Xi'an

The ancient civilization city dating back to the beginnings of human society is still walled by a 20-meter tall and 14 kilometers in perimeter wall surrounding the old city. Of course like all of China outside the wall has dwarfed the original city and its five million inhabitants live luxuriously in skyscrapers and drive Porsches. We arrived in Xi’an after a fifteen- hour overnight train ride – where Jimmy and I were in separate compartments. We left the station and were immediately hassled by people who wanted us to stay at their hostel or hotel. We had already booked ahead and reserved a dorm room at the Shuyuan Hostel on HostelWorld.com. I did not feel so well when we got off the train, I didn’t sleep and I had an upset stomach, but Jimmy and I needed to find our bus to the hostel, even though we had no idea where to find it and people kept pestering us whenever we looked at the guidebook. Finally Jimmy couldn’t take it anymore, a woman came up to us and said we should stay at her hostel, Jimmy said no, but she persisted, finally she grabbed Jimmy’s arm and tried to pull him in her direction, then Jimmy turned to her and said “we are not staying at your fucking hostel, go away,” and then the woman started screaming at us “fuck you, fuck you” Jimmy and I quickly hurried in the opposite direction of this very angry Chinese women and a moment latter found our bus. We stayed at a quaint youth hostel with a beautiful set of three courtyards and a pleasant café that served the best café latte encountered in China thus far as well as French toast, which Jimmy and I had everyday for breakfast. When we arrived I didn’t feel so go we upgraded to a private room and I took a nap. When I woke up Jimmy was there with fresh soap, the knowledge that the hostel does laundry and a orange juice, it was everything I wanted in that moment and Jimmy, my hero, got it for me! Xi’an provided a peaceful escape from the bustle of Shanghai. We spent an afternoon touring the top of the wall via bicycle, and the other days were simply spent just lounging and reading. I started to feel better after a couple of days but then Jimmy started to come down with something. We ate a fabulous meal the first night we were there at a Muslim restaurant in the Muslim quarter, peppered beef, flat bread and mixed vegetables. The second night however was a total disaster, Jimmy was taking a late late afternoon nap and around 7:30 I woke him up and said we should go get food, I said it was a little place I found in the guide book just around the corner and it was suppose to be great. So we walked out of the hostel and 45 min. later we finally found the restaurant. By the time we sat down we were both starving but alas the menu was not in English, so we had to rely on pictures, I ordered corn as our vegetable and Jimmy ordered, beef on a stick, well what we thought the waitress said was beef, then we ordered bread, but the bread was in a picture with soup and deli meat we tried to tell the waitress that we just wanted the bread. First the corn came, which tasted amazing then about 20 min. later the “beef” came, which ended up being large shrimp that you had to peal of a stick. Being from Alaska we are not scared of Alaskan seafood but when you are in interior Chinese miles and miles away from the ocean, seafood is probably not the first thing you want to be eating. Then the bread came, but it also came with the soup and the deli meat, the soup ended up being in a bowl the size of a large salad bowl, enough to feed at least 15 people and the deli meat was defiantly dog! Jimmy was a good sport and tried to eat it but there was so much food we couldn’t have finished it all. Looking around everyone in the restaurant was twice our size and looked like sumo wrestlers. We finally decided this was the place where you come if you haven’t eaten in a week or you weight three hundred pounds, neither, of which were Jimmy or I. Then Jimmy looks at me and says very seriously I don’t think they are going to let us leave with all this food on the table still eat up! I couldn’t eat anymore – but I was a little nervous what Jimmy said might be true no one was coming over to ask if we were done. I also felt so bad for wasting all the food, and I was really worried it was going to coast a fortune. Finally we called the waitress over and broke the news, she quickly brought us the bill and several doggy bags, the meal was only $8 US and our food was neatly packed up for us to take home. When we left we gave the food away to a homeless person and went back to the hostel, it was around 11 pm, so much for a quick dinner around the corner. The highlight of our time in Xi’an was in a way the Terracotta warriors, located about an hour and half outside of the city. The warriors were built to protect the tomb of the first Chinese Emperor, the man who united China, Emperor Qin Shi Huang. The warriors that remained fully intact, though few were amazing in detail and would have been truly fascinating in their peak of existence. It is thought by some that each one of the warriors actually represented a individual soldier because each worrier is different, has some distinguishing feature all his own, in addition the horses that accompanied the army are also uniquely different as well. The army has no official writings dating before the accidental discovery in 1974, when a peasant found the tombs when he was digging a well. Its existence was never supposed to be known to the public. But today the Terracotta warriors are a leading Chinese tourist attraction and so Jimmy and I went, even though we were quite enjoying our down time in the cafes of Xi’an. We took the city bus, number 603 that we caught from the train/bus station. We entered the bus and it appeared we were the only foreigners who would venture to the warriors today, on the cheap. Most people according to the guidebook hired a minibus or a taxi to travel to the warriors but Jimmy and I wanted to save a little money so we thought we would just wing it on the local bus. After taking our seats the attendant came over to us and started speaking to us in what seemed like very fast Chinese, after about a minute our first guardian angle of China came to rescue us, he asked us were we wanted to go and then spoke in EngloChinese to his very young wife who then told the attendant that we wanted to go to the Terracotta warriors. After we received our tickets we thanked the man and his wife and struck up a conversation with him, and you’ll never ever guess where he use to live, Kodiak Alaska! Now he lives in Florida and he had recently married his wife, who still lived in China, there was apparently something wrong and she was unable to get a visa to come to the United States, even under the Obama administration. Jimmy was convinced she was some kind of criminal. She was about our age and the man was about sixty-five – this was something we encountered quite often in our following weeks in China. Anyways when we said goodbye to our helpful friend from back home, as we existed the bus, I looked up and the bus had dropped us off at a KFC, yes a Kentucky Fried Chicken! Then we had to walk pass the KFC up a newly constructed mall where vendors were hawking their goods, everything from mini Terracotta warriors to Chinese candy. Jimmy bought an orange juice and it was triple the price it would be in Xi’an. After we made it through the hordes of sellers we finally made it to the entrance. Once inside we entered the first of three airplane hangers, the first one was the biggest and the warriors were the most intact. It was an amazing sight – more then 100,000 figures. The next two vaults as they called them were smaller and less in tact, vault three was the home of the elite guard – all the soldiers were lined up in battle formation, however interestingly the Chinese had taken all their weapons away and put them in a secondary location. After taking several pictures and seeing all that there was to see we braved the vendors once more and traveled back to the bus. Once back in Xi’an it was around dinnertime and so we had a quite dinner and the next morning we left on the train the Chengdu to see my mom.

