Vietnam and Cambodia!

Okay, here's a basic rundown on the last five days.

We have to be back on the ship tonight; it's currently 4:46pm on March 2nd in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Our first day in Vietnam was four days ago and I went on a SAS trip to the Cu Chi tunnels. The tunnel system is incredible elaborate and we got to go through the tunnels that had been widened for tourists. The widened tunnels were still only 2 feet wide by 5 feet tall. I'm 5'7 and I had to crawl half the time. I can't even begin to imaging spending months or years under the ground like that. We didn't get to see any of the bunkers that the tunnels connected, but we saw a diagram; they had hospitals and kitchens down there! The hidden entrances are so tiny that I didn't think I'd fit, but with a little wiggling I managed. We had a couple of huge guys with us though and my Graham (6'4 and built like a football player) could only get through up to his knees. That night we explored the local markets.

The next day I flew to Siem Reap, Cambodia with a group on the Temples of Angkor Tour. I didn't know what to expect from Cambodia, but it's gorgeous! The people are all beautiful and seem so happy. 70% of the population are still rice farmers, but the tourism industry is really beginning to pick up. They only have two season in Cambodia, dry and wet, and they're both hot. We visited in the dry season, which is colder than the wet season; it was between 90 and 100 degrees (low humidity) every single day... that's cold.... The first day we visited Angkor Wat, which is massive and has an incredibly rich history. It's also riddled with bullet holes left over from the civil war. I realized when I was there that I've always learned a lot about the Holocaust, but the Cambodian Genocide has never really come up and I didn't know much about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Our tour guide lost his entire family in the war (parents, brother and sister). It's not uncommon to see amputees around the city; the war happened so recently that many of the people were soldiers and many have stepped on active landmines left over from the conflict.

Day two in Cambodia was spent touring six different temples, including the temples in the city of Angkor Thom. The second temple we saw in Angkor Thom was the Bayon Temple and we got to ride elephants on a tour around the ruins! There were also monkeys running around everywhere. After Bayon we went to the Temple of Trees (I don't know if that's its real name) where Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was filmed. One of the most striking things about Cambodia is the number of children selling things for one dollar (they prefer American money to Riel) on the streets. Postcards, bracelets, books and scarves; you name it and these kids were selling it. They're so persistent and they're adorable children with huge eyes, which makes it hard to say no. Kids as young as three or four are sent out to sell things in the morning and they go so school in the afternoon. Most of them are between 8 and 12, which is the same age as the kids in this class. The differences are incredible.

Day three was spent touring a floating village by boat. The village is made up of over 700 families who are all fishermen. Their homes are small boats and there are even floating rec centers with basketball courts and a school. The village moves every year with the seasons and it's absolutely swarming with small children the vast majority of whom will stay with the village all their lives. I'll try to send pictures of the village, too. That afternoon we flew back to Vietnam. We got back to the ship around 8pm and met up with everyone else. That night we decided to go out to the bars. Crazy. Absolutely nuts. We wandered around until we found the first bar, which was fun, but not very full. After a while we all hopped on the back on mopeds and meet up with a bajillion other SASers at Apocalypse Club, which was a crazy crazy crazy dance club. We met a group of people from Ireland, Scotland, Australia and New Zealand who had all met while scuba diving and were traveling around Asia together.

The last day in Vietnam (today), two friends and I wanted to see the War Relic Museum (which is also called the Museum of American War Crimes). The museum was incredible and the Vietnamese perspective was interesting. There was a whole floor dedicated to the pictures of war photographers, many of whom were killed and that was the only real diversity of perspective they offered; they seemed to respect any photographer who risked their life to publicize the war story. We met a moped driver named Aty and he agreed to give us a tour of the city. He and his two friends took us all over the city to different museums for four hours and then bought us delicious spring rolls. Traffic here is crazy, so riding on the back of a moped was definitely an adventure; I'm sunburned and I had a great time. Tonight we have to be back on the ship and tomorrow morning we leave for India, which is supposed to take us 8 days.

GHA!

On a quick side note, yesterday was my first day of taking malarone for malaria and dang, what freaking freaky dreams! I might need my Molls to cuddle me tonight.

China!

Ok, so I am not exactly getting along with uploading pictures, so I guess you’ll all just have to come see me in May! After Shanghai we flew to Guilin and there were about 12 or 13 of us in 4 separate groups, but then we all just got into two groups and one went right off to Yangshuo and the 7 of us stayed in Guilin for the night. We stayed at this great hostel called the Backstreet Youth Hostel which had a dorm room with 7 beds, which was perfect for us. Then we headed out on to the street, walked around a bit, then went to this restaurant for dinner that had tree trunks on the walls. And the menu! Oh my gosh, it was a book! We each got an entree and a dessert and split some pitchers of this sangria type stuff, plus Kyle got whole fish as an appetizer, and the whole thing came to about $13 a person. We were there for a solid 3 hours just enjoying each other’s company. Then we wandered back to the hostel and watched some Olympics and headed to bed.

We got up around 8 or so, found some breakfast, and hopped a van to where we met a fisherman who took us on a bamboo raft down the Li River for about 2 hours. This trip was pure magic! We glided just inches above the water, passing people doing their laundry on the rocks of the river, cows grazing on the shore line. And all of this under these amazing limestone mountains! They just jut up everywhere, these huge hunks of rock covered by plants. We passed quite a few other boats like ours and every couple turns in the river we would come across a little commune for the fisherman and nearby towns. We eventually landed back to reality and took another van ride to Xingping. In our van were a couple Canadians who taught English in China and were on holiday for the New Year. I plan on doing that in the near future, so maybe I’ll find some young travelers then, too!

We got this amazing lunch in Xingping from this place with the best fried noodles any of us had ever had and then we wandered through the market and got a lot of pictures. I met a 16 year old girl who wants to practice her English so she and I exchanged email addresses so I hope to hear from her. We eventually took a bus to Yangshuo and got rooms at Monkey Jane’s. What a hostel! Only 20 RMB a night, which is less than $3, and it had a rooftop bar and restaurant and just some really cool people. Kyle, Nic, Brook, Natali, and I headed to this night light show on the water that supposedly had 500 people in it. And wow, amazing! It was about this Chinese singer and her story. We couldn’t understand any of it since of course it was in Mandarin, but the singing was gorgeous, especially with the limestone mountains as the backdrop. I will try to get some pictures of it up here when we get to our next internet friendly port. And there were tons of men on bamboo rafts with lanterns, and the whole valley was the stage! It was just phenomenal. Then towards the end over 200 women came out on moving docks and walked from shore to shore in light up suits. Just amazing.

After the show we headed back to the hostel to meet up with Tucker and Emily up on the roof. There we met Craig, this Canadian who used to spend the winters in Thailand mountain climbing but then came out to Yangshuo for 5 weeks to check out the climbing there. He has been there for over a year now and is heading home this summer to say goodbye to everyone, then move to Yangshuo, open up a coffee shop that has a corner for English practice, and find a Chinese wife. He is a pretty interesting guy. We also met some guys from Holland, this girl Riika from Finland, a couple guys from the UK, some more Canadians, and this guy Stone from Inner Mongolia. What a place! It was such a great night; making fun of accents, talking about football (soccer!), and just having a crazy good time. There was this stuff called Snake Wine, which is liquor in a big jar with a snake coiled up at the bottom….from what I hear it was good, but I just couldn’t muster up my courage to try it! I’m sure I’ll find some in Viet’Nam.

The next day we met back up with Stone and Craig and biked out of town to where Stone works, this restaurant/hostel called the Giggling Tree. A guy from Holland had been biking through the countryside, just as we were doing, and saw all these abandoned, dilapidated old farm buildings and thought, “Huh, I could do something with that place.” And he did. He and his wife moved there, used local materials and local labor to fix the place up, and now in its 5^th year of business it is a thriving business. They have a 3 year old son who speaks Dutch, English, and Mandarin. Damn! What a life that little guy already has before him. But hell, what a life I am living! Thanks again MaPa. J We ate amazing food, including fried bananas with honey, fruit milk shakes, apple pie with raisins, and fried rice with diced ham, veggies, and peanuts. What a place! After we ate our fill we walked around a bit and all planned on coming back as soon as possible. There were people working there from Europe and China and the owners were so welcoming. Then, as if the day couldn’t get even more amazing, around the corner came a group of fellow SASers! Emily, Zack (both of whom I met through our Choco sandals), Eric, and this other girl who I don’t know came riding their bikes alongside us. On all the roads in all the towns of China! Too funny.

