Travelling vegan

2009

2011-09-27T21:57:00.000+08:00

I want to write recent stuff, but in order to maintain the chronology, need to update things a bit. So, go with 2009 first. As mentioned in the end of the previous, we got back to Beijing, and indeed stayed there the whole year. There are a few new restaurants and now the vegan club has reactivated, but otherwise it's much as before. Large, crowded, polluted, but friendly and with excellent food.

We did have a summer holiday in the Nordic countries though. In Tampere, Finland, the only vegan restaurant I mentioned earlier went bankrupt, sadly. That reduced the eating out options to one vegetarian restaurant, and even that open only during lunch time on weekdays. Quality not really worth cheering about either.

In Beijing there came and went a favourite restaurant, the Loving Vegetarian, which there's probably no need to review as it is indeed gone. The Vegan Social Club continued meetings, but rather than regular meetings in restaurants, potlucks in member's houses became the norm.

With reduced travel funding there wasn't an awful lot of that either. But there was Isabel's first visit to Europe in the summer, visiting Finland, Sweden, and Norway. While most of the time went in Finland, probably the most special part was visiting the fjords in Norway. We went over land and sea; Stockholm is quite good for veggie people but I'll get back to that on the more recent things, and Oslo was ok also. From there we took the train to Bergen, a beautiful town by the water but not so great food-wise.

Then we went by boat over to Flåm, with gorgeous fjord scenery all around. Flåm had even less when it comes to food, but the big hotel in town would cook decent veggie food and grilling something outside was always an option. We went kayaking, saw porpoises, and had lots of fun!

Back in China in the autumn we made another trip to Sichuan, but never mind that, wanting to get on to a bit more recent things. Here's a couple more photos from 2009 though.

Vietnam, part 2: and then there's two

2008-12-24T01:27:00.020+08:00

Well, that's almost two years without updating this blog. However, I'll continue where I left off, as I did start this blog entry more than a year ago but just never finished it. The rest of the things to be updated later.

So even before arriving in Vietnam, I contacted a vegan girl in VeggieConnection and asked about veg food and interpreters for doing user studies in the country side. It turned out she was an interpreter, and all-around super nice, so we ended up talking a lot on the phone during part one of this trip. Part two, then, is where I took the bus to her village to do the user studies. The girl is called Isabel, and I even stayed in their house, enjoying the wonderful vegan cooking of her mother.

This meant a five-hour bus ride from Ho Chi Minh city to a city called Long Xuyen in the Mekong river delta. The minibus ride included a half-an-hour lunch stop in a place with no vegan food, and a ferry-crossing where one could see these funny boats with eyes painted on them. She came by motorbike to pick me up from Long Xuyen. Now I'm not crazy about motorbikes, so a girl wearing a mask arriving by motorbike isn't the greatest turn-on for me, but I hopped on and we chased the sun on to her... town, perhaps, she called it a village but I was almost inclined to call it a city due to the apparently large population. I still don't know what the population is, but at one or two main streets I guess it doesn't really constitute a city.

I was lucky enough to come in time for dinner, and her mother was cooking. I was asked to carry the food to the living room, fine, but after I set the plates on the table they pointed out that this wasn't the Vietnamese way. They eat from the floor. Ok, fine, when in Rome... The food was delicious though, and everything served in the house is vegan! Awesome. The mother and one elder sister are vegans also, the rest vegetarian. Unfortunately Isabel was the only one speaking any language other than Vietnamese, so my communication was limited, but the whole family, including the husbands and children of her elder sisters, all live in the house. I was given a bedroom upstairs complete with a huge balcony. Before you go thinking it was immense luxury, let me point out that there was no bed. Just a bamboo-mat on the floor.

No deep sleep then.

Whatever light sleep there was got interrupted at 5 AM as a loud radio broadcast came on. At first I thought it was someone in the house, maybe using the radio as an alarm clock and accidentally turned it too high that morning, but then I noticed the noise came from the outside. It's a broadcast that's heard all over town, every morning from 5 AM to 6 AM, to get people up with the sun, apparently. This would set the pace then. Given that I wouldn't be able to sleep, I got up, and since Isabel was sleeping and I couldn't communicate with others, I decided to go for a run. On to my shorts then and off with everything else and running around the small town certainly did turn a lot of heads. I guess foreigners are a rare sight, and crazy ones even more so.

After a nice run it was time for breakfast and then to work. I set out heading to what seemed more like countryside with Isabel, after we printed out the forms she had translated. After the first interview it was already lunchtime, and given how long it seemed to take to get these done, I figured we should give some gifts to the people we interview. So after lunch we bought some small stuff and started to give those to all the interviewees. Just small things like drinks and snacks, but they were well-received. To my surprise Isabel had to do most of the writing on the forms as a large proportion of the people were actually illiterate! That I hadn't expected.

Anyway, we picked up pace in the interviews and got quite a lot of them done in the coming days. And it was just a lot of fun spending time together too, whether it was at the interviews, meals, going around by bicycle, or hanging out on the balcony at night. Some days later I was due to go to a workshop in Hanoi, so we celebrated getting the interviews done, and somehow the whole thing started turning romantic all of a sudden. Odd.

So we went for a hike up a small mountain called Núi Cấm near the town of Châu Đốc, close to the Cambodian border. Along the way there were lots of beautiful flowers, a small water-fall, and the above heart-shaped splash of water. Up on the mountain there is a big Buddha statue and a pagoda (Chua Phật Lớn), where we were lucky enough to arrive at dinner time and they offered us free food. All vegan of course. Unfortunately it was already getting dark and there wasn't really any way of getting back so we just stayed in a little hotel on the mountain.

Then there was a quick train trip to Hanoi and back... it takes 29 hours one way but is quite alright. You can get rice from the train but not vegan food otherwise, so bring something along to have with rice or bread that you can buy from stations the train passes by. It stops for 5 minutes or so, enough for quick purchases. After a quick and uneventful conference in Hanoi I returned south and joined up with Isabel again to go to Đà Lạt, a nice city of flowers that's considerably higher than much of Vietnam and hence has cooler temperatures. We had a lovely few days there, rented a tandem bike (that we decorated well) and went around. There are a couple of veggie restaurants in Da Lat also, but I don't have their details on me just now... message me if you need those!

After Da Lat it was time for Isabel's graduation from the university. And for that I needed something formal to wear. We went around looking for a sizable suit to rent in Ho Chi Minh city, and eventually found one at a wedding photography shop. Isabel wanted to try on a beautiful wedding dress she saw, the shop staff thought we were getting married, and on an impulse we decided to take wedding photos! That proved to be heaps of fun, not only at the moment but also later when sharing the photos with friends and relatives, some of whom really thought we got married, and also going through the photos just between us. That always put us to a good mood.

The graduation itself was a simple party with shows that seemed like primary school performances to me. Either way, I had been called by my boss to get back to China, and with that looming we went to a beach for a couple of days. One of the easiest to reach beaches from Sai Gon is an island called Vung Tau. There's a fast ferry service that takes you there in about an hour, and the town of Vung Tau does have a veggie restaurant so don't worry too much about food. The beaches are passable only though, yet, with Isabel that was lots of fun.

Almost forgot to mention, also during the stay Isabel's sister had a baby. And funnily enough my sister in Finland had a baby a few days later. We did visit the hospital. Christmas in Sai Gon seems to involve getting on motorbikes and sitting in a traffic jam for a few hours, then returning home. Supposedly they're going to see the Christmas lights in District 1, but no-one seemed to be getting anywhere. Nothing else going on really. One of Isabel's friends helped me convince her to come to China with me, so we got on a train north together. Alarmingly she was feeling cold as early as Hanoi, but we pressed on nonetheless.

The price of the international train tickets had doubled during the couple of months, so we decided to find an alternative. This turned out to be a bus from Hanoi to Nanning in southern China, and a train from there to Beijing. This drops the price to a third of the international train: it costs over 2000 CNY while the bus is 150 CNY and the train from Nanning around 500 CNY. Unfortunately with the timings one has to overnight in Nanning, but the cheap hotels around the railway station only charge 80 CNY a night. That is where we spent New Year Eve then. Oh well. By the way, there is a veggie restaurant in Nanning also, I'll put the address here later.

Vietnam, part 1: North to south

2008-12-23T23:58:00.012+08:00

Hanoi seemed even more polluted and noisier than Beijing, which is quite a lot to say. Beside that, the wireless networks didn't really seem to work, or at least were super slow. But one day the amazing massage kitty knocked on my door. Or rather, meowed behind it. So I let him in, he explored the room for a moment and jumped on my lap. And that's when he started showing his amazing talent. He went on for at least 15 minutes, massaging non-stop! I figured no-one would believe me without a video, so here is one.

Beside talented kitties, there was a lot of rain in Hanoi. Soon the city was flooded, which at first was just a curiosity to me as I had never been in a flood before. It was kind of interesting to go knee-deep in water to the veggie restaurants. But later I heard dozens of people died in the floods, which gave it a much more serious tune. Nonetheless, I went of hiking in Sapa, hoping that the rain would cease.

As luck would have it, it indeed didn't rain constantly in Sapa, but it was pretty cloudy with occasional showers. This made it rather nice hiking weather, but these organised tours have very light hiking. The scenes were pretty great, albeit the place is very touristy and a lot of locals always follow around wherever you go and soon try to sell you stuff. They do it pretty effectively too, managed to even sell me a shirt and two bandettas! Otherwise it's worth the trip. Veggie restaurants I didn't find, nor really look for as food was included in the tour and they did make it vegan for me. Actually the tofu in tomato sauce was really tasty.

After returning from Sapa I just wanted to continue down south. Hanoi and surroundings were still mildly flooded and not too interesting anyway. I bought one of the open bus tickets that allow you to go from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh city or the other way around and stop in key places along the way. This was in a sleeper bus, unfortunately one might say as the buses are slow, too small to really sleep in, and too small to sit in, just like the Chinese sleeper buses. The sales people convinced me these would be different, saying they're German buses, but whether they are or not they're just the same as the Chinese ones, don't believe them!

After a long and unpleasant journey I arrived in the city of Hue, just to be surrounded by hoteliers and motorbike drivers. After a short bidding competition I agreed to follow the first guy offering me a hotel in town, as it sounded about right. They drove me there by motorbike, and this was in fact the first time I've ever been on a motorbike. To my surprise the big luggage wasn't a problem. The hotel was good, but another motorbike driver who I at first thought was involved with the hotel kept on asking me to take his tour. Instead I wanted food, but as he was so persistant, I asked him if he knew vegetarian restaurants in town. He did and drove me to a very nice one, and kept on marketing himself. After the long sales pitch, I agreed to let him drive me around for half a day. Big mistake! The tour was ok but he didn't say a price, I overpaid, and thereafter he wouldn't leave me alone. Stalking outside the hotel constantly and asking to drive me wherever I was going. Had to leave town quick to get rid of him. Note to all: stay well clear of pushy motorbike drivers!

Fortunately the next city, Hoi An, was also nice. The hotel the bus dropped us in front of didn't have wireless so I walked a while and found one that did, and they had a swimming pool as well! With free drinks in the evening. So that and my Vietnamese book provided solid entertainment after dark. Before dark there's the beach, and on the way to the beach, there's a vegan restaurant in the most amazing location: a bamboo house with a pier on top of a lovely tropical river. The food might not be the finest in the world, but it's vegan and completely adequate, and the location is a killer! There's a couple of vegetarian restaurants in town also, but I wasn't too crazy even about the old town.

Next up was Nha Trang which seems like a big city, whether it is or not. They have beaches, supposedly nice ones, but I preferred the beach in Hoi An. No amazing restaurants either. So, onwards to Mui Ne then, there the beaches are awesome! I ended up in a beach resort that had absolutely nothing else, but the beach was enough for a weekend. Just swimming, sunlight, running on the beach, didn't really ask for anything more. Except some fruit juice, and they do have that. Note that if you get the open bus ticket that doesn't include Mui Ne nor Da Lat, you can still stop in one if you pay them a few dollars extra. But it's better to get a ticket that includes the stop in the first place, they're both really nice.

And then to conclude this first part of the Vietnam tale, I arrived in Ho Chi Minh city, also known as Saigon. Or actually Saigon refers only to Ho Chi Minh city districts 1 and 3, but that's only for the smartasses. Anyway, the initial reaction to the city was to run away, and it never really changed. As told by a local, the only good thing about the city is food, as ascertained by an American who had spent 4 months there and announced you can't find anything good here no matter which way you go as I was looking at the map on the street. I started by walking to a park, and had to literally run away from the "massage girls" that even grap your arms and try to cut you up with their motorbikes. But yes, the food is good, and the best of it is at Thien Tam, which is located on 443 Su Van Hanh noi dai, district 10. Tel: 08. 8630798. But more about that and other things in the next part. I also went to tango, they rarely have milongas but they do have regular classes so I joined one. Quite fun.

Beijing weekend

2008-11-09T21:39:00.009+08:00

Kind of depressing to arrive in Shanghai to witness the brown murky waters and the gray skies. It was mostly natural though, a rainy day, but still. Cold too. Anyway, Shanghai has its share of nice restaurants and I was looking forward to a feast until I eventually got queued all the way to the ticket counter at the railway station and found out they wouldn't have tickets for the faster evening trains but only for one leaving in the afternoon, and what's worse, a hard seat for that! Stupidly, I took that ticket then.

Now here's my information piece on train travel in Asia.

Use the train rather than bus if possible in countries other than Malaysia, South Korea, and possibly Japan. In Japan it's pretty much the same but the bus is cheaper.
Never ever take a hard seat for a journey of over 3 hours in China! If that is all that's available, forget point 1 and take the bus.

Anyway, I rushed to the vegetarian restaurant whose location I was most certain about, the one on Nanjing road, and ate quickly. The food was really good though. Then back to the railway station and to endure 17 hours on a full train, on a hard seat, with lights on all night and no hope of sleep, to be filled with anxiety of actually getting the tickets onwards to Hanoi and to get to work within some reasonable hour. So what to do? Study Vietnamese of course. :-)

The train arrived around noon and Beijing railway station unsurprisingly doesn't sell tickets to Vietnam. They suggested the west railway station, but I didn't have time to go there, heading to work instead. Afterwards it was on to a new vegan club event, Fridays at the Vegan Hut. Great to see the folks again and of course the Vegan Hut food is excellent. Then I just went to the office for the night -- being happily homeless, after all. Saturday morning and "rushing" to the agency that supposedly sells tickets to Hanoi, almost certain in my mind that they wouldn't have any at such short notice. Rushing through Beijing is kind of funny, especially if you do it in public transport. It just takes hours and hours. I got there at lunchtime and to my utter surprise, they did have tickets! Brilliant, on my way to Vietnam! :D

For lunch I had to go to the new vegan restaurant north from Xizhimen since a Chinese author was to interview me for a vegan book. Don't really know what the book will be like, but the interview went nicely, she asked me all sorts of usual stuff like why did I go vegan etc and even more odd stuff like what's my view on life. Quite interesting actually. And the food was amazing, and so great to see more friends there as well.

Later at night it would be a friend's birthday, so I ordered a birthday cake from the vegetarian shop, verifying once again that it really is vegan. Those just look so fancyful I always have my doubts. Anyway, they made the cake in time and I went to a third of my selection of four great restaurants for the weekend. That was 我行我素, because I happen to really like their "meat" pies and the "west lake vinegar fish". I got plenty of the "meat" pies to go too. But the birthday party didn't really happen in a large degree, went to a bar with a couple of friends and had the cake at her place.

Next day and rushing to the office to pick up my stuff, lunch with the vegan family and their super cute vegan baby, and on to the train to Vietnam! The ride took two days and was pretty much ok. The train goes nonstop until Nanning, there everyone is ordered out of the train for half an hour to a nice waiting room, then taken back to the same train, so it's ok to leave the luggage there. At the border town of Dongdang on the Vietnamese side there are the formalities, in a confusing manner and for some reason in the middle of the night, but it works somehow. And then another Vietnamese train takes you the rest of the way to Hanoi. It's not quite as nice as the Chinese train but not too bad either.

Japanese food wonders

2008-10-29T20:54:00.030+08:00

Arriving in Fukuoka I had a great start to a stay in Japan. The weather was wonderful, sunny and 25 degrees -- quite a difference to Beijing that had already started getting cold. And the country is spotlessly clean, which still doesn't seize to amaze me, partly because they have very few rubbish bins. So I guess people just carry their garbage with them for miles, or then they don't snack while walking like yours truly. Either way, I started up my walk and as soon as I ended up at the first shrine I got to witness a school children's sumo wrestling competition! It was fun, I've never seen sumo wrestling live nor such young and small wrestlers. But they still had cheerleaders!

The destination of my walk was unsurprisingly a vegetarian restaurant. Or at least what was at the time listed as a vegetarian restaurant in happycow (they've included my update by now), Ruru. I was served a very nice Chinese style vegan lunch, well, vegan by my request, but when I went back there the next day I was told they don't have vegetarian food at dinner time. But at the time I was happy about it, not knowing of their meaty dinners. Their service was fine though, and when I was told they didn't have dinner for me they did give me even a map to the other supposedly vegetarian place in town, the macrobiotic cafe. But it was closed at the time.

The nicest thing about Fukuoka though, IMHO, was the park near the restaurant. It was so lovely to just sit there in the sunshine and watch the water birds and the joggers going by. I read later it was designed to resemble the West Lake in Hangzhou, China, and indeed there is a bit of a resemblance to a miniature West Lake. Wouldn't have minded just sitting there for a few days.

And here's my favourite Japanese invention. Yes, it's a toilet seat, but notice the faucet at the top. Thing is, when you flush the toilet, the new water to fill the tank comes via this faucet, so you can wash your hands with it before it makes it to the tank. Saves water, and the water will be clean enough for flushing the toilet even after one has washed their hands in it. Brilliant!

A night bus onwards to save a little money (transport costs a ton in Japan!) and I arrived in Hiroshima. I was quite happy to see everything was within in a walking distance from the bus station -- and no, I don't mean just my walking distance, things really were nearby! The castle was ok, and the a-bomb dome... well, to truly get the meaning of the dome you have to visit the museum in Peace park. Even after all this time it really is moving. They have pictures before and after the bomb, as well as videos and artifacts and wax people who look so much like zombies from movies you'd think they had just made those up. But then you see the old pictures and realise that really is how the survivors were. It's scary, and may well make you cry. Much recommended visit though, especially to politicians and anyone in favour of nuclear weapons.

However, despite desperately wanting a shower I didn't stay in Hiroshima, possibly because of another disappointing restaurant visit. I went to Shichida Life Cafe, which happycow also listed as vegetarian at the time. It's a buffet but most of their foods did contain meat or fish. Rice and tofu for lunch, not highly exciting and certainly not worth the price. Instead I took the afternoon bus to Kobe, night buses were full. It's kind of disturbing about the Japanese night buses anyway, they go slower so that they wouldn't arrive too early, but the way they go slow is by stopping somewhere in the middle and keeping their engines running! Goodness, why not just turn the engine off when the bus is going to stand there for an hour or two?!

The bus arrived too late for the hostel, so I decided one should try the capsule hotels in Japan. I found one, got my capsule at a cost a bit higher than a Japanese hostel (which means the price of a fancy 4 star hotel in most of Asia) and was delighted to find that the capsule was actually relatively spaceous and comfortable. Besides, you get a spa for the same price, several hot and cold baths and a sauna. Pretty nice actually, but these places are usually for men only.

I failed to find any food in Kobe either (and the Japanese put whey even in flippin' peanuts! Not all of them, but some brands list that in ingredients. Don't ask me why, I'm just happy they use Chinese characters so I can recognise it), so I just took up and went to Kyoto as I saw a large number of entries in happycow. Finding accommodation was a bit challenging though, apparently it was the start of a long weekend due to some public holiday and everything was full. I did find a place eventually though, and it was quite a nice Japanese style hostel too, called Roro or something of the kind.

But the real find of Kyoto came a couple of hours later. I went on a search for the first vegan restaurant on the list, Café Proverbs 15:17. It's located right at the crossroads at Hyakumanben, near Kyoto University. However, I didn't see it at first and decided to ask a group of students. University students surely speak English, no? I asked them, and the answer came immediately: no. So I went to a second group of about 10 students and asked if any of them speak English. "No" came back right away. But I decided to be persistant, showed them the address and asked if they'd know where it is. One girl got up and showed me the way, speaking perfectly good English. Japanese politeness, eh?

