Australia

Been in Oz for about a month now and really enjoying it. Here are some thoughts

* Kinnari and I decided to rent a car and drive around Oz. The original plan was to go from Sydney to Airlie Beach and down to Adelaide, Great Ocean Road, Melbourne and back to Sydney. This trip in time would be equivalent of driving from Anchorage, Alaska to Miami, Florida. Distance wise, it would be New York to LA. Australia roads have lower speed limits, even for major highways and when you leave those major highways you are lucky if the road is paved. That plan changed as we drove, it ended up being from Sydney to Cairns, down to Great Ocean Road, Melbourne, Blue Mountains and back to Sydney and we had to add two days to make it all work. When we had to drive, we averaged 12 hours a day. Crazy, but a good trip.

* Frasier Island is a really cool place, a bit expensive. The only really cool attraction is Lake McKenzie. Picture water as clean as your bathtub (even cleaner for some of you...) surrounded by white sand beaches and tropical rain forest. The lake is fresh water, it's got a mineral bath feeling and when you come out, you feel so clean. The water is crystal blue, one of those must see before you die places.

* Whitsunday Islands is as beautiful as I remembered it. Crystal blue water surrounded by Islands, full of fish and life. Whitehaven beach is just magical, white sand, blue water, fish swimming in the shallows and aggressive sea gulls.

* In Melbourne we discovered the "Melbourne Right Turn". So you thinking what? Remember in Oz they drive on the left side, so a right turn in Oz crosses on coming traffic and a left turn doesn't. This Melbourne Right Turn makes a New Jersey jug handle look like child's play. So to make a Melbourne right turn, you get on the LEFT side of the road, drive INTO the intersection, STOP halfway in the intersection and than WAIT for the other light to turn green, ie wait for your light to turn red and the crossing light to turn green and then you turn right. Essentially you make a right turn from the left side of the road when your light is red.

* Kinnari bought a hair dryer and she blew it on the first night. Her dryer was for 150V-200V, Australia is 240V. I come into the room and she goes 'Do you smell smoke?' and I reply yes and she tells me her hair dryer burned. Now, I've never appreciated a hair dryer before, just extra weight, wasted money etc. But with long hair, I can sorta see why you would want one. Waiting for your hair to dry is a bit annoying. This brings me to my next point. My hair is long enough to put it in pony tail. So I had to buy hair ties. I walked into Target and they had many hair ties. Purple, Pink, Yellow, Orange, etc... After much consternation, I decided on Black...

* You know you've been traveling a long time when:

1. Your cloths are becoming thread bare and are disintegrating.
2. Your boots fall apart.
3. You've gotten used to living out of your backpack.
4. Home is where you make it and 'home' is just a concept in a far far awayland.
   
5. When other travelers ask you for advice on where to go.

Well, that's it for now folks!

China Wrapup

Well, finally, I'm leaving China. I left China proper two weeks ago, but some people consider Macau and Hong Kong part of China, so I guess I'm really leaving today. Didn't really expect to stay this long but it's been awesome. Here is a wrap up of stuff I've left out, obsessed about and random tidbits.

* Guess that brings up my first point. For me to enter Hong Kong and Macau I just need my passport. For XiaoYu, a Chinese Citizen to enter another part of China she needs a special permit. This permit is basically like a visa, limited stay and limited entry. In fact her permit only allowed her in Macau and Hong Kong each one time and only allowed her to stay 7 days. On the other hand, a LaoWai (Foreigner) like me got 30 days and 90 days respectively.

* The fireworks display in China is just awesome and scary. They fire everything and they do it everywhere. In the streets, throw it at cars, in their backyards, off their balconies, etc... So between New Years and a week after New Years it's pretty much constant fireworks and firecrackers. Nanjing sound liked a war zone, firecrackers echoing off the office buildings, fireworks illuminating the night AND day sky. Just crazy. Macau had an official firework zone and from XiaoYu's cousin's place we could see and hear both of them. Firecrackers started about 3-4pm in the afternoon, fireworks started as soon as it got dark and went on until about 2am. Just crazy and awesome, took some pictures and posted them. If any of you have been following the news, a brand new hotel burned down in Beijing because CCTV (the official Chinese Television company) illegally set off fireworks in their own compound and burned their new hotel down.

