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A friend just sent me a news story about a guy who was vacationing in Central America with a friends of his. They were NY Giants fans, and the Giants ended up defeating the Patriots in the 2008 Superbowl, leaving the Patriots one loss short of a perfect 19-0 season. They had heard that the NE Patriots Superbowl Champions gear that noted their perfect 19-0 season had ended up nearby when it was donated to people in a poor village and they decided to find some. 

So they trooped off into a few small villages to find a hat or shirt, and ended up talking to several locals, including a girl from their home state of New Jersey who was visiting friends. They found a hat and shirt, brand new and unworn, and paid handsomely (in local terms) for these incredible souvenirs.

I started thinking about what a fun adventure that must have been, and it was clearly a great story, even if the adventure was a little tiring. It led to my thinking about another friend’s story about of buying me a Mah Jong set in China. Again, trying to find a hard to find souvenir led to interaction with locals and seeing places that might not be touristy, but more the “real world.” 

So it lead to the idea that all trips should include a souvenir hunt. Not a generic t-shirt, or a magnet, or something generic like that, but something unique to the location, and not easy to find, at least not easy to a tourist. It would give you a reason to interact with locals, and potentially allow you to end up in a small village in Central America, with a hat and shirt that should not exist racing to get to the last bus out of town.

From here on out, all of my vacation planning should include a souvenir hunt. I will decide on something before hand, so I can arrive ready to start looking. It doesn’t have to be a purchased item, it might be black sand from a Hawaiian beach, or pumice from Mt St Helens (which I have) or something purchase, hopefully from locals, that will always be a catalyst to an adventure in tracking down this treasure.

My friends CO and AnnMarie were featured in an article in a Duluth News Tribune article written by Linda Hanson that was published today. It’s an article about their life in Brevig Mission, Alaska, a tiny village in way northern Alaska. Brevig is a fascinating place stuck partially in the 19th century and partially in the 21st century.

Brevig is only slightly closer to the closest town, Nome, than it is to Russia as you can see in this map:

The article is short, and doesn’t have a lot of detail about life in Brevig, but it’s cool to see the interest. Linda called me last week for some more information about Brevig and CO and Ann, which is mentioned in the article as well.

Here is a link to the article, which includes a photo of CO, AnnMarie and their son Harold in Brevig:

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/articles/index.cfm?id=71110&section=homepage

You can also see more about life in Brevig on the Rudstrom’s Blog.

Driving the smart doesn’t seem that much different than driving any other car, until others see you. While many people have scoffed at the car calling it ugly, or un-manly, or the like, I have never got as much attention as I have driving my smart. It’s not a car you want to drive when you are rushed or in a bad mood, because people will ask you questions about it whenever you stop.

On my recent road-trip, I had at least seven different people ask me questions about the fortwo. They ranged from people who had no idea what it was to people that knew, or thought they knew what it was. The first question they ask is what kind of mileage it gets, 42MPG, and the second question is do you like it, and I do. They also often ask how much it costs and are often surprised that is it so cheap, mine cost just over $13k.

The real fun is on the road, between little kids who stare out the windows at the car, to people that slow down to look at it as they pass, it’s a popular car. I even had a bunch of kids in a Jetta slow down while passing me so one of them could take a picture of me between Ann Arbor and Detroit. I’m sure there is now a picture of me driving on I94 somewhere on the internet.

On the trip I saw just two other smarts. A blue one near Ann Arbor, and a yellow one somewhere around Milwaukee. I also saw two Lamborghini Gallardo convertibles on this trip (although it might have been the same one on two different days), so that gives you an idea of how uncommon the fortwo still is.

Internet access was not as easy in China as I had expected, and I was unable to post any updates during my trip. This might get a little confusing, but I will be writing several updated about various legs of the trip and back dating them to when I should have written them.

As a quick teaser, the trip was incredible. The experience was absolutely awesome, and having three weeks to explore the country was also amazing. I am glad to be home again, and I think that the length and experience was the perfect length for me.

