Seoul, South Korea

We were blessed to have great hosts in Seoul. We visited with Joe, one of Evan's friends from Emory, and his girlfriend, Jooyoung. They are two of the kindest people...from Jooyoung waiting for us at the bus stop on our arrival, researching a day tour of Seoul, great meals, letting us crash at his place and even giving up the bed for us! Thanks Joe and Jooyoung!

On our first day, Jooyoung took us to Joe's work neighborhood to check out the National Assembly, the river and the tail end of the cherry blossoms. After Joe finished work they quickly immersed us in Korean culture...a Korean BBQ dinner. You cook the meat yourself (we had both pork and beef) and wrap it in lettuce with other toppings. It was delicious! Here's Joe and Jooyoung enjoying their meal...



After dinner, Jooyoung headed home and Joe had something special up his sleeve. We walked around his neighborhood which is full of fun bars, restaurants and boutiques. He pointed to a bar at the top of a building and suggested that we check it out. It was called Dog Cafe Bau Haus and we could see dogs' noses pressed against the windows. The dogs are being boarded either daily or long term, and they even have a card with many of the dogs' pictures and names so you can address them by name. The dogs seemed quite well behaved until we purchased some treats for them. They were climbing all over the tables and over us to get the treats. They did know how to sit and shake to get their treats.







We were zonked after almost 2 hours in the Bau Haus, and headed home to rest for a busy following day. Joe and Jooyoung found a city bus tour where we could get on and off as we pleased, so we hit that the next morning. Our first stop was Deoksugung Palace, a former royal palace and residence for various emperors over the years. One thing that was really neat about this place, as well as all of the temples and palaces in Seoul was the proximity of the old to new and how we were standing in the middle of the city, but in a serene atmosphere. This fact is not lost on the many people of all ages who we saw strolling the grounds at all hours of the day.

This is the main hall of the palace, Junghwajeon, where Emperor Gojong conducted state affairs.



All of the halls were very intricately detailed and we were really impressed by their use of color.



The next stop on the tour was Itaweon, an area that caters to foreigners, especially military personnel stationed in Seoul. Deepa had shown us a couple jerseys he picked up when visiting Joe a few months back, so we knew (yes, we, even Michelle) that we had to check it out. We managed to score Manning and Addai jerseys. The best part about all of it was they were only $20 a pop. They do great knock off work in all of Asia, but this was the first time we had seen NFL goods, and perfect copies of Mitchell and Ness as well as Reebok official equipment, gotta love it.

We stopped by the Namsongol Traditional Village on the way to Namsan park, but didn't stay long as we didn't have a guide and that made it difficult to appreciate a lot of what was there. Namsan Park is the home of Seoul Tower and some beautiful views of the entire city and surrounds. Even though we were past peak cherry blossom time at ground level, up on the hill they were still in full bloom.



It's a tradition to bring a padlock to the top and hook it to the fence, unfortuantely we didn't know this until we arrived, so all we could do was admire.



The final stop on the tour was Insa Dong, a really cool shopping and dining street that was great for a stroll. We grabbed a bite to eat here and killed some time before meeting our hosts for an evening of soccer at the World Cup stadium to see FC Seoul take on Incheon. This stadium is world class, and definitely one of the nicest used in the 2002 World Cup. The teams battled to a scoreless draw, but we still had a blast!



Another morning of sleeping in and then off to see the sights. The first palace we tried to visit was 5x the normal price this day because you can't take a guide, go figure, so we passed and chose to visit the Gyeongbokgung Palace instead. This was a former imperial palace, originally built in the late 14th century, but destroyed during Japanese invasions in the 16th century. This was the place where Sejong the Great held court in the 15th century and also invented the Hangul language of Korea so that (according to Joe) the common people could learn to read and write much easier than the complex Chinese script.

We loved the throne room and all of the vibrant colors over every square inch of the building.





Also, we were intrigued by the adornments on the corners of each roof.



With perfect weather and flowers in full bloom we enjoyed all of the gardens tucked into every corner of the palace.





After visiting the palace, we met up with Jooyoung to check out some art galleries. Then we had dinner with Jooyoung, her sister and Joe at another great Korean restaurant where we tried octopus. We walked around some more at Insa-Dong where they don't allow signage in any language other than Korean. So, here's the Starbucks...



