Hong Kong

I'm going to do Hong Kong all in one post since I leave for Cambodia in 3 hours and won't have internet again for 3 days. Pardon the length of this one as a result.

 

First of all I LOVE Vietnam. We spent yesterday in Ho Chi Minh City / Saigon. Everyone is extremely nice, and everything is extremely cheap. It is so much different than the US in about every way imaginable, and that makes it quite an interesting place to visit. I'm a little bummed that I only get 2 days in Vietnam because of my 3 day trip to Cambodia, but I'm young and I can always make it back to some of these places.

 

For my Cambodia trip we hop an international flight today, get our Cambodian Visas and such and then I believe head to the capital of Phnom Penh where we will see the Killing Fields and learn about the Khmer Rouge. We then will see the Temples of Angkor Wat, which I have heard are stunning, and are on one of the many wonders of the world lists. I'm really excited, and I can't wait to tell everyone how they went.

 

Here is my update on Hong Kong. I don't have a travel quote at the end because I consider Hong Kong part of China and I'm low on time, so sorry for that but enjoy!

 

The first thing I will say about Hong Kong is that the flight we took was EARLY. I have no idea how it happened, but we were literally off the runway into the air 10 minutes before our scheduled departure time. Never, never, never would that happen in the US. As I mentioned before, the flight to Hong Kong was a little bit rough, but we made it in one piece. We got served some sort of chicken surprise dish which was not great, but it still baffles me how we get hot meals on board. That and the 4 times they come around to offer drinks is quite acceptable to me. It was so foggy when we landed that I had no idea the ground was coming. I heard the landing gear go down, but it looked like we were really high up in the middle of the sky. Not 30 seconds later I feel us touch down, and look out to see honestly nothing but fog. I have no idea how the pilot saw the runway but he did so hooray!

                When we got off the plane and got our bags it was about 11:00 if I recall, and the first order of business was getting to the ship to dump off all the junk we had from Beijing. We took a train to a station that was reasonably close to the pier, and even though it was a bit pricey, something like 9 dollars US, it worked out. From there we took a cab, and found the ship. We were actually docked literally inside of a mall. It was nice because it turns out the mall had free wifi, but the whole mall was pricey so I wasn’t the biggest fan.

                I dumped all of my stuff in the room, found that none of my roommates were home, so I caught up a bit on emails that I had missed. My friend Jose came down and we talked for a bit and decided to catch a bite to eat in the expensive mall waiting right outside for us. I wanted Thai food, but neither Jose nor Dani, a friend who also joined us, were feeling it, so we went to Pizza Hut instead. Let me tell you, this Pizza Hut was like nothing you have ever seen in America. First of all, it had a chef. I don’t know about you, but where I come from, Pizza Hut does not have a chef. Their menu was 90% fancy appetizers, salads, and pastas, and pizza seemed to be an afterthought. I got a tortilla pizza, which was basically a pizza on a very light and flaky crust which was terrific. For some reason they put mushroom and mango on their pepperoni pizza though, a bit weird but alright.

                After that, we went back and met Tolan and Sarah at our room and prepared to take off for the night. By the time we actually left we had 14 people I think, we are all so popular. So we headed out to grab a bite to eat. We went to this place that had I guess Chinese food, it was clearly Asian, but Chinese food is tougher for me to spot out. Regardless, the food was good. I had some chicken and barbecued pork on rice, the pork in particular was delicious. Afterwards we headed to the subway to make our way closer to the right area of the harbor to see the laser show that happens every night in Hong Kong. There are about 40 buildings along the harbor, like huge 100+ story sky scrapers, that are all lit up and have a synchronized thing to music every night. It was very overrated and not that great, but it was cool to see and totally free. We had the best seats in the city too. Honestly what I wanted them to do more than anything was kill all of the lights to the signs, like a mini-black out for 3 seconds, then turn EVERYTHING on, but they didn’t. They clearly don’t know how to do a real finale.

                We went from the laser show to the night market, which is famous in Hong Kong. We found that they were not happy to barter with us, and in fact when you tried to bargain they would get pissed off. I ended up getting a Hong Kong flag patch, to go along with my China one. I need a Japan one, along with a Japanese necklace, but Google will fix that problem just fine when I get home. I REALLY wanted a laser light while I was there. They had these high powered lights that could honestly light up buildings a mile away. Someone bought one and hit the center of an O on a 150 story building across the harbor from us. I talked myself out of it though because it would have been a waste of twenty bucks. I got a great smoothie there which probably wasn’t sanitary but oh well, and then we decided to go out. There was a street in Hong Kong we heard about, where the entire boat from Semester at Sea was, so we hung out there and talked to people we knew. I do have one eventful story from the evening though.

                So I’m standing there talking to a couple of friends, when these four British guys walk up to me. The conversation went as follows:

British People (B): Someone over here called my friend a pedophile do you know who that could be?

Thomas (T): Nope

B: Well he pointed to you.

T: Well I’m sorry, but I didn’t call your friend a pedophile.

B: I think it was really rude and uncalled of for you to call him a pedophile:

T: I didn’t.

B: He says it was you, are you calling my friend a liar?

T: I’ve never seen you in my life, why would I call your friend anything?

B: You called him a pedophile.

At this point he steps up like right in my face, clearly wanted to hit me, so I just walked away. He realized that at that point I was surrounded by at least 10 other semester at sea people, and fortunately for me half the guys there were over 6 foot and imposing figures. Declaring defeat, the British guys retreated to about 30 feet away and just sat there glaring at me. Eric, one of my roommates who is about 6’1’’ and a big, again imposing guy yelled at them, and they left.

 

So that is my story of almost getting into a fight in Hong Kong, but fortunately the other SASers had my back.

 

The next morning I had an FDP where I was supposed to go look at endangered species, but when I woke up for it I was exhausted so I went back to sleep. It wasn’t even for my class, so I didn’t feel too bad. Instead I hung out with Tolan, Sarah, and Jill all day and we had a good time. The first thing we did was book our plane tickets for India. We got a flight from Chennai to Delhi for 61 dollars US, and that included a surcharge to choose my own seat and a 3 dollar breakfast. I have heard their planes are very nice, new, and extremely safe too, so I’m pumped.

 

After booking the flight and getting on Facebook for a while, we took off and grabbed lunch. We ate at a Dim Sum restaurant, which is basically dumplingish things that come in different forms and have different fillings. It was really good but expensive. We each paid more than 15 dollars US, easily my most expensive meal yet, and didn’t get all that much. It took 45 minutes to get into the place too, so I think it is popular there and probably was our best bet. After that we decided to go to the top of Victoria’s Peak. To get up you take a sketchy tram that literally is at a 60 degree angle upwards. You have to work to even sit upright and not fall over the back of the bench. It could have made a really good thrill ride if they were more adventurous J. We got to the top, it is a mountain in the middle of Hong Kong, and from there had a view of the entire city. It was really pretty, definitely worth the time. We could even see our ship far away docked in the harbor. I bought a keychain, we wandered around, and then booked it back to try and catch the ship on time.

                On the way back Jill, Sarah, and Tolan tried Boba Tea, which is basically a tea-like concoction with Tapioca pearls just hanging out in the bottom of it. It was not my favorite thing ever, and the tapioca balls take you by surprise. Sarah and Jill headed back to the ship, and Tolan and I went off to spend the rest of our money. We each had about 50 Hong Kong Dollars left, roughly 7.50 US, and we decided we wanted fried rice. We go to the mall we are docked in and ask the information person for Fried Rice. She gets excited, understands us, and directs us to the nearest place. It is a huge mall and we walk for 10 minutes before seeing another info station. We ask them and they say keep going you are almost there. We arrive, and it is “New York Fries” is the restaurant. Apparently fried rice + American = hot dogs and fries. Having little time and no choice we blew all of our remaining cash on Chili Cheese Dogs and Fries. We then speed walked through the mall to make it back to the ship, and ended up back in plenty of time. Unfortunately the walking plus the hotdog gave me a massive stomach ache that didn’t go away the whole evening.

                Back on the ship we ate dinner and I was about ready to crash. I went to the room and popped a couple Tylenol Sinus PMs because they make me sleep wonderfully and I still felt a little stuffy. We had a lifeboat drill which I hardly remember because I was exhausted and on nighttime meds, and I went to the room to crash. The genius that I am looked at the clock, saw it was 7:50, remembered that the laser show which wasn’t even that great, started at 8:00, so I went on the deck to watch the laser show again. Ended up talking to a couple of people, didn’t make it downstairs and to bed until like 10:30. I woke up for my classes the next morning and feel totally refreshed at the time of writing this though so that is GREAT.

