India Day 1

India Day 1
So I’m traveling with my two friends Anne and Angela. Angela has an older sister, Jacy, who did SAS like 3 years ago, and is currently dating her boyfriend, John, and they met on SAS. Jacy and John have been traveling since like October all around Laos, India, Cambodia, and Thailand, and will be continuing until May. We pulled into port in Chennai and we had a 1:30 flight to New Delhi to meet Angela’s sister. We were one of the first people waiting at the gangway to get off because we needed to catch our flight. We got in a rickshaw (they are these little motorized cab things, they’re so crazy) and drove straight to the airport. India is SO CRAZY, the driving is seriously ridiculous, I honestly thought we were going to get in an accident like 12 times, and we shoved 5 of us in this tiny rickshaw and we were so crammed. We made it to the airport way faster than a car would’ve taken us because the rickshaws weave through everything. It took us around 40 minutes to get there. When we got there we were totally fine on time. BTW Chennai is the dirtiest city I saw in India, it was really crappy, and HOT, especially in my black yoga pants and tshirt, you cant show your knees or shoulders in India. And the airport was just the jankiest airport I’ve ever seen. It was like this crappy building with all dirt roads around it, there was nothing paved. There was like no airport security either, it was just very..India. Oh, also also negotiate prices of cabs or anything before getting in so they don’t rip you off. We flew jetairways on the way to Delhi, and there was a decent amount of SAS kids on our plane. The plane was nice, but the seats were really uncomfortable so I couldn’t sleep and talked with this kid next to me on SAS that I just met. The flight was like 2 or so hours I think. When we got into Delhi, Angela’s sister was waiting for us, it was so cute to see them so happy to see each other. Jacy and John are so cool and so cute. John is tall with dreads and Jacy is so pretty, literally looks exactly like Natalie Portman. She said people mistake her for her all the time. Jacy planned like everything for us it was so nice of her. She rented us a driver for the whole time we were there, it was a total of 140 U.S. a person, which was really nice because we would have had to spend that money on trains to get from city to city and it’s a lot safer and we were in control of what we did, it was a really good deal. Our drivers name was Kishen Singh(its said like kiss and sing, its funny), he was also at the airport and he drove us to our hotel, we stayed at some niceish hotel in Delhi called Jakpur something. It was considered a nicer hotel, but it was by no means nice, it was pretty dirty insdie. Anne and I shared a room. Indians also always use a bucket to shower, so every hotel we stayed in there was a bucket in the shower. We dropped our stuff off and then we went to grab dinner. We ate at this place that is a chain restaurant, the food was really good. IT was so nice to have Jacy and john with us because I would have had NO idea what to order. We got dosais, its like this crepe type thing with potato in the middle and you use your hands (everyone uses their hands for everything in India) and dip it in the different Currie sauces. I really liked it a lot. After like every meal in India, all restaurants give you anis beads (its black licorice basically, I think its what they use to make black licorice), and sugar little pellets, and you dip a spoon in the anis and put it in your hand, then dip it in the sugar and put that in your hand, its like an end of the meal thing that cleanses your palate or something. I really liked it, actually I really just liked the sugar. After dinner we went to this street market, there were a lot of cute shops, with a dirt road in the middle, of course. This was my first spotting of COWS all over, just roaming the streets. It was so weird at first, but after being all through india they are EVERYWHERE. Cows are sacred in Hinduism so they just let them roam all over. It’s so bizarre. We went to cool jewelry shops and other little shops. We all got henna too, it was so cool. My guy was so good and he did my whole right forearm and hand/fingers really detailed in like not even 10 minutes. After we got our henna, we went to this little restaurant above some random shop and got 2 “cappuccinos” there. When we ordered beer they called in a cappuccino because drinking is really frowned upon in the Hindu religion, no one really does it at all. It was really funny they served us our beer in these big coffee mugs so you can’t tell its beer. After we drank our two beers we went back to the hotel.

India

INDIA
I loveeeeee India. It’s my favorite country ive been too. Everyone should go to india. I can’t explain it, ill try, but it is just so amazing and different and crazy. Indian culture is so different its so fun to experience. India is SO dirty though, I didn’t realize how bad my entire bag and clothes smelled until I got back on the ship. The water was so dirty, I barely even showered, only twice, while in India. You constantly blow brown boogers (gross, but true). Indian people are so nice, for the most part. I love they way the dress too, I wore bindis (the jewel in the middle of your forehead) the whole time. Their saris are so pretty. In the south, Indian people do the funniest thing, they do this bobble head thing, it means yes or agree, it’s the same thing as nodding your head, but they move their head from left to right, and it looks like a bobble head, its so funny, I couldn’t get over it. They don’t really do it in northern india though. I love Indian food too, it basically consists of some type of bread (kind of crepe like) and you dip it in some kind of sauce (currie). It gives you dirreha though, not sure if it’s the food or the germs. We drank bottled water the whole time, but who knows what goes in the food.

