Yangshuo – Sweet Cherryette

From Beijing we flew south to Guilin, where we then took a bus to Yangshuo.  The plane ride was great… normal.  The bus was the opposite.  First off, we dubbed it the “dirty diaper express” due to the waft of dirty diaper smell that permeated the bus the entire trip.  Thankfully the spectacular view kept our minds off the stench and on something much better.  Despite the overcast weather, you could still see the silhoutte of all the crazy mountains that seemed to come out of nowhere.  The mountains around Yangshou were interesting because there were single mountains popping up everywhere instead of one long mountain range.  Aside from the scenery and the poopy diapers the bus ride was quite an adventure.  The road we traveled was a two lane road but everyone passed one another either in the left lane or on the shoulder and horns were going off every couple of seconds.  We never felt in danger even though everyone was seriously all over the road.  We soon came to realize that in southeast asia horn honking and passing at any opportunity is a way of life. 

The more I think back on Yangshou the more I realize how much it held.  The karst mountains, the beautiful Li River flowing through it, the great market, and the fabulous happy hour were things, at the time, I thought we’d find everywhere and we have found one of those elements in every city, but to have a town with them all is truly awesome.  The markets were packed with all kinds of goodies but the one item that dominated was silk.  There was also an overload of knock-off Columbia and Northface winter jackets that I resisted to buy. 

Yangshou was a beautiful small town we used to relax in in-between city sight seeing.  We rode bikes outside of town through small villages and over beautiful bridges and we took a motor boat ride up the river to get a better look at the mountains.  While the motorboat ride was fun, the weather was still chilly and a bit overcast.  We recommend if you’re going to go and do a boat ride it’s probably best to do a bamboo boat ride on a beautiful sunny day while someone paddles you.  You’re also able to hire a bamboo boat with a table where you can eat dinner while going down stream. 

Interestingly enough, we ran into a guy in Yangshuo from the town next to where I live, who is a photographer named Shea.  Shea and his tour guide, Julie, met up with us one night for some happy hour drinks.  That was still the best happy hour we’ve found on this trip, buy one cocktail, get the second free!  Keep in mind, the cocktails were around $2 each.  However, the greatest part about the drinks were they were made by a ten year old!  This little girl had a bartenders guide and couldn’t see over the counter top.  Gotta love those lax Chinese drinking laws!  Actually, Julie, Shea’s guide told us in China drinking isn’t a big deal (much like in Europe) and most Chinese youth don’t really start drinking until after they’re done college.  Julie also asked us why our government is so oppressive.  We laughed and asked her the same question!  Needless to say, this whole trip has been a huge learning experience as far as getting to know the people, gaining a better knowledge of how they work, and coming to understand how they view us as well.

Our next stop… Vietnam! I wish I could say we jumped from Yangshuo to Hanoi, Vietnam in no time but our trip took us from Yangshuo to Nanning, China where we had to catch a train to the border.  In Nanning we stayed in the grossest roach motel I’ve ever seen.  While brushing my teeth I started to gag from the poop fumes and Drew freaked because he saw his first rat here (not in the motel thankfully).  Crossing the border went without a hitch and we were off to start a whole new country! 

View all of our China photos, CHEERS!!!

Chin-up China!

So, as Blair stated, we were blocked from the blog for the length of our stay in China.  The vacation from media and outside contact was indeed refreshing in someways.  Definitely more like traveling in the “old days,” sans satellite tv, cell and internet.  Now that we are back, news is neat.  One quick thought, China criticizing the US on shooting down a satellite on “environmental concerns” is um… a lil silly.  It’s friggen tough to breath there.  Some say living in Beijing is equivalent to smoking 70 cigarettes a day, that is a bit drastic thou.  That said, we all know that’s not why the US did it either.  Second political thought, we had more then one conversation with Chinese folks, who asked us how we could stand our oppressive government.  Beers were shared over that one.  Funny and sad for ALL of us. 

OK Beijing… the desert creeps close everyday, and it is flat, freezing, super dry and polluted as all heck.  Some Olympiads this summer plan to wear masks when competing, and I understand why.  Thou US has banned its athletes from doing so for political reasons.  As every city in China, there are construction cranes absolutely EVERYWHERE!!  Its development on at mach speed.  The Chinese are very worried about the pace, saying they fear the farm to disco culture. 

