I Heart Promotions!

When it comes to shopping, I'm very budget conscious and always the one known in my family to ask questions like, "Don't you have that already? Are you sure you need it? You do know that even though it's on sale, you're still spending money, right?" but since coming to China, I've had the impulse to buy items because they give you a free bonus item with your purchase. Some examples of what I've caved into buying include a re-usable shopping bag with an 8-pack of eggs, a small cosmetic bag with a box of moon pies, and (the most random combination) 3-pack of Snickers bars with two AAA batteries. I'd argue that in all cases, I would've needed the items at some point (although the box of Snicker bars and moon pies probably isn't something we ever "need") so my purchases of these promotional items are justified, right?

新年快了 (Happy New Year)!

Okay, it's a belated greeting but looking back at my blog entries, I realized I didn't post anything about my first Chinese New Year's in Beijing. I even have pictures and videos to go with it so I figured I need to say something about the holiday. Very similar to what Christmas is for the USA, Chinese New Year is for the majority of Asia; everyone goes home and enjoys an extended holiday with their families. During the days surrounding the holiday (this year February 14) the country witnesses the largest migration of people as they travel on planes, trains, and buses to reach their homes. Since the majority of people who live in Beijing aren't from Beijing, the city became more and more empty as the New Year approached. The obvious plus side to this was that there was less congestion in the roads and subway but to go with that stores and restaurants were closed so that their workers could go home.

On New Year's Eve, I decided to try making home-made dumplings (饺子jiaozi). The ingredients were easy to find except for the fact that I had to wait 30+ minutes to check out of a local grocery store; again similar to Christmas in the States, visiting the grocery store close to the holiday can be a nightmare but I think my wait could've been cut shorter if people here knew how to stand in lines (another blog entry about this to come). Traditionally you're also supposed to make your own wrappers from scratch but luckily there was a stand that sold them already rolled out and pre-cut for cheap; I think it came to a penny per wrap and 60 wraps were plenty for just the two of us for two meals. The most important part for a successful jiaozi is the filling. Scott loves mushrooms so I thought I'd try to add them to the recipe but that turned out to be a mistake because the filling ended up dry. Needless-to-say the jiaozi didn't come out as we would've liked so I'm not going to share the recipe but it was fun to make. As soon as I find a successful recipe, I'll post it. Our vegetable for the meal was Scott's favorite smashed cucumber dish and at least that turned out. It's simple to make - here's the recipe.
2 Chinese cucumbers - smashed with large knife and cut into 1-2" pieces. You can cut it instead of smashing it but it won't absorb the sauce as much.
4 cloves of minced garlic
50ml vinegar
50ml soy sauce
Mix together and serve. The amount of vinegar and soy sauce doesn't have to be exact - just equal with maybe a little more vinegar than soy sauce.

After making nearly 80 jiaozi we went outside to enjoy the fireworks. Believe-it-or-not the kind of fireworks that would only be shot off by professionals in the States are sold on the streets for anyone (like us) to buy. Supposedly it's illegal to sell them here too but in a matter of controlling the masses, perhaps it's a battle that the officials here choose to ignore. Our complex has a few courtyards smaller than football fields that they "allowed" people to set off their fireworks. We had 5 long strings of firecrackers, 5 boxes that shot off ten large fireworks into the air, 4 roman candles, and two what I call, "sparklers on steroids". Since the courtyard was surrounded by buildings, the already loud fireworks were amplified with the echoes off of the buildings. After the second box of the 10 firework show, we had an instance that showed that these types of fireworks are not safe in the hands of amateurs. We placed the boxes on pillars in the middle of the courtyard and stepped back but one of them fell over and instead of shooting fireworks into the air, they started shooting at us with one of the sparks bouncing off of Scott's chest and charring his new jeans and almost catching our stack of other fireworks on fire. I captured a little bit of the chaos on my camera. After that, we made sure the boxes had more support. To give you a sense of how close these fireworks were to the buildings, I captured this video. I'm sure the people facing the courtyards appreciated the view but since the fireworks continued to go off past 3am sometimes, the noise probably wasn't welcomed. The climax of the fireworks shows came of course at midnight and according to Scott, these types of displays continue until Lantern Festival (15th day of the lunar new year) so by being in Vietnam, we guaranteed ourselves better nights of sleep.

On New Year's Day we ventured out to experience one of many temple fairs. The largest would be at the Ground park and when we arrived we saw a large line going in the direction of the park. Assuming it was the line for the temple fair, we stood in it for a little over an hour before we realized we were in line for the Lama Temple. We went in anyway since I've never been and it was neat to see the different Buddhas and people with hand-fulls of incense to pray for a prosperous new year. Kudos to the police for keeping people organized and preventing cutters. After going through the temple, we found our ultimate destination. The temple fair had games, food, and various vendors selling different goods. After standing in the Lama temple line and pushing through the crowds at the fair, we didn't stay too long and ended our first day of the New Year with a trip to Burger King and Starbucks and then the rest of the jaozi from New Year's eve cooked in a wonton-like soup.

Vietnam Day 1-4

Here's part 1 of ?? about our trip to Vietnam. I finally got the pictures organized to include location information so you can see where we got to travel. As one might expect, Google maps isn't very complete for the central part of Vietnam so I had to do alot of guessing. Enjoy!

