Asian Adventures

So, I used to have this blog called "Made in China"...but...seeing as how I'm heading to Thailand with ILP in less than 2 weeks, I figured that title was no longer appropriate. :)

Yah...it's been a crazy couple of weeks. Not quite 3 weeks ago I got a message from one of the ILP directors asking if I was going to be busy for the summer, or if I would be interested in going to teach English in Thailand! I kinda freaked out. I was about to head out to meet up with a friend between classes when I read the message, and so she got to see my first reaction. I called my dad, and he was excited for me, and I messaged my sister, who's teaching English in Ukraine, right away too. The whole day I couldn't stop thinking about it, and that night, after reading my scriptures and praying, I really felt like good about it, so, about 12 hours after getting this message, I said yes!

This meant that I had to drop my summer classes, cancel my housing, get through finals, and pack up my room in the next 10 or so days. It was pretty stressful actually. Plus all the goodbyes. ugh. I hate goodbyes. Some of my goodbyes were forever goodbyes...what with people going on missions and not coming back until I'd be graduated...but even goodbyes that were just goodbye for the summer were really hard. I realized that before my other semesters in China I had been living at home, away from friends, for months before leaving to China...so goodbyes weren't really hard. These goodbyes were hard.

The flag circle at BYU-Hawaii. I've got my sight set on Thailand now!

I've been at home for a week now, and I miss Hawaii and my friends. Plus I don't know anyone here since "home" isn't really home anymore, seeing as how my family moved while I was gone to school.
But! I'm going to Thailand! In 2 weeks, I will be laying on a beach like this:

We start of our semester with a week long vacation, so we're heading to southern Thailand - Krabi and Koh Lanta. It'll be great. I miss the sand and the sun already!

Hong Kong

So, after saying all our goodbyes, and finishing our end of the semester performance, and staying up until 5am packing, and then waking up at 6am to leave Nanlang, and after many many tears...we were on our way to Hong Kong. We went to Hong Kong a few days before our flight, as well as a few other people from Zhongshan. The ferry was actually kind of an ordeal...they wanted us to pay for our luggage, but we hadn't been told that we had needed to, and none of us had any money. I guess they got fed up with none of us understanding anything, cuz they eventually let us on, and had a bunch of help from this one American guy. He seriously helped us out a ton, not only with that situation, but with our luggage as well. 

Anyways, then getting to our hostel was kind of a mess too...Lex and Chris's taxi driver didn't know where to go, that was kind of my bad, but they found me and Leisha eventually, and then it was just a matter of checking in...oh boy. Our hostel in Hong Kong was....ghetto to the max. I'm almost positive people have been murdered in the staircases. The first floor was full of shops...most with Indian men working at them. The place smelled...weird. And when I finally found the elevators that were supposed to lead up to our hostel, one of the elevators went to even floors, and the other went up to odd floors, but neither of them had buttons to go down...so once you were upstairs, you could only go down on the elevator if it happened to stop for someone on their way up...otherwise, you either had to wait forever, or take the stairs...the murder stairs. So...that was interesting, haha. Oh, plus our room was the size of a closet. Yah... at least the location was convenient? haha.

Just outside our hostel.

I don't have a picture in the staircase, or of our closet of a room...this is the only picture I have at our hostel...the view outside the hallway window.

Me, Alexa, and Chris headed out to see the Big Buddha that afternoon, and that was when we saw this man on the metro. He was beautiful. We struggled while in Hong Kong, not being able to speak English in front of people because they understand it there, but we especially struggled when we were standing in front of him on the metro. It made us miss China.

Heading to the Bid Buddha, riding a gondola through the clouds again.

It was really foggy when we got up to the Big Buddha. It made us kinda sad.

Luckily it would clear up every couple of minutes, and we were able to get some clear pictures.

The next day the 3 of us went to Aberdeen fishing village.

And that night we watched the light show at Victoria Harbour.

The next day it was time to fly home. So very sad....until my next adventure ;)

ZhangJiaJie

Zhangjiajie! This was one place that I had never been to before, so I was really excited for this vacation. We took a sleeper train there overnight, and got to the city of Zhanghjiajie in the late morning. We found our bus heading to the village of Wulingyuan where our hostel was and after getting checked in and all it was about 1pm. We were planning on going to the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park right away, and asked our hostel for directions. The kid working at the desk tried telling us we didn't have time to go there that day, so we should just chill there, but we only had like 3 days in Zhangjiajie, and no time for a day of nothing, so we went anyways, and it was a good thing we did, cuz the kid was crazy and we had plenty of time to see stuff in the park! We took a gondola ride up to the top of the mountains, and...wow.

There's a free bus system within the park, and after awhile, and with the park closing fairly soon, we figured we better so home and started trying to find our way back to the entrance. Well, turns out there isn't a bus down from the mountains, so we either had to pay for the gondola ride again, walk (which we didn't have time for), or pay for and ride the Bailong elevator, so we went for the elevator. 

It's apparently the longest outdoor elevator in the world, and is glass so you can look around, but we were the last ones to get into our elevator, so we couldn't really see anything... Plus the elevator view is blocked by cement for the last half down. (I took this picture in the reflection of the elevator ceiling...I'm not that much taller than the Chinese, haha)

That night we ate the most delicious noodles and explored the village of Wulingyuan a bit.