Terracotta Warrior
A lot of Terracotta Warriors
Biking around the big wall of Xi'an

Shanghai

We arrived in Shanghai in the morning and quickly figured out which bus was ours into the city. We were going to take the worlds fastest train, however it was a little more than we wanted to spend and would only take us to the northern suburbs of Shanghai, where we would have to then take a taxi to our hostel. The bus was relatively quick and gave us a good opportunity to see some of the cities sites. When the bus attendant called to us, specifically us, in broken English, we knew it was our stop. Once off the bus we looked up in the skyline for a building with a pointy top – we were told that our hostel was right next to the JW Marriot Hotel and according to our city map acquired at the airport the Marriot had a pointy top. We walked a couple of blocks and found the Marriot but we still were not sure where our hostel was until we saw the Hostel International sign down an ally. Our hostel was located near a nice wine bar, which at first we thought might be the hostel, but were quickly directed further down the ally. When we arrived, we checked in and were shown to our room, through a beautiful courtyard with little ponds of fish and bridges that traversed them. There was also a nice little bar/cafe, pool table and movie room. The whole place was designed in gray stone and dark wood with a lot of red finishes, giving it a traditional Chinese look. We stayed in a six bedroom dorm with four other guys, one was older and just visiting, another was a designer in Shanghai selling a new kind of travel bag – who also partied like there was no tomorrow, with another guy who had been at the hostel for a while and then there was a guy who was traveling around Asia looking for a place to settle and teach English – he was also from Washington DC and we had a great time talking with him about our possible plans for next year. After settling in we set out armed with “Three Days in Shanghai” a guide Jimmy tore out of a United Airlines magazine of the highlights of Shanghai. Our first order of business however was to go to the Park Hyatt Hotel and ask them about our tickets and permits to Tibet, where we would be going when we meat mom and John in about ten days. The concierge informed us of the difficulty but we came to the conclusion with mom, who is always cool and confident, that we could get it done further down the road. After that was done a highlight in the guide book that was very close to the Hyatt was the Shanghai Sex Museum, boasting all kinds of sex toys and histories throughout the ages – Jimmy was quite excited to go but after about an hour of searching for it we finally asked where it was and were told that it had been closed only a month before to further improve Shanghais image for the upcoming expo. The face of Shanghai was totally being altered for the Expo, which could be equivalent to the historic worlds far. New construction was everywhere; it was evident that China was not being negatively affected by the current financial crisis that was damaging so many other markets.

