Visa Runs to Mongolia

Recently a friend shared this article from the Wall Street Journal with me. This is actually something I wanted to write about anyway, so the article provides a nice cue. Although my situation was a little different than the ones described in the article, the basic facts remain the same: I was running out of days on my multiple-entry 60-day tourist visa, so I needed to leave the country and then come back in to reset the count to zero. (Note that this is only possible with a multiple-entry visa. If you try this with a single-entry visa, you will get stuck in Mongolia.) China shares land borders with 14 different sovereign nations, plus Hong Kong and Macau (which, although part of China, have different visa requirements), so if you need to leave and come back in, you have some choices. Most people go down to Hong Kong or Macau, as that tends to be the easiest border crossing, but I was in the north of the country and didn't want to head all the way back down south. As an American, I didn't need a visa to enter Mongolia (thanks, Mongolia!), and it was much closer to where I was than Hong Kong, so it was an easy choice.

I did a bit of internet research before heading up there and found a number of sites with varying degrees of helpfulness. It may be futile to add another voice to the crowd, but I thought I might be able to offer some additional insight on how to make the border crossing. I figured I could provide some information that I wish I had known before I went. So here goes.

Most people who go from China to Mongolia cross the border through Erlian (also called Erlianhaote or Erenhot). Erlian is a tiny border town of no more than 20,000 inhabitants. Even though the city is not very large, the biggest thing that would have helped me in my research would have been a map. I took the liberty of creating one here.


View Mongolian Border Crossing in a larger map

This map should show everything you need to find in Erlian. Chances are you will arrive in the city by either bus or train. The stations are only a few blocks from one another, and are shown on the map with a bus icon and a train icon. If you are in the center of town, the most obvious landmark is the huge sculpture in the middle of a roundabout marked with a yellow pinpoint on the map. The road running roughly east-west of the sculpture leads directly to the train station, and the road running more north and south heads straight up to the border crossing. It's probably the easiest way to get your bearings in the city. If you are looking for the border crossing and you can see that sculpture, just go north on that road.  If you see signs that say "国门" (literally "country gate"), you're going in the right direction. You should also be able to see a giant rainbow sculpture directly in front of the border (marked with a red pinpoint on the map).

As others before me have written, it's unfortunately not possible to walk across the border. You either have to be part of a bus that's crossing over or you have to get in one of the many jeeps patrolling the city. These jeep owners are all independent entrepreneurs, so there is no real set price for their services. This is the time to use your haggling skills. Most of the sites I have read say that you should count on about 50 - 60 RMB for each trip (if you are crossing the border and then coming right back for visa-renewal reasons, then you are paying for two trips). I've heard that there are places in the city center where the jeeps congregate and collect passengers. Alternatively, you can just walk right up to the Chinese gate of the border crossing (marked with a blue pin with a black dot on the map) and try to find a ride there. The gate is about 2 miles (3 km) from the center of town. This plan can be a bit of a risk because the drivers know that they make the most profit when the jeeps are full, so if they can fill up in the center of town before going to the border, they won't be able to pick you up next to the border itself. On the other hand, if they are already at the border crossing and they need to fill a couple more seats, they might be willing to offer you a better rate since a small amount of money for your seat is better than an empty seat. When I went, I took my chances and walked up to the gate. There were a few nearly full cars there, and I managed to negotiate the driver down to 60 RMB for a round-trip--30 up front and 30 when we finished. With the haggling complete, I piled into a five-passenger jeep holding nine people and all of our luggage. This seems to be pretty standard--be prepared to have no personal space in the jeep. Once you're in the jeep, the next steps are pretty straightforward, if unnecessarily numerous:

1. Drive from the Chinese border gate to the Chinese customs building (the blue pin on the map).
2. Get out, go through customs, go out the back door of the building, get back in the jeep. At this point you are technically but not geographically out of China.
3. Drive from the Chinese customs building to the Mongolian customs building (green pin on the map).
4. Get out, go through customs (welcome to Mongolia!).
5. If you are staying in Mongolia, exit the building through the back door, get back in the jeep, and drive to Zamyn-Üüd, Mongolia (and skip all future steps).
6. If you are returning immediately to China, make a U-turn to the left just before the exit doors. This will place you right by the departure customs desks for Mongolia.
7. Go through customs, wait outside for your jeep.
8. Get back in the jeep and drive to the Chinese customs building (again).
9. Get out, go through Chinese customs (welcome to China!), go outside to wait for jeep.
10. Get back in jeep, drive through Chinese border gate, and get out wherever the driver drops you off.

