China - 2019

We spent 4 days in China, a new supplier this time but still in Huizhou where I've been on most of my visits.  Before we get to the travel-blog section, I have a few random quotes from my notes about the food: 

"Today I ate loofah. Yeah, like the shower thing. Apparently if you harvest them before they become desiccated and stringy you can have a tender zucchini-like vegetable. Slimy, but unobjectionable."

"Anne explained the rules about eating dog on our walk tonight. A stray dog 'belongs' to everyone, therefor anyone is allowed to eat it. However, since it belongs to everyone, whoever cooks the dog has to share with anyone who asks. Even if the dog does belong to someone, if it bites you you are allowed to eat it. I love that, sort of a karmic justice to it..."

"There was a fad around 60 years ago of injecting chicken-blood. It was said to get you "High" - which in Chinese means stronger, more aggressive, motivated to dive into tasks or fights..."

"I'd never had Foi Gras before, but if there is a food so good it's worth torturing animals over I'm definitely going to try it. The taste was unobjectionable, but the texture was, as expected, quite gross."

"The shrimp, prawns, and oysters were great, and then we had cervical vertebrae from chickens. As you would imagine, there isn't much to a vertebra, meaning that they had to kill at least 10 chickens to fill the skewers they brought to the table. I don't recommend it. They roast them long enough to soften them, but you're still just crunching through cartilage and bones while pretending to like it."

Our last day in china was (finally) not at a factory!

I have no idea who she is, but her photo turned out great!

We woke up early to have breakfast with Anne before her flight, and then our hosts picked us up for a trip to the mountains. It was brutally hot - I tried to buy a fan, but they only accepted WeChat (Chinese messenger app) payments... Luckily our hosts were quick to jump in and cover the costs. I was the only man with a fan there, but if there's one thing I've learned from the Chinese it's a lack of shame in social situations. They are much less inhibited... the girls are (adorably) happy to wear overalls, flounce their skirts, skip, or hold hands with one another.  The men are loud, quick to joke, and not shy to lift their shirts in the heat, regardless of the size of their stomach. So I fanned myself with impunity and told myself all the kids were staring at me because I was the only white person on the mountain, not because of my fan.

Instead of hiking up the mountain, we took a cable car! Not actually, we were told it was a cable car, but it was actually a ski-lift. The longest ski lift in Asia! Not that you can ski there, as it never snows. Even a thousand miles north in Suzhou where Anne lives, snowfall that accumulates is a once-a-decade experience. We criss-crossed over a rivulet cascading down the mountain, took in the views, and enjoyed the 10 minute ride to the top. I constantly expected to see dinosaurs or something crashing through the forests below us, but there were only park employees, presumably searching for a dropped cellphone...


At the top we set off up the hiking trail. It was quite hot. Quite ridiculously hot. And I'm out of shape and hiking in my dress shoes. Not that that's anything new - we'd been doing about 7 miles most days - but it does wear on your calves. Note to self: Stop being lazy and take the huge suitcase next time.  About halfway up the trail, we took a wrong turn. There was a staircase that quickly crumbled into disrepair and the trail broke up. We turned around to take the trail, but our host asked if we wanted to take the vanishing trail. I was of course down for it, but the ladies thought we were crazy. So we broke the first rule of horror movies: we split up. The guys took the ever-worsening trail while the ladies took the official footpath. The trail was a washed out streambed in some places, a sketchy mule-trail in others. It was great. It topped out at the service entrance of a restaurant, which we cut through to rejoin the main trail near the peak. After several more staircases we finally made it to the top! 

It always feels great to summit a peak, even when machines do 90% of the work for you. But there were more peaks! I, acting "high", sarcastically suggested we go for the next peak, a mere 3km away (and straight uphill the whole way). They surprisingly agreed to it, so I had to start backtracking. Even though I was up for it, I could tell the rest of them really didn't want to. Going back and forth with my coworker we politely deescalated and chose to put it off until our next trip, and turned off down a side trail back to the lift. Going down offered even better views of the valley, and a bit of excitement when the lift suddenly stopped before a peal of thunder echoed across the mountains.  I was figuring out my odds if I had to escape (~80% chance of crippling myself) when the lift restarted and we were carried back down. The coming storm and approaching sunset cooled off the temperature appreciably though.

