I just booked the tickets for Eric and I to go to Jeju-do during his visit, we'll be on the island from the 26th-28th. The tickets were so cheap! Thanks to Lonely Planet, I found Eastar Jet, I'll probably use them for other travel as well--tickets to Thailand were half the price as on any other website.
The day after we get back, Eric and I will be staring down the guards of the North Korean Boarder (as long as nothing goes wrong and the non-refundable tour isn't canceled due to conflict).
I'm reading through the Lonely Planet Korea for things to do in Seoul, and trying to keep in mind that it will be freezing cold here.
Overall, I'm really excited and just a little nervous about how we'll bare the cold. I'm trying to make a list of all the weather-proofing I need to do (there's a breeze in my apartment, not just a draft, a breeze). I'll need to buy a space heater as heaters don't exist in Korea. And my shower doesn't push out hot water when on full blast, so I'll have to get that repaired (and I want to get that done before December for myself as with the space heater). The bathroom sink works fine, so I don't know what's up with the plumbing.
Tomorrow morning, I'm going out with a large group of teachers and friends of teachers to look at the fall colors (there are 40 of us and we chartered a bus to Chungbuk Danyang) and climb around in a cave. I made some soup for lunch tomorrow as I'm not eating rice at the moment and we'll be going to a temple for food.
Oh! And I got some Vega! Turns out Vegan Essentials does have it, I just couldn't find it because their search function isn't as good as Google. It's pretty sweet (stevia and chicory root, not sugar--I'm not eating sugar right now either), but the vanilla gets overpowered easily and I add cinnamon to the mix to get some spiciness into the mix. And I weighed in at 146.4lbs yesterday! That's without exercising and basically planning my meals around greens, and cutting out sugar and flour.
I am still in and out of mourning the loss of Worf, but I don't think it's hit me completely due to the distance. It was difficult watching an episode of Farscape that had a creature being hurt and the cries sounded like that of a kitten in distress. I don't understand what would make someone want to kill a cat, and I'm sorry Worf didn't get to live longer and share more Snuggie snuggles with me.
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Friday, October 29, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Chickety China, Part 2: 5 hour delay and no hot water
Upon our arrival to Qingdao,
Janetta and I asked which bus would take us to the train station, waited for Albert (our new South African acquaintance) and walked to the bus stop. Albert and Janetta needed change for the bus, so we went to the convenience stores near buy and made the store owners a bit upset by cleaning out their small bills. Qingdao is not a place I would recommend visiting. The only thing to do there is tour the Tsingtao brewery. The city is huge, but dusty and kind of boring. It feels a lot more like a small town than a big city in that it's got no real entertainment or cafes in which to pass the time. How do I know this if I was just going to take a train out?
Albert got the last spot on the bus that came by (argh) and the bus pulled away before Janetta and I could try to squeeze on. We got on the next bus and met up with Albert at the train station, he had planned on taking the night train into Beijing but the window attendant on the west side of the train station just gave him the soonest ticket out of Qingdao to Beijing (the joys of language barriers). I'd printed up the train schedule and underlined the train Janetta and I wanted (it was the same one Albert had a ticket for), the 11am train. The attendant gave us tickets for the 5pm. When we tried pointing to the 12, 2, and 4 trains she just pointed at the 5pm. A man behind us, helped us clarify the matter and told us all other trains were sold out. WTF? It had been mere minutes since Albert had purchased his ticket. Janetta and I were kind of miffed, especially since I'd checked a couple different sites to see if I could book the tickets in advance and had had no luck. Albert hadn't even wanted to leave Qingdao that early.
Whatever, we made the best of it. There was a coffee shop (over priced, yes) in the train station, so we settled down at the 'SPR Coffee' with a coffee (me) and a Tsingtao (Janetta) and started to plan a bit about how we had to shift our schedule and where to look for food in this dusty, large port city. We had another drink and asked the young Chinese guy (who spoke English) working the register if we could leave our stuff in the store room since there weren't any lockers in the station--yes, a blind leap of faith on our part. The owner/manager/boss was an older, middle-aged woman and she kept asking us to sit down and relax (that was the extent of her English). They agreed and Janetta and I walked off, a little less weighed down, to find a place to eat.
The plaza of the East side of the train station looks out onto an intersection with 5ish spokes, and we just started walking down the closest one. We wondered for a couple blocks and found a restaurant that looked a little pricey, so we went across the street to the restaurant advertising cheaper prices. I whipped out my Vegan Passport and turned to the page with the Chinese translation of what vegans do and do not eat. We should have looked around the restaurant first, there was an awesome looking lunch buffet for only a few Yuan but it was hidden behind a divider wall. Instead, we just pointed at what looked good (the server showed me the veggie section of the menu--OMG a veggie section!). We ended up with super oily potatoes and peppers for me and deep fried pork bits for Janetta. We decided to take our time at the next restaurant we visited, despite the servers habits of hovering over us like we should know the menu and be ready to order.
After eating our slightly disappointing lunch, we walked around the block. There were shops with all kinds of awesome looking fruit- one had Dragonfruit, which I have yet to try fresh. The craziest thing about this area were the clotheslines going from lamp post to street sign to whatever else. Businesses were using these street clothing lines to dry sheets and towels and residents were drying clothing.
