One Good Eye

After spending the last few weeks on hiatus in Canada, where it seems everyone we met was either stoned, slow eh, an Australian working in Whistler or the entire trifecta we arrived back in China.

Not knowing if the venerable “LargeAmericanCorp” will renew my time in China for another year, we decided to forgo spending the weekend on the couch watching pirated cheap DVD’s and do a whirlwind run up to the frozen wasteland that is Harbin for the Ice Festival.

So how cold is it.  It’s the opening scenes of Empire Strikes Back cold.  In fact on the Saturday morning at around 10am it was already -20 degrees Celcius.

You can understand why then, we were in a bit of a panic wondering what to wear, especially when googling yielded nothing useful other than helpful sites advising that you “take a jacket”……….er…….no shit.

So, without further ado, I will list what I wore to keep warm and toasty in -30 degrees Celsius temperatures.

Recipe for a warm and comfortable trip to Harbin

Base Layer

1. One pair of polyprop long johns

2. One long sleeve polyprop undershit

3. One polyprop muscle-shirt (muscles optional)

4. One t-shirt (short sleeved)

5. One pair silk socks

6. Stick on heat packs, stuck over / around the toe region

Middle Layer

1. One pair of polar fleece lined cargo pants.

2. One zip up fleece jacket

Outer Layer

1. Two additional pairs of woolen socks.

2. One down jacket, with cool faux fur lined hood

3. Waterproof Snow Pants

4. One polar fleece beanie

5. One woolen beanie, also lined with polar fleece

6. ear muffs

7. frost mask

8. gloves

Yes, I looked like a bit of a muppet and I could hardly move, bend or sit, but man I was WARM!

Photos’ to come later.

Kirk Nesbitt Uncategorized

Zamin Uud, as far as remote, dusty border outposts go, it’s got it all………..

Full international roaming, a must for your high powered IT executive.

Global Roaming.......Yeah Baby!!!

Alfresco Snooker.

Step out into sub zero temperatures for a spot of snooker

Comfortable Housing.

Ger's a go go

Friendly Locals.

Like walking around inside National Geographic

Random bovines wandering the streets.

Zamin Uud - greenest pastures this side of the Gobi

Luxurious gentleman clubs, where one can avail oneself of a local lass.

Ew, we saw someone hanging out sheets behind this place

An efficient supply chain…

From the farm.......

And then……..

To the table

Finally……..

One VERY satisfied customer

As an aside if you do go to Zamin Uud, the above hotel / restaurant was the best in town and definitely has the cleanest toilet in all of China and possibly Mongolia.

Welcome!

Zamin Uud………Something for Everyone

Kirk Nesbitt Beijing

We actually knew that we needed to cross the border in a vehicle.  Lord knows why this rule is in effect, it’s basically resulted in an industry of shifty buggers, in old UAV Russian Jeeps, that stake out the border with the express mission of screwing every last cent out of people wanting to cross.  Many people went past and wanted way too much money.  Even the Mongolian Police are in on the act, they wanted RMB 160 for the two of us, no negotiating!

The Mighty UAV Jeeps of Mongolia

It took us around 40 minutes for us to find someone that would take us, and then the dodgeyness began in ernest.  We approached 2 Chinese dudes in a white hatchback who were happy to do the job for RMB 100 flat, we knew this was the “correct” price and engaged their services.

About 2 minutes into the journey and now in the no-mans land with no ability to cross back these jokers inform us that they dont have the correct paperwork and cannot go all the way into Mongolia.  Happily no money has changed hands, so we figure we will continue on.  We enter the customs building and find that we have to fill in the number plate of the car on our immigration form, but we have no idea what it is, “no problem” says the friendly Chinese border guard, just write 1234!  They then go through every single page in my passport, not to check for anything, they just hadn’t seen an Australian passport before and all thought it was a beautiful document, with a friendly pat on the back we were ushered outside and now stood in No Mans Land.

Waiting in no mans land was a different Mongolian dude, who would take us the rest of the way.  He already had another passenger, and we all happily sped off to Mongolian customs.  We cleared through a very retro health check, it could have been straight out of the 1950’s and made our way into immigration.  It turns out that our fellow passenger was traveling on a false document and was swiftly detained for what was undoubtedly severe punishment.  Unfortunately for us it also meant that we had lost our ride, but not to worry, we’d been passed to a Mongolian couple that would take us all the way to Zamin Uud.  We paid our money, got into the new car and drove off into the wilds of the Gobi desert, with a pumping Mongolian techno soundtrack.

