April 1
I honestly can’t remember the last time I posted a blog about my travels. Looking at my personal journal I can say that I have at least started my posts about India, Vietnam and Cambodia, but before I complete those, I think I’ll try to recite some stories from my 7 days in China. I wouldn’t expect any literary gold in this post, and it might even be a stretch to assume this will even make it up on the internet in the next day or so, but as always ill try my best.
China: I’m not really sure where to begin with China. It snuck up on us pretty quickly after a lot of intense travel in India and South-East Asia. Last Friday (a whole week ago already!!) we were about 12 hours away from arriving in Hong Kong, when I realized that I would run out of clean clothes in two days. This followed sleeping in through two classes (didn’t miss anything) and attending a class where, unknown to me until about five minutes into class, I had to deliver a ten-minute presentation. With my uncanny ability to make myself appear smarter than I am, (the professor said, and I quote: “I’m really impressed by the time and effort you put into preparing.”) I did a pretty great job reading from my journal (it was completely blank, but I just pretended like I wrote stuff in it) and talking about the philosophical foundation for global altruism. About an hour of washing clothes in my sink afforded me the ability to at least wear clean underwear every other day in China, and a good night’s sleep had me feeling excited for Hong Kong.
Saturday: We arrived in Hong Kong a little before 11am, a few hours later than expected. Rough seas had plagued us since leaving Vietnam, and that apparently had slowed our progress. Actually, the ship was probably rocking the worst it had all voyage (or best? considering I didn’t get sick at all) the whole way in transit from Vietnam. Elevators were closed, some classes were cancelled, and plates and cups were flying all over the dining hall. Even though arriving later was a little disappointing, we have grown pretty accustomed to unexpected delays, and happily left the ship a little before noon. Our plan, or more accurately, incredibly rough and uninformed idea of what we should we do, was to visit the Big Buddha statue. We managed to find our way to the subway station, which was huge, decipher the automatic ticket dispenser, find the right platform, walk 10 minutes
underground to the right platform (the station was really big) and get on the right train.
The subway system, or MTR, in Hong Kong is massive (if I hadn’t mentioned that before), clean, although not as clean as Singapore, and really efficient. I think since a lot of the cities we have visited in Asia have such huge populations, public transit has to be efficient out of pure necessity. It was about a 30 min ride from Kowloon, where the ship was docked, to the Tung Cheng station. We had no idea, how much it would cost to take the Gondola up to see the Big Buddha, how long it would take, or if it would even before worth it. About 4 hours later we had the answers. We had to wait in line for close to three hours, first to buy tickets, then to board the gondola up and then to take it back down. It was pretty expensive too, but honestly was a fun experience. It would have been more fun if we didn’t have to wait so long, but I think having regrets about spontaneous travel destinations is a bad idea. After the Big Buddha, we took the train back to Sneaker street, which had a lot of cool kicks but they were too expensive, although I did buy some dress shoes and a D&G belt for that night’s festivities (read on…). We made it to the ship around 1830 for dinner, watched the incredible lights of the Hong Kong skyline, and met up with some more friends to go out.
During our time in line at the Big Buddha, we convinced ourselves that the coolest thing we could do that night was to dress up in our custom tailored suits from Vietnam, put on our fake Rolex watches and Ray Ban sunglasses, and head to Macao to go to the casinos. Again, our incredible (sarcasm) planning skills were put on display. There were several things we didn’t know about Macao that would have been helpful to know before we became utterly determined to get there. First, Macao, although a part of China, is like Hong Kong in that it is, in the colloquial expression “Same, same but different” meaning that to get to Macao requires a passport, departure forms, and a customs checkpoint. Two of my friends didn’t have their passports, so had to take the metro back to the ship, get them and meet us in Macao later that night. Second, to get to the casinos requires a 10-minute ferry ride to Hong Kong island and then an hour speed boat ride to Macao. This is both time consuming and expensive. Thirdly, we didn’t know that Macao had a separate currency from Hong Kong, which was already different from the currency used in main land China. Fortunately, the casinos took HK dollars and we only had to tip our one taxi in Macao a little extra to get him to accept HK dollars so we wouldn’t have to go to the ATM. Fifth(ly?), some residents of Macao are scum bags and think it is a good business to buy every single ticket for the only ferry returning to HK island, which happened to be the 4am ferry, and sell them at ridiculously high prices. After a lot of arguing, begging, trying to barter our fake Rolexes and attempting to call the police, we finally were able to get on the ferry back at 4am with only paying about 25% over the original value. We walked back onto the ship around 7am Sunday morning.
