humpty dumpty sat on a wall...

November 3-8, 2011 - Hong Kong and Shanghai, China

...but i slept on the great one. OMG was china amazing! now i know i've said this after a couple of ports now... but this time i really mean it when i say china was my favorite country! i knew it was going to be cool... but i was not expecting it to be that awesome. so we arrived in hong kong on the 3rd. our little group decided to meet in tymitz square whenever we got our passports and the ship was cleared... so we met around 10:30 and got off the ship together. there were 7 people on my trip... alyssa, brenna, audrey, ali, laura, reid, and myself. reid was the only guy for 6 days... but he was a trooper. so we got off the ship, walked to a free shuttle at a hotel nearby that took us to the train station that would take us to the airport. we spent like a whole 20 minutes in hong kong which totally sucks... so i definitely need to go back there cus it looked amazing from what i could tell. we got to the airport without a hitch. and the hong kong airport was seriously the nicest airport i've ever been to in my life. at airports in america, you maybe buy yourself a magazine, some mcdonalds, and perhaps splurge on a pack of gum or something. not in hong kong! the shops there were chanel, hermes, tiffany's, d&b, louis, etc. like WTF!? let me just casually buy a louis while i'm waiting for my plane. that doesn't happen! we did get starbucks though because they had holiday cups! are those out at home yet?? first time i've had starbucks since i left. delicious!

so we get on our plane to fly to beijing. what movie do they play? harry potter 7 part 2. in english! pretty sure we were the only white people on the plane, so we were in heaven. (spoiler alert for those who haven't seen the movie yet) except when they stopped the movie right before harry walks into the forbidden forest to die!!!! i thought we were going to mutiny and hijack the plane. so we landed in beijing and met our guide who took us to our hotel in the city. he also got us tickets to the kung fu show that night which was awesome!! those guys were doing some crazy stuff and it was really cool. after the show we took a cab to the bar district. we had dinner at one of the restaurants and ordered pizza. first meal in china was pizza. yup. then we walked around trying to find a bar. all the bars that were around there were really cute, but they all had live acoustic emo music. it was SO weird! like no club music or dj's anywhere. so this guy on the street told us there was a disco bar, so we were like "yes please!" turns out it was more emo music, they just had a disco ball at the bar. but while we were there we met two australian guys (what else is new??) so they joined our group so reid had some testosterone to hang out with. we walked around with them for a while and we somehow added a german guy to our group too. this happens in every country, but it's always fun. me and one of the australian guys (aaron) spotted a reggae bar so we tried that. no emo music there... and cheap shots! so we were there for a while. ali made friends with the guys who worked there who told her about a club. so after a few rounds of drinks we headed over to "mix" club. it was really cool! there were like 7 different rooms and somehow we always end up on stage at every country we go to. so that was a blast. we were celebrities that night. and i'm pretty sure there were like 4 black guys in all of china, but somehow they all found me. i had to pretend reid was my boyfriend to get them to leave me alone. reid was making fun of me, but whatevs. reid, audrey, and i headed back to our hotel around 3am.