We also stopped at a street vendor who makes sweet treats that were famous as a royal dessert...



Our last day in Seoul was spent with Michelle relaxing and while the boys went shopping at Itaewon again and Longsan, a place to get great fake dvds. Joe found out that he got into law school, so we went out to celebrate with another great Korean BBQ meal. We had some drinks at a bar before saying goodbye and heading to the Hilton for a great night's sleep. Joe's dad used some of his points to get us a free room at the Hilton, thanks Dr. Jueng! The next morning we took off for Japan!

Great Wall...It's really that big

Our big side trip while in Beijing was the same as everybody else, go see the Great Wall. The construction of small sections of a wall began in the 5th century b.c. by various independent groups, but it was linked together into what we know now by Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi around 220 b.c. He was the first emperor of China and saw this as a good defense from nomads from the north. The most impressive portions of the wall were created in the Ming dynasty where soldiers and peasants from the entire country were conscripted to work on its construction.

When deciding how to visit the wall you pretty much have 3 choices, Badaling, which has been open the longest and is the closest to Beijing therefore it's a tourist zoo, Mutianyu which has very beautiful scenery and has not been rebuilt but is a bit further away, and lastly hike from Jinshalin to Simitai, a nice 10k stroll between these two towns.

After seeking numerous recommendations we opted for the last choice, the 10k hike from Jinshalin to Simitai. This section of the wall was the furthest away, about a 3+ hr drive, but it allowed us about 5 hours on the wall and plenty of serenity. An early rise allowed us to arrive at the wall around 9:30 and we were off on our journey.

The first sight, even before the wall, is that of the women who are notorious for latching on to visitors and hiking with them as far as they can, pestering them to buy water, food or souvenirs. These ladies were with the whole group as we worked our way towards the wall, but broke off into smaller teams as soon as we arrived. Michelle and I were willing to do anything to preserve the peace and quite we were hoping for so we dropped way behind as to let all of them move ahead with the rest of the hikers. Our plan worked and we are happy to report that we were free from this annoyance throughout the hike. This is not to say that there weren't people at just about every outpost trying to sell you a t-shirt or water, but at least we didn't have anyone attached to our backsides like some others.

Our hike to the wall led us to this point where we entered the wall.



We took our time snapping photos and admiring the beautiful cherry blossoms, letting all the distractions run quickly ahead. We lucked out and had a very clear day so visibility stretched for miles in all directions.



You can see lots of fortifications along the wall where soldiers stood guard and slept at night, these were spaced about a 5 to 10 minute walk apart most of the time.



Moving along we inevitably caught up with some of the other hikers, but luckily their friends chose to stick with them and not try their skills with us.



The gnome decided to finally come out of hiding, we don't think we've seen him since Australia.




Throughout the hike we occasionally met sections that were in pretty bad shape, nothing that was hazardous, but it did make for some difficult climbing in the steep portions.





We kept looking back to take in the views and were amazed that for most of the hike we could make out our starting point (or somewhere close). I just wasn't expecting it to be this clear, but we were really happy it was. We spoke to some people who went three days earlier and they said they couldn't see more than a quarter mile in any direction.





We knew we would miss the peak cherry blossom time in Korea and Japan, so this was a great consolation prize!



Michelle had the eye for these shots from the doorways, and I think they came out really nice.



Just in case you were wondering if we actually made it or if we just paid someone to take all these pictures, here are your intrepid travelers in the flesh.



The final portion of the hike was a suspension bridge over a river that goes through Simitai. We're not sure if there was an ancient bridge here, but it sure looks like it.



Looking back on where we've been I'd say we did a pretty good job...

Happy Anniversary

It's our 3rd anniversary today!

Call and wish Michelle a happy anniversary and ask how she's put up with me this long.

If you have Skype it's 15c/min, if you don't it's at your own risk.

+81-90-1729-9619

Beijing

Upon our arrival we wasted little time in heading to the famed Tian'amen Square. Outside the forbidden city there are tons of gawkers as well as college aged students asking us three main questions - where we were from, if we liked art and if we had been to the Great Wall. Evan was polite and answered all of their questions - Canada, no, and we'll go there later. I just was extremely annoyed. When we got back to our hotel we read a sign warning about these people. They tried to convince people to go to an art gallery where everything is overpriced and really pressure you to buy something. Scams are everywhere!

