WOW - what fun!
We arrived in Beijing after taking a red eye flight from Bangkok and were greeted by a city more polluted than its Thai counterpart...
China is a VERY different country to travel in when comparing it to the other places we have been. The language barrier is much more prominent (i.e. NO ONE speaks english here). This made for a very difficult time finding our hostel - very difficult. We took a airport shuttle bus to downtown and basically had no idea when to get off... after that, at least 5 cab drivers waved us off when we showed him our guest house - FINALLY we got one cab driver to take us into the vicinity of it (after a long time using our navigational skills with a chinese map)! After we got dropped in the vicinity of our GH I went for a very long walk while Julie guarded our bags on the sidewalk. I actually can't believe we managed to find it! We are staying in a 'hutong', which is an old alleyway that make up a lot of Beijing. Sadly, many are getting destroyed because of expansion of the city and the 'Olympics coming to town' (which we heard was simply an excuse by the government). Anyway - we love our GH - the 'red lantern' - and would reccomend it to anyone coming to this part of the world!
We spent out first afternoon exploring the hutongs around our GH - the ones here are about 200 years old, which is young in comparison to others... these alleys are soo full of life - everyone is buying, selling, yelling, and riding their bikes. Its soo much fun just to watch life go around you!
We met a very nice man from Oregon who works over here as a proffessor. He took us out for 'hot pot' - which was AMAZING. He showed us how to do everything - and its quite the process:
- get a lady to give you a hot plate with a big pot of stock on it (you can get one or 2 different flavoured stocks)
- go up to this big cooler and grab as much food as you want (dozens of vegetables, mushrooms, tofu, noodles, soo much seafood, meat, etc. etc. - it really was endless) - we had mutton
- grab a tray of appetizers to eat while the stock boils (peanuts, soybeans, watermelon gourd, soy bean curd, etc.)
- make a sauce of your choice to dip all your stuff in (Steve made ours - some sorta nut based sauce)
- get something to drink (a liter of beer is about 20 cents canadian)
So.. once your stock is boiling - you chuck whatever you want in there and wait till it cooks (meat is floating) and then dig in - its one big messy fondue and its soooo delicious. Chinese usually end their meal with a carb - so we waited till the very end to have our noodles. Mmmmmmmm. I think the best part was - for all of us to stuff our faces with food and beer - the bill was less than 10 dollars!!! YAH!
We started the Beijing tourist trail and visited the Summer Palace - which was built so the royal family could escape the heat of the Forbidden City in the summer. The place was massive and beautiful and full of tourists! For dinner we went for Peking Duck - it was a whole other process for that meal - basically you order a duck and a chef comes out with it and butchers it in front of you - you eat it with pancakes and a sauce - they even cut the head in half for you, but its hard to deal with - then at the end of the meal they bring you out a soup that is apparently all the duck meat that the butcher couldn't get from the bones or somthing. It was good... but hot pot is a better bang for your buck in my opinion!
We went to Tiananmen Square - the largest public square in the world - and then to the Forbidden City. Both of these places were WAY bigger than I ever imagined..
Tiananmen Square:
We started the day off wrong - we took the right bus - but the wrong way - OOPS. Anyway.. we finally made it the square - our goal was to get there by 7 am and avoid some tourists but the bus problem made us arrive closer to 8:30. TS is the world's largest public square - what is very interesting about many of the sites in Beijing is that they are all built in accordance to Feng Shui and their ideals on heaven and earth and where things need to be placed according to their beliefs...
Forbidden City:
Now, this place was AMAZING. It was like one giant maze - 8000 rooms in 900 buildings - we got soo lost and soo turned around in the 'Palace Museum'! The FC was off limits to 'commoners' for 500 years, housed 2 dyanasties (Ming and Qing) who never left the place unless they had to (or it was too hot - see 'summer palace :). Apparently.. the FC is soo large that a permanent restoration team moves around painting and repairing - it takes 10 years to do a full renovation.. and then they have to start over again. Almost all the signs are in, you guessed it, Chinese - so its kind of hard finding your way around. Julie and I got lost so many times - so fun!
