MTR Fare Saver Map

Okay, so none of you are probably interested in this Google Map, which lists some of the MTR Fare Saver machines around the more popular tourist spots here in HK. You only save about 2 HKD, which only gives you enough to take a free ride on the tram-system. Still better than nothing. Besides, if it's popular enough for the locals....



(yes, those pictures are recycled)

I didn't put all the Fare Savers on the map nor am I planning on updating it right now (even though the machines do get moved from time-to-time). If it's useful enough for people I'll let others tweak it (or I might) so let me know. You know, for those two people that actually visit this blog. =)

Lastly, there's a whole slew of terms and conditions on the MTR's Fare Saver page (English, 中文) so be sure to read them before you use it.

US mobile coverage maps

Looking at figuring out which mobile phone company to use in the US and thought I'd throw these coverage maps up here. I won't get started (er, continue ranting) on the removal of Google Voice from the iPhone.

Anyway, too bad the quality of mobile phones in the US pales in comparison to the rest of the world. For now, these are what we get to choose from (in reverse alphabetical order):

• Verizon Wireless - http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/CoverageLocatorController?requesttype=NEWREQUEST
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• T-Mobile - http://compass.t-mobile.com/Default.aspx
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Sprint - http://coverage.sprint.com/IMPACT.jsp
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• AT&T - http://www.wireless.att.com/coverageviewer/
  
  
  

Photos: Top Gelato in Venice

Given that it's summer and I just returned from a trip to Venice, here's a list in my humble opinion of the best gelato we tried in Venice.

#1 - Pear



#2 - Chocolate



Both from:
Gelati Nico
Dorsoduro, 922 - Zattere

Hands down the best gelateria in Venice that we tried and if you do a quick search for best Venice gelateria, it will be on the list and rightfully so. The pear gelato just tastes like you're biting into a real pear. The chocolate was a close second as it also tastes incredibly like a smooth bar of chocolate. If you can only make one stop in Venice for gelato, this is it. (In fact, we stopped by here every day we were in Venice....)

#3 - Watermelon



Gelateria Alaska
Santa Croce 1159, Calle Larga dei Bari

Alaska is known for the fact that they use fresh ingredients in their gelato. While for the most part we could tell that the actual ingredients were used, the flavors weren't as rich or deep as Nico. For example, the ginger had strings of real ginger, but it wasn't quite "spicy" enough for me. I did, however, quite enjoyed the watermelon gelato (in case you're wondering, Nico didn't have watermelon). One taste of that gelato made you think about warm summer afternoons lounging around biting into the deep flesh of a watermelon.

#4 - Dark Chocolate



Grom
Campo San Barnaba
30123 Venice - Italy

We stumbled across this gelateria on our meanderings through Venice and really liked their dark chocolate gelato. There was a good balance of the sweet and bitter that is dark chocolate.

#5 - Lemon



Gelateria Paolin S. Stefano
Campo Santo Stefano 2962, San Marc

We weren't too enthralled with the gelato here. M described the strawberry as "melted Starbursts" and reluctantly I have to agree as it has that overly sweet and fake taste to it. However, the lemon flavor was quite good. It tasted sweet and light, and except for the scoops that were tainted be the strawberry, quite enjoyable.

Okay, as you can tell, I won't be a food critic any time soon, but maybe the photos themselves will give you a good sense of what it might taste like. Or just make your mouth water. =) -- more --

Mac: Fixing auto connection to WiFi

I've had a hell of a time trying to figure out why my Macbook wouldn't auto-connect to my preferred networks and Googling over and over again didn't help. Basically, up pops the "none of your preferred networks are available" window. But finally, this forum post actually worked so I figured I'd repost it here. Since it's done so succinctly, rather than rewrite it, I'd just reprint the very, very helpful instructions here:

I have been searching high and low for a fix to this and none have worked…until now!

I spotted a fix to this problem that strangely centered on the specific location of the “System Preferences.app”, if other than the standard location of the root of the “Applications” folder. I had in fact moved mine and would NEVER have thought it related to this bug. Hmmm!

