Tri's Space

To my bitter surprise, the beds in China and Korea are rock hard.  Note that I was staying at five star type hotels (Hyatt and Shangri-La) too.  I actually thought camping was more comfortable (yes I know that is hard to believe). 

I tried moving rooms but they indicated all their beds where the same.  Eeeks.  I ended up folding my comforter into a taco so I could sleep on top of it. 

I’ve been duped by my parents.  They have always had soy sauce at our dinner table.  When I went to China I thought it would be everywhere.  It wasn’t, instead they served vinegar.  Yuck.  At the restaurants, I always had to ask them to get me soy sauce.  I’m not sure what the deal is but I’m definitely going to hit up my parents for an explanation.

·        There serving size are super small – even compared to my standards.  I can understand why we Americans are so shapely!  Bigger is not necessary better.

·        They also use every part of the chicken (nothing is wasted).  I went to both a fancy and low-end (local) restaurant to compare the experience.  In either situation, I never got served a chicken breast or thigh.  I think they ship it all to America  =)

We are use to McDonalds and Starbucks being everywhere.  Well in Asia that is not the case.  It is KFC.  Yep, KFC to them is like Starbucks is to us.  It seemed like there was one on every corner. 

Note that I didn’t eat one single fast food meal in my two weeks here!  I did stop into Dairy Queen for a couple of blizzards though (hey they had mango fruit smoothies that you don’t get back in the states!). 

I visited (actually bumped into) my first “hutong”.  Hutongs are narrow cobbled alleyways that small time vendors sell their goods for cheap prices.  I couldn’t believe how much fun it was in the hutongs.  I wish I would have gone to them sooner.  Some of the stuff I paid at the mall type stores where half the price here! 

I was bedazzled by what I found here.  You had food of all sorts.  I saw maggots and scorpions (the scorpions still were alive!) on shish-kabobs.  You could drink fresh coconut juice straight out of the coconut.  It also included a variety of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean food.  Of course they had tons of vendors selling all sorts of trinkets from chopsticks to Buddha statues to communist military uniforms.   

So I ended up eating a ton of finger foods and negotiated with the sales people.  The sales people were good people and it was fun bargaining with them.  It was a blast!  My mom would be proud of the price I got for some of the goods!   Hooray!!!

So I learned a couple of tricks here in Asia since I don’t speak their language. 

1.      The first tip is to make sure you print out the hotel name and address of the place you will be staying at in the foreign country.  It of course will need the foreign language of the hotel and address.  Now when you land at the airport you can show this to the transportation service people and they can assist you to the right bus, train or taxi. 

2.      The second tip is to make sure you get the business card of the hotel you are staying at.  You can easily get this from the concierge desk.  So now when you are traveling around town you can just show them the business card and people can help get you back to the hotel

3.   Subways are excellent to use here.  Though taxis are dirt cheap (depending on distance but they start at $1.20).

4.   Barebones bargaining that I learned from the people here.

·        Aim to pay 50-65% of the initial offer.

·        Only engage in bargaining session if you are willing to buy it.  Changing your mind after the vendor agrees to the price is considered rude.

·        Do not offer a price because it will give the sales person a minimum price you are willing to pay.  Keep them guessing.

·        Be complimentary to the sales person (nice store, nice goods, etc).  Or you could go with the product has defects that you are buying.

·        Do not go overboard with bargaining.  If you are arguing about 25 cents is it really worth your time?

·        Have fun!