The rest of our four days in Shanghai were spent getting Chinese massages from blind masseurs, finding the perfect dumplings, and taking in all the history from the English Bund and the French Concession. On our third day we asked our hostel to book train tickets for us to travel to Xian the next day, which they did and the next day we were off. We got a taxi to the train station early and thank goodness we did because in the middle of the Shanghai express way our taxi got into a collision with another vehicle. There was much yelling in Chinese and much wondering on our part what to do – our taxi driver’s idea was that we just walk to the train station from the expressway. Jimmy did not like this idea and so he hailed us a taxi and so we grabbed our bags and hopped into the first one that stopped. There was a little confusion with the language at first but then with our guidebooks help we were off to the train station again. When we arrived it was like a cattle yard people pushing us through winding gates and not knowing if we were ever going in the right direction. “Jimmy called back to me do you think this is right?” I told him it was, I saw it on a You Tube video two travelers took of there experience at the Shanghai train station. Once we went through the phony security we were able to find our gate or waiting room as it is referred to in China. There were tons of people and “stuff”. We were not sure when we would board the train but we were there about an hour in advance. About 45 min before the train was to depart everyone in the room got up at what seemed like the same time and charged for the ticket counter. I healed onto Jimmy’s backpack and we were pushed and pulled until we finally handed the agent our ticket and we were on our first train of China. All I was thinking was I hope its not Chinese trains do not have a large infestation on cockroaches like some Vietnamese trains. When we got on the train there were no cockroaches but we did find out shortly that Jimmy and I were in separate compartments and we had two upper bunks to boot. I looked at Jimmy, and all I could think we seriously! Car accident and now we are not even in the same cabin. Jimmy said it would be fine and that we would just go hang out in the dinning car. After the train got underway we went to the dinning car and ordered a soda and started to play cards after two games are drinks were almost empty and the train attendants kicked us out, telling us in broken English we could not hang out in the dinning car, as we shortly realized the dinning car was not for travelers it was a place for the train staff to hang out eat and drink and party, something we would encounter over and over again on Chinese trains, frustrating! We went back to our cabins and tried to get some sleep, which Jimmy was the only one of the two of us who was able. Xi’an and a nice double room were calling my name!

Don’t Rock the Boat – Hong Kong

We hit the ground running in Hong Kong; because of the high cost of living we limited ourselves to just three days in the amazing capitalistic city reclaimed by the Chinese in 1997. We checked into our hotel early after a train ride out to Hong Kong Island from the airport. It was our first real hotel of the entire trip, the Ramada. We dropped off our bags and headed out. Our trusty Rough Guides for Southeast Asia as our companion and we began a hurried exploration of one of the most awe-inspiring cities of the world. We were startled by the amount of green space intermingled within the tall skyscrapers. We took a walking tour through some of the most historical sites such as the old markets that sold Chinese Herbs, St. Joseph’s Cathedral, and the old Gas Lanterns that once lit all of Hong Kong.

Then we took the Tram up to the “Peak.” The highest point on Hong Kong Island and we meandered along one of the most peaceful little paths we have ever encountered. There were waterfalls and families picnicking and people walking their dogs and then a few outrageous houses. It was a feat actually to get Mary to take the tram up to the top as her and heights aren’t exactly on speaking terms.

Hong Kong has one of the most impressive sky lines in the world and the best way to take it in is during an evening Harbor Cruise so we ventured out on one or second night. The day had been a little drizzly but nothing too bad. Shortly after boarding the ship and heading out into the harbor the winds picked up and the rain starting falling. Within moments many of the tourists were vomiting off the side of the boat. The light show was amazing and we will definitely be venturing back to Hong Kong someday.