The next day we went back into Zhangjiajie city and went to Tianmen Mountain National Park. The gondola ride up is the longest in the world, and it was super foggy when we went...at times we could barely see 20 feet in front of us, and it looked like we were gonna smash right into the side of the mountain before the gondola swung up and above the mountain.

Super foggy, but it was really beautiful.

We found the glass walkway! It was actually terrifying. The park wasn't really busy when we were there, and so we took our time on the walkway.

 Once we were done at the top of the mountain, we took the gondola half way down, then got onto a bus that took this 99-turn road to Heaven's Gate.

They say there are 999 steps to the top, but I counted 905 on the way up, and 904 down, so I think they're wrong.

At the top of the stairway to heaven there are all these love locks.

Getting back down the mountain, and back to Wulingyuan, we explored the village a bit more. It's a really neat place.

The next day we went back to the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, this time walking around at the bottom of the mountains rather that getting the view from the top. It was also breathtaking.

I successfully saw monkeys on every single vacation this semester!

We got our stuff from our hostel and then headed to the train station to catch our last long train ride of the semester. :( I actually really like train rides.

\/ Train rides captured in one picture...just missing the purple noodles.

I also figured out how to make people look like Avatars on the train ride home...too late to take awesome pictures as avatars in the park :(

Hǎojiǔ bùjiàn Běijīng

So...I've been meaning to at least finish up writing about our last couple vacations for the past...11 months? haha. So, here goes...Beijing!

We took a hard seat train ride overnight from Xi'an to Beijing, and said goodbye to Jenna once we got there. She joined back up with the Kaiyin group, and me, Lex, and Chris headed to our hostel. We got the best welcome to Beijing though...once we stepped out of the metro and started walking to our hostel, we saw this little boy standing on the sidewalk, walking around with this Chinese flag and waving it around. He was adorable.

Our hostel was really quaint, and we scored a private room after booking a dorm! Sweet!

We headed to the Lama temple that first day. It's one of my favourite places in Beijing. I wasn't feeling well, but we were able to take it slow for the day, only going to the Silk Market that evening before heading home, so that helped.

There's a Buddah at the lama temple that holds the Guinness World Record for being the largest statue carved out of one piece of wood. 26 metres tall.

The next day we went to the Temple of Heaven. This is a great place, and also GIGANTIC! It was an absolutely beautiful day, and we spent quite a while here before heading across the street to do some shopping at the pearl market.

We loved laying in the grass! 

This man was so good at waving this thing around in beautiful circles and intricate loops.

I wasn't so good at it...

But I was better than Chris, haha. She really struggled.

After finishing waving our kite things around, I hid from Chris and Lex, this man, seeing me, and seeing my friends looking for me, started laughing at me...ruining my hiding place, haha. He was adorable though, and only had like 3 teeth.

We had a little photo shoot in the park too. It is such a beautiful park!

We also saw this man at the Temple of Heaven...not only was he attractive, but he was with these 3 kids who were totally in love with him. Soooo cute.

The next day we headed to the Olympic Plaza.

After the Olympic Plaza, we headed to the Summer Palace. I had never been here in my other 2 trips to Beijing, and while I'm glad I finally went, I don't know if I'd go again...I like other places in Beijing better...plus it was May 1st, a holiday in China, so it was PACKED with people

We did get to witness a performance by this man...I don't even know...

That night we wanted to find some funky food to eat, so our hostel told us the place to eat scorpions (WangFuJing), and we headed out!

The scorpions were actually still moving around while stuck on these sticks. They didn't die until they were fried for us to eat.

We ended up buying dog, snake, and scorpion to eat. The dog was alright, the meat was pretty soft, but the taste was ok. The snake was actually pretty good, tougher meat though. And the scorpion was...crunchy. And oily. And terrifying, haha.

The Great Wall was our adventure for the next day. We booked a tour through our hostel to a private section of the wall called HuangHua. We were a small group, it was the 3 of us girls, then 2 guys and 1 girl from France, plus our tour guide. It was a wonderful part of the wall., and I think we only saw like 5 other people there the entire day! You don't get that kind of experience, being alone on the wall, when you go to the more touristy parts of the wall.
The first hour or so we spent on a restored part of the wall, and then the next 3 hours or so were on an unrestored section. We stopped for lunch at one point and our tour guide set out our little picnic. We had these sandwich things with donkey meat, and cucumbers and chips as well. It was pretty good actually, I thought the donkey meat kinda tasted like roast beef. Our tour guide was an interesting guy. He actually owned the hostel. He told us he had had a business partner, but she went back to Sweden after getting knocked up by a kung fu monk....yah...then he said it was weirder than it sounded...don't really know how that's possible...

The next day we went to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Jenna came with us, since her group had gone there while she was in Xi'an with us. 

It's lucky to rub the knobs on the doors...I lied and told Alexa and Jenna that the higher ones gave more luck, so they started making a human pyramid to rub as high as possible, hahaha.

We found a patch of wet cement and left our mark in the Forbidden City.

After the Forbidden City we met up with some of Jenna's group at a cute market area.

I also got to visit Zo during the week too! Our hostel was just down the street from his shop. I love that he still recognized me. We also met his wife, who was pregnant at the time.

I had a great time in Beijing! It was nice to be able to walk down the street without sweating because of the crazy humidity that we have in Zhongshan. We were on the same train as most of the other Zhongshan teachers, there were a few who had gone to Xi'an for the last few days of the vacation, but it was a painless 22 hour train ride home.