I think the hardest thing to get used to was that everyone hawked luggies everywhere. You could be sitting in a restaurant and the folks next to you would be hawking and spitting on the floor.  Hence, you never see them sit on the ground ever.  I would eat with my bag in my lap, if a chair wasn’t handy.  Even with the indoor spitting, we still managed to snag some delicious veggie and duck meals.  More on meals, we never saw the Chinese use soy sauce.  Once we asked for some, and the waiter said “on dumplings!?” laughed and walked away.  I guess its like putting ketchup on our pasta… noted and fair enough.

Due to us getting there just after Chinese New Year, there were fireworks (the large mortar kind) every night.  Its very exciting, especially when its all night, just outside your window.  As all things, you get used to it.  Another aspect of the New Year, all of the older folks rock the hackie-sack.  It was awesome to see 70 year old ladies flipping around, busting moves.  We were told this is an ancient game, and I believe it.

It also seemed that everyone traded in their old pedal bike for moped-like electric versions.  Progress indeed, and very neat.   

As B. mentioned, Valentines day was our best in China.  THANKS GRAVY for the awesome Great Wall and Gun Tour tour idea.  The wall trip was absolutely amazing.  The mountain climb brought some much needed exercise, and was absolutely breath taking.  Worth the trip indeed.  The second part of the trip was also simply perfect.  B and I were driven to a Chinese Army gun range; lead into a room full of weapons of all types; and allowed to choose what we wanted to bro down with.  Until then, our driver had remained completely quiet, but got unbelievably stoked when he saw what we were doing; he kept smiling big and shooting an “air” machine gun around.  FUN is just not the word.  We both shot Uzi’s and Ak-47’s.  Blair ruled the UZI, I the AK, and we were allowed to keep our targets.  I must say  that you haven’t lived until you’ve watched your lady fire a machine gun on full auto.  Our driver even snuck us a bunch of our spent shells as souvenirs (mailed home before we left China with our targets).  Unfortunately, they would not allow us to take pics on the range, but everyone loved it, including the Chinese military men, all smiling.

It was at this point that our guide pulled Blair aside, and told her that ,” I must be VERY wealthy to have such a pretty girlfriend.”  Now, um, yea, um!?  Its obviously very true that Blair is truly beautiful, but am I chop liver over here!?  I gotta have cash to match-up?  She also explained how excited she was when her fiance purchase a tv, fridge and car so his company could then allow them to marry.  She also explained that you need the same permission from your employer to have a baby. 

 We ended the day with a trip to the Temple of Heaven.  Our best experience within the city.  It was the golden hour, and a perfect beautiful ending to a great day.

Other highlights were the Lama Temple and of course, the Forbidden City and Tienanmen Square.  We timed how long it took us to walk from one end of the square to the other, and it was some 30 minutes.  HUGE! Being in Tienanmen was super weird with all the pics we’ve seen; mixed with being there, watching lil crazy cute kids running around everywhere.  We called them rolly-pollies as they were all bundled up, cute as heck.  These kids did bring a bit of culture shock too.  When toddles need to use the pot, the parents just pick them up hog tie style and hold them over a trash can, street curb or city tree.  Efficient i guess, but watch your step in the city.

Check out all of our China pics!

Next post, Guilin and Yangshuo…

lovedrewbie and Blair

good morning, vietnam!!!!!

alright everyone, it’s been far too long since we last updated this thing but for very good reason.  you see, we were in china and the chinese government we learned employs 30,000 to 50,000 people to sit on the computer all day long and block websites from being seen.  for whatever reason, our travel blog was one of the millions of sites they deemed unsuitable.  lets all breathe a sigh of relief though because we’re now in beeaauuttiifulll hanoi, vietnam where the internet flows freely! 

anyway,  drew will be making a larger post in the next day or so full of pictures and adventures but for now you’ll have to wait.  i will say though that in china for valentine’s day drew and i climbed the great wall of china in the morning and in the afternoon went to a chinese military complex where we shot AK-47’s and UZI’s.  my valentine’s day present were the bullets i got to fire.  as drew likes to say, “nothing says love like automatic weapons!”  weapons reigned supreme in the north while bike riding and boat rides ruled the south when we stayed in a small town called Yangshuo.  the pictures won’t do this place justice, it was just too beautiful.  now that i’m in vietnam though i’ve come to realize that that beauty was just the beginning…

 i’m wearing shorts today and so stoked about that.  bring on the warm weather!!! 

love,

blair

Thoughts on Korea, and a trip to World Cup Stadium.