If you have moved the System Preferences application (not alias, actual app) to any other location for any reason, your newly joined preferred network will NOT be properly remembered and will NEVER be properly rejoined. Apparently one of the multi-step system procedures involved in properly saving a preferred network assumes the location of System Preferences to be the standard location. Period.

FIX:
1) Move “System Preferences.app” back to “Applications\”.
2) Delete all instances of “Preferred Networks” in “Network Preferences”.
3) Delete all “Airport network password” instances in “Keychain Access”.
4) Restart your Mac.
5) Add/Join applicable preferred network using the Airport pulldown menu or in Network Preferences (as if for the first time). Use “Advanced” in “Network Preferences” to confirm the existence of your preferred network and the correct settings. Use “Keychain Access” to confirm the existence of the applicable “Airport network password” instance and the correct settings.
6) Restart your Mac. The OS should now find your preferred network and join it on its own. Good Luck!

NOTE: Simply moving back System Preferences will NOT suffice. Deleting and re-adding/joining the preferred network is a must after the app has been moved.

Hopefully that solves your problem too. I'll add in my two cents that I followed these instructions and it worked beautifully. As an added bonus, I think my Macbook boots up much quicker too.

Yunnan - Day 1: 丽江古城

On arrival at the Lijiang airport that afternoon, we were greeted by our driver sent by our hotel. As you can see, there were a slew of drivers waiting for other tourists.



The hotel we stayed at this first night was called Zen Garden Hotel. They have two locations both near Old Town Lijiang (one smack in the middle - Wuyi Branch - and another up on the hill - Lion Hill Branch). We ended up staying at both and did notice the price difference of 880 RMB (Lion Hill) versus 500 RMB (Wuyi). For example, the water pressure at Wuyi was much weaker probably due to its location in the middle of the Old Town. Both rooms were clean and comfortable.



One advantage of the Lion Hill Branch was that we had a view of the Old Town from just outside the steps of the hotel. We dropped off our stuff and went down the hill to explore the Old Town.



As a late lunch, we sought out the 过桥米线 ("crossing bridge noodles"), which is the hallmark noodles of Yunnan. Frankly, they were okay at best and we opted to try other noodles for our later meals.



This is the famous waterwheel at the north end of the Old Town. There is generally always a throng of tourists clustered around it - lots of tours use it as a meeting place.



On the way through the Old Town we went through 四方街 (Square Market).



A canal runs north-south through Old Town and goes through the edge of the Square Market. It's said if you are lost in Lijiang that you just need to follow the canal upstream to find the Old Town.



Through the streets of Old Town are many stores selling "local" trinkets. One common complaint by our non-Han guides was that the area has turned very commercialized and been invaded by Han Chinese. Thus, the "local" products being sold are not actually made by locals any more.



We headed towards 木府 (Mu's Residence), which is a modern reproduction of the local ruler's home from centuries ago. There are plenty of signs scattered through the Old Town that direct tourists to it.



The buildings were rebuilt in the late 1990s (although I forget why they needed to be rebuilt). I recall there are seven buildings that progress up a hill and from the last building there is quite the view of the city.



After we were done, we grabbed dinner at one of the local restaurants. We were looking for a place that had some sort of a view.



The food was nothing to write home about, but the view wasn't too bad.



As night fell, the streets lit up with lanterns.



And that ended the first day of our trip. -- more --

Yunnan - Day 0: Things to Buy, Borrow, Beg, and Bring

Here, I have to give much credit to M for planning and booking the whole trip. I was just along for the ride and the pictures. =)



Contents:

• Getting There
  
• Phone Card
  
• What to Pack
  
• Finding a *Good* Driver

Getting There
The first thing we'd suggest is to plan your trip using domestic airline tickets. We found rather cheap flights on Ctrip. In case you're wondering, it's actually a publicly traded company in the US (ticker: CTRP).