On the Harbor Tour

Hong Kong - Skyline from the Peak

Dried Fish Market

Missing In Action

To our friend and family that may or may not be reading our blog around the US, we would like to apologize for our recent month long absence. We hope you didn’t worry that we were dead, or worse converted to communism. The Chinese government fears freedom of speech as recently displayed by the lack of live video feeds across the country during President Barrack Obama’s first Asian tour. With these fear comes the censorship of media outlets including social networking sites, facebook, twitter, and MySpace as well as Google run web-based applications such as our blog. This crackdown on the web started in July of 2009 following some riots that were organized via these websites. But alas, we are now back in the free world and will be posted regularly.

Mekong Delta

The Mekong Delta was far more populated than I though it would be. There were people everywhere but hardly ever on land. The river on the other hand was full of people, life in the Mekong was lived on the river, people buying and selling at markets, traveling from one place to another, working - fishing, illegally harvested sand from the bottom of the river, entertaining tourists, etc. Down on the Mekong the land was reserved for farming rice, Vietnam is the second biggest exporter of rice in the world, just after Thailand. However according to our tour guide, life is changing, half of the population in Vietnam is under the age of thirty and the younger generations do not want to farm, fish, or live in the country. We saw this when we spent the night in Can Thou the largest city in the Delta, the younger generations were modern, loved to party and spent long nights at bars singing karaoke. But back to the beginning...

Our journey through the Delta had a bit of a rough start. Our first day in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) we booked a tour to the Delta through our hotel, it seemed great $32 each for an over night trip, other travel agency we were seeing were charging twice as much or more, so we were really excited. However booking the tour through the hotel, were English was not well understood, left us wondering what we were getting into. The next morning woke up early and boarded our tour bus at 7 am. Everything seemed fine, there was an assortment of about twenty other people, all excited just like us to be traveling to the Delta. After a short bus ride to the river we boarded a boat that was small but other than that seemed fine. After a forty-minute boat ride along the river, where the boats prop got stuck five times on river debris, the boat broke. We were told that the seals in the engine broke and while the two member boat crew tried desperately for two hours to fix them, the endeavor was eventually terminated and we were then, one by one off loaded from the boat into a small wooden canoe and rowed to shore. And who was the first person to go...Jimmy.... he had been trying to assist with the engine and then when the decision was made that we were leaving the boat he happened to be the closest to the canoe and therefore the first and easiest person to offload. However I was needless to say a little bit surprised when I saw Jimmy being paddled to shore out the window of the boat. As soon as we all got to shore we then had to walk through the river villages on small muddy roads, because it had been raining here in the south for months, which for some on the trip was a true feet but Jimmy and I really enjoyed seeing the small town life all around us, even if our legs were covered in mud. We walked for about 5 kilometers to a spot where the road was large enough for the bus to enter. We boarded the air conditioned bus for a two hour drive to another port on the Mekong were we boarded another boat, that worked, which took us to dragon island for lunch. After lunch we went to a coconut candy factory and then for a walk through some fruit orchards and finally some tea at a bee farm, where they made amazing honey. After all this everyone was pretty tired and thought the day was over, this was around 5:30 PM. But we all boarded the bus again and drove for another 3 hours to were we would spent the night, in Can Thou. This wouldn't have been so bad except it was dark and as we have already mentioned the driving in Vietnam is out of control. So then after three hours we reach a town where we thought our hotel was located but on no, we then had to take a fairy across another rive to get to Can Thou, the largest city in the Mekong, and the only way to get there is by fairy. Apparently they were building a bridge but after two years of working on one, there was a massive accident and the bridge collapsed and now there seems to be some bad voodoo or something around restarting the project. So our tour bus boarded a big fairy, after an hour wait, and then we finally arrived. Our hotel room was sparse to say the least, no air-conditioning, but we made due, we were tired but the day was filled with so many great things it was hard to be mad about the travel delays, however many others were. Then next morning we woke up at 6 am and left on another boat cruse at 7. This boat was very nice, and worked, and took us to the largest floating market on the Mekong. After the market we went to a rice noodle factory and a rice harvesting factory. After our tours we had a great lunch and then travel back across the fairy to walk through another large market, filled with frogs, snakes, snails, cat fish, eels, rats, turtles, chickens, ducks etc, pretty much anything that moved on land or in the ocean was sold at the market for someone to have a lovely dinner. There were also every vegetable and fruit under the sun to be purchased. We then traveled back to Saigon arriving back to the same hotel and went to bed. Over all the trip was amazing but definitely not anything like The Kangaroo Cafe tour company we used in Hanoi. We enjoyed the Saigon Mini Hotel our first night in Saigon and thats why we chose to stay there again... Unfortunately I woke up this morning with several bed bug bights, Jimmy and I slept in our double sleep sheet but before we went to bed I was laying on the bed reading unprotected. After researching bed bugs and seeing some pretty horrible pictures we learned that if your skin is prone to swelling easily, as when you get a mosquito bite, then the same thing will happen with bed bugs - although some people could become bitted and not even know it, because there skin doesn't swell. Therefore I have red welts all over my legs, thank god none on my face, those of you who have seem mosquito bites on my forehead know how horrible that would be, and Jimmy has none! Anyways they are suppose to go away relatively quickly if you don't itch them... I guess I will just be more careful at the next place. We leave for Hong Kong in the morning, which we are Very excited about. We will write again soon, miss and love you all.

