china!

Sorry folks, I know it's been a while since I've written last. I promise I've been thinking about writing a lot! But life here aboard the MV Explorer has been hectic at best. I didn't really realize exactly how little time we had between each country...two days looks a lot different on paper. So I've now officially gone to China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand, and I have so much to share. This is probably going to take two or three posts, so I'm going to get China done in this first blog and try my hardest to have the rest done before we get to India.

Right now, I'm sitting in my cabin and the boat seems to be stationary, which means we're now docked in Singapore! That would be a lot more exciting if we actually visited Singapore, but we're just here to fill up on gas and stock up on water before we finish the voyage to India. I've just finished taking a midterm for my linguistics class, which was such a breeze and I feel silly for even stressing out about it. Meanwhile, I've acquired a terrible cough which has me running to Kleenex or a sink every five minutes, hacking up half my lung, and that's no fun at all. My body feels pretty out of whack, and I'm pretty sure I'm just not getting all the nutrients that I need thanks to all this ship food. I never thought I'd say this but I would probably fight a bull for some fresh romaine lettuce right now, or maybe some spinach...I miss my leafy greens! (We have salad on the ship, and I eat it at every meal, but it's a kind of iceberg lettuce that is literally crunchy water.)

Fresh, uncooked vegetables and fruits in the countries we've been visiting recently are a big no-no if you don't want to spend a couple hours praying to the porcelain god. (Traveler's diarrhea, folks.) It's soooooo tempting too, especially the fruit. On the upside, we now have a regular stock of Japanese pears on the ship, which are officially my favorite fruit ever. They're crunchy like apples but taste kind of like pears...delicious.

On the subject of traveler's diarrhea (how appetizing), we had an outbreak of infectious diarrhea on the ship that was so bad that we had debriefings telling us that we might not be let into Thailand! Apparently, only 2% of the ship can have diarrhea in order to dock in a country, and we were at a whopping 5%. Yours truly was not affected, thankfully. I guess people were eating some things they weren't supposed to in Vietnam. Anyway, after they let us know that we might not get to go to Thailand, a bunch of people who had reported themselves sick earlier went back to the nurse and let her know that they were better and the crisis was averted.

What else can be said about ship life? Well, as I'll tell you more when I get into the subject of China, I got really sick on our last day in Beijing and subsequently missed Hong Kong. I mean, I could see it out of my bedroom and it looked like a really killer city (seriously, it was the best looking city we've been to), but I was too sick to venture off the ship. So we got back to the ship on the 23 of September, I slept all day on the 24th (the last day in Hong Kong), slept through my classes and a lot of the day on the 25th (my birthday!), was feeling mostly better on the 26th but still slept through all of my classes. And then we were in Vietnam on the 27th. Starting to see why I haven't blogged in a while?

I love the routine of Semester at Sea and how we see these countries, pause to catch our breath and repack our bags, and dive back into it, but at the same time, it feels so great to have a break right now. We haven't spent more than two days at a time on the ship since we got to Japan on September 12th! I'm finally getting caught up and back on track with all my classes, as is everyone...there's really been zero time to do homework (which, let's be honest, I can't complain about.) We got back on the ship on Monday night, had Tuesday off from classes, and we dock in India on the 15th. I have to say, I think the best part about this short reprieve from traveling is that my hall finally had laundry day on Tuesday. However, I still haven't gotten my laundry back, so my outfits are getting really creative.

So I started a blog entry about China in between China and Vietnam, but like I said, I was pretty sick, so I got maybe a quarter of the way done with it and didn't really feel like continuing...I didn't feel particularly articulate, needless to say. Anyway, here's what I had, and I'll continue from there (bear in mind that this first part was written two weeks ago):
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I've finally recovered from China (and I mean that in a very literal way) and already I'm going to be in Vietnam tomorrow. If I felt like I didn't have enough time between Japan and China, I've had less than enough time between China and Vietnam. But that's half the fun, right? After spending tomorrow in Ho Chi Mihn City, I fly to Cambodia on Thursday, which I think is going to be life-changing. Either way, I'm excited to move on.

