The Good and the Bad

This blogging thing is not easy. When I started this, I had no idea how difficult it would be to come up with interesting stuff to write about. Alright, maybe I'm giving myself too much credit - I hope you've found this at least mildly interesting. Anyway, at first it was pretty easy as we started finding our way around the city and seeing some of the sights but now that we've been here a few months and gotten into a routine, it's a little more difficult. On the other hand, there is one advantage to being settled in. We have started to get some idea of the things that are better here, as well as the things that are worse. In the past few months, we've also began to discover the things we really miss about home and the things we don't miss at all. So to fill this space until we do something interesting, I'm going to post a few entries here about the good and bad of living here.

The first bad thing is easy - the water. The tap water here is unfit for consumption, at least for Westerners. It doesn't bother the locals, who drink it like - well, like water - but it has some serious adverse effects on foreigners (think Mexico). It's not too bad in our home, where we have a filtration system that cleans it up pretty well but in some of the hotels I stayed in before we moved here, the water was a little yellowish and had a definite odor to it, kind of like kerosene. Our filtration system, however, doesn't do anything about the microbes so you still can't drink it. It's fine for bathing, washing dishes and laundry - I even rinse my toothbrush with it. You just don't want to drink it, but it's almost impossible to avoid entirely (ice at restaurants, washed produce). I know that doesn't sound like a big deal but think about how many times you grab a glass of water as you pass thru the kitchen or open your mouth in the shower. Those things are so common that you don't even realized it until you can't do it anymore.

So we have to use bottled water for all cooking, drinking, ice, etc. Fortunately, bottled water here is pretty cheap. We have a dispenser in our kitchen that takes the big bottles. We use a brand called Sensation, which is a Coca-Cola product. The bottles are 18.5 liters (almost 5 gallons) and cost about $2. The best part is that we don't have to go out and buy them. We just call the service center for our apartment complex and someone shows up with a new bottle.

Perhaps the worst thing about not being able to drink the tap water is that you can't just order a glass of water with your dinner. The only water you can get at a restaurant is a small bottle (usually Evian) that costs about 30-35 yuan ($4-5). Actually, mentioning restaurants gets into a whole other good/bad topic but it's getting late so we'll save that for later.