With our stomachs growling we set off to find food and do some exploring. We wandered through some pedestrian only shopping streets and came across a food market. This wasn't any food market though. They were selling fried bugs (any and all kinds), fried starfish, squid, octopus, snakes, sea urchins, and Evan's favorite, fried ice cream. He couldn't pass up the ice cream, but didn't try anything else.



We walked around the wall of the Forbidden City and into Jing Shan park. We noticed a crowd gathering and decided to check out what was going on. They were filming a movie, and the main actor in this scene (an old guy) kept forgetting his lines and hitting his head in frustration. It was pretty amusing.





The park is built on a hill overlooking the Forbidden City and the view was amazing.



Next we headed to Beihai Park and took a stroll around the lake. We were impressed with the number of people outside walking in parks and exercising. All throughout China we have seen people, young and old, doing Tai Chi, walking, playing badminton, etc. Not the most strenuous of sports, but at least they are getting plenty of exercise.



Saturday morning we woke up with high ambitions - visit the Panjiayuan market, Temple of Heaven and the Forbidden City. To accomplish our goals, we decided to take a taxi to the market to get the day started asap. Wrong decision. Not only did it cost $7 (a fortune compared to the subway), he dropped us off at a different market and we were duped. Granted, we should have been looking for a market that brought in around 50,000 people a day and the one we were at probably saw about 200. Oh well, we found some interesting items and went on our way oblivious (until we figured it out later that evening).

Next stop was the Temple of Heaven. It was pretty much a large park with a temple in the middle. The layout was nice with all the green space, but the temples weren't too different than ones we had seen before.



Disappointed from the market and the temple, we felt like we hadn't accomplished much, so we decided to squeeze in the Forbidden City/Imperial Palace as well even though we only had an hour and a half before it closed. We are professional temple tourists now and were able to cover it in our given time.



We did find a 4 star toilet in the Imperial Palace...





At night we treated ourselves to the very special Li Family Restaurant, a very intimate dining experience that specializes in the selections of the Qing and Ming imperial court. We had about 10 different set menus to choose from, and just like we do when ordering wine at a restaurant we took not the cheapest, but second to cheapest. The top set menus were tailor made for expense accounts at $300 per person but we couldn't even go there.

The dinner started with our "small dishes"... stir-fried pickled cucumbers, Beijing smoked pork, boiled celery, mung beancurd, fried lotus root box, fried fresh green beancurd, fried beancake, spicy beef, mustard seed Beijing cabbage and spicy chicken. We enjoyed every dish here and we knew with this warm up we were in for quite a treat for the full meal.

Next came the "main courses"...deep fried fish scallops, pork fillet in soya sauce, sweet and sour pork ribs, lobster with Beijing flavour, fried sea prawns, steamed snowfrog with egg, fried eggplant, sweet and sour mandarin fish, and baked Beijing duck. Everything was delicious except for the snowfrog with egg...yuck.

What a meal, one of if the the finest dining we've seen on the trip and worth the expense. We did wonder, having not studied the expensive menus, what exactly do you get for all that extra money??? Well, we checked the menu after the meal and saw some of the highlights...bird's nest soup, shark fin, braised abalone, and braised fish maw.



Sunday we set out to right our wrong with the market, but the first stop was the Lama temple. You may recognize the Lama part from the second half of Dalai Lama, and this temple was for the Lama sect of Buddhism. It was a really nice temple complex and we enjoyed it especially for the giant Buddha, 26m high, and made from one piece of sandalwood. No pictures allowed here, but take our words for it, this thing was amazing.

We liked these lions that seem to be protecting most of the temples we visit.


Onto the market where we managed to score some great souvenirs and used our quickly increasing Chinese vocabulary to bargain with the vendors. Evan even managed to conduct an entire purchase in Chinese! This was more like what we had expected with thousands of people and tons of great buys.



The next day was spent at the Great Wall, which we will talk about separately, and the evening at Luoguxiang hutong. This was a place that we found in the NY Times before the trip and the recommendation was seconded by some fellow travelers in Xi'an. Very narrow streets, cute shops and tons of bars, cafes and restaurants made for a great finale to our time in Beijing.