Eventually we hopped back on our trusty wheels and headed on down the road. We stopped a few times to just watch the river wind through the mountains. Oh my gosh, what a place. We eventually got to Moon Rock, which is a limestone mountain that has a huge hole in the top part. It looks a lot like a donut. Yeah Greenbush! Then we peddled our way back to Yangshuo but stopped on the outskirts of town to have some lunch at this great outdoor restaurant. Mom, oh my gosh would you have loved the kitchen; it had infinite bowls and spices and counter space. We ordered veggies, rice, beer fish, and a chicken hot pot. Then we went and watched our fish and chicken be killed and cleaned….and then we ate them! The freshest meat I’ll ever eat. The fish came cooked, but the chicken was just all cut up and put on a platter while a pot in the center of the table heated up. When the water was boiling we just dumped the whole chicken in, everything from the beak to the feet and everything, I mean EVERYTHING inside. The first thing I grabbed with my chopsticks was the neck….and I just couldn’t eat it. It was just a bunch of cartilage and yeah. But I did eat an egg sack, which is just the yolk of an egg. We also found floating around in there the whole group of maturing eggs. It was like a bunch of yellow grapes all packed together. Very interesting. A professor of mine pointed out today that it is because of our wealthy culture that we disregard so much of the chicken and other animals before we eat them. To us drum sticks come in abundance and we don’t think about the rest of the animal, where as people of poorer nations eat everything including the brains and the feet. It was an eye opening and taste broadening experience.

On our way back into town we stopped and got some snacks for the long bus ride that night to Shenzen, a town on the China side of the China/Hong Kong border. I got what I thought were oreos but instead they were cookies with egg yolkish stuff in the middle. Oh well! We dropped our bikes off and said our goodbyes, then Kyle, Natali, Nic, and I headed to catch our bus back to Guilin to get on an overnight bus to Shenzen. When we got to the bus station we got excited because we saw the sleeper buses and had beds, but then we found our bus that was just a plain bus. Whatever, we’re in China. And I sat next to Kyle and we watched a movie on his iPod then used each other as head rests for the rest of the ride. We got into Shenzen around 7:30 a.m. and walked around for quite a while because we were trying to find a market, but after an hour and a half of wandering we finally found the market, which was actually a produce market and not a clothes and gadgets market. But we got some great dim sum for breakfast, then hopped on a train to go through customs before entering Hong Kong. A couple metros later and we were at the Harbor City Mall, which is actually where our ship was docked. The Hong Kong people love to shop and there are malls freaking everywhere, so it was not surprising that all the big ships like our lovely MV Explorer was docked next to a cosmetics store. I did a little bit of internet goodies then headed out to explore the city. The metro system is amazing! It is touch screen so all you have to do is touch the station you want to go to and it tells you how much the fare will be. And there are lights on the maps telling you where you are and which direction you are traveling. Oh, so nice! And extremely blind person friendly; they even had maps in brail, as well as raised walking paths for people to follow with their canes. I got back to the ship around 5 or so and laid down for a quick nap with the intention of meeting people for dinner, but instead woke up at 9:15, found nobody left on the ship because they were all out on the town or still in Beijing, and so I did some reading and writing and went to bed to get some dearly needed sleep.

The next day I had a city tour for a class and we went all over and even up Victoria’s Peak which had an amazing view of the whole city. Then that night Heather and Mollsy babes and I went to the Temple Street Night Market and wow! What a place. The last day Molls and I went to this place called 10,000 Buddhas and ran into two more Badgers there. What a busy, vibrant place Hong Kong is.

And now? We are in Viet’Nam! Today we have the Chu Chi Tunnels, which are 25 miles worth of tunnels that the Vietnamese used during their wars against France and us. This is going to be the first of many difficult but needed and eye opening experiences.

Thank you all so much for reading this or skimming it or thinking of us. We miss you and love you and will be bugging you plenty come May. :)

Hong Kong!

Big Buddha!


View from Lankau (sp?) Island next to the Big Buddha.



Helen near the temple of 10,000 Buddhas!

