Off to Yangshuo!

So I have a bundle of random things to say about the last couple days but it is 11:30 PM and I have to wake up at 4:30 AM to catch a flight to Yangshuo, so I am going to have to postpone those notes until later. Unless I change my mind in the morning, I am planning on bringing my laptop and they do have internet cafes, so I should be pretty well connected. If I actually have my computer with me, I might even be able to put photos up before I get back.

Super excited about this trip, however I was a bit bummed when I checked the weather and it said it would be raining all but one day. Crap. Hopefully the weather is wrong and it will be nice there. I haven't seen rain since I was home, I hope I can handle it.

Anyway, Yangshuo is supposedly a backpackers paradise and it is considered "Heaven on Earth" or something like that, I can't remember.

I bargained today for a pair of hiking boots so I hope they are decent fakes. I managed to talk her down to $60 from $125, so this weekend will be the true test.

Have a fantastic weekend and I am off to sleep!

Hiking 15 Towers of the Unrestored Great Wall

Saturday morning I woke up at 5 AM to get ready and meet the Beijing Hikers. Every weekend they do a hike of varying levels. This weekend was a level 5 hike, which is supposed to be their hardest level. Although I was worried about the level 5ness of the hike, I had decided that I was mentally prepared for anything that came my way. As for physically, in the past I had been able to take on challenges without preparing for them and somehow I would be in the lead. When I did the several day hikes in the Sinai I was almost always at the front of the group and was helping lead the way even though I had never done sports. So naturally I would assume that I could do it now. Oh how wrong I was.

While on the bus they gave us each a rough drawing of what we were going to do. There were three options.

Option 1: Hike from Tower 1 to Tower 15 and then come down the mountains and come back, making a circle.

Option 2: Hike from Tower 1 to Tower 8 and come down the mountains and loop back.

Option 3: Hike from Tower 1 to Tower 4 and come down the mountains and loop back.

I had decided that I came to do the 15 towers, I was going to do the 15 towers. It's funny how easy it is to think you can do things and then they turn out to be ridiculously harder than you thought.

As soon as we got off the bus we saw our guide, Mr. Mao. Apparently the last time they tried to do this hike some farmers spotted them, climbed up the mountains and told them they had to leave because the Chinese Government does not allow people to go on the unrestored parts of the wall. I guess since we had Mr. Mao (a local farmer) as our guide it was ok? He was awesome. While all of us were decked out in fancy hiking boots (thank you Alex), backpacks (thank you Mamuke) and carrying two liters of water and snacks, this guy was wearing the equivalent of Converse hightops and he had nothing more than a little sickle to cut through the brush. I don't think I ever saw him eat or drink any water the whole time.

We started the hike going right into the hard stuff. Not even ten minutes into it I started to wonder what I got myself into. I took a lot of photos but I think they suffered due to the fact that I was focusing so much on not falling or getting hurt and keeping up with the group. The hike was set up so that there was a leader in the front and in the back. The front person would tie red ribbons to trees and then the back person would take the ribbons off. This way the path was marked and people would not get lost. Well, two girls did get lost because the leader didn't put enough red ribbons up and they came to a fork and went the wrong way. Side note, one of the girls was wearing loafers that she bought for boating in Hong Kong. I still don't know how she managed the whole thing.

At what I thought was the 8th tower we stopped for a break and I thought they would make an announcement about Option 2, going down the mountain and back to the village. All I heard was "Well it looks like everyone is going to tower 15!" Apparently they had asked if anyone wanted to earlier but obviously the people in the back who would have wanted to go back had not made it to Tower 8 yet. So we all kept going and it just got harder. It was a lot of up and down and since the wall is all over the place, it was rather difficult at parts. They told us that we would have a rope in parts but I don't think they even brought one.

When we finally got to Tower 15 I was excited but also worried about the way down. Although I have a hard time breathing when going up, going down does a serious number on my knees.

The worst part about going down was that we didn't even have the wall anymore. Mr. Mao was cutting us a path and we were constantly being scratched up by ultra dry bushes and thorns. Luckily it was chilly enough that I was wearing long pants and my windbreaker so the worst of the scratching was on my hands.

After finally completing the hike we got back to the bus and had a bunch of snacks. I am sure you can imagine my joy when I saw they had OREOs!!! Not regular Oreos, but chocolate filled ones.

After all of that I came to a very important realization: I am not 17 anymore.

First big hike

Ok, so very last minute I decided to see what's going on tomorrow and sure enough there is a hike to do 15 towers of an unrestored part of the Great Wall. It is considered an "advanced hike" and is their highest level, eek. I don't know what I am getting myself into, but it sounds like fun. Wish me luck! I should have some good photos.

4.5 Fingers

Alex and I are looking for places to stay in Yangshuo and I happened upon this one hostel that looks to be pretty popular. The guy can write pretty decent English, but this little "notice" is hilarious.

Notice:
There are some people who wants to bring you to the other place to stay when you are arrived Yangshuo by bus or boat, they will say they come from the Yangshuo culture house or they will say the Yangshuo culture house is full and this is the brunch or sister business, please don't trust them. To mention me-the owner of the Yangshuo culture house and it's very easy, you only need to have look my right hand and there are only four and half finger on my right hand. I never sent anyone if I'm not telling you there is someone who will come to pick up you.

Not sure what a brunch business is, but it sounds tasty, I will gladly stay there. As for his fingers, I guess if someone was desperate enough, they could cut off part of their finger to get business. Ewww . . .

Coney Island or Taoist Temple?

Yesterday I walked over to the Dongyue Temple, which is not far from where I am currently living. I was intrigued because Lonely Planet said "Dongyue Temple is an unsettling, albeit fascinating experience . . . get spooked at the Department for Wandering Ghosts or the Department for Implementing 15 Kinds of Violent Death." So ofcourse I was interested in checking this out. I did not realize though until I got there how much it would remind me of Coney Island. I guess it should be the other way around, but I saw Coney Island first. I took loads of photos that you can see online. Ofcourse I went for the creepy looking ones, which there was no shortage of. It was really interesting to go through and read about each department and see each ones' depictions. I must say I was a bit disappointed in the "Department for Implementing 15 Kinds of Violent Death." With a title like that, you would expect something crazy and violent, but they looked fairly normal (in comparison to some of the other departments). The worst of them was a guy with blood coming out of his eyes and one that was headless. Sounds bad, but when you compare it to a guy holding his entrails in the "Punishment Department" it is peas.

Today was nothing too exciting. I had class and then borrowed Alex's card to go to the gym because I guess the Chinese think white people all look the same (I guess we think that about them sometimes too). The gym was pretty crazy today interms of the kind of people I saw there. For some reason I can't get over how amusing it is to see massive bulging muscles on really short Chinese guys. This one guy was probably a good foot shorter than me, was wearing tiny little spandex and one of those horrible shirts that is loose and has the huuuuuge arm holes so you can see right through it to what you assume is his six pack. Oy, it was pretty gross. Then I saw this couple walking up the stairs. The girl looked like she was probably some Chinese model or actress or something and the guy looked like he was trying to be Ali G. I did not really get to look closely but I don't think he was Chinese. He did however have a white do-rag and a necklace with three ivory looking tiger teeth. Oh and the girls . . . sheeze! They are ridiculously thin! I do not lie or overexaggerate when I say one of them is about the size of one of my thighs. Sadness. They are nearly non-existent.

Ok, super sleepy . . .

9:20 AM . . . dance to greensleeves

Ever since I arrived here three weeks ago, every morning around 9:20 AM I hear "Greensleeves." The old people across the street dance in the mornings and I get to listen to the music everyday. It reminds me a lot of Cairo, only there I got to listen to gradeschool kids do P.E. which consisted of clapping their hands to Celine Dion songs. I did not notice it before, but this morning they played "La Cucaracha" right before "Greensleeves."

Cameras and costumes

Today I went with Carrie (one of the roommates) and Julie (she has the same birthday as me) to a photography store way on the other side of town. First of all, the directions we had said that if we took a taxi to this subway stop, it would be obvious where this place was. We got off at the stop and started walking down this road that the store was supposed to be on. After asking four people and walking for around 20 minutes, we found it, definitely not obvious because it was nowhere near the subway stop.

The place was crazy, I was imaging something like B&H in NY where everything is organized and if you want a Canon digital SLR, you go to one spot to look for it. This place however (as many of these megastores are) was comprised of many small booths selling a lot of the same stuff. So you would have some 20 different booths selling cameras, another 20 selling lighting and so on. Then about half of the place was stores with fancy dresses, wedding dresses and crazy gaudy costumes. There were also shops with a variety of backgrounds that you can choose to take your photo in front of. I guess you can dress up and take photos in front of a romantic bridge going over a river of waterlilies. TACKY! But man it would be fun to do, get dressed up in the most hideous dress and then pose in front of a sunset or some weirdness. And no worries about makeup, there were a load of makeup booths all over the place too.

After we had had enough of the madness there, we walked down the street a bit and found a bunch of furniture stores. As we were walking into one, Julie opened the door and a mother ran out with her child and held her to the sidewalk where the kid peed right in front of us. As gross as it sounds, I think that kid almost peed on Julie and my guess is the woman knew the kid had to pee because it had already started to on her, EWWWW! Still not a fan of the open pants thing for kids.

For dinner we ordered take-out from a Mexican place and I will just say that fajitas are best eaten at a restaurant, not delivered, they were definitely not worth it.

Bellydancers and snakes

First thing in the morning Alex and I went to join the gym she used to belong to. On our way there we saw a group of old Chinese people dancing in a wide area of the sidewalk. I will have to go back and take photos of them, they were too cute. Unfortunately when we go to the gym, we had to deal with a truly incompetent woman who would not budge on the membership price. Apparently for three months I have to pay $194 + $225 (initiation fee). There is no way I am paying more for an initiation fee than for a membership and it ends up being over $100 a month and I am not cool with that. So I guess what I am going to try tomorrow is to use a card of an old roommate of Alex's. There is a photo on the card and she looks nothing like me and somehow I need to renew the card. Eek! I hope it works, Alex and Carrie seem to think it will.

In the afternoon we went bowling with some of Alex's friends. This one guy has four lanes in the basement of his apartment building and although I probably had more experience bowling than anyone else, I didn't do that great.

Another market opened up across the street and Alex and I went to check it out. There were more clothes and less food this time. We found this one booth with a massive pile of clothes that I actually liked. They had some really cool shirts but as I am coming to realize in China, I am too big. Most of the XL shirts were still too small. So that was a little annoying going through all of these shirts I liked, and none of them fit.

