…we just kept lookin for this guy named Charlie…

Sorry for all the Gump quotes, but man! this country makes me want to watch Forrest in action again.  Especially when the rains came and we were driving through one of the National parks in NinhBinh and … “We been through every kind of rain there is. Little bitty stingin’ rain… and big ol’ fat rain. Rain that flew in sideways. And sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath.’”

Sorry… that was the last one.  I think.

After the ever beautiful and breathtaking hills of Sapa, we headed to the coast for some Island time. 

It was our first time going somewhere where we didn’t have a place to stay.  How unprepared of us!  What risks we take!  Ha!  Smartest choice ever.  Since it was low season on the island, we had guesthouse owners begging for us to stay at their place.  Nat and I ended up choosing a guy that was giving us a double room for $4 a night… $2 each.  My kinda deal. 

This shall be our new form of getting a place to stay in Vietnam!  Cat ba Island was fun, there wasn’t much going on, but enough to keep us entertained. 

We took a tour of Halong Bay, which if you have a chance (since I can’t really get any pictures up…) you should google image that shit!  It’s spectacular!  We spent the day on a boat touring around the magestic rocks jutting out of the water, kayaking through caves and visiting fish farms.  The fish farms… least exciting.

The tour also included a day on Monkey Island.  The poor monkeys on this island..their natural life completly destroyed by tourists, and the tour companies that bring dreadful tourists like us to ruin beautiful places like this.  These monkeys diets consisted of oreos, pringles and whatever else bits of food tourists will hold over their head to watch the monkeys jump and dance.

Nat and I spent a few hours lying on the beach insulting two boys that were teasing the monkeys the most.  What pricks.  Luckily, the monkeys sought revenge by chaseing one boy into the water and standing guard, probably threatening to bite if the American came out of the waters… the guys left the island shortly after calling much unnecessary attention to themselves.

Later that night, Nat and I decide to hit up a bar for some happy hour bevies.  And whaddaya know… look who the bartender is… prick from the beach #1.  American guy from Hawaii.  Alright, he wasn’t so bad, but we did confess that we caught him being cruel to animals.  He pointed out that those monkeys natural life, free of teasing tourist was long gone, and they were only there having a little fun.

Fair enough.

In walks Prick from the Beach #2, an English guy… who also turned out to be alright.  One happy beer turned into three (or six…?).  Either way, the night was good… especially since we ended up at Karaoke!  Nat and mines first time since Japan!  Tim, (the American), was living on Cat Ba island for a bit, and knew the places to go when all the rest of the bars were closed at the ridiculously early hours of 11pm.  Karaoke was where it was! 

I mean, we did have to beg and plead with the guy to let us in, let us stay, let us drink, and let us sing, but it worked!

How i’ve missed you Karaoke, love of my life.

Cat ba is worth visiting, most tourists opt for Halong bay tours, where they spent tonnes of money booking through their hotels.  Nat and I just got a bus from Hanoi to Cat ba, easy as pie and tonnes of money saved, plus, cheap cheap tours of the bay are offered everywhere.

Ninh Binh was next.  This was one of my highlights of Vietnam.  Nat and I spent the whole two days on a rented motos, singing “Born to be Wild”,  driving around the back country roads, visiting fishing villages, driving to far off National Parks that look like jungles, awaiting the moment when T-Rex would pop his head out of the lush green trees and eat us. 

We may have become too adventurous when it got late one night, and being out in the country where there are no lights, we should have headed home earlier.  We got the dreaded shake and rumble of the moto running out of fuel, leaving us with dead transportation in the middle of nowhere.

Luckily we broke down right in front of a big old house.  We walked down the hill towards our saviours. 

“Foreigners?” Asked a women to the male approaching us in Vietnamese.

“Yah, foreigners.”  He replied.  They had obviously seen and heard our moto die.

“Hahaha, foreigners!!!”  She squeels.  Yah yah, haha.  They helped us out and got us our tank refilled, gave us some tea and showed us many pictures of their family members.

The next day we hiked around the beautiful park and touched some thousand year old trees.  I love you Mother Nature.  I would highly suggest Ninh Binh for its awesome back roads, beautiful mountains and country side, and amazing parks.  Today we were very careful to have a full tank of gas before heading out and singing our song of glory.

‘Booooooorrrnnn to be wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiild.’

Take Care of Your Feet

and Don’t do Anything Stupid Like Getting Yourself Killed…Thanks Lieutenant Dan.