After we left the park, we went to a historical village. We drove through a half-vacant town past a number of modern abandoned villages, and eventually made it to the historical village. This village is also mostly abandoned, and right up my alley. This was an 18th century village, or maybe a recreation of an 8th century village. It had old halls and small canals, and I darted ahead like an excited puppy, pausing at corners to make sure the group was headed my direction and wouldn't worry about me too much. I walked brazenly into dark stone rooms, searching for interesting architecture to photograph. Unfortunately, with the fading light almost nothing turned out, so all my work framing courtyards and sunsets through ancient doors was for naught. Oh well, still had a blast taking the photos!

As it was now dark, we headed to dinner, and back to the hotel, exhausted. Time for an early night to sneak in 4 hours of sleep before we start heading home!

Thailand - King Rama IX Park

On Sunday we woke up early to have breakfast with Anne, before her flight to China to get a headstart on our next build. Meanwhile, we would clean up loose ends on the current build in Thailand. Our other coworker went back to bed, which left me alone with an entire day to relax.

I decided I'd set out to King Rama IX Park.  This was the only park near the hotel, but it was still large enough to offer plenty to see. The hike there was just over a mile and then I set about wandering around the lake, taking breaks at convenient places to photograph or read.  The park celebrates King Rama the 9th's water aerator. This is the only international patent ever issued to a monarch, and you can tell he's very proud of it.  The aerator increases available oxygen for fish and improves water quality, plus it's a nice background noise in the park.

Cacti from America!

There were a number of gardens throughout the park - including one just for medicinal and poisonous plants.  There were also greenhouses for jungle and desert plants. I particularly enjoyed the forest / stream built into the park. Mangrove trees and bamboo enclosed a series of artificial waterfalls, so I hiked the entire length of the waterway and decided I definitely need to buy property with a stream on it so I can play these games.

Also gave me a chance to play with the slowmo option on my phone... 

There were a few vendors selling old bread to feed the fish / birds, which is always fun. I grabbed some bread the birds missed and fed some fish myself. It was fun at 1/10th my age, still fun today...

Speaking of wildlife, there were a few monitors, including this one massive dude. He was pretty chill, content to let me read a few feet away from him as long as I stayed on my side of the tree.

But then the sky started to darken... I figured it was probably time for me to head back for dinner anyways, so I started back towards the markets. They sky went from hinting at rain to downpour within minutes.  I barely made it out of the park before the sky opened up.  Since I had no hard schedule, I took refuge under a canopy on the side of the road, where I was joined by a couple and their toddler. Eventually the rain stopped and I made my way back to the night market, taking several shortcuts that looked promising on the maps that did not work out at all.

I made my way back to the Night Market, which was just opening up. On my own for the first time this trip, I indulged all my vices. Which meant I bought a cigarette, a beer, and a switchblade. Actually a pair of switchblades, since when I asked my girlfriend if she needed a banana cat or a switchblade she said she needed a banana cat switchblade.

I eventually made it back to the hotel for dinner with my coworker, which featured all-you-can-eat sushi. It was a good day. Ended up walking about 10 miles.

Clearly custom, and clearly a work of art.

Thailand - Bangkok

This year, the company sent me to Thailand! Typically our team worked 14+ hour days, but on the weekend we finally had some free time and we were determined to make the most of it! By sleeping in!

Sleeping in accomplished, we met up around noon and grabbed a taxi to Central Bangkok. Despite being just 15 miles away, the cab ride took an hour.  Our host told us the southern side of the country is a short one-hour flight away! Or an 18 hour drive. That tells you almost everything you need to know about the roads in Thailand. That's not to say it was a boring drive. The highway was built over a river, providing all sorts of hydrological engineering to decipher, and the architecture in Bangkok is great as well. There was a building wearing a necklace that looked like a racetrack, a building with a claw on top, buildings that looked like boats, all sorts of weird stuff (in the best way).

