Been around the world

[tikistitch]

BTW, seems that, even with the supposed loosening of the economic system, China currently blocks Livejournal. At least, we were basically unable to update this blog for the duration of our stay.

Also, Chinese drivers truly want to kill you. It's a fact.

Comments

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Loosening, schmoosening. Rich people can get richer more easily, they mean. Lots of stuff is still blocked--LJ, flickr's image servers, Technorati, Blogspot, blah blah blah.

Anyway, yes, it IS true. I took a horrifying taxi ride in Beijing, and got ripped off, too (Taiwanese taxi drivers are so much nicer! and their cars are less DEATHTRAPTASTIC). And I saw multiple bicyclists hit by cars, which shocked me. o_O

Welcome back!!!

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

"Deathtraptastic." Yup, that about sums it up. Mr. Tiki was reading Lonely Planet I think with some really shocking traffic fatality statistics.

I was amused (and also horrified) by the taxi guy attitude towards seat belts. We had several drivers who would only grab the shoulder belt when they saw a cop--and even then they refused to buckle it, but would let it snap back as soon as the policeman was out of range. On cabs that had belts in the back, there was inevitably a seat cushion thrown over to make it useless.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

One of my poor, naive tutees told me that things would have totally changed since I was there (in 1999) because of the Olympics, since supposedly they're training taxi drivers in safety, hospitality, and English. I see the first two are about the same as they were--how about the language issue? :p

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

They are *definitely* trying to spiff up for the Olympics! We saw stores stuffed with the anime-type chara mascots everywhere we went. There was a lot of stuff (like Mao's tomb) under renovation.

If by "language issue" you mean speaking English, and not cursing? And a lot of signage is in English--not sure whether that's new or not. For example, the subway (what there is of it) is bilingual. We got a hostel where there was usually someone who could more or less speak English on staff.

The other wacky thing about taxi guys is that they'll flat out refuse to take you if you're going "the wrong way." And a *lot* of them will totally avoid picking up white people.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

She (and the newspapers) claimed that all Beijing taxi drivers were learning English. I'm deeply skeptical.

There was a lot of English when I was there, and I could often find store help or whatever in English, but the taxi drivers spoke very little.

This photo appeared in SFGate.com's Day in Pictures a couple days ago, by the way:

http://sfgate.com/n/pictures/2007/08/03/mascot10.jpg

XD

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

Hahahaha!

What seemed to work--our hostel had pre-printed cards with popular destinations pre-written in Chinese. Then you'd just point it out for the driver. That's how we got to the Peking Duck place.

The taxi guys who seemed to know some English seemed to be the ones you'd want to avoid--the unofficial guys who'd bark "hello" and try to rip you off. We really learned to avoid *anyone* who said "hello."

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Sounds all too familiar. :p

quick question for ya...

[mishakitty78.livejournal.com]

glad to see you made it back safe and sound! ;)

we're heading to japan for our honeymoon (!) and we'd *really* like to blog it. did ya just take yer laptop and cart it around? or did you use internet cafes? hope you don't mind the queries, but we're trying to find the best way to do it :)

Re: quick question for ya...

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

Japan's very laptop-friendly. Do you have a Mac? I took my iBook, and the only problem we ran into was finding a 3-pronged outlet to power it up. Japan has basically the same outlet, so we didn't even need converters. I like to have my own laptop along (despite it being heavy) so I can download pictures along the way.

One thing: read carefully the description of internet service in your hotel/ryokan. If it just just says "internet," it might mean they have just one old PC connected via DSL, and you'll have to fight with all the other travelers to check your email. We stayed one place with DSL cables, and another with WiFi.

Re: quick question for ya...

[mishakitty78.livejournal.com]

thank you so much! that makes me feel much better. i want to do the same thing - upload pics along the way so my family can read about the trip (i'm guessing i won't have much phone access) i have a macbook, so that should be ok? i'll have to check on the plug thingy though.

[aelfsciene.livejournal.com]

Woohoo, welcome back to the land of the LJ! I've been going back to read your trip reports, and it sounds like an absolutely incredible time.

I'm actually still on my own trip, up in Seattle probably through the end of the week (mmmmaybe plus weekend), and would absolutely love to meet you guys (and, er, see all your Stitches!) if you've recovered enough by then. ^_^ Drop me an email at faerie at idiom dot com, or something?

Also, we went to the SciFi Museum on Saturday, and as I've not really read LJ for the last few months, I was all surprised and !!! to see the Death Star there. I exclaimed mightily at my friends, and pressed the button at least three times (though other people mostly kept it continually pressed).