I left my apartment on July 13 at 4 in the afternoon. I got back on August 6 at 7 pm. In those 25 days away, I visited:
1. Cleveland
2. Columbus
3. Oxford (1 night)
4. Cincinnati (airport)
5. Minneapolis (airport)
6. Tokyo twice (airport)
7. Beijing
8. Xi'an
9. Chongqing
10. Feng Du
11. Yi Chang
12. Wuhan (aiport)
13. Huangzhou
14. Huangshan
15. Shanghai
16. Detriot
17. Naperville (just a visit)
18. Aurora
(unless otherwise indicated, I spent at least two nights at each place).
I am a restless individual but even I am just so happy to be back here blogging at my own computer.
8.06.2007
8.03.2007
Jet Lag Fun
Can't sleep.
It's 3:08 am Eastern time. More time to blog.
July 21 - After a quick breakfast at the hotel, we headed out at 9am. This was after a frantic night of packing after our trips to the pearl, jade, and silk factory and of course, our trip to the fake market. Chinese domestic flights only allow you to take 20 kilos of checked baggage and 1 carry-on. We weren't going to make it (or so we thought). We weighed, shifted, re-weighed, re-shifted, etc until finally we said, "well, I guess we're going to just have to pay the extra charge."
That morning we visited the Temple of Heaven built in 1420. It is a lovely place but I was weary of tourism and took the "free time" sneak a phone call to RC. At this point, it had been five days since I had seen him and I was really starting to miss him. The aunty that was staying in our room brought a SIM card-ready phone to China. She let me buy a SIM card and use it while we were there. It was really nice of her. It cost about RMB2 per minute ($0.30) to talk to home so I only called RC and Amma while I was there. After a few less-than-10-minute conversations and a lively email exchange, I was craving to see his face. Knowing that I get like this, I wasn't allowing myself to wallow in it. It was trying to stay positive but crawling into bed alone was the hardest part. I diffused that by reading "The Devil Wears Prada" everynight until I couldn't keep my eyes open. But there, at the temple, I couldn't resist calling him and telling him how much a missed him. We love to travel together and in a few short days, I had seen and done things that he would have loved to do. I guess we'll just have to plan a seperate trip out there at some point.
After the trip to the temple, we made another stop at the fake market. Travel tip: shop in Beijing for this stuff. The markets in Shanghai were either too expensive or the quality was way too cheap. Since we were so worried about our weight already, we didn't buy much while we were there.
We hopped back on the bus and headed to the Beijing aiport for our flight to Xian.
But first - one more reason to shop. Our guide took us to a traditional Chinese medicine school where were escorted to a room with 30 chairs lined up against the wall. Before each chair was a wooden tub of steaming hot water with tea bags. We were getting a free foot massage! After a brief introduction to Chinese medicine, the eager young students that started to work on our weary feet. After days of trekking through Beijing, we felt like we really deserved it. Where's the catch? It's coming. While getting our foot massage, we got a "free reading" from one of the professors there. I was a little disappointed in my reading because the woman right next to mie got the same one as did a few others. A elderly man assessed Mom and from what I overhead (yes, I was more than slightly eavesdropping) he was right on about Mom's issues! I was amazed. At the end of all the assessments, they recommended some herbs that were conveniently available at their own dispensary! Some of our group actually bought the stuff, but Mom and I just tipped our fabulous masseuses and went on our merry way.
The flight to Xi'an was only marked by the stinky food-service that served some crazy fish dish. What airline serves fish on the plane? Eastern China Air I guess. I was hungry and it satiated me for the time. By the time we arrived in Xian (9 pm), I was an enormous crank-monster. We went straight to (another) Indian restaurant. I just wanted to stay on the bus and sleep but Mom insisted I come inside. Since I was so hungry and I had eaten on the plane, I couldn't eat anything that was being served. We got to the Diamond International Hotel, checked in and hit the bed around 1am.
The wake up call for the next day was 6 am. Zoinks.
It's 3:08 am Eastern time. More time to blog.
July 21 - After a quick breakfast at the hotel, we headed out at 9am. This was after a frantic night of packing after our trips to the pearl, jade, and silk factory and of course, our trip to the fake market. Chinese domestic flights only allow you to take 20 kilos of checked baggage and 1 carry-on. We weren't going to make it (or so we thought). We weighed, shifted, re-weighed, re-shifted, etc until finally we said, "well, I guess we're going to just have to pay the extra charge."
That morning we visited the Temple of Heaven built in 1420. It is a lovely place but I was weary of tourism and took the "free time" sneak a phone call to RC. At this point, it had been five days since I had seen him and I was really starting to miss him. The aunty that was staying in our room brought a SIM card-ready phone to China. She let me buy a SIM card and use it while we were there. It was really nice of her. It cost about RMB2 per minute ($0.30) to talk to home so I only called RC and Amma while I was there. After a few less-than-10-minute conversations and a lively email exchange, I was craving to see his face. Knowing that I get like this, I wasn't allowing myself to wallow in it. It was trying to stay positive but crawling into bed alone was the hardest part. I diffused that by reading "The Devil Wears Prada" everynight until I couldn't keep my eyes open. But there, at the temple, I couldn't resist calling him and telling him how much a missed him. We love to travel together and in a few short days, I had seen and done things that he would have loved to do. I guess we'll just have to plan a seperate trip out there at some point.
