China Part 1: Sweaty bellies, kung pao chicken, and starfish as snacks.

As a college student, while you don't long for the responsibilities, long hours, and office politics of most full-time jobs, you are usually jealous of one thing that your part-time, on campus job cannot give you = paid vacation. (well plus a nice paycheck.) Well friends, I just finished having my very first paid vacation ever as a self-proclaimed grown-up with a full time job - and it was amazing!

A few months ago my friend Amy and I decided that China was calling our names for vacation.  We began the process of applying for [expensive] visas, booking flights, planning tentative itineraries, etc. Many hours and changing entire itineraries later, we had it all set - July27-August 6, we would be exploring the cities of Beijing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou.

Obviously the trip is now completed, and I must say, it could not have been any better. We had a phenomenal time of seeing historical sites, eating good food, experiencing a different culture, having lots of laughs, and sooo much more.  I'm going to attempt to give you a summary of the trip with enough details and pictures to give you a true glimpse of what I experienced without boring you.

July26.
With only a slight hiccup in the initial plan (I booked train tickets for 6am instead of 18:00 so had to buy new KTX tickets, blah), we were off on the KTX (Korea's high speed railway) for Seoul by 7pm after work.  The plan was to stay the night in the airport's jimjilbang/spa as our flight left early the next morning.  Jimjilbangs are basically public bath houses and most have a room for sleeping the night.  While they're very popular here, I have not ventured to one as I just don't have a desire to bathe with other people, no matter how nice their jaccuzi pool is.  However, we had heard this one was very clean, nice and shouldn't be too crowded on a Tuesday night.  Thankfully, they were right and Amy and I had the changing and showering area mostly to ourselves.  You are given lockers, towels, and even clothes to sleep in when sleeping on your hard mat with what felt like a brick as a pillow.  It was quite an experience to sleep there, but it was worth it when we woke up at 6 to check in for our flight.

Changing area at the spa

stylish pajamas

ready to fly to China!

July27.
By 9am we were en route to Beijing, China on one of the bumpiest flights I have ever experienced.  We had a group of children on our flight and they were screaming for a few minutes. Lovely.  Luckily, we made it there in one piece, gathered our luggage, took the express airport subway into the city, and a few wrong turns later, found our hotel - a really nice Holiday Inn that was built about 5 years ago.

I guess I should explain who "we" are.  It was Amy and I, plus a friend (Jordan) she knew from the US who is teaching in Seoul and her friend, Katie, who was just in Korea to visit.  The 4 of us were only together for the first 3 days in Beijing and then we split off due to different amounts of vacation time. Clear?

After we had done the essentials at the hotel (checked out the view, made sure the TV worked, had a Pringles break), we headed out to take on Beijing.  Enter adventure #1 of too many to count.  We took the subway to the Forbidden City area...and oh my goodness. check out just a few seconds of this video of a subway we took frequently while in Beijing.... (I didn't take the video, but it is just what we experienced!)

http://youtu.be/So2AdMcIW5M

Needless to say, we were NOT prepared for the pushing and shoving and strategy it would take to allow 4 girls to get off at the right stop.  We got to our stop, thought people would move and when they didn't, we started to panic and all of us just shoved our way off.  I honestly didn't think we would all make it off, but we did!

The rest of the day was spent in a garden which we thought was the way into the Forbidden City (we could see it, it was so close!) but found out 2 hours later it wasn't even connected. Whoops. By the time we realized this, the Forbidden City was closed for the day but we got a few good photos and headed to the Temple of Heaven.

I wasn't joking about the Pringle's break..

Forbidden City Walls! (across from Tiananmen Square)

Get yer communist army crawler here!

Even more than in Korea...we were celebrites/objects to take pictures of/with. Usually they were awkward, like this one.

Catching dinner. (joking, I hope)

Biggest Bonsi tree I've ever seen, Gramma! your next project??

Bamboo forest.

L-R: Amy, me, Katie, Jordan

Cute little rambunctious boys!

lotus flowers - you can't tell, but some were in bloom!

 However, this was closed too! Our timing reeked.  [but it was China, so who cares, we had fun!] Finally we decided it was time for some retail therapy and headed to the Pearl Market.  This is an indoor market with every knock-off/real item but with defects you can imagine.  If you ever get the chance to go, put on your haggling shoes (whatever those might be) and prepare to hear a ton of "You want shoes? You want purse? What you want? I give you good price!" or my absolute favorite that made me want to give the sellers a nice little slug to the face, "Hey Lady, you want (insert any item here)?" while physically grabbing me and attempting to pull me to their store.  Whew! Can you tell I'm not the best haggle shopper? I become a stress basket! However, we did find some amazing deals and I bought a ton of real pearl jewelry (I even checked if they were real and they are!) and it was fun in a sort of stressful way.

