Category: Travel

Ok, I will fire off more hoping the connection will stay stable.
As I mentioned earlier, it’s tough to take pictures of all you see when you are basically off roading in some places. Cambodia is basically flat, and as it’s the end of the wet season parts are flooded. About half the population is under 30, and half of those are aged 10 and under. The Khmer Rouge killed off the intellectuals and anyone with an education, so in that respect Cambodia was brought back to “Year Zero”. Education is not compulsory, so if family needs the child for work s/he does not go to school. When school is held, it’s a half-day session. Poverty is huge here–lots of heaps of garbage and broken down items. Also saw some lovely things, too: Patches of beautiful lotuses, kids frolicking in streams, a temple peeping out of green fields, people going about their daily lives, bridges and other structures being built. Saw some scarier things too: A family of four riding on a motorcycle; dad (who wore a helmet) holding an infant on his shoulders while the motorbike was in motion. Bottles of gasoline are stored in glass liter bottles at roadside stands–in the hot sun, no less.
More later–Aimee

Today we took a bus from Bangkok to Siem Reap, Cambodia. Journey took about 10 hours, with about two hours for immigration and breaks. We entered at Poipet, which is apparently the last border to close after the Khmer Roughe took over–if you were going to get out, that was the place for it. I think it should be renamed “Poi-pit” or, rhythmically, “Toilet”. Dusty, hot, muggy, with piles of garbage and a road pockmarked with potholes the size of small ponds. Lots of kids working. The road to SR is pretty bumpy, so is difficult to take pictures. And the internet connection here in SR is pretty spotty, so my description will have to stay short for now.
Aimee

Sawadee ka!
Here I am in Bangkok. The total flight time was over 17 hours, and I got here at 11:30 p.m. Bangkok is 14 hours ahead of Seattle time. It was 80 + degrees with 90% humidity–totally different from 54 degrees and damp in Seattle! On the way to the hotel I saw roadside food stalls, and it looks like Chinatown was hopping in places late at night. I’m not terribly jetlagged, but am taking it easy this afternoon as I acclimate to time and climate changes. The hotel I’m at is in Chinatown and I took a stroll for a couple hours. All sorts of goods, from military gear, including a cheap rifle, to batiks, were offered. I was one of the few western faces around, and no one bothered me at all. Alleyways with smells of rice, frying bananas, fish, fruit, pollution, and some unidentified smells as well. Saw a dried up Khlong (canal) that looked like it doubled as a toilet. Poverty is here too but haven’t seen many beggars. Traffic is a big here, and my asthma is feeling it to a degree, though I’m glad I wore a mask outside.
Weirdest thing I saw on my way yesterday was a toilet in Narita International that in addition to having a functioning flush mechanism, gave options that included making a flushing sound…
Tomorrow I’ll try to see a few sights before hooking up with the tour group. Take care. Let’s hope the market crash halts quickly!
Aimee

Conclusion of those little projects known as Vista and IE7 at work meant a short weekend vacation for Aimee and myself. We’re spending the weekend on the Oregon coast in Seaside.
This little city is quickly becoming one of my favorite “get away” spots. It is about four hours drive from Seattle and has much of what I like in a place to relax. The city is very pedestrian friendly and the ocean access and beach off the Promenade are excellent.
Access to much of the Oregon coast involves getting through some rugged and rocky terrain. I enjoy a healthy hike as much as anyone but it is nice here in Seaside to be able to walk along a smooth sandy beach that’s nothing more than a step off the 2 mile sidewalk known as the Promenade.
That’s not to say the more rugged beaches are far away. We went out hiking yesterday along a winding trail that lead to the beach. It was amazing to see how much ground the recent batch of rain here in the northwest dug up. Most trails along the coast are covered with accumulated debris from the surrounding forest. But in hiking yesterday it was easy to experience all the places where water had exposed tree roots, rocks and in general dug up the forest floor.
We capped the evening off with dinner at Lil’ Bayou. This is a must visit restaurant for anyone visiting Seaside. Great food at reasonable prices and excellent service.
Retirement, something not in the near future, would be pretty nice in a place like this. Like that’s any secret though as a quick browse of any coastal home price listing shows.

