Archives November 2010

The Long Way Round

We recently watched the series Long Way Round, where Charlie Boorman and Ewan McGregor ride their BMWs from London to New York– the long way around. They cover some 19,000 miles in around 3 months. This show was of interest to us because we recently completed the 2010 Mongol Rally, a charity ride from London to Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia. Ewan and Charlie did a strikingly similar route though much of the same territory, stopping at many of the same sites.

Charlie and Ewan set up an office in London several months prior to their departure and hired a small staff to help plan their route, get the necessary paperwork, consult with them on border crossings, and many more activities, like writing and disseminating sponsorship proposals and calling companies for donations. These were all activities we undertook for the Mongol Rally, and oh how nice it would have been to have an office and a support crew to do so!

To train them before the ride, they hired a personal trainer. We did sit-ups in the basement. To prepare themselves for harsh border crossings they hired an ex-military safety guru to teach them basic evasion, combat training, weapons use and how to best deal with a hostage situation. We watched Steven Segal movies. To prepare for any unforeseen medical problems, a doctor was brought on board. We had several boxes of band-aids and a suitcase of pepto. To learn Russian prior to departure they hired a Russian area consultant, a visa advisor and a language coach. We got an language book off Amazon and read the history of Russia. To fund the trip, they had a room full of women sending out proposals and a celebrity actor pleading for kit. We had a proposal we made ourselves and sent to everyone we could think of– and they promptly laughed in our faces. Needless to say, we’re jealous of their support crew.

They rode a nearly identical route from London to the Ukraine as we did, passing through the Czech Republic just as we did, and stopping at the Church of Bones, which we routed ourselves out of the way to see. Along the way they had various monuments and tours cleared for themselves and the support and video crews, and his two-van support team went ahead at most border crossings and at major sites to arrange visits, viewings and make for easy passage. A lot of what they saw would not have been possible without the support crews, and yet without Ewan on the team it wouldn’t have been a TV series at all.

The show itself is inspiring and lively, and gets me eager for our next self-guided adventure travel or rally. Its hard to watch a show like this one that makes travel look so dangerous, difficult and unattainable without a whole crew behind you and then realize that with a bit of real-world thinking and prior experience you could undertake the same trip as they did, and I’m sure people have.

diss I’m not trying to the Ewan-Charlie team, as I think they have something special and love what they are doing. I just think it is sad that it takes a celebrity on a team to get publicity for it. A lot of great travelers are doing equally amazing trips and because they arn’t A-listed stars they don’t get sponsorship, recognition or free gear, and the trips don’t get publicized so that most people think travel is this dangerous and relatively pointless activity.

Abandon the Cube has undergone changes…for the better we hope. Be the first to check it out! We’re excited about the changes we’ve made and can’t wait for you to browse around the new stuff!

As I said, we added a few new pages– the foremost of which is a page of Top Ten lists about various adventure and travel categories ranging from travel foods and gear to the greatest travel adventurers and most intense adventure rally events. Let us know what you think of the Top Ten page, and if you want to add any lists or suggest list ideas, simply contact us with your ideas.

We also expanded the Events aspect of Abandon the Cube to cover more of the activities ATC participates in, from the Mongol Rally to Habitat for Humanity and teaching English abroad. Its a work in progress but we’re hoping the pages do well and attract a bit of interest. With any luck, we’ll be partnering with some English teaching programs soon to bring you the best information on traveling abroad to teach.

But wait, that’s not all! The website changes are ongoing and comprehensive. We continually update the Most Influential Adventurers page. We’ve added a few more female adventures, an area we were sorely representing previously. Suggest someone for the list by contacting us or leaving a comment be low. We’d be happy to know who you consider the world’s greatest adventurers.

As always, the resources page can help you decide if you want to abandon your cube, how to go about it and a few other odds and ends to help you ATC. We think this is a great place to expand, and we’re always looking for new travel resources and tools to add to this page. If you have suggestions for us, don’t be a strange!– Let us know your thoughts.

Finally, we have a few more destination pages coming soon! We’re excited about uploading new destination pages for the countries we visited while on the 2010 Mongol Rally. Check back soon!

Happy exploring, and let us know what you think of the changes!

