It has been quite awhile since I sent out and update email, but there hasn't really been much going on here in Liaoyang. I feel like I have seen most of the local sights and don't really have enough time off to
go all the way to Beijing. The biggest thing I have discovered here is...wait for it...McDonald's! I don't really care for McDonald's in the US (outside of breakfast and the occasional McFlurry) but here it
is like a godsend. Think about not having American food for, I don't know say 12 weeks, no cheeseburgers, no bacon cheeseburgers, no double bacon bbq burger, no baked potatoes...you get the idea. Now say you
find out there is a place to get a double cheeseburger and chicken nuggets but the catch is it is a 90min bus ride to get there, how fast would you jump on that? The answer is fast, I have gone a few times to McDonald's a few times despite the distance of the bus trip (time is the only factor the bus ride costs ~3 USD).
Okay time for good news, bad news. First the good news, we are wrapping up here and China and I should be finished here by the weekend, hopefully. The bad news, I am currently scheduled to be in Ulsan, S. Korea on the 31st of Aug or the 1st of September so I will only have maybe a week at home. I have to say I am pretty upset about that. I was really counting on taking my 2 weeks of unpaid leave (as required by Honeywell cost-cutters). I am supposed to be in Korea 3-4 weeks and from what I hear the Koreans are much better about this type of contractor work than the Chinese, so hopefully 4 weeks won't turn into nearly 4 months like this time around.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
Qianshan Mountains and Shenyang Imperial Palace
Hey everyone,
I put up nearly 400 pictures yesterday from the last two weekends. Last weekend we went to a Qianshan "mountains" near Anshan, about 35min south of Liaoyang. In my opinion they are very big hills at best but they are very sudden. The land here is pretty flat and then all of a sudden bam, mountains. Also in Anshan we went to see the temple where they have the world's largest Buddha carved from a single piece of Jade, they even have the plaque from Guiness to prove it. This weekend we went to the city of Shenyang, about an hour and a half north of Liaoyang. In Shenyang there is an old Imperial palace, also called the Mukden Palace, built in the 1625. It served as the home of the the first three Qing emperors lived there from 1625 to 1644. After 1644 the home of the emporer moved back to the forbidden city in Beijing. After the palace we went to a highly recommended "international flower expo" which is code for botanical gardens. What a tremendous dissapointment that was. They had different styles of "international gardens" which mostly consisted of the same 4 or 5 types of plants with very cheap rip-offs of the architecture from the target country. I haven't labeled all of the pictures with titles and descriptions yet, but feel free to look through all of them anyway. Some pretty interesting stuff in there.
Work is going much better now, we are still a little behind but the contractors seem to have gotten things all figured out now. As long as things go smoothly from here on out it seems like we might be able to leave sometime in mid-July.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/
I put up nearly 400 pictures yesterday from the last two weekends. Last weekend we went to a Qianshan "mountains" near Anshan, about 35min south of Liaoyang. In my opinion they are very big hills at best but they are very sudden. The land here is pretty flat and then all of a sudden bam, mountains. Also in Anshan we went to see the temple where they have the world's largest Buddha carved from a single piece of Jade, they even have the plaque from Guiness to prove it. This weekend we went to the city of Shenyang, about an hour and a half north of Liaoyang. In Shenyang there is an old Imperial palace, also called the Mukden Palace, built in the 1625. It served as the home of the the first three Qing emperors lived there from 1625 to 1644. After 1644 the home of the emporer moved back to the forbidden city in Beijing. After the palace we went to a highly recommended "international flower expo" which is code for botanical gardens. What a tremendous dissapointment that was. They had different styles of "international gardens" which mostly consisted of the same 4 or 5 types of plants with very cheap rip-offs of the architecture from the target country. I haven't labeled all of the pictures with titles and descriptions yet, but feel free to look through all of them anyway. Some pretty interesting stuff in there.
Work is going much better now, we are still a little behind but the contractors seem to have gotten things all figured out now. As long as things go smoothly from here on out it seems like we might be able to leave sometime in mid-July.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/
Benxi Water Caves
We, Pavol and I, were asking our interpreter last week, where can we go in one a day trip that isn't too expensive but is unique? She took us down to a local travel agency and helped us sign up for a trip to Benxi. Luckily the tour agency also had an agent that spoken fairly good English, and they offered to send her with us for 100 RMB, split between Pavol and me. Total cost of the trip around 300RMB, which is a little less than $50, including lunch and the show. Thank God we had her too otherwise we would have been totally lost. Benxi is a city about 2hrs away by car (can't exactly remember the distance and google maps is unhelpful in China) that is famous for its underground river aka water cave and its maple trees. Despite the extremely large "steel plant" near Benxi the park surrounding the water caves was very pretty and even fairly clean. We were lucky to get a nice bright blue sky (a rarity in china) and cooler temperatures to explore the park in. First thing we did was tour the water cave, then we went to the museum, and then we had lunch with all of the people who came with us. Despite not knowing a lick of English they were very nice and extremely hospitable. This eventually led to me eating a salted fish, whole, all of it, no spitting out bones or anything, because they send the plate your way and then watch to make sure you take and eat some of everything. It wasn't so bad...anyway after lunch we headed down for the show. The pictures on flickr/facebook tell most of the story, except for the ladyboy part.
Okay, so the tour guide talked us into going to the show and wouldn't really take no for an answer so we went. Before the show the best our interpreter could do was, "Do you know ladyboy, is a very beautiful boy singing" or something close to that. Thankfully Pavol had seen a show before and explained to me, basically they are cross-dressing and/or possibly transvestite and/or gay boys performing in public. I consulted Wikipedia and he was pretty much right. It was very weird, despite knowing they are in fact male it is pretty hard to tell with all of the make-up on, but the Adam's Apple generally gives it away. Also both of them were pretty terrible singers. Anyway I wasn't really sure what the etiquette was for taking pictures during the show so I only took one, and it isn't very good. The crocodile part of the show was way more awesome and the pictures do tell that whole story. Those guys are insane, I can't figure out why those animals didn't remove any limbs, they certainly were close enough. The whole experience was pretty cool, wish I could have gotten better pictures of inside the cave but I will survive. The whole day was a pretty awesome experience it really let you see some of China's natural beauty, as opposed to all of the industry we see during the week.
Okay, so the tour guide talked us into going to the show and wouldn't really take no for an answer so we went. Before the show the best our interpreter could do was, "Do you know ladyboy, is a very beautiful boy singing" or something close to that. Thankfully Pavol had seen a show before and explained to me, basically they are cross-dressing and/or possibly transvestite and/or gay boys performing in public. I consulted Wikipedia and he was pretty much right. It was very weird, despite knowing they are in fact male it is pretty hard to tell with all of the make-up on, but the Adam's Apple generally gives it away. Also both of them were pretty terrible singers. Anyway I wasn't really sure what the etiquette was for taking pictures during the show so I only took one, and it isn't very good. The crocodile part of the show was way more awesome and the pictures do tell that whole story. Those guys are insane, I can't figure out why those animals didn't remove any limbs, they certainly were close enough. The whole experience was pretty cool, wish I could have gotten better pictures of inside the cave but I will survive. The whole day was a pretty awesome experience it really let you see some of China's natural beauty, as opposed to all of the industry we see during the week.
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