Chu Chi (Vietnam)

I only have a few minutes left so here is a quick review of what I have been up to in the last week or more...

It is the night of the 23rd right now, I am currently 13 hours ahead of CST. While in Shanghai, I checked out Old Shanghai. Pretty awesome aged area. Did you know that Shanghai boasts over 2,100 highrise buildings? After spending a few days in Shanghai, I took a train to Beijing to see the Great Wall, Tian'amen Square, the Forbidden City, and Old Beijing. I went with a few others and had a great time on the train. The bathroom was an interesting experience (no toilet seat, just a hole in the ground and a bar to grab to hold you in place.

Snow covered Great Wall

Sledding

Yup.....

We took a cab to the Great Wall and it started snowing! As we made out way up the hill side to the walkway up to the Great Wall, we passed a pickup truck with two guys in the back shoveling salt onto the roads...interesting method. Once we got to the Wall, there was no one there. It was completely void of anyone. We were able to walk around the wall for a few hours and at one point there was enough snow accumulated to take some cardboard signs we had with us and go sledding down the wall! All in all we had a great time.

Largest outdoor Budda

After Shanghai, we flew to Hong Kong where I visited the largest Buddha statue in the world (that was pretty much the only thing I was able to do since we were only there in HK for 2 days). I did make it to the jade market and a few other small markets before we departed.

Tunnel enterance

Heading into the unknown

Once we arrived at the Vietnamese airport and got through customs, I went with a group to the Cu Chi Tunnels (the location where the movie "We Were Soldiers" actually took place) and got to crawl through a tunnel that they said had been widened since it was originally dug to accommodate for tourist. I still barely fit, it was crammed!

Blue Ocean Resort, Mui Ne, Vietnam

Anyway, after that we worked out a trip to Mui Ne, a coastal town out of the city and away from SAS'ers where we stayed at the Blue Ocean Resort. The bus ride there was only $5 but an hour into the 3 hour trip, the A/C on the bus broke and it was nearly 105*! When we finally got there we ran into a SAS field program there and there was abt 30 SAS'ers. Oh well, it was still really nice. If you have a chance to go to Vietnam, go. It is what Hawaii used to be 50 years ago when hardly anyone knew about it. I figure that it will be a hot spot very soon as Europeans vacation here already. While I was in Mui Ne, I ran into some American flight attendents (a mother and her daughter who worked for United and American) who said that flying to Vietnam is extremely cheap. Getting a visa for Vietnam is easy too and since it is a country where most people talk a decent amount of english, it is very easy to get around. Anyway I've been having a great time so far.

Mekong Delta

Tomorrow I am going to plan a trip to the Mekong Delta with some friends and Friday we have our last (thank goodness) field programs for the remainder of the voyage. The ship is suppose to be in port on the 25th so we will be back on it then. The hotels they are putting us up in are amazing!! Great service. anyway, I hope this gives you an idea about what is going on here...hope things are going well back home.

Ticket Problems (China)

The Bund, Shanghai

I am writing from an internet cafe in Beijing, China. Some friends and I took a 12 hour train ride last night from Shanghai to Beijing and it was amazing. Things are going well right now, we are currently making our way through the city of Beijing towards the Forbidden City and Tian'naman Square and tomorrow we are going to the Great Wall. We are going to be taking the train back to Shanghai where we will take a plane on the 16th to Hong Kong. Right now we are about a day ahead of you, it is currently 10am on the 14th. Shanghai was incredible! I walked around Old Shanghai, around all the markets and saw a lot of poverty. Overall things are going well and I am very excited to be here. There is just so much to say, I don't know where to begin.

12 hour train ride

The flight from San Francisco was long but after seeing the city as we traveled through it to our hotel energized me to explore the city. At night, the entire city is lit up by its 2,000+ highrise buildings in the downtown area. It is very bright! The entire trip out to Beijing has been an eye opening experience since people here are not so friendly to Americans. we went up to a ticket window in Beijing to get our train tickets back to Shanghai and even though we had Chinese lettering telling them what we needed, they refused to help and left the window. We then went to an international hotel where an English speaking woman called the train station to find if there were any tickets available for us and she told us there weren't any for the day we wanted to leave so I asked if there were any leaving tonight that had any room and without hesitation she said no, so we figured that she wasn't trying to help at all. We continued to a travel agency and got our tickets with no problem.

Old Shanghai

So now I am sitting here in the internet cafe with five of my friends, all of us are at computers writing back home. We're with a good travel group, we're not too big but big enough to be able to split up if someone wants to go into a store and someone else wants to go into another. Things are going well, we have been trying to find phones that allow the use of international phone cards but all of them thus far take some sort of credit card type thing. Still haven't figured out how to use them.

We are going to try and get a hotel or a hostel near the Great Wall tonight so we can get up early tomorrow and have the entire day to see it. I have a lot of pictures already and so many will be taken in the next 24 hours and a lot of video footage too!

Alright, we're heading out. Just know that we are ok and are enjoying every minute in China. Hope things are going well back home. I'll try and call home or email again sometime.

Destination: Airport (Hawaii)

So after spending two weeks in Hawaii will finally be flown to Shanghai since the engineers don't foresee the ship being fixed for nearly a month longer. They have told us all the flights we will each be on (what a logistical nightmare it must have been to figure out how to get 650 students flights out of Hawaii to China! Craziness! Anyway, the unfortunate side of this mode of transportation is it is not direct...meaning I am flying to San Francisco (about a 5 hour flight), then suffer through a nine hour layover until my 14 hour flight to Shanghai. Not really looking forward to this. On top of all that, we have to pack what things we need for the next month so we can live out of our bags as we move from country to country until the ship can meet up with us. Where that is going to be, no one seems to know.