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Published: April 19th 2009
Well, it appears that many days have passed since I wrote last. The last .. well.... 3 days have been slightly nuts... not so much in a good way. Although most of our crappy days have been made up for with some pretty awesome experiences.
I guess I'll start from where I left off...
Thursday... the last "normal" day we had was pretty wonderful. We were a little bit tired from sightseeing so we decided to try to go to a museum that Jake's cousin (Tom Chee! don't know if you're reading this😊 ) recommended to us. The Chinese government tends to destroy a lot of history that either makes China look bad or goes against the government in any way. This museum was started by a man who has been collecting Chinese religious artifacts trying to save them from being destroyed. According to the New York Times article about it, the guy has ended up having to make several monetary "gifts" to the government and couldn't afford to keep the museum open... and when we finally found it.. it was boarded up and closed down.
The search for the museum took us to a pretty cool part of Beijing. Its the Beijing Cultural Street... all the buildings are very intricately painted and there are tons of traditional Chinese art shops lining the street. At one end of the street there is a tourist-y shopping area where we found a lovely little stall where the vendor woman invited us for tea. We had previously been told that foreigners could not sample tea for free.... not true. So, we sat down and had some really amazing tea... Black lychee and a special kind of jasmine. The black lychee was AMAZING, so Jake and I bought some. It was more expensive than it should have been, but we figured that we had been paying at least a dollar a day for tea at our hostel so it was worth it. The woman was hilarious and kept trying to sell us things while we drank our tea, but she also realized that she was being a little ridiculous so we all just laughed the whole time.
After that we wondered down a very local "hutong", ate some REALLY good flat bread (similar to parantha...indian/pakistani breakfast bread usually filled with something tasty)... and found a place for lunch with a sign that said " WE HAVE ENGLISH MENU". After the chicken head incident we really like these signs. This was just the type of lunch we were looking for... good food.. and CHEAP! and the people were super nice. We had sweet and sour pork and noodles.... and this really amazing chili sauce that I only needed a drop of. I'm very impressed by good chili sauces so it made me like this place even more. I apparently looked very Pakistani/Indian that day because the elderly woman in the corner was pointing at me and saying "eendu... eeendu"(hindu) and making a dot gesture on her forehead. It was pretty funny.
Friday began the madness. We went to Western Union to try and wire money to the hostel that was going to be getting our Tibet trip organized. Lets make this long and sucky story shorter.... Basically.. no one spoke english, then the atm wouldn't accept my card because go figure my STUPID BANK THAT I HATE FROZE MY ACCOUNT BECAUSE I WENT TO CHICAGO LAST WEEK. In their words exactly "well we knew you were going to Asia, but you didn't tell us you were going to Chicago"..... yeah. It also turns out that the international collect number does not have access to CA accounts. So I spent two hours on the phone with the bank and ended up in tears because I was so angry. so this is all very boring. i apologize. So we didn't get to transfer the money and now we're not even going to Tibet .... WOOOOOO. In addition to the bank/Tibet problems we ran around Beijing trying to find this airline office to get airline tickets out of china... and they didnt have any.
Moral of the story. 1. I HATE bank of america with all of my being.
2. the Chinese really don't want you here for more than 30 days, but they make
it REALLY hard to leave the country.
3. i hate bank of america.
So moving on to better things. We pretty much ran around Beijing all of Friday..... it was rough. The night time made up for it though! We went to the Night Market and Snack Street. These are night street food markets (mostly set up for tourists... but still really fun). They have scorpions, cicadas, snakes, sharks, starfish, crickets, silk worms, livers, kidneys, fermented tofu (the SMELLIEST THING ON THE PLANET), hmm what else.... Well the scorpions on the stick are still moving, so that was pretty crazy. Megan had her first street food! No scorpions... We mostly had dumplings and these really good pork sandwiches, and I also had pineapple and strawberries... and NO SICKNESS! woohooo.
Saturday... Saturday was interesting. We woke up and went to the train station to buy our tickets to Xi'an. On the way to the train station we met a girl named Violet, the tiniest Chinese girl I have ever seen. Jake said Ni hao to her on the sidewalk and she was our new best friend for the next 20 minutes. She was SO excited to talk to us and barely took a breath the entire walk. We all wanted to scoop her up and take her with us.
So instead of going to Tibet we are flying to Kolkata from South China.... Tibet is just too expensive. So.. India here we come! 2 weeks early! So the train sleeper cars were all full so we got a regular seat.. (silver lining.. half the price..and it was pretty fun. more in a minute).. Then we went to the Forbidden City where we found out that we are famous! jk. This was a whirlwind of people asking us to take photos with them. At one point I was asked by a Chinese tourist (in a huge tour group)... but apparently I'm nothing with my dark hair.. when Jake and Megan walked up they went CRAZY! The entire tour group took turns taking pictures with us and we had at least 6 cameras in our faces at a time for like 5 minutes. We're now starting our own little photo collection.
After the Forbidden City we found that Megan's bank also froze her card... which caused us to almost miss our train. The main train station in Beijing is ENORMOUS! It is literally the biggest building I have ever seen in my entire life. Its like a monster. So we ran through this monster with our million pound backpacks in tow... (at this point i couldn't breath) and we made it!
On the train we made friends with a Chinese student name Will. He changed his seat so he could sit next to us because ... he wanted to practice his Spanish! He is studying spanish/international studies at a University here in Xi'an. He basically became our babysitter/ best friend. His girlfriend had given him these amazing cookie/cake things called "wife cakes". Pastry filled with sweet beans... SO GOOD! and he let us have as many as we wanted. We also had another student sitting across from us. She was shy at first because she thinks that her English is bad... but once she got going she really took care of us too! We got noodles for dinner (like cup of noodles/ramen). Everywhere in China has hot water because they drink so much tea. The Chinese Cup of Noodles was delicious!
Our friend William not only took care of us on the train, but also got in a taxi with us to personally make sure we made it to our hostel. I'm continuously amazed by how nice the Chinese people are, how much they love talking to strangers, and how willing they are to go out of their way to help you. We've had several people approach us when we look lost and ask if we need help. Then they walk us to wherever we need to go! Its amazing.
And here we are. I guess I should write more frequently so I don't have these novel length entries. I would like to post photos but the computer I'm on is so old that it doesn't even have a USB outlet. So they will have to wait! We'll be in Xi'an for three days.. then off to Kunming in the South. Hopefully our bank/travel luck turns around from here!
I hope no one was bored with this.
oh yes. one more funny thing.. we were discussing American shows with our friend William on the train and I mentioned Gossip Girl... to which he said.. "oh yeah... xoxo.. gossip girl".. funniest thing ever.
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naila
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gossip girl in china?! awesome! scorpions on a stick that are still moving? why didn't jake try one? i thought he wanted to eat crazy food like that?!