We’ve been looking all over for a place to buy a ferret. Yeah, I know what you are thinking, why buy a pet when you will just have to leave in a few years and possibly leave it behind. The quarentine process for brinign animals from China to the USA can’t be easy, and besides, ferrets are just glorified rats. Here’s my retort, sirs:

Ferrets are adorable, they do a warrior dance to signal when they want to play or fight that involves rolling around upside down and tossing their bodies side to side. If all warriors did that dance there would be no war… only massive laughing sessions followed by treks to the closest bar.

We looked at other animals as well. In 2006 we owned a rabbit in Beijing, but it quickly died. It was either sick when we purchased it from the street corner salesman who was also selling fish and toilet bowl cleaner, or he died as a result of running around or soon-to-be-condemmed apartment. He died so quickly after we got him that Mike seems to think it was his fault. I’ll go on record saying it wasn’t anyone’s fault, but it did mean that this time around we didn’t want to try our luck again with a Beijing bunny.

Cats are the best option, in my opinion, but Mike is allergic. Lame. And although I’d love a dog, how could I possibly part with that or give it away whenever I left Beijing? Ideally, the most generic and cliche animals are actually the best because they interact with humans on a high level and when guests come over they are not terrified, a they might be if a ferret ran by unannounced.

To check out our options, we went to the Beijing Guanyuan Market – The Fish, Bird and Insect Market. Obviously insects and fish were out of the question (boring, loud, boring, ugly, etc…), which left birds. I’d be happy to get a bird actually, but one that flies around and is interactive, not one of the irritating and loud ones that is scared of humans. I had a cockatiel in middle school that would fly around and land on people’s heads and eat seeds out of your mouth. I miss him, his name was Fido.

Anyways, fish and bugs were out, and the birds were mostly tiny and overcrowded, with 10-20 birds in a tiny cage meant for one animal. We also saw cats, kittens mostly, in tiny cages meant for rabbits and rabbits in cages meant for rats and so on. Only the ferrets had large cages, and they wanted over $500  USD for one ferret. We really wanted to get one, but we didn’t want to party with $500 to do so. To get to the market if you happen to be in Beijing, take the subway to Fuchengmen (line 2), take exit B and head North, the market is on the right (East) hand side of the road, just inside the Second Ring Road. It is in an old hutong, so you can walk around the maze and find food, rabbits, insects, more food, and clothing.  A nice but not appetizing combo.

A lot of people are interested in how much money our website makes, how we acquired so much content for the blog, and how we created the various destination and other pages on the website. It is, actually, one of the most common questions we get about Abandon the Cube. We had a lot of learning to do once we decided to start our own website. We were not interested in making money on ATC at first. That was a natural progression once our pages started to earn rank and increase in readership. We didn’t figure out the entire process in on our own. Luckily, we had friends!

Several years ago, not long after we started Abandon the Cube, we met a couple who work very hard and have had an impressive career in digital marketing. They started their own company called Moomu Media, a digital marketing company aimed at helping people increase their website page rank through SEO, PPC, keyword-rich content and analytics tracking. They have a proven track record that speaks for itself.

If you are curious about how to increase your page rank, make your website profitable or simply expand your readership, contact MooMu Media and tell them ATC sent you. Check out their success stories and contact them via email: sales@moomumedia.com if you are interested in a consultation for your website.

Since it was my birthday week we got to do a lot of really fun stuff. After all, you only turn 27 once! Mike decided to take me to the Beijing zoo to celebrate. With the new apartment I was hoping to get a cat but one of the room mates is allergic, so a trip to the zoo to see the giant cats there was a consolation.

In 2006 our visit to the zoo ultimately resulted in one of our friends yelling at a local child for tossing his empty coke bottle into the lion cage and yelling at the other animals. We were shocked at how people treated the caged animals, yelling, throwing things, banging on the glass and generally just being annoying and rude to the animals and other human visitors to the zoo. Now, 2010, things were a bit different. You still had the occasional asshole, but those are everywhere I suppose. At Como Park Zoo in Minnesota I saw a fourteen year old boy throw a hot dog into the monkey cage. So it goes.

A few memorable events happened while we were at the zoo. First, the boy throwing his coke bottle into the lion cage (lion helpfully pictured here). The lion jumped up and began to limp around the periphery of the cage. His front, right paw is seriously injured, you can see him holding it awkwardly in the picture. We watched for a while, but it looked like a recent injury. Hopefully they have resolved it by now!