* I was called 'Shu Shu' for the first time and really felt like strangling the kid for some reason. 'Shu Shu' means uncle; a male of your father's generation, more specifically a male of your father's generation younger than your father. This was one of the kids China Climb had over from Shanghai and I was the group leader. It's like being called 'Sir' for the first time, but in that case it meant you were an adult. This meant I was old enough to be the kid's dad. Crazy...

* Macau and Hong Kong are just EXPENSIVE (compared to China). Before I rant, for reference 1 USD = 6.82 RMB (China) = 7.99 MOP (Macau ) = 7.75 HKD (Hong Kong). Now the smart people in the streets of Macau decided that 1 RMB = 1 MOP = 1 HKD. You realize how bad a trade that is, for every 100 RMB you lost 15 RMB, for a 100 HKD you lost 5 HKD. Some schmuck at a restaurant gave me change in MOP when I paid in HKD, didn't fight (but argued) with him cause it was 1am and he was the only place open. Anyway, back my point, EXPENSIVE (compared to China). A full meal that would fill me up in Macau was costing me about 70-80 MOP, or 10 USD (reasonable....), but in China that same meal would cost me about 30 RMB, or 34 MOP. So in China when I had 1000 RMB (146 USD) in my wallet, it'd pretty much last 3-4 weeks; in other words I spend $146 USD in 3-4 weeks - no plastic. In Macau, 1000 MOP (125 USD) left my wallet in 3 days. Granted in China I cooked more and wasn't sight seeing as much, but still! Can't wait until I get to Oz and see the sticker shock there!

* I've been to China many times, been to Thailand and Vietnam. I'm pretty sure I ranted about this the last time I was in Thailand and Vietnam, but here it is again. It's CROWDED here! People have no respect for personal space. You'd think that if you were afraid of pick pockets you'd give space. Instead these people crowd, shove and butt in lines! At both Disneyland and Ocean Park in Hong Kong people pushed and shoved like it was the end of the world! So you are standing in line and the person behind you either bumps you every time the line moves and stops, tries to casually edge past you, or if you leave anything more that 3 foot of space between you and the person in front of you, tries to shove into that space or yell at you to move into that space. Look, you are in line, even if I leave the whole queue in front of open, you still have to wait for me to go before you can go, the open space doesn't matter! What is with this bumping and pushing? Is being 1 foot closer to me going to make a difference, make the line go faster? That some how bumping me will make the line go faster? That like electrons, they can bump the one in front and create a current? I was standing at the airport in Guanzhou, I had all our bags and was waiting for XiaoYu to come back from the bathroom. I stood 15 feet (3 meters) away from the luggage carousel and the space behind me was empty - nearest wall was 60-70 feet (20 meters) away from me. This guy pushing a luggage cart going around me, runs over my foot! WTF!?!? All the open space and he runs over my foot? What don't you just make a little wider turn! Why the tight turn? Was he practicing for his F1 race and need to make tight turns to save seconds??? By the way, he was 60+.

Thanks for reading my rant guys. Hope you are all doing well!

PS, Sis: I do miss you.

Happy Holidays from China

It has been a while since I've posted anything.  It's been a combination of being busy and too lazy to write anything.  But I figured I should write something for the Holiday and catch people up.  I'll probably break this up into parts for easier ready and writing.

* Climbing in YangShuo is world class.  As good as anything in Thailand and Spain but cheaper.  Finally went Trad climbing again and this time we found good rock.  Hard to find but the rock was worth it.  By the time I left YanghShuo I had redpointed a 12b, China Whit, was comfortably redpointing 11ds and onsighting 11as.  So my climbing strength and ability had improved a lot.  I say 'had' because I've been in NanJing for the past week sitting on my ass doing nothing and being sick.  So any of you want to go climbing in China, YangShuo is it.

* ChinaClimb makes most of it's money from International Schools in China.  These essentially meant a week of rich spoiled kids under our charge for a week.  Some of these kids just drove me nuts and some of these kids would never have survived a US Middle School/High School.  I was belaying a bunch of these kids around Baby Frog Crag.  There a small ledge with a slope between climbs and kids had to negotiate this ledge between climbs.  So this boy negotiating this ledge dropped his shoes down the slope.  He stands there looking at me and I look back at him and shrug, he looks at his shoes, then me, then the shoes... etc...  Then one of the girls just says 'I'll get it' and he lets her go down the slope for HIS shoes.  WTF!?!?!  He was 12 years old, he should be getting his own shoes!