Oh, what memories! The Nitty Gritty is one of those institutions that I suppose most cities, especially those that play host to major colleges, has to have to be considered complete. I confess to having the birthday bell rung for me a time or few during the almost 10 years I called Madison home. Ironic that these days the old gritty mugs are more often filled with milk for dinner than that other beverage that Wisconsin’s so famous for.
The Nitty Gritty is one of those places that’s a must stop, birthday or not, if you’ve never been to Madison. Then too, it is a requirement for any return visit to the city if you’ve ever called the city built on an isthmus home.

It has been almost a year since Aimee and I travelled to India. Today an article in the Seattle Times caught my attention as they have a travel writer visiting for two weeks.

Walking through the grounds at Humayuan’s Tomb, a precursor of the Taj Mahal, built in the 1500s, I was struck at how easy it is to escape the traffic noise and congestion, and get a feel for what medieval Delhi used to be like.

This isn’t the most descriptive paragraph but it caught my attention because it captures a lot of what I remember about India. The noise, chaos and constant action that surrounded us is still something that I marvel at when thinking back on our trip. Yet reading about the writer’s experience at the tomb reminds me how peaceful the grounds were.
I’m looking forward to reading this author’s experiences.

Aimee put together a photo story of our trip to Beijing. Enjoy some of the images and sounds of China.