Welcome To Mongolia

After a twelve hour bus ride, 3 – 4 hours squatting in a hotel lobby, a 7km walk, 2 cars and a jeep we had arrived in Zamin Uud, Mongolia.

Kirk Nesbitt Beijing

We left the warmth and cheap accommodations of the Xin Tian Hotel and stepped out into an invigorating -7 Degree Celcius morning.  For our Fahrenheit Friends, not yet acquainted with the metric system that equates to “bloody cold”.

In the spirit of true tightarse-edness, we decided to walk the 5 or so kilometers to the border.

On the way we stopped in at the Sino truck dealership to peruse the latest offerings in Chinese farm equipment.

Sinotruck!

We met crushing disappointment at the zodiac park.  Some muppet had nicked Tanya’s statue!

Sadness at the Zodiac park

Finally we were in sight of the border, not sure if we were close to the pot of gold, or if China is trying to present a “gay friendly” vibe to their brothers and sisters over the border in Mongolia.  Whatever…….the rainbow was a nice touch.

All this for an exit stamp!

We walked the remaining couple of hundred metres to the border, only to find out that you cannot cross on foot.  Has our golden run of champagne tightarse-ness come to an end!

Kirk Nesbitt Beijing

Not sure how much I slept, I estimate between 30 minutes and 2 hours.  The bed just wasn’t long enough for this large lumbering Western giant to get comfy on, like many things, the sleeper bus is good in theory, not so good in practice.

We were deposited at the Erlian (二连) bus station at 3:00am.  From our extensive research (about 1 hour of Googling) we figured there would be at least a cosy cafe, or Chinese restaurant open offering up breakfast and sustinance to weary travelers from the sleepr bus, but no.

Instead, we spent the next 30 minutes running around and around the bus trying to avoid people who flat out refused to understand my Chinese and who’s Enligh only consisted of “Hello, Taxi?”.

Giving these guys the slip was no mean feat.  I had to fight through a scrum of people offloading massive sacks of food, electric kettles, steam irons and tractor parts  that were destined for sale in Mongolia to get my pack, whilst using the other hand to swat away the grasp of about 3 or 4 taxi touts.

After getting out of that mess and out of the bus station, we wandered around the streets of Erlian, followed by an armada of Taxi’s.  It took around 20 minutes of the now ubiqitous “hello, Taxi?”, flashing of lights, slow following, driving around in circles on the road and horn tooting for all the taxi’s in Erlian to realise that we were quite happy walking…….not that we knew where we were going.

Road to Nowhere

It was 4am, -7 degrees, pitch black and looked like the opening scenes of An American Werewolf in London, so we decided to go for a walk to keep warm and to find somewhere warm to wait until the border opened at 8am.  We actually walked almost to the border before the cold, and boredom sent us back to the only hotel we had seen, near the bus station, the Xin Tian Hotel.

Not so clean......or secure........but warm

Happily the salubrious Xin Tian hotel’s doors were unlocked, the heat on, and all of the staff fast asleep.  After consulting the room rates, we decided the O’Clock room would be far to noisy and expensive, so took the tight arse option of the common room.

Right price for a Tight Arse visa run.....zip!

We were able to get a wee bit of kip on this very regal-esque lounge suite, all for a price that kept us within our tight arse budget.

$0....a happy tightarse!!

After taking our morning ablutions in the ultra clean facilities, we were pretty glad we had opted for the common room, as it was only slightly cleaner than the common toilet.

Hmmm.......yummy

At around 7am, we breakfasted on leftover, partially frozen baguette with a still frozen Snickers chaser for desert.

Incidentally the staff did wake up, looked us up and down, decided it was all to hard and went back to bed.  It was obviously way to early, to figure out how and why two foreigners are sleeping in your hotel lobby.

After this we left and walked to the border

Kirk Nesbitt Beijing Beijing, china, erlian, Travel

It’s already started to get cool in Beijing, so before we head off to Erlian, we swing by the Yashao market to pick up a pair of what is possibly the greatest leap forward in winter comfort since the Snuggie, the zip off fleece lined cargo pant.  Yes folks, like those jackets with the zip out fleece lining, you can now enrobe yourself from head to foot in polar fleece.  The only let down is that you don’t get a free book light.