* So why am I in Chin and not on some tropical beach in Thailand?  That is because I met a girl and she's in China.  I'm staying around here for a bit and see what happens.  Also trying to look for a job here, which isn't going very well.

* Christmas in China has been interesting.  It's a truly commercial holiday.  There is no religious aspect to it at all.  It's all about Sales! Sales! Sales!  There are tons of Santas and no Mangers.  I guess this is China after all, not too surprising.  Christmas Eve is a shopping bananza, the stores and restaurants are packed and the local Wal-Mart is open until 2am.

* Got a Christmas gift from my mom.  Orbitz gum, surprising but none the less awesome.  Cause gum in China is like chewing melted rubber; it's either too soft and disintegrates in your mouth or too hard and breaks your teeth.  Orbitz is just good old American Gum.  Thanks mom!

Anyway, just a few thoughts for now.  Happy Holidays all!

YanShou Crazy

Well since my last posted I've had an interesting two weeks. Here are some highlights

* Our first school group arrived after training and I was assigned to work Tyrolean. This is basically a zip line or fly fox with a rappel/abseil in at the end. To do this we usually have 4-5 guides, one sends, one receives, one back up rappels by attaching a top rope, one lead guide who sets the kids on rappel and talks them off the cliff and one doing the fireman back-up on the bottom. I was assigned to receive the kids. They were all given the safety briefing by the send-off guide and the first kid was ready to go. Everyone was cheering and clapping and off goes the kid. He's screaming! We are screaming! Then I realize he's screaming in fear and really freaked out! The zip line doesn't have enough height difference for you to make it all the way to the end without pulling yourself over hand over hand (really easy...). The kid is stopped halfway through the line and doesn't want to move and is really freaked out. I'm like "What do I do?", this never happened in training. Finally one of the lead guides yells "Hey, get your friend Jay to pull you over!" At this point I realized I have a line attached to his zip line device for retrievals! I start hauling and getting him calmed down, he was pretty cool when I got him over. In fact after everyone had gone, he went again and had no problem. After this kid I had my hand on that retrieval line for every kid and hauling in rope and giving them a little slack to make sure I wasn't pulling them. Was a bit freaked myself as it was technically my first hour on the job.

* I went Trad climbing here one day. Not recommended, more like adventure climbing with dirty rock, no rap anchors and questionable gear. Supposed there are some semi-decent places around here but I haven't seen it yet.

* We had a Bathroom Party here at ChinaClimb. This is basically we turn the whole bar into a bathroom. Everyone comes in their bathroom gear, which in this case meant swimwear covered by towels. We sprayed water and beer all over the place. We were dumping water out with 5 gallon buckets. We were hosing people from the bar and people were just dumping beer on each other. When I showed up I went upstairs and left my shoes there and went down to the party. After a while we gathered good tourist attraction in front of the bar forming a semi circle. At this point a few of us ran out and randomly grabbed someone and pulled them into the action. Later in the night we started throwing water out the door too. Real crazy. I ended up tending the bar that night to help out with the crazy business. Towards the end of the night 2amish, I went up looking for my shoes and found them missing; someone had worn my shoes home and there was broken glass ALL over the bar. We shut the bar down around 3amish and I walked home barefoot only to find my shoes in our dorm room, one of the staff/roommates had worn my shoes home!

* The next day I had agreed to help one of the main guides setup the Tyrolean to help train some new people who showed up late. I get up at 8ish still groggily and slightly hungover. I dress and walk over to work, finding it surprisingly cleaned up... There I find out there were three customers who had signed up for Day Guiding and were waiting for a guide. The person who signed them up wrote Friday the 20th. Friday is the 19th, 20th is Saturday. So the main guides assumed it was the 20th and no one was assigned to guide that day. So 9am after a night of crazy partying, no one was up. After some discussion I was assigned to guide the three along with another staff who really doesn't guide but used to guide a little. Now, up to this point I've followed a main guide who's done this many times and knows everything down to the T. Here was I was about to be the lead guide a day after a crazy party, and still groggy... crazy! So the three clients knew of our party, they were sitting nearby watching the craziness and even told me they hoped their guide wasn't too hungover. I tried to be diplomatic, and that I would be awake in a few and all would be cool. Then I find out that one of them used to run a ropes course and has climbed in the Gunks before with REAL guides. If they were newbies I could BS my way through a lot of shit, but the fact that at least one knew what she was doing meant I had to be careful in what I BSed... In the end everything went off without a hitch, a slightly later than usual start but everything went as planned. We went swimming afterward and they even tipped, which for those who don't understand Chinese customs, NEVER happens in China. You are not required to do so, this was the first of 3 groups I've guided that have tipped.