More Pictures from China!

My first glimpse of China (Shanghai from the ship in the morning)



Shanghai during the day




Pearl Tower in Shanghai at night from the ship



Chinese calligraphy! These characters mean "I love you" and "forever"



The dumplings were gone so fast that all I got was this picture




View from a tower at the Xi'an City Wall



Terracotta Warriors! (pit 1)



He LOVED that camera



Remainder of a delicious donut from 85 bakery



Local Street Market



Temple of Heaven at a distance

Pictures and Videos from China!

"Thank you mom and dad!"

Beijing, Day 1

We flew out of Xi’an early in the morning. The flight attendants on the plane wore plum colored uniforms; I noticed because I thought it was weird. The flight was definitely taken over by SAS. There were a few Chinese people and I think they were really confused as to who we were and what 100 of us were doing on their plane haha. After a 3-hour plane ride we landed at Beijing International Airport and went to the hotel.

Friday the 19th was pretty free because we were traveling, so we had the afternoon and evening to do what we wanted. I wandered around Beijing with a small group (Zach, Patrick, Mike, Matt and Carson). We wanted to visit the (Hong Qiao) Pearl Market, which is a 5 story indoor market full of vendors, basically five stories of bargaining and cheap shopping, but we heard it was closed because of the New Year. We walked into a mall for a second just to look around, discovered an ice skating rink in the middle of it, took a few pictures and left.

Then we stopped at a 24-hour bakery called 85 and bought delicious donuts. We met a guy who works there named Jordan (I don’t remember his Chinese name) and he told us about another market and a cool bar to hit up that night. He was excited to have people to practice his English with. We walked over to the market he told us was open and it wasn’t what we expected/were looking for, but it was interesting. I was looking for knock off Coach wallets and this market was more of a local food/small household street. It was down a back alley and super dirty, but I have some unique pictures and it was nice to see the non-touristy markets.

On our way out we decided to swing by the Pearl Market even though it was closed because we could see it in the distance. As it turned out, our guide was wrong. We actually had thirty minutes or so to look around inside the market because it closed at 6pm, not 4. It was overflowing with people. As you walk by, the vendors yell at you. “Lady, Lady, you want purse? Girl, look, wallets! Lady, Lady, Lady!” It was certainly an experience.

Next we walked over to the Temple of Heaven. It was built in 1420 and it was the Ming and Qing emperors’ personal place of worship (we weren’t far from the Forbidden City). We were too late to go inside the Temple, but we were still able to walk around the huge park surrounding it. The park itself was really cool and we met three girls who are taking a year off of college to teach English in China. They were visiting Beijing for the holidays and we chatted with them for a while. Inside (and outside) the park everyone seemed to be selling these weird little hackysack things. They almost look like badminton birdies, but they have brightly colored feathers and they’re heavier. You’re supposed to kick them around to each other, which didn’t seem that unusual until we witnessed them in action in the park. Groups of 6 or 7 people were standing in circles playing an intense game of kick the weird feather thing and they were REALLY good.  The funniest part was that they weren’t young at all. Some of the groups had people who looked as old as 50 and they were lunging and jerking around to kick the birdie thing. I have pictures. It was cool. Then we bought a birdie thing and we sucked at it. American fail.

After it got dark we went back to the hotel, showered and went out to find a place to eat. After a couple weeks of eating Asian food all day we were really in the mood for a pizza or a cheeseburger, so we found a sketchy looking place called Big Pizza. This place is on the second floor of a building up some gross back stairs, but once you get inside it’s awesome. It was 49 (about 7 bucks) for an all you can eat buffet, which we assumed would just be pizza. Wrong. Big Pizza had EVERYTHING! (Nicole, you would have loved it). They had tons of pizza, chicken nuggets, salad, wings, fries, popcorn chicken, slushies, pop, beer and even soft serve ice cream (plus about a million things I didn’t eat). Let’s just say that we got our money’s worth.

Big Pizza closed at 9:30, so we headed back to the hotel and met up with a bunch of other people heading out to Bar Street. There aren’t too many bars in Beijing because people tend to drink less and drink in restaurants, but there is Bar Street. There were a few places with live music, which was nice and we bar hopped for a while, but then we found a sweet place packed full of SASers and locals. Everyone was dancing and there was a strobe light, which always make me a more confident dancer because I know people can’t tell quite as easily how awkward I am haha. Good times. Around 1am I dodged peer pressure and took a cab back to the hotel with Mike. A bunch of other people took cabs out to Club Mix. I’m glad I went back and got some sleep. We had to be up early.