That's all there is to it. One thing to keep in mind is that at some of these stops the jeep will need to be searched by customs officials. A lengthy queue of cars is not uncommon. You may have to wait longer than you expect for your jeep to catch up to you. Also, a word of advice from my own experience: if you are doing a round-trip and plan to use the same driver, make it as clear as possible with the driver where you are going to meet him. I thought my guy and I had a good understanding, but I ended up waiting outside in the cold (≈ 0° F / -17° C) for about half an hour before another driver took pity on my shivering form and let me into his jeep. I got pretty lucky there, I think (even luckier in that he didn't charge me anything, so I managed to do the whole there-and-back trip for only 30 RMB), but I wouldn't count on that happening every time. Some drivers may want you to go with them all the way to Zamyn-Üüd before they take you back through China. It all depends on the driver. Just make sure it's clear ahead of time.

I hope this map and description helps out some. If you have any questions about how this all works, feel free to leave a comment below and I'll try to answer. All in all, the process is easy enough and takes only about an hour and a half. Tickets in and out of the town aren't plentiful, but they exist. Erlian is a pleasant enough place to spend a night. There are dinosaur statues to see in town and south of town on the main road (some are marked on my map) and I have been told the dinosaur museum is worth a visit. If you are in the north of China and need to refresh your multiple-entry visa, this may be the option that makes the most sense. Good luck out there, folks.

Couch Surfing

"Please come, my friend." So began the response to the first couch request I ever sent through www.couchsurfing.org. Couch surfing, for the uninitiated, is a new term for a very old concept—hospitality. Through the Couch Surfing website, travelers to an unfamiliar city can find locals who are willing to meet up for coffee, show them around the city, or even offer a place to sleep. It is citizen diplomacy in its purest form.

When I was planning my trip through China, I decided to give couch surfing a try. I had heard about it before but had never been in the position to host, so I never got around to signing up.  On a whim I thought, "well, let's see if they have any couch surfers in China." It didn't take long to find out that China has an active and vibrant couch surfing community. Just to see what would happen, I sent out a request to a couch surfer in Shanghai, the first stop on my journey. Within five hours I had received a reply. The minute I received that reply, I was hooked. In the three months that I crisscrossed China, I spent 53 nights in the homes of 30 people I had never met before. I stayed with Chinese nationals, foreign expats, college students, families with children, retired people, gay, straight, men, and women. I slept on couches, floors, and beds in lavish homes and modest, spartan apartments. Every host was gloriously different and added something new to my Chinese experience.

A few highlights (leaving many out):

• One host was the assistant artistic director at a Cirque du Soleil type show at a big casino in Macau. He was able to get me good seats for the amazing show for a much better price than I could have afforded otherwise, and then I got a backstage tour afterwards. 
• One host's father was generous enough to gift me with an old sweater from his closet when it seemed like I was cold. I wore that sweater every day for about a month (I received it just before the coldest parts of my sojourn).
• One host drove me to and from a different city two hours away just so we could sample some of that city's street food.
• Several hosts (or their families) included me in big traditional Chinese dinners and made me feel very welcome.

There are many more highlights and lots of great stories; these are merely a sample.

Becoming a couch surfer is easy. Registration at the Couch Surfing website is free. Once you've signed up, you can search for other registered surfers anywhere in the world. Likewise, they will be able to find you if they search for your city. New couch surfers often express a concern for safety, which the Couch Surfing website addresses with several safety measures. First, all participants have the opportunity to become a "verified" member. Essentially, a couch surfer can use a credit card to make a small donation to the Couch Surfing organization. This allows the website to verify that a surfer is using his or her real identity on the website. The second key safety measure is a community vouching system. Only couch surfers who have been vouched for three times by other couch surfers have the ability to vouch for the people they have met and trust (the vouching began with the site's founders and the people they trusted, and spread from there). The best safety measure, of course, is that you are never under any obligation to host a person who wants to stay in your home. You can judge from the person's request and profile page (including reviews from other members) whether or not you feel comfortable hosting him or her. For more about couch surfing safely, visit www.couchsurfing.org/safety.