We met up with Empi and Mikael (Empi is the daughter of one of my mother's friends back in VA) for dinner at Red Rose, a Xinjiang restaurant. Xinjiang is in the west of China and has many minorities. It is more like Central Asia than East Asia, the language is totally different and I believe that Islam is more dominant than Buddhism, but I could be wrong. Anyway, this restaurant had a band and two belly dancers. It was great! One of the belly dancers had a snake and she brought some guy up on stage to dance with. I felt bad for the snake though, she kept swinging it around. I was sort of expecting the band to play Arabic sounding music, which they did at times, but then they would play Gypsy Kings and at one point I swear they were playing country. There were also these two Greek-looking guys in the audience we got up on stage and started dancing without even being invited up there, it was great. The food was delicious, lots of meats and a massive full leg of lamb (I think).

Not sure what's going on today yet, I know a bunch of the "girls" are coming over for brunch as one of Alex's friends is probably moving to Xi'an this week.

Crimped Mullets

Ok, new favorite haircut . . . the crimped mullet, or even better the half crimped mullet. This consists of the top part being crimped and the bottom part straight. Oh yes, there's lots of them here in China. I have yet to take a photo of one, but hopefully soon. So if you want to be ahead of the trends in the states . . . you know what you have to do to your hair.

Yesterday and today I basically tested out gyms, woohoo! We went to one yesterday that has a pool but costs a ridiculous amount. No one was there so Alex tried to teach me how to swim. Yes . . . I don't know how to swim. Ok, not really, I just haven't been able to freestyle ever that I can remember. I did make some progress though. Alex told me she used to teach swimming . . . to seven year olds. So I am probably her worst student, oy.

We went to this deliciously wonderful restaurant called "The Olive" that is only a block away. It's new and it a variety of European foods. It is right below Bodi (the place we go for massages) and they are trying to combine the two as a sort of healthy restaurant that works with the massage place. They had an amazing pumpkin soup that I think I was a bit too excited about.

Today we went to this gym that Alex belongs to and it was crazy. Apparently lots of Chinese models and body builders go there, heh heh. For some reason it was really amusing to see a Chinese bodybuilder. Most Chinese people are small and thin here and then you get this short guy with bulging muscles.

I learned how to say numbers today in class and boy is it confusing. Just to give you an example. If you wanted to say 50310, you would say something like, "Five ten thousand zero three hundred one ten". It will definitely take some getting used to. The money here is a bit odd too. For example most things make sense like, ten 1's make a 10. But then you get these weird 5s and two of those make a 1. And then ten small 1s make a 5. Oy, math is odd here.

We were going to go to Qingdao and Mt. Taishan this weekend however this guy currently has my passport since I have to extend it, and it probably isn't wise for me to travel around without it. Argh!!! I would hate to try and check into a hotel 8 hours away and find out I can't because I have no passport, aye!

Chaos at Carrefour

I am still a little bit out of sorts from this cold but for the most part I am better. Last night Alex and I went to a 3 or so hour long meeting on the hutongs project, oy. Alex left early which left me to sit and look at every single photo taken for this project. Don't get me wrong, I love looking at photos and these are especially interesting, but 3 hours of it gets a bit tiresome. I am looking forward to going on more trips throughout the city to take photos of hutongs. Hopefully next time it won't be so cold/windy/dusty.

Today I went to Carrefour for the first time and I don't think I will be going again anytime soon. It was my first time taking a taxi alone which I managed to do without getting lost, woohoo! Carrefour is like a Walmart (which I never went to in the states) in that it is one store that has everything and anything. They even have a grocery store downstairs. Among my list of things to get, I was looking for a yoga mat. Naturally I looked in the sports section but could not find one. So I did the daring and tried to ask someone in English, because the store caters to foreigners (although I didn't see many). Unfortunately I had around four Chinese guys trying to understand what I was asking for. I tried making all kinds of motions to show a yoga mat and eventually someone brought one from the back. It was pretty frustrating though and I felt like a complete idiot trying to play charades with these guys.

After nearly losing my mind in there I decided I had to leave but ofcourse the lines to checkout are ridiculously long. I went to a line that said "Credit Card" thinking they would take mine. Side note: Not sure if I mentioned this before, but little kids here wear these big bundled clothes that have a massive opening where their butt and such are. I guess they do this so that they can just squat and do their thing without taking off their pants. It's kind of weird though when you are at a grocery store and you see little baby butts showing. Anyway, while waiting in the longest line (not really longest, but the woman in front of me had an insane amount in her cart), I looked around to see if there were any shorter lines, but then I decided to just stick with it because I was exhausted and did not want to try and switch. When I got to the checkout, they could not take my credit card because it is a foreign credit card. Apparently they had a special line for foreign credit cards, what a fool I was! Oy. So they took me out of that line and to the foreign credit card line and all was right in the world.

Beijing cold

I am sick, bleh. No, not my stomach, I have a cold. I am pretty sure it is from walking around in the cold, wind and dust in the hutongs. Oy. Dusty throat stinks.

Anyway, I guess it's better than stomach problems, but it makes me uneasy about what I was inhaling yesterday. Today was pretty much a bust, I just stayed home and tried to rest. Tomorrow will be sort of busy so I need to sleep. Going to start watching Lawrence of Arabia on my lappy and go to sleep. Nak nak.

Blood pipe and Hutongs

Last night as I said was the engagement party. It was fun to dress up although I didn't really know anyone. I decided to be adventurous and had Alex do my eye makeup. I never really wear eye makeup other than mascara, so it was interesting but I think it worked out pretty cool. We went to this girl, Julie's apartment (Julie and I have the same birthday, which automatically makes her cool), for the party. It was fun, not much to say though.

This morning I woke up earlier than I wanted to, to the sound of the door bell. It was weird because I woke up and did not even realize what it was since I was not quite awake yet. I just kept hearing this annoying sound. Apparently the maid (not sure if I mentioned that we have a maid that costs less than $2 an hour, how sad) came over two hours earlier than she was supposed to and was incessantly ringing the doorbell. After that stopped, I fell asleep again and then heard the doorbell go off a million times again. Then I heard a bunch of Chinese men talking really loudly and running up and down the stairs. I have no clue what was going on as I was barely conscious but I jsut made sure to stay in my room. It was very surreal. I hate the sound of our doorbell now.

Other than that rude awakening, today was pretty awesome. Alex was very busy with work, but I went on a photoshoot to some hutongs with MCK (Alex's American friend), and three of his Chinese friends, AJ, Kurt and Nicole. First we met for lunch, a lunch I will never forget. The Chinese guys wanted to go to McDonald's but MCK and I would not have it. So we went to this Chinese restaurant and since the menu was entirely in Chinese I did not bother to look for anything. Most people eat family style in China, and I was not especially hungry, so I just let them pick whatever they wanted. Not sure how good of an idea that was. The first dish to come out was weird looking and I knew it had to be some animal part, turns out it was lamb stomach. So being the little trooper, and that fact that I will eat "anything" once, I tried it. The worst part was the sauce it was in, I think on it's own it would probably be somewhat tasteless. The texture was sort of like calamari. Then came out something like Kung Pao Chicken, which honestly I have not seen yet in China, but AJ and Kurt said that that is the dish that is most associated with foreigners. Go figure . . . I actually liked that one. Some other plates came out, all of which were good and then on top of it all was this hot pot that consisted of varioud animal parts. I still don't know what all was in there but the soup part looked like blood (don't worry, it wasn't). Of all the parts that were in there, I managed to eat "blood pipe", duck blood, cow stomach (not much different from lamb stomach), possibly part of an eye of some animal, and some other organ like parts. I am not quite sure what "blood pipe" is, I would guess maybe one of the major arteries or veins? It was pretty thick. Anyway, it was not as bad as it all sounds. Not something I would ever order or choose to eat again, but none of it made me feel like I had to throw up, which in my book is the most important thing. I think the sheeps brain I had in Egypt is still more disgusting than any of what I ate today.

After lunch we walked over to where there used to be hutongs. I am not sure how recently, but most of it was rubble. We all took our cameras out and spent a couple hours wandering around and taking photos. I didn't take as many as I wanted to because it was freezing, insanely windy and I forgot my gloves, so my hands were frozen. MCK was going around and tried to talk to a couple people. Some of them were not as willing to talk but this one guy was pretty cool. He apparently only moved to Beijing three months ago so he could get a job, have a better life and see where the great leaders were from. It was really sad to see that he was living in the remnants of a demolished hutong. Luckily MCK talked to him or a while and even got him to let me take a photo of him.

Overall the day was pretty cool walking around and documenting this stuff. We are meeting on Tuesday to go over photos and who knows what will happen next. I know they are talking about doing exhibits, maybe books and who knows what else.

As for the burns I got yesterday, one of the eleven turned into a blister, argh! It seriously looks like I have some weird birthmarks on my arm right now in the shape of a bunch of red spots.

This evening we made pizza with some homemade dough that Carrie had frozen from her mother. We ordered ingredients from April Gourmet, which as usual is a very risky deal. I asked Alex to see if they had root beer and they ended up bring over a can of warm Carlsberg beer. Oy! Not what I wanted. That happend to us for the potato pancakes when we asked for oil and they brought margerine. I guess that's what we got for not wanting to walk to get our groceries last minute.

On top if it, I bought the first season of Lost on DVD here (super cheap) and am getting everyone into, mwa ha ha ha! I officially have Alex hooked.

I am super super tired so I am going to sleep, but I will put the photos up first thing tomorrow, I think I got some goods ones, unfortunately no evidence of the stomachs though, I am such a fool!

Kitchen Battle Wounds

Not a lot going on right now. Yesterday I had another Chinese class and learned more food words and how to say "I like" . . . so now I can say, "I like to eat noodles." "Wo xihuan chi mientiao." Yummy! Next week we are learning about taxis and transportation, so I will finally be able to get myself around. On my walk home from class I noticed a sign on a store that said "Welcome to here." Yes . . . welcome to here indeed.

Last night Alex and I went to dinner at a Thai restaurant with her friends Fuzzy and Erla. They are both very cool. Fuzzy is Pakistani British and Erla is Icelandic. After dinner we went to get massages for super cheap again, woohoo!

This morning I decided to make French Toast and oh what a disaster. They came out tasting pretty good but not without some battle wounds. I managed to get burned in 11 spots. Three on my hands and then the mother of them all was when I was putting more butter in the pan and somehow is splattered out onto my forearm into 8 separate dots. It hurt like all hell but I didn't think it did anything, now I look like I have some weird birth marks on my arm. On top of it, I am supposed to get all dressed up tonight for a friend of Alex's and Carrie's engagement party. So I am not sure what to do, but my arm might look a bit freakish.

Ok, I am off to get ready . . . will report more later, sorry no new photos. I did fix (more like replace) the images that were not working.

First day of class

Today was my first Chinese class, woohoo! I was sort of hoping I would meet cool people there, but was a bit disappointed. My class has three other people in it, all of who are probably in their 40s/50s. Not saying there is anything wrong with that, but I don't see myself becoming buddy buddy with anyone.

My teacher is pretty cool, she is closer to my age (or so she looks, Chinese can be decieving). I learned some really valuable phrases today, like how to say "Your mother eats chicken." "Tade mama chi ji." Don't try to pronounce it, their sounds are so different. The hardest part I think will be figuring out how to pronounce the vowel combinations like ae, ie, ou, uo, iu and so on . . . I have the "ou" and "uo" down, but that's about it.

Last night I was turning the lights off and we blew a fuse. So Alex and I went to the fusebox and were flicking the switches but it wasn't doing anything. We were without any lights for a full day until maintenance finally came by and flicked another switch in another fusebox that solved the problem. Oops. We didn't realize there was another fusebox for our lights, it's too bad we couldn't just communicate with them over the phone and get it done earlier.

Other than that, I am working on reuploading all of the images to the broken albums, argh. I have no clue what happened. There is nothing wrong that I can see in any of the code or image files, so I am just starting over for those three albums.

That's all for today, things have been a bit slow. I have decided that I am going to do a little project for myself on mops. For some reason the variety of mops and where they have been placed in the environment fascinates me. Everytime I see a mop and I don't have my camera I get annoyed. So from now on, the camera comes with me everywhere a mop could possibly be. Be prepared for the mop photo album.

Sizes

Just a little note, China is no place for a person with low self-esteem. In the states I wear a medium size shirt, here I have to wear a 2XL!! Ha ha. If I lose a bit of weight maybe I will fit into an XL. Sheeze!

Last day in Shanghai, Yuyuan Gardens, boat tour

Our last day in Shanghai was jampacked with walking and sites. We started off the day trying to find a place for a good breakfast but instead went into a good croissant place and got one to go since they had no seating. We went to the Yuyuan Gardens first which were super super cool. Outside of the gardens and around the whole area is considered Old Shanghai and has very cool Chinese architecture. I think it might have been the original center of town. While walking around outside of the gardens this old Chinese man tried to talk to us. Normally we would just keep walking, but he seemed legit. He asked if we were American and where we were from. We said Virginia and he said he has a granddaughter at UVA and a granddaughter at Northwestern and he kept going on and on about them. He spoke really good English and then out of nowhere he asked if we were going into the gardens and if we could buy him a ticket. It was sort of awkward and I couldn't tell if he pulls this act on every American or what.

As we continued on we found a Dairy Queen! It repulsed me but I also was happy. It repulsed me that there was a Dairy Queen inside this old looking part of town, but I was happy to see a blizzard and had to get one. They had weird flavors too, like Green Tea blizzards.

We went into the Gardens and it was like a little paradise, I could hang out there all day every day and have picnics. I might need one of these when I get back to the states. I can't really explain it, so you will just have to look at the photos.

After the Gardens we walked down Old Shanghai Street and then walked up toward the Shanghai Museum. On the way to the museum I saw this little kid in front of us who kept looking back at me and my camera. Then he said in Chinese that we were American. All of a sudden he tried to touch Alex's chest and grab our bags. He followed us and pulled on our stuff for a couple blocks and we could not get rid of him. I am not one for child abuse, but I was ready to slap this kid. He grabbed my water bottle out of the side of my bag and thought he had stolen something of mine. Lucky for me it was empty and I didn't care. Then Alex and I split, she went into a store and I walked behind some gate. He followed her into the store and tried to steal from the woman at the counter who then proceeded to yell at him and kick him out. Alex and I found each other again and he was still there. He just kept laughing and so I turned around and took a picture of the little rat. I don't know how we eventually shook him off but we did.

We made it to the Shanghai Museum and saw a couple interesting exhibits although there were many areas that were closed down. There were some amazing furniture pieces and old dress pieces from the 1700s. After the museum we walked back down Nanjing Donglu and then to the Bund for a boat trip up the Huangpu River. It was slowly become more and more smoggy and cloudy, so the view from the river was not that great, but it was still nice to see the shipping yards and all the boats in the area.

Once we arrived back at the dock, we had to rush to get our bags from the hotel and get to the train station. In Shanghai and I suspect in most of the large cities in China, there are areas where you cannot cross the street but you have to go over or under. The road, or more like highway, that you have to cross to get to and from the Bund is one such road. I think it is eight lanes across. We were hoping to catch a cab but could not find any so we decided to wait for no traffic and then run across. Ofcourse there were two police officers maybe 20 feet away from us. So when the traffic let up, we started to run. The officers blew their whistles but Alex just yelled to keep running! As we were running across we saw a police car with flashing lights turn the corner and we freaked out but he was not coming after us. Anyway, we made it across and no one came after us. We just played the idiot American card.

We got our bags and took a cab to the Shanghai Train Station. It was getting dark and we passed Nanjing Donglu and got to see all the bright lights for a brief moment. At least I got to see it, even though I didn't get to take any photos of it.

So we got on the train and we knew it would not be as good as going down since we were going on a Sunday night. We got into our room and were the first ones. Then two older Chinese guys, probably in their 40s or 50s came in. I was very confused because I thought they would not put men and women in the same room. Apparently I was wrong. The worst part about it was that Alex and I were on the bottom bunks, which are considered to be couches for everyone until you sleep. So we were stuck sitting with these guys until they wanted to go to their beds and sleep. One of them spoke English but the other did not. The one who did not speak English thought I was an 18 year old Russian. I guess I am psyched that I passed for 18, but I am not Russian! It's funny because I look at Chinese girls and think they are all teenagers when they are in their 20s, so I assumed that a Chinese man looking at me would think I was much older than I am. Anyway, the ride was ok, considering we slept through most of it.

