Final Thoughts on China

Oct 30th, 2009.

I’m glad to be leaving China. If it wasn’t for the Great Wall and Tiananmen Square I would recommend that no one ever go there. As a whole it’s a dirty place that smells of urine constantly with rude people who constantly say “laowai” (derogatory word of tourist) to your face and make fun of you. Also, Chinese people have this horrible habit of hawking up whatever is in there lungs (probably a lot of pollution and crappy that’s in the air) and spitting it wherever is convenience- usually right next to you if you’re a tourist. It’s disgusting. I remember being shocked two years ago when I was here last by the potty training that parents do with their children. All of the babies wear pants that are completely open in the bottom, and then the child needs to go they are told to squat down and go. We saw one mother actually allow her daughter to pee and poop in the subway on the train. It was unbelievable. We encountered some great people in the hostels in China and made the most of every minute but I am happy to be moving on to new places. Jess and I tried a lot of new foods (okay I’ll admit she was much more adventurous than I was), again we didn’t know what much of the food was. We both agree that Beijing was great for historical sights and that Shanghai was much more metropolitan without much tourist value, it was also cleaner. The best part about China? - The knock off handbags!

That’s all for now.

Shanghai in the Blink of an Eye!

Oct 29th & Oct 30th

Our train ride from Beijing to Shanghai was quite interesting. Despite what you may believe about the Chinese being neat, orderly, and organized the opposite is actually true. Upon arriving at the train station in Beijing we were overwhelmed by people pushing and shoving trying to all squeeze through a small opening to show their tickets to the one security guard who was letting people into the station. We next had to put our bags through an x-ray machine and walk through a metal detector. We walked into the main entrance and looked up at a huge screen with all of the train info, track number, and times written out in Chinese. Since we couldn’t read anything but the times we were clueless. We looked around desperately looking for someone that we could ask. No one wanted to help us, and said no before we could even show them our ticket or try to formulate a question in a way that they might understand. We finally found the train masters’ booth and got in the back of the line to get some help as to where we should go. While waiting in line we were cut by two separate Chinese people. We said something to them both and we were ignored, its so frustrating that everyone here is fighting for themselves. It’s very clear that the Chinese have no appreciation for anyone other than themselves and no care for anybody expect their family. The train master rudely pointed us in the right direction and we entered a large lounge. This area was packed. People were spilling into the alley of the walkway and everyone was very close. We finally found one nice Chinese guy who showed us that he was on the same train and after about 15 minutes motioned to us that it was our turn to board the train when a Chinese lady came over the loud speaker. I think that a number of trains must have been called all at the same time because there was a sudden movement and everyone started running and pushing towards the narrow exit of the lounge. All passengers needed to go through a single carrousel. We were packed in like sardines, Jess and I couldn’t even turn slightly to the side to see each other. We were pushed and shoved from every direction. We each have huge backpacks which weight more than either of us want to admit and its very difficult to navigate, or even move when your being pushed from all direction. At one point there was no place for me to move my feet but my upper body was being pushed, and with such a heavy bag I was almost positive that I was going to fall over. I really didn’t see the need to rush or be pushed at all. Everyone had assigned seats (or beds) and there was plenty of time before the train left. We finally made it to the train and were relieved to put our bags down. We opted for the soft sleeper, meaning that we got a bed and were in a room with 4 people in total. Jess and I had the two upper beds which were cheaper and there were two Chinese men who slept below each of us. They didn’t say a word the whole 10 hours to us or each other. We were woken at 6am despite the fact that we had over an hour and a half before we actually arrived in Beijing. I turned over and drifted back to sleep. The room was actually pretty decent. We each had our own personal TV (of course playing movies only in Chinese), our own head lamps. The room had the small table in between the two lower bunks which the two Asian men shared. Jess and I had no option but to sleep with our bags so we both placed them at the end of the beds blocking the TV’s since we couldn’t really watch anything. The room had its own sliding door which could be locked (this was nice for security) as well as a switch to turn off the overhead light. It wasn’t bad for 10 hours, I was glad to get off the train but it was bearable.

We took the subway to our hostel arriving at 8am. Luckily we were able to check in and go right to our room. We were both thrilled to take shower and freshen up. We met the two guys that were would be sharing a room with, Andre who is 22 and from Sweden and Emilio who is 27 and from Colombia I am very surprised by the number of people who are traveling so such long periods of time. Almost everyone I have met has a minimal of a month that they are traveling for, most have 3 months (and these are young people, not older people who are retired). I am starting to believe that more people in the world have similar ideas about the importance of traveling and the need to leave work behind and travel for significant periods of time. Yay!

Jess and I walked around Shanghai all day, which was much needed after being cooped up on the train for 10 hours. Shanghai is much more metropolitan than Beijing and has a lot less culture and historical sites. The buildings and architecture here is amazing, Bill would love it. The whole city seems to be under construction. Almost every single road is being redone and new things are going up left and right. Shanghai is the hosting some kind of Expo in 2010 and there are signs everywhere that say “Better City. Better Life” with a cute blue cartoon character (I enjoyed taking my picture with him several times).

I think the city will be a completely different place in just a few years, it would be interesting to see the changes and progressions that occur.

On our walk we ventured to Old Town first, which was fascinating with many old temples that have been turned into little restaurants and shops. There is a small pond and gardens in the middle of Old Town with a bridge that zig zags over the pond.

 

It was fu n to walk around because the road was closed off to car traffic and there was lots of quaint little shops- was definitely my favorite part of Shanghai. After our time in Old Town we grabbed a little lunch I had some kind of soup with noodles and beef, it was okay. Andre was nice enough to lend us his guide book for the day so we followed the walking tour guide of the French Concession area for a while. I felt like I was in Europe for a bit.
At this point we were both getting tired. We decided that it was time to go to the markets for some shopping before we both fell asleep. We had a little bit of trouble explaining to people where we were trying to go, but quickly learned that in English all we needed to say was “Fake Market“ and everyone would know exactly where we were headed. The market was a little disappointing after Beijing. It didn’t have many of the LongChamp bags that we were looking for. We both were tired and decided to cut our losses and head back to the hostel for a much needed nap.

