Traveling in China - Days 4 and 5 - Rainy Days

At this point we decided that the hotel was cheap enough that we would make it our semi-permanent home. It was easier having a place where we could put all our stuff and not have to worry about taking over someone else's home. 

Day 4 of the trip I decided to get up again before everyone else to find a real breakfast this time. No good.  I went to the main part of the city and there was nothing. I did buy some fruit (some guava. Super good. Hadn't had that since I lived in Taiwan). On the way back to the hotel, I went to the supermarket and bought some candy. Yep. Totally splurged the whole trip and spent about ￥40 -  ￥50| $6.50 - $9 on food every day of the trip. Some days I even spent more (actually... I probably didn't, I just want to feel like I splurged a bit though). 

When I got back to the hotel, everyone was still sleeping. Yep. Lazy day. The rest of the day was spent watching TV shows or movies on our computers and playing Settler's of Catan. It was nice to watch "Rudy". Hadn't seen that one in a while. 

The next day was more of the same. It was a rainy day (come to think of it... nearly every day of the trip was rainy but this day was a bit more so than others). We did more with planning for what else we would do on our trip. Got junk food at the supermarket and watched more TV and played more games. It was nice to relax and be lazy (though technically, I think by virtue vacations are supposed to be somewhat relaxing and lazy). 

Loida taking advantage of a rainy day.

Traveling in China - Day 3 - Fun in Chongzuo (崇左)

The hotel we stayed in was not super fancy (well... ok, the key thing was pretty cool), but it least it provided a warm (private) shower and plenty of blankets. The bathroom still had a squatter, and it wasn't the cleanest (not too bad if you didn't look at the walls) but for what we payed, we were pretty happy. We all slept very well. In the morning I got up before everyone else and decided to go on an adventure in an attempt to find a delicious breakfast. I remember when I was in Taiwan that the breakfasts there were amazing! Since we were in southern China (much more like Taiwan I have been told) I fully expected to find some great breakfast food.

Traveling in China - Day 2 - Going to Chongzuo (崇左)

26 hours spent in any space can be tedious. Especially if you only have 3 feet above and to the side of you to move around. In the morning I pretended to sleep for as long as I could. The guy snoring I think did a better job at pretending. Rock solid performance.

Eventually I conceded defeat and decided to turn on some tunes and look out the window. I must admit, after seeing the dismal, flat and cold grey setting of Zhengzhou, I was a bit relieved when I looked out the window and saw some green and some mountains! By time we "woke up" we were just about in Guangxi province. At about 9:00 we passed the city of Guilin. This is considered by much of China to be the most beautiful place in the country. I have heard a few times that it is also considered one of the most beautiful places in the world. It is a tourist city and as such, the train station actually looked clean. How nice.

The reason Guilin is famous is because of the mountains. You know how when you think of Chinese mountains, you think of these steep pointy mountains that you would see in Kung Fun Panda or a Chinese watercolor painting? These are the mountains from Guilin. These type of mountains are called karst. If you have seen all the Star Wars movies, then you have seen images from Guilin. The mountains were used as background images for the Wookie planet Kashyyyk. (See these images)

This is a picture I snapped out of the train window as we were passing Guilin. Not much, but you can see some of the mountains in the background. 

Traveling in China - Day 1 - Off to Guangxi 广西

Here in China school doesn't get out around Christmas time. Fortunately for me, this past Christmas was on a Sunday, so I had the day off, but I still had to teach English classes for a week afterward.

What IS nice however is that the Chinese new year is a <understatement>pretty big deal</understatement>. This means that from the beginning of January until the middle of February has no school! Woot!

I was able to endure a week of nothing in my apartment before I realized that doing nothing is only slightly more fun than actually going to work. That called for a plan. A plan to do SOMETHING! When most people go to China, the go with the intent to travel. Sounded like a good plan to me, so that is what I decided to do. I talked to a couple other teachers here who wanted to travel as well and we decided to go to southern China near the border of Vietnam. From Zhengzhou (Henan province) to Nanning (Guangxi province) is just over 1000 miles (see map below). It is about the same distance as driving a car from Provo, UT to Kansas city MO. (Incidentally, I just found out from Wikipedia that Nanning is sisters cities to Provo. How cool is that?!)




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The Chinese version of Amazon.com - Taobao

Amazon.com started out as an online bookstore. Since that time it has turned into the largest online retailer selling just about anything. It has become a place where people go to get reviews on and buy products. Amazon is a great place for people like me; people who like getting cheap stuff but don't really want to go out shopping for it. You can imagine my excitement when I found out about the Chinese equivalent: taobao.com

Cheap Food in China

China has cheap food. A lot of cheap food. Not only is it cheap, it is usually quite delicious. Originally I was planning on posting this later when I had more pictures of food, but I think I can show this now and if I get more pictures in the future, I will just post another food series.

The point of this post is twofold. First, to make people jealous of the cheap food I get to eat that they don't. Second, I wish to document the food I am eating and the prices for them. Mainly though I just want to make people jealous.

The true meaning of Christmas - Brought to you by the country China

I have noticed three main aspects of Christmas.

The first aspect is more than apparent the day after Thanksgiving. The commercialism of Christmas is perhaps the most visible thing we see of Christmas. During this time of year, people who are typically very frugal (like me) and save all their money splurge a bit and do their part to stimulate the economy. Businesses do well and new markets seem to pop up (think Christmas music or movies; also don't forget those sweaters that don't stand a chance of being sold if not for the ugly sweater contests). While all of this is not necessarily a bad thing, it does fall short of being the true meaning of Christmas.