Speaking from personal experience, couch surfing is an exciting way to interact with people of different cultures. As a solo traveler, the free accommodation was nice, but the opportunity to learn about a new city from a local was priceless. My book (and this website) are 100 times richer because of the local knowledge shared with me by my hosts and their families. I joined the community on a whim. That was, perhaps, the best whim-based decision I ever made.

Note: This article previously appeared, slightly modified, in the July 2012 issue of the NCIV Network News.

How to Research Chinese Train Timetables in English

By my count, there are three main ways people get around China: airplane, bus, and train. You could of course rent a car, hitchhike, walk, or bike, but I suspect most people stick to those three primary options. Of these choices, my favorite by far is the train. Here are my arguments to support this opinion:

• Trains usually offer five different types of tickets (standing room only, hard seat, soft seat, hard sleeper, and soft sleeper). This variety is nice. Planes might have first class and economy, but no beds. Buses come in two varieties--seats and beds--but you're basically stuck with whichever is available on the route you want to take.
• Trains are far cheaper than airplanes (most of the time anyway--ask around because sometimes they have insane sales on inter-city plane trips). Trains also tend to be cheaper than buses, assuming you get the hard seat tickets.
• Trains have bathrooms on board. Buses stop every couple hours, but in between those stops you are on your own.
• You can get up and stretch your legs on a train. If your trip is more than a couple of hours, this is a nice luxury.

For these reasons (and more), train is my preferred method of travel in China. This is not to say there aren't times where it makes sense to take a bus or a plane, usually due to constraints of time or the absence of a train station in your desired destination. 

So now that I've convinced you that you should be travelling by train, you might be asking yourself how one knows which train to take. Back in January I did a lot of searching around for English timetables with limited success, until I discovered China Travel Guide's wiki-powered train searching function. Friend, this was a lifesaver. If you enter your desired travel route into the search boxes, it will come up with the trains servicing that route, including departure times, arrival times, and cost of tickets. Let's say, for example, that you want to go from Hangzhou to Shanghai. Your search results will give you 131 different potential trains to take.

Notice a couple of things here. First, it shows you the price of hard seats and soft seats, top, middle, and bottom bunks on hard sleepers (the top bunks are always cheapest because they are considered less desirable), and top and bottom soft sleepers. This is very useful for trip planning purposes. Second, note that the train numbers and station names are active links. A click on the train number will tell you where else that train stops along the way. Click on the station name to see all of the trains that stop at that station (661 apparently come through Shanghai South every single day!).

One other nice feature of the site is this handy railway map of China. It's not 100% complete, but it does show most of the big cities and how they are connected by the major rail lines.

Map courtesy of www.chinatravelguide.com

You can see why this website very quickly became one of my most utilized resources in China. Recall that I was travelling basically every other day to more than 50 cities, so a website that let me research train travel with this amount of detail was invaluable. I would routinely decide my plan for three or four cities in advance, and it was a huge help to be able to decide which trains I wanted before I arrived at the station to buy them.

Some of you may be asking about how trustworthy this site is. In my experience, the accuracy is pretty close to dead-on. Here and there a train would be 5 or 10 RMB more than I expected, so be prepared for that. Only twice did I ever have noticeably faulty information from the site. First, the prices to and from Haikou were a good deal more expensive than this site said they would be. I think this is probably because the prices are calculated with an equation that uses the distance traveled and the type of train (fast, slow, old, etc.). The trip to Haikou includes a short ferry ride across the South China Sea, and my unverified suspicion is that they charge a bit extra because of the ferry portion of the trip and that wasn't accounted for by the normal equation. The other time this website failed me was when I was trying to go from Erlian to Datong. The search function shows a single train, K2. What it doesn't show (and what I didn't find out until I was already freezing cold in Inner Mongolia) is that the K2 train is an international train from Ulaanbaatar that only runs once a week or so, and I didn't happen to be there that day. Those were the only two times the site didn't give me accurate information, which is a fairly good track record.

In brief, I wholeheartedly, 100% encourage you to use the China Travel Guide to plan your train travel in China. It is an excellent resource.

Accessing Money While Traveling: An Endorsement

Every traveler to a foreign country has to deal with the issue of money. If you're planning to spend longer than a day or two away from home, your costs are likely to be greater than the amount of cash you feel comfortable traveling with. Travel experts have suggested various solutions over the years, none of which are perfect solutions for all travelers in all situations. When preparing for my trip to China, I spent more time than I care to admit researching the options. I ended up deciding that for a three-month trip through a wide variety of cities, my best bet was to rely on ATMs to provide a steady stream of Chinese RMB. Of course that led to the next question: which bank should I put my money into if I want to pull it out in China. More research? More research. I looked on bank websites, read reviews, called customer service representatives, and did all the other due diligence things necessary until I found what I believe is far and away the best bank account for U.S. travelers abroad: a Charles Schwab High Yield Checking Account.

