Tuesday, October 28, 2008

China, Part Two

It has been way too long since we've updated this blog! Since our last entry we've moved further south in China, slowly working our way down to Vietnam. Here are some highlights (new pictures and videos are posted below):

Train Ride to Pingyao -- The Hard Seater (aka worst decision, ever)

In an effort to save money we decided to take the hard seater tickets for our 12 hour train ride to Pingyao. Terrible idea. Not only did we squeeze 4 people in a 3 person seat...there we literally people occupying every free space on the train. People were squeezed so tightly together, they just stood for hours at a time all along the isles and in between the cars. It was the most insane thing I'd ever seen. There was one guy that I couldn't stop staring at. He was wearing a full suite, holding a briefcase in his hand, and looked like he was on a short 10 minute subway ride. This guy stood in the same damn position holding the briefcase for 5 hours! I didn't go pee for 12 hours because the toilet looked like a disgusting pile of 150 people's poo, and I probably couldn't have climbed over all the people to reach the door anyway. Also, I'm pretty sure an old lady would have stolen my seat. We slept a cumulative 1 hour while sitting completely upright, sandwiched between strangers that were way too close for comfort. Whew! But, it's like Kirstin said to me, even the rough days of traveling are blessings...even if you came frighteningly close to pooping your pants and freaking out from claustrophobia :) I like to look at it as training for India, if we ever make it there.

Pingyao, Shanxi Province

One of the most well-preserved walled in cities remaining in China. A cool little city, that could pretty accurately be described as a mini-Forbidden City with people still living in it. It looks like the set of a movie. All the streets are lined in cobblestones and red lanterns hang from every doorway. It's beautiful. A little touristy, which is difficult for Shane because Chinese tourists LOVE to take pictures with him. The crumbling old rock walls give the city an ancient feeling, but the people within the city make it extremely colorful, especially all the cute little kids. They like to yell "HELLOOO!" at us as they pass us from the back of their parent's bicycles and motorcycles. Our hostel was inside the old governor's residence, and it had oodles of charm. It had a classic courtyard that lead to all the rooms, and beautiful antique furnishings in each room, that give it a funky new-meets-old vibe.

Chengdu, Sichuan Province -- Where the Panda Roams

Chengdu is a cool city, as far as big cities go, but we kind of used it as a transition city on our way to the mountains. We did get to see some really cute Giant Pandas! I was hoping to meet the author of "Wild Swans" a controversial book on the Cultural Revolution and Mao's policies. Unfortunately, we didn't see her. But we did eat lots of fatty pork, drank lots of beer and played Uno.

Oh yeah, we also finally got to experience a tea house that overlooked a pretty lake at sunset. It was a really peaceful, beautiful experience, and then a really old Chinese guy sat next to us and started listening to really loud early 90's Madonna music from his cell phone. Ha! I love the Chinese.

Mt. Emei Shan

Day 1: Soooooooo many stairs

After a 2.5 hour bus ride from Chengdu, we arrived at a little mountain town at the base of Mt. Emei. Mt. Emei is one of the 4 sacred mountains in China and supposedly one of the most beautiful. We decided take about 3 days to climb it, sleeping in one of the many Buddhist monasteries along the way. It was such an amazing experience! We climbed about 6.5 hours the first day - and when I say climb, I mean step by step. Every trail on this mountain is covered in rock stairs. At any point on the mountain you are either climbing up, or climbing down. By the last day I looked like a crazy old mountain man coming down from a gold digging expedition, I was so sore I could hardly move!

Day 2: The Summit

On the 2nd day we woke up at 5am so that we could climb to the top before sunrise, and beat the throng of Chinese tourists who take a cable car to the top. It was so misty and dark we could hardly see the stairs we were climbing. As we climbed higher we could hear the sounds of the monasteries waking up as we passed them on the trail. It was so surreal to be hiking in the dark, hearing chanting and drum beats somewhere in the fog. When we finally reached the top, we weren't really sure we had made it because it was too misty to see anything. We could barely make out the temple at the "Golden Summit" but we beat the crowd! We had a few precious moments of silence at the summit of this beautiful mountain to ourselves right before the sun began to rise. It was so misty, we couldn't grasp the height of the severe cliff we were overlooking. Slowly the mist around us lightened and we were able to make out the golden elephant statues that surrounded us, and the giant Buddha that stood behind us. It was a trip.