We did a 'bit' of shopping one day here as well. I might give us awards for our bartering skills. The people selling stuff here will actually grab your arm and pull you into their store... and the prices they start at our ridiculous. Some things I bought went from 1200 yuan to 70. We figure they must start that high because there are some stupid tourists that will actually pay that much. Shopping is soo much fun here - but soo draining - its a lot of work! Life is hard.
The Great Wall
We, of course, had to make a trip out to the Great Wall. We opted for a location very far away from Beijing (and thus the hoards of tourists). Before we made it there, our bus decided to not have a clutch anymore so we had a one hour detour on the side of the highway before we got another bus. We went to a site called Jinshanling which is about 110km NE of Beijing. And our plan was to hike about 10km (and 30 towers) to a site called Simatai... by accident... we took a wrong turn (who does that?) and ended up walking through some farmland and a small valley to the 10th tower - we took an hour off of our original hike!! A group of 'hawkers' me us ever so kindly there and showed us the way - I felt REALLY good about my self when a 65 year old lady was helping me climb up the wall.. while she was carrying more bags than me... she does that EVERY DAY - she was truly my hero! The actual sites we saw while on the great wall were undescribably - one of the most beautiful things i have ever seen! I ll show you pictures soon
Temple of Heaven Park
We went to this park in Beijing at 7am in the morning and watched hundreds of Chinese people do their daily routines of Tai-Chi, dancing, singing, stretching, running, and other traditional forms of excersise... it was AMAZING.. one of the most peacefull parks I have been to... so fun just to sit and watch....
OK - sorry for the rushed blog. i catch a flight in like 6 hours to go home - BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
see you soon
TL
21 July, 2006
16 July, 2006
MALAYSIA!
Now, don't think I have been ignoring this blog thing for the last 2 weeks. Its just that internet access hasn't really been available for a while (at 10 bucks an hour.. who would dream to use it?)
I don't really know where to start on how my time in Malaysia went..
KUALA LUMPUR (KL)
The capital city was an absolute culture shock, especially coming from Cambodia. It's really hard to explain - but coming from a country with no chain stores, few paved roads, a lot of poverty, and a lot of recent, sad history to a country that plans to be considered 'fully developed' by 2020, has McDonalds in a VERY clean airport, has a SKYTRAIN, etc., etc. - the whole thing was hard to grasp... they really did seem like extreme opposites. (It was interesting, however, that we felt Malaysia to be super clean and modernized when we entered it, yet to Dutch girls coming from Australia found Malaysia to be 'rough and dirty' - wow!)
We stayed in the heart of Chinatown at the Backpackers Travellers Lodge. The people there were almost too friendly and helpful - it was great! Shopping in KL's Chinatown was quite an adventure. There is a lot of good 'knock off' stuff for sale.. Adidas, Nike, Gucci, Rolex, etc. etc. Each stand has around 4 people working for it. One person sells and the other 3 have radios and are at each corner of Chinatown looking for the cops coming to bust them. Very often, Julie and I would be shopping, say for some Diesel watches when all of a sudden, this guy would sweep the whole table of watches into a garbage bag, chuck them to the side, and start putting stuffed animals and stupid trinkets out for sale. Kinda funny, but really annoying as a shopper!
We went to the famous KL twin towers and walked across the skybridge on the 41st floor - it was pretty neat.
The food in KL (and Malaysia as a whole) was phenomenal and CHEAP. We ate street food as often as we could because A) its cheap and B) its soo tasty! We went to 'Little India' one night and had ourselves 7 different dishes and drinks for maybe 2 dollars each! Amazing!
