Safety First

Things in South Korea are safe.  Very safe.  This has been particularly evident during our time in Sokcho.

The beach is an excellent place to witness Korean safety in action.  The swimming area is wide, but only extends about 30 feet out into the water.  At no time would anyone over a height of five feet tall be unable to stand.  There are three lifegaurds stationed every 75 yards, and they are paying attention.  If you go even one foot outside the swimming area whistles are vigorously blow and violent gesturing ensues until you have returned to the proper roped off area.

In terms of personal argumentations to all of this public safety, people here love flotation devices.  Life jackets are common in the swimming area (again you can stand the whole time).  Life jackets paired with inflatable inner tubes are also commonplace. 

Rodney and I also witnessed safety on our two visits to Seoraksan National Park.  Everything is very well marked.  The trails, the off limits areas, everything

There are however two areas to which this overwhelming sense of safety does not extend.  The first is drinking.  South Koreans, men in particular, like to drink.  Beer and soju are the beverages of choice, and they are consumed to excess. Often.  Rodney and I have witnessed the following in our two weeks here...

- A man, probably 45, in business attire, sitting in the street vomiting into a plastic grocery back.
- Two men, both in suits, screaming in the street.  After several minutes of screaming, one man choked the other man in full view of everyone.
- At the beach, two men drinking with a woman.  Both men ended up passed out at the table while the woman sat and enjoyed the sunset.

These are but three examples of literally dozens that we could relate.

The second area, was much more surprising to us.  Put simply, there is a tons of open flame in South Korea.  This is mostly in the context of food, Korean barbecue specifically.  Imagine a table with either a circular or rectangular cut-out in the middle.  Into that hole they place a pile of burning hot coals and a grill.  You grill beef, pork or seafood yourself.  This works brilliantly, but to get the coals into the table, they are carried through the restaurant.  Often the tool used to carry the coals is nothing more than a metal rod notched at the end that hooks in the metal coal container.  Rodney and I have debated more that once how many injuries per year result from barbecue restaurant mishaps.

Beer

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  If that's the case the case, the folks at Anheuser-Busch and Miller should definitely feel flattered.  Asian beers (Mongolian, Chinese and Korean specifically) by and large seek to mimic the light yellow, easy drinkability of the American macrobrew.  Three countries and all of the below could easily pass muster in you local American mini-mart as some thing cheap and domestic...

-Golden Gobi
-Tsingtao
-Yangjing
-Snow
-OB
-Cass
-Max

This is not a value judgment by any means.  We've drunk quite a bit of beer and it's been lovely to feel that all that's really changed is the label.

So, Gan Bei, Wihayeo and Erüül mehdiin tölöö.  Keep up the good work, we'll keep drinking.

Mirror, mirror on the wall...

We're in Seoul and it's awesome. It's also hard to miss how often people look at themselves in the mirror here. There are large full length mirrors in many of the subway stations, used by both men and women. The compact mirror - often less compact than you might be used to - is also a must have accessory for young women here.

It is all to good effect though. The residents of Seoul are an attractive and well put together bunch. There is a sense of style here that was completely lacking during our travels in both China and Mongolia.

Belated Posting on China

I started a post on Shenyang more than a week ago and never finished. Here is part of that post plus some thoughts on China in general...

Shenyang is a city of over seven million people that until two weeks ago I had never heard of. It feels like a more vertical city than Beijing. I think though that's a function of the wide streets and large footprint buildings in Beijing rather than there being extremely tall buildings in Shenyang.

I had thought that there was little to no ancient history in Shenyang, but you just need to look for it. We has some of our best tourist experiences there. The Northern Tomb and the Imperial Palace are both well worth a few days in Shenyang. There is also apparently a huge botanical garden but we didn't make it because of the soaking rains.

We took the train to Shenyang and watching China roll past the window early in the morning it became clear how much the landscape has been shaped and reshaped over the centuries. Looking out at China that morning every tree and rocks looked like it's been placed. The landscape feels like a collaboration of generations in a way that is both readily apparent and very different from how it feels to travel through America. China is remaking itself now to be sure, but it has been remade itself many times before.

Beijing feels like it is set. The vision is in place. It works. It is the Chinese capital and it is a prime site for visitors to China. Someone understands how to move people around and give them a good experience. We were not an oddity there. Occasionally in a local restaurant but not usually.

Shenyang is a city on the move. Tons of construction, a complete reinvention of the downtown. They are realizing a new vision and it is far from complete.

