Vietnam

I recently had the chance to meet up with a friend from the US in Ha Noi, Vietnam for a few days. Since Sev always gets to travel on business trips, I figured it was my turn to get a way for a change! I arrived in Vietnam the day before a huge typhoon hit so needless to say, the weather was not good. I was on my own for the first day so I got a guide and drove a couple hours out of the city to visit on old temple. The temple itself was not that interesting but the ride sure was! Rice paddies and water buffalo were the order of the day. I was really surprised by the amount of propoganda signs that I saw everywhere. They mostly consisted of pictures of Ho Chi Minh (the great communist leader of Vietnam from WW2 until 1969) and had slogans reminding people to live their lives the way Ho Chi Minh would want. Weird- he's been dead for over 30 years! His body is on display in Ha Noi but my friend and I opted to skip the viewing.
A buddist cemetery in the countryside



Snake and scorpion wine for sale


Very communist looking building which is Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum

In the afternoon, my guide took me to the prison where John MacCain was held during the Vietnam war. Again, serious propaganda here- all the photos on the wall showed the American POW's laughing, playing badminton, enjoying cultural films about Vietnam...where in reality, several POW's barely survived the "HaNoi Hilton".

Day 2, I met up with my friend and we wandered around the old city. I have never seen so many motorbikes in my whole life. And I thought crossing the street in Shanghai was bad but this place was 10 times worse! The shopping in the city was OK- lots of silks and embroidered cottons. The food however, was outstanding. Lots of french influences blended with asian ingredients. Our favorite restaurant was KOTO which takes in street kids and teaches them to be chefs, servers, etc. It was fantastic and cheap- with proceeds going to a good cause.


Getting ripped off on a traditional rickshaw ride! Oh well, had to be done!



Fruit seller on the street- I couldn't believe people actually wore these hats in daily life.

Day 3 entailed a 3 hour drive to Halong Bay- a beautiful bay surrounded by limestone cliffs. It was lovely and reminded me of my previous weekend trip in Guilin, China (see earlier post). We were "lucky" enough to end with a eurotrash couple from Russia who started hitting the rum and cokes the minute they got on the boat. She stripped down to a g-string thong bikini and a banana hammock for him, which is when I started referring to them as "the entertainment". But back to the scenery- it was very peaceful but overall I kind of felt like I was in a tourist trap. However it was interesting to see the local fishing villages where people actually live out on the water for several months a year.



"The entertainment" and her infamous thong which we unfortunately, saw plenty of during the cruise!




Traditional fishing village- yes, people actually live in these little huts


Another view of a fishing village


Our resort on Cat Bah island in Halong Bay- not bad, not bad at all!


The beach in front of our hotel - but the water was actually pretty dirty :(

Overall, it was a nice trip but out of all the places I've been in southeast asia, I'd say Vietnam was my least favorite; but I would definitely be willing to try it again- I've heard their beach towns are great...


G pissed off because I made her model the hat I bought her- can you picture this look permanently on her face at the age of 16?

Hong Kong side trip

I recently met up with a friend in Vietnam but because I am cheap, I chose a connecting flight with an 8 hour layover in Hong Kong. For half the price, I figured that I could find something fun to do in Hong Kong for a day! And since the three other times I had been to HK had all been to visit Disneyland, I thought I owed it to myself to explore the city this time. I took the high speed train into the heart of the city where I hopped onto the Star ferry. For a cost of about 30 cents, I got a beautiful view of the harbor on one of the historic ferries. After a few hours of shopping, I met up with some friends who live in HK and they took me to a famous dim sum restaurant. Now, don't get me wrong, I like Chinese food but in general, I wouldn't say that I loved it- until I ate real dim sum! Dim sum basically means little snacks and this place we went to serves it the old fashioned way. People push a cart throughout the restaurant and you can choose what you like as it comes by. Yes, they had some yucky stuff on offer: shark fin soup (which I morally oppose), chicken feet, and the like but on the whole it was delicious, awesome food. My favorites are the BBQ pork buns (fluffy white bun with sweet bbq pork in the middle), sesame seed stuffed buns, and shrimp dumplings. It's been a week and I can't stop thinking about this place- can't wait to go back next time I am in HK!

The dim sum place- it was massively huge and PACKED (this shot was taken at 2pm).

The cart- full of delicious stuff

BBQ buns, sesame buns, and a veggie dumpling (oops, already ate a few before snapping the pic)

View of Hong Kong from the Star Ferry.

Ok, I may be sick but I found this ad extremely funny. Sorry about the glare but if you can read it, it says "live demonstrations in store". A picture of a granny holding a vibrator and touting live demos? Ewww....