Vietnam

Vietnam
Everyone in Vietnam is SO nice and so welcoming, it amazes me especially after the war. Anyways, When we pulled into port, we had to wait a while, of course, before we could get off the ship. When we got off there were like a million motor bike guys trying to get us to ride with them and take us wherever (SAS says were not allowed on the bikes, but everyone did anyways). We didn’t go on the motorbikes here. We wanted to find a place to go to the Mekong Delta. We went in this random hotel to ask where to find a travel agency, but they had it at the hotel and we just signed up right there, we signed up for the next morning to go to the Mekong Delta, the group was me Eli, Andrew, and this girl I can’t even remember her name now, who was friends with Andrew. After we figured that out we walked to lunch at this cute little place and I got an omlet, beucase everything else was all meat and it looked gross. It was so freaking cheap it was ridicouls, everyone spent maybe 3 dollars on their meal and drinks. After that we went to a market, which sold a bunch of random stuff, like china, but I liked it a lot better, they sold more stuff, like cloth to make clothes, and a huge food market. IT was fun to walk around and look at everything. After the market we walked to the war museum, which was so sad. They had U.S. tanks and miliraty planes out front. Inside was just a bunch of pictures of soldiers and like dead kids and messed up civilians from the war, it was seirosuly so sad and it made us look like the worst people ever. This one Vietnamese guy with no forearms came up to me and Eli and said hi im blah blah, I immediately walked away, I looked rude kind of but I couldn’t do it, I could not look at him and shake his nub, I felt too bad and im really bad at awkward situations like that and I always smile at inappropriate times because I don’t know what else to do and I would’ve looked even worse if I was smiling when I shook his nub. It was so sad though, he just wanted money though I think. After the war museum we walked basically across the street to where the U.S. headquarters were during the war. It was this huge building that was gated. The building was really cool, it totally looked like a government building on the inside (and the outside). There were big conference rooms, a movie theater, chandeliers, production room, and so on. The roof was so cool, it was so open and there was a pool, there was also a helicopter on the roof in the back. After looking at the builiding we went to stop to eat again because we were with new people that we met up with that hadn’t eaten yet. It was similar food to the restaurant we ate at earlier. I just got a mango smoothie, which was SO good and so fresh. I also got orange juice because it was the best orange juice I have ever had (I tried a sip of my friends first and decided to get some). Oh, by the way this whole day it was SO hot and humid and I was sweating so bad and all I wanted to do was drink water the whole time. Anyways, after we ate we walked to where the shuttle bus picked us up to take us back to the ship. We got back to the ship and we were there for a little while and got ready for the night. I went out with a bunch of my girl friends. When we were all ready, we walked to find somewhere to eat/get drinks. Half of us girls went to one restaurant, and the other half went to another right across the street. I was with my friends Emily, Taylor, Noel, and roomie Lindsay. The restaurant was so cute, it was small, but really cute and it was like outside, where there would normally be windows it was just open. We all weren’t that hungry so we just got some appetizers, I split this amazing shrimp appetizer with Noel. Oh, all Vietnamese restaurants use this dipping sauce for anything, and it seriously smells exactly like cat food, its so gross, I refused to eat it because of the horrible stench at our first lunch, it wasn’t bad at this dinner but lunch ruined it for me. Everyone said it tasted good but I could not get over the cat food smell. We all got a drink or two and then we went to meet back up with the other girls. The other girls wanted to go to the club, Apocalypse Now, where everyone was going to be that night. We didn’t want to go yet, so we just walked along the streets and found this cute little local bar that we stopped by. The bar small and really cute, people were playing darts. There was this really weird Vietnamses guy who seemed a little retarded, and REALLY drunk that was funny at first, but annoying after a little while and the owner made him leave us alone. The owner said it was tradition for anyone who it was their first time at his bar to take this drink/shot with him on the house. It was basically a saki bomb, where he dropped the liquor in the beer, it might have been something different but that’s basically what it was. The owner loved us and introduced us to his cousin who was there, his cousins name was Minh and he started speaking and he had PERFECT English, I was like wow your English is so good, and hes like oh yeah I used to live in the U.S. for a while, and we were like oh yeah for what, and hes like for school, we asked where, and he replied “Yale”. Hahaha, he went to a way better school than any of us. No wonder he spoke perfect English. If I hadn’t seen him I would’ve thought he was from the U.S. by the way he talked. He was so nice and so helpful, he gave us a lot of tips and where to go and what to do. He then walked us to Apocalypse Now to show us how to get there. OH, I totally forgot, crossing the street in Vietnams---CRAZY. There are no crosswalks basically and there are constantly Tons motorbikes, and you have to like navigate your way through them to cross the street, they like weave around you, it was so scary the first time, after a while you get used to it, but it’s so dangerous. Anyways, we just stayed at Apocalypse Now for the rest of the night.