                We are somewhere in the ocean, I don’t know which ocean, almost to Vietnam. We are about 200 miles from the coast, directly east from the middle of the country. By the time you read this, I’ll have already been there and done that, but that is what is happening now. The weather is BEAUTIFUL. It is like 80, sunny, with a light breeze. For the first time all voyage they have the pool open, but I don’t love swimming in salt water so I didn’t bother. Vietnam is supposed to be 95 and about 1540303% humidity, so prepare to hear me whine about that soon. (Update: Vietnam is really hot, I sweated a ton the first day, but the heat was a nice change. I think I lost about 5 pounds too, all of my China food weight that I gained :)

 

That’s Hong Kong and life in a minute, I hope everyone is well. Drop me an email!

 

Thomas

China Part 4 - Finishing up in Beijing

This is the fourth of four China blogs. It would make more sense to read them in order if you haven't, but to each their own right? First I will update you on what is happening to the minute though.

 

It is 6:30 am here right now. I woke up at 6 am to catch the sunrise in Vietnam, and it did not disappoint. We are going through extremely calm water to Ho Chi Minh city, and the scenery never fails to impress. I have pictures of 3 sunrises in 3 countries now, so hopefully I keep it up!

 

Today in Vietnam we are going to go figure out how to have a suit tailored, probably find a cheap massage somewhere, maybe see some temples, and eat some delicious food. I'm pretty excited about it. Hopefully everything is reasonably priced! I leave for Cambodia tomorrow to see Pnomh Penh (bad spelling I believe), the Killing Fields, and the Temples of Angkor Wat.

 

We had a pre-port meeting last night like we do before every stop where they acquaint us with the culture and some logistics. The summary of this pre-port was to stay the heck away from any and all water, and coat yourself in deet. They spent a cumulative 45 minutes telling us about all of the diseases we could get if we did stupid things, so I am sufficiently scared. I will be bathing in bug spray for the whole port and have no intention of swimming in anything.

 

We should be off the ship by 11 am or so. Immigration has been on board for 3 days processing all of our Visas, so we just need to pick up some piece of paperwork and our passports I guess and we should be good to go. I think we have to listen to the Consulate talk to us about all kinds of useful (not so much) things as well.

 

So that's a current update, now back onto China.

This is the last blog about the mainland of China/Beijing. I have another one for Hong Kong which I'll throw up tomorrow morning most likely before I leave for Cambodia.

 

I hope everyone is enjoying daily updates, there is just so much to talk about that I have to keep pumping them out.

 

The next day was our last day in Beijing, and we woke up, ate, and caught the bus at 9 am. Our first stop for the day was an “Antique” market full of plenty of awesome looking fake things that I would buy if I had more money. They had 30 foot dragon statues to put in your yard which would be the coolest thing ever. How much fun would it be to give directions to your house if you had a dragon taller than the actual house hanging out in your front yard? Oh just take your first right and stop at the big dragon, that’s the one. I bought a little Terra Cotta warrior for like 75 cents which didn’t bother me one bit. What I really wanted there was an oil painting of the great wall, but again I’m not quite that loaded. It had a starting price of like 3000 yuan, which means I could have got it for 500-600 realistically, but that is still almost 100 dollars on artwork and I am a college student. Jay and Eric both bought these little red books filled with quotes from Mao. I believe they are the Chinese Communist bible of sorts and it was really interesting to read some of them.  Honestly the guy wasn’t saying anything too revolutionary, just things like “A good leader always has his mind on the will of the masses”. I can see how people are happy living in China even without the individualism available in America. Having grown up with the latter, I couldn’t give it up, but if all I knew was Chinese Communism, it really isn’t as oppressive as it is made out to be.

                Here’s a cool quick story about the market. There was a guy sleeping on his bike there, clearly a beggar, or homeless man. I was going to take his picture, when a Chinese man spoke soft English to me told me to only take pictures of the beautiful parts of his country. I thought it was admirable that he wanted foreigners to have a good opinion of his country when they left. I obliged of course.

                We ate hot pot for lunch, which was very good. We got way more food than we did the first time we tried it, and by the end of it we were extremely full. I went through way more than I should have eaten, but that’s okay, I’m in China and am not about to start a diet in the middle of it. We went to the Pearl Market afterwards and shopped there for about an hour. It was similar to the silk one with different items, but equally fake and cheap. I keep trying to find a new wallet, but apparently Tri-Fold is something that they don’t do. One lady actually started beating us with a wallet which was a bit odd but comical. I told her I didn’t like her wallets and she hit me on the head with them and told me that yes I did like them. She than thumped me on the back and I bailed, afraid for my life. We got another Blizzard at a Dairy Queen nearby, because the first one was that good, and waited for the bus to leave. One guy got a remote controlled helicopter for like 12 dollars, and I am still jealous of it. If we had more time I would have bought one in a heartbeat. Owning one is on my bucket list now.

 Our hunger and shopping satisfied, we left for the Temple of Heaven, what would be our last stop on our tour of Beijing with the China Guide. I was not looking forward to the temple so much after the Temple of Earth was kind of uneventful, but fortunately I was wrong. There were tons of gardens and trees which were gorgeous, but once you got into the actual area where the Temple of Heaven, or rather the Hall of Good Harvest or something sits, it was amazing. It is a huge round building sitting on top of a bunch of steps in the middle of a square courtyard. The courtyard is square because that represents earth, and the temple is circular and above the earth because it represents heaven. The temple is also smaller than the square courtyard because the Chinese believe heaven is smaller than earth. It is the site where Chinese leaders prayed or perhaps still pray once a year for good fortune and harvests for their people. We took group photos here and then walked out the other side. I thought that was all we would see there, but there was so much more to the area. There was another corridor, similar to the long one in the Summer Palace filled with more vibrant painted crossbeams. What was cooler though was that there were people singing and playing all over the place here. There were hundreds of people sitting playing cards, some playing Hacky Sack, others listening to the musicians, and it was spectacular to see Chinese people living their everyday lives. They looked like they were full of live and I loved seeing it. There was a nearby courtyard where music was playing and hundreds of people were just dancing by themselves. A bunch of us jumped in and made a conga line which many of the locals joined in on, and everyone was full of smiles. A lady came over and started dancing with us, showing us how they do it, and it honestly was just about loving life. A photographer came over and took our picture, and this morning we picked up a local newspaper to see this lady and the faces of about 6 SAS students in the paper, amazing. The last thing we did at the Temple of Heaven was stop by a “Public Gym” which was honestly a playground for adults. It was full of these things you would expect to see at a park, like monkey bars and jungle gyms, but there were adults using them to work out. Everyone was so happy to be there, enjoying the fresh air and working out. We really need to have places like that in America. The locals challenged some of the guys to a fitness thing that every SASer failed at, but it was all in good fun. After that we departed and made our final drive to the hotel.

                 At the hotel, half of the group packed up their stuff to catch an evening flight to Hong Kong. I was on the morning flight, so I did not. I said bye to Jay and Eric, who left that night, then met up with four other friends and went to dinner at a restaurant next door. At this point I was pretty much exhausted so I didn’t eat much or anything good, and after I just went back to the hotel and crashed. We had to be up at 6:30 the next morning, ready to get on the shuttle bus to the airport. We got to the airport, passed through customs, got our tickets, and went through immigration. The good news was that they stamped my passport here, so it is slowly accumulating stamps, visas, and all kinds of good stuff. I want to fill it up of course and get more pages. The flight to Hong Kong was or rather is a little rough, I’m actually typing this up on the flight so I suppose that means I am up to the minute on my blogging now. Because we have quite a few days at sea between Vietnam and India, 7 I think, I’m going to do Hong Kong separately and I’ll post that when I get back from Vietnam. That way it gets spaced out a bit more.

Here are a couple of random thoughts about China, some might be repeats but oh well.

·         I like Japan more than China. Japan was orderly, clean, quiet, beautiful, and nice. China is full of people who look like they are more excited to be alive, but it is louder, dirtier, seems more dangerous, and is far less connected with culture than Japan. Between the two, I would visit Japan again in a heartbeat. I think my picture of China would be far different if I had seen more of the outdoors or historic parts of it though.

·         If you want to go to Beijing, 5 days is about the right amount of time if you can get up and going early. I feel like we saw 90% of the “must sees” and experienced most of the culture that was accessible to us.

·         The Great Wall MUST be on everyone’s bucket list. If you don’t see it you are truly missing out. It is a wonder of the world for a reason and it is truly stunning. Words can’t describe how huge and marvelous it is.

·         I’m glad I slept on the wall. It will make a great story for the rest of my life, and even if I was miserable for the night and am still feeling ill from it, I slept under the stars on the Great Wall of China.

