Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai Picasa Photo Album

After spending a day in Bangkok, Drew and I took a sleeper train to Chiang Mai in the northwest of Thailand, arriving the morning of January 20th. Overall, Chiang Mai was one of my favorite places we went on the whole trip. The weather was gorgeous every day we were there. We had lots of really, really good Thai food (the Thai ice coffee in Chiang Mai is particularly excellent). Chiang Mai is the kind of place you could easily spend a week or more. Unfortunately, we were only there for three days. But it was a fantastic three days. On our first day in we rented motorbikes and just explored town. We went on a jungle trekking tour on our second day. I had the craziest "It's a small world after all" moment on the tour. We went on the tour with 6 other foreigners--one of which was a girl who graduated from my high school (Kentwood High School in Kent, WA) two years after me. My high school had a fairly large student body (~1700 students, if I remember right), and I had never met her before. We just started talking about where we grew up on the tour. It turns out that we have some of the same friends, and my sister has taken classes from her mother and played on Kentwood girls tennis team with her sister. And we randomly meet on this jungle trekking tour in Thailand??!! (Cue "It's a Small World After All"). The tour was great--especially the elephant riding :). It also included a bamboo raft ride down the river and a hike through the jungle to a waterfall.

On to the pictures...

I had never ridden a motorbike before, so I was a bit worried about how I'd fare, especially with the added complications of the manual transmission and the fact that you drive on the left side of the road in Thailand. But it turned out to be really fun and not that difficult.

This is Wat Chedi Luang, a temple complex built in the 15th century that is right in the center of Chiang Mai.

At Wat Chedi Luang, we participated in "monk chat". There are a few monks sitting around, waiting to practice their English with foreigners. It also gives the foreigners a chance to ask the monks whatever they like about Buddhism, Thailand, monastic life or whatever. Drew and I talked with this monk-in-training (who was actually from Laos, not Thailand) for about an hour.

Some buskers at the Chiang Mai Sunday market.

The elephant ride!

Every few steps the elephant would stop and put its trunk over its head to ask for some food (bananas and sugar cane). Mostly, I think this was a tactic for the elephant breeders to make more money, since we had to buy the fruit, but it was kinda fun to feed the elephant, too.

At one point, this baby elephant came over and touched me with its trunk. Elephants are really friendly creatures. At least the domesticated ones.

The bamboo raft ride.

On our third and final day, we just caught a flight to Krabi, in southern Thailand.

Bangkok

Bangkok Picasa Photo Album

After spending three days in Hong Kong, Drew and I flew to Bangkok, Thailand on January 18th. Bangkok has the honor of having the World's longest place name. In Thai, the city is called Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit, and no, I have no idea how to say that. Roughly translated, it means "The city of angels, the great city, the eternal jewel city, the impregnable city of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukam"--at least that's what Wikipedia tells me. I'm glad we use names like "New York" and "London" in the west.

Before going to Thailand, I had talked with several people who had previously visited Thailand, and they told me that Bangkok was nothing special compared to some of the other places in Thailand. So, given that we only had one week in Thailand total, we only stayed one night in Bangkok. In fact, we were in Bangkok for a total of about 16 hours.

In the 16 hours we were in Bangkok, we slept a few hours (we got into our hotel at about 4 am), went to the train station to get train tickets, took a couple of tuk-tuk rides around town, got some awesome Thai food for lunch and took a cruise down the river. But the best story from our time in Bangkok occurred when our tuk-tuk driver took us on this tour that included going to this shady gem dealer place that we really didn't want to go. They tell you that it's the last day before the sale ends! And you can take these gems (which are probably fake) home and sell them to a gem store for twice the price! And people come here every year to participate in the gem sale! And it's all too good to be true! After we didn't bite on the gem scam, our tuk-tuk driver took us to this giant buddha thing and then took off, never even getting us a chance to pay him.

On to the pictures...

The Bangkok train station.

A church.

The highlight of our time in Bangkok was our ride down the river.

Some of the buildings you see from the river.

Bangkok, and Thailand in general, is a bit gaudy. Decorations such as this one abound.

A very, very tall Buddha.

That evening, we took a train to Chiang Mai, in the north west of Thailand.

Shenzhen & Hong Kong

Hong Kong Picasa Album

First off, I apologize for taking so long to begin blogging about my winter travels. I hope and plan to post much more regularly in the future.

Drew and I left Qinhuangdao on January 14th, heading straight to Beijing. From there, we took a 26 hour train to Shenzhen, in Guangdong Province. Shenzhen was a mere fishing village 30 years ago before Deng Xiaoping changed China's economic policies and designated Shenzhen as a SEZ (Special Economic Zone--basically an experiment in capitalism). Today, Shenzhen is mainland China's richest city, but it has no significant sites, and the only reason to visit it as a tourist is to go into Hong Kong. Shenzhen sits right on the Hong Kong-mainland China border, and you can catch the metro from Shenzhen right into Hong Kong. So, after we stayed one night in Shenzhen, we headed straight into Hong Kong.

Hong Kong is the most non-Chinese city in all of China. It lacks many of the distinctive features of Chinese cities--the pollution and garbage everywhere, the constant spitting by the locals, and the disfigured beggars that you find everywhere in China. In many ways, Hong Kong has everything I love about China and lacks most of the things about China that bug me. Needless to say, I really liked Hong Kong. And being able to use English everywhere sure was nice, too.

