Thailand

We left for Thailand the morning of New Year's Eve (Feb 17). The roads in Beijing were empty early in the morning with the exception near the airport on the airport expressway. We went through the usual angst of getting boarding passes, all the forms, passport control, security, etc. The flight from Beijing to Bangkok is a little over 5 hours.

We got off to a one hour late start and were a little concerned about our connecting flight to Phuket. The connection was fairly easy as we did not need to go through passport control or pick up our bags like you would in the US. The flight to Phuket is an hour on a 747 if you can imagine that.

We are staying in a section of the island called Laguna Beach. There are a small cluster of hotels that share a water taxi and bus service to connect them. We are staying at the Laguna Beach Resort. We arrived around 5:30 and are happy with it so far. We had a nice dinner at the hotel restaurant Rimatay (Thai Cuisine of all things). It was very nice.

Spring Festival - Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year is the biggest holiday of the year for the Chinese. It is a big family celebration in which people make every attempt to go home to celebrate with their parents and family. It is a difficult time for the transportation industry especially the rail system. This is the only time that the migrant workers get to go home and they wait in long lines to try and get a train ticket home. They are not always successful in getting a ticket even after waiting in lines that could take 1-2 days.

Fireworks can be heard near our apartment building for the last month. The last couple of days have been more intense. Fireworks just recently went on sale in the city and were legal to light within the 5th ring road.

The New Year is also called the Spring Festival. This is the time when spring officially begins according to the lunar calendar. It has actually been warm weather the last couple of weeks. We had a day where it got to 16C. President Hu extends Spring Festival greetings:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-02/17/content_811566.htm

St Andrews News

On Friday, AF got word from St. Andrews that she has an unconditional offer to attend school . This has been her number one choice but still needs to contemplate her choices. Needless to say she was in a good mood over the weekend and was soliciting advice. Choices, choices, choices (at least there are good ones) . . . . . . . . .

Skiing at Nanshan

I had another opportunity to go skiing in China on Saturday. I went with co-workers to a resort called Nanshan. It is one of the closer resorts to Beijing (less than an hour from Shunyi suburbs where many expats live in housing compounds).

Nanshan had an advanced slope, a tethered hang glider ride, and an alpine slide. The runs were shorter than the previous resort I went to. They also had a nice deck to eat meat on a stick and beer. They had chicken liver, squid, chicken legs, beef, etc that were barbecued with a nice spicy dry rub.
The snow was very fast and icy at 8:30 but it loosened up with sun beating down on it. The lines were shorter than normal even after lunch. We are speculating that it is due to the Chinese New Year which starts next week. To ski and rent equipment it costs 190RMB (roughly $25). Not bad. This is a great place to teach kids to ski at a very reasonable price.

Art Community

BF has been scouring the art scene in Beijing with some knowledgeable expats. She has been to several. She has been making some purchases along the way. The art is so varied and finding something that she truly likes has been a little difficult. She is making good headway.

Last weekend we went with another expat couple to a community center that had three artists featured. The exhibit was scouted out the previous day and it was time to make some purchase decisions. The genre of art was called folk art. There was an artist who created block prints with a Cultural Revolution theme, a colored folk painting artist named Wang Xingke, and a paper cutting artist. We bought a framed watercolor folk painting and a block print on Sunday. BF went back on Thursday to get a collectible book from Wang Xingke and one more art piece. HE is from a small village from the Shaanxi province. We visited there in the Fall to see the Terracotta soldiers in Xi'an.