- Hocking up gobs of spit and spitting onto the pavement
- Face masks
- Buick cars, Hyundai Elantra taxis
- Smog/pollution
- Pressure to buy
- Busy but organised/orderly
- People wanting to get photos with me
- No Facebook!
- Rickshaws
- Dumplings
- Tea
- Jade
- Street sweepers
- Huge tour groups with tour leader holding flag and tourists wearing same hat for easy identification
- Red Chinese characters
- Panda clothing (hats, t-shirts, bags, you name it)
Saturday, 21 September 2013
Things that remind me of Beijing
Saturday, 3 August 2013
The World’s Worst Vegetarian
On my 9 month trip overlanding in
Africa, I was often referred to as “The World’s Worst Vegetarian”. Let me
explain. 99% of the time I am vegetarian. But I also eat seafood. And
prosciutto. And the odd sausage – though that probably doesn’t even classify as
meat. And then I often try unusual things whilst travelling.
In Beijing, I started out with
the best of intentions on my first night, eating tasty and wholesome chilli
spaghetti with beans at the Veggie Café. It was not very Chinese per se
although as the theory goes, they were apparently the first ones to make pasta.
On the way back to my hotel, I
went via Donghuamen night market as I’d been wanting to try something unusual
(as an after dinner snack rather than a full size meal). Chefs were hawking
their dishes with pride gesturing towards their trays full of ready-to-cook silk
worms, tripe, spiders, bamboo worms, snake, crickets, cicadas, starfish, sea
urchins, scorpion, cat, dog and the more normal dumplings, noodles,
veggies and candied fruits.
The scorpion skewer was calling
me. I walked up and down to try to find the best stall and lingered in front of
it, contemplating the critters. Then I realised my problem. There was no-one to
egg me on. In order for me to eat something bizarre, I need peer pressure. Lacking
it, I chickened out and went home.
The following day, I met a lovely
couple who were travelling around the world for 9 months – Julen and Sabrina.
They must’ve taken pity on me lamenting I was unable to eat a scorpion on my
own and accompanied me back to Donghuamen night market.
We strolled up and down
and selected an appropriate scorpion skewer. There was a choice between 'small' ones and a an oversized one. The small ones somehow seemed more appetising.
Two come on a stick – perfect for
sharing. Julen had the first one and I had the second. The tail on mine was
curled up angrily and looked threatening despite it being deep-fried. I bit it
in half and was actually surprised – it was oily, salty and crunchy – and
actually relatively tasty. Even the curled tail went down well.
Next off the
mark was snake, which had the consistency of chewy calamari, though it had no
flavour aside from the sauce and herbs added to it.
Satisfied with my
non-vegetarianism for the night, I then switched to candied fruit which to be
honest was far tastier.
The World’s Worst Vegetarian? A fairly appropriate title, don't you think?
Sunday, 21 July 2013
Whirlwind trip from the least popular country to the most popular
This trip would have to be the
quickest I’ve ever planned and to be honest, I’m actually surprised it came
off! My maternity leave cover contract had come to an end at Hyundai and I had
just been offered a new permanent role at Aussie – though I was asked to start
in a month’s time. Dilemma. What to do? Leave the country of course!
I had a quick think about where I
could go for a short break at a moment’s notice. I investigated going to Cuba but
it was a tad expensive and all too hard. Then I thought about North Korea. It’s
fairly close, you only need to go there for a week or so, it was definitely an
‘interesting’ time to go (I’d been reading tourism has been booming!), and it’s
probably the least popular country at the moment (those of you who know me well
know I find that very appealing).
I had thought the visa could be a
little tricky but I managed to get accepted on a tour at the last minute. Just
when I thought it was all too easy, the tour was cancelled due to a supposed
outbreak of H1N1 in Shanghai where most of the other tourists were coming from.
I asked a few companies if I could arrange a private tour instead and Uri Tours
agreed but said we’d need to “hustle”! This was 11 days prior to setting foot
in North Korea.