In any case, the café is absolutely amazing, one of the best restaurants I've ever been to anywhere! It's totally vegan, the food is so good the thought makes my mouth water right now despite eating tons just a moment ago, and they even have yummy cakes for dessert! At dinner time you get to choose from 3 alternative set meals of the day, I was really tempted by the tempeh sandwich but went for the soymilk ramen instead, in a decision to have something Japanese for once. I can't stress too much how good the food is, and the service is wonderful also. Wish I could eat there every day.

Next day it was time for sightseeing in Kyoto. After a few temples and shrines I went to the old imperial palace, and only when arriving at the gardens it dawned to me much of it wasn't open to the public as there still is an emperor to be usign the place! Silly me. Oh, along the way I had lunch at Mikoan, which was a perfectly fine vegetarian café but it's unlucky to be in the same city as Proverbs... that's way too hard to compete with! So dinner at Proverbs it was, and it didn't disappoint.

However, I felt I should hurry to Tokyo to apply for the Vietnamese visa as I had read it might take up to 10 days to process, and took the night bus over. But arriving in Tokyo I realised this was that mysterious public holiday and the embassy would be closed. Never mind, on to the imperial gardens then. I was happy to see how clean the waters were even at the heart of possibly the biggest city in the world. However, they didn't let me in to have tea with the emperor, so I had to go on and find veggie restaurants again.

I'm happy to say there really is a plenitude of choice in Tokyo. I decided to go try Pure Cafe, but instead I found Brown Rice café. It was fine, and had vegan things clearly marked, but ever since the thought of the tempeh sandwich at the Proverbs I really wanted a sandwich or a burger or something and I had read there'd be good ones at Pure Café. So despite having a perfectly fine lunch at Brown Rice I kept searching for Pure. And failed, but instead I found the vegan bakery, der Akkord! It's a macrobiotic bakery actually, and I'm still a little unclear as to what exactly does macrobiotic mean, but at least this place doesn't use any yeast, baking powder, or sugar, among other things, like animal products. Which effectively means it doesn't have that finger-licking yumminess of Sticky Fingers but strikes quite a different chord with a sturdy European flavour. Very nice bread, but the apricot pie didn't really win me over.

Next day I went off to the embassy then, but got up late and only ended up there at lunchtime to find it closed for lunch. So I decided to take a lunchbreak too and walk over to Vegan Healing Café since it didn't seem to be too far, despite the light rain. It's a cozy little place, seemingly quiet but as there's only one person working each day it apparently is busy work nonetheless. The food is vegan and fine, but resembles homecooking to me, nothing really fanciful. Oh, and if anyone working there ever reads this, do add some berries or something on top of the soycream cake, it'd make it so much more appealing!

Back at the embassy I filled up a form, handed in my passport and was told to wait. Half an hour later they gave me back my passport, said here's the visa and it'll be 12000 yen! (Or something of the kind, not 100% on that price.) Yes, it's expensive, but a super fast service, forget the 10 days. And I can get that reimbursed, it was the kind I was looking for, so no problems. For dinner I was thinking of Little Maman, but I think I was there too late and it was closed, or then I just couldn't find it.

Next day it was the turn of Café 8. Now this is the place in Japan that can really compete with Proverbs, the food was heavenly and they too have things like New York style cheesecake for dessert! And it's completely vegan. It felt terribly expensive though, and I started noticing how fast my budget was running down. In retrospect, however, the food wasn't much more expensive than elsewhere in Japan, it was the optional extras that really cost. Like a pot of tea costing over 600 yen! So yes, go there, eat and be happy, and if your wallet allows have the dessert too, but go somewhere else for tea. Same for other drinks. Water is good and free.

Following day I found myself back at Vegan Healing. Ok, I'll be honest with you, this had more to do with the nice girl working there than their food. Beside it being great to have someone to talk to, she was also the first Japanese vegan I ever met, so that's quite something. She recommended the nearby Meiji shrine for sight-seeing, so I headed there after lunch. It was ok, but when it comes to shrines I think the first one you see is really exciting, the 2nd also quite interesting to compare with, but after the third shrine the interest goes down. If there isn't for religious reasons of course. However, the surrounding park is lovely, so I quite enjoyed it.

Then I went back to the hostel to do some work at last. This had after all turned into much more of a real vacation than planned. I also looked into the return options and realised there'd be no way to make it to the Beijing-Hanoi train leaving on Sunday afternoon with the ferry arriving in Tianjin at noon on Sunday, and the train would be the easy way to cross wherefore I felt I should use it since it would be work time rather than adventure time. Besides, my shoes, bag, and computer were all breaking down, so a pit stop in Beijing and visiting all the friends for a weekend made sense. So I booked the ferry from Osaka to Shanghai leaving the following Tuesday. This was on Thursday, and I meant to go out of town for Friday and the weekend would have the Tokyo Vegetarian Festival, while I would have to leave Tokyo Sunday at the latest, so... That's how my excuses went, and silly as it was, I went back to Vegan Healing for dinner. I just wanted to see that girl there one more time before I leave, in case I wouldn't run into her at the vegetarian festival (which I indeed did not). Well, in any case, the fried soy meat thing is probably the best dish that café has.

Friday and out of town in Tokyo, I went over to Kamakura which is a lovely little town totally littered with temples and shrines and has also a huge bronze Buddha. He has windows in his back. And you can go inside. Wee. Anyways, the temples are beautiful and the best thing is the hiking path around there, the place is totally worth a visit! Dinner time I was back in Tokyo, however, so I went over to Nagi Shokudo. It's a cosy vegan café with pretty nice food, although I must say whatever they were having at the next table looked more exciting than mine. Oh well.

Saturday was the exciting time of the Vegetarian Festival. I was happy to see lots of people and stands of various veggie restaurants, cosmetics companies, shops, and animal rights organizations there. Really good turn-out, and way way more than I would ever have expected in a country like Japan! There was so much yummy vegan foods and nice people to talk to that I spent pretty much the whole day there, and ate tons!

In the evening, however, I just had to go find Pure Café. I was on a mission to try many veggie places in Tokyo as a friend was asking for recommendations for another friend who'd be visiting Tokyo soon. And I was still craving for a sandwich. I found their website and they have a map there, making it rather easy to find. The place is nice, and I finally got my sandwich! It was almost worth the wait, and I only say almost because it had been a long time. The sandwich was good, really good.

Sunday morning I went back to the festival to pick up some things for the road. Just a quick visit this time and on to the railway station. The thing I most crave for about Japan though was at the festival now: the Loving burger, made by the Loving Hut. Goodness, so juicy and tasty! Anyway, I figured I had to try the shinkansen, the Japanese bullet trains, at least once and this would be my last chance. However, had I realised how much it's going to cost overall before buying the first part of the ticket I probably would've changed my mind. Sure, they're fast trains, but way overpriced.

Anyhow, I arrived in Kyoto and you don't have to be a genious to guess where I went then. I had a huge meal with desserts and everything, and after hearing Proverbs is closed on Mondays I also bought one of those sandwiches I had been craving so much for the road, or the ferry as it turned out to be.

On Monday then I took a walk around Kyoto and realised it definitely is the nicest city in Japan. Or at least of those I visited. Lots of temples, lovely rivers, nature, and yes, great food. Since my favourite place was closed I went to Kairas, with the notion of soya ice-cream. The food was nice, as was the ice-cream, just again, there's too good a competitor in the city for anything else to be taken very seriously. Oh, and I found out where to get money: in Japan the ATM's don't accept international credit cards, the only place where I could withdraw money had been the Visa office in Tokyo. But the hostel in Kyoto let me know the ATM's at 7-11 do take international cards, so I was saved, as my budget was long gone by this time and the ferry must be paid in cash also.

So, for the last night I took a train to Kobe, because I wanted to try the soychicken pizza mentioned in the happycow site. And possibly the onsen as well. But after a couple of hours of searching and finding the right block, I just couldn't locate the restaurant! I'm pretty sure it was closed, at least for the day, maybe even for good, because at least the English name wasn't anywhere to be seen and there was only one (closed) café without an English name in the block. Of course they don't have house numbers so it's not easy to tell which is which. As for the onsen, I decided to go there but after buying a train ticket I changed my mind. It was after all late already and I should've been working, so I turned around and decided to try the fare adjustment machines. Don't do the same, they just steal your money. The fare adjustment is there only to pay more, if you've paid too much, they give you a ticket of zero yen to replace your money. Greedy bastards.

Anyway, after a night of some working and more sleeping, I took a train to Osaka and got to the port in time. Two days on a ferry, I had bought some noodles from the vegetarian festival to take along but nonetheless I was happy to find it was a Chinese ship. For that means I can actually eat in the restaurant: one can talk to the staff and in any case, I don't have the same fear of everything having fish sauce when it comes to Chinese food. The ride to Shanghai was quite nice, mostly, apart from the few hours on the second day when the sea was quite stormy and to my surprise I found out I do, after all, get seasick under certain conditions. I think it was mostly due to the fact that I was stupid enough to go to the toilet, closed space doesn't do good. Whenever I could breathe the sea air my stomach would be calm. Anyways, China for the next entry.

Vegetarian Korea and Raw Vegan Village

2008-10-15T20:52:00.016+08:00

Back to travel track, I and two friends took the ferry from Weihai (Shandong province, China) to Incheon, South Korea. The trip takes about 14 hours, plus a couple of hours of waiting at the harbour. The service is run by Weidong Ferry, check their site for details. It's not a super fancy boat like the ferries between Sweden and Finland, but it's decent enough. A little shop, a restaurant serving nothing vegan, a Karaoke bar, and coin lockers that for some weird reason only accept Japanese yen (on a boat between China and Korea!). We went economy class, but surprisingly didn't get the Japanese style thin mattresses on the floor but proper bunk beds, with curtains and everything. Pretty good, I would think.

After a while of figuring out what's next and where to change money, we went to town for a first Korean meal. The Seoul metro runs all the way to Incheon, so it's rather convenient, although it doesn't go to the port but you need a few stops in a bus. We started with the Sosim vegetarian restaurant on Insadong, as it was closed the last time I was in Korea. The food was decent, but not very tasty really.

The two travel companions were much into couchsurfing and considerable time was spent finding accommodation, but as nothing was found for the first night we checked in to a hostel. A pretty decent place actually, and later it turned out the Korean member of staff used to be vegetarian for a while and even grew her own food in her garden, but later gave up as it was just too difficult in Korea. Anyhow, our path led straight to Sticky Fingers, the vegan bakery. It was amazing, as always. Expensive, but so worth it!

The next day we went walking in a park and as luck would have it, they were hosting the high-wire world championships at the time! People walking 1 km over the river on the wire. Cool stuff, and a nice drum concert to precede it. From there we went over for a second dinner at Insadong in another place I didn't visit last time, Han Gua Chae. It's a buffet place, Korean style, and by now my companions were saying they're not fond of Korean food. They did like the Korean pancakes though. I must agree that the food there wasn't all that great again, but thought it quite ok.

That night we actually found couchsurfing hosts, and as there were two hosts with small places, we split up: I went to one and the duo to another. My host was a very nice Lithuanian guy who spoke fluent Korean and a long list of other languages also. His flat, however, was tiny (about 14 sq m) and had no furniture at all. We went to the top of a hill with one of his friends to try some Korean drinks.

Next day it was time to hit the other branch of Sticky Fingers in Seoul, this one a proper café and as the weather was nice, we enjoyed the goodies outside at the table. There's even wireless net, it's absolutely perfect. From there we parted ways for some hours, I went to see traditional Korean houses and they went to a flea market. But bought no fleas. The house thing was rather small scale and not that special either.

We met up for dinner at the SM vegetarian restaurant (these restaurants are listed at happycow). The SM stands for Supreme Master, as in Ching Hai. They also had Supreme Master TV on. In any case, the food was deemed a bit better than the previous ones, possibly due to being more Chinese in style. From there we went to meet a bunch of couchsurfers in a bar, and from there I had to rush back to the place of my host to let in a new couchsurfer as the host himself was away. It was the first time I tried being a couchsurfing guest and even then the hosting crept up on me!

I figured it was time to move on though, and took the train to Gyeongju the next day. The others stayed behind. Gyeongju is the old capital from the Silla era, and has tons of old graves that just look like weird little hills. I bought a bagful of goodies from Sticky Fingers as I thought there'd be no food in Gyeongju, but I ended up eating almost all of them on the train. They were just too damn good. I checked into a hostel in Gyeongju, I'm not that crazy about the whole couchsurfing thing.

Next day I went off to see a temple and a grotto, supposedly the finest around. It was pretty nice, I suppose, but behind a glass and not so large, so it was far less impressive than the Longmen Grottoes in China. Nice hike nonetheless. Afterwards I asked the tourist information about vegetarian options in town. They directed me to a vegetarian restaurant called Baru. They only wanted to serve me bibimbap, but it was good and at 6,000 won it was much more worthy of its price than the more expensive Seoul restaurants!

Now comes the interesting bit though, the hostel map marked something it called "Ura, special vegetarian village". So I asked the tourist information what, and most importantly, where, was this. They told me it's a village of raw vegans (without using those words) not too far from town. To get there you have to take bus 350 at 7:30 in the morning all the way to the end station of Sannae, and there continue at 8:20 by bus 351 until its final stop at Ura village. From the bus stop it's about 1 km hike up to the village itself. So this I did.

The village had approximately 20 houses. This was daytime during a weekday so that, probably, is why I didn't see many people, only a few old women busy collecting nuts of some kind. They only spoke Korean, and my Korean is very limited, so I mostly just walked around the village by myself. It's in a beautiful setting, and there was music coming from a loudspeaker as well. But the village seems to have no services, no restaurants, hotels, or even a shop, so a couple of hours was certainly enough with nothing to do. I then had a bit more of a chat with one of the women, she told me, I think (very poor Korean indeed), that there live around 50 or so raw vegans in the village. She offered me some juice and fruit, and then I went on my way. Unfortunately the bus back doesn't come until 15:30 or so, and hence I started walking back. Soon I realised what a long walk it was and decided to try hitchhiking, if there'd be any cars around. Eventually one came and gave me a ride a bit closer, and a small tractor gave me ride for the rest of the way to Sannae, from where the buses to Gyeongju run every 20 minutes or so.

In Gyeongju I decided to continue to Busan, which is only a short and comfortable bus ride away. After checking into a hostel I went over to what might still be the only vegetarian restaurant in town, the Namsadae buffet. They actually have pretty good Korean food with nice fake meats, so if not counting for Sticky Fingers, this was probably the best meal of this Korea visit. However, I was more excited about Japan and the next day, after visiting a beautiful seaside temple, I boarded the ferry to Japan. I decided to save money by taking the slow overnight ferry rather than the fast three hour one. Not only is the fast one more expensive, it would also mean having to pay for a hostel night in Japan immediately.

This time I did get the Japanese style of an economy class, but it wasn't bad in my mind. This ship had even less services than the other one, only a restaurant not serving anything for vegans, but strangely they wanted us to board hours before the boat left despite the restaurant onboard also being closed. There were vending machines, only accepting Japanese yen -- this time it was more understandable but I still didn't have any. When buying the ticket they told me one is supposed to have a return ticket from Japan booked when entering the country, but didn't seem too bothered about it when I told them I didn't, and the Japanese customs said nothing. They did, however, search me very thoroughly, went through all the bags and even my shoes. Haven't been so checked in a long time. Well, not since the US at least.

But the rest belongs to the Japan article... Regarding vegetarian Korea, there used to be a nice site called vegetarian-korea.org but it seems gone now. Hope it comes back later, but if anyone needs info on restaurants not in happycow, send me an email, I have the archive of that site from Sept. 2007 and it contains a lot more than happycow does.

A month in Beijing

2008-10-08T23:00:00.014+08:00

Running behind on the blog as usual... so as a quick wrap-up, there was a month in Beijing, and the company arranged me this huge luxury apartment to live in. Never lived in such a thing before and it doesn't feel comfortable, especially not in a country with as much poverty as China. Plus it does get lonely in a huge place, listening to the echo of your own footsteps. So I filled up the place with couchsurfers. And cats, four of them at best, former stray cats for temporary housing. And weekly milongas. Here's some pics.

Then a few restaurants that need mention:
1) The Vegan Hut -- a great vegan restaurant in Jianwai SOHO, right off the Guomao metro station. Probably the only place in China with vegan ice-cream. Excellent stuff. They're open also for breakfasts during the week. And have wireless internet. There's a take-away stand downstairs, the restaurant itself is on the 2nd floor (or 1st floor counting the British way). The Vietnamese dishes are particularly good. They also don't add MSG, although it might exist in premade sauces.
2) The other side of love, another vegan place with a more extensive menu, and less fake meats than most Chinese vegetarian restaurants. It's north from Xizhimen, at Mingguangcun west stop of bus line 16 from Xizhimen. In Chinese: 彼岸爱心素，艺海大厦，明光村西站。

And to the end, the first cake I've ever baked, at least if I'm not forgetting anything... it was pretty tasty, just should've had something nice for a topping.

“Don’t Lose Hope, My Little Fox” Anti-Fur Concert

2008-09-11T14:00:00.002+08:00

“Don’t Lose Hope, My Little Fox” Anti-Fur Concert in Beijing

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Kunming, Guiyang, Changsha, Hangzhou

2008-08-25T15:57:00.010+08:00

Goodness, I've fallen way behind in keeping up the blog again. So just a quick wrap-up of the rest of the trip to get to more up-to-date things! From Dali I jumped to the train to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province. There's a very nice vegetarian restaurant in Kunming, but unfortunately only one! So I ate there every day. There's a veggie shop next to it also, and there's no egg in foods, so save from anything that might contain dairy (can't remember if there was anything of that kind) it's probably vegan too.

The restaurant is next to a temple and close to a lake, and these two are pretty much the only sights I went to in my few days in Kunming, which were spent pretty much only working. I meant to go to the Stone Forest also but got too confused of the million bus stations to actually get anywhere, and then decided the sooner I return to Beijing the sooner I can leave China. (So I thought at the time, but more on that later.) Oh, I did also run into a blood donation bus and on a sudden decision tested if they're the same as in Beijing. They pretty much were, similar form of which they let my bypass all the health questions marking them "no" without even asking me about that, and they did use new needles and everything seemed fine. They even gave me a nice thermos cup, I was thinking of refusing any gifts but that cup is just too useful in Chinese trains etc.

Next up, Guiyang, in Guizhou province. I arrived in the morning, left my bag at the train station and jumped on the bus for the main sight of Guizhou province: the Huangguoshu waterfalls. One of the biggest in Asia, it is definitely well worth seeing. But be warned that if you take up and walk everywhere like I did, the taxi drivers can be really irritating claiming the 5km to the next place would be too far to walk and pestering you constantly. I have tons of pictures from this place, will upload them somewhere 'soon', whatever that means.

Then back to Guiyang and to search for a place to stay. Now here's the thing; apparently there are no reasonable hostels in Guiyang. And what's worse, a young Chinese guy travelling around on a very small budget with 2 friends happened to sit next to me in the bus, and stupidly I decided to join them in the search for accommodation as they were to embark on the same task. But their priority was to find the cheapest place possible, and so we eventually ended up in a dirty hotel full of cockroaches, and of course no internet, which would've been one of my priorities given that I was supposedly working. Anyway, just one night then, and I went out to look for food and that wasn't too easy either in the evening. After being pestered on the streets by some locals for a while and deciding that I hate Guiyang, I did find something to eat, even if it wasn't anything to write home about. The next day the only vegetarian restaurant in town was open but it isn't worth much either. Don't go to Guiyang unless you really have to.

The next day and on to Changsha, but in my hurry to leave town I accepted the hard seater on the train, figuring I'd arrive early in the morning. But at 11 pm the train stopped in the middle of nowhere and stood there until 4 am, with all lights on and of course there isn't anywhere to even lean on those trains so there's no hope of sleep. I didn't bring anything to eat either, and two cute kids decided I was the most fun person to play with throughout the day... I don't mind playing with kids at all, but given the tiredness it did get boring soon. We arrived at 7 pm the next day. Changsha isn't worth a mention really, what, a city of 6 million people without any vegetarian restaurants or even hostels! No real sights either, despite 3,000 years of history, at least no sights other than Maoist things, I guess anything old has been destroyed long ago. It did feel better than Guiyang but this is another city one should skip.