Hello from Seoul!

We continue to have a fantastic trip!  We are so lucky to have this opportunity, so we count our blessings!  That said, we dearly miss our friends and family.  So love to you all! 

Thoughts and observations: Christmas and the holidays are big deal here.  There are still Christmas decorations everywhere.  We are told they stay up until the Spring.  I guess that’s not too different from us in the US starting the holiday, at least the decorations and adverts,  at the beginning of Fall.  Also, its Chinese new year, which is a VERY big deal here, so everyone is still saying happy new year.  The new year also means everything is shut down for a week.  As such, we have had to push back our trip to Beijing by 5 days or so.  We figure its good to give China a few more days to untangle the travel fiasco anywho.  We fly there Tuesday morning.

Other observations…  People here love their video games, 3 out of the 30 TV channels we recieve are devoted to video game coverage.  Basically, like watching your friends play video games all day.  lots of porn too, but yea…   We managed to wake up in time for the Superbowl, which was broadcast here with no commercials.  Certainly a differnet experience, if your a fan, its the way to go. 

  

 view our pictures of Korea: http://www.flickr.com/photos/teamblew/sets/72157603861443693/

Also sports related, everyone here wears White Sox hats.  I checked the Sox roster to see if they had a star Korean, but it didn’t seem to be the case.  Last night as we boarded a subway I saw a dood with a Mariners hat.  I ran up to him and tried to talk about Ichiro, but he wanted nothing to do with me.  We were on our way out of World Cup Stadium, where we watched the Korean team whip some Turkmenistan butt.  It was super fun, and a great precursor for 2010 in South Africa.  The stadium is amazing, the people were uber friendly (giving us beer and chanting fight songs), that said it was the coldest night I can remember experiencing.  Luckily, Blair came to the rescue with the toe warmers she packed.  No food at the stadium, but plenty of beer to keep us warm.  Afterwards we went out with new British friends, met here at our hotel, they were at the game as well.  Super fun and great people.  Journalists on holiday from Beijing.

Oh, and lookie here, the Mariners captured my fandom on an ad banner for tix.  Im gonna miss my M’s.

Again, love you all

Drewbie

welcome to the danger zone…

we took a tour of the dmz today. needless to say it was pretty intense. on the bus ride there the highway we took paralleled a river. between the river and road was barbwire and chain link fence. totally eery! there’s one highway that connects north and south korea called road 1 or highway 1. there are a couple railroad overpasses on the road which are laced with dynamite in case north korea were ever to take the road to invade south korea they’d blow them up and block the roads. nutty!

our first stop was the third tunnel south korea found. thus far they’ve found four tunnels dug by the north koreans to try and invade south korea but think there could be up to 20 of them! we walked 350m down a very steep ramp underground and toured the 3rd one. we got to walk 170m of the tunnel until we hit a wall the south koreans had built to close off the tunnel. we had to wear hard hats and i had to duck because i was too tall. i kept having to tell myself i was on some disney ride because i started to feel really claustrophobic down there!

the second stop was an observation deck where you could see north korea and the actual DMZ. in and around the DMZ are two towns, one north korean and one south korean and an industrial complex run by both countries. this industrial complex is a sign of hope to a lot of people that one day the countries can work together on a larger scale. standing there on that observation deck drew and i got to look at something not a lot of people get to see. again, we are so crazy lucky…

the third and final stop was a train station near the DMZ. you can take the train here from seoul but this is the last stop in the northern part of south korea. at 11 a.m. everyday the train carries cargo to the industrial complex and returns at 2 p.m. but no civilians are allowed to ride it. it’s essentially an empty station and some see it as a big fat waste of money while others see it as a sign of hope and a right step towards the future. one day, the south koreans would like people to be able to take the train into north korea, the rest of asia, and into europe.

drew and i weren’t aware the lunar new year here in korea and china was such a big to-do. everything basically shutdowns from wednesday until sunday. this means we can’t get our china visas until next monday leaving us in south korea for a few extra days than we had planned… oh well… tuesday we’ll be flying to beijing to start our third country on this trip… what are my chances the snow will be melted by the time we get there?! ha… Blair

 Our photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/teamblew/sets/72157603861443693/

Sayonara, Japan… Annyeong Haseyo, South Korea!!!

