a few days back.....

I apologize for not updating this sooner- the past week has been a whirlwind of travelling and I either havent had internet access or haven't really had a chance to sit down for an extended period of time and do a good update.

So i'll start again last week in Beijing!

The day after the great wall we all woke up feeling just a bit sore from our hiking! We decided to do some shopping, as Emma and Meg wanted to buy some fabric and possibly get some clothing made. We went to the Silk Street Market, which is a 7 story building full of everything you could possibly want to buy- from shoes to electronics to fabric and tailor shops, to your average chinese souvenier shops full of Mao Ze Dong watches, majong sets, postcards, chopsticks, and "chops". A chop is a hand carved name stamp, which every chinese citizen needs for official records, banks, legal documents etc. Many people even have more than one and use different ones for different purposes. Since I still have a month of travelling ahead of me and have really been limiting myself on buying stuff that i:m going to have to carry around, buying a chop with my name on it was a great way to get something uniquely Chinese that I will actually be able to use (I even stamped my postcards with it! All that shopping made us hungry and we decided to get some lunch in the market:s food court. Unfortunately my lunch didnt agree with me and I decided to head back to the hostel to rest. I napped and was feeling better when I woke up so, and decided to join the group at an amazing restaurant that Cathy at the Hostel recommended to us. It was a trendy restaurant full of young chinese groups, with beautiful photography and woodwork throughout. Although i stuck to a simple bland meal for fear that my stomach couldn't handle it, I did have a taste of the others famous Beijing Duck, and it was pretty good!

The next day, Meg and Dennis left early in the morning, and Emma and I decided to go to the beautiful Summer Palace for the day. Teresa, one of the girls that came to the Great Wall with us, and Sunny who works in the hostel decided to join us. It was about a 45 minute bus ride to west Beijing. The Summer Palace was the empress Cixi's own playground that she built for herself to escape the heat of the Forbidden City . It is a huge piece of land, with a enormous manmade lake, and many gorgeous, traditional Chinese buildings and temples, and even buildings for visiting important people to hang out in when they were visiting, filled with the gifts of furniture and decorative art that she was given for her birthday. Cixi seemed like quite the diva and she used a ton of the money that should have gone towards the poor Chinese public to build these gardens for herself. I made my way back to the hostel all alone on the scary bus system, as Emma left early to go get a fitting of the shirt she was having made, and Teresa and Sunny wanted to walk all the way around the lake, which I was just too exhausted to do after walking and hiking all over the palace. Emma and I met an Australian girl for dinner that she knows through a friend, who lives in Beijing. She took us to a great quaint little restaurant with food from the Yunan province of China. Delicious!

Friday was my last day in Beijing, and I decided to sleep in, pack up, and I went back to the Silk Market with Emma to pick up her shirt and do a little more shopping. I returned to the hostel to meet up with a group of brits who were going to the train station at the same time as me, and the hostel had arranged for their driver to take us to the train station. My train to Xi'an was at 7:30, a little earlier than I would have liked as it is a 13 hour ride and its much easier to take a later train when you really feel like you should be sleeping. The train ride was much bumpier than my last one, and made stops along the way, which isn't too great when you are sleeping and are jolted awake by the train coming to a stop. I made it with a few hours of sleep, and took a taxi to my hotel in Xi'an, which luckily was only 5 minutes away from the train station.

When I arrived, I was told about a tour leaving shortly that made a few stops in addition to the Terracotta Army Museum, which is the main reason most people even go to Xian. I put my bags in my room and hopped on the minivan with the driver Mr. Lee and my guide for the day, Frankie. We picked up 4 others(all foreign business men from California, Mexico, and Spain). We went to the Big Goose Pagoda in Xian, which is so named because a long time ago the monks that lived there were meat eaters (most are vegetarian), and had run out of meat, so one of them prayed to the gods and asked why they didn:t have anything to eat, and a big dead goose fell from the sky for them to eat. Thats the story anyway! After that we went to a factory where replicas of the Terracotta Soldiers are made in all shapes and sizes. We then went to some famous hotsprings, although didn:t get a chance to actually bath in them- only washed our hands! It would have been great to be able to enjoy the hot springs after all the walking I had been doing! Eventually we made it to the massive Terracotta Army museum. The terracotta army was discovered by a farmer digging a well in the 1950's (i think around then), and took many years to unearth this massive lifesize army of terracotta (clay) soldiers, horses, carts, and weapons. They are still digging and uncovering more and more broken pieces of this huge archaeological discovery. That was it for our tour and we returned for Xian where I crashed at my hotel! On Sunday I spent the day having a nice western-style breakfast, and then setting out to see a few famous sights in Xian- the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower. After that I discovered the muslim area of town, which was filled with amazing smells and sights throughout a few streets of outdoor vendors, markets, and great faces. There is quite a large chinese-muslim population concentrated in this one area.

After all this, I had a flight booked to Shenzhen, which is a city in the south of China, bordering Hong Kong. It was much cheaper to fly there and then take a bus over the border to Hong Kong. I'm still perplexed that there is still such a separation between mainland China and Hong Kong. I had to go through customs, they drive on the opposite side of the road from China, and they have their own currency, even though they are now officially part of China. My flight from Hong Kong was at 1:20 in the afternoon, with a stopover in Taipei, Taiwan. I arrived in Osaka-Kansai International airport- at 7:30 on Monday evening.

After having my luggage thouroughly searched at customs (annoying!) , I made my way to the tourist information desk to find out about a place to stay, as the hotel I wanted was booked up. I met a nice married couple there- Stefan from Germany and Yvonne from Taiwan. They live in Taiwan and both speak eachothers languages fluently, which is amazing! They told me they were staying at a bed and breakfast type hotel run by a Taiwanese woman, and invited me to join them there. It took us 3 hours from the airport to get there- after taking a zillion different trains, attempting to figure out this confusing system here in Osaka (they have 3 different private train lines in addition to a subway). After finally getting off the subway at the right stop, and trying to find the exit (there were 18 different exits!), we lugged our luggage up and down hundreds of stairs -the stations are definitely not meant for travellers! We called the owner of the hotel and she came and met us at the station- we would have never found it on our own! At this point we were starving and wanted something to eat, so we set out but realized we were really in a business area and everything had closed! We ended up eating instant ramen noodles at tables inside a convenient store- welcome to Japan! (After being in 4 countries in one day including Hong Kong, anything was fine with me!)

Yesterday was spent in Kyoto, about 45 minutes away from Osaka exploring some of the MANY temples that are there.

I will try my best to upload photos, as I now have quite a collection and would love to share some!!

for now,
kp