Finally then, Hangzhou. I wasn't meaning to go to Hangzhou actually but as the above mentioned two cities weren't worth stopping and I needed to stop somewhere to work a few days before getting back to Beijing, Hangzhou seemed perfect for the task. And it was quite a contrast to the previous two, it's green and luscious, has several nice veggie places and excellent value hostels right near the gorgeous and rightly famous West Lake. Even so, I had been to Hangzhou before so didn't do much sight-seeing, just ate and worked and met up with an old friend. It is one of the actually nice cities in China though, well worth a stop.

Dali and drugdealing housewifes

2008-08-10T10:56:00.007+08:00

Dali lies 3 hours (by bus) south from Lijiang, and also has a relatively nice old town. Although not car free and less defined. The buses and trains usually go to Xiaguan, which is confusingly also known as Dali City, but the Dali old town (gucheng) is what tourists would look for. It's something of a backpacker central, which brings about some interesting phenomena. Like lots of signs in English, western food advertised all over, and middle-aged or older women selling drugs all over the streets. They really don't look like drug dealers and seem to only target foreigners. But if you're non-Asian and walk the streets of the old town for five minutes, several will probably have approached you already.

Lonely Planet (2005 edition) also talks of a restaurant claiming to be the first vegetarian restaurant in town, and another one nearby laying the same claim. Neither seems to exist nowadays. But there is a vegetarian café called Seeds, pretty close to where LP said the restaurant was, across the street from Bamboo Café. Their menus feature the Vegan Society logo, but don't be confused: dishes marked with the vegan logo aren't necessarily vegan, they only mean they will make it vegan by request! The menu isn't huge but some of the dishes are very nice, I'd recommend the potato curry at least if you don't mind some spices. The sandwiches are ok too, although they put a considerable amount of oil in my tofu sandwich that I had at the premises, those taken to go didn't seem to feature the oiliness. There's also a bunch of magazines and books (in English, French, and Chinese) to read and very friendly service. And when leaving, get some sandwiches to go.

Otherwise in Dali it was just work and some hiking in the nearby mountains. And a look at the lake. But at the railway station I was quite surprised when the countdown for the Beijing Olympics came on TV and everyone at the station started counting down also. What's more, soon they played the national anthem and almost everyone (myself excluded of course) jumped up and sang along! Goodness, patriotism is weird. Afterwards about a dozen kids surrounded me and each of them wanted a picture with me. That doesn't tend to happen in northern China anymore so it was a little surprising also, even though it was a common occurrence when I came to this country. Speaking of photos, I'm just setting up a new photosharing thing and pictures will be there later, so very few of them here this time.

Lijiang and Leaping Tigers

2008-08-06T13:15:00.049+08:00

Lijiang is a nice city in nort-western Yunnan. The place to be over there is the old town, it has several features to add to its charm: traditional style houses of Naxi people, nice cobble-stone alleys, no cars allowed, lots of little waterways, and the location in a valley with mountains surrounding. It's also a Unesco World Heritage site, and full of tourists and shops selling crap to the tourists. The shops seemed to just sell all sorts of tourist crap mixed in with local handicrafts. Also the car ban didn't seem to be as strict as on Gulang Yu island in Xiamen because there was a garbage truck driving through at least once a day and the police had electric cars there. Still, far better than nothing.

A rather interesting visit in Lijiang was the centre of the Nature Conservancy, a US based organization trying to, well, figure it out from the name. They had quite a display of stunning photographs from the area, with the most interesting being the comparison pictures. They were showing pictures taken in the 1910s and 1920s and next to them modern pictures of the same places. It was really easy to see the effects of global warming, the snowlines going higher up, as well as the treelines.

An actual sight in Lijiang is the Black Dragon Pool and the park around it, including Elephant Hill. The pond and the park are quite nice, and it wasn't a bad hike up the hill, but I really don't see how it would be worth the entrance ticket of a whopping 80 yuan. Well, have to spend the money on something, as accommodation in Lijiang was pretty cheap. I paid 50 yuan per night of a single room in a really nice and comfortable traditional style guest house, which had wireless net access that made working from there excellent in the quiet settings and a cute puppy interrupting occasionally.

Oh, there's also an interesting writing system of the Dongba in this area. A little museum-like thing is set up near the Black Dragon Pool where they present things and an old man there writes people short things in Dongba script by request. It's like Egyptian hieroglyphs meet Chinese characters. Here's a picture as a sample.

Not far from Lijiang is the Tiger Leaping Gorge, and of course I have to go anywhere that mentions tigers. Besides, it's supposedly the deepest gorge in the world, or at least among the three deepest gorges, there's always conflicting information running about. Closer to 4 km from the river surface to the mountain peaks. It's a good two-day hike through the gorge, but how to get there was a bit of a question. My outdated Lonely Planet guide from 2005 knows of three bus stations in Lijiang, and it seems none of them exist nowadays. There is a brand new bus station to which I arrived, but they have no buses to Daju where I wanted to start and only one per day to Qiaotou which is at the other end, and that one leaves at 2 pm which would be too late. Naturally I wasn't the only one looking for buses so I teamed up with some other travellers and together we hired a minivan to drive us to Qiaotou for 50 yuan each.

At Qiaotou I almost got a second job as a Chinese - English interpreter, but since I don't accept any jobs that don't let me travel around freely it didn't last long. So we headed to the mountains beside the gorge, me and Mr Fan, one of the people who shared the ride over. The early part of the hike is all uphill, so sweat poured despite the weather not being too hot. Actually the weather reports had said it should be raining constantly, but there was only the occasional drops of water and I even managed to get sunburnt during the hike. Well, rather than telling you how beautiful it was I'll just post some photos. They're all phone photos, so no optical zoom, unfortunately. Should suggest making phones with that functionality. I guess N93 has something of an optical zoom but anyway, I digress.

I stayed overnight at Tina's Guest House, Mr Fan stopped an hour and a half earlier. One of the nice things about such hikes in China is that there are these places where to stop for the night and you don't have to carry tents along. These guest houses come up every 2 hours or less during the hike and they do have decent restaurants as well. Tina's is a regular youth hostel, fine and cheap but nothing to write home about really, so I'll stop writing.

In the morning I went down to the river and climbed on the thing the gorge got its name after, the Tiger Leaping Stone. Legend has it that once upon a time a tiger leaped over the river from the stone. Either the river was smaller back then or then it was one heck of a leap!

There are two ways up from the rock, one is the little path they call the "safe" way which I came down on, and the other includes a long ladder and a very shaky bridge. So I took that option, never too concerned with safety.

The hike onwards was less interesting, mostly on a proper road, albeit with practically no traffic. There was a difficulty finding the way to Daju though, the maps and guidebooks speak of a new ferry rather close to Walnut Garden, but when I got there I saw a couple of French guys climbing up who said there was no ferry. Later I also caught up with a German guy who had gone up and down only to see that there is, in fact, no ferry, despite the signs. Later I've noticed Lonely Planet calls it winter ferry, so maybe it runs in the winter only. Then the walk onwards was a bit confusing, asking all the people I saw for the way and got just pointed onwards. I got a lift for a few hundred metres from the aforementioned French people who had hitchhiked with a local guy. He left all four of us to a post where a small road took off and a sign pointed to a ferry. A woman holding a shop around the corner told me it's about 6 km to go, and perhaps it indeed was, a fair bit to walk across the corn and sunflower fields, and a totally broken down path down to the river. There was also no pier at that side of the river, but on the other side there was and indeed there was an old ferry also! They took us across the river for 20 yuan each, and on the other side two minivans were waiting, one for Daju and the other for Lijiang. We all took the Lijiang one and got the price down to 50 yuan per head.

Here's also a video at the rock to get more of the atmosphere and an idea of how far the tiger supposedly leaped...

A temple, pandas and bus rides

2008-08-02T16:13:00.017+08:00

Beside the bears, Chengdu also has a pretty nice temple right in the city centre, the Wenshu temple. It has a fully reasonable entrance fee too, 5 yuan, unlike the 40 or so you'd expect in Beijing. The nicest thing about this temple was the garden, well, maybe I'm biased towards gardens but to me anyway. It's not very large compared to lots of other temples in China but still has a relaxing feel to it, despite the large number of people going about. This is one of the main temples of Zen or rather Chang Buddhism, and it's completely self-financing, running a vegetarian restaurant and a guest house.

Right, so I saw a vegetarian restaurant and I started thinking that since Sichuan food is rather famous it wouldn't be quite right if I had none while there, would it? So I gave my fruitarianism a miss for the day and had an oversized lunch at the restaurant. Sichuan food is supposed to be spicy, I picked one dish that they marked with one chili pepper on the menu, meaning slightly spicy, and another with three, for very spicy. But to my surprise even the spicier one wasn't all that spicy. They also bring rice with all orders, which I didn't expect as that is not the norm in China, so I really shouldn't have ordered dumplings... although those were possibly the best part of the meal. Feeling stuffed after my first warm meal since leaving Beijing and I was more convinced on the goodness of fruitarianism than before.

One more thing about the temple actually, they had quite interesting cartoons on the wall, in English to my surprise. It was quite easy for me to associate with these.

On to the pandas then. At an animal welfare dinner in Beijing a few weeks ago I happened to meet someone working at the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base in Chengdu and she promised a tour of the place. But unfortunately she missed her train to the city and wasn't in town to give me the tour, she called her colleagues to do that though. Panda breeding centre really doesn't sound nice in my ears, breeding another species kept in captivity, but I came to the place with an open mind. It's a large area about 10 km from central Chengdu, to get there take bus number 1 all the way to the terminal in the north, then change to 532 and don't jump off the bus as soon as you see the words "panda base" and notice you have turned to Panda Road! I did that and had to walk for about 4 km along the Panda Road to reach the centre.

The panda base has a large garden-style area with a lake and waterbirds, as well as lots of bamboo of course. But actually they don't feed the pandas with the bamboo grown there as the pandas are very picky about food and want certain types of bamboo that grow in an altitude of 2 - 2.5 km. Chengdu is only around 500 m from the sealevel. That also means it's often too hot for the pandas, and that's why they tend to be inside in the hot summer days... and inside they don't have a lot of space to stay in. It's not absolute abuse like the moon bears and the staff clearly care about them, but it still feels so wrong to me to see innocent animals in cages.

I was lucky as I often am and there were pandas born just the day before! Now I'd love to put here some pictures but there was a sign saying no pictures, and as a Finn I tend to bide by the rules... although the others didn't. However, I can tell you that newborn pandas look much like rats. Some white hair but none of that distinctive black and white stuff, that comes at 20 days of age, I was told. I was also told that the official number of pandas in the wild is 1,600, but the reality is something much fewer as local officials are given incentives of having large numbers of pandas in their area so if they see panda droppings in two places it must mean two pandas, not one panda going around.

The panda base hosts 71 giant pandas at the moment, and they're all offspring of 6 pandas taken there in the 1980s. Beside giant pandas, they also host 30 or so red pandas, who actually don't look much at all like giant pandas but more like foxes. The big idea of the base is indeed to breed pandas, and they also hope to eventually release the pandas in the wild, which makes it more of a reasonable conservation effort and less like a zoo. They released one panda a couple of years ago, but she got into a fight with a wild panda, fell off a cliff and died.

Otherwise the time in Chengdu went with work. I was planning on continuing to Emei mountain, but you know how I am with plans, so that didn't actually happen. Instead I took a bus to Lijiang, in Yunnan province. The only thing was that the bus ride would take 24 hours, which was a bit off-putting. Never mind though. The bus was one of those Chinese sleeper buses that have three rows of bunk beds, 5 in each row, making up 30 beds. But make that 30 beds made for Chinese people. For me they are too low for sitting, too short for lying, and so narrow they squeeze the shoulders in a nasty way once you do manage to settle there somehow. And of course Chinese people always smoke on the long distance buses, drivers included, despite that being forbidden. So make sure you have an openable window next to you for fresh air.

But the scenes were awesome. The mountains of Sichuan and of Yunnan made the trip almost worth the pain. If you're 175cm or shorter I think I could even recommend that to some degree, but for us taller than that... not sure. Maybe bicycles.

The torment of bears... no-one could bear it!

2008-07-26T11:50:00.010+08:00

This morning I was fortunate enough to get a tour of the Moon Bear Rescue Centre in Chengdu. The moon bears are Asiatic black bears with a distinctive golden crescent on their chests. But now comes the terrible part: Thousands of them are kept in tiny little cages, barely larger than the bear him/herself, in bear farms to extract their bile with rusting catherers implanted in their gallbladders or open and infected holes injected in their abdomens for the bile to weep. Subjected to absolute torture for all their lives for the sake of "medicine" -- the bile is used in traditional Chinese medicine, but it could easily be replaced by herbs.

The moon bear rescue centre was established in the late 1990s. It's funded by AnimalsAsia, and the rescue centre in Sichuan has so far rescued over 200 bears from the farms. Bear farming is incredibly still legal in China, hence getting the bears out of them and getting the farms to close requires great negotiation skills. The licenses of the closed farms are passed to AnimalsAsia and the policy doesn't allow any new licenses issued in China. The bears are brought to the centre together with their cages and other equipment so the farmers wouldn't just immediately replace them with other bears. Then they go through massive surgery to med the damage inflicted in the extraction techniques. The gall bladders are often removed as they are damaged beyond repair. Afterwards the bears recover, in cages but considerably bigger ones, as they need time to adjust and also mustn't scratch their wounds. Unfortunately for a large number of bears help comes too late, approximately 15% of rescued bears do not survive.

After recovery they are rehabilitated in the bear sanctuary, where the bears usually for the first time in years get to walk and play and interact with other bears. It's truly delightful to see how they have recovered from their terrible pasts and seem to be enjoying their lives lying in the sun or playing in the water.

Another sanctuary has recently been opened in Vietnam. Please donate whatever you can afford to support this important work. Donations can be made online through AnimalsAsia.

The biggest tomb in the world

2008-07-24T11:26:00.014+08:00

The second day in Xi'an I joined a tour ran by the hostel visiting the main sights in the area for 245 yuan, which is not an awful lot more than the sum of the entrance fees. And unlike many Chinese tours they didn't make us spend dreadfully long times in tourist shops.

We visited a village from 6,000 years ago, and their house-building techniques and burial rites were explained by the guides. That was pretty interesting, certainly more so than the terracotta factory, although they did explain how the warriors were made this did seem like one of those "sell crap to tourists" stops. Then there was a place where they showed an interesting movie of Qin Shihuangdi, the "first emperor" of China, and his tomb and terracotta army.

For lunch I had two peaches, going strong with the fruitarian diet. It's not only cheap and easy, but also really good for travelling as you easily avoid any lies about fake meats or hidden chicken broths. The only downside is that I can't review vegetarian restaurants for you now. But here's the list of Xi'an vegetarian restaurants anyway. The only thing I've noticed with the fruit diet is that now I really have to eat at least twice a day while I commonly only had one meal a day with the regular vegan eating. But that's ok, closer to the norms of society anyway. I'm more convinced than ever that people just eat too much. And eating only fruits feels so much more natural than all the processed crap. I think I shall keep avoiding processed foods even though I probably won't stay fruitarian too long. Probably also no more root vegetables, but I think beans and mushrooms will lure me out of fruitarianism pretty soon.

After lunch we went to the main place, the actual terracotta army. It's mighty impressive, thousands of life-size statues of warriors built 2000 years ago. The place is simply huge. Absolute madness, for the sheer sake of the vanity of one idiot they buried alive over 10,000 workmen who built the tomb, as well as the 6,000 of his concubines who hadn't borne children. One of his sons then killed all his siblings to get to rule, but was fortunately overtaken almost immediately in a peasant uprising.

Third day, and back in the city of Xi'an they have several interesting things, including the Muslim quarters. The way to notice you're in the Muslim quarter is that occasionally (but extremely rarely actually) you see some writings in Arabic of Uighur or whatever it is on the Chinese-looking buildings, there are some (very few) women with head scarfs and a few men with the caps. But more noticeably, there's meat everywhere! The street sides are filled with baskets of raw meat, sellers have stands full of raw and prepared meat all over, and the stink is terrible. But eventually I found some fruits there too! It was also very crowded with the narrow alleys, making a Finn almost run to the nearest park despite the heat.

Xi'an is one of the few Chinese cities that still has the city walls, mostly reconstructed later but nonetheless. One interesting thing about these walls is that they're sloping... I noticed the same thing in Pingyao earlier, don't really know why they did them that way, the slope ought to make climbing easier. Anyhow, surrounding the wall there is nowadays a small park, which is quite fun. And as usual in China, parks have these exercise grounds for the elderly, or anyone really but they're especially used by the elderly.

So, having found the pull-up bar I had to make my birthday test. Long long time ago, when I was about 5 years old, my father told me one has to be able to do as many pull-ups as his age in years. When I approached 15 that felt too easy and I decided one has to go to straight arms in the pull-ups, even though that wasn't what my dad showed me when I was 5. So every year on my birthday I verify that I can still do it. Now I went a day early since I don't know if I'll run into a pull-up bar tomorrow, and since it was easy I also verified the next decade while I was at it. Things should run smoothly if I don't get any fatter or in worse shape.

But quite importantly I've noticed I must pay more attention to working. These past few days I haven't done much work to speak of, so I have to consider them days off. Fortunately I had a couple of those coming, but I really must change that and prove that this travelling+working thing really can work!

Next up, Chengdu, which lies a 16-hour train ride away.

Farewells

2008-07-22T21:50:00.011+08:00

Unfortunately the last few weeks in Beijing were too busy for blogs, and unfortunately I haven't been taking many photos either to enable writing later on. Well, what went on was the longest series of farewells in history. (In my history, that is, I'm sure you can find someone being farewelled for 34 years, 5 months and 6 days if you check the Guinness book of records.) So this is dedicated to the amazing vegan community in Beijing, their great hospitality and amazing cooking and baking skills! Thank you all, you're so lovely! :-)

Oh, I do have a few photos, some of Laura's creations:

So, stuffed enough to decide to turn fruitarian, I finally left Beijing. Unfortunately donating all my material possessions didn't come through in quite that level, I have a closet-full of stuff in the office, including all these books. These are pretty much all dictionaries and course books of the languages I want to learn, so how could I give them up? In any case, after more than 3 years it was high time to say goodbye to the smoggy city, funnily enough right at the time when it's due to become non-smoggy for a couple of weeks due to the stupid Olympics that everyone hates. Well, maybe not everyone hates them, but it's hard not to having lived in Beijing recently.

Right now I'm writing this in Xi'an, the ancient capital famous for the terracotta warriors, but I'll only go see them tomorrow and the drum and bell towers didn't seem too extraordinary. Maybe I'm just tired of China right now, they are pretty nice. So I'll just post pictures rather than judgements without any basis. Or at least one picture of a huge drum. They used to beat the drums at night and the bells during the day, so people who were too lazy to wear their digital watches or look at the sun could tell the passage of time.

I also saw this interesting cross-walk. Yes, it is a circle, or a roundabout if you will, over the streets. I kind of like it. Nice green colour too. And I must mention the housing thing too! I booked a hostel room online, but arriving in the hostel they said the room isn't ready. So I took a long walk. Coming back in the afternoon they told me they would have to put me in a hotel instead because the previous folks didn't leave. So I got a nice standard hotel room instead for the price of the hostel. Lucky me, eh?

There also seems to be many more beggars in Xi'an than Beijing. It may be partly that they've been moved out of Beijing for the thing that "everyone" hates, but even a few years ago I don't think they were that many. Well, everyone, help and love each other!

June in China

2008-07-04T18:34:00.024+08:00

Right, so I didn't write anything during the whole month of June. I was working mostly, but there have been other things, let me just wrap things up quickly and put up some pictures. This was a month spent completely in China. The first thing I would note when getting off the plane was the smog of course, it hangs over the city of Beijing almost constantly. Very depressing.

There was a brief escape from that though as I took a trip to Chengde with some friends for a weekend. Chengde is a city about 250 km away from Beijing, built largely as an imperial recreation place. There's a large amount of temples, especially of the Lama Buddhist style, and an imperial palace and large grounds with all sorts of "beauty spots", mainly pavilions or houses in great scenery, built during the Qing dynasty (1644 - 1911). There's a couple of interesting-looking rocks too, and nice hiking in the mountains. I don't think there are any vegetarian restaurants, but you can get veggies from the regular restaurants as usual in China.