So that was the trip to Shanghai, sorry if it was wordy, I have been trying to remember everything at once. I have photos online but for some weird reason am having problems with my older albums. Will try and remedy that today.

Day 2 in Shanghai, Aquarium

After a very restful sleep in ye ol' Captain's sailor bunk, we got ready and began our day. We started it off by walking to the Bund and taking the underground Tourist Sightseeing Tunnel. I initially thought it was just a tunnel you could walk through to get to the other side of the Huangpu River, however I was mistaken. You have to pay to take this pod on tracks through a tunnel that was like something out of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. It was nuts! I was pretty much giggley the entire time, it was such a tourist trap but I loved it. It has cheesy narrations and crazy lights, it was like a rave on wheels without the music.

Once at the other side we decided to go to the Aquarium. I have a thing for Aquariums and like to go to them whenever I am in a city that has one. It is said that the Shanghai Aquarium has the longest underwater tunnel in Asia, so I had to see it. The Aquarium was definitely an experience. It was more like a theme park than an aquarium. There were different sections based on country or region and strangely enough Africa only had one very small room, not sure if it's because they are racist or not. Maybe there are not many fish in Africa? For each area there were places to take photos and the Chinese people there took photos everywhere they could. Unfortunately when looking at the fish many of them looked dead. The worst was this frog that had part of it's mouth and part of it's eye missing, it was quite morbid. Another thing we noticed was that the seaweed and surrounding environments in the tanks looked like plastic. The worst being a tank with neon fish in it in which they tried to match the coral to the fish. I have seen some crazy colors of coral, but not neon blues, greens and pinks like they had in this tank, they were definitely painted to match the fish. The coolest part of the Aquarium was definitely the underwater viewing tunnels. The fish were not that exciting, but it was still fun to see them all and take photos in the tunnel.

We went back to Nanjing Donglu for lunch and had some super tasty dumplings that are specific to Shanghai. I have never had anything like them in the states, but they are amazing. The dough part is much more bread like than pasta. Super tasty. Nanjing was much more packed when we went back on Saturday than on Friday. There were areas where cars are supposed to be able to drive through and the people make it near impossible. Everyone was dodging cars and trying to cut through, I would hate to have to drive through that.

After going through the touristy stuff we decided to walk in another direction and see what was around. We crossed the creek that goes into the Huangpu and ended up in an area that I doubt many tourists go to. The area was similar to Hutongs in Beijing but the buildings were a bit taller (three stories instead of one). We walked down one street that was all little shops with mannequins in rows. Each store had slightly different mannequins and most of them were only wearing tops and no pants. It was kind of creepy, I wish I could have found a way to get a photos of the entire street. We continued on walking down this one street that was pretty much empty except for one parked van. We heard a crash and looked and saw a guy on a moped had driven right into the van. I don't know how he did it because there was plenty of room to avoid the van and there were no cars coming in either direction. It also does not surprise me though because even while walking down streets we will see a guy on a moped or bicycle look at us, then look away while his moped/bicycle starts to veer towards us.

We walked down by the Astor Hotel which we initially were hoping to stay at when planning our trip. It had a hostel at one time but when Alex called to book a room they said the hostel was cancelled. It is a building with many firsts in China, such as: first modern hotel in China, first electric lamps in China, first phonecall in Shanghai . . . We used their internet and their bathrooms and then crossed over back to our side of the river.

We met up with Alex's friends again for dinner at a delicious Thai restaurant called Simply Thai. After hanging out there we looked for something to do after and ended up at the skybar in the Radisson Hotel again. It was pretty lame and there was a lounge band playing. One guy was playing what looked like a really skinny upright bass and the singer was a Chinese woman singing songs mostly in English. It was weird though how she looked like she was being dubbed. I am quite sure she was actually singing but her mouth did not look like it was making the same motions as the words she was saying.

That night I was hoping to take photos of all the lit up streets but did not realize that they turn off the lights around 11 PM! I thought for sure they would be on until at least 1 or 2 AM on a weekend night. I totally missed taking photos of nighttime in Shanghai, so I guess I will have to go back and take more next time.

Day 1 in Shanghai, wandering around

We woke up shortly before arriving in Shanghai on Friday morning. Took the subway quite easily to the Captain's Hostel but were there too early to check in. We dropped our stuff off and explored the surrounding area. We found a nice place to have breakfast where they had "waffles." They tasted a bit different but were still good. It was considered a dessert, but I was fine eating it for breakfast. We walked along the Bund (a touristy area we were staying a block away from) and then checked in. Considering it cost us $7 a night, it was pretty nice, I actually slept better my two nights in the hostel than I have in Beijing. The hostel rooms were called sailor bunks and there were eight beds to a room.

After checking in we decided to just wander the streets and see what we could discover. We spent most of the day walking along Nanjing Donglu and the French Concession. Nanjing Donglu is a main walking street that lights up at night (unfortunately we did not get to see it all lit up) and is very popular during the weekends. Nanjing Donglu leads you into People's Square where we saw a Communist gathering of sorts. We took a break near a sculpture for a bit and saw an old Chinese man painting. His easel was attached to his bicycle somehow and he was painting the sculpture. As we were leaving we looked at his painting and noticed that we were in it! We were both pretty psyched that we were memorialized in this old Chinese man's painting.