Our first stop was Hanoi which took 7 hours to fly there including a 2 hour layover in Guangzhou. Our first full-day was a tour of Hanoi where we visited "Uncle Ho" (Chi Minh) in his Mausoleum, a museum about his teachings, some pagodas, and the Hanoi Hilton which included some artifacts and pictures of John McCain. For our only non- included meal of the tour, we walked to a nearby Irish pub but rather than getting the typical European fare we ordered noodles and a pint of their local beer. The noodles didn't fill us so we picked up a gyro-like sandwich from one of the street vendors for a little over a $1USD.

Day 2 we flew to Da Nang, significant for its base as it was located along the beach and in the middle of the 1000+ mile-long country. Surprisingly our flight included alot of tourists but I think their final destination was Hoi An which is popular for its beach-side resorts. In Da Nang we drove by an old military base and the former U.S. Consulate (now the Da Nang police station), a war museum and stood on the sands of China Beach. Along China Beach there were the beginning stages of resort development and even a Las Vegas-style casino which appeared to be open but had no sign of any customers. Dinner was at a restaurant with live entertainment and we were happy to end the night early to enjoy what seemed to be an endless number of TV stations and to get ready for our 7:30am pick-up to drive to the DMZ.

Our first significant stop was the Old Imperial Citadel in Hue where the Tet Offensive occurred in 1968. A side note, I personally learned alot about the war on this trip since I was never really good at learning history and it had been over 10 years since it was covered in high school. Adding to that, our tour guides were about my age so they (and sometimes their parents) didn't experience the war and provided little insight for our Vietnam War-themed tour. So going back to the Citadel, those who are familiar with the war know that it was leveled as a result of the fighting and so there was hardly any original structure to see. They're making efforts to refurbish it but it'll probably take them a very long time to accomplish. Its layout is very similar to the Forbidden City from which the architects supposedly drew their inspiration.

Day 4 was long as we toured the remainder of the DMZ on top of driving the 3 hours that we had traveled the previous day to get us back to Da Nang. The highlight came when we walked through the Vinh Moc Tunnels close to the 17th parallel. During the war, the Vietnamese had built a series of tunnels through which they traveled and even lived. Some of the tunnels were open for us to walk-through and at a height of a little more than 5', it was somewhat uncomfortable for Scott to walk through but not as much of a problem for me and our tour guide. It was also a bit humid that day so the tunnels felt stuffy and it was hard to imagine that hundreds of people lived in the tunnels at a time.

Another lazy Sunday

So we woke up this morning to another healthy blanket of snow. I think this is the 5th snow fall of the season when I heard Beijing usually only sees a couple per year. Growing up in Southern California for most of my life enjoying a warm cup of coffee in flannel pj's and sweater jacket with the snow falling outside is only something you see in movies. Throw in a view from the 22nd floor and the movies become reality (pictured). Let's see if I can make more progress on our Vietnam pictures.

Our Tour of 'Nam

Vietnam has always been on the shortlist of locations to see for Scott and his dad so during the Chinese New Year break we travelled there for a 10-day tour which started in Hanoi and ended in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC, AKA Saigon). Hearing that Vietnam isn't necessarily the easiest country to travel through on your own, we opted to take personalized tour that took us through to many parts of the country that were significant during the war. For the entire tour, it was only the three of us with our own driver and tour guide. Below is a quick summary of our trip and I'll provide more details and pictures (I have over 700 to sort through) in a future post.

Weather:
The weather forecast had predicted it would be raining the entire trip but luckily for the most part it only drizzled or remained overcast and stayed in the 70's which was welcome from the 30-degree weather we had in Beijing.

Traveling:
For the most part, we travelled through Vietnam in a SUV which was great for seeing the beautiful country-side however, in what appears to be a re-occuring theme in Asia, traffic laws are followed loosely and we had many occasions where it felt like we were playing chicken with opposing traffic not to mention an excessive use of the horn which made Beijing traffic seem tame. There was one segment of the trip where we were traveling through the mountains and I swear the driver had the horn on for the majority of the trip. And it wasn't like the horn even helped because we still came around a corner and had a bus coming at us on the wrong side of the road and an accident was avoided with quick reflexes.

Food:
The menu for the tour primarily consisted of noodles, seafood, and rice and the restaurants we went to ranged from the nice linen-napkin type to the ones where you swear you saw a rat scamper in the corner. We definitely got our fill of pho but not enough spring rolls and it reminded us of how much we miss our Vietnamese restaurants in San Diego. After 10-days of having no western options we looked forward to visiting the Burger King back in Beijing. Even if the restaurants hadn't been preselected as part of the tour package, there was little in the way of American fast food in Vietnam. As one tour guide put it, Vietnam is open for these companies to set up shop but they choose not to come.

Tipping:
Prior to going I tried to do some research on whether tipping was expected since we've long been spoiled in Beijing where tipping is never expected. Pre-trip research found that it wasn't expected except for maybe a small tip for carrying your luggage in nice hotels and your tour guide and driver and the fact that they lingered a little bit to wait for their tip reconfirmed this. But had we not been on a tour and didn't look so foreign, I don't know if they would've expected it. Often times in our travels, we get the feeling that perhaps people are trying to take advantage of you because you're a foreigner and they automatically assume that you're loaded with cash.