You get to Chengde from Beijing by various buses or a train. The buses leave from Sihui long distance bus station, or there might be buses from elsewhere too but at least from there. The ticket price is from Y50 up. The slow and crowded train that runs once a day during the night is only Y20.

In Beijing it's been a working and exercising mainly, and of course vegan club meetings. There have been a couple of team building events from work, going hiking to waterfalls and boating around. Some pics from those then:

Oh, and also a new vegan restaurant has now been opened in town, the Vegan Hut, but I'll write a proper review of that later. Finally, I have talked to the bosses and have got my distance work idea approved, so I shall be leaving Beijing soon. First, though, I'll be spending a couple of weeks in Shaanxi countryside, then returning to Beijing briefly although I won't have an apartment here anymore, and then off somewhere else. Haven't decided where to yet. Exciting, isn't it? :-)

Back to São Paulo

2008-05-26T16:44:00.007+08:00

Goodness, I'm writing this very late indeed. But I headed back to São Paulo from Rio, and over there went for a picnic with the SP vegans. And made some pastries for the road since the hostel had an oven. The picnic was excellent, a beautiful park / forest very near the city. There were all kinds of trees identified by a biologist who was along, but please don't assume I'd remember any of them. And even some monkeys, yay! :-)

And there was indeed more and more awesome vegan foods to be found. It seems there are quite a lot of vegan and vegetarian restaurants in SP, not the kind of numbers there would be in India of course, but relatively many, and of high quality. The picture on the left is from Fulo, which is supposedly the best veg restaurant in town. I don't really know about that, it was fine and more expensive than most, but didn't seem that amazing.

Then on my last day in Brazil we went to walk around in a number of parks and I took pictures of Brazilian wildlife. And of course more food... Anyway, I don't have the time to write much now but it was great fun, the people amazing, and I'm eternally grateful to them for making the trip to Brazil so special! :D

Rio de Janeiro

2008-05-17T09:18:00.007+08:00

The bus ride from Campinas to Rio takes about 7 hours, including a half hour stop which happened to be in a place that had lots of beans in a buffet, and well, I love beans! So it was a happy arrival in Rio, where I booked a hostel bed during the bus ride. At Botafogo beach, from where it is easy enough to go anywhere. I was quite surprised really to see that Rio really does look like the pictures, those little hills and beaches and forest are right there in the city, and of course the Christ statue watches over everything in its quiet magnificence.

The weather wasn't the greatest to begin with, but I still wanted to see the beaches even if they were empty and walked up to Copacabana and eventually Ipanema. The odd thing to me about these beaches was that they don't have any breakwaters so the waves are humongous! Great for surfing, but not so for swimming. At Ipanema I thought I was imagining it when I heard someone call my name, but no, there were the Swedes from the conference! So I hung out with them the rest of the day, pretty nice.

The next day I decided it was time to go up and meet Jesus, since he had been watching over for a while already. It's quite impressive, the statue, especially when it's lit up at night. There is a train that goes up the mountain, leaving from Cosme Velho (which can be easily reached by bus from Largo do Machado metro station). Built in 1884, this was the first electric railway in Brazil and with even live music included, it is quite a nice ride. At the top of the Corcovado mountain stands Cristo Redentor or Christ the Redeemer, a statue of about the size of a 13-storey building. It's also a good place for taking pictures of the city in general.

The idea was to then leave for somewhere else, possibly the national park they decided to protect in my name(!) to honour my visit to the country, but after considering the short time left, the long distance to anywhere north and the cooler weather in the south I decided to just stay in Rio. So I spent the day at the beach, and discovered that they sell smoked tofu in the health food shops... it's quite expensive, even more so than the similar stuff in Europe, but tasty and useful when the vegetarian restaurants are either closed or just too difficult to find without a map. Another easy option is to go to the pizza places, pick the vegetarian pizza and ask for it without cheese (sem queijo).

The following day I headed up to the Sugar Loaf mountain (Pão de Açucar), which provided quite nice views again. And then on to a restaurant in Botafogo called Vegan Vegan, I had seen it before but as usual it was closed whenever I was ready to go there, it's only open from 11:30 to 15:30. But everything they serve is vegan, and this was feijoada day! It was really tasty, the lemon pie I had for dessert wasn't as good as the coconut custard I tried the following day.

I went to the Ipanema beach from there, rather nice but on the way back there was a negative experience as I walked through a tunnel and around the mid-way point saw a greoup of three guys coming the other way. I smelled trouble but knew I had nothing valuable so I went on. When I was passing them, one of them, a teenage boy put his hands in my pockets and said "money, gringo", while another one, a grown man, was taking my bag. Despite the pockets being empty I was much more keen on keeping the kid out of my pants than on anything in the bag so the guy got away with it and ran to the other side of the street. I wasn't nearly bothered enough to run over the traffic to get a bag with just 35 reais (13 euros) in it, so I just waited annoyed and after taking the plastic bag with 20 reais in it the guy brought the bag back to me. Unfortunately my postcards were in the same plastic bag, losing them bothered me a lot more than the money.

The incident gave me a puzzling question though, although it was just one man and two teenage boys, having nothing valuable made it an easy decision to do nothing. But I started wondering what would I have done if the same situation would have occurred when I had my wallet and phone etc on me. Would I be willing to hurt anyone for the sake of stupid material things? I still don't have a definite answer to that. I guess I would've tried running away, despite only wearing flip-flops.

The day left a bad image in my mind of Rio, and so I was even more determined to head back to São Paulo the following evening. I checked out of the hostel, took my bags to the left luggage counter at the bus station and went to see the Botanical Gardens. This was autumn and definitely the wrong time of the year for that. Hardly any flowers at all, and the trees didn't seem so exciting. Afterwards I walked over to Ipanema, seeing all passers-by in a much more suspicious way than I ever had before.

It was already getting dark after 5 pm so I just sat at a beach bar watching the sea and people playing volleyball until I figured it was late enough for dinner. I had read that one vegetarian restaurant, Vegetariano Social Clube, would be open until midnight so I searched and found it. I ordered the tempeh à portuguesa and it was really tasty! I never had tried tempeh with seaweed before but they seemed to go together quite well. Afterwards I just headed to the bus station, waited for an hour or two and then took the overnight bus to São Paulo. It seems there are more people in the overnight than daytime services, but it was still comfortable enough. Seven hours, but I couldn't really sleep on the bus. The picture collection of the Brazil trip overall is here.

Campinas, Brazil

2008-05-15T09:19:00.005+08:00

Next city in Brazil to make it sound less like a vegan heaven since really, it's not. Campinas is the second largest city in the state of São Paulo, with approx. 1 million inhabitants. However, the conference was arranged in a fancy resort-style hotel (Royal Palm Plaza), where I also stayed, and it's badly isolated from the city with just motorways on every side. Even the nearby shopping mall is hard to reach on foot. The hotel had a really nice pool though, and that's where I spent all my lunch breaks. I guess swimming instead of eating can't be too bad for the health if not done for too long, can it?

The hotel breakfast was nice with lots of bread and jam and heaps of fruits. And of course the stuff I didn't touch. Oh, and cereals, which are quite tasty with fruit salad. Lunch, well, they had a lunch buffet and it did have all sorts of beans and salads, but I figured that I wouldn't be able to eat the price's worth of veggies and hence would be paying for the meat too. The nearby shopping centre also didn't have any veg food other than the supermarket. For dinners, we went to town a couple of times, but it seems vegetarian restaurants in Brazil are generally only open at lunchtime. The regular restaurants would first say they have nothing vegetarian, but after asking about some specific things would generally find or make something vegan.

And then there was the banquet. The other thing about Campinas is that it's the place where Brazilian coffee got started, and the conference banquet was held on the very first Brazilian coffee farm. Which sounds way cooler than it was. There isn't really a trace of coffee-growing left now, just a touristy place that does use some coffee beans for decorations. And it seems I just don't like coffee, even the Brazilian kind. I can stand a cup per day but don't enjoy it and more would be torture. Sorry. Anyway, the only vegan thing at the super expensive banquet that I hope to be reimbursed of was the starter salad. I thought the veggies were too until I tasted them, a buttery taste. Should've asked.

Well, I didn't see much anything of Campinas other than the hotel, so that about concludes this one. At the end of it I went to the bus station and the queue for tickets to São Paulo, but then noticed there was a counter for Rio de Janeiro also, and given that my new friend in SP would be busy, I decided to go where I haven't been before and sat 7 hours on the bus to Rio. But that's the next post.

São Paulo

2008-05-05T09:24:00.004+08:00

Finally in South America! My initial view of São Paulo, the slums seen through the bus window on the way from the airport in pouring rain weren't so exciting, but it has definitely picked up since. The metro system is quite alright too, even if they don't have full maps on all stations. Tired status and rain made sure there was nothing much on the day of arrival, but I did have a walk and got my shoes wet.

On the second day I was almost ready to pack up and go to Rio when I got a reply from a São Paulo vegan on VeggieConnection and changed my plans to meet her in the afternoon. Then, walking on Avenida Paulista, someone suddenly pulled my sleeve and after a second of wondering if he wanted money or directions I realised it was my former tango teacher Giggio! He stopped here on his way back home to Argentina. Then I found a great vegetarian buffet restaurant (Apfel) for lunch, with vegan things clearly marked, and very tasty.

Good things only improve sometimes. After lunch I met this local vegan who turned out to be a really nice girl. She and her friends took me to an organic food fair with a section for vegetarian stalls. They even had vegan white chocolate! Incredible, I've never seen such a thing before, and it was so yummy! In the evening we went to a vegan pizza place where they bring slices of pizza around and you can pick as many different kinds as you want, and some BBQ soya sticks and soy-shakes to go with it. Their vegan "cheese" was really well done too, it melted much like the real stuff. No idea where to get that stuff yet.

The next day (well, today) they invited me to a vegan birthday party, lucky me. So not only did I get to spend more time in their amazing company but also got some more great vegan foods and even birthday cake! This time the food was East Asian style and that's a tad less exciting for me, having had heaps of great cooking of that style on the other side of the planet. Afterwards we went off to a place that serves 10 different flavours of vegan ice-cream. Not that it'd be ice-cream weather, it's only about 20 degrees, but just for the sake of trying out this amazing stuff. Really good it was too, and of special interest was the açaí ice-cream, since I didn't know of the fruit before.

Off to Campinas for the conference in the morning, but very happy indeed about São Paulo now. :-) And the pictures can be found here, although I must apologise for the lack of good photos this time.

Paris

2008-05-02T21:55:00.009+08:00

For once no big delay in my blog entry! Yesterday I had a day in Paris on my way to Brazil (where I'm currently waiting for room cleanup and listening to the pouring rain). Only changing planes for a few hours, but I went to the city, snapped a lot of photos and had a great meal. So I'll put here a few photos of Paris, but let me tell you of the dinner place. It's just south of Notre Dame cathedral, a place called Le Grenier de Notre-Dame. It's a vegetarian restaurant, and vegan foods are clearly marked in both French and English. I forget the name of the dish I ordered, but it was something bérbéré. I think it was the only one. Only order it if you're hungry, it's quite a lot for one person, and the best thing in it is the homemade seitan, it's truly delicious! But expensive also, around 17 euros.

Italy

2008-04-23T16:34:00.018+08:00

Alright, just a quick write on the recent trip to Italy as I don't have a lot of time. This was a conference trip to Florence (Firenze), a truly charming old city that's considered the birthplace of Italian renaissance. But the first weekend went in Rome, an even more historic city with far too many sights to list here. Well, I arrived in Rome in the evening and you know what I like, so it's no surprise that I searched "tango Roma" on my phone and typed the address to the Maps program. So here's a bit of something new to this blog, technology. I'm using a Nokia N95 nowadays and it does, among tons of other features, come with GPS. It can find where it's located, download a map of the area off the Internet, and if you type in an address too, show you on the map how to get there. While updating your position on the map as you walk, as I did, among the historic streets of Rome. It's fun and it works well. But back to tango, Rome has about 5 milongas every night but unfortunately I didn't really locate the one I went for on the first night. I did find the indicated address, but the people outside that said it's like a theater. There was a tango school a couple of houses down but not a milonga at that moment. Never mind.

The next day a penpal of mine agreed to be a local guide to show me around Rome, and therefore a lot of sights fit into that one day! Starting from the Spanish steps, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, Piazza Navona, the Colosseum, Palatine Hill etc.

In the evening I looked up another of the tango places, and this time I successfully found a place to dance. It wasn't quite what I had expected, but on the positive side it wasn't only my first time dancing in Europe but also the first time to live music! I was expecting a much more crowded milonga, and hoping for a more youthful one, but it was alright overall.

Then it was off to Florence. I figured I can just walk to the hotel with the GPS, and indeed found a way to walk by the riverside and it wasn't far. It turned out the whole city, or at least all the parts where a tourist would wonder into, are within a walking distance. River Fiume runs through the city, and the Centro Storico (Historic Centre) is filled with wonderful narrow alleys between ancient buildings, and littered with little restaurants and shops. It was almost as if no big supermarkets existed in Italy, and cars were delightably few.

The conference itself took place in the central Fortezza da Basso, an old fortress now used for conferences, apparently. This was CHI08, on Human-Computer Interaction, and quite interesting, lively, and large, with over 1700 people attending. The best part, for me, was the message of "CHI goes green", taking the environmental matters far more into account and presenting papers on sustainability.

My initial plan was to return to Rome after the conference, but with a sudden decision I took off to Sardinia instead, after all, I had never been there before. I took a train to Liverno and from there a ferry to Olbia on the island. Unfortunately I didn't have time to venture further than that city before heading back, to Civitavecchio on the mainland and from there back to Rome. Sardinia seemed beautiful, although I was somewhat at odds as to what to do there in just one day when the wind was too cold for swimming. I mainly just walked around and watched the sea.

And then it was just heading back, via Civitavecchio where I sat for a couple of hours watching the sea.

Almost forgot, Italian food is amazing! And so easily vegan. All you really need to remember is "senza formaggio" (without cheese), and you can get the most amazing food you've ever had. And in the home of pizza, having it without cheese is normal and pretty common, so no-one will question your sanity. The same goes for pasta. The last day wasn't good food-wise though, for one thing I ended up being in the wrong places during the proper meal times and restaurants don't like to serve food other times. For another, Air China forgot my vegan meal as they so often do. And for a third, the restaurant at the Roman airport has "pizza rossa", which is just pizza with tomato sauce basically, but they use pizza bases that already have some cheese in them, rather than making the pizza there. So not for vegans. But overall vegan culinarists will have delicious times in Italy.

Vegan Brunches

2008-03-31T15:34:00.004+08:00

One of the reasons I haven't written for a while has been the sheer number of great veggie events recently! First there was the animal rights concert in Wudaokou, to be continued with a concert tour around China (assuming we can raise the funds for that). The club has also switched to three weekly meetings now, with the potluck Sunday brunch being the best of all! It seems our group has some excellent cooking talents. Here's a sample of what was on offer yesterday:

Otherwise it's been lots of work, sports, and dancing. Speaking of which, I shall now return to the least exciting one of the three.

Malaysia

2008-02-22T16:21:00.002+08:00

恭喜发财！Happy Rat Year! The Chinese New Year passed again, here in China that means several things:

A 7-day public holiday. Yay! (Well, it's 3 days really, just combined with weekend work.)
Totally sold out public transport.
An incredible amount of firecrackers and fireworks with which people blow up a year's savings. It's a war zone, and your ears are the victims.

Hence, I used #1 to escape from #2 and #3. To Malaysia, because I've never been there before, it's not dreadfully expensive, and it's warm. Arriving in Kuala Lumpur the taxi driver pointed out a crowd queuing for tickets and a sense of familiarity came up, but fortunately it wasn't anywhere near as bad over there. At least after the very first day train and coach tickets were available, there were very few firecrackers, and many businesses stayed open. KL is quite a modern city with at least passable public transport and everything you'd expect in a big city. But nothing overly exciting, what I wanted was the seaside. I was told by a local vegetarian couchsurfer that the nicest beaches, such as Tioman island, were closed due to monsoon season and the best available would be Langkawi.

Therefore, after glancing at Wikitravel, I decided I'd go by train to Butterworth, use the ferry to Penang, then another ferry to Langkawi, and figure things again there. So here's my first bit of Malaysian travel advice to you: Don't take the train, use the coaches! The train was about 4 hours late, really slow, and while ok, not as comfortable as the coaches. Given the late arrival, I decided to stay overnight in Butterworth. My second advice to you is: Don't stay overnight in Butterworth! There's nothing there, and I mean also no decent accommodation. At least I couldn't find any. I ended up in a hotel (the only one I saw) which admittedly was quite cheap, but that's about all the praise I can give it. I guess it was used primarily for prostitution.

This picture from Butterworth demonstrates that Malaysia has a very international feel to it, not only thanks to tourism but also the multicultural population of Malay, Chinese, and Indian people. All of which made it largely quadrilingual, with signage often in Malay (sometimes written with both Latin and Arabic scripts), Chinese, Tamil, and English. Lots of people seemed to speak good English, too many in fact, to put my Malay in test.

The ferry-ride to Penang is really short and nothing to write home about. It arrives in Georgetown, which is a reasonably-sized city and has plenty of accommodation options available. Cheap sleeps are in Chinatown. A cheap single room in much of Malaysia seemed to be around the rate of 30 - 40 RM or around 6 to 9 euros per night (a tad more in KL). This usually means shared showers and toilets. Well, Georgetown is famous for food, and they do indeed also have vegetarian restaurants! Unfortunately many were closed due to Chinese New Year, but I ran into an open one while walking lots in the city as always, and it was a very good one. I'll figure out the address later. Penang island also has some beaches, and that was one major reason to go to Malaysia so I rushed off to the nearest one. It was ok, there were horses, all the usual beach activities (jet skis, paragliding, etc), expensive beach bars, quite a lot (but not overcrowded) of people, and nice sand and warm water.

Penang was good, but when I get on to the travelling around mode I tend to just keep going. Hence I headed off to Langkawi the following morning. That's a much longer ferry ride, about 3 hours, but not too bad, leaving around 8 AM daily. Langkawi had me immediately admiring its beauty, well, as soon as I got out of the awful shopping centre the ferry drops people in. It's a real paradise island with endless white sand beaches, coconut trees and monkeys running around. It's even a tax haven. I soon started regretting not booking accommodation in advance as I didn't know where to go, but luckily Zackry's Guesthouse had a dorm bed free, for just 15 RM. Later I noticed there are plenty of motels around the island pricing rooms to the neighbourhood of 40 RM, even with private showers and during the Chinese New Year.

What comes next is easy to guess. The beach. The endless white sand beaches with the rolling waves of the ocean were so inviting I spent the next few days largely in the water. Swimming for hours, but I did also go island hopping, saw lots of cute monkeys, plenty of eagles, even more of those crab-like little things that make the holes in the sand (what are they called?), and went kayaking around the island. And got my phone broken while heading back. All this, while watching the sailboats around, made want even more to get my own sailboat! Well, some day.

What I haven't really brought up yet is food. I was expecting something similar to Indonesia where things with tempeh and tofu were all around. But to my disappointment I didn't find that at all in Malaysia. It seems the wonders of tempeh goreng or even tahu goreng are very much limited to Indonesia. The Malay food was largely infested with fish sauce, and Langkawi was a pretty bad place for that, the island is full of restaurants advertising sea food. The exception is the 'capital', Kuah, where they do have a vegetarian café at least, but I was on the other side of the island. However, there is a large Indian population in Malaysia and of course that means there is Indian veg food to be found, almost anywhere. Including Langkawi, but to my shock when I took the ferry out and went to the capital of Kedah province, Alor Star, that city seems to have no Indian people nor restaurants nor vegetarian options! So I had to rely on my well-trained stomach to go a day without food and not complain.

Indeed, beach holidays are fun but after a little while you do want something more. Like something to do after the sun goes down. Or, if you burn your skin, something more to do even when the sun is up. And definitely, some good food, for the selection in the Indian places (none of which was pure veg) on Langkawi is limited. So I decided to head south to Singapore. It is true Singapore has overly strict punishments, and it's quite disturbing that they do the largest number of capital punishments in the world (in relation to the population), but even so I do like that city. It's a city where you can be dropped anywhere, walk around randomly for half an hour, and run into at least one vegetarian restaurant. Where it's constantly warm, all year round. Where public transport works and goes everywhere. Where multiple cultures mix without clashes. Where Asian cultures can be met without the bothersome foreigner label you get elsewhere and things are pushed at you because of it. Where cars stop for pedestrians going across the road. Where homelessness seems largely a solved problem. Friendly people, beautiful places, and general cleanness, and all services available all the time. It's just comfortable.