Then ensued a bit of chaos as I
had to fill out visa application forms for both North Korea and China (managed
to get a Chinese visa in 3 days!), get travel insurance and thanks to
Lastminute.com booked a flight and set off for Beijing. I had also planned a
week with Keith in Bali (Australians’ no.1 tourist destination, making
Indonesia our most popular country – a bit of a contrast!) – and would be leaving
the day after I got back so everything was a tad rushed to say the least! Once
I’d finished my booking frenzy I realised it would have been easier to fly from
Beijing to Bali rather than Beijing to Sydney and then back to Bali… oh well.
So I had 4 days in Beijing and
only found out 2 days before my flight to North Korea that I had been granted a
visa. Evidently I had back up plans ready to go if needed (a side trip to Xian)
but luckily I didn’t need them.
I flew Air China which was actually
pretty good. I’d forgotten to order a vego meal in all the rush but the air
hostesses managed to find me smoked trout with mango salad from Business Class
that left everyone around me jealous.
What to see in Beijing in 4 days…
>Panjiayuan market with all manner of stalls, my
favourite being one with old army paraphernalia including gas masks, rocket launchers,
grenade shells, etc.
where many people asked if they could get a photo with me. I happily obliged
but asked one of the girls to reciprocate as she was wearing this!
Why only pink? Who knows. Another girl later on had a t-shirt saying
‘Pervert’ in huge letters. They mustn’t know. Can they?! I later found out many
people visiting Beijing come from smaller towns where they don’t get tourists,
hence their fascination with us. Chairman Mao’s Mausoleum, in the square, was worth the long shoe shuffle waiting to get in under the hot
sun. Patience paid off with a glimpse of Mao’s embalmed body lying in a
see-through casket.
>Nanluogu Xiang, a shopping
street with a great vibe where I bought my Dad a Chairman Meow (Mao) wallet and
slurped down a silky but watery custard with the locals at Wen Yu’s custard
shop.
Walking through the surrounding
Hutong, I made my way to the Lama temple
and then did some shopping in
Wanfujiang.
>Forbidden City, which took 14 years to build and sits on 79 hectares.
You can peer through
some of the windows to see the Emperor and Empress’ beds. Tour guides were
yelling at their groups on megaphones and all seemed to have some kind of
identification technique from branding all of their group with matching caps to
holding up a stick with a flag or kite style fish on the end.
>Temple of Heaven, built in 1421 and used by 24 Emperors over the years.
Lovely and cool compared
with the heat of the city which is why many locals come here and engage in all
manner of activities including Chinese Chess, cards, Tai Chi, badminton,
Tibetan dancing and some game where you kick around a shuttlecock.
Here we saw
an 80 year old with his leg perfectly straight behind his ear.
>Olympic Centre where we got a
free foot massage and palm health reading by a doctor with the intent of
selling medicine. Finding no health issues with me, the doctor decided foot
soaking crystals were an absolute necessity and I should use them every night.
>Summer Palace where you can take a dragon boat to the palace
and walk up to the top via steep
stairways to admire some stunning views.
>Ming Tombs which are
underground and still sealed to protect them. You go through a gate that
represents Heaven inside and as you leave, you have to say ‘I’m back’ (as in ‘back
to the real world’) otherwise legend has it you could get very sick.
>Great Wall – no trip would be
complete without it. I picked Mutianyu for the toboggan ride down alone.
Partnering up with some crazy Slovakian guys (Frantisek
and Michal),
I had the most fun you could probably have on the wall – laughing
non-stop and jumping off parts to get fun photos. I found the jumping a tad
hard though as I had a broken toe (self-inflicted by carelessly and stupidly
kicking my bedroom door a week or so before I left).
I also managed to pick up a few more than 10 pieces of litter on the wall and made a new friend!
All of the above activity meant
that at the end of each day my poor toe would balloon up to 3 times its normal
size! No point letting that stop me though! Though I did start relying more heavily on rickshaws towards the end!