We woke up at 7 the next morning to walk to right outside the hotel to get picked up and go to the Mekong. Our guide was a girl that was my age (20), and we talked to her for a long time about their culture on the drive to the Mekong, I also slept for a lot of it, it was like a 2.5 hour drive. When we got there we bought those funny straw Vietnamese hats. We got on our boat, which was this skinny, long boat that was really close to the water, we had our guide that was with us from the drive, and we had a guide that was with us from the Mekong. I loved the Mekong, it was SO cool, it is basically like people living on a river and they use boats as cars and the water is their roads. We drove through the floating market, and everyone was on their boat selling their stuff (a lot of food, clothes, etc.). There were houses/shacks everywhere along the river, it was so cool. It was also nice to be by fresh water and not ocean water, you can totally tell the difference. We drove a little ways down the river and we stopped at this one little pier to get off. When we walked in there were the cutest little girls trying to sell us post cards, I couldn’t say no they were only 1 dollar (they love dollars in Vietnam) and they were so cute. We were in their home basically, and it was this cute little island looking home, with a grass roof and everything. We went there and saw how they make rice paper and ate it, we also tried some banana wine, and saw how they make candy, we got to try this hardish/chewey chocolate flavored candy, which was so good. Then we walked to the next little house, where there was another little house with their family business, they made rice cakes, the whole family was wrapping them when we got there. We saw how they popped this rice thing, it was like popcorn in a huge pan. We got to try the rice cakes too, and some fruit, I think we tried guava, it was weird, it was kind of like the texture of a potato and not that flavorful. Oh, there were also these 2 little boys playing soccer in the back of the house outside, they were so cute. It was so nice that everyone let us into their home, they seemed so used to it. We also got served tea at both houses we went to, they love tea here too. We got back on the boat and then we took the boat back the way we came and drove to this island, we drove past this one part on the island that had like a fence in the water, we found out that it was how they trap fish. We pulled up to this one pier, and on the island there weren’t any buildings you could see on the edge of the water, we pulled up to the pier and got off at this family’s home. It was really cool, they seemed to like live in this island, like in the forest, they had little buildings and walkways all over, there was a little stream that went through the middle of their “property”. They seemed like they were a lot more well off than all the other places we saw before this. I think they said that they caught and sold fish for a living. We saw the Vietnamese dad catch a fish in this little area with a net, it was cool, he made it look so easy. The little girl was SO cute, and she was playing with this puppy that was tied up, it was so adorable. Their little huts and walkways were really nicely made, it was nice tile and everything. We sat in this one little shaded hut and we got to eat fruit. I don’t remember what anything was called, but there was this one fruit that was like grapes kind of, but tasted like apples. There was also this really good soft yellow fruit, it was like passion fruit or something. We also tried a sip of their fruit alcohol that they made, and it was so strong I could barely swallow it. They also made me this AMAZING lemon tea because I had a sore throat. We left the island and got back on the boat and drove back to where we got on the boat originally. The trip included a lunch there, which was really nice. The lunch was outside in this really pretty garden type area. We were served this fish that was literally sitting in the middle of the table, it was like a dead fish with some type of breading covering it. There was a lady who cut it for us and made it into rolls for us with rice paper and pineapple, it was sooo good. We also got shrimp and they were honestly HUGE, we each got one. I have never seen shrimp so big. After lunch we we got back in the van and drove back. On the way back we stopped at this place where they use eggshells to paint all sorts of pottery, it was really cool, but everything was so expensive, and overpriced so we didn’t get anything. When we got back to the ship we relaxed a little and got ready for the night. I went out to dinner with Emily, Taylor, Lindsay, and Laurel. We went to this Thai food restaurant. We were the only ones in there, it was this really cute small restaurant and the people working were just so incredibly nice. The food was really good, we got some like spicy shrimp and pineapple rice to share; as a meal I got this seafood omelet, it was okay. After dinner we were just going to walk around and find something to do. We ran into some more SAS kids and we ended up just walking around with them. Laurel met this kid who walks around and sells gum the night before and she took him to dinner and she ran into him again. Him and some other little kids (with no shoes one) were just following us everywhere, they were so cute. They were obsessed with taking pictures on our cameras. They thought our cameras were so much fun, and they loved looking at the pictures. All of us started drinking a little bit in this grassy area until we figured out what we wanted to do, two of the kids were still with us and following us. We went to this club that this random guy told us to go to, but he was totally doing it for commission. We were there for like 10 minutes, I hated it, way too loud and way overpriced. Me, Emily, Laurel, and Taylor left (Linds went to meet up with her friend Brooke who was also in Vietnam) and tried to find somewhere else to go. We ended up trying to walk to some bar that looked cool, but there was a circle of Vietnamese guys that were sitting in a circle and playing the guitar, drinking, and singing. They started talking to us and invited us to sit down. We all sat down in the circle with them foreverrrr. They had this really cool thing of alchol with rice in it, it was like this big pot and you just used this straw to sip it out with someone at the same time. The people were SO nice, we just talked and sang with them for hours. It was such a cool experience. Later in the night they took us on their mopeds and they gave us a ride, it was so much fun.