And my favourite place in Singapore is Sentosa island. Fine, the beaches aren't as great as Langkawi by a long shot, but they're still far better than anything a Finn would dare to dream about. And you can go to the city in the evening to dance tango. And eat in various vegetarian restaurants in styles of any culture. Or whatever else you might want to do.

After a couple of days of heavy eating in Singapore I headed back to Kuala Lumpur in order to get back home. I got one of those tickets for the hop-on, hop-off tourist buses going around the city, and it seemed just the thing for a day visit. The Lake Gardens were nice, especially the Hibiscus and Orchid gardens there. And the Petronas Towers actually do look quite nice, especially at night. So, overall, a great trip, and Malaysia as well as Singapore are certainly along the top of my recommended travel destinations. The rest of the pictures are here.

“Don’t Eat Friends” Concert, March 8, in Beijing

2008-02-20T13:38:00.002+08:00

The Chinese animal advocacy and vegan outreach group Don't Eat Friends (founded by Giant Beanstalk lead singer Xie Zheng), will be playing an awareness-raising concert promoting veganism on Saturday March 8, at 9pm, at the 13 Club in Wudaokou, in Beijing's University District.

The general theme of this concert is that the health of our planet and our bodies could benefit enormously from a more compassionate and ethical relationship with our fellow earthlings.

The name of Xie's group Don't Eat Friends derives from his most common explanation when questioned about why he is a vegan: "Animals are my friends, and I don't eat my friends."

This will be the first concert of a planned ten-city tour of China to raise awareness about veganism and to highlight the problems of factory farming, animal experiments, moon bear "bile farming" and fur farming.

For details in Chinese: http://blog.sina.com.cn/biechipengyou
For details in English: http://vegansocialclub.com/?p=73

Vegan Beijing

2008-01-18T13:51:00.000+08:00

Vegan Beijing is looking better and better these days. The most important development in that is the newly started Vegan Social Club. We have a vegan dinner every Thursday in a nice restaurant and also the vegan brunches on Sundays have become a nearly regular event. And the number of people keeps going up, our record is 28 people and a cat (the cat wasn't vegan, and actually not all the people were either, but at least interested) during a Sunday brunch, and yesterday we had more than 15 people at the dinner also, thanks to a group of Swedes joining us. It's awesome meeting so many compassionate and kind people at once! And each of course have their own interesting tales. Many are amazing chefs also, this picture is from the Mexican vegan brunch by Pat, not a great picture but certainly great food!

Otherwise I've been highly engaged in the moving issue, the office has moved to a faraway suburb without decent public transport and I don't know if I should move after it and be isolated from the world or move somewhere else and be isolated from the workplace. It doesn't help matters that Chinese housing agents are some of the most difficult to deal with people. If you ever look for housing here, do not expect service, expect to be abused, then you're prepared in roughly the correct way. Anyhow, it snowed yesterday. Beautiful. :-)

The Home of Santa

2008-01-07T14:15:00.000+08:00

Happy 2008 to everyone! So, Christmas break and holiday to Finland. Finland is the best place for Christmas, or at least it is for me. The home of Santa Claus. I was feeling like him once again on the way over with the huge suitcase full of gifts. It always feels a little odd returning to Finland and hearing the familiar language everywhere. We headed almost straight to my father's kesämökki / summer cottage in Kihniö, a little town about 120 km from Tampere. I was saddened to see there was no snow and weather reports were saying there wouldn't be any, but fortunately it did snow a little so we didn't have a completely non-white Christmas. We went off to find a Christmas tree, and walking with the ax made me think whether plants can feel pain or not... hope not.

The Finnish Christmas celebration usually focuses on Christmas Eve (24th), but some of my siblings were coming only on the 25th so we delayed some things a little. At noon they announce peace for Christmas, after which they play the most militant song in Finland, quite grotesque actually. Around then people eat rice porridge with plum sauce. The porridge is made with milk but soya or oat milk works fine. After that, well, if you're all set otherwise, decorate the tree!

In the evening there's the Christmas dinner. This has three special casseroles only made at Christmas time: potato, swede, and carrot. The two latter mentioned ones are often vegan even in the traditional recipes (although some put cream in the swede casserole), the potato one has milk but again, soya or oat milk works fine. With those they generally eat ham. One of my sisters made a wonderful ham replacement from cold smoked tofu. Then there's a special Christmas bread (which is vegan) and salads or various other things... different families have different habits. The sweet section has Christmas tarts which have plum in them (vegan unless applied with egg for colour) and ginger biscuits (some are vegan, most have egg). And you drink glögi or glögg in Swedish... fruit juice with certain spices, heated up and often sharpened with wine or spirits. Much like mulled wine.

After that Santa comes, but as there was no-one of suitable age this time around, Santa passed us by and just left gifts under the tree. We didn't even open them before the others arrived on the 25th. The others included the main reason for getting over to Finland this time: the newborn baby of my brother. He takes after his father, just six weeks old and he could already speak a little bit of Arabic and Finnish, albeit only the word "no" in both languages. Pretty negative, then. :-P

The gifts were too many as usual, and after that it tends to be time for various kinds of games. Someone always gets games, and Christmas is the perfect time for playing them. One of the games was Scrabble, which is pretty interesting in Finnish because you can make all sorts of crazy words by combining them. Some of the creations were totally hilarious. The rules exclude conjugation forms as then it'd be one form after another, endlessly. Outside games are certainly in too, unfortunately this time there wasn't enough snow for regular winter games but being outside in the fresh air is good enough. Ah, and sauna, almost forgot that!

Roll over to New Year Eve then, as you may or may not know I turned vegan with my new year resolution of 1996 and hence it was a time to celebrate 12 years as a vegan. My tradition, albeit a relatively new tradition, is to celebrate with a meal in a vegan restaurant on New Year Eve. Last year it was the Millenium in San Francisco, this time it was Veganissimo in Tampere. The foods were amazing, the restaurant was far better than expected! The price level was rather normal for Finland, and actually ended up a lot cheaper than the meal at the Millenium despite more eaters this time.

All the photos are here, including nice photos of a lake, such as the here. Happy New Year!

Henan

2007-12-22T17:41:00.000+08:00

One more entry before Christmas, this time on a work outing to Henan province. Henan means south of the river, referring to the Yellow River (Huanghe). This was a project kickdown... a project kickdown in Shaolin Temple sounds pretty scary, but we all made it back intact! Phew!

After a project related meeting in the province capital Zhengzhou we went off to the White Horse Temple. This is the first Buddhist temple in China and the first officially built Buddhist temple in the world, built around year 65 AD. In the temple there was a water pond and story has it if you can make a coin float on the water that will bring you blessings. I was the only one in our group who could, without reverting to placing the coin on top of anything else at least. So I guess there are great many blessings coming my way. :-)

From there we went to the Longmen Grottoes, a large area with tons of caves with thousands of Buddha statues in them. Lots of the statues had their heads or in some cases more than that missing, destroyed in the course of the centuries. But it was still very impressive.

After a night in Luoyang city we headed on to Shaolin Temple. Shaolin temple is famous for two things: it's the birthplace of Zen-Buddhism and then of course there's kungfu. Actually more than a decade ago my mother brought me a T-shirt from Denmark that said "中国少林" (Zhongguo Shaolin / Shaolin, China) on the back, and as I had never heard of Shaolin temple I wondered for years what was the meaning of this "China few forests" thing, thinking it may have been something environmental, haha. In the temple we saw a kungfu show, those guys are pretty impressive! Shaolin temple also has its own brand of vegan cookies that are available elsewhere in China also, and they're yummy.

The pictures are here.

Good Eating Vietnam!

2007-12-11T10:40:00.000+08:00

It's pretty cold in Beijing these days so a conference trip to Hanoi was definitely welcome, and I reserved the weekends for exploring. The early December temperatures in northern Vietnam seemed to be around 20 degrees during the day, but a bit chilly for a t-shirt at night. Just like the Finnish summer weather really, only less rain, much shorter days and far more pollution. The conference people were nice enough to book a hotel, a tour to Halong Bay and even an airport pickup for us. The hotel in Hanoi was the Government Guest House, which at US$35 a night is rather expensive for Vietnam, but it was central and comfortable.

We started up by going to a tour of Halong Bay. It's a scenic seaside area about 170 km east from Hanoi, known in China as Guilin on water -- the readers outside China (Blogger is blocked in China so I suppose most readers would be elsewhere) may not know Guilin so I'll point you to the pictures I took there in 2005 for reference, here and here. The tour group consisted of me, one of my colleagues and two professors from Beijing, and our Vietnamese guide who spoke good English. Generally language skills seemed to be at a shortage in Vietnam, but people catering for a lot of tourists speak some English and most people in Halong Bay speak good Chinese, as it's pretty close to the border. Halong itself is a small city at the seaside and with the foggy weather that seems to be a common feature in the winter time the scenes weren't overly impressive, for the proper scenes you have to take a boat to see the thousands of islands.

The houses in Vietnam are quite interesting, they make relatively high and narrow buildings and paint the front... but not the sides that are a little less visible from the main street. In Hanoi these would be right next to one another, outside the city there's plenty of space between houses but they still make them quite narrow. We had a relaxing start for the tour, staying overnight in Halong before heading to see the islands. So we had dinner (food was rather similar to Chinese, and nothing extraordinary) and went to see the night market. It was quite lively, and prices are low. They also readily accepted the Chinese yuan in Halong, but not in Hanoi where they'd only take Vietnamese dong or US dollars... actually it bothered me quite a bit when people would tell me prices in US dollars when I don't have any and don't want any either! Vietnamese dong is one of those currencies that force you to learn even the big numbers in the local language and where you have to count the zeros in the bills to make sure you don't give them 100,000 rather than 10,000 dong. (1 CNY was a bit over 2,000 VND, therefore 1 EUR would be around 22,000 VND).

We got our own private boat, a big boat, to tour the islands. We started by seeing some limestone caves on one island, quite large caves although I've seen several bigger ones in China. Just like in China they were lighted with colourful lights to make them more impressive, but seemed to have less of a tendency of naming all the formations, or perhaps I just wasn't paying attention. Afterwards we continued on the boat to see quite a few islands pass by, the rock formations were indeed similar to the little mountains in Guilin, but perhaps due to the fog it didn't really look as impressive. Very nice nonetheless. The also made us a lunch on the boat, a pretty good one, too. The guide told us that Vietnam is one of these weird "socialist" countries just like China where people have to pay for the education, healthcare and so on. And they're actually really expensive, for example a year in the university (including living costs) apparently costs about 10,000 USD, and even in the highschool level it's around 1,000 USD a year! This is a lot of money in a country where the average salary in Hanoi is less than 250 USD per month, with a lot of people making a lot less. Apparently the government does offer free education to the poorest families though.

The three hour drive back to Hanoi was interrupted by a stopover at a place selling touristy things at very high prices, probably due to a deal with the tour company. But at least it was fun chatting with the staff who after my greeting thought I'd speak good Vietnamese, which, unfortunately, isn't the case. My Vietnamese seemed to be lacking at least as badly as my Korean, especially as people didn't seem to understand even my "Tôi là người ăn chay" (I'm vegetarian). I probably got my tones wrong, or then it's just so rare to be vegetarian that people look confused even if you do say it right.

In Hanoi even crossing the street is an adventure. There's heavy traffic in Beijing also, and drivers don't care much of the rules, but it's a lot worse in Hanoi... well, a lot different at least. The main difference is that rather than cars, the streets of Hanoi are filled with motorbikes. Unlike cars the motorbikes can navigate around people crossing the street, assuming they don't change pace suddenly. So that's what you do, forget your fears and just walk at a steady pace and watch the traffic magically go all around you. Worked amazingly well. We went off for a walk on the market streets nearby, filled with little shops selling all sorts of tourist crap and tours and people walking and selling fruits and French bread and asking you if you want to go somewhere by motorbike and of course swarms of tourists... it's very crowded and loud. We went for dinner at the Tamarind Cafe, which is a vegetarian restaurant right in the middle of this area. It seems almost all of the clientèle are foreigners, even the prices are only listed in USD. The food was pretty good, but unfortunately the vegan options were few and not clearly marked. They had a marking for foods that contain egg but no markings of the dairy that seemed to be infested in most of the dishes here, unlike the regular Vietnamese cuisine.

The next few days went with the conference... but a mention of the food. They had arranged lunches and dinners at a restaurant near the conference venue, and had a vegetarian table for me, 3 Indian and 2 Taiwanese people. The first lunch looked quite scary, it seemed they were serving us chicken and who knows what. Around came a rumour that those were mock meats and not real ones, but we shied away from them nonetheless. As we pointed out that we'd feel more comfortable with "regular vegetables", we did get those on the following meals. Ah, and breakfasts were at the hotel, the only vegetarian option without egg was French bread with jam and butter, which I always asked without butter but they only did so on the first morning. The butter was separate though, and in a tiny jar that I didn't open so hopefully they gave that to the next person rather than throwing it away. They also brought a yogurt to everyone despite it not being mentioned in the menu but hopefully they also gave my unopened one to the next person.

The conference organisers had also arranged for us a city tour, funnily enough in the evening, but the Ho Chi Minh square was a very interesting sight even in the dark. It seemed like a smaller version of Tian'anmen, with similar texts and a mausoleum for Ho Chi Minh. The main part of the square were smaller patches of grass, 79 of them, to celebrate the 79 years that Ho Chi Minh lived. Seemed a popular place for locals to take the kids to play also, safe from the traffic. After that we went to see a Vietnamese water puppet show, which apparently is a local tradition over 1,000 years old. It was really cute, much recommended when you visit Vietnam.

Originally I was planning hiking at Sapa after the conference, but Christmas shopping is a pain that must be dealt with every year, and it made more sense to do that in Hanoi than Beijing. Actually the couple of days there wasn't enough to find gifts for everyone as I did want to see some of the sights in Hanoi also. And that meant I could test the other vegetarian restaurants! While the food in those was similar to the Chinese vegetarian, there were enough differences to make it feel exciting, and a great idea that the Chinese vegetarian places don't have is the menu idea where you can order a meal for one consisting of a little bit of several dishes, at a price only a little bit above that of one dish. The sharing idea that they have in China is great when you have several people, but if you eat alone it gets really dull and you don't get to taste many things. These Vietnamese ones had both as you could order either way. Perfect.

I used the list of restaurants from Happycow. Dakshin would supposedly have been the nearest one but I couldn't find it, either it's been replaced by a regular Vietnamese restaurant or I'm blind or stupid or the address is wrong. I didn't go to the faraway places at all but rather visited Nang Tam twice, it was good enough to justify that. Adida was very nice also, with very good service, which I'm not saying just because the waitress called me handsome, honestly! :-P And one thing to note is that it is quite possible and easy to get vegan food from the regular restaurants as well, ok, I'm not saying I'd know with absolute certainty they don't use animal oils but at least the food tasted good. And while these vegetarian places (with the possible exception of Tamarind Cafe) are very reasonably priced also, eating in random places costs next to nothing. During a long walk from shop to shop and sight to sight it's quite relaxing to just stop at a corner bar, sit outside on the terrace and have a couple of beers and perfectly good tofu for 23,000 dong or less than 1.5 USD.

Enough about food and on the the disturbing part of the country. One evening I was walking around the beautiful Sword Lake (Hoan Kiem Lake) when a student in his early 20s came to talk to me. He told me he gets some food and study money by helping tourists find what they're looking for. Sounds nice, until you hear what they tend to look for. That's ladies, or even more disturbingly, boys. This was reaffirmed a few days later alongside another lake (there are tons of lovely lakes in Hanoi!) when a group of boys with ages ranging from 12 to 28 came to talk to me, speaking barely understandable English. One of the older ones was asking if I liked boys, and pointing to the younger ones in the group. Sheesh! I just don't know what would be the best way of helping these kids, just giving some money to the few you happen to meet doesn't really seem that much. Ideas welcome.

Overall Vietnam was a positive experience though, it's a beautiful country with very friendly people and plenty of historical sights, as well as good food. Next up, Shaolin and then Finland... Happy travelling to everyone! The pictures (a lot of them since they include photos taken by a colleague) are here.

Luckily enough I arrived in Beijing just in time to witness the first snowfall of the year the first morning here! Don't know how much of it there will be later either, it's a very dry climate, but it did bring a nice contrast to the summer weather (well, Finnish summer weather :-P) of Vietnam.

Vegan Feasts and Meetups

2007-11-27T13:59:00.000+08:00

We're at the time of the year where I have to stop procrastinating and actually work for a month or two to finish my projects, therefore few updates here. There are some interesting things going on though, and a few have to do with websites.

HospitalityClub is a site where travellers can search for accommodation and those who have extra room can post their profiles so these travellers can stay on the couch or wherever. I just joined in recently and had my first visitors, a fun vegetarian couple of globetrotters, really great people.
VeganSocialClub of Beijing!!! My most recent finding, it appears there's 10 or so people gathering every week for a vegan meal, so this Thursday there shall be one more! Yay!

And since people say this blog is all about food, I shall have to post some pictures of our recent vegan feast where the veg. couple are present and so are some of my local vegetarian friends. The cooking was done mainly by one of these local friends, I made some too, including this tofu thing I just invented and was quite happy with, but maybe I'll try some further improvements before posting a recipe. Now I'm thinking I should've taken pictures of the food. Hmh.

Top 50 Restauraunts

2007-11-22T13:33:00.001+08:00

Travelhacker has collected a list of the Top 50 Vegetarian and Vegan Restaurants, certainly worth checking out. The familiar ones on the list certainly are excellent, like Millenium in San Francisco, Susie's in Edinburgh and Sanchon in Seoul to pick a trio. Most of the other places I haven't been to, must keep them in mind when going to those areas. But I want to point out a few that in my mind definitely should've made it to the list though. Btw, they have a list of places for Green Travellers as well!

North America:
Possibly the best restaurant I've ever been to, the completely vegan Caravan of Dreams in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, NYC, definitely shouldn't be missed on a trip to the Big Apple. The atmosphere is like one of a cosy café, and the menu, also containing enough for an amazing feast for the raw vegans, is sure to delight. The excellent service tops it off as a place almost worth a trip to New York for!

On the north side of the border, Le Commensal, a chain of vegetarian buffet restaurants in Canada are definitely winners. Their ginger tofu is among the best I've tried. Vegan dishes at Commensal are clearly marked, and you pay by the weight of the plate you collect. They're around the eastern parts of Canada, I've tried a few in Montréal, Quebec.

Back to the south, Herbivore in San Francisco left an undying memory with their amazing creations for breakfast. Also completely vegan, there are several Herbivore restaurants in this city spoiled with vegetarian fares.

Asia:
There's a bunch of awesome vegetarian restaurants right here in Beijing, but as I've written about them before, I'll just leave it at that.

In Indonesia you shouldn't miss Milas in Yogyakarta, it's simply so gorgeous that you want to dine in a place like that every day! The food is good enough to justify that, even though I think it would get boring for a vegan in the long run, the vegan options aren't that many. It's also a non-profit, which just makes you feel that much nicer about frequenting the place.

And I must once again point out to Jeombongsan Mountain Vegetable Village in Sokcho, South Korea. They create amazing dishes flavoured with the local herbs creating a truly unique experience. And the service is second to none.

Europe:
Nothing is mentioned from Finland, and there is a newly opened fully vegan restaurant that just opened in my hometown of Tampere. The place is Veganissimo, and the foods are totally amazing and absolutely world class. I have some pictures linked from when I mention my visit there.

Isänpäivä / Father's Day

2007-11-11T13:26:00.000+08:00

It's Father's Day in Finland, and given that we're Finns the rest of this is in Finnish, sorry...