Drew and I spent a total of 2 nights and 3 days in Hong Kong. One of the most delightful aspects of Hong Kong was the variety of food. We had an amazing Indian lunch one day and a great Italian lunch the next. You definitely don't get that kind of variety in mainland China. Anyhow, on to the pictures:

Shenzhen, the richest city in mainland China.

Drew and I in Kowloon, looking across Victoria Harbor towards Hong Kong island.

Hong Kong has the world's biggest laser light show every night, using all of these sky scrapers.

Hong Kong island.

One of Hong Kong's many alleys.

The Golden Bauhinia, erected to commemorate the handover of Hong Kong from British rule to Chinese rule in 1997.

Hong Kong at night.

The world's longest escalator!

Hong Kong at night, from Victoria Peak. This is definitely the best view of Hong Kong you can find anywhere in the city. It reminded me of the view of Seattle from Carey Park on Queen Anne.

Tian Tan Buddha statue, the world's largest outdoor seated bronze Buddha statue, located on Lantau island.

Some other sculptures next to the Tian Tan Buddha statue.

After spending three days in Hong Kong, Drew and I returned to Shenzhen on January 18th to catch our flight to Bangkok.

Winter Travels 2008 - Summary

During the break between fall semester and spring semester, I traveled for 5 weeks.  Last year when I traveled, I went to many of the main tourist places--Shanghai, Beijing, Xi'an, Guilin, etc.   This year was a lot different.  Since I've already been to so many of the main tourist sites in China, we went to some places that are a bit off the beaten path (with a few exceptions, such as Hong Kong).  I traveled with Drew Langlie, another ELT Edge teacher who teaches at Northeast University (another university here in Qinhuangdao). 

 

We left January 14th, heading straight to Shenzhen (the city adjacent to Hong Kong on the Chinese mainland) and spending a few days in Hong Kong.  After returning to Shenzhen, we flew to Thailand, where we visited four different places (Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Krabi and Phuket) during our week there.  After returning to Shenzhen on January 26th, we headed to Chengdu for a few days before flying to Lhasa in Tibet.  We spent about a week in Tibet, then took the train to Lanzhou in Gansu province, where we stayed one night before flying to Urumqi in Xinjiang (the giant province in the northwest of China) on February 8th.  We spent a week in Xinjiang, our time split between Urumqi and Kashgar.  From Urumqi, we flew to Xi'an to visit a student before heading back to Beijing.  From there, Drew returned to Qinhuangdao to begin teaching, but since I had an extra week before classes began, I went a bit south to Handan to visit two students, finally returning to Qinhuangdao on February 22nd.

 

Put another way, the trip was like this: Qinhuangdao -> Beijing -> Shenzhen -> Hong Kong -> Shenzhen -> Bangkok -> Chiang Mai -> Bangkok -> Krabi -> Phuket -> Bangkok -> Shenzhen -> Chengdu -> Lhasa -> Shigatse -> Lhasa -> Lanzhou -> Urumqi -> Kashgar -> Urumqi -> Xi'an -> Beijing -> Handan -> Beijing -> Qinhuangdao

 

All told, we traveled more than 13,000 miles.

 

Last week I discovered this really great feature of Google maps called "my maps" that I used to map out the whole trip.  I've meant to add more detail to each placemarker on the map about what we did before posting this, but I haven't had the time to do it, and I've put this off long enough.  Plus, the details will come in my future blog posts.

 

View Larger Map

By the way, if you click the "View Larger Map" link above, it'll take you to the map at the Google page, where it has a few extra features, such as the list of all the placemarkers and lines in a column on the side, ordered chronologically.  It's a handy way to trace through our trip.

Spring Semester Has Begun

I'm back from traveling, and spring semester began this week.  Like last year, I'm planning to do some pretty extensive blogging about all of my traveling.  Stay posted for my travel updates.

Thailand

I'm about a week into the trip. So far we've spent most of our time in Hong Kong and Chiang Mai, Thailand, with short stops in Shenzhen and Bangkok. A few highlights:

• Viewing Hong Kong at night from atop Victoria Peak. I don't think it matters how dirty a city is; I always think cities are incredibly beautiful at night with all the lights. Victoria Peak provides a great view of Hong Kong.
• Riding an elephant today!
• Riding a bamboo raft (also today).
• Renting a motorcycle and riding one for the first time in my life. It's lots of fun and much easier than I expected.
• Eating some great non-Chinese food. It's been nice to take a break from the standard dong bei (north east) Chinese cuisine. Highlights so far have been the Indian and Italian food we got in Hong Kong, the Mexican food we got last night in Chiang Mai, and all the Thai food we've had. Thai food is really, really good, and I still haven't gotten pad thai, which is what I always get at Thai restaurants in Seattle.
• In the "it's a small world after all" category: on our trek today (that included the elephant ride and bamboo raft ride, among other things), Drew and I were in a group with 6 other people. One of the 6 people graduated from my high school (Kentwood high school) in 2002, 2 years after me, and we knew some of the same people. What are the chances?

Tomorrow we're flying to Krabi in south Thailand where we'll spend a few days.

New Webbsite and Winter Travels

I haven't been very good about posting this semester. I apologize for that. One reason is because I have been very busy, specifically with creating www.ghostsandspirits.net. It's not quite complete (I'm still waiting for Phil to update several of the pages), but I'm happy with what we have so far. Check out the album, listen to the songs and leave comments if you like.

I'm leaving in two hours for about a month. This time the plan is to go to Shenzhen and Hong Kong, then fly to Thailand for a week, then fly back to China and go to Yunnan, Tibet and Xinjiang. I'll be traveling with Drew Langlie, who I traveled with last winter.