Chiang Mai Day Trek

Our fourth and final day in Chiang Mai was a full one! We reserved a full day trek all around Chiang Mai to do a number of activities!

We started off our day by being picked up at our hostel and driven to an orchid and butterfly farm. Unfortunately we didn't get to see a single butterfly BUT the orchids were plentiful and gorgeous! There were hundreds of orchid plants all different shapes, sized, and colors! Fun way to start off the day!

Next we began our uphill drive into the mountainous area of Chiang Mai. In these hills are the Karen Hill Tribes, tribes of people indigenous to the area. The Karen tribes gained some fame because of the Long-Neck Karen Tribe, one of the many tribes in the area. These women put copper rings around their neck to lengthen them as a symbol of strength and beauty. When I was in high school I did a report on the tribe so it was so exciting to be able to see them in person after learning so much about them! The girls in the tribe begin putting rings around their neck when they are about 5 years old and add another ring every few years. The women in the village had stands set up selling hand carved figurines and hand woven scarves. I bought two scarves, both with incredibly vivid colors! We also got to visit some of the other tribes in the area who showed us how to weave dried leaves together to make a roof, dressed us up in some traditional costumes, and taught us about some of their customs. One of the tribes that we met were known for their love of dog.... So gross! But all in all the tribes were very interesting!

We all got back in our caravan to head to the next stop when our tour guide come over with his finger over his mouth saying "shhhh". He pulled out a few marijuana leaves and put them on the floor of our caravan! Apparently the Karen Hill Tribes had a secret little side business going on along with weaving scarves!

Next stop on our adventure tour was to see elephants! We arrived at the elephant park and got to go meet our elephants! There was a park that we got to ride the elephants through, so we bought some bananas and sugar cane (elephant's favorite snacks!) and went to get on our elephants! Our elephant's name was Madonna! She was a big beautiful elephant AND she was pregnant! We learned that when elephants have babies they are pregnant for around 2 years! We rode Madonna down to a river where she got a drink and also got playful spraying us with water, what a silly elephant! It was hard to balance on the elephant's back but we managed to hang on and have a ton of fun in the process! We rode around for about and hour until we had to move onto eat some lunch. The tour had made us some fried rice and sliced some pineapple for our lunch! 很好吃！"very delicious!".

Next on the agenda was hiking up to a waterfall! The hike was about a 45 minutes long through the forest and along a river! We made it to the top and we got to swim around the basin of the falls! It was freezing which, after a hot and long walk up a mountain, felt amazing! The dip in the water also got us excited for the final leg of our day trip!

We made our way down to a large river where we met our final guides of the day. We took off our shoes, put on life vests and helmets, and got in our river rafts! The river was low due to it being dry season, but even through getting stuck in some parts, managed to have an awesome time! The river rafting turned into mostly a game of splash wars with the locals! The local people of the area all hung out around the river on hot days sound when we came floating by on our rafts would come up to us and splash us! We, in turn, would splash them with our oars! It was really funny and highly amusing! For the last 5 minutes of rafting we got off our rubber inflated rafts and hopped onto a traditional bamboo raft! Charly paddled us through the river and got us back to our caravan which was waiting for us on the side of the river!

By this time it was about 5pm and after 8 hours of activities, we were worn out and ready to head back to our hostel for what we knew would be an amazing Thai dinner cooked by our hostel's chefs! The day trip was such a perfect way to end our stay in Chiang Mai and made me fall in love with the city even more! It was bittersweet leaving Chiang Mai first thing the next morning but we were off on a 36 hour journey to get down to the islands of eastern Thailand, Koh Phangan here we come!

Day Three Chiang Mai

Our third day's activity in Chiang Mai was a highly anticipated one. Ever since thoughts about traveling to Thailand began to form, this activity was always brought up as something we'd do and finally the day was here where we got to satisfy all the talk that had built up around it..... Today was tiger day!

Bright and early we got up and ate breakfast at Mickey's Cafe (as in Mickey Mouse!); a cute cafe next to our hostel decorated in Mickey Mouse, Harley Davidson, and Coca-Cola Products! Me being completely obsessed with Thai food ordered my daily breakfast of curry and rice. I figure I can eat eggs and toast when I get back to the states, so most of the trip I refused to eat anything that wasn't either noodles or curry!

After breakfast we took a cab abou 45 minutes into a more mountainous area of Chiang Mai and anxiously awaited our arrival at Tiger Kingdom! When we arrived we were created at the front with the different options of tiger ages you had to choose from (biggest: 1-2 years, medium: 8-12 months, small: 5-6 months, smallest: 3-4 months) each for varying prices. All three of us decided to do interactions with the biggest and smallest tigers!

Biggest:

Smallest:

It was strange, when we entered the cage with the big cats none of us had even thought to be nervous until we saw one girl freaking out she was so scared. The tigers just lounged around and didn't mind people petting them and seemed like they barely even noticed they were there, just like a big kitty!

They actually were surprisingly similar to house cats with the exception of size, of course! They played with each other, groomed each other, and even chased and batted at a dangling coconut hanging from a long bamboo pole which resembled the common cat toy in large scale!

The big tigers were very soft and calm just wanting to lounge and sleep mostly. It was a really hot day so thy also liked to play around in their swimming pool! Most of the time thy just later in the shade barely acknowledging that there were people all around, probably because tigers, like cats, are naturally a nocturnal animal. It was so cool to pet them, I even got to cuddle with one while she slept and layed down on her!

