TravelStream™ news feed for member tomlacey on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/tomlacey en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:18:49 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1216411200/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1216411200/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1216411200/tpod.html Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:18:49 -0400 Liz and Tom - China 2008

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Qing Xi, China

On Friday July 18th my manager (Scott) and our materials scientist (Ryan) arrived into Qing Xi around 4 PM. This was Ryan's first trip to China and we were very anxious to share our China experiences with someone who has never seen this strange land. They came in two days early so they could enjoy some of the different parts of the culture. As soon as they arrived I met them at their hotel, since they didn't want to stay at the fancy Hotel California...I knew I had to keep them moving, since they hadn't slept much on the plane and they would be getting tired shortly. We walked down to my hotel and had a couple of beers while we waited for Mike to meet us. The 18th is Xiao Li's birthday and we had a full night of events already planned. We decided that the best way to break Ryan into the Chinese food would be to take him to a place that had a room full of live snakes, turtles, chickens, rabbits, fish and pigeons. The main reason for picking this restaurant was because of their specialty in snake. On our way to the restaurant we saw an overloaded truck.Upon arriving to the restaurant we enterd a garage type building that had a huge cage in it and many other smaller cages that housed all of the other lives animals that we would be choosing to eat. After some talking with the people at the restaurant, we decided that we would have two snakes, two turtles, a fish and some other smaller dishes. After that the process of catching the snake and preparing it for eating started. A man with an extremely crossed eye got into a cage that was about 6' x 6' x 6' that had a large number of snakes in it. He pulled a snake that was about 7 feet long out of the cage and quickly moved it over to the cutting board where he removed the head. After that he grabbed a glass of some high octane liquor that he drained the snakes blood into.The head continued to move after it was cut off and Tommy grabbed it to go and scare everyone that was keeping a large amount of distance between them and the action.Next the guy removed the scales and the guts of the snake. Of course the guts had to be removed before cooking the snake, but the main purpose of this was to get the gallblatter out. The only natural thing to do with what is inside of the snakes gallblatter is to pour that bright green matter into another shot glass so we could drink that too. We also watched them prepare the turtles for our meal and then we moved into the restaurant portion of the building. Most of what I just described can be seen in this YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHE_pS2-iwo just copy and paste the link The restaurant was actually quite nice and we moved on to picking out the snake liquor we wanted to drink with dinner. This is similar to the other snake liquor we had, but this time it contained hundreds of snake penises. Did you know that each male snake has TWO penises? We are learning so much important information over here.We all went into our room and sat down then immediately had to drink a shot of the blood and then a shot of the gallblatter. Both were extremely terrible tasting, but are apparently good for you.The snake and turtle were both very good and we all got very full. This was Ryan's first taste of food in China and he thought it was pretty good, but also very interesting. He has an allergy to green peppers, so we really had to watch that, since almost every dish here has them in it. After dinner, some of us had our fair share of snake penis liquor and we headed to pick up the cake that we ordered earlier in the day for Xiao Li. Everyone else went to the big room that we had rented out at karaoke. The rest of the night consisted of everyone singing karaoke, glow sticks being cut open and flung all around the room and multiple dance parties.Here is Xiao Li and our buddy Susan dancing on the back of the couch, with glow sticks in the front of her pants. We almost forgot about eating the cake, but we are happy that we finally had it, because it was delicious. Liz did a good job of picking out the cake.The next day Scott and Ryan woke up quite early, because they were still on US time. We met up at Time Coffee for breakfast and then came back to our hotel for Ryans first Chinese Foot massage. The girls were asking a lot of questions about why Scott and Ryan have bellies and I don't, among many other questions. Ryan said the massage helped his hangover and then we went to a place for lunch near their hotel. We met up with Mike and headed back to his house to watch another earthquake DVD that Jimmy got from his government buddies back in Sichuan. This one was much more in depth and showed a lot more detail of what happened during the repair stages of the earthquake. We made plans to go to one of the more fancy hotels in the area that has a pool that takes two hours to walk around the perimeter. Our karaoke room overlooked a stage and performing area that Liz said looked like Disney World. Liz made two new girlfriends at karaoke and got a bag of lavender potpourri and a bouquet of flowers from them. This was the first time that the karaoke girls realized that if they made friends with Liz they wouldn't be forced to drink too much. We got a ride back to Qing Xi from one of our buddies named Liu You Hong. Liz made the suggestion that we go get some street BBQ food. Scott and I jumped at the oppurtunity and we proceeded to drop Ryan off at the hotel and then went to have the spiciest BBQ we have had to date.The next day Ryan wasn't exactly on top of his game. So we decided to go have some Taiwanese food with some beers. He couldn't believe that he was even smelling beer, let alone drinking it. Next we went to Liu You Hungs new house so Scott could see it. As soon as the foreigners arrived at his house, approximately 6 people arrived to see/talk to us. With Ryan's current state, we thought that a full body massage might help him a little bit, so we went and got a 90 minute one. After that we went back to our hotels to get cleaned up for a dinner "up on the mountain"...the place that we have been to before with the "lake" and the outdoor dining. We knew that when we signed up to go to dinner with these guys it would turn into a drinking event. We all stepped up to the plate and we feel that we beat them at their own game.The next two days we travelled to two different manufacturing facilities and then they went down into Hong Kong for the end of their trip. One day we did have stretch noodles for lunch and Ryan really struggled with the chopstick thing. It is understandable that you would struggle eating noodles with two sticks, but the way he went about it was unprecidented. He would stick one into the stack of noodles then clamp the noodles with the other stick, hold them with his fist and then twirl the noodles around them and suck them off.The main reason for these guys coming in early was so we could possibly travel somewhere that Scott hasn't been to yet, unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate and we were stuck in Qing Xi with getting massages and going out at night. I think that it was a good first trip for Ryan and he may even come back. He definitely has some stories to share when he gets back.
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Chengdu, Sichuan, China

The most special birthday for someone in China is their 60th birthday. July 4th happened to be Jimmy's mothers 60th birthday. This would be the first time Jimmy and Tommy were back in Sichuan for their moms birthday, since they moved to Shenzhen at the age of 21. We took 11 people from Qing Xi to Chengdu, Sichuan. We were booked one of the earliest flights out of Shenzhen to Chengdu on Thursday morning.There were no problems with the flight and we got into Chengdu around 10 AM. From there we went to get our rental car, which was a Buick mini van.We jammed all of our stuff and 10 people into the van and we were on our way to have lunch at Jimmy and Tommy's parents house. It was about a 45 minute ride and we met up with Jimmy's older son and a few other friends of the family on the way. Once we left the highway it was an extremely bumpy ride back to where we would be walking rest of the way.The walk back to his parents house was not as long and difficult as the one to Xiao Li's house, but it was still about 15 minutes of walking on a path to get there. We carried some stuff back, but not ours since we would be staying in a hotel for this trip. After getting back to their house we walked around for a little bit while lunch was being finished up. We wound up in their peach tree orchard and the peaches were ready to be picked.Everyone picked a couple handfuls of peaches and we saw a bed in the middle of the orchard. I asked Mike what that was and he told me that Jimmy's dad sleeps out there when the peaches are in season, so no one comes and steals them. We ate lunch outside on their "patio" and Jimmy's dad showed us his homemade gun that he made many year ago.Then we got back on the road to go and see one of Jimmy's friends piece of land. The main reason for this trip was to have a friend of their family, who is apparently some kind of witch doctor tell them where a good spot would be to possibly build a house. He got out his Ouija board type thing and some how came up with some information.After we were done walking around for a while we got back in the car and we weren't really too sure where our next stop would be. Mike was in another car and all that Jimmy was telling me is that we would be staying at a very beautiful place tonight. Liz, Xiao Li and I all fell asleep in the car and Jimmy finally got us to our destination in the mountains. I think the car ride was at least an hour and we ended up at a lake.We went to a hotel on the other side of the lake and looked at a couple of rooms and decided we would be staying there for the night. We dropped off our stuff and Jimmy kept telling us we were going to a place that has big fish to eat.We looked at the fish and I think we might have bought one, but I'm not sure. We looked at the lake for a little bit and then sat down at a restaurant for dinner.Liz is always a big hit with the ladies for pictures. Anytime another woman joins us for dinner, they have to get a picture with the female foreigner, then they tell me how beautiful she is. We don't understand why they don't tell her. After dinner we went to back to the hotel and called it an early evening, since we were up at 5 AM that morning.Jimmy wanted to get an early start the next day, so we were to meet down in the lobby at 9 AM. We were of course the last ones to get downstairs, while everyone else was waiting for us in the van. We got on the road to head back to Chengdu for a lunch time birthday party. On the way we met up with the witch doctor and some other people in a tiny van that had a lot of fireworks in it. We got a quick breakfast, which back home would usually be an egg sandwich or something, but here in China a quick breakfast is noodles and meat. It was actually a great meal, as most every meal is here. We got back out to his parents path around 11 and I was handed two huge wheels of firecrackers to carry back to the house.You would think that fireworks would be reserved for night time activities, but it is tradition to set off fireworks before the meal at such a special birthday. So 5 or 6 people started unwrapping the firecrackers and laying them along the path to the house, tying them together in a continuous string.After about five minutes of a firecracker show and no one getting injured we proceeded with eating lunch. They hired a "catering company" to cook the food and they had brought all the tables, chairs, dishes and cooking apparatus back to the house. It was raining so there was a tarp over top of the 15 tables that were set up. There was enough food cooked to feed about 25 tables of people, but the leftovers were used for dinner that night. The party was not as rowdy with the drinking as Xiao Li's dads was, but there was still a decent amount consumed. They also purchased a refrigerator just for us, because foreigners don't like to drink warm beer.The party was winding down and Mike and Jimmy had taken a walk to look at a pond full of minnows. After a while I called Mike to see how long they would be and he said that Jimmy was sleeping in the grass next to the pond. Around that time Tommy asked us if we wanted to go into town to buy another cake for the dinner that night. We said sure, and the three of us were off on an adventure. We got to the bakery and they told us that it would be about 15 minutes before they would have a cake decorated for us. I went out to the car and woke Liz up with a half dozen flowers that I bought her for 50 cents. Tommy got us a bicycle carriage and we took a ride around town while our cake was being finished up.I saw a place that was weaving straw and asked what they were doing there. The next thing you know we were inside of someones house picking out which kind of hats we wanted to buy. We got 4 of them and then we were back in the bicycle to get back to the bakery. Tommy and Liz went to the back of the bakery and took some chocolate and then we were on our way back to the party with the cake.Carrying a three tiered cake over a bumpy road isn't the easiest thing in the world, but I balanced it on my hands the entire ride back and then carried it on the path and it arrived at the party the same way it was in the bakery. When we got back to the house dinner was being served, so we ate the leftovers from the day and took pictures in our new hats.The catering crew did all the dishes and packed everything up and carried it back out to the road. We stuck around for a little while, waiting for it to get closer to dark and then we lit off two boxes of fireworks. Then we packed up our stuff and got back on the road to the city of Chengdu. We stopped at one of Jimmy's friends places and gave him some peaches and drank some tea and then checked into a hotel that had VIP Building written on the front of it. The room was very nice and they actually didn't turn the power off during the day, so that allowed us to get a good nights sleep.The next day we were supposed to be in the lobby at 9, since Mike and Xiao Li can get ready in approximately 10 minutes, they were downstairs 20 minutes early. He had all sorts of plans for the day. We had breakfast in the hotel and then we were driving around looking for a place to wash the van, since we had been driving on muddy roads for the past two days. The first place we stopped at was too busy to take us and then we spotted another place but Jimmy wasn't too sure on where the driveway was. As he was slowly turning into the driveway we heard the sounds of tires skidding and then the van got hit in the side by a motorcycle. We were all shocked for a few seconds then we realized that a guy just plowed into the side of our car with a motorcycle and he is now laying on the sidewalk moaning in pain. This might put a slight delay in our original plans for the day. Mike and Jimmy got out and then I did to find a guy on the ground next to his motorcycle that was now leaking gas. Mike got the motorcycle up and out of the way and a crowd was starting to form. They were trying to figure out what was wrong with the guy and he told them that his hand and ankle were hurt. The last section of his pinky finger was bent back at a 90 degree angle and when they got him up he wasn't able to walk. In the middle of all the commotion Mike and Jimmy got him into the van and we were on our way to a hospital. We later found out that we weren't supposed to leave the scene like that, but this guy was in some pretty serious pain and we wanted to get him to a hospital quickly. The hospital was only about 5 minutes away and when we got there Mike carried him up the steps and into the "emergency room". The hospital took a look at him and said that they couldn't take care of broken bones there and that they would transport him to another hospital. Mike and Xiao Li got into the ambulance with the guy and then they were gone. Next a car arrived that we thought might be the guys family, but it wound up being one of Jimmy's friends and before Liz and I knew it Jimmy got in the car and left too. So there we were, Liz and I sitting in a rental van that was just hit by a motorcycle in the parking lot of a Chinese hospital. We waited for a while and then got out our DVD player and continued to watch Grey's Anatomy. Mike eventually called us and said that the guy is fine, no broken bones and that his finger was just dislocated. He asked to talk to Jimmy, and I told him "Jimmy is gone". Mike asked, did the police take him away? I explained to him what happened and he told us to just wait there until he gets a hold of Jimmy. A little while later Jimmy came back and got us and we went back to the scene of the accident and Jimmy waved down a police car to explain what happened. At that point Liz and I were picked up by Jimmy's cousin and he took us to the hospital. We weren't overly intersted in sitting in a room with a guy that we didn't know, so we waited in the lobby. Mike said that the guy was talking up a storm and he was actually a really nice guy. He was very sorry that he ruined our trip and he told Mike that he has always had bad luck and that his motorcycle didn't have any brakes. That might explain why he ran into the side of the van. The hospital said that they wanted to keep him for a week, because his chest hit the handlebars and we eventually parted ways and went back to the hotel to meet Jimmy for lunch. The police took his drivers license and the van, so now we were without a car. He would be able to get both of them back on Monday. Jimmy was pretty worked up and sorry that the whole thing happened. We had lunch and were forced to drink and then we made our plans for the afternoon. Jimmy arranged for one of his friends that speaks a little bit of English to take us on a tour of an old city about an hour outside of Chengu, while they went and handled some stuff with the accident. Jimmy went to the hospital to see how the guy was doing and to take him some peaches, but the guy had left the hospital. As they were driving away from the hospital they saw the guy hobbling down the road, apparently he was doing alright. The next day the guy called Mike's phone saying he needed money for something in the hospital and Mike couldn't really understand what he was saying. He gave the phone to Xiao Li and she said, we saw you walking down the street, we came to visit you yesterday afternoon. He didn't have to much more to say after that and then hung up. After lunch Liz and I got a cab out to the town of Luodai with our new guide. The girl insisted on buying this lei for Liz and then she kept asking us if we wanted to eat, even though we just finished lunch.The area we were walking through had all kinds of shops and even had a museum that spoke of the heritage of the people from the area.While walking through the market our guide bought us this sweet treat that was nothing like we have had before and then we continued on, looking forward to finding the "Mini Great Wall"When we got to the end of the market, we were approached by this guy asking us if we needed a ride anywhere.Usually we just walk by these people saying no thanks, but our guide spoke to him and got it set up for him to give us a ride to the wall. After driving quite fast down some rather bumpy roads, we arrived at this place.It was a pretty hot day and we really didn't know what we were getting into when we got out of the car. We walked up one set of small steps and saw this huge set of steep stairs.Liz isn't too fond of heights or steep steps in the middle of a hot afternoon, but after some coaxing we were climbing up the "Mini Great Wall of Sichuan". The wall never served any purpose like the real Great Wall did, it was just built as a tourist site. We thought that we would go to the top of this first set of steps and look around and that would be it, come back down and continue on with our day. When we got to the top our guide pointed to a building way off in the distance and said that is where we are going. I interpreted this for Liz and she said "NO WAY, why would we do that?" But next thing you know we were putting one foot in front of the other and making our way to some random building. Along the way there were many little stands that were selling drinks and fruit and slingshots and little trinkets. We stopped at this one to buy a fan and we bought water at another stop too. As we continued to get closer to the end we looked back and realized how far we had actually walked.I asked our guide if when we got up to the top would we be walking back down to where we started, and she said yes. We really weren't looking forward to this but we would do whatever she had planned. We finally got to the top and she realized that we didn't have enough time to walk back down to the beginning, so she called our driver that brought us up to the Wall and told him to come and pick us up at the top of the mountain. She told us that we just walked 7 kilometers, we felt like we accomplished something.While we were waiting for him to drive up, we went into the temple and got blessed and were told that we would have good health.There was also a tea house and the top and we walked through that. It was a pretty cool set up, looking out over all the mountains. Our driver eventually made it up to the top and we were on our way back down the mountain. Luckily no other cars were coming up the mountain, because the road was pretty narrow and windy.Liz and I were expecting that we would get in another cab that would take us back into Chengdu, but this guy actually took us the entire way back in his little van with no air conditioning. We met up with everyone at the hotel and then went to a hot pot place to eat dinner. The food was extremely spicy and some guys even had their shirts off in the restaurant. Surprisingly, Mike kept his on. After dinner we walked around a little bit and saw a building that had every window broken out from the earthquake, but surprisingly there was not much damage to the rest of the town. People told us that during the earthquake the sidewalks looked like waves and that the statue of Mao Zedong looked like he was waving to everyone.Mike and I couldn't understand how the roads and sidewalks weren't completely ruined or at least a little cracked. After walking around we went back to the hotel to get a foot masage and then we were off to bed. We were allowed to sleep in til 10 the next day, but then Jimmy called us and asked that we be ready for 9:30. Jimmy found us a van and we went to eat breakfast at a noodle place. From there we went to Jimmy's house that he has on a golf course. We hung out there for a while and then decided to go into an older part of Chengdu that has a park and some shopping. The area that we were walking through had all kinds of fancy tea and coffee houses and some small stands to buy art or souvenirs. This tea house had a painting of Michael Jackson on the wall.Next we found the park and walked around for a little bit. Since it was Sunday, there were a lot of people hanging out taking naps or playing cards. There were a couple of diffrent areas that had a microphone where people were singing. We're not sure if it was a karaoke type set up or if it was actually someone who sings for a living.We came upon an "amusement park" that had a few rides and we decided to go on one that looked like it spins around. Liz's belly wasn't feeling so great from the hot pot the previous night but she eventually decided that she would go on the ride with me. Upon entering the ride we saw that the ride was self propelled. If you wanted the car to move you had to pedal and then turn the steering wheel to get the car spinning. Liz wasn't too keen on the spinning but we still had fun.Next we found a game where you spun a wheel and whatever animal it landed on would tell the guy what kind of lollipop he would make you. He had some melted down sugar that he would put on a stick in the shape of a bird, or a tiger or a big dragon, which was the grand prize. Xiao Li actually got the grand prize dragon and that really made her day.We continued to walk around and got into a bigger part of the city where we ate a late lunch. We weren't overly hungry, but I take advantage of every oppurtunity that we are given to eat. Mainly because we never know what the plans are for the day, and if we do they can change at any moment. We could eat at 5 o'clock or we could eat at 8 o'clock. Everyone ended up eating a meal and then we were back to walking around.We told Jimmy that we would like to get back to room to get cleaned up for dinner and to maybe take a nap. We made plans to go to dinner at 6 o'clock. We didn't know where we would be going for dinner, but we were told that everything at this restaurant was taken from the wild. Nothing was raised on a farm or bought from a store. They apparently go out to the mountains and hunt for the meat and find the vegetables growing wildly. We weren't overly convinced that this was entirely true, but it was an excellent meal. To get to the restaurant we had to go down a bumpy dirt road where we eventually got to a parking area that had a set of steps going up a hill. Everything was overgrown and the whole area smelled like a toilet. We were told that this place was where a lot of the government officials eat. Some of Jimmy's friends met us at the restaurant and one of the guys was actually a part of the local government. He had a video of his involvment with the earthquake relief efforts. We watched the 10 minute video of how they got supplies out to the remote areas and how they were helping the people who lost everything. It was very interesting, but I think we would have gotten more out of it if we could understand what was being said. When dinner was served we were told that we were about to eat leopard, beaver and pig. The leopard was in a soup and it was one of the best parts of the dinner. Liz apologized to her cat Oliver before she took her first bite. During dinner we were greeted by every person in the party by standing up and drinking a glass of beer. Sometimes it seems like they are trying to make you drink much, but it was explained to us that they were just welcoming us to their town and they were very happy to be able to meet foreigners. So with the mixture of the beer and all the food we were all pretty full. We then drove back to the area of the hotel and we were taken to a barbeque place. It was a really cool place with a tarp as a roof and a whole bunch of tables. We had about 15 people with us and they filled up about 20 feet worth of table with all kinds of barbequed food. We were not hungry at all, I picked at a few things and we stayed there for about a half hour and then headed home.The next day we had to get up at 6 and on the road by 6:30 for our flight back to Qing Xi.We had a really enjoyable time on this trip and got to see the full spectrum from city life to country living. The whole motorcycle incident sort of put a damper on our original plans, but the things that we ended up doing were just as fun.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1214769600/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1214769600/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1214769600/tpod.html Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:37:43 -0400 Liz and Tom - China 2008

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Taipei, Taiwan

Mike and I had to go to Taipei for a mold sampling. So we left on Sunday afternoon for Hong Kong airport for a short trip to Taipei.We took a van to get into Hong Kong and Liz and I were supposed to be on an earlier flight than Mike. When we got to the airport we found out that the flight was overbooked and they told us to come back in 15 minutes and they should have a seat for us. We were in desperate need of food and we found the fastest food that we could...that wound up being Popeye's Chicken. We dominated two orders of fried chicken and french fries in 10 minutes and then quickly got back to the ticket counter. At that time we were told that we couldn't get on the flight and they would put us on Mikes flight two hours later. Liz said "I think iI want to go throw up so I can eat some decent food"...she didn't actually do that, but we did go to a steak place and Mike and I each ate a steak. We finally got on our flight then got picked up by a car and got into our hotel around 10 PM.We went to the hotel bar and got our complimentary beer and then went to bed.The next day we got picked up by Vincet Lee (a tooling engineer from Graco's Taipei office) at 8:30 and we went to the mold sampling house while Liz stayed at the hotel and went shopping at the mall across the street from the hotel. She enjoyed walking around normal looking stores with clothes that she might actually want to buy but everything was extremely expensive. Mike and I got our work done and got back to the hotel around 5 o'clock. Around that time I was to the point of hunger that if I didn't eat something immediately there was going to be a large issue. We found a Thai restaurant in the mall and everything was back to normal with my attitude. After dinner Mike had plans to go play badmitton with the guys from the Taipei office. Liz and I weren't overly interested in going to watch him sweat, so we went to a night market.The night market consisted of a ton of stores each about the size of a garage that were selling every kind of knock off item you could imagine. They actually had some decent clothes that wound up getting. After being there for about two hours, we got a cab back to the TGI Fridays that was by the hotel and met Mike and another guy from our Taipei office for a drink.The next day Mike had an extremely early flight and Liz and I made plans to go do some sightseeing around Taipei. Vincent picked us up in the morning and took us to the National Palace MuseumThis museum has over 70,000 items that were taken from the Forbidden City and moved to Taiwan. It was cool seeing some of the old tools and weapons they used and they had a lot of other pottery and jade carvings that you can't believe someone was able to produce.We got done with the museum around noon and got a cab to see the tallest building in the world, Taipei 101. The cab driver asked us if we wanted to stop and get some really good tea and then tried to take us to a jewelry store. We told him we were just interested in getting to Taipei 101.On our way to the hotel we saw groups of scooters at the front of each red light that looked like scooter gangs. This city is dominated by scooters. This picture shows a small group of these scooters, but we saw other groups that were 3 - 4 times as big.Whenever we got to the building we spent some time walking through the fancy stores that were so overpriced it was ridiculous. We also walked through the food court right around lunch time and there was not a seat to be found. There were at least 70 food stands in this food court, but we were looking for a sit down type of restaurant. We headed up the 4th floor and went to a place specializing in Shanghai food.After lunch we went to the top of the building. The elevator ride to the 89th floor only took 30 seconds and it is so smooth that you can stand a nickel on its edge and it won't fall over during the entire ride. When we got to the top floor we got a pair of the headphones that tell you the details of what you are looking at. We walked up to the first window and Liz looked down and said "that's enough of that, it's too scary." Despite the fact that our headphones told us the windows can take an 8 ton direct hit without breaking she stayed a few feet away from the windows for the rest of the tour.From one side of the building we could see this parking lot that only had scooters in it.With being such a tall building, they had to design something to counteract the force of the wind from making the building move. We were told that many tall buildings have a stabilization device, but it's not open to the public. This building uses a huge steel ball weighing 20 some tons attached to three cables that will move the opposite way that the building wants to move. This device makes the building completely motionless.After our time at the building, we got a cab to the Graco Taipei office where my computer was being repaired. Two weeks ago my computer would not start and we wound up having to re-install Windows. They got all of the Graco specific programs installed for me and we spent some time going through the office to meet everyone that I commonly email from back home. They told us at the office that we would pretty much be screwed with getting a van from Hong Kong to Qing Xi at the time we were scheduled to get into Hong Kong. There were luckily no problems with our flight and we wound up getting on the next to last van up into China. The van we got into was low on gas, so he would drive extremely fast for about a mile and then put the car in neutral. We eventually got gas and through customs, Lizs passport hasn't been giving us too many problems lately.We enjoyed our time in Taipei and found it to be a much cleaner city than most in China. It had a feel of the United States that we miss sometimes and we enjoyed the shopping the most, since that is something that we rarely get to do here in China.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1211426280/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1211426280/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1211426280/tpod.html Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:19:50 -0400 Liz and Tom - China 2008

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Dongguan, China

This will be a continuously updated list of the odd foods we have had during our trip:* Pigs Blood* Fried Bee Larva* Pig Liver* Whole Fried fish - eat them in one bite* Stinky Tofu* Deer meat - the rump roast sliced very thin and cooked in front of us at the Korean BBQ. It was pretty chewy* Whole pig leg - We only ate the pieces of meat inside, the chinese only like the thick layers of fat and think it is odd that we don't eat that. They say it will make you strong* Raw Horse Meat - At a sushi restaurant, Liz wouldn't eat it because she said it was from a miniature pony* Ham Egg and Cheease sandwich is our normal breakfast as the Time Coffee restaurant...and a plate of bacon* Pig Kidney* Gooose Liver* Tuna Salad Sushi - One of Liz's favorites* Tofu - at almost every meal and it is one of our favorite dishes* Bitter melon - Not overly tasty and is esasily mistaken for peppers, it's a big surprise when you get the taste in your mouth and you think it should be a pepper* Turtle* Street Food in Qing Xi - Every night this one area becomes filled with these carts of food. We went to this one cart that had a grill and a table full of raw meat and had them grill some chicken legs and wings. They also put an eggplant on the grill for Liz. Then we went to another stand where you get a basket and put the type of noodles we wanted and then anything else you want them to put into your soup. We had quail eggs, tofu, seaweed, green onions and dumplings in ours. A two foot high table was set up for us just outside of the noodles area and we ate right there. It was delicious and something we will do again.* Snake Liquor* Pigs Ear* Razor Clams* Chicken Testicles...when Mike told me what they were, I said "NO WAY these suckers are bigger than any human beings"...but they really were chicken balls...They weren't too bad and something that I would eat again* Leopard - When we were told we would be eating Baozi, we thought the translation was lion, but it wound up being a soup that had leopard in it. It was extremely good and was apparently a leopard that was hunted from the wild.* Pigeon - we ate pigeon while in Chengdu and then we had it again at a restaurant near Qing Xi that specializes in pigeon. It was very good and much meatier than you would think. We wore plastic gloves to eat them, just so we didn't sticky hands.* Beaver - this was at the same place that we had the leopard and it was one of the best dishes of the night.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1214067600/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1214067600/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1214067600/tpod.html Sun, 22 Jun 2008 10:22:00 -0400 Liz and Tom - China 2008

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Sanmen Dao, China

After about 6 days of heavy rain the weather has finally broken and we decided to go the beach this weekend. We started our trip around noon on Saturday. Xiao Li was very anxious to get on the road and wanted to get KFC or McDonald's but we convinced her to go to a sit down restaurant. Here she is at lunch in her beach gear.After doing some running around in Qing Xi, we got on the road for a 1.5 hour trip to the shore. Once we got off the highway near Nan Ao we had to drive on this narrow road for about 20 minutes to get to the water. Luckily bus traffic wasn't too bad.Xiao Li had called ahead to make sure the weather was OK at the island and to set up our boat ride from the mainland out to the island of Sanmen. As soon as we arrived we put on sunscreen beacuase the sun was extremely hot. Liz had to go to the bathroom and there was a lizard on the wall of the stall, she came running out screaming. After that we walked down to the shore and met up with the guy who would be taking us to the island.When we got to the island we went to the hotel and had to wait for the police to come to the hotel to check our passports and have us sign a book stating that we were there. We quickly dropped our stuff off in the room and got changed to go snorkeling. Liz had a slight headache, so we went to the pharmacy/docotors office.This guy was apparently the pharmacist/doctor, he didn't move from this spot for about the first five minutes of the conversation about Liz having a headache. He said he could mix up some different pills for $2 a dose and she would need three doses. Mike didn't quite understand what he said, so he said OK. Xiao Li jumped in and set the guy straight and we wound up getting 4 ibuprofren for 20 cents. Liz was only supposed to take one at a time, but there was another language misunderstanding and she took all four, her headache went away shortly there after and Xiao Li thought the misunderstanding was pretty amusing.We walked down a path to get to the beach and we got ready to do some snorkeling. Mike had bought some pretty fancy snorkeling gear and the water was extremely clear. It was both mine and Liz's first time snorkeling and we really enjoyed it. We saw a decent amount of fish and a whole bunch of sea urchins.There were quite a few people in the water catching these spiney sea urchins. It doesn't look like something that you could eat, but apparently they are pretty good. Mike started to catch some of them and he got some of those spines stuck in his hand. One of the guys gave him a glove and he caught a whole bunch of them. It turned out that he was getting ones that were too big and we didn't end up eating them. After we were done with the snorkeling, Liz and I went up and got some beers and sat at this group of tables and watched Mike and Xiao Li snorkel for a while.When we got back to the hotel room the power was on. This might sound a bit strange, because you would expect that a hotel would always have power. But the way things work on the island is that around 6 o'clock at night the power is turned on, so that you can see what you are doing and so that there is AC in the rooms. Our AC wasn't working at first but after they recharged it with freon we had some cold air blowing out. We headed to dinner at a "restaurant" that was run by the guy who came and picked us up in the boat.This restaurant definitely has some of the freshest food you will ever have. Here is a picture of the chicken that we were about to eat being killed and if you want to eat a fish, our captain heads out in his boat to a net that they store fish at and gets a few fish and/or crabs. Our meal was very good and we wound up making some new friends with these guys who were there for a fishing trip. We gave them some of our food and they let us have some of their fish.After dinner we had tea with one of the guys that works at the restaurant and then Mike and Xiao Li went back to the room for the night. Liz and I walked back down to the water and came upon a group of Bejing college students sitting around in a circle and doing some karaoke/acting/dancing/drinking. One girl came over to us and told us "I have a friend that lives in Florida, that's by Washington, but I don't even care cause I'm in China!!!" Another girl came over and the only thing she said was "she's drunk". After watching these guys dance around for a while, making phone calls home and talking for a while we headed back up to the room to see if we had a cool room or not. The AC was doing its job and we went to sleep. Liz didn't sleep very well because she said I was talking in my sleep, both in english and chinese, and kicking my feet very violently. I woke up at 4:30, which happens to be the time that the power is turned back off in our hotel. It is still dark at 4:30 AM, so we had to use the cell phone to see if we were peeing the hole in the ground or on the floor. When the power goes off, the room gets hot pretty quickly and we were up and moving around 6:30. Mike called us and we went over to his room for a breakfast of snacks that we bought at the grocery store the previous day. Liz said that she was ready to get off of the island as soon as possible, but after we went outside it was much more comfortable. We went snorkeling for a couple of hours and then had lunch at the same restaurant as the night before. The reason for this is that it is only one of two restaurants that we could have chosen. We had some very good crab and fish and the best ramen noodles I've ever had. The daughter of one of the people working at the restaurant was shy around us at first, but eventually opened up and even posed for some pictures.She said she wanted to come back to Qing Xi with us, but we settled to take her for a walk back to our room while we packed up our stuff. We checked out of the hotel and took the same boat back to the mainland and started heading home. We stopped at a fish market on the way home and Mike and Xiao Li haggled with the guys to get some fish, crabs, shrimp and oysters for dinner at Xiao Li's uncles house that night.It was great to get back to Qing Xi and we both fell asleep for while before we went to dinner at Xiao Li's uncles house. The seafood we got was awesome.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1213256700/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1213256700/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1213256700/tpod.html Sun, 22 Jun 2008 08:57:55 -0400 Liz and Tom - China 2008