Moganshan

I know it's been a LONG time since I've posted but at least I have a good excuse. The Chinese government has blocked blogger.com, as well as facebook, twitter, and youtube to name a few. So, it makes it extremely difficult and time consuming for me to update my blog. For now, we seem to have found a way around it so I'll try to do as many updates in the next few days as I can.
We recently celebrated a week long holiday here in China, collectively known as "golden week" or October holiday. It's China national day (kind of like our 4th of July) and moon festival all rolled up into one long party week. Since the government is still making stupid rules about H1N1, they decreed that any child leaving the country for this holiday had to stay out of school for an additional 7 days to prevent the spread of swine flu. And yet, it seemed to be OK if you stayed in China and exposed your kid to the massive crowds of people here in town- whatever. We decided to stay in the area and take a roadtrip to a mountain town about 3 hours west of Shanghai. My general rule of thumb is not to go anywhere near Chinese tourist areas during national holidays (see very early post about the crowds in Hangzhou, 2007) but the town of Moganshan is not well known even to the domestic tourists. It is, however, growing in fame and popularity with the expats in Shanghai since the book "China Cuckoo" was published. In a nutshell, a British guy came to China in the late 90s and started up one of the first english language magazines in town. After a very successful run, the government came in and took it all away from him without offering him a penny. So, instead of leaving China, he moved himself and family to the small village of Moganshan- known for it's bamboo forests and clean air- but especially known for the beautiful old villas that were built there in the early 1900's by Shanghai's wealthy expats and locals looking for a summer getaway to escape the heat. During World War 2, the villas were abandoned and fell into disrepair. Anyway, this British guy moved to Moganshan, opened up a little coffee shop and wrote a book about his experiences.

We thought this would be a great vacation for the kids, lots of places to explore and run around, but it turns out our kids don't really like to hike so we ended up carrying them around in our backpacks most of the time. Overall, it was still fun although the town was very "local". Meaning, they don't have too many restaurants with english menus (two chinese places and one western by our count) and other than The Lodge (the coffee shop started by the British guy that left Shanghai), nobody speaks any english. Oh well- that's part of the adventure. One night, the Chinese family dining next to us ordered snake. That's not that unusual in Chinese restaurants but I've never actually seen them kill the snake before- until now. The owner of the restaurant brought out a big snake, proceeded to use a pair of garden shears to cut it's head off and drain the blood on the stairs next to the restaurant, and throw it's wriggling, headless body into a pail where they dumped boiling water over it. In front of our kids. Nice. See video at the end of the blog for proof of this episode. I was sure it wasn't a poisonous snake but that was a wrong assumption as it turned out to be one of the most deadly snakes in China- the 5 step. If it bites you, you can take 5 steps before you fall down dead. And yet, after two years in China, we just laugh about it and take it all in as part of the experience of living here. Now, who's up for a visit??


The old Assembly Hall- this is where the expats held their gatherings and Christmas pageants in the 1920's. Now it sits vacant and decaying in the forest.


House 23- a restored villa, now a bed and breakfast (also owned by the guy who wrote the China Cuckoo book).



A local woman laments to us about how tough life is in Moganshan. "Yes, the air is good, but life is hard here" she said. No kidding- she's carrying water back to her home since her house has no plumbing.

A quintessential scene- Audrey having a fit, a Chinese man and his child staring at the white kid which they have probably never been this close to before, the owner of the restaurant smoking a cigarette which is about to ash on me while he explains the menu.

On one of our hikes in the bamboo forest, we came upon several workers cutting bamboo to make brooms.

One of the bamboo cutters smiling at the foreigners.

Our hike to the tea plantation and our steaming glasses of fresh green tea- it was delicious!

The view from the tea plantation.

A typical mountain view.

G & A admiring a myna bird. By the way, this was taken at a restaurant and the kids were pretty much standing in the kitchen (there was a dead chicken waiting to be plucked just off to the side of the picture).

The Lodge- the western coffee shop/restaurant where all the foreigners hang out. Owned by the British guy mentioned earlier.

Pretty little bridge in the bamboo forest

Video of headless snake - not for the faint of heart!

What's in a name?

Chinese names don't really translate into English very well- the literal translation on many names is things like: Small Rain, Beautiful Pear, (our ayi's name is Small Red). So in response, many Chinese people will choose their own English name. This has lead to many humorous encounters for me over the past two years. Here are some of my favorites:

Echo

Koffe

Apple (not so strange after Gwenyth Paltrow made it famous)

Squall

Handsome

BoBo

Lucky

Rainbow (a man's name)

Boy


And my all time favorite: Rubber Pixie

But the beauty of choosing your English name is that if you don't like it, you just change it. One example is that a new engineer joined Sev's company and his name was Moses. But once he was hired, he got some feedback (from both Chinese and Americans) that maybe it wasn't the best name so the next day he came to work and announced his new name was Edward- and so it goes.

The Jersey Shore

Well, we are back in the Shanghai for the start of year 3. Yep, our one year assignment has turned to three- who knew? Anyway, before I get back to writing about life in China, thought I'd write this blog about the biggest freak show on earth which is actually not in China, but instead in New Jersey. Specifically, at the Jersey shore on the boardwalk at Seaside Heights. A fascinating combination of normal people, derelicts, "Jersey girls", and oh so many of the fashion challenged. I really noticed on this last trip how truly weird and wonderful this place is. We've been visiting the boardwalk for 30 years so I guess I just took it as a normal thing while growing up but alas, I finally had to admit to myself that it's a strange place.

(Amusement park at Seaside Heights boardwalk)

(Guy on stilts- you can't make this stuff up people.)

To begin with, Jersey isn't noted for it's fashion and nowhere is it more apparent than on the boardwalk. You are guaranteed to see things you wish you hadn't and the sight of the seriously overweight woman in a skin tight leopard print minidress with size triple D boobs will give you nightmares for weeks. In the famous words of one of my favorites bosses from Target- "Just because you can doesn't mean you should".

(The latest fashion for the Italian princess- wings on the butt- if you farted, you'd fly away. )

Next, you can't help but gorge yourself on the greasiest, most heart clogging food on the planet- but it tastes SO GOOD. Inside out pizzas, philly cheesesteaks, deep fried clams, elephant ears, etc...it's like a heart attack on a plate and worth every bite.

(Waiting for our sundaes at he best ice cream parlor EVER- The Showplace.)

(My sundae- bigger than my head and yes, I ate the whole thing.)

And don't forget the aged amusement park rides where part of the fun is experiencing the fear of the roller coaster breaking down during your ride. And hitting the vomit comet right after a greasy dinner is a must. All this after you've just lost your last dollar playing carnie games that you have no chance of winning (I personally lost about $20 playing the claw machine for a stuffed toy that I couldn't bought for $5).

(G taking a ride on the 1918 carousel- an annual tradition for us.)

(Good thing A is not afraid of clowns!)

All of this set on the backdrop of the Atlantic ocean while the seagulls screech through the air- it's truly a thing of beauty. Seriously though, say what you want about Jersey but for my money, there is nowhere else I'd rather spend a summer than kicking it at the Jersey shore.

A view from my parent's backyard- the bay and bridge connecting to Long Beach Island.

Blue claw crabs caught off the back deck from the 'rents house. Cook up with a little Old Bay seasoning- delish!

Solar Eclipse

It's been awhile since my last post and the reason for that is because I have been flying solo with the kids in the USA while Sev has been hard at work in China. Which leaves me very little time for blogging since I am so exhausted at the end of the day (and I usually can't get the kiddos into bed before 9pm) that I go straight to bed. Anyway, I am a little sad that I missed a pretty cool natural phenomenon that occurred in China today- a complete solar eclipse. I've seen partial eclipses before but never a total eclipse. Sev was kind enough to snap these before and after pictures on his cell phone and email them to me (sorry, the photos are a bit grainy). Keep in mind that these photos were taken at approximately 9:30 IN THE MORNING.

The view from the office at 9:30 AM during the eclipse- complete darkness (except for the city lights of course)!


The conference room during the eclipse- note the dark windows.

Same conference room after the eclipse- approximately 10AM. Note the smog...but that's another story!

I will say that although it's been challenging to do the single parent thing this summer, I am thrilled to be back in the USA and enjoying the fresh air and cool temps in Minnesota! We are off to New Jersey at the end of the next week to visit the parents and then back to Shanghai. I'll do my best to keep up the blog a bit better once this vacation is over!

A new fruit

Being in Asia gives you the opportunity to explore all different kinds of fruits and vegetables that we do not have access to in the USA. I haven't really come across anything that was totally unknown until my Chinese neighbors across the hall offered us a basket of yang mei. I don't even know the english translation for this fruit as I had never seen it before. It's best described as a cross between a raspberry and a mulberry- kind of. Each one is a little smaller than a golf ball. And let me tell you, it's darn good! It's only in season for about one month in June. The only problem is that it is VERY juicy and messy so after finding out the hard way by ruining one of Audrey's dresses with the juice, I decided it's best to strip the kids down to their underwear before eating!
This fruit definitely goes on my list for things that I will miss about China once we leave.

Yang mei

Grace after eating her fill. She thought the coolest part was that the juice looks like blood which provided quite a bit of entertainment around the house (while I chased after her shrieking "Don't get the juice on anything!"