Alright, so, we’re on the bus heading out of China, down the highway with rolling green mountains as our background, on our way to Vietnam.  Nam.  Yaaah.  I’m definitely feeling very cool at this point, almost as cool as when I arrived to China on a boat.  Also a little scared… maybe not scared but apprehensive.  I have visions of hot sweaty immigration offices, with Vietnamese men holding guns and bribing me so that i pay them more money.  Yah, yah, I have a slightly overactive imagination. 

It was so smooth though.  Get off the bus, get on a mini golf cart type mobile, get my passport stamped (man that thing is starting to look so much hipper!), get back on the bus and that was it.  No questions, no threats, no mean stares, no bag searches, no drug dogs… it wasn’t even hot.

Alright, so Í’m in Vietnam.  That was easy.  Now I start worrying about when we arrive into the city.  All I ever here about, is how taxi drivers and moto drivers hound you and insist that you  get in their  vehicle, promising to take you to your hotel, only to lie to you once you are on and take you to some hotel that they have connections with (everyone in Vietnam has a connection somewhere and everywhere) where you’ll pay double the price, because actually, your hotel is full, the driver just called them to make sure for you, and sure enough those (unrelated) bastards gave your room away.  They’ll beg you to take their vehicle and they’ll all surround you, and you’ll probably get pickpocketed.

Again, everything went fine.  Five minutes before we arrived, a woman got on the boat.  She asked us where we were staying, and as it turned out, the hotel we were staying at was her sisters hotel.  No kidding.  She could get us there, nooo problem.  Oh, and she convered the price of the taxi since we hadn’t gotten any money changed over yet. 

Well, that was easy. 

We spent the evening learning how to dodge motos and cross the street while weaving between cars and motos and looking both ways to avoid the oncomming and passing by traffic, saying ‘no’ to every other person trying to offer us a ride on their moto (“Where you goin Madame?“) and declining offers to eat in every restaurant and look in every shop (“You wanna come in?  Take a look at my shop”).

Hanoi was a nice city.  We stayed in the Old French Quarter, and honestly, that was the only part I saw of Hanoi.  The architecture is French inspired (for obvious reasons) and the small area is close to a small lake in the middle of the city.  Surrounding the city are busy streets that looked like they’d been squashed, and the houses and shops and buildings all squeezed into a small space so that everything looks ready to burst at the seam, and the buildings are tall and narrow.  The streets are all cracked down the sides, like they are ready to pop.  People are falling out of every doorway, men, women and children are standing in doorways, hanging around on lounge chairs, taking up the sidewalks, playing cards (they are always playing card games!), picking at one anothers hair, cooking up things in pots that they carry around on a beam that rests on their shoulders and on mini barbeques.  They are usually surrounded by people that are squatting or sitting on mini plastic chairs enjoying the street food.  Everyone is selling something and everyone seems to not be working… just sitting and yelling and playing cards and eating.

We did the cultural thing and saw a Water Puppet Show.  It was alright, though I couldn’t really understand the story or what was the cause of the puppets and the dancing and the snakes and the turtle and the bird.

One of my favourite places in Hanoi was the Temple of Literature (by the way, just read On Beauty by Zadie Smith…absolutely brilliant).  It was the first University in Vietnam and it was a school of Literature and Philosophy.  It was a beautiful area and I thought, hey, it would be nice to learn and read here.  We checked out some other sites, but this one stands out in my mind still.

After Hanoi, we headed on a train (this more woody and rickety than China) to the mountains of Sapa.  The view was absolutely breathtaking.  The mountains are perfectly lined horizontally with terraced rice fields.  They have an elevation of about 3000m, they are deep green and while we were there the sun was shining on them the whole day.  The mountains of Sapa are the homes of many minority groups in Vietnam.  In the valleys of these hills are their homes and their farms where they keep their cows, dogs, and children. 

We spent two days trekking through the mountains visiting these people and talking to them and eating with them.  Our guide was a very intelligent and wonderful speaker, she was one of the minority people and her job was taking people for tours and telling them about the different groups.

This guy Kim and I had many questions for her.  We were curious, and she answered all of our culture questions.  The most surprising piece of informations that she told us, was that her group does not kiss.  They don’t kiss.  Can you imagine?  Not only are you getting married at 17, but for as long as you live, you won’t kiss this person.  I thought this was sad, but I guess, if you don’t know the difference.. as they say.

Also surprising was the marijuana tree that Karr (our guide) pointed out.

“Wait.  A what?”

“Marijuana.”

Run up, touch it, smell it, “What do you do with the marijuana?”