The floating market where hundreds of thousands of pounds of produce are flung from boat to boat every day. The veggies on the tall pole represent what each boat has to sell.
This kid was amazing, selling beer in the middle of the river.
Floating through the Jungle in little river boats.
Trying to help with the broken boat.

Ha Long Bay

Ha Long Bay was the place I could have spent the entire year sitting on the deck of the boat drinking mojitos and diving off the side into the ocean every time the sun got a bit too hot. It is a Unesco World Heritage site and one of the truly beautiful landscapes of the world. And that is saying a lot after having grown up in the Last Frontier.

The Bay is full of rock formation shooting nearly straight out of the ocean and speckled with little fishing communities that live on floating neighborhoods, family dog and all. We boarded the "junk boat" with sails flying in the light breeze and we were off into the bay to enjoy the scenery. After checking in to our state rooms we were promptly served a five course lunch. After lunch we cruised deeper into the bay and went kayaking through some caves into hidden lagoons. This was truly some of the most amazing scenery I have ever witnessed. After a few hours of paddling we boarded back onto the boat and while waiting to have dinner we all starting diving off of the rigging into the Ocean. As the sun set behind us we took our lasts dives and headed in for another feast.

The next morning we woke early and headed to land for a hike into some big caves up in the mountain side. The caverns and caves were enormous. After the hike we did some more swimming and then headed back to port; our Ha Long Bay tour was over far too quickly.

Cockroach Express

Sa Pa was amazing. The people were great. The views fantastic. The Food delicious. Returning back from Sa Pa to Hanoi was already bitter sweet. We were ready to go to Ha Long Bay but we could have spent weeks more enjoying the landscape and hiking in Sa Pa. So alas, we boarded our train back to the big city and found our nice four berth soft sleeper to be cramped but still cozy.

We had been with our cabin mates throughout our Sa Pa adventure and had gotten to know them a bit. When we settled into our cabin we noticed a bug strolling across the small table, on further inspection it was realized to be a cockroach in all its glory. As the train started to meander away from the station more cockroaches began to literally come out of the woodwork. We then pulled the blanket back on the bed to discover hundreds more that were flowing from every cranny in the cabin. At that point our feeble attempts at controlling the problem were marginalized like no buddy's business. I had duct taped the first invasion point thoroughly but my half role of tape wouldn't hold up against the colony.

Daren our cabin mate then went to find a train attendant and I searched for an empty car so we could just move cabins. I returned around the same time a train attendant did. I had not found any empty cabins but the attendant had a solution. A rubber flip flop and some air freshener. I had to just laugh at his optomism of solving the problem with such precarious tools. You do have to give it to Viatamese they know how to win a battle against all odds whether it be against the foreign invaders or cockraoches galore. The attendant then went on a killing rampage and managed to annhiliate nearly all of the visible bugs and seemed quite satisfied with himself. But of course soon after he left the sheets were filled once again and we begged for mercy and finally got moved to an empty cabin. Actually we were uprgaded to the swanky VIP cabin which only had two beds but the four of us made due and were extactic to be done with the Cockroach Express!

Take note of the duct tape on the wall. That continued down to the floor in hope of staving off the invasion.