G-O-N-Z-A-G-A, Go Gonzaga!

Day 5 in China, day 34 of my voyage

We woke up around 7 am to sunlight streaming through the windows of our watchtower. The sun had risen maybe an hour before, and it was absolutely beautiful outside. We had fresh fruit, juice, and croissants for breakfast before embarking on our hike. Rolling the sleeping bags up and fitting them back into the bags was fun. It’s funny how once you get them out of the bags they never seem to go back in the same way. Anyways, we finished packing everything up and headed out. We had about a 6 mile hike ahead of us, and we were all ready to go. We set out, and let me tell you it was basically the perfect hike. It wasn’t too difficult of a hike, but it was still a little challenging. There were some areas where Brittany and I had to hold hands and go down steps, but it wasn’t too bad. We were all constantly in awe while walking along the wall, and it was gorgeous. Once I warmed up, I was able to take some of the layers off that I started with in the morning. We stopped very few times during the hike, and we finished the 6 miles by noon (give or take 30 minutes). At the very end, we had to cross a long wooden bridge over a river, climb up a bunch of steps, and then we were at the very end of the line…the zipline that is. We got to zipline off the Great Wall and over the river we had just crossed! We got to go in groups of two, so Brittany and I went together. I managed to take a video on the way down, and it is rather funny, mostly because of Brittany’s little comments she makes on the way down. After the wonderful adrenaline rush, we walked over to the restaurant and had yet another great family-style lunch.

 

With the little narrative about my actual hike over, I want to say a little something about our guide for our hike. His name was Tommy, and I would put him in his early to mid-twenties. He graduated from school with a degree in broadcast journalism, and his dream is to be a host on the Travel Channel. He was absolutely hilarious. He spoke really great English, but every once in a while we would need to explain something to him. He had the most energy of anyone I have ever met. He scrambled up the wall the first night like a little mountain goat and left all of us in the dust. As a guide, he would carry around a little pole with a red flag on the top so we could find him whenever we needed to regroup. Once assembled, he would randomly decide to run ahead and wave the flag around his head in a very warrior-like fashion. He said he does so many tours a month and that ours was the coldest he had ever done. We all gave him a tip at the end because we all absolutely fell in love with him. We even interviewed him for our project, which was slightly awkward considering it was about birth control, but that’s ok. He even zip-lined with us at the very end of the hike! He was so happy that we all had a great trip, and all the girls adored him. 

 

 Anyways…After lunch, it was once again naptime while we headed 2 hours back to Beijing to see the outside of the birds nest and the water cube Olympic arenas. They were pretty cool to see, but it definitely would have been much better if we could have gone inside them. Apparently they are going to make the water cube into a huge water park, and the birds nest is now some sort of shopping mall. We hung around, took some pictures, then checked back into the hotel for another night. It felt wonderful to shower and eat dinner, then I passed out, exhausted from the long day and preparing for another day of hard bargaining at the silk market.   

 

Day 6 in China, day 35 of my voyage

Brittany and I were up at 8 am and out of the hotel around 9. We headed back to the silk market to do some last minute shopping before heading back to the hotel to check out and head to the airport. We spent about 3 hours at the Silk Market, and both of us got some pretty good deals on stuff. One thing I will say about the people is they are incredibly pushy. They aren’t afraid to put their hands on you and pull you into their stall, or even slap you on the arm if they don’t like the price you offer. This happened to Brittany on our first adventure at the silk market, and let me assure you, she was not a very happy camper about it. In the end, we both made some good purchases, and we knew we were going to have to repack our stuff once we got back to the hotel before getting on the plane.

 

Back at the hotel, repacking the bags was not an easy task, but we made it work. The airport was about a 45 minute to an hour drive, so four of us split a taxi. It ended up being about 4 or 5 dollars a person. In San Diego, that long of a cab ride would be anywhere from 50 to 100 bucks. Cabs are so cheap in Asia! Our flight was about 3 hours, and not only did we get little packages of peanuts, we also got a full dinner and refills on our drinks. In this sense, Asian airlines are way better than US airlines. We landed in Hong Kong at about 8:30, and the cab ride to where the ship actually was about an hour and 15 minutes. Driving into Hong Kong was amazing. It is like San Francisco, only way bigger. There are buildings lit up everywhere, and some of them even have really cool lights on the side that change colors and designs every few minutes. The city was amazing, as was the weather. It was probably 65 out when we got there, and it felt EXACTLY like San Diego. It had the exact same amount of humidity, it was the same temperature, and we were right on the water, which meant that there was also a wonderful ocean breeze. Brittany and I felt right at home.