TEMAN NEGARA
After KL, we took a bus first to a town called Jerantut (to get our licenses), and then to Kuala Tembeling (to hop on a 3 hour boatride) and then to the world's oldest rainforest - Teman Negara! We did a group tour sorta thing for the first 2 days... some of the stuff we did with the group were:
Night jungle walk (lots of disgusting insects, wild pigs, deer, lemurs, etc)
Canopy walk (nothing special wildlife wise... but the bridges were really sketchy and we were really high up)
Rapids on a dinky little boat (not a single dry spot on our bodies and our driver was psycho)
Bukit Teresik (we hiked to this little peak.. and lost our group for a bit cause we met a fellow canadian and talked to him for a while)
So, Julie and I decided to spend an extra day in the park before we left. We wanted to do our own hike in the jungle. This was a BAD idea. We convinced Colin, a guy from London to come along (always smart to add a third person). We decided to hike to some rapids called 'Lata Berkoh). It was 8.1 km there....and the hike was good. It was soo muggy in the forest so we were all sweating profusely... we finally arrived (after crossing a river in our barefeet (OW) and getting monsterous leeches on us - I had the biggest one EVER on me.. the little bugger got inside my shoe and I had NO idea). Anyway.. we swam at the rapids and I ate a hearty lunch of ritz crackers and some fruit (how substantial). It was at this point in the hike that I realized I had roughly one cup of water left in my bottle to get me over 8 km back to the park headquarters. Not good. On our hike back.. we saw some monkeys fighting in the tree.. I don't remember much of the hike back.. I don't think I have ever been that dehydrated in my whole entire life. I ran out of water - after some serious rationing.. with about 5 km left to go - haha! So, when we finally reached the headquarters.. I drank 2 litres of liquid within the first 6 minutes... it tasted sooo good! We were DONE for the rest of the day. Sooo tired.
PERENTHIAN ISLANDS
After leaving Teman Negara.. we felt it was time for some serious relaxing before we headed back to what we feel could be the 2 most polluted cities in the world (Bangkok and Beijing). We went straight to the islands from the park...on our ride to the jetty in Tok Bali we met a very nice chinese man (he was our driver) who happened to own shares in the taxi company as well as the boat company. It worked out in our favor because he up graded our ticket for free and even carried out bags right down to the boat dock for us! He wanted to meet us on the island in a few days at some cafe for lunch but we ditched him for some kayaking (are you proud of me dad?). So we arrived on the Pulau Perenthian Kecil (small island, Besar is the big island) and were taken aback by its beauty!
The Perenthian Islands are VERY unique! There are no roads on them, not even trails for dirtbikes. You can between some beaches - but basically everything is done by boat taxis. There is no electricity on the islands either. Everything is run by generators - so accomodation gets power from 7pm to 7am. The island is also relatively 'dry' - by saying this I mean alcohol is very expensive and often not even on the menus (my kinda island!)! Oh yah - one of the more abundant wildlife species on the islands are monitor lizards... i had no idea they were HUMUNGOUS! Some of them tip to tip were easily 6 feet! WOW!
We met up with Mark again (so fun!) which was a great treat! We spent our first day on the island doing a snorkelling trip amongst the two islands as well as some outlying reefs. This trip FAR SURPASSED ALL EXPECTATIONS I had. Why dive when you can snorkel? It was AMAZING. We were diving with hundreds of species of fish, inclduing reef sharks! We went to one spot known for its turtle population and I had the honour of seeing 4 turtles within 40 minutes of snorkelling. 3 of them were HUGE (almost the size of me!). We followed one for about 10 minutes and swam beside it while it surfaced for air twice and was being cleaned by two friendly fish! It was a beautiful sight!
The next day we (Mark, Julie and I) rented a 3 person kayak and decided to do a bit of a trip to another beach. These kayaks were not made for huge westerners. It was not a pretty sight there (one person swam behing the whole time) and on the way back when the seas got a bit rough - we took in a lot of water and mark fell off twice. It was a good laugh though. So after Mark left for Phuket... Julie and I basically chilled on the beach, ate amazing food and drank ginormous mango shakes.
We also switched accomodation 3 days into our stay on the islands - we moved into what many would consider a shack or shed back home. First of all.. there was no path to it.. you just kinda climb over rocks to get to it. Basically it was a wood platform with a bunch of 2 x 6's making 4 walls. We had 2 open air windows (one couldn't shut) and a deck. We had a lightbulb but no light switch - so to turn off the light to go to be I had to unscrew it. Our roof was made of tin sheets - but when it rained our roof leaked... in 3 spots one to left of me, one to the right of me and one to the left of Julie. All hit our bed. Lets just say the place waws a little damp at times. We also had visitors at all times of the day.. these freaky looking lizards about 6 inches long. Oh yah.. the bathrooms - oh the bathrooms! They were about a 5 minute hike away so at night when it was dark out.. we would just go outside our shed. When we did use them, however, we shared them not only with the 30 something other shacks... but also snakes, frogs and these weird looking lizards. ew. We did however go from paying 40RM a night to 15! (only 7.5 each - thats like 2 dollars - which is realllllly good on these islands!
