Mike In China

I next hopped on a night bus (which was blasting obnoxious Vietnamese music videos for the first hour of the ride) to my next destination:HoiAn. The bus dropped us off at a hotel and I was a little hesitant to stay there initially. I had read some precautions about these bus tours and that in return for having a really cheap bus fair you would be shoved to all these expensive touristy places. After checking it out, I could get my own, nice quality hotel room with bathroom and everything for $7USD a night which is what I spent on my hostel in Hanoi. I'm sure I could have searched and found a nice hostel or guest house for $3 per night but I realized that when I'm only spending a day or two in a town its not worth it to spend half the day carrying around my backpack searching to save $4. I spent my first afternoon/evening walking around. The older part ofHoiAn is filled with little restaurants and tailor shops. The tailor shops were crazy. They had tons of recent catalogs and any fabric you could imagine. All you had to do was pick out something from a book, pick a cloth and get sized, come back the next day and pick up your clothes for 1/8 the price you would normally pay. I ended up getting a swimsuit and a shirt made and they both turned out pretty well. While wandering around I stumbled upon a sign offering Vietnamese cooking classes and that was something I had read about and was interested so I went in to ask. For $9 she would take me to the market and teach me about some of the things they sell, pick up a couple of ingredients and then teach me how to make three different Vietnamese dishes. I said sure and we headed off to the market! I learned how to make Vietnamese spring rolls, lemon grass and chili fish and Vietnamese curry chicken. The girl was really nice and a good teacher. I wrote down the recipes and everything so I will have to see if I can successfully make the dishes back home (assuming I can find all the ingredients). After dinner I went back to the hotel and realized what the disadvantage of staying in a hotel was, there wasn't a good way to meet people! It was ok though because I decided to call it an early night due to the fact that I got very little sleep on the bus and I had already made reservations for a day trip to My Son the next morning. The next morning I took atour of the My Son which is the ruins of temples made by the Chang people. They were pretty cool to see out in the jungle but someone what depressing. During the Vietnam War theVietnamese troops used the ruins as a base in hopes that the Americans wouldn't bomb it. Well, we did and as a result the largest, best structure was destroyed and the ruins are scattered with large bomb craters. This was really my first experience with anti-American feelings in Vietnam, but by no means the worst (just wait to you hear about my "feel bad for being an American" day in HoChiMinh City). After the ruins we took a boat cruise back to HoiAn stopping at a "local" island to look at how they make "local" crafts, aka tourist trap to try to get you to buy stuff. That evening I went to a tailor shop and went to bed early again. My last day inHoiAn I walked around a little further trying to see some more temples and sights in the Lonely Planet. I ended up getting talked into taking a boat ride with this old woman paddling me around the river for an hour. It was nice to see a little bit of the town from a different angle and the woman was very nice. I really likedHoiAn, it was a very laid back and relaxing stop on my tour. That evening I hopped back onto an overnight bus to head to Dalat. I definitely spent my fair share of time on buses during my travel (more than I want to add up) and it took quite a while to get used to sleeping on them. I found the best way to go was an all out offensive of ear plugs, eye mask, sleeping pills and complete disregard for the person sitting next to you. It sounds kind of mean but I realized after my first couple of bus trips that unless you stand your ground on what is your part of the seat you will be taken over by greedyaggressors . But if you initially take a stand and make the person realize that they are invading your space by sitting next to you then they feel lucky to be left with their fair share of the seats and arm rest. Thebuses also stop every two or three hours all night long because there is no bathroom on the bus. I'm also pretty sure its because they get paid little incentives by the restaurants and snack bars they stop at because the places are always packed with tourists waiting around to get back on the bus. I would try my hardest not to buy anything as a form of protest against the commercialization but after staring at a can ofpringles for 15 minutes I would eventually cave and feast. To get to Dalat I had to switch buses at NaTrang and hastily pushed on a bus and assigned a seat. I ended up sitting next to a girl from D.C. and we became friends and talked the whole three hour bus ride toDalat. Upon arrival we decided to continue hanging out because travelling is better with someone else.

