after dark and the same street become unrecognizable. A few days later we were walking around and noticed an extremely long line of carts with all manner of things on them that just appeared around 6:30pm. They seemed to all be waiting for something and as we got to the head of the line there was a policeman minding his watch. As it got to some exact minute he waved his hand and hundreds of street vendors flooded the area. Highly entertaining.
In a certain part of town the streets become nothing but food stands as far as the eye can see and this is some of the best food I have ever tasted. They of course have the random meat or vegetable cooked over an open flame you can get on any street in China, but they also have homemade ice cream, this crazy sort of sandwich made from a sort of pita bread with fried ingredients on the inside, jiaozi (dumplings), baozi(bigger dumpling things), kettle corn, eight treasures rice, and countless other things. Again one more reason to come and see Kaifeng.
Another thing that struck me about the city is that it seemed educated beyond its economic level. What I mean by this is that Kaifeng seems like any other poorish, run-down, smallish city in China but around every corner there is a bookstore. Lining the streets are street vendors with used books for sale and we met some very interesting English students. Once riding a bus an elderly lady started up a conversation in English and said she was a part time English student as Zhengzhou university. I was shocked. Also we met an unexpected number or random citizens with pretty good English. Unfortunately that doesn't mean that most people speak English, but Kaifeng does better than most places.
Well, we decided to try and be touristy by going to some theme parks (although I'm not sure what the theme was). The first one we came to had a giant building shaped like a peacock which looked fun, but it was a little overpriced. So we went up the road to another that looked almost exactly the same but a little cheaper. Aside from the fact the park was almost completely empty, it's wasn't too bad, 5 minutes into the park we found some swings so we did that for a while. Later we happened upon some sort of mock Shao Lin training ground. I of course had to prove that my Kung Fu is best so I proceeded to accept all the challenges. Elizabeth even tried a few, but she got much more entertainment out of impersonating the painting on the wall.
We went down to the train station to attempt to procure a way to our next unknown destination hoping to have better luck than Xuzhou. Kaifeng is on the rail line that runs through Zhengzhou into Xi'an so we actually had some options. We knew we were eventually going to Xi'an so a stop is Zhengzhou (another large city) would be pretty repetitive so we consulted the guide book and chose another small city on the other side of Zhengzhou at random and bought our tickets. Since the train station wasn't that close to our hotel and the train was leaving pretty early we thought it would be a good idea to find a hotel closer to the train station. And since we had splurged on the Kaifeng Hotel and were only staying one night we decided to take the rock bottom option. I don't remember the name of the hotel we got a room at, but I do remember that it was 60 yuan a night (that's about $7.50, for those of you who like to know that sort of thing). I can safely say it was not a nice hotel room, but Elizabeth will say that is was the worst night we've had in China. I can think of a few to rival it, but the fact is it was hot and the A/C didn't work well, the bathroom was kinda' funky and in serious need of hot water, and they bed had bamboo sheets. I've seen the bamboo bed before in China and I must say I think it's a good idea in theory. If you had to sleep in a room that was something like 95 degrees you probably wouldn't want to wrap up in sheets and blankets. So for summer most stores sell a kind of bamboo mat that goes over your bed and another bamboo mat you can use as a sheet and yet another that goes over your pillow for a pillow case. This is much cooler than sheets, but the downside is it doesn't help soften an already seriously hard Chinese bed. After getting up and working the cricks out of our backs we checked out and had a breakfast of some sort of cold rice noodles in like a peanut sauce (actually quite tasty) and stumbled our way to the early train bound for Huashan (pronounced "HooAhh Shan rhymes with Swan").
_Nathan
[1] comments
Changes around here, and more empty promises
8.30.2006 : 13:13
I've been working on this. Not that I don't totally appreciate every blog comment, I in fact savor every one, but I thought we needed a more open forum for saying "what's up." I've also been playing around with the idea of changing the layout of the site, since it's basically looked the same for 3 years. I take that back, there was the Kuaizi.net version and then the Whereisnathan.com version but both used the same color scheme. Anyway, the message board may also serve as a preview for things to come.
In other more current matters, one week from today I will again be an teacher of English students and one week from yesterday I will be 27 years of age. For the past week the Sophomores have been undergoing the nationally mandated military training. That's right, when you go to college in China you also have a week and a half of military training somewhere around your first year of school. Usually this just makes a good show for the Lao Wai (foreigners), but this year I suddenly remembered I live in the campus hotel when 75 or so drill sergeants moved in on the first day. So now I get to hear the "good morning" whistle every morning at 6am and a few more throughout the day for lunch and night time marching. Super cool.
With the officers living on the 4th floor I hardly even notice the sports teams living on the 5th floor who came back to train early except that they have been sucking up all the bandwidth for the last few weeks. I actually had fairly decent download speeds when there was no one on campus for first week or so when I got back, but alas, now it is not so.