Our time on the island flew by - we made good company with one cafe, and ate their everyday! We played beach volleyball with some of the locals that worked on the island - and we snorkelled around whenever we felt like it. Life was good! Unfortunately we had to leave - we went to a town called Kota Bharu and stayed a guesthouse run by a chinese lady. She loooved me! She kept talking to me in Chinese cause she knew I was half - so fun!
After Kota Bharu we had to get back into Thailand for a flight to Bangkok. We went to a town called Narathiwat in Southern Thailand only because we found a flight out of there for 11 dollars. Basically the town had NOTHING in it - but we managed to eat an unbelievable dinner at some outdoor street stalls for super cheap. Street food, I have now realized, is the best tasting food in Asia, and conveniently the cheapest. What a good deal!
So, now here i sit. In Bangkok. We fly to Beijing, China tomorrow...
I don't really know where to start on how my time in Malaysia went..
KUALA LUMPUR (KL)
The capital city was an absolute culture shock, especially coming from Cambodia. It's really hard to explain - but coming from a country with no chain stores, few paved roads, a lot of poverty, and a lot of recent, sad history to a country that plans to be considered 'fully developed' by 2020, has McDonalds in a VERY clean airport, has a SKYTRAIN, etc., etc. - the whole thing was hard to grasp... they really did seem like extreme opposites. (It was interesting, however, that we felt Malaysia to be super clean and modernized when we entered it, yet to Dutch girls coming from Australia found Malaysia to be 'rough and dirty' - wow!)
We stayed in the heart of Chinatown at the Backpackers Travellers Lodge. The people there were almost too friendly and helpful - it was great! Shopping in KL's Chinatown was quite an adventure. There is a lot of good 'knock off' stuff for sale.. Adidas, Nike, Gucci, Rolex, etc. etc. Each stand has around 4 people working for it. One person sells and the other 3 have radios and are at each corner of Chinatown looking for the cops coming to bust them. Very often, Julie and I would be shopping, say for some Diesel watches when all of a sudden, this guy would sweep the whole table of watches into a garbage bag, chuck them to the side, and start putting stuffed animals and stupid trinkets out for sale. Kinda funny, but really annoying as a shopper!
We went to the famous KL twin towers and walked across the skybridge on the 41st floor - it was pretty neat.
The food in KL (and Malaysia as a whole) was phenomenal and CHEAP. We ate street food as often as we could because A) its cheap and B) its soo tasty! We went to 'Little India' one night and had ourselves 7 different dishes and drinks for maybe 2 dollars each! Amazing!
TEMAN NEGARA
After KL, we took a bus first to a town called Jerantut (to get our licenses), and then to Kuala Tembeling (to hop on a 3 hour boatride) and then to the world's oldest rainforest - Teman Negara! We did a group tour sorta thing for the first 2 days... some of the stuff we did with the group were:
Night jungle walk (lots of disgusting insects, wild pigs, deer, lemurs, etc)
Canopy walk (nothing special wildlife wise... but the bridges were really sketchy and we were really high up)
Rapids on a dinky little boat (not a single dry spot on our bodies and our driver was psycho)
Bukit Teresik (we hiked to this little peak.. and lost our group for a bit cause we met a fellow canadian and talked to him for a while)
So, Julie and I decided to spend an extra day in the park before we left. We wanted to do our own hike in the jungle. This was a BAD idea. We convinced Colin, a guy from London to come along (always smart to add a third person). We decided to hike to some rapids called 'Lata Berkoh). It was 8.1 km there....and the hike was good. It was soo muggy in the forest so we were all sweating profusely... we finally arrived (after crossing a river in our barefeet (OW) and getting monsterous leeches on us - I had the biggest one EVER on me.. the little bugger got inside my shoe and I had NO idea). Anyway.. we swam at the rapids and I ate a hearty lunch of ritz crackers and some fruit (how substantial). It was at this point in the hike that I realized I had roughly one cup of water left in my bottle to get me over 8 km back to the park headquarters. Not good. On our hike back.. we saw some monkeys fighting in the tree.. I don't remember much of the hike back.. I don't think I have ever been that dehydrated in my whole entire life. I ran out of water - after some serious rationing.. with about 5 km left to go - haha! So, when we finally reached the headquarters.. I drank 2 litres of liquid within the first 6 minutes... it tasted sooo good! We were DONE for the rest of the day. Sooo tired.
PERENTHIAN ISLANDS
After leaving Teman Negara.. we felt it was time for some serious relaxing before we headed back to what we feel could be the 2 most polluted cities in the world (Bangkok and Beijing). We went straight to the islands from the park...on our ride to the jetty in Tok Bali we met a very nice chinese man (he was our driver) who happened to own shares in the taxi company as well as the boat company. It worked out in our favor because he up graded our ticket for free and even carried out bags right down to the boat dock for us! He wanted to meet us on the island in a few days at some cafe for lunch but we ditched him for some kayaking (are you proud of me dad?). So we arrived on the Pulau Perenthian Kecil (small island, Besar is the big island) and were taken aback by its beauty!
The Perenthian Islands are VERY unique! There are no roads on them, not even trails for dirtbikes. You can between some beaches - but basically everything is done by boat taxis. There is no electricity on the islands either. Everything is run by generators - so accomodation gets power from 7pm to 7am. The island is also relatively 'dry' - by saying this I mean alcohol is very expensive and often not even on the menus (my kinda island!)! Oh yah - one of the more abundant wildlife species on the islands are monitor lizards... i had no idea they were HUMUNGOUS! Some of them tip to tip were easily 6 feet! WOW!
We met up with Mark again (so fun!) which was a great treat! We spent our first day on the island doing a snorkelling trip amongst the two islands as well as some outlying reefs. This trip FAR SURPASSED ALL EXPECTATIONS I had. Why dive when you can snorkel? It was AMAZING. We were diving with hundreds of species of fish, inclduing reef sharks! We went to one spot known for its turtle population and I had the honour of seeing 4 turtles within 40 minutes of snorkelling. 3 of them were HUGE (almost the size of me!). We followed one for about 10 minutes and swam beside it while it surfaced for air twice and was being cleaned by two friendly fish! It was a beautiful sight!
The next day we (Mark, Julie and I) rented a 3 person kayak and decided to do a bit of a trip to another beach. These kayaks were not made for huge westerners. It was not a pretty sight there (one person swam behing the whole time) and on the way back when the seas got a bit rough - we took in a lot of water and mark fell off twice. It was a good laugh though. So after Mark left for Phuket... Julie and I basically chilled on the beach, ate amazing food and drank ginormous mango shakes.
We also switched accomodation 3 days into our stay on the islands - we moved into what many would consider a shack or shed back home. First of all.. there was no path to it.. you just kinda climb over rocks to get to it. Basically it was a wood platform with a bunch of 2 x 6's making 4 walls. We had 2 open air windows (one couldn't shut) and a deck. We had a lightbulb but no light switch - so to turn off the light to go to be I had to unscrew it. Our roof was made of tin sheets - but when it rained our roof leaked... in 3 spots one to left of me, one to the right of me and one to the left of Julie. All hit our bed. Lets just say the place waws a little damp at times. We also had visitors at all times of the day.. these freaky looking lizards about 6 inches long. Oh yah.. the bathrooms - oh the bathrooms! They were about a 5 minute hike away so at night when it was dark out.. we would just go outside our shed. When we did use them, however, we shared them not only with the 30 something other shacks... but also snakes, frogs and these weird looking lizards. ew. We did however go from paying 40RM a night to 15! (only 7.5 each - thats like 2 dollars - which is realllllly good on these islands!
Our time on the island flew by - we made good company with one cafe, and ate their everyday! We played beach volleyball with some of the locals that worked on the island - and we snorkelled around whenever we felt like it. Life was good! Unfortunately we had to leave - we went to a town called Kota Bharu and stayed a guesthouse run by a chinese lady. She loooved me! She kept talking to me in Chinese cause she knew I was half - so fun!
After Kota Bharu we had to get back into Thailand for a flight to Bangkok. We went to a town called Narathiwat in Southern Thailand only because we found a flight out of there for 11 dollars. Basically the town had NOTHING in it - but we managed to eat an unbelievable dinner at some outdoor street stalls for super cheap. Street food, I have now realized, is the best tasting food in Asia, and conveniently the cheapest. What a good deal!
So, now here i sit. In Bangkok. We fly to Beijing, China tomorrow...
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