Finally arriving in downtown Bangkok we were dropped off by the Grand Palace (est 1798). We were immediately greeted by a kindly local who warned us our female coworker's clothes were not conservative enough to get into the Grand Palace, and advised us on a wonderful tuk-tuk route we could take instead.  We ignored him, and went to the Grand Palace, where Anne's clothes were fine.  You could see the spires poking over the walls of the temple area, but it didn't really prepare you for the full tableau that strikes you when you walk through the gateway. The temple complex was packed with buildings, each of them tessellated in mirrored mosaic tiles. Except for the reliquary which is leafed in gold. Not accented or highlighted, the entire shrine was an unbroken layer of gold. We weren't allowed in, but apparently that building is where they keep a lock of hair from Buddha.

The wall bounding the temple complex tells the story of Ramakien. I can tell you the high points include making friends with monkeys, fighting dragons, fighting or possibly befriending mermaids, definitely fighting giants, building a temple inside another giant? climbing some clouds? it got weird.... to be honest I'm gonna have to read the book, it looked like a lot of fun.

There was even a scale model of Angkor Wat.  Angkor Wat is enormous, and so this model was also enormous, at least 30' on each side.  If anyone out there wants to go visit the real thing let me know, I'm absolutely down.

Angkor Wat chockablock with two other temples, renovation, and Japanese
 tourists posing. This is a 100% accurate experience.

The temple of the Emerald Buddha was the focal point of the complex. After taking our shoes off we shuffled in to check it out. Like everything else, it was overwhelming. As much gold, inlay, and mosaic as they could physically fit in to one building, with an enormous altar summited by a jade Buddha 4 feet tall and clothed in gold (There are multiple sets of clothes, and rituals to change them every season). Honestly, it's overdone. It could be much more beautiful if it were less extravagant and slightly restrained, more like the rear doors to the temple. These doors were some of the most beautiful craftsmanship I've ever seen - black enamel doors inlaid with delicate mother-of-pearl dragons writhing across the entire panel. Unfortunately the full panel doesn't photograph well since part of it is always in glare, but I found this sample.

And throughout the complex were statues of monkeys (who looked like demons), demons (who looked like the monkeys with larger fangs), half-man-half-rooster soldiers, half angel-half-rooster ladies... it was bizarre. In a great way.


When we finished with the temple complex we made our way to the palace itself (the ceremonial home of the king), which is remarkable for being western architecture with an eastern roof. Unfortunately it is only used for state functions and is not open to tourists. It looks like a classy place to have a swanky party.  We admired a few more impressive buildings and toured the on-site museum, which featured older parts of the temples, now replaced. The entire site is constantly under renovation and improvement, so the museum featured replaced portions of the temple, old thrones, gifts to the king and to the Emerald Buddha, even some elephant bones were featured here. Oddly, some parts of the museum were also shoe-free zones - but at this part of the trip it took far more than that to phase us.

By this point (4pm) we were worn out and ready for lunch, so we wandered towards a likely-looking market trying to find a nice sit-down meal. We saw a lot of foods for sale, but nowhere to sit, and when we rounded the next corner we were suddenly on a dock. Hey! In the (literally) 10 minutes of research I did on Bangkok I'd read that the ferry is the best way to cross the river and get to the other temple I was interested in seeing! And it was fifty cents. For the three of us.  So we took the ferry!

It was chaos. The ferry clipped the dock, hard, trying to spin around. Nobody really reacted, so it must be a normal thing. Another ferry was trying to slip into our berth as soon as we were moving, and fast boats were weaving between the larger ferries, so we were constantly cutting through/over chop.  There were two or three times where I legitimately thought there was a chance of collision with other boats. In short, it was great.

