Olympic Green

"Bird's Nest" at Night

Thankfully Beijing might have one of the most foreigner friendly subway systems in the world. Everything is in English and there is even a voice that comes on when a transfer station is approaching that gives you a list of reasons you might want to change trains (like "Change to Line 10 for Olympic Stadiums"). This makes it pretty easy to get up to the Olympic Green in Beijing.

Beijing by Train

High Speed Train from Shenyang to Beijing

So...this time around I was not nearly as successful as the trip to Dandong. I had a feeling that the Chinese train system was maybe not so reliable, but I got a little more first-hand experience on Friday.

Flickr Set (haven't gotten all the titles and descriptions up yet, but it's there if you want to look)

Beijing!

Heading out to Beijing in the morning, quick rundown of the plan:

1. Hop on the slow train from Liaoyang to Shenyang
2. Ride the bullet train from Shenyang to Beijing
3. Wander - Forbidden City/Tianamen Square
4. Find a hotel?
5. Wander part 2 - Olympic Stadiums?
6. Come back the way I came

To add a little bit of fun to the confusion (or should it be confusion to the fun?), no one can speak English here! Haha...never was much of a planner. Since Beijing is relatively close I'm not going to try to pack everything into one trip. The main goal of this weekend is to see Tiananmen Square, including the Forbidden City, and the Olympic Stadiums, Birds Nest (Wikipedia) and the Water Cube (Wikipedia). After that my plan becomes significantly more freeform, if that is possible. Anyway wish me luck, I hope to take some good pictures and maybe even come back with a story or two.

Chinese Ingenuity

Some days I see some things around this country I just have to share. Here are two from my trip to Dandong.

Grenade Helicopter

We saw some guys hawking these helicopters made from wartime surplus aka GRENADES! Notice they also build all kinds of stuff from various size casings. Next to the helicopter looks like an artillery gun made from .50 cal and maybe a bomber behind that.

This one is even better. If you think it's tough for the Chinese to copy a purse, these guys are building a a copy of the fiberglass boat on the right. Did you catch that? They are building a second boat, in the water, using a grinder. These guys can and will do anything with a grinder. (Full Size)

Bonus: Baijiu Review

Like I said, I'm not the only one that thinks Baijiu is terrible. Robert on the other hand is a machine, it looks like he might actually enjoy it.

Dandong Part IV: Yalu River Bridge

End of the Old Yalu River Bridge Looking Toward N. Korea

...Or how we kinda sorta crossed into North Korea (according to Google).

Dandong Part III: Museum of American Aggression and Aid to Korea

Entrance to "The Museum of American Aggression and Aid to Korea"

I think it's interesting that as students in the United States, we don't really learn that much about the Korean War. It seems like a lot of focus is put on the World Wars, but we don't really see or hear that much about the wars the US has been involved in since then. Or maybe I did learn about it in school but pop culture is so much more focused on WWII I just forgot I knew something about it. Think about how many movies and TV shows were spawned from WWII. How about the Korean War? I know the only one I can think of is MASH (both the series and the movie). It may have to do with my age, but I have to wonder if it has to do with the sketchy, open to interpretation type outcomes of the conflicts/police actions in Korea and Vietnam as opposed to the very clear WOOO USA USA USA!!! outcome of WWII.

Dandong Part II: Hushan Great Wall

Obligatory Standing on The Great Wall Shot

The big goals on this trip were: crossing into DPRK getting as close to DPRK as possible, seeing The Great Wall (conveniently located near the boarder), visiting the "Museum of American Aggression and Aid to Korea", and seeing the nearly destroyed Yalu River Bridge. So naturally the first thing we did was try to kill two birds with one stone and made a beeline for The Hushan Great Wall. Not coincidentally this is also probably the closest we got to N. Korea (for those that want the details that is 40.223767 N ,124.519391 E).

Dandong Part I: Travel by Chinese Train

Shanghai - Dandong

We started planning this trip in a hypothetical way sometime on Thursday afternoon, then on Friday afternoon we decided we were going to go for it. By planning I mean that we booked a hotel in Dandong and we were trying to figure out the best way to get to the non-refundable reservation. We figured once we spent the money, we would figure out a way to get there come hell or highwater.