Elikkä hauskaa isänpäivää! Laitanpa tähän kuvan siitä kun viimeksi tavattiin, isä ja osa lapsikatrasta Kiinanmuurilla. Näytänpä olevan ainoa joka ei yritä olla incognito. Ainahan isä on tärkeä, mutta nyt kun sitä kuulee kaikista hulluuksista Suomessakin niin täytyy yrittää tuoda esille kuinka tärkeä tällainen erinomainen isä on. Isä joka aina tukee ja välittää, vaikkei sitä tuputtaen esille tuokaan. Isä joka opettaa tärkeitä arvoja elämässä, ja joka johtaa esimerkillään niiden noudattamiseen. Isä joka ei aseta hassuja sääntöjä sääntöjen itsensä vuoksi vaan elää nykypäivää ja sallii lastensa kasvaa itsenäisesti omiksi persoonikseen. Kun katsoo miten erilaisiksi ja kunnollisiksi olemme kaikki kasvaneet, on helppo nähdä kuinka hyvin olet tässä onnistunut. Itse olen tänä isänpäivänä kovin kaukana, mutta toivottavasti toiset sisarukset muistavat henkilökohtaisemmin kuin vain näin netin välityksellä. Oikein mukavaa isänpäivää, ja kiitokset kaikesta isukille!

World Vegan Day

2007-11-01T15:12:00.000+08:00

Today is World Vegan Day, but how to celebrate the occasion? I haven't really set up any kind of a tradition for it yet. This year I decided to adopt a bunch of animals for conservation, in the wild of course, I'm not in favour of zoos. There are a lot of organizations doing that, a friend has told me bad things about WWF, warranted or not I don't know, but it made me decide against them. Instead I went to some UK based charities, including CWI and tigertrust (since I happen to love tigers). Adopting animals in the names of family and friends seemed fun and rewarding for a vegan day activity. I'm also inviting some people for dinner at a nice vegetarian restaurant here, but really should've planned that in advance as not that many have time at such short notice. How about you, what's your way of celebrating Vegan Day?

Dancing to a new vegetarian restaurant

2007-10-30T14:33:00.000+08:00

Last night I visited a rather new vegetarian restaurant that wasn't in the list when I wrote my review of vegetarian Beijing earlier. It's another one of the Lily vegetarian restaurant (百合素餐厅) chain, this one located in a traditional hutong house near the crossroads of Dongzhimenneidajie (东直门内大街) and Dongzhimenneibeixiaojie (东直门内北小街), south from Xiaojie bridge (小街桥) or west from Dongzhimen metro station. The fact that it is built in a hutong and retains the traditional hutong feel about it makes this place more interesting especially to travellers, and indeed it seemed many foreigners had found their way there. The menus were bilingual in Chinese and English and included some pictures of the foods. The menu seemed largely the same as the other Lily restaurants, which means a lot of mock meat and especially mock fish dishes. I tried the "lychee flavoured vegetarian fish", "curry vegetarian chicken with potato" and "mushroom hotpot with vegetarian satay", and some dumplings to go with it. The portions were quite large, and the food wasn't bad, but I wasn't really impressed with them either. Therefore I give the restaurants three smiley faces in my very own restaurant criteria as seen in the earlier review. Prices were similar to the other places in relatively central Beijing.

Otherwise, I've been biding my time dancing tango as we have a teacher visiting from Germany, the dance is great, much recommended to everyone. It's very creative, communicative, beautiful, and most of all, fun! I'm also just starting up salsa now, must keep dancing as the temperatures go low!

Contact details for the above mentioned Lily vegetarian / 百合素餐厅(香草园店):
东城区东直门内北小街香草园胡同23号(四合院内), 64052082.
From Dongzhimen metro station, take exit A to Dongshimennei and turn around as the exit faces north and you should head to the road going west. Then head straight on along Dongzhimenneidajie until you reach Dongzhimenneibeixiaojie. Cross that street and walk north, the Xiangcaoyuan hutong is the first or second little street on the left. The road sign is quite small so be on the lookout.

Pilgrimage to the Vegan Bakery

2007-10-08T17:10:00.000+08:00

Last year on the Chinese national day holiday (everyone gets 7 days off from Oct 1st -- apparently a hundred million people goes through the railway stations of Beijing during the week, so it tends to be a good time to escape from the country) I was in Washington DC and over there visited Sticky Fingers, a vegan bakery. So great their goodies were that I thought I might make it an annual thing. DC is far away, but they have another branch in Seoul, South Korea. Besides, I've never been to Korea so it made an interesting trip. And it got me to see how totally I've forgotten my Korean -- I studied it for a year and a half back in the university but apart from the writing system and a few phrases, everything seems to have escaped my mind. :-(

"Welcome to Korea, we've been waiting for you for 5 thousand years" say the wonderful placates as you arrive in the country. It seems 5,000 years isn't enough time to learn my language, but then, with over 100,000,000 forms for every verb in Finnish that can't be too surprising. They didn't speak much English either over there though, nor Chinese. Actually it was quite sad that for sudden snacks I'd have to revert to Pringles despite products called SoyBars and so on as they only had the ingredient listing in Korean and there would be tons of things I don't understand then. Anyway, Seoul is a bustling metropolis and possibly the third biggest urban concentration of people in the world after Ciudad de Mexico and Tokyo, which makes it a bit odd destination to escape the Chinese crowds, but at least the public transport was not only frequent, extensive and modern, but also not overly crowded.

I arrived late in the day and decided on a dinner in a restaurant that seemed to be in the same part of town as one of the branches of the bakery, namely Country Life Health Restaurant near the Shinsa station. They had a rather tasty vegetarian buffet with the spicy Korean kimchi and other dishes, at very reasonable prices. Then I took off to look for the bakery randomly in the area, and tried asking people, none of whom spoke any English. One was kind enough to call the number of the bakery and explain in a way that even I could understand that it's really far away. Fine, I just spent the evening walking the streets of Seoul then, quite a nice city it is. I stayed in a fine budget hotel near the city centre called Yim's House, warmly recommended, definitely worth the budget price and the owner who works really long hours speaks excellent English and is extremely friendly and nice.

Yim's House is right next to the Changdeokgung palace, so I decided to visit that in the morning, but as you have to go on a guided tour and the English one only started at 11:30, I decided to go to the bakery for breakfast first. For in the evening I had found a web page that seemed to have very precise information on how to find them. (Wireless internet hotspots were all over the place in Seoul, including free ones.) I decided on trying the Shinchon branch, followed the instructions on the page and walked up and down the street finding nothing. Deciding they might mean some other intersection I tried all that seemed plausible but still found no trace of Sticky Fingers. Then it was time for the tour of the palace, so I went back. They only show certain sections of the palace grounds but nonetheless the tour was certainly worth it and it was very interesting to hear how the heating system worked for example. The Korean palaces have a certain resemblance to the Chinese ones, but they're not exactly the same, the colour scheme is a bit different and the architecture, ornaments and even basic design have certain differences.

After the tour I decided I really want to find the bakery and the branch in Shinsegae department store seemed easiest. The department store was easy to find, but had no store map, and it has 14 stories, if I remember correctly. However, the Sticky Fingers stand is at the level where you enter from the metro tunnel, even though I didn't notice it at my first round as I didn't cover the whole floor. So, finally, the vegan goodies! I bought some samples although I was rather disappointed to see pretty much only sweet things, I would rather have seen something savoury, especially as I hadn't eaten all day. But the confectionery was definitely mouth-watering and totally palatable.

Cheered up after finding what I had been looking for I set out to touring more of the palaces of Seoul, and beautiful they were. There are five main palaces in the city, all quite distinct. I also figured a celebratory dinner was in order and headed off to a famous restaurant that's been voted as one of the best in Asia, the Sanchon Mountain Village. The restaurant was opened by a former monk who liked the mountain food the monks ate so much that he wanted to bring it to a wider audience. They have a set course which contains more than 20 dishes, so there's certainly enough to eat, and they keep you entertained by having a nightly performance of music and dance. The setting is traditional Korean, you sit on a pillow on the floor, and all food is brought in little bowls. Much of it is really tasty, some a bit too spicy for my taste. It's a little expensive though, 35,200 won.

The next day I decided to head to Seoraksan national park, and as the main branch of Sticky Fingers was supposed to be at a station rather near the express bus station, I thought I'd go there to pick some snacks for the road. Again I followed the instructions in the page mentioned above to the letter and then twisting the letter, walking over an hour through the streets and still finding nothing. I was tired of this and as I had the address even in Korean from the Sticky Fingers website, I stopped a taxi and asked the driver to take me there. He looked at the address for a while and said sorry but he had no idea where it is (or something of the sort, my Korean is very limited). Disappointed I walked on but decided to try another taxi driver still. He also didn't know the address but he had a GPS device to which he could type the address and get instructions how to get there. To his utter surprise the place was just two blocks away. He didn't even turn the meter on for such a short trip, just charged me 1,000 won for taking me there, and indeed there was the Sticky Fingers logo... but a much bigger "RENT" sign over the whole thing. It was closed. For good. As I walked back to the metro station I still couldn't fathom how could one possibly end up there with the instructions from the website, but as it was closed it hardly matters.

Next I boarded a bus to Sokcho, a small city near the Seoraksan national park. The Korean express buses are really comfortable with huge seats and not too many people and they do drive on schedule. I went to the motel recommended at Yim's House, and the place was quite good again and the staff friendly. They even had coffee that tasted good! I don't know how they do that, generally I don't like coffee but that stuff was great. The Vegetarian Korea page knows a vegetarian restaurant in Sokcho so I headed off there... first I tried to find it but eventually reverted to a taxi. I was presented with a menu in Korean only and no pictures, and I just said "vegetarian" in Korean to the waitress and she asked me if one item on the list would be ok. It was a pibimbab, costing 6,000 won, so I said yes and expected a simple meal, for as far as I knew pibimbab is rice with some veggies and possibly egg but not in this place then. I was in total awe then when I saw what they brought before me: more than a dozen bowls of totally amazing foods, coupled with rice and Korean pancakes. This place is famous for herbs, they collect local herbs and sell them over there, and you could taste that in the food. I can honestly say I've never tasted anything like it before, it was totally delightful. And the service was top notch, the son of the owner speaks decent English and he came to explain to me how to eat the foods and best of all, even drove me to town after the dinner as the place is quite far away. At no extra charge, just the measly 6,000 won. I can't praise this place enough, if you ever end up around Sokcho, do look it up!

The next day I went off to Seoraksan national park. It was a rainy day, and hence the idea of hiking for possibly even 11 hours to the top of the mountain to see nothing but cloud didn't really excite me, so I decided on the option of hiking to the 873 m high rock that's been compared to the Ayers Rock in Australia. I can't really say how fair a comparison it is since it was misty and I couldn't see far and hence couldn't get a proper look at the rock but nonetheless. At Seoraksan there's also a huge Buddha statue, the biggest I've ever seen, right near the entrance. Made of bronze. The actual hike was fun regardless of the wet weather, and got gradually harder as the path became steeper. In the end it was climbing seemingly endless stairs along the rock. I'm in a pretty good shape but I still had to pause for breath a couple of times, the thing that amazes me is that some people actually managed and saw it worthwhile to build these stairs over there, all my respect to their hard labour!

The hike was shorter than I thought though, so I also decided to take the short path to the waterfalls. I almost turned back disappointed before reaching the end of the path as it seemed there were some waterfalls but nothing really fancy. However the waterfall in the end was pretty nice, not huge but quite pretty, and the pond below was so inviting I had to fight the urge of taking my clothes off and jumping in for a swim!

I took the bus back to the motel where I had left my bag and then changed off my wet shirt before heading off to the bus station and the next destination, but in my silliness I didn't even ask about buses to Busan from Sokcho but just figured I'd go to Seoul, pick up some snacks and head on to Busan from there in a night bus so I'd arrive in the morning. Well, I made it to Seoul but the department store and hence Sticky Fingers was closed already, and I spent much of the evening waiting for a train in Seoul station as I decided I didn't want to leave too early as I'd arrive near midnight then and would have to find a place to sleep in Busan. I was quite decided that I'd sleep on the train, even though the last train of the evening, leaving Seoul at 23:00, arrived in Busan already at 4:19 AM. And I seemed to get a seat, don't know if they had sleepers. They didn't even dim the lights, the train kept stopping several times, always with loud announcements, and overall I got no sleep at all.

So in the morning in Busan station, sleepy and my legs aching from the hike of the previous day I decided to go to the beach to see the sunrise, given that I was up early enough. I went to the metro station and waited for the first train of the morning, leaving at 5:33 AM, and got to the beach an hour later to see that the sun was pretty much up already. I took some pictures anyway and decided I needed some relaxation and hot springs sounded just the thing. I went off to this thing they claim to be the biggest spa in Asia, I don't know if it is but it wasn't huge and the Chinese ones I've been to certainly don't seem much smaller at all. Anyhow, there were hot springs, in much the same style as in China, meaning that they flavour the waters to have some health effects. I couldn't understand the Korean signs to know what effect they were supposed to have but there were cherry, citron, and grapefruit flavoured pools at least. No, that doesn't mean you drink the water, you just soak in it. But it had the colour and smell of those fruits. They had a small swimming pool also, and saunas. The sauna was in Finnish sauna temperatures, 84°C, but they only had a bench to sit on at ground level, so it didn't feel like a hot and proper Finnish sauna. I also went down on the sun chairs that were by the pools to relax for a moment and ended up falling asleep for a bit.

The sad part about Busan, a city of over 4 million people, is that there's only one vegetarian restaurant, the Wellbeing vegetable buffet. It's a pretty good one, but definitely not enough for such a big city, and it wasn't even big or crowded. Maybe a dozen people or so dining on Friday night, a few more at lunchtime. It's a family business, and seemed to be quite a nice vegetarian family, even if the language skills were limited. There was also a nice temple in Busan, but I took off back to Seoul the next morning nonetheless.

Back in Seoul I decided I will definitely find the missing Sticky Fingers bakery, whatever the cost. I went off to a tourist information centre and asked the staff to call the bakery number and ask where is it. They did that very nicely and I got instructions how to get there, despite being told that they wouldn't have much more selection than the department store stand and the place was quite far away. Never mind, I went all the way to Korea for the bakery, I wouldn't mind sitting another hour in the metro to reach it. Despite the instructions I did end up taking the wrong way from the metro station and ended up in a wrong place that still somehow seemed to match the description, so I used my superb Korean skills to chat with an old man there and after five minutes managed to understand that I was supposed to go to the other direction from the station. Well, I walked back and searched for a bit and there it was! The vegan bakery. It was true their selection wasn't much wider than that of the department store though. I bought a bunch of things and happily headed back to the city centre.

There was still time for dinner and I had read of a restaurant offering a nice vegetarian fare, including tofu ice cream, so I took off to find it in the artsy district. Surprise surprise, after walking back and forth where it was supposed to be for an hour or two I didn't find a trace of it. But I did see a restaurant that had its name written in Chinese characters and the name started with 素, which means vegetarian or plain. So I checked their menu, it wasn't a vegetarian restaurant but they did have a vegetarian special also, so I went in and tested my Korean in explaining the whole "no fish, no egg, no dairy" thing to them while pointing to the vegetarian special in the menu. Another waitress came back a moment later to verify the no egg part, so I guess it had an effect. The food was good and at least seemed completely vegan.

The last day I checked out the main palace, Gyeongbokgung, and the Korean folk museum that's adjacent to it. A beautiful palace and an interesting museum. After which I headed off to the Sticky Fingers at the department store and bought the stand empty to bring back tons of stuff to offer to everyone, thinking I'd host a vegan confectionery party in the weekend. Later I realised there's a tango workshop during the weekend so the party might not take place. Don't know. Anyway, Korea overall seemed a very nice country largely worthy of its name ("korea" in Finnish means pretty, sometimes suggesting overly decorated). Well worth a visit, with or without a vegan bakery, but especially with one. The rest of the pictures are in flickr.

Sticky Fingers bakery branches in Seoul:
- Shinsegae department store branch: Take metro line 4 to Hoehyeon (회현) station, go to Shinsegae department store by exit 7 and search the level to which you arrive, probably B1, it's in the sweet foods court.
- Garak market branch: Take metro line 8 to Garak market (가락시장) station, take exit 3 or 4 (one was closed as I was there) towards Olympic Family Apartments (올림픽훼밀리아파트), note a big GS25 Mart and make sure it's on your right hand side as you walk on. If you don't see it, turn around. Turn right immediately after the fence of the GS25 on a small walkway and walk across over to the place straight ahead with several small shops. Sticky Fingers is a bit towards the left, on the side where you'll arrive from.

Blood donation in China

2007-09-24T10:21:00.000+08:00

The blood donation tends to be very similar around the world, as far as I know, but there are certain differences also. In China they're only now moving to the completely voluntary donations, certainly a good move as the paid "donations" led to individuals over-donating and disease-spreading etc. At least Beijing seems to be in voluntary donations now, the countryside is probably behind in matters.

The confusing part for me at least was that there aren't dedicated places for blood donation, but this is done in so called "blood buses" that are parked around the city, and then one would have to figure out where are they and when. But I gather they are in the same places pretty much every day, from 10 AM to 6 PM, more or less. Other than that, the donation proceeds in much the same way as elsewhere (well, my experiences are from Finland and the UK). First there's a form to fill (in Chinese) with the regular questions about illnesses and sexual behaviour and so on. Then they take a blood sample, presumably to measure the hemoglobin and whatever other tests they might do, I didn't ask what they did with it. They do use new needles, thankfully. And then it's the donating part which is the same as anywhere really, although you don't lie down in the buses but it's done while sitting. They gave me a T-shirt for thanks, those are really cheap over here.

Zhangjiajie

2007-09-24T09:53:00.000+08:00

Zhangjiajie is a nice but touristy town in Hunan province, claiming to fame with natural parks full of beautiful mountain scenes and nice waterways. The downside is the same as always in China, there are just too many people. Fortunately this isn't quite as popular as some other sights yet, so the number of people is somewhat manageable, but it undoubtedly is a problem for the local wildlife. Which, to my utterly pleasant surprise, exists! In the form of monkeys at least.

The company outing over there started by drifting down some rapids and water cannon fights to make sure everyone got soaked, later visiting a rather nice park dedicated to the culture of the Tujia minority people... You know, there are more Tujia people than there are Finns, so it really didn't feel as much of a small minority group as I guess it was supposed to! But I bought really nice handmade straw sandals over there, they're really light and in every way feel so much better than any stupid factory-made footwear. Much recommended.

The following days were filled with mountains, hiking up and down them, and admiring the great sceneries. Plus a huge limestone cave for the last day. A very nice trip, even if food wasn't all that great... They did get vegan foods for me, but especially in the beginning both quality and quantity were lacking somewhat. And I admit to getting a bit tired of the "what would you do if you came across a tiger that wanted to eat you" style of questions when I didn't let a colleague kill a bug at our table but chased it away instead. Tired enough to have my first bubble bath in years with a good book, wouldn't do it in BJ with the water shortage but it seemed different in Hunan. The pics are at flickr. But not of the bug nor me bathing, mostly the mountains, sorry if that disappoints. :-P

me-me

2007-09-24T08:50:00.000+08:00

Got tagged for a me-me by Dreamy...

Here are the “official” rules:
# Players must list one fact, word, or tidbit that is somehow relevant to their life for each letter of your first or middle name.
# When you are tagged you need to write your own post containing your first or middle name game facts, word, or tidbit.
# At the end of your post choose one person for each letter of your name to tag.
# Don’t forget to leave a comment telling them ,they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
# If I’ve tagged YOU, please join in on the fun!

Ok, so Jari (which, btw, means a helmet-laden warrior) stands for:
J - Jolly. Once a year I turn into a jolly old fat man, as you can see in this picture from last winter with the nephews...
A - Anti-cruelty. I believe in the equality of all life, and I don't feel one has a right to cause deliberate harm to other beings.
R - Romany aka Gypsy. Well, I'm only a quarter Gypsy but it still works for me as an excuse to keep travelling! Life is a winding Road that goes far and wide in unpredictable ways.
I - Independence. Finns are people of the forests, having our own little houses somewhere in the middle of nowhere, with no neighbours for miles. Traditionally, that is. This causes the character to be quite self-reliant. We hardly ever ask for help.

And of course all know my middle initials are P.T. which stands for Perpetual Traveller. :-)

Tempeh goreng and wild Finnish mushrooms

2007-09-21T12:59:00.000+08:00

Here's last night's dinner and today's lunch, my very first take on "tempeh goreng" coupled with spinach noodles and wild Finnish mushrooms. I had no recipe for tempeh goreng, so this is just my usual case of using whatever I happen to have around, which tends to be salt and a mix of peppers -- even my chili sauce had seen the end of its lifespan. The tempeh I brought from Germany, haven't found any in China. The mushrooms are trumpet-shaped chantarelles, they're one of the richest natural sources of vitamin D and totally yummy. The whole thing tasted even better with the egg-free mayonnaise from Plamil -- which was brought from England, it's not available in China either. So the only Chinese obtained thing were the noodles and the spices. Oh well.

