Last day in India

We can't believe it, but our time in India and in Asia is coming to a close tonight. We fly to Milan, Italy at 5AM tomorrow morning. We have really enjoyed our time here in India, but we both agree that it has been an exhausting two and a half weeks. We have had quite a few 110+ degree days in and around Delhi and more hot and humid days in Calcutta with heat indexes over 110 degrees.

Internet has been widely available in India, but largely of very low quality connections and computers in dark, hot, and dirty little rooms. We have decided to limit our time online even though it is often dirt cheap, ~50 cents per hour. We will do what we can to get more updates up, but our Laos, Thailand, and India adventure stories and pictures may not make much of an entrance until we are back home in 'the states'.

the End of China

FENGHUANG AND THE EPIC JOURNEY OUT OF CHINA
Fenghuang is a very cool town with guesthouses and restaurants on stilts lining the river. During the day, we enjoyed the shops, the wonderful homemade peanut and ginger candy, the food vendors, and all the interesting animals, reptiles, and insects in the front of all the restaurants. From our balcony we would watch floating candles of all shapes, colors, and sizes float down the river each night. The streets and river were beautifully lit by red lanterns and lights. Karoke music could be heard coming from many of the touristy bars and restuarants. Except for the touts, the area was more relaxed than the bigger cities and we enjoyed 2 nights in town.

When leaving Fenguang, we headed to where our guidebook told us the bus station was located. When we arrived on the corner where the station should be, it was not there. We asked several people where the bus station was by pointing to the word "bus station" and "Jishou" we had written down in Chinese. We got several finger points to keep heading down the street. Tommy and I walked about 5 minutes before asking someone else the same question. They pointed further down the street where we were heading. About 5 -10 minutes later, we once again asked and were pointed further down the street. At this point we were heading out of the city with less and less people, shops, and cars around us, but we kept walking. We got pointed further and further up the same street, then directed to take a left, pointed up a hill, until about 1 hour later, when we are totally out of the city, we found the bus station. We were instantly rushed onto a bus to Jishou and took off.

Once in Jishou, we waited in line for train tickets. We asked for 2 night train, hard or soft sleepers to Guilin, but were told "no", without any explanation of if they were sold out, if there was not train to Guilin, or if she just didn't understand what we were asking. After a while, a university student came to our rescue and enquired about our ticket when it was his turn in line. He learned that there was no direct train to Guilin. So, we bought tickets to a town where we would be able to get a connecting train to Guilin. We had to buy tickets for the following night since that night they only had standing seats on the 8 hour night train. Once we checked into a hotel, we began to realize that our tickets for the following night were standing tickets as well. We decided to work it out in the morning.

In the morning, we headed down to the tourist office in the hotel where no one speak English. They called a girl, who seemed to be a student and not a travel agent, to talk to us. After a long time of trying to help us, she decided to just take us to the train station to talk to the ticket attendant. Once there, she confirmed only standing seats were avaliable for that night and the next several nights. With only a little time left in China and the need to be heading out of the country, we decided we had to leave town that day, going somewhere. Our new friend hopped into a taxi and went with us to the bus station. We decided Kunming should be our next destination, from where we could head south to the border of Laos. Since there is no direct bus there, we had to go to Guiyang first, but there is no bus to Guiyang, so we had to take a bus to a smaller city that is several hours away. We got a bus ticket to this small town and had to go back to the train station to sell back our train tickets. We hopped back into a cab, sold our tickets at the train station, stopped for lunch, said good-bye to our friend, taxied back to the bus station, and arrived just in time. Once we get to the small town, we immediately found a bus (the last bus of the day) leaving for Guiyang in literally 4 minutes. We arrived around 11pm in Guiyang, exhausted by the long day, only to wander around looking for several hotels in the guidebook that we never found. Finally aroun 1am, we found an affordable place to settle in for the night, that was not listed in the guidebook.

From Guiyang, we flew to Kunming where we saw more foreigners the first few hours than we had seen our whole time in China. We stayed by the university and enjoyed the college feel of the area, with all the fun shops, great restaurants, and relaxed vibe. We stayed 2 nights and took a flight to Jinghong. Then after several bus rides, a night's stay in a scary place, and another bus ride, we finally made it to Laos!!!

A FEW THOUGHTS ON CHINA
Tommy and I enjoyed our time in China, but wish we would have had more time to travel at leisure and to soak up the cities we were in. Especially for the last week in China, we felt that we were bogged down by travel difficulties and delays due to being off the main foreign tourist track and in the end, did not really get to experience the cities as deeply as we had wanted. Several times we became frustrated with situations because we were under such time constraints that we really did not get to relax and take in what was around us. We hate that this happened and took on a slower and more meaningful way of travelling once we came to Laos.

China had its moments of frustrations, but overall, the people there were so genuine, curious, and kind. We were often in situations where we needed help and an English speaking student would come to our aid in order to help us, with no strings attached. We even offered to pay them at times for their help, but they would decline. Not only the many students we met, but the other passengers on the train who felt it was their duty to look after us, help us with our bags, and tell us when to get off the train, made trips easier. On many occasions Tommy and I entered a restaurant where it not only had an all Chinese menu, but no one spoke English. The owners and staff at these restaurants were more than happy to try and accomodate us. We were even taken into the kitchens where we could point and select what we wanted to eat. Many times someone else in the restaurant would be able to speak enough English to help us order. On one occassion in Xi'an, we sat with the police captain of the south district of town and the owner, who was a detective. Being that only the police captain spoke English, he helped us order food and carry on conversations with the owner and curious patrons. They even called in another officer, a young, new man on the force, to come and practice his English with us.

We had so many positive encounters with people and their excitement upon meeting us was infectious. I very, very rarely felt uneasy about who we were talking to or their motivation for talking to us. Our conversations with locals were out of sheer interest about one another and not about what they could sell us or how to scam us out of money. This has been even clearer in hindsight after our experiences in Thailand and India. I cannot think of one time that I felt unsafe, even walking around at 1 a.m. in an unfamiliar town. Despite some annoyances that every city has, anywhere in the world, it was such a great and unique experience to visit China. One final note, we definately saw less cats in Bejing than elsewhere in China, but I don't think there was any less spitting.

In India and still behind on Blog posts

Kristin and I made it to India this afternoon. It was just a 2 hour flight from Bangkok to Calcutta. The bangkok airport was new, huge, and very impressive. Once here we shared a taxi with a traveling couple from Spain to the main area with guest houses for tourists. It was an eye opening hour ride. The streets were packed with motorbikes, taxis, packed buses, pedal rickshaws, person pulled rickshaws, and an odd cow or two. The traffic appeared chaotic at times, well most of the time. There are no lines on the road and one minute there may be 3 or 4 rows of traffic all going in your direction and the next minute two of those are now traveling in the other direction. Horns are used every few seconds to tell other cars what you are doing or that you don't like what they are doing. Even with all the chaos, heat and humidity, and exhaust no one seemed to be getting particularly angry. We have checked into somewhere with air conditioning, bought a used copy of the latest edition of the India Lonely Planet guide, eaten a little meal, and now are at an internet cafe. We will study up on the book this evening to better plan our time here. We will likely spend a day or two more here and then head north west in the direction of Delhi.


A couple of other updates:

• We sold the VW bus that we drove out west on ebay. Tommy's sister Sara and her fiance Nick did all of the physical work for the storage and sale of the bus. THANKS SO MUCH SARA AND NICK!
  
• I shaved my beard a week ago before spending a week in the sun at the beach
• We spent a week on an island in Thailand and stayed in a nice bungalow just a few feet from a beautiful bay.
• Kristin ran for one hour straight for the first time ever this weekend in Bangkok!
  
• Tommy got to play ultimate for the first time since Quito in late January while in Bangkok
• We heard "Lumberton, NC" mentioned on the news and even saw a video of a second or two of Bill Clinton's recent speech from a front porch in town.
• In a single twenty minute walk in Bangkok we past over 12 Seven-Eleven stores. In some places there was more than one on every corner!
  