So we docked in Qingdao on last Wednesday. Because of the typhoon offshore, Qingdao was pouring rain and really nasty out. I headed with three of my girlfriends (Kate, Stasi, and Morgan) to the Tsing Tao brewery around 11 am. We went on a tour, which was relatively unenlightening (it was self guided, so we sped through it pretty quickly) and then ended our time at Tsing Tao in the bar. (Beer was included with the price of our tour...have you had Tsing Tao beer before? I think it's my favorite now!)

Here comes the good part of the story. There were two professional photographers near where we sat down, apparently with a wedding party or something. Anyway, the four of us young ladies got situated and they immediately started taking pictures of us. And not just a few. Easily hundreds. Two of the guys with the wedding party had their pictures taken with us. One of the professional photographers had a video camera with him and he interviewed Stasi for a news segment in Giulin. And the head photographer just kept taking pictures of me. He was being kind of sly about it, popping up from behind poles to catch me when I wasn't looking, but he eventually stopped trying to be coy. He knew that I knew. So he took picture after picture after picture of me. Only me. Before they left, the photographer ducked into the gift shop and bought me a pair of ceramic pigs that can hold a bottle of beer between them; a gift, the lesser photographer translated for me, because he thought I was so beautiful. Pigs! (They are REALLY ugly, by the way, but I'm pretty sure I'll have them forever because honestly, how often will I be given pigs in China?)

After the hilarity of the brewery, we got lunch and then walked around a market area of Qingdao. There really wasn't much to do, it was pouring rain, and we couldn't find an ATM that took American debit cards, so around 4 pm we decided to head back to the ship for the night.

The next morning, I was up and in the Union at 6 am for my trip to Beijing. The first couple hours were pretty uneventful (ah, the act of traveling itself) as we took a plane to Beijing and then got on our tour bus. I chose to do a university-hosted trip to Beijing, which means that our guides were university students instead of real guides and that we had a chance to interact with Chinese people our age. Our guides for our stay were named Kate and James (not their real names, the names the chose to be called because their Chinese names were too unpronounceable for us), and the university my group was paired with was Renmin University. My group was the smallest university-hosted trip, with only about 30 of us, and my trip leaders were my extended family parents, Jim (the assistant dean) and Nancy (his wife). (Following still?)

Anyway, we got into Beijing around 1 pm, had lunch, and went to our first attraction—the Temple of Heaven. Basically, the Temple of Heaven is where the Chinese emperor used to receive sacrifices. I made some jokes about human sacrifices, but it seems that there were only animal sacrifices (although, if there were human sacrifices, do you think the Chinese government would ever admit to it?). The Temple of Heaven was pretty but not worth describing in detail here...I suggest Googling some pictures of it, though. The most notable thing that happened at the Temple of Heaven was that I met and walked around with Stevie, Jenna, Danny, and Chris (different Chris than from Japan!), or, as we came to call ourselves for the duration of our trip, "Team Dragon."

After the Temple of Heaven, we went to our hotel (absolutely nasty grungehole called "Long Du Hotel"...also not worth describing, because I think it would gross my Mom out.) Our hotel was bad, but there are worse things in the world. Stevie was assigned as my roommate, which was awesome because she and I get along exceedingly well. We threw our stuff down in our rooms and then it was back to the bus. Dinner was at Renmin University! We had a banquet of sorts with the Chinese students, and we all sat at tables with them. The girl I sat next to called herself Nancy and she was so nice. I feel like I learned a lot about the way Chinese life works thanks to her. (For instance, the Renmin students all live in the dorms because they can't afford apartments in Beijing, and they only pay 100 USD a year to live there!! On the other hand, the living situation in the dorms sounds pretty grim and really minimal...ahh, the Chinese.) Once dinner ended, everyone at my table wanted to go out with the Chinese students, and we agreed on karaoke (or, as the Chinese call it, KTV). KTV was a blast and I have many invitations from Chinese students to come back and visit them (although I'm not really sure if I want to go to China again!).