Apparently a couple folks who’ve read my posts requested that I discuss the food we had in Beijing. Ironic, as thinking about food right now is not high on my list. First, it’s hot in fair Seattle (not as hot as Beijing, though) and no A/C in the house. Even more, I’m recovering from Travelers Trots, which I believe was due to bad airline food.
The question I’ve been asked by several people is whether the food in China is much better than the food served in Chinese restaurants in America. My answer to that is it depends, although the food was generally fresher, had little MSG or gooey sauces. It is common to find that vegetarian items usually have some meat in them. As meat was traditionally scarce, and thus valued, it is unthinkable to many Chinese to not have meat, especially when entertaining. Meat, fowl, and fish usually still have the bones in, sometimes the head too. Some of it was quite good, but nothing really knocked my socks off save for some street dumplings and Chinese mashed potatoes. Organic foods are relatively new here: produce is typically doused with pesticides, and meats are likewise treated with hormones/antibiotics. The water that is used to irrigate fields can contain toxins at levels that would make the EPA faint.
Food is a reflection of culture, geography, and of available resources/ingredients. This is no different in China. As China is family oriented and has a strong history of poverty amongst its masses, it should be no surprise that the food served in restaurants is meant to be shared. Chinese folks usually eat in groups, and order items that are shared with the group. Unless you are at McDonalds, a food court, or other establishment that caters to Westerners, expect to get some odd looks if you go solo or in a twosome.
For breakfast, I tried two types of congee (a rice porridge), one with dark glutinous rice (very bland) and another that tasted like a cross between porridge and grits. There was also some steamed baby bok choy, clay pot tofu with pork (pork too tough). The dumplings were average and somewhat greasy. I’ve had Chinese doughnuts before, and I highly recommend them, but be warned—they are salty, not sweet, fried dough pieces. I tried fruits whose names I didn’t know which caught my attention: a white fruit with black edible kiwi fruit-like seeds, and a pear shaped red fruit that tasted like a cross between an apple and a grape. Lychees were good, too. The hotel had a pastry shop, and sold chocolate croissants and other pastries for surprisingly reasonable prices (unlike the rest of their food), and the coffee wasn’t bad. We ate here for breakfast most days, although a couple of mornings we had Doritos and Pepsi (from a grocery store in the mall)!
I didn’t eat lunch a lot, because usually I was too hot and when I got hungry, didn’t want to ruin my appetite for dinner. Retrospectively, this was a mistake. As most of you know, Kelly is not adventurous in the food department. Moreover, at the end of the day, we were both tired, hot, and hungry, and not in the mood to schlep around looking for food that would please us both.
One day I ate at a Uighur (Muslims whose ancestors settled in NW China near the Silk Road routes) restaurant recommended in a guidebook, and enjoyed the yangrou chuan (grilled lamb skewers with cumin and chili powder). I’m not a lover of lamb, but most of it was tender and not fatty. The bread I ordered to accompany it (nan), however, was meant to sop up sauces, and was simply too dry to eat with the meat. The other diners enjoyed watching me negotiate the meat from the skewers, sometimes with bread, other times with chopsticks. For lunch another day, I managed to find a popular Tibetan restaurant near the Silk Market via the subway (don’t be afraid to try the subway, it’s easy to negotiate). The restaurant was beautifully decorated, and the servers are pleasant, but not warm and fuzzy. Tibetan food will not get any marks for haute cuisine, I’m afraid, but the yogurt was delicious, and I appreciated the opportunity to try tsampa (barley flour rolled with yak butter—it’s a great filler and high in calories, great for the cold), which was very bland. I would’ve tried the butter tea, but it was way too hot that day.
Japanese food seems to be popular in China, although the food we tried one day (in the lower level of the ATC building) tasted more like a cross between Japanese and Chinese food. It was still tasty. The Miso soup was authentic, though, and quite good.
We ate a few dinners at the hotel, whose food was way overpriced (avoid the fake Italian restaurant). The burgers and fries were very good, as was the claypot eggplant. Oxtail soup had a bland broth, but the meat was tender and tasty. One evening we went to a hotpot restaurant, very popular in Northern China and Mongolia, and definitely communal. Basically its Chinese fondue–you dunk veggies, noodles, beef, lamb, tofu, etc. in boiling broth. The staff was very nice in showing us what we were supposed to do. However, the experience was a disaster. Kelly did not like the dunking sauce and he didn’t eat more than a couple bites. I found the food OK, although the broth was not as flavorful as it should have been. Although I enjoy trying new foods (within reason), seeing my love looking bored and/or hungry takes most of the pleasure out of the experience. For that reason, I opted to eat one meal at an establishment I never thought I would set food into in a foreign country: McDonalds. And it tastes the same there, too.
We did, however, have the good fortune to be guests at a banquet that was hosted by Beijing’s Microsoftees. A plethora of dishes were served, including fish in sweet and spicy soup (one of the most popular dishes in China). Incidentally, the word for fish in Mandarin is yu (inflection up). Yu with a different inflection means abundance, so the presence of fish signifies bounty on the part of the host, and subsequently, prestige/face. Other dishes included orange beef, pork wrapped in lotus leaves (pork is the most popular meat in mainland China), cuttlefish (yummy), vegetarian rolls, smoked duck in a szechuan sauce (delicious), fried rice, and Chinese mashed potatoes (to die for!)
We went to the Donghua Market one evening, which is sometimes featured on the Travel/Discovery Channel and saw the “freak show food”. The Chinese claim that they will eat anything that “swims, runs, walks, or crawls with its back to the sun”. They’re not kidding. Many people have seen the episodes or pictures of fried scorpions, baby birds, etc. Didn’t see those specifically, but you could have skewers of dead pigeons/swallows, snakes, roasted silkworms, and all sorts of organs (testicles, bung, etc). You could either have your mice barbequed or fried, the latter with eyes still in (a colleague of mine asked if you would get a rat if you asked to “super size it”). Most of the food stalls, which are decked out in red and white, carried the same foods. There were some “normal” foods (veggies mostly). Lots of tourists, mainly from China, walking up and down, and the one place I observed public drunkenness. The place smelled like bad carnival food and I was not inspired to try any of the fare. I didn’t see anyone else buying it either. We asked our driver Michael if the Chinese “really ate that stuff”, and he assured me that they did.
Fruits are the main feature for dessert. The watermelon was succulent everyplace I tried it, possibly better than Dulcineas here in the States. Ice cream/gelato is also quite popular, the latter very good. Noted that DQ had a couple outlets in Oriental Plaza—avoid the “shakes”—in truth they are flavored cold, slightly thick, milk.
Although tea is clearly the predominant beverage, Starbucks has a few outlets in China—including the Forbidden City. Coffee is also gaining more ground in anticipation of the oft-cited “2008 Olympics”. A couple words about tea: There are several different theories about tea’s discovery, the most popular being attributed to the Chinese Emperor, Shin Nong in 3000 BC, when a leaf from the tea tree fell into the boiling water and he decided to try the resulting brew. The first valid references to it in China start from the fourth century AD. Anyway, the Chinese word for tea is “cha”. In many languages, the word is similar to this, but in others, it evolved into a variant of “tea”. The answer is that many western traders picked up tea for trade in the Fujian province, in which the character for tea is pronounced “deh”. In China, the written characters are the same throughout the country, but pronunciation is different.
My “final thought” on the matter of the food I had in Beijing: research findings suggest that there could be some awesome food out there, but the small sample size and outlier variables indicate more studies on the matter are needed.

