Our last full day

On our last full day in China, I let Jayde sleep in while I went to check out the Temple of Heaven. The temple had incredible intricate and colorful architecture and woodwork. Although the fake cows were disturbing, the temple's historic use as an imperial sacrifical building meant to promote a good harvest.








Incredible design



The fake sacrifical "lambs"


By far the most interesting part, though, was all the people "excercising" in the park. I'm not sure if there are not gyms or enough room in the houses to work out, but there were hundreds of people (mostly elderly) practicing karate, sword play, dancing, instruments, and so many more. I don't what was more interesting, the variety of "sports" or the old people practicing them. It was one of the most enjoyable cultural experiences I had in China.

The Chinese Acrobats

Before we head back to the States there was one other Chinese phenomenon we had to experience: the Chinese Acrobats. The feats of strength were pretty impressive, but I think we both enjoyed the Kung Fu more. Maybe it was the well-written plot . . .

The Summer Palace

After our long day in Datong, we decided to take a leisurely day walking around the Summer Palace. We made ourselves a picnic and headed out.

The Summer Palace was a bit of a disappointment. Don't get me wrong, it was beautiful. But we felt a bit taken advantage of, after paying for a taxi and a relatively expensive entrance ticket, they expected us to pay an additional amount to get into the actual palace part of the Summer Palace. There were so many tourists, the only solitude we had was a short hike to an overview of the Palace.
We walked along the lake, down the long corridor and took off.




Our next destination was the Lama Temple. After having a disagreement with a taxi driver trying to take the "scenic route" back to the subway, we ran into a friendly local practicing his English. We told him where we were heading and what restaurant we were looking for, The Golden Tripod. He said that he knew where it was and that he liked it. When we got off the subway, he offered to walk us to the restaurant. Or so we thought. He walked us right to the Lama Temple. Then we spent about 5 minutes explaining that we were looking for the Golden Tripod to eat before we went to Lama Temple. We were starving! He tried to help us, but no one seemed to know where it was. We ended up eating at the first restaurant we could find. We decided to try the famous roasted duck, which was yummy if you ate it in the lettuce wraps with plum sauce, but a bit greasy on its own.

The Lama Temple was beautiful and, for us, much more enjoyable than the Summer Palace. This is a functioning temple, with real monks and people worshiping. It was a bit voyeuristic, but felt more authentic. One of my favorite photos was a picture of a young man in traditional dress taking photos with his cell phone. It was surreal. The cherry blossoms were out too . . . beautiful.

Datong

Well . . . to put it nicely, Jayde was not pleased when I told her that another train ride was in her future. I was determined to get off the beaten track. Who knows when we'll be back!

So . . . we caught a train to Datong. It was not supposed to be a long train ride (5 hours). But by the time we got to the train station, stood in line, the train ran late, and we found a hotel, the day was pretty much shot. Luckily we were prepared this time and had plenty of snickers, chips, and oreos to snack on. What we weren't prepared for was the staring. The waiting room for the train was packed and in complete chaos. We ended up sitting in line on the floor for an hour. We were the only blondes in the room. People were not shy about noticing either. They wouldn't stop looking even if we stared back. Between that and the little buzzing magnets that everyone was trying to sell, Jayde and I were pretty irritable. I thought Jayde was going to lose it when we found out we had to share our soft sleeper.

When we got there, Jayde wasn't feeling well. We got a room at the first hotel we found and went to sleep. The next morning I got up early to find drugs for Jayde and set up things for us to see the Yungang Caves and the Hanging Temple. Setting up the tour was no problem. There is a company in the train station that did everything. Finding a pharmacy and communicating what I wanted was another story. The wandering down the street looking for a drug store didn't really work, but I must have looked pathetic enough. A young boy asked me what I was looking for. I found the term in my dictionary and pointed it out to the boy (my attempts at pronouncing words has not worked well thus far). He walked me to the pharmacy, but it was closed. I stood out front, again looking pathetic. I explained that my sister was sick (again in my best attempt at Chinese). All those podcast Chinese lessons finally paid off. The woman let me in the store early and helpled me pick out medicine for Jayders. I got back to the room just in time to wake the beast. :)

Kung Fu Hustle

After an exhausting day of hiking the Great Wall and shopping at the Silk Market, we treated to each other to a true cultural experience: Kung Fu.

It was truly gravity-defying! I have been to a number of dance and cheer competitions. I have never seen anyone jump that high. There was one point in time where the participants were jumping from the floor so high that they had time to spread their bodies out completely parallel to the floor and still landed on her feet. There were also some very young (couldn't have been older than eight), very talented kung fu artists.