On the other side of the river the ferry emptied into more markets, more cramped and more eclectic, and more food! We ducked down an alley to a riverside cafe where we grabbed a table on the water.  Fancy soda drinks and a chance to get off our feet were both great. Eventually, we had pizza. Margarita (which tasted as expected) and Mexican Chicken (which was good, but tasted like an eastern approximation of dimly remembered tacos).  Unfortunately between slow service and the temples closing around 5pm we weren't going to make any more tourist destinations, so we strolled through the market. This market has cats - some scrawny and suspicious, some fat and happy... Eventually the market ended at another temple! Here service was underway and the temple was full of chanting worshippers. There were even a few overlow worshippers outside random windows, chanting along with the congregation.

It was now 5:30 and the shops were closing, so we made our way back through the market, back across the river, and back to our starting point.  From there we caught a cab and made the (now 80 minute) short drive home. Interlude! Time for ibuprofen, a huge bottle of water, and a bath.

We reconvened at 8:30 to find dinner. The in-house food wasn't all that appealing, so we went to the mall next door! We found a Sizzlers that let us pretend we weren't in Thailand for one meal this trip (the food here is never simple. I don't even bother asking what I'm eating. I know I've had a lot of shrimp, squid, and mushrooms, and I think I've had jellyfish and tripe as well. Not that it's bad, some of it is amazing - they're very happy to add sweet flavors where I'd never expect them - it's just complex and you can never let your guard down) I had a really good steak and a pretty weird seaweed salad.

Around 9:30 they started turning the lights off. I guess it's time to go! Leaving the restaurant we found they were turning the lights off in the mall as well. And the escalators (but as Mitch says, escalators can never break. They can only become stairs.).  The hotel had recommended the mall or the night market for dinner. What's a night market? No idea! But it's behind the mall, so we decided to find out.   It's a huge market that /doesn't/ close at 5:30 like everything else. Pop up bars, restaurants, clothing shops, tattoo parlors, it was enormous. We spent over an hour wandering, and at one point we stumbled into 1950's America. An old diner, a garage full of vintage American cars... it was bizarre.  But also very cool.  And also amazing people watching, since the younger generations were out in force, in every possible style.  On the way out of the market we found the coolest store ever. Switchblades, airsoft guns, plasma lighters...  I loved everything there. Unfortunately the rest of the crew was tired so we headed back to the hotel via 7-11 (I bought some milk candy. It's as bad as it sounds.)

And now it's midnight, and I have no idea what adventures tomorrow will bring. G'night!

China - Sunday

On Sunday we had the day off, with nothing to planned. We obviously can't do nothing all day, so we made plans to see the lake! But first I needed some nail clippers. So Jeremy and I walked over to the mall, had breakfast, and I grabbed a pair. Pink and sparkly and fabulous...  but they worked!  With out bodily needs taken care of, we caught a cab across the river to save us a mile of walking, (correctly) anticipating that we would be thankful for it later that day.

(Jeremy) taught me that they replant the tree higher, turning
 the gnarled roots into the bottom of the trunk!

Arriving at the lake the first thing we checked out was the Bonsai garden! Very peaceful, and Jeremy was full of interesting Bonsai facts, apparent he and his wife have recently taken a class on it!  Hundreds of miniature trees filled the tiny park on the lakefront.   When we finished admiring the miniature topiaries we made our way to the next island and scared some wildlife into the water! Some sort of aquatic mammal- it took off swimming beneath the surface. We tracked it and when it finally resurfaced we found it wasn't the cool kind of aquatic rodent, like muskrats or nutria... it was the more common kind - like sewer rats. Turns out sewer rats are great swimmers - which really shouldn't be a surprise.


Setting off to find more wildlife, we veered inland to the pet store (so many pretty birds!) and continued to the market! Most of your typical edible animals, typically alive in buckets: fish, snakes, snails, shellfish, squids, turtles, eels, and frogs. In the dry area, there were more animals in cages, including (but by no means limited to) pigeons, ducks, porcupines, guinea pigs, and a couple of extremely feral cats. I considered trying to rescue one, but I figured they'd do me the "favor" of dispatching what they'd expect to be my dinner, and then I'd be left with a dead cat on my hands. So instead we compartmentalized and set off across the lake.

