Xi'an

Xi'an (pronounced See – Ann)

We arrived early in the morning by train along with millions of other people who travel by train. The station was just out of control. Extremely congested. The train was bad. We actually was able to be upgraded to "soft sleepers". They were rooms with 4 beds in them and door to the hall way. We were next to a group of French tourists (remember...3rd worst tourists). They sang and chanted ALL night, drunk as hell. Super annoying. I haven't been drinking much fluids due be absolutely terrified of public restrooms and squatter toilets. Well today was the day I had to go. It was so bad! SO BAD. That squatter toilet will give me nightmares for ever. GROSS! Then you have to get out of the train with luggage that is WAY too heavy with thousands of people. It wasn't really fun for me. It was a low point. However, Xi'an is a great city. I really enjoyed it! Our tour guide said this was a "smaller" city.....only 7.4 million people live here. ONLY! Thousands of years ago, like most ancient city capitals in China, the Emperor built a wall around the city and it is still all up. It was beautiful to see. We took a bike ride on top of the wall on traditional Chinese bicycles around the entire city wall (about 8 miles). There was a little damage on the wall due to the earthquake. We were told that moments before we started to climb the stairs to the wall. I actually had fun for the first 5 miles. THen the sunset and it was hard to see....no to mention I haven't been to the gym in a very long time. The wall was pretty bad shape though. There was so many bricks missing which made huge pot holes and you had to avoid them like the Bird Flu. Xi'an is also were we discover Pizza Hut in China. Fantastic Pizza. Way better than what we have in the states. It is like an actual, upscale restaurant. Xi'an is also famous for Dumplings. We had the privilege to go to dinner and show and have 16 different dumplings served to us. The dumplings were shaped to look like the meat inside. So we had piggies and ducks and flowers and walnuts. It was pretty neat to see and I enjoyed the show. We also when to the Chinese Muslim quarters. They have this open air market that you can buy tons of stuff. It was pretty fun to negotiate with the people when buying stuff. More like a game to me. I was almost the victim of pick pocketing here. You have to be pretty careful. Overall, Xi'an was a great city. VERY smelly though.

Pictures:

1. A photo of a tower on the city wall taken on our bike ride.
2. Moat around the city wall.
3. Ryan on his Chinese bike.
4. The Bell tower located in the center of the city. The Drum tower was just down the street.
5. The drum performance at the Drum Tower.
6. Becks and Kerri on top of the Bell Tower.
7. Performance at the Dumpling Banquet.
8. Dumplings shaped as Ducks, Pigs and Lettuce.
9. Ryan and I in front of the South Gate of the city wall.
10. Muslim Mosque.
11. Giant Wild Goose Pagoda. It is an active Buddhist Temple. Monks there and pray there. Built in 652.
12. Busy street in Xi’an. Notice people and bikes all over the road. Traffic is a nightmare.

Blogging....

I am really trying to format this properly....but the program moves stuff and creates spaces or photos go in places that it shouldn't....so please bare with me!

Now back to your regular scheduled blogging....

Three Gorges Dam Project.

This thing was INCREDIBLE. I was actually amazed by this thing. It was huge. It cost just under 25 billion dollars to build and will be finished by 2011 (It started in 1994). The project was conceived by Dr. Sun Yat-Sen (remember him from Nanjing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Yat-sen ) in 1919. It is a Hydroelectricity generation and distributer which means it can produce and sell the power….(think the Hoover dam, it sales its power to Vegas). In just a few years, the dam will have sold enough power, that it will pay for it’s self. I am talking only in about 5 YEARS!! 25 BILLION DOLLARS! It will supply power for 3% of China’s population.

The shiplocks was the coolest part. Since the dam creates the river higher on one side and lower on the back side….the ships need to pass through them. So what happens, the huge ships go into the first lock. The water raises (or lowers depending on the direction it’s heading). As soon as it is level with the next lock, the doors open and the ship goes to the second lock. There are 5 all together. It takes 3 hours to go through all 5. They are in the process of designing a ship “elevator” for smaller boats.

The size of this project is just unbelievable. This is definitely a highlight of my trip. However it was short-lived cause after that, we drove to the train station for our first overnight train with the peeps.