The show was in a big theater. Jayde and I walked in past a big crowd of people and were immediately ushered to the front and center. I don't know if they were confused about who we were, but I don't care. The seats were fabulous!

There was a story too. The captions did not make a lot of sense, but I think it was about a young orphan that worked at a school of Kung Fu. He observes the students and asks the master to study under him. He has to prove himself and along the way falls in love with the master's daughter. Not a novel storyline, but entertaining. There were people hanging by their feet with scarves dropping from the ceiling, balancing on the tips of swords, and laying on beds of nails. Indoor rain. What more could we ask for?

It was an incredible ending to a memorable day.

Shopping: A Cultural Experience

I've done more shopping on this trip than I have done in all of my previous trips put together. It must be Jayde's influence. :) It really surprised me how different my shopping experiences have been in each country. Bali was grateful, Hong Kong indifferent, and China angry.

Bali: The Balinese (?) believe that the first sell of the day sets the tone for the rest of the day. When we would shop, the store owners would tell us they were going to make a special deal for us and, if it was early, that we were the first sell of the day. The bartering process, at least for me, was awkward, but amicable. And, when it was over, the store owners were very grateful and thanked us over and over again.

Hong Kong: People here would barter, but not to the same extent. They did not seem as motivated to make a sell. The strangest thing, to me, was that they absolutely refused to let you try on clothing. Even the shops with dressing rooms would let you try on pants, but refused to let you try on shirts.

China: Although the Silk Market was heaven (floor after floor of shoes, purses, silks), it is manned by heathens. They had no problem letting you try on clothes here, but they didn't have dressing rooms. Instead, two of the workers would hold up a blanket while you got undressed in the middle of a very busy shopping mall. It didn't help, either, that the girls holding up the blanket would look over of the top and comment on how cute you are or how beautiful your skin is.

After the very embarrassing process of finding the perfect pants, the more unpleasant barter process begins. The shopgirls inevitably opens with a completely outrageous price to see just how much they can take you for. You'd be surprised how many people willingly agree to pay $100 for a knock off purse! Unless you agree to this outrageous price, the shopgirl is likely going to tell you at least 100 times that you are killing her, that you are a liar, or that you are in some other way deficient as a human being. This is true even if you eventually agree on the price and they sell you the item. Their demeanor does not change after the sell.

In one instance, Jayde wanted to try on a pair of pants. She asked the girl how much they were, the girl told her not to worry, to try on the pants first, and then she would tell her the price. The girl helped Jayde with the pants, the whole time telling her how beautiful and lucky Jayde was and how she wanted to be friends with Jayde. After Jayde found the right size and, again, asked about the price, the girl opened with a ridiculous amount. Jayde apologized and told the girl that she only had a certain amount to spend on a pair of pants. The girl kept trying to barter with Jayde, and Jayde kept telling her that she was not going to pay any more for the pants. When Jayde finally gave up and walked away, the girl ran out of the shop and screamed "You f$@king beast." Everyone turned to look at us. Immediately thereafter the shop owner came out and said okay that price is fine. The shop girl glared at Jayde during the whole transaction. As we walked past a store a few fronts down a woman asked if we wanted to look at pants. I grinned and said we had already bought some. She asked "How much you pay?" I told her 5 yuan less than we had actually paid and without hesitating she said "Okay, I give you same price."

The Great Wall

We got an early start this morning. We signed up to do a five hour hike on one of the more secluded parts of the Great Wall. As we approached the place where our hike would start, I noticed some strangely shaped jagged mountains. It wasn't until we were close up that I realized that the jagged "mountains" was actually the lines of the wall on top of the mountain range. Now, maybe it's just me, but I always pictured the Great Wall to be one big, relatively uniform wall cutting evenly across the mountains. I was surprised and amazed to see that it actually follows the contours of the mountain. It is incredible to see (and to think about how LONG it must have taken to make it).

There were 32 towers between where we started and where we ended. The towers aren't too fancy, but they do mark the top of the hills, which were steep. Jayde kept complaining that all the climbing was making her ill. This made it a little difficult to completely enjoy the scenery, but I had to agree with her that it was a LOT of climbing. I consider myself to relatively fit, but I was definitely winded. Some of the towers are just straight up stairs, others probably should have stairs.

The first half of the wall had been restored and looked completely intact. It wasn't until we reached the second half of the wall, which is slowly crumbling, that we realized how much work had been done to the first half. Some of the peaks were impassable and we had to detour around them.

Now, China may be a communist country, but its inhabitants sure have the capitalist system down. There were some very enterprising people making a lot of money on that not-so-short hike. We were warned by people who had done the hike before not to let any of the people who volunteered to "guide" (it is pretty hard to get lost . . . you follow the very large wall) you for free not to walk with you. After trying to discretely "lose" her several times, we politely told a woman following us that we really wanted to enjoy the wall by ourselves. At the midway mark, we saw several other people guilted into paying a lot of money for overpriced souveniers from the free guides crying that they had walked all this way, "Won't you please buy something? Not just a postcard. I have walked so far!" Also, we had to buy a ticket to walk from the beginning to the middle of the wall, from the middle to the end of the wall, and to cross a bridge between the end of the wall and where we met our bus.

All-in-all, it was still worth it. There is no doubt in my mind why the the Great Wall of China is one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It's breathtaking (literally).

The Olympics are ruining Beijing

After the long ride to Beijing, we had a LONG night in a full hostel room with a sick girl. it was hard to sleep with all the puking noises. After discretely changing rooms, we went straight to the bank. While telling our sob story to the friendly people in line with us, they explained that only certain people in China can have foreign currency. That would explain why no one would take our dollars!



After a quick breakfast at the Traveler's Den, we went walked through Tiannamen Square towards the giant Chairman Mao flag to the the Forbidden City. We explored until our feet were ready to fall off. It is so huge; everything starts to look similar after the thirtieth ornate building. Our favorite part, though, was the park we got lost in while we were trying to find the Forbidden City.



Strangely, several people asked if we would take pictures with them. We were getting so used to our superstar status that when a couple asked us to take a picture of them, Jayde lit up and started to pose before realizing she wouldn't be in this picture.



We tried to shop on Quianmen St., which according to our guide is a happening street market. In addition to Mao's Tomb, and several of the buildings in the Forbidden City, the Quianmen St. Market is another victim of the Olympics. Many of the buildings had been torn down with scaffolding up the sides and huge screens with pictures of nice buildings to hide the wreckage from the street.

We were disappointed with the lack of shopping, but we made up for it later that night. Roi and Colby, two guys from Israel, took us with them to the Silk Street Market, aka Heaven! It has whole floors dedicated to high-end shoes, purses, electronics, clothes, pearls, and SO much more. To be honest, we didn't make it off the purse floor. :)

The Long Road to China

An uncomfortable and somewhat scary encounter with the manager at our hostel made us VERY glad that this was our last day in Hong Kong. We had planned on staying longer, but the train schedule just didn't work out that way. We spent the morning shopping. Shocking, I know.

Since the train ride was supposed to be for 24 hours (it ended up being 26 hours), we splurged and got the soft sleeper cars. The cars were . . . pink, but otherwise private and comfortable. I knew that I wasn't going to be able to handle Jayde's whining for the whole trip so I gave her motion sickness pills. They knocked her right out, and gave me some time to catch up on my peace and quiet.

I was hoping for a scenic ride through the country side. Either the places around the train tracks are pretty bleak or I just slept through all the pretty places. The food was atrocious! We could not finish our first (and only) meal on the train because it so slimy/greasy. It was so bad that we opted to starve rather than eat the food. The two granola bars I had in my bad did not really tide us over.

By the next day, when we arrived in Beijing, we were tired and hungry. We caught the first cab we found. Not smart. It was gypsy cab and way overcharged us. After throwing our stuff in our lockers in the hostel, we headed out to find two things: 1) Money and 2) Food. We learned the hard way that the Chinese ATMs do not accept American ATM cards. The banks were closed. None of the restaurants accepted credit cards (or traveler's checks or American dollars). Our feet hurt, we were tired, and I could have ate a horse. Anyone who knows me, knows that this is a lethal combination. We decided to try one more restaurant before I started throwing a tantrum.

***The Traveler's Den***


Not only does this restaurant have good food and good atmosphere, it takes pity on despondent American travelers. We ate an incredible pepperoni pizza! We ended up eating there at least once a day. :)

Having a ball in Bali!

Okay, okay! Back by popular demand (well at least one demand), I have started writing about my most recent trip (see below). It may take me awhile, though, since I am in the middle of discovery in several cases. But I will do it! Maybe I'll get ambitious and write about all my other trips too. Until then, here are my favorite pictures from Bali, Honk Kong, and China.

Enjoy!