The next morning everyone had something going on, some sort of planned trip with SAS (a lot of people were going to Cambodia), and it was just me and Emily left. Lindsay had booked like the 7 am bus to Mui Ne, a gorgeous resort town. Emily wanted to catch a bus there too so the next morning when we woke up we ate breakfast/lunchish on the ship and then went to a travel agency to figure out how to book the bus to Mui Ne. We walked around forever trying to figure out where to go. We ended up going to the wrong place and had to walk back across town to book it. We decided to just stop halfway at the Rex Hotel and get a drink because we heard a lot about it. The rex hotel was a famous place during the war where all the high up military officials went during the war. They have this really cool rooftop restaurant/bar open to anyone. It was sooooo cute and really big and so relaxing. I got a mojito. It was so freaking hot out and humid it was nice to stop for a little while after walking all over with our heavy backpacks. After we finished we walked to near the area was where we get the bus ticket and by this time we were starving so we decided to find a restaurant, which was seriously impossible to find, we were not in the restaurant part of Ho chi minh city. We finally find this mall and it said it had some restaurant in it. It ended up being this Japanese food restaurant, but it was actually really good. Emily and I both got sushi. After we finished eating we went to find the place to book the bus. We walked around in circles forever trying to find it, it was on some random little street. We FINALLY found these tiny little agencies that you book the bus through. It was like 5 bucks to take the bus there and we booked it for the 8pm bus. We also looked through hotels there and booked one for 2 nights. We booked one at the Canary Resort, it was so cheap (40/night total), so it was basically 20 dollars per night for me. This little place also sold a million DVDs so we spent a long time looking through DVDs, a lot weren’t in English and a lot had subtitles so I only got like 5 DVDs, I just wasn’t in the mood to buy stuff. Even though now I regret not buying more DVDs, most the time they work and they were seriously less than a dollar for a DVD, I regret it so much, oh well. Anyways, by the time we got done looking it was like dinner so Emily found a restaurant close to where the bus picked us up (at 745pm). Em and I found this cute little restaurant that was like half outside/half inside and it was so funny it was like 10 restuarnts in one. The menu had one page of Vietnamese food, another with Chinese, another with Italian, and Mexican. Em an I were so overwhelmed, it was so much to choose from. I ended up just getting some shrimp dish thing. Another thing I noticed—basically all restaurants serve smoothies and I got one every time, they seriously have the best fruit in Vietnam. I also didn’t realize how many tourists were in Vietnam, I mean it wasn’t like filled with tourists, but there were more than I expected. Anyways, it was also weird in the restaurant, people were coming in the restaurant trying to sell us stuff and beggars were coming in and asking for money. It’s crazy how people are just allowed to do that there. Someone was trying to sell us books, and its like yeah im eating dinner right now about to catch a bus and I was just thinking, I REALLY want a book on China, not. Anyways, we showed up at 745 to catch the bus, and we were like the first ones one it. We picked up like 15 more people, but it was really nice to have to have a seat by myself to sleep. The bus took like almost 5 hours to get there, it went by fast because we slept basically the whole way, only stopping once to get food/bathroom. The resort was so cute and nice when we got there. We checked in and went straight to our room, which was pretty nice, but maybe a little rustic, but it wasn’t bad, it was pretty big and the bed was really comfortable. The next morning we woke up and got breakfast at the buffet, which was pretty decent. We went back to sleep for a little while because we were so exhausted. When we woke up, again, we just layed out by our pool. It was a really nice pool and resort. The beach was seriously gorgeous. It was such a nice day too. When we went inside we got ready and met up with Lindsay and her friend that was visting her, Brooke. Brooke and her boyfriend met on SAS and her boyfriends little brother , Chris, is on our ship too so we met up with all of them. We got motorbike rides to the restaurant, it was so fun, I seriously love the motorbikes in Vietnam. Dinner was so cute, it was outside on this rooftop, and I got really good red snapper. After dinner we went to like 2 beach bars, which the first one was really dead. So we went to this other one and it was a little more crowded, but not many people at all. We were only there for an hour or so and then took motor bike rides back to our resort. The next morning we had to catch an 8am bus to take back to Ho Chi Minh City. The bus ride was completely full, and hot, and a really long 5 hour bus ride. Two other SAS girls sat behind me and Em. When we finally got back to Ho Chi minh, Emily and I got lunch at this cute modern restaurant, the owner was talking to us, used to live in California until recently when he came back to Vietnam to open this restaurant. I got this fish fry, it was decent. After lunch it was kind of around ship time (3 or so), so we went back to the ship. I tried to get off and use the internet at this café like 2 steps from the ship, but it was so slow and everyone was using it so I gave up.

CHINA

China
This is honestly going to take so long to type, I have so much to say, and not that much time, I can’t believe we only have 2 days in between now and Vietnam. I’m currently sitting outside on the 7th deck laying out, it’s so nice out, and windy, it feels so good though. Anyways, to start the adventure, we pulled into Shanghai on Monday(?) morning. We had to wait on the ship a little while until we could get off with customs and such. After we finally got off the ship me and a couple of my guy friends walked around Shanghai, there was a group of us that booked a hostel, but when we got there we realize the reservations were messed up so we just decided to put our huge backpacks in our friends hotel room and we would just stay on the ship that night. We walked around a lot of the day in Shanghai, it is really dirty and crowded. This one street was so crowded you could barely walk. We went to lunch at this really grungy place, we just went there because we were starving and we saw they had an English menu. We didn’t realize when we were ordering that it was family portions, so we got WAY too much food, and we didn’t eat a lot of it. I got the Kung pow chicken, which was really good actually, compared to the other boys cooked chicken meal that had tons of bones in it. After lunch we walked around a little bit more, then we went back to the hotel, where some people stayed until later that night, and the other half of us went shopping. I went with 2 of my friends to look for this area called the French Concession, but it’s hard to find because Chinese people don’t recognize it. We walked around a cute shopping area for a while, and stopped to get a drink at 2 cute little restaurant/café places. After we were done looking at shops we took a cab back to the hotel and changed into our clothes for the night and went out to dinner. Dinner was so good, we got all you can eat and drink for like 25 dollars..we seriously got so much food it was ridiculous. It was so much fun there was a HUGE group of us and we stayed there for a long time and just kept ordering more food and drinks. After dinner we went to this bar/club called Muse2 or something, it was a lot of fun, except drinks were kind of expensive considering we were in China. After the bar we went back and picked up our stuff in the hotel room and went back and slept on the ship.