(Jeremy) captured this great shot of Dongpo looking stately.

We crossed several bridges and made our way up to the central pagoda, and the nearby house of Su Dongpo - Dongpo was banished to Huizhou in 1090 for "being a free thinker and a virtuous man."  (Looking it up, it was over his criticism of the salt monopoly - and a lot of intricate political feuding lost to time). He's revered in Huizhou for his poetry, his calligraphy, and helping them organize the town government and build bridges...  He's a little like Johnny Appleseed and George Washington rolled into one, in a country that reveres bureaucrats as much as soldiers. We toured the academy built in his memory when his exile was rescinded, checked out the tomb of his concubine, and saw some of his writings and belongings.

A little too intentionally casual there...

Continuing back across the lake over more bridges, we picked up a tail. The zig-zag bridges might be an impassible barrier to demons, but they were powerless against a pair of highschool girls who were attempting to surreptitiously follow us... I say attempting because it's hard to be inconspicuous while your trying to get random Caucasian dudes in the back of your selfies.  We'd been getting looks all day for being white (we saw no other white people today), but this was a bit too awkward so we shook them by reversing course in the midst of a garden.

After leaving that garden, we continued around the lake to.... another garden! This one was in the style of the Tang period - where they were really into the contrast of plants and stone. As someone who is into cool rocks, I was into it as well.

We also checked out a viewing platform for the bird sanctuaries in the center of the lake and met a young boy.  He saw us on the other side of the pier, glanced back at his parents for approval, and sprinted over to us. "Hello, good morning, good afternoon!" he used literally all of his English, and after we used literally all of our Chinese, we waved goodbye. "How are you goodbye!" he replied.

By this point we'd made our way to the Crocodile Lake. We'd driven by this field of mud all week and one of our goals for the day was to see it in more detail. They had dammed up one arm of the lake and pumped it dry for.... public works reasons. (There are definite upsides to the Chinese make-work economy, as illustrated by all these well maintained parks and facilities.) This condensed all the fish into small puddles, where they were feasted upon by birds and fishermen alike.  In the center of the (dry) lake we found Crocodile Island, featuring the "Male in proud glory overshining the female crocodile" while their children scuttled about. It was definitely weird, but like most things here, that's part of the charm.  While we were out here in the center of the lake I decided I should head out into the mud-pans and see what the fishermen were catching. A Chinese grandfather and his grandson became very interested in me (as Jeremy was too smart to participate). The rocky shoreline was carpeted with snail shells, thick as gravel - it must be the remains of generations of snails living on the algal growth in the euphotic zone (I admit I had to look that one up - it's the sunlit part of the the ocean... It's much shallower in silty lakes) . Once I got past the rocky shoreline and onto the mud itself, I made it 2 or 3 entire steps before turning back to an extremely amused trio.

I was giggling about Proud Male Glory for about an hour... 

There was one area of the park we hadn't been to yet, and - checking the map - we decided to take a shortcut through the forest behind the lake, but when we arrived at the access road we were met by a large "NO PICTURE MILITARY BASE" sign. I really really wanted a picture of it, but I don't think the Chinese government has a sense of humor. Like at all, but especially not about taking pictures of a "NO PICTURE" sign. So I smiled at the armed guard watching from back at the gate and we doubled back along the trail to the final unexplored area of the lake. It was a quite pleasant walk, and they played special "5pm end of the day music" - probably to celebrate the fact they didn't have to arrest a random whiteboy.

Walking down this unexplored arm of the lake we came upon temple stairs! We assumed that the temple was locked and the stairs only offered a view of the lake, but we went up anyways - to find an open door to a courtyard!  Stepping inside we found lots of statues, ancillary buildings, further courtyards - an entire courtyard.  At this point a group of passing teens asked for a selfie - which I obliged, of course. Being the only white people in town is weird, but fun.  Making our way upward into more courtyards we came to the temple itself - in the midst of a funeral service.  Incense drifted across the courtyard as they sang a dirge out the open doors. It was otherworldly - a scene that was thousands of miles from home and could have been thousands of years from home as well. I feel truly blessed for all the circumstances that aligned to allow us to experience it.