This episode in Macao certainly qualifies as a great travel story and was actually a blast. All of us looked incredible in our suits and watches, which entitled us to adopt a pretentious rich businessman persona for the evening. We arrived at the Sands Macao a little before midnight, and immediately withdrew 1,000HK dollars from the ATM (You’ll have to look up the exchange rate yourself to see how much US money that is). Lady luck was on my side at the black jack table, and I quickly found myself up a few hundred. We took a little break on the hotel’s top floor club, where we just walked in and sat at the VIP table (our waitress comes up and says, “you guys must be businessmen from Hong Kong, let me bring you some complimentary snacks). After the club, it was back to the card tables, where I hit a 10-1 payout on a 50HKD bet. At the end of the night I walked out with my initial investment and an additional 500HKD, which covered all the ferry and taxi expenses for the evening, plus a little extra.
Sunday: Sunday was comparatively uneventful. I got back on the ship around 7am, slept for a few hours, went to the mall for some breakfast and free internet, came back to the ship, packed and left for the airport for my flight to Beijing. Our flight was delayed about 90 minutes, which left us some extra time at the airport for a nice dinner. The HK airport was incredible, and the whole thing is built on a man made island. We arrived in Beijing around 2200 Sunday night (also a massive airport), and made it to our hotel a little before midnight. Needless to say I was pretty tired, and went straight to sleep.
Monday: Monday was the official start of our tour with the China Guide Company. China Guide is the first non-SAS affiliated tour group I have used this entire voyage, but a lot of friends signed up for it, the reviews online were positive, and it was a lot cheaper than the comparable SAS trip. Our first stop of the day was the Forbidden City, about 15 minutes from our hotel. We entered through the North Gate, which is a lot less crowded and touristy than the South Gate and gave us some space for photos. We followed our guide Vincent and his blue flag stick (which at the time I thought was silly, but later proved invaluable when trying to follow him through the crowded train stations) and learned some interesting history about the construction and purpose of the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City is massive. It has 9,999 rooms (lucky number) and housed 20,000 servants and workers for the royal family. The compound is beautifully renovated and restored, and truly gives a sense of the original magnificence of the city. Towards the southern side of the city it got a lot more crowded with tourist groups. This was frustrating, but did provide us the opportunity to watch a full on fistfight between several elderly Chinese women (no one was hurt, so it’s entertaining watching old people throw down). On the outside of the South Gate is a giant portrait of Mao facing the infamous Tiananmen Square. We walked over to Tiananmen Square, which is essentially just a giant platform, in fact, the largest public gathering area in the world. It is also the site of the iconic Tank Man photos from 1989 and the sight of the massacre of students and intellectuals by the communist party during that same time. Our guide warned us not to talk or ask questions about the massacre in public, since China is still a communist country and does not have all of the same freedoms we have in the states.
After Tiananmen Square, we had a family style lunch, which was delicious and then headed to the Silk Market. I’m usual not a huge fan of shopping, but there are certain items that I do enjoy buying; namely sneakers, adventure apparel and sports clothing. The Silk Market was heaven. I’m not gonna list everything I bought but lets just say I was forced to but a new North Face duffel bag just to hold all of the goods. After the Silk Market we drove about 90 minutes to the Jinshanling portion of the Great Wall. The ride was incredible and one of the first times I had seen mountains the entire voyage, and we managed to watch the setting sun just before arriving for dinner. Dinner was honestly kinda gross, but at least we were the only people in the area. I also bought a cool ski cap that looks like a panda face. About 25 out of 30 people in my group bought the same hat, which gave us the opportunity for some awesome panda pictures throughout the trip. At this point it was pitch black outside, around 40 degrees and we were in the middle of the mountains with no real cities within an hours drive; basically it was awesome and I was enjoying every second of it. We picked up our sleeping bags, mats, and a hand crank flashlight and hiked about 20 minutes uphill to the Great Wall.
The Great Wall of China is exactly that; Great. Although it was dark and unlit, I couldn’t help the feeling that I was standing on one of the most remarkable structures in the world. The shear magnitude of the wall is mind blowing. We were on just a tiny, tiny portion of it, but it still felt like one of the biggest things I have ever seen. Sleeping overnight on the wall was definitely an interesting experience. As soon as we got to the tower we were supposed to sleep at, I hiked about 20 minutes the other direction to the next tower where I had hoped to sleep alone, but I got yelled at and had to come back. I was able to negotiate with the guide to a spot about 10 minutes away from our group’s tower on an open section under the stars with two other friends. Before retiring to my humble abode consisting of a sleeping bag and mat, which was stiff from the cold, we had a few drinks, ate some oreos and tried our best to stay warm. I probably slept about 4-5 hours that night which isn’t too bad, considering the temp was right around freezing, and I haven’t been in weather cooler than 70 degrees since I left the states.