The next morning we woke up on the ship and ate lunch around 11:30 on the ship since we had to leave soon for our flight to Beijing. We took a cab to the airport (me Olivia and Lindsay) which was SO cheap. Cabs in China (all cities) are so cheap. It cost us like 10 dollars total to get to the airport, which was at least a 15-20 min cab. I forget what time our flight was, but we basically spend our whole day traveling. I wasn’t expecting to be on a nice plane, but it was actually really big and it was nice. Oh, another thing-when taking off it was really weird you could totally see how communist it was, you totally got an aerial view of Shanghai and there were TONS of buildings that were the exacty same-the housing was SO uniform. The flight actually included a meal (unlike the cheap American airlines these days) that wasn’t that bad, I think I got the shrimp meal. We also got free beer on the plane. The flight was like 2 hours maybe a little more and when we got there our guides were there to pick us up. There were about 40 of us total (everyone is from SAS). There were two tour guides and we sort of just broke off into 2 groups. We were with Vincent (who was so cool, he was so cute and awesome, we loved him so much), the other was Linda, she was cool, but Vincent was just awesome. There were 2 buses (one for Vincent and the other Linda) and we took them from the airport to the hotel. The hotel was called king Parkview hotel, it was probably 30 minutes away from the Beijing airport. The hotel was not right in the center of Beijing, but in a pretty good location, and a really close cab ride to the center. It was actually really weird, in order to get to the hotel gate entrance we had to walk down this really sketchy like backstreet that was like filled with really grungy looking shops, it was seriously so bizarre. It was kind of freaky to walk down at night. The hotel itself wasn’t bad though at all. Everything was pretty new and the shower was really nice, the only thing was the beds were rock hard, but it was fine for the time being. That night for dinner a few of us girls on the trip went to dinner at this restaurant (literally-it was called “Restaurant”) next to our hotel. It was hilarious, it looked like a banquet hall, they had huge banquet tables that we only took up like half of with like 6 of us, and there were those tray things in the back where it would be set up for a buffet if there was food in the tray things. The dinner was hilarious. Everything was family portions again and we ordered WAY too much. I realized I hate dumplings after this meal. We got a bunch of food that we all shared. When we got the bill we ended up just splitting it like 6 ways, and it was honestly so sad if you converted it into US dollars it would have only been 5 dollars per person (a little less). We honlestly got SO much food, and a ton of bottled water, it would have been SO expensive in the US,. This meal totally made me realize how cheap China was. When we woke up the next morning we got breakfast in the hotel, which was alright-nothing too great, and met everyone in the lobby at 9am (I think, it might have been 8-it feels so long ago now). From there we walked to the Forbidden City, which was really close to our hotel probably around 2 blocks away. I’m sure most people know what the Forbidden City is (maybe not, I honestly didn’t really know) but it was the gated “city” where back in the day all the royal family lived and no one was allowed in it. Anyways, the Forbidden City is definitely a cool thing to see. It was really big, after about an hour everything looked the same, but at first it was amazing to see. I took WAY too many pictures. The buildings were really amazing, the forbidden city was built in 16 years, which is so crazy, that’s so fast for how amazing the buildings are. I can’t really explain the forbidden city, you kind of have to see it for yourself or look at pictures. It was really cool to see. Vincent toured us around the Forbidden city for about an hour, a little more, and then we left to see Tinnamen Square, which was right across the street from the South Entrance of the Forbidden City. Tinnamen square was cool because there is so much history of it. I felt like I really needed to behave around this area, there were guards all over the place. We just walked around Tinnamen Square for a little bit, not too long, then went back to the bus (basically our home for the week) to drive to the Silk Market. When we were walking to the bus was when we first started experiencing the CRAZY Chinese people that are DYING to sell you their random crap. There are serisouly the craziest vendors I have, and probably ever will, expericne, by the end I was SO sick of them, I was way more rude by the end of Beijing. So we got to the Silk Market which was the craziest market we went to that whole time. There were SO many levels of this mall and every floor sold something different, and there were like probably hundreds of people selling the exact same thing just dying to sell to you. It was so crazy. They all actually had pretty good English too. My friend Tess got sick of them she pretended she only spoke German. The silk market was basically intended for us to buy warm stuff for sleeping on the great wall. I ended up buying this “Helly Hansen” vest, yeah right. I bought it for like 50 RMB, which is like not even 15 US. It was worth it because it kept me a lot warmer. I also bought gloves for a couple bucks. I bought other random stuff, but not too much. The silk market was so intense, I was so overwhelmed, I didn’t know what to buy and how much to buy for. There was so much bartering done, but at first I probably overpaid for some things, but everyone does, you learn after a little while, we got the hang of it after the first day or so. Oh, forgot to say that right before the silk market we ran to subway quick because we were starving, it was basically just like the U.S. subway, except a few different options. Anyways, after the silk market we got on the bus (we all had to meet at 2pm) and we drove 2 hours to the great wall. The drive was really relaxing, it was finally nice to rest. The drive was really pretty, and you could totally see it progressively becoming more mountainous. When we got to the great wall we drove to a part of the wall that would be good to see the sunrise. Seeing the great wall for the first time was surreal, everything about the great wall was surreal, it was such an amazing experience. We walked up this path for a little (while the local vendors tried selling us all this great wall crap, they followed us all the way up and all the way down until we got back on the bus—they’re crazy!) until we finally reached the great wall. We all kind of scattered on the wall and took a million and one pictures until the sunset- SO COOL, so beautiful, amazing experience. There were mountains everywhere, and all you could see in the distance was the great wall, it was just so amazing. After we watched the sunset we went back to the bus and drove to dinner at this restaurant near the great wall. It was pretty good, all Chinese places are all really similar, cook the same stuff, all in family portions, and you use a lazy susan in the middle to pass all the food around, it was really nice to have Vincent and Linda just order everything and we just kept getting handed dishes. Another thing that they do in Japan and China-don’t bring food out when everyones is