·         China has a nationwide internet firewall that blocks Facebook, Wikipedia, Blogs, Youtube, and anything else that I might want to look at for fun. It’s interesting that they have gone that far, but those sites aren’t necessary to life and the promote free expression a little too much for the Chinese government.

·         There are more people that I ran into in China that spoke passable English, but more that spoke none at all. There were quite a few people, mainly those working in some capacity, that I was able to get directions from, order from, and effectively have broken conversations with. That being said, in Japan, rarely was there anyone who didn’t understand ANY English, whereas in China, some of the most basic words were foreign to them. For example I had a hard time ordering water half the time because they don’t understand the word “Water” which given that it is one of the three things we need to survive, I would think it would be one worth learning.

·         While China has the people, resources, and potential to overtake the US in terms of Economics, Politics, Military, or whatever, it is still decades away in terms of organization and attitude.

·         I only spent $240 in spending money in China. While the trip I took was obviously way more, I think I did a good job of being a bit stingier.

So that was China. By the time I post this it will probably be the night before, or the morning that I leave for Cambodia which I am super excited for. I have a couple of days in Vietnam too, which I am going to spend having a suit made, getting a cheap massage, and perhaps seeing the Mekong Delta. Cambodia is the site of the Killing Fields and the Temples of Angkor Wat, both of which I am excited to see. I will let everyone know how those and Hong Kong went!

As always if you have any questions, comments, thoughts, or stories for me, please don’t hesitate to email me. Tmalinowsky@gmail.com or Tdmalinowsky@semesteratsea.net

Thanks for reading!

Thomas

 

"People travel to far away places to watch, in fascination,

the kind of people they ignore at home."

-Dagobert D. Runes

China Part 3 - Sleeping on the Wall and More

The scenery outside of the city of Beijing was really something else, definitely beautiful. There were mountains everywhere, but they looked different than the Rockies or the Appalachians for example. They were more rounded, and nearly all of them had terraces built on them to support agriculture. I’m not sure if they still grow things on them today, but there were rows of trees neatly planted that probably provide fruit when it isn’t so cold out. We finally caught site of the Great Wall after a couple of hours, and I was at least pretty excited. We parked and began our hike up the wall to see the sunset! I had heard it was tough to climb the wall, and it never really registered with me. After all, it is only what? Like 30 meters high? It never occurred to me that to get to the wall in the first place you have to climb a mountain, so after a 30 minute hike up this mountain, we made it on the wall. We were early, so I hiked up to a bit higher point on the wall, and from there took way too many pictures and saw the sunset. The wall is so beautiful, words really don’t describe it. You know you are at a wonder of the world when you take pictures of it and when you go back and look at them, they all look fake. One of the ones that I took with me in front of the wall honestly looks like I Photoshopped myself in over it, though I promise I didn’t! We climbed back down the wall and had our first meal with the China Guide. When they are in charge of the meal, we go to restaurants and they order for us. So the tables hold 9-10 people and have a huge spinning glass center where they put food and we serve ourselves family style. They bring out so many dishes and I tried everything, most of which was delicious. I was told real Chinese food was a lot different than in the US, and while it definitely was different, it wasn’t that bad. We still got dishes I wouldn’t be surprised to see in the US. The major difference with real asian food is that they use more mystery vegetables and meat that you don’t ask about, and the rice is AWESOME. I am going to eat more rice when I go home for sure, I’m a big fan.

                We left the restaurant and headed to a different section of the wall. The first one we were at was the Jinsaling section, and the next one where we stopped was the Simatai section. At the Simatai section, we got all geared up in our cold weather clothes, it was below freezing, and began to climb up again. This climb was far higher and more taxing than the first one, and we were all exhausted by the time we reached the top. We found a guard tower that had sleeping bags and drinks all ready for us and set up camp, ready to sleep on the wall! The inside of the tower filled up quickly, and the only places open were next to the door and next to the bucket that people used to relieve themselves, so Jay and I joined some others outside on the wall under the stars. While it was a great experience and one that I’ll always be able to talk about, we were idiots to sleep out there. Even in two sleeping bags, and all of my clothes, shoes, jacket, etc, we were still freezing. I hardly slept at all, pretty much in sporadic 10 minute spurts all night, and by the time we woke up at 5:30 am, my whole body was pretty much numb. I was convinced that I was going to die. We woke up that early because Vince told us the sunrise would be then, though it didn’t actually happen until 7:30, but whatever works. The sunrise was beautiful, and I took plenty of pictures again. We ate breakfast and set out on a hike across the wall. The hike was over 4 miles of pretty rugged terrain. For those who picture the wall as a well maintained thing with a smooth surface on top (I know I thought it was), it is NOT. It is hundreds of years old, and falling apart in places. It is very much a hike and not a leisurely walk. The hike however went quickly and was a lot of fun. I warmed up in no time and was in the first group of people the whole way. We went the whole time without taking any breaks so I was proud of myself for making it. I took even more pictures, which looked even more fake because the wall is so darn cool, and eventually we were at a shady suspension bridge that we crossed to the end of our hike.

                At the end of this section of the wall is a zip line that we were told we could take down for $6. When we arrived it was all shut down for the holiday, but Vince made some phone calls and we got a guy to run up and start it for us. Pretty much the whole group did the zip line, and Jay and I were the 2^nd people to go off of it. I think I put a picture up of the thing, so check it out, but this was a very long zip line. It went over a really pretty lake, and the whole ride was more than a minute long. For those who have zip lined before, a minute is forever on those things. It was probably dangerous, but a ton of fun and we got through it with no problems. We walked to the busses, waiting for us at the bottom, dropped off our coats, and ate another delicious meal at a restaurant nearby.

                After that, the whole bus was exhausted and starting to get sick. Again, sleeping outside in sub-freezing temperatures was probably a bad idea, but it will make a great story. We boarded the bus for the ride back to Beijing, waved goodbye to the wall, and collectively passed out for a couple of hours. When we got to Beijing, we found ourselves at the Olympic village from 2008, site of the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube. The main stadium, the Bird’s nest was huge and really an architectural marvel. The Water Cube was alright, but you really have to see it at night to get the full effect I think. It isn’t a cube either, it is way longer than it is tall, but they didn’t seem to mind J. We went back to the hotel after that and rested for a couple of hours before having dinner free to roam around. We ended up at a mall in some section near to our hotel and wandered around there looking for cheap food. We ended up at a place called Fugong Noodles, where I got fried rice (Good) and some noodle bowl with raw egg chilling in it (Not Good). Still a bit hungry, Eric, Jay and I broke off from the rest of our group and went to Dairy Queen to get Blizzards. It goes against all my beliefs about not eating at places you can find in the states but I don’t even care, I wanted a Blizzard. Eric and Jay stopped at McDonalds to get a Big Mac and fries, but at that point I had eaten my fair share. We had some time to kill so we went to an awesome Chinese arcade where we played a racing game, some basketball, and a tribal drum game with the same concept as Dance Dance Revolution. You hit the drum when it tells you to on the screen and it was a lot of fun even if we sucked at it. We left there to meet up with the rest of the group again, walked back to the hotel and crashed hard.

                The next morning we grabbed the same breakfast at the hotel again, and met our guides in the lobby at 8:30. The first stop we made was at the Temple of Earth. There are four big temples in Beijing I guess, Fire, Earth, Heaven, and some other one. This turned out to be pretty much a huge tree garden area surrounding a courtyard that was decked out with carnival games. This was the big day of the Chinese New Year, so there were performers and stuff out, but it was really pretty boring. I ended up getting lost from the group, leaving early, and checking in with my parents. I found the busses and waited there till everyone got back, and we then took off to the Hutong district for a Rickshaw ride! The Hutong is an older neighborhood in China, as in hundreds of years old, where the buildings are fundamentally the same as they were way back in the day. It was cool to see, and we got to ride Rickshaws through the whole thing. We stopped and ate a meal prepared by a family in their home and learned a little bit about Chinese lifestyles. Their homes are far smaller than ours, with little personal space to relax. If there is any space for relaxation, it is shared between multiple generations living together, or even multiple families. The food was great, and afterwards we finished up our rickshaw ride and got back on the busses to head to the Summer Palace.

                The ride to the Summer Palace was about 45 minutes, and after another short nap we arrived. The story of the palace is worth telling. The last emperor of China in the early 1900’s I believe was very young, and while he was too young to effectively lead the country, the “Dragon Lady”, some relative of his, took over running the country. Afraid that when he became of age he would seize her power, she built the Summer Palace and confined the emperor to it. While it was a huge area, similar to the Forbidden City in size, the emperor was unable to leave the palace for basically his entire life. The palace was filled with gardens and the architecture was very stereotypically Chinese. There was a corridor called the “Long Corridor” which was something like 700 meters long, and had over 700 beams with a unique hand painting on each. There was a lake in the center of the area which was beautiful, and the whole thing was really neat to look at. After making the rounds through there, we set off. We were a bit early, so we had time to go to “Dr. Tea” which was a tea house somewhere in Beijing. There, we tried different kinds of tea for free, and ¾ of the people on the trip ended up buying some to take home. It was delicious, but not being the biggest tea drinker, I decided to save my money for something more useful.  We relaxed there until it was time for dinner, and we set out to have Peking duck!