* One of the crew, slightly new to climbing had been bought up to speed really quickly. He led his first 5.10a and was set to clean the route. He calls 'safe', I call up 'Belay Off' and give him some slack. I watch him, people come up, I chat, I watch him, I chat. Next thing I know I'm yanked off the ground and him screaming 'Wow!'. Turns out he had released himself from his personal anchors and back onto the rope without calling 'Take'. Lucky for him, when I said 'Belay Off', I really didn't take him off belay, I just gave him a lot of slack but kept my hands on the rope, so when he sat back down on the rope he didn't fall far... lucky him. I think he's learned the lesson of weighting the rope before he takes himself off the anchors.

* Climbing here has be just awesome. Easy to get to, quality routes and tons of stuff. Been hitting it hard at 11d or so, aim to hit the 12s in a few weeks.

* Three of the crew set up an Urban Adventure race. This involved swimming, climbing, leading the blind through a park, making a PBJ, bouldering, running, biking, tubing, drinking beer, riddle solving and taking pictures. The rules stated that 'Sabotage was encouraged.' We were divided into 4 teams of 4, Blue, Red, Black and Yellow (my team). To start the race off I decide to disassemble of the bikes from the competitor team. This didn't get very far as we didn't start until 15 minutes after I did this. We biked to a nearby bridge where we each swam a leg of a 4 person relay. At this point out egg was stolen; each team was given an egg to protect for the day, by the judges as we later found out. Then we biked to the climbing place. At this point the sabotage has begun full on, I stole a few seats, a few tire were deflated, etc... From climbing it was to a park where 2 members were blind folded and the two others were to lead them through the park with only their voices. We finished the course as the Black team caught up to us. One of their members left her bag un-attended so her egg was stolen. When they found out about this I was targeted and wrestled to the ground. At some point someone yanked my dry bag off of me and smashed it against the ground breaking 2 water bottles in the bag with two cell phones, both soaked. One cellphone survived and is working. The other, mine is dead, a brand new Motorola V3.... Going to see if I can get it fixed cheaply. The race continued with little incident... In the end we (Yellow) won the race. During this race we were also given a sheet for picture taking, points were given for taking a picture with a hunchback women, with 5 random people, 10 random people, 20 random people, mooning a bus, everyone's left butt cheek, climbing a tree, etc... We did manage to do most of them. Over all great day.

* I had Tyrolean duty again for the school group in this week. Pretty much went well until the last kid. He completely freaked out. Took him 30 minutes to walk 4 steps to the edge, had to back out and let the teacher go first, then after the teacher went, another 30 minutes for him to take the remaining 3 steps. I had to patiently talk him off the cliff, everyone was so bored watching us... He even cried a few times during this 'ordeal'. He was Korean and from what I've heard from the old guides they are the worse; their parents are very over protective. One kid was allergic to heat, dust, dirt and cold. WTH?? That is saying a lot from a group of kids who have led very sheltered lives. A normal steep hike for most of us was grueling for the kids. They show up with Canon/Nikon SLR cameras worth more then $1000 USD. They all have cellphones, iPods and PSPs. I heard some of them saying their monthly allowance was in the 2000Yuan range (about $300USD). I got $5 every time I mowed the lawn!

* My lens is at the manufacturer getting fixed. It had spent a week in postal limbo because the shop I had purchased it from was closed. Looking forward to getting it back soon! Pictures will be taken and posted then!

YangShou

Been in training for China Climb (http://www.chinaclimb.com) for a week and it's been blast. The place has it's own cook who cooks breakfast and dinner Monday to Saturday. Really good authentic Chinese food. They have free beer, orange juice and Sprite upstairs (surprisingly the OJ and Sprite runs out before the beer). Monday was a biking and water rescue course. We rode tandem bikes, which was a first for me, didn't help my confidence that 10 minutes into the ride one of the staff's bike broke in half. Tuesday was first aid in the morning and caving and kayaking in the afternoon. Wednesday was Tyrolean, learned to set it up and then Orienteering in the afternoon. Really funny part of Orienteering was I paired myself with a local who lived in the area we were Orienteering. He just looked at the map and the marked flags and didn't consult the map again. We found some of the most random trails to get all the flags; the only group to do so. Thursday was a bike ride in the morning in the mud and rain and afternoon climbing. We got so muddy my underwear looks like I shit in it. Really fun! Friday was a hiking and camping trip, a day hike out and camping in the meadows. We had a surprise exercise on Wilderness First Aid on the way in. One guide broke his neck and back, one his arm and the other his knee. We managed to stabilize them after much confusion. The vista here is just awesome! Hiking through the valleys just awesome; through the rice paddies and among the rounded limestone cliffs. Just Google Guilin and/or YangShuo for pictures. I'm dying to get my lens fixed so I can take pictures of this place!