• The cheapest beer we could find in Thailand was an 80 cent can of Thai beer, quite disappointing after the price and quality in China and Laos. The next cheapest beer that we could find (a dollar ~22oz beer in a bottle) turned out to be very bad white wine when we took the first surprising sip.

We would love to hear from one reading some of the blog. Please send us emails or leave a comment here on the blog or one our photo site.

Fenghuang - Travel then riverside

When we arrive in Yichang we are clearly off of the beaten backpacker track. We are not off the track, for there are millions of local Chinese around us, but there are not other foreigners around. Big city, fancy hotel, break from road, used gym twice, 1:30 train to Jishou, lucky evening bus to Fenghuang, girls helped us find cheap room, beautiful old city (new city outside), photographers, took it easy, two nights, bus back to Jishou----ever going to get to leave Jishou?

It is time to go eat dinner now, more to come. We are almost caught up with China entries.

Xián

After several games of Farkle, waking up to a strange Chinese man peering down at my face, and having to sleep in a different section of the train than Tommy, we arrive in Xián. Once again we have survived a smokey, cramped night on a hard-sleeper. Xián is a lot like Pingyao in the fact that it still contains aspects of ancient arcitecture, has a bell tower, a drum tower, and a large wall surrounding the city. It is also like Beijing and Shanghai, with its large population, busy streets, and big buildings. Once again we see a large number of vendors and our faith in "you can buy anything to eat on a stick" is restored. The Muslim Quarter is an interesting area that houses the Great Mosque and several other, smaller mosques. All the mosques, even the Great one, are not very visible from the street and seem to be hidden throughout the Muslim Quarter. There are also a lot of food vendors, where I was able to find, once again, some awesome steamed buns. Tommy found some delicious potatoes that looked to be roasted to perfection. As the cook put the bowl down in front of Tommy, we were both surprised by the jiggling motion the potatoes made as the bowl hit the table. As soon as Tommy took a bite, it was confirmed that he was not eating potatoes. He was in fact eating stir-fried spicy cubes of bean paste, which basically looked like transparent cubes of jello. We found several other food items made of bean - a green bean cake and a tasty looking treat that I thought would be chocolate, but turned out to be rice with dark bean paste. After this, I was done with the food tastings for a while.

WALMART IN CHINA
Tommy and I discovered a Walmart listed on the map of Xián that our hostel provided. We quickly found the large Walmart sign and proceeded to follow sign after sign, arrow after arrow, leading us in circles until we finally found the store, no where near the initial sign or the icon on the map. I cannot compare the prices of large bags of MSG, but for the rest - if you thought an American Walmart was cheap, you should check out Chinese Walmart!! Tommy and I got several bags full of juice, beer, water, and food for $11. We were very excited.

TERRACOTTA WARRIORS
The next day, Tommy and I set out to visit the Terracotta Warriors Museum with a tour group from our hostel. Outside of the museum, there is a gift shop where you can meet the man who discovered the Terracotta Warriors. He use to be a farmer, but has now been given the job of sitting inside at a desk all day signing books bought in the gift shop. By the look on his face, he is rethinking his decision of disclosing his discovery to others. The Terracotta Warriors and Horses are life size and colorless replicas of the warriors, horses, and chariots back in the day (the original colors quickly disappeared from the warriors and horses once unearthed) . It is an incredible excavation site and the process of excavating the warriors and horses is still ongoing. They are working on reconstructing those they excavate. It takes one person one year to restore one warrior. All of the warriors excavated differ slightly from one another, so no two warriors are the same, not even their faces. It was incredible to see all of the warriors and horses lined up in the vast pit. It is quite an experience.

That night we go for a short run around the city. Running on the streets of Xián makes you feel like you are running from someone, since you have to dodge people, jump out of the way of bikes carrying packages the size of refrigerators, steer clear of rabid looking dogs, get out of the way of vendors and their carts, etc. We found our way to the outside of the wall, which has a thin park that wraps around it. Many people come here to practice Tai Chi, meditate, jog, dance, walk backwards, and yell. This was a great people watching area.

The next day, Tommy and I decide we want to go for another run, but somewhere less crowded. We opt to pay the small fee and head up on top of the wall. The wall that surrounds Xián is 13m high and 13 km long. We have a wonderful jog around the wall, where we can see people flying kites, playing in the parks, and going on with daily life. The air is a little tough on the body, between the dry air and the smog. My head started to throb and my throat swelled up thick for the next day. Good luck to all those athletes heading to Beijing! After our run, we headed to the Big Goose Pagoda by bus.


TIBETAN RIOTS CHANGE PLANS
Our last day in Xián, we checked out and sat in the hostel lobby without a plan of where to go next. The riots in Llasa, along with the spreading unrest throughout China, made us reevaluate our plans. We had planned on heading west to Xiahe, which is not actually in Tibet, but has a large Tibetan population. We had heard that the government was not allowing foreigners into this town, along with several other towns we were thinking of heading to. Since all the media was being strictly censored, we were not sure of exactly what towns to the southwest we could head to.

So after a period of indecision due to this uncertain circumstance, our plan of attack was to head to south to Luoyang, Yichang, and Fenghuang. This route was the next most western train line after the one we were origanially planning on taking. This route was not on the Tiebian plateau and appeared to be safely away from the expanding Tibetan protests. Standing in the rain, we get train tickets for the first train out of Xián and run back to the hostel to get our bags. It is pouring rain and we are turned down by every cab driver we asked to take us to the train station. A girl nearby tells us to hop on bus 300 and that will take us to the train station. Tommy and I run for the bus, hop on, and ride out of town towards the station.

After 10 minutes on the bus, we soon take a turn and begin to head in the wrong direction, away from the train station. When shown the word "train station", the ticket attendant motions for us to get off the bus where we are and pointed in the direction of the station. We hop off the bus and start running down the street in the direction of the train station. After a few moments of not being sure if we would make it in time or not and not being able to determire where any of the busses passing us were going, we flag down another bus and point in our book to the word "train station" and the driver motions for us to get on. Two stops later, the bus driver motions for us to get off. We are not at the station, but we think that we can see it. The train will leave in less than 15 minutes. We run until we get to the station and push our way through the mass of people waiting for other trains until we get to ours. The whistle is blowing and our train is just about to take off. We jump on the train and it begins to move. Soaking wet and out of breath, we have made it!

Louyang - Budda Caves and Train Riding

THERE ARE TWO FOREIGNERS ON THE TRAIN
The trip to Louyang was via a "hard seat" on a train. A "hard seat" means that we have an assigned section of a bench seat. There are sets of benches facing each other on either side of a center isle. They are something like a booth at McDonald's but the table between the seats was much smaller. We are pretty sure we were the only foreigners on the whole train, which had around 15 cars of 50 to 150 people per car depending on the type of car. The whole train was full, which meant we were sitting in pretty close quarters with our fellow passengers, something like a full subway car. It was a great experience and I am finding it hard to fully describe the experience here. The other travellers were from a different world. Most seemed to be local farmers or entire families and many did not ride as far as we did. The train stopped every 30 minutes or so to pick up and drop off passengers.

At first it did not appear that anyone could speak any English outside of "Hello". The people in the seat facing us had been communicating with us for a while by pointing, gesturing, and writing in our common language, aribic numerals. We had gathered how old we all were and where we were going and where we had been, but not much more. A couple of hours into the trip fellow around our age showed up with a little note, in good english, asking us our names and where we were from. We wrote our answer and passed the note back. This got everyone around interested. After a few volleys with our mystery english speaker we convinced him to come up and talk with us. He was a PhD student in aerospace engineering on his way to have a meeting with an oil company about some thing the university was helping them with. I did not cease to be amazed at how light the Chinese travel. For this two day and one night trip, four hours from home, he was carrying..... a laptop briefcase. It was big enough for a little bit more than his laptop and power supply, but I doubt it was big enough for even one extra shirt.