Beijing, Day 2

We woke up early, grabbed breakfast at the hotel and took a 10-minute bus ride to Tiananmen Square. I had always picture Tiananmen as a small area, but this place is huge (I think someone said 13 acres… I’ll look it up later). I also didn’t know that it backs right up to the Forbidden City. In China you’re not supposed to talk about the student protests of 1989; the government doesn’t official recognize any memorial of the event. I read that they allowed the news to cover a memorial ceremony for the first time a few years ago, but it was broadcast as a service to commemorate victims of a more recent earthquake instead of all the dead kids. There are cameras EVERYWHERE.

Our tour guide was open about the protests, so we got a few historical tidbits. No one knows exactly where the kid stood to block the tanks, but based on the angle of the pictures Jason (guide) led us to the general area of where it happened. They also don’t know exactly who he was. Most people think he was a 19-year-old college student and after it happened he was dragged away. There are differing stories, however, about who dragged him away: friends to protect him or the police. Either way, most people say that he was killed.

 When I think of Tiananmen I think about the student protests, but to the Chinese the square is a symbol of all political power and action in China and it’s a landmark. They’re very proud of what Tiananmen Square represents; they simply don’t talk about 1989.

Anyways, the mausoleum lf Mao is there, too. It’s friggin huge. There’s also a big red gate with a gigantic portrait of the chairman. We walked through the square to the Forbidden City, which was cooler. The Forbidden City was the home of the last 28 emperors and they call it a city instead of a palace because it’s as big as a city. There are 1,000 buildings for everything from judicial proceedings to housing for the imperial concubines. Each emperor had a different number of concubines. The last emperor (circa first half of the 20th century) had two; an earlier dude had 3,000. We couldn’t go inside most of the buildings, but we did get to see the throne and a couple other ceremonial buildings. Also, every section was separated by a threshold, which we learned earlier, is meaningful. If you’re a girl, you have to step over with your right foot first and you can’t step on the threshold because it’s ridiculously bad luck. Also, the higher the threshold, the wealthier/more powerful the people in the home are; there are some obnoxiously high thresholds.

After the Forbidden City we walked a bit to meet up with our trishaws, which were going to take us to lunch. We turned a corner and there were fifty of these things lined up! Nick and I rode together. You just sit in the back and put a blanket over your lap while the driver hops on his bicycle and takes you down all these winding back alleys that the bus could never dream of fitting through. A vendor trying to sell us stuff jumped on his own bike and rode next to us trying to bargain.

The drivers dropped us off and we were divided into groups based on the size of the houses we were trying to fit into. Our group was shown to a small door flanked by two black and yellow birds in decorated cages. They can talk and they have the strangest voices; I took a video of them. The house belonged to a middle-aged woman and was surprisingly comfortable on the inside in comparison to the location. She showed us into the back room and taught us how to roll out the dumpling dough and fold it up. Then we ate and it was definitely one of the most delicious meals of the trip!

After lunch we took the trishaws back to the buses and jetted over to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Birds Nest and Water Cube! It was amazing to see the two buildings and think of the incredible things that happened there. Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps. Wow. We didn’t get to go inside the water cube because it’s being renovated, but we did get inside the birds nest. They’ve made the entire inside into a winter park. They have tubing and sledding and skiing and ice skating.

We had a little time to wander and then we headed over to the Yuan Hou Silk Factory. It was advertised as a tour of the factory and it started out pretty well. The tour, however, only lasted 10 minutes and was more of a sales pitch because then they led us into a store and that was the end of it… Lame. It was the only let down of the entire trip, so to make up for it they bussed us over to the Pearl Market and let us spend an hour.

We had to be back at the hotel by 6pm to leave for dinner. We went to a nice restaurant for Peking duck, which ended up being great. After dinner a lot of people went out, but I was exhausted, so I stayed in and watched a movie with my roommate.

I’ll post about the next two days later (including the Great Wall!).

Love,

Molly