Anyway, mostly caught up on my photos, so go check them out!

Back in Civilization and Hating it.

Arriving in Hong Kong from China really did feel like leaving the jungle and back into civilization. The chaos, the neon lights, the commercialism is just crazy! And I hate it, not sure what it is, but something about Hong Kong is just off. I used to like this place every time I visit, but now... there is something missing. Maybe after seeing what the rest of the world has to offer, Hong Kong isn't as exotic as it used to be.

* I had issues at emigration and immigration with my passport. Leaving China, I think the Chinese border guards thought my passport was fake. They examined it under black light, flipped through all the pages, bent and examined the cover and even wanted my US drivers license. They also kept questioning on where I lived, where the passport was issued (as the US passport unlike other passports, namely my Canadian does not specify which city it was issued in), etc.. finally they waved me through. The Hong Kong side again held me up, but they wanted my name in Chinese, not sure why. I think a 'Jie Zhang' has made it onto someone's watch list; whoever you are... cool!

* The visit to Hong Kong was not a total failure, I managed to get my lens mailed off to Japan. Walked into a South African Airline ticket office to cancel what was supposed to be an already canceled ticket from Cape Town to Frankfurt. Yes, you read correctly, South Africa to Germany and I'm in Hong Kong. I thought I had canceled the ticket in Cape Town but it turns out I did not. Or as the ticket agent explained to me, I probably did cancel the ticket but I didn't refund it, seems there is a difference. I guess once they have your money they want to keep it.

Anyway, heading back into China today, we'll see how the passport thing goes.

Home Sweet Home... Sort Of..

Been a while since I posted something. Just been so busy having fun that I haven’t found the time to write. So finally have a few spare hours sitting at Beijing Airport heading back to Nanjing for a few days. Here are some highlights.

* Arriving in China has been a big change from traveling in Africa. People here actually care about their jobs. I don’t quite get it but it’s so weird. They don’t get tips and the the service people get yelled at, yet they run around doing whatever you ask them to do. It is so common to see people telling their waiter/waitress’ to hurry up the food only 5 minutes after ordering it. I’m sitting there just enjoying the company and patiently waiting for the food and my relatives are telling the servers to hurry it up. I’m so used to waiting 5-15 minutes for food, but they usually expect food to arrive within 5 minutes. It’s not a crazy expectation as I’ve seen that happen regularly. When you ask for your server they show up within 5 seconds, crazy service and they don’t get tipped! When you enter a restaurant you are greeted and when you leave they wish you a good day and hope you come back again. Every restaurant does this!

* China has changed a lot since the last time I came here. Especially Nanjing as the last time I was in that city it was 2004 and I don’t even recognize the place. There are new skyscrapers, they’ve cleaned the streets up and they built more roads. It’s like walking into Baltimore and finding out they expanded 695, added 5 more buildings, each taller then the other and then tore down the row houses and built modern apartment buildings.

* Beijing Airport was hectic and yet very well organized. They had greeters and users everywhere to get you to where you needed to be. They had special olympic lines for the athletes and teams. Organized Chaos would be what I would call it, aka China.

* The pushing and shoving still gets to me. I push and shove just as well as the next person but I won’t push and shove women, children and old people, yet these people have no problems pushing and shoving me. As I got onto the subway heading back towards the airport I was carrying my huge backpack. This women and her kid pushes her kid right in front of me and butts in line for the train and then when the door opens pushes past me to rush to a seat. So I stand for a few stations and then half the train exits, so I mosey over to several open seats, turn to drop the bag and three people rush to take the seats. At this point I’m pissed and I’m carrying a 40kg bag, and you really don’t want to piss someone carrying that heavy of a bag as they are likely to drop it on you. So I drop the bag onto the open seat smacking both guys (yes two men, who rushed the seat...) slightly. Then on the airport train, it’s packed so I rest my bag near the door and I lean on the door the whole ride in. As the train enters station, I pick up my bag and get it on. At this point this kid edges past me and blocks me from the door with his roller luggage. I motion to him that the door is his and head to the door on the other side, which is the side you exit from... I think it’s poetic justice that he got stuck behind all the other people lined up behind him on the wrong side of the train while, me giving up my spot and moving to the other side was the first one off.