                Eating duck is apparently necessary and traditional in China, so it was part of our trip. We went to a restaurant that was a bit more upscale and had delicious food. They served us much of the same stuff that we had been eating elsewhere, but at the end they brought out the duck. The duck was full, head and all, and fried or baked or something to a nice deep brown. They cut it up for us, and brought us a small tortilla thing, sauce, and vegetables to eat with it. I actually was not a huge fan of it, the actual meat simply tasted like turkey and the skin was a little too different for my tastes. I did try it though! Everyone was stuffed after that meal, but we pushed on and headed to the Beijing Opera to see an acrobatics show. The show was amazing, very similar to Cirque du Soleil with a bit less of an artsy edge I suppose. They did all kinds of tricks, and had a laser light/hologram system that made the whole thing that much better. I took some great pictures of it and have a couple of videos too. The pictures will probably be up by the time I get around to this post actually. There we ran into a couple of other groups on official SAS trips, so afterwards it was mass chaos trying to find the right busses. Usually we can just follow the white people and it works every time, but this time there were like 9 busses full of people I recognized. We made it of course because we are awesome, and headed back to the hotel.

                That night our tour guide Vince decided to come out with everyone, so we headed to some district whose name I can’t remember nor pronounce, and went to a bar there. I got separated from the rest of the group I was with because I was waiting on my friend Jill to come down, but we ended up finding everyone really easily. There were people from SAS trips who ended up there and I ran into a bunch of friends of mine which was nice. I had seen only the faces on the same trip as mine for 3-4 days at that point, so it was good to hang out with others for a couple of hours. Many of them were on the Beijing/Xian trip, which is the one I was signed up for but backed out of at the last minute to save money. I’m royally jealous of all of them for seeing the Terra Cotta warriors, but I will be okay. We had plenty of fun with our extra time in Beijing! That night was a ton of fun hanging out with everyone, and we ended up leaving for the hotel pretty late. Unfortunately our hotel was in the middle of nowhere, so none of the cab drivers knew how to get there. After asking at least 10 of them, we finally just told one to take us back to Ho Hi, and walk from there. We got lost, had to ask for directions at another hotel we ran into, but finally made it back and went to bed to catch our few hours of sleep.

China Part 2 - Arrival in Beijing

This is the 2nd of 4 parts to my China Blog. The first is already posted below and would be a good one to start with. Keep an eye out for the rest.

 

Quick current update.

We left Hong Kong last night at about 8:15 and are now going full speed ahead to Vietnam. We will be there in less than 48 hours. It is crazy to be in class so little when you think about it. We did 6 days in Japan, 8 days in China, and 6 days coming in Vietnam with only 4 total days of class in between. I could definitely get used to school like this.

I got about 10 hours of sleep last night to help catch up with what I miss in port. I feel alright this morning, but still a little groggy from my cold that I am getting over. I'm also taking Larium as a Malaria prevention drug, and it is supposed to have some nifty side effects including nightmares, anxiety, depression, and thoughts of suicide. So far I'm clear of those, but each night after I took the pill (Once a week), I have woken up and just stared at the wall for like 10 minutes, completely confused about where I am. It's really comical to think back on it the next morning though!

 

Okay all that aside, I need to go get in my nap for the day, so here is a small novel to read about China!

 

 

The next morning we woke up pretty late and packed for our 5 day trip to Beijing. I brought a duffle bag and a backpack, neither even close to full, but I wanted to have some extra space in case I needed it. We set off for the airport at about 11, but first we had to find a post office. After struggling to find one because no one speaks English, we finally ended up in a “China Post Museum” which had a random post office on the 2^nd floor. I had to send a package to a group of students in New Hampshire which are my awesome pen pals for the semester. I also had a couple of magazines I bought in Japan that I sent to a couple of friends while I was there. Whereas in America we fill out one form to ship something internationally, China is not so easy. To send the package to the kids, they had to open it up and search through the items, then made me fill out I believe 7 forms with the same information.  The magazines were easier, only like three forms for each, but still ridiculous. After about a half hour in there, I managed to pay my thirty dollars in postage and get out. I’m glad Eric and Jay were in patient moods! We took a cab to the airport and checked in, a really easy process actually. All you do is show them your passport and they do the rest for you. We got through security fast as well, leaving an hour to kill where we just sat in the Shanghai airport. We got on the plane, which was about 1/3 Semester at Sea people, and took off. After a short flight, which included a full hot meal that was pretty good, we began our descent into Beijing and saw one of the many differences between China and the US. As we were landing, a plane came down and landed on the runway next to us about 100 yards away. In the US you never even see a plane while you are in the sky, but here it was almost like a synchronized landing. Everyone got off, got their luggage successfully, and we headed to find a sign saying “Semester at Sea” being held up by our guides for the week.

                We found our two guides easily and waited for everyone to get there. The guides names were Vincent and Linda and they were both extremely helpful and a lot of fun. I ended up on Linda’s bus, which was admittedly more boring, but we had more room on there. Vince was more popular and more fun, and I ended up following his group more often because he was interesting to listen to. We got on the busses and headed to our hotel, which was in the middle of a pretty sketchy area of Beijing but turned out alright. Because it was Chinese New Year, most businesses were closed, but had they not been closed we would have been on a street with tons of local market type shops and restaurants. Once we checked in and dropped off our luggage and passports (the hotels in China have to hold your passports while you stay with them), we set off looking for dinner and some entertainment. We found the only restaurant that appeared to be open for blocks and went in to find out that it was hot pot. First of all, before I explain, let me say that if you haven’t had hotpot you really shout try it. It is a lot of fun and the food is good. So what happens is they bring out these little boiling pots of water to each person and then you get plates full of raw vegetables, meat, and noodles to put into them. It all cooks in less than five minutes, so you take it out, cover it in some sauce, and eat. We had so much fun cooking our food, which was delicious, and we served as the entertainment of the night for the locals. At one point we had nine waitresses surrounding our table laughing at us. They ended up actually doing a lot of the work for us because we had no idea what was going on. I considered it a successful night given that the food was great, and I only burnt myself three times on the hot pot. Five days later I still have a mark from one of the burns, so I’m hoping it turns into a cool star that I can tell a story about. The whole meal ended up costing 33 yuan a person, and included a free bottle of wine for the table. For those unfamiliar with exchange rates (everyone I imagine), that comes out to five dollars a person for a meal that in America would have been well over twenty.

                After dinner we wandered to a district called “Ho Hi” (I’m sure I butchered the spelling) where there were apparently some places open at night worth seeing. It was a series of restaurants and bars surrounding a pretty cool little lake, and we had a good time seeing it. Everything in China is lit up at night with basically Christmas lights, and while I’m not sure if it was only for New Years or if it is an all year thing, it was really neat. We ended up wandering around there, stopped at a couple of places and listened to some locals do Karaoke and left soon after. Eric bought some funny Communist posters which were blatantly anti-American and would surprise me if he gets them back into the US, but provided a laugh nonetheless. We decided to call it a night and headed in, ready to see some of the touristy stuff the next day.

                We woke up the next morning and ate breakfast at the hotel, which included some Dim Sum (Again bad spelling I’m sure), which are these little puffy balls filled with meat and vegetables. They are pretty good and I think you can get them in the US at any Chinese restaurant easily. We got on the bus and the first thing we set off to see was the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City was the palace area used by Chinese emperors up until the 1920s and it was HUGE. It was called Forbidden because no one got in unless you were royalty or worked there. Fortunately now it is open to the public and we were going to see it. There were dozens of courtyards and huge buildings all over the place in it, basically it was set up to run the government of the whole country so you can imagine how much space there was. I believe there were actually 729 rooms in the whole thing, which is 9 cubed (lucky number). It took us about two hours to make it through the city, and while it got repetitive, I am glad I saw it. While there we were again the object of fascination for the Chinese people who constantly would paparazzi us. They loved waiting until someone got kind of separated from the group, and then asking you to pose for pictures with them. I posed for probably a dozen or so, and gave them some nice big smiles. We left the Forbidden City and another Chinese man wanted me to pose for a picture with him, only this one wanted me to shake his hand and pose, so it looks like we were engaging in some peace talks or something, it was pretty funny. We headed from there to Tiananmen Square, right across the street and saw that next. It is a huge open area, I believe Linda said 45 hectares which means little to me other than huge. In the center was a huge statue, and on either side was government buildings and a museum.