We continued around the final arm of the lake (which included a detour for a lookout pavilion and several more bridges) and ended back at the Bureaucrat's Residence that I had visited my first trip.  I (again) thought it was 1000 years old, but the signs still say 1846.. With Jeremy there to bounce ideas off we noticed much more, and figured out that the beds were smaller due to malnutrition, figured out all the very precise scales were for opium - which also explained why so many pipes were found.   However, it doesn't explain this.

I don't think anything can explain this.

We headed back toward the hotel and cut through another market - this one mostly clothing shops instead of food. We made a circuit, randomly picking shops or alleys to check out, and made a single purchase: ibuprofen. We were beginning to feel the effects of the day. We finally crossed the river and made it back in the mall we started at - and after looking around for a simple dining choice we settled on pizza. With a bit of sign language and a lot of pointing we got two pizzas and some much needed lemonade. Only they were all a bit weird, because all the food in china is a bit weird.

Reviewing the maps we hiked 12 miles over 6 hours. It was an incredible day: fun, bizarre, fascinating, and spent with great people (us!). I am looking forward to the rest of my night though, I have a date with a cold beer and a hot tub. And several Advil.

China - Saturday

Today we went for a bike ride- Our driver took us to Honghua Lake, the local reservoir which doubles as an evacuation center (with chemical decontamination facilities, stockpiles of food and tents, and similar supplies for the apocalypse).  At the bike rental lot we got to test-ride dozens of bikes and pick our favorite variant. Being lazy, I went with a road bike since that would mean I could do less work.  Jeremy and Milo (our host) also chose road bikes, while our Chinese coworker chose a mountain bike. And we set off on the 18km ride! And we set off pretty hard.  Jeremy does triathlons, and I noted our host had proper form and pants tailored to stay out of bikechains... So he's not new to this either.  Robin doesn't ride much and had a slower bike, but he made up for these disadvantages by being almost a decade younger than us! We stopped once about a mile in for pictures, but other than that we kept a solid pace the entire circumference - frequently crossing that border between fun exercise and actual exercise.  I did have to slow down to reread a  "no electrocuting the fish" sign.  We generally took in the nature and people-watched the other people bicycling. Some mom steamed by on a bicycle for two with her kid as ballast on the back. I was impressed.  By the end I was actually drafting off teammates to be lazier. Of course, by that point Jeremy was pouring on the power because he could. So fun, but I was glad we finished.

After our ride we had time to kill before our lunch reservation (apparently we completed the biking part of the day faster than anticipated), so we walked a mile down to the Buddhist temple. The temple was gorgeous. Beautiful courtyard flanked by mini-shrines with an enormous (I'd guess over 10 feet tall) bell in one, and a similarly sized drum in the other. Expansive stone steps leading up to a bed of incense burning before the temple itself - all wood construction and bigger than a house.  Inside the temple was a giant golden Buddha, flanked by gilt goddesses. These goddesses were smaller, only 14' tall while seated. All against an intricately carved and gilt backsplash... it was awe inspiring. The same hushed tones and silence that I last saw surrounding the Book of Kells and in Cathedrals was also evoked here.

(Jeremy)

After admiring the temple in awe, we walked back to the lake for lunch.  Delicious food, painfully slow service, but luckily my housemates cat had stolen her meds, so we stayed entertained by status reports of just how high this kitty was. I emailed my girlfriend the following: "Going to an expat bar tonight. Getting a hamburger, and hopefully some fries. NOT GOING TO PULL ANY BONES OUT OF MY FOOD. NOT EATING LUMPS OF FAT LIKE IT'S NORMAL! " ... So young, so naive... The expat bar was more of an American-themed bar than an American bar, and their hamburgers were flavored, fatty, and dripped all over the plate.  However the whiskey sour that I got when I ordered a whiskey-coke was pretty great, and there were cigars on the menu! We ordered one for the novelty and then remembered why we never smoke cigars. The American themed band was actually really good though, with some quality Beatles covers mixed in with Chinese rock.