The second event was when we were attacked by the Golden Monkey. The cage, to preface, is shaped like a giant metal mushroom. You can walk under the mushroom close to the ‘stem’ and look up and see the Golden Monkey flying around in his cage from branch to branch. I was looking up at three monkeys clinging to the sides of the mushroom cage when suddenly the male monkey became aware of our presence and jumped from where he was perched, falling around 12 -14 feet until he landed directly above our heads on the cage roof. He snarled and scared the hell out both of us! He rattled the cage and showed his teeth and even pounded on the grating. He was really angry! We backed up (honestly, we practically fell over backwards he terrified us so much) and a moment later the monkey was back on the wall, acting like nothing happened. Naturally, we moved back under the overhang area and watched. A minute later he noticed us standing there and free-fell from even higher, landing right above our heads and rattling the cage and making off monkey yelling noises. It was like Planet of the Apes!

Mike pretended to get mad at the monkey, yelling at it “Don’t you scare my girlfriend on her birthday, evil monkey!” it only takes about five seconds for a million Chinese people to gather whenever a commotion is detected. Mike’s fake taunting of the evil money quickly drew a crowd…. a very large crowd. The evil monkey climbed back up in the cage and ignored everyone, making Mike look like an evil spectator and the monkey like the innocent victim. This was one evil monkey we were dealing with, here. We shuffled away eventually, when it became obvious the monkey had one that round. Don’t worry, we’ll go back to the zoo again soon and see who wins round two!

After the zoo we went over to a friend’s apartment for taco night. They were friendly enough to invite us over and one of the room mates at our friend’s place even produced an extremely large birthday cake! They hit the lights and came out singing Happy Birthday. We played cards and chatted about old times, these friends having lived in beijing since 2006. All in all, and despite Evil Monkey, it was a great birthday!

Since we finally had an apartment we were free to start looking for jobs. We set about looking in the obvious places for expats living abroad, craigslist, the Beijinger, CityWeekend and other Beijing-specific websites with classified ads. In Shanghai in 2008 I found my job on Craigslist, proving that even legitimate,professional companies post on the plebeian forums. We began to stalk the classifieds in search of employment.

Harry, our British room mate, worked at a reputable English-teaching company across town. Andrew found one-on-one teaching gigs to fill his wallet. Mike and Lauren wanted to avoid teaching English if at all possible, having already experienced the joy of teaching in Beijing we were eager to try something new and also add a new skill set on the ol’ resume. They began to search for jobs in their desired fields, holding out for a decent paying opportunity. Lauren went to four interviews and turned down four jobs due to low pay or immoral practices. One job doing marketing for an online sales company was in the final phases of negotiating the contract when Lauren learned that the goods sold online were counterfeits being peddled as legitimate, she turned down a position paying $3,000 a month. Eventually, both found positions they could enjoy for a short time while refilling their bank accounts and learning new skills.

Teaching English in China is fairly simple and extremely straight forward. Most companies are seeking people who have a bachelors degree, though they will make exceptions. They are looking for native English speakers, though again, they make exceptions and are sometimes seeking Spanish, German and French native speakers. A TOFEL is not required, but it is helpful and in higher paying companies (like Wallstreet, Berlitz and EnglishFirst) it is a huge bargaining chip. You can find more information on our resources page about TOFEL programs.

To read how to apartment hunt in Beijing, check out our previous post on the issue!

Having decided to stay in Beijing for a while, we set bout organizing ourselves to look for an apartment. We were determined to stay in the central area of Beijing, right in the middle of the expat community. Sanlitun is a great area, near the shopping, bars, restaurants and other expats. It is a great area to live about 10 minutes from, which is where we started looking. We wanted a traditional, small-town Chinese community with a courtyard and trees. We also wanted to be near the subway and have access to fresh air and sunlight (meaning, high up in an apartment). With such in mind, we got online and started looking for apartments. It turned out that apartment hunting in Beijing was a different beast than the relatively easy process in Shanghai.