                After Tiananmen Square we walked a couple of blocks to the busses, past the tomb of Chairman Mao which had a line thousands of people long waiting to see him. It’s crazy how much Mao is still almost worshipped in China, his picture is everywhere. Apparently he is resting under glass so you can still see his body, but we weren’t going to wait four hours to do so. We left and went to the Silk Market, which is basically a six story building full of vendors who sell generally fake items at a fraction of their US cost. I bought a spare battery for my camera because I lost my case and battery in Hawaii. I paid $15 US for it, which is cheaper than I could get it back home, and it works, but I think I could have gotten the lady lower. A local Chinese guy said the lowest they usually go for batteries is half of what I paid, but I didn’t know that before. Oh well! I also bought a watercolor scroll painting of a tiger for $6 and a painted carved tiki mask thing for $7. They both will look pretty awesome on the wall in my cabin. After too much time and money at the market we left on our three hour bus ride to the great wall!

 

China Part 1 - Shanghai

Like Japan, this is going to be the mother of all blogs. I’ll break it up into manageable parts, but if you haven’t got caught up yet with the older ones, now might be a good time to because there is going to be a lot more in the coming days.


We are currently in Hong Kong, I’ll explain what I did here later, but I’m going to start from the beginning, which in this case was China. Some of this might be a repeat of my start to China, but that’s ok!

We got to Shanghai really early in the morning, apparently the harbor pilot boarded at 1 am. We pulled in and were all docked by 6:45 am which is when I woke up. Realizing I had missed sunrise, I booked it up to the deck to take some pictures anyways, and got some pretty nice ones. When we pulled into Tokyo there were at least 50 people up there on deck, but this time it was only myself and the global studies professor. There is a huge tower in Shanghai, called the Pearl Tower I think, that is really tall and really cool looking. I put a couple of pictures up of it with the last batch I posted, so take a look. Anyway, that tower was what was right outside of our window and across the harbor from us when we woke up, so it was a really neat sight to see. They didn’t get immigration started until almost 10 am, which was frustrating, but it moved pretty fast once it started. We went up to the faculty lounge, had our temperature scanned, passports looked at, and some forms to fill out but after that we were done and free to go.

I didn’t really have any plans for Shanghai so I hung out with my friend Simone for the morning and made plans to meet up with some other people in the afternoon. We set off to see what there was to do, and decided to head into the direction of the Bund. The Bund is a shopping district that is pretty old and historic. The architecture looks similar to the British parliament building actually. We got to the general area of it, and having no interest in shopping that early we just walked around trying to figure out how to make it across the harbor to the giant tower I mentioned. We stopped for a second so Simone could borrow my phone, and the first of many staring sessions began. In America we might catch ourselves staring at an obvious group of foreigners, and in China they are no different. As we are standing there up against a building, throngs of people walk by and they literally stare at us all the way. Many bust out cameras and start taking pictures of us, and one person even picked up his daughter, puts him in between us, and takes a picture. It was really hilarious, and I was happy to smile for as many pictures as they wanted to take. Not too far from where we were stopped was the “Bund Sightseeing Tunnel” which according to a map was going to take us under the harbor and out the other side. We went down and bought a ticket for the tunnel, an arctic exhibit and a sea exhibit not really knowing what we were getting into. Here we also got our first experience with the salespeople in China. Walking through some souvenir places, we made the mistake of stopping and actually looking at the things they were selling. They take this as a sign of wanting to buy, so they immediately start telling you that they have a good price for you. When you walk away, they grab you and start to lower the price. On the whole it is really funny, I couldn’t keep a straight face, but they are really persistent. I ended up buying a necklace which has my name written in Chinese. It goes along with the one I got in Hawaii and I’m going to keep getting as many as I can. No luck in Japan though.

So we get on this “Sightseeing Tunnel” and it turns out to be a little gondola tram thing on a track that goes through a laser light show tunnel. It was really pretty awesome for the five dollars it cost us to go through. It even had a story to go along with it that they translated into English that made no sense, but it made the whole thing that much better. We got to the other side and saw the two other exhibits we paid to see and they were a bit of a disappointment. In the “Rare Ocean Creatures” exhibit we did see some baby sharks and sea turtles which were cool, however they consider things like guppies and gold fish rare creatures apparently, so we also saw those. The arctic exhibit was a giant joke, with a bunch of plastic models of creatures and all signs written in Chinese, but we laughed it off and went on our way. When we got out of the tunnel we found a restaurant and had our first experience with eating in China. I got dumplings and a huge plate of pork and rice for less than five dollars and it was pretty good. The service was terrific too. We left from there and went to the big tower where we were going to meet some other friends at about 4:00. Well we told them to meet us at the “Front Door” not really knowing how much of a zoo it was going to be. There were probably a million people literally in that one small area, and needless to say there was no clear front door and we never found the others. After that we went to a mall close by, also filled with hundreds of thousands of people, and then started to make our way back to the ship to try and find the people who we didn’t manage to catch up with. On the way back we found a market where I actually bought some stuff. I got a pair of fake Oakley sunglasses for 75 yuan I believe, which is 11 dollars in the US. I probably could have done better, but I was still learning how to bargain. It was funny, because when they saw us coming, they got into prime selling mode and booked it to their stalls. A guy selling gloves had me suckered in from the start, and despite my attempts to just leave, he would physically restrain me and eventually I just bought gloves from him. They were fake North Face Gloves that I paid $15 for, but regardless of being real or fake they are really warm so I couldn’t care less. Finally I ended up getting a jacket for about $40 US, and in hindsight I severely overpaid for it, but I think it will turn out alright as long as it doesn’t fall apart on me.

We made it back to the ship at about 7:00 and two of my roommates, Jay and Eric, were just getting back too. I found out they overpaid for all kinds of things too, so I didn’t feel so bad. They each bought fake North Face coats which looked pretty good, and Eric bought a big stone dragon for his Grandma. As with all of the other stuff he has bought, he says he is putting it on the shelf over my bed in case it is bad luck. That just means my side of the room looks more festive though! Eric and Jay were going to go out that night with some girls that Eric had been hanging out with, so I decided to join them along with my friend Carson who we also found at the ship. We ended up having a lot of fun just hanging out that night and getting to know everyone, I’m really glad I went.

Quick China Update

So I'm in my hotel in Beijing and figured I'd give a quick update. I won't get into everything I've done, that will have to wait, but I will post a couple of thoughts I have about China and stuff.

 

First of all let me say that if anyone reading this is a future SASer and is wondering what to do in China. The company we are all using, The China Guide, has done a pretty exceptional job keeping us organized, on time, and shown us a good time. I don't know if you can do it cheaper, you probably can, but if you are looking for a trip cheaper than the official SAS ones, with good guides, and a pretty packed itinerary, you get a lot of bang for the buck with these guys.

 

Ok now, I have to admit that I liked Japan a whole lot, and at this point I like Japan a lot more than China. Japan is equally dense in terms of population, but the people are so much more quiet and organized that it doesn't feel too crowded. In China there are people everywhere, they are louder and ruder, the cities are dirtier, more dangerous, and on the whole it is just less pleasant. That is not to say that it isn't a ton of fun, because it is, it is just very different.

 

The food in China has been great, and it is not as different from American-Chinese and other asian foods as I was led to believe it would be. Nothing I have eaten has been too outlandish and it has all been pretty tasty.

 

I slept on the Great Wall. We drove three hours to the wall yesterday to watch the sunset, then climbed down and ate dinner. It is really quite a trek to get up to it given that not only is it 30 meters high or so, but it is on top of mountains. After dinner, we hiked up to the top of a different section, much higher, and slept on the wall. Myself and some others chose not to sleep inside one of the guard towers and instead literally outside in the 20 degree weather and I quite nearly froze to death. I hardly got any sleep, feel terrible today, but I can say I did it and the sunrise in the morning was stunning. I'm going to put up pictures right after this on Photobucket since Facebook is banned in the whole country of China and I can't get on.

 

New Year's in China is a challenge. People fire off fireworks in all places at all times of day, so everytime I hear a bang I think myself or someone is getting shot. In addition to the constant near heart attacks, we have to deal with the inconvenience of 75% of the restaurants and stores being closed because everyone goes home for the Chinese New Year.

 

The shops here sell stuff really cheap, mostly fake, and bargaining is really fun. They are persistent as hell, and I've literally been grabbed and held in place until I buy something from them. They are great at learning a couple lines of English and saying them to you to get you to buy as well. "Hello Friend, Good price just for you!". You can walk buy people selling the same stuff as the one next to them and even if you said no to the first 5, the next 3 will ask you to look anyways. Honestly I bust out laughing everytime they try, it is really funny to me. They tried to sell me knock of Coach purses and girls kids shoes. There really is no end to the madness. If they have something you DO want, they start the price at something ridiculous, usually a little higher than it would cost in the US, and you can expect to pay roughly 1/4 of that in the end.