Tuesday: I awoke to an awesome sunrise, which I couldn’t fully appreciate because my contacts were out and my glasses had frost on them, but can still say was magnificent even with impaired vision. I wanted to stay in my sleeping bag to warm up under the sun, but decided I might as well just pack everything up and start hiking to warm up. We had to hike back down the path we took up the wall to return the sleeping bags. I did this ahead of everyone, snapped some pictures of the map to find out which tower to stop at, and got the go ahead from my guide to start the hike. The plan was to hike 15 towers, which was about 5km. The guide had told us it would take about 3 hours, but my roommate and I were determined to hike it in half the time. The hike was incredible. Not too hard, but certainly strenuous enough to keep the body warm and the views were indescribable. Literally, I’m not going to even try to describe how cool it was to hike the Great Wall of China, you have to find out for yourself. We made it to tower 15 in just over an hour, besting our goal, and giving us plenty of time to relax a bit, explore on to the next tower, film a music video of a Disney song, and eat some fruit we took from the bus. About an hour later, everyone else showed up and we had about a 20min hike down a path to the buses. I managed to rinse my face and hair with some water in the woods by the buses, threw on a clean shirt, ignored my smelly shorts and got back on the bus for the rest of the day.
It was around 11am at this point and after driving back into Beijing for lunch (not impressive except for the Chinese doughnuts at the end), we drove around the Olympic compound and then went to another market selling jackets, sneakers, jerseys, sunglasses, and headphones – my favorite things. I had planned on being more reserved with my shopping, but of course ended up spending just as much as the day before. The good news was that I had a new duffel bag to put all my loot in. The market also had a bathroom with actually toilet seats and toilet paper (a rarity in China) and I of course took advantage of the opportunity. After this evacuation (I apologize for the potty humor) we headed to the acrobatic show. The acrobatic show was everything I expected and more; a more authentic Cirque De Solei, with cool laser lights, ridiculously strong athletes, and a collection of acrobats obviously just barely subpar to world-class Olympic gymnasts. We checked into our hotel after the show, and had the evening to ourselves. After a shower, some friends and I headed out into the streets of Beijing. We tried some dumplings from the street vendor, but passed on the sheep’s testicles, fried snakeskin and scorpions. We spent a few hours wandering the streets and a mall, and turned into the hotel just before midnight to get some sleep.
Wednesday: After checking out of the hotel around 9am, we headed back into historic Beijing to visit a hutong. Hutongs are traditional Chinese communities that are very close knit. Historically they follow a sort of caste system, but in more recent times, everyone is seen as equal. The hutong we visited was very close to the Forbidden City and contained the drum and bell tower that we had seen from inside the Forbidden City a few days earlier. Hutongs are arranged in very narrow streets with similar sized and styled homes. We took a bike rickshaw ride through the community and ate lunch at one of the local’s homes (who happened to be friends with Jackie Chan and was Jet Li’s brother). We also climbed to the drum tower, which contained over a dozen massive drums and a bronze kelou (basically an elaborate water clock) used to measure time and announce it to the hutong. We then attended a traditional Chinese tea ceremony inside of the bell tower. The tea ceremony was really, really interesting, despite being a slightly stereotypical Chinese tourist attraction. We learned the proper serving, holding and even sipping procedures for tea, and were able to sample three different varieties, all of which were incredible. I couldn’t quite justify spending 20US to buy a small bag of tea, but definitely plan on trying to find some whole tealeaves and a proper tea maker back in the states. My favorite tea was the ginseng, but the fruit dessert tea was also really good.
After leaving the hutong we went to panda exhibit at the Beijing Zoo. You have to remember that 90% of the kids in my group (including me) had been wearing panda hats everywhere for the past two days, and so you can’t imagine our excitement (and the awkward stares of the zoo guests seeing 25 white kids running around with matching panda hats) once we got there. The panda exhibit was really cool, and we managed to get some awesome pictures of the real pandas and the people wearing panda hats. I wished we had more time at the zoo to explore some of the other exhibits, but we had to make our way to the Summer Palace.
The Summer Palace is awesome. The dynastic system in China allowed emperors to spend absurd amounts of money, time and labor on projects that are actually pretty pointless (case in point: terracotta warriors, the Great Wall, Yao Ming’s NBA career). The Summer Palace was originally built in the 1700s, then ransacked by the French in the 1800s and later rebuilt in the early 1900s. The dominant feature of the palace is this huge man made lake, and with the breeze that day, I desperately wanted to take a sailboat out on it. We didn’t have too much time at the Palace, but were able to walk outside down the Long Corridor which is covered with paintings and carvings, see the marble boat, and look at some of the buildings with cool names like Hall of Benevolence and Longevity and the Sea of Wisdom Temple. After the Summer Palace, it was off to the Beijing train station for an overnight train to Xi’an. The train station in Beijing was packed and kinda dirty, which was perfect preparation for our train, which was also packed and kinda dirty. Fortunately we had our own cabins with four beds (and not much more) a squatty potty every car, and a train worker who pushed a cart full of undistinguishable food every hour or so. Unfortunately the electricity in the cabins was pretty spotty, so we couldn’t use our laptops, but we were all tired enough that we passed out and slept pretty well.
