Blocked!

For some reason, our blog has been blocked from us. We assume that something we wrote has been blocked by the internet "watchers" so we are unable to make posts. Fortunately, a little hacking has allowed us to post this note. We will catch up as soon as we get to a better location.

In the mean time, we were able to update our photo albums (Yahoo is not blocked), and we added links on the right hand side of the page. Enjoy. Since our last post, we've been to Shanghai, Chengdu (where we stayed with a friend - thanks Barb!), visited the Leshan Buddha, and Xi'an to see the terracotta warriors.

We hope all is well back home, and our being out of touch does not mean that we don't miss everyone.

Lost in Translation

We have read articles about how the Chinese national government is trying to do a thorough editorial review of Beijing in preparation for the 2008 Olympics to reduce the amount of English misspellings and mistranslations. Unfortunatly for them, they have a bit more work to do. Fortunately for us, we are constantly giggling about funny signs that we find.

More Suzhou

While in Suzhou, we visited a few gardens as well as a Buddhist pagoda, which was 9 stories. The pagoda was a fascinating trip, not only for the site but also the incredible view of the city from the top. Also, the gardens were amazing, so I feel compelled to post a couple more images from them.

I am constantly amazed at the architecture of the gardens. There are round doors, and mosaics built into the stone floors. There was also an incredible window which had a couple trees growing outside, so they were perfectly framed in the window. Suzhou was well worth the visit.

Oh look, a foreigner!

We look a little different from the locals. Of course, this is an understatement, but it is worth mentioning. We are constantly stared at and sometimes laughed at, and it has taken a little getting used to. We haven't learned the Chinese word for "foreigner" yet, but I'm sure it is used around us frequently.

While we were visiting a garden in Suzhou a family approached us and asked to take a photo. To be honest, I thought they just wanted us to use their camera to take a group photo of the family. They had a totally different idea, as they wanted to take a photo with a foreigner. Since I'm the tall white guy, they asked me to pose with what I assume was the wife of the group (there was a grandma and grandpa, wife and husband, another couple, and some kids). As they were getting ready to take the snapshot, the woman grabs her 3 year old-ish daughter and hands her to me. I am usually pretty good with kids, but I think I must have looked a little alien to her because she FREAKED out.

At this point, I must have turned beet red and I put the little girl down saying "I'm sorry" in my best Chinese. The family burst into laughter, and the mom picks up the little girl to console her. The little girl then chastises her mom and gives her the biggest slap on the arm, which of course caused more laughter from the family.

So, somewhere in China my picture is in the photo album of some random family, and now their photo is in ours.

Suzhou

Suzhou is a small(ish) town to the north and east of Shanghai. We ended up in a nice hotel which was probably more expensive than we would have liked, but after 16 hours on a train we figured a hot shower and big bed were worth it. The hotel was in a fun neighborhood, just down the street from a shopping district and plenty of sights.

Suzhou is known for its gardens, and the ones we visited were exquisite. They were so serene and peaceful. The style was traditional Chinese garden, and we were fortunate enough to be there when everything was in spring bloom. Even though it was still cold, the spring is in full swing and everything was beautiful.

Overnight Train from Beijing to Shanghai

We took a train from Beijing to Shanghai overnight, and it was an interesting experience. The trip took 14 hours, and I tried to sleep for as long as possible. Erin researched the next leg of our journey, which started as soon as we arrived. We decided not to stay in Shanghai overnight, but instead we went straight to Suzhou (pronounced soo-joe). The overall trip took nearly 16 hours from leaving Beijing to arriving in Suzhou, and as you might imagine we felt a little exhausted and a bit dirty.

As an aside (and I'm not sure if we've mentioned this yet), but there are lots of smokers in China. For some reason, they also like to smoke in confined spaces like bathrooms, busses, and train cars. Erin and I have joked that smoking cigarettes must be the national sport. I feel like I've smoked a carton of cigarettes since we've been here, and that is just from second hand smoke.

Pics from home

We just received a note from Ben and Kim and we are pretty excited about the pictures that they sent. Apparently, while we have been travelling, they have been at work finishing one of our home projects. As you can see from the pics below, the downstairs bathroom is practically done. We can't wait to get home, so we can put it to good use.

Beijing night time food market

Just around the corner from where we were staying was a night time food market. There was a row of about 100 or so food stalls. Most of the appeared to sell the same stuff, but some of them had some really unique food offerings. Here are a few that caught our attention:

Scorpions, Grubs and Crickets

Baby Sharks and Star fish

Squid and Snake

Other Beijing Sites

We stayed in a pretty cool neighborhood in Beijing. We were very near the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. There was plenty of shopping and eating and sightseeing without having to venture too far afield.
We visited the Jingshan Park, which is a one of the highest points in the city. It was made from the dirt which was excavated from around the Forbidden City for its moat. There are a few pagodas and temples on the property, and it is an excellent place to look out over the Forbidden City - well, it would be an excellent place if it weren't for the smog. The park was a nice place to escape from the major crowds (see the previous post) and have a moment of near solitude. It was very serene with a small grove of trees and other folliage.

Beijing Population Notes

Beijing is HUGE. This may sound nerdy, but according to the 2000 census, Seattle has around 500,000 residents. For the Louisiana readers, Lake Charles has around 70,000 residents.

In contrast, Beijing has over 12 million citizens. It is hard to describe how many people that is. We clearly did not see the bulk of Beijing, but we did explore as much of our neighborhood as we could in the few days we were there. We will revisit Beijing, as it is where we leave from on the next leg of our journey (Thailand).

Beijing's Forbidden City

In the heart of the major cosmopolitan ultra-urban city of Beijing lies the Forbidden City. It was the palace of two dynasties (the Ming and the Qing), and was off limits to anyone but the emperors and their subjects. In fact, when the emperor or his family entered or exited the palace the locals even had to close their windows, so that they would not lay eyes on the royals. The palace has a long history and has seen its fair share of destruction (during revolutions and war) and restoration during different periods. I won't go too much more into the history, because this isn't a history lesson.

The palace was fascinating though. It contained so much history (some of the relics were from as far back as 200 BC), culture, and technology (the astronomical device int he picture above is from the 1600s-ish). The best part for me was the names of the halls and courts. For example, the southern gate was named "Divine Military Genius Gate" and another was named "Supreme Harmony Gate". There were also a few halls that made us chuckle, like "Palace of Enjoying Nurture" and the "Palace of Tranquil Longevity". They did use names which explained the significance of the location though, like the "Chamber of Literary Grace" and the "Hall of Mental Cultivation".

Of course, the day we visited it was raining like crazy and it was incredibly cold. I'm surprised that we made it as long as we did. But the place was so awe inspiring and interesting, we couldn't drag ourselves away either.

Beijing

We have made it to China. It is wicked cold but we are enjoying ourselves. We are just about to head to the Forbidden City. You can see our pictures of Jingshan Park in Yahoo. I promise we will make some actual posts shortly.

Erin

Joey's turn:
After spending 3 months (yes, it has been that long) in the heat, arriving in the cold has been a shock. It has been in the 30s in Beijing, so I'm sure that it isn't a shock that we've put away our shorts. Fortunately, we have some warm clothes, but we did go shopping for a couple of more warm items.

Kuala Lumpur

We have fallen behind on our posting again. Our week in Kuala Lumpur was a vacation from our vacation. We have a few pictures and a few anecdotes which we will try to post in the next day or two. For now, you can check out our pictures on Yahoo (please use the link in the sidebar).

Erin

Joey's turn:
We decided to take a break from the hectic life of traveling and touring while we were in Kuala Lumpur. It was seriously hot and humid, so we left our hostel and splurged on a hotel. In this case, splurge means US $50 per night.

One of the key selling points of the hotel was the swimming pool. We had been dealing with the heat pretty well - ok, not so well, but all of the malls have AC so we were doing our fair share of shopping (more on that later). Anyway, the pool was very helpful in getting away from the sweltering atmosphere. Also, the pool had a very nice view of the famous Petronas Towers (or at least one of the spires of the towers). It was amazing to swim beneath such a monumental landmark.


Speaking of which, the Petronas Towers are seriously unreal. They used to be the tallest towers in the world, but I think they are in 3rd place now. They are so tall that it is difficult to actually fit them into one photograph. Also, at night they really seem like the backdrop to a movie set. In fact, they are prominently featured in the film "Entrapment" with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones if you want to get a better view.

As I mentioned earlier, we did our fair share of shopping. We actually joked that the national sport in KL must be shopping, because it is a major feature of the current "Visit Malaysia 2007" tourist campaign. All of the ads and articles prominently feature shopping as a major "attraction". We figure that most people are just trying to escape the heat of the day by going inside to enjoy a little air conditioning. On a side note, the malls here are enormous. We visited one mall which had 12 floors and had three separate wings. It was so big that it had a roller coaster in the building. I just wish that we had been able to snap a photograph.


In the first neighborhood that we stayed in there were some typical hawker type malls that we had seen previously. Basically, the shop owners spill out into the walk ways inviting you into their shop and calling out for you to see their wares. We also got to see some of the VERY high-class malls where all of the major name brands are sold. I thought that it was funny that you could go into one mall and buy expensive name brands, and then go a block away to a different mall and buy a knock-off of the same item (for seriously cheaper prices).