Our whole section of the train had a grand time the last hour of the trip. Our new interpreter asked us questions that our traveling companions had been mulling over for the last couple of hours. Did we have any kids? What were our jobs? Did we like China? Did we like President Bush? What did we think about the war with Iraq? (they did not seem to like either of these things, but in general they did seem to like the US). Do you know who Yao Ming is? (we got this question on a number of occations) We saw that even though we were from very different worlds we had plenty of humaness in common. We also had fancy cell phones in common, although many of our traveling buddies outdid us in that regard. Everyone in China seems to have a cell phone that doubles as a music player and mini-PDA, something like a Blackberry but smaller.

The train got into town pretty late, 11PM?, and it was raining. We were convinced to follow on foot a man and a lady who offered to take us to the hotel we had choosen from our guidebook. We weren't sure that it would at first, but this worked out fine, more or less. We were now very clearly off of the international backpacker trail. So far in China we had stayed at backpacker hostels which cateered, more or less, to our English speaking foreinger needs. Our hotel this night spoke enough English to get by, but there was diffently not the same communial feel of our past hostels.

While checking out the next morning we met Brian, a backpacker from Hong Kong who spoke perfect English. He agreed to accompany us to the train station to help us buy our tickets for the next day. This was a godsend. Then he joined us for lunch, where he helped us order from an all Chinese menu. This was one of our best and cheapest meals from anywhere in China. We were all getting along well together and decided to travel together to the big tourist draw of the area, ancient buddist caves outside of town.

We rode bus number 81 to the end of the line and found the other dozen forienrs in town at the budda caves (along with hundreds of Chinese tourists). We were enjoying ourselves, but not overly impressed at first. Then, not expecting much more, we came to the top of a huge steep band of stairs and our jaws dropped. There were the biggest statues I had every seen. Well, I am sure Mount Rushmore is much bigger, but you are not this close to it. I am glad I did not have high expectations so that I could truely be wonderfully surprised by the size and beauty of this mammoths. In total there were tens of thousands of buddas. We wondered around of a few hours and got some good pictures, which almost took themselves.

From Louyang

That night we took a late night train over night to Ychang, around 11 hours away. Our train did not leave until after 1AM which gave us some time to sit around the train station. Because night trains are popular for long routes the train station was rather full of people even at this hour. We were approached by a couple of poeple wanted to say hello and practice their English. We talked to the student below for quite a while. He told us that he was studying English at a local university and that his professors told him to practice his English whenever had got a chance to talk to foreingers. He said we were the first he had ever talked with! He also told us that the way we westerners say "Yao Ming" means "kill you" because we say the words flat and not with the correct tones. We even say Beijing to mean "hurt you". This guy was waiting for a 5 AM bus to go a few hours home for the weekend. He was in great spirits, perhaps because he was traveling so light! At one point he wanted to show us how he had just been listening to some American music on his Ipod, so he pulled it from his over the sholder 'briefcase' type bag. It appeared to be the only thing in the bag! Now that is traveling light.

Pingyao

From Bejing and Pi...

Pingyao is a neat old cirty surrounded by a large wall. It looks like it has been dropped down right in the middle of a booming city, since outside the walls, it seems just like all the other busy cities of China. Inside the walls, motor vehicle traffic is very limited and the streets are quieter, more laid back, and not as smoggy (although it is a very dry area and quite dusty). Although the city of Pingyao consists of the area inside and outside the wall, inside-the-walls locals seem to only acknowledge Pingyao as the area within the walls.

CITY WALLS
We spend our first day exploring the street and walk on top of the large wall that surrounds the city. Solar panels are scattered about the tiled rooftops, as well as piles of corn, chickens, and cats. From the wall, we see a mass of gray buildings splashed with dots of red from the lanterns that line the streets. The slower pace and the quietness is a much needed relief from the large, busy cities we had grown accustom to. Pingyao is the first city of many to come where we hear fireworks set off at noon for a lunch time announcement. In Pingyao, there are not nearly as many food vendors as there were in the larger cities of Shanghai and Beijing, so we eat at several different restaurants that prove to be cheap and convenient. Finding the historical places on our own proves not to be easy. Our first day, we try to find several places of interest without any luck, since everything in this town looks identical! We end up playing with a girl about 8 years old and her toy that is equivalent to our hacky sack. The toy has several bright feathers with a flat disk attatched to the bottom. It is a popular game with the Chinese, and several older adults enthusiastically stopped to kick it a few times with us as well. The little girl seemed to have fun playing with us and sporadically would say either "Thank you very much", "So Sorry", or "Hello". She remained very serious the whole time and only allowed herself to smile and laugh a couple times when she seemed like she couldn't contain it any longer - usually this was after Tommy or I did something ridiculous. The game ended about 45 minutes later when she kicked the toy too high and it landed on the roof. Later, Tommy and I bought another one and found the little girl the next day so that we could give her a new toy. She didn't know what to do, but as we walked away and turned around, she had run in to get her mom to show her mom who had given her the gift.

Pingyao are beautiful at night with red lanterns lighting up the streets. We had a wonderful time roaming the streets until someone tried to tackle Tommy for his water bottle that was still mostly full. Luckily, after a couple of minutes of trying to lose the guy, a shopkeeper came out and yelled at the guy. This guy was one of several people that tried to grab our bottles before they were empty in order to add it to their recycling pile. Who knew you had to conceal your water bottles from theft? But, this gentleman's elevator did not seem to go all the way to the top floor. We saw a few other bottle collectors like this, but most collectors were fairly well dressed and seemed very normal.

The next day we had set out to meet Mr. Lui, who we read about in the Lonely Planet as a recommended tour guide. We had run into him on the street the previous day and he showed us a large stack of business cards he had collected from previous tourists with good reviews written on the backs of each. Since we had had no luck finding places that day, we set up to meet him at 9:30AM the next day. Of course, Tommy and I were running behind. Breakfast took longer for our hostel to make, since the electricity was out. We were 15 minutes late and he was not at our meeting spot. The L.P. listed his hostel, so we headed in search of Mr. Lui. We find him at the hostel and Lo' and Behold, there must be 2 Mr. Lui's because this is not the man we talked to before. The real Mr. Lui gives us a great 3 hour tour of the city. Throughout China, we often went into museums, temples, and other sights without gaining much knowledge since information was given mostly in Chinese, so getting a tour guide when affordable, was very beneficial.

Before hopping on the train for Xián, Tommy and I decide to bike an hour outside of town to visit a temple. It is a stressful ride getting out of the city due to cars, bikes, scooters, and people coming from every direction, but soon we are riding on more of a rural highway and have a nice ride on our flat-tired, loose steering, broken seat, one-speed bikes to the temple. They were top Chinese quality! We only stay at the temple for a short time, since we really did not know what all we are looking at. When we head back into town, the one outside of the city walls, traffic has gotten crazier and we have to walk the rest of the way until we get to the walls.


The beutiful greyness of the city as seen from the city walls. And, yes that is a big screen TV on the wall. It seemed to show videos for Chinese tourists.

Beijing

LESSONS FROM OUR FIRST NIGHT TRAIN
Our first night train experience proved to be a good one. We began to experience and learn several important philosophies held by the Chinese culture.

1. Lines: What's the point in queing? You get where you are going much faster by pushing and jumping people in line. While the gate entrance looks like it can only fit one person through at a time, if you push hard enough, you can get at least 6 people through at once. Wave your ticket wildly up in the air as you squeeze through the gate. You may not have been able to get your ticket punched, but I am sure that the sweaty, exasperated ticket attendant saw yours through the 10 tickets in her face.

2. Time: Although you have plenty of time to walk to get on the train from when the ticket attendant begins to let people through, you should still run like hell and fantically push people out of the way until you get safely on the train. You never know if the train will decide to leave early. On later trains, we learn more....

3. Although the signs say "no smoking", you can still smoke in the doorways and blow smoke into the cabin areas.

4. Spitting: Hoking lugies can be done anywhere, even on the floors of trains. If you want to be more polite and spit in the toilet, just open the bathroom door and let one fly. I am sure you will get close enough.