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Dongguan, Guangdong, China

I will be updating this entry on a regular basis with stories and pictures that don't necessarily warrant a whole new entry.* For instance, the fact that there is a shortage of diesel fuel over here, and it is very common to see a couple hundred yards of truck backed up at the gas station, because the station is out of gas.* It had been a while since we got a massage, so we went to get a full body massage after dinner last night. The full body massage consists of a room with three twin sized beds and you lay down on your back and the front of you gets massaged for an hour. This is an intense massage where you almost want to tell them that it hurts, but then you think that they are professionals and they know what they are doing. After that first hour, they ask you to roll onto your stomach and they massage your entire back side. Some may say that it was a little too much pressure, but we thought it was pretty amazing. The cost for this event, per person, was $15 and that included two beers.* It is pretty hot and humid here and we have been talking about wanting to go swimming. Directly across the street from our hotel is an enormous recreation complex. They have three pools, one is an olympic sized lap pool, another is a more shallow family type pool and the other one is the largest swimming pool I have ever seen, even at a tropical resort. I would say it is about 100 yds by 75 yds. It only costs $1.50 to swim all day and we usually go over after I am done with work to swim laps. You can even drink beer there. They also have a driving range, massage and badmitton at this place. Mike and I played badmitton and her dominated me. It is a much harder sport than I was expecting and I need to do a lot more training.To help with our swimming, we got a pair of swim goggles. They really let us know just how dirty the pool was* Almost every day we will see some large amount of food, livestock, styrofoam, propane bottles, water bottles, people, etc... strapped to the back of a motorcycle, three wheel bike/truck or bicycle. Here are some pictures of this type of stuff.Mike has seen a bike have so much styrofoam strapped to the top of it that it could not fit under a bridge underpass.* One night we ate dinner by our hotel and we needed to go grocery shopping afterwards. On our way we had to stop at a neighboring hotel to use the bathroom and we saw these two girls singing at the bar of the hotel. They were wearing some very short skirts and singing English songs. Mike told us they were from the Phillipines and they spoke no Chines. We decided to enjoy their entertainment and had a Guiness and a Corona.* Recently the weather has been beautiful. We decided to have a BBQ one night. So Mike got some chicken legs, wings, potatoes, a whole fish and shrimp and did them all on the grill. It was a charcoal grill and the meal took about 3 hours to prepare, but it was some of the best barbeque I've ever had.* On Friday August 13th we woke up to a pretty large rain storm. This is pretty common here and we didn't think anything of it. We never know what the weather is going to be like, because we can't watch the weather on the news and weather.com doesn't know that Qing Xi, China exists. The rain did not stop until about 4 AM on Saturday morning. There was a lot of flooding and it was not possible for us to leave the town of Qing Xi. All of the roads were flooded. We were driving around on Saturday and we saw some areas that were severly damaged. Some people's crops were completely washed away. Our friend Steve lives in a neighboring town and he wasn't able to get back to his wife and 15 month old baby because of the flooded roads. Their apartment building was surrounded by 8 feet of water. Another problem that we quickly realized was that if you can't get out, no one can get in, and that includes fuel trucks. Mikes car was almost empty and we had to go to 3 different stations to find a place that didn't have a huge line or that wasn't out of gas. Everything has gone back to normal now, but Yahoo News reported the 55 people died from the flooding and 1 million were pushed out of there homes.* This Tuesday we went out to dinner with Tommy (Jimmy's brother) to a place that Mike says a lot of high up people in the community go to for dinner. We asked the waitress how many foreigners come into the restaurant and she said we were the first three she's ever seen. We drank this snake liquor that was pretty horrible at first. After dinner we went to get a massage. I asked that we go to the place that is in our hotel and it wound up being a beautiful place. They had a menu that has hamburgers and all kinds of other things on it. They also claim they have an exercise room, but you have to use their bathing facilities before you use it.After the massage we went to karaoke to meet up with some of Mike's friends. We played this game called "Drink not Drink" where one person covers their face with a serving dish and someone else points to a pair of people and says drink not drink. It is up to the person who has their face covered to say whether that pair drinks or not.After we were done at KTV we headed back to our hotel but as we were approaching the hotel it looked awfully dark. The power was out in the entire hotel. Our room is on the tenth floor and we didn't want to deal with all of those stairs to just go to a hot hotel room, so we called Mike and he sent Xiao Li to get us and we slept at his house.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1212845400/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1212845400/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1212845400/tpod.html Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:02:19 -0400 Liz and Tom - China 2008