The climb back down to our hotel passed in what seemed like 5 minutes, though the hike up took at least an hour and a half. Once we reached the hotel it seemed like a dream. Like it never happened. It still kind of feels like that.

Day 2 continued: I got jumped by a monkey

The rest of that day we spent hiking toward the monastery where we would sleep. They warned us at our hostel to use our bamboo walking sticks to ward off monkeys, but I didn't believe them. Of course, I got jumped by a monkey the size of a large toddler. At first he looked really cute and we were joking that we made a friend because he was walking down the path with us. Then before I knew it he was walking toward me with his beady monkey eyes and started climbing up my leg. I'd like to say that I kept my cool and used my stick to do some kung fu defensive techniques, but I basically fell into a ditch and screamed for Shane to help me. Thank god he was there! Otherwise I seriously would have hired a guide to walk with me for the entire length of the trip just to ward off monkeys. I now hate monkeys.

We slept that night at a beautiful old monastery in possibly the crappiest room they had. The guy at the counter showed us pictures of their rooms before we paid, but the room we got couldn't have been further from the version in the picture. But, a bed was a bed, and we were so tired from our climb and all the monkey adrenalin had worn off so we were ready to crash for the night. We had a delicious vegetarian dinner with all the workers in the monastery and the monks. There was a little confusion over the bill (they kept saying "3" when really they meant "30") and finally a short monk with a sweet face told us to follow him, which was hard to do because he was really fast and took us through the labyrinth of the monastery before pointing to a bench and instructing us to sit. When he returned he gave us 20 yuan, presumably from his personal stash, because he thought we didn't have any money to pay for the food. It was really humbling.

Day 3: The hike down

More monkeys, unfortunately. This time I had the sense to keep rocks in my hand and not hesitate to point my stick of fury in their direction. The mist finally started to clear and we could see more of the beautiful scenery that surrounded us. The final part of the hike was the most beautiful and also the least crowded. When we finally finished and left the park, we were sad to be done.

Now we're relaxing at a hotel at the base of the mountain. Tomorrow we leave for Tiger Leaping Gorge for a few days, and then on to Kunming to get our Vietnam Visas!


Here are our latest pictures:

China 2


Here are the latest videos:

Kerri found gold in them hills!


Narrow canyon hike


Kerri powering up the stairs

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Pictures from Beijing (and some Mongolia stragglers)

After almost a week here in Beijing, we have decided to head off to Pingyao tomorrow night. Beijing is a beautiful city and we have enjoyed walking across its enormity (one block = 1/4 mile), taking the subway, ordering food by pointing at other tables, eating dumplings on the street, and walking through the historic hutongs, or old alleyways.

Two days ago, we woke up at the ungodly hour of 6 am to make the trek to the great wall. We jumped in a very cramped bus and drove for three hours before arriving at Jinshanling where we started our walk. We walked for about 10km on the wall all the way to Simatai. The scenery was breathtaking and we took about an hour to do the first two kilometers until we caught up with our guide who promptly scolded us for walking so slowly. Some parts of the wall were more like climbing a ladder than walking up steps, but we were rewarded after four hours with a zipline over a reservoir to the finish in Simatai.

Other Beijing highlights include the Summer Palace, Forbidden City, Beihei park, seeing our french-canadian friends Andre and Tonny and sharing a whole delicious roasted duck, crepe-ish egg and dumpling street food for 2.5 yuan, roughly 40 cents (so good we thought we would mention that again), riding bikes around the city, and the beautiful weather.

Check out our latest pictures:

China

Saturday, October 11, 2008

We are in Beijing!

Hi everyone! We made it safely to China. Whew! The train ride was a long 30h adventure and we got here yesterday night and were immediately picked up by our friend here in Beijing, Rebecca, and brought in to her college classroom at the University of Beijing where she teaches English and we were the center of a classroom conversation for the rest of class. Exhausting but fun and very interesting.