We spent 4 full days in Beijing and had great weather for our entire stay. One of our first comments about the city was that we couldn't really sense the pollution. The sky was blue and there weren't many people wearing masks. The day we flew out to Seoul, we finally understood the concerns of the athletes. The smog was so bad, visibility was horrible and the sky was an ugly yellow/grey. We don't know what caused it to turn so suddenly, but we are grateful that we only had to deal with it on our taxi ride to the airport.

Even though we are still going to write about the wall, we figured now would be as good a time as any to let you know how much we love China. It's a place that can be very intimidating at times, but holds some of the most spectacular sights for travelers. The history of the country is really hard to get your mind around and the feel of being on the edge of a new world order with China being at the forefront is really something. There is a great deal of wealth concentrated in certain areas, but the sheer scale of everything here means that if they get their act together this country will be throwing a lot of weight around for the rest of our lives.

Xi'an...Home of Sunny and the Warriors

Our hostel in Xi'an had just opened a month before our arrival and had received great reviews online. After walking into the hostel we could immediately tell that it was going to be a great experience. Internet was free, our room had a great bathroom, there were comfy lounge areas. The hostel used to be one of the top spas in Xi'an and they had kept all the soothing colors and comfy couches.

Sunny met us at the hostel and was her usual wonderful self. She accompanied us to the train station to help us buy our tickets to Beijing for the following day. Evan had mentioned earlier that day that he was going to ask Sunny if she had any brothers or sisters but remembered that because of the one child law she probably didn't. She actually has 5 brothers and sisters! The law went into effect in 1979, so she's one of the few people our age who have siblings. Sunny put us on the right bus to visit the Terracotta Warriors and we decided to meet up the next day.

On arrival at the Museum of Terracotta Army we watched a movie on a 360 degree screen to get a little history about the warriors. The entire complex makes up the mausoleum of emperor Qin Shihuan, the first emperor of united China. The warriors were placed here to protect the emperor, and they took about 35 years and 700,000 workers to create them all in time for his death in 210 BC

We started at Pit #3 and worked backwards so we could save the largest pit for last. Pit #3 was the headquarters for the army and they found many officers as well as chariot and horses here.



Next we saw Pit #2 which was huge but mostly still being excavated. There were some individual warriors that were on display.



While Evan was getting a closer look at the warriors on display, I was enjoying the vast pit until an older Chinese lady next to me decided that she needed to clear her throat and spit a hawker into the pit. Spitting is not considered gross over here, but it was here...A World Heritage Site! I was already disgusted by the constant sound of people clearing their throats (which grosses me out more than the actual spitting), but had dealt with it to this point. This time I couldn't help but give this lady a dirty look.

After pointing out the culprit to Evan, we moved on to Pit #1. This was a monster pit and about half of it has been excavated. It is the size of a giant airline hanger and housed the great battle formation of cavalry, infantrymen and charioteers. We were blown away by the scale of everything and they have barely scratched the surface of what's still buried.







The next morning we woke up to rain, so instead of exploring we decided to relax. Sunny met us for lunch and we went to a really great restaurant for duck close to her university. Then she walked us back to the City Wall where we said our goodbyes. Thanks Sunny, you were a great guide and we're so glad we met you!



We had the wall to ourselves since the rain scared everyone else away.





We enjoyed our brief stay in Xi'an and hopped an overnight train to Beijing. We were lucky and bought tickets for the Z train where all seats were "soft sleeper." This meant that we only had to share a room with 2 other people and it had a door. The train was a lot quieter and we both slept much better than our train from Shanghai. Even better, there wasn't an old lady staring at me for the whole trip!

Shanghai...barber poles, mystery meat and a futuristic city

We had a smooth flight from Hong Kong to Shanghai on China Eastern. Best airline ever because they served individual servings of Haagen-dazs! Normally we wouldn't be excited about the ride into the city, but Shanghai held a special treat for us. A 430 km maglev (magnetic levitation) german engineered train got us to Shanghai in about 7 minutes.



