Paradise Is In Your Mind...

We had to reroute after Japan due to a typhoon so we got to China a few days late. Actually we docked in Hong Kong first. Now THAT is a beautiful city. I never thought I would think a skyline was beautiful but nothing beats the Hong Kong skyline at night. HK is like NYC but on all different little islands and much cleaner. The people are so friendly, there are markets just about everywhere and it is busy all day and all night long. It was nothing like I expected from a big city however. We rode about a half an hour to Stanley Markets and the ride was amazing. We were in the front on the 2 nd level of a double decker bus riding up this huge, windy road and climbing up the side of a mountain. HK has so much greenery and there are even beaches there! When you look out over the edge there were mountains and islands and it was just beautiful. I definitely would like to return to HK one day.

Hong Kong is nutssssssss. Pulling into port you just see miles and miles of ridiculously tall buildings. Its like new york city but all crammed onto these islands. Oh and the people are a lot nicer too. One of the cool things was they use bamboo scaffolding still to work on buildings! Also, we went to Stanley Market which is this really popular market here and the ride up-- so gorgeous. There are beaches and so many mountains and hills everywhere and so much greenery. Its so beautiful youd never guess like 6 million people live there or something ridiculous like that. I had NO IDEA HK looked anything like that. We went to the markets and bought way too much stuff so get excited for xmas presents everybody.

Ok so James, Sam, Jenn and I flew Indy up to Beijing. We spent the day in Hong Kong and then flew up there. We got in late and didnt get to do too much. We got ripped off majorly for a cab ride tho..it was like $50 for 40minutes which i know all of you are like whaaaaaat thats excellent! But the next day we hired a woman to take us to the great wall and she drove us 2 hrs, waited for us for 3.5 hrs while we climbed and then drove us back for only $50. Everything is SOOO cheap here. Its actually sad how low u can go when u ask for a price. At the markets, some woman tried to charge us $12 for 5 bananas because she knew we were American and would pay that. We said no and she wouldnt go lower so we started walking away. She immediately grabbed us and gave us however much we wanted because there were literally 15 other women around her selling the EXACT same things!

Funny story about our flight there. We bought alcohol because jenn saiddd she gets anxious and didnt bring anything so we thought hey get drunk! So we ended up hating the alcohol but before long we realized James and Sa were beligerent in the back seat. Sam ended up trying to steal his lap top and then asking him in a uncontrollable volume was his ethnicity was because he looked very western. haha. That was after she spilled her dinner all over their row. Haha.

So anyways we spent that next day climbing the Great Wall and it was amazing. You take these trams up and all of a sudden over the trees you just see this huge wall. It is in the middle of the mountains and the scenery is incredible! The wall itself is just a wall but the fact that it took SO LONG to build it is just baffling. People were buried in the wall that died while they were building and this thing is just enourmously long. Its so intelligently architectured too. It is surreal to be there because you grow up seeing this beautiful thing in magazines. You never think you'll actually get to see it. It was absolutely amazing. We spent almost 3.5 hrs climbing so we got to see a lot of the wall. The spot we climbed was in pretty good shape but I saw others' pictures where the wall was just crumbling. We got to a point on our spot where we weren't allowed to go any further as the wall was almost completely demolished beyond that point. We climbed absolutely vertically up 460 stairs (yes, we counted) and reached this landing where you could look all around you and see the wall winding along the tops of the mountains. The scenery was unbelievable. All you could see was green. Mountains and valleys surrounded us on the wall. It was such a breathtaking sight. It was so surreal to be climbing this thing Ive seen in magazines and on tv since I was little.

After taking it all in, we climbed back down and met our lady at the bottom to take us back. Before we left, James bargained for 6 bottles of water for $1 and a ridiculous amount of bananas (im pretty sure he ate like 6 of them that day!) for way cheap...unbelievable. The ride back was long and smelly and we were definately exhausted. I can now say I have seen the great wall of china! How surreal is that...

China was a dump. Haha, I hate to be brutal but it was seriously nothing like I had expected. Especially since they have such a great economy, I thought id see a much more put together country. I also talked to kids who went to Xi'an and Guilin and they all had the same impressions.