BTW...my photos are not fuzzy....it all the pollution in the air!

Yangzi River Boat

Wow!!! DON’T go cheap if you do this tour. There are WAY nicer boats you can take. TRUST me. This is the part of the trip, I was not liking China. I wanted to leave. The boat was very nasty and saturated in mold. Our room was the most musky, moldy smell that I have every encountered. It was really bad, as well as the food. But when you go out and see the beauty of the river and its surroundings, you forget the smells and the horrible food. All you see is green slops for days and the locals growing their crops on the sides of mountain. Every foot was farmed for a crop of some sort primarily corn. It was just breath taking. We got to go off the “death boat” for a small day trip up a smaller river. We got to go on canoe looking boats and have boat trackers pull us up the river. It was an amazing thing to see. They worked so hard. They do this several times a day and only get around $10 per day. Tourism in China is down due to the Olympics and the Earthquake (May 12th). Especially in that area, tourism is down because we were pretty close to the center of the earthquake. We got to go through the Three Gorges. They were very neat to see.

Pictures:

1. Our boat looked a lot like this one
2. A huge cave
3. River view from the boat
4. View of the smaller river
5. Hill side crops
6. Another river view
7. One of the Three Gorges
8. A canoe boat with fellow Chinese tourists
9. Captain of our canoe boat
10. Boat Tracker
11. More Boat Trackers. They wear shoes made of rope. They have done so for centuries.
12. Boat Tracker taking a break. Most of the Trackers were elderly.
13. PULL!!! They did a great job.
14. Ryan and I at a top of a summit on the Yangzi River. We were just happy to be out of our “death boat”.

Nanjing

We took a bullet train to Nanjing. It wasn’t a scary train (we will talk about those later). The train station is super hectic and chaotic.

Nanjing use to be the capital of China until the early part of the 20th century. There wasn’t very much English and it wasn’t a city that many Westerners travel to. We took a bus to Dr. Sun Yat-Sen’s Mausoleum. The Chinese people believe the higher your coffin is, the closer to heaven you will be and look good for the Gods. So most of the Mausoleums were on top of hills and mountains facing south.

Pictures:

1. Ryan and I on the train. A few of our tour group members are behind us.
2. Our Group in front of the entrance of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen’s Mausoleum. 5 of us are from the USA. 4 are from Australia. 1 from England, 1 from South Africa (living in London) and 1 from New Zealand.
3. Ryan climbing the million stairs to the Mausoleum.
4. View of Nanjing from the Mausoleum.
5. A view from a cafe

Shanghai - First Stop

I can see why they call this the Cosmopolitan City. Shanghai is vibrant and fast-moving, truly breathtaking. They compare this city with New York meets Las Vegas. They have a little old, mixed with a very high tech new, mixed with Euro 18th century and neon everywhere. It was just really cool to see all the architecture. There were some amazing buildings. The people all tried to dress nice and had high heels on.

Our first day out, we were walking on Nanjing Street (a very expensive street that they closed to cars. Motorcycles, bicycles and scooters went on the street anyway. Think of the game Frogger.) Anyway, we were starving and scared out of our minds. We realized we are in a country that has NO clue what we are saying. All of a sudden, we see KFC, then Pizza Hut, then finally McDonalds! We were SO relived that we were not going to starve to death also know as the “China Diet”. McDonalds has some different items, but they had a FANTASTIC Egg McMuffin! We basically ate there every morning, even though it smelled horrific.

Ryan and I spent most of our first day on Nanjing Street. We realized quickly that there are these “fleas” that come up to you. “You want watch, you want shoes? We got purses!”. They would track all the “Western” looking people (American/Europeans) and follow them, begging us to follow them is some sketchy dark ally to go into a hidden shop. We did go once. It was quite the experience.

On the second day we went to the Bund. It is a part of where the Huangpu River meets the Pacific Ocean. It is pretty cool there. Buildings of all types. I really liked it there. We met a guy there named Liu. He followed us up and down the banks….practicing his English on us. The weird part is he only knew how to speak English when talking about his religion (Jehovah Witness). He was super nice. I tried to get as much info out of him as I could about China, but all he wanted to do is talk about God. After about an hour, we had to say good bye to our new friend Liu.

