Hong Kong

I am in love with Hong Kong, not even joking! I have already made up my mind that I am going to liver here someday because it is just an amazing city. When we got back from Beijing that night and I walked into my room, I had the most amazing view of the city…and I could see it all from my bed! We literally docked in the middle of the city, right downtown. That night after going back to the ship I dropped sleepy head Kristen in her room and went out with some friends to find some dinner. We found this little pizza joint that had a good bar menu too. I think one of my new drinks now is a Vodka tonic! There is some crazy night life in Hong Kong, there is even this street that is full of bars and clubs (which is where the whole rest of the ship went to go party, which we all heard about after we let because I guess a lot of people did some stupid stuff there and “set a bad name” for semester at sea!) So Jeff and I decided that we did not want to go party so we went to 7-11 and bought a bottle of red wine and found a comfy little spot by the harbor and enjoyed our wine and the beautiful cityscape.


Two days in Hong Kong was definitely not enough time at all. The first day Kristen, Leila and I just went on our own tour of the city. It is a huge city that has everything in it. We started off by getting some Starbucks to get our lazy butts motivated because we were all really tired.

(Side note: For some reason or not Kristen and I always seem to find the biggest mall in every port we have been to, Japan, Hawaii, China… you name it. Kristen and I are so not mall girls and we don’t even spend time in malls at home so we have no idea why we keep finding them everywhere we go.)

Anyways, we found the mall in Hong Kong (by accident, like always) and walked around in there for awhile because it was raining outside (like always!!!) but then we said “what the heck its just water” so we went out and walked around. Hong Kong has an amazing skyline but one of the most striking buildings which is the tallest as well, is the Hong Kong Monetary Authority Building. They allow visitors to go up to the 55th floor out of the total 80 stories. The view from up there was amazing and you could see forever. Our ship looked so little compared to all the massive buildings.

One of the nice things about Hong Kong is it is an international city and there are people her from all over the world and a lot of them speak English which makes getting around really nice. We ended up just walking around everywhere and then later on we took a sky tram that takes you up this mountain near the city where there is a mall on top, go figure! We talked to some people and they said that going to the mall when you have some free time is the thing to do, so really we were doing the “thing to do.”

We had some lun-ner, then went to the Jade market. There were hundreds of little stalls selling all sorts of jewelry and chess sets and little odds and ends. It was fun to be in there but the people were not as willing to bargain as much as people in other countries had been. After the Jade market we went to the night market to see what they had there. It was both a selling of little trinkets market and food market. They had lot of fish stalls that sold all sorts of crazy fishy things. They had sea cucumbers you could buy and even fish cut half open with their heart still beating so you could tell that the fish was fresh!

It took Kristen and I forever to find the ship that night but we made it back before dock time! So we went up on the top deck with the whole rest of the ship to watch us leave port and it was amazing. Hong Kong is just amazing and I am so excited to come back here someday!

Beijing, China

O Beijing, the place of the 2008 Olympic games! I think it is so cool to know that next year when the Olympics are on I will be able to say “I was there!” Throughout my whole stay in Beijing, it was very obvious to me that they are trying to do there best to “clean up” the country and make everything look really good so when those cameras turn on, the city looks its best. I had an amazing time in Beijing with some outstanding memories that I will never forget.

(In Beijing I signed up to participate on a SAS trip, this trip was Sponsored my Peking University in Beijing.)

We started out leaving from Qingdao with our flight to Beijing, the problem was that it was still raining very hard and we had all discovered that Qingdao has a horrible drainage system, tons of streets were just absolutely flooded up and over sidewalks and the funny thing was it did not seem to phase the people that lived there it just seemed to be another rainy day.

After a long delay in Qingdao we arrived in Beijing later that morning. We were met by our University guide who then took us to our hotel in the city (ish). On the drive there we passed many of the new stadiums that will be used for the Olympics and many of which are still under construction. Out of all the Stadiums we saw the venue that will be used as the main stadium looks amazing so make sure you guys watch out for that on TV next year. The main grand stadium looks like it shouldn’t even be from this world, they call it the bird nest and I am sure you all will see why when you see it, it is so cool.

