After Thailand Experience

Well I had a little bit of an adventure when I got back from Thailand! The first day after we got back my stomach started to feel a bit sick and then it just kept getting progressively worse. Now this is my story so I am going to tell you what I think, so here it goes. For breakfast that first day I woke up and had breakfast as usual, I grabbed some cantaloupe and started to eat it but I thought it had a really funny, as in bad taste, so I decided not to eat any more of it. Then later that day I felt a little sick but not too much. However that night became the worse night aboard the ship ever. I don’t remember how many times I got up anymore, but I know I got up more than 6 times to throw up. It was really horrible and I felt so bad. I went to the clinic the next morning and they gave me some medicine and told me to just try and rest the rest of the day and see how I felt. So I laid in bed all day and the only times I got up were to throw up some more. That night I had the same horriable evening again and I just could not stop throwing up and it got to the point that (for those of you who are grossed out easy don’t read this part J) I had nothing else left in me and all I was throwing up was this dark green bile that the nurse said was from my gallbladder because that was the only fluid that I had left!

I barely made it back to the hospital the next morning and I have never felt so bad in my life. The nurse quickly put me in one of the ICU rooms and through the course of the morning I was given 6 bags of IV fluids and a shot of something really strong in my hip! Crazy hunh! About lunch time I was hydrated enough that I was able to leave and because I was so sick they put me in isolation. Let me tell you isolation is no fun. I had to get the essential thing I needed and I was had to move to the 2nd deck and I got my very own private room were I was not allowed to leave and not have any visitors.

The stewards would bring me meals which consisted of plain white toasted toast, plain pasta/ plain white rice and a broth of some sort. I was told to spend the rest of the day there and try and keep some food down since I had not eaten in 3 days and come back in the morning. I went back in the morning and I still did not feel completely better so back I went into isolation for another day! I then went back the next morning again (which was the day before we got to India, so I was doing everything in my power to feel better so I could get off the ship) and I had a temperature of 104.5 even though I felt completely better. They told me I had to go back to isolation until I could get my temperature down and then we would see. I finally was able to get it down by mid afternoon, so I became a free woman!

So it was a very interesting six days, which 3 of the days were spent in isolation and 2 days very sick. Never the less but I did end up losing a lot of weight because of it! But unfortunately I have gained it all back since then!

I personally think I got sick from that cantaloupe that I had on the ship because the piece that I ate did not seem good at all. Also because the very last day I was in Thailand I did not eat a thing and I just had three cups of coffee so I don’t think I could have gotten that sick and had the virus wait a whole day before I got really sick. However the doctor says that I must have gotten sick from the coffee because if it was the cantaloupe she would have seen other cases of that on the ship because I would not have been the only one who would have ate it.
So yeah just thought I would let you all know, but all better now!

Thailand (October 4-8)

Who would have ever thought that I would be able to come to Thailand when I was twenty? I know I am going on a trip around the world but for some reason I never thought that I would be going to Thailand! I don’t know…. I guess it is just now hitting me that I was in Thailand and it just seems crazy to me that I was just there yesterday!

Once again Kristen and I had no plans what so ever for port so we decided to wing it again! The morning we came in to port Kristen and I decided that we would figure out what to do before we got off the ship for once. So while we were still on the ship we decided that we wanted to go to this island that is south of here called Phuket. So we booked two tickets on ‘One-To-Go’ airlines to go to Phuket that night. We made reservations at Deevana Hotel on Phuket for three nights… so we were all set. The only issue is where the ship was parked. For some reason the “closest” port to Bangkok is two hours away! The harbor we docked in is a complete industrial area and there is latterly nothing around besides big cargo tankers and all of the containers that hold it all.

Prior to docking in Thailand SAS was selling tickets for $35 on way to Bangkok form the ship and also return tickets for another $35. I thought in my head that there should be a better/cheaper way of getting to Bangkok (not knowing how far away it was). So since I did not have a ticket and Kristen did I decided to sneak on the bus all smooth Jorge style!