Thursday: We got to Xi’an sometime around eight, met our guide and headed to the terracotta warriors. There was, let’s just say, some confusion between our guide and the original plans for the day, which would manifest itself into only having about 40mins at the terracotta museum, sitting on a bus for a combined 2 hours by the end of the day, barely making our train back to Shanghai and skipping our scheduled stop at the Muslim Quarter of Xi’an. With those minor frustrations aside, it was an absolutely awesome day. Really the only appropriate reaction to seeing the terracotta warriors is shock and disbelief at what you are looking at: thousands of soldiers and hundreds of horses and chariots lined up in neat rows, each one unique from. There are currently three pits where terracotta has been found, but there is a lot of excavation and digging still to be done. Farmers discovered the pits about 35 years ago (I met one of the farmers who found the terracotta warriors-he’s still a poor farmer, although he gets to sign books once in a while) and the museum and buildings were built more recently. 700,000 workers were used to construct the massive burial pit and craft each figure, and construction lasted several decades, all to appease the wishes of a young emperor.
After the terracotta warriors we drove back into Xi’an, ate lunch at a really fancy hotel and took the bus to the city wall. The Xi’an city wall is an eight-mile stretch of about a 70ft high by 40ft wide wall forming a square around the city. Because we had been cooped up on a train and buses a lot recently, and cooped up on a ship the past two months, everyone in my group rented bicycles and bike the whole perimeter of the wall. It was a blast biking. The weather was perfect; about 65 and sunny, the bikes, although kinda crappy made it the whole way, and it was just a fun way to spend an hour. Once the biking was complete, it was a race off to the train station to catch the 1700 train to Shanghai. We just made it to the waiting room before we had to board. Fortunately everyone made it, but we didn’t have time to pick roommates so me and another SAS kid had to share a cabin with two Chinese men. Everything worked out fine though, and the 15-hour train ride honestly went by kinda quickly. I slept like a baby, woke up and saw half the train’s occupants on the platform at the station in Shanghai, quickly threw my contacts in, grabbed my bags and got off the train a few minutes before it left for the next station somewhere in China.
Friday: After a 15min bus ride we were on the ship just in time to catch the end of breakfast. Unfortunately, SAS had failed to inform us that after boarding in Shanghai, it took about 2 hours to get your passport processed to be able to leave the ship again. Also, on-ship time had been moved up an hour, from1800 to 1700, meaning that 3 hours I had expected to have to explore Shanghai were gone. But that’s how things happened, and I spent my waiting time trying to find space in my room for all the stuff I bought (it all fits!) and taking a shower for the first time in a few days. Finally I was allowed off, and met up with some friends to take the subway to the science and technology center, where there was also a huge market. Of course I had to buy a few more jerseys and some more headphones for myself, and after my overindulgence we grabbed some great dumplings for lunch. My friends had been in Shanghai for a day already and visited some of the sights I wanted to see, so I ditched them later in the afternoon and took the subway by myself into the heart of downtown. It was a lot of fun to navigate the city by myself with only a Chinese map as my guide, but fortunately my destination was the tallest building in China and the third tallest in the world (I get to go to the 2nd tallest in Taipei next week) so it was pretty easy to know where I wanted to go. The Shanghai WFC is 1614ft tall, and basically looks like a bottle opener at the top with this massive bridge connected to towers, forming a square hole at the top. The elevator took 66secs to get to the observation deck on the 100th floor, the tallest observation deck in the world. It was quite an experience being that high above the ground and having the best views of the Shanghai skyline. Even though it was hazy out (Beijing and Hong Kong were really hazy too – I’m guessing it is air pollution), I could see a bunch of incredible buildings and even our ship on the other side of the harbor. I went down to the bar on the 94th floor, sat by the window and enjoyed a snack, probably one of the most unique locations I have ever eaten a cheese quesadilla in.
After the WFC I had a little bit of time to walk around down town. Shanghai is a beautiful city with clean, wide streets, lots of plants, a great subway, crossing guards at every intersection, and a very efficient layout. Shanghai is a relatively new city compared to other world cities, and the modernity of its layout and its buildings certainly shows. I made it back on the ship with about 20mins to spare, and had some time this evening to take some photos of the skyline at dark, which is really impressive. We have two days of class, one free day and then we will be in Taiwan. The realization that this trip is coming to an end is certainly becoming more apparent in our minds, but I try to ignore it and just enjoy the moment I am in. In a sadder bit of news, two SAS students were rather seriously injured on a fall on the Great Wall. The students were actually at the same spot on the wall as I was, just a day later. SAS officially announced that one student suffered a broken leg and is already back on the ship, but the other student sustained some pretty traumatic head injuries and was flown to Hong Kong to receive treatment. The latest official news is that she is responsive to some questions and is showing signs of improvement, but the injuries appear to be severe. Of course I have heard a lot of other news, but don’t think it is productive to post them on this forum, so I will only share what has been officially released by SAS. The student with the head injury actually works in the AV booth on the same shift as me every other day, so it is always a sad thing to see someone you know get hurt. I know both students and the entire shipboard community would appreciate your thoughts and prayers for a quick and full recovery.