We also found that people we always more than happy to help us out. Not only did we get help finding our sleepers or seats (usually this consisted of 10 people passing around our tickets and talking to each other for a few minutes before more people came over to see what was going on and then we would find our place), but fellow travellers also deemed it their responsibility to tell us when it was our time to get off the train. Most of the time we had no idea when we should be getting off, since one stop looked like another and we were never at our destination on time. So when we would arrive at our stop, our non-english speaking travellers would point excitedly to the exit and would help pull our bags down from the rack in order to get off the train.

ARRIVE IN BEIJING
So, after a night on the train and a ride on the metro, Tommy and I set out to find the Leo Hostel in Beijing. We quickly found the road that the hostel was off of and proceeded to walk around for hours trying to find the actual road the hostel was on. We began to wander down side streets and finally found the Leo Hostel tucked away in a busy market street. We soon realized that our maps of China would not be very reliable since, not only were the street names different in our book, but there was so much construction throughout every city, things just changed so quickly. Despite this, we still persistantly tried to find locations (hostels, banks, restaurants, etc) that seemed to have vanished.

TIANANMEN SQUARE AND THE FORBIDDEN CITY

We arrived around 10am at the hostel and used our first day in Beijing to explore Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Tiananmen Square, very impressive in size, can hold up to a million people. Bags are searched upon entry into the square, while soldiers patrol on foot throughout. In order to get to the Forbidden City, Tommy and I had to cross through the square first. Once at the Forbidden City, we walked around the grounds for hours. The Forbidden City is very expansive and it would take a whole day to read all of the information provided. This city is where the emperors once lived with all of their wives, family, children, concubines, administrators, etc. We meandered through rooms that had been turned into museums, courtyards and alleys, many different halls, quarters, etc. All of the architecture was beautiful. Some areas we were unable to see do to extensive remodeling.

A REALLY REALLY BIG DINNER

From Bejing and Pi...

Exhausted and hungry after a full day, Tommy and I sat down in a restaurant across the street from our hostel. Not learning from previous experiences, we ordered many different dishes - corn, spring rolls, soup, pork, and peanuts with greens. With all the dishes being a good size dish, we could have done well with just the soup! The amazement of just how cheap the food was blinded us to the fact we were ordering, once again, a large amount of food! We rolled back to the hostel to get to bed early.

THE GREAT WALL

Up at 7am, we head out with 7 others on a tour hosted by Leo Hostel of the Great Wall. We drive for about 1 hr, stopping about 10 minutes before we get there to pick up a little old lady from the local village that was maybe four and a half feet tall and spoke no english. Our minivan driver drops us off in the middle of nowhere and tells us that our guide (the lady from the village) will walk us to the wall. He hops back in the van and takes off. Everyone looks at each other with a look of confusion and amusement. After pointing to her "No Smoking" sign our little lady waves us on and takes off up a path with her walking stick in hand. We hike for about 30 minutes, stopping at times when our guide needs to sit down for a minute, until we finally see the wall. We climb up to it and look in amazement at the remenants of this remarkable structure. Our group continues for about 2 1/2 hours on the wall, only passing one other local man who is out for a stroll. We pass through watchtowers, where we climbed up and could see the Great Wall weaving in and out of small valleys, extending for miles. The whole experience was incredible.

The section of the wall we were walking on was more remote and much, much less visited by tourists than some other more well known sections. Nothing had been restored (we don't think), so some areas were still intact, while others were not. Our guide lead us 30 minutes down another path that brought us to our driver. We headed into a restaurant in a tiny village where the 9 members of our group ate a wonderful local family-style meal of all different meats, veggies, rice, and noodles.

CHINESE ACROBATIC SHOW
Once back in town, we decide to find an acrobatic show recommended by our L.P. book. It takes us more than an hour to find the theatre (eventhough it should have taken 15 minutes. The map in the book showed it over a block away from its actual location) and we buy tickets for the show that night. We figure it must be good since there is a picture outside of the theatre with Mr. Bean and the troupe of acrobats. The show was a lot of fun with some very amazing tricks. There were about 7 or 8 acts, all of which were impressive and used a large spectrum of props, ranging from hats to drums to playing cards to ribbons to hoops, etc. That night at the hostel, Tommy and I got our train tickets for a night train to Pingyao for the following day. We also have Leo Hostel call and get us reservations at their sister hostel in Pingyao, which means they will pick us up from the train station for free!

SHOPPING AND BOMB SHELTERS
The next day, with our bags safely stored at Leo, we set out to explore more of the town. We first head to find some warmer clothes that we have been lacking since getting to China. I find a nice, cheap down jacket and Tommy finds a warm vest. Next we head to the pearl market, where there are more vendors selling the same products than I have ever seen. We have good fun looking around and seeing the different qualities of pearls, but are soon ready to move on. We stumble upon the entrance of Beijing's underground tunnel, which we were looking for, but thought it was somewhere else. We take a quick, but interesting tour beneath the streets of Beijing and through some of the tunnel system. It was built in the Cold War Era as a network of bomb shelters that would hold 300,000 people. After the tour, we headed back to get our bags at the hostel and on to the train station for the night train to Pingyao.

Recap of China - Shanghai

Tommy eating grilled spicy squid on a stick.


EXCUSES FOR DELAY IN BLOG UPDATES
While we just arrived in Thailand yesterday we are just starting our China blogging. This is due to China's tight internet censorship, which includes blogger/blogspot. When we first got to China it looked like we would be able to continue our posts by using some websites that allow you to bypass various types of internet firewalls. They are for people who want to post blogs from China and others who want to visit their Facebook page while at work at IBM. However, about a week into our time in China, just as we were getting comfortable enough with everything that we were ready to spend some time inside blogging, the riots in Tibet started and China really tightened up it's internet censorship. We then found our selves several places with very slow internet, power disruptions, and very few options to communicate in English. Pretty soon we decided to try to start up the blog again in Laos.

Well, when we got to Laos there was too much to do during the day to sit in an internet cafe and the curfew at night kept us from working late. Soon the task of catching up on the blog' began to grow into a labor intensive task that has seemed easier to push out one more day than starting at the stop by an internet cafe to quickly check email. Finally, the time has come to tackle the task. It is very hot, humid, and sunny outside and some time in the AC is a welcome reprieve.

ARRIVAL IN ASIA
Now, Shanghai. Shanghai was our first stop off the beaten path on our own. In Ecuador Phillip and Melissa were always near at hand to translate language and interpret the culture. New Zealand was easy. Now we were in Asia and all on our own. The trip from the airport to the first subway stop was via the world's first maglev (magnetically levitated) train. Very cool! It was a fast smooth ride. The subway was also not too difficult. It was similar to subways in the states. The ticket machines even had an English setting. Things started to get a little bit more harrowing once we were ready to leave the subway.

Now we were about to face the unorganized jittering world of the streets of a Chinese city. People are everywhere, horns of all pitches and volumes are honking everywhere, and it is starting to rain, hard. Our map says that our hostel, which we have already booked online, is about a mile away. We are unsure of who, if anyone speaks English. We had been told different things and had not conversed in English to anyone on our journey from the airport to here. Just as we were happy we had the map correctly oriented and decided we would try to flag down a cab a Chinese man in business attire asked us in perfect accent-free English if we needed any help. Maybe this would be easy after all. Without much trouble, but basically no English, we got a cab to take us right to our hostel. This trip went fairly smoothly and I think gave us a little boast of comfort.

Shanghai was cold, probably in the low to middle 40's. When we got into the hostel lobby, which looked quite nice, it was at least as cold inside as outside. You could clearly see the breath of the lady checking us in. She spoke pretty good English. At least we know we are safe while inside. The room was a little warmer, but not by much. There was no heat to mention of. Tired from an overnight flight (Since she couldn't get to sleep Kristin spent almost the entire flight watching movies on her personal screen attached to the seat in front of her, 4 or 5 movies in total I believe) and the stress of navigating to our hostel in this new world we napped until dinner time.

FIRST MEAL IN CHINA
Dinner time also meant, night time. If we were a little unsure of ourselves on the city streets in the day we were not ready to venture too far out of sight of the hostel at night for fear we may not be able to find it again. We made our way to Steak King just two turns away at the recommendation of the hostel. The staff their spoke English and had a more or less legible English menu. The food was great and we started our trend of ordering too much food. How can a bowl of soup for $1.20 be big enough for 3 people?


