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| Obligatory Standing on The Great Wall Shot |
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Dandong Part II: Hushan Great Wall
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Dandong Part I: Travel by Chinese Train
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| Shanghai - Dandong |
Monday, November 1, 2010
Trip to Dandong
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| Jason, Robert, and I at The Yalu River Bridge |
Thursday, October 28, 2010
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.
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:
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.
So I have been pretty busy the last few jobs I was on, but now I am back where I started...Liaoyang, China.
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| Liaoyang, China - Sunset June 2009 |
I think we might go to Dandong this weekend. Wooo North Korean border towns. I think Wikipedia captures the essence pretty well:
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.
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
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.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Good News/Bad News
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.
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.
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/
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