Best,
Ben
I honestly can’t remember the last time I posted a blog about my travels. Looking at my personal journal I can say that I have at least started my posts about India, Vietnam and Cambodia, but before I complete those, I think I’ll try to recite some stories from my 7 days in China. I wouldn’t expect any literary gold in this post, and it might even be a stretch to assume this will even make it up on the internet in the next day or so, but as always ill try my best.
China: I’m not really sure where to begin with China. It snuck up on us pretty quickly after a lot of intense travel in India and South-East Asia. Last Friday (a whole week ago already!!) we were about 12 hours away from arriving in Hong Kong, when I realized that I would run out of clean clothes in two days. This followed sleeping in through two classes (didn’t miss anything) and attending a class where, unknown to me until about five minutes into class, I had to deliver a ten-minute presentation. With my uncanny ability to make myself appear smarter than I am, (the professor said, and I quote: “I’m really impressed by the time and effort you put into preparing.”) I did a pretty great job reading from my journal (it was completely blank, but I just pretended like I wrote stuff in it) and talking about the philosophical foundation for global altruism. About an hour of washing clothes in my sink afforded me the ability to at least wear clean underwear every other day in China, and a good night’s sleep had me feeling excited for Hong Kong.
Saturday: We arrived in Hong Kong a little before 11am, a few hours later than expected. Rough seas had plagued us since leaving Vietnam, and that apparently had slowed our progress. Actually, the ship was probably rocking the worst it had all voyage (or best? considering I didn’t get sick at all) the whole way in transit from Vietnam. Elevators were closed, some classes were cancelled, and plates and cups were flying all over the dining hall. Even though arriving later was a little disappointing, we have grown pretty accustomed to unexpected delays, and happily left the ship a little before noon. Our plan, or more accurately, incredibly rough and uninformed idea of what we should we do, was to visit the Big Buddha statue. We managed to find our way to the subway station, which was huge, decipher the automatic ticket dispenser, find the right platform, walk 10 minutes
underground to the right platform (the station was really big) and get on the right train.
The subway system, or MTR, in Hong Kong is massive (if I hadn’t mentioned that before), clean, although not as clean as Singapore, and really efficient. I think since a lot of the cities we have visited in Asia have such huge populations, public transit has to be efficient out of pure necessity. It was about a 30 min ride from Kowloon, where the ship was docked, to the Tung Cheng station. We had no idea, how much it would cost to take the Gondola up to see the Big Buddha, how long it would take, or if it would even before worth it. About 4 hours later we had the answers. We had to wait in line for close to three hours, first to buy tickets, then to board the gondola up and then to take it back down. It was pretty expensive too, but honestly was a fun experience. It would have been more fun if we didn’t have to wait so long, but I think having regrets about spontaneous travel destinations is a bad idea. After the Big Buddha, we took the train back to Sneaker street, which had a lot of cool kicks but they were too expensive, although I did buy some dress shoes and a D&G belt for that night’s festivities (read on…). We made it to the ship around 1830 for dinner, watched the incredible lights of the Hong Kong skyline, and met up with some more friends to go out.
During our time in line at the Big Buddha, we convinced ourselves that the coolest thing we could do that night was to dress up in our custom tailored suits from Vietnam, put on our fake Rolex watches and Ray Ban sunglasses, and head to Macao to go to the casinos. Again, our incredible (sarcasm) planning skills were put on display. There were several things we didn’t know about Macao that would have been helpful to know before we became utterly determined to get there. First, Macao, although a part of China, is like Hong Kong in that it is, in the colloquial expression “Same, same but different” meaning that to get to Macao requires a passport, departure forms, and a customs checkpoint. Two of my friends didn’t have their passports, so had to take the metro back to the ship, get them and meet us in Macao later that night. Second, to get to the casinos requires a 10-minute ferry ride to Hong Kong island and then an hour speed boat ride to Macao. This is both time consuming and expensive. Thirdly, we didn’t know that Macao had a separate currency from Hong Kong, which was already different from the currency used in main land China. Fortunately, the casinos took HK dollars and we only had to tip our one taxi in Macao a little extra to get him to accept HK dollars so we wouldn’t have to go to the ATM. Fifth(ly?), some residents of Macao are scum bags and think it is a good business to buy every single ticket for the only ferry returning to HK island, which happened to be the 4am ferry, and sell them at ridiculously high prices. After a lot of arguing, begging, trying to barter our fake Rolexes and attempting to call the police, we finally were able to get on the ferry back at 4am with only paying about 25% over the original value. We walked back onto the ship around 7am Sunday morning.