We were right near the Radisson Hotel and decided to use their bathrooms since they would probably be the nicest we could find for a bit, this became a trend for the weekend. Using bathrooms in nice hotels. I recommend it, it beats the alternative. After checking out the facilities we decided to see if we could go to the top of the building and check out the revolving restaurant. We went up during a slow time so a waiter took us around the restaurant and showed us a menu as I took photos of the city. Had we gone up one of the other towers with a view, we would have had to pay, and here we got to see it for free and look at fancy menus.

We continued on to find the French Concession and some good French food. While walking down the streets there were loads of people running up to us trying to get us to buy handbags, it was getting really frustrating and annoying after a while. After being completely exhausted we found a cute French place where I had a Nutella Crepe, yum! It was refreshing and I totally did not feel like I was in China anymore. Right outside the restaurant was a market with all kinds of booths. We decided to check it out and immediately were attacked by all kinds of people trying to sell their goods. I bought the cutest tiniest little tripod I have seen which is great for traveling and surprisingly it holds the weight of my camera. Alex bought a monstrous pair of sunglasses and managed to talk the woman down to a super low price. While walking down one of the strips, a man came up to Alex trying to get her to buy a handbag and she said, "I don't like handbags." One would normally think the guy would leave us alone but instead he wanted to know why and kept following us. For some odd reason I burst out into a laughing fit and he decided to follow me instead and kept asking if I was crazy. Eventually we lost him and got out of the insanity.

On our way back to the hostel we went to a tea house that looked really cool because it had swings as chairs at some of the tables. We really really wanted one but unfortunately they only had two tables with swings and both were taken. We ate there anyway and the waitress was very odd. We asked for water and she told us that we had to order. We kept trying to tell her that we would order but that we wanted water first and she did not seem to grasp the concept. Since we were in the area and it was getting late we decided to check out some of the local bars since Shanghai is supposed to be a "happening" town. We went to one that seemed ok until some weird guy tried to talk to us. We were by no means dressed to impress as we had just been walking all day, so I am not sure why he even came over. He was obviously drunk and made some statement like, "We guys come here to get girls and you girls come here to get guys." Alex and I looked at each other like, um ... not quite. Eventually some teeny tiny Asian girls (they were definitely not Chinese) started dancing all skanky like and luckily the guy's attention shifted. Alex's friends were in the area, so we moved onto another place and stayed there until we went back to the hostel.

Leaving for Shanghai

We are back in Beijing and I will do my best to write up what all happened this weekend. Unfortunately I am sure I forgot small details that I wanted to include.

After packing our bags we took a cab to the Beijing train station. There were some issues with this because apparently there are several train stations and we did not know which one we had to go to. Eventually we figured it out and got there early. We did not know what the meal situation would be on the train so we went to the food court at the train station. Word of advice, never go to the food court at the Beijing train station. There were numerous vendors selling all kinds of noodles, dumplings, soups and such. I decided to get noodles and Alex decided to get dumplings. I tried to buy my own noodles and got sucked into some whirlwind bureaucracy. The woman started putting my noodles in a bowl and I took out my Y8 to pay her. She would not take my money and kept pointing and yelling. So I looked over and there was another stall on the other side of the room. After standing there and obviously not doing what the woman wanted me to do, she led me to the stall and told me to pay Y8 plus another Y3. I don't know what the 3 was for, but I just gave it to them because I had not way of arguing. After giving the woman at the new stall the money, she gave me a foodcard. I went back to the woman with the noodles, she put my card in and then motioned for me to go back to the other woman and she put her hands up showing me "five." At this point I was getting annoyed and did not understand why I would need to pay another Y5, but whatever, I wanted my food. I went back to the foodcard woman, gave her another Y5 and went back to the noodle woman. This time she would not take my card, I was utterly confused. Then this other guy (I have no clue if he worked there or not) started yelling something at me in Chinese (like yelling it will make me understand you any better) and had me follow him back to the stall where I got the foodcard. I don't know what happened, but he gave me back Y10 and then I got my food. Some how Alex did not have to go through all of that, so I don't know what I did wrong.

After eating we tried to find out track. Something I have learned from Alex is that when asking questions in China, make sure to ask several different people until you get a confirmed answer. We asked five different people what track our train was on and got three different answers. Once on the train we found our sleeper room and it was awesome! I have never been on a sleeper and it was really exciting. We were also spoiled because there was no one else in our room. On the train they gave us a complimentary dinner which was halfway decent. There was some weird pack that we could not identify. Might have been cold noodles, cabbage, jellyfish? We did not try it. We got to listen to Chinese smooth jazz and pop songs on the train and had a blast with that. There is one song where they try to sing in English but we couldn't even understand that.

To be continued . . .

Off to Shanghai!

So I am super excited, Alex and I just got tickets to take the overnight train to Shanghai tonight and stay until Sunday night. I am not sure if I will take my laptop yet, my guess is no, so I will write more on Monday when I get back.

Woohoo! Now to pack up for three days!

Thai food and blue skies

Today was probably the nicest day in Beijing ever, or at least while I've been here. The sky was blue and it was pretty clear outside. I don't really understand how it went from disgustingly polluted to blue skies. Everyone here says the Chinese government controls the weather by shooting chemicals into the sky for holidays to make the sky blue. I wonder if this was one of those days.

