Wednesday, July 18, 2007

The Arrival of the Pictures!

Like the timely arrival of the swallows at San Juan Capistrano every spring, so too is the nature of the pictures on our blog. Like clockwork, they arrive to show everything about our trip this far. Okay, maybe not like clockwork, maybe there haven't been any at all so far.

But, with a little luck, and much, much more effort, we hope to have reports on each of the last fifteen days uploaded (along with pictures!) and ready for your viewing pleasure.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

July 5th: Beijing

So we roll up to this shaggy looking place, walk inside, and the tour guide bores the heck out of us explaining the difference between green, blue, red, floral pink, and rainbow sunshine jade. Little did we know, this "jade factory" would become our biggest place of expenditure so far through the trip and just about assured the highest for the rest of the trip. After spending about two hours browsing through their selection of jade and buying a few items, we set off for the Great Wall. At the bottom, the climb looked incredibly intimidating, but after making our way up a few flights of stairs, the only thought in our mind was to look for a flat piece of wall to play a little catch. So after about 45 minutes of climbing straight up, we found a nice place to settle down and break out the gloves. The climb was fairly difficult, not to mention that we arrived at the wall around midday, but the views of the wall were breathtaking and a twice in a lifetime experience. As we set off back down the wall, we are met by some crazy Italian extreme walker attempting to climb down the edge of the wall, quite a test of balance and endurance. Much to our dismay, the brother Bilo survived his test of faith, but he ironically trips on a few steps of stairs just as he finishes the climb. Do I need to spell it out for you? "You see...My brother Bilo...He is retard..."

Following our climb on the great wall, we are forced to go to another money spending scam place...we all know where this is gonna go... and then we eat at some absolutely dismal hole in the wall (not a first).

Food Column: Government sanctioned artisan shops also have eateries attached to them. Think of the cafeteria in IKEA, except with really greasy tourist-grade Chinese food and you start to get the idea. I don't ever want to see fried pork with sweet/sour sauce on it ever again. Bleeech!

Sunday, July 8, 2007

July 4th: Beijing


The things you find when you go exploring. These eels were in the a tank at a hotel restaurant.


Belated Independence Day wishes to everyone back home in the States! We hope you had a blast (literally, of course)!

We would like to extend our sincere apologies for the paucity of posts in the last five days; as you probably all know, traveling overseas is a exhausting proposition. We felt we wouldn't do things justice by writing two word posts for you, our loyal readers, to see.

Our first impression of Beijing as we rode to the hotel the first morning was: “wow, this place is enormous!” There is new construction everywhere; heavy construction equipment clogging the smaller roadways, cement dust in the air, cranes lining the skyline. Gently rolling countryside quickly gave way to expressways and cookie cutter high-rise apartment complexes. New shiny corporate skyscrapers marked most every major intersection.

After our twelve hour delay, we arrived at the Beijing airport at 3:30 in the morning. We cleared immigration and customs and met our tour guide, Jo Jo. We ended up checking in to the hotel at around 5 AM. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, we crashed down for a nice nap (that is, the elders among us) before setting out on our first day's outing, Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City.

The hotel in Beijing was built on an enormous scale, just like the rest of the city. The lobby, pictured below (pictures to come), was an exercise in bold-faced extravagance, the kind of thing you’d see in Las Vegas.




The lobby is enormous.



Mom and dad checking in with the tour guide, Jo Jo.

If the Chinese are emulating Las Vegas in their new development, we will have a much more serious environmental and resource crisis on our hands sooner than we ever imagined.

She's an environmental disaster in the making. This is Melissa after more than 24 hours of not showering.

We set out for the heart of Beijing at around 2 PM, refreshed from a much needed shower, a good nap, and some mostly well-done Western food. (Yes, Western food. Don't look at me like that.) It’s hard to put into words what it was like to walk through Tian’anmen Square and the Forbidden City, so we'll let our photographs do the talking for us.


Much more to come in the next hours and days!

Dan's Food Column for Wednesday, July 4th: Sometimes, you just want something familiar while you’re getting your bearings in another country. I ordered a cut of beef tenderloin with a black pepper sauce and french fries for lunch at the hotel today. They made a pretty good effort at it; it was pretty good.

For dinner, our tour guide brought us to a Chinese chain restaurant. The food was decidedly subpar.

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

July 3: Plane...Schmeh

Well, the Langoliers didn't get us, but they might as well have. Our day of "crazy fun" in San Francisco came to abrupt end as we finally boarded the plane at around 1:00 a.m. We eagerly entered the plane in hopes that we would find an airline comparable to SQ (Singapore Airlines), but our dreams were immediately turned down as we crammed our bags and our bodies into the crowded rows of Air China.

No TV!!! No moist towelettes, no English magazines or periodicals, but most of all...No TV! Dan questions Peter earlier in the day, "Hey, I wonder what they are going to show on the airplane?"
Peter responds, "Hmm, well, what came out before spiderman? Ohh, well schmeh, it'll probably end up being something like music and lyrics..." Bingo. Hugh Grant hip thrusting all movie. All i could think of doing in an attempt to put the horrible conditions of the airline behind me was to recite the various lines of Borat over and over again. "You see, My Brother Billo...He is Retard..." ...time passes... "Do you want to be my boyfriend?"

Very nice!

Dan's Food Column: Never have I been so disgusted in my life with the swill placed before me on an airplane. Just look at this garbage. Beef with beef sauce with Uncle Ben's rice!



This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs.

Monday, July 2, 2007

July 2: Are we there yet? No.

Since I'm posting now at close to 10 PM Pacific time, you can assume that something has gone seriously awry with our travel arrangements. Lo and behold, you'd be right.



This is neither a happy, nor welcome sight. Volcanic activity? Krakatoa? A solution to all of our global warming worries? Nope.

Volcanic ash spewing from one of the several active volcanoes on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Where? Eastern Russia... that thing that extends down toward Japan. The one the Russians and Japanese fought a war over a hundred years ago. Air China says that there was enough volcanic activity to significantly delay the flight.

How much of a delay do you say? Nine freaking hours! A 2:50 PM departure time turns into an 11:50 PM departure time.

We could have done a lot of things with our nine hours. We could have imitated Tom Hanks in that bad movie about how he's stuck in an airport and has a worse Russian accent than Borat. Or, we could have gone home and slept all day. We could have watched all three Godfather movies, back to back to back. (Although why waste time on Godfather III?)

We decided to have some crazy fun instead. So while all two of our readers were expecting to see something exotic and new, we present to you something from a little closer to home. The Heng Brothers give you our odyssey through San Francisco.

Peter being awesome at the SFO BART station. Mom showing her palpable disdain.

Melissa starting to lose her mind.

The parents are nonplussed.



Top: How I'm feeling about the whole situation. Bottom: Sibling love is all over that BART train.





Above: A view of the San Francisco skyline from the a tour boat in the Bay. Below: Peter and the Golden Gate Bridge (really?)

Above: Views of Alcatraz from the Bay


Above and below: The family explores Coit Tower and North Beach.



Below: The Chinese continue to flood our country with cheaply-made goods. America stands and watches as its manufacturing jobs are lost overseas. All this and more on Lou Dobbs Tonight!


A shot of St. Peter and Paul Church, the anchor of one of the sides of Washington Square in North Beach

Sunday, July 1, 2007

Last Supper

yay for eating malaysian food before going to chiner

July 1: Packing

Packing is lame.