We had some lunch and (let me just clarify to all of you that what we eat in the US that is “Chinese” food, is so not what they eat in China.) we drove off to the Summer Palace. That was one of the most “awesome” places that I have visited yet (Mom you would totally love it there). It is just this huge palace that was the “summer palace” for the Emperor where it sits on a lake and it gorgeous. The grounds of the palace were huge, I can’t even imagine what the three year old Emperor did with all of that space, but it was very beautiful place though. I took lots of pictures there so when I get back you all can see those. There were also a lot of people there from all over the world so it was very fun to people watch too! It was a lovely place and I am so glad we went there.

After a long while of getting lost at the Summer Palace we drove to Peking University to have an evening with some of the university students. We got to the school and got broken up into small groups and we all had an assigned student to host us for the duration of our stay. We had this young girl named Shen-mi who is 17 and a freshman at the University. Shen-mi gave us a tour of their campus which is absolutely beautiful, I wish my campus looked as amazing cause I would totally spend more time at school that way. Then after our tour we went and had dinner at one of the local restaurants where we had a feast with definite Chinese food (and by this time I am a master at chopsticks and I now prefer chopsticks to silverware!). While at dinner Shen-mi told us she wanted an American name, so we decided to name her Shelby and she loves it….but anyways we were asking Shelby a lot of questions about random stuff. One of the crazy things she told us was she has never heard of all things that we call “Chinese” food. Like she has never heard of fortune cookies, “lo main”…. And some other stuff like that!

That night we had the evening free so we all went out to this lake that was sort of by the University for a fun evening out. It was a pretty good sized lake and all around this lake there were little bars and pubs and most with live music. There were clubs/bars that would latterly fit anyone’s taste, from jazz to salsa to hookah to Japanese tea parties to strip clubs! It was a really fun night and we just bar hopped all night and enjoyed each others company.

The next day we woke up and went to a cloisonné factory which was really awesome. It is where they take a copper pot and hand bend and attach the different designs and patterns to the pot. Then they add colors to the pot color by color and they have to do this whole process 6 times for one piece, it is crazy how long it takes to complete one piece. We saw all of the steps from beginning to end which made it even better when I bought things at the end!

After the factory we packed up and went to the ‘Ming Tombs’ where the Emperor and his Emperoresses are buried in their huge tombs. I have to admit it was not the coolest place to go but it all worked out in the end. I got some nice pictures of the mountains of China!

So this next part was the most amazing part of this entire trip!!! We ate lunch and then started driving into the mountains…. Then on the left side of the highway I say it!....... The Great Wall of CHINA!!!!!! To me this is right up there with summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro and I was so happy. I really could not stop smiling and bouncing around like a little kid because I was actually on the Great Wall of China! We walked through those first gates and stepped up on to the beginning of the wall. It never really occurred to me that in order to get to the parts that you always see in pictures where the wall is on the ridge of the mountains you have to go up a lot of stairs just to get to the top. I can’t even describe how happy I was, I was just on this huge mental high and nothing could mess up my world right then and there. I could tell that this ship has made me not be in as good of shape as I was in because it was kinda hard getting to the top and you would think for someone who climbed a huge mountain earlier that this should have been nothing. So I plugged into the iPod and put on some good motivating music and made my way up the wall to the top. Once I got up there I was in a completely different world. I don’t know why being up there moved me so much but it really did and I was just…. I don’t know, crazy happy!!! We spent a good portion on top and after a while the guy who is making the SAS movie (which I am going to buy mom, just so you know) came up and he started to film all of us up there and singing and just being happy kids!! It was so cool! We started to walk down and then my friend Ryan and I decided to count how many stairs it took to get from the top all the way back down to the bottom and it took 1,696 stairs to get all the way to the bottom! It was sooo pretty on top, the view was just amazing. It was also fun walking down to because the steps are huge and you really have to be careful. Gosh I just loved it up there and I could write about it forever I am pretty sure! But I will move on to the rest of my trip!