Anyway, Alex went back to tutoring a woman from Inner Mongolia today and she invited us to have lunch with her, her husband and her friend. Alex told me and Sean to meet them at a corner because we thought we were going to her place to eat lunch. They showed up in a black volvo and got a cab for us and told the cab driver to follow them to a restaurant. Everything was fine until a black VW pulled in between us the Volvo. Somehow our idiot cab driver could not tell the difference and when the Volvo turned, the cab driver kept going and followed the VW instead. Neither Sean nor I speak Chinese and we did not know how to tell the driver to stop or turn around. We were both really flustered but luckily the VW was pulling off not far away into a parking garage, so we just got out and walked the rest of the way to look for their car.

So May, the woman Alex tutors, took us to this amazing Thai restaurant that is apparently pretty famous in Beijing. The menu was more like a magazine than a menu. It was filled with ads and it was hard to tell what you could order and what was an ad. We just let the husband order and it felt like it took half an hour for him to finish telling the waitress what to get. Eventually I figured out why, because they ordered tons of food. It just kept coming and all of it was so delicious. It's interesting to me that Thai food in America is pretty similar to Thai food in China (which I assume is similar to real Thai food in Thailand), however Chinese food in America is drastically different than Chinese food in China. There is no sweet and sour chicken or sesame chicken or any of the things you would normally associate with Chinese food. So who decided that these things would be considered Chinese food? At any rate, the food was delicious and we all tried Baijiu, a Chinese alcoholic drink that Alex thinks is disgusting but I thought tasted alright. Apparently whenever you want to drink, you hit the table with the bottom of the glass and everyone has to drink with you. So I guess everyone gets equally drunk? I am not sure. Luckily they were being cool with us and did not do that. May is a fashion designer and seems very cool. The funny thing is, she has no shame in telling people they are fat. She had emailed Alex while she was in the states asking if she was fat or skinny. Then today during lunch we were talking about Chinese food and I said I liked the noodles the best and she told me that noodles will make me fat, so if I don't want to be fat, I have to stop eating noodles.

After lunch we went to the Temple of Heaven since it was a nice day and in theory, it would be a good day for photos of the sights. Unfortunately they are doing renovations and we could barely see anything since it was all closed off. Hopefully we will get to go back when it is done. Not far from the Temple of Heaven is the Pearl Market where you can buy all kinds of bargain goods. We walked through and it is hilarious to see how these Chinese girls attack people. They are all trained to say things like, "Special price for you!" "Beautiful lady, I give you low price!" "Cheaper for you!" We actually saw one British guy get pulled by three little Chinese women when he said he did not want to buy a bag. They kept physically pulling him back in and he kept trying to get out. They are vicious, but man it must get exhausting. We saw all the pearls and it's really overwhelming and a bit frustrating. I would really like to buy beads since they are so much cheaper here and you can bargain, but I do not know how to tell what quality things are and what price I should be paying. Any pearl/jade/coral experts out there?

Wednesday nights are Quiz Night at this bar called Bar Blu. Alex's friends have been going so we went to check it out. I have only been here a week and I felt so odd walking into a bar full of Americans, Brits and other foreigners. I have not seen that many white people in one place, it's so weird.

Anyway, I am tired and will upload photos tomorrow morning.

Mardi Gras snow

No big sights today, but I did wake up to snow! There was maybe a half an inch, but it was still kind of cool to see snow in Beijing considering it was built on a desert. Alex and I went to this design studio called VaporCube. She has a friend who works there and they are planning on doing a project on hutongs (the "shack" type buildings that are being knocked down in order to build highrises). He wanted us to come in because he thinks we could do a lot for the project. It could be really interesting although I am still unclear as to what exactly I would be doing. Seems like they want to do an exhibit and they want to basically spread the knowledge to people all over since there may not be any left by 2008. On our long walk home it started snowing again. I tried to take some photos but they didn't come out all too great. The creepiest thing was that I could see the sun perfectly but there were definitely no shadows. I can only assume that the pollution was so thick that the sun could not really get through enough. If I had not actually seen the sun, I would have thought it was really cloudy. Today had to have been the most polluted I have seen Beijing.

After walking around for a while, we stopped at April Gourmet for sour cream and apple sauce since I decided to make potato pancakes for Mardi Gras. Woohoo! While I was looking around, I saw a thing of Nutella and maybe I got a bit too excited. I called over to Alex and showed it to her and she immediately said, "Put it down!" so these two Australian women looked up and started laughing. They thought it was the cutest thing and we started talking about how great Nutella is. I am glad I made their day, they were even talking about how "cute" it was as they were walking out. At anyrate, I am super excited I was able to find all the ingredients I needed for potato pancakes since I am not able to have my mother's tasty cooking for Mardi Gras this year. Unfortunately they came out a bit too crispy because the stove is a bit freakish (and would probably be illegal in the US). There are only two burners and one of them doesn't seem to work unless the other one is turned off first. Then you have to fiddle with it for around ten minutes before it starts to work, if it does at all. In the middle of making the pancakes, I ran out of oil so we called April Gourmet to deliver another bottle. Somehow they misunderstood and delivered margarine instead. Even with all of that though, the pancakes were good and seemed to be a hit. Carrie even said that it was the best food she has had in Beijing.

Now I am super tired and am off to sleep. I will put the photos up tomorrow morning.