“We use it to make hemp…”

Oh.  Good.  Hemp.

The hill groups were fabulous, cheeky and smart people.   These were some of the cutest kids I have come across.  I thoroughly enjoyed spending a few days with them.  They are a little influenced by the western world (“Äre those Oreos…?”), and their English is awesome, especially since they learnt it from tourist.  They can mock any accent (except Canadian… “Little boy:”Where are you from?”

Natalie : “Australia”

L.B: “G’day mate.  Aussie, aussie, aussie, oi, oi , oi.  Where are you from?”

Me: “Canada.”

L.B: ” Oh, it’s cold there.”

Yessss, its cooold there.  C’mon.

Two days was enough for that small town.  So far, the livin’ is easy in Nam.  Let’s go to the Island!

The Backpack

Dear Backpack:

How’s it going?  I know you feel really cool and superior to the rest of the luggage in the luggage department, but it’s time you hear some unspoken truth.

You’re not as great as you think you.  Sure, you have a whole tribe of dirty smelly people named after you, furthermore, a chain of equally dirty and smelly hotels all around the world.  You appear convenient and handy; you make your carrier cool.  You allow your carrier to allow him/herself to refer to him/herself as a ‘backpacker’, which consequently makes them believe they are of a certain special class of people.  You are kind of like a crown, only certain people wear it, and it’s clear what the symbol means. 

The traveller has carried you for years, they decorate you with stupid flags (aka. bragging rights) and fancy clips or scarves.  Anything that can emphasize that they are a traveller.

Don’t get me wrong, you are useful, and you fit more within you than what meets the eye.  You allow the backpacker to have your weight evenly distributed across their body, minimizing damage to their upper and lower back.  Thanks.  Lets get real though.  You know what I think!  I think the rolly suitcase is superior.  Yah, you heard me.  THE ROLLY SUITCASE.

In this day and age, everything is wheelchair accessible, therefore, the rolly suitcase can too go everywhere.  Ha!  Sucker!  You know what doesn’t hurt your back?  THE ROLLY SUITCASE.  You know what opens so that you can see the full interior of its contents (and not just the top, leaving the bottom squashed items to become damp and wrinkly)???  THE ROLLY SUITCASE.  You know whats easier to run with???  THE ROLLY SUITCASE.  Ok, i’ll be fair, that last point can maybe go either way, depending on your strength. 

I’m not totally against you backpack, you’ve been a great partner, and my thighs are looking toned; but i’ve got this one pain in my back (right hand side, bellow the shoulder blade… you know it).  I just wanted you to know, that the rolly suitcase isn’t so bad, and if you don’t watch your back, it may take over the backpacking world.  They may even start renaming the tribe… i don’t know,… from backpacker, to say, traveller, or suitcaser…or something crazy.. i don’t even know… evolution is a mysterious thing.

Anyways, no hard feelings k?

See you later,

Lindzy

PS. oh, and can you fix that pokey metal thing???

China’s Last Burn on Lindzy and Nat

Nat and I can safely say that China has thrown way more punches at Nat than I.  Not only did she get her camera stolen, but she ripped off by a hairdresser, who refused to do her hair untill she bought overpriced hair serum.  Meanwhile, beside her and this dickhead of a hairdresser, I am sitting with my cute-as-a-button-i-want-to-put-you-in-my-pocket-and-take-you-home-hairdresser, who is working so carefully and pampering my head like it was the Queens hair or something.  Seriously, after he was done, angels sang and fairy’s floated around me while my hair floated around Clairol commercial material.  My smile was huge… untill I looked over at Nats sad face and puffy poodle hair.  There were a few other instances of rude people, stalkers and rip offs that I didn’t experience, making me think much more highly of China than Nat.

As we were walking around Nanning, our last city in China, we joked about how this is where Nat gets killed by a speeding car or something, with all the luck she has been having.  She was praying to make out of China alive. 

The morning we were walking to the bus station for the bus to Vietnam, I held up my fist in glory!  “We have won!  We are leaving China alive!”  Nat muttered something about not knowing what I had to complain about…. true…

Our bus arrived and we were home free… almost… as we walked to the bus, I missed a step, my ankle turned in and I came crashing down on my knee, my ankle bending awkwardly and making that snapping sound.  I didn’t cry!  I don’t cry!  I whine!  “Owowowowowowowowowowowowowowowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.”  I held my ankle tightly hoping that if i held it tight enough, the damage could be reversed. 

Not one Chinese person offered to help me, but all the foreigners were on me in an instant:

“Are you ok?”