I'll leave you with a quote from the evening:

"I love the hubris of jumping in a taxi with a business card you can't read and a pocket full of cash, and saying 'Bàoqiàn, Měiguó*' anytime the cabbie asks you a question."

*"Sorry, America"

(Jeremy. Also this is what China thinks America looks like - pretty close!)

China - Friday Night

Jeremy and I met in the hotel bar for a whiskey to decide whether we should visit the club next door. Apart from an incredibly bizarre motto on the outside wall ("WITH YOU - ALL ARE JUST DUSTS") we know nothing about this club. Even the internet couldn't shed any light on it. We headed over around 9pm because we're in China and we're trying things and we're gonna try a club, dammit. We got metal-detectored, walked past the cover charge desk (I think, I have no idea what the desk was), and into a room of loud Eminem music, literally 20 staff, and no guests. Oh, this must just be the entry lounge, we'll get the elevator up? down? to the actual club. Nope, that's a coatcheck, and that's a restroom. This is it. Most of the staff chose this moment of confusion to swarm us, and none of them speak English. We communicate that we want beer. They bring us to a table and some couches, we sit down, they show us the menu.... it's all massively overpriced. A corona is ¥500 (~$80 usd), and budweiser is twice that. That can't possibly be correct, right? So we order two! They ask for ¥1000. I claim to only have cash, and not nearly that much. They need credit card, and need ¥1000. After a lot of back and forth we apologize and walk out, laughing.

No idea who this guy was, but he was also drinking in public...

Once we're outside we light up a cigarette (when in Rome...) and discuss plans for the rest of the night. While we talked a promoter tried to convince us to go back to the club, and hands us flyers - the ¥500 is for a case of coronas. Ooooh. So almost tolerable. But there are no locals, no one dancing, no one needs a case of coronas, and no one likes Eminem. Besides which, we'd already decided it wasn't for us. So we went to a local 7-11 knockoff instead! Spent 5% as much and got a couple beers and new cigarettes (ours were terrible). These are flavored nano-cigarettes! One is menthol, as expected. Jeremy makes me guess the flavor of the other. I'm guessing different fruits and berries with no success... turns out there are two flavor-bubbles, one for red wine and one for white one. WTF, lol. It's awesome. We wandered to the courtyard of the local mall and wandered about drinking, admiring the glowing art installations, checking out bonsai, and generally people-watching. It was way more fun than we would have had in the club.

After we'd finished our drink, we went shopping (browsing) in the mall. Since we're in the banking district it's generally overpriced luxury goods, though I did find a stuffed animal for a Christmas gift. After we finish browsing the mall we continued back to the hotel. Nature forced us to detour to a dark park to recycle some beer, and suddenly we were good to keep going! We started another drink and crossed the river to admire the bridges, and then - purely on impulse - went up a staircase that lead to the city wall!

Unretouched, just a great looking bridge.

We hiked along the city wall, examined the built-in ancient temple, and then did a sketchy climb where the city wall suddenly lost 10 feet of elevation. We continued hiking along the wall and down to the river, before we cut up a random alley (pictured at left,) to circle back towards our hotel. The road lead to a memorial park! For some dude* from the turn of the last century, it had a statue and an impressive structure and all sorts of engravings. It's magical to wander into another century like that with no forewarning. After admiring the courtyards we found the city wall again and headed back to the hotel - stopping briefly in another super fancy hotel (mostly to avail ourselves of the facilities). All in all we did about 6 miles... in dress loafers, so my feet were quite angry at me.

The gate in the city wall. Amazing find to stumble upon.

*Editors note: This dude is actually Dr Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of the Republic of China. He was the first president after the overthrow of the Qing empire. The sweet memorial building is actually the site of the former presidential palace, which was shelled by artillery during the revolution - nearly killing his wife. You may have heard of his protege - Chiang Kai-Shek - who ruled china for almost 50 years after Dr Sun's Yat-sen.