I do fully intend to continue my story telling, but I wanted to finish the message board first so expect another installment by the end of the week with luck.
_Nathan
I've been working on this. Not that I don't totally appreciate every blog comment, I in fact savor every one, but I thought we needed a more open forum for saying "what's up." I've also been playing around with the idea of changing the layout of the site, since it's basically looked the same for 3 years. I take that back, there was the Kuaizi.net version and then the Whereisnathan.com version but both used the same color scheme. Anyway, the message board may also serve as a preview for things to come.
In other more current matters, one week from today I will again be an teacher of English students and one week from yesterday I will be 27 years of age. For the past week the Sophomores have been undergoing the nationally mandated military training. That's right, when you go to college in China you also have a week and a half of military training somewhere around your first year of school. Usually this just makes a good show for the Lao Wai (foreigners), but this year I suddenly remembered I live in the campus hotel when 75 or so drill sergeants moved in on the first day. So now I get to hear the "good morning" whistle every morning at 6am and a few more throughout the day for lunch and night time marching. Super cool.
With the officers living on the 4th floor I hardly even notice the sports teams living on the 5th floor who came back to train early except that they have been sucking up all the bandwidth for the last few weeks. I actually had fairly decent download speeds when there was no one on campus for first week or so when I got back, but alas, now it is not so.
I do fully intend to continue my story telling, but I wanted to finish the message board first so expect another installment by the end of the week with luck.
_Nathan
Hangzhou -> Xuzhou
8.25.2006 : 13:30
//Sorry for the delay, here's part 1.
We had planned for our first stop in the summer tour to be Nanjing but two of our good friends Bailey and Angela had been banished to a little town in the north of Jiangsu province called Xuzhou. They were teaching a summer course at a middle school for three weeks and couldn't get back to Nanjing for a weekend. So we promptly decided that we would swing by Nanjing, pick up the rest of the crew, and go and surprise them with a visit. We arrived in Nanjing around 4pm on a Thursday and were supposed to get tickets to Xuzhou for the next day, but somehow they were all sold out. This was confusing to me since, as I said before, Xuzhou is a tiny town with nothing in it. But this will come up again later.
We took the subway and met Jason who took us out to the tiny village he lives in (similar to Xiasha except smaller!). We met up with Luke and Ben and went to a nice Hunan restaurant and had dinner with their boss Rob. Afterwards we all went back to Ben's and had some beers. Jason mentioned that he wasn't feeling well so he went to bed early even though it was a Thursday night and they all had to work in the morning. The next day I thought we'd leave for Xuzhou straight away but it turned out there was some placement testing to be done and so I volunteered to help. Placement testing is exactly what it sounds like; asking kids questions to see how much English they can speak. So we did this for about 2 hours and then we were free to go so we made our way to the bus station.
Since the train station hadn't worked out we were banking on bus tickets, but when we got to the ticket window the lady was convinced we were trying to say Suzhou (Sue-joe) and not Xuzhou (Shoo-joe) Suzhou being a much more popular town to the south. It finally came to us pointing to a map and making funny faces, but she finally got it.
5 hours later we pulled into Xuzhou and gave Angela and Baily a great surprise. They had been expecting Jason, Luke, and Ben but Jason had only mentioned "other people" and not told them who. The first tourist slap of the summer came when we got off the bus and the taxi offered to take us to the hotel for 10 US dollars. I couldn't help bus laugh in his face since for 10 American dollars I could get a ride back to Nanjing. So we just decided to walk.
Now getting a hotel in China is a slightly different process than getting one in the US. In good ol' 'Merica you just walk in say "I'd like a room" and give them your credit card. In China you have to walk in a ask to see a room. After seeing the room you ask how much it is. On the board behind the front desk it will say something like 350 yuan, they will tell you its 250 yuan. You then have to tell them you won't pay 250 yuan and then start bargaining. I told them I had brought my friends here and I wanted to stay 3 nights and I didn't want breakfast. This brought the price down to 160 a night. Which sounds really good next to 350 a night, but really you know a Chinese person would have got it for 120.
After checking into the hotel and changing into something less sweaty we all agreed the first order of business was to find a bar. This doesn't sound like a difficult proposition, but after walking for 40 minutes we were starting to become daunted. We had a guide named Anita, a poor Australian girl who had been trapped there for months. But Anita was 18 and used to being by herself I guess, so she didn't know exactly where the bars where but eventually we found a few. The first one was way to noisy and the second one was way to noisy and there wasn't anybody there, but the third one was just right. It was almost completely empty, instead of music they were playing world's funniest commercials on the big screen and it had the only source of entertainment we would find all weekend....a Foosball table!! So of course I spent the rest of the night drinking QingDao (or TsingTao or whatever it's labeled in the US) and losing at foosball.