The next days were basically spent exploring the city on foot. We quickly learned more or less what to expect and had a pretty easy time getting around. Most poeple did not seem to speak English, at least not more than Hello and Goodbye, but enough people did speak enough English that it was not really a problem. Pretty soon the subway was a piece of cake and we could find food whenever we wanted. We saw and experienced many firsts. Most of these were not really gross, or disgusting, just different from at home. For example our first squat toilet (at least Tommy's first squater was clean, many later toilets have been disgusting), street food, street markets, and overloaded bikes and scooters.

BAD AIR
It was not until an hour or two before sunset during our second day exploring the city that Kristin realizes that maybe that weather forecast we saw last night was correct. That this is a blue sky. The smog in the city was so bad that we had thought that it had been incredibly overcast the last couple of days. Like one of those winter days that just seems to stay dark all day. But, we discovered that if you looked straight up, where you were looking through the least amount of smog, that you could get a hint of blue sky. Thank goodness for the clean air regulations that we do have in the states.

PEOPLE EVERYWHERE
There are people everywhere, really everywhere, but rather few cars. The roads are full, but it is only maybe half car traffic, the rest is bikes, scooters, and the many electric bikes. There were around 4 or 5 million people in all of New Zealand. There were 8 million within the city limits of Shanghai! This was a big change from our recent surroundings!

There were also huge skyscrapers everywhere. Not just in one downtown area like the cities I have been to in the US, but miles from the center of town too. Most of these seem to apartment buildings, 20, 30, or 40 stories high. And in groups of one to ten buildings. We went to an observation deck on the 70th floor of the tallest building in China. Literaly as far as you could see in every direction there were skyscrapers. Granted that due to smog you could not see all that far. Across the street from this building was a nearly completed building which will be the new tallest building in China when completed. The construction rate in Shanghai, and the rest of China, was noticeable and rapid. The area in Shanghai where these two buildings now stand was all farmland just a dozen years ago! The land on which all of these buildings stand was farmland just 12 years ago!


SOME INTERESTING SITES IN SHANGHAI

Many, well most every, street is lined with some sort of vendor. They sell everything from sunglasses to live chickens, and cell phones to live turtles and fish. Here is one vendor's setup where he will sell you a very freshly cleaned turtle or fish. He was just one of several similar vendors on this street. I motioned to ask if I could take this picture and he said it was fine. Then he got up and moved, it appeared he did so not because he did not want to be in the picture but because he did not want to mess up my picture of his 'store' It was a very thoughtful gesture.

STIR FRY RESTAURANT....ON A BICYCLE

Bicycle based (often actually tricycles) businesses were very common here and, we have since learned, across most of Asia as well. Here is a common example of store front and kitchen all built into the back half of a bicycle.

ELECTRIC DELIVERY BICYCLE

Here is a nice example of two sites I could not get enough of: electric bicycles and bicycles carrying what would have looked like an amazing large load before I arrived in China. We saw a couple of bikes carrying loads of chucks of styrofoam that made your jaw drop, but I did not get a picture of them. It looked like an ant carrying a bumble bee.


ACTIVE DECENTRALIZED RECYCLING

I would be willing to bet that over 90%, maybe over 99%, of recyclables in Shanghai (and the other Chinese cities we visited) are recycled. There seemed to be about 1 recyclable collector for every 2 vendors. There were cardboard collectors, many plastic bottle collectors, other plastic collectors, metal collectors, etc. Again, many of these were bicycle based businesses. They dug through trashcans and the cardboard guys rang a bell for shops/vendors to bring out their cardboard as he passed. There were so many of them, especially the people collecting plastic bottles that I would think it rare for a bottle to last 15 minutes in a trash can. There were also many garbage collectors who swept the streets and emptied the many small city trash cans. These folks take their collections to one of the many places that buy the recyclables. From the street view there is nothing centralized about this system at all. Many, many, many independent collectors and many, many independent buyers. If Waste Industries ever comes to China millions of people would be out of work.

We are in China

We have been in Shanghai for about three days now. We have been entering the new world slowly, like tip-toeing into the cold ocean. After another afternoon on the town today we will take an overnight train to Beijing, where we will spend a few days. From here we will head west then south, on a combination of trains and buses and through everything from cities, villages, mountains, plains, sun, and snow. Pictures and more blog about Shanghai and the rest to come soon.

Last week in NZ - caves, dolphins, mussells, sell car

Tuesday, Feb 26: After using the internet at a local hot spot in Queenstown, we head to Christchurch and after a beautiful drive arrive at our hostel late in the evening.

Wednesday, Feb 27: A nice simple day. We shop some used bookstores for new reading material, eat great huge burritos for the first time in over a month, visit a Cathedral and local market, and have champagne with dinner. It is still Kristin's birthday week for sure.

Thursday, Feb 28: We drove 2 hrs to the Cave Stream Scenic Reserve not quite sure what to expect. There are several camper vans in the parking lot and a small bus of other folks, perhaps this place is pretty safe after all. The landscape is big and beautiful. We put on our warm fleece jackets and headed down the trail to the cave entrance (stream exit). The deepest pool was about as far in as the sunlight went and it was belly deep and very very cold. After a 10 yards of this deep pool it was less than knee deep, dark, and exciting. It took us about an hour to go through the entire 1/3 of a mile or so through the cave. There were many turns, lots of cool rock formations, tiny waterfalls, and always at least ankle deep ice cold water. It never got old, but our feet were ready for a good warming when we finally saw the first speck of light ahead. The way out was up a 10 foot ladder built into the rock wall up the side of a little waterfall. Soon we were out in the bright sun and happy for the experience. We then made it back to town for some frisbee throwing in the awesome city botantical gardens.

Friday, Feb 29: We left early to get to Kaidura by 12:30 to see if anyone had canceled for the last dolphin swim of the day. No one had, but someone had canceled for the next day, so we booked the 5:30 am trip and headed to the holiday park to set up our tent, do laundry, and sit in their hot tub. That evening we got in our first run for a good while and enjoyed more great scenery along the seaside cliff track.

Sat. March 1: 5 AM wake up for 5:30 Dolphin Encounter. About 40 of us were suited up with thick 5mm wetsuits, hoods, masks, fins, and snorkels anh rode the bus over to the water to board 3 different boats. After nearly an hour of searching for the right groups of the local dusky dolphins we were in the water with them. The water was rather clear and very deep. i would guese you could see 20 or 30 feet. We were in a pod of over 300 dolphins. The got in for around 20 minutes on three different occations. The dolphins darted all around and often came more than close enough to touch, sometimes in groups of 5 or 6. Particuarlly interested ones would cirlce you just a couple of feet away looking you right in the eye. It was pretty expensive, but well worth what is likely to be a one in a lifetime opprotunity. On the boat ride home Tommy enjoyed the complimentary hot chocolate and ginernut biscuits (ginger snaps), Kristin didn't feel so well and tossed her cookies.
After a power nap we drove on North and visited the Preznel distillery where we both a tiny bottle of honey liquer, and visited 4 different wineries. The region has exploded with wineries in the last 30 years, there are now oaver 50 within about a 40 minute drive. A short drive more in the rain brought us to Picton at the top of the South Island.

Sunday, March 2: Back at the same hostel in Picton were we stayed a few weeks earlier we again tried our hand to picking local mussells for dinner. This time we went at low tide and had a great time picking about 30 big mussells from the nearby bay. We went exploring around town and did a long hike/run along a popular seaside trail. For dinner we cooked our mussells in wine, garlic, and mild sauce, which we searved over a wild rice. On the side we had milk with honey liquer. It was probably the fanciest meal of us had ever cooked, and it turned out to be perfect. Afterwards we walked the shells back down to the bay.

Monday, March 3: We checked in at 7 AM for the 8 AM ferry back to the North Island. The weather is not so pretty, with all the wind and rain, so we are little worried about how rough the trip will be. On the way down the weather was beautiful but the huge boat still rocked enough to make elegant walking hard at times. We were tossed around a bit at times and were forced to take naps to settle our unsure stomachs/ears. In Wellington our Indian visas were ready at the Indian High Commision so we were happy and ready to drive on toward Auckland. We drove to Waitomo Caves for the night, ready to explore the caves tomorrow before driving the rest of the way to Auckland.