 

For example I was buying an awesome painted tiki mask thing the other day and it went something like this.

"Hand Made just for you great price"

"How Much"

"Was 1000 (150 US or so), but I cut price to 280 for you right now"

"I'll give you 40"

"Too low, 250"

"40"

"200"

"40"

"150"

"40"

"100 as low as I can go"

"Ok that's fine, bye - (Turn and walk away)"

"Fine 60!"

"40"

"Ok deal"

 

That's pretty much how it goes everytime. You never know what you are getting, how much you SHOULD pay, or if it's a good deal or not, but it is a lot of fun to take part in even if just for the entertainment. They are relentless in their sales as well. We had one group follow us to the top of the freaking great wall to sell us T-Shirts. Eventually I bought one and ended up paying $2.80 USD for it. I liked the shirt, and if the lady was willing to hike to the top of the great wall, I didn't see why I should say no to a three dollar t-shirt.

 

That's all I have for now. We are in Beijing for 3 more nights, including tonight and we are doing all kinds of fun stuff. Hopefully I feel better, but I am having so much fun. I never thought that life could be as fun as it has been for the last month, I'm loving every single minute of every day. I can already tell I'm going to be a depressed mess all summer trying to get used to life at home again.

 

Anyways I'm going to put up pictures right now. As with last time, you can see the slide show on the page, or if you are getting this by email at http://thomasatsea.blogspot.com

 

If that doesn't work, the direct link to the slideshow is:

 

http://s805.photobucket.com/albums/yy331/Tmalinowsky/Semester%20at%20Sea%20Spring%202010/

 

Enjoy!

Full update on China to come in 4-5 days. I get to Hong Kong on the morning of the 22nd.

Japan Part 4 - Hiroshima/Kobe

This will wrap up Japan. I'm glad that I got it all done before I had to leave for Beijing. My flight leaves Shanghai in about 6 hours, so I'm going to pack and get ready to see the sites in China's capital. Shanghai was a ton of fun yesterday, but it isn't a city that I would want to come back to. It is huge and overcrowded with not a whole lot to do. People push and shove to get where they need, and literally millions are walking in the street at any given time. It is just a little too chaotic for me after coming from the orderly Japanese culture. Plus the vendors are persistent here and I am thus far terrible at saying no. They literally grab you and physically will not let you leave their stall until you buy something. Definitely a different experience than in the states. That's a tidbit about Shanghai for you, I'll have a full China update in about a week.

Thanks for reading all of my posts so far, I appreciate it, and I definitely appreciate the emails.

Part 4, the final one. If you haven’t got the message by now, please read them in order starting with Part 1 which is down the page a bit.

                We got up early again, a theme in Japan, and headed to the train station to catch a 7:26 train to Hiroshima. We arrived and needed to find a place to stay to dump our bags. We found out about a capsule hotel, and after several attempts to find it, finally found success. It was buried in a corner of a random small street and had no hint of English anywhere. We only found it because there was a sign that said “2300” which we knew was the price. We were there at about 10 am, far too early to check in, but they allowed us to pay and leave our bags. The very first thing that we had to do was see the A-Bomb Dome and Museum. When we arrived the dome was right next to the big street we were on, and it was kind of a surreal site. The city, entirely built up looking like any big city had this nearly destroyed building immortalized in the center. It was something that I had only seen in pictures, and it was really aw inspiring to be standing there. While there, a nice lady came up to us and offered us a free presentation about Hiroshima. We of course said yes, and in passable English and using a notebook full of pictures, she taught us a bit about what happened leading up to and after the A-Bomb. It was a combination of the subject material and this lady’s voice, but it was really a mesmerizing presentation. There are some people who when you listen to them speak make your skin almost tingle with interest, and she was one of them for me. She walked us to a small stone memorial block on a small street that we would never have found alone, and explained to us that where we were standing was directly below where the bomb hit (It actually exploded 600 meters in the air because that mathematically would create the most destruction). If you watch the slide show on this page, and you see a picture that appears to be looking upward at a random building, that is the spot where 65 years ago the bomb fell. We also saw a statue nearby which survived the blast, but had its shadow burnt into the base. You could feel the difference, with the non shadow covered spot being rough from the intense heat that hit it, and the part where the shadow was being smooth.  At the end of the tour the lady thanked us for listening, explained that she is part of a group that wants to use education to stop nuclear testing, and explained to us that the Japanese hold no animosity toward America for the act, only toward nuclear weapons.

                We left that area and made our way to a couple of peace memorials down the street. On the way we ran into Lexi and Andrew, two others from Semester at Sea. Lexi, with the help of some people on the ship and her town in Pennsylvania, folded 1000 paper cranes and strung them together to bring to the peace memorial in Hiroshima. It was a really cool gesture, and we were able to walk with them as they delivered them. There were probably a million cranes in that place in glass cases.  Some were made into amazing designs, and all promoted peace around the world. Lexi and Andrew decided to tag along with us, and we went to the Hiroshima museum to learn more about what happened leading up to and after the bomb was dropped. The museum was informative and interesting, but heavy at times. It is clearly designed to make those who visit it resent nuclear weaponry. We spent about an hour there then set out to find lunch. We found a random restaurant where no one spoke even a single word of English, ordered and hoped for the best. This would turn out to be our one notable failure in ordering food. We all got soup and side dishes that were not particularly good, and the main dishes didn’t turn out any better. Eric got a soup that looked decent, but came with a raw egg cracked into a bowl, still cold. That pretty much killed his appetite I’m sure. I got a bowl of rice with what I thought was going to be a beef patty on top, but it turned out to be raw ground salmon or something. It only tasted alright when I drenched it in Soy Sauce and Wasabi.

                After lunch it was early afternoon and we decided to go to Hiroshima Castle. The castle was cool looking from the outside, but turned out to be a big letdown inside. It was destroyed with the bomb, and rebuilt more as a museum display than as a legit castle. There were exhibits in there in nearly 100% Japanese that I wasn’t interested in anyways. We went to the top though, which towered over the city, and had a 360 degree view which was neat. We quickly bailed from there and headed to Myagima, which was my idea. Myagima is an island outside of Hiroshima, and both Heather Dresser, and a brochure recommended it. We knew we were pushing it on time, but we got on a tram thinking it wouldn’t be too far away. About an hour later we arrive there, as the sun is just finishing setting, and get on the ferry boat to take us to the island. When we arrived the whole place looked dead, so Lexi and Andrew left to try and make it to the train station as early as they could. I kind of feel bad for them, but I’m sure they made it alright. So the island looked dead, and we are all thinking “Oh god what a waste”. I in particular felt guilty because it was my idea in the first place. We wondered down the street anyways and were surprised at how beautiful it was, even at night. There were random deer and raccoons meandering around, so I of course had to sneak up and pet the deer. It turned after I touched it so we booked it out of there afraid of the deer. Pretty sure it was just seeing what was going on though. We continued walking to see a really cool arch in the middle of the water that was lighted and made for a good picture. I think if you Google Myajima gateway you will see what I’m talking about. There was a temple in the water that we could only see from afar, and a tower that was cool too. Overall I think that Myajima would have been a real highlight of the trip had we made it there for day time.

Even with most places closed, and dark, it was still really gorgeous. Plus, very very few SAS students made it there, so we did something unique.  The Hiroshima lady who gave us the free tour recommended Okonomiyaki as a food to try. We immediately forgot the name, but as we were walking on Myajima, the one restaurant still open had a big sign in the window that said Okonomiyaki. We thought it was meant to be so we went in and had an amazing dinner. It is similar to a Pizza in a vague sort of way. The base is noodles, which are cooked and then put onto a hot grill. They are covered with thin layers of meat, in this case pork. On top of that you put some mixture which consists mostly of egg, and then cover it with basil and cheese. When you get your order there is a bottle of sauce at the table that was an asian barbeque, and after drenching the pie looking concoction with it, it is delicious. Definitely the best meal we had in my opinion, so many thanks to the woman who suggested it.

                We headed on the long trip back to our hostel after that and wondered around the area. We were in a pretty sketchy area, the only time I’ve not felt 100% safe, but everything was fine and we had a good time. The next morning we as always woke up early to catch a 7:46 train to Kobe, where the ship was waiting. We arrived in Kobe, and at this point all I can say is I was exhausted. Going on 16 hours of sleep over 4 days in a totally foreign environment can be a tough thing to do. I had a headache the entire time in Kobe but still enjoyed my time.