Upon arriving at the hostel we decided to book our train tickets to Hong Kong. We planning on having two nights in Shanghai and leaving on a sleeping train on the 30th and arriving in Hong Kong during the day of the 31st, clearly so we wouldn’t miss Halloween. The lady at the front desk called to book our tickets and we quickly found out that there were no trains to Hong Kong on the 30th (contrarily to what is said online when we were planning our trip this summer- and what it still says to this day online). We decided that we saw all of what we really wanted to see in Shanghai and that if we had extra time in Hong Kong we’d be able to spend a day or two in Macau so we decided to shorten our stay in Shanghai and leave on the 29th, especially because we did not want to be stuck on a train all night on Halloween. We also found out that there are no express trains from Shanghai to Hong Kong like the one we took from Beijing, and that it is an 18 hour ride! The soft sleeper beds were expensive so we got the cheapest; the hard sleeper,. Hard sleeper means that the room is a bit smaller and 6 people share it, three bunk beds on each side.

Since our time in Shanghai was going to be cut short we decided to live it up and go out that night (Shanghai is supposed to have great nightlife). We had dinner with Emilio and Andre.

We decided to share the dishes and ordered the famous Peking Duck, a squid and octopus dish, and noodles. I tried everything but mostly stuck to the noodles, which are incredibly hard to eat with chopsticks. We read online that there were a few bars in this one area that had great deals on Wednesday nights so we went to check them out. We arrived at the first bar at 8:30PM and there was not a sole in the whole place, so we quickly relocated. The second bar was pretty empty but advertised buy one get one free drinks

. We got a secluded booth and enjoyed each other company talking about our travels and home. When the time came to get our second free drink at the bar we were all shocked by the 3 western looking men who were clearly hitting on Chinese employees who seem to be encouraging them. We quickly finished our second drinks and decided to relocate. The next bar advertised buy a Corona and get a free tequila shot, so we decided to give it a try.

 

We were shocked to discover the same thing happening at this bar. There was even a dad playing pool with two Chinese women and his son who was no more than 12 years old. One of the Chinese women appeared to be entertaining/distracting the little boy so the other Chinese women could flirt with the dad, her bra was clearly showing. I was outraged and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The four of us made the best of it, watching what was going on in shock. We finished our drinks and decided it was time to switch to a different area in town. We headed to another club that we had heard about online called M2. Here was the first normal place, we danced the night away! The club had a promotion going, 10 drinks for 100rmb ($12USD) so we all split the drinks, it worked out well. The four of us had such a fun time and we ended up staying up til almost 3:30am!! We were all very tired the next morning.

Since we had done all of the sight seeing that we had wanted to do we enjoyed sleeping in. We got up at 10am and slowly got ready for the day and packed our bags. We checked out of our room and put our bags downstairs. Jess and I have both decided that our bags are too big and filled with stuff that we don’t need. We decided that we should do most of our gift buying in Shanghai because the prices are the best and send a box home. We felt refreshed and were ready to haggle and get some good prices. We went to the market that was located under the Science and Technology museum underground at the subway stop, this was recommended to us by my friend Ami in Japan, and she was right, the best prices were to be found here. We found lots of LongChamp bags and had fun bargaining with the Chinese ladies to get a good price.

We had lunch at the Latin Café that had a Brazilian Steakhouse. Jess and I both got the chicken club which were delicious. It was nice to have some regular food that we are used to for a change. We’ve really lucked with weather on this trip. Beijing was really the only cold city, but even still it was bearable since it was only a couple of days. Shanghai had beautiful weather the whole time we were there, not too hot , not too cold, we didn’t even need a sweatshirt most of the time. After getting a lot of gifts and things at the market we knew that we needed to lighten our load and so we went back to the hostel and grabbed the stuff we didn’t want anymore as well as our new purchases and headed to the post office.

The two of us made quite a scene as we walked down the street with shopping bags and boxes filled with stuff. The directions that they gave us at the hostel ended up being wrong which was irritating especially because the stuff was heavy and at this point we were pressed for time. We used my “visual translator” book to show people pictures of a post office along the way and eventually found where we were going- that book was the best $15USD that I’ve spent so far on this trip, its been so helpful! Thank goodness there was a guy at the post office who spoke a little English and could help us ship things home. However, he insisted on checking everything that we shipped home! Everything of mine passed inspection, I think because I had hidden some things in my new Ugg boots so they wouldn’t break. Jess wasn’t allowed to ship her bottles of OPI nail polish (I had 3 bottles hidden). Went we finally finished filling out the numerous forms and picking which shipping option we wanted it came time to pay. We had both planned on paying with a credit cards because we didn’t want to take out any more Chinese money, of course the post office only took cash. I had to make a mad dash to the closest ATM (which was very very far away) and make a withdrawal. I had to sprint back because the post office was closing in less than 10 minutes and we only had 25 minutes to grab dinner and grab our bags before we wanted to head to the train station. I ended up grabbing a sub at subway and we stopped at the convenience store to stock up on water for our long journey. We grabbed our bags and hopped in a cab and said our goodbyes to China.

The Shanghai bus terminal is set up much better than the one in Beijing. Since we were leaving the country we had to clear customs which was surprisingly easy. We got the Chinese stamps and filled out our departure cards and were able to walk right on the train, no lines, no pushing, no nothing. We were shocked when we got inside the train. Its clear that the soft sleeping is “first class” and we are definitely in “coach” with our hard sleeper. The space between the bunks is no more than 3 feet, making it impossible to even sit up straight.

 

 

We’re sharing the room with 4 other Chinese people who don’t speak a word of English and have enjoyed laughing at us as we struggle to make our way to our top bunks. The bed so high off the ground. Its really tough to get up and down without stepping on other peoples beds. I am praying that I don’t have to use the bathroom at all between here and Hong Kong, it’s going to be a long 18 hours! Well off to bed.

