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Published: February 2nd 2008
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finally made it back! 😊 ..well actually i've been back for 3 days now, but haven't gotten around to writing on here cause its freeezing in the room of my apt that has internet, lol. i got a space heater today though and i have it right next to me so i can finally bear to sit in this room for more than 5 min, haha.
k, so the trip was amazing!! everything was a little last minute and there were a million unexpected changes, haha, but it all worked out and was so much fun..and the philippines and thailand are definitely 2 of the most beautiful places in the world!! really its undescribable how gorgeous the mountains in the philippines were, and the grand palace in bangkok, and the perfect white sand and clear blue water in ko samed, the island we went to. i took over 1700 pictures though, lol, so you be able to see it all!
since i have so many pics i picked the best and uploaded them on another website so they can be divided into albums..so, here's the breakdown of our trip..and then you can read the captions of the pics for
some more details. wow there's soo much to tell, and there's probably a bunch of things that i'm gonna forget..but i'll try my best! lol
here's the link to the albums. i used this site called bubbleshare, which actually seems to work really well..
http://www.bubbleshare.com/users/profile/441053 part 1. well, the first unexpected change of plans was that when we arrived at the airport around 11pm on Fri. we found out that our flight had been canceled due to fog. we fought with the airline people for awhile, but there was nothing we could do..the next flight they could put us on to the philippines was on Monday night at 1am. since this cut our time in the philippines down to 4 days, the other girls that were supposed to come with us decided it wasn't worth it. Julia & Trey, however, who teach in the same city as alesia, were also supposed to be on our flight..and they offered us to go stay at their friend's apt for the night. we ended up staying there for the next 2 nights also, and just spent our time hanging out in shanghai.
part 2. we finally made it to
the subway
you can walk all the way through the cars manila, the capital of the philippines, on tues around 5am. after spending most of tues figuring out how to get to the rice terraces in banaue, up north, and if we even had time to go..we got an overnight bus tues night at 10pm and were in banaue at 6:30am. we spent all day wed hiking through the mountains and rice terraces which was amazing! then, the next day we hung around the town and got a 6pm bus back which got in at 4am. On fri we went to see the old spanish part of manila which was cool, before leaving for thailand that night.
part 3. we spent 2 days in bangkok before heading for the beach. the first day we went to the grand palace and reclining buddha. the grand palace was sooo pretty, tons of really cool buildings with crazy detailed murals and mosiac tiles. the reclining buddha was huge! haha, really though it was pretty crazy and really cool. and all of the buildings around it were like the grand palace..soo pretty! oh, almost forgot, we also got thai massages! ammaazing! (thanks to steffi for recommending the wat po school!) it took us awhile
to find where the massages were, but it was so worth it, especially since we were still insanely sore from hiking in banaue, haha. that night we went to the tallest building in thailand, which was hysterical..lol. and the next day we went to a crazy huge market..
part 4. on monday morning we got a bus at 7am to ban phe, a city on the coast of thailand. from there we took a boat to Ko Samed, an island in the gulf of thailand. it was amazing!! sooo pretty, really just like a postcard, lol. we got a room in like a little hut right off the beach which was actually really cheap & still nice. we spent the next 3 days just relaxing! we hung out at the beach all day, got thai massages on the beach, ate really good food, and tasted just about every fresh fruit smoothie you can think of! haha.
part 5. on thurs we got up early and got a boat back to ban phe, and then a bus to bangkok, and then a cab to the airport, and then a plane to shenzhen! we had planned on enjoying the nice
warm weather in the south of china, and going to some parks..but it was cold and raining the 2 days we were there..so we shopped & went to an art gallery across the street from our hostel which was cool, and then went to starbucks, lol.
part 6. got back to shanghai around 3am Sat night, and stayed a hostel which was freezing, lol. and then the adventures of being snowed in started on Sunday morning when I wnet to the bus station and found out there were weren't any buses going to zhangjiagang or anywhere nearby! i ended up going to the bus station on monday to buy a ticket for tues, and then on tues getting my money back, and then on wed i went in the morning without my bags and bought a ticket for 3pm. long story short, i ended up having to wait around in the bus station from 2pm til 5pm having no idea if a bus would even be coming (no one knew!). around 4pm a guy told me that his friend said that no buses were coming from zhangjiagang to shanghai and therefore there wouldn't be a bus to take us..so
he left and told me to just go to a hotel. not sure if he really knew anything..i decided to wait though. and then around 4:30 another guy asked me where i wanted to go and explained the situation to me, that none of the buses all day had been on schedule and we were just waiting hoping a bus from zhangjiagang would come to take us back. a lady also started talking with us and said that the bus station had said that if the bus didn't come by 6pm (when all of the bus stations close) we'd have to wait til the next day..but she thought that maybe if we stayed there they might let it take us.
a bus showed up around 5pm and we basically fought to get on it, lol. it then took us about 4 hours to get back cause the roads were bad, but i sat next to that guy and we watched michael jackson videos on his laptop which was pretty hysterical, lol.
and thats it! there's probably about a foot of snow on the ground here..and snowed most of the day today, and its supposed to keep snowing all week!
its kind of annoying cause they've never really had snow like this here so they really don't have a system for dealing with it. all of the roads are clear though, its just that the bike paths aren't. and for some reason taxi's decided they should have a minimum price of 20 yuan because of the weather so it costs like double to get anywhere.. so my plan is to stay warm with my new heater, lol, and watch all the new dvds i got in shenzhen, and maybe tutor a few days...
anyway, hope you enjoy my picss!!
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