* On a variation of this pushing and shoving is the rush for seats. I’ve seen everyone do it, old, young, male, female, frail, fit, etc... they all rush for the seat and when they get the seat they all have this look on their face that they’ve just won the lottery! WTF?? I can understand old, frail and children but grown men? Sort of in their defense, they do give up their seats for old, frail, children and women with children.

* As I said before, the service here is awesome! I’ve gone from the American Gold Standard, to the non-existent Africa standard, to the Silver Dubai standard to the platinum Chinese standard of service. I’m so glad I went from Africa to China, cause if I went the other way, I’d gone nuts expecting food to show up within minutes of ordering. In fact my clock has started to speed up again. I grow impatient if I have to wait more then a minute for the check. Or if I’m ready to order and there is no server nearby.

* Traveling with Brian has been an experience onto itself. First of all Chinese people are fascinated by tall white people, so Brian stands out. Doesn’t hurt that Brian has a serious bout of Yellow Fever. So he’s going around staring at all the pretty girls that walk by and going “Ni Hao, Wo Ai Ni” or “Hello, I love you”. He’s also has a serious crush, in the creepy stalker way, on American Softball pitcher Cat Osterman. He’s been trying to get tickets all week. In fact he made a T-Shirt that read “I need USA Softball Tickets”, Chinese on the front and English on the back. Then he shows up at the stadium shouting at Cat “Ni Hao, Wo Ai Ni” Repeats this to all Chinese softball players and the volunteers in the stadium. As if this wasn’t enough while at the Temple of Heaven he got one of the costume dress-up people to paint him as a famous Chinese Opera star, a female role. He dresses in drag and gets his picture taken. Then doesn’t wash off the make-up and walks around town in it. The line he feeds the locals is “Wo Shi Piao Liang De Mei Long Fang” or “I am the beautiful MeiLongFang (female opera singer)”. Then I teach him “Wo shi feng zi” or “I’m crazy.” He does this with a serious face and really bad accent. So everyone is just staring at him laughing. Except one woman who looked at him and addressed him in the same tone as you would a child “Hao, Hao, Hao..” or “Ok, ok, ok...” and kept walking.

* Olympics is just awesome. The organization is great, the stadiums are packed and the crowd boisterous. Part of me understands that this is a world event but while I’m at the games, the place feels so small. The softball and hockey seats place me less then 15 feet (5 meters) away from the edge of the field. Most of the time you can hear what the players and coaches are saying. I’ve never sat this close to a field of play before and never expected to do so at the Olympics of all places. Just awesome!

* It took 10 days for Canada to get it’s first medal. In the meantime failed countries like Zimbabwe were racking up golds, silver and bronze medals. What the is going on? On day thirteen Canada is ranked 13 on the total medal count and 19 on the gold count! Behind countries some smaller and poorer countries. What is going on?!?!?!

* We only got 4 field hockey tickets before we arrived in Beijing. However in town we were able to score some tickets to softball, baseball and diving. The interesting part was going to the stadiums and listening to outrages prices for tickets. Tickets whose face value (printed on the ticket) were like 50, 80, 150 RMB going for 800, 1000, 1500 and even 2000 RMB. Some for events that already started. Crazy!

* We managed score three diving tickets on the last minute for free. Family connections rock; as a note we did give a comparable gift for those tickets. We got to watch Guo JingJing win the Gold medal that night, really awesome experience. Then we got to walk around the main Olympic grounds. Just spectacular, the pictures and videos cannot do the place justice. Another note, the main Olympic complex which includes the Main stadium (Bird’s Nest), Aquatic Center, National Gymnasium, and a few other small stadiums are surrounded by security and fences. The only way you get past the fences and walk around these buildings is to have a ticket to one of the events. So scoring these diving tickets was a double bonus as we were able to see these stadiums up close.