the next morning we got up, ate breakfast, and left the hotel around 8:30. our first stop was to the silk market. not sure why it's called that cus there was no silk anywhere... but i bought a ton of shit. including panda hats. which did not come off our heads the entire journey. i might hate myself in 20 years when all my china pictures are of me being a douchebag in a panda hat... but it was definitely worth it at the time. after the market, we drove about 2 hours out of the city to the great wall. everybody told us that we would have that one moment on sas that we would never forget. hiking on the great wall was definitely that moment for me. i can't even put into words how amazing it was. we had to hike for about 45 minutes up stairs to get up to the wall. then we hiked about 3 miles on the wall. parts of it were falling apart. it was GORGEOUS. there was nobody around except for our group. the leaves on the trees were changing colors cus it's fall. and it wasn't as cold as i expected. i was sweating in fact. it was just beautiful. we hiked for about 15 watch towers, then we reached the dark tower where we were going to sleep for the night. so we climbed down the wall into a mongolian farmer village where we had dinner. it was our first chinese meal of our trip and it was delicious. chinese meals are served family style which was awesome. except we were SO full and they kept bringing out more dishes. after dinner we all got ready to hike back up the wall to sleep. we all put on like every article of clothing we had packed cus it was pretty cold and we were sleeping outside. so we got ready, all the girls peed in the bushes and we considered it ali's initiation into AXO. bonding. then we hiked back up the wall and back to the dark tower where we got our sleeping bags and got all settled in. obvs we were way too excited to go to bed anytime soon. so we stayed up with our guide and played some games. tony made us drink rice wine. it's 46% alcohol. and it is neither made with rice, nor is it wine. it was DISGUSTING! but it was cultural. when in china. we also took about 3 million pictures of us doing different things in our panda hats. but we just blamed it on us being "dumb americans." it's our favorite excuse for this entire voyage. it's going to be weird when we get back and can't blame our behavior on being american. eventually we did go to sleep. in the middle of the night i woke up and was like sweating. or maybe i was claustrophobic since we were in those cocoon sleeping bags. either way, i took off my panda hat, north face jacket, sweatshirt, and gloves. we found out the next morning that it was 3 degrees below freezing... and i was sweating. so mom, that's proof that i really do run hot. sleeping on the great wall was a once in lifetime experience. it rained a little during the night but that wasn't going to make us go in the little room. it was kind of a bummer cus it was cloudy all night so we couldn't see the stars. but it was still beautiful. especially waking up with the sun and being able to see the wall as far as you could see. ah. so amazing. one of the local farmers brought hot water up to us so we made instant coffee and oatmeal for breakfast on the wall. then we packed up and hiked back down to our van. sorry if you have to hear this story a billion times when i get home, cus i'm pretty sure this is going to be my go to.

so we left the wall and headed to the olympic grounds. it was so weird cus our guide tony told us that before the olympics, none of the buildings or anything were there. it was a little village that the government displaced in order to build everything for the olympics. a little messed up if you ask me. we saw where the athletes stayed and everything. then we got to walk around for about an hour. we mostly just saw the bird's nest and the swimming cube. which were SO cool. it looked really different in person than it did on tv. it was kinda eerie cus it was a little bit of a ghost town. i thought there would still be people selling olympic t-shirts and stuff, but there wasn't anyone there. but it was really cool to see. after that we got back in our van and headed back to the city for a hutong tour. hutong is a word for narrow streets in chinese. so we basically took rickshaws around these alleys. it was pretty cool seeing how average chinese people live. we got to see a local person's house. then we went to the drum tower and watched the reenactment of what it was used for. after that we got back in our vans and went back to the hotel where we dropped our stuff, got ready, then went to the acrobatics show. i thought the kung fu show was crazy. i was wrong. they did some crazy things at the acrobatics one... like fit 10 people on a single bicycle. pretty sure the whole show was made of all the rejects from the chinese olympic gymnastics team. it was pretty awesome. after the show, we walked forever to find the hard rock beijing. because what's more authentic than that?? but beijing was SO spread out. it was the first city we've been to that we couldn't walk everywhere. we got there like an hour later and there was a huge wait. reid and i stayed and shared a club sandwich at the bar, had a drink, then met up with everybody back at the hotel. the hard rock was really cool. i wanted to get a tshirt but they were $30! outrageous. back at the hotel we all got on computers, ipads, iphones... any and all wifi enabled devices for a while. then we went to the convenience store next door and got some beers. ali, reid, and alyssa ended up going out that night but the rest of us decided to stay in. it was a long day, so i just  showered and went to sleep.

the next morning, audrey, reid, and i woke up early and climbed this hill that was next to our hotel. it was seriously the weirdest thing though. it was this man-made hill with these buildings at the top. but it was surrounded by a park and there were seriously hundreds of senior citizens dancing, doing tai chi, chanting. literally the strangest like 20 minutes of my life. audrey & i tried to figure out why they were chanting, but we couldn't figure it out. so we climbed to the top and there was the most amazing views of the entire forbidden city as well as some of the beijing skyline. we took some pictures, then headed back to the hotel to eat breakfast before we had to check out. this was sightseeing day for us. we left the hotel around 9:30 and headed to tiananmen square. it was really cool... and super strange because our guide had absolutely no knowledge of what we think of when we hear "tiananmen square." but that's communism for you. this was the first time there were a bunch of tourists anywhere. but it was weird cus it was like ALL chinese tourists... we were pretty much the only white people we saw there. so we walked around a little, then our guide was like "wanna see mao?" as in mao zedong. the founder of the people's republic of china. so we were like "uh, yeah?" so we went and stood in line, entered mao's mausoleum and legit saw mao's body. like, i saw mao. i can officially cross "see a dead body" off my bucket list. and i know mao's been dead for like 40 years. but they froze him like austin powers. pretty sure they did the same thing with lenin. shit's crazy. so after that little adventure, we walked to the forbidden city. it was cool, but not mind-blowing. it kind of all looked the same. once we finally made it to the end (that place was huge), we went and had a delicious chinese lunch. after lunch, we headed to the summer palace. it was really pretty there. we took a dragon boat ride across the lake. reid thought it was romantic. we walked around for a little bit, and we actually ran into the german guy we met on the first day. after we walked across the bridge and saw the island, we headed back and it was time to head to the train station. tony, our guide, bought us all kfc (sidenote: i've seen kfc in every single country we've been to! wayyy more global than mcdonalds or starbucks, which is really surprising to me). so after we ate, we headed to the train station to catch our overnight train to xi'an. it was sad leaving tony, our guide. he was pretty awesome. but we got on the train without a hitch. only bad thing was that reid was 6 cars away from the rest of us. but he still hung out and partied with us all night. cus we can't waste a night of partying just because we're on a sleeper train. "beer man" loved us that night cus i'm pretty sure we were the only ones buying. he kept trying to hang out in our cabin with us, but he didn't speak any english which was kind of a buzz kill. so we had a ton of beers and hung out for a while. we eventually went to bed. the trains were SO much nicer than they were in india. i could literally live on one of these trains, it was so nice. (in hindsight, it probably wasn't even that nice. but in comparison to india, it was the ritz).

our train arrived in xi'an around 7 the next morning. our guide melissa was waiting for us right on the platform. we rallied the troops then made our way to our van. first stop, terracotta warriors. i can't remember when or why i learned about the terracotta warriors. maybe ap world history sophomore year of high school? but i do know i've been obsessed with them (or the idea of them) for quite some time. holy shit. the pictures online and in books do NOT do them justice in any way, shape, or form. we're afraid of the chinese taking over the world now. i think it's totally justified... just look at what they managed to pull off like 2000 years ago. impressive shit. we saw 3 pits of warriors there, as well as these bronze statues which were cool. after the warriors, we went to the city wall. it was freezing at this point, and it was nothing in comparison to the great wall. so that was kind of a buzz kill. but we did go to the fung shui museum which was pretty cool. learned how to properly "pet a dragon" (no sexual innuendos you nasty people) for good luck. i figured i could use whatever luck they wanted to throw at me. after the wall we went to the muslim quarter. there are 6000 muslims who live in xi'an which i thought was pretty interesting. we walked through there for a while. it was pretty much just alleyways where people were selling souvenirs and knockoffs. but i spent the best single dollar of my life there. as we were walking through the markets, alyssa and i spotted a bin of dvds. not very exciting as we'd already seen pirated dvds in vietnam. but what did we find? harry potter 7 part 2. the guy wanted $30 for it... i bargained him down to $1. that's called skill. but then once i bought it i was like "wait, this for sure does not work if he's going to sell it to me for a dollar." but we got it for the train ride cus we had another overnight train that night. after walking through the markets for a while, we stopped at starbucks to get some coffee and food for the train. then it was time to head to the train station to catch another overnight train to shanghai. two overnight trains in a row. winners. this time was better though because we were all in the same car. 4 people in one cabin and 3 in the other. we didn't party as hard this time because the beer man on that train was a slacker and only came by like every hour. but fruit lady was on her game so we bought like a billion bananas. biggest buzz kill of the train ride was that everybody's computers were dead. and the outlets in both our cabins didn't work. aka we couldn't watch harry potter. reid had 20% power left on his so we attempted to watch it. SURPRISE the dvd actually worked. literally the best dollar i've ever spent. so we got to watch the ending and reid's computer died just as the credits started to roll. it was meant to be. and it was SO fitting watching harry potter while on a sleeper overnight train. it was so fun. we stayed up for a bit doing literally nothing. then we crashed.

our train was a little late arriving to shanghai. but we met our guide/van and they took us right to the ship. i don't know why, but we had to surrender our passports when we got on the ship and we couldn't leave again until customs/immigration checked them. we had already gone through customs when we got to the beijing airport, but oh well. so we showered, got ready, then once our passports were ready ali, brenna, alyssa, audrey, reid, and i got off the ship together to go explore shanghai. we walked around the bund for a while, which is just another work for the waterfront. the most amazing views of the shanghai skyline EVER! americans fear that china is going to take over the world. um, after seeing shanghai i can officially report that they most definitely will. for sure in my lifetime. some of the gnarliest highrises ever! and the architecture was out of control. we walked along the bund for a while and saw the french quarter which looked a lot like montreal. it was really pretty. then we took the sightseeing tunnel under the river to "new shanghai." it was the craziest tunnel ride ever. it was like a little pod that we were in going through a lightshow. i've never done acid, but i'm pretty positive that's what it's like. insane. we got to the other side and walked to the pearl tower. reid wanted to go up, but it was $20 and nobody wanted to spend that much money. so we walked to this restaurant called seagull that this lifelong learner maddie recommended we go to. it was really good, but it was really strange. it was in like a banquet hall, but it was a restaurant. kind of weird. but it was a good last chinese meal. after that we took the tunnel back to the old side and walked to old town. more markets and souvenirs. but we stumbled upon this really awesome temple. it was daoist, and could be the coolest temple i've been to on this voyage. after the temple we found a mall. we went to h&m to shop. i purposely left my credit card on the ship when i left in the morning so i wouldn't spend anymore money but i'm SO pissed cus i found the jacket that i've been looking for for like 9 months. urghhh!!! after that, we took taxi's to a different mall. reid made friends with some guy at a donut shop that told us about this mall. turns out the mall was all high end designer brands. as much as i love louis vuitton, i'm not really on that level at this point. and we got split up since we had to take two taxis. so it ended up being me, audrey, and alyssa. we found the coolest apple store ever so we went and played. it was like underground and we played with the ipads and stuff for a while. then we went to the nike store, where there were NO nike shorts. total let down. then we went to starbucks one last time before we had to go back to the ship. made it back to the ship on time for the new onship time. apparently they changed on-ship time to 5pm tonight... without telling anybody. good thing we decided to come back at 4:45. sas is so annoying sometimes.

other things about china... it was pretty cold the whole time. i loved it though. it finally felt like fall. and it was a nice change of pace from these countries where it was like 100% humidity all the time. so i wore jeans, a tshirt, and rainbows the first day. pretty sure i have a cold now, but it was definitely worth it. china was an amazing country. definitely need to come back to hong kong and shanghai. i'm pleasantly surprised how much i love asia so far. maybe i never really thought of asia cus it was so fashionable to care about africa in high school. but asia is definitely where it's at. plus, i feel like i should like asia if china is going to own the world here pretty soon. oh and people were seriously paparazzi-ing us all week. and they weren't even sneaky about it. they would literally just stand there and take a picture of our group without asking. like i understood that in ghana when we were literally the first white people some locals had ever seen. but china!? tourists come here all the time. i mean, it's happened in every country so far. i just don't know why it was so out of control in china. whatevs.

anyways, brewer & i just reunited and had dinner. we sat outside even though it was raining because the skyline was so cool lit up at night. we just got our laundry together too and put it outside. we haven't had laundry since after india, so it'll be nice to get some clean clothes. now we're about to watch mamma mia! maddy's parents came to china for the parents' trip and so obvs we made them bring us mamma mia. it's going to be pure magic!

alright well... japan in 2 days! so crazy. miss you guys! hope you all are loving life just as much as i am right now. love love love.