                We dropped off our stuff at the ship, took a shower, and got ready to go back out. We wandered around, trying to find a post office and a souvenir shop since none of us had many trinkets. We found the post office only to realize it was Saturday and closed by then. It’s difficult to keep track of days on Semester at Sea. When you are isolated to a ship, the day doesn’t really matter. Similarly, in Japan we just thought of it as 1^st day, 2^nd Day, etc, knowing that we had 5 days. The only way I know what today’s date is, is that the kids on the ship have been romping around singing Happy Valentine’s songs. Anyways, so the post office didn’t work out, and we end up in an open air shopping center, and we start to hear drums. We look down the street, and there is a stereotypical Chinese dragon heading toward us, one of the ones with the body that moves around and a huge head. It was a parade, which we later found out was for the start of Chinese New Year, and it was lead by a drumming group. It was really neat, totally free, and I got a great video of it, so be sure to make me show it to you. We went in search of lunch and found a place that looked alright. Again, the language barrier was impossible, so we did the point and shoot approach again. Jay got tempura which was good, Eric got some sort of stew which looked better than it was apparently, and I ended up with Chicken Katsu, which were bonafide chicken tenders with rice. That was completely okay with me though since I love chicken, and rice in Asia is terrific. We had seen signs for “Pachinko” which I wanted to see, so we did that next. It was a Japanese slot machine basically, which I still don’t fully understand even after Wikipediaing it later, but it was a lot of fun. There were lights and noises and all kinds of good stuff. Eric dumped in 1000 yen and it took us about 20 minutes to lose it, but all in good fun right? After that we went to an internet and comic place, which is where businessmen go to blow off steam after work. We used the internet, which is where I put up the pictures from, bought snacks for the sea, then headed back to the ship.

One quick story for you. We were looking for somewhere to get internet and stamps, and having no luck finding either, we decided to find help. Eric out of the blue spots a group of 3 that appeared to be all American and he asks them for help. He claimed it was because they were coming out of a parking garage that would be impossible to navigate had they not spoken Japanese, but I think it was just a good guess. We ask them if they know the area and they say they do. They all spoke perfect English, seeing as they were American, but lived in Japan. They went out of their way to walk us to a convenience store where the lady went in and helped Eric buy stamps, and Jay and I stayed and talked to the other two. It turns out that the husband and wife work for Young Life, a Christian organization based out of the US, and the other lady was a friend of theirs visiting. Here is where it gets weird though. The lady visiting had been in San Diego the month before, and had seen the MV Explorer (Semester at Sea) pull into the harbor. We were telling her about our itinerary and she said “Oh I saw a ship in San Diego, Semester at Sea I think, sounds similar”.  I then told her that I went to U.Va and it turns out she has a daughter in Charlottesville, AND she lives in India, and will be back there when we visit. It is just strange that a lady sees the ship in San Diego, somehow ends up in Kobe, Japan on a business trip for 3 days at the exact same time we are there, and that somehow we run into her, in a city of 2 million people. It really is a small world.

So that’s the story of Japan, everything I did, ate, saw, that’s all of it right there I think. It’s really long, but that is more so that when I go back and read this, I won’t forget a single thing. I had such a blast and have no regrets about the whole thing. We did so much with our time. I’ve been wearing a bracelet that I got from church that says “Live life with no regrets” and this voyage has so far been the epitome of that. I’ve been out of my comfort zone more times than I care to count and loved every minute of it. If you read this Rick, thanks for having those wrist bands at church, I for one appreciate it.

So we now pull into China in less than 48 hours and I’ll be off on an adventure to see everything that Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong has to offer. Actually by the time I post this last blog, I’ll probably already be in China, or will be really darn close. When I got back from Japan, I stalled out going to bed as long as I could, popped a couple Tylenol Sinus night times to “get rid of my headache” and crashed at about 8:15. I slept 13 hours, through both classes of today, but that’s okay. I apologized to one professor who I ran into on the ship and he didn’t mind too much. I got a haircut today, and now am just finishing this post. It is more than 10 pages on MS Word and if you made it this far I’m impressed. I’d like to personally thank you for having enough interest to do so.

I will post all about China when I’m done there and I can’t even imagine how much I’ll have to say. Hope everyone is well, and please email me if you have any comments, thoughts, suggestions, wishes, or anything to say. Tdmalinowsky@semesteratsea.net

Thomas

Americans who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that,

Despite all the progress that has been made in the last 30 years,

Many foreign people still speak in foreign languages.

-Dave Barry

Japan Part 3 - Kyoto

We have arrived in Shanghai and are currently waiting to be cleared for customs. The view from the ship is amazing, we are surrounded by huge buildings. Shanghai is the largest city in China, which I did not know, and the architecture is something else. I'll put up pictures when I get a chance.

I'm just spending the day in Shanghai today, then tomorrow I set off for Beijing.

Here is part 3, I thought it would be the last but it’s going to be 4. Again part 2 is right below this, and part 1 is below that. I would read them in order if I were doing it.

                We woke up the third day in Japan at about 6 am and got ready to go. We caught a bullet train at about 7:30 headed to Kyoto. The bullet trains are awesome, and they go extremely fast. It was crazy to hop onto a train and travel probably 300 miles in less than 2 hours. The Japanese system is far more efficient than the US one as well. You buy your tickets either from a person or more often a machine. You put your ticket into a gate similar to a subway, and walk in. There is no security check, no scanner, and no pat down. You find the gate, which is easier said than done when nothing is written in English. The only thing in English was the numbers actually, so we had to get on the train with the departure time that we thought sounded right, and hope we made it to the city intended. Anyways the trains fly into the station, and unlike in America where an Amtrak stops for a half hour while people get on and off, the Shikansen stops for 2 minutes. As a result, if you are on the train and fall asleep, you are at a high risk of missing your stop, and if you aren’t at the right place on the platform, you might miss the train. For example on one of our train rides we were waiting outside of what we thought was cars 1-3, the cheaper non-reserved cars, but come to find out, we are outside of the wrong end of the train. Even running as fast as we could, we made it to car 8 before the train started to leave, so we had to hop on that car and make our way to the right one while it was moving. Another notable thing about the train was the food. Unlike airline food, this food was fantastic. I got a sandwich pack with egg salad, some sort of veggie sandwich, and a fried pork one, all were great. After about two hours we arrived in Kyoto and hopped off the train.

                The first thing we did when we got to Kyoto was again to find our hostel. It wasn’t too far from the train station so we walked it, but the weather started taking a turn for the worst. We arrived at the hostel to find that it was not only cheaper than the one in Tokyo, but it was also far nicer. It was traditionally themed, so it included open areas to connect with nature, a couple of neat courtyards, and rooms that were stereotypically Japanese. They were the type with the paper walls and sliding doors where you sleep on the floor. It turned out to be so comfortable; it was really a perfect place to stay. After getting settled there, we set out to find lunch. At this point there were 10 of us, and it became a headache to have so many. We found a restaurant that specialized in takeout boxes that looked fantastic and decided that it would be a good idea to eat there. Like the other restaurants though, it was totally group illiterate. We walk in and Eric orders his food. They proceed to process a 30 box take out order, and only then do they make his food.  His food comes out, and only then do they take the next order. Well given that it was taking 5 minutes a tray, our group of 10 wasn’t going to work out. Tolan, Sarah, and I went down the street looking for other options, and a couple others went to 7-11 and bought snacks. We didn’t find anything down the street, and they were getting frustrated, so Tolan and Sarah broke off from the group, agreeing to meet the rest of us at 7 back at the hostel for dinner. I went back and the ones who stuck around were ready to go, and if you know me, I refuse to eat a full meal 7-11 when I’m in a place with awesome food like Japan, so I ended up not eating.

                After lunch, we took off in search of temples. We went to one that was really close by, a Shinto one and it was huge. There were three separate shrines connected, and the building was the size of a basketball arena. Photography wasn’t allowed, but I snuck a couple of pictures anyways. We again saw many people praying or meditating. In the US, if you were to go to something like that, it would be a tourist trap, probably with a gift shop connected. It was interesting how here in Japan, a temple of great interest to travelers was still a part of the daily lives of locals. We left that temple and walked about a mile to another one that was similar, but was Buddhist. This one was again, still in use, but it was empty. It was very peaceful and pretty. Realizing that time was quickly escaping us, we had to choose what to do. We decided that we had to make it to the golden temple, the most beautiful one in Kyoto (Or anywhere for that matter in my opinion). We found the bus stop to take us there, and after 45 minutes of waiting, we were about ready to make an audible. At this point it was about 40 degrees and raining, and the last thing I wanted to do was give up the chance to sit on a bus for a while, so I threw up a quick prayer, and low and behold, the number 12 bus comes around the corner and picks us up. After getting warm and dry on the hour long bus ride, we arrived at the temple. As soon as we get off the bus, the rain increases to a downpour. We paid our entrance fee and hiked a bit to get to the temple, and there in the middle of a lake was the most beautiful thing I’ve probably ever seen. It was a temple that appeared to be made of solid gold (in reality I’m guessing it was paint laced with gold). The pond surrounding it was beautiful as well, it was really surreal. There are a number of pictures in the slideshow on this page, or you can see it as my profile picture on Facebook at the time of this post.