Love,
Katie

Stair Master 5000

Monday was our trip to the Great Wall .We decided to go with the two Americans from our hostel, Alex and Andy. The tour that the hostel offered was $290 Yuan ($44USD) where as the bus was only $12Yuan (less than 2 dollars) each way. While Jess Showed I had breakfast with Alex and Andy. Alex is from St. Louis who is working & living in New Zealand and Andy is from Michigan who is living and working in southern China. I had two pieces of French toast, a banana and bacon- it was a dream! We were on the road by 9:30am and walked to the subway station and rode a few stops to the local bus stop. We knew that was wanted bus 919 but there were tons of busses all saying 919. We were confused and no one was willing to help us. At least in Japan is you had a confused look on your face people could come up and try to help. Here in China if you ask people for help they say no or shake their heads or say that they don’t have time. We were trying to point to a picture of the Great Wall and sign to the bus driver that we wanted to go there, when this Chinese man aggressively came up to us with very bad English. He kept yelling at us to come with him. We thought that he was a taxi driver and tried several times to tell him that we weren’t interested. His tone was very mean and aggressive. We continued to talk to the bus driver, but the man was creating quite a seen and said something to the bus driver about not letting us get on the bus. We were all very skeptical and annoyed at this point but we followed him for a while. Then decided to try to get on a different bus that said 919. This time the Chinese man pulled out a badge saying that he worked for the Red Cross in China and that we needed to trust him. We all laughed at the fact that he seriously was showing us this piece of paper saying the Red Cross and he clearly wanted us to then believe that he was therefore trustworthy. Annoyed but again having no other option we followed him some more and finally came to the right bus. We thanked the guy despite the fact that he was rude and yelled at us and chalked it all up to cultural differences.

After an hour and a half on a smelly bus we finally made it to the Great Wall. We were all stoked that it cost less than $4USD round trip! We had a hike quite a bit from the bus drop off to the enterance of the Great Wall. We went to the Badaling portion of the wall which is known for having lots of tousts. Like anyplace where there are lots of tourists there are lots of venders and hawlkers. We were shocked to see black bears in cages right outside of the enterace gates.

Toursits could pay $1Yuan (15cents) and get an apple that had been cut into pieces and can have the bears do tricks, then you throw them the apple. Alex, did it, and we got some great pictures of the bears despite the fact that we all felt bad for the bears. From there we bought our tickets. Lucky for me I’ve been using my ISIC card and have been getting half off on almost all enterance fees since I’ve been in China. It only cost be $25 yuan (a little over $3USD) to get in. The Great Wall is very very very steep and hilly.

I really put my physical ability to the test while I climbed. One Semester at Sea I had only made it about half way (though I was on a different spot on the wall)- I was ill prepared wearing flip flops and jeans. I have regretted not making it to the top ever since, and was determined to push myself. About a third of the way up Andy decided she was going to head back to the bottom. I felt bad that she was going alone and almost offered to turn around with her, but I decided that I needed to keep pushing myself. Slowly but surely I made it to the top. I was always lagging behind Alex and Jess, but not by far. I was proud of myself considering that Alex is a tall and lean guy. His strides are at last twice the size of mine. And Jess is so petite that she is litteraly half of my weight. Also the fact that my ankle was still weak from falling the morning before. That being said I was proud of myself for keeping up with them and reaching the top. Machu Picchu here I come! We rested at the top. I are a banana I had packed and drank some water.

We walked about half way down when we found sliding cars. Which look like a cross between a rollercoaster and a bobsled, but moved about as fast as a merry-go-round. It was a fun ride the rest of the way to the bottom and we were able to get some great pictures.

We all fell asleep on the bus ride home, I guess the hiking wore us out. Once we got back to Beijing we hopped on the subway and went to Olympic Park. We got there right at dusk so we were able to get lots of good pictures while it was light out, and after when the sun set and all of the lights came one. I loved seeing the pool, “the Cube” all light up- although I was secretly hoping Michael Philleps would appear out of no where.

 

 

We had dinner at a local Chinese restaurant that was kind of family style. Jess ordered a grilled Eggplant dish with terrikki sauce that I loved, and I has mostly the noodles with beef. I really liked it surpisingly. From there we hit the Wangfujing night Market. This is the same market that Andrew Zimmernan visted on his “Bizarre Foods“ show. They sell everything from glazed fruit to fried ice cream to chicken hearts to scorpions! Alex was the bravest and enjoyed trying many of the weird food. He and Jess shared fried snake which they both hated.

Alex also went on to try starfish, scorpion, seahorse, centipede, and silk worm! I was not brave enough to do that but it was definitely entertaining to watch him! We had a crowd following us and an old Chinese man ended up buying the centipede for Alex, it was quite a sight to see. The venders also loved watching all of the action that we were drawing in. They thought it was hilarious because when there was a lul in the crowd they would yell in perfect English “Hey, Sheep Penis”(obviously trying to sell their most valuable and exotic food as well as get arise out of us) it definitely shocked us every time. We decided to call it a night and head back to the hostel. Alex and I got a drink and sat in the lounge and chatted for a while then decided to call it a night.

On Tuesday we all got us and had breakfast together again. I had the same French toast was that equally as tasty. The four of us headed to Maos Musoleum to see Mao’s decaying body which everyone has been telling us is quite a site to see, but just as our luck would have it, the exhisbit was closed for the day. From there we decided to split up. Jess and I went on our way to the Forbidden City and walked around for a couple of hours. Althought I think that it was very important in Chinese history and it is interesting to see, I believe that this is the most boring part of the sights in Beijing. I remember not liking it much when I was on Semester at Sea and I had the same feeling all over again. The Forbidden Palace is huge (2.97 square kilometers) and its filled with building after building that all have the same Chinese look and decoration. Most of the rooms and buildings cant be entered and simply have a sign that reads “this is the area where the emperor would change before his public affrairs” or “this is the room where the emperor would rest on his way to meetings with official.” Sometimes there are small openings where toursits and peak their heads in and take a picture or two, but its very furturating because the Chinese find no shame in PUSHING you out of thr way to benefit their view. It was weird at first, but now that its happen 10,000 during the past few days I am so annoyed. Requardless, it was fun to walk around The Forbidden City and great to see again, but I’d be okay if I never went back there again. From there we headed to the Temple of Heaven which is my favorite temple in Beijing. I love the courtyard where hundreds of old people gather to play cards, countless games, sing, and even do yoga together. The temple itself is stunning, but watching the people interact gives me a great idea what their daily life is like and I love it. Afterwards we headed across the street to the Pearl Market again, we mostly did looking. They have every designer imaginable- Polo, North Face, Abercrombie, Coach, Longchamp, Rolex, etc. From there we had more time to kill so went to the Silk market, we left there empty handed. We got some ideas on the prices of things and we’ll be more than ready to go to shopping heaven in Shanghai. Shopping at these types of markets can be overwhelming at times. Literally if you look remotely interested then they pull you in. I had a little Chinese women who literally weight less than half of my weight grip my wrist and pull be into her stall to show me her bags. She insisted I look and it took us forever to get away from her. It can be fun haggling, but it’s difficult because you never know if your being ripped off or not, until much later. We stopped at a local hole in the wall restaurant for dinner and I attemped to get a dish similar to what I had the night before (noodles and beef). Somehow what we ordered ended up being small pieces of beef on the bone in a soup with noodles. I ate some of the noodles but it wasn’t very good and it annoys me that the meat is on the bones and your supposed to get it off in your mouth then spit it on the table. Yuck! After I got about half of the noodles I gave up. We headed back to the hostel and hung out in the common room. The room is very cozy, it has an open air feel and part of the room is completely windows on the side and celiing, it looks over at a beautiful court yard. The room is filled with comfy big couchs and tables. The hostel has a full kitchen and I was still kind of hungry so I ordered a little pizza. Alex and Andy met up with us and the 4 of us just relaxed. Andy also had night train back to Southern China so the three of us shared a cab to the airport. It was less than $2USD between the 3 of us- so cheap! I’m wrtting now as the train is rocking me to sleep. I better get some sleep before we arrive in Shanghai! More to come soon. Bye for now!