“Let me get your bag-”

“Do you need aspirin-?”

I wobbled on the bus and kept the ankle elevated and took Bruces mysterious pills from Africa… Bruce and Kylie are a couple we met in Nanning that were on a similar route as we were. 

See ya China, and thanks for lessons on how to toughen up.   The Vietnam border awaits us.

Peace! (^-^)V

The Last Race in China: Guilin

So, since the beginning of this trip, I have been running for trains and buses.  No matter how hard I try, I am always left looking at a clock, gasping, coming to a screeching halt, switching directions, sprinting across subway stations, squeezing through doors, telling a cab driver to step on it, or, just making it to immigration.

I missed my bus out of Toyama, and my buddies Takahiro and Takafumi had to race the bus to the first rest stop, getting me on it safely, I had to run for my boat to China (and i mean ruuuuun), I was tense in the backseat of a taxi for my train to Xi’an, we read the ticket wrong for our tickets from Shanghai to Hong Kong (causing us a 1/2 hour mistake) and we got the wrong station to get a bus from Hong Kong to Guilin.

By the time we got to our time for Guilin on this trip, we thought we had everything down pat.  We arrived to Hong Kong with such grace!  We planned everything!  We got our tickets, our maps and our re-entry permits to go “back in to China” pretty much as soon as we got into Hong Kong (P.S. How annoying is it that HK and China are the same country, but you need a visa to get to China from HK??).  We had everything ready and planned to leave HK on a monday night.

Unfortunetly, the people at the bus station failed to tell us that there are two stations next to each other in the city where we had to catch the night bus to Guilin. 

Nat and I were plenty early for our night bus; we relaxed, ate some ‘cup-o-noodle’, made a toilet stop and 10 minutes before our bus, we decided to go find it… thats when the friendly bus station man informed us (through diagrams and flailing arms) that our bus left from the station two minutes down the street… and that we better hurry… no kidding… ready…set… sprint! again!

We arrived on time though… for a nightmare of a ride!!!  Have you seen the Chinese drive?!?

Alright guys, I defended you in Canada… shamed people for giving into the stereotype, but honestly, you guys are crazy drivers.  I understand!  It’s how it’s done in your country!  No problem!  Problem: Night bus, crazy driving, hills, curves and turns.  I have never hung on for dear life so much in my life.  It was fun…I guess… you know, like a fun rollercoster ride, that went on for 12 hours.. while you’re trying to sleep.. and is not fast enough for gravity to hold you down, so you have to rely on your own grip.

We arrived to Guilin exhausted.  We got there so early, that the lady we were staying with wasn’t ready for us.  We decided this time to rent out a ladies little apartment for $11 a night.  So good!  It was in a wicked neighborhood, no foreginers, tonnes of markets and tonnes of people on the streets, kids, adults eating and drinking and playing cards, they loved us.  Always shouting hello! and offering us delicious mandarins and grapes!  I love chinese fruit!

Since her place wasn’t ready, she dropped us off at her mos place.  It reminded me how much i love grandparents; which is what these people acted like for two hours, as in, they fed us more food than we could eat.  Luckily everythign was vegetarian…except for these meat balls that she kept putting on my plate.  Whenever she’d turn an eye, i’d put them back in the bowl.  BEing a Grandma, she would notice that i was out of balls of meat and put more on my plate…gawwwd.  In the end I won (aka, i didnt eat any mysterious meat balls).

Guilin is in the south of China, and absolutely beautiful.  We spent our time in parks, rivers, and mountains. 

My favourite part was our tour of some of the beautiful highlights of Guilin, Yangshuo and Xingping and the boat tour of Lijang.  Our hostess hooked us up with a cheap tour.  The unfortunate thing about these asian countries is that there is a price for locals, and a price for foreigners.  They love taking avantage of us “rich people”.  Listen, when I go back home, I am not rich.  In fact, I’m not rich now!  Does school dept mean anythign to these people…

Anyways, so our hostess hooked us up with a cheap tour, with allllll Chinese.  They loved us though and took real good care of us.  I’m sure each and every single one of them have a photo of Nat and me with either them or their child. 

My least favourite part was when Nat got her camera pickpocketed.  Burn.

Luckily she’s got insurance.

Guilin was a nice calm time for what had just passed and what was to come with crossing the border and doing it all in Vietnam.

Shanghai to Hong Kong: the road to Civilization

Music: waaaaaah, none!!!