We made it to Bangkok and found a Taxi that would take us to the airport which was another 45 min away. Along the way Kristen and realized the fact that this was the first Kingdom that either of us have visited. Then we were discussing the fact the there were pictures of the King and Queen everywhere. There would be huge billboards with pictures of them, or pictures that would drape the sides of some of the big skyscrapers and there were just pictures everywhere. I was talking to a Thai man later on in our trip and I was asking him question about their King and it amazed me what they said. He said that he loved the King so much and he was the best thing that ever happened to this country. I asked him what was it about the King that he loved and he quickly said “Everything!” He said that if a bullet were ever to try and kill his King that he would throw is body in front of his King to keep him alive and he would die for his King. He said that everyone else feels the same way! So it just amazed me that everyone there is very proud to be part of their Kingdom. I thought to myself that not too many people would say that about people who have “ruled” the US.

Anyways, Kristen and I caught our flight to Phuket then we got a taxi and drove another 45min to our hotel from the airport. When we arrived I was again happily surprised at the niceness of hotel and we just had a nice standard room with a bathroom and two twin beds! That night we booked some activities to do on the next day and then went to bed.

The next morning we woke up and went down to get our breakfast which turned out to be a very nice breakfast indeed, very fancy. It was at breakfast we realized that we were probably the only Americans again even though this was a much bigger hotel. There were lots of Australians again and Japanese. It was also at breakfast the we realized there were quite a few old men that were with very young Thai girls, let me clarify very old men, with very young girls! We later realized that this was just not prevalent at our hotel, or Phuket, but all of Thailand. Crazy!

After breakfast we met our tour company that was going to take us on adventuress day. We started off by going to this very beautiful view point where you can see many miles of beautiful beaches! After that we drove up into the hills where it got way junglier, and we were dropped so we could drive ATV’s through the Jungle!! I know, it was so much fun I loved it J We got to go as fast as we wanted and I totally went through a puddle and got all gross!

Then from the ATV’s we got back in the car and drove to a elephant and monkey park where we got to see a “monkey show”. I did not really enjoy it very much just cause I “think” I could tell that the Monkeys were not having fun and you could tell that have gone through some pretty intensive training! However after the Monkey show we got to go and ride an elephant!!! We had to sit on a little seat thing with the elephants handler on the elephants neck. We had an awesome ride and the guy that was giving us our ride was having a lot of fun too! He would pretend to loose control of the elephant until the point where the elephant was going to go down a really steap hill and then Kristen and I were freaking out but then he just looked backed at us and smiled! He did it a couple of times and every time he seemed like he really lost control, he was a really good actor! I think because K and I were playing off of his jokes he gave us a better ride because we went across the river twice and went off the path quite a bit and we were gone way longer than all of the other people that went out at the same time as we did. But it was a lot of fun though! After the elephant ride we watched an elephant show where they did little tricks like sitting and playing the harmonica and cutesy stuff like that. Then at the end of the show they were asking for volunteers to get massages by elephants, and of course who said yes… me and K! They have you lie down on this mat and it is the most non-human thing to lay there as a gynormus beast walks up to you like he is going to squish you! So the elephant walks up and puts its foot on your back with a little bit of pressure and was using its trunk to massage your shoulders like someone’s hand, then the elephant suction your skin up your arm which actually felt pretty good and then at the end he gives you a huge elephant kiss that’s all slimy on your cheek! It was fun, I liked it!!!

We got back in the car and drove off to a cashew store where they bring all of the tourists to see how and where the cashews come from and then they lead you to a big room where you can buy all of the different kinds of cashews and what you can do with them (like cover them in honey or hot sauce). After that we drove to a different mountain where we went down into the bay and got into canoes and floated around in this little bay for a while. There was a small oyster farm there and there were also mud puppies in the water and along the shore which was cool because I have never seen those before!

Being on a tour with a tour company I think it is a law that they have to stop you at really big tourist traps. We stopped at this big building where when you first walk in it is nice a quite and it looks like they might not a try and make you buy things….but no…. you turn the corner and boom it is this ridiculously huge jewelry room. When I first saw it, it made me want to just turn around and find a trashcan to go puke in, that’s how disgusting it was. It was just huge and I am sure that you could probably find anything in there you have ever wanted to do with jewelry or gold or silver or gems or pearls. It was probably like half a football field in size and there were all these people standing around trying to convince you to buy thousands of $ worth of jewelry.