The next day we saw the Forbidden City which was really nice as well. It was HUGE! Unfortunately all the buildings pretty much look the same inside the walls but it was nice to see them. If you saw the Last Emporer the movie, not the disney one (Villa girls- we watched it in world cultures!) you know what it looks like. No one was allowed in there at one point except him and his people so it was bizarre to be in there. It all looks the same but the painting on the outsides of the buildings are so intricate. They must have taken them 30 years! It was all so elaborate and absolutely beautiful.

We walked through Tiananmen Square and saw the Peoples Monument and Chairmen Mao's Mausoleum. The weird thing about the Mao site: it was 7:30 am, the site didn't open until 8 and was only open for 3 hrs, all it is is a walkthrough where you see his body (even then, you don't even know if it's the wax double) and there were probably 3,000 people in this line that wrapped around the building waiting to go in. We couldn't figure it out- maybe EVERYONE in china is required to go every day (haha, wouldn't surprise me!). Oh I also learned that in China if you send an email with anything bad about the country in it, the recipient receives only a blank email. Isn't that strange? Oh and you aren't allowed to have bibles there which I'm sure is not the only banned object. That afternoon we walked to the Temple of Heaven which was beautiful as well. We had to walk 10 blocks to get to it. The city was a dump. There were amputees just sitting in the middle of the sidewalk on just about every corner. All the buildings for that 10 block stretch were pretty much hollowed out and had nothing inside them but rubble and rats. The strange thing, Beijing is hosting the Olympics in 2008 so apparently there's a huge renovation going on. Thank God because I don't know how they could bring all those people and cameras into that city with it looking like it does. Also, this could be really good for them because the Olympics tend to bring a great deal of money to the host city. Anyways, all those buildings had these expensive billboards lined up one next to another in front of them to block people from seeing them. They were brightly colored pictures of the city. It was very bizarre because I'm hoping they weren't simply going to block out the filth. We'll see I guess in 2008. Anyway, that night we flew black to HK and spent the next day doing a little bit more market shopping.

There was such a huge difference between what we saw in Japan and what we saw in China. Its funny cuz at home its just if ur asian, ur asian. We cant tell the difference. But the cultures are two completely different ones. In China people just walk around and the whole tone of the society is just depressed. Theyre not friendly, its so dumpy...it was just not a fun place to be. But seeing the sights was definately something. Im really glad I went.

We only had two days on the ship and then we docked in Saigon, Vietnam. Vietnam was pretty much the best place on earth which is surprising because it too is quite a dump. At night when we'd walk the streets there were cockroaches and huge rats and garbage everywhere. The city itself wasn't anything special but what made me enjoy it was the people. Everyone there was so friendly. They would ALL yell hello to us as we'd pass or offer a smile. No one here was really trying to rip you off either like we found in China (at the great wall some woman tried to get my friend James to pay $5USD for a bottle of water). It was just such a comfortable, fun environment that you couldn't help but love it.

The first day we arrived I didn't get up to see us dock which I should have! We docked early and I was exhausted. We got off the ship and immediately there were a couple stands where people were seling things, not surprisingly. After walking a little further there is a circle of men in purple shirts with motor bikes all trying to offer you a taxi! There was a big group of us and we werent sure where we were going so we decided to walk. (I wish we had taken those motorbikes earlier cuz those were fun!) We went to this place to get our dresses made. It was really expensive. I got one dress made there that I ended up being satisfied with. On the way to lunch I actually stopped at a smaller tailor and got a dress made for $30 which I ended up liking a lot better than the other one! But oh well, as was my justification for the rest of the money i spent, they need it more than I do really. That day we did a lot of shopping at the markets and I bought a ton of cool stuff. We also ate lunch at this small place and I tried my first coconut! It wasn't nearly as good as I expected. We also ate some kind of soup with unrecognizable objects in it.

We walked around a lot and just saw as much of the city as we could.

The middle three days I spent on the Mekong River Delta. Its this huge river that runs through Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and a few other places and the delta is in Southern Vietnam. It was about a 3 hours ride which was long but interesting. There were so many dogs here which we haven't seen in the last 3 ports. Everyone has them as pets but most of them look like a combination of two dogs that shouldn't breed. When we got to the delta we spent a lot of time on boats in the rivers. The Delta is one big river and all its tributaries. It was straight out of national geographic how these people live. They all have boats because that's the only way to get from island to island or across the "Street" which is all river. They have houses on stilts on the edge of the water. I wouldn't really call them houses. They are more like huts made of any type of scrap material they could find. They have makeshift fishing nets to catch dinner. They wash their laundry in the river and hang it up to dry. Their huts don't have doors on the front and they have minimal furniture. They are usually just one big room and when you drive by, people are just lying on the tile floors. Many people here don't wear shoes either. It is all so primitive. I really did not imagine that people live this way. But it was also very bizarre because there are internet café's even on the delta and there were a couple houses we walked by that had televisions.