Here's why Charles Schwab is the best, hands-down:

1. There are no maintenance fees on a checking account. True, most banks offer this, but not all. It's a good place to start.

2. With your Charles Schwab bank card, you are entitled to pull money out of any ATM in the whole world, so long as it has a VISA logo on it. This is good--those suckers are everywhere.

3. Here's where they start to distinguish themselves. Unlike some big banks, Charles Schwab doesn't charge you any fee to pull money out of a different bank's ATM.

4. Continuing with this "no-fee" thing, Charles Schwab doesn't charge you a conversion fee. Many banks charge a percentage of the withdrawal amount as a conversion fee if you are collecting a different currency than the currency in your home country. I'm not a banker, but it seems to me that conversion fees are pretty silly. Does it cost a bank anything to calculate the conversion rate? If I can check on Google for free, I don't get the sense that a company that lives and dies by exchange rates would have any trouble with it. So why charge me anything to do it? Charles Schwab succumbs to logic and charges no conversion fee.

5. This is the real kicker. In addition to the above no-fee tactics, Charles Schwab goes one step further and offers to reimburse you if the ATM you are using charges you a fee. Think about that for a moment. How many times have you been traveling--abroad or at home--and had an ATM say that it's going to charge you $3.00 because the bank name on the ATM doesn't match the bank name on your card?  With Charles Schwab, the ATM can charge all it likes--Charles Schwab will literally pay you the money back. This is fantastic.

So it sounds good in theory, yes? How does it work in practice you say? Exactly how they said it would. I used this card at ATMs all over China (really...all over) with no hassle at all. Charles Schwab never once charged me a fee, and when the foreign banks charged me a on-site fee to use the ATM, I was reimbursed completely. I can't tell you how convenient it is to have access to your money in any city in China. I never had to carry more than 1000 yuan (about $160) on me at any given time, and I was able to pay for everything in cash.

Are there any downsides to the Charles Schwab solution, I hear you asking? Of course, I respond; but they are few and negligible. For one, Charles Schwab does not maintain very many physical offices. In order to deposit money, you need to either transfer electronically from another account or you need to mail them a check to deposit (in postage-paid envelopes that they will provide you). The electronic transfer process is easy, but it does take a few days for the money to become available to you--best not to wait until the day before your trip to do this. The only other very minor drawback to this solution that I can think of is that you are required to open a Charles Schwab investment account to be able to hold a checking account. That sounds a bit scary until you learn that you don't have to keep a minimum balance in it. You can open the account and then leave it completely empty for no charge. It's a bit of an inconvenience, but certainly no reason to overlook all of the great qualities of the checking account.

This card worked perfectly for me. I have no reason to doubt that it won't work for you as well. It truly seems like the ideal solution for a traveler going abroad. So long as you aren't spending all of your time in completely rural areas that don't have ATMs, this could very easily be the best solution for you.

Thus concludes the first official product endorsement of this website. Charles Schwab High Yield Checking Account: I salute you.

How To Read a Chinese Train Ticket

If you're among the 4/5 of the world's population for whom Chinese is not your native language (and, frankly, if you reading this, I think it's safe to assume that you are), then independent travel in China might seem like a daunting prospect. To you I say, "take heart!" Though it is admittedly easier to travel in China if you know at least a handful of Chinese words, it is possible to get by without any Chinese language skills. When it comes to communication, a series of gestures and pointing can usually get you the basic necessities. As for reading, you won't often find yourself in a position where you have to read important information in Chinese. Most of the time the inscrutable Chinese characters you see are not vital to your well-being, and if they are there is usually an English translation. One exception to this rule is train tickets. Your life will be much easier if you can decipher the information on your ticket. That being the case, I thought it might be useful to provide this short guide to the parts of a Chinese train ticket. Here's a picture of a ticket with different parts numbered for explanation below.