After Xi’an (best known to Nat and I as the mistake), we arrived in class to Shanghai.  We had the most expensive and most comfortable 17 hour train ride.  This was not really our choice… if you read the previous post, you would know that a slack worker at a hostel caused us to miss out on the cheap train tickets (this girl does not need class! she needs cheap!! ) and run around all day looking for a way (anyway!!!) out of this city!

Though it was a little overbudget (really… it was only about $40 to $50 … not that big a deal…), we appreciated the smooth ride into the crazy and loud and smelly and hoooooooooot and humid Shanghai.

I love Shanghai.

We stayed with two girls, Katie and Sara, bright, loud and brilliant young girls from America, that lived in Toyama teaching English at one point.  They welcomed us with open arms (and lots of delicious home cooked food… and clean hot showers.. and tips on EVERYTHING in Shanghai) to their sweet pad in the center of the city. 

I can’t remember the last time I met two sincerely generous and helpful people.  Shanghai would have been nothin’ without ‘em. 

I didn’t wash my own hair once… puh-lease, $1.50 for a wash, cut, blowdry and massage… like I would waste my own energy on it.  We ate and drank at the best and delicious deals in town, thanks to Katies collection of business cards on where to be, all the time, anywhere. 

Within those business cards laid more business cards on where to get the best deals on hand made silk attire (Lindzy: + one yellow dress), eyeware (Lindzy: + one pair of Louis Vuitton frames and lenses), bags and purses (Lindzy: + 1 Chanel black handbag), and cashmere scarves (Lindzy: + one blue silky scarve)… this was all for less than $100..far less…. This is why I love Shanghai!

Ok, I went a little overboard, and spoiled myself, but how do you say no to these deals???  On top of the great shopping Shanghai is actually a hip and happenin city.  There are more foreigners than Golden Week in Kyoto (thats a lot), there are tonnes of places to go, there are tonnes of things to see and do, eat and drink, laugh and play, run and bike, and really do, anything. 

One of my favourite parts was checking out the circus one night and the amazing Chinese Acrobats.  Mind blowing!  I screamed!  I laughed!  I was almost peeing my pants!  (Too much?).  I t was amazing… At one point they had eight motorcycles in a small sphere, racing around!  This show SHOULD NOT BE MISSED.

I was sad to leave Shanghai, but fear of staying there for a year (Katie promised she could get me a job, no problem…yikes!  teeeemmmptiing), I had to get out, fast. 

Again, we went in class (man! tickets go fast here!) to Hong Kong! 

This is where Natalie and I get good at the travelling thing…seriously.  We got to Hong Kong, found our way to the cheap place to get our re-entry permits to China, got our tickets (cheap ones!) out and made our way to the place we were staying at.

This time, Nat and I couch surfed.  If you don’t know what couch surfing is, you should check it out.  It’s an online community that connects travellers who can help each other out, by offering a free place to stay (perhaps a couch…) or meet up for a coffee, to show the whats what in whichever town.

Our host was not as chic as Sara and Katie… He was an older man, probably a little lonely, who didn’t say much (hey, if I can’t make you talk, no one can), but put us up in his beautiful, sea front, mountain backdrop apartment, with our own bedroom and a housekeeper, who cooked us a mean seafood lasagna on the first night.

Hong Kong reminded me a lot of Vancouver.  Nat and I spent five days there checking out everything that could be checked out.  We toured the islands, saw the biggest buddha in Asia, went to the highest peak, ate delicious curry foods and walked a lot.  We probably would have only stayed for 3 or 4 days (the city is a little pricey…) but, we had to wait to get our re-entry permits… since someone didn’t tell us when we got our Chinese Visas, that if you go into Hong Kong,  and back, you need a double entry permit… they told us this, after we got our visas (and yes, we had given them our itineraries…grrrr).

I really enjoyed my time in Hong Kong… it was kind of a Western Tease …. everyone speaks English, no one is rude, and Starbucks are everywhere.  No one spits, no one tries to sell you crap, no babies are pooping in random places and everywhere has (angels!  clouds of heaven opening! harps playing!) clean! western! toilets! with! toilet! paper!

As a Chinese man from Hong Kong put it when we first arrived to HK:

“We’re more civilized here.”  He had offered to help a man with wheelchair, and the man thanked him, telling him that he was very kind.

This Hong Konger couldn’t have put it any better….