Retail is a seemingly huge part of that vision. The area we stayed in was mall after mall, often with same stores. People were buying. Shenyang feels like it has tremendous middle class. This was different than Beijing. Beijing feels like there is a large wealth gap. There are still a lot of very poor people in what is seemingly a hugely prosperous city.

All of the above is obviously anecdotal and comes from a tiny little window of time and experience. I was fascinated by China. I'm looking forward to checking out Shanghai in a few weeks and getting another look at a tiny piece of China.

Glasses City Update

After 3 days of mild headaches, I had to give up on the new glasses
from glasses city. My revised recommend would be to shop for cheap
frames there and have lens put in at your trusted eye care
professional back home.

How many people does it take...

...well if you're us and you're in China, the answer is many. To be
fair, part of it is definitely the language barrier, and it seems we
often are in places that do not get a lot of Western tourists. That
said, almost everything service oriented has involved dealing with two
(often three+) people often at the same time. We can attribute some
of this to our novelty, but there is real workforce surplus here.
Restaurants and retail stores illustrate this most graphically as we
have frequently witnessed a 1-to-1 ratio of staff to patrons.

Last night was the crowning jewel of this when almost the entire
front-of-the-house staff at a restaurant stood around while we ordered
dinner. We had an audience of at least 9 for this incredibly mundane
activity.

Google Maps Transit

We're in Shenyang, and it's not so easy to get around here. As is
often the case, the folks at Google have our backs. We discovered
this morning that with a little trial and error (Chinese address can
be difficult to get into a form Gmaps likes), we were able to get
accurate bus directions in a city that offers little in the way of
English maps and directions.

If you find the addresses for any 2 points you want to travel between
written in Chinese (even if your browser/computer doesn't load the
Chinese font) copy and paste them into Gmaps. The English formatting
of Chinese addresses often is not immediately recognized by Gmaps and
will require (much) tweaking.

We wish we'd played with the this more in Beijing, but Beijing is much
easier to navigate on the whole.

I'll try to report back on how this works in Korea. We will hopefully
be arriving in Seoul tomorrow evening.

Korea Side Note: If you or anyone you know is going to be in Seoul or
Sokcho (or anywhere else in South Korea) in the next month please let
us know (you can email us at plansmall@gmail.com ). We'd love to
meet-up.

Consistency

A while ago Rodney and I visited the Berkshire Brewing Company in central Massachusetts. They make delicious microbrewed ales and lagers. If you see any of their beers in your local store, I suggest you buy them.

The brewer leading the tour talked at length about how they will likely never can or bottle in 12oz bottles because Anheuser-Busch and Miller have those markets locked-up. Berkshire Brewing only sells in a small area and they only sell 22oz bottles and two sizes of kegs. While our brewer/tour guide didn't have great things to say about Bud as a beer, he had nothing but admiration for the worldwide consistency of Bud's products.

All that is a long way of saying that it's nice to able to have a small taste of home when you're far away. We had McDonald's for lunch today. It was delicious and it tasted exactly the same as it does everywhere.

Glasses City, Beijing

Imagine a city block sized mall, four floors that sells nothing by
glasses. That place exists in Beijing, and it is overwhelming.
Overwhelming in the best sense. Also, many of the glasses are
incredibly inexpensive and they'll make them for you in about 20
minutes.

After many hours of looking and a much needed lunch break, we returned
and I pulled the trigger on a new pair. Lens and all they came in at
just under US$25. I've never paid so little for glasses. So far they
are working out well. I'll try to get up a picture soon.

One of the things that really struck us though was how bad a mall like
this must be for the individual store owners. Typically, I spend a
long time in a single glasses shop when I am in the market, but at
Glasses City if they didn't have anything interesting there are
literally 200+ other places to look for the same product. Convenient
for the customer to be sure, but I can't imagine how frustrating it
must be for the store owners.

If you're a glasses wearer and are in Beijing, I would highly
recommend checking this place out.

Glasses City is located near the Jinsong stop on subway Line 10.

Beijing

After getting over some technical difficulties, I hope to be able to
post more frequently moving forward. Rodney has thankfully posted
much on our Mongolia experiences, so I'm just going to jump into our
time thus far in Beijing.