                We finished up looking at the temple, and at this point we were all soaked, freezing, and miserable (In a good way, we were still in Japan after all! J), so we made our way to a bus stop and figured out what bus would get us in the same vicinity as our hostel. After another 30 minute wait for a bus, we hopped on a very warm and very comfortable bus and headed back to the hostel. There we hung out, warmed up, took showers, etc for more than 2 hours. When 7 finally arrived we decided to man up and go back out for dinner. The hostel called us 3 cabs, which took us to “The Cube” for only 200 yen a person. The cube is the mother of all malls in Kyoto. It is an architectural wonder, and is perhaps one of the biggest buildings I’ve ever seen. Not only is it huge, but the inside is fairly open, so it looked even cooler. Honestly I’m not doing it any justice, so try Googling “The Cube Kyoto” and see what comes up. The group of us was on very different budgets, so some of us wanted to do a nice sit down meal (myself included), whereas a couple wanted to save as much money as they could. We found a place suitable for all, and called it good. Our meal there was fantastic, their dumplings/potstickers, whatever you want to call them were to die for and I probably ate two orders of them alone. I then had a tray of food including fantastic fried rice. Let me tell you that in Asia fried rice is way more legit than in the states. It is always fresh and moist, and chopsticks friendly, whereas at home it is usually dry. We finished up dinner, took some cool pictures, then headed back to the hostel and talked some more before going to bed.

Quick Note

I'm having trouble getting the font color to work out, it messed up on part 1 for a little bit. To fix it I tried making the email update in white text, which fixed the problem on the blog, but made the writing for automatic emails invisible without highliting. If you are getting this by email try going to http://thomasatsea.blogspot.com and reading this one there while I work out the kinks.

 

Arriving in Shanghai in 12 hours! Next Japan update will be posted by this evening US time.

Japan Part 2 - Tokyo Continued

Here starts part two. If you haven’t read part one, it is below this one I imagine and you should probably start there.

                The next day, we woke up at about 5 am, got ready, and caught an early train to see the Tokyo fish market. Every morning thousands of fishermen, restaurateurs, and consumers alike gather at this fish market to buy and sell fish. There is an auction very early in the morning which we didn’t make it for, so by the time we got there, they were hard at work packaging and shipping the fish off to all corners of the world. There were hundreds of small electric cart things which zipped around at about 15 miles an hour, through crowds and traffic. It was really amazing that we didn’t see a single wreck or injury while we were there. We went to the vendor section, which was probably 3 huge warehouses full of fish that was either still alive, or was alive in the last 2 days and walked around. There were literally all sorts of fish, from thousand pound tuna, to squid covered in ink, to live crabs. It was really cool to see Japanese commerce at work in that way.

                After the fish market we wanted to do something a bit more relaxing, so we went to the Tokyo Palace gardens and wandered around. The gardens featured huge calico looking rock walls, large open spaces, and beautiful ponds. We sat down there, and Tolan played his guitar which he decided to carry around for the trip. After we finished up at the gardens it was time to find somewhere that would serve us breakfast. Most places in Japan are not open when we would normally consider breakfast time. For example we walked by a couple coffee and donut shops, and McDonald’s which were closed at 7 am. We found a street with a bunch of little noodle stands next to each other, one of which had tempura that everyone wanted. I was all fished out after smelling it for 2 hours at the fish market, so I said no thanks and wandered around the block alone looking for something fishless to eat. I failed to find anything and went back to the tempura stand and ordered a bowl of noodles, broth, and green bean tempura which was delicious.

                After breakfast we made our way to the Sony Building, which might be there headquarters, I have no idea, but had a showroom featuring all of their current and upcoming products. There were two things that excited me, one of which I knew about already and one I didn’t. They were 3D TVs and 3D Video Games. I’m guessing those reading this won’t be as excited about this as I am, but the TV’s I believe are set to launch really soon, and 3D channels will be showing up starting this summer with ESPN offering the World Cup in 3D. We were able to put on glasses and try it out, and the picture was great. It was just like being at a movie theatre. I then got to sit down and try out a racing game in 3D and it was unreal. It really felt like I was right there with the action. We looked at some more things like some awesome cameras, and then looked for a place to sit down, rest and eat. (I just realized the noodle breakfast was before the gardens, so hopefully you don’t think we ate like every hour) We found a restaurant in the basement of a building that had amazing food. I got some spicy noodle bowl and rice, and was in heaven.  Rejuvenated, we set off from there toward Akihabara, the electronic district of Japan. There were huge buildings covered in bright billboards, and stores that had a dozen floors all with electronics in them. Everything was pretty expensive, even more so than in the US, so no one bought anything, but we had fun exploring anyways. Japan has awesome massage chairs by the way, and when they are selling them, they put out rows that anyone can sit and try. I’m pretty sure if we could speak Japanese they would have tried to sell them to us, but seeing as we couldn’t understand a word they were saying, the salesmen left us alone and we enjoyed free massages.

                At this point it was getting kind of late so we headed back to the hostel to drop off some things people had purchased, and to get ready for the evening. We went to the fashion district, Harajuku, it is where you see all of the nice clothes stores, and people dressed up in really funky outfits. Unfortunately it had gotten cold and started to mist a little bit, so we saw no unique outfits. We headed back to Shibuya to meet up with some more people at the statue again, and with our group now up to 8 people, we went in search of Kaiten Sushi. Kaiten Sushi is conveyor belt sushi, and for those who don’t know the concept, there are basically 5-6 Sushi preparers in the center, and they constantly make rolls and place them on a conveyor belt which circles the restaurant. When you see a plate of sushi go by that you like, you simply grab the plate and eat it. At the end of the meal, they count up your plates and that’s how they know what to charge you. The sushi here was AMAZING. I had 10 plates I believe, with 2 pieces per plate, so 20 pieces. I had mostly Tuna and Salmon, both of which had no hint of fishy taste, and melted in your mouth. I’ve grown up not liking fish at all, and I realize now it is because Kansas is in the middle of nowhere, and whenever we eat fish, it is at minimum probably 4-5 days old. At that point it starts to get a fishy taste, which fresh fish simply does not have. This sushi we had was probably swimming around in the ocean not 2 days before we ate it, so it tasted great.

                With dinner finished and our hunger satisfied we left, picked up two more people making our group of 8 a group of 10, and decided to do Karaoke! In Japan, Karaoke is entirely different than it is in the states. Instead of singing for a group of strangers, you get a private room, and pay to sing by the half hour. It is pretty expensive but lots of fun. We were in there for an hour, and I got to sing about 4 songs. We sang in groups of 2 so that no one was embarrassed, and Jose and I, one of the guys who we met up with, were definitely the best duo. Toward the end, Jay, another one of my roommates had me sing with him because his partner Eric (my third roommate) had decided he was retired from singing. We did “In The Club” by 50 Cent, which is pretty much straight rap, and I was intimidated. Well out of nowhere I did the whole thing pretty much right on, and so we all discovered that my one talent in life is Karaoke. We finished up our session and left, everyone had a great time.

                All of the 5 new people in the group were ready to head to the hostel to dump their backpacks, so Eric led them back. Tolan and Sarah, his girlfriend, went off to wander around, leaving Jay and I not ready to call it a night yet. We wandered around in search of something to do, and decided that it would be cool to find somewhere to dance in Japan. We tried to ask random people on the street, including one set of girls who thought Jay was asking them to go out with him. They replied with “No only Japanese” so that was a good laugh. Eventually we ran into a British man who had lived in Japan for 15 years and knew his way around. He went out of his way to lead us to a place that he considered foreigner friendly, which we appreciated. We went down into this club I guess you would call it, and it was dark and loud. It was interesting to see people dance in Japan, because there is absolutely no connections at all, people in general dance to themselves around others instead of a touch fest like there is in America. I was about ready to bail when another group of Semester at Sea people wandered in, so we talked to them for a while. Jay and I were sitting back just talking, when we look over and the other group, which was 4 girls and 1 guy, was being surrounded by Japanese business men. They were getting hit on by 40 year olds, and it was hilarious. They called us over for backup, and eventually one of the Japanese guys even got kicked out of the club for it. After that they were leaving, so we decided to as well, and headed back to our hostel to call it a night.