Today we went to the Great Wall at Mutianyu–less crowded than the more popular (and closer) area at Badaling. The surrounding area was gorgeous–mountains, flowers, small villages. The wall itself was incredible. Stairs are alternatingly steep and then smaller and wider without any pattern. Perhaps it was due to building materials, but anyone running on the wall would be slowed by that. The wall was not built for the disabled or the out of shape. Would have enjoyed it more if it weren’t hotter than Hades, either. It must have been hell for the people who had to build it, esp in that weather. On the way down, we rode in a cable car that Clinton rode in when he visited Mutianyu in 1998!
Then we went to the Summer Palace, frequented especially by Empress Cixi, an enterprising concubine-turned ruler. It was beautiful, but the construction, the crush of people and the heat made it less enjoyable. We did have a 8 kuai (one $) boat ride, which was nice. Topped off the day by having a swim in the hotel’s gorgeous pool.
Yesterday went to Factory 798, a cluster of contemporary art galleries in factory buildings. Many galleries have closed, due to government’s desire to screw up the land essentially, but the art in the galleries (and outside) was awesome! Had dinner at a Chinese restaurant close to the Advanced technology Center, and tried multiple dishes–my favorites were the Chinese mashed potatoes and the Szechuan Duck.
Tomorrow we’re off to see a temple in a remote part of Beijing, and do some last minute shopping. Early Monday am it’s time to fly home. While it’s always nice to be home, I’ve really enjoyed this trip, and am grateful for the privilege of having come here.
BTW–the nursing home is actually more like a senior living complex. We were told there were no nursing homes in China like their American counterparts. In China, families are expected to take care of their parents. Even senior centers are not looked at too kindly, and we were told that people talked badly about those who did not take care of their parents. The one child policy adds to the burden, as care cannot be shared. The divorce rate in cities is about 30%, so that adds another wrinkle in obtaining housing for aging parents. In remarriages, some offspring refuse to “recognize” their parents’ spouse. Within the next several years, the elderly population is expected to rise to 14%. Another thing to watch unfold here in the years to come.
All for now–Aimee & Kelly

As in everywhere else in Asia, you are expected to bargain for items, something I’m not adept at and don’t really like. Guess I’m typically American in that fashion–just tell me what you want for it and I’ll decide if it’s worth my while. I went to the Pearl Market (Hong Qiao) which had lots of stuff, most of it the ticky tacky variety. Got a few things, which I likely paid too much for. In contrast though, I found this low key market in an old temple that is primarily patronized by the locals–some fakes, but basically a smaller version of Panjiayuan (antiques and curios–way overpriced). No one hassled me and I was free to browse–my kind of place.
Of course, Mao items galore are found at these places, as he’s very popular with Chinese and foreign tourists alike. I’m conflicted about this–on one hand, this guy was responsible for millions of deaths and lives otherwise shattered during his Great Flop Backward and the Cultural Revolution (see what happens when teenagers run loose). Hardly things to celebrate. On the other hand, given his abhorrence of capitalism, perhaps it’s fitting that his Cult of Personality is reduced to having his mug plastered on cheap T-shirts, pins, plates, etc.
I’ve had the chance to wander through a few hutong, too (Chinese neighborhoods, a maze of alleyways, etc). As mentioned in my last post, many are being systematically destroyed for beautification–and for the fact that the land is valuable. Since municipal governments are short of funds, they get funds when the land is sold to developers. Now, homes in hutongs don’t typically have plumbing or heating/A/C, and many are dilapidated. But many residents have lived there for decades, and even generations. The NYT printed an article about this two days ago–highly recommended.
A few oddities I’ve noticed or learned of: Beijingers have to pay $800 a year for a dog license. And yet car licenses top out at 120 yuan (about $14) a year. Banks have been liberal with loans, which has also contributed to the ocean of cars on the road.
Many shops have bilingual signs and even sections, such as a bookstore I wandered into. And yet, none of the books were in English or with both languages.
Just as many Westerners mangle Putonghua, Mandarin speakers also mangle the English language in amusing ways. Some signs I saw during my stay here include Beijing Stomatotology (no mispelling), Cloake Shoes, and an add for a cellphone that reads, “I chocolate you”.
Tonight Kelly and I will join a few of the Microsoft employees for dinner on Houhai Lake, which should be fun. Kelly’s meetings have been “very productive” in his words, and this has been a successful week. A lot of accessibility testing is being done here–while he is very interested in this, he’s not interested in moving to China at this point.
All for now and take care–Aimee & Kelly