Love, Katie

And It's All Coming Back To Me Now....

Oct 24th, 2009
We woke up at 6am and packed our bags and headed to the airport. We’re glad we gave ourselves plenty of time because it took us nearly 2 hours to get from our hostel to the airport. I know the airport is a little bit outside of Tokyo, but its crazy to me that it could take 2 hours to get there. We checked in and got some breakfast and tried to use up our Japanese coins by buying bottles of water. We transferred all our of paper Japanese money into Chinese and were finished just in time to board the plane. We sat in the middle row, I was in the middle. Despite the face that I was exhausted I managed to stay awake the whole time. I watched “When Harry Met Sally’ which is and older movie that I somehow have never seen. I did my reading on China to get myself up-to-date on the customs and traditions here. When it came time to fill out our customs forms we realized that we didn’t have the address of the guy that we were planning on staying with (found him on couch surfing), only his phone number. Luckily I had written down some hostel addresses just in case so we used that. We got to the airport and got our luggage then called Kevin (the guy who’s house we were surfing) no answer. We entered the country code then tried again, this time we got recording. We had a lady who spoke both English and Chinese listen, and she gave us a new country code to enter, this time we got an answer but the person responded with “no, no, no.” We took this as a sign. Not knowing what to do and desperately wanting a shower and our own space to spread out we decided that maybe a hostel might be best. Thank god for Jess’s phone, having constant internet access has been a lifesaver! We logged onto Hostelworld.com and found a place with a great location and grabbed a cab. We quickly saw the difference in price between Japan and China when we got in the taxi. Our nearly hour taxi ride cost $14 USD, we were thrilled. Luckily the hostel had vacancy so we booked it. The hostel has a great location, its literally a stones throw from the back of the Forbidden City. We are staying in a room with 4 bunk beds, so the rooms holds 8 people. Everyone is really nice. Two of the people are Americans both living abroad (one in southern China teaching English and the other is working as a bioengineer in New Zealand). I cant believe how many people that were running into who are Americans and living abroad. Two of the other people are from Spain, Jess got to practice more Spanish and chat about her time there with them. Carlos, our Spanish friend, is en route to Hong Kong to meet up with his brother who is living there- we’re going to hopefully be seeing him again soon in a few days. Carlos was super friendly and helped us a lot by giving us good tips, and even called his brother for us to get some information about where we can go for cheap massages! Since it was still pretty early at this point -3:30pm we decided to walk around and get the lay of the land. We walked through the Forbidden City, then to Mao’s Mausoleum, then to Tiananmen Square.

 

I was shocked how much cleaner everything looked than the last time I was there. I could tell China really did a lot to change and fix up the major tourist attractions for the Olympics. There are also huge TV screens around the edge and in the middle of Tiananmen Square playing national pride videos of China which seemed a bit unnecessary to me. They have seem to have cut down on the number of hawkers and venders that are allowed in Tiananmen Square which is a nice change. We were being tourists and taking tons of pictures in Tiananmen Square when we were approached by two woman. They were very friendly and wanted to practice their English, they were both English Teachers in Northern China. We walked with them for about an hour seeing the sites. They brought us to another road which was created for tourist who visited during the Olympics (it had tons of huge designers shops and chains like Starbucks). The road appeared very old looking but all of the buildings were actually new, and there was even a cute cable car to bringing people from one end to the other. We had fun with the two women and they actually had a lot of good advice about what we should do and what was safe for us to eat. They would have stayed by our sides for the next 3 days, but we finally lied and told them that we needed to leave. We decided to grab some food and search and searched for something recognizable. I had forgotten how dirty of a country China is. My lungs feel like they are filled with pollution. On practically every block there are public bathrooms and the smells that come out of there can literally knock you over. In the windows of the restaurants there are lots of dead hanging animals. Jess and I were a little overwhelmed with Chinese food; Japanese was tough enough not recognizing what we were eating, but in China we not only can’t recognize what were eating, but also it could be ANY kind of animal here. We ended up walking pass a restaurant called “Grandma’s Kitchen” which was one of the places that was recommended that we try. Its run by a real life American grandma. They had all of the typical unhealthy American favorites, we were both excited! We split chicken fingers as an appetizer and I had a burger. We left feeling stuffed, each leaving more than half of our meals untouched, for everything it was less than $20USD! Still wanting to see more of the area around us we decided to walk some more we went to this late night food market and saw all sorts of stuff that made us very happy that we had gone to Grandma’s Kitchen. The venders were selling everything on a stick that you could imagine, scorpion, star fish, seahorse, snake, etc.

We were getting kind of cold and tired and were in despite need of a shower so we headed back to the hostel where we spend about 2 hours chatting with our new roommates and sharing travel stories and tips. It was a great way to end the night, its so nice that everyone we’re meeting has the same love of travel that we do. It was a little cold in the room and there are no hair dryers in our room so we decided to rough it and shower in the morning. I bundled up and even used my sleeping back under the comforter that the hostel provided.