The next day I got up early and hopped on the minibus that would take me to Ha Long Bay. Ha Long Bay was actually one of the main reasons why I wanted to come to Vietnam (I had seen pictures of it online and they were amazing). The minibus trekked around Hanoi until we had picked up all the people that would be on our little two day boat tour, a total of 14 people. I slept most of the three hour ride there because I had been up late the night before. However, while fading in and out of sleep I realized that the two people sitting next to me were my age (everyone else on the trip was older), that they were also English teachers but in Korea, and that one of them went to Knox which is a small liberal arts school in Illinois and is where my friend from high school KatieHarring went. We actually talked about it later and sure enough he knew who she was. I thought that was pretty crazy meeting someone on a 14 person boat in Vietnam that went to college with one of my good friends. When we got to the bay we were dropped off at a marina that was jam packed with "junk" boats and tourists. A junk is the type of boat we traveled on. They are the boats you always see pictured in Asia with the sails that look like fish fins. We got on our boat and headed out. The beautiful thing about Ha Long Bay is that it is made up of hundreds of tiny islands that spring out of the sea as rocky cliffs. As we started reaching all the islands it was absolutely beautiful. At first I was a little upset because it was a foggy day and I didn't think all the islands would be as beautiful. But as the day went on I realized that I actually really liked the fact that it was a foggy day because it made the bay seem even more mysterious. We had a seafood lunch on the boat and headed toward a giant cave that is on one of the islands. We were told that this cave was once used by the Vietnamese people to hide weapons during the war with China. The cave was pretty cool and it was nice to see all the other junks with their sails up waiting outside. After the cave we did some sea kayaking for sunset. It was beautiful but very frustrating. In our group of 14 there were two older French couples who had to be at least in their late 60's. One of these pairs decided to go kayaking and they were MACHINES!? It drove me crazy?!?!! They were just easing along the water at a lightning pace and taking breaks all the time to look at the scenery while I paddled with all my energy (and all my limited knowledge of how to paddle) and was left in their wake. And the woman was clearly doing nothing, so it was all just the old man?! I don't get it... So in short, the scenery was beautiful but I could hardly enjoy it because I felt my dignity be stripped away by an old man in a kayak. That night we had another sea food dinner on the boat and it was very good again. Unfortunately this time it was crab and I clearly had no idea how to eat it. I guess it was very apparently clear that I was struggling so our guide had to show me how to do it/do it for me like I was a little kid. I've decided I don't care much for crab. Waaaaaay too much work for far too little food. After dinner we sat around waiting for what had been promised to be the highlight of our trip, our guide Din singing Vietnamese karaoke. He and the crew all came up and sang (I guess you could call it singing...) Vietnamese songs and tried to get us to sing too. After a whole lot of pestering they finally got me to get up and sing (mainly because most people had gone to bed by that time) and I knocked them out with some Copacabana (including some hot dance moves). Of course for some reason when I woke up the next morning everyone said that they could all hear me from their rooms (and only me) but they said I did a pretty good job so I guess that'sok . The second day on the boat was mainly just a ride back to the marina while weaving through the many islands. I spent most of it sitting on the deck and reading in the sun. The trip was a lot of fun and I'm very glad I did it. Unfortunately, I was trying to make plans with my new friends when they were abruptly kicked out of the van and were told to hurry by the driver (and the hoard of honking cars and mopeds as we blocked traffic at their hostel) so I never got to meet up with them again. Back at the hostel I asked the people in charge if they had any suggestions on areas to go to meet other backpackers and there happened to be another guy sitting there who was also travelling alone and looking for someone to hang out with. We got some pizza and had some beers and then headed back to the place with the really cheap beer and plastic seats. He was from Australia and was telling me all about the horrible drought they are having. If you haven't heard about it, look it up, but there are water usage restrictions on almost EVERYTHING. The next day was my last in Hanoi because I had already booked a bus ticket to head on down to HoChi Minh City. There is actually a really great system set up where you can buy a bus ticket (about $26 USD ) from one to the other and then there are five cities that the bus stops at along the way. You can get off at any of those cities and stay for as long as you want. When you are ready to go to the next city, you simply call a number and the bus will pick you up the next day. The buses also served as a great way to meet people, as I will describe in the future. So on my last day in Hanoi I wanted to go see the pickled remains of HoChi Minh and visit some museum that was supposed to be really good. Of course I got there and and you can only see the pickled communist leader very early in the morning and I was too late and for some reason the museum was closed all day. While trying to take some pictures in front of a pagoda I met two Vietnamese girls who wanted to show me around Hanoi for a little bit in exchange for being able to practice their English. They took me to a temple and it was nice having someone that could explain what the temple was for and what Vietnamese people do in temples. They actually even invited me to their home town for Tet (Vietnamese New Year) but it wasn't for a couple of weeks and I obviously wouldn't be around anymore. I also came to find out that they were only 16 and then I felt very sketchy and decided that it was time to go back to the hostel and wait for my bus to come. Once again, it is IMPOSSIBLE to judge the age of Asian women (or girls I guess...) and they all look the same between 16 and 40. I really liked Hanoi even though it was crazy busy and loud. It was a great introduction to Vietnam and I highly recommend going there someday. OH... on a side note... I recently was made aware of a website:hugeinasia .com and it is about a couple guys that just graduated that are trying to become celebrities in Asia. Its pretty funny and they start off in Vietnam and I think just got to Thailand and have lots of videos so if you want to check that out to get more of a feel for Vietnam I recommend it. And don't forget to check my picture page to see all the pictures that go along with my posts!

Upon my arrival to the Hanoi airport I quickly realized, I was alone. It was actually not as big of a deal as I had thought but there were definitely moments when I would sit back and think, wow, I'm alone in Vietnam, to my parents generation that must sound like suicide! After I got my bag I started searching around the luggage area for a person holding a sign with my name. One of the reasons why I picked the hostel I did was because it warned you about all the ripoffs at the airport and said that they would pick you up if you let them know. So after searching for a half hour I decided something was wrong and I would call them. After figuring out where I could use a phone I was told that the number I had was wrong. I decided I was going to have brave the taxi system but then realized all I had was the name of the hostel (because I had depended on the phone number!) and the taxi driver had no idea where some English named hostel was. We began driving into the city anyway as I panicked to myself wondering how I was ever going to find this hostel. I remembered reading something about it being by a church so I busted out my lonely planet and found the giant church in the area and had him take me there. It happened to be my lucky day because I chose the right church and there was a big sign for the hostel right next to the church. So I made it! I threw my bag in my lock box (I had opted for the cheapest room which meant I was sharing it with 11 other travelers) and wandered around to get some food and check out the local lake. I went to bed early because I was tired from the day of traveling but also because I didn't have much else to do. I woke up early the next morning and after getting some breakfast I decided to go on the recommended walking tour of the Old Quarter of Hanoi. It was amazing. Markets, shops, and HOLY MOPEDS. The amount of mopeds in Hanoi was insane. Not even that many cars, just mopeds, and tons of them, a consistent flow. Crossing the street was like playing frogger even more so than it is here in China. After the walking tour I bought tickets to go see the famous Water Puppets. It was pretty cool, but I must say I was quite disappointed. The first thing that disappointed me was that when I returned to the theater for the show to start I was greeted by an armada of tour buses from which flowed a river of elderly Caucasian tourists. I guess I was disappointed because this was supposed to be my big thrilling adventure, Vietnam! Not everyone goes to Vietnam! I am special! This trip is special! Oh wait, no, you aren't that special and this isn't that big of an adventure, everybody does it. DOH! I guess I don't know what I expected. The show itself was cool just because it was puppets in water, but that lost its appeal very quickly and I think I might have actually dozed off a little bit during one of the many small acts. The second major reason why I had chosen my hostel was because they advertised a BBQ every other night with beer specials to help promote the meeting of other travelers. I made my way up to the rooftop terrace and had a blast! Once again I was reminded of actually how non-adventurous I am. Everyone else had been so many more places and had so many more stories! That was the largest danger I found with backpacking, that you would constantly meet people that had been more places than you that would have cool stories and cool suggestions and it would just make you want to travel more! Even though I spent a month travelling Vietnam and Thailand I felt like I was just another one of those people on the tour buses because I didn't go see Laos and Cambodia?! At the BBQ I made a couple of friends and we decided to head to one of the famous "Beer Hoi" spots. Beer hoi translates to fresh beer and these little bars are nothing more than an old man with a home made keg and some child size plastic stools sitting on the sidewalk. The best part is the price, about 13 US cents for a big glass! We enjoyed ourselves there for awhile but unfortunately the fun police come around midnight and break everything so we went to another bar for awhile but didn't stay long because we were tired. I also wanted to get home because I had already booked a trip for the next two days to go see Halong Bay!

Before I go on about my trip I will give a quick update about my life in China. I am pretty sure that I announced that I will be coming home on July 19th. However, the ever so difficult airlines made it so that I could only fly back on the 18th (and could not fly out of Shanghai, but will have to get a separate flight down to Hong Kong to fly home). So I am coming home one day earlier than planned. Classes have been ok. The kids have been misbehaving a lot lately which is very frustrating. And what is more frustrating is that when they misbehave they don't learn as much, and then when your boss comes and they don't know as much you get yelled at which is EXTREMELY frustrating when you are already upset from having to yell at the kids all the time and then you get told you are doing a bad job on top of that. Not cool. But so is life. Take a power walk around the block during lunch time to cool off, come back a little more relaxed, and get back to work. Sometimes I wish the kids weren't so darn cute because then I could just flat out declare war on them and be evil and not care. List of things I still can't quite get over about China: 1) General rudeness and pushy-ness involved with subway system and any kind of line waiting 2) Constant spitting, and not just a little spit here and there into the grass. I am talking major lugy hacking, inside and outside, and including full volume sound effects 3) Children who, with the aid of their parents, pull down their pants in broad daylight, in the middle of the sidewalk and pee. Yup, I think that's the big three. Lastly, I will leave you with some new videos. The first is of one of my first grade classes doing their daily classroom exercises that happen to last five minutes and fall in the middle of my lesson for some reason....
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The next is of my second graders doing their five minutes of daily eye exercises which is basically just rubbing their eyes for five minutes (the point of this one is beyond me)....
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The third video is simply just some of my first grade students (Richard, Wendy, Baker and Jack) at another school. They come to class a few minutes early every day so we talk and play around a little. Enjoy!
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The next day we got up and hopped back into the car for another full day excursion. We started out by going to see the first bend of the Yangtze River in Stone Drum Town. We walked a little through the town and up to an area with amazing views of the town, river and surrounding mountains and valleys. Mom got a history lesson about the importance of the town (something about how it was an important area because during some war a bunch of troops crossed the river here or something like that) while I once again opted out for self exploration and picture taking. From there we drove to the Tiger Leaping Gorge which was absolutely beautiful. We hiked along the gorge for awhile taking many pictures while talking with our guide. I actually took a turn talking with him because he found out that I had majored in Real Estate in college and had a bunch of questions about investing in real estate. I answered them to the best of my ability but it was pretty hard without any knowledge of how the real estate system and laws are set up in communist China. The gorge got its name from a legend of a tiger trying to escape and, what asurprise, he leaped across the gorge. Seeing as how the gorge was decently wide and the river cutting through it looked like a whitewater rafters heaven, I don't think there is much truth to the story. More interestingly though (or depressingly) is the fact that it probably won't exist in ten years! The area is high up on the Chinese government's list of places to build another gargantuan damn slash hydroelectric power plant. I don't think plans have officially been cemented yet but by the way our guide was talking things don't sound to hopeful. It really isa shame because it really is a beautiful area. That night for dinner Mom and I went a restaurant in Lijiang and had a great time. In addition to the dinner, we once again had a fair number of beers (more of the Dali beers) and had a great time talking about anything and everything. In addition to our conversation the local waitresses danced and sang around a fire in the middle of the room most of the night. Upon leaving we came to find that the streets ofLijiang are even more busy at night than they are during the day (or at least they are on the bar streets). Lit only by red Chinese lanterns hanging from the various pubs the streets are packed with tourists as the workers at the pubs have singing contests with the pubs across the street/stream. It was quite a site to see (but unfortunately I couldn't manage a good picture of it) and is another reason as to why I really likedLijaing. The next day was a free day so we slept in and then hit to the streets to do the last of our souvenir and gift shopping. In the afternoon we also got massages. I ended up getting a massage from a blind man, which is fairly popular in China. I think the theory is that since they are blind they have a better sense of touch and are able to tell better where you are tense and such. In all truthfulness it seemed just like any other massage. We went out to dinner again at the same place andreminisced of our trip and what a great time we had. The next day we got up really early to go catch a flight back to Kunming. Upon arrival at the airport Mom was hurried inside to her connecting flight to Shanghai as I was whisked out the door to wait two hours before I could re-check in for my flight to Hanoi. The abrupt goodbye made things short, yet sweet (thank god, I believe a long goodbye would have been awkward with Mom crying everywhere and attracting a crowd of staring Chinese people). Our original guide in Kunming picked me up and we spent two hours chatting inKFC about everything from education and politics to music and movies. I really had an absolutely wonderful time with my mom and am very glad she was able to come. I would like to thank her once again for taking me on such a great trip down to Yunnan and I hope that she enjoyed it as much as I did! The plane ride to Vietnam was very nice (I have found that thus far every airline has better food than the ones in the US) and things seemed to get off to a great start. However, fate would not let it be so and things began going wrong as soon as I got my bags from the terminal, that I will save for the next trip post.

DOH! I apologize for leaving you hanging in suspense about my trip but my internet is currently out! I went to Chinatelecom to get it fixed today and apparently we have three months of unpaid bills so they turned if off (I leave the country and everything goes wrong). But it should be back in 24 hours. Currently I am sitting at an Iranian restaurant (I think I've mentioned it before) watching the belly dancers (but I am here purely because of the freewifi ). Tomorrow I will try to write a couple of posts to make up for lost time. I also have taken some more video of my students that is pretty cool.

Just a side note about how things are currently going in Shanghai. I jinxed things by bragging to people back home about how warm it was here right when I got back. Now its freezing. I was told that Shanghai just broke a 50 year record for the coldest its been at this time of year. There was actually light flurries of snow seen at various places in Shanghai a few days ago (it almost never snows in Shanghai). Hopefully things will change soon. Also, my friend Jamie (was on the team with me) recently decided that she is going to come visit in me in May so I'm pretty pumped. I actually feel kind of bad because she was going to go visit my old roommate Clayton in Spain (he is teaching English in Spain) but I (with the help of her co-worker) convinced her that she can go to Spain anytime and when again will she ever have the chance to go to China and have a local guide? My other friend who is coming to visit, John, has recently figured somethings out about his visit in July and now I have an official date that I am coming home (although I still have to change my flight), July 19th, so mark your calendars! And finally, I hope you all remember that I have a picture site where I am posting all the pictures that go with the stories (blogger stopped letting me post pictures and I really have a lot so it works better with a separate site). So check keep checking that!

Lijiang was amazing. This time our hotel was actually in the Old Town part of the city, which was really nice. The Old Town in Lijiang is a maze of cobble stone streets, small stone bridges and alleys with a zig-zagging stream system running along side most of the streets. It is also a UNESCO World Heritage site in which you still see many local (but usually older) women and men walking around in traditional costumes doing the same chores and jobs their families have done for generations. Unfortunately it is starting to get somewhat touristy and I heard that UNESCO has been threatening to take away the World Heritage status so hopefully the commercialism will halt and even degrees. After dropping off our bags in our hotel we walked around the tangled streets while making our way to the Black Dragon Spring which is a spring fed lake just outside the Old Town. The water was crystal clear and there was a great view of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. It was kind of cloudy the first day we went there and unfortunately didn't make it back on more clear days, but you could see what it looked like with no clouds on all the postcards! Also in the park was a history museum for the Naxi people, the major minority group in Lijiang. While doing all this we got to know our guide for the next couple of days. A very nice man, who always had plenty to say about everything and spoke very good English, but (and you knew there was a but coming) somehow, someone in his life decided to tell him that to be really good at English like a native speaker, you have to master all the sayings and idioms (I think I'm saying this right, unfortunately my English ability has plummeted in China due to the constant surrounding of horrible, horrible English). Knowing "Don't count your chickens before they hatch" and that I am the "Apple of my mother's eye" is great, and does show that you know a lot about the English language. However, using one of such phrases in every THIRD SENTENCE is English abuse and, quite frankly, really, ridiculously obnoxious after a day or so. At first I thought it was somewhat funny (as did he because he would follow each phrase with a hearty laugh). But it god old REAL fast. Other than that he was a great guide. He would even try to help prevent us from getting ripped off by locals trying to barter with us (of course he would ALWAYS refer to it as "highway robbery," another one of his favorite sayings). The second day in Lijiang we hopped in our car and were taken to the Yak Meadow which is at the foot of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. Oh wait, I mean we were taken to the "cable car" that would take us to the Yak Meadow. Being China and everything, of course this "cable car" was more like a chair lift and the simple thought of such struck fear in to the heart of Mom. In fact, after seeing this day on the itinerary I'm pretty sure she mentioned the "cable car" at least three times a day. Well, judgement day had come. Mom summoned her inner strength and got on! Of course she had her eyes shut and a death grip on the railing the entire 15 minute ride, but she did it. I also was barely allowed to talk. At one point the children in the car in front of us were trying to make echos and Mom muttered, "well at least someone is having fun." I thought, "I would be too, IF YOU WEREN'T FREAKING OUT RIGHT NOW!?" We safely arrived at the top to find that once again it was a cloudy up by the mountain and we couldn't see it at all. We walked to a Buddhist temple and Mom (I spaced out and stopped listening) got a long history/question and answer session with our guide about Buddhism. The cable ride down was equally as frightful for Mom, which is unfortunate because the views were beautiful. During the drive back to Lijiang we got a flat tire and had to stop by a touristy bus area. It was actually a very beautiful place to stop and I got to ride a yak! By ride, I mean pay money, sit on and have my picture taken, but it was still cool. After lunch we saw the old residence of Rock Joseph, a biologist who lived in a small village outside of Lijiang for several years studying plants. That night we saw another show of local dances and music but it was nothing compared to the one we saw in Kunming (except for the fact that it was still filled with a ridiculously rude Chinese audience).