Well, Alisha had a good idea with her summary of her recent trip through Europe, so I decided to give it a try with my Asia trip.
Total Distance (not including to and from America): 3020mi (4860km)
Number of different types of transportation: 6
Friends visited: 3
Map of my trip in Korea and China
Best Places to get pictures taken:
- Tiananmen Square (Beijing)
- The Bund (Shanghai)
Tastiest food:
- Hongdong Garden (Gimhae, South Korea)
- Huangting in the Peninsula Hotel (Beijing)
Most surprising food:
- Duck Heads (Shanghai – I thought we were ordering shrimp)
Best meal for the buck:
- Jianbing (Beijing and Shanghai – almost a breakfast burrito for 30 cents)
Best Restaurant slogan:
Check out the logo - Mr. Pizza is a player
- Mr. Pizza – Love for Women (South Korea) Also winner of the best pizza ingredient: crust stuffed with mashed sweet potatoes.
Sketchiest transportation:
- Halfway between a vespa and a motorbike. With three people. And all our luggage. But it was only 5 kuai! (70 cents?)
Most appropriate exit from a museum:
- Leaving the Urban Planning exhibit in Shanghai into a giant underground mall from which it took over 45 minutes to find an exit.
Most surprising meal (for someone else):
- Taking a girl I had just met ten minutes before to a 5-star restaurant (Huangting) because I had budgeted too much money and had decided to take the first person I met to the most expensive restaurant I could find.
Best hotel feature:
- Renting a cell phone for $1.50/day. Wow, what a great idea.
Best Club:
- Coco Banana (best fellow dancers, too)
Most awesome and intimidating Chef:
- KungFu Pasta Chef making longevity noodles on my birthday.
Best Athlete:
- Michael Phelps
Best conversation:
- 35 minutes of talking to a taxi driver in Beijing who guessed that I’d lived in China for two or three years. That was the moment when I really got Chinese.
Most frustrating 20 minutes:
- Getting stopped on the great wall by men from the army and not having a ticket because my tour guide was trying to scam us and having to speak for the two guys from the Netherlands as well because I spoke Chinese. We eventually just paid them again, and then I had to convince the tour guide to give us our money back at the end. Haha.
Best choice for what to pack:
- A week’s supply of Immodium AD
Place most likely to return:
- Beijing
Hmm, I guess that’s enough for now. If you want, I’ll put more up later when I think of them!
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September 1, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Glad you liked the idea! I think you were much more concise than I was. I’m way behind on my blog reading, what with moving in and buying furniture and all, but I can’t wait to read all about Asia (I read the summary). Anyway… we should catch up for real sometime! I’m back in Cambridge. I’ll shoot you an email
September 2, 2008 at 10:58 am
“Most surprising meal (for someone else):” You are awesome, Mike!! that is a brilliant idea!!
September 2, 2008 at 11:11 am
Thanks, Kendall! It was fun and tasty. Plus, she told me it was like being in a movie. Haha.
September 14, 2008 at 1:32 am
“KungFu Pasta Chef making longevity noodles on my birthday.”
you had a birthday and longevity noodles!! amazing
i <3 noodles
i’m so glad you’ve written about your china/korea trip
/haven’t read whole post yet, starting bottom up, but had to comment on the noodles !!!
September 14, 2008 at 1:36 am
Did you try the duck heads?! i’m thinking the meat would be tough… I don’t know if I could try the eyes or brain, and I wonder if the beak would be crunch.
Alisha and you had a great idea for trip summary ! I like.
The map looks great, where is it from that you got to mark it and get distance, google earth?
September 14, 2008 at 1:56 am
Yep, Google Earth and a screen shot… not too complicated! There’s got to be a better way, though; I couldn’t include the airflights to and from America, etc. because they went around the world.