done, when one dish is ready, it comes out, and it’s all in really random order-another weird thing Chinese people do: they don’t go away after they hand you the menu, they wait there and stand over your shoulder until you order. ANYWAYS, we ate dinner and got way too full. I drank so much water, and had 2 beers (the big ones, it seems like it’s the only kind restaurants have), so when we got to the bus to drive to the part of the wall we were sleeping on I was DYING. It was like a 20 min drive, the second we got there I peed right behind the bus. Everyone was all bundled up and most people packed small backpacks, but I just brought my purse that goes over my shoulder and slept in the clothes I was wearing, it wasn’t worth it to change or anything. As we hiked up the great wall to get to the part we were sleeping, no one realized we were literally hiking for like 2 miles, I’m glad I didn’t know in advance or I would have just been in an even more anxious mood because sleeping on the great wall was intense. The hike seirosuly tired everyone out SO bad, everyone was seriously sweating, it was a good start to the night I guess. IT took us at least 30 minutes to walk there. When we finally go there it was probably around 10-10:30 pm. They had all the sleeping bags, food, and mats already up there. Vincents group slept on a different part of the wall than Lindas. They had beer up on the wall and 2 of my friends and Vincent shotgunned a beer on the wall just to say we shotgunned on the Great Wall of China. Vincent was so funny he’d never done it before, so we taught him how. Vincent is so cool, forgot to say he’s around our age-he’s 24. After we jagged around for a while we climbed into our sleeping bags. We all had mats layed down and 2 sleeping bags. Four of us girls got really close in between this small area and it made it a little warmer. Everyone (except for a few) slept in one of the towers, it was warmer in there. There were a select few of us that couldn’t sleep (including me) and were talking forever, I’m pretty sure everyone hated us. My friend Jordan gave me some ny-quil type medecine to help me fall asleep, thank god he did, I would have never fallen asleep. Sleeping on the great wall was a great experience, but I’ve never been so miserable in my whole life. I’ve never been more thankful for a bed. It was really cold, but it wasn’t even the cold that really bothered me, it was just so uncomfortable, it was rock solid, I was so bundled up, I could barely move, I woke up ever freaking 20 minutes, I’ve never been SO happy to see daylight in my entire life. I didn’t know how I was going to make it through the night. IT was so miserable, but I’m so glad I did it, it was SUCH and undescribealbe experience. If you want to know what I’m talking about, you have to do it for yourself. Vincent even said that’s the coldest it’s ever been on the wall for him. He also said we were the first group that everyone did it, normally there are a few that don’t do it and stay in the hotel. I was kind of scared because I kept thinking/dreaming someone was going to come take our stuff. When we woke up we watched the sunrise-around 7am-it was SOOOOOO amazing, better than sunset. I have pictures of it, sooooooooo gorgeous. I think you can imagine. After we watched the sunset, put our bedding away, and ate some fruit/crackers/cookies/drank some juice, we started hiking to get to the zip line. The hike was nice, it warmed up really fast and I was legit hot, I had to shed some layers. The sun was out and it was nice. We hiked for about 3-4 miles. We had quite the workout, the wall is SO up and down, and a lot of it is falling apart, you really have to watch your step and be careful on some parts. Near the end of our hike we had to cross this bridge over this river, it was so gorgeous, after the bridge we climbed a bajillion stairs to get to the zipline-so relieving, it felt so great to have that whole night/day under our belts. It costed 45RMB to zipline down which is like 7 bucks, SO worth it. You could either go alone or with a friend, I went with my friend Tess, she was freaking out. The zipline was so long, it went from the top of this part on the great wall over the river to the bottom, near the restaurant. I have pictures (I keep saying that, but not sharing, ek sorry! I know, I’m trying). Zipling actually went really fast, we were all down in the restaurant with good timing. The lunch we went to was really similar to our dinner from the night before, it might as well have been the same restarant, Chinese food (orange pork, dumplings, rice, that’s basically what I think of). Oh another thing I just thought of (sorry ik im random) the Chinese people around the great wall are a lot darker looking and have different facial features than other Chinese, that’s because a lot of their descent is Mongolian, since part of that area used to be Mongolia. ANYWAYS, we had lunch and we went back to the bus-another 2 hour ride back. When we got back to Beijing we drove to the Olympic green where the 2008 Beijing Olympics were. We just walked around for a little while outside the stadium, we didn’t actually go in. It was cool to see I guess, but we didn’t really do that much. We were all so exhausted from the Great Wall still (and really gross) so we just wanted to get back to the hotel and shower and such. When we got back to the hotel linds and I showered and it felt SO good. We also took a little nap for like an hour or so before going out to eat again and out. After getting ready we ended up meeting with a bunch of people from our trip and going to the banquet “Restaurant” again because it was cheap and it was right next to the hotel. We did the same thing where we split a bunch of random Chinese food, dumplings, fried rice (so good, I ate like all of it because I don’t really like Chinese food and this was like the only thing I liked basically), and some beers. It ended up again being so cheap, probably around 7 dollars per person. After dinner we walked out onto the main street and got cabs to take downtown to “bar street”. It was like a ten minute cab ride, which was probably like 2 us dollars total, so cheap, for the 4 of us in the cab (we split up into groups). Bar street was really cool it was literally just a huge line of bars all on the same side of the street, we walked to almost the end and went to this random bar because they said they had Hookah. It’s so funny the bars are just like the markets, everyone is standing outside their bar enticing you into their bar, its honestly ridiculous. This bar was a total rip off. There was a live band at this one and they were only singing Chinese songs, I’m pretty sure they were talking about us on stage to the crowd because they were starting right at us when they were talking. I also think they were totally lip-syncing the songs. Anyways, this bar was a rip off and we left because they were totally overcharging us. After that buzzkill we ran into some more SAS kids on our china guide trip, and they, and by they I mean my friend Andrew, introduced us to the tactic of bargaining for drink prices before you go in, and they are always willing to make it cheap, but “were not allowed to tell anyone else, it’s a secret.” So we went into this new bar and it was a blast, there were a ton of us at this bar and it was way bigger and the live band was playing some English songs, it was fun. After this bar we went to another on bar street that