Looking around Guangzhou - Transportation

I'm amazed at the traffic here in Guangzhou.  Vicky is driving and is sharing the road with busses, electric busses (that move slower), bicycles, mopeds, motorcycles, push carts, pedestrians, all of whom seem to believe they have absolute right-of-way.  It was fun to watch... but I was glad I wasn't driving.  I tried to capture a lot of this from the car, but things were moving so fast that I just have a bunch of blurry shots.

I was really amazed at what people can haul on a bicycle.

Vicky's Toilet

For a while now, Vicky has been saying "Wait until you see my toilet".

I've been mentally preparing myself for one of the eastern style squatting types of toilet. This old boy hasn't squatted since my knee surgery a few years ago, so I'm not exactly looking forward to that experience.

Instead I'm face to face with this contraption. The silver bar on the left (above the TP roll) is the toilet's "control panel". Yes, this toilet has 15 buttons - only one of which is "Flush".

It looks like it is a high tech version of both a bidet and commode. Buttons include "rear cleansing", "front cleansing" and evidently it also has a "drying" function.

For now I'm just using one button.

It does have the habit of opening its own lid whenever you walk into the bathroom... which makes you feel welcome.

Congee (Chinese breakfast)

This morning for breakfast, Vicky's mom made some Congee and left it in her apartment for us. This is a dish consisting of rice that is cooked to a soupy texture. In this recipe, ginkgo biloba fruit, dried scallops, and "dried bean milk cream".

It has a nice subtle taste, and lots of different textures. It was served with coffee, orange juice and some oatmeal blueberry cookies (which Vicky points out are western - Congee is normally just served with water).

33 Hours of Travel

So yesterday, I left the house around 5:30 AM EDT to head to the airport. I arrived at Vicky's apt at 2:30 AM Chinese time - 33 hrs later if my math is correct.

The trip involved a flight to Chicago, a flight to Hong Kong (which was rerouted far south of Taiwan to avoid a typhoon and included A one hour refueling stop in San Francicso - 20 hrs on the airplane), a SUV ride to the Chinese border, then a 2-hr bus ride into Guangzhou (which included a traffic jam at 2:00 AM) and finally a taxi from the bus station to the apt.

At the bus station, we met up with Tony (Vicky's brother) and his son Tiger (who I will introduce later).

I'd show you a photo of the apt., but we exploded into it with suitcases and bags everywhere! Allowing for an adrenaline rush, we finally got to bed around 4:00 AM.

I woke up at 7:00 to this scene from her balcony. The air outside smells like a firework just went off... Vicky tells me this is the cleanest air of any of the cities we will visit.

Despite the haze, the area is beautiful.

Grounded...

We're on the ground in San Francisco to take on more fuel.

I didn't think I had gained THAT much weight.

Actually, it turns out there is a typhoon(!) in China and we have to "take a longer route" around it. So we get to wait on the plane while the fuel guys do their thing before continuing on.

One interesting thing about this flight I had not considered is that we seem to be following the sun as it goes around the earth. Right now it's 4:45 Pacific time here, which is 7:45 PM Eastern time and 7:45 AM (Aug 2nd) China time. I don't know how the detouring will work, but we were scheduled to land in China around 7:00 PM China time so I expect we'll be in continuous daylight.

Exploring...

Even when merely in Chicago, there are things to see!

Meet Brandon!

So after a bit of a flight delay, and some confusion about where people were camping, I finally met Brandon one of my traveling companions for the next couple of weeks.

So far I learned that he's going in to 7th grade... he claims to be 17 years old (but then he's unusually short - even by Chinese standards, so I won't mention it, but I have inside information that he might actually be 12).

Like all the kids in my youth group, he tries his best to keep me from taking his photo... He'll learn that I usually win - I have lots of practice.

Beyond that, he's an avid reader and a wiz at the Rubik's Cube.