We went back down into town and went out and had Peking duck for dinner at a pretty nice place. The duck was pretty good it was really greasy though and they served a lot of food with it and I felt like we had a big thanksgiving dinner that night! Then after dinner we went back to the University and played games like limbo and eating contest with our university hosts. It was fun to see all of us just playing little kid games like we have been doing it our whole lives together. And that was the end of the first day!

Day two: We started off by going to Tiananmen Square where the city is covered in red, smog and a lot of people! It was really cool to be there and kind of be humbleized in a way just knowing what went on in that exact place almost 20 yrs ago now. Just to see the place where a man stood ground in front of a tank fighting for democracy, and where all of those University students were, it was really cool and it made me feel very small! But I liked that!

We had some free time to go explorer, so my friends and I went to the “silk market” where you can pretty much buy any name brand for non-name brand prices. They literally had everything there you could want, from North Face equipment to Harley Davison leather jackets to Juicy Couture underwear! I did go to the Starbucks there though and I seriously had the best Frappachino I have ever had in my entire life!!

We went back to Tiananmen Square to meet up with everyone and go to the Forbidden City! There was some really amazing architecture in there and lots of brick work went into laying the ground, that’s for sure! We definitely had too much time built in to explore this place but none the less it was interesting. After making it across the city we crossed the street and walked up this hill to the Temple of the Lama in the Jingshan Park where we had an amazing view of the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square and the billions of trillions of pounds of pollution per square inch (it was gross to see what we had been in all day)! Our tour guides said that it was a clear day but I would not call that clear, that picture up there is literally the pollution from a very over populated country!

That night we had dinner and then we went to a Chinese acrobatic show which was really fun. Many kids who saw it said it was the coolest thing they saw in their life but I thought they were an amateur Cirque du Soleil. They were good though!

After we got back to the Hotel some friends and I still wanted to go out, so we decided to walk around and see what was going on. We ended up in this real sketch part of town in this really dark park, but there was a group of college kids having a bbq (@ 11pm ?) and we decided to join them. We just sat down and we definitely could not find a common language between us so we resorted to sign and pointing language. We ended up eating some really shady looking chicken that came out of this big box that they had on skewers which they grilled on this little grill on the ground with some glaze that was in a real paint can! I totally thought that would have been the end to our stomachs, but we were all fine the next day remarkably (we all ate 3 peptos when we got back though, just in case)!

The next day we went to the Temple of Heaven which was were the Emperor would go to pray to the Gods and from what I could tell the temple of heaven was also know to bring good luck to the crops because that was the place where you would go to ask for rain. It was a very pretty place but my friends and I were mostly people watching instead. There is a huge park on the outside of the park and it is known as the park for the elders because it is where the elders go to be able to breathe and get away from the city smog. There were lot of people out in the park doing Tai Chi, badminton, playing instruments and singing, it was very fun to walk around and watch it was almost like I was at the fair.

We had some lunch and jumped on the plane and flew to Hong Kong and arrived there by 3:30! Looking back I had an amazing time in Beijing (if you could not tell by the length of the entry!). I think the great wall was the best, however I really enjoyed hanging out with Shelby and visiting Tiananmen Square. The only part of Beijing I did not enjoy was how much pollution they had there and they are going to have to work really hard to try and improve the quality of the air because all of that crap is not going to be good for all of those athletes to breathe!

Qingdao, China

Let me sum up Qingdao in a brief few sentences. Normally I have been averaging between 120 to 270 pictures a day while I am in each port. My whole time in Qingdao I took 10 pictures! So Yeah! I think that explains a lot.