A few statistics from the trip:

People involved: 7 (Fritz and Rain, Peter, David, Rick, Brian, and I)
Photos I took: 1296

Total number of photos taken by everybody: ~4500

Provinces visited: 5 (Beijing, Henan, Shaanxi, Sichuan, and Guangxi)

Cities Visited: 7 (Beijing, Ye’Xian, Pingdingshan, Louyang, Xi’an, Juizhaigou, and Yangshuo)

Total flights: 7 (On Northwest, Air China, and Hainan Airline)

Methods of transport used: 12 (International flight, Chinese domestic flight, hard sleeper train, hard seat train, subway, Tour bus, inter-city coach bus, city bus, taxi, private car, mini-cab, bicycle, foot)

Highest elevation visited: 3500 meters (11500 ft) at the Juizhaigou airport

Highest elevation hiked: 2900 meters (9500 ft) in Juizhaigou park

Animals added to my list of animals I’ve eaten: 4 (rabbit, yak, scorpion, sea horse)

Here is a list of my entries in chronological order:

Pre-trip – Pre-trip entry

Beijing – with photos

Ye’Xian – with photos

Pindingshan to Luoyang – with photos

Longmen Caves – with photos

Juizhaigou Arrival – with photos

Juizhaigou Park – with photos

Yangshuo – with photos

Final Days in Beijing – with photos

Humorous sightings while in China – Entry coming soon

The train journey from Guilin back to Beijing was an interesting experience. In China, most people travel by train, and many large cities have only recently built airports. I traveled in a “hard sleeper” which is normally the most luxurious manner to travel by train, and so has the more affluent Chinese. None of them speak english, however, that’s still a rarity in most of China. They were all friendly, and the older couple on the bottom bunks was very nice, offering me their table to write on and such.

For people traveling by sleeper in China, there are three rows of bunks. The bottom bunks serve as seats for people when they are not sleeping, and the top bunks have the least headroom, so the middle bunk is considered the best, although I actually preferred the top. On one train there was a shelf at the top to place bags and keep them nearby, and the vents for the AC are up there, so that person can chose to close them and boil everybody else. There’s also nobody climbing up you bed.

So I spent 26 hours on a train traveling about 1100 miles up through China, with very little ability to communicate with anybody on the train. It was a unique experience to say the least, but not nearly as difficult as one might have imagined. I did have the luxury of movies, music, and recorded TV shown on my PDA phone to keep me entertained, as well as my camera to record what I could of the passing country-side.

Here is the route that I believe that we took through China. We started in Guilin, and then traveled through Changsha, Wuhan, Zhengzhou, Shijiazhuang, and into Beijing.

When I arrived in Beijing, with no phone, no Chinese language skills, and no real way to communicate, It was very nice to find Fritz waiting at the station for me.

We headed back to the hotel he had found, and settled in.

Monday June 4th was our last day in Beijing, so the last chance to pick up trinkets and such. We ended up eating lunch at McDonald’s, were I had my only opportunity to use an Asian Toilet, with a sense of urgency. That was an interesting experience.

While wandering about, we saw an interesting site, while in the Beijing subway there was a guy holding his daughter, about 3 years old, over a trashcan, while she was peeing… Diapers are not the norm in China, even in Beijing. I felt it best to not photograph this site, despite the oddity of it.

While wandering around and shopping, we also stopped at a street vendor where we sampled some unique cuisine, deep fried seahorse and scorpion. For the record, they both taste like burnt bacon.

I ran out of deodorant at the end of the trip. Most Chinese do not wear deodorant, so it is not easy to find. I decided I needed it when we got to the airport, and my though was that they would have more Western stuff there, since it’s an international airport. It turns out that the only deodorant in the place was $12US Calvin Klein at the duty-free shop. Of course, you can’t just buy stuff there, you pay for it, and then they hold it until you get on the airplane, which was still a while off. To help spend the rest of our Chinese money, we bought several waters and juices at a vending machine at the gate, to make sure we were prepared for the flight. When we boarded, they made us leave the bottles, because of the “american laws.” Nice, way to mis-interpret the laws, jerks. I chugged the juice and left the water, which turned out to make for a very full bladder on the plane. Oh well.

The flight from Beijing was also delayed by two hours. This was a problem since we had a two hour layover in Japan and needed to clear customs there before heading back to America. As it turns out, we missed our flight that connected through Detroit, and got a direct flight back to Minneapolis instead that required us to hustle through the airport to catch. That flight was actually delayed to allow us to catch it. In the end we arrived in Minneapolis two hours earlier than planned, got aisle seats on the long flight, and got travel vouchers from Northwest, so this was clearly the best late flight I’ve ever experienced.