So, after three hours on the bullet train, 1.5 hours on the subway, 2.5 hours on a plane, 1 hour on a bus, a little bit of walking, and a whole lot of perseverance, we finally made it to our guesthouse here in Seoul, south Korea at around midnight last night. every-time we get to a new location it’s like learning how to walk again. we have gotten into some good routines though and are becoming a tighter unit.

we started to jot down things we were noticing and feeling while traveling through japan. i suppose we will share them all here, with you…

first off, it’s harder to find sushi than you might think. we definitely had to do some searching for a sushi joint that looked even mildly appealing. at the end of the meal, we both agreed it was no better than a good sushi joint at home. Of course, we are totally newbies, and probably totally in the wrong place.  That said, not only is it hard to find sushi, it was even harder to get steamed veggies! most of the dishes were made up of noodles, rice, and some kind of meat. the only time we managed to eat broccoli was on a pizza! i think the thing we enjoyed the most in japan were the heated toilet seats and bidets! almost every western toilet we came across had many life changing features. We are talking heated seat, hot, cold, and pressure settings. Oh, and fan driven stink vents inside the toilet!  We are now determined to find one back in the states to put into the home Im going to buy.

Again, not to sound jaded, but if you’ve been to London, new york city, or Paris, you’ve basically been to Tokyo as well. All of these major cities start to blend together in a whole lot of ways. Its also really comforting as while your a million miles away, you feel at home as well. 

I think we were a little less impressed than we might’ve been had we not traveled so much before. It seems that the folks in Japan are also unimpressed with us.  Even thou we see almost no tourists or westerners, no one seems to give us even a glance.  I suppose it may be the off-tourist season, and that Japan is packed with Yanks in the summer, but who knows.

People say tokyo is an expensive city, and it certainly is if you want it to be. much like nyc, you can get a dinner for a bajillion dollars, but if you are content with a slice of pizza and a soda you’re good to go for under $10. For Blair however, the cheap food in tokyo got real old, real quick. the variety was not there like it is back in the states. another different thing about food establishments we noticed is, if you lame-out and go out for mexican in japan, a Japanese man or woman makes it and serves it, if you head to an indian restaurant, again a Japanese man or woman makes and serves it. at home in the states if you head to a mexican/indian/italian joint you are more than likely going to get served by a mexican/indian/italian. i mean, it’s not mindblowing considering the U.S. is made up of immigrants, it was just different for us.

I can’t tell you how many people mowed us over or cut in front of us in line… that was definitely frustrating, but that’s just how they are though even to each-other! older Japanese people were much nicer to us than younger people and tried to help us (even if unprovoked). Not that we should have expected it, but no one spoke any english and certainly no menus were in english. oddly, there would be signs in store windows and stuff that would say “sale!” or “new item!” or an advertisement on a poster would be all in chinese character except for one or two words in english. i never understood how they decided which words to put in english! it seemed so random! oh! everyone is either on their phone (surfing and texting, not talking) or reading comics! young or old, it doesn’t matter! everyone has the same phone too and all the advertisements i saw for the phone had cameron diaz or brad pitt in them! we never once saw an iphone! everyone has charms on their phone too. we saw a lot of disney charms. We started taking pictures of them, so we’ll upload those soon. As for the comics, again, all ages read them all the time, but only men.  The coffee shops have racks and racks of them.  Men in suits get thier coffee and chill and read before work… Overall, Blair thought Tokyo was OK, I think I liked it quite a bit more then she did. 