Dalian and Qingdao

2007-09-13T14:29:00.001+08:00

More travelling to the travel blog, I just got back from my beach holiday to Dalian and Qingdao. I started off by taking the train to Dalian, it's about 1000 km or 10 hours from Beijing but should be more eco-friendly than flying. A lovely city by the seaside, Dalian happened to host the Summer Davos 2007 at the time, which was very much visible on the streets and one famed beach resort was closed due to the conference. The other beaches were open though so on to the water! The beaches weren't overly clean but up to the Chinese standard, and the many Russian tourists in Dalian made it sure I was generally taken as a Russian as well. I should learn more Russian so I could play with that a bit more...

Some say the blog is all about food, so here we come to the topic. Dalian seems to have two vegetarian restaurants -- the list provided by IVCB only carries one, the other was found randomly on the street. Tian Yuan (天缘素食店) was a tiny little place but relatively central, and the food quality wasn't remotely comparable to the fine vegetarian restaurants of Beijing or Shanghai, but it was edible and vegan. So edible, I guess, that my belt broke down while I was eating there! Perhaps that's only for the better, it was the last animal product I had in daily usage, given to me over 15 years ago when I wasn't vegan yet. Unfortunately there are no pictures in this blog entry because I only took pictures with my phone and lost it when leaving Qingdao.

The second vegetarian restaurant is one of three parts of a restaurant by a central hotel in Dalian, I don't have the address here but will update this entry with that later. The other parts are a regular Chinese restaurant and an Indian restaurant... actually it turned out the vegan food in the Indian restaurant was nicer than the one in the Chinese vegetarian, not to mention the nicer atmosphere and lower price. This place is considerably fancier than the street diner Tian Yuan, but the food wasn't much better and the vegetarian part was quite small. As people go to Dalian for seafood, they did provide a lot of mock alternatives.

From Dalian I took a boat to Yantai, a port city in Shandong province. This was a fast catamaran, the trip took a bit over 3 hours but I would suggest taking the slower boat instead: people weren't allowed on the deck during the ride, there was nothing onboard but seats, the windows were mostly too dirty to see through, and the seasick lady in front of me and the TV screaming dubbed Deep Blue Sea in far too high volume didn't make the ride any more comfortable. Yantai seemed to be a relatively dull industrial city, I had a small dinner there and jumped in a bus to Qingdao.

Qingdao, formerly romanized as Tsingtao, is the beer capital of China, but also famous for beaches. They did have a nice seaside walk, 40 km long, which I went through and of course made a stop at all the beaches passed for a swim. Beside the staring and comments (positive ones, but still) of the locals, all this shirtless walking also got me a mild sunburn, silly me I thought I wouldn't burn in the sun of northern China in September. The beaches were a bit nicer than those of Dalian, fine sand and the less central ones seemed quite clean, beaches 1 and 6 (they're numbered) were slightly dirtier and more crowded. With the lack of Russian tourists the beaches were filled with Chinese men; it seems very few Chinese women go to beaches. One odd thing to see at the seaside were newlyweds having their wedding photos taken by the sea. There were dozens of them, going knee-deep in the water in their wedding dresses! Unfortunately, again, the pictures were lost.

Qingdao seems to have only one vegetarian restaurant, at least in the list and I didn't see any others either. This one is quite far from the city centre or the seaside, and while the atmosphere and service were friendly and nice, I'm afraid the food quality wasn't any better than in Dalian. Overall these two cities do provide nice places to swim and veg*an people can certainly survive there, but don't expect culinary delights from such a trip. In that sense it was a happy return to Beijing, although the blue skies now seem a distant dream again. Oh, and I did get a replacement SIM card already with the same number, and the phone was provided by the company anyway so the only real loss were the pictures. The phone must have fallen out of my pocket as I was running for the bus back to Beijing. A bus with beds, never seen one of those before, but it was a reasonable ride, although the beds were a bit short and narrow for me, made for the slightly smaller Chinese people I assume. Ah, and note that Qingdao is confusing with railway stations right now, perhaps the proper one will be repaired by the Olympics but right now the one in use is Sifang station quite far from the centre and not knowing this had me going to the wrong place and almost late from the bus back (which would be why I was running). Next off to Zhangjiajie in a couple of hours, about that later...

Beijing Raptor Rescue Centre

2007-09-05T13:37:00.000+08:00

I finally found the time to visit the Beijing Raptor Rescue Centre this weekend. This centre was established in 2001 by IFAW and Beijing Normal University (BNU) on BNU grounds. It provides rehabilitation and medical treatment for raptors that are e.g. hurt when flying into kite strings or glass buildings, or kept illegally as pets. The centre holds the birds for a maximum of three months, trying to heal them with the target of releasing them into the mountains. This target has been reached for hundreds of birds, but unfortunately about 1/3 of them cannot be rehabilitated and are euthanised instead. They also educate people on raptor conservation.

The centre has had many international visitors and is endorsed by organizations such as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Several of the people working there are vegetarian, which is very much a rarity in China. The raptors, obviously, are not. They're fed with chicken and mice. Their cages weren't terribly large, but probably bearable for short time keeping, especially for the smaller birds. They had also artificial rain in parts of the cages and tried to keep human contact to a minimum so the birds would live more naturally. Detailed health logs are kept on each bird.

In any case, it was very interesting and very positive to see a wildlife rescue centre in China, there are very few and from the lack of wildlife, they would be very much in need. At the moment the centre had 20 gorgeous birds, hopefully they can all be released soon.

1st German meal

2007-08-30T13:14:00.000+08:00

Time came to start trying the German foods I brought over. I started by boiling potatoes and then started to make a sauce for it, just your traditional brown sauce in principle but I put some onions and quite a lot of mushrooms in there, I thought I was overdoing it with the mushrooms but it was actually really good. Then I went on to fry the first bit of the German foods, Cowgirl steaks they were called, I think. Really tasty, good texture and just the right amount of spices. I fried up the rest of the mushrooms to make company for them.

My friend wanted the broccoli boiled, and that's simple enough, so I put it boiling and fried up the "tofu pizza", as odd as it sounded. Two slices of spiced tofu, they were pretty good also but didn't really resemble pizza in any way. I decorated that with the Plamil egg-free mayonnaise. Best dinner I've had in a while, and there's tons of the German foods left. :-)

Bonn, Germany

2007-08-27T16:43:00.001+08:00

Well, I was lucky enough to get to attend a conference in Bonn, Germany just now. Bonn was the capital of West Germany during the split time, but it's a relatively small and quiet city. A wonderful place to just walk around. It's also along the river Rhine, there are boat cruises on the river (we went on one on the Poseidon, there was practically nothing for a vegan to eat) and the scenes were lovely. It's also great fun to walk along the riverside, in the evening lots of people gather there, put in camp fires or have small or big parties, live music, or just play around in whatever way they might feel like.

As for food, German supermarkets are packed with meat alternatives, especially fake sausages, since the Germans like to eat sausages. I quite like the hemp sausage, I already had tried them in Finland but they are German and much more common (and cheaper) over there. As for restaurants, that's a more difficult thing. There are usually some vegetarian dishes in the restaurants in Bonn, but not a lot, and they're generally not vegan. Of course there are falafel places all over the city, so you can have a quick vegan meal with that. And then there's one restaurant that's a buffet where you pay by the weight of the plate, I think it was completely vegetarian and they had marked the vegan things with a green dot. I think about 75% of foods were vegan. The place is called Cassius Garten and is located on Maximilianstraße, very close to the main railway station. Well, practically everything in Bonn seemed to be pretty close to the main railway station. They even have a web page.

On my way back I visited Frankfurt very briefly, just for a few hours. I asked the tourist information for vegetarian restaurants near the main railway station, but apparently there are none. I don't know how far they count "in der Nähe" though, so if you have more time in Frankfurt you can probably find such places. As for me I went off to an Indian restaurant near the station then, they did perfectly fine vegan food also. Strangely it seemed the neighbourhood around Frankfurt Hbf was filled with sex shops, one right next to the other. It's also a much bigger city and doesn't have the charm of Bonn.

Brownies... or something

2007-08-02T07:54:00.000+08:00

I saw a raw brownie recipe a few days ago in Dreamy's blog, and having nothing else to eat I decided I might give it a try. So, I went through the ingredient listing. "Do I have walnuts? No. Dates? No. Carob? No. But hey, I have water!" Thus reassured it was possible due to having one of the required ingredients, I set out to look for alternatives for the few missing pieces. :-)

I had some of the dried, salted beans (I think they're broad beans) that they sell in shops in China, not nearly the suggested 1.5 dl to replace the walnuts in the recipe, but they still were a starting point. Then I added some pistachios, didn't have a lot of those either but at least some. And raisins to replace the dates. So on to the grinding and it looked pretty good already. I even had cocoa powder which should replace the carob quite nicely, and that and the actual correct ingredient, water, made a lovely mixture. Of course I never measure anything when cooking, that's just me, and this time I think there might have been too much water for it never really dried down but had to be eaten with a spoon. Actually after being in the fridge for a while the taste as well as the looks reminded me of mämmi. Anyway, it was quite tasty, so thanks for the recipe that I so carefully followed, heheh. :-P

Vegetarian Beijing

2007-07-16T19:29:00.006+08:00

As I recently toured the vegetarian restaurants of Beijing with my dad and sisters, I decided share with you what sort of culinary delights this city has to offer, especially since it seems there is no comprehensive listing of vegetarian restaurants in the web in English, or at least I haven't found one. There is one in Chinese at IVU.org. Let's go with this by the district.

东城区 (Dongcheng district -- the eastern parts of central Beijing, with the limit being around the 2nd ring road)

First, there's my local one, the vegetarian buffet at 雍和宫 (Yonghegong) lama temple, opposite the temple of Confucius. I read an interview of the chef long ago claiming all dishes would be vegan, and verified some dairy-looking things to really be vegan, but at the very least their ice-cream does have dairy and the desserts probably do also. I tend to skip things that look like they might have dairy or eggs, but if you feel more interested in them, do ask the staff, they might just be vegan. Lunch buffet costs 48 CNY, dinner buffet 58 CNY. Also serves individual dishes by order, and has bigger private rooms for larger groups.
Address: 北京市东城区国子监大街甲26号登品素食(原叙香斋) -- Opposite the temple of Confucius, walk south from Yonghegong station exit C and you'll see a sign that says "vegetarian restaurant" even in English on your right hand side, around 100m from the station. There you turn right and it'll be the first restaurant on your left hand side quite soon.
Tel: 64046568
My rating: 4 stars

Next metro station, Andingmen (安定门) would host 莲花海素食 -- well, it's not actually at the station but not awfully far from there. In fact the restaurant is in a hutong. It's a cosy little place, and sometimes serves good food, but the quality seems rather random. Some of their stuff is just... plain at most.
Address: 安定门内大街车辇店胡同河北饭店对面. So it's opposite Hebei Hotel (河北饭馆), that's an easier thing to spot, in Cheniandian hutong, off (towards west) Andingmen neidajie. If going by bus, take 104 or 108 to 安定门内 (Andingmen nei).
Tel: 64036169
Opening hours: 10 AM to 10 PM daily.
My rating: 2 stars

Away from metro lines but certainly worth a visit is Wo xing wo su (我行我素茶食坊), which you can find at the north end of the city wall ruins park (皇城根遗址公园). This is also a tea house, and has nice and simple wooden decor. There's no smoking, no alcohol served, and no eggs in the food. Really good things here include the special tofu of the chef, Xihu (West Lake) vinegar "fish", black pepper steak, and the "meat pie", although many others are well worth trying also.
Address: 东城区地安门东大街61号，在平安大道霞光街口，皇城根遗址公园对面 (61 Di'anmen dongdajie)
Tel: 84011287
My rating: 4 stars

Closer to the city centre there would be 马娘娘斋饭 on Chaoyangmen neixiaojie. It's a nicely decorated (apart from the terrible toilets!) restaurant with usually good quality food, but can be a little random at times. Lower than average prices though. There's no egg in the foods.
Address: 北京东城区朝内南小街221号 (221 Chaoyangmennei nanxiaojie)
Tel: 65594161
My rating: 3 stars

Then there's Still Thoughts (静思素食坊), the place where the Vegan Social Club of Beijing has the Vegan Thursday dinners, but the restaurant is obviously open at other times too. The prices are fair, lower than most vegetarian restaurants in Beijing, the service and atmosphere good.
Address: 美术馆北大佛寺东街甲18号 (18 Dafosi dongjie). Refer to the map at the Vegan Social Club site.
Tel: 64008941
My rating: 3 stars

Name: 功德林素饭庄 (Gongdelin -- the oldest veg. restaurant in Beijing)
Address: Seems to have moved to the proximity of Chongwenmen metro station. From the line 2 station head west for half a block on the south side of the street, it's the big restaurant at the corner, seems to have no English signage. Should be Chongwenmen Xidajie, not sure of the house number, about 10.
Tel: 67020867/65112542 -- not sure if these are valid for the new location!
My rating: 2.5 stars -- based on visits to the old location, they may have changed

(Name: 绿色天食 (Green Angel)
Address: 东城区灯市口大街57号 (157 Dengshikou dajie). A bit off Wangfujing. Take bus lines 108, 111, 103, 104 or 803 to 灯市西口 (Dengshixikou).
Tel: 65242349/65242476
Closed since the summer of 2006. The food was nice and didn't have egg, and the location was a selling point to this rather expensive restaurant, but I don't know if it'll reopen or not.
My rating: 3.5 stars)

西城区 (Xicheng district -- the western parts of central Beijing, roughly within the 2nd ring road)

First this area has my favourite restaurant that I introduced earlier, 嘉禾园素食. Since it has been introduced, I'll simply mention the details now. And that it does serve beer, as I didn't mention last time. Average prices, prepare for up to 100 yuan per person.
Address: 德胜门西大街甲5号（积水潭桥西360米路北地铁集团院内）. Close to Jishuitan metro station, head west past the petrol station and turn to a courtyard that says 北京地铁, then it'll be on your right hand side quite soon.
Tel: 62261846
My rating: 5 stars

Next, 慈海素心. This nice restaurant stands in the basement of a hotel called 齐鲁饭店. It's rather friendly and some of the staff speak English... enough to bother me actually, when I speak Chinese to them and they reply in English. But the food is pretty good, they also have a mock Peking duck which isn't bad, although I didn't try it the last time as we had the mock duck in Bodhi-Sake. The fruit juice is quite expensive and so are some of the dishes, depends much on what you order. The menus are in Chinese and English but without pictures. The restaurant is quite close to Lotus Lane and the Qianhai and Houhai lake areas that have lots of bars and lights at night, it can be a lovely place for a stroll, especially a romantic one. Pricing a little above average, prepare for 100 yuan per person.
Address: 西城区地安门西大街103号，齐鲁饭店后院内. (103 Di'anmen xidajie.) Bus lines 107,118,810,850,204 and 13 take you there, get off at 东官房站 (dong guan fang zhan).
Tel: 66571898, 13301259664
My rating: 3.5 stars

妙膳素食 was the very first vegetarian restaurant I found in Beijing, and it's in the same area near the lakes. However, when I last went there (2006), the place had changed and was no longer completely vegetarian. They had a very extensive range of vegetarian options though, including a lot of mock meat things.
Address: 北京西城区鼓楼西大街76号. (176 Gulou xidajie.) Either take the metro to Gulou exit B and walk south all the way to the Drum tower, turn west and continue a bit -- overall a 15-20 min walk. Or take bus 5, 815, 819 or 839 to 甘水桥站 (Ganshuiqiao). Or walk from Qianhai.
Tel: 84045899
My rating: 2 stars -- the food is good and place nice, but the presence of meat lowers the score

There's also one near Xizhimen station, I'm not sure if this is still in Xicheng district or not, but let's assume so. 静思素食坊（分店） is a nice and clean place, but modern and lacks personality. The food is good and tasty but nothing really fancy about it.
Address: 北京市梅苑饭店高粱桥斜街甲30号（交通大学南门梅园饭店1-2层）. Around the south gate of the Jiaotong university.
Tel: 62255792
My rating: 3 stars

And then there's Shifangzhai (十方斋素食宫), haven't tried them yet:
Address: 平安里西大街甲6号 (平安大街赵登禹路路口往东100米路南) (Location on map.)
Tel: 66166691/66166692
Info: No eggs, no five roots, no alcohol. Seats 300, tables for 8 but can be joined to seat over 30 people together.

宣武区 (Xuanwu district -- south of the city centre)

This has Bodhi-Sake restaurant, of which I wrote earlier. It's not terribly far from the Temple of Heaven, although it can be a bit of a walk for those not used to walking at all.
Address: 10-16 Heiyaochang jie. 200 metres to the north of north gate of Taoranting Park.
Tel: 010-63557348
Opening hours: 10am-10pm
My rating: 4 stars

朝阳区 (Chaoyang district -- north-eastern parts of the city, outside 2nd ring road east and north)

Close to home in Hepingli 和平里 area but a little hard to find is 荷塘月色 or Lotus in Moonlight, and it's worth a visit even though I got a bad impression the first time I went there as they gave us a complimentary dish containing dairy and the waiter denied it -- it's the lie that makes it worse than the dairy, it doesn't claim to be dairy free. However, it is a Chinese restaurant like all of these and the dishes with dairy are few and far between. Average prices, for 1-2 people prepare for 100 yuan per person, for more people it'll be less.
Address: 朝阳区柳芳南里12号楼（104路柳芳东口下/18路左家庄下） -- the bus instructions there tell you to get off from 104 at 柳芳东口 (liu fang dong kou) or from 18 at 左家庄 (zuo jia zhuang). If you're walking along Hepinglibeijie (和平里北街), turn south to Zuojiazhuangdajie (左家庄大街) and walk for a few blocks and pay attention to your right hand side, there will be a sign for the restaurant telling you to turn right, walk for 100m or so and find it on your right. I don't remember if there was any English in the sign.
Tel: 64653299/64663114
My rating: 3.5 stars

Next up, 草木间, although it's quite far from me but it is worth a visit. They have the greatest fake fish, albeit the last time they had changed their menus and I didn't see it and tried other things. Those weren't quite as special, but the atmosphere in the restaurant is nice as it hosts a little stream and a bridge over it. The menus are in Chinese and English and have pictures too. Prices slightly above average.
Address: 朝阳区劲松三区甲302号华腾达厦二层. So it's on the 3rd ring road east, not terribly far from the Temple of Heaven if you're into walking a lot, but most people wouldn't go for it (like I would, haha :-P). By public transport you might take the metro to Guomao (国贸) and either walk south for 20 minutes or jump into any bus going to Jingsong bridge (劲松桥), it's very near. The restaurant is on the second floor like it says there in Chinese, enter through the main entrance of the building. There are signs for vegetarian restaurant even in English on the side of the building.
Tel: 87730135, 87730136
My rating: 4 stars

For upper class dining, try 净心莲素食餐厅. It's rather popular so it would be recommendable to reserve a table in advance. The dishes are set up in quite fancy ways and this shows in the prices too, but on the international level it's still rather cheap, perhaps 100 yuan per person will do if you don't go for the really fancy things. There are no eggs in the dishes and the place doesn't serve alcohol. The menus are huge, in Chinese and English, but without pictures of the foods. Try the mock shark at least, it's yummy.
Address: 农展南里10号中国文联院内. (10 Nongzhannanli, inside the courtyard of Chinese cultural federation.) It's very near north-east from 长虹桥 (Chang bridge of the 3rd ring road east. That means if you head east from Dongsishitiao you will eventually get there, but it is a relatively long walk. Bus lines 350, 707 and 特3 get there.
Tel: 87036669/65923627
My rating: 4.5 stars

And again one I haven't been to yet:

颐养斋

亚运村北苑路阳光广场北侧，公交:358、803、417支、758、858大屯站或秀园站下 / 64976535

海淀区 (Haidian district, north-west of the city outside 2nd ring road)

香阳小筑 is a nice restaurant that unlike many of the other vegetarian restaurants in Beijing seems to be practically only for locals. Also the Chinese-only menus without pictures don't attract foreigners. The price level is more suitable for local budgets than the other vegetarian places mentioned. The food has no eggs, no MSG, and no alcohol is served. There's also a small shop for mock meat stuff in the front.
Address: 海淀区北三环路大钟寺古钟博物馆大门西侧20米. On 3rd ring road north, 20m west from the entrance of the clock museum of Dazhong temple.
Tel: 82112104
My rating: 3 stars with a little extra from the no MSG part

Near the east gate of Tsinghua university you can find Heaven's Kitchen (天厨妙香(清华店)), which is another busy restaurant, book or be prepared to have to wait for a table. The food is really good though, there's no eggs, no smoking, no alcohol served, and it doesn't use the root vegetables the Buddhists don't eat. The prices are rather reasonable.
Address: 清华正门外，清华科技园，创业大厦一层西侧。A little hard to find perhaps, head west from the Tsinghua east gate (outside campus) within the courtyards where you can walk and it should be one of the first restaurants that come your way. There's a coffee shop with bigger signs at the same entrance. Bus lines 110, 307, 320支, 331, 355, 355支, 375, 375支, 628, 726, 731, 732支, 743, 749, 825, 913 and 951 go to Tsinghua east gate.
Tel: 62797078 / 62780859 / 89833390
My rating: 4.5 stars

Then there should be two restaurants I haven't visited, so I'm just posting the information from the Chinese website here:
Name: 百合素餐厅(稊园店)
Address: 海淀区昆明湖路50号，颐和园新宫门东南50米（乘坐374,374支,704,905,992等公交车在颐和园南门下车即到）. 50 Kunminghulu, 50 m southeast of the new gate of the Summer Palace. Bus lines 374, 374支, 704, 905, 992 and others serve the south gate of the Summer Palace.
Tel: 62878726
Special information: No eggs, no alcohol, no five roots

Name: 六和斋
Address: 海淀区西三旗立交桥东南角
Tel: 86490060/86394733

昌平区 Changping district

Here's another one I haven't tried yet:
Name: 般若素食
Address: 昌平区鼓楼东街33号. (33 Gulou dongjie.) Take bus 21 to Changping 2nd highschool and head north for five minutes. Here's the original instruction too: (乘轻轨到龙泽，换乘21路公共汽车，到昌平二中下车，向北5分钟即是)
Tel: 86694425,13141386173
Special information: no smoking, no alcohol, no meat, no eggs, no five roots

Fruit cake

2007-07-13T11:03:00.000+08:00

Yes, fine, I am a fruit cake, but that's not what I mean. :-P What I'm writing about is a fruit cake we made a couple of days ago with my sister Suvi. This one is suitable for raw vegans too... You see there are no ovens in China, so we have to inspire, just like my wok-baking. This fruit cake is just layers of different fruits. Does it stick together you ask? No... but who's to care, it looks pretty and tastes great, what else can you ask of a cake?

