Wondering with Wind

I joined the Stop Global Warming Virtual March today after I read a hilarious post about Sheryl Crow’s eco-friendly baby shower, saying that Sheryl, my favorite rocker, “wants to limit the use of toilet paper to one sheet per visit”. I don’t know if she was talking about using one sheet of paper after wash her hands or … 😉

Anyway, I don’t own a car in Shanghai, so I feel good at doing something stopping global warming in my daily life. My action is to get around by foot instead of bus or taxi. I was “proud” that I took train to Beijing in my recent trip instead of plane. Train is the greenest transportation in travel, according to Tom Mercer on Trains, Planes, Automobiles.

Here are some more numbers for your reference:

Total Emissions Per Vehicle

SUV (15mpg) – 2.29 lbs/mi
Average Car (25 mpg) – 1.39 lbs/mi
Prius (55 mpg) – .61 lbs/mi
Motorcycle – .57 lbs/mi
RV – 4.58 lbs/mi

Total Emissions Per Person
Average Car/Single Driver – 1.39 lbs/mi
Average Car/Family of 4 – .34 lbs/mi
Train – .32 lbs/mi
Bus – .48 lbs/mi
Plane (250 mi trip) – .85 lbs/mi**
Plane (600 mi) – .69 lbs/mi**
Plane (3500 mi) – .56 lbs/mi**

During my recent trip to Beijing alone, I stayed in a new budget hotel called Master Inn (贏家酒店, meaning: a hotel for winner or a hotel better than home). It is a business economic class hotel in China. One of my friend founds this online when we wanted to find a budget hotel near “Tsinghua Science Park” area. It is located in the campus of Peking University, Health Science Center, and recently remodeled from a college-run hostel into this business chain hotel, and it is in “beta phase” during my stay.

What I like about the hotel:

1. Brand new items: the hall, the floor, the carpet, the wall, the sheet and towers…When everything is new, everthing looks and feels clean and good; and more important, I didn’t smell any “renovation odor”.

2. Quite environment: It is no surprise that I didn’t hear much noices since it is in campus. The wall is not as thin as other new hotels, and I really had the same sound sleep as at home.

3. Free Internet and breakfast: the price of a queen-size bed room is 188/night, the lowest I can find online at that location.

What I dislike about it:

1. Unclear direction: I went to the hotel with a local fiend who has looked up the hotel location on map before. We need to ask direction to the hotel; on the second day, I was with another friend and we both got lost in the campus.

2. Small room: The bed/living room and restroom are really small, but the layout is good enough for ONE person to stay. I don’t know if the room with two twin-size beds is larger.

3. Service: I asked for a hair drier and was told that all the driers were borrowed. They didn’t follow up to ask if other customers have finished using the drier.

I am in Beijing for the 3rd Annual Chinese Blogger Conference from Nov. 2 -5. I took an overnight train to Beijing. Here is the tour from Beijing Train Station to the conference venue: Tsinghua Science Park (where Google is located at.)

Beijing Train Station

An ancient building I shot on taxi.

The main entrance of Tsinghua Science Park

Conference sponsors and popular bloggers (the thumbnails)

The hostess

The most adorable KIDS from Flickr.

This looks like something wrong when crafting.

But now you know!

I can’t read the text on this orignial post: Mona Lisa…pís of keik!

When I told people that “we went hiking in Sai Kung”, most of them would respond with a question:” huh? you went to Vietnam?” “No, no, we went to Sai Kung in New Territories，Hong Kong“.
So, for people who are not familiar with Hong Kong, Sai Kung = Hoi Chi Minh city. For Hong Kong residents, Sai Kung = sea food, boat trip and maybe parks.

Last August, we flied back to China and stopped at Hong Kong for a week. My ex-colleagues invited us to a company retreat – a one-day boat trip in Sai Kung. Well, we have hiked there, have had great sea food there, this would be a great opportunity to complete our experience of “Sai Kung“.

I know most of local travel agencies have a kind of tour for people to “fish cuttlefish” at night. You don’t need to bring any gadgets for fishing, but invite a large enough group of friends to reduce cost per person and bring food & drinks. Young people like to “hang out” on sea for party and fishing at night when it is much cooler. If you rent a boat and go boating in daytime, you can have more options for water activities. Make sure you have insurance coverage.

On the trip, some (including ME) played poker games, engineers played PSPs (see above right), some went to swim and took “banana boat“ and some were just idle and relaxing.

Ok, here are our photo tour of boat trip.

This is the view of Long Ke Wan Bay & Beach from sea. (Check my previous post Go hiking in Hong Kong, have you ever think about that? for a closer view.)

Teenagers on the next boat were playing some dangerous game.

Banana Boat!

Our recent trip to Sichuan, a western province in China, was my first “vacation” in China. Well, I had a road trip with college friends 10 years’ ago in Xinjiang province. But that wasn’t really a vacation (if you know what I mean). This time, we only had 4 days in the destinations: jiuzhaigou, songpan and huanglong, so our desired experience was to see the best natural beauty of these places. Not culture, not people, though they are something unique and special to experience, we just don’t have time. These tips are most usefully when you are in our similar situation, who have some budget concern (don’t want to be ripped off) .

