2009

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.

Beijing weekend

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.