Tuesday, March 4: We did a tour of the Raikura cave for about two hours around lunch time. The cave was very large and our tour guide tried very hard to be funny. Together it made for a pretty good tour. Much of the concrete paths were made with a lot of pumice to be water permiable like the natural limestone of the caves. We got to experience the very famous glowworms of the area. They were tiny green dots on the ceiling, very easy to see, but not enough of them to provide enough light to even play cards by. Before leaving town we stopped at the angora shop that has over 300 angora rabbits. We got our picture taken with one of the very cute and cozy bunnys, then continued on to Auckland.

Wednesday, March 5: Someone stole Kristin's Diet Coke she had in the kitchen fridge at the hostel, our first such experience, but that did not ease her pain after a poor night's sleep due to very noisy neighbors who got home from the bars at 3 AM. Our goal for between now and Friday night was to sell our car, "Boss Hog", our 1989 white Honda Civic that had gotten us around both the North and South island so reliably. We headed to the Backpackers' Car Market where we had bought him a month earlier, paid the $69 fee, made our for sale sign, and sat, and waited, and waited. Only one copule came in all day looking for a car, they bought the car next to ours. Which was disappointing, but thinned the competition, as there were only three cheap cars there (<$1,500), now there were just two. This evening we posted a couple of local internet ads.

Thursday, March 6: Two emails overnight from the ads, looking hopeful, but no cigar, yet. Back at the car market for more sitting. Around noon a UNC grad from Charlotte that we had met there the day before brought in two of his hostel roommates who were shopping for a cheap backpackers car. It ended up that these two guys from Holland (19 and 20 yrs old) bought our car, although a mechanical check turned up some potential problems and we were cornered into dropping our price some, but still sold it for $800, $200 more than we paid for it! By the time all the paperwork was done it was time to meet some of my distant family that lives in Auckland for dinner. Gloria came and picked us up at our hostel and we had a great dinner and a few glasses of wine with Gloria and Stan. After an a cab ride home we worked our packing for life without a car.

Friday, March 7: Our last day in New Zealand. We did the Auckland Museum, including a Maori song and dance show. We had a less than ideal time of getting to the airport, but got there on time and were in the air to China before midnight.

Back from the tramping trail

We have been backpacking (known as tramping here in New Zealand) for the last 5 days/4 nights. We have showered, eaten a hare leg from the grocery store washed down with some free soup from our hostel and are now out at a big internet cafe uploading pictures and updating the blog....

Saturday, Feb 16: We signed up for a full day hike on the Frans Josef glacier, which is one of two very large, but very accesable glaciers on the west coast. They are only 30+ miles from the beach! This region has very tall mountains very close to the shore where there is a near constant wet wind blowing inland. They coast gets meters of rain a year and the mountains get tens of meters of snow a year! This snow then oozes down in glacier form. From balmy downtown Frans Josef it was a 10 minute bus ride and a 40 minute hike to the face of the glacier. We strapped on crampons and started up ice steps cut into the ice by the guides with their ice axes. It was an amazing 5 or 6 hours on the ice. Our group of 11 hike up maybe a mile of the glacier. We went through ice caves and climbed some rather step crevasses. It is hard to describe life in the glacier. To get an idea see the picture we just uploaded in the 2nd and 3rd weeks in New Zealand folder.

Sunday, Feb 19: Today we did our first overnight hike in NZ. We hiked to the Welcome Flats hut on the Copland Track. The track continued on, but quickly headed up into a snowfield requiring ice axes and crampons which we did not have, but our hike was realatively flat and warm. It was a 10.5 mile wet and rocky walk and then we were rewarded with nice mattresses and a natural hot springs, which were nice, but could not hold a candle to the 'hot cold rivers' hot springs from last week. To our surprise there was a german trio hiking with a 9 month old baby. The baby got to ride on her dad's back the entire time. Kristin only got a backy ride over a few streams. I ended up wearing my crocs the entire hike so that we could cross these streams quickly, which meant carrying Kristin to keep her running shoes dry.

Monday, Feb 18th: Back out again from the Welcome Flats hut. We were a little quicker on the way out. Again I hiked in Crocs and helped Kristin over the creeks. Once back at the car, we sped away from the swarming sandflies and drove 5 hours to Wanaka for a two night stay at a very nice holiday park there.


Tuesday, Feb 19th: We had a very enjoyable day celebrating the eve of Kristin's Birthday. We visited the Wanaka Brewery for the daily tour of the tiny brewery on the outskirts of town. It shares its building with a much larger toy and transport mueseum. One of the two employees gave us our tour and our samples. One of the people on our tour was a man that lived nearby that was thinking of purchasing the brewery. It was for sale by a type of silent auction that ended in a couple of days. The only other employee was the owner/brewmaster/delivery man. A very quant and fun little place that had won many top awards for their beer. Also in celebration of Kristin's birthday eve was our visit to the famous and popular couch movie theatre. Also a small owner owned business, which had only old couches as seats and had an intermission so you can buy homemade ice cream and cookies.



Wednesday, Feb 20th: Kristin's birthday! The day started with pancakes and mimosas and ended with a few candles in a little stawberry marshmellow bunny. In between we preped for our big upcoming hike, walked up to the top of the tall ridge overlooking the town, enjoyed a "5 O'Clock Thing" of cheese and red wine over looking the town. Happy Birthday Kristin.


Thursday, Feb 21: We started out today picking up a rental MacPac backpack and catching up on internet errands. Then we drove to a newarby tiny town to pickup the shuttle. We did our last packing at breakneck speed in order to catch the bus. By early afternoon we had started the Routeburn Tramp, one of NZ "Great Walks". We only had two and a half hours walk to the our hut for the first night. Kristin had to hike in flip flops due to the lack of skin on the back of her heels from the Frans Joesef rental boots. There were amazing views from the hut and we sat our at a picnic table for dinner and the sunset, where we met at Swiss traveler and shared a game of Farkle (a dice game we like and carry), known as "10,000" to him.


Friday-Monday, Feb 25th: For the next four days we hiked and then relaxed at our hut for the afternoon/evening. Our light packs and young legs left us with lots of hut time int he afternoons. The weather was perfect and we had jaw droping views of the mountains surrounding us. It is too hard to explain the views, it get an idea see our posted pictures. By Saturday the rain hit and we hiked for a few hours in some serious rain, but we were in good spirits and had packed a liter of hot tea that we made that morning. Technically around the middle of the day we completed the Routeburn trek and started on the Greenstone trek. The trail was the same, but the huts were smaller and much less expensive. We got the hut before 2pm and had an afternoon of drying clothes by the coal stove, talking to other travelers, working on riddles, and playing farkle. Sunday was predicted to have more rain, but it didn't start until about an hour after we reached the hut. The trail that day was through a long mostly flat valley and included many grazing cattle, so of which we had to walk around. Monday we completed the Routeburn and Greenstone trek before noon and the shuttle was right on time at 2. Back in Queenstown we stayed in a great hostel with a hot tub and free veggie soup. For dinner we had the soup and a big wild hare leg (bought in the supermarket) that we grilled on on the BBQ.

Onto Franz Josef!

Tuesday the 12th: Kristin and I drove the remaining 5 hours to Wellington, where we would get our Indian visas and catch the ferry to the South Island. Our only major stop was to do part of 'the best day hike in NZ/world'. We only had time for about 30 minutes in and another 30 minutes back out, which was enough time to get us to a backcountry hut. This was our first look at one of the many backcountry huts and we were very impressed. It is not like the shelter on the Appalacian Trail, this is like a hostel in the woods. It had a nice kitchen with sink and gas cookers and bunks for sleeping. There was a beautiful view of a volcano which was several hours hike away.
We did not arrive to Gareth and Anna's until about 10:30pm. We had a setback because I forgot to write down Gareth's phone number from my email earlier and then we could not find anywhere to get online. It took looking in 3 different towns and then driving about 30 mintues out of our way to a larger town that had an internet cafe. Then we had the challenge of finding somewhere to buy a phone card so that we could make a call at the payphones (very few of them will take coins, they only take prepaid cards). We had a great time with Gareth and Anna and got some good guidance for our time in the south island.