We spent the night on the University campus, but it smelled strongly of paint and was very dusty because it was under construction. I guess it helped that we hadn't slept more than 3 hours the night before (vodka + long train ride = disaster). We made a quick decision to switch to a hostel in the lama temple district of Beijing. We found a very nice hostel when a guy named Lee took pity on us carrying our backpacks down the street looking like lost tourists and offered to have us at his hostel. We are sitting in the hostel bar drinking our first Beijing beer and feeling much more relaxed already.

We were offered the equivalent of $100 to give a lecture for 2 hours in front of a group of 200 students about the US economy and the presidential election. What crazy experience!

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Nijow, China! Here we come

A quick update on what we've been doing:

After returning from our tour of the West we decided to apply for our Chinese Visa's and discovered that the consulate was closed all week due to Chinese National Day. The Chinese Consulate in Mongolia is only open 3 days a week for 2 hours a day anyway...so having a whole week off set our ambitious plans back by a lot. We then decided that the most logical course of action to was to mooch off of Sam's free apartment, catch up on sleep, and play lots of games of chess while drinking cheap Mongolian beer. Mission accomplished. We even managed to squeeze a few other activities in to our busy schedule. We hiked around the mountains south of the city and got a great view of Zaisan Memorial. I volunteered at an orphanage run by an Australian ex-pat where I made necklaces out of cereal and fell in love with Mongolian children-- they're sooooo cute! They are also incredibly well behaved. I was expecting to leave the orphanage covered with sticky globs of cereal in my hair and all over the unwashed jeans I had been wearing for 2 weeks straight. But the kids all worked methodically and carefully, cleaning after themselves as they played. They made American children seem like crazy entitled little drunk people. I think my presence confused them because I look really Mongolian but respond with a blank, dumbfounded expression on my face whenever they spoke to me in Mongolian. I'm pretty sure they were thinking "who's the weird mute Mongolian chick that's eating all the cereal?"

Last weekend we were lucky enough to be here for micro-finance day. Sam Grant invited us to come and "celebrate" with his bank in one of the suburbs of Ulaanbaatar. In true Sam Grant style we were assured that micro-finance day is one of the most fun days of the year and we could not miss it. After two and a half hours of standing in the cold, watching Mongolians speak Mongolian on stage, and Shane being told that he was Osama Bin Ladin and then Ghengis Khan, and then his brother by a middle-aged vodka-loving Mongolian man, we decided to leave early to go eat homemade mutton with rice with one of our Mongolian friends.

This week we focused on the whole Visa fiasco. After 2 unsuccessful attempts to get a Chinese Visa from the US and over 4 hours of pushing and shoving in the freezing cold weather outside the Chinese Consulate in Ulaanbaatar, we finally got our f-ing Chinese Visas-- whew! I have never seen such a crazy crowd. I felt bad for the poor Mongolian security guard who's only leverage against the mob of foreigners trying to push their way in was a thin metal door which he would push his whole body against to slam shut, only letting in a small group of people every hour.

Now with our Visa's and 2 first class train tickets in hand (they were sold out of every other seat) we are ready to leave Mongolia and start the next portion of our trip. We're a little sad to leave. Hanging out with Sam Grant has been awesome, and experiencing the countryside was such a unique experience. We've also grown to love Sam's 3 Mongolian roomates who, when combined with Sam, are the most hilarious group of individuals you could cram into such a small and, until recently, filthy apartment.

We are going to try and extend our 30 day Chinese Visa for another 2 months and head South by either riding bikes, taking trains, or doing a little bit of both to Vietnam. As for where we're staying in Beijing (or anywhere in China for that matter) we're still not sure. Our friend in Beijing, Rebecca, has found an apartment on the Beijing University Campus for us to rent for a month, but spending a whole month in Beijing might be a little too much city for us. If anyone has friends in China would you mind passing their information along? All we know how to say is "hello" and "thank you", so meeting friends along the way would make things so much more fun!