If you noticed from the picture above, we flew out of Shenzhen (instead of Hong Kong), which made all the flights domestic and also saved us some money (as HK -> Lijiang was much more).



For the most part, the airlines were interchangeable so we booked based on time. This actually hurt us in the end as one of our flights home was changed to early in the morning and gave us a long layover in Kunming. We tried switching to an earlier flight, but since our last airline only had one flight, we were stuck unless we paid penalties and fees. We flew the following airlines (and are alive to tell about it):

CZ - 中国南方航空公司 (China Southern Airlines, Co. - part of SkyTeam so miles accrue for Continental and Delta)
FM - 上海航空公司 (Shanghai Airlines - part of Star Alliance so miles accrue for United and US Airways)
MU - 中国东方航空 (China Eastern Airlines - no affiliation that I could find)
CA - 中国国际航空公司 (Air China - part of Star Alliance so miles accrue for United and US Airways)

Phone Card
There are two main mobile phone companies in China: 中國移動 (China Mobile) and 中国联通 (China Unicom). Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to purchase the cards online without a large mark-up. It was also a bit difficult to do research as most of the information wasn't really found online. From Hong Kong, both offered a "dual-number" SIM card that would give both a China-based and HK-based phone number on that one SIM. From research on China Mobile, it looks like each region sets its own price and terms so purchases from HK are more centered on Guandong Province (such as free incoming calls within the Guandong area).

While I guess you can use your existing phones and just roam - at least Three HK is such a terrible and greedy service that you're much better off getting a phone card. For example, the roaming rates for Three HK run HK$13.30 (approx US$1.70) per minute for incoming calls and over HK$3 (approx US$0.40) per minute for local outgoing calls.

We purchased a "Easy own HKcard" from China Mobile for 113.5 HKD (approx US$15 or about 10 minutes of roaming incoming calls), which gave us 95 RMB worth of credit. There is a 25 RMB monthly fee so essentially we used this as a one-off phone card for this trip. Service was great - we had reception pretty much everywhere even out in the mountains. For example, in the picture below you'll see in the top-left corner a cell tower - the mountains were littered every few miles with these things.



What to Pack
One of the hardest things for us to figure out was the temperature. Searches on the usual weather sites didn't really pinpoint the appropriate cities. In a nutshell, at least in April, the weather in the cities were cool and pleasant. I think you can get by with jeans, t-shirt, and a light jacket. In the mountains, especially up near Deqin, you'll need to bring heavier stuff, such as a ski jacket or something similar as the mornings can be quite cold (our SUV clocked the temperature at about 39 degrees Fahrenheit in the morning). Some weather links that M found (unfortunately not in English and in Celsius):

Lugu Lake (泸沽湖)
Deqin (云南德钦)

One more thing to pack: a flashlight. It actually proved to be quite invaluable our first morning there as the power went out city-wide. Also, if you go outside the city, there really isn't a whole lot of streetlights nor porch lights.

Finding a *Good* Driver


Lastly, if you're not part of a tour group, to get from place to place within Yunnan, you'll need to find a driver. Now, one of the most annoying things about Lijiang was that we were accosted by people offering to drive us around the surrounding area. (And after you say no to one, somebody else will approach you five steps later. Lather, rinse, repeat. See how this can be annoying?) Usually, they'll just end up taking you to some tourist traps (see Day 2). Luckily, in our preparation for this trip we came across this blog post which recommended a driver from their trip.

