Advertisement
Published: October 8th 2006
Terra Cotta Warriors
One of the extracted pits eith rows of warriors
ok every baby here is tiny. They're walkin around and talkin and they look like they should still be in the womb! which is another thing.....they all walk, i've only seen one stroller here. and the ones who are too young to walk, get carried around. no diaper bags...nothing, wow we're so spoiled in north america!! oh and another thing....they apparently don't have the luxury of diapers here and to make things worse the kids wear pants with slits in the crotch. I figured it was for when they have to go to the bathroom, so that they could go right there on the spot with no warning so at least the pee/poo wouldn't sit in their pants! maybe they have pooper scoopers for babies!!! and it tourns out I was right...not about the pooper scooper, but the other day we say a woman holding her baby away from her with his legs spread open and 2 seconds later he peed! and another day we actually saw a 2 year old shit in the street and then his mom came, wiped him and picked up the poo!! gross!
It's amazing how some facets of Beijing give it the feel of a
Feeding Time
a panda eating before going to sleep modern city and others make you think you're back in the 19th century.
It's not as easy to get out of Beijing as one might think....you have to actually get to the right train station! we of course didn't, so we spent an extra night there and luckily got a ticket out for the next day..which apparently was really lucky since there's a big Chinese holiday October 1st and many of the 1 billion people here travel within China as much as a week before the day. so we were close to getting a standing room only ticket for our 12 hour overnight train. That took us to Xian, where we arrived at 6 am, took a tour to see the terra cotta warriors, which were really cool, so life-like. And then were back on another night train heading for Chengdu. That one took 17 hours....luckily I have magical powers...AKA crohn's, that allowed me to sleep for 12 of those hours! We spent 2 days there, and basically just saw panda bears and hung out with the swarm of Israelis that we met there. the pandas were so freakin cute. Together, we took about 80 pictures and 6 videos
Sleeping pandas
I love the position the one on the right decided to sleep in. of them, but don't worry I won't force you to look at all of them till i get home. and for the bargain price of $60 you could touch one. So instead I asked a guy who touched one how it felt and took a pic of him touching it with the intention of photoshopping myself into it. He said it was quite prickly and hard, so I was ok with spending the money on something else!
We made our way from Chengdu to Guilin on a bus I would rather not go into detail about. All I'll say is 24 hours is too much time to spend on a bus. Especially when you can't even ask when the next pee break is! But hey, at least it didn't tip over any of the times I was holding on for dear life! Don't worry mom, we made it and we're fine. Oh and to add to the thing about the babies and their non existent diapers.....one mom held her kid over the garbage in the bus until he shat....made for an interesting smell for the rest of the bus ride!
In Guilin, we walked around the city and
within 2 minutes already had a Chinese person come up to us and say he wanted to practice his English with us. We were of course skeptical of being scammed again, so we weren't so friendly. He told us what parts of the city to see and then showed us where we could get some food. there was no scam involved, but we spent the whole time worried!
From Guilin, we took a boat down the Li River to Yangshuo. We opted for the boat designed for the locals as oposed to the foreigners,cuz it was half the price. the only drawback was that there was a Chinese speaking tour guide rather than an english one. Luckily we met a german couple who also speak English and Chinese, who translated for us. Most of the time though, they just said, you're not missing anything!! The point of the cruise rather than taking a bus was the scenery, which actually didn't disappoint. It was gorgeous....if you like mountains...which we do! They were the coolest shapes and there was one where you can supposedly see 7 horses in, but we didn't even see one! Some things in China are completely lost
on us! We did see some water buffalo though and guys on rafts made of logs trying to sell us stuff! They'll do anything for money here.
Yanghsuo is the cutest little town, our favourite in China, by far. IT's basically one main street, with a couple side streets running off of it. It's surounded on all sides, except for the side with the river. And the mountains are so close, it feels like you can just reach out and touch 'em. Our first day, we got a guide to bicycled around with us, just ourisde the city, where there are little villages and rice fields. The whole city is surrounded by enormous mountains and your proximity to them makes them seem even taller. One of them, called Moon Hill, had a whole right through it. The scenery was great, and it was pretty easy to bike on the roads...even the unpaved ones, it was the other drivers on the road that made us think we would crash. Every single car, bus, van, moped, you name it would honk right as they approached another vehicle. At first it scared the shit out of us cuz we thought it meant
A mud lake in a cave
somehow we were floating in the mud water! they were gonna hit us. then we decided it was a warning. they were saying "I'm about to pass you, so don't pull out into the road!" It's like they expect us to swerve into the street. Maybe it prevents accidents, but it makes for a lot of unnecessary noise! they obvioulsy don't learn about blind spots in driver's ed here.
After the biking, we walked through a mud cave, which in certain spots was melting. One section of it was a mud lake, which you could you could actually float in...i thought you could only do that in the dead sea!! Our second day in the small town, we went rock climbing. I've never climbed up real mountains before, only those fake walls, so it was pretty cool. Marissa and I made bets that if one of us made it to the top and the other didn't, we'd owe the other one a drink! It forced us to both climb all the way! After doing all these activities we're both like, we should bike and rock climb when we get home. 10 bucks says we do neither!!
One thing we've learned here is that the Chinese really know
how to charge. You have to pay for everything....going into a park, peeing in a hole (both of us have learned to aim really well!!), looking at a "famous" tree! Everything here is "famous"!
Luckily the food and accomodations are cheap, just the touristy stuff is overpriced. A bottle of water costs 30 cents and tonight we're staying in a hotel for $4 each and that includes towels, a tv (with one English channel) and a maid!
After Yanghsuo we took a 'longer than it was supposed to be' bus ride to Hong Kong. And spent way too much time trying to figure out how to get from where the bus dropped us off into hong kong...it wasn't allowed to cross the border from china into HK. When we finally arrived, it was like we crossed over into Europe! Both the city and the people are nothing like in China. We spent a few days enjoying the city, checking out the much talked about shopping (which we couldn't actually afford) and meeting cute british guys at a club. I also got to see my cousin from Ann Arbor and his wife, who's from HK, which was great. It was
so random that we were all there at the same time.
Oh, the other day i saw a woman squatting in the street. she was peeing right on the corner!
We flew into Vietnam a few days ago...but I'll save that for the next blog.
For those of you who can't get enough of our pics, i'll be sendin out another link to kodak soon.
Keep in touch, I wanna know what I'm missin (or not missin) in Montreal....or wherever you live!
Trish.....not from Marissa anymore, she sends out her own now.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.101s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 7; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0565s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
debra
non-member comment
I love reading your blogs. You add things that you do not write in your emails, i do not know if that is good or bad. But certainly interesting. Thanks for all the info, I feel like i do not have to go to China, coz I do not think I will get there anyway. Love ya.Mom