After the horrible jewelry palace, we drove back up into the jungle where we went to a gibbon rehabilitation center where they get gibbons (that were mostly pets) and try and rehabilitate/de-humanize them so they can be released into the wild again. It was raining kind of hard by this time so I was not able to go look around at the gibbons as much as I would have liked but it looks like a very good non-profit and I wish them good luck because it seem like are giving it there all.

Just up the hill from the gibbon center we went on this little hike up to a very pretty waterfall. It was a nice walk and it felt really good to hike again plus I got some really good pictures! Then that was the end of our tour adventure! They took us back to the hotel and that was that. I was really glad we did that because it let us see a lot of the island and what else was around our hotel besides a whole bunch of other tourist things.

Kristen and I freshened up a bit and went to find some dinner. We ended up finding this really nice place on the beach where I ordered some curry and the lady told me it was a little hot, and holy crap it was really hot. I only ate like a third of it because it was just way too hot but really good at the same time. We watched the sun go down and just enjoyed our evening on the beach. On the way back to the hotel we took a different route and one of the streets (which is really famous I guess) we went down there are tons of bars and if you would like to find someone to take back to your hotel room, that would be the place to find someone. I guess most of southern Thailand is sort of known for having an abundance of transvestites, which was also very apparent in Phuket. While we were walking they have all of these little food stands all around and I found one that makes all sorts of crapes and I got one for my dessert and it was delicious. Then off to bed for us.

The next day we just chilled around and hung out on the beach most of the day and just had a relaxing time. That night we went back to that same restaurant and I got a different curry that was not hot at all but pretty good, and Kristen got this amazing garlic chicken that was to die for!! We went for a walk again that night and just enjoyed the scenery and all of the night life. Kristen wanted to find a crape for her dessert that night and as we were walking around looking for a crape we walked down this dark street and as we ended up getting back to the lighted area I saw a tall guy with long blonde dreadlock! It was Jeff!! The three of us ended up hanging out the rest of the night and we ended up at a hookah bar where we got a beer and enjoyed a green apple hookah! It was a very very nice night and a good ending to our trip in Phuket!

Well the last day we woke up had breakfast and caught our flight back to Bangkok. Once we arrived to Bangkok we had to figure out how to get back to the main city because we had come by a cab earlier but it was really expensive. So we asked this lady if she knew how to get back and she told us to take this bus and it would get us there. We had no idea if she understood us correctly or not because it kind of seemed like she did not really know, but we tried it anyways. We got on the bus and we were definitely tourists but we played our money and hoped she was right! She ended up being right and we saved ourselves 460 baht by taking the bus, awesome! So we got to the city and….. then what? That was as far as our plans had taken us so we decided to walk around again. We walked around until we got thirsty and decided to go find a coffee shop and where was it, the mall! We just sat and enjoyed our coffee for a while since we had a lot of time until the bus back to the ship. Since we did not really feel like walking around with our backpacks on anymore we thought it would be ice to do something sitting, so we saw a movie! The movie was called Banrhah and it was a Thai movie and it was really good. It was a comedy and it was kind of like one of those silly teenage movies that most adults don’t like! I liked it though it was really funny! The odd thing about the movie was you got assigned seats and someone actually waked into the theater with you and sat you down at your seats with a little flashlight and everything. During the previews about the time when those adds come up and tell you to turn your cellphone off, everyone in the whole theater suddenly stood up. Then some music started playing and pictures of the King started to pass by on the screen! We gathered that they play their national anthem before the movie with some pictures of the king too!

As the movie got closer and closer to the end, it got to be closer and closer to the time to when K and I had to leave to catch the bus to come back to the ship. We had to figure out where we were in the mall and try and remember how to get to one particular door that we had seen 4 days prior! It got really close with time and we did not know if we just could get up with our big backpacks and make everyone else move during the end of their movie just for some tourists to leave….. and we got very antsy sitting there waiting for the movie to end. It finally ended and we had 7 min to get from the 7th floor to the 1st floor and find the one door that we had no clue of just so we could catch the last bus to the ship. We ran like crazy and tried to get past everyone on the escalators and just ran as fast as we could in latterly some random direction and for some crazy reason we made it! We have no idea how we got down from the 7th floor and found the one door we needed out of a mall that is probably 2 city blocks long! So right then and there Kristen and I decided that we are going to go on the Amazing Race when we get home because we will totally win!

