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Published: January 23rd 2008
Well, this it. We fly home tomorrow. In the last 6 days, we have been to Beijing, Tianammen Square, the Great Wall of China, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Lamma Island (no Llama's) and now today, slightly (no, totally) beat up, tired and back in Bangkok. Lot's of travelling and we've covered a lot of distance. The past week has been great, literally, starting in Beijing as we visited the Forbidden City and took a tour that took us on a 3 hour hike up a mountain to an unrestored section of the Great Wall of China.
We then walked up and down and along the crumbling wall for 4 or 5km (2 or 3 mountain peaks). It felt very real and we had an overwhelming sense of the effort it took to build a huge brick wall traversing a mountain ridge for 6000 km....Beijing itself was very cold and also somehow, unforgiving. It had a very communist feel to it, but we met a number of travellers in our hostel that made our 4 days there more hospitable. Beijing is also mad with preparations for this summers Olympic Games. We have come across a number of humourous "educational programs" that the
Chinese government is providing to its citizens as they prepare for the millions of visitors this summer. A few examples - Teaching the people how to wait in line to get on the subway instead of just pushing their way in (much needed). The Establishment of a "Chinese Patriotism and Hygiene Commission". I read about a program encouraging people not to spit (too polite, a better word would be - horque) on the sidewalk! Citizens are also becoming upset that they will not be able to smoke in restaurants during the Olympics. I read that of the 30,000 restaurants in Beijing, only one has a no smoking policy...and it is usually empty!
After Beijing, we then made our way down south to Shanghai and spent 2 nights there. Shanghai was suprisingly fun, lots of huge buildings, grand skyscrapers and great architecture. There weren't a lot of tourist sights to see but we did a lot of walking and ended up spending a few educational if not slightly unremarkable hours at the Shanghai museum. If you want to know anything about Ming Dynasty Pottery and Ceramics, just ask! Or even better yet, don't!
We then took a 20 hour
train south from Shanghai to Hong Kong and spent a day and a half in Hong Kong waiting to catch our flight back to Bangkok. We ended up taking a day trip out to Lamma Island, a small island about a 30 minute ferry from downtown Hong Kong. This trip was our last ditch effort at being on vacation! We had a nice day there with our big flight back to Canada looming large in our minds.
So here we are in Bangkok, readying ourselves for our 8:30am flight tomorrow to Edmonton, via Tokyo and Vancouver. Eventually, we arrive in Edmonton at 3:20pm on Thursday afternoon. We are excited to come home, see our cats, friends and family. I'm also curious to see if my truck starts!
Thank you all for following our blog, we loved all your comments and emails and it made it really fun for us to be able to write about our experiences. The blog really helped us feel connected to you all back in Canada. Take care and we will see you soon!
Greg and Shannon
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Barb Blokzyl
non-member comment
Welcome Home
I must admit, I don't want your trip to be over. I've loved reading about your trip. Thanks for sharing with us all.