We wholeheartedly concur with their experience with Zha Xi Pei Chu (扎西培楚) so if you're looking for a driver, give him a call first. His contact information:

Mobile: 13988733337
E-mail: zhaxi-peichu@hotmail.com
QQ: 970265966

Oh, and yes, we can definitely see his mountain rally driving experience when we were dogged by this army of 20 Toyota SUVs full of Thai tourists that were barreling through these windy mountain rounds at 100+ km/hour.
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Yunnan: Delinquency

Oops, sorry for the absence of posting in April. Got back from a trip to 云南 (Yunnan) and there were quite a few photos to sort through. It was an insightful trip, but in a way it made me miss the US. But I digress. Here's our itinerary and given the number of pictures and days, I'm planning on doing a day-by-day write up. Our schedule went like this:

Day 0 - fly to 丽江 (Lijiang) via 深圳 (Shenzhen) and 昆明 (Kunming)
Day 1 - 丽江古城 (Old Town of Lijiang)
Day 2 - 印像麗江 (Impression Lijiang show), 玉龙雪山 (Jade Dragon Snow Mountain), 拉市海 (Lashihai Lake), 束河古镇 (Shuhe Ancient Town)
Day 3 - 丽江 (Lijiang), 黑龙潭 (Black Dragon Pool)
Day 4 - 泸沽湖 (Lugu Lake)
Day 5 - 泸沽湖 (Lugu Lake)
Day 6 - on the road to 香格里拉 (Shangri-La) with a stop at 虎跳峡 (Tiger Leaping Gorge)
Day 7 - 德欽 (Deqin)
Day 8 - 明永冰川 (Mingyong Glacier)
Day 9 - 香格里拉 (Shangri-La)
Day 10 - fly back via a stop in 昆明 (Kunming)

So... let's see how lazy I won't be and maybe there'll be more to see here soon!

Photos: Bangkok

Went to Bangkok last month for a quick weekend getaway. M and I primarily went to three spots: the Damnoen Saduak Floating Market, the Chatuchak Market, and the Grand Palace (along with the surrounding Wat Phra Kaew and Wat Pho). Mmm.... mango sticky rice. =)



As I've noticed in many of the places, the tourbooks are always warning you against hiring random drivers to drive you from the airport. Luckily, there's quite an orderly process in Bangkok that costs an extra 50 Thai baht (about US$1.50). You tell the person behind the booth your destination and they write it in Thai for you. This last part is quite important and makes getting to your place much, much easier.


The vehicles on the road in Bangkok were different than what I expected - they were not only quite colorful, they were also quite "green" as a number of them looked to be powered by CNG.



Along the way to Damnoen Saduak Floating Market, which was a good 110 km away by car (about a 2 hour drive) from downtown Bangkok, we saw a number of fields being harvested. We were later told the fields were yielding salt. (Our driver told us it was for soap, but couldn't convey to us exactly what it was. We thought it might be grain, but it wasn't rice or barley.)


At the Floating Market, our driver dropped us off at one of the motorized canoes. It ended up being like sitting in an SUV on the water compared to one of the manually-rowed boats. We unfortunately didn't follow this posting's advice ("Do not get suck in by the boat tour operator at the bus station. They want "Standard" price of $1000 B for one hour long tail boat tour. Instead, walk outside the parking lot and turn left to town. A short 10 - 15 minutes walk and you will arrive at the bridge over looking the floating market. You can then hire a non-motor boat tour for $100 - $200 B at the floating market."), which was right on the money. Anyway, at least we were able to go quite quickly:


Versus ...


In the actual market, the waterway gets quite crowded (alternatively, we realized you could actually get into the market area and just walk around on foot if desired).


Boats were used for all sorts of things, including cooking WITH REAL FIRE!?!


Back in Bangkok, we took a ride on the BTS Skytrain to get to the Chatuchak Market.


This bypassed a lot of the traffic that dominated the streets.



At the Chatuchak Market:





At Wat Phra Kaew:




Notice the rules for entering Wat Phra Kaew and Grand Palace! (Basically, you have to wear proper attire which means no sandals or shorts.)


As evidenced at how the cultures in the region are so intertwined, there was even a miniature model of Angkor Wat!


The Emerald Buddha:

(Okay so not such a good shot, but they wouldn't let amateur cameras inside.)

Outside the Grand Palace:


At Wat Pho there was a different entrance for Thais and visitors. One required a ticket.


Inside the Wat:


And with that, the weekend was quickly over!
-- more --