First, we combed the online site listings, which revealed a more expensive bracket of apartments than we really needed. We discovered that Andrew, the Oklahoma boy from the Mongol Rally, was also staying in Beijing for a while, so we joined forces to find an apartment for three, and then, when another friend at the hostel joined the group, we started looking for four-person apartments. This dramatically decreased our options since the one-child policy means most apartments have only two bedrooms and, if lucky, an office room.

Nevertheless, we decided to meet with a man renting his apartment online. We showed up only to discover it was actually a crooked realtor who was planning on charging one months rent in commission to show the apartment for his ‘friend.’ We waited until the realtor left and told the actual owner we’d take the apartment, he declined unless we paid a fee to the realtor, which we declined to do. After several more days of looking we found a two bedroom with an office in our price range. A different, semi-crooked realtor only wanted half a months rent for commission. Thing got convoluted quickly when the actual owner failed to materialize and in her place came a small army of men and women in suits claiming to represent her. Despite the annoyance of dealing with two different sets of middle men, we decided to get the apartment. It was in a great location with a decent interior and furniture, and room for 4 people, albeit barely. This picture is from our balcony, and shows a bit of the infamous Beijing pollution.

Note: If you are looking for an apartment in Beijing, your best bet is to check the Beijinger and CityWeekend online and in print, and beware that most postings are by crooked realtors looking to take a higher commission rate off foreigners. You can also go through a local real estate company. First, you find the area you want to live in and then walk around and look for a real estate office. There is one on every major road or in most residential areas. Often, there will be an office just for a specific building or complex, and you can cut out come commission costs by going directly to the one you want.

Next time: Job Hunting in Beijing, China!

Arriving as we did in the middle of the night we had an epic sense of adventure attached to our return to China. Adding to that feeling was the fact that several ralliers were to be in the city for the next week. We got in touch with them, though they were eager to see the sights (Great Wall of China, Forbidden City and the obvious tourist stuff). We met up and went shopping with Justin, from Seattle, and two American boys from Oklahoma named Cody and Andrew. Chris, the Irishman that was a member of our Mongolian convoy, was also in town. We met and shopped, ate and generally explored New Beijing. We moved into the same hostel so we could occupy our evenings in the hostel dining hall playing jenga and smoking apple-flwvored hookahs.

Much has changed in China’s capital city since we last lived here in 2006. The Olympics, which we visited in 2008, were a huge factor. But general improvements around the city have made Beijing the figurative and literal capital. We lived in Haidian, a north-western fringe area where the universities are. We taught English at a private company there and lived in a tiny apartment that cost less than 2000RMB a month for the company to maintain. In winter, there was no heat and no air in summer. We had a pet rabbit. This time we were staying in the eastern-central area of Beijing, right in the center of the expat community. We were looking for an apartment in this area, where prices have risen around 2000 per apartment since 2006. Food, living costs, entertainment costs all went up, but an exploration of the Beijing expat job market revealed that salaries haven’t really done likewise.

More importantly, the changes were positive, obvious and refreshing. The streets are much cleaner and there is even a street-sweeping machine that goes down the main roads daily. The trash is picked up daily, and efficiently. Shopping centers are more organized, isles are wider and the people pushing carts down them are polite and smiling. The general dislike of foreigners seems to have abated. Likewise, most foreigners we saw in the first few days in Beijing were fluent in Chinese. In 2006 a fluent foreigner was an extremely rare thing. Now, 4 years later, an incompetent foreigner with a Beijing zip code is more rare.

We spent the week hitting Beijing’s highlights, souvenir shopping with the ralliers, and enjoying our relaxing post-rally down time. Having been in a cramped, tiny, dusty car for the past month, it was a relaxing change of pace.

Come back soon to read about apartment and job hunting in Beijing, as well as the trials and tribulations of dealing with a corrupt realtor.

The euphoria at being back in a land where we could speak the language, knew the customs and food, and already felt comfortable was beyond description. We sat, discussing our options, until the wee hours of the morning. A friend had agreed to let us stay with him until we decided what we were going to do. We took him up on his offer and moved into his living room.