Xi’an: The Place we Should Have Skipped

Reasons:

1. The train was hell… hardseats for a 17 hour ride.  I slept on the seats, Nat slept under.  Way to take on for the team Nachan!
2. The hostel wasn’t the greatest.. mostly cause the people had half a brain and lied to us about train tickets.
3. Trains everywhere out of there were booked
4. When we finally got a train it was for that night, so we weren’t able to really do or see anything historic or monumental.  We did bike around the city wall, which I did really really enjoy, the city was cool, but really only took a day.  The next day we were out. 
5. We paid a lot, but got a really nice soft sleeper room, which we shared with a mother and her daughter ( a baby that did not randomely pee/poo anywhere she pleased, which we saw a lot in Xi’an.  You know how you see horses in a parade just let ‘er drop wherever, whenever?  Thats kind of like the tykes in China.  One girl had the class to step over a sewer… one boy whipped it out in a national park… hmmm.. SARS anyone? )
6. We got to see a true Chinese city, after the slightly faking it Beijing (they cleaned up nice for the Olympics), dirty, loud, smelly, rude, no english whatsoever.  No apologies for anything, no smiles.  I miss smiles.  And the spitting.. man do they spit.  Not just the little spitting or the ‘ oh I have extra saliva in my mouth let me just get rid of that in the bush nearby.’  No, no, this is straight up, from deep down, stomach gurgling, throat scratching hoarking.  Now i’m not so sensitive, and I could stomach it, but I mean, people, this is a nation wide problem!   Get that shit checked out!  You arn’t a country of spitters!  You’re a country with lung infections!  Again: SARS.

Things get classier from here.

Beijing: Baptism of Fire

Looking back I loved Beijing.  It’s big, it’s full of culture (a crazy culture), and there is so much to do!  When we first go there though, I was not in love.  I was close to tears. 

The taxi drivers are crazy and no one ( NO ONE) speaks English.  When we finally made it to Beijing from Tianjin (where the boat dropped us off), there was no one to help us.  The subway at that particular station was not finished (of course!  what is this? a bad part 3 of Speed??) and no one could tell us which buses to take where.  Even our ‘I’m a sad, lost, pathetic foreigner’ faces didn’t work. 

That is untill Angel number 2 appeared

(Angel number one was a Chinese/Japanese woman …who had also seen me naked on the boat… who could translate Chinese to Japanese for us.  saaafe)

Angel number 2 was an older man accompanied with his wife.  Together they took Nat and I in and escorted us safely to our hostel in the heart of Beijing, Sanlitun area.  They also paid for the taxi…Ping Pong!!

The tears were gone.  Beijing could be enjoyed. 

Enjoyed in a crazy way… i kind of missed the boat… a time when things were simple and all there was to do for two days was read and be lulled to sleep by the rocking of the boat and the humming of the engine.

The streets in China were one of my first shockers.  Absolute insanity.  I don’t see why they bother putting lines on the road, or stop lights, or pedestrian crosswalks…or sidewalks…

Also being in Chinese train stations, i missed the high efficiency and frequency of the trains in Japan.  Train stations in China are like airports.  With the amount of security in both the train stations and the subway stations, i wasn’t sure if i should feel safe or not.  I was also getting sick of taking off my bags and queuing up for the scanners.  After travelling a lot of China, I’m pretty sure all of this security was just for the olympics.

The first day we met these two awesome dudes that took us out for breakfast to a little family place on a little sidestreet they had previously discovered. 

We did the bank thing, we did the whole not signing our travellers cheques and having to leave them and sign them and find a new, not so close, bank.  (The travellers cheques are another funny story… yah we decided to get those two hours before our boat… they took an hour to get… we had to be on the boat an hour before leaving… we definitely ran through the streets of Kobe with 30 pound bags on our backs.)

We spent about four days in Beijing.  I loved it and hated it.  I was tired of holding my purse so tightly and I was tired of making stupid costly mistakes.  I was tired of running for trains with 30 pound bags.  I’m tired of taking wrong exits with no answers.  I wanted to stay longer to enjoy because I was finally getting the hang of it, but I also wanted to stay longer to kick its ass with my presence. 

We saw the lake, we saw the temples, we saw the Forbidden City, we saw the Hutong areas, we partied with randoms, we met some Paralympics and partied with them.  We saw the Summer Palace (soooo good!) and we climbed the Great Wall… According to Chairman Mao, that makes us real Woman.  Thanks buudddyy.  We got a sketchy cab driver after the Great Wall who made us get out of his cab in the middle of nowhere, for no reason we could understand.  Luckily we were able to flag down some random bus heading back into Beijing.  Little flirting with the bus drivers assistant and we were on at a gooood price. 

That was our Baptism of Fire.