Well that was the end of our Thailand trip! I really want to come back someday because there was a lot I wanted to see that I did not get to see this trip so I will have to come back someday in the future to do it all. Kristen and I had a really nice time in Thailand and I am glad we were able to do all that we did!

Vietnam (September 27 – October 1)

(I will add pictures to all of these later, I just thought it would be better to just put it up)

So I can sum up the reason why I love this country in three phrases:
1 Outstanding Vietnamese coffee
2 Amazing beaches
3 Everything is really cheap! (Except postcards!)

Ok so that’s all for now, talk to you all in Thailand! JK!

Let me just start out by saying that my whole experience started out when I woke up in my room and knelt up on my head and peeked my head out the window…. And we were not in the ocean anymore, but we were in a river and it really did not look that big and I was totally surprised that our ship made it to where we were. There were lots of little colorful fishing boats around and tons of floating greens (I think someone told me they were water hy-ya-s-thins!) and the water was a really disgusting brown, o and it was not raining for a change! So I got my shorts and sweater and my slippers on and went outside. From the instant I walked outside I smelt all of the smells I smell when I go to Guatemala! So it already made me smile!

I was so happily surprised with Vietnam in so many ways! Vietnam was the one place that I was not really excited about going to but I had a blast there and I really wan to go back and take my family and friends!

It all started out with the realization that I was in Vietnam and in Vietnam they will have Vietnamese coffee! And let me tell you that I drank that stuff like it was going out of style! For those of you who don’t know what it is let me fill you in; for one you are totally missing out on some amazing coffee, but what it is, is two shots of espresso mixed with sweetened condensed milk poured over ice. A-MAY-ZING!
After the ship got cleared that morning Kristen, Leila and I all went into town to go figure out what to do because none of us were really excited about Vietnam so none of us really had any plans. We went to a travel agency and looked through some stuff and we totally booked ourselves the best couple of days ever. But I will talk more about that later! Leila had to go back to the ship so Kristen and I walked around the city and asked some people where a good coffee shop was and they recommended for us to go across the street and up to the top floor, so we did…and guess what…. It was a mall! So we slowly made our way up to the top floor were we enjoyed some good coffee. On the way back down I ended up buying a whole bunch of stuff because it was all so cheap for what it was!

The next day Kristen and I had an SAS trip to go to the Mekong delta and explorer along the river. We started off on our two hour bus ride towards the river and along the way we stopped at a Buddhist shrine were we were able to get out and take some pictures. They had some amazing Lotus paddies there that I took lots of pictures of!

When we arrived to the river we all piled off the bus and the first thing I noticed was it smells like (for those of you from Colorado) when you are driving east down I-70 where you get to about I-70 and Vasquez where it starts to smell like…….. the dog food place! It smelled exactally like the dog food factory it was crazy, we have no idea why and I am not really sure I want to know what it was that made it smell like that either!

We got into this boat and started driving around and it was just crazy to see what we were seeing. People had “houses” made out of metal siding floating along the brown dog food infested water! It was crazy! While we were cruising along the water they gave us coconuts with straws so we could drink the coco water! After a while they dropped us off at a river bank where we were able to walk around a fruit orchard for a while and then they lets us eat some. They gave us little bananas, dragon fruit, pineapple, a grapefruit thing and I think they were called longgen berries (which I loved).

Then we got back on the boat and they drove us to a place along the river where they make coconut candy which is really good! After the candy demonstration we walked in the neighboring village for a bit and came to the place where we were going to have lunch. At this place they had a giant python…. and guess who jumped up when they said we could hold it…me! It was soooo cool, but it weighed sooo much! But I held a giant Python all by myself!!! We all decided that the snake had just eaten because its stomach was huge and a few people after I held it the snake decided it wanted to release some….feces and when the handler went to go take the snake off he swung the tail around and accidentally made the snakes feces spray all over a lot of people and all over the restaurant! It was nasty and I smelt even nastier, so never the less we went somewhere else for lunch since the snake kinda ruined that place. After lunch we got back on the boat and headed back towards the bus and then head back to the ship.