The first night in the delta we stayed at this Inn on the water and we laid around in hammocks listening to traditional Vietnamese music. We ate fabulous food and slept under mosquito nets and showered in freezing cold showers. It was so humbling to see all of the things that these people didn't have and yet they were so happy. People here have such terrible living conditions but nobody starves. Vietnam has so many resources that their problems are not hunger which is a beautiful thing. They don't have much else but they are truly so happy. It is amazing to think how many things I have at home that I don't NEED.

While we were at the delta some of the other things we saw were how coconut candy is made, how they make bricks, we drank snake wine (snake bodies and a dead crow that is marinated in alcohol—terrible tasting), saw them making rice paper and went to an orphanage. We also woke up early and saw the floating markets. These big boats fill up on produce and then ride down and dock in the river. The little boats come and float up next to the big boats and buy their supplies. Some farmers send someone down for days until all their produce is sold. It was so neat to see because it was so different than us getting in our cars an going to the grocery store.

I had such an incredible time in Vietnam. I only got to share here some of the experiences I had. I wish I could tell you everything! Maybe when I get home, haha.

The thing that will stick in my mind about China is not really something a country would want to be known for: the horrible smell. Now given that China has one of the biggest economies in the world I expected it to be modern, clean and very happy. That isn’t even close to what I saw. The people are so poor there. There are amputees sitting in the sidewalk everywhere, there are people doing whatever they can for money and it smells so terrible from the pollution. It actually resembles Mexico somewhat in that it is brown, dusty and pretty run down. The difference is the people. Chinese people seem so depressed. They aren’t friendly and the general undertone of society there is just sad. Its like the people go through the motions of their day without a single moment of happiness. Its so sad. It was SO different than what we saw in Japan. Also another difference is Japanese people don’t stare at people for fear of embarrassing you while that rule doesn’t apply whatsoever in China. They stare and point and whatever else they feel like doing. Also, in my opinion, Japanese people are much smaller and in better health than Chinese. Both countries people have very bad teeth…I don’t know that they have good dental care anywhere I’ve visited but I noticed it far less in Japan than I did in China.

Kyoto was the 2nd capital of Japan before it was moved to Tokyo. It is an older city with way too many shrines, temples and monuments. The day we went was incredibly rainy which made the sightseeing a little difficult. We hopped a bus and went to start the sightseeing. We went to Nishi-Huganji and watched this really bizarre Buddhist ceremony. We also got to see Kinkakuji (Golden Pavillion), the Gion District where all the Geisha houses are, and Nijo Castle which offered a beautiful view of an entire piece of property that was once the castle of the shogun. (Rumor is parts of the Last Samurai were filmed there) Now just sightseeing can start to resemble family vacations when your father made you walk the perimeter of Gettysburg battle field in the scorching heat when all you wanted to do was shop. I admit, it wasn’t the most stimulating thing although it was pretty amazing to see some of the architecture. Just when I was starting to lose enthusiasm, Kate Sam and I boarded a city bus and soon after were in the company of four 15year old Japanese school students. This was a long bus ride and we noticed the one girl would rest her head in her hands and just stare at the three of us. When we would look over at her, she would giggle and look away. After 15 minutes of this I looked her in the eyes and said hello. They all got so worked up! We spent the next 20 minutes talking about everything from school to Britney Spears’ new baby. At the same instant, the little girl and I both took out our cameras and took a group picture. They were so excited, she dug through her bag and pulled out three little paper cranes she had made. Kate had a few American $1 bills in her bag so she gave each of them one. Then we gave them some American gum and they gave us some Japanese candies. The best part was that we knew we would leave the bus to tell everyone we encountered about the amazing Japanese children we met. We knew at the same time, all the children would go home and tell their parents and spend the whole next day talking about their new American friends.