::Wondering Mind::

I do spend quite a bit of time online and naturally, I do spend a bit of it reading other blogs! Here is a small sample for the week:

Quirky Beijing: brought to you by my friend and neighbor. Great little collection of -how else to put it- quirky things about beijing. From fashion to cakes, passing through parks and signage. Check it out!

Beijing Boyce: Jim is an absolute reference as far as the Beijing nightlife goes. If it’s happening, he knows about it and I read his blog religiously.

Grape Wall of China: Jim’s other blog about the wine scene in China with guest posts by some of the more prominent figures of the local vino scene. A reference for all things grape!

bizCult a new a fresh take on the business culture in China. a take-no-prisoner attitude combined with smart and witty commentary. Love it or hate, it’s good! Matt and his gang also do some podcasts that are worth a listen.

I was lucky enough to get the hell out of the ‘jing this past weekend for a camping trip in Inner-Mongolia with a friend. Had a great time hanging out in the wilderness roughing it out with not a soul in the area, complete emptiness with a dash of peace and quite thrown in for good measure.

It technically all got started the night before with a missed train but i won’t dwell on that. We pick up here as i’m getting ready to board my plane at the NanYan airport in Beijing on one of the bluest-sky days that the city had this year:

1.5 hours later, the plane landed in Baotou, Inner Mongolia to another blue sky:

As we’re driving over to the camp site, we pass by traditional Mongolian yurts. I couldn’t help but snap a few pictures:

It took about 1.5 hours to get to the entrance of the park/reservoir/whatever where the camping would be done. Cute little place with an eclectic mix of building styles scattered throughout the “livable” area of the site:

The green side of the reservoir:

The middle kingdom side, stuck between greenery and dryness but blessed with a great skyline:

“The Stargate view” as it was dubbed by my partner in crime. One could see the moon halfway between the mountains and the sky in broad daylight:

Now we’re getting serious! yours truly was on Fire and BBQ duty. Gotta dig a pit and stone it properly:

And Badr said ” Let there be fire”… I’m admiring my handy work:

Oh yeah baby.. we got flames! so puuurtyyyy and graceful and they danced to the soft whispers of the wind:

My partner in crime for the weekend proudly showing HER handy work… yip, she was on bartending duty and those pineapples were the cups for the evening.. yeas, we’re roughing it but we need the bare minimum required amount of indulgence: white and spicy Captain ( aye captain aye) with tropical juice and slices of mango/pineapples:

Our little visitor for the evening… just one of the strangely freakish looking bugs we came across on the trip. This was particularly freaky because it had what looked like a gigantic stinger on it’s backside:

Burn Baby Burn:

There might not have been much green happening but the skyline made up for it with style and a multitude of colors between sundown and sunrise:

The camp site: mine is the red tent!

Not really sure if our little friend from the previous evening came back of if this was its close cousin coming to say hello on sunday:

goofing up after climbing parts of a mountain on flip flops..

Enjoying a well-deserved cigarette after getting near the top. couldn’t do much better between m flipflops and her Crocs:

Lunch the next day.. pieces of beef that had been marinating for 48 hours.. that’s what i call chuan’r:

Back to the city on sunday afternoon.. i loved this particular section of Baotou. It was just so refreshing and original:

Ghengis Khan: a local folk here, worshipped and veneered to this day.. his picture/painting was everywhere.

Oh yeah baby… gooooooooood roasted lamb

I think she somewhat enjoed it as well.

The final meal in baotou wih all its glory. Let’s see if I can describe what i’m trying to do: from top to bottom, left to right:
Camel meat burger(chinese style) and home-style flat bread. I must admit I was taken by surprise with that but to taste flatbread that was soooo rich in corn you had to go.
Then, center stage are the lamp ribs. right next to them lies some small “mountain desert salad”and right below it, the master peace: Sheep Brain in a light spicy yet pleasant ….

After a rough start (that’s a story for later), I managed to make it to Baotou in Inner-mongolia for a camping weekend up in the mountains. Camping aside, I got to spend a few hours in the city walking around, eating, getting a foot massage and just enjoying the flagrant absence of high rises in the horizon.
A few singularities reminded me of why I love small cities to begin with:

- Great and friendly conversation with Taxi drivers: they’re genuinely impressed and happy to see that a 老外 (laowai i.e foreigner) can speak some Mandarin and has gone through the trouble of learning it. It makes for amazingly nice and friendly conversations that ere enlightening.

