Getting around Beijing

How, when competing with a population of 12-15 million people does one navigate Beijing? [population: 1, 2, 3, interestingly, 2 and 3 are from the China Daily, a daily English language newspaper, months apart, and reporting different counts.] Beijing's highway system reminds me of Houston: there are a bunch of expressway rings around the city.

I can think of these:

• On foot
• Bicycle
• Bus
• Subway
• Taxi
• Personal vehicle

Foreigners are not allowed to drive in Beijing, with the exception of ex-pats in residence, who may endure the red-tape for a Chinese driving license. Still, with that license, you cannot drive outside of Beijing proper, period.

Driving in Beijing is not for the weak however: traffic is chaotic, but somehow, it seems to work. There's no such thing as a left turn signal, even at major intersections. Vehicles just push their way through an interesection when making a left turn, and oncoming traffic actually stops. The basic rule is that the larger vehicle has right-of-way, although my taxi drivers slightly cut off busses once in awhile.

With the expansive scale of the city, only nearby destinations are reasonably reached by taking bus number 11 - Chinese slang for walking. Most visitors will travel from place to place in a taxi.

Chicken, anyone?

KFC continues to be really popular over here. I've mentioned chicken in some other posts, but figured I'd point out that there have not been any concerns about catching Avian flu from cooked chicken. In fact, I ate chicken for dinner tonight.

Catching up

I've started re-posting following Blogger's troubles. I tried my best to line the datestamp of the post up with when I actually wrote the post, but some of this is admittedly guesswork. I've posted most of the stuff I already wrote but there's a couple that I want to attach pictures to and will do that later. Stay tuned.

Blogger trouble

So I posted a couple of things last week, but apparently, Blogger had some difficulties over the weekend and my posts were lost. Thankfully they were short. I'm a little nervous about putting a post up right away after the outage, so I think I'll wait one more day before I get back into talking about the trip.

Things I miss

There are some things that you miss while you are out and hear about later and think 'Oh yeah...'

Some of these are:

• The State of the Union address
• Groundhog Day

It's a bit odd to forget about an event as large as the State of the Union address, but then again, I was on vacation. Granted Groundhog day isn't as big a deal as, say, Memorial Day, but it's still one of those days that everyone hears about in anticipation of a short winter.

Of course, there are other things that I am completely aware of but will miss and cannot do anything about it.

• The Super Bowl

One night in Bangkok (and the world's your Oyster)

Last night was my first night in Bangkok. I met up with Thana and we went out for dinner to a cool pizza place. We milled around a bit, but I was tired and Thana had to work the next day, so we didn't stay out.

I had been traveling all day. Ban Luang is serviced by a non-air conditioned bus at roughly 8:30 am. This route is the northern equivalent to my trip from Chiang Mai to Nan, passing through Phayo. Sean was not able to see me off as he had to head out into the country on a school trip, so his friend Peafoy came over at 8:00 to make sure I got on the bus. It was very nice of her to do that, and she even brought a couple small bags of some sort of mini-cookies (looked like a mini fig newton as the inside was dusted with chocolate, but tasted slightly like regular Cap'n Crunch).

I was really proud of myself when I understood the 'bus-attendant' tell us that we'd be taking a 15 minute break at some random town's bus terminal. I looked for some fresh fruit for sale, but couldn't find any and settled on a Magnum ice cream bar instead.

Anyway, I've been to Bangkok before, so the world is already my oyster I guess. Here's a photo of the Bangkok skyline.

Friends, and a home cooked meal

One of the nicest things about seeing friends while travelling is getting a home-cooked meal. After arriving in Ban Luang, Sean and I visited one of his fellow teachers and prepared supper. It was essentially a cashew chicken stir fry. I cut up the vegetables and Sean cut up the chicken. We were having special chicken that night: boneless chicken breasts. The photo below is of Sean cutting the chicken out on the back porch.


The meal was fantastic. One of the interesting elements was glutenous rice, also known as sticky rice. The meal was entirely finger-food style. We formed small rice balls and grabbed some of the main dish. It's amazing how quickly this fills you up!