#1. Where to Go?

What? Having said that the destination is Jiuzhaigou doesn’t mean you can go to Jiuzhaigou directly. You can fly to Jiuzhaigou or take bus or hire a private driver or drive yourself there. There are flights from 6 cities in China to Jiuzhai-huanglong airport which is built in the altitude of 3200+ meters. Chengdu, Chongqing and Xi’an are the major connection city to Jiuzhai airport. So you can plan in advance to visit one of these cities before flying to Jiuzhaigou.

There are more than 20 flights every day departed from Chengdu v.s. 6 from Chongqing. In theory, you can get cheaper tickets by fly in from Chengdu. But in peak season when Chengdu is a HOT destination, the theory doesn’t work. So I got at least 20% cheaper tickets by flying in from Chongqing.

If you are taking bus (120RBM/person) or hire a private driver by road (around 800RMB one trip), the trip from Chengdu to Jiuzhaigou takes about 10hrs (without traffic in Chengdu downtown). From north such as Langmusi, it this the same hours due to bad road condition according to Man Man Zou’s Jiuzhaigou Park and Chengdu trip in 2006.

#2. When & Where to Buy Air Tickets?

New online travel sites/service providers are helping to get cheaper and cheaper tickets for consumers in China. So don’t be surprised if your tickets are 80% off. It is not a spam! I will strongly recommend Kooxoo.com for ticket booking. It is a meta search engine like sidestep. Its competitor is Qunar, found by 3 American. I prefer Kooxoo for its clean simple interface design.

I booked my tickets about 3 weeks before departure date at a quite satisfactory rate. And later a travel buddy told me she got a 20% cheaper ticket a week later. So it is not always the earlier the better. Travel agents say 14-day-advance is the best. My other friend claims that 2-day-advance is the best (in non peak season week days). I will test her theory. 🙂

#3. Where to Stay?

I made at least 20 phone calls to hotels to quote hotel room rates and book hotel. That means there are very limited data about hotel rooms in jiuzhaigou on the Internet. I collected the phone numbers from the websites that ask for an extremely unreasonable price of hotel rooms. At last, we stayed at a hostel recommended by a lot of young travelers. Because most of the hotels won’t tell me the rate until check in which made me feel very “unsecured”. They usually reserve most of the rooms for tour operators or travel agents. If you book through elong or ctrip (Chinese expedia and travelocity), you can get a confirmed, but very HIGH rate.

We arrived at jiuzhaigou on Oct. 7, the last day of national holiday. We shared a private car with a couple from Songpan to Jiuzhaigou. They didn’t book any room, but easily find a nice hotel room in walking distance from the park entrance. The biggest learning is: in 99% of cases, you don’t need to book your hotel rooms in advance if you travel to a place like Jiuzhaigou. Go there and shop for hotel room as you shop for gifts.

My previous posts about this trip:

4-Day Trip to Jiuzhaigou, Huanglong, Songpan of Sichuan, China (Part I)

My coming & dream travel destination: Jiuzhaigou, Sichuan, China

This is just too funny that I have to foward it here, for all travler friends. Hope you enjoy it besides travel blogs and images.

A kangos Gene McKenna made “a little satirical piece about what its like to do web design in the Google Era” and was instantly getting popular around the web.

Here is his final master piece and his post-comment:

I went through the comments and a lot of people thought it is a “yahoo”. How do you think?

OK，in case you don’t know who is Kango, here is a few ways to get to know her:

• 1. A Preview of New Travel Search Engine Kango.com by Jens Thraenhart, a global tourism and hotel marketing stratigist.,
  
• 2. A review by Techcrunch: Stealth Startup Kango Working on Semantic Search For Travel;
• 3. A private Beta test ride by yourself, sign up here.

I just got back from one of the most beautiful places in China, which is called Jiuzhaigou Valley in Sichuan Province China as I planned. It is a much less well-known national park among foreginers since i didn’t see many there, though it is one of 166 UNESCO World Natural Heritages in the world according to the number on wikipedia, and one of 45 in Asia Pacific. I have to say this is a MUST visit place in China if you want to get out of city to see the natual beauty of China.

Different from the United States, China has a very short history in running and managing national park. But Jiuzhaigou Valley is a well managed and kept place where normal gas-consuming vehicles were banned in the park. To make up the high maintenance cost, visitors have to pay 400RMB (more than $50) / visit (2 days) per person in peak season from March to November. So the cost for a 4-person family per visit is about 10 times of that for a national park in US ($20-$25 admission fee/vehicle). It is the cost for a sustainable travel environment, and it will be justified.

As a Chinese, I am very glad to see such a wonderland is still in a good shape. My simple wish for Blog Action Day 2007 is that this fairy place will stay forever for people from all over the world to visit and share.

Before I come up with a well-organized travel report, I would like to share some pictures with you. They are just too Beautiful to be kept in my own hard-drive.