Chinese New Year Vacation: Part 2, Bangkok

We got to Bangkok around 11:30pm (there is a 1 hr time difference). We were warned by our tour group to ONLY take the "meter-taxi," which we did, however after getting in the cab the driver pulls over on the highway and tries to negotiate a price in order to avoid turning on the meter. We told him we absolutely wanted the meter on, so he turned it on, drove us in circles, and made us pay the tolls. When we got there, he didn't give us change for what we handed him, but we were so tired, we didn't argue. Plus, he ripped us off 100 Thai Bot which is about $3.

The next morning we woke up to walk around and explore Thailand. On our way out of the hotel, we stopped at the front desk for a map and a couple survival pieces of information. We were talking to the concierge trying to get a feel for the currency asking questions such as, "about how much should we pay for a bottle of water? How much should we pay for a beer? etc." The sunburned overweight American women next to us noticed we were asking some interesting questions and leaned over and interrupted, "Umm...Yea, How do I go to the bathroom?" With that we left.

About 150 meters out of the hotel a very nice local man approached us while we were consulting the map, and he informed us of all the popular tourist locations. He told us they were in a loop and the best way to get to them was to take a tuk-tuk for the day. However, we should be advised that some tuk-tuks were not as honest as others and we should pay no more than 20 Bot per person. In fact, we should only look for the tuk-tuks with the yellow stickers and if we found yellow sticker number 43-20 that would be best. We thanked him, turned around and went on our way. About 30 seconds later sure enough a tuk-tuk pulls up and it just so happens to be charging 20 Bot per person and what do you know it was yellow sticker number 43-20! coincidence...I think not! We didn't buy it and kept walking.

The city was PACKED with transportation. Here are the two forms, meter-taxi and tuk-tuk (a 3 wheeled motor bike). There is clearly too much transportation in the city when every driver approaches you for a ride and the meter-taxi's won't turn on their meters in order to get a better fare.

The streets of Bangkok were so alive. We spent a lot of our time on a popular backpacker street called Kao San Road. There were tons of clothing venders, street food, hostels, restaurants and bars. After being a scarce minority in China, we were really suprised to see how many westerners there were! As it turns out Thailand is a VERY popular vacation location for Europeans.

Along with being constantly solicited by tuk-tuk drivers, there are many traveling sales people as well. They walk around with croaking frogs (wooden meditation frogs) get your attention and try to sell just about everything. In the time it takes to sit down and have 1 beer you would probably be approached an average of 8 times.

In addition to the hawkers, there were other forms of entertainment. Such as this incredible soccer player. He stood in front of the outdoor restaurant doing tricks for about 30 minutes. He could put a jersey on and take it off all while standing on a chair, bouncing the ball on his head!
The people watching was incredible, there were so many sights, and we were loving the warm weather. Everyone was so friendly and wanted to share their travel stories. We were sitting next to a German couple who had been coming to Thailand every year for eight years. Then we moved down to share a table with some very intoxicated Aussies and a Canadian. One of the guys bought women's clothing in Thailand for very cheap and then sold it elsewhere. They had some of their teeth and were telling stories about the past 3 months they had been wandering around Loas, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The big Chang beers were flowing, and then we realized it was 5 minutes before we had to meet our tour group back at the hotel. So we jumped in a meter-taxi who wouldn't turn on his meter, charged us 100 bot and drove us a block. The next morning we realized a Thai Chang beer is 6.4% alchohol by volume while the Chinese Tsing Tao which we have become used it is only 3.4% alchohol by volume. Needlesstosay we were more aware of that from that point on.

On of the best things about Thailand was the wonderful fruit. The shakes/smoothies were incredible!
Swearing off all forms of local transportation scams and feeling the guilt to do something cultural, we walked to one of the tourist destinations on the map. Nothing was very far.

Our first monkey in the wild!

There were beautiful prayer bells as we climbed the stairs of the Golden Mountain. You could ring them as you went.

The dirty Bangkok skyline, a view from the top.