So with new warm duds procured, we go home to pack our food, sleeping bags and towels to drape over what we anticipate will be the fairly manky/crusty/filthy/smelly beds in the sleeper bus and take a taxi to the Beijiao Beijing Bus Terminal, located in the north of the city somewhere near the fourth ring.  We planned ahead and purchased our bus ticket earlier in the week.

Intrepid Travellers Set off!

After arriving at the bus station with plenty of time to spare, we waited…….and waited and decided to amuse ourselves by watching the only TV in the place, it was too dark to read, as the bus station doesn’t turn on it’s lights.  TV watching only lasted 5 minutes, they were showing drivers safety videos.  These are basically Chinese versions of the extremely graphic RTA / TAC ads showcasing what might happen if your bus should happen to impact objects at high speed, however no one in the bus station is driving, but after living here for a while I’m sure it makes total sense to someone.

If you drink and drive your bloody bu hao

We watched our bus pull in and it looked surprisingly modern.  We were fully psyched up and ready for lots of pushing, shoving, smoking and spitting on the floor, all at the same time, but surprisingly there wasn’t much of that, people boarded the bus in a relatively orderly fashion.  We  promptly got settled into the wrong seats, moved, got settled again and strapped in for the long 12 hour ride.

The beds on the sleeper bus look like an elongated Z in reverse, like a long lazy recliner.  except they dont recline and aren’t that long.  There is a  sort of box, that your feet go inside (or would, if they are below size 6), presumably this minimises the stink, some have a built in pillow, mine didn’t, Tanya’s did.

Foo!

She gets a Pillow - I didn't

Surprisingly the bus was no smoking, which I am happy to say “most” of my bus-mates adhered to, the driver had a few sneaky fags, but it was way better than sleeping with Chinese migrant workers chaining packets of the cheapest Chinese “darts” continuously for the next 12 hours.  There was also a distinct lack of Mongolian Techno, in fact at each rest stop, they played Celine Dion esque Chinese music to wake us up, which was quite pleasant.  In fact if the bed had been a bit longer and a little wider, it would have been an awesome way to travel.

Kirk Nesbitt Beijing Beijing, bus, china, mongolia, Travel

It’s been too long since I have posted, but I’ve been waiting for something really interesting to happen.  It happened last weekend.  You see, because Tanya and I have been living as an affront to God’s law for the past 9 years, the Chinese government forces Tanya to leave the country every 40 days.  Happily we’ve managed to jet off to Singapore, for a work trip and we went to Japan for golden week (posts to come) on FF points, so we’ve kept the costs to a minimum.

However, for visa run number 3 the time had come to put my hand in my pocket and being a total tight arse, there was no way I was paying RMB 2000 to fly Tanya to Hong Kong and back in a day, it’s a Capricorn thing.

So, I needed an alternative.  Sure you can fly to Hong Kong, or South Korea, many do, but these destinations didn’t fit my tight arse criteria.  A quick Google search yielded option 3, Zamyn-Uud.

It all sounded so easy, cruise up to Inner Mongolia on a sleeper bus (卧铺客车, yes, you read it right, sleeper bus) , arrive in Erlian (二连), slip over to Zamyn-Uud in Mongolia, pop back over the border to China with the trusty Chinese exit stamp in your passport and your all done, a snip at RMB 400 return!!  Way cheaper than RMB 2,000.

More posts to come……..stay tuned.

Kirk Nesbitt Beijing Beijing, bus, china, mongolia, Travel

Well, here I am back in Beijing and via combination of aspirin, reading a book on Antarctic Exploration and the fact that I don’t have “it” (it being H1N1) I’m through the quarantine gauntlet.

To China’s credit, they are pretty thorough, much more thorough than Hong Kong, which you astute (smartass) readers will also point out is also China, but it’s different.

In China, you land at a special “Swine Flu” gate, you have to fill in a form which I am sad to say no longer lists one of the possible symptoms as “Snivel”.  You are not let off the plane until a medical team in grubby white coats board the plane and take everyone’s temperature.