We've been here for less than a week and I've already fallen in love
with this place. The city is huge but incredibly well laid out. It
has everything to offer - tons of sites to see, good shopping, great
food, nice people. We have explored much and yet I feel like we've
barely scratched the surface. We have tried to check off some of the
major sites, but the tourists sites, while totally fascinating, also
come with lots other tourists - both Chinese and non-Chinese - and the
locals who wish to sell them stuff - ricksaw ride, anyone?

Similar to other large cities we have visited, there is something
about Beijing that made me feel almost immediately comfortable. It is
a real, vibrant city in every way that Ulaanbaatar was not. Our
favorite has been wandering the warrens of hutongs (back alleys that
often ignore the grid). These have also generally had the best food.
The hole-in-the-wall spots have delivered. My favorite thus far has
been a place that specialized in cold sesame noodles. The best I've
had by far. The sauce was a perfect balance of creamy and slightly
sour. The noodles had a perfect bite to them.

I would also highly recommend the 798 Art Zone. The city has set off
a large number blocks where visual artists have their studios along
side (what seems like) hundreds of galleries. There is some great
talent here and it's a very cool area. We spent four hours at 798,
and we may try to return before we leave Beijing.

The one thing that I have found consistently strange here is range of
prices. We have eaten many meals in certain parts of the city that
are equal price to single beer or cocktail in others. Not like one
plate costs as much one drink, three dishes plus bottles of water
equal to a single cocktail. To be fair the latter places cater to a
Western and wealthy Chinese crowd, but it's still sticker shock.
Depending on where you stay here and where you eat here, Beijing is
either very, very affordable coming from the US or it completely
comparably priced.

We're off the the Great Wall tomorrow and then back in Beijing for
another week before heading to Shenyang. I'll try to get out another
post soon.

Mongolia

I've never been somewhere with so few rules.  You can go anywhere and pitch a tent.  When there are ruins dating back to the 8th Century there is no guard, there is no fee.  You just park and walk up.

It is a strange and wonderful experience coming from the land of procedures and guidelines.  This place is truly untouched, but it will not remain so for much longer.  You can feel the pull towards a more contemporary life.  It's in the solar panels and satellite dishes connected to the gers (traditional nomadic dwellings).  It's in the brand name clothing on the young people, and the Ke$ha videos on MTV Asia playing in remote tourist camps.

The best of Mongolia is in it's landscape.  It is varied and open and has a complete lack of fences.  We climbed 500 meter sand dunes and saw impressive red rock cliffs that resembled a mini-Grand Canyon.  We sat on the shores of a lake that in United States most certainly would have been surrounded by beautiful private homes.  Here there were a few tourist camps and tent campers. We walked through a gorge that would have been as at home in Scotland as Mongolia.

The openness is hard to describe.  At first it felt isolating.  The level of disconnection really got to me the first couple of days, but once that passed I came to embrace how far we were from anything.  Mongolia has pockets of modernity, but they are hard won.  This does not seem like an easy place to live.

Not all is positive here, and not all parts of our last two weeks were perfect.  Our tour company left much to be desired, and at one point we found our van hopeless stuck in the mud in the middle of the desert.  Even with the problems, I am so glad we came here.  As we drove along yesterday past endless piles of gravel that will soon pave many of the roads, I was especially glad that we saw it this way.

Right now though, I'm glad to be back in Ulaanbaatar.  Really not a nice place, but a nice place to return to.  We are showered and we are tired.  More reports on Mongolia to come.

Stuff

4600 cubic inches sounds like a lot in the store, especially when you thought you were going to be taking a bag that was only 3300 cubic inches.   Rodney is taking the 3300 cu. in. bag and I get the heavy, bigger one.  Neither is spacious.  The thing that truly saved us was compression bags.  Seriously, this can not be overstated, we would bringing 40% less stuff without them.  Also, I am down to 3 pairs of shoes for the year (yesterday there were 5).

We are already looking forward to ditching such Mongolia specific items as Clif Bars, peanut M&Ms and "toys for the children".  The food is supposed to be awful (a lot of boiled meat), and apparently, the Mongolian Nomadic children get psyched for Western toys.

After much debate on that front, we ended up going with a ten-pack of Matchbox cars and ten tiny cans of Play Doh.  These were far and away the best (and most economical) choices at Target. 

It's hard to know what's going to be useless when you're going away for this long, and it's hard to know how out of civilization we're going to be.  In Mongolia we will be as far from anything as one can be, but we're going with a tour in a jeep, so we expect they will have any emergency items on hand (we brought our own in case they don't).  From there, we head to Beijing.  I'm guessing as major a city as New York or Tokyo, but in the Chinese countryside???