We decided to splurge and booked a room at the Astor House hotel, a historic hotel built in 1846 and has had famous guests such as Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin and Ulysses E Grant. Our room had two giant beds, 15' ceilings and Kohler furnishings in the bathroom. We were so excited about the place we decided to rearrange our schedule and stay an extra night in Shanghai.

Our first dinner was down a shady street with lots of barber poles where we doubt you only get a haircut. Neither of us speak Chinese so we just pointed at the menu and hoped for the best. Evan ended up with a spicy mystery meat and Michelle had an eggplant and potato dish.

Our first stop the next morning was the Old Town and the Yuyuan Gardens. The gardens were what you would imagine traditional Chinese gardens would look like. It was very peaceful walking through and enjoying the flowers, trees, ponds and architecture. Everything was in bloom and it was a beautiful spring day.



We went to lunch in Xintiandi in a neighborhood called the French Concession. Everything was modern with cute boutiques and cafes. We spent the next 4 hours wandering around the French Concession. Evan sent us on a wild goose chase trying to find one particular store. We had the address, and you'd think that would help, but streets change names, no one knows the streets and there are no maps. We enjoyed our walk and finally found his store hours later.

That evening we went to an acrobat show. We had great seats and really enjoyed the show. Here is a picture of some girls balancing on chairs...



And some videos...





The next day we went to the Shanghai museum. It was filled with excellent ceramics, paintings, bronze objects, and costumes with some relics dating back as far as 3000B.C.





We went to the Bund to enjoy the view of Pudong, the neighborhood filled with the new skyscrapers in Shanghai. It was a rainy, windy, cold day and the view wasn't great. We could only see about halfway up the buildings before they disappeared into the clouds/fog/pollution.





We took an overnight train to Xi'an, and we were the only westerners that we saw. We had "hard sleeper" tickets which means that you don't really have a room, more like a cubby with 6 bunks and no door for privacy. There was an older lady who had the bunk under Evan who stared at me for the entire ride. I don't think she had seen someone with blonde hair before. I would look down and smile at her, but didn't get much reaction...she just kept on staring.

Hong Kong in 24 hours

Like we mentioned, we took the overnight bus from Yangshuo to Shenzhen and we never expected it to be this time consuming to get to Hong Kong. We arrived in Shenzhen around 10am and we thought we'd be there closer to 8am. By the time we took another bus to the border, proceeded through customs and took the metro into Hong Kong, it was 1pm by the time we arrived at our hotel.

We checked in and them immediately took off in search of food (that happens quite a bit on our trip as we take long buses or trains and get off a typical meal schedule...we all know what happens when I get hungry!). We had lunch at Luk Yu Tea House, the oldest teahouse in HK. We ordered spring rolls and a bunch of their famous dim sum (small dishes that accompany tea). Some dishes were superb (dumplings, spring rolls) others (pork with lots of fat and the bean curd dessert) weren't the best. Everything was going well until Evan had a case of the dropsies with the chopsticks. He's the better chopstick user, but he tends to melt under pressure. He had to make a trip to the bathroom to clean up and returned in a better mood after he realized that it wasn't going to stain.

Our restaurant was close to the mid-levels escalators, these take you from the lower parts of Hong Kong through SoHo and other neighborhoods about halfway up the mountain. It's actually the world's longest outdoor covered escalator system.



From the top of the escalators, we walked towards the Peak Tram, stopping along the way at the botanical gardens and the zoo (both free!). The zoo had some great primates, two of which who were going berserk.



We finally made it to the Peak Tram and made it to the top. We were afforded incredible views despite the pollution. The panoramas will show the view better, but here's a taste:





We stayed up top for sunset and had a few drinks. Here's the view at night:



These pictures don't really do the skyline justice. It really is the best skyline we've ever seen. The combination of the number of high buildings with the mountains and the harbour make it a sight to behold.

We took in the Arsenal vs Liverpool game at a bar in SoHo and grabbed some dinner. We splurged on dinner as is our custom when they take Visa. We took the doubledecker tram home for a little bit of extra sightseeing and then called it a night as we had to get up early for our flight to Shanghai.

We would have liked to spend more time in Hong Kong touring the harbor and the many neighborhoods, but we chose to spend more of our time in Yangshuo and we have no regrets about that. Just means we'll have to come back!