This seems as good of a time as any to go on a rant about Beijing. It is SO dirty. Not just dirty like garbage in the street. That actually wasn't so bad. But it is straight up the most polluted place I've ever been in my life. You could hardly see a hundred yards in front of your face because it was so smoggy, constantly. I felt like every time I took a deep breath, I was losing a day of my life. I'm really confused as to how it was chosen as an Olympic city because I don't know how Olympic athletes will be able to compete in air like that.

Ok, this is where the original part of the post ends. Picking up from that...

The next morning (bright and early at 7 am!; Friday, Sept. 21) we left our hotel to go see the Ming tombs. On the way to the Ming tombs, we stopped at a jade factory, which was really just a lame tourist trap. Apparently, bus drivers take tour groups to places like this because they get a cut of the profit from it. Our bus driver made up an excuse about how traffic was really bad and we might as well stop and wait for it to get better...except that there was no traffic. Anyway, we eventually got to the Ming tombs, which was pretty anticlimactic. Thirteen out of the sixteen emperors from the Ming dynasty are buried there, and it's a gigantic area and maybe if we had a whole day to explore it, I would've enjoyed it more. We only went to one tomb, the Ding Ling tomb (yeah, it's really called that), which is the only tomb that has been opened and excavated. It wasn't very cool because it had been looted or something and there really wasn't anything to see, except a gigantic cement hole that you walked into. (This part of the trip, seeing useless touristy stuff that's really only interesting if you know a lot about the history, made me wish I had done an independent trip!)

After the Ming tombs, we went to lunch, but first we had to tour a cloisonné factory (gotta love that bus driver.) Then, after lunch, we headed to the exciting part of the day...the Great Wall!!

There are several parts of the Great Wall that are close to Beijing and open to tourists, and we just went to the section that was closest to the city. The sections that are open have obviously been rebuilt over the years, and aren't really the original Great Wall, but it was still probably one of my favorite parts of Semester at Sea to date. Of course, I'd heard all about the Great Wall since I first started taking history classes (so, what, first grade?), but I'd always pictured it as just a long stretch that you walk along. (Apparently, some of the sections are like that...the most touristy section, which some of the other Semester at Sea groups went to, features a cable car to the top and a slide to the bottom.) Anyway, the section we went to was not like that. At all.

Basically, the section of the Great Wall that we climbed (yes, climbed) was a never-ending, extremely steep staircase. You'd take the winding, swerving stairs up for a while, and then there'd be a stop at a tower, and then you'd start again. I think there were eight or nine towers, but I honestly stopped counting. Team Dragon started climbing the stairs all together, but then Jenna and Stevie were exhausted by the first tower and decided to go at a much slower pace, so I continued up to the top with the boys. It took about 45 minutes to get to the top and wow! The view was so spectacular. I kept stopping along the way and taking pictures, much to the chagrin of the two jumpy young men I was climbing with. It was a really difficult climb (probably because it was so frigging humid out) but it felt so great to get done. It's too bad, once again, that Beijing is such a polluted city, because the mountains were polluted too and the view would've been so much better if it had been in clean air. Regardless of the pollution, it was an awesome experience; I'll try to get some pictures up soon (I know, I know, I keep saying that, but the ship internet is really too slow!) because they're pretty cool.

We went to a Peking duck restaurant for dinner, which I obviously did not partake in, and then we went back to the hotel. Team Dragon (yep, it's really easier than naming everyone) went out to this nightlife area that's built around a small lake, called Houhai, which was pretty much full of tourists but pretty nonetheless. Not feeling up to spending too much yuan in a flashy club full of Americans, we bought some Tsing Tao beers from a stand for the equivalent of 30 cents US each and spent the night walking around the lake and people-watching.

