Wrapping up our 240 hour transit visa free stay in China; Shenzen and Kunming
Definitely beat our expectations!
But a land of contrasts:
-generally kind and friendly people, willing to help and be patient with translations or pointing at menus.
-yet you really have to watch the bill and look out for people trying to overcharge, which happened at restaurants and even the subway station
-very security oriented, with the toughest screening I’ve ever seen at the airport. But also screenings going into the metro. And do NOT travel with mobile chargers (they confiscated all of ours)
-delicious food and very inexpensive; I can’t get enough of the numbing Szechuan peppers!
-the great firewall made “normal” things challenging to use. There’s a whole new set of payment apps, translators and maps. My laptop was basically useless despite having a few VPNs…
Definitely a place to explore more with so many other places to visit…
First impressions of China (Shenzen):
-friendly people, very helpful (come out of nowhere to help if you look lost)
-clean and super modern. Soooo many electric cars and scooters and brands we've never heard of
-sidewalks are chaotic as there are a ton of mopeds zooming everywhere
-inexpensive - big meals with meats and other delicious things for $20-30 for a family of five
-lots of smokers (I don't miss this from Spain!)
-gotta watch how much you get charged at restaurants fairly carefully. One guy over charged by 30% and then refunded it when we asked about it, but he also tried to get us to pay the whole thing again at the lower amount (claiming he refunded the whole amount but actually only refunded 30%)
-very health conscious! Lots of walkers, joggers and people working out at machines in the big green parks
-the great Chinese firewall is real. I have two vpns and my phone works just fine, but can't get my laptop to connect (so no Google services, not even Gmail)
@jake say hey, is it possible to change the wallet that Kondo connects to? I tried to switch my Farcaster preferred to another verified address, but Kondo kept using the old one…
My take here is that FC already turned into a wallet w/ coinification 6-8 months ago. My written posts are down, and practically, I mine FC apps for value as they mine me for attention.
It's different than 3 years ago when you'd check the feed and the posts were the same as a few hours before (because there really weren't that many people in my network).
Then at some point it was all about crypto builder energy. That was a lot of fun, and I wrote a lot more and interacted with people as we all felt a bit of a spark of possibilities.
Then after that was about Degen and other meme coin metas. How to farm? How to drive engagement? What about rewards? Who's the top of the rank? (I don't really have time to figure out how to excel at all that, so my activity dropped off a bit over time)
I get it, FC is trying out what it means to be a killer wallet with social features and apps and commentary. It never did replace X/Twitter as my source for "crypto industry news" (or bickering, or whatever).
Let's see how this new meta rolls
Even after years of full time travel, for some reason it still delights me when I can fit everything I need for a weekend trip in a small backpack that’s less than 6kg
😊 ✈️
I can definitely recommend Tangle after checking it out the last few days.
It researches a topic a day from both sides of the spectrum.
Many of us would benefit from the balanced discourse of US “news”…