Wednesday the 13th: We got up and went to get our Indian visas, well at least turn in our applications, and had plenty of time to get to the ferry by noon. The three and a half hour ride was rockier than we expected for such a big ship on a very clear day, but we went inside and watched a movie and did some south island planning. And lo' and behold, Kristin did not get the least bit seasick. We checked into a hostel on the edge of the town where we were dropped off(Picton). It was bright and cheery. At dinner we met a great couple from Wales celebrating 40 years of marriage with a 2 month trip.

Thursday the 14th: Valentine's Day! We started the day with a couple of hours of kayaking in the bay by the hostel with their old sea kayaks. The wind and water got a bit rough on us, but neither of us flipped and the scenery was great. I loved looking at all the small sailboats anchored in the bay. We biked down to a local spot in hopes of picking some mussells for dinner, but we hit the tide was too high. So instead, we had a great dinner of steak and potatoes, along with some New Zealand red wine, while taking in the beautiful bay view from the hostel.

Today we are headin to Franz Joseph, where we have a glacier hiking tour set up for tomorrow.

World's Best Hot Spring

-picture on camera to come soon-

Last night we stayed at a neat hostel in an active geothermal area. The owner gave us directions to what may have been the perfect hot springs. It was a hot water creek mixing with a cooler stream (about twice the size of the hot water one) and there was a long jut of rock near where the cool one came in that only let a little bit of the cool water into the big pool where they mixed. If you got too hot or cool you just moved over a few feet to a different temperature. It was just off the side of the road and there were 6 to 15 people there (some came and went in the nearly 2 hours we were there). There were other backpacking couples and some locals, including some fun children and an older lady sent there by her doctor. We did not take our camera yesterday, but drove by it on the way out of town today and took a picture. There was just one guy there this morning.

This afternoon we plan to do all or some of what some claim to be the "best day hike in the world" It is about 30-60 minutes from here and it is sprinkling here now. Then we have 3 to 4 hours to drive to get to Wellington where we are planning to stay with the twin bother (and his wife) of my New Zealand friend from ultimate (Robbie Minshall).

Hot Water Beach a dissapointment

Here is Tommy digging along side dozens of other excited tourists at the renowned Hot Water Beach at low tide. Unfortunately "the swell was too high" today and even at dead low tide the water did not go out far enough to allow anyone to get a personal hand dug spa. We did find one spot that you could feel was warmer than the ocean water, but a wave washed into it about 15 seconds later.

We came along the shovel for $2 at a yard sale the day before and felt very happy we had not wasted $5 on renting a shovel from the little store by the parking lot.

Heading south in our new wheels!

Tommy and I got up Tuesday and headed over to the backpacker car market about a 15 minute walk from our hostel. After looking around at our options, we stumbled upon a $(NZ) 600 car. A 1990 2 door white Honda Civic. We had it checked out legally and mechanically and all looked good, so we bought it! We picked it up from the shop yesterday afternoon. After Tommy practiced driving left-handed stick and driving on the left side, we headed out to a couple stores for supplies. We decided to stay in Auckland one more night to catch up on sleep (which didn't happen at the noisy hostel we stayed at) and to get a visit a few thrift stores that were not open yesterday. Now we have sleeping gear, a tent, cooking items, and a car!! Tommy and I plan to head out of town soon and head to Hot Springs Beach, where we plan to dig a couple holes and enjoy our manmade natural spas! We'll post pictures of our new sporty car soon. As long as the doors haven't fallen off yet. As our blog skills increase, we plan to post pics along with our written updates. That will be soon to come!

We made it to Tomorrow

We crossed the international dateline this morning and immediatley made it to tomorrow. After many hours on 4 seperate flights we made it from Quito to Auckland. We spent about 24 hours on the island of Tahiti, which was beautiful, but very expensive and seemingly half desereted. Perhaps it was because it was Saturday but few stores and few restaurants were open. We had dinner at McDonalds because it was literally the only place we could find to buy food before it got dark except for a $12 tuna salad that neither of our stomachs trusted. The flight into and out of the island was especially beautiful. I would love to go back to these French Polynesian islands and travel island to island on a sailboat some day.

We are now in Auckland and are trying to work out the best way to get around here for the next 5 weeks. Used cars being sold by other backpakers look like the most tempting option, but are scary after all of our car trouble out west this fall. Most are selling for $1500 to $3000 New Zealand dollars ($1 US = $1.30 NZ). Our other options are several different bus companies or renting a car. Wish us luck.

going away frog dance at Camp Home

been updating blog, about to leave Ecuador

Thats all I have time for now. We are off to sleep in our last night in Quito. We are staying in a guest room at the Samaritian's Purse office where Phillip worked. Tomorrow morning we fly to Miami, then LA, then Tahiti. We have a 24 hour stopover in Tahiti then it is on to Auckland, New Zealand. We will then have 5 weeks to explore and enjoy New Zealand. (The picture is of Tommy practicing harmonica in the hammock on the front porch of our hostal room at the beach)

at the beach in Ecuador

Kristin and I found this odd fish laying dead on the beach as we took a walk along the beautiful national park beach we visited earlier this week on the coast of Ecuador. The beach was just a 15 minute moto-taxi ride from the little town where we spent two nights, Puerto-Lopez, "the capital of heaven", as some 'official' graffiti read.

10 Weeks Out West in a VW Van

From T and K Out W...

Kristin and I have been home for sometime from our journey across the country and back that we took this fall. For those of you that do not know, I have taken an offical leave of absence from The NC Solar Center/NC State University. So, when we return from all of our travels I will return to work at the Solar Center. Kristin sadly left her friends and patients at Doctor's Vision Center as a vision therapist. She is not yet sure of her plans when we return.

The picture above is from a sunrise at the northern end of Glacier National park. It was one of the most spactactular moments of the whole trip. Their was a very very beutiful sunrise on one side of the road and then a huge bright double rainbow appeared on the other side of the road. We have a great huge panaramic photo that we stiched together from about 12 photos that shows the entire double rainbow with the van below, but we forgot to upload it and the handful of other stiched panaramics to our Picasa page before we left. We will get them up once we get back and fire up our computer.

The trip started in late September. See the prior post for a better verson of our first week or so. We picked the van up from the shop just in time to load it and Kristin's car up with the last few things in our house before we had to be out. We dropped those things off, dropped off Kristin's car in Burlington and were on the road. We were headed for Glacier National Park first, well with some planned stops in South Dakota, and a long unplanned stop in Misourri (transmission died).

In South Dakota we saw hundreds of buffalo, ate at a must-eat-at restarunt, Alpine Inn, saw the rock carvings of Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse, and toured some intriqing caves. From here we headed northwest to Glacier National Park. We saw our first snow of the trip as we approached. It was amazing, from a distance of a couple of miles there appeared to be a wall of snow. Before 'the wall' there was no snow at all, almost felt sunny, at the wall it was coming down hard and the ground was bright white. As we approached the wall it became a little more translucent. In fact it took about 30 seconds to go from dry to nearly an inch of coverage. We camped just a few miles from 'the wall' in Buffalo, MT just a coulpe of miles from the park. There are several photos of us in the snow at this campsite.


The next morning we head into the park. The roads are clear but there is up to four inches of snow on the ground and it is very windy (see recent video post for example). We tour the south and east side of the park before driving around the bottom of the park to get to the west side. About 10 miles of the single road, Going-To-The-Sun Road, through the middle of the park was closed for scheduled 10-year maintance, but would have been closed very soon, if not by then, due to snow.
The west side of the park was much less windy than the east, which was releaving. We did several hikes while in the park, including a 13 mile round trip hike to Sperry Chalet, the second half of which had us hiking through snow nearly up to our knees. By this time in the fall most of the park was closed for the winter, all the lodges, some of the roads, all the park shops, and about half of the campgrounds were closed. The other campgrounds were in 'privative' mode, no running water and only pit toliets. We did see people throughout the park, on trails, and in the campgrounds, but they were few and far between. The highlight of our time in Glacier, besides all the amazing views, was three or maybe four moose walking through our campsite. It was just starting to get dark and we were cooking dinner in the bus when Kristin saw them. They were just meandering along about 10 feet in front of the bus. We got to see them for just a few seconds before they got spooked and took off. Then we had fun tracking them through the snow and mud through the campsite.

