Bustling Hong Kong, Snowy Beijing, and Quiet Qingdao

Alright, I am combining all 3 of these Chinese cities into one, because they are all in China. Well, Hong Kong isn’t technically part of mainland China, but for the sake of this blog it is. We ported in Hong Kong first. Many people spent one day in Hong Kong then traveled to Beijing, which is what I did. While people traveled to Beijing, the ship left Hong Kong and went to Qingdao. After Beijing, we met the ship in Qingdao, instead of flying back to Hong Kong. As I am writing this, we are on our way home. We just left Japan. We only had two days at sea in between China and Japan, so I wasn’t able to get this entry up until now. The seas are rough today, the roughest they gave ever been. Swells are between 14 and 20 feet, and classes were cancelled. Things are flying around my room and I am struggling to hold on to my laptop as I write this.

So back to China. I had a wonderful and interesting experience traveling around China. It was everything I expected it to be and more. I mean seriously, what can be better than standing on top of The Great Wall of China, roaming around Tiananmen Square, or bypassing a Starbucks in the Forbidden City? China fascinated me. It was safe, beautiful, and packed full of cultural goodness. I really hope to go back sometime; maybe to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing….

We arrived in Hong Kong at around 8am on April 3rd. The travel to the port was cool. Hong Kong is practically built into a mountain range, and it was amazing to see a huge city with skyscrapers built into the mountains. It definitely did not resemble any city back home. It actually reminded me a little bit of Rio. We were off the ship at around 11 and Ryan, Grant, Mark and I walked around the port area. We were docked in a mall, no joke. Our gangway was actually connected to a building which was a first for us. It was like an airplane gangway. We walked off the gangway and the first step off I was in a mall. It is hard to describe but it was an actual mall. I was standing in front of a Birkenstock store and I knew this was going to be trouble. We walked around the port mall for a while and then took the ferry to Hong Kong Island. Hong Kong is a series of islands, and our ship was docked in Kowloon, so we had to take the ferry to Hong Kong Island. When we got there we just began walking through the bustling city of Hong Kong. It was really cool. We had gone from a third world country to a first world country in one port, and it was crazy being thrown back into a civilization we hadn’t seen in a while. We were drooling over the Ferraris, Mercedes, Maseratis, and BMW’s we were seeing. We walked into a number of buildings, and they were all malls. It seems that every building we walked into in Hong Kong was a mall. We spent a few hours in the malls. I bought a new digital camera because my old one bit the dust. It is a Canon Digital Ixus 55. I love it, it takes amazing pictures. After that I bought the most comfortable pair of sandals in the Rockport Store that I have ever worn. Once we finished touring the malls, that we decided were so incredibly expensive we couldn’t even look at them, we went to lunch. We ate a Chinese restaurant in the bottom of the Bank of America building. I finally had to buckle down and learn how to use chopsticks, something I had been dreading for a long time. The food we had was amazing, even though we weren’t sure what all of it was. After lunch, we walked around the city some more and then went back to Kowloon. Ryan and Grant went to go get some shirts tailored, and Mark and I went to a Haagen Daz, which was heaven to us because it has been long time since we have seen normal ice cream. This was no normal Haagen Daz; the way they do it in China is it is like a restaurant. They sit you down and you can order all kinds of crazy concoctions from a menu. While we were enjoying our ice cream we saw the Captain of the Explorer walking down the street past the window, and he had on a bright orange polo shirt with the collar popped. Gotta love the Cap. After ice cream we went back to the ship, waited for some people to get back from some SAS field programs, and then Grant, Ryan, Quinn, and I set out to take the tram up to the top of Victoria’s Peak to see a panoramic view of Hong Kong at night. We walked about 15 minutes to the tram, and it climbed almost vertically up the mountain, it was crazy. When we reached the top, there were panoramic views of Hong Kong. It was all lit up and beautiful. It was a little hazy due to all the pollution, but it still looked really cool. We found one of our friends Heath up there, and then we all went to dinner at the top of the mountain. The place we ate at ran out of egg rolls and fried rice. We were laughing because how can a restaurant in China run out of those two items. Regardless, we had a fun dinner, then you guessed it, went back to Haagen Daz. We ate our ice cream and watched a shooting water display and then took the tram back down. We went back to the ship, and I packed my bag for my early morning trip to Beijing in mainland China.