In the morning we slept in until 9:30am and showered and took our time getting ready. It was nice not to rush too much. I was half asleep when I decided to climb down off of the top bunk in my socks. The latter that connects the two beds is a slippery wood. Of course I was setting myself up for trouble with that combination. My left foot slipped right through the rung in the latter and I went crashing down. The bunk bed are very tall, at least 10 feet. I caught myself with a lot of weight pressing down on the left quad and then a lot of weight on the right ankle. I think I might have slightly twisted my ankle as it has been very tender and sore to walk on all day. I already have a huge booze forming on my left leg. So I was off to a great start! We finally headed to the Summer Palace which was further away than we expected. We needed to change trains 3 times so it took us nearly an hour to get there. It was about 11:30am at this point and I hadn’t eating so I grabbed a sleeve of Ritz crackers and had those for breakfast and lunch. We did a lot of hiking and stair climbing in the Summer Palace and were there for almost 3 hours.

We then headed to the Temple of Heaven but by the time we arrive we were both famished and decided to have some lunch before we entered, it was around 4pm a this point. After walking around for almost an hour we finally found a place that had recognizable food. It was a buffet with both Chinese and American food. We tried a bit of everything, I mostly stuck to what I knew- pizza and fruit. It was delicious though Jess and I were so hungry we both felt so much better after eating. Around 5pm we attempted to enter the Temple of Heaven but they were closing for the day. Conveniently, right across the street happened to be this huge 8 floor Pearl market that sells everything from pearls to pashminas. Jess and I killed nearly 2 hours doing a bunch of shopping. We heard that Shanghai has even better prices so we tried to hold off. We each bought some OPI nail polish and I bought a pair of black Uggs for $14USD! What a steal! Be expecting a big package in the near future Mom! From here we had to hassle and head to the Acrobatic show that we had booked earlier in the day. Even though we had bought the cheapest tickets available $25USD we were in the VIP section- 3rd row dead center. It was great! It was quite a good show, I couldn’t believe some of the strength and flexibility these people have. After the show we were still quite full so we decided to walk around the night market a few blocks from our hostel. We saw more crazy foods (I couldn’t believe that they eat scorpion on a stick, and some of the scorpions were still moving!).There was also lots of Chinese knick-naks, but nothing that really interested us. We stopped in a little grocery store and each bought a piece of fruit then of course it started to downpour so we hopped in a rickshaw and got a ride back to our hostel. I showered and attempted to upload pictures on facebook and post a blog but quickly found out that the Chinese government has blocked those two sites. I guess it will be a while before anyone hears about my life! Well off to bed, we’re hiking the Great Wall tomorrow!

Love,
Katie.

Interesting Facts that I learned and my final thoughts on Japan

-There are no trashcans or benches anywhere to be found.
-They are handicap accessible for the blind. EVERY road has yellow bumpy lines to illustrate the middle of the sidewalk/street as well as circle bumps to illustrate that a blind person is approaching end edge or something or an intersection.
-They are NOT handicap accessible for people in wheel chairs- EVERYWHERE there are tons of stairs.
-All shrines are free to see and enter but almost all the temples have admission fees, and none of them offer student discounts!
-None of the schools and most of the buildings don’t have heat or air conditioning making it very tough because of the extreme weather conditions. My friends, Regina and Ami, have to wear tons of layers in their classrooms.
-The post office is open 24/7. Mailman come to deliver mail in scooters years round, and if you have something to mail you can call the mailman and they will come pick it up for you at your house.
-Most Japanese people don’t have computers or the internet at home.
-All Japanese people have internet on their phones. In Japan they don’t have texting. Instead everyone’s phone comes with an email address and you email each other, and get it on your phone, kind of like texting.
-The phones have barcodes that can be scanned and used for promotional purposes. For example, we went to dinner and if we had a Japanese phone that could be scanned in we could get a discounted rate one the price of dinner. Some of the phone is Tokyo can be waved in front of vending machines to pay for an item and the cost of the item shows up on the phone bill.
-Electricity bills can be paid at any convenience store.
-Children learn the importance of balance, all elementary school students learn how to ride a unicycle to gain good balance at an early age.
-People really do take off their shoes when entering peoples homes and sacred places.
-Many toilet seats are heated- this is the best invention ever!
-There are vending machines everywhere selling practically everything- vacuum bags, ice cream, hot coffee, full meals, and even memory cards for digital cameras.
-Japan is very very very clean and safe.

Chains that we’ve seen here include, Seven Eleven, Denny’s, TGI Fridays, Subway, McDonalds, Minute Made, SoyJoy, Crocs, Baskin Robbins, Haagen-Dazs, Co, YMCA, Gap, Prada, Coach, Burberry, Abercrombie and Fitch, LL Bean, Starbucks, Cosco.

Down to Business- Kyoto.

Oct 22nd, 23rd, & 24th

Despite our troubles the day before we were determined to get in lots of sight seeing on Thursday. Our day began very early, Regina had taken a sleeper bus and met us at our Hostel at 6am. She greeted us with gifts to welcome us to Japan including instant Miso soup, Roman, and three flavors of Kit Kat bars (she‘s the best!).

The three of us snoozed for another hour than got up and were ready to see the city. We stated our morning at the Sanjusangendo Temple which has 1001statues of the Buddhist Diety Kannon, each statue was lined up in perfect rows.

After walking toward the next temple we were all pretty hungry so we decided to stop and grab some breakfast. I ordered the only thing that was recognizable to me, ham and toast. I was expecting this to be a ham steak with a piece or two of toast, when it was it was actually a ham sandwich with mayo, cucumber and lettuce (even weirder was the fact that the sandwich was cut into 3 pieces- long strips). It wasn’t what I was expecting but it was tasty. We continued to walk and explore the city. Like I mentioned before we really are walking miles and miles a day. After witnessing and running around I thought I’d be in good shape, but I’m surprised to discover that each day my body is sore and I can tell my muscles are getting stronger. Throughout the day we saw many temples and shines which all seem to blend together now. I was shocked to find out how many temples and shines Kyoto has, it’s literally filled with them. I think its so funny that a shine can simply be in a residential neighborhood- sometime’s we’d think that we were so lost walking around peoples houses, then our of nowhere this amazing shine/temple just appears. We visited the Kiyomizu Temple which is a steep hike up a big mountain with views of the whole city.