Now as you may have heard every single square foot of China is famous for something, or at least anything that constitutes a village. And so Xuzhou's claim to fame is a set of terra-cotta warriors (yeah, there's more than one) and so we decided we'd give it a visit. Now I've heard all about the famous terra-cotta army in Xi'an so I was expecting something fairly grand. What I got was nothing but disappointment which quickly turned into choked laughter. I don't want to dis' it too much, it is 2,000 years old and stuff, but there wasn't much to see. Essentially what you have are three long pits about 2 yards wide and 40 yards long encased in glass. In the first pit you have fully restored figures about a foot and a half tall and lined up the way they were originally in the tomb (maybe). Pit two is partially excavated and shows some of the figures in the form they were found in. But the glorious finally is pit three, which is just a pile of dirt. Now they say there are more figures down there, but how do they know? Have they looked with X-rays or something? There were signs everywhere saying now pictures so we didn't take any, but you can see what I'm talking about here.
So by the second day we were pretty much ready to leave Xuzhou and so we went to the train station to see about tickets. Now the original plan was to go to QingDao (that's right, like the beer) which is the St. Louis of China and home to China's most famous brand of beer. I've heard the town is supposed to be pretty cool and you can tour the Brewery and buy beer in a bag. But upon reaching the train station we found out there were no trains going to QingDao. I didn't see how this was possible but that's what I was repeatedly told. QingDao was too far to go by bus and it was too expensive to fly on our limited budget. We check other trains going in that direction. Nothing available. We checked trains going anywhere but nothing was available. Now I think I know the reason for this. Xuzhou is small and not really on route to many places, and certainly no trains start in Xuzhou. Anywhere we wanted to go we wanted a bed, but every bed was sold. So taking the train was out.
Now also in the plan was meeting our friends Jason, Angela and Bailey in Yunnan province two and a half weeks later during their vacation time. So we eventually had to give QingDao up. We went to the bus station to see what our options were and they weren't many. We considered all of them carefully and on our last day we chose Kaifeng.
[to be continued...]
_Nathan
//Sorry for the delay, here's part 1.
We had planned for our first stop in the summer tour to be Nanjing but two of our good friends Bailey and Angela had been banished to a little town in the north of Jiangsu province called Xuzhou. They were teaching a summer course at a middle school for three weeks and couldn't get back to Nanjing for a weekend. So we promptly decided that we would swing by Nanjing, pick up the rest of the crew, and go and surprise them with a visit. We arrived in Nanjing around 4pm on a Thursday and were supposed to get tickets to Xuzhou for the next day, but somehow they were all sold out. This was confusing to me since, as I said before, Xuzhou is a tiny town with nothing in it. But this will come up again later.
We took the subway and met Jason who took us out to the tiny village he lives in (similar to Xiasha except smaller!). We met up with Luke and Ben and went to a nice Hunan restaurant and had dinner with their boss Rob. Afterwards we all went back to Ben's and had some beers. Jason mentioned that he wasn't feeling well so he went to bed early even though it was a Thursday night and they all had to work in the morning. The next day I thought we'd leave for Xuzhou straight away but it turned out there was some placement testing to be done and so I volunteered to help. Placement testing is exactly what it sounds like; asking kids questions to see how much English they can speak. So we did this for about 2 hours and then we were free to go so we made our way to the bus station.
Since the train station hadn't worked out we were banking on bus tickets, but when we got to the ticket window the lady was convinced we were trying to say Suzhou (Sue-joe) and not Xuzhou (Shoo-joe) Suzhou being a much more popular town to the south. It finally came to us pointing to a map and making funny faces, but she finally got it.
5 hours later we pulled into Xuzhou and gave Angela and Baily a great surprise. They had been expecting Jason, Luke, and Ben but Jason had only mentioned "other people" and not told them who. The first tourist slap of the summer came when we got off the bus and the taxi offered to take us to the hotel for 10 US dollars. I couldn't help bus laugh in his face since for 10 American dollars I could get a ride back to Nanjing. So we just decided to walk.
Now getting a hotel in China is a slightly different process than getting one in the US. In good ol' 'Merica you just walk in say "I'd like a room" and give them your credit card. In China you have to walk in a ask to see a room. After seeing the room you ask how much it is. On the board behind the front desk it will say something like 350 yuan, they will tell you its 250 yuan. You then have to tell them you won't pay 250 yuan and then start bargaining. I told them I had brought my friends here and I wanted to stay 3 nights and I didn't want breakfast. This brought the price down to 160 a night. Which sounds really good next to 350 a night, but really you know a Chinese person would have got it for 120.