was smaller, but it was fun. The band played like backstreet boys and Britney spears, it was hilarious, and so much fun. I think we went to one more bar after this one, maybe two, they all seem so similar and it was a while ago now. This one kid from SAS not on our trip, but acuatlly with SAS, alsomt got in big trouble. We were about to go home and we saw him talking to these angry Chinese guys, they called the cops on him because they thought he kicked his car, which he says he didn’t do. We made sure he was okay and then we got a cab to go back. My friends wanted to stop at this club first (Club Mix) so we went there for like 2 seconds, but linds and I wanted to go home so we took the cab back to the hotel. The next morning we woke up and met in the lobby around 9. We got on the bus and went to this Chinese New Year festival. It was cool to be there for the Chinese new years, which is 9 days long I think. This year is the year of the tiger. Anyways, this new years festival was cool. There were random performers everywhere. There was a section of a bunch of food, another section of vendors, another section of games. A section of stages for performers. We just walked around for the hour and a half we were there. After the festival we went back to the bus and we drove to this Hutong village, which is like a typical Chinese village (it is pretty poor I think). When we got to the village we had to split into smaller groups so half of us could eat lunch first, and the other half could go on the rickshaw ride around the village. We went to lunch first in this home. It was really cool to have such an authentic and cultural meal. We ate in the family’s kitchen. They set up two tables and there were little stools all around the table. The kitchen was pretty small, and we found out after lunch that it was for a bunch of people, like the whole building of people that live there. At lunch we had a home cooked, family style (of course), meal. It was actually really good. I really liked the eggplant, I never knew I liked it. China also made me realize how much I didn’t like meat, it mostly just grosses me out. After lunch we got on the rickshaw, Lindsay and I were together. We took a short tour through the little back streets of the village, it was pretty poor, but I don’t think they know any better. There were vendors that were following us everywhere trying to sell us random stuff. Lindsay was such a sucker for the vendors because she feels bad, and they were following her everywhere, it was hilarious. We stopped at this little local Buddhist temple for a few mintues, but we only stood outside it, we didn’t go on. We got back on the rickshaw and then they rode us to the bus. We took the bus to the Summer Palace. The summer palace is where the king or emperor or whatever sent his wife during the summer so he could have his mistresses. The summer palace looked a lot like the buildings in the forbidden city. The summer palace was cool because it had a bunch of walkways and it was on the water. I liked it better than the forbidden city, but it got old really fast. I was done after 15 minutes, everything just starts to look the same. After the summer palace we went to a tea house for a tea ceremony. It was really cool, I liked it a lot, it was relaxing after a long day of walking and site seeing. The tea house lady made like 4 or 5 different teas in front of us, explained what they were and what they were for. We got tiny little cups and we got to try it. At first when we got to china I didn’t really like tea, but I got an acquired taste for it after we had it with every meal. After the ceremony we took the bus to this restaurant for a Peking duck dinner. The restaurant was on the second story of this huge building. The restaurant was the nicest restaurant we had gone to the whole time on our Beijing trip. There was SO much food at this dinner, and it was by far the best food I had had, it was family style again, but it was the best one by far. They had the best tofu ever, I also realized I loved tofu after china. At the end of the meal they brought the duck out and cut it right in front of us. I tried the duck (wrapped in tortillas), it was okay, but it kind of grossed me out so I didn’t have very much at all. After dinner we went to the acrobat show. There were a bunch of SAS kids there (on the SAS trip) too. The acrobat show started at like 8 or 830, it was like an hour long. IT was seriously AMAZING. The started out doing a bunch of cool flips by launching people in the air. Another act they used like this thing that was in the air that was like 2 hamster wheel things, it was scary, I was so afraid they were going to fall. They also had a bunch of really flexible girls, one was really young. I have a bunch of pictures, I can’t really describe what they did. It was seriously amazing, I was so amazed after the show. After the show we went back to the hotel and got ready for the night. We went out to the bar street again for a little bit, it was so funny we went to one of the same bars that we went to the night before and the people who sang the backstreet boys the night before were there and they were singing the EXACT same songs, and in the exact same outfits. After we went to the bars for a little while we went to this club called Vick’s, there were tons of SAS kids there. It was fun, but it wasn’t that cheap like all the other bars.

When we woke up the next morning we had to pack super fast because we didn’t know we had to be checked out of the hotel since we were leaving later that night to fly to Hong Kong (most people were flying out the next morning). After we packed in record time we ran to the bus. We drove to this market that was SO cute, it was an outside market. They sold a lot of art, jewelry, and a bunch of other crafts. This was by FAR my favorite market, they were selling really cool stuff and they weren’t as grabby as everyone else. I bought this really cool painting for my mom of a river and Chinese houses around it, it was SO amazing and I actually spent a decent amount of money on it (around 35 dollars), which was so cheap for how good and large it was. It took so long to pick out art work, there was SO much and it was so hard. I also bought a neclace, I don’t remember if I bought anything else, I don’t think so. After the market we went to this hot pot lunch. It was really cool, even though I didn’t really like the food. They had this boiling water pot in the middle of the table and they gave us a bunch of raw meat and vegetables and we would grab what we wanted and put it in the water and just grab it when it looked done. When we grabbed it out of the water we put it in this sauce, it was really good. I didn’t eat that much and I wasn’t very satisfied after the meal, the meat really grossed me out seeing it raw then cooking it in like 2 seconds and eating it. I liked some of the vegetables though, but it didn’t fill me up. After lunch we went to ANOTHER freaking market. This was called the pearl market, but it didn’t really have just pearls, it was just like the silk market where there were a million vendors all selling the same thing, fake purses, and shoes, iPods, electronics, makeup (of course, it was all “real”). This market wasn’t as bad though, it wasn’t as crowded as the silk market and it was more organized. I got some real pearl earrings for really cheap. After the market, we went to the temple of heaven, which was where the royalty went