This episode in Macao certainly qualifies as a great travel story and was actually a blast. All of us looked incredible in our suits and watches, which entitled us to adopt a pretentious rich businessman persona for the evening. We arrived at the Sands Macao a little before midnight, and immediately withdrew 1,000HK dollars from the ATM (You’ll have to look up the exchange rate yourself to see how much US money that is). Lady luck was on my side at the black jack table, and I quickly found myself up a few hundred. We took a little break on the hotel’s top floor club, where we just walked in and sat at the VIP table (our waitress comes up and says, “you guys must be businessmen from Hong Kong, let me bring you some complimentary snacks). After the club, it was back to the card tables, where I hit a 10-1 payout on a 50HKD bet. At the end of the night I walked out with my initial investment and an additional 500HKD, which covered all the ferry and taxi expenses for the evening, plus a little extra.
Sunday: Sunday was comparatively uneventful. I got back on the ship around 7am, slept for a few hours, went to the mall for some breakfast and free internet, came back to the ship, packed and left for the airport for my flight to Beijing. Our flight was delayed about 90 minutes, which left us some extra time at the airport for a nice dinner. The HK airport was incredible, and the whole thing is built on a man made island. We arrived in Beijing around 2200 Sunday night (also a massive airport), and made it to our hotel a little before midnight. Needless to say I was pretty tired, and went straight to sleep.
Monday: Monday was the official start of our tour with the China Guide Company. China Guide is the first non-SAS affiliated tour group I have used this entire voyage, but a lot of friends signed up for it, the reviews online were positive, and it was a lot cheaper than the comparable SAS trip. Our first stop of the day was the Forbidden City, about 15 minutes from our hotel. We entered through the North Gate, which is a lot less crowded and touristy than the South Gate and gave us some space for photos. We followed our guide Vincent and his blue flag stick (which at the time I thought was silly, but later proved invaluable when trying to follow him through the crowded train stations) and learned some interesting history about the construction and purpose of the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City is massive. It has 9,999 rooms (lucky number) and housed 20,000 servants and workers for the royal family. The compound is beautifully renovated and restored, and truly gives a sense of the original magnificence of the city. Towards the southern side of the city it got a lot more crowded with tourist groups. This was frustrating, but did provide us the opportunity to watch a full on fistfight between several elderly Chinese women (no one was hurt, so it’s entertaining watching old people throw down). On the outside of the South Gate is a giant portrait of Mao facing the infamous Tiananmen Square. We walked over to Tiananmen Square, which is essentially just a giant platform, in fact, the largest public gathering area in the world. It is also the site of the iconic Tank Man photos from 1989 and the sight of the massacre of students and intellectuals by the communist party during that same time. Our guide warned us not to talk or ask questions about the massacre in public, since China is still a communist country and does not have all of the same freedoms we have in the states.
After Tiananmen Square, we had a family style lunch, which was delicious and then headed to the Silk Market. I’m usual not a huge fan of shopping, but there are certain items that I do enjoy buying; namely sneakers, adventure apparel and sports clothing. The Silk Market was heaven. I’m not gonna list everything I bought but lets just say I was forced to but a new North Face duffel bag just to hold all of the goods. After the Silk Market we drove about 90 minutes to the Jinshanling portion of the Great Wall. The ride was incredible and one of the first times I had seen mountains the entire voyage, and we managed to watch the setting sun just before arriving for dinner. Dinner was honestly kinda gross, but at least we were the only people in the area. I also bought a cool ski cap that looks like a panda face. About 25 out of 30 people in my group bought the same hat, which gave us the opportunity for some awesome panda pictures throughout the trip. At this point it was pitch black outside, around 40 degrees and we were in the middle of the mountains with no real cities within an hours drive; basically it was awesome and I was enjoying every second of it. We picked up our sleeping bags, mats, and a hand crank flashlight and hiked about 20 minutes uphill to the Great Wall.
The Great Wall of China is exactly that; Great. Although it was dark and unlit, I couldn’t help the feeling that I was standing on one of the most remarkable structures in the world. The shear magnitude of the wall is mind blowing. We were on just a tiny, tiny portion of it, but it still felt like one of the biggest things I have ever seen. Sleeping overnight on the wall was definitely an interesting experience. As soon as we got to the tower we were supposed to sleep at, I hiked about 20 minutes the other direction to the next tower where I had hoped to sleep alone, but I got yelled at and had to come back. I was able to negotiate with the guide to a spot about 10 minutes away from our group’s tower on an open section under the stars with two other friends. Before retiring to my humble abode consisting of a sleeping bag and mat, which was stiff from the cold, we had a few drinks, ate some oreos and tried our best to stay warm. I probably slept about 4-5 hours that night which isn’t too bad, considering the temp was right around freezing, and I haven’t been in weather cooler than 70 degrees since I left the states.