After the crazy process of getting back to the ship we met Leila and grabbed our backpacks that were already packed and headed back into town to start are crazy travel adventure.

So we get in this mini van and begin our four hour car ride north to a place called Phan Tiet. Our driver spoke no English so we hoped that we got in the right van and he knew where to take us and we hoped we were actually going to go there. We started driving at 6pm so it was already getting dark so we really could not see much so we napped almost the whole way. When we finally got there we pulled into the Sailing Club Resort and Spa! That’s right J all in the name of school! We get our key for the Private bungalow we had already pre booked and walked in and it was like something from a movie or one of those crazy travel books! It was a picture perfect room with huge bed and big draping mosquito nets that fell around the bed like silk. Then the bathroom… we decided to call it “the sexy bathroom” because it really was! It had a huge bathtub and if you felt like showering, one of those rain shower heads, a floating bowl for the sink and incase you did not want to shower in the tub there was another shower outside (because it was a half open air bathroom) in a little mini Zen garden where you could look up at the palm trees and the birds! Ahhh it was amazing! We went left our room to go check the rest of the hotel and it kept getting better and better. The pool was one of those never ending pools so when you were in it you can’t tell where the pool ends or the ocean ends! The beach was pretty nice and there were a few lounge chairs out with extra comfy cushions! We got in around 10:30 so we all decided to go to the bar at the hotel and order a drink to celebrate our outstanding selection. The bartender made the absolute best Mojito I have ever had. (On a different day I had a caparihna and that was amazing. It is vodka, lemon juice and brown sugar!) While we were sitting there with our drinks we could not get over the fact that we did all of this planning all by ourselves and our parents had no helping hand in what we did and it was completely on our own and it was funny that we all just realized that. So at that travel agent we booked the private car to drive four hours there, two nights in our private bungalow, breakfast every morning (which was a really good breakfast by the way), and our 4 hour car ride back all for 120 bucks! Crazy hunh!!!

The next day my friend Leila and I got a 90 minute Thai massage for $20! Our massages were vary different than anything I have ever had and it was completely crazy and kind of awkward all at the same time. I had no idea that I could be that flexible. For the rest of the day we went for a nice long walk on the beach, did some homework on the beach and went swimming in the pool then Leila and Kristen got a 90min manicure and pedicure for $7! Crazy J That night we went for a walk in the city down from our hotel. It was a nice little city, like a nice ocean side town.

The next day we spent most of our time swimming in the partial dog food smelling South China Sea and just hung out and did our homework and enjoyed life. One of the really nice things about this place is we were the only Americans and everyone else was from Australia. The people that own the hotel are a young couple from Australia so I think it is popular with the Australians. But we did not see a single semester at sea kid or any other Americans so we really felt like we got away!

Our driver came and picked us up that evening and brought us back to Ho Chi Minh City. Then we had that night back on the ship.

The next day Jeff and I got up and went into town and got so coffee and then walked around town for a bit because Jeff wanted to get a suit made while we were there. A lot of SAS people had suits and dresses made here because they are really cheap. I know this one kid who got two tailor made suits with jacket, vest and pants out of black cashmere for $120 usd and they look really sharp. So next time I come to Vietnam I totally can do that.

I had a very nice time in Vietnam and I was pleasantly surprised at how nice it is to. The people here were a lot friendlier than the people in China and life from what I saw looked pretty good, the crops looked good, there were lots to sell, and streets were busy… I was also glad that I got to seem both ends of the spectrum of the nice resort town to the very poor and labor heavy lifestyle of the Mekong River.

I forgot to mention one thing: when you want to cross the street in Vietnam you don’t ever stop and wait for traffic you just walk out and go, it is so crazy. The streets are full of scooters (because the government put a large tax on owning cars, so everyone has scooters) and you just walk out in to a big oncoming pile of scooters and just weave your way through them and they will try and go around you!

I had a really good time but I kind of regret spending most of my time at a resort in a third world country. when I could have been out exploring and taking some good observations for all of the homework I have to do! I did not really get to see the poverty there like I have been seeing in different countries, but I did see a little bit of it though!

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!