 

We had found out that the other girls were out on the town, so Brittany and I rushed to the ship, took quick showers, then caught a cab to meet them. When we got there, they all wanted to leave. Victoria decided she would stay and show us around, since she is from Hong Kong and she loves being out on the town. Brittany and I were starving, so Victoria took us to a little hole-in-the-wall bar that apparently had good food. She told us we had to try a Canadian dish (why we were doing this in Hong Kong, I don’t know) that she and her friends loved to eat before going out on weekends. The dish consisted of French fries covered in gravy and cheese. I didn’t see why this dish should be so good, it was just a variation of animal style fries from In N Out (can you tell where my head is at?). Let me tell you, this dish put animal style fries to shame. They were absolutely wonderful, and Brittany and I polished off one order in about 5 minutes. After our wonderful snack, Brittany and I got a personal tour of Lan Kwai Fong, the party street in Hong Kong. We wandered around and Vic showed us some of the smaller places she and her friends liked to go. We stopped and had a pineapple jello shot at a bar, got 2 for one mojitos at another, and hung around with some friends from SAS. We had a big day the next day, so we didn’t want to be out too late. Brittany and I hopped in a cab and headed back to the ship. Getting back to where the ship was docked was strange. In order to get to the ship, one had to walk through a very high end mall, and it was strange to see it all deserted. We had gotten dropped off on the very opposite end of where we were last time, so it took me and her some time to figure out which direction to go in the mall. Once we figured it out, we got back on the ship and went to bed, excited for our plans for the next day.

 

Day 7 in China, day 36 of my voyage

Team Awesome was ready to go at 9 am for our first and only full day in Hong Kong. We met Victoria right outside the ship, and we were off to see the Hong Kong that Victoria knew. We first went to a temple in the downtown area, where a large number of people were worshiping. The second one walks in, there is one sense above all others that becomes overloaded: the nose. There is incense burning everywhere; there is incense hanging from the ceiling, incense on tables, on statues, everywhere you look. We got some really cool pictures, but most of us were developing headaches rather quickly, so we booked it out of there pretty fast. Before we knew it we were wandering the downtown streets of Hong Kong, led by Victoria. We wandered around a little market selling a bunch of neat trinkets, then decided to head off to lunch. As we were walking, we saw some men doing a dragon dance for Chinese New Year, which was really cool. We had lunch, then went to one of Victoria’s favorite Mexican food places for margaritas. On the way there, we had to go up the longest escalator system in the world. It was like a bunch of normal ones put together, just with a ten foot flat landing between each. You could get off at each landing and head to the shops at that particular level on the street.

 

After a pitcher of margaritas between all of us, we headed to what was called a wet market. They have fresh everything you could possibly think of. Fish that literally just came out of the water, fish that were cut open yet still breathing, freshly cut pig’s head (or foot or ear or tail or any other part really), and basically any fruit or veggie out there. We spent quite a while wandering around this market, then we headed to one particular street Victoria was telling us about. It is a street filled with places to buy stuff for ponds or aquariums. There are bags and bags of goldfish and other small fish that you can buy, as well as turtles and sometimes even puppies and kittens. This is where the title of the blog came from...Graham goes to my rival college,Gonzaga, up in Washington. His mascot is the bulldogs, and when he saw a little bulldog for sale in the pet store, he squatted down next to it and started chanting this song, fist pumping and all. The puppy basically looked at him like he was absolutely crazy. It was really cute, and it really made me miss my own doggie.

 

After the fish street we headed to the Yuen Po Street Bird Garden. In China, many people live in smaller houses or apartments, so they cannot have a big dog or sometimes even a cat around, so many people (older men especially) will keep birds as pets. The garden is a place for the men to bring their birds in beautiful wooden cages so the birds have time to socialize and get some fresh air. There are also people who sell birds and cages. They had a bunch of different types of birds, from parrots to lovebirds to sparrows to small ravens. Some of the birds were talking, others would whistle and hop around in their cages to get our attention as we walked by, and others just looked at us with their heads cocked to one side in that confused way that animals tend to do. After the birdie walk, we all headed back to the ship to rest and shower before our last night in Hong Kong. This wasn’t just any last night in any port, we had a 21^st birthday to celebrate. Victoria’s to be exact. It was her Chinese birthday (yes it is different than our normal birthdays) two days before we docked in China, so we figured we would celebrate in Hong Kong.

 

It was in China that I first began to realize that I brought no cute shirts to go out in. Nor did I have any shoes other than flip flops. Shame on me for having such a casual sense of style. Luckily, Brittany was around to save the day, and I stole an entire outfit from her. We all ate dinner on the ship, then headed out to meet Vic around 9:00. We went to a rather upscale bar called Dragon Eye first, where we all had a round of drinks and Vic bought a bottle of champagne for everyone to share. They brought out the magnum of champagne, and like any birthday champagne should be, it was flaming. They had stuck two giant sparklers on it that also emitted little flames, and it was definitely the best way to serve champagne that I have seen. We all urged Vic to pop the cork, and when we finally busted the bottle open we also manage to bust a light. The cork had popped straight into the lights above us, causing one of them to break and the cork to have a giant scorch mark on it. The people at the bar assured us not to worry about it and told us it wasn’t the first time that particular incident had happened. After dragon eye, we bar hopped for a while, running into many SASers along the way. We finally got back to the ship around 3 in the morning, after a fantastic night of celebrations and a ton of fun.

 

Day 8 in China, day 37 of my voyage

Woke up in the morning, had breakfast, then went out into the mall to use the free internet. Any type of free internet anywhere near the ship is a gift to an SASer, since we have incredibly limited amounts. While video chatting with my wonderful and currently London-based friend Peter, he mentioned that he could make unlimited phone calls with Skype to any phone he wanted. He (being the good friend he is), gave me his sign in information and allowed me to call my parents, boyfriend, grandparents, and a few other relatives and friends. It was great to have unlimited talk time with them, as I hadn’t really gotten to have any meaningful conversation with any of them in quite some time. Let me tell you, time flies when you are having fun, and before I knew it I spent 5 hours on the phone. Instead of going out and leaving the ship when on ship time was only two hours away, I got back on the ship and spent some time catching up on homework and reading that I really needed to get done.

 

Days 38 and 39

Same as always when in transit. Spent all of every class talking about port experiences, which even the teachers seem to realize is when we learn the most. Spent some of the time also talking about Vietnam and the culture there. Apparently, they don’t hate Americans as much as we think they would, what with the war and everything. Majority of their population is under the age of 25, so the war isn’t something they remember or really care about. On the other hand, in global studies on the day before Vietnam, we had a panel of speakers about the Vietnam War. This is how most of global studies is: people talking about places we are going, experiences, politics, etc. These speakers, in my opinion, were the best we have had so far on this voyage. We had two Vietnam war veterans, one who voluntarily joined the Air Force and was in the Special Forces, and another Marine who was drafted 2 months after he got married. The other was a war protester. Both men who had been active in the war had incredibly intense stories to share, and let me tell you, there were very few dry eyes in the room once they were done speaking. Both of them had lost good friends in the war, and it was really hard for me to hear them speak of their experiences when I now have so many good friends in the military. The one marine veteran hadn’t told his story since he was on SAS ten years before, and (if I remember correctly) this was his first time being back to Vietnam since he had been there during the war.  No words that I can write can convey the intense emotions of that one class, nothing I say will ever be able to capture their experiences in the way they did when they told us their stories. If you haven’t done so recently, thank a soldier or anyone serving in the armed forces. They deserve your thanks more than anyone else, especially now.

 

Vietnam tomorrow! I don’t really have anything planned other than my one day trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels and the Cao Dai temple, a trip to the War Remnants Museum, and getting a dress made. A lot of people are making trips to northern Vietnam, and while I wish I were going, it will be nice to just wander around and get a little lost in the city. I am really excited (yet sad) to be on my final Asian country and to be able to compare all three that I have visited.