The next morning (Saturday, Sept. 22), we were up again at 7 am and we started our day off at Tiananmen Square. It was interesting to see almost solely because of the historical value, but it really is just a big open public area. Here's something creepy, though: Mao's tomb is built on the square and there are viewings twice daily. I really wanted to go inside and check him out (I think he's mummified or plasticized or something), but there was an insanely huge line of Chinese people waiting to get inside and we just didn't have the time.

Here's an appropriate time to go on another rant about China: I HATE LATRINES. I've heard that squat toilets are supposed to be more sanitary or something but honestly. It's really hard to use a squat toilet unless you've been doing it all your life and have the appropriate muscles needed for it. With that preamble, now let me say: Chinese babies and young children don't wear diapers. They wear pants with slits in them and when they need to go to the bathroom, their parents help them squat whenever and wherever they happen to be. For instance, I saw two adorable Chinese toddlers squat with the help of their mothers in front of the Chinese flag and the gigantic picture of Mao that lords over Tiananmen Square and urinate in public. Right there. On cement. Not so adorable. Let me once again emphasize how dirty China is.

Anyway, after all that, we walked across the street and visited the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City seemed like it could've been pretty awesome. Seriously. But, along with everything else in Beijing, it's under renovation for the 2008 Olympics. So the main building was closed, along with a couple of the more important looking buildings. I don't really know what I saw there but it was all really beautiful and I left feeling disappointed because I think I'll have to go back and visit the Forbidden City again someday when it's not mostly closed. The disappointment is for having to go back to Beijing someday. I feel like this is all complaining and I really don't mean it to be; I'm really glad I got to see China and I got to see all these fantastic things that I've always dreamed about, but I think it just wasn't what I was expecting it to be. And I have to be honest, (once again, I'm so glad I got to see these things and feel so fortunate, but...) I really don't like what I saw of China and never plan on going there again. I guess I've made it pretty apparent that it's not my cup of tea, huh?

Well after the disappointing hour and a half we spent in the Forbidden City, we were scheduled for lunch and to go on tours of the hutong. Hutong are these communities built within little roads all throughout Beijing. They're kind of hard to describe, so once again, I'm gonna suggest you Google "hutong". They're important right now because the city of Beijing has been tearing down a lot of hutong in order to build new things for the Olympics and it's a really big controversy in China since they're a longstanding part of the city culture. I'd heard from some of the Chinese students that the hutong are really good to see by bike and I was getting pretty tired of scheduled group tours and itching to do something on my own. So Chris and I said farewell to the group and he and I left the Forbidden City in search of bikes to rent.

After about ten minutes of walking with no real direction, he and I decided to walk into a hotel and see if they knew anywhere to rent bikes. And, coincidentally, the hotel rented them out. So we found our bikes for the day! Now I actually have something positive to say about Beijing: it is an AMAZING bike city. There are huge bike lanes built next to car lanes and usually separated by a median, and the bike lanes even get a traffic light. It's such an easy city to bike in and the afternoon that we spent biking was, the Great Wall aside, the highlight of my trip to China.

So we rented our bikes and we decided to head to the Silk Market. The Silk Market area was, at one point, notorious for cheap fake goods. However, because of the Olympics, the city was trying to "clean up" the area, so it isn't the knock-off mecca that it once was. We parked our bikes in a bike lot and walked around the area for a few minutes before we were enticed by a man selling pirated DVDs. (Sorry, Dad.) It was actually a pretty sketchy transaction; we followed him to a restaurant, and sat down at a table at the restaurant. Then they brought out the DVDs and we looked through them and picked out ones we were interested in. We probably went through a few hundred DVDs and ended up getting around 30 between the two of us. After we left, another DVD hawker hooked me when he promised he had Sex and the City, so I bought the entire Sex and the City series, too. And you know what, it's really awesome having some TV shows to watch on this dang ship.