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Hong Kong, China

This past weekend we made our first trip to Hong Kong. As I mentioned in earlier posts, we have to go into Hong Kong once every 30 days to "renew" our visas. We were prodding Mike to make the trip with us, since he is much more familiar with the city than us, but he hates going down into such a huge city. He finally caved and said he would bring Xiao Li along with him. We started our trip with breakfast at the Time Coffee restaurant at 9 AM.From there we drove to Shenzhen in Mikes car. There was quite a bit of rain, but when we arrived in Hong Kong we found out that we missed the largest portion of the storm. The papers said that Hong Kong received 17 inches of rain in just under 10 hours. There was video of cars up to their hoods in water. The only signs of this flooding when we arrived were shops that had all their carpet ripped out and on the sidewalk.Navigating into the train station in Shenzhen is always a chore and if it wasn't for Mikes exceptional chinese driving skills, we would have been there much later than we were. We finally got into the train station and had to go through the customs process. There was a small issue with Xiao Li going through customs getting out of China. She had to get a hold of a travel agency that acted as her guide to get her through and from there on we didn't have any problems. Once through China customs, we had to go through one final customs line to get into Hong Kong. From there we bought four first class train tickets for the one hour train ride into Hong Kong. First class gets you a guaranteed seat and a much more comfortable car.The train took us to a station right by the hotel we would be staying in. The Sheraton Hong Kong is the hotel that most of the people from Graco stay at and it was very nice. We were able to get a harbor view room.The room was smaller than our big place in Qing Xi, but they did a great job with making the best of the space. The bed was extremely comfortable and the shower had two shower heads that felt like they were dumping buckets of water on you.After quickly dropping off our stuff, we got out onto the streets and starting walking around one of the main shopping areas. This area of Hong Kong has many of the high end stores like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, etc...And they also have more knock off stands/stores than you could imagine. People are constantly saying "copy watch, copy bag, tailor, CD, DVD" to you as you walk down the side walk. The shopping scene got to be annoying rather quickly and the fact that we were hungry didn't help. We were convinced to come into this Indian/Malaysian/Thai restaurant by another guy on the sidewalk trying to drum up business. It wound up being a great meal where we had some Indian beers and some really good food. It definitely wasn't the cheapest lunch we've ever had, actually it was by far the most expensive lunch I've ever seen for 4 people.After lunch we continued to walk around and shop.After a stop at the hotel for a bathroom break and to drop off what Mike had purchased we walked down to "star walk" which is similar to the place back home that has all the stars and their hand prints are...neither of us can think of the name of that place right now, maybe walk of fame??...From there we took a ferry across the harbor over the Wan Chai area. This is the area where all the flooding was, but we had no idea that it had happened until we saw some video on the TV while waiting for the boat. As I said before, there was no serious devistation and people were trying to clean up their shops. The area where we were walking around wound up being a whole bunch of home decoration and renovation stores, so there wasn't much to look at. The reason for us going over to this part of town was based on the manager at the "Spice Restaurant" that we ate lunch at. She told us there would be an American style band at this one bar in Wan Chai and it would be a good time. Well, we finally made it to that bar and it was very small and the people were pretty rude to us. The rude personalities were something that we encountered quite a bit in Hong Kong, but I guess you will have that in any big city. Once again we were getting hungry and decisions were becoming tedious, so we decided we wanted to eat dim sum for dinner but we couldn't find a place that had those little carts that they push around and you pick the dishes you want. We actually wound up in a somewhat fancy restaurant that had half way decent food.However, our disappointment in them not having Dim Sum carts and the lack of hospitality that we are used to in Chinese restaurants gave us a negative attitude and were in and out of there before we knew it. From there we weren't very sure on where we were going to head next. Mike wanted to get up into Lang Kuai Fang (an area up on a huge hill that has all kinds of nightlife and restaurants)...but we were considering sticking round Wan Chai to see how things turned out there...Liz said, "lets go to that place you want to check out Mike" and it wasn't 10 seconds until we were in a cab on our way to this bar Mike has been to that has great live music. The cab ride was actually pretty fun, with a lot of steep hills and the fact that they drive on the wrong side of the road is hard to comprehend sometimes. The bar Mike wanted to go to was a bar that I went to with some college buddies during our trip in 2003...the bar that was sort of open air and somewhat of a spanish/european design. The band wasn't as lively as Mike remembered, but we still had a great time. The bar was full of foreigners and we found ourselves being overly critical of the overweight people and we wanted to be back in China where we were the specticle and receiving all the attention.The next day we got up around 9 and met Mike and Xiao Li in the lobby and headed to Starbucks for breakfast. You may be thinking, you were in Hong Kong and you ate at Starbucks and just winged it on your dinner?? Well, Hong Kong is a place that I feel doesn't have the culture of China and it is a little too big for my liking. We were trying to do everything as easily/quickly as possible, so we could move on to the next part of our trip. Sunday was the Dragon Boat Festival and we were hoping to see some of it. The Dragon Boat Festival is a huge event that involves these decorated canoes that are used for racing in one of the harbors nearly Stanley Market. They actually bury the boats in the sand every year after the race, i am assuming to preserve them for the following year when they begin to train again. In order to get to Stanley Market, you have to take an hour long double decker bus ride along the coast on these ridiculously narrow roads. We were able to get in the second row of seats and the ride was a lot of fun.We got to see this building that has a hole in the center of it, for Feng Shui...the thought is that the Dragons can fly down from the hill and pass through the building...this was according to some guy on the bus, who knows if it is a true myth or not. Upon arriving in Stanley Market, we realized that it was an extremely hot day and Liz immediately became a sunglass model.The Stanley Market area has really developed since the last time I was there in college. There are a lot of cool restaurants right on the water and the shopping area has expanded a little bit. Stanley market is basically a huge area of knock offs, chinese knick-knacks and art vendors. It's very easy to spend hours in this market, looking through all the stores and negotiating with the sales people. We were getting a little frustrated with the crowd, so we knew it was time to eat. We found a dim sum place that still didn't have the carts, but they had some really good food and it was the perfect meal to get us through the day. After lunch we continued to walk around and shop and we were always looking for this Dragon Boat Festival. We were right on the water and didn't see any sign of these boats. We finished up our shopping and went on a quest to find this huge event. We were seeing people walking around in these goofy outfits and soaking wet all day. We finally followed the crowd/asked around and we found the main event.We watched one race and got the idea of what all the fuss was about and then headed back to the bus for our trip back to the hotel. It was a longer bus ride this time, because we didn't go to the bus station, we went directly to the hotel. Upon walking to the hotel, we saw Pizza Hut and we had to have it. This was by far the fanciest Pizza Hut we have ever seen.Mike got thin crust meat lovers and Liz and I got the traditional pan pizza. It was just as good as home and it was one of the few meals that made us truly feel full like you get back home...not something that we were looking to have happen, but we had to get as much of that goodness into us as possible.After our feast we got onto the train back up into Shenzhen and then made it back through customs without a problem.Overall, the trip was enjoyable. For our next trip down there, we will definitely have an itinerary on where were want to go and what restaurants we want to check out. The winging it thing is fun, but can be stressful at times. We are looking forward to going back for another overnight trip. We are not very good at buying things for other people or even for ourselves. We will do our best to get together a list of things we think might be cool to bring back and be sure to get something meaningful for our friends and family.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1212563640/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1212563640/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1212563640/tpod.html Wed, 04 Jun 2008 22:00:28 -0400 Liz and Tom - China 2008

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Dongguan, Guangdong, China

After returning back to Qing Xi we started to develop a routine as each day went on. Our normal routine is for me to get up around 7:30 or 8 and check emails and then get a shower. After that we decide if we are going to go out to breakfast at the Time Coffee restaurant or if we are going to have cereal in the room. We found a place that sells cereal and another place that sells milk. My favorite milk is called "breakfast milk" and it is sort of sweet. After breakfast I am picked up by Mike around 9:30 and we go off to start our day of work. The past week or so has consisted of us going to Graco's main production partner called Wonderland and reviewing a new product we are working on. After a morning of work I get a hold of Liz. I either send her an email from my phone, call her on her chinese cell phone that was given to her by Mike, or I call the hotel and I tell them this, in chinese..."Hey, this is the foreign devil who is staying at your hotel, I want to talk to my girlfriend in room 1022"...they are giggling as soon as I say foreign devil (a common name for foreigners here) and then they connect me to the room...I then tell Liz that we are on our way to pick her up and where we are going to eat...sometimes we eat lunch at Mike's house, other times we go to get sushi or beef noodle soup, other times we go and get a massage...it's a surprise each day. Not understanding everything that is being said around you leads to a lot of surprises...sometimes things will just appear that you asked for a few days ago, like Liz's cell phone. They could have been talking about getting this cell phone for a while and we didn't know it and next thing we know Liz has a cell phone that only works inside of China. After lunch we either take Liz back to the hotel or she comes with us to our next stop. If she goes back to the hotel she will usually take a nap, catch up on emails or the celebrity gossip in the US. She has also been doing crossword puzzles and reading a book that I gave her on China. Sometimes I also go back to the hotel and try to keep up on my workload that I would usually have back home. It has been somewhat difficult for me to stay on top of emails, analyses, learning Chinese, learning about molds and attending tooling reviews. As we continue to develop a routine, the juggling is becoming easier. We plan on going to the gym around 4 every day and Mike and Xiao Li actually meet us there. Mike says he hasn't been to a gym in about 6 years and he is excited that we got him back into it. Xiao Li on the other hand has never exercised in her life and struggled to do one sit up. She told Mike "she is going to be the sexiest woman in all of China" and it seems like she enjoys being there. The gym is basically a sauna that guarantees a soaking wet shirt with every workout. We get back to the hotel around 5 and have to quickly get ready because dinner plans are usually for 6 o'clock. Dinner almost always involves a few beers and we really haven't had a meal that we have disliked. We have moved into a new hotel room at the Sen Mei Hotel that is considered a suite. It is the first suite that was finished in the hotel and we are the first people to stay in it. It is much bigger than the previous room and it has a second living room area. We like it because it gives us more storage space for our stuff and we don't feel as closed in. The view of the mountains is beautiful when it's clear enough to see and we plan on doing some hiking on one of the weekends. One of the issues with the hotel is the fact that Liz has gotten a ton of bug bites on her legs. They are most likely bed bugs, but I haven't gotten bit yet. So we are trying to figure out what the cause is. She went to the pharmacist with Xiao Li today and showed them her legs and they ran off and got her some stuff to put on them. When we got back to the hotel we discovered that it was basically Vicks and it has worked wonders for her itchiness. While on the topic of issues with Liz, her stomach hasn't been processing the food very well and she hasn't been visiting the toilet very often. We have acquired four different kinds of Chinese poop medicines and she is getting better each day.Other things we have done in our free time over the last week or so are:We went to Karaoke for the first time on this trip. Liz was definitely hesitant to go to karaoke in China, but she was a great sport and wound up having a fun night once we got settled in. The deal with karaoke in this part of China is that someone rents out a private room at the karaoke place. It is a room that consists of a large wrap around couch, a large TV and a karaoke system. There is no stage and no guy that you tell what song you want to sing, you select the songs with the remote and sing whenever you want. That night we drank this horrible red wine that is mixed with 7-UP which makes it taste a little better. It is drank out of very small, shot sized, wine glasses and there are dice games that some people play to pass the time. There are "ladies of the evening" at karaoke, but we only treat them as friends and send them on their way when we are done singing. Liz and I sang Take Me Home Country Roads. And a few other American pop songs, we sound really good together. The guys that invited us to karaoke are some of the few Asians that can drink a lot of booze. We all wound up drinking a lot and they were able to hang with us all night.We got invited to our first Chinese house warming party that was held at a Hunan restaurant. The party was for our friend Liu You Hong and this was the first house he has ever purchased. There were approximately 60 people at the party and we had a good time. As soon as the food was cleared we left the party. We could have stuck around for a while longer, but Mike has been to enough of these banquets to know that it would have turned in to a game of lets see how much the foreigners can drink.We've also had dinner at Xiao Li's Uncles house. They live in an "apartment" that rents for $12/month. The meal was delicious and we stuck around for a while so Mike could try and beat Xiao Li at this card game called Kill the Landowner. She is an expert at this game and Mike believes that she can truly count cards.We also had a meal at a Korean BBQ that involved a set of coals being placed in the middle of the table and the meal was cooked by a waitress in front of us.After our Korean meal we went bowling at a place about 20 minutes from Qing Xi. We bowled enough to make our arms hurt and it is always an experience seeing some of the uncoordinated Chinese try to bowl. If you bowl a certain score or get a certain number of strikes, you receive a "prize". Here is a picture of me receiving the great prize of a bottle of water for bowling 4 strikes in a row.And here I am receiving my second award of buy one get one free for bowling over 170.Finally Mike and I had a bowling championship to see who was the Grand Master of the World and he won. I now owe him a case of beer.The final topic of interest is a trip to the Columbus bar where we were playing Jenga and Liz was reading thru the list of shots that were translated into English. The one shot was named "nothing". Mike asked the one manager of the bar who was playing Jenga with us "what is this shot of nothing" she replied back by saying "Mei You" which means 'do not have' in Chinese. We had to try it.Overall we are really enjoying our time here. We have made plans to go into Hong Kong this Saturday morning for the weekend. The main reason for this trip is that our visas only allow us be in China for 30 days at a time. Going into Hong Kong is considered leaving the country of China. We will be staying at the Sheraton in Kowloon near the Space Museum. This Sunday is the Dragon Boat Festival and we hope to see some of it before we head back up into China.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1211518800/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1211518800/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1211518800/tpod.html Fri, 30 May 2008 01:34:13 -0400 Liz and Tom - China 2008