If you are at the pointy end, you may be thinking “this is why I paid that extra $$$ for”, given that the thermometer would have a decidedly awful taste by the time it gets to the back row in economy.  However they use a very cool infrared gun.

Once in the airport you go through another temperature check.  I notice most people are walking way more slowly than normal to keep their temperatures down.

The measures at the border are the most thorough they could be short of a rectal exam.  However this is not good enough for my customer here.

I turned up at work and was promptly sent home!  I have to undergo a 5 day Quarantine.  However it’s a Claytons kind of Quarantine, i.e. the quarantine you have, when you’re not really having a quarantine.  You see I can meet with all of the team, I can roam Beijing at will, I can expose my foreign and deadly germs to all and sundry, I just can’t go onsite.

Kirk Nesbitt Beijing Beijing, china

Well, Now that the Olympics are well and truly over, Beijing has simply just gone back to the Chinglish of old, which is great to see.

Below, we have this stellar example from a very very exclusive apartment compound in Chaoyang

hmmm....tug your pet

Next up, direct from Shanghai’s River Promenade and from loyal reader EP.  This next one goes a long way to explain why everyone walks so bloody slowly over here.

Walk..don't Stride

If anyone knows what the Chinese says, I’d be interested to hear how they got from that to No Striding.

Kirk Nesbitt Beijing, Photos Beijing, china, chinglish

After spending 11 hours this weekend WORKING (not happy Jan) I needed human contact, so instead of ordering “ruin sorbees” and pining away in my room for the Fjords, I decided to check out a Japanese place right behind the hotel, near Bar One, home of the biter!

My trusty Beijing Makansutra said it offered an RMB 100 buffet, with FREE FLOW BEER.  Unfortunately when I arrived, the Buffet is no more, the free flow beer is gone, the veritable dream, is over.  However all is not lost, they have taken a great concept and instead, gone on hiatus for re-tooling, to re-emrge as a “Magical Teppanyaki Restaurant”, oh my!  Already seated and too far from the front door to make a run for it I was locked in.  So I just had some Surf Clam Sashimi (my new favorite) and teppanyaki steak.

As I was the only customer, and speaking mostly in Chinese (>70%), I was a bit of excitement on a slow Sunday evening to a lot of curious and bored staff.

So much so, the manager befriended me and after negotiating one free large bottle of Tsing Tao (RMB 6 from the supermarket) had me convert the following “Chinglish”……

There are 11 teppanyaki tables included 6 luxurious private rooms for you to dine with friends or hold a group party in there.  Whatever the lunch business set / dinner set menu or a la carte we all choose the best material after our chef carefully selection.

Our high value lunch business set include unlimited Japanese style appetizers/salads/Sushi/fruits and teppanyaki fried rice.  Then you go on with one of your choice for the main course like cod-fish/befffillet/sirloin steak/prawn with scallops…..Our beautiful female teppanyaki cooks will prepare your main course on teppanyaki tables.  Besides the professional cooking skills they also offer magic face to face.  This beautiful lunch will be offered for a price between RMB 58 – 68.  We also have dinner sets starting from RMB 298.  So what are you waiting for.  Hurry up and Try.  Take time for a super memorable dining experience.

To this rather elegantly put together piece of prose (if I don’t say so myself)……..

We have 11 teppanyaki tables, 5 in the main dining room and 6 luxurious private rooms where you can dine with friends or hold small private parties.  Whether you visit us for lunch or dinner, we offer both a set menu and a la carte, where the freshest seafood and best seasonal ingredients are chosen by our expert chefs.

Our set business lunch includes unlimited Japanese style entrees, salads, sushi and teppanyaki fried rice.  For main course, select either, cod fish, beef fillet, sirloin steak or prawns with scallops.  All dishes are expertly prepared by our highly trained teppanyaki chef’s.

Our Chef’s will demonstrate their skilled maneuvers on the teppanyaki grill and also perform an amazing magic show during your stay with us.

Our set lunch price represents great value ranging from RMB 58, to RMB 60.  Our set dinner is excellent value starting at RMB 298.

What are you waiting for!  Call us now to reserve a memorable and magical Japanese dining experience.

I’m hoping I can parlay this into free food all over Beijing!

Chinese restauranteurs, contact me at this blog for Chinglish eradication paid in kind by food and beers!

Kirk Nesbitt Beijing Beijing, chinglish, restaurant