* Brian and I decided to go to the SiMaTai section of the Great Wall on our last day. There are four main sections of the Great Wall open to tourists near Beijing. BaoDaLing is where 80% of the tourist go and therefore the most packed. It has also been recently renovated and so is not the original bricks. SiMaTai is almost 150km away, and most of the stone are original and it’s not easy to get to. Brian had some outdated information and there wasn’t much online. So we tried Brian’s info and took public transportation to MiYun (a town 60km from the wall). There we were supposed to find another public bus to SiMaTai. First off, we were supposed to go all the way to the terminal bus station, however the ticket agents tries to get us (and a bunch of other tourist) off 1 stop early by a bunch of unmarked taxies who wanted to charge us 400 RMB to SiMaTai. After saying there was no bus to SiMaTai, she says there may be no bus. We get back onto the bus to the Bus Terminal. There we meet the same bunch of taxi drivers hassling us... I push past them and head into the bus terminal. Where we find out there two public buses to SiMaTai, they run 7am and 2pm, which meant we had to leave Beijing at 6am. The 2pm was not an option as it was another hour to the Wall and it takes about 3 hours to hike it and another 2 hours back to Beijing, with the last bus leaving at 7pm. So Brian and I walk back to the taxi drivers and find them negotiating with the other white tourists. Once they figure out I can speak Chinese they start negotiating with me. One guy says he has a minivan and can fit 7, me trying to be helpful tell the French group of 6 to go with him and the remaining four of us will split a smaller car. Now there are three drivers there, if we only take two cars, one driver is left out. So minivan guy starts making excuses on why he can’t take 6, and I keep pointing out that he was the one who offered to take 7. We argue for a bit, he insists that we take 3, and I tell him it doesn’t make sense for us when we can get 2 cars for 600 (300 each, roundtrip), why pay for 3 cars? At this point someone points out to me that the French made a separate deal with the other two drivers. So, I was like ok, let’s go. On the way to the car one of the French guys smiles and says to me he got two cars for 800. I was confused for a second then I pointed out that we had already agreed to 300 per car, so he should be paying 600, not 800. I yell at his driver saying it’s 300 per car not 400. His driver acquiesces and it takes the French guy a few more seconds to realize his mistake... SiMaTai was an awesome end to the trip. The Wall raises stunningly steep and there were very few people. In fact the attendants were saying how busy it was that there were about 30-40 people there that day.

* The story of my broken camera lens has been an epic. First I find out that the warranty is only good in Japan. Then I find out that China Post will not mail any electronic equipment because of the Olympics and probably won’t be able to until October. The guy handling my warranty repair won’t accept anything but Post, no DHL, Fedex or UPS. So I’m probably going to drop by Hong Kong on the way to YangShou to mail off my lens. I’m so pissed that I’m in Beijing at the Olympics and all I have is a basic point-and-shoot and my super-telephoto lens!

* Security has been a mish-mash of feel good gestures to TSA style pat downs. The feel good stuff has been first tier airport and subway. The subway one is what makes me laugh. Before you enter the subway you have to put your bags through the X-ray but they don’t check your person. So they say no knifes or weapons, but my knife is in my pocket and not in my bag, so x-raying my bag doesn’t do anything. They have a hand-held metal detector but I’ve only seen it use it on each other never on a passenger. Also the X-rays are not at choke points in the entrance, they are usually to the side, so you can theoretically walk into the Metro without X-raying your bag. In an empty station that is hard, but during rush hour traffic I can easily see that happening. On top of that, on my last day in Beijing on the way to the Airport I had my big bag packed and had my pocket knife in the check-in bag. I put it through the X-ray and they flag it (as it has a few pieces of climbing gear as well...). They show me the picture on the X-ray and ask what it is, and I go.. I don’t know.. let me see. and I open my bag and start pulling things out and go ‘is this it?’ and ‘or this?’ They get frustrated and tell me there is too much stuff in my bag, and give up and just tell me to go... What type of security is that!?!? The TSA version has been getting to the Olympic venues. Their medal detectors pretty much go off on everyone, I emptied my pocket expect my passport (which I always keep on me and which has never set off a medal detector), it set the walk-through one off and the hand-held one as well. After that incident I didn’t bother to empty my pockets. I just carried everything in my hand, walked through the detector, set it off and showed them what was in my hands, got patted down and sent in. Crazy security!

Anyway, Beijing has been awesome. Will be in Nanjing with relatives for a few days and then heading to YangShou for some climbing, may drop by Hong Kong.