I woke up at 6:30am, and went to go meet for my SAS trip to Beijing I had signed up for. We left around 7:30am, and we went to the airport to check in. Hong Kong airport is insane, it is a huge mall, big surprise, and it was a big change from the Vietnam and Cambodia airports we had been in the week before. The flight was long, about 3 hours, and we arrived in Beijing around 2pm.We cleared customs, and then walked out of the airport into a blast of cold weather. It was about 40 degrees, and we were freezing. You may think I am complaining too much, but try living in 90-100 degree weather for three and a half months straight every day, and then one day being thrown into almost freezing weather with no gradual change over time. It was quite a shock. We boarded the buses to go to the summer palace. The summer palace was built as a retreat for the imperial heads during the Qing dynasty. It was burnt down but then rebuilt in 1888. The summer palace was cool; it was a series of temples and gardens right on the water. It was interesting to see the Chinese architecture, but there were an incredible amount of tourists there. After that we went and checked into our hotel in downtown Beijing, which was one of the nicest hotels I have ever stayed in. We had about an hour of rest time and then we headed to a Peking duck restaurant for dinner. This was my first experience eating roast duck, and I am not a fan. It is a weird meat. It tastes a little like chicken, but not as good. It was funny though because everyone at my table was trying to figure out how to eat the mysterious foods placed in front of us. After that we returned the hotel, and I was exhausted so I went to bed.

The next morning I woke up, had breakfast, and then we left at 8:30am to go to the great wall. The section we were going to was about 2 hours away, but our guide told us it was the most beautiful and quiet section. We took the two hour bus ride and arrived at the bottom of a large mountain. While we were driving I could only see parts of the wall for a few seconds, then they would disappear between the mountains. Our guide told us that we wouldn’t see it until we started climbing up the mountain to get to the wall. Before the steps started, there were all kinds of vendors at the bottom selling t-shirts and touristy souvenirs. We started climbing the 2000 steps to the wall. It took some people a while, but it only took me and a couple of my friends about 15 minutes. When we reached the wall, it was breathtaking. The Great Wall stretched on forever, and it was an amazing feeling to actually be standing on top of it. It really was liberating, and it made me reflect back on everything I have done on this voyage and the significance of it all. I called my parents and told them I was on the top of the Great Wall, and my mom was really excited. About 10 minutes before me and some people were to head back down to meet back at the buses, it began to snow. It made the scenery much more beautiful. A snowy day on the Great Wall of China, it can’t get any better on that. By the time I went to head back down, it had stopped snowing. Me and some people took a luge back to the bottom. I actually got on a little luge and went town a luge track to the bottom. It was a lot of fun. When I reached the bottom I bought a touristy “I climbed the great wall” t-shirt, and then we got back on the buses. We drove the two hours back to the city center of Beijing, and we visited two markets. They were both inside, which was good because it was freezing out. The first one was a little boring, but the second one was pretty cool. It was pretty funny because the markets are a huge tourist trap, and the vendors think they can sell you their products at outrageous prices because they think we are regular tourists that don’t know any better. My friend Sheila tried on a knock-off Spyder ski jacket, and wanted to buy it. The lady told her it was $350 US dollars! Sheila laughed at her and said you have got to be kidding. The lady then said $320. I went up to the lady and said, “Listen, we are not the regular tourist you think we are. We have been bargaining for the past 3 and a half months straight in 8 countries. I know, and you know, that that jacket isn’t worth a quarter of that. Nice try, but we aren’t who you think we are.” Sheila got the jacket for $45. See what I mean? This may be a problem when I get back to the states. I am going to walk into Target and say, “$10 for a CD? I will give you $1.” Then they will probably throw me out. Anyways, I was looking for some more bootleg DVD’s to expand my collection since Vietnam. There were guys standing by the doors of the markets who would just keep saying, “DVD?” over and over again. After I couldn’t find any in the market, I finally started talking to one of the shady guys. Here is how the conversation went:
“You want DVD?” – Guy
“Where?” – Me
“Follow me” – Guy
“No, where?” – Me
“Just follow me” – Guy
“Not until you tell me where we have to go” – Me
“No problem, I show you DVD’s. Please, follow me.” – Guy
“Whatever” – Me
So, me and my friend Katie followed this guy out of the markets and down the street for 10 minutes. After a while I was getting mad because it was really far, and I had to be back at the buses soon. The guy finally turned and headed into a building. I looked at the building and it was a steak restaurant. We went in and he took us into the back of the restaurant and sat us down at a table. All these guys came in with suitcases and started pulling tons of bootleg DVD’s out of the suitcases and placing them in front of us. This was how the next conversation went:
“How much are these?” – Me
“Don’t worry about it” – Guy
“No, how much are they each?” – Me
“We talk about it later” – Guy
“Listen, I am not going to sit here and look through all these if you are going to charge me more than a dollar for each one, because that is what I am paying.” – Me
“Please, just look.” – Guy