Real live monk in front of sitting Buddha

After climbing the Golden Mountain we visited other monestarys around. They were really active with people praying/meditating and monks everywhere. It was very beautiful. We wandered into one place that had a sign "for monk only" oops!

We only saw sitting Buddha and standing Buddha, leaving out black Buddha and Jade Buddha. After seeing the largest Buddha in the world, you get a little Buddha-ed out.

On our way out, 2 men on bikes noticed Jeremy's Chicago Cubs shirt and pulled over to talk to us. They were retired from Chicago and biking across Southeast Asia for a month. We had a long talk with them, exchanging travel stories and lamenting over the Cubs. We were pretty tired of walking at this point, and I really wanted to ride in a tuk-tuk, even though Jeremy swore them off. We hailed a tuk-tuk, negociated a price, and made it back to Kao San Road.

The view from the tuk-tukLater that evening we met our group to go to the train station to take the overnight train to Kao Sok. This overnight train was set up differently from the one we took to Beijing. While the other had individual rooms of four beds, this one was just rows of top and bottom bunks. The cool thing was you had seats, and the two seats facing each other turned into the bottom bunk. At about 10pm the conductor came by and made the bed for you. There were curtains to pull across your bunk, however they never turned off the lights.

During the night hawkers would get on the train and walk down the aisles selling food, drinks, and beer. One Thai man who I think was selling beer, but was certainly also drinking it, came over and sang to us, "Chang Chang beer, Chang Chang beer, Chang Chang Chang Chang beer" (to the tune of Jingle Bells).

The view down the aisle.

sitting in the seat reading.

sleeping

The next morning we woke up about 7am to disembark. We sat down and had breakfast and made friends with this little ham. His name is Guy, he's not even 2 years old. He is so cute and loves attention. This was his pose when we took his picture.
From the train station we had to take another 2 hour bus to get where we were going. One of the reasons we chose this tour group was because they take all local transportation, which saves money and adds to the experience. However, one of the problems is with 17 people there's not always room. So we ended up hanging out at the bus stop for about 3 hours waiting for the bus. Don't worry, there were fried chicken feet.
The bus dropped us off then we took pick-ups to our Bungalos in the Koa Sok Rainforest.

Chinese New Year Vacation: Part 1, Hong Kong

Our Chinese New Year Holiday Vacation began on the afternoon of January 19. Packed and ready to go, we set out on our long journey. The journey began with 15 minutes on the 973 city bus to the train station where we were able to catch a one hour bus directly to the airport. We got to the airport early, since travel during this time is crowded and hectic, however we were surprised to find that the airport was desolate and lacking the sleeping, spitting and eating people in every corner. Air travel is quite the luxury, and each flight regardless of it's length still has a full in flight meal.

The first leg of our journey was to Hong Kong, but instead of flying to Hong Kong (which is an international flight from Shanghai) we took the cheaper option and flew into Shen Zhen, a Chinese boarder city. Upon landing in Shen Zhen we had to find our way to Hong Kong. We quickly learned this was a pretty popular idea because they had charter buses running across the boarder into Hong Kong. We were the last ones on the bus and Jeremy sat next to a nice man from Hong Kong we was eager to talk to him and explained the whole process. After about 45 minutes the bus dropped us off on one side of this huge customs building in the middle of nowhere. We went in and stood in one line to depart China and then another to immediately enter Hong Kong. The Hong Kong residents had an "easy-pass" type thing to quickly go through, but the Chinese had to wait in the same visitors line as us, hmm. The friendly man waited for us on the other side, and the bus drove around the building and picked us up. We got on and began driving on the opposite side of the road, officially in Hong Kong. Thee bus drove for about 30 more minutes and dropped us off somewhere on Hong Kong Island. We found the closest metro, took it 3 stops and then walked out to find our hostel. We stayed in a guest house in Causeway Bay. It ended up being right in the middle of everything, a nice surprise.