After checking into the hotel and changing into something less sweaty we all agreed the first order of business was to find a bar. This doesn't sound like a difficult proposition, but after walking for 40 minutes we were starting to become daunted. We had a guide named Anita, a poor Australian girl who had been trapped there for months. But Anita was 18 and used to being by herself I guess, so she didn't know exactly where the bars where but eventually we found a few. The first one was way to noisy and the second one was way to noisy and there wasn't anybody there, but the third one was just right. It was almost completely empty, instead of music they were playing world's funniest commercials on the big screen and it had the only source of entertainment we would find all weekend....a Foosball table!! So of course I spent the rest of the night drinking QingDao (or TsingTao or whatever it's labeled in the US) and losing at foosball.
Now as you may have heard every single square foot of China is famous for something, or at least anything that constitutes a village. And so Xuzhou's claim to fame is a set of terra-cotta warriors (yeah, there's more than one) and so we decided we'd give it a visit. Now I've heard all about the famous terra-cotta army in Xi'an so I was expecting something fairly grand. What I got was nothing but disappointment which quickly turned into choked laughter. I don't want to dis' it too much, it is 2,000 years old and stuff, but there wasn't much to see. Essentially what you have are three long pits about 2 yards wide and 40 yards long encased in glass. In the first pit you have fully restored figures about a foot and a half tall and lined up the way they were originally in the tomb (maybe). Pit two is partially excavated and shows some of the figures in the form they were found in. But the glorious finally is pit three, which is just a pile of dirt. Now they say there are more figures down there, but how do they know? Have they looked with X-rays or something? There were signs everywhere saying now pictures so we didn't take any, but you can see what I'm talking about here.
So by the second day we were pretty much ready to leave Xuzhou and so we went to the train station to see about tickets. Now the original plan was to go to QingDao (that's right, like the beer) which is the St. Louis of China and home to China's most famous brand of beer. I've heard the town is supposed to be pretty cool and you can tour the Brewery and buy beer in a bag. But upon reaching the train station we found out there were no trains going to QingDao. I didn't see how this was possible but that's what I was repeatedly told. QingDao was too far to go by bus and it was too expensive to fly on our limited budget. We check other trains going in that direction. Nothing available. We checked trains going anywhere but nothing was available. Now I think I know the reason for this. Xuzhou is small and not really on route to many places, and certainly no trains start in Xuzhou. Anywhere we wanted to go we wanted a bed, but every bed was sold. So taking the train was out.
Now also in the plan was meeting our friends Jason, Angela and Bailey in Yunnan province two and a half weeks later during their vacation time. So we eventually had to give QingDao up. We went to the bus station to see what our options were and they weren't many. We considered all of them carefully and on our last day we chose Kaifeng.
[to be continued...]
_Nathan
And we're back!
8.24.2006 : 12:10
We actually arrived back to our apartment very early on Sunday the 13th, but for the last week and a half I've been taking a vacation from my "vacation". After riding buses and trains for a month I decided to completly shut down and dedicate myself to re-playing through Minish Cap and catching myself up by re-reading Megatokyo. I occasionally ate and took a shower every few days, but now that's over since there is only a week and a half left until my classes start. So it's "back to work" for me.
I know that all of you (some of you maybe?) have been wondering what I've been doing for the past month and a half and since I posted up some new pictures with hardly any explanation*, I will tell you the tale of how I saw the whole of China (almost) and went mostly broke doing it. I think I'm going to take my time with this since it could take a while. I think I'll break it down by cities since that's kind of how it divides itself in my mind. I'll see if I can finish "part 1" by today or tommorow.
On a side note, I just found out that Google is putting Blogger through some kind of new Beta (which they won't let me take part in, jerks) and I'm going to try and change some things around the site. So that things could start acting funny so be warned.
_Nathan
We actually arrived back to our apartment very early on Sunday the 13th, but for the last week and a half I've been taking a vacation from my "vacation". After riding buses and trains for a month I decided to completly shut down and dedicate myself to re-playing through Minish Cap and catching myself up by re-reading Megatokyo. I occasionally ate and took a shower every few days, but now that's over since there is only a week and a half left until my classes start. So it's "back to work" for me.
I know that all of you (some of you maybe?) have been wondering what I've been doing for the past month and a half and since I posted up some new pictures with hardly any explanation*, I will tell you the tale of how I saw the whole of China (almost) and went mostly broke doing it. I think I'm going to take my time with this since it could take a while. I think I'll break it down by cities since that's kind of how it divides itself in my mind. I'll see if I can finish "part 1" by today or tommorow.
On a side note, I just found out that Google is putting Blogger through some kind of new Beta (which they won't let me take part in, jerks) and I'm going to try and change some things around the site. So that things could start acting funny so be warned.
*You can thank Elizabeth for the explanation that was provided as I was too lazy to actually type anything.
_Nathan