Trip to Dandong

Jason, Robert, and I at The Yalu River Bridge

 Wow, what a trip. We (Jason, Robert and I)packed about three days worth of sightseeing into one crazy day. So, due to the number of photos, stories, observations etc. I am going to break this trip into sections and try to put one up everyday-ish. I am hoping to get this all written down before the weekend so I can (maybe) take another trip and start all over again.

Long Time, No Update

Long time, No Update.
So I have been pretty busy the last few jobs I was on, but now I am back where I started...Liaoyang, China.

Liaoyang, China - Sunset June 2009

The good news is the customer and contractor move verry slow here, so I will have some opportunity to travel around and see some things. The bad news is the customer and contractor move verry slow here and I might not be home for Christmas. Anyway, on with the show

I think we might go to Dandong this weekend. Wooo North Korean border towns. I think Wikipedia captures the essence pretty well:

The two cities are connected by the Sino-Korea Friendship Bridge (中朝友谊桥, also called the China-Korea Friendship Bridge). Another major landmark is Hushan Great Wall (虎山长城), which marks the eastern end of the start of the Ming Dynasty's extension to the Great Wall. Other interesting tourist spots include: a museum dedicated to the "War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea" (also known as the Korean War) and Jinjiang mountain (锦江山) that is now the city's biggest park, but used to be a Chinese army lookout.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandong#Landmarks

Sooo...pretty much it will be like going back to South Carolina where they have memorials to the War of Northern Aggression. Hopefully I will be able to get a good update together (with pictures!) sometime early next week.

One last thing, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and lots of other sites are blocked in China. If I didn't respond to whatever message, request or otherwise sent to me, it is probably because that site is blocked and not because I am ignoring you.

Incredible !ndia

First I want to remind everyone that I put some of my more interesting pictures on facebook, but normally I put every single picture on my flickr page at flickr.com/mike-nappo.

Okay so...India. I have to say I haven't ever been to a place with such incredible poverty. I thought I saw bad living conditions and poor people in rural China. While the people in China are very poor, it really is nothing compared to the total poverty of a large part of the Indian population. Living in Chennai is really unusual experience. The class and wealth of the population seems to change on every block. While there is a general trend that the richer people (Indians and foreigners included) live on the southern end of the city around us, there are some pockets of poverty nearby. While the people in the city do live in some bad conditions, it really is much worse in the areas of the city reserved for the "fisherman". The fisherman and their families live in what essentially looks like abandoned land. Pretty much they live in huts made of sticks and woven banana leaves with dirt floors. I have noticed that at least some of the huts have electricity, when we are driving to work at night you can see light escaping around the poorly fitted doors and walls. Generally the people are pretty helpful here, but most often they are helpful because they would like to take advantage of you. It is sometimes difficult to get an honest answer from anyone with anything to gain by helping you. The most notorious rip-offs are the autorickshaw drivers. They will never run the meter, even when you ask them they will insist that it is broken and they don't carry change. Even if you manage to negotiate a "fair" rate before getting in, if you don't have exact change on arrival don't expect them to do you any favors.

Generally speaking, as far as India goes there are much better and much worse places to be. I think the most amazing thing to me is, the Indian people are so willing to live in their own trash. There is a small government housing/welfare complex down the street from our house that always smells like trash. During lunch time you can see the people are cooking, then throwing everything out on the ground not 5 or 6 ft from where they were cooking. I'm not sure if it is the heat or what but they just don't seem to care about living in a clean place. Even the river that runs near our house has just tons of trash floating on it, I can't imagine what is on the bottom. All of that being said, there are some really wonderful (and well cared for) things to see here. The Taj Mahal or the temples at Mahabalipuram, where we were yesterday. At Mahabalipuram there are several temples made from granite, the two most impressive being the Shore Temple, made from individual pieces of granite carved and transported to the site and the Draupadi and Arjuna rathas, which is an entire temple complex carved from a single huge, huge piece of granite.

I start back on shift on Saturday with no more long offs until the end of the month so this will probably be the end of my site seeing in India for awhile. I am still hopeful that I will be able to make it to the Taj Mahal before I leave India. If I do I will be sure to post pictures.