Set our course for adventure
This weekend we made several excursions out of Changping. Friday night we tried to find a faster route to one particular Carrefour/Starbucks, Saturday we drove out to Mutianyu, and Sunday afternoon I had a hankering for bagels so we went to a part of expatland. With Randy at the wheel, we tried to rely on his new Garmin GPS (with Chinese maps) as our guide. Some of the time it was really helpful and some of the time it was, uh, interesting.
We've seen some Chinese GPS systems in use, and they seem to be very accurate. Randy's Chinese-American boss has one, and some of the black-cab drivers that I've used to get into Beijing have them. After inputting addresses in Chinese, the turn by turn directions are fantastic. I don't know about all of them, but in the case of Randy's boss, his unit uses cell towers rather than satellite to triangulate his position.
Randy's Garmin uses traditional GPS satellite. He bought this in the US and then added on the China maps. The reason he did this was that the Garmin maps are all in Pinyin and English. Most of the units we've seen in China are, of course, in Chinese with Chinese characters.
Some of the time the Garmin showed us where we were fairly precisely. Here we are driving on a road with a canal just to our right.
Sometimes it showed us driving off-road. Here we are on the same road as above, but now the GPS has us driving in dirt with the canal on our left. It is still on our right.
I couldn't get a good picture of it, but yesterday it even had us driving right down the middle of the Ming Tombs Reservoir. Through the water.
Mostly the GPS has been a help if we only use it as a guide. However, in the absence of any really good driving maps, it is fantastic.
We've seen some Chinese GPS systems in use, and they seem to be very accurate. Randy's Chinese-American boss has one, and some of the black-cab drivers that I've used to get into Beijing have them. After inputting addresses in Chinese, the turn by turn directions are fantastic. I don't know about all of them, but in the case of Randy's boss, his unit uses cell towers rather than satellite to triangulate his position.
Randy's Garmin uses traditional GPS satellite. He bought this in the US and then added on the China maps. The reason he did this was that the Garmin maps are all in Pinyin and English. Most of the units we've seen in China are, of course, in Chinese with Chinese characters.
Some of the time the Garmin showed us where we were fairly precisely. Here we are driving on a road with a canal just to our right.
Sometimes it showed us driving off-road. Here we are on the same road as above, but now the GPS has us driving in dirt with the canal on our left. It is still on our right.
I couldn't get a good picture of it, but yesterday it even had us driving right down the middle of the Ming Tombs Reservoir. Through the water.
Mostly the GPS has been a help if we only use it as a guide. However, in the absence of any really good driving maps, it is fantastic.
Comments