All over China, there are tons of rickshaw/bicycle people who try to get you to pay for a ride - well we didn't know how far Pearl Market was, but Amy maneuvered an amazing price with two bicycle people to take us.  It was SO fun, cheap, and thrilling...as you can tell I feared for my life in the best way possible! We convinced them to take us alllll the way, which meant crossing a BUSY street!

notice the fear, and then notice the bus barely missing us and you can understand.

so scary, but SO FUN!

Back to the hotel we gallivanted with our new purchases, relaxed a bit, and then took off for a night food street market where they deep fry literally anything on a stick.  They had everything from whole baby sharks to seahorses to cockroaches to duck hearts. Gross. I felt that I was crossing the line just looking at the food, so when Jordan decided she wanted to try a starfish, I took a bite of that (tasted and had the grimy texture of fishy dirt) but that was it.  It was a great first day in Beijing!

yummy!

your guess is as good as mine...

Notice that he is crouched ON the counter.

sugar coated fruit...now that's something I can eat!

Culture Shock of the day: It is HOT in China right now, so apparently it's normal for men to pull up their shirts so their bellies are showing.  However, it's very crowded in Beijing (17 mil. people!) so guess what happens...yep, you end up bumping into sweaty bellies of overweight older Chinese men. sick.

August 28.

Long story short, after a fulfilling, free, delicious breakfast at the hotel, we narrowly avoided being majorly scammed and potentially in a dangerous situation. Now, before you panic, notice I say we avoided it. We had signed up for a bus tour for the day to the Great Wall, which the bus turned into a van just for us and the lady saying that we couldn't go all the places we had signed up for.  Luckily, we are intelligent young ladies and didn't pay any money and high tailed it to the closest travel agency to book a legit trip for the next day. That left a full day for exploring, so off we went to the Summer Palace.

The Chinese name for the Summer Palace literally means Garden of Nurtured Harmony and can trace history of it being a place for palaces back to the Jin Dynasty in 1122. Obviously much has changed since then, but it's a beautiful place with a huge lake, large pagoda, etc.  It was dripping hot that day - and I mean dripping.  I have never felt so disgusting in my life by just walking outside.  It was totally worth it though - so beautiful!

Mini water-town

Intricate artwork!

Sweet dragon boat on the lake

Delicious and cheap popsicles that were sold everywhere

gorgeous.

We grabbed a lunch at the most non-Chinese place possible - McDonalds...mostly because we knew it would have strong air conditioning flowing and then headed back for another round at the Forbidden City. Our timing was better and we made it in the doors this time, along with what felt like 12981238794 million other people. Fortunately, the Forbidden City has quite some room for that many visitors. The Forbidden City was built around 1410 and for almost five hundred years, it served as the home for emperors and their households, as well as the ceremonial and political center of Chinese government.  It's rumored to have over 9,000 rooms and is overwhelming to just walk around the grounds, let alone imagine people living there.  We wandered (and sweated) for hours. You could spend all day in there and still not see everything!

we weren't the only tired ones! haha

middle plaza of Forbidden City

ooooold sundial

apparently everyone loves a good rock formation

on our random walk back to the subway.

Fun Story: Plastic bottles must be worth a lot in China because people are always scavenging for them in trash and will even ask for your empty bottles if you're holding them.  Leaving the Forbidden City, I was holding a water bottle with about 4 inches of water left.  All the sudden an older woman snatched it like a ninja out of my hands so fast that I had no idea what just happened.  Then a Sprite bottle fell on the ground and it was the fastest I've ever seen two older people move - and my lady must've been a Chinese ninja...because she got that bottle too! Jordan saw the whole thing and we laughed for a loooong time - it was just so ridiculous!

Refreshed after cool showers and a/c back in the hotel, we went to a delicious Chinese dinner at a restaurant across the street from our hotel and sat on the patio outside.  We had lots of entertainment, including this cute dog and duck friend combo! Ironically we were at a duck restaurant, so I hope the dog made it home with his friend not ending on a plate for dinner!

friends!

the girls at delicious dinner

Kung Pao Chicken!

Well, I'm about blogged out for today. As you can tell, the trip has been nothing but fun and adventure so far...I think I can get used to this whole paid vacation thing!