1. This is the origin city for your train ride. Tickets always include the Chinese characters and the pinyin.
2. This is the destination city. Again, you will always have the city name in Chinese and pinyin. A tip: if you have a guidebook or something else that lists the Chinese characters of your destination city, it's worth double-checking your ticket after you buy it to be sure you are going to the right city. Some city names sound very similar, or even have the same pinyin, and it's better to find out you have the wrong ticket before you leave rather than finding out upon arrival. One other note: big cities often have several train stations servicing them. The different stations are typically distinguished from one another with one of the cardinal directions. In Chinese, these words are Bei (北) (North), Nan (南) (South), Xi (西) (West), and Dong (东) (East). On the sample ticket above, you can see that my destination was Shanghai Nan, or Shanghai South Station. This is a good thing to be aware of when you are buying and reading your ticket.
3. This is your train number.
4. This is the date and time of your departure. The sample ticket says: 2012年04月08日 17:09开. You're a smart person and can figure this out on your own, I'm sure, but 年 means "year," 月 means "month," 日 means "day," and 开 means "start." My train above left on April 8, 2012, at 5:09 p.m. (actually, it ended up leaving about twenty minutes behind schedule, but that's beside the point). All tickets use the year-month-date format, and use a 24-hour clock for departure times. 
5. This is your carriage and seat number. My ticket above says: 14车 107号. 车 means "car" and 号 means "number." So, in this case, I needed to find seat number 107 in carriage number 14. Easy enough, yes? If you have a ticket for a bed on the train, this section of the ticket will also tell you which bunk you are assigned to. It will either say 上 (upper), 中 (middle), or 下 (lower). In that situation, the 号 number will indicate which column of beds your bunk is in. 
6. This is the price you paid for your ticket. If you booked through a ticket agency or a ticket office outside of the station, you will have paid a service fee on top of this price. 
7. This is your name and/or passport number.
8. This tells you where you bought the ticket. In the example above, I bought the ticket at the Yiwu (义乌) train station.
9. This gives you information about the carriage you'll be in. The ticket above roughly says that my car is a hard-seat car with air conditioning.
10. This tells you what days it's okay to use your ticket. The above ticket (and, to be honest, every ticket I ever got in China) says that it can only be used on the date shown on the ticket. Apparently you can sometimes buy tickets that can be used any time within a certain window, but I never came across that as an option so I can't say much about it.
11. Most tickets don't have this, but if they do it's worth paying attention to because it's important. This tells you which entrance you should enter the station by. In the example above, it says I should enter from the South Square. Most stations either only have one entrance or have multiple entrances that all get you to the same place. Here and there, though, a station has multiple entrances that lead you to different places, so it's important to enter from the correct entrance.

And that's about it. So long as you know what your ticket says, you should have no trouble navigating China's excellent train system. Happy traveling, friends.

Going to the Bathroom in China

At the risk of broaching a subject that is unsuitable for polite conversation/blogging, I would like to take a moment to talk about going to the bathroom in China. While first-time travelers to China often have no trouble with the eating of Chinese food, they can be confounded, stymied, or otherwise caught off guard by some of the practicalities of tending to the other end of the digestive tract. It is for those travelers that I present this straightforward guide to the ins-and-outs, so to speak, of using the restroom in China.

1. Most travelers have been (accurately) forewarned that Chinese toilets are traditionally squat toilets, rather than the Western-style toilets that you actually sit on. This is not to say that you will never see a Western-style toilet in China, of course. You should just be aware that these seated commodes are more commonly found in private homes than in public restrooms. My general rule is to always expect a squat toilet wherever I am. If you are always hoping for a chance to sit down, you will be frequently disappointed. If you've never used a squat toilet, the procedure is pretty self-explanatory so I won't describe it in detail. The only tip I might suggest is to try to keep your feet completely flat on the ground. Most Westerners squat on the balls of their feet, with their center of gravity pushed forward a bit. If you look around China (and other Asian countries), you'll see that most people here keep their heels flat on the ground, which allows them to shift their weight a little farther back, right over their feet. This might feel awkward at first, but it is much more comfortable for long-term squatting (whether using the restroom or just resting). For what it's worth, studies have shown that squatting is a much more efficient way of vacating one's bowels than sitting down in the Cassiopeia position. If you are sitting, your colon is sort of pinched like a garden hose with a kink in it, which means more effort on your part to get the job done. Squatting positions the colon straight up and down, which means most of the work is done by gravity. Benefits include shorter times in the restroom and fewer instances of hemorrhoids. Just something to keep in mind.

