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.

Eating New York

I'm going to miss the food options. A lot.  I've made a Google docs spreadsheet with all the places I'd like to go and go back to before we get out town. This list is a gluttonous fantasy.  It just keeps growing and growing. This is where is stands at the moment...

1492
11 Madison Park
Al di La
Allen & Delancy
Alto
Anthos
Apiary
Arirang
Back Forty
Barbuto
Bar Piti
Basta Pasta
Becco
Black Iron Burger
Blaue Gans
Bobo
Boca Lupo
Bon Bon Chicken
Cafe Habana
Char No. 4
Clinton Street Bakery
Company
Convivio
Cookshop
Crif Dogs
Crispo
DBGB
Defonte's
Degustation
dell'amina
DeNino's Tavern
D'Espana
Devi
Diablo Royale
Diner
Dogmatic
Double Crown
Egg
Freeman's
Georgia's
Grifone
Haandi
Hill Country
I coppi
Il Buco
inoteca
Ippudo
I Trulli
Izakiya 10
Jane Hotel
Jimmy's #43
Joseph Leonard
Kajitsu
Kampuchea
Katz's
Kefi
Kingswood
Kittichai
Knife and Fork
Kumura Zushi
Kushi
Kyo Ya
La Pequeña Colombia
La Superior
Le Meu
Little Giant
Little Owl
Little Pie Company
Loconda Verde
Los Hermanos
Lucali
Lula's Sweet Apothecary
Luzzo
Macondo
Marea
Mark Burger
Marlow & Sons
Mile End
Minetta Tavern
Motorino
New Pasteur
Nolita House
Northern Spy Market
Number 7 Sub
Num Pang
Pamplona
Peasant
Permenant Brunch
Peter Luger
Piccolo Cucina
Pies and Thighs
Piggy Market
Porchetta
Public
Puebla
Punjabi
Rack and Soul
Rhong-Tiam
Robataya
Roberta's
Room 4 dessert
Rye
Salt
Saltie
Salumeria Rosi
Sasabune
Saul Restaurant
Scarpetta
Seafood Harbor
Sfoglia
Shakeshack
Sho Shaun Hergatt
S'mac
Smith & Miller
Sobakoh
Spitzer's
Stand
Sushi Seki
Sushi Yasuda
Sushi Zen
Taim
Tamarind
Taso de Oro
Terakawa Ramen
Terroir
The Breslin
The Spotted Pig
Toby's
Tomoe
Trestle on Tenth
Tsukushi
Udon West
Unidentified Frying Chicken
Vatan
Vermilion
Willies Dawgs
Yakatori Totto
Yasuda
Zaitzeff
Zampa
Zarela

There's a 141 restaurants currently on the list, and I've thus far eaten at 25.  I've thankfully been to a number of the above before, but some are holdovers from old lists that have already closed without my ever getting the chance to visit.  I know that there's going to be many phenomenal things we are going to eat while we're away, but rare will there be another place that we are going to live that literally has on-demand food.

Between lunches and dinners I have about 28 meals left.  Sadly, amazingly, I'm sure I could write down another 141 places where it would equally delicious and not repeat a single on of the above.