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Chongqing, China

On Thursday May 23rd we left Qing Xi at 1 PM to head for the provinence of Sichuan. This is the provenince that Xiao Li grew up in and this weekend was her dad's birthday. We drove from Qing Xi to the Shenzhen airport in Mikes car and got a plane into the city of Chongqing. The flight was about 2 hours long and we got these snacks of beef that were like nothing I've had before. When we arrived in Chongqing we were met by Xiao Li and one of her family members at the airport. Xiao Li had already gone to Sichuan earlier in the week and she would be needed to guide us on how to get to her families house. From the airport we got into a cab that took us to the train station. We had five people + the driver and all of our luggage in a VW Jetta. At one point in the ride Xiao Li had to lay across everyone in the back seat because the driver said the "police" were checking to make sure there weren't any cars that had more people in them than seatbelts. Our cab ride was about 20 minutes and Xiao Li had already bought our tickets to the train. It was at the train station that the continuous staring at the foreigners started. The train station was quite large and very crowded. We got in line for the train and were immediately approched by 6-8 guys saying HELLOOO and trying to shake our hands. Liz and Mike both got quite uncomfortable from the number of people around us and staring at us. The line finally started to move through the narrow turnstiles and it was a mad rush of people pushing all around us to get through. Xiao Li was in front of us and when she got close to turnstiles she put her arms out and stopped the entire crowd so we all could get through, it was amazing. After that we got down to the train and we were able to get enough seats for all of us to sit together on the hour long train ride into the town of Tong Nan. Unfortunately, it was dark, so we didn't get to see the countryside we were traveling through. Tong Nan is the closest town to Xiao Li's house. It is approximately 200 miles from where the earthquakes happened, but there was no damage in this area. When we got off of the train we got onto a bus that was very full, the majority of the trip the bus was turned off and we were just coasting down the hill. As we got closer to the center of town, we saw quite a few of the open areas that people were sleeping in under huge tarps. The reason for them sleeping outside was that they were scared of earthquake aftershocks, so they wouldn't sleep inside, hotels were even closed. Once we got into town we got off the bus and into a cab for the last leg of the trip that would take us to where we would be walking the rest of the way. We were in the cab for about 3 miles and we eventually saw a flashlight go on and off on the right hand side of the road, but nothing else was around at all...this is where the adventure really starts. The flashlight was coming from Xiao Li's dad who walked out to the road to meet us, it was pitch black and about 8 o'clock at night. We unloaded all of our stuff from the cab, Liz and I fit all of our stuff into one hiking backpack, and her dad immediately grabbed my pack and put it on his back. We had bought crappy shoes because we knew we would be walking through about 1.5 miles of sloppy red clay/mud, but he wouldln't let me wear them and insisted that I put on these rain boots that were no larger than a size 9, while I wear a size 12 shoe. The pain from having my toes curled up was pretty miserable as we marched our way back through fields to our final destination. This trip that we just did from Tong Nan to their house is about 7 miles and it is something that they do almost every day on foot. They will rarely even take a cab or bus, they do not own a car and bicycles are not very common in this area for some reason. Everything is carried over their shoulders on a bamboo stick that has a basket attached to each end, or in a basket and two ropes that they wear like a backpack.Upon arriving at their house, we were fed a great meal in the kitchen and we had a couple of beers. Earlier in the week, Xiao Li and her dad went into town to buy a refrigerator (their first one ever) because they knew we would be coming and we don't like to drink warm beer. This refrigerator was carried from the road on his back, I would say it was about 4 feet tall and defintely not something I would want to carry on my back in the mud, it is in the left hand side of this picture. After a long day of travelling we were ready to settle in for the night, but first we had to get the live chickens out of our bedroom that we would be sharing with Mike and Xiao Li.The next day we were woken up around 6 AM, because that is what time life gets started on a farm. Nearly everything that they eat is grown/raised on their property, chickens, potatoes, peanuts, vegetables, fish, duck, fruit, even the rice that we were eating everyday.But this weekend was going to be a big party, so we had to head into town to buy a ton of food for the number of people that would be coming on Saturday for lunch. After breakfast we got ready to head into town, this time I refused to wear the boots that were too small for me. Liz still wore her rain boots and she looks like the girl from the tomb raider movies. This picture also shows what we walked in on the night before, this is known as "the road" and when it hasn't rained for a couple of days it's actually pretty easy to walk on, we were there just after 3 days of rain, so it was still pretty sloppy. Once we hit the main road we waited for a bus into town, they took the bus this time because Mike was paying. The time in town was very enjoyable and sometimes humerous. There is no doubt in my mind that we were the only foreigners in this town, and that made us quite the specticle. People would stop what they were doing just to look at us, not because they were upset that we were there, but because they were curious about us and how we looked and acted. Add on top of the fact that we are foreigners, that Mike can speak Chinese very well and you quickly have a large crowd of people around you, just looking and wondering.We spent about 4 hours in town buying all sorts of things, mainly vegetables, and being stared at.We got back from town on a bus and walked back to the house a different way, since the paths were drying up. The path that we took this time was only about a foot wide and was going through all of the rice fields that the neighbors had. If you slip, your foot gets wet in the rice paddies. After getting home and having some lunch we walked to some relatives/neighbors homes.After returning from our walk, Mike and Liz took a nap and I stayed up. We were told we were going to catch some fish at 5 o'clock, so I got everyone up at that time. They weren't happy that they had to get up, but I'm sure they were happy they didn't miss the next events. We walked down to the lake and two guys went to get the net for fishing. The net is long enough to stretch across the 50 yard wide lake and has weights on the bottom of the net so fish can't get through under the net. After a while Mike and I got into the lake in our underwear to help out. The lake was about waist deep and each step put you up to your knees in mud.As the net got across the lake the number of fish trying to jump from one side of the net to the other was amazing. We were even getting hit in the back and arms from the jumping fish. The ends of the net were eventually brought back together and we got two of the biggest fish of the hundreds we caught, a carp and a "big head"...that's dinner for the night.After dinner we had some drinks, no one tried to gang up on us to see how much the foreigner could drink, but we had our fair share. Xiao Li's uncle wanted to arm wrestle me. I thought it could be a close match because this guys is pretty ripped from working so hard on the farms and dragging that huge net across the lake, but I was successful.The next day was the big party, a lunch time birthday party that wound up having about 30 people at it. Early in the morning, the meat man came by selling meat. He didn't have a refrigerated truck or a cooler, just a basket on his back full of about 30 pounds of meat. They wound up buying almost everything that the young guy had for sale after about 5 people beat him up on his price. Next we had to go and catch some more fish, this time Mike and I didn't get in to help, Liz said that something could crawl up one of my orfices and that got me thinking too much. Xiao Li's step mom wound up jumping in because her uncle was struggling with that huge net by himself.The party got going around noon and we had to pull out extra tables and chairs. There was more than enough food for everyone at the party and probably about 20 more people (tradition in their culture).It eventually turned into a drinking event with many cases of beer being drank. One guy at our table was enjoying drinking with the foreigners, but he wound up crossing his limit and quickly visited the bathroom. They also like to drink beer out of a bowl, a new concept to us, but something that I sort of enjoyed doing. Kids also would run into our room and grab a bottle of beer.The party wound down later in the afternoon and the rest of the day was pretty calm with a long nap and then dinner. The next day would be the start of our trip back to Qing Xi. We weren't flying out until Monday, but we didn't want to depend on the schedule of two buses, a train and then a cab to get us to the airport by 10:30AM, so we decided to get back into Chongqing on Sunday. We packed up all of our stuff and headed down into Tong Nan to buy some ducks and chickens for Xiao Li's family. The ducks and chickens were sold in another open air market and just kept inside of little pens. If there was ever a place for the bird flu to spread rapidly, this would be the place. We didn't want to stay too close to Xiao Li's family while they were negotiating the price for the ducks, because they would gouge them if they knew that a foreigner was paying for the ducks. They got the price down to about $0.27/duck, Mike bought 106 of them. Then they bought about 12 chickens and we parted ways.Just knowing that the end of the trip was near made some of us start to get a little anxious and the overload of people looking at us was getting to be a little too much, so we were happy that our trip was coming to an end. We had about 5 hours to kill before the next train would be heading into Chongqing, so we hung around town for a little bit then got onto the bus to the train station. Liz and I watched a handful of episodes of Entourage on the portable DVD player my parents got us...that thing has saved our sanity numerous times already. We had a beer at the station and had to buy big fans to keep ourselves cool in the hot train station. We ate noodles at the train station and eventually got onto a very full train to Chongqing. This time it was light out and the terraced hills were beautiful.After getting off the train we had to get near the airport and find a hotel room. Xiao Li didn't want to spend the $5 extra to take a cab, so we were waiting for a bus. The bus took a long time to come and Mike finally convinced her that it would be much more convenient to take a cab.Now we had to find a hotel room, one place said it was a hotel, but it wound up being a restaurant. The second place was decent and where we stayed. The first room they put us in did not have any windows and as soon as I closed the door Liz started to get dizzy and said "no way I can stay in this jail cell"...so we got the only room with a window and everyone was happy. The next day we were scheduled to fly out at 10:30 AM, but then they started taking pictures of the airplanes tail and we had to get on anotehr flight. 8 hours later we finally were on our way back to Qing Xi.I would say this was definitely a trip of a lifetime...to think of how removed we were from "normal" everyday life was amazing. I would defintely do the trip again and hope that we are given the oppurtunity some other time. The people that we met were such hard working people who were happy as could be with how little they actually had.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1211025600/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1211025600/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tomlacey/2/1211025600/tpod.html Wed, 21 May 2008 23:10:52 -0400 Liz and Tom - China 2008