At this point, I'm just glad that my bag is closed.  Now we just have to shoehorn Rodney's stuff in 3300 cu. in.

Last Meals

I ate a lot of delicious things on the way out of town.   Below is list of places that I hit in our last week in NYC...

D'Espana
Roberta's
Ushiwakamaru
Convivio
Lil' Frankies
Momofuku Ssam
Momofuku Noodle Bar
Brick Lane Curry House
Dos Toros
Hasaki

I would recommend any of those places to you in a heartbeat, but, seriously, the best place I went to was Mile End.  This is sacrilege and I will likely be kicked out of the clubhouse of lifelong New Yorkers, but this Montreal-style deli is producing some of the finest sandwiches around (and some on bagels shipped in Montreal).  I could try to describe the orgy of sandwiches that were consumed, but I think that the accompanying picture says the most.  Just make sure that if you go you order the smoked meat sandwich and the poutine.  Everything else is a bonus.  If they just served the smoked meat and the poutine the place would still be a destination.  So, go.  Now.  Don't wait.  Get on the train and go there.

Also, make it a point to go to Roberta's.  The Morgan stop on the L.  You won't be disappointed, and if you're feeling saucy the 45-day dry aged rib steak special with marrow bone rivals any steak in NY.  I'm usually a pizza purist but here the thing(s) to get are the non-traditional pies.  The Cortes in particular illustrates what you can do with a round of pizza dough if you don't get too wrapped up in tradition.  A serious shout-out to JD and Theresa for introducing us to this place.

Mile End
97A Hoyt St.
Brooklyn, NY

Roberta's
261 Moore Street
Brooklyn, NY

Cameras

I am a complete sucker for cameras.  I really like taking pictures.  I really like reading about them.  Lens specifications are more interesting to me than a great many other things that have far greater consequences.

After a lot of careful consideration and purchases made under the auspices of research, I have decided to bring the following with us to Asian:

Canon SD1000
Canon SD1100
Superheadz Slim Devil 22mm
Digital Foci PhotoSafe
AquaPac Small Camera Case

If you have already experienced more model numbers and camera geekery than you wanted to, I suggest you stop here and wait for the next post.  The geekery continues below...

In the last four years I have owned the following cameras.  Each time I bought one of the digital cameras below, I thought that it was going to replace the SD1000/SD1100 (these are essentially the same camera in 7 & 8MP versions respectively).

Other Digital Cameras:
Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX2
Canon G10
FujiFilm JZ300

In some ways these are all better cameras than the SD1000.  Certainly, the first two have significantly more features and allow for greater control.  The Lumix in particular is a really nice camera, but the interface is not intuitive.

I can not overstate how much I think that Canon has the best digital camera interface.  The photos from the SD1000 and G10 are comparable, but the G10 weighs a lot, has a much larger footprint and is difficult to shoot with one hand.  I would also say that the combination of Exposure Compensation and ISO control make for a decent (though imperfect) substitute for full manual control.  Lastly, at 7/8MP our photos are going to take significantly less time to upload to Flickr/backup online.


The Superheadz is the simplest possible execution (fixed lens, single shutter speed, no batteries, no flash), so I think it will make a good backup.  It's basically an instant camera that allows you to replace the film.  I do like the quality of the lens though.

(You can see examples from all of the above mentioned on my Flickr page.)

Mongolian Tour Companies and Articles

We are traveling with Blue Mongolia, but there are a huge number of companies running tours in Mongolia.  These are some of the others that we looked at...

Black Ibex
Nomadic Expeditions
Happy Camel

Blue Mongolia seemed to strike a good balance between offering a real taste of the local experience and the level of organization and professionalism that we wanted.  Many people apparently just show up in Ulaanbaatar and arrange travel from there.  Definitely a cheaper option, but, from our research, also more hit or miss.  That said, we are fingers crossed on Blue Mongolia.  They have been fantastic in the lead up to our trip, and we anticipate (hope for) a really amazing trip when we arrive.

This is the website to the tourism bureau of Mongolia...

Offical Tourism Website of Mongolia

Here's some good articles that gave us a sense of what this all might be like...

The Mongolia Obsession by Tim Wu (Slate)

Mongolia for Beginners by Marco De Oliveira
 
I don't particularly like the way the second one is written but it did get me excited about traveling there.