After the trip to the temple, we made another stop at the fake market. Travel tip: shop in Beijing for this stuff. The markets in Shanghai were either too expensive or the quality was way too cheap. Since we were so worried about our weight already, we didn't buy much while we were there.
We hopped back on the bus and headed to the Beijing aiport for our flight to Xian.
But first - one more reason to shop. Our guide took us to a traditional Chinese medicine school where were escorted to a room with 30 chairs lined up against the wall. Before each chair was a wooden tub of steaming hot water with tea bags. We were getting a free foot massage! After a brief introduction to Chinese medicine, the eager young students that started to work on our weary feet. After days of trekking through Beijing, we felt like we really deserved it. Where's the catch? It's coming. While getting our foot massage, we got a "free reading" from one of the professors there. I was a little disappointed in my reading because the woman right next to mie got the same one as did a few others. A elderly man assessed Mom and from what I overhead (yes, I was more than slightly eavesdropping) he was right on about Mom's issues! I was amazed. At the end of all the assessments, they recommended some herbs that were conveniently available at their own dispensary! Some of our group actually bought the stuff, but Mom and I just tipped our fabulous masseuses and went on our merry way.
The flight to Xi'an was only marked by the stinky food-service that served some crazy fish dish. What airline serves fish on the plane? Eastern China Air I guess. I was hungry and it satiated me for the time. By the time we arrived in Xian (9 pm), I was an enormous crank-monster. We went straight to (another) Indian restaurant. I just wanted to stay on the bus and sleep but Mom insisted I come inside. Since I was so hungry and I had eaten on the plane, I couldn't eat anything that was being served. We got to the Diamond International Hotel, checked in and hit the bed around 1am.
The wake up call for the next day was 6 am. Zoinks.
8.02.2007
Back home
Despite my efforts to blog while actually in China, busy touring schedules and obscene charges for Internet usage at hotels prevented me from doing that. So here I am back-blogging about the trip.
I still have things to say about Beijing! That seems like a lifetime ago.
After our day in the Forbidden City, we headed to a silk factory where I actually got to see real worms making silk. Ew. But still fascinating. After a brief tutorial of how Chinese silk is the best the world, we were ushered in to their showrooms to - you guessed it - spend our dollars! They showed us how they made silk comforters and because of the group-think mentality as sooon as one person decided to buy one, everyone started to buy them also. They had these gorgeous silk duvet covers also but those were just too expensive. I bought one for R place and one for Didi's.
After the silk factory we headed to the Summer Palace - a magnificent lake and beautiful surrounding grounds. It was the summer resort for the mother of one of the Qing emperors. I can see why the imperial family chose to make that their summer home - it was several degrees cooler there than in the Forbidden City. The breeze off the lake was so refreshing after a miserable day in the sun (temps were in the high 90s). Because of the time that we lost in the Forbidden City due to my wanderings and the time that it took 24 people to buy approx. 40 kilos of silk, we didn't have that much time to tour the grounds of the palace. Also, we couldn't go to the actual palace because it (like the rest of Beijing) was being renovated in preparations for the Olympics next year. But nevertheless, a worthwhile stop during the tour.
Our next stop?? The pearl factory. Here we got a tutorial about freshwater vs. seawater pearls (seawater is better) and how to spot a fake pearl. I had read a little about it in my Frommer's guide. Wanna' know?
I still have things to say about Beijing! That seems like a lifetime ago.
After our day in the Forbidden City, we headed to a silk factory where I actually got to see real worms making silk. Ew. But still fascinating. After a brief tutorial of how Chinese silk is the best the world, we were ushered in to their showrooms to - you guessed it - spend our dollars! They showed us how they made silk comforters and because of the group-think mentality as sooon as one person decided to buy one, everyone started to buy them also. They had these gorgeous silk duvet covers also but those were just too expensive. I bought one for R place and one for Didi's.
After the silk factory we headed to the Summer Palace - a magnificent lake and beautiful surrounding grounds. It was the summer resort for the mother of one of the Qing emperors. I can see why the imperial family chose to make that their summer home - it was several degrees cooler there than in the Forbidden City. The breeze off the lake was so refreshing after a miserable day in the sun (temps were in the high 90s). Because of the time that we lost in the Forbidden City due to my wanderings and the time that it took 24 people to buy approx. 40 kilos of silk, we didn't have that much time to tour the grounds of the palace. Also, we couldn't go to the actual palace because it (like the rest of Beijing) was being renovated in preparations for the Olympics next year. But nevertheless, a worthwhile stop during the tour.
Our next stop?? The pearl factory. Here we got a tutorial about freshwater vs. seawater pearls (seawater is better) and how to spot a fake pearl. I had read a little about it in my Frommer's guide. Wanna' know?
- Rub the pearls together. They should grind a little. If there is no friction - you got some plastic.
- Ask the salesperson to shave off a little of the pearl - it should come off like a white powder.
- Run the beads through a flame. A genuine pearl should be fine - a fake one will turn black.
- While round pearls are obviously more valuable, completely spherical pearls are very hard to find - a string of them would be impossible or fiendishly expensive.
After the tutorial came the feeding frenzy of shopping. I took a hilarious picture juxtaposing the men at the pearl factory vs the women. The men: casually sitting around drinking tea. The women: jumping from one glass case to another followed by over-eager salesgirls. Mom and I bought two sets (neckalce, earrings and bracelet) of pearls: one black and the other white for Didi and myself respectively. If the tour guide was getting any commission for these shopping excursions, he was making a killing with this group.
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