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Dongguan, China

Once we got to the hotel Mike came over and met up with us and we went to dinner at Xiao Li's (his girlfriend) uncles restaurant. They serve traditional Sichuan food that is brought from Sichuan to Qing Xi on the bottom of a bus that they know the driver of. It was delicious. We had many dishes, like green peppers, short ribs, pork, fish soup, pickled cabbage and of course beer. Liz asked where the bathroom was and Mike told her and as she was walking away he asked, does she know that the toilet is a squat type toilet. She didn't have any problems, but this was her first exposure to one of these in China. After that we went to get our first Asian massage. Just to put any thoughts to rest about Asian massages, there are no "happy endings" at the kind of place that we go to, it is a completely legitimate massage that lasts 1.5 hours and cost about $6 US per person. We both really enjoyed the massage and of course had beer with that event as well. After that we were pulling up to our hotel and we saw this place called Columbus Bar. Mike told us that it is the only bar that he goes to in China, so we decided to check it out. It is a cool bar with a ocean type theme and they are trying to cater to foreign patrons. We stayed there for about an hour and played Jenga.The next day we went to Mike's house for lunch that was made my Xiao Li, then we went to Jimmy's mold shop to do some work. We drank a lot of tea and checked up on some work he is doing for us. On the way back Mike asked if we wanted a sweet treat and I got ice cream and Liz got a Green Pea popsicle type thing. Then we went to join the gym at California Sports Club. It is a decent gym that has enough equipment to keep us happy. Xiao Li's cousin and his girlfriend were staying with them and they made us dumplings that night. They were very good and had pork inside of them. We drank many beers and played Wii bowling and golf. Jimmy drove us home.The next day (Sunday) we went to breakfast on our own to this Americanized restaurant called Time Cafe. The first menu they gave only had Chinese characters and Liz said "we're screwed", but we worked through it and eventually found a menu that had English in it. Liz had Chicken Noodle soup and I had an egg, ham, cucumber and tomato sandwich, both meals were very good. Xiao Li flew to her hometown in Sichuan provinence. After we sent her off we went to Shekou city so that Mike could buy some Mountain Dew. It was quite an adventure getting there, because Mike's GPS is in all Chinese characters and he didn't have Xiao Li there to read them to him. So we were making our way there and all the sudden we saw cars driving in the wrong direction on the highway towards us. We assumed something was wrong up ahead and we turned around too when we saw the massive amount of traffic. Cars were going the wrong way on the exit ramps and everyone was quite confused.We were in Shekou for about 4 hours and when we were driving home cars were still stopped in traffic. We had dinner at a Thai restaurant and then came back to our hotel for an early night and watched a movie, took some sleeping pills and fell asleep by 9:30.On Monday we went to visit three different mold shops and had lunch at Time Cafe again. We met up with Liu You Hong later in the afternoon and that is always an experience. Mike has taught him a decent amount of English, but for the most part he only blurts out obscene words, it is hilarious. That afternoon was the first time we learned about the three days of mourning that China was following, for the earthquake victims. At exactly 2:28 everyone that was driving stopped their cars and blew their horn for 3 minutes continuously...it was pretty amazing. Then that night we learned that all the karaoke places are closed for the three days. We got invited to dinner with Liu You Hong and he brought 6 friends with him. I didn't think that they would try and gang up on us with the beer drinking, but before you know, we were getting asked to "GAN BEI" (which means dry glass in chinese) every five minutes. So we knew what they were up to and we quickly returned the favor and they realized that there was no way they could win this battle.This guy who has the red face wound up throwing up in the restaurant bathroom and we found out the next day that 4 other guys threw up in a flower pot shortly after they left us. Mike, Liz and I went to the Columbus bar to hang out for a few more hours.Tuesday we went to our manufacturing facility to get an update on some molds that are being built there and then we went to get a massage. We went to the same place as Friday but this time Liz got her ears cleaned out.The procedure for this is we ask for the girl to come in and she comes in with her tool box of ear cleaning tools. The first thing she pulls out is an LED headlamp and she puts it on her head...Liz's eyes got so big and I was laughing hysterically. So then she gets out some of her ear cleaning tools and goes to work. Liz said it was one of the more strange things she has ever experienced but she really liked it.The last two days (Wedensday and Thursday) have been about the same. Going to mold shows and our manufacturing facility during the day, having lunch, going to the gym then off to dinner. This afternoon (Thursday) we are packing up all of our stuff to move out of our hotel. We are taking all of our stuff to Mikes house, except for one backpack worth of stuff and we are heading to the airport to head to Chongqing. This is a town in the same provinence as the earthquake, but we will be about 200 miles away from where the earthquake happened. Some of you have asked if we are close to any of the earthquake problems. If you look the map on this blog, you will see that we are close to Hong Kong and the earthquake was close to Chengdu, Sichuan provinence. It's approximately a 22 hour drive between the two of them, so we aren't even remotely close to where the problems are. The earthquake coverage is dominating the TV stations, but it should be slowing down since Wednesday was the last day of the three day mourning.We will have a large entry about Sichuan when we return Monday morning.
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