At this point it was about 10pm and we had been traveling for a good 9 hours, and we were starving. We walked around the area, trying to find anything by Chinese food and we ended up at a diner-type place with the teenage population of Hong Kong and ate gross diner food like it was the best thing we had ever tasted.

Jeremy's yummy diner food (he finished the whole plate)

Our trip to Hong Kong was kind of a layover trip on the way to Bangkok which we tryed to make into a full tour. The next morning we woke up early, armed with our Frommer's guide to Hong Kong and a map from the hostel. We headed out to harbor where we took the ferry to Lantau, an island off of Hong Kong and home of the largest sitting Buddha in the world.

Photos on the ferry:

When we got off the ferry we took a local bus. When we got off the bus we saw...

The Great Tian Tan Buddha sitting on the Ngong Ping Plateau (2,421 ft). According to Frommer's the Buddha was built in 1993 and is the largest outdoor, sitting, bronze Buddha (over 98 feet tall, weighing 250 tons).

Getting ready to climb the 260 steps
Almost there...Here we are!
If you'd like 150 artistic pictures of the largest sitting Buddha in the world, just email us. I only chose a couple of the favorites to upload.

The Bodhisattvas offering gifts to Buddha.Inside of the Buddha was a small museum, which contained really beautiful old manuscripts and paintings, some of which were done in blood. At the top of a spiral staircase was a sacred relic.

In the town surrounding the giant Buddha was the Po Lin Monestary, established over 100 years ago, however these buildings date back to 1921-1970.At the monastery we enjoyed a traditional vegetarian meal prepared by the monks. The prayer on our table read, "Work with justice, so you won't regret and don't afraid of becoming poor, What we have got in our lives is not decided by us, but our fate. We should be modest throughout our lives."After lunch we wandered around the monastery.

This is the main temple where these three Buddha's sit, representing the past, present, and future.

There were beautiful offerings of flowers, fruit, and incense all over the grounds.


We left the monastery looking for the cable cars that would take us back to Hong Kong Island. We walked through a recently created village for tourists with souvenir shops made to look traditional. Of course, we participated in such tourist activities.

We rode the cable cars back to the Island. Since it was a Tuesday there were no lines anywhere, which was great. However, when we got to the cable car, they were filling these 15 person cars with 3-4 people who came together, which made it take longer. We over heard some other Americans laughing about this as well, so we invited them to join our cable car ride. They were from Missouri and Florida and teaching English in Heng Zhou, a suburb of Shanghai.


At the end of the ride, we took the metro to Kowloon and walked down the Avenue of the Stars!

Jeremy and I being STARS!

The view of Hong Kong from Kowloon

We sat at a bar on the Avenue of the Stars people watching and then headed to dinner at a great hole in the wall Indian restaurant.
After dinner, we raced back to the hostel to grab our bags, head to the airport, and make our 9:30pm flight to Bangkok! Talk about making the most of 1 day in Hong Kong!

Cultural Event Day 2

Christine, Stephanie and I have been exploring Shanghai by taking short day trips to locations of interest. Shortly before Spring Festival, we went to check out a small pedestrian street called Dongwu Lu. On the walk there, we stumbled upon a small, dangerous looking amusement park.

And then we saw that Michael Jackson still has a source of income at a Chinese Optometrist.


The road was lined with small stalls selling dried fruits and meats. The surprise of seeing whole dried squids or pig faces is starting to wear out, but still gets some giggles out of us. We taught one vendor how to say "sea cucumber."

Unlike many of the tchotchkie roads, each of the vendors were selling something unique. We were drawn in by the snuff bottle painter. He uses a bent brush to paint intricate scenes on the inside of the bottles. He knew how to please tourists, because when we asked to take a photo he knew to pretend to be hard at work.
I hear they're delicious:


We ended up at a cafe that Stephanie had read about. It was very dark inside, but the women working there were incredibly friendly- especially when they realized we spoke Chinese at an infant level. They inspected our snuff bottles and let us know that 1) there was no snuff inside and 2) we paid too much.

On the way home, just hanging out:

Stephanie and I bought face masks to fit in with the Chinese: