HK and CHINA

Day 1:

We arrived in Hong Kong after only two days of short and sweet sailing. Despite the fog, the soaring skyline was beyond impressive. It is a little daunting to think that man created the landscape I saw before me – miles and miles of lanky buildings poking at the sky. I only had one day to let loose in this massive city since I had a flight to Beijing leaving the very next day. My friend, Clare, and I took on the day together. I would have to say the majority of our morning was spent asking directions and luckily many people spoke English and were extremely helpful. We first had to find the Ferry Station where I could pick up a ticket for a ferry to the Shenzhen airport the next morning. For being in the same vicinity as our ship, it took us quite a while to make it to the right building and the right ticket booth after stopping every 5 minutes to make sure we were headed in the right direction. After finally purchasing my ticket we disembarked on another fun adventure of finding the subway station to take us to the Ladies Market! The subway was a hoot and a half! I have discovered I really enjoy various forms of public transportation – it’s confusing, yet easy and fun! I’m going to be riding those new buses in Bozeman when I come home!

Anyway, the Ladies Market was about 6 blocks of shops with Chinese trinkets, clothing, knock-off shoes, handbags, and watches, and occasionally lingerie (always strange to see in an open-air market). I made a couple amazing purchases – I can’t wait for gift giving when I get home. We basically spent the whole afternoon at the market, doddling around. That night we decided to go up to Victoria Peak where, on a clear day, you can see over the whole city. When we went up there we were lucky to see fifty feet in front of us, still we had a spectacular meal! By the time we got back to the ship it was 10 p.m. and time for bed!

Day 2:

A little background: ten of us had planned a while back to travel China independently with a tour group that allows you to sleep on the Great Wall, so roughly a month and a half ago we all booked a one way plane ticket to Beijing from Hong Kong. Time passes by quickly when you are jumping from country to country so we were all blindsided when we realized China was only a week away and none of us had paid the tour company yet. It was a bit of a conundrum when the tour company informed us we couldn’t pay by credit card and all of us are stuck in the middle of the ocean. It all worked out one day before arriving in Hong Kong thanks to good ol’ Pay Pal!

I woke up at 6:30 a.m. to pack, eat some breakfast, and meet our group at 8 to head to our Ferry. The earliest ferry leaving from Hong Kong to Shenzhen was at 8:45 and if we missed that then we were guaranteed to miss our flight. Everyone except for Teagan and I went out the night before so half of the group was running late. I had to pound on one of my friend’s doors to get him out of bed at 8:05 a.m. and my other friend lost her wallet so we had to leave her behind on the ship while the rest of us rushed to make the ferry. All ten of us ended up making the ferry that morning – the universe was working with us because it was somewhat of a miracle! The ferry to Shenzhen was definitely not what I had expected – it looked like a super wide airplane from the inside and dining service and safety videos. Teagan and I talked for the hour it took us to arrive at the airport. We had to go through customs in Shenzhen since we were now entering China – it was nice to get through customs there instead of at a busy airport. We then got on our 3 hour flight to Beijing.

Upon arriving in Beijing we got some delicious Starbucks (I have never enjoyed Starbucks as much as I have on this voyage) and grabbed 3 taxis for the ten of us. We anticipated the taxi drivers not speaking any English so we had the tour agency in the airport write out our hostel’s address in Chinese, even then the taxi drivers hadn’t the faintest idea where the place was. The three drivers stood there for about ten minutes bickering back in for in Chinese, waving their arms in all different directions, and finally one turned to us and said, “Okay.” We all piled in our taxis and hoped for the best! The drivers only stopped two times to get directions before we were dropped off on the street and were pointed down an alley way. There are two hostel buildings and we happened to find the wrong one, so a nice lady led us to the right one. The hostel was absolutely adorable – it had a cute balcony lined with bamboo, rooms of all different sizes and number of beds, a family room with a TV and computers, a communal shower, and Chinese decorations everywhere. I had pictured hostels to be dirty, crowded, and just plain unwelcoming, but I was once again proven wrong (how many times have I said that over the course of this voyage?) There were only a couple of other people staying there besides our group – one girl, from London, just moved to Beijing hoping to learn Mandarin and was looking to find work.

That night we went out for a family dinner at a nearby Chinese restaurant where English is not spoken – our friend Lindsey studied Chinese in college so we had her take care of the ordering. We had the most outstanding sweet and sour pork – you definitely can’t get that at any Chinese restaurant in Bozeman. After dinner Teagan, Lauren, Collyn, Gabe, and I decided to walk to Tiananmen Square, which, come to find out, is a lot farther than anyone wants to walk at 9 p.m. in a foreign city. About an hour an a half later we finally make it to the front of the Forbidden City. The boys ended up meeting these two Chinese girls rather abruptly and decided to go off with them for the night. We didn’t think much of it because this is something Collyn and Gabe would do. Us girl caught a taxi down the road to take us back to the hostel for the night. As we were sitting in our room later that night we read a page in “Bobby’s Advice Book” that went a little something like this, “Beware around Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City of hustlers. Young girls will claim to be college students and ask young men out for tea where they will proceed to teach them about the culture, feed them loads of tea, and charge them an absurd amount of money. When approached, please turn them away.” That is exactly what happened to our friends. If we had cell phone we would have texted them to get out of their, but thankfully the situation wasn’t a dangerous one…more comical than anything.

Day 3:

The next morning we met our tour guide, Hilda! We began our Beijing adventure by visiting the Summer Palace…can you say “tourists”?! There were Asian tour groups up the wazoo – they wore matching hats and moved like a flock of sheep following after the person holding a flag in the air. The ten of us stood out like a sore thumb. The place itself wasn’t too exciting; it was the place where the Emperor and his Empress went during the summer. We walked down the longest corridor ever built and massaged our feet on the stone walkway. We ate a decent Chinese-style lunch with some very-excited-to-be-there servers. They introduced each food with gusto, “Hello, this is RICE,” one would say. After lunch we went to Tiananmen Square (again) and toured through the inside of the Forbidden City. Both places turned out to serve more for people watching than anything else. You get an unbelievably wide range of outfits and hairstyles in China.

We then went to a humongous indoor market that was five-or-so stories tall. I was overwhelmed with the amount of knock-off shoes, bags, jewelry, coats, backpacks, and pretty much everything under the sun. I did the best I could to indulge myself in this market for the hour we were allotted. I wonder day after day why we do not have markets like these in the states where you can barter away your little heart until the sun goes down. I guess I’ll just have to keep traveling to be able to enjoy places like these. After the market we had an interesting Hot Pot dinner where you cook your own food in your personal pot. Sounds cool…but not really. None of us really knew what we were doing, so all of the little waitresses were laughing and making fun of us in their Chinese language.

We ended the night with a mind-blowing Kung Fu show! It was more of a play than anything – it had a story line outlining the development of Kung Fu and there was a main character and everything. The lighting, set, and sound were phenomenally done! For me it was more the fact that I was watching a play/performance in China than watching outrageous kung fu moves. There were little kids that did back handsprings on their hands! Being a former gymnast, I was pretty much flabbergasted.

Day 4:

We met up with Hilda again at 9:00 a.m. to go to the Mingh Tombs…another uneventful excursion, but we managed to have a good time riding on the stone elephant stools that were scattered around. We walked down the “Sacred Pathway” line with stone soldiers, elephants, horses, tortoises, and unidentifiable beings. It began raining on us, so we made it a rather brisk walk down the pathway. We had another Chinese style lunch (surprise surprise) then drove three hours to the Great Wall. When we arrived at the Wall a bunch of us had to “sing a song” (go to the bathroom). We took a short hike up the road to find quite the bathroom. It looked as if it were built the same time as the Great Wall and was meant to be on display in an Archaeological museum to show what people used to pee in. Did I pee in it? Yes, yes I did. Was it fun? No, no it wasn’t. We then had a cup of tea in the shop of the couple who was hosting us for the evening before ascending the Great Wall for the first time. The section of the wall we were climbing was completely deserted of tourists, the only people around was a film production crew working on a movie. We hiked the beaten wall to a nearby tower to watch the sun set behind a mountain in the distance. It was a peaceful gift to be able to sit on one of the Seven Wonders of the World and watch the sun set without one other tourist around. Once the sky turned a grayish-orange we made our way back down to the shop where we were served the most delicious Chinese food to date! We had a wide assortment of greens with pork and beef, and out-of-this-world dumplings! At dinner we were joined by an Australian couple, Russel and Simone, who would be joining us for the remainder of our Great Wall adventures.