to send their messages to the Gods. The temple of heaven architecture looked a lot like that of the forbidden city and the summer palace, but it was smaller, and there was a huge temple (obviously) in the middle of it. When we were walking down a pathway there was this lady singing this weird, opera/yodeling type music. There was a decent size crowd around her filled with Asians. Lindsay and I were being weird and were in the way back where no one could see us because there was a big crowd and we started dancing like really weird because we thought it was funny and we were bored just being silly, the next thing I knew these 2 Chinese old guys were loving it and cheering us on and the next thing I knew after that the entire crowd parted and the lady singing was waving us up to come up and dance in front of the entire crowd with us. Lindsay and I were so embarrassed and hesitant at first, but everyone was so persistent so I just say screw it and we went up there. Lindsay was embarrassed and kind of standing in the back, but I just embraced it beucase might as well, when in rome, and I danced like a complete idiot for the minute and a half it lasted. There were so many Asians taking pictures of us, it was so hilarious. The lady singing was so short and she was spinning me around in circles, it was so hard to fit under her arm. After the song we had to run to catch up with our group, there were like 3 kids in our group with us who saw us dance like idiots in front of everyone. When we found our group we were almost out of the temple and we were in this open area with a bunch of people and there was music playing. Someone in our group decided to start a congo line through the whole thing and everyone joined in and the Asians were loving it, some joined in and there was a news reporter that took a picture of us and said we were doing a “great wall” dance, we were in the paper the next day. Someone has the article, I need to get a copy of it, im not in the picture though. We walked out of the temple and right outside it was a public gym, it was really cool. There were a lot of old people in workout clothes, it looked like a playground basically. We got back on the bus and we got dropped off at the hotel. Vincent, our guide, was so cute. He loved us so much. He gave us this speech on how we changed him and showed him such a good time, and we were the best group he ever had, Vincent was so adorable. Oh, I forgot to say that Vincent went out with us the night before, and he said he has never had that much fun before. He was more of our friend rather than our guide, he was so sad to see us leave. When we got dropped off at the hotel we waited in the lobby for an hour or so for the bus to take us to the airport. Lindsay and I were starving so we went to a convenience store to get some snacks while we waited, I got wasabi pees, I love them, I forgot all about them, we used to eat them all the time at home. When we got to the airport we checked in and since the plane was full by the time we got there and there was empty space in the business class, we got upgraded to business class, which was AWESOME. Going through customs I accidently left my painting on the table filling out a departure form. I realized it after we went through security and I tried explaining what happened to like 4 people what happened until one lady finally understood, she walked us back but by the time we got back there I didn’t see it and it was long gone, I was so upset I lost it, but it’s not the end of the world. Lindsay and I tried to get pizza hut after we got to the gate, but we were so rushed we had to get it to go and we were almost late, and we had to get spaghetti because pizza took longer to cook. The business class was so nice, the seats were so big, and we got like a really good like 3 course meal it was awesome. When we landed in hong kong it was like 1 am and we got a cab back to the ship. I could already tell by the cab ride there that I was going to love hong kong, it was so much warmer, and it was really pretty, and everyone seemed to speak English. When we woke up the next morning (around 10 or so) I met up with some of my friends Anne, Laurel, and Noel (and Lindsay, of course), and we took the subway to 10,000 Buddhas. IT was SO cool. There were literally 10,000 buddhas there. When we walked in we walked up this long walkway, uphill, with statues of buddhas on both sides. When we got to the top there were like temples with buddhas everywerhe, it was really cool, I have a ton of pictures. We ate lunch in this restaurant at 10,000 buddhas, which by the way there are really like 12,000 something buddhas total, the restarant was small and it was vegatarian, I loved it, we each had to order one course and we shared it with everyone, everything was basically tofu, we got like duck and some other stuff, it was so good, I loved it, and I loved knowing it wasn’t real meat, I think I could totally be a vegetarian (maybe a pescatartian, I love fish). At lunch we saw a monkey in the tree, it was so exciting, I didn’t realize monkeys were in hong kong. At the end of lunch we saw a pack of monkeys run up this pathway so we followed, the monkeys were playing around and everyone was taking pictures and videos, i was kind of hesitant because I knew they are territorial. After a while, the monkeys started getting annoyed and they kind of attacked us. One grabbed this Asian girl and she was screaming and they got really close to me and noel and we all were screaming and sprinted away. We stayed far away from them after that. We walked around all the pathways of 10,000 buddhas for a little while after that, and then walked down a million stairs to get out, which led us to like this little village type thing, it was really cute and a river ran through it. This whole day made me love hong kong, the weather is warm, but not too warm, and it was so much better than the other part of china, its werid that hong kong is like a different country, but not at the same time. You can totally tell that the British were there before. And hong kong isn’t communist, which you can also totally tell. Hong kong was so awesome. After 10,000 buddhas we went back to the ship. We all just hung out on the ship and ate dinner on the ship, then we went out for this “booze crusie” that we went on to watch the lights show. The booze cruise was a lot of fun, it was just a bunch of us semester at sea kids, probably around 30 of us. The light show was only like 15 minutes, and it was just like a bunch of different color lights coming from the bulidngs, it wasn’t THAT cool, but it was still cool to see, because it’s like the best in the world or something. We pre-paid for the booze cruise so it was all-inclusive with everything. We were on the boat for like an hour and a half or so and when they dropped us off, we went to this bar called Bulldogs, where a ton of semester at sea kids were. It was really fun. The next morning when we woke up we didn’t have that much time, so we all just took advantage of the free internet because it was the first time since being on the ship we had free internet, so I just used that for a little while and then got back on the ship because it was around the time it got crowded and everyone was coming back on the ship. WOW that took me SO long to write, over a period of days, on and off. I’m so glad that’s done, it was brutal to write. We get to india tomorrow, yay! Now I have to write about Vietnam….