I found 5 DVD’s I wanted to buy. The guy wanted 7 dollars for the 5 of them, and I told him that I told him before I was paying a dollar each, and he kept saying 7. I put the DVD’s on the table, and started to walk out. As soon as I hit the door, he agreed to 5 dollars. It works every time! So, after the restaurant/DVD deal and the markets, we returned to the hotel. We had the evening at our leisure. I went out and grabbed some food and ice cream with a few people. When we got back to the hotel, I wanted to find out what hotel the other SAS Beijing trip was staying in, because Quinn, Leah, and Jess were on the other trip. I asked around and finally found out which hotel it was, and it was only 4 blocks down from ours. I walked down there and asked at the desk which room was theirs. I knocked on the door, got no answer, so I left them a note, went back to my hotel, and got a hold of Quinn on her cell. We figured out that they gave me the wrong room number. I didn’t feel like walking back down there in the cold, so we made plans to get together the next night.

The next morning I had breakfast, and then we headed out to the famous Tiananmen Square. We arrived in Tiananmen, and the square was packed. Everyone goes there to hang out, and it was really cool because it was lively. Tiananmen Square is the largest public square in the world. It is famous because of the student rallies that took place and the massacre in 1989. We hung out in the square for about an hour, took a group photo, and then walked to the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City covers 250 acres, contains 800 palaces, halls, shrines, and pavilions. It was the home of the emperor of the Ming Dynasty in 1407, and was ruled later by 24 more emperors. There is actually a Starbucks in the Forbidden City, which is ridiculous, but it is pretty famous. So after the Forbidden City we went to have lunch at a restaurant which had a dance show. After lunch we went to the Llama temple. I don’t know why it is called the Llama temple, but it wasn’t anything special. It is another temple, and to be honest with you, I am templed out at this point. We returned to the hotel for some rest, and I walked down the street to a bakery I had noticed the day before. I bought all kinds of crazy pastries, cakes, and cookies, and brought them back to hotel. We then went out to dinner. After dinner we went to an acrobatics show. It was unbelievable. It was a lot like Cirque Du Soleil or however you spell it. There were so many crazy acrobatics being performed it blew my mind. When we got back, I grabbed all my stuff I had bought at the bakery and headed down to see Quinn, Leah and Jess. We hung out all night at their hotel, and I just crashed there because once again, I didn’t feel like walking back in the cold. I don’t like cold weather. That’s why I’m heading south in a couple years…