After our movie-buying marathon, we went into the actual Silk Market, which is a big building (4 stories with two basement floors?) filled with stalls of people selling knock-offs. Shirts, shoes, purses, even socks. Anything that you might want a knock-off of, they had it. But neither of us really wanted anything, so we just went to the mail room and I finally sent out all the mail I'd been meaning to for two ports (has anyone received anything yet? I feel like it will probably never get to you.) Then we got back on our bikes and continued with our adventure.

We biked through hutong, which was really cool and a very interesting perspective of Chinese life, and somehow at the end of all our biking we ended up back near the Houhai area we had been at the night before, so we found a restaurant around the lake that looked good and had dinner there. After dinner, we had to meet our group back up at the Beijing opera, so we had to book it to the hotel we'd rented the bikes from and drop those off. Then we grabbed a taxi and went to the opera!
Chinese opera is actually really fun to watch. It's kind of a spectacle; there's singing, there's acrobatics, there's really crazy costumes! I was really tired though and kept almost dozing off...oops. After the opera, we just went back to the hotel for the night and we all hung out in Stevie and my room for our last night in Beijing. I was really tired and started falling asleep but I was feeling kind of nauseous, and even told Stevie and Chris that I wasn't feeling very well. Well, that was the beginning of the end for me.

I woke up in the middle of the night and had to race to the bathroom to vomit. That happened four times throughout the night, and needless to say, I was having some trouble getting my stuff together and getting ready the next morning. For some reason, my legs were so sore and painful that I couldn't really walk; even when I was sitting completely still, my legs hurt. We went to the Summer Palace, which I really had wanted to see, but I wasn't feeling well enough to get off the bus and spent the entire three hours in the back of the bus sleeping. From the Summer Palace we thankfully started heading to the airport, but I got sick again as we arrived at the airport, and then one last time when we were in the airport. It was maybe one of the most miserable days of my life. Then we took our plane to Hong Kong. We got on a bus in Hong Kong, were shuttled back to the ship, and by that point I hadn't eaten all day and hadn't been able to keep almost any liquids down. We got to the line to get back on the ship and I almost started crying because I was having trouble holding myself up. Stevie and Chris took my bags from me and made sure everyone in the line knew that it was urgent that I got back on the ship first, so I thankfully cut the line and got my stuff from them later. The first thing I did was take a hot shower to try and make my muscles feel better. Then Jim, the assistant dean/my extended family father, came by my room and took me to the clinic.

Well, surprise. I had a 102-degree fever and was severely dehydrated. The nurse gave me anti-nausea pills and ibuprofen and then I went straight to bed for my Long Sleep. I can't say enough how nice everyone on my trip was that entire last day. Nancy kept coming with me to sit down at the airport because I couldn't stand for more than 5 minutes at a time, and people switched off who carried my bags. The nurse has no idea if I got food poisoning or if I just picked up something viral, but either way, I feel eons better now.

So basically, I didn't have the best time of my life in China but it was definitely an experience. I think I should probably end this blog here, because I've been writing this for about an hour and a half now and it's seven pages long and I need do some homework! But I really am going to try to post at least about Vietnam/Cambodia before we get to India. Just to let you know what you have to look forward to in that post: I am completely and totally in love with Southeast Asia and have been floored by every other country I've been too. The people in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand are all so nice and so kind (in comparison to the Chinese, who I found to be loud, rude, and not so kind) and the countries have all been so beyond beautiful. (Although I think I might have allergies in Southeast Asia, which is weird because I've never had allergies in my life and I'm just kind of confused about what I'm feeling...I keep thinking I'm getting sick but maybe not?) I miss you all and love you so much. Thank you for sending me emails, they make my day, even though I haven't really been able to respond to them individually...just so you know, I am reading them, and I really hope you all keep writing because I love knowing what's going on with all of you in the States. It's hard to not feel pretty disconnected from home on this ship somewhere on the other side of the world.

Until later then, xoxoxo,
Eliza