The foliage is just starting to change color and the leaves were really pretty. Everyone keeps telling us how lucky we are that we are here during the foliage, I admit it is beautiful, but nothing can beat the fall foliage in New England.
Regina has been a great travel partner in Kyoto, it has been a blessing having her with us- I’m so glad she was able to take time off of work and come down to be with us. Regina and I met while we were on Semester at Sea together in Spring 2007. We were in the same Intro to World Music class and quickly bonded over our hate for the class. We were supposed to travel to Tokyo together on SAS but I got really sick with a kidney infection and wasn’t allowed to leave the boat. Regina moved to Japan just over a year ago to teach English with the JET program. She lives about 5 hours away from Kyoto in a small rural village. She is nearly fluent in Japanese and had been to Kyoto several times. She quickly became our personal tour guide and translator. It was so so so helpful to have someone who speaks the language with us. She is very familiar with the culture (this is her second time that she has living in Japan), she had a good understanding of the culture and the country. We asked her tons of numerous questions and I was shocked with all of the detailed answers she gave us. Regina was also great at buying lots of foods and drinks and having us try it. I’m so lucky to have such a great friend who would do all of this for us! Thanks Regina for everything! She really made our time in Kyoto wonderful.
After the Kiyomizu Temple we walked to the center of Kyoto where we saw the Jidai Matsuri parade. There were hundreds of Japanese people each representing a different era of Japanese history all in traditional dress. It was fun to see them march through the town, we got some great pictures! We then headed to the Path of Philosophy and saw even more shrines and temples. We stopped along the way and had pizza for lunch. The pizza I ordered was supposed to be “chicken pizza” but I tasted like a hot dog to me- very strange. The pizza is Japan also comes with potatoes and corn, a weird combo to be on pizza in my opinion but I ate it anyways. After lunch we check out some more temples and shines. By this point we were all exhausted and decided to head back to the hostel for a nap. It felt great to relax and rest for a bit. After showering and changing we headed to dinner. Our French roommate David decided join us.

 
I had chicken on a stick, sweet potatoes with cheese stuffed inside (random but delicious), and a dish with corn and ham that was delicious. After dinner I got to try pachinko which is the Japanese form of legalized gamboling. There are pachinko places everywhere in Japan, they are very loud and smoke filled, but the Japanese seem to love them. I still cannot understand how to the play the game and the $10 I decided to play with when quickly. When you win, you are given small balls. Each ball seems to have some value that you can use to cash into a prize. The Japanese then take these prizes to special stores and buildings and trade them in for money. It’s a very interesting system run by the Japanese Mafia.
After pachinko we decided to do a bit of karaoke. In Japan there are huge karaoke studios everywhere. The one that we went to was $2400 yen (just under$30 per person) for 2 hours including all you can drink alcoholic drinks. We had a blast singing all sorts of American songs in our own private room. David was very funny and started us off with Disney‘s Lion Kings “A Kuna Matatta”

The karaoke studio that we went to had 5 floors each with about 20 private rooms. We were impressed with the technology in the room, we had a giant remote that made it easy to look up a song by the title, artist or category. Each room had a phone as well so we could call and order more drinks when we wanted. It was a blast and the 2 hours flew by!
At this point were it was just after midnight and we were all exhausted. We had a long walk home and made it to bed by 1am.
On Friday we decided to sleep in a bit, and got up shortly after 9am. We got ready and packed our bags and checked out of the hostel. We needed to take the bus to the temples that we were going to see so we grabbed a quick breakfast in Kyoto station. We went to “Mister Donut” which is a local donut chain here. I tried a honey glazed and a chocolate with cream inside. They were good, much better than the mystery breakfasts that I have been eating all week, but they had nothing on Dunkins. It took us nearly an hour by bus but we finally arrive at the Golden Temple called Kinkakuji Temple, it was beautiful!

The whole thing is made out of gold and sits right next to a pond which shines with the reflection of the temple. From there we walked a mile and a half and got to the Ryoanji Temple which is where they have the famous rock garden.

It is amazing now quite and peaceful it can be just looking at rocks. Everything here is Japan is so Zen.
From there we hopped a bus back to the hostel to grab our back packs. We said our goodbyes to Regina and jumped on a train for a 3 hour ride to Tokyo. We then check into our capsule hotel which wasn’t as glamorous as the one we stayed in at the beginning of our stay. We had dinner at a conveyer belt sushi- this place charged different prices so each color plate was a separate price. Jess and I walked around for a bit and said our last goodbyes to Japan. We went back to the hostel and asked the guy at the front desk how to get to the airport. Just our luck it costs nearly $30 per person by subway- way more than we expected. Since they don’t take credit cards we ended up having to go back out and take money out of the ATM. We then attempted to shower, but found out they only have a skuzzy looking public bath, so we decided against that.

We then attempted to use the computer and internet to upload our blogs and pictures, and that too didn’t work. I guess it just wasn’t our night. We decided to get to bed earl since we have a 10:30am flight and it takes over an hour to get to the airport. Goodbye Japan… Hello China!
Love,
Katie

Here, There and Everywhere!

Kokura, Hiroshima, and Kyoto

Oct 19th, 20th, and 21st

Woaaahoooieeee so much to tell you about....

After our 5 hour train ride from Tokyo we finally made it to Kokura. We were greeted by Ami, my good friend from Semester at Sea. She is now teaching English in Japan with the JET program and living in Kokura. Kokura is a city of about 1 million people. Although we were only there for a short period of time it seemed liked a great place, somewhere I would want to be if I was living in Japan. There was plenty to do there without the hugeness of Tokyo. We took a monorail from Korkura station (about a 4 minute ride) to Ami’s stop. She biked in a skirt and made it there just in time to meet us as we got off the train, she’s very multi talented and can fit right in with the Japanese. We walked to her apartment which took less than 5 minutes, she really does have a great location. We were warmly welcomed into her beautiful apartment that was a fun mix of Japan and America with lots of pictures and cute decorations from all of her travels. Both Jess and I loved it and agreed that we could easily live there! Want two roommates Ami? The apartment had a few differences from a typical American apartment. The overhead light in the living room/bedroom area looks much like ours but when you turn it off it shines a pretty bluish/green color that makes for a wonderful nightlight. Ami had heated floors throughout the apartment, I‘m so jealous. The bathroom was kind of broke up into 3 sections. The toilet was in its own room with a door. The shower and tub were also in its own room which was completely waterproof. The tub was designed to keep the water lasting for like 8 hours so that it could be reused to save water, although we didn’t give it a try. It seemed like a great place to live and Ami definitely did a wonderful job making it very homie. After changing our clothes we headed to an Izakaya which is a restaurant and bar where you can hang out and order all types of Japanese food and they have all you can drink for 2 hours costing $1000 yen if each person orders 2 dishes. We ordered a bunch of things and all shared. We tried shrimp flavored chips, edamame, pork dumplings, Chiizu-age (deep fried cheese), fried rice balls, raw horse meat and Yakitori which is chicken on a skewer, we had kawa (chicken skin), tsukune (chicken meatballs), chicken meat and chicken wings (tebasaki). I also tried their plum wine and a few of their “sour” cocktails, like mango sour and strawberry sour, which were actually very sweet. At the restaurant we had to take off our shoes before going inside the restaurant, so we ate barefoot! There was also call buttons which we could press to buzz our server to come back over to the table. It was a very fascinating experience. After diner we went to the Kokura Castle which was beautifully lit up with Pink lights (Korkura was doing a breast cancer walk and the Pink lights were to promote it).

By this time it was getting pretty late and we headed back to Ami’s where we used the internet while Ami wrote down a list of things for us to do in Hiroshima as well as helpful hints to get us where we were going. We all were very tired and passed out soon after. We all were off to an early start as Ami had to leave for work at 7:45am. Jess and I played on the internet for a little while longer while Ami got ready for school. Ami left and Jess and I stayed and showered then packed up for our trip to Hiroshima. Ami was a great host, I am so lucky to have a friend like her! She really showed us a great time in Kokura!
We arrive in Hiroshima at about 10am after an hour train ride. We found our way to the hostel and put our bags in a locker. We still had about 4 hours before we could check into the hostel so we decided to lighten our load then do some sight seeing. Since we had the whole day we decided to spend a majority of our time focusing on the Peace Park memorial.We first found our way to the Hiroshima Castle.

 

We even climbed the numerous stairs to the top! We certainly are getting good exercise on this trip! We walk more miles a day then you could imagine. Plus we are doing a lot more walking with our backpacks than we had planned. Oh, and, the Japanese love stairs we’ve quickly found out. Instead of putting in a simple cross walk, many of the streets have underground passageways that you must use to get across the street. Regardless we’ve been getting good exercise.
We decided to grab some lunch before heading to the peace park. We both were quite hungry and craved a bit of home. Its amazing how different the food is here. We’ve walked in many grocery stores since we’ve been here and there are plenty of foods that we cant even recognize. We have no idea what it is, when or how you’d eat it, or what you’d eat it with. Its crazy to think two cultures could have such different foods. Regardless we found a Subway and it was fabulous. I think that it was the best tuna sandwich that I’ve had in a long time. It was very similar to home with the exception of the sides. They didn’t have any chips instead they had oven potatoes were which were similar to french fries. Its also crazy how different the portions are. The drink that I got with my meal was considered a large, but it was definitely smaller than the “small” size at home. It’s funny how different things can be. After lunch we found our way to the Peace Park. We started by observing the “A-Bomb Dome” which is the main building that was left in shambles after the bombing. This building was once a symbol of hope for the city and was left to show the destruction that the bomb caused. It was one of the only buildings in the whole city that was somewhat recognizable after the bomb. From there we walked to the Children’s Peace Monument and rang the bell for world peace.

We entered the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and spent a couple hours walking through and seeing all of the artifacts and reading the information. We both thought that the museum was nicely laid out and had tons of good information, but we were surprised by how little was mentioned about the bombing at Pearl Harbor. We left in a very somber mood.

We decided to head back to the hostel to check in. Our room was a 4 person female dorm. The room was quite small but very traditional Japanese. Each “bed” was just a small area of floor space with a folded up matt which when unfolded will be the sleeping arrangement for the evening. If all 4 beds were setup/unfolded there is only about a 1 foot border around the edge of the room to walk and move around. We decided to wait until the last minute to unfold the beds. Jess and I shared the room with two women, an American who married a Japanese man and who had been living in Japan for 3 years and is now traveling the country, and a woman from Spain- Jess bonded with her and spoke in Spanish for a while explaining how she studied abroad there. I listened, only comprehending about 1/3 of what was being said. Since the internet has been sporadic (and my internet card that I bought that is supposed to give me internet 24/7 doesn’t work) we decided to rest for a couple of hours and both used my computer to upload our pictures to our USB drives and put them on facebook. After showering and putting on real clothes (wearing jeans is one of the best feelings after being in yoga pants for days on end) headed out to check out the nightlife in Hiroshima. I am still in disbelieve about the shopping. There are dozen and dozens (maybe even hundreds) of covered roads with shop after shop selling everything imaginable. After walking around for a while we started to get hungry and decided to go to a Okonomi-yaki, (a type of restaurant that sells a type of Japanese food that is famous in Hiroshima, the food is described like a pizza-pancake, but the only resemblance is the round shape, it tastes nothing like either of those foods in my opinion) Okonomi-yaki is cooked on a hibachi grill with eggs, shredded cabbage, bacon, soba noodles and if you want you can add cheese, mayonnaise, dried squid, leeks, shrimp, etc. We added some type of Japanese herb to it. Jess ordered spicy raw squid I bravely tried a bit. It as okay, but I don’t think I‘d order it again. We left the restaurant and went to a local grocery store to grab some fruit and breakfast items. We decided that we should treat ourselves to a little local dessert. Jess was adventuresome and tried green at ice cream for dessert which neither of us liked at all. I had a more standard chocolate ice cream with chocolate Hershey pieces. I was grad to have something that tasted a little like home since dinner wasn’t my favorite meal I’ve ever eaten. Jess and I can not get over the food here, we both agree that were on a culinary adventure. We called it a night somewhat early at 10pm.
On Tuesday we woke at 7am because our roommates were loud packers. We slowly got ready and checked out of the hostel around 8am. We had some difficulties with our huge bags and needed to get a local at the train station to store them in. We took at 20 minute train and 15 minute water ferry to Miyajima Itsukusima Shrine which has one of the most famous pavilions in Japan.

We got lots of great pictures! We were surprised by the number of deer that lived on the island.

Some of the deer even went into the stores and the employees didn’t seem to be phased by it in the least. While on the island we also got to try Momiji Manju (cake in a maple-leaf shape) we tried ones that were filled with chocolate cream and cream cheese

These were delicious! I wish I could send some home for all of you to try. All of the shops seem to make them right on the island, it reminded me a lot of Golden Rods salt water taffy in Maine, all of the shops had a conveyer belts in the window making these sweet treats.

We then made our journey to Kyoto. We apparently got on the wrong train and sat in first class (which we weren’t supposed to do). We made it almost all of the way to Kyoto without anyone noticing. It’s kind of nice to be able to play the “were the dumb tourist” card and pretend we had no idea in these situations. We made it to our hotel in Kyoto about 3pm. We’re staying in a Ryokan, a traditional Japanese Inn.

Compared to the hostels that we have been staying in this so luxurious! This was our major splurge for this leg of the trip. We’re each paying about $215 for the one night. We had some time to kill before dinner in the room. We decided to walk around and were again amazed by how large Kyoto was. There are tons of shopping areas and restaurants. We’re excited to have 3 days here. We came back to the room around 6 and had an hour to kill before our 7pm dinner. The Hotel staff brought our 8 course dinner (Kaiseki-meaning many courses) in and set everything up for us, including, miso Soup, white cowder-ish dish, Tempura fish (cod?) some type of green pepper I do not know the name of and a potato?, sashimi - tuna & two other white/clear fish. These were all served with soy sauce and green horseradish, There was also a simmered dish called takiawse, with a carrot & some other vegetable served with meat and simmered in a plate on top of a small flame on the table. We enjoyed a bowl of rice, Japanese pickles (kounomono), a grilled dish that included piece of fish, gingerroot & pearl onions wrapped in a leaf of some sort, for dessert we had fruit including melon, peach, Japanese plum and tea. Each dish was beautifully arranged/presented . Some dished had flowers or leaves on them as garnishes.

 

I was very adventurous and tried a lot of things that I normally wouldn’t go near. I didn’t LOVE anything, but I was glad I tried it. The tuna sushi and the rice were my favorite parts. After dinner the staff came in and moved the tables that we had eaten on off to the side of the room then set up our beds for the night.

Jess and I changed into the bathrobes that they provided for us then went to the basement to use the public bath.

We had to shower well and rise our bodies and hair before entering the bath. We joked that after this experience we’d be much closer. Luckily there wasn’t anyone else in the bath with us, so we were able to be a little prude and cover ourselves quickly. We spend the rest of the evening relaxing and got to bed early knowing that we would be having breakfast prepared in our room bright and early plus a full day of sightseeing.
We woke at 7:30am with housekeeping banging on our door. They wanted to put the bedding away and make room for the meal that was being delivered at 8am. We were both groggy a little startled. We had our 5 course breakfast, again trying everything but having no clue what we were actually eating.

We have decided that the theme of our stay in the Ryokan has been “I don’t know” we tried tons of things but didn’t know what anything was. We asked for my towels to use in the public bath and the hotel staff didn’t know what we were talking about. There were various buttons on the toilet sets that we didn’t know what they did, but after some trial and error we figured it out. All in all it was a very traditional Japanese experience. I’m glad that I did it, but I’m not sure if I’d spend the money to do it again.
We checked out of the hotel and bought a day pass for the Kyoto bus and were off to check out Kyoto’s many temples and shrines. Little did we know that would be the start of an annoyingly long day of waiting for ever to get the bus. I kid you not, we must have missed the bus by 30 seconds at least 5 times. We saw in total 2 shines and were so annoyed and famished that we gave up. Since we couldn’t find a restaurant with recognizable food we both opted to grab a snack at a local convenient store. I had a waffle that was folded in half with wipped cream and banana in the middle. It was delicious- who knew you’d find that in a convenient store in Japan? We went back to the Ryokan and grabbed our bags and headed to our hostel. We lucked out with this hostel, it seems bran new and everything is so nice and clean. We are happy to be staying here for 2 nights. We are in a 6 person dorm with bunk beds. Jess and I are the only girls. Three of the guys are European (2 from France, 1 from Whales) (the other bed seems to be empty) they all seem like great guys. After getting ourselves situated at the hostel Jess and I went to find the Geishas on a popular area (Gion) where they are known to walk around. We had no luck- seems that we missed them by a few minutes. We saw 2 women in traditional komonos all dressed up, but aren’t quite sure if they were actually Geishas or not. We went to a restaurant that a lady in our hostel recommended (which happened to be literally 50 feet from the Ryokan- typically we’d move across town and then end up walking all the way back to where we’d slept the night before for dinner. Anyways, the restaurant was a kaiten-sushi,

meaning that they put different pieces of sushi on plates and it goes around on a conveyer belt and you can take as much or as little of every kind of sushi that you like. Luckily, this restaurant had pictures with the English words of all of the different choice so we knew exactly what we were eating We had such a great time seeing all of the different types of sushi and trying different things. I had salmon, tuna, tuna rolls, and lobster salad. Everything was delicious. When we were finished the server counted our plates and charged us $137 Yen per dish, so cheap! In total it ended up costing us less than $10UDS and we got to try exactly what we wanted we were pleased. We came back to the hostel and each did a load of laundry, it feels great to have clean clothes. We also grabbed a drink downstairs at the bar with the two French guys were dorming with. Both seem to be about 25 and have recently lost their jobs and have decided to travel. Its now midnight and I’m scrambling to finish this blog and get to bed. I’m exhausted. My good friend Regina, from Semester at Sea, is meeting us tomorrow morning at our hostel at 5:30am!I think I’ll be needing a nap tomorrow! We’ll off to bed!
Love,
Katie