- Cleanliness is of a complete different order: in Beijing, you need public service announcements, police presence and all other sorts of tricks to get people organized in lines, to get them to pick up after themselves etc…. In a lot of the smaller cities, it’s a natural thing. Folks over there seem to be better-mannered in general

- Taxi drivers: Not only do smaller cities have a higher proportion of female taxi drivers, they have nicer taxi drivers period. In Baotou, the taxi we waived drove past, made a u-turn after a red light and then came to pick us up. In contrast, when i got back to Beijing today, I tried close to 10 taxis within the vicinity of the train station but none wanted my business apparently. I asked one of them why he wouldn’t take me on board. His reply was that he was waiting 10 mn for his shift to be over so that he could go drinking…. at 9 in the freaking morning… come on…

- Cost is sooooo much lower than beijing. A great meal with local yogurt, milk tea, lamb ribs, camel burger, fried flat cornbread, sheep brain ( HELL YEAH) and a few other dishes was barely 200 in a great setting for a good quality.

I didn’t really get around to writing much about the trip to Morocco. Truth is I was just too busy dealing with certain matters and when I was not doing that, I was enjoying life too much to write about it. Anyways, while the facebook folks saw these a while back, I finally had some time to put them in here:

Palm Trees at the gates of Marrakech:

Marrakech rooftops. look at all them satellite dishes..

Place Jam’aa El Fna , one of the major nightspots in the red city. I spent a fantastic evening there with my siblings browsing, eating and just chilling:

Food stalls were everywhere. The center had more grill-type places whereas the outskirts has juice vendors and snail stands.

Local dinner at one of the stands: merguez, beef kebabs, ground beef, olives, harira olives and mint tea to top it all off.

El koutoubia, Marrakech’s most famous landmark in night mode with special effects. I love this picture

On sunday, we headed up the mountains to “lalla takerkoust” a hillside village with swimming spots and all. had a great afternoon there soaking in the sunshine and the food.

More mountainside sights. Who said there was no green in the desert?

My mamma’s couscous… delicious and the best cure for insomnia. a plate-full will knock you out for the afternoon.

Back to casablanca. Downtown is so pretty, I actually didn’t remember it being so well maintained. This is the old courthouse.

Colonial side of casablanca. Buildings here date back to the 30s and 40s. Old French style, reminiscent of sights in Paris

Still in the same area, an encounter with the one and only Moroccan lamborghini, aka the donkey cart.

Olive vendor… I’m drooling just looking at this pictures

Spices and herbs galore at the local market.

The Bazaar area where traditional crafts and arts thingies can be found. a bit of a tourist trap but nevertheless good for certain items.

Been back “home” for the last few days now and I’m finding it a bit difficult to sit down and put everything I see down in words. There so much to go over and so little to say at the same time; It’s enough to say that being back is really weird after all these years and things have changed quite a bit. Yet, in some strangely comfortable way, they’ve remained the same.
I’ve decided that I should not dwell on the negatives but look at the positives I come across as a way to see things from a different perspective… now that is one hell of a challenge and I’m breathing sarcasm heavier than before.

The technology has gone way up since I was last here: In 2003, when I signed up for ADSL and got my modem, I paid upwards of 350 dhs/month for 256Kbps adsl. Now, 100 dhs gets you unlimited access on a 4mbps connection. 3G is also available at the cheap rate of 200dhs for unlimited 1.2 mbps connection. Sweeeeeeeeet

E-commerce is taking off in a land where it seemed to be nothing less than an impossibility. My family bought their last cheep over the internet… they’re still claiming they were ripped off and that the website used make-up on the sheep… that’s just a no comment from me.

on a note that is neither positive nor negative, folks are silent…. in the uncomfortable kinda way: You can go with a buddy to a cafe, order a cup’o'joe and sit there for hours at the time exchanging maybe a few words every 15mn. Now, I’ve seen that tendency even in pubs here… a dozen people sipping their poison around the same table while scanning the room with barely a word said.

great selection of food at the supermarket complemented by a great selection of toiletries. Axe deodorant, Le petit marseille, UShuaia prducts, garnise….. beef hotdogs, great cheese and even good cellars in the supermarket. very welcome unexpected surprise.