We went back to SPR and found the folks sitting and eating, the guy rushed to the back room and promptly brought us our bags (everything still inside, see, people can be trusted sometimes) and asked us to sit down. We were given some water (hot, all water is boiled in China since it's not safe otherwise) to sip on while we waited for our train to board at 5pm.
I was surprised to find out that Google did work on the computer at the coffee shop, and it was a good thing too because I had to email our hostel to let them know there was a delay in our arrival time.
The train was full (but no standing seats on this one, more on that in the entry on the train ride back)
so we sat, read, napped and looked at the packaged food for sale in the "cafe." My favorite name was Jew's Ear Juice, but we saw things ranging from Trail Mix to Duck Tongue to Fried Tofu strips. It was a nice ride through the Chinese countryside.
We got into Beijing at 11:30pm, it was a long day. With some help from an English speaking Chinese man, Janetta and I got a cab from the Beijing South Train Station to Leo's Hostel. We checked in and looked forward to a hot shower and a place to sleep.
Janetta and I asked which bus would take us to the train station, waited for Albert (our new South African acquaintance) and walked to the bus stop. Albert and Janetta needed change for the bus, so we went to the convenience stores near buy and made the store owners a bit upset by cleaning out their small bills. Qingdao is not a place I would recommend visiting. The only thing to do there is tour the Tsingtao brewery. The city is huge, but dusty and kind of boring. It feels a lot more like a small town than a big city in that it's got no real entertainment or cafes in which to pass the time. How do I know this if I was just going to take a train out?Albert got the last spot on the bus that came by (argh) and the bus pulled away before Janetta and I could try to squeeze on. We got on the next bus and met up with Albert at the train station, he had planned on taking the night train into Beijing but the window attendant on the west side of the train station just gave him the soonest ticket out of Qingdao to Beijing (the joys of language barriers). I'd printed up the train schedule and underlined the train Janetta and I wanted (it was the same one Albert had a ticket for), the 11am train. The attendant gave us tickets for the 5pm. When we tried pointing to the 12, 2, and 4 trains she just pointed at the 5pm. A man behind us, helped us clarify the matter and told us all other trains were sold out. WTF? It had been mere minutes since Albert had purchased his ticket. Janetta and I were kind of miffed, especially since I'd checked a couple different sites to see if I could book the tickets in advance and had had no luck. Albert hadn't even wanted to leave Qingdao that early.
Whatever, we made the best of it. There was a coffee shop (over priced, yes) in the train station, so we settled down at the 'SPR Coffee' with a coffee (me) and a Tsingtao (Janetta) and started to plan a bit about how we had to shift our schedule and where to look for food in this dusty, large port city. We had another drink and asked the young Chinese guy (who spoke English) working the register if we could leave our stuff in the store room since there weren't any lockers in the station--yes, a blind leap of faith on our part. The owner/manager/boss was an older, middle-aged woman and she kept asking us to sit down and relax (that was the extent of her English). They agreed and Janetta and I walked off, a little less weighed down, to find a place to eat.
The plaza of the East side of the train station looks out onto an intersection with 5ish spokes, and we just started walking down the closest one. We wondered for a couple blocks and found a restaurant that looked a little pricey, so we went across the street to the restaurant advertising cheaper prices. I whipped out my Vegan Passport and turned to the page with the Chinese translation of what vegans do and do not eat. We should have looked around the restaurant first, there was an awesome looking lunch buffet for only a few Yuan but it was hidden behind a divider wall. Instead, we just pointed at what looked good (the server showed me the veggie section of the menu--OMG a veggie section!). We ended up with super oily potatoes and peppers for me and deep fried pork bits for Janetta. We decided to take our time at the next restaurant we visited, despite the servers habits of hovering over us like we should know the menu and be ready to order.
After eating our slightly disappointing lunch, we walked around the block. There were shops with all kinds of awesome looking fruit- one had Dragonfruit, which I have yet to try fresh. The craziest thing about this area were the clotheslines going from lamp post to street sign to whatever else. Businesses were using these street clothing lines to dry sheets and towels and residents were drying clothing.
We went back to SPR and found the folks sitting and eating, the guy rushed to the back room and promptly brought us our bags (everything still inside, see, people can be trusted sometimes) and asked us to sit down. We were given some water (hot, all water is boiled in China since it's not safe otherwise) to sip on while we waited for our train to board at 5pm.
I was surprised to find out that Google did work on the computer at the coffee shop, and it was a good thing too because I had to email our hostel to let them know there was a delay in our arrival time.
The train was full (but no standing seats on this one, more on that in the entry on the train ride back)
so we sat, read, napped and looked at the packaged food for sale in the "cafe." My favorite name was Jew's Ear Juice, but we saw things ranging from Trail Mix to Duck Tongue to Fried Tofu strips. It was a nice ride through the Chinese countryside.We got into Beijing at 11:30pm, it was a long day. With some help from an English speaking Chinese man, Janetta and I got a cab from the Beijing South Train Station to Leo's Hostel. We checked in and looked forward to a hot shower and a place to sleep.
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