China - Food

In December, I went back to China for work. I'm not going to do the every-day-gets-its-own-post thing, because nobody wants to read "I went to the factory, we went to eat weird food, we went to the hotel" a dozen times. Instead, I'm going to extract a few excerpts from various letters I sent during the trip. In retrospect, I should have taken way more pictures.


"Survived my first really Chinese meal - although I did skip the frog because there were just too many organs.  The first things I ate was a little fish. The dish was mini fishes and mini shrimps, intact. So I look down in my bowl and this little guy is looking up at me... I mentally shrugged and threw the whole thing in my mouth.  Yolo."

"Fish, duck, pork, beef, rice... just entirely too much food, and most of it a bit weird. I told my coworkers I felt like a small child, just putting things in my mouth and seeing if they are food or not. Usually yes, but sometimes it's bone, tendon, fat, at least one blood vessel.. they have a different standard for 'meat' over here. Still tasty and still fun though!"

Pigeon, a regular and appreciated fixture of our meals. 

 "Our host turned to us and said, with the utmost earnestness, 'This is ass meat'. I smiled politely, and asked 'Oh?' like I was pleasantly surprised and curious, and not like I'm suppressing the urge to laugh hysterically. Jeremy correctly guessed that it was donkey. In case you're wondering, ass meat is served cold, but is otherwise generally pretty good. We also had giant goat drumsticks (amazing), dumplings, noodles, little goat ribs, steak, cabbage, just so much food. So far this was the best meal yet."

"Dinner tonight was some great pigs legs, and a super sketchy fish head... that was smoked and actually delicious.  I started the trip asking what things were before eating them. At this point I've given up, and eat whatever they put in front of me. If I'm still curious afterwards then I'll ask what it is."

Hot pot, the one meal to take revenge on me. Not sure if it was the hot peppers or my impatience cooking the meat.

"We drove across the city, and started going down alleys. I assumed the driver was trying to take a shortcut and got lost. He was! Then we went down another dead-end-alley which wasn't a mistake. We walk into an open concrete restaurant, past a handful of fish tanks, to a table in the back. Then they started bringing out shellfish. Razor clams. Scallops. Mussels in all sizes. Giant shrimp.  Crabs. After trying oysters in the states I'd written off mollusks - what a mistake. It was amazing. I ended the night with a full stomach, a pile of skeletons on the table ahead of me, and a smile on my face."

Near the end, but before I ate literally all the shrimp on the family platter.

"'I know I can get you to try anything if I try it first and you how terrible it was' - Jeremy, after he convinced me to eat a whole peppercorn.  They are so spicy they make your mouth tingle. Not because they are hot, it's a weird feeling similar to anesthetic without numbness. I'm really not sure what to compare it to, it's just weird."

(Jeremy's) shot of the Wild Animal Restaurant

"Dinner tonight was a 'wild animal restaurant' where all the dishes (fish, chicken, and inkfish [squid]) were wild animals that they hunted. Decent food, super amusing owner who kept trying to speak american while he hung out and drank beer with us. It had a neat location down a dirty road, under a few highways, on a small lake. I love the anachronism of driving under a futuristic LED billboard to a restaurant that looks and feels like it's in the middle of the jungle and the 1950s.  Oh, and the squid was great, amazingly tender."

By this point I shouldn't have been surprised by how good this fish was. When we asked if he had any more he yelled out the window and ten minutes later his daughter brought in another. Would not surprise me if she hooked it on request.

"Today we had the typical 'omg I can't believe they eat that' Chinese food. Definitely edible, but I can definitely see why dog has not caught on in the states - almost every other animal I've eaten is better."

Before,  Jeremy meeting our meat.

"Last night in China, so we had the whole team out for a fancy dinner, which included snake! Snake is (still) great, the gall bladder is not. I spent ten minutes trying to get Jeremy to eat it, so I felt like I had to when he offered it to me instead. It's almost sweet, but it has such a terrible aftertaste... "

And deliciously after. (Jeremy)