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!