We ended up going across the river to the Oriental Pearl Tower, it is 468 meters. We were able to go up to the 350 meter deck, but it was so cloudy we couldn’t see anything….total waste of money.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_Pearl_Tower)

The next few days, we met our tour group and did this amazing walk around the city. Our tour guide, Charles, was super knowledgeable and took us to some places that we wouldn’t have gone by ourselves. It was really neat and eye opening at the same time.

I really enjoyed Shanghai. It was a little smelly, but probably my favorite city in China.

Pictures:

1. Ryan on our balcony of our Hotel
2. Nanjing Street
3. Liu and Ryan
4. A sign on the older part of Shanghai
5. Older part of Shanghai
6. Ally
7. Shanghai sky line from the Bund
8. Night view
9. Oriental Pearl up close
10. Acrobat show, there were 5 motorcycles in there!!
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

China Honeymoon Overview

China is this beautiful country. It was so much more beautiful than I imagined. Some things surprised me in a good way and some things I was taken back by. First off the people of China are nice and try very hard to communicate with you the best they know how. However Chinese standards and manors and American standards and manors are the EXACT opposite. Chinese tourists are very frustrating people to deal with. (I am not alone in this theory…Expedia.com did a survey. Chinese tourists were found to be the worst tourists. Just behind them were Indian tourists and French tourists. Japanese tourists were found to be the best, and I absolutely agree with that. American’s was in the middle.) There is so much poverty in the country; I feel that makes their standards lower than our standards. Like the cleanliness of the hotel rooms, indoor plumbing, smells that you can’t get away from. A 2 star hotel looks like a palace compared to what they live in. So many of them have no running water in their homes. They have to use a community toilet that the neighborhood shares and a local watering station to get water. It was very difficult to see. So you remember your mom saying to you…”You have to eat all your food, there is starving children in China” or something like that. I finally got what the moms were saying. The people there are very desperate to sell you ANYTHING! They will pull out all the stops to have you buy what they are selling. They are pretty persuasive as well. The country is DESPARATE to have a better life. Their government controls/suppresses so much of their lives…they tell you how many children you can have and what job you are going to do. Made me feel for them.

Their manors are just non existent compared to ours. They hack up luggies and spit them EVERYWHERE! All day long…all you can hear is them snorting up and spiting them out. Even inside of buildings. They also do snot rockets. It is so disgusting on so many levels. They also have no concept of what “lines” do. They crowed entrances and cash registers. We will be in a single file line to buy tickets or get food and they cut right in front of you. At first, I thought they were doing it to “us”, but then realized that they do it to everyone. It is so chaotic and unorganized. Ryan and I were so sick of people early on. MILLIONS of people everywhere. We were going to a “small” city and I asked our tour guide how many people? And he said, “7 million.” WOW, holy people. Another thing that disgusted me on every level was that I seen several toddlers and infants with no pants on. They let them wonder around, pooping and peeing on everything. Inside of busses, on the streets, subways. Just horrific. I know you can’t afford diapers, but come on! Cloth diapers are WAY better than nothing. It was so gross and very disturbing.

They are so much advanced in their recycle programs though. This surprised me. I thought I would see trash everywhere, but I didn’t. And if there was trash, it would be picked up in the night by a cleaning crew. Another thing that surprised me was they had automatic sinks everywhere. Even at gross truck stops.

Overall, Ryan and I had a once and a lifetime experience and adventure. We did so many things and learned so much. It gave us a better understanding of people and we appreciate the people in our lives and all the material things we are blessed with. Especially with indoor, working plumbing!

Wedding Bliss

Ryan and I were married in Las Vegas, Nevada on April 26th, 2008. We had our ceremony in an outside gazebo at the Flamingo inside of their wildlife habitat. No Elvis in sight! Our reception was held at Battista’s Hole in the Wall Restaurant. I was this great Italian place with original owners. Very cute and quant. I wouldn’t have changed a thing! Well maybe the getting sick and missing most of the reception part.

To view a slide show: http://chelsea-nicole.com/slideshows/jamie_and_ryan/
I will try to get more up soon. I am having problems with the CD of photos. The photos were taken by the VERY talented Chelsea Nicole Photography.

Thank you so much to our friends and especially our family for making the journey out to Vegas.