Walking around Beijing was like returning home after a long trip. We’ve spent time in China, in our adult lives we’ve probably spent more time in China than in America, and the comfort of knowing where things are, how to get things done, and how to be comfortable were almost irresistible. The original plan was to visit friends in Beijing and Shanghai and then head to South-East Asia and eventually make it to Thailand where we’d learn a new country and a new way of life. Yet now, in Beijing, we were so eager to stay. Mike wanted to learn Chinese, to become fluent in a language he’d been learning off and on for a few years. Lauren wanted to refill her bank account with a little work, and spend some time in one place. They had been on the road for over a year and a half, having left their apartment in Shanghai on May Day, 2009. It was now mid September, 2010 and the first time they were asking where they should go.

We checked into a hostel a few days later so as not to bother our working friend by living on his couch. We took a few interviews, saw a few apartments and generally got the low down on what had changed in Beijing since we lived there in 2006. The answer– a lot! Prices were much higher, apartments were harder to find and costed around 2000RMB more a month. Salaries were lower, strangely, and yet food prices were sky rocketing.

We decided we’d like to stay for a while. Should we?– I don’t know. But we talked about it and both decided that Chinese was important to us, as was taking a break in our travels for a little while. We’d make it to South-East Asia soon enough, and in the meantime, we could wait out the winter and maybe even the spring and summer, here in Beijing, China. It is easy to get a job teaching English, and to enroll in a Chinese language school. Finding jobs in Beijing is also fairly straight forward.

Tune in again to learn how to get an apartment in China’s capital city.

With the 2010 Mongol Rally behind us, we found ourselves sitting at a restaurant in Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia, wondering where we should go. Should we head to Thailand, which was the original plan? Or should we hop on a train to China and see where the road takes us? It was hard to say, but after being on the road for a year and a half the idea of getting an apartment and relaxing in one spot for a while seemed more than enticing. It was just such a big decision that we decided to hop across the border and see how we felt.

We had previously met two American brothers, also on the rally, who were planning on heading down to Beijing. Likewise, the Irishman from our convoy was headed that direction and we had heard that several other teams had members heading towards China’s capital. It seemed like the place to be. We walked to the UB train station and discovered one cannot book a train ticket in advance. The American boys handed us some cash and we agreed to buy the tickets the next morning.

In the morning, we discovered you needed a passport to book your tickets, so we booked ours and gave the American’s their cash back. We hopped on the train that afternoon and settled into our crowded alley-way bunks. The Trans-Siberian train was not as impressive as one would think. The bunks were tiny, crowded and the luggage compartments were overflowing. You have to pay for sheets, and the entire train smelled of mold and dust. Despite this, it was great to be back on a locomotive and chugging along at a slow, relaxed pace. I didn’t even miss having the Saxo!

The train reached the small border town the following morning and we jumped off with our luggage and easily caught a bus across the border for a few dollars. Customs and immigration were a bit of a joke on the Mongolian side. The woman barely looked up when she stamped me out of the country along with several other people who had stuffed their passports threw her glass window at the same time. The Chinese customs and immigration were a bit trickier. I was held for a few minutes because the guards said I looked nothing like the photo in the passport. I told them all white people look alike, but they did’t laugh. Apparently I look different now than I did in 2002, and after living in a tiny car for 40 days, its no wonder I didn’t match my image. Eventually they let me through, but our bus had not waited and we were left stranded at the border crossing with our luggage, a mile or two from town.

We set off walking into town thinking it wasn’t a great start to possibly staying in China. But, just as I was grumbling about being left by our Mongolian bus driver, a Chinese driver in a van pulled over and picked us up and drove us to the train station for free. They were friendly and chatted with us the whole way. It was such a good feeling to be able to communicate again, having been useless in Mongolia on the communication front. They were so incredably friendly that they even invited us to their homes, which we declined in favor of catching the night bus to Beijing… but not before we had a breakfast beer at a Chinese chain restaurant we have always enjoyed in the past. Mike’s first epic Breakfast Beer picture in China!

Sleeper buses seem to be specific to Asia. Essentially, everyone gets a bunk-bed sleeper compartment and the top-heavy bus rolls down the street swaying from side to side. It seems dangerous and unsteady, but if you want to sleep over the 12 hour drive it is worth the small upgrade. Our sleeper bus deposited us in the middle of Beijing at 3:00am on a Friday. We walked sleepily to a 24 hour McDonald’s to talk about our options. Where should we go from here?

Tune in next time to find out what we decided…. or if we decided!