The last night in tokyo, we saw an commercial on TV where Ichiro spoke more then I think in all of his stateside interviews combined.  I was stoked, but I am silly like that.  I expected to see a few Mariners hats, but they are all NY in Tokyo.  Go figure…  Oh, we saw an Ad for Whistler too on the big screen in Shabuya (Time Square).  Even in its crazed commercialism it made me miss the NW mountains. 

We took an awesome yet long double decker bus ride to Osaka.  We had the front row seat on top of the bus.  We just put our feet up and watched the country side.  Like looking out of a glass bottom boat. I just drank beer, listened to Brit Pop and enjoyed the ride, waking up Blair for the sweet sites, and rest stops.  We are certainly very lucky! 

Osaka was a cool little city, totally Blade Runner at night.  It comes alive at night.  A normal business city by day, but at night the crazy style kids come out, and the city explodes with neon.   The antithesis of Kyoto, which was absolutely beautiful. Being 45 minutes away, doing Osaka at night, and Kyoto by day is the perfect mix.  We wish we had spent more time in kyoto looking around, but we had a stupendous birthday for Blair there… walking around, hiking the trails and small street from one shrine to the next.  It definitely held more of what i was looking for in japan.  Check out the photos!

Our Japan photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/teamblew/sets/72157603829226046/

Looks like we made it…

i do not have too much time to type and i am still trying to figure out these keyboards but i wanted to let everyone know we made it to tokyo alright. our flight over was incredible! we owe our friend gregg big time for hooking us up with business class seats. not only were we catered to like crazy, at the end of the flight the flight attendants gave us a bottle of champagne because they thought we were super cute and sweet!!! drew and i both slept for the first 6 hours of the flight so for the remaining 4 hours of the trip we watched movies, ate, and read. it took us 3 hours or so to get from the airport to our hotel (we had to switch trains 4 times and learn to navigate the subway) but we made it with no errors. last night was our first attempt at eating out. thank god i was given little notecards that say i am a vegetarian in all different languages and the things i do/do not eat because that helped us out a lot. needless to say though we were still a little skiddish and had a few problems with the language barrier. once we get into the swing of things, i think we will have an easier time. right now we are still trying to learn the basic words so we can get around a bit better. we got a good nights rest last night so hopefully our internal clocks will adjust pretty quickly. today we plan on taking a huge walk around town and hitting up some of the neighborhoods that were recommended to us. our first stop today, the imperial palace… Blair

Our photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/teamblew/

Last Day

so, as drew’s last day of work comes to a close, i’m sitting in his office scoping guesthouses for our stay in seoul, south korea.  the first week and a half of our trip is mapped out pretty well.  tomorrow we set sail for tokyo, japan.  we’ll stay in tokyo for three days and from there take the train to osaka where we’ll be for four days. while in osaka we hope to take a day trip to kyoto and one to some small fishing village  drew’s coworkers told us about.  on february 2nd we’ll take the train from osaka to narita and hop on a flight to seoul, south korea.  unfortunately we’ll only have 1 1/2 days in seoul because our ferry to Qingdao, China takes off on monday, february 4th.  how long we’ll stay in Qingdao is still a mystery.  that reminds me, i have to find a pay phone so i can call korea and book our room on the ferry.  i wonder what we’ll do for 16 hours on a boat? it’s going to be so intense waking up in the morning to find the coast of china at our feet…  Blair

Testing, Testing…

It feels a little silly to have one of these things but after a lot of people asking for one Drew and I caved. We picked up the last few items we needed for the trip today. One power adapter, two boxes of airborn, two boxes of razors (1 his, 1 her’s), one tube of body lotion, one travel fan, and one pack of blister bandaids. There you have it! The last few necessities for a three month trip through Asia!
The apartment is almost completely empty, which actually makes me kinda sad. I’ve always said Seattle is my favorite U.S. city (no disrespect to Philly because she certainly holds a special spot in my heart.) I sure hope Drew and I come back here as often as we say we want to. Two more days and we’ll be boarding a plane to Tokyo, Japan. If you’d have asked me this time last year if I’d be here right now doing this, I would’ve laughed.
Our goal is to keep everyone updated by using this thing; make sure our parents know we’re still out there breathing and post fun photos from our crazy travels. We’ll let everyone know via email when we get around to updating this so no need to check back everyday or anything. Until next time… Blair