From Glacier we headed through Idaho to meet our friends Ben and Elizabeth (House) Brodhead in Seattle, Washington. We were with them when we set up this blog and made our first post many months ago.....

more to come as we have time to write it up...

Some detailed journaling from the start of out west trip

Kristin did a great job of writing up some detailed journal entries of our first week or so on the road (which was late September 2007). We found out what a task this is and how hard and intimidating it can be to catch up with detailed journaling once you get behind. We have not written any more detailed entries, and I think posting this here is our way of throwing in our hat and admitting that the rest of the out west journal will not be written in detail. A post to follow soon will include a rougher overview of our western journeys.




Thursday Sept. 27 – Tommy and I woke up and worked on last minute details until the bus was ready to be picked up. We tied our mattress down to the roof of the Malibu in order to take it to storage, dropped off our cable box, and headed over to pick up the bus around 11. We had to hurry in order to get Alberta to the house, so we could pack up the rest of our stuff to take to Hall’s and be out of the house by noon. We got to Hall’s and unloaded the bus, then transferred all our trip gear from Sally to Alberta. We then headed out to Burlington, stopping to get lunch at Burger King and using one of our last Raleigh coupons. We got to Burlington and quickly hand wrote an itinerary for my parents. We had started typing one up that morning, but were unable to finish or email it due to our power being shut off. We waived good-bye to ole Sally as Tommy and I headed out of town in Alberta. We drove to Charleston, WV where we requested that our GPS, Rose, take us to the closest Walmart. Once at Walmart, we inquired where we were allowed to park for the night. We prepared for sleep, even though with the curtains closed, it was very reminiscent of daytime! About 2 or 3 in the morning we woke to a truck flying around the parking lot, dragging a guy around on a piece of metal, like a sled. They seemed to be having a great time and did not seem to tire of this activity. Needless to say, we did not get much sleep that night.


Friday, September 28- We woke up and headed out of town. It was a long day of driving, but a beautiful day for it. We stopped in St. Louis for a run downtown and around the arch. This was quite refreshing and needed after sitting for hours. Sun set and we drove a little over an hour to Graham Cave State Park. As we pulled into our campsite, Alberta started to act up and would not go into reverse. After a few minutes, Alberta seemed to be feeling and acting fine, so we hoped all was well. We ate some cereal for dinner, then went to sleep.


Saturday September 29- The morning was filled with sunshine as I headed to take a hot shower! Right across the way from us in the campground was another couple our age in a nearly idential VW van. They were from NC/Georgia and were in the process of moving out to Portland for a new job. After becoming acquinted
with them and enjoying some hot showers, we set out on the road...sort of. The van was acting funny, but we rolled on, for a mile or so. We were still in the state park and faced with a steep hill that we couldn't make it up. In fact, it appeared that our whole transmission was shot. Just a minutes later, after some head scratching, our new friends came by and looked it over with us. We started her up again and was able to make our way gently up the hill to a small, flat, parking area. We used the GPS and our phone to find an auto garage open on Saturday. It took close to a dozen calls, but we found a Midas that was open and could see us. Midas was a 45 minute drive away, in Columbia, but at least this was 45 mintues in the right direction.
We dropped off the van with them and walked away for a lunch. We came back to have the bad news confirmed. The tranny was shot and would have to be replaced, it was late Saturday afternoon and no one in town would be able to even look at it until Monday. We thought through our options and decided to try to hobble with the van about 10 miles north of town to a state park for a quiet, peacefull, weekend of camping. We made it there around dinner time Saturday night by being real gentle on Alberta. Very luckly we got the last open campsite in the park. The host said she was amazed there was still a spot so late. It was a beatiful day and the park had been full every weekend day in the spring, summer, and fall for several years. We smiled to ourselves for our good luck and setup camp in a reallativly quiet corner of the park. See, the park is an Off Road Vehicle (ORV) state park, it has over 70 miles of four wheeler trails, but not a single hiking trail. But, they can't ride after dark so we get a good nights rest.


Sunday September 30- With the buzz of ORV’s in the air, Tommy and I woke up and ate breakfast. After working on a budget for the next 8 months for our trip, we decided to go for a run. It was a gorgeous day, but quite hot. We took a long run on the main road of the park, since all the trails were devoted for motorcross. After running, Tommy and I walked down to a lake to go fishing, which did not last long since it began to rain and become dark. Tommy and I quickly made dinner and closed up the bus as a huge storm came through. High winds, intense thunder and lightning, as well as torrential downpour kept us in the bus playing ‘Farkle’(a dice game for those of you who do not know).


Monday October 1 – Waking up early, we took showers and set to work on getting Alberta some therapy for her transmission blues. Walt’s VW repair told us to bring Alberta on in to be looked at. With books to read in hand, Tommy and I sat down on an old VW seat for 2 in the lobby and waited to hear the diagnosis. Walt informed us that Alberta needed a new transmission, which he just so happened to have sitting around. Walt had bought a wrecked bus about 5 years ago and kept the transmission to sell if the occasion came about. This new-to-us transmission is a 1991 with only 68K miles on it. Thrilled with this bitter-sweet news, we walked a couple miles downtown to get lunch and check email at the public library. After walking back several hours later, Alberta was ready to go and we rocketed out of town around 5:30, reaching 75 mph quickly on the interstate! This was surly a new van! We drove until Sioux City, South Dakota, where we sought out a Walmart to sleep. With the weather cold and rainy, we wearily went to sleep. This time we were smarter and used extra sheets to block out the bright lights and keep us more insulated from the cold! We, along side one other car, slept like angels.


Tuesday October 2 – Pumped about our new speed and agility, we headed out in route for Rapid City, South Dakota. The drive to Rapid City would have been quite boring except for the incredibly high winds! Each stop Tommy and I made, we would have to stretch our arms out from clenching the steering wheel so hard! Tommy and I also grew exponentially excited about the amazing Corn Palace that we saw signs for every few miles over the course of a couple hundred miles! We could not imagine the coolness of this place, with its ‘amazing earcitecture’ and being ‘the wolrd’s only corn palace’! As the corn palace came into view, our hearts sunk a little. This “corn palace” WAS a large building with corn on it, but it was a brick building with halves of different colored corncobs nailed to the sides in certain areas to form pictures. While still somewhat impressive, Tommy and I thought this building, this palace, would all be made of corn! Inside was a large gym, where concerts and events take place, but overall, the corn palace received 2 thumbs down. Several more hours of driving brought us to Wall Drugstore, where we spent some time looking around. We never found their free ice water, 10 cent pop, or 5 cent coffee, but it was still a fun stop. We headed on and were getting very pumped up for our dinner at the ALPINE INN!! Tommy had learned of this place from a coworker and we were told that this restaurant was a must! We arrived about 8 and after 30 minutes, were seated for our first dinner out on our trip. We were asked whether we wanted the 6oz (the small) or the 9oz (the large) for you see, this is your only choice here at the Alpine Inn! So our meal started with a wedge of iceberg lettuce and homemade ranch dressing. Then the main course – filet mignon wrapped with bacon, a baked potato with sour cream, and a piece of Texas toast. This was a seriously good meal! We finished off with a wonderful medoly of chocolate moosse and brownie. With a good feeling of success, we left to find somewhere to camp. We entered Custer State Park to find that most of the campgrounds were closed for the season, and the ones open were way across the park. We began to drive through the park on very slow and windy roads, when we decided it was too dark and too far to drive these roads. We turned around and took the highway the long way around to the other side of the park and made our way to Game Lodge Campground, where we stayed for the night