I woke up that morning, and it was raining barrels of water, not even joking. We got off the boat really early and decided to just go walk around. There were three people in my group that day (Kristen, Jeff and me) and only one had an umbrella, so Jeff and I ended up getting really wet. We began to walk towards where we thought downtown would be and we all had one of those wizard of oz moments where we said “were not in Japan anymore guys.” The streets were not very clean at all and it felt as if we were in a pretty bad part of a third world country. The people we passed were not very friendly and you could tell that they wanted to have nothing to do with us. The buildings were pretty shady looking and did not look as though they were very well built. After a long and confusing walk we made it to downtown where the streets were full of cars, big mud and who knows what else puddles that kept splashing up on to us….. then we found a mall-ish looking building so we decided to go in and get out of the rain for awhile. It was in fact a big local mall and we were definitely the only non-Chinese people there. They had a supermarket up on one of the floors and in there I saw live Turtles that you could buy for cooking and lots of other crazy stuff. After a quick lunch we decided to go back to the ship while stopping in a few local outdoor markets on the way and we were back on the ship by 1:30.

So I think out of 10 I would give Qingdao a 6. Many people on SAS hated Qingdao and say pretty mean things about it which makes it sound pretty horrible. I did not really like it there that much, mostly because I did not feel welcome at all and the buckets of rain made the whole place not very appealing. However, I would like to go back someday when it is not raining and give it another chance because I don’t think that it would be like that all the time.

Kobe, Japan

So I came back on the ship when we sailed back to Kobe just for the mere fact that Japan is soo expensive! It was really nice though because the ship was really quite and we even had a formal dinner on board!

We pulled up into to Kobe and I thought it looked a lot like Yokohama (O and PS there are Farris Wheels in all of the cities that we have been in) and guess what it was raining!

My first day in Kobe I woke up and I went on my first SAS trip to a Japanese tea ceremony! We drove to the city of Osaka and got to a very large Buddhist community. We spent some time visiting some temples and some gardens before we went to go have our tea. The tea ceremony took place at a Zen Buddhist temple/home and one of the monks met us and gave us a tour, showed us the some of the Zen gardens and led us to the tea room. The ceremony was really interesting but amazing at the same time. There are so many different rules that go along with it: how you sit and at what times, how you breathe, how you hold the different tools, how you eat, how you drink everything….. it was very hard to try and do everything right. One of the oddest things was that they used powered green tea that they stir in with all these special utensils. They say that the powered tea is better than brewing it with tea leaves.

After the Tea ceremony we went to the beautiful golden pavilion. It was a very gorgeous place and the gardens around it were very beautiful as well. That night we went out to spend time in the city of Kobe. We had another dinner at a place were there was no English so you just hope that the couple of pictures that you see on the menus turn out to be edible food! We got some beer out of the vending machines and watched a “football” match which was a lot of fun.

On the last day in Japan we woke up and went into the train station and bought roundtrip tickets on the bullet trains down to Hiroshima. The train was crazy fast but the scenery was amazing and I was able to see a lot on our 4 hr long ride. I thought by going by train I was able to see a lot and really see what the countryside of Japan looked like.

When we walked up to Hiroshima park the very first thing we saw was the A-dome and I remember thinking how shocked I was to see it because it looked like something that came out of a movie, but I knew it was real. As we stood around and admired the building a man walked up to us and we were not quite sure who he was and he just started talking to us, we later found out that he is a survivor of the A-bomb. He has a certificate that states that he is in fact a survivor even though his mom was 6 months pregnant with him at that time. So he told us that being a survivor, he felt that it is his duty to come to this park whenever he can and show people around the sites and tell them stories of what had happened. So he did and he taught us a lot, he showed us all the major landmarks, cemeteries, and lots of little things that many people would not be able to see. After all of that he led us to the museum, which was really interesting. It was very sad to see and there was some pretty disturbing stuff in there but I really enjoyed visiting the museum because I now feel like I have a better understanding of what happened so long ago and even how it effects the present.

Well that was it for Japan! I can’t even wait to go back there someday and just visit the rest of the country and spend more time learning there culture and …… I just really loved every minute of the time I spent in Japan, I already miss it!