The next morning we had breakfast and checked out of the hotel. We visited the Temple of Heaven. The emperor of the 15th century would only go there twice a year, but it was built with advanced principles of mechanics and geometry. After the Temple of Heaven we ate a buffet lunch, and then went to the airport for a flight to Qingdao, where the ship had sailed to while we were in Beijing. We arrived in Qingdao at around 3, and we drove an hour to the port from the airport. While we were driving, I was looking out the window for things to do. Restaurants, bars, parks, museums, and malls were non-existent. All I saw was a city of rubble. I became very disappointed that SAS decided to port here, but I will get in to that later. We were trying to ask the tour guide on the bus if there was anywhere to go to eat or drink that night, and he said we should stay on the ship. We tried to convince him that we live on a ship for 100 days, and staying on the ship for an entire evening while in port is not an option. He wouldn’t listen to us and told us that there really isn’t anything to do in Qingdao, and that we should come back another time. It made no sense, but he was right that there was nothing to do. I did in fact end up staying on the ship that night, because I had no one to go out with because all the flights were delayed coming out of Beijing except for us, so all my friends did not get back to the ship until really late. We went out early the next morning. We planned to spend the day in Qingdao and hopefully find something to do, and go back to the ship in the evening before we left for Japan. Ryan, Grant, Mark, Kerri, and I went out around 9am. We began walking around the city looking for interesting things. We walked and walked and walked, and saw nothing. There was just some office building and residential plazas. It really was a city of rubble, and I was very disappointed that Qingdao was added to our itinerary instead of extending our stay in Hong Kong, or giving us a day in Hawaii later on in the voyage. This was SAS’s first stop in Qingdao, and for the sake of the experience of future voyagers, I hope it is the last. Anyways, we walked for hours just trying to find a decent restaurant to eat in. We eventually found a local café and ate there. The food was good, and after lunch we tried to figure out something else to do. We began walking around some more. We walked down by the water, and Grand and Ryan bought a kite from some guy on the beach. After that we headed back to the ship. Ryan, Quinn, Leah, Jess, Kerri and I decided to go out and try to find a restaurant to eat in. We asked some cab drivers to take us to a couple hotels we had written down, because we figured that a hotel might have a nice restaurant. The drivers had no idea where the places were, so the hotels we found had nothing in them. Not one person in Qingdao spoke English. That doesn’t make me upset, because I would expect that. We are in a foreign country, and I don’t expect people to know English, but when a couple people in the city know English, it helps. In Qingdao, we didn’t meet one person that knew English. It wasn’t a bad thing; it just made it more difficult than it usually is, and that didn’t help our view of the city. So, we walked for about an hour, found nothing but a KFC, so we ate there. After that, the only people that wanted to stay out and have a drink were Ryan, Kerri, and I. So, once again we walked, and walked, and walked. There were no bars. I don’t know if it is something in the Chinese culture, but I think it is just the fact that Qingdao is a city of rubble, because Beijing had lots of bars. After about 2 hours of walking, we found a bar. It led down underground. When we got down there, the lady led us to a private room. As we were walking to the room, we walked through a line of Chinese women on either side of this. I said, “Ryan, this is definitely a hooker bar.” He said, “Really?”, and I said I was pretty sure. We were led into the room, and it was really awkward. We were the only customers there. The lady came in and asked us if we wanted anything to drink. We each ordered a beer, and the lady left. It was quiet except for a TV in our room that was playing weird music videos. The lady came back, gave us our drinks, and then said, “Do you want Chinese women?” I was right, and Ryan and I looked at each other, Kerri started laughing, and we politely declined. We decided to finish our beers and then pay and leave, but when the lady came back in with a box of tissues and a trash can, we decided to leave then. We paid, took our beers, and grabbed a cab back to the ship. What an experience. I got on the ship, called my parents before we set sail, and then the ship left around 10pm on the night of April 8th, destined for our final port of Kobe, Japan.

So in conclusion, as always, I had a wonderful time in China, overall. Hong Kong is an awesome city, but I have realized that unless I want to spend more time there, I need to be a millionaire, because everything there is very high class. Beijing is definitely a city I would come back to. It is very interesting because China is the first culture we have been thrown in to that barely speaks English. Before this, enough of the people in the countries spoke it for us to get by, but in China, it was a little more difficult. It was a great experience. Still, we survived, and Beijing is a must see for anyone who gets the chance to visit. On the other hand, Qingdao is the only port I was not impressed with. It was a good thing we only spent a day there, because longer than that would have been bad. It was interesting to be thrown into a full blown non-English town, but the problem with going to such a small place is the lack of things to do.

So, that is all for this entry. I would like to extend a Happy Easter to everyone back home. Like I said before, we just left Japan, and it is April 16th, Easter Day. By the time you read this it will be Easter for you too. I think we are supposed to have an Easter dinner tonight on the ship. Eating cranberry sauce should be fun with all this crazy rocking! Expect my next entry in the next few days. I am going to go post this on my blog right now, head to Easter dinner, and then I am going to write about my favorite place in the world, and the country I fell in love with, Japan.

P.S. – I am a pro at chopsticks now ;-)