Thursday, 16 May 2013
10 Pieces update – one step closer to reality with your help
I’ve been sporadically asking you for favours for ‘10 Pieces’. But
again, I thought it might be good to summarise my progress with the initiative.
To recap, I came up with the idea on a trip to Kyrgyzstan with my
Mum. We were walking around a stunning National Park that was spoilt by litter and I suddenly wondered
what could be achieved if everyone coming through picked up 10 pieces of
litter. This gave birth to 10 Pieces today, which is ‘an environmental sustainable tourism initiative encouraging group tour
travellers to pick up 10 pieces of litter per day of their overseas tour’.
Fast forward to 2011 when I created this blog and decided to try
implementing 10 pieces on my 11 months in Africa. I cannot begin to claim I
picked up 10 pieces of litter every single day but on my trip, I picked up
litter when and where I could and was motivated to – often picking up a hell of
a lot more than 10 pieces. In any case, it gave me many insights into how I
could make this initiative work. See my previous blog entries here:
Upon returning to reality (Sydney), I had already missed the first
two weeks of my final semester of my Master of Business in International
Marketing. I got back on a Monday night and then had night classes that
Tuesday, Thursday and Friday where I was already a tad behind. Struggling with
the jetlag was the least of my problems! On the Friday night, I had the
Capstone subject of my Masters – Business Project. That night I was informed
that our proposal for the topic we planned to individually research for the
semester was due on Monday at 5pm. Panic! Normally I would base projects on my
job but given I’d just gotten back from 11 months travelling and was at uni
full time, I couldn’t do that. It was a little 'out there', but I hesitantly asked
my lecturer if I could research whether or not ‘10 Pieces’ should launch and
fortunately she agreed.
That semester was a tough one with 3 subjects competing for my
attention and as I actually cared about ‘10 Pieces’ I devoted an excess amount of time
to it. Two focus groups, seven one-on-one interviews with Marketing Managers
and Responsible Tourism Managers from adventure tour companies, one-on-one
interviews with Clean Up Australia and Two Hands Project, and an online survey
with 194 respondents later (which many of you completed for me – thank you!), I
had completed my research and then spent considerably more time analysing it
all. Fortunately it all paid off with a High Distinction (90%!)
I was overwhelmed by the interest shown by both travellers and
group tour companies alike, which propelled me to registering 10 Pieces as a
company in February this year. Since then, and after volunteering at Coogee
Beach for Clean Up Australia Day, I found out about a competition called ‘The G
Project’ which sources ideas that will have a positive impact on our planet.
One person from each category: Freedom; Beauty; Knowledge; and Community will
win a trip to Costa Rica to pitch their idea to a panel of judges for the
chance to win $25,000 towards implementing it. This could be the perfect way to
kick start 10 Pieces and I am doing my best to get as many votes as possible, a
criteria to get considered by the judges.
To help, if you haven’t already, please register by creating a
profile, click on the email link you receive, sign in and then visit this link http://www.thisisyourplanet.com/ideas/beauty/128
and click on ‘Vote for this idea’. You can vote every day until 3 June and
every vote counts. Commenting adds to my overall score (pulse) too so please
feel free to leave your thoughts. If you’re still reading this post now you
must either be one of my hardcore fans (hi again, mum! x.) or you must really
want to make a difference to the environment. So thank you in advance for your
help!
An initial shortlist will be announced on 4th June and
the 4 finalists will be announced on the 24th June. I really think I
have a chance at getting considered for this – at least within the initial
shortlist. But not without your help! Please vote for my idea and help make it
a reality.
Thanks also to those of you who have already supported me by
completing my survey, encouraging me to keep pursuing the initiative, and more
recently voting for my idea. You rock! Let’s make this happen!
How can you help?
Vote daily until 3 June 2013: http://www.thisisyourplanet.com/ideas/beauty/128
Follow 10 Pieces on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/10PiecesCleaner
Follow 10 Pieces on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/3117748?trk=company_search
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