Tuesday: I awoke to an awesome sunrise, which I couldn’t fully appreciate because my contacts were out and my glasses had frost on them, but can still say was magnificent even with impaired vision. I wanted to stay in my sleeping bag to warm up under the sun, but decided I might as well just pack everything up and start hiking to warm up. We had to hike back down the path we took up the wall to return the sleeping bags. I did this ahead of everyone, snapped some pictures of the map to find out which tower to stop at, and got the go ahead from my guide to start the hike. The plan was to hike 15 towers, which was about 5km. The guide had told us it would take about 3 hours, but my roommate and I were determined to hike it in half the time. The hike was incredible. Not too hard, but certainly strenuous enough to keep the body warm and the views were indescribable. Literally, I’m not going to even try to describe how cool it was to hike the Great Wall of China, you have to find out for yourself. We made it to tower 15 in just over an hour, besting our goal, and giving us plenty of time to relax a bit, explore on to the next tower, film a music video of a Disney song, and eat some fruit we took from the bus. About an hour later, everyone else showed up and we had about a 20min hike down a path to the buses. I managed to rinse my face and hair with some water in the woods by the buses, threw on a clean shirt, ignored my smelly shorts and got back on the bus for the rest of the day.
It was around 11am at this point and after driving back into Beijing for lunch (not impressive except for the Chinese doughnuts at the end), we drove around the Olympic compound and then went to another market selling jackets, sneakers, jerseys, sunglasses, and headphones – my favorite things. I had planned on being more reserved with my shopping, but of course ended up spending just as much as the day before. The good news was that I had a new duffel bag to put all my loot in. The market also had a bathroom with actually toilet seats and toilet paper (a rarity in China) and I of course took advantage of the opportunity. After this evacuation (I apologize for the potty humor) we headed to the acrobatic show. The acrobatic show was everything I expected and more; a more authentic Cirque De Solei, with cool laser lights, ridiculously strong athletes, and a collection of acrobats obviously just barely subpar to world-class Olympic gymnasts. We checked into our hotel after the show, and had the evening to ourselves. After a shower, some friends and I headed out into the streets of Beijing. We tried some dumplings from the street vendor, but passed on the sheep’s testicles, fried snakeskin and scorpions. We spent a few hours wandering the streets and a mall, and turned into the hotel just before midnight to get some sleep.
Wednesday: After checking out of the hotel around 9am, we headed back into historic Beijing to visit a hutong. Hutongs are traditional Chinese communities that are very close knit. Historically they follow a sort of caste system, but in more recent times, everyone is seen as equal. The hutong we visited was very close to the Forbidden City and contained the drum and bell tower that we had seen from inside the Forbidden City a few days earlier. Hutongs are arranged in very narrow streets with similar sized and styled homes. We took a bike rickshaw ride through the community and ate lunch at one of the local’s homes (who happened to be friends with Jackie Chan and was Jet Li’s brother). We also climbed to the drum tower, which contained over a dozen massive drums and a bronze kelou (basically an elaborate water clock) used to measure time and announce it to the hutong. We then attended a traditional Chinese tea ceremony inside of the bell tower. The tea ceremony was really, really interesting, despite being a slightly stereotypical Chinese tourist attraction. We learned the proper serving, holding and even sipping procedures for tea, and were able to sample three different varieties, all of which were incredible. I couldn’t quite justify spending 20US to buy a small bag of tea, but definitely plan on trying to find some whole tealeaves and a proper tea maker back in the states. My favorite tea was the ginseng, but the fruit dessert tea was also really good.
After leaving the hutong we went to panda exhibit at the Beijing Zoo. You have to remember that 90% of the kids in my group (including me) had been wearing panda hats everywhere for the past two days, and so you can’t imagine our excitement (and the awkward stares of the zoo guests seeing 25 white kids running around with matching panda hats) once we got there. The panda exhibit was really cool, and we managed to get some awesome pictures of the real pandas and the people wearing panda hats. I wished we had more time at the zoo to explore some of the other exhibits, but we had to make our way to the Summer Palace.
The Summer Palace is awesome. The dynastic system in China allowed emperors to spend absurd amounts of money, time and labor on projects that are actually pretty pointless (case in point: terracotta warriors, the Great Wall, Yao Ming’s NBA career). The Summer Palace was originally built in the 1700s, then ransacked by the French in the 1800s and later rebuilt in the early 1900s. The dominant feature of the palace is this huge man made lake, and with the breeze that day, I desperately wanted to take a sailboat out on it. We didn’t have too much time at the Palace, but were able to walk outside down the Long Corridor which is covered with paintings and carvings, see the marble boat, and look at some of the buildings with cool names like Hall of Benevolence and Longevity and the Sea of Wisdom Temple. After the Summer Palace, it was off to the Beijing train station for an overnight train to Xi’an. The train station in Beijing was packed and kinda dirty, which was perfect preparation for our train, which was also packed and kinda dirty. Fortunately we had our own cabins with four beds (and not much more) a squatty potty every car, and a train worker who pushed a cart full of undistinguishable food every hour or so. Unfortunately the electricity in the cabins was pretty spotty, so we couldn’t use our laptops, but we were all tired enough that we passed out and slept pretty well.