嘉禾园素食 -- my favourite restaurant in BJ

2007-06-22T19:48:00.000+08:00

I decided it was time to introduce my favourite restaurant in Beijing. 嘉禾园素食 (Jia he yuan su shi) or the "excellent grain garden vegetarian restaurant" (my translation, not sure if they have an English name) is located near Jishuitan metro station along the 2nd ring road north. But the place is quite hidden, in fact the first time I went there we had to call the place three times just to find it! It's hidden in a courtyard of houses, the sign at the gate of the courtyard says 北京地铁 (Beijing metro), which doesn't help matters. Even inside the right area it's easy to walk past the place. Basically from Jishuitan station you take exit A and walk west past the petrol station, and the first courtyard to the right after a short bit of green following the petrol station should have that sign. Within the area the restaurant will soon be on your right hand side.

Now assuming you find it, what you'll find inside is a quiet and comfortable environment and friendly staff. Perhaps due to being hard to find, this place is never crowded. The owners are Buddhists and that explains the decor as well as the music playing on the background. But of course it's a restaurant, so the best part would have to be the food. Everything in the menu is vegetarian, but not necessarily vegan. However, the dishes themselves don't tend to contain eggs or dairy (but do verify!). Among my friends this place is commonly known as "the potato fish restaurant". This is because the very first time I went there, I ordered a dish that was one of these mock fish things in sweet and sour sauce. To my surprise, this "fish" that looked realistic enough tasted like potatoes! For the simple reason that that's what it is. There's also pineapple at the bottom. It's pretty good, do have a try.

While the potato fish is a distinguishing feature, it's not my favourite dish in this great place. That would be their roasted mushrooms in a spicy sauce. I discovered by accident that if you have the mushrooms together with their shredded pancake, it's not too spicy at all, but still enough to wake up the taste buds. It's beautifully set too. A total delight.

Also noteworthy is their sweet taro, of which I have no photos at the moment, and this sweet potato dish featured on the left. A lot of other foods are tasty also, do go crazy experimenting! The only thing I don't like is the fake pork meat which they make too realistically, even adding in a layer of fake fat! What's the point? Nobody wants the fat anyway.

To complete a meal there's a complimentary fruit plate as is rather common in restaurants in China, well, the decent ones. What's more, this place also has vegetarian books on offer, many for free, and sometimes Buddhist music also.

Here's the address so you can find them, first in Chinese:
德胜门西大街甲5号（积水潭桥西360米路北地铁集团院内）
Or if you don't read Chinese but want to say it to a taxi driver:
Deshengmen Xidajie jia 5 hao.
Tel: 010 - 62261846

Singapore

2007-06-18T14:22:00.001+08:00

Back to civilization! And straight to shower... That was the feeling when hitting Singapore. Singapore seems to be just what it's famed to be: modern, clean and efficient. The parallel to it being wet didn't apply during my visit at least, it hardly rained at all. Maybe I'm just lucky. Aside from Hong Kong this seemed to be the only place in Asia where cars actually stop when someone is stepping to a zebra crossing.

Singapore has a large number of vegetarian restaurants and it seemed you're never too far from one. The quality of them didn't make any great impressions, however, they all seemed fine, but nothing to write home about in all honesty. But their sheer number makes it seem it's easy to be vegetarian or vegan in Singapore. What was more impressive were the gorgeous tropical fruits squeezed into great fruit juices all over the place! Yes, the fruits and even the juices existed in Indonesia also, but not here in the north. It's that, the beaches, the rainforest (something I didn't really expect in a concrete jungle!), the tropical scenes, all services being easily available in a modern city with efficient public transport, nice people, and places to dance that tell me that this could indeed be my next destination. I've never experienced an eternal summer before, or even a non-white Christmas! I don't have much time to write this in all detail now so I'll just post a picture collection instead.

Indonesia, days 8-10: The beach! And leaving...

2007-06-17T16:59:00.000+08:00

Anyone who knows me at all knows that when the weather gets hot, there's one thing I long for: to get in the water! Throughout the time in Indonesia I was asking for places to swim, but apparently there aren't decent ones except for Bali which was far away. There was one beach that I had been told to be possibly the most gorgeous one there is, and a place where no foreigner had set foot before. But there were also supposed to be huge tidal waves and it may be too dangerous to swim. Well, by day 8 it was time to find out for myself. We dropped into a temple in Yogyakarta first and from there found a car and driver and two ladies who came along. To this day I remain unclear as to why they came along as they didn't even come to the beach, but... not my problem. On the way we dropped by a fruit market and bought three big boxes of oranges and plenty of water bottles to give away at the village. Or well, to reduce the price, I hid away and the locals did the shopping. It took 2-3 hours to get to the village on small mountain roads with beautiful scenery, passing rice fields and fruit trees all the way.

There are no phones in the village and mobile phone networks don't cover it either, so there was no way to check if the local kids would be around then. It also happened to be a day for weddings, we passed several wedding receptions on the way, and as the first houses in the village were empty it seemed as though everyone might be at one of those. However, eventually we found a kid and he helped gather around the rest of them, and some parents too, to the temple. At the temple we served fruits and nuts and crisps to everybody and sat around and sang songs... I was put to sing a couple of Indonesian songs and the kids sang English songs to me. Some of them were excellent singers! Actually their artistic talent wasn't limited to singing put some had made gorgeous oil paintings also. I was given one as a gift, a beautiful scenery and a waterfall, complete with a cute little duck.

After the singing session, it was time to hit the beach! It's a bit away from the village, we gathered up as many kids as could fit in the car and drove a tiny little road, the rocks sounding like doing dangerous damage to the bottom of the car. Eventually we hit a point where you couldn't drive any further and hiked for the last half an hour through some gorgeous scenes... although the best were only seen when we finally saw the sea!

The beach was gorgeous, but the tidal waves really were huge and it was rocky, so it soon became clear that to swim there that day would be practically a suicide. We walked in the water and I got myself completely wet, so it felt a little better. The kids collected sea shells. I hear during high tide this beach would be absolutely perfect as then the water reaches the sand, making it easier to swim without such fear of hitting the rocks. Either way, it was a gorgeous location, and it was quite special to be the first foreigner out there.

The way back wasn't clear and we had a bunch of kids along so it was time to head back before it got dark. The kids were dropped back into the village and then we headed back to Yogyakarta and to the great vegetarian restaurant Milas, described in more detail for the previous day. The food was as good as ever.

All good things must come to an end, and so it went also for the Indonesia trip. Day 9 was just a day for preparing to leave: took a bus back to Semarang, bought a plane ticket to Jakarta, waited for my friend to negotiate with her aunt about how to do this and eventually doing it a little differently anyway... We took the car the aunt insisted on back to Ampel but stayed there overnight rather than returning immediately to Semarang. This time was needed to pack and get the pictures on a CD and so on. Then it was an early morning drive to Semarang, flight over to Jakarta (where the damn bastards stole my sunscreen as it was in the hand package and that's not allowed!) and then back over to the northern hemisphere again... not very far though, just to Singapore. The pics below are still in Yogyakarta, and another vegetarian restaurant there, Lusidus. We persuaded the staff there to mark vegan dishes in their menu with my green marker, so if you go there and see the markings, you know who to blame. :-)

Indonesia, day 7: Yogyakarta

2007-06-16T13:47:00.000+08:00

Day 7 was to be the day to head to Yogyakarta, also known as Jogyakarta and Jogjakarta, don't ask me which one is correct, even the locals don't seem to know. I think Yogyakarta was the most common spelling in road signs, but this built-in spell-checker in Firefox wants me to write it as Jogjakarta. Nah, I tell the machine what to do, not the other way around. :-)

However, leaving from my friend's aunt's was so slow for a while I thought I had got lost to my dad's place, don't know of any other folks as slow in leaving for anywhere! I was up by 6 AM and over there before 7, yet we were almost late from the afternoon bus despite doing nothing all day! Well, not nothing: eating. They brought me plate after plate of local foods. I don't dare to count, I think it must have been at least 7 plates of food. So, sitting, eating, sweating, and wondering if we ever get to leave. At least I showed the earlier pictures with the deer to the kid and she was quite excited about it and wanted a picture with her dog. Ok, I know I'm sounding like an ungrateful bastard. The food was good and the company was nice, even if I had trouble communicating. And very interesting to taste all the local flavours. Of the foods, I don't know of a name for the top left one, the top right is milontong and the bottom one is tofu flower or something, I think I was told the name in Chinese since I don't remember any Indonesian name for it.

Despite the pleasantness of the food, there was too much of it and the weather was too hot, so I was truly delighted when we finally got to leave Semarang behind. The bus ride to Yogyakarta took about 4 hours I think, and they don't tend to make stops, so watch how much you drink beforehand. One irritating part of Joglosemar buses is that they give this package of "refreshments" to every passenger, and the only vegan thing in it is water. I tried refusing the package on every ride, on the first one I even succeeded but on this ride to Yogyakarta the conductor really didn't get it at all. Eventually we gave our packages to a becak (pedicab) driver along the way.

Over in Yogyakarta we found a place to stay at some students' house in a maze of small buildings and took one of them to dinner in this restaurant we heard about very randomly... We had a chat with a Swiss tourist at Prambanan and he mentioned a nice ho(s)tel in Yogyakarta, and in the hostel I ran into a card of this vegetarian restaurant called Milas. What a lucky find it was! The place was totally amazing. The setting was beautiful, these little bamboo huts that they had tables in, with a small fountain in the centre of the courtyard. All very clean and neat, a little handicraft shop and a library were adjunct to it, the food was great, the service good and best of all, it's all non-profit! They put all the profits into promoting vegetarianism and other good causes. The only unfortunate part was that there were a lot of dishes with dairy, eggs or honey in them, but there was ten or so fully vegan dishes also. There'll be more on Milas on day 8, and I'll put their contact details at the end of this blog entry.

After dinner we went to see a ballet performance of a religious story at the site of Prambanan. The performance was... nice. Not spectacular, not great, not amazing, but nice.

Rumah Makan "MILAS"
Jl. Prawirotaman IV 127 B
Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Tel: +62 274 742 33 99

Indonesia, days 5 & 6: back to Semarang

2007-06-15T14:58:00.000+08:00

We promised the folks at the temple the previous night to go back to Semarang on day 5, so after a quick "shower" (see conditions on the right) we took a bus over there. Indonesian long distance buses have many interesting features. One is that there are no bus stops, they stop anywhere if you just wave to them. They're also relatively comfortable, meaning the seats are ok and there are enough of them... there's no air-conditioning of course, if you want that, go for the tourist buses. But the doors are open all the time so there's plenty of air. There are also folks that come in and sing and play a guitar or something. Give a coin to them, 100 rupiah or something. If you give nothing, they might punch you. If they sing well, you might give more. The other kind of people that comes to the buses are the salesmen, and they don't punch you even if you buy nothing. Some sell newspapers (in Indonesian), others sell food. That was the most pleasant surprise of the buses. There are generally 5 things sold and 4 of them are vegan! One is aram-aram, it's sticky rice, coconut milk and tofu wrapped in a coconut leaf and shaped like a big candy. The second is tahu goreng, fried tofu, which comes with a few little and very hot green chilies. The third is tempeh which they bring in dry bars. I forget the name of the fourth, but it's these very sweet biscuits that look almost chocolaty but it's actually just palm sugar. According to locals, even if it says it has honey, it's actually palm sugar since that's cheaper. I have no recollection of what the fifth non-vegan item was. Surprisingly enough they don't sell anything to drink, so bring your water bottle along.

In Semarang we took a becak (pedicab) over to the city school where the kids were at the time. And sang songs all the way there. At the school I ended up being put to "teach" a class, introducing myself in Indonesian and then trying to get a conversation going in English. And singing and listening to them sing. At the cafeteria I was also pushed to teaching tango again, but the girls were too shy. Don't know what's with Indonesian girls, but I ended up teaching mostly boys all the time there. I guess they'll get the girls hooked later then, hopefully. Afterwards we took a ride back to the city, had a nice chat with the Chinese teacher of my friend... Well, nice despite the fact that he started making silly claims that questioned that veganism would be the one and only Right Path to take, so I had to extend my Chinese to explain to him where he was making a mistake. :-)

The day passed with surprisingly few pictures, we took an air-conditioned Joglosemar tourist bus back in the evening and that was about all there was to the day. It seems practically impossible to reserve Joglosemar tickets in advance as they never pick up the phone, at least not in Semarang. These fancier buses don't have people coming to play and sing, or anyone selling food. They are, however, considered safer, especially in the evening. A girl in the bus told us a tale of when she had taken an Apollo bus earlier and as she was about to get off, someone had cut her mobile phone out of her pocket and pushed her off the bus! Reporting the crime to the police or the bus company didn't result in anything, not even an apology. In any case, back at Ampel we admired the Moon which for some reason had a huge light circle surrounding it. I tried to take a camera phone picture but as you can see, the circle is not there. However I swear to you we both saw it as clearly as we saw the moon itself. Strange phenomenon.

Day 6 was Vesak day or the "birthday of Buddha" and the previous day I ended up promising one kid we'd be there in their celebrations of the temple, so despite non-willingness to head to Semarang AGAIN, that had to be done since I always keep my promises. A tourist bus took us to the city and a taxi to the crowded temple. We made small donations to the temple in the queue that was formed outside and poured water on top of a Buddha statue, I don't really know what was the significance but that's what everyone did. Later there was free food in the basement of the temple, at least mostly vegan, I didn't pick any of one dish as I wasn't sure. Then one of the kids asked me to follow her upstairs, as to this day I'm unsure why as she soon seemed rather lost and didn't indicate anything of where to go anymore. She didn't speak enough English to explain and my Indonesian wasn't good enough either. Doesn't matter though, I ended up running into two guys, one of whom spoke pretty good Chinese and the other decent English, and soon they wanted to accompany me to upstairs. I also met the mother of the Chinese speaker, she spoke even better Chinese, so we got along well. Quite soon these guys were asking if they could show me around town. I agreed as my friend would be busy chatting with the kids in a language I wouldn't understand anyway, and off we went in their car, with another guy and the girlfriend of the Chinese speaker joining us. Later it turned out this girlfriend was among the crew of the ship that sailed to Africa, even if only as far as the Seychelles, as mentioned in the bit about Borobudur. She had travelled quite a bit otherwise too, and spoke good English.

First they took me to see the house with 1000 doors. This house was built during the Dutch rule of Indonesia, it had a prison in the basement, office space in the ground floor, and a dance hall and a gym upstairs. Plenty of trap doors too, leading nowhere, to fool the prisoners. Now the building hasn't been used in a long time, the daughter of the previous president Suharto wanted to turn it into a hotel, but as he went out of power the plans vanished too. It's claimed the house is haunted, and unfortunately even my tour guides were too scared to go down to the prison level. There were nice scenes from upstairs and plenty of bats had made their home in the water tower.

From there, we went on to see the Central Mosque of Semarang, which is impressively large and fancy, and complete with "umbrellas" built with German technology that can be opened up if there are special events. There's also a tower to watch from. Like any silly foreigner, I was wearing shorts and that's not allowed. They would've borrowed me a robe at the mosque, but we didn't bother to buy tickets and go see it but just watched it from the outside and went to the tower that has been built in conjunction to the mosque. The tower is only 99 metres high but provides scenes across the city. The stones in front of the mosque were oven hot in the afternoon sun, and of course you have to take the shoes off... plenty of fried feet on offer there!

Afterwards they had to go and I was due to meet my friend back at the temple also, so plenty of thanks to these nice people, it was a lot of fun to tour the city for a bit and have a nice chat! Back at the temple it turned out the regular driver would be busy the next day so we had to cancel the previous plans and decided to stay overnight in Semarang as it was easier to catch a bus to Yogyakarta from there. We fist headed to my friend's aunt's where she would stay and would later find me a cheap hotel. We also took her young cousin to dinner in a vegetarian restaurant in Chinatown. This place was extremely welcoming to a Chinese speaking Finn who lives in Beijing, I have never noticed how warmly the overseas Chinese community might welcome a stranger before! They were all smiles and introducing me to a kid who wanted to study in Beijing and so on and so forth. Lovely people. Pretty good food too.

Later we went off to find me the cheapest hotel room in town. One was found in Chinatown for around 60,000 rupiah, I believe, that makes roughly 6 USD. A very basic thing but there were beds (two of them actually), air conditioning, a private squat toilet and the Indonesian style of "showering", a water tap... and actually the water (cold of course) actually ran. So, fully decent, and worth the price. On the way back we ran into a bunch of folks practising the dragon dance for a festival which should take place pretty much as I write this, but sadly none of them spoke decent Chinese. I posed for a few pictures with the dragons but none turned out any good as the camera was out of batteries as always and wouldn't use the flash. We had a nice ice dessert in a place called Es Snowhite, and then I escorted the girls to the aunt's and headed over to the hotel. I'm not your typical Finn when it comes to alcohol consumption but after the heat of the day and the little sleep and no showers I had got throughout the trip I really felt like having a cold beer. It was Friday night and I was in the centre of a big city, so I didn't think that'd be a big problem despite it being a Muslim country. I was wrong. I walked for an hour across the central area, saw people singing karaoke and playing games at a night market, but no sign of anything stronger than fruit juice anywhere. Eventually I decided I was just tiring myself more and walked back to the hotel and settled for water. I did later see beer sold in a supermarket in Yogyakarta, so clearly it exists and isn't even illegal, but don't go to Indonesia for the bar scene.

Also on day 6 there was a cute kitty playing with my bag while I was eating, I forgot the pics earlier: