ok, so i was bummed out that i didn’t update my blog while i was gone..i had a great trip by the way! so there were a few reasons: 1) blog site was blocked by government (china) 2) no internet access to be found except for a stall at a mall, pretty cheap at 30 US cents per 10 minutes but running on something like windows NT? (thailand) or 3) just didn’t have enough time from all the walking, shopping, and eating (hong kong).
i have about 6-7 pages on a word document of text of my trip in china, which i might eventually revise and put up O_O.
i guess at least a recap is required..so i went on a tour in china to shanghai, xi’an, and beijing over the course of a week and a half including travel. i loved this tour because not only did we get time to see the historic sites but we also had time to explore on our own. this was my first time travelling internationally not only without family but also alone. ! well, i technically wasn’t alone because i met some cool people on our tour, and we had a cool tour guide too. but, basically i didn’t go with anyone i knew. so all in all it was a pleasant experience. we did the usual required beijing stuff: great wall, forbidden city, ming tombs, temple of heaven. we didn’t do summer palace because it was too cold – around 30 degrees F and the lake was drained due to it being off season. we also saw the terra cotta army in xi’an and the yu garden and the bund in shanghai. we did some cool off the beaten path things like visit a village outside of beijing where we stopped by at the kindergarden and also made and had dinner with a family, and took a rickshaw ride through the remaining hutongs.
OK foodwise something worth trying that is “yan’s fry dumplings”. it’s the street food fried version of shanghai’s famouse xiao long bao, or soup dumplings. these go for 6 dumplings for a $1 USD and it is crispy deliciousness on the outside with the tasty soup dumpling filling on the inside. !! i miss them already.
unfortunately, i got food poisoning the last 2 days in beijing. i’m suspecting it was the hotel food even though we stayed in a nice hotel. otherwise here would have been a little blurb of the world famous quandjude peking duck.
next i spent 5 days in hong kong where i met up with norm, chris, peggy, sherleen, christine and co. i really should have planned a little better in regards to locations of our hotels. i figured hong kong wasn’t that big and as long as it was close to a subway station we would be ok. which in general is true, but both hotels i had booked, which although were beautiful and i got a pretty good deal for (around $65-$95 per night) they were not in the most central location and it generally took us about half an hour to get to where we wanted to go.
peggy, sherleen and the rest of the lowe entourage and i had dim sum at jumbo floating restaurant, which is famous and a lot of celebrities had gone to. the food was decent and tasty.
chris took norm and me to stanley, which is another touristy area with a pretty view of the beach, an open market, a shopping center, and some restaurants and pubs. we also went to a popular hong kong cafe which specialized in noodle soup with fish balls and milk tea with egg tarts and pineapple buns. also a place where i bought a shirt that says “i love pork chops” which in hongkongnese, “pork chops” is slang for “fat girls”.
now it was norm’s turn to get food poisoning.
but, fortunately he recovered in time for our thailand tour, which we were joined by chris and ronnie. this tour was a little different from the china tour, as it was packed with activities from morning to night, and the tour was in chinese. i had some brilliant translators though. 
after thinking this through, i am a little disappointed that i didn’t write down what we did each day, as i am trying to remember and my memory is failing me. however i will try to recount the bits and pieces, and the pictures definitely help.
the first day we flew into bangkok and visited the temple with the reclining buddha, which was huge and spanned nearly the entire length of the temple. later that evening we went to patpong, a tourist trap area. there is a fake market surrounded by all these bars with thai girls dancing next to poles and people outside showing you menus of what their girls can do with their nether regions, one being something with a ping pong ball..i never really found out what, but as you walk down they shove the menu in your face asking “ping pong show?” several times.
we also stopped by at a tiger zoo, where we even took a picture holding a baby tiger. never had i seen a place with so many tigers (most of the time you’re lucky to spot one sleeping in a corner at your typical american zoo). this was also home of the counting pig, a pig that can do simple math up to the number 6, and the scorpion queen, a woman who proudly displays a bunch of scorpions hanging off the front of her shirt. thailand is a great place for close and interesting animal encounters. we got to ride an elephant as well as go to a show that included elephants painting, riding bikes, playing basketball, and even giving massages.
another place we visited was the damnoen saduak floating market, which is a marketplace where you can go to the stores by boat. it was definitely a touristy attraction since we got in a number of traffic jams with other boats. we did get to sample some delicious fruits like mangosteen and rambutan, as well as fresh sliced mango with sweet rice and coconut cream. which reminds me, the fruit here is great!! the pineapple and longans were probably the best that i have ever had.
we also went to two massage places. the first place was a ‘thai massage’ place. it was slightly sketch and rather painful, but included in the tour. we got down to these pajamas that were given to us and escorted into a room full of maybe 10 twin mattresses? and the masseuses proceeded to tickle our nerves and crack all our joints from head to toe for a good two hours. it definitely was not the most relaxing situation. our next massage the following day was much more pleasant. it was at a spa, and included steam room, a cold bath, and an oil massage with a mung bean soup dessert at the end of the session.
i will definitely get back to you and write more, but i’m starving right now and maybe i should get back to work. however, i will leave you with a collection of some of the pictures that were taken on my trip =) enjoy!