Thursday: We got to Xi’an sometime around eight, met our guide and headed to the terracotta warriors. There was, let’s just say, some confusion between our guide and the original plans for the day, which would manifest itself into only having about 40mins at the terracotta museum, sitting on a bus for a combined 2 hours by the end of the day, barely making our train back to Shanghai and skipping our scheduled stop at the Muslim Quarter of Xi’an. With those minor frustrations aside, it was an absolutely awesome day. Really the only appropriate reaction to seeing the terracotta warriors is shock and disbelief at what you are looking at: thousands of soldiers and hundreds of horses and chariots lined up in neat rows, each one unique from. There are currently three pits where terracotta has been found, but there is a lot of excavation and digging still to be done. Farmers discovered the pits about 35 years ago (I met one of the farmers who found the terracotta warriors-he’s still a poor farmer, although he gets to sign books once in a while) and the museum and buildings were built more recently. 700,000 workers were used to construct the massive burial pit and craft each figure, and construction lasted several decades, all to appease the wishes of a young emperor.
After the terracotta warriors we drove back into Xi’an, ate lunch at a really fancy hotel and took the bus to the city wall. The Xi’an city wall is an eight-mile stretch of about a 70ft high by 40ft wide wall forming a square around the city. Because we had been cooped up on a train and buses a lot recently, and cooped up on a ship the past two months, everyone in my group rented bicycles and bike the whole perimeter of the wall. It was a blast biking. The weather was perfect; about 65 and sunny, the bikes, although kinda crappy made it the whole way, and it was just a fun way to spend an hour. Once the biking was complete, it was a race off to the train station to catch the 1700 train to Shanghai. We just made it to the waiting room before we had to board. Fortunately everyone made it, but we didn’t have time to pick roommates so me and another SAS kid had to share a cabin with two Chinese men. Everything worked out fine though, and the 15-hour train ride honestly went by kinda quickly. I slept like a baby, woke up and saw half the train’s occupants on the platform at the station in Shanghai, quickly threw my contacts in, grabbed my bags and got off the train a few minutes before it left for the next station somewhere in China.
Friday: After a 15min bus ride we were on the ship just in time to catch the end of breakfast. Unfortunately, SAS had failed to inform us that after boarding in Shanghai, it took about 2 hours to get your passport processed to be able to leave the ship again. Also, on-ship time had been moved up an hour, from1800 to 1700, meaning that 3 hours I had expected to have to explore Shanghai were gone. But that’s how things happened, and I spent my waiting time trying to find space in my room for all the stuff I bought (it all fits!) and taking a shower for the first time in a few days. Finally I was allowed off, and met up with some friends to take the subway to the science and technology center, where there was also a huge market. Of course I had to buy a few more jerseys and some more headphones for myself, and after my overindulgence we grabbed some great dumplings for lunch. My friends had been in Shanghai for a day already and visited some of the sights I wanted to see, so I ditched them later in the afternoon and took the subway by myself into the heart of downtown. It was a lot of fun to navigate the city by myself with only a Chinese map as my guide, but fortunately my destination was the tallest building in China and the third tallest in the world (I get to go to the 2nd tallest in Taipei next week) so it was pretty easy to know where I wanted to go. The Shanghai WFC is 1614ft tall, and basically looks like a bottle opener at the top with this massive bridge connected to towers, forming a square hole at the top. The elevator took 66secs to get to the observation deck on the 100th floor, the tallest observation deck in the world. It was quite an experience being that high above the ground and having the best views of the Shanghai skyline. Even though it was hazy out (Beijing and Hong Kong were really hazy too – I’m guessing it is air pollution), I could see a bunch of incredible buildings and even our ship on the other side of the harbor. I went down to the bar on the 94th floor, sat by the window and enjoyed a snack, probably one of the most unique locations I have ever eaten a cheese quesadilla in.
After the WFC I had a little bit of time to walk around down town. Shanghai is a beautiful city with clean, wide streets, lots of plants, a great subway, crossing guards at every intersection, and a very efficient layout. Shanghai is a relatively new city compared to other world cities, and the modernity of its layout and its buildings certainly shows. I made it back on the ship with about 20mins to spare, and had some time this evening to take some photos of the skyline at dark, which is really impressive. We have two days of class, one free day and then we will be in Taiwan. The realization that this trip is coming to an end is certainly becoming more apparent in our minds, but I try to ignore it and just enjoy the moment I am in. In a sadder bit of news, two SAS students were rather seriously injured on a fall on the Great Wall. The students were actually at the same spot on the wall as I was, just a day later. SAS officially announced that one student suffered a broken leg and is already back on the ship, but the other student sustained some pretty traumatic head injuries and was flown to Hong Kong to receive treatment. The latest official news is that she is responsive to some questions and is showing signs of improvement, but the injuries appear to be severe. Of course I have heard a lot of other news, but don’t think it is productive to post them on this forum, so I will only share what has been officially released by SAS. The student with the head injury actually works in the AV booth on the same shift as me every other day, so it is always a sad thing to see someone you know get hurt. I know both students and the entire shipboard community would appreciate your thoughts and prayers for a quick and full recovery.
Best,
Ben
No comments:
Post a Comment