2. Some would call this the first commandment of independent travel in China: ALWAYS CARRY TOILET PAPER. It is very, very rare for a public restroom to have toilet paper for you to use. Most people in China carry small packs of tissues with them wherever they go. When nature calls, you don't want to put the call on hold while you go in search of tissues. You can find these packets of tissues at almost any convenience store or small market in China. A pack should never cost more than 2 yuan.

3. While we're on the subject, you generally want to avoid flushing toilet paper down the toilet in China. The pipes can't always handle the paper, which causes clogging and unpleasantness for all. If you see a trash can next to a toilet, you can assume that you should throw your used toilet paper into there. One exception to this rule is on trains. Most train toilets exit right out onto the tracks (yes, it's gross), so there aren't really any pipes to get clogged.

The train tracks are screaming by right underneath that hole.

4. If you're out on the town and need to use the restroom, you have a few options. International fast food chains (especially the ubiquitous KFC and McDonald's) have reliably cleanish bathrooms that you can use without buying anything. The restaurants might frown on this, but they never stop you. If you don't feel like freeloading, you can usually count on finding a public restroom out on the street somewhere. You have a better chance at finding one of these if you are in a downtown area, though they exist in every part of the city. They are generally advertised with street signs that use internationally recognized bathroom icons to point you in the right direction. Most of these restrooms are free to use. If there is a fee, it's negligible--usually no more than 0.5 yuan (about $0.08). Don't expect much from the public restrooms in China. They are there to get the job done, and that's about it. Most (not all) are smelly, dirty affairs. Some have no doors on the stalls. Once in a while you come across one that is just one long trough with short (1.5 meter) walls to offer the tiniest bit of privacy. In general, though, they are entirely functional and usually offer enough privacy for the Western sensibilities. They aren't palaces, but they'll do in a pinch.

5. In closing, some advice about smoking in restrooms:

Science!

That's about all I have to offer. If anybody else has further tips on using the restrooms in China, feel free to say so in the comments.

5/3/2012 EDIT
I'm adding one other important item today:

6. I wrote above that public Chinese bathrooms rarely provide toilet paper for your convenience. It's worth noting that the same applies to soap. There is almost always a sink with running water, but very rarely is there any soap to use. If you're the type that likes to wash your hands with something more than water after using the restroom, you'll probably want to have your own supply on hand. 

How to Find Street Food

Let's say you are in an unfamiliar city in China and you are hoping to find some street food. Where do you go? Naturally every city is different, so there really isn't a straight answer here. That being said, there are definitely ways you can shorten your search a bit. The following are some tips I have picked up along the way. None of them should be taken as absolute rules--merely suggestions or general guidelines.

1) The bigger the street, the less likely you are to find good street food. In Chinese cities, the main thoroughfares are noisy, bustling affairs full of people, cars, bicycles, and storefronts. Unfortunately, they are usually a bit too busy for street food. You'll have better luck exploring the smaller streets and alleys near the more populated avenues. Sometimes just a block or two off the main strip can make all of the difference.

2) Check the old parts of town. As Chinese cities continue to grow at an astonshing rate, there is a marked difference in atmosphere between the newer, shinier parts of a city and the older, grimier more charming parts of a city. In my experience, you're more likely to find great street food in the more traditional sections of town.

3) It is a truth universally acknowledged that a college student in possession of a poor fortune must be in want of cheap eats. This holds true in the USA, and it holds true in China. Wander around the neighborhood near the gates of a Chinese university and you will almost certainly find some street food.

4) The entrances of bus stations and train stations are always crowded with street food vendors. Personally, I tend to avoid them because they are rarely selling the best local dishes. Usually you'll find pretty generic fare with little variation across the country. That being said, there's nothing inherently wrong with eating this food--it's a cheap and tasty way to fill up before a long train ride.

5) Look for steam. It may sound silly, but it works. If you're hungry and wandering the streets, keep an eye out down every cross street for steam. Steam is often visible from pretty far away, and it can be a good indicator that there is food to be had.

6) Watch what other people are holding. If you see somebody walking down the street with a fresh snack, there's a good chance they bought it nearby. The less they've eaten, the closer the shop is.

7) Leave yourself in the hands of chance. If all else fails, there's nothing wrong with wandering aimlessly for an hour or two until you find something that strikes your fancy. Chances are good that you'll find something interesting to eat.

I've been in a lot of unfamiliar cities lately, and these guidelines have worked resulted in a pretty good success rate. Hopefully they will work equally as well for you. Good luck out there!