After dinner, we piled on every piece of clothing in our backpacks to prepare ourselves for the extreme cold we were about to face while sleeping on the Great Wall. We hiked up to the tower looking like a bunch of marshmallows, laid out the sleeping bags and mats provided by the company, and went on to sleep on the Wall. I actually had a warm, cozy, and substantial sleep that night, which is pretty impressive considering our tour guide said he only slept 2 hours because “we” were so noisy. Another thing Semester at Sea as taught me: how to sleep anywhere and everywhere.

Day 5:

We were woken up at 6:00 a.m. by what sounded like a military raid yelling, “Wake up! Let’s go! We must eat breakfast and climb the wall! We are already late! Get up!” It was intense, and pretty hilarious. Our hiking guide was named Max and Max liked to say things like this, “Watch every step you make because if you do not then you will never see your Momma or Poppa again,” or, “Always watch where you step, ladies, or you will fall and smash in your little faces”. He was really poetic. The hike turned out to be a heck of a lot more strenuous than I could have ever imagined. I have never climbed so many stairs in my life…total. We climbed up steps that were eighty degrees and maneuvered down towers where the stairs had collapsed. The fact that we were engulfed by fog made the first grueling hour and a half of the hike a little enchanting and easier to enjoy. The remainder of the hike was fairly easy - the fog had cleared so we could see the Wall stretch all across the land. The hike was supposed to take four hours, but our powerhouse group finished in three! At the end we all treated ourselves to ice cream sold by a vendor, then zip lined across the canyon to a boat that took us to our bus. It was an unbelievable, unforgettable morning!

We had another quick Chinese lunch before driving three hours back to Beijing. We ended up playing games on the bus I had learned from campers – Yay Camp Equinox! Upon arriving in Beijing we were treated to a 90 minute foot massage and pedicure (included in our trip cost!) which was just delightful! We had about an hour to kill before heading to the train station so we hit up the nearby market and Subway! We said our tearful goodbyes to Hilda as we boarded our sleeper train to Shanghai. I hadn’t been on a train since India so I was surprised by its luxuriousness. Each cabin had four beds, fluffy linens, two pillows, personal slippers, and a tea pot. I got the short end of the stick and ended up in a cabin with three Chinese men who didn’t speak a word of English – it wasn’t that big of a deal since I hung out in the dining car with my friends until I went to bed.

Day 6:

I was woken at 6:00 a.m. again by a loud voice; instead this time it was the lovely cabin steward announcing something clearly important…too bad I don’t speak any Chinese. I looked around and saw the men in my cabin gathering their things, so I figured I would do the same. The train was coming to a stop so I threw on my backpack and followed the crowd to the exit of the train. I showed the nice lady my ticket and she started shaking her head and saying words I do not know. Finally she said something I could recognize, “No Shanghai, Waso, no Shanghai!” We were definitely not at my stop yet. I did the walk of shame back to my cabin where I waited another hour to actually reach Shanghai.

We all made it off of the train in one piece, grabbed a couple of taxis, and went back to our home away from home. It was so nice to be back on the ship again. I ate a delicious western breakfast and took a nice, long shower before heading out into the city. Shanghai seemed cool, but I felt I didn’t have the time or energy to take it in. It was pouring rain outside so all I really did was get my Japan Railpass, buy some warm clothing, and call it a day.