After the big cats we went over to the babies! They were so cute! Their paws much too big for their tiny bodies which made them stumble around a lot. They were much more restless than the bigger tigers, just like children! But we got to play with them, pet them, and even hold one! One of the babies was crawling all over my lap and kept licking and biting at my pants and was trying to play with my hands by taking little love nibbles at my fingers!

After getting a sufficient amount of time playing with the babies we went and walked around all the enclosures the park had. They house 47 tigers up to the age of 2. Once a tiger gets to be older then 2 they began to act more like the wild animal that they are because their hormones kick in once past the toddler years. That's why we only had the option to play with tigers up to the age of 2, any order and we may have been the ones being played with! They also has a "tiger preschool" that had a month month old tiger to young to be played with, a full grown lion, and a few parrots!

We ate lunch at the Tiger Kingdom as well. The restaurant is treated like half of the attraction of the park, "Tiger Kingdom: Tiger Park and Restaurant", which we thought was kind of strange until we tasted the food! It was AMAZING! One of the best meals I've ever eaten! I had a chicken salad that had an incredible dressing and the chicken as an incredible marinade and we all split an order of spinach, cheese, and apple sauce spring rools. Sounds odd, but I think it's one of the most amazing dishes I've ever eaten. We also got coconut shakes served in the coconut decorated with beautiful flowers. So obviously, because we ate at such a nice, 5 star restaurant the meal was going to be the most expensive one we would eat during our stay in Thailand.... And the bill was less than $20 for all three of us. I don't know how I'm ever going to survive in the states again after being spoiled with food at these prices!

We webt outside of Tiger Kingdom and found out that our cab driver from the mornin had waited (almost 2.5 hours) for us outside Tiger Kingdom! We figured out later that all cabs do that because they want the money to drive you back down to town since its a out of the way location so they just wait for you! From our tiger time he took us to our second destination, waited for us there, and then drove us home. It cost us about $20 for a personal driver for 6.5 hours of travel and waiting for us! So awesome!

Our second destination was a Buddhist temple located on the very top of a mountain that looked over the entire city of Chiang Mai! It was beautiful, quite large, and decorated with gold towers and statues! It was amazing the detail and decoration that aw sour into the temple. When you ventured to the back of the temple, there was a balcony that overlooked the city. It was gorgeous, the entire city of Chiang Mai is surrounded by mountains covered in a thick, green jungle! It was a great place to relax and really take in the beauty of where you are.

We headed back down to our hostel and upon walking in ran into our new friend Alex who invited us to join her in getting Indian food for dinner. Of course we wanted too so we followed her for about 10 blocks until we found the Indian restaurant that was suggested to her by her Lonely Planet book. Turns out, the people at Lonely Plant know what they're talking about! The meal was amazing! I got shrimp masala and garlic naan bread but the four of us ended up sharing everything we ordered and not one thing was less than perfect!

We went back to hostel after dinner and met up with our other friend Brandon and all hung out for a while in the lounge area of the hostel. None of us lasted long though, all of us keep busy during the days, and we called it a night. Just another perfect day in Thailand!

First Two Days In Chiang Mai

It's becoming so much fun meeting people from across the world! So far we've met people from Australia, Canada, London, New Zealand, Belgium, Spain, France, Scotland, and Mexico. The pseudo-family that you find when backpacking is great! Everyone is wanting to just explore and enjoy their time so you can always meet new friends and end up having people to travel with!


It turned out that our new friend Alex was heading to the same city the next day and even staying at the same hostel! By the time we got off the train and met up with her in Chiang Mai she had met a guy from New Zealand, Brandon, also staying at our hostel so ever since we got off the train, the 5 of us have been hanging out an sight seeing together every day. Brandon is even going to the same place later in the week as us so we'll be able to hangout with him throughout our entire stay in Thailand. I really enjoy meeting all these new people!



We arrived in Chiang Mai at 9am after taking a 14 hour sleeping train from Bangkok. The sleeper train was great! The time passes so quickly when you are sleep 11/14 hours an the other 3 are spent reading a great book! We got to Julie's Guesthouse Hostel (I highly recommend this place if you ever find yourself in Thailand!) and after taking a quick shower the 5 of us walked around Chiang Mai seeing a lot of the Buddhist temples which can be seen all over the city! The temples require your shoes be off and your knees and shoulders covered, so you have to borrow wraps from the temples in order to go into them. They were all very elaborate and many were covered in gold paint making them shine in the sun!

Later on our first day, the 5 of us were picked up from our hostel and taken to a Thai cooking school to learn how to make our dinner! We were joined by a couple from scotland and a french man and woman from mexico making our table very international and fun! We got to choose 4 types of courses (we all chose curry, appetizer, stir fry, and dessert) and then from those categories for to choose what we individually wanted to make. I chose to learn how to make pad Thai, spring rolls, panang curry, and mango sticky rice! Very typical Thai dishes! We got to visit the outdoor vegetable market first and learn about all the vegetables and rice that go into all the dishes we were about to create! We went back and the first round of cooking I made both pad Thai and panang curry (if you know me well you know these are two of my favorite things in the entire world) and they turned out AMAZING! I was so full after those dishes but we went back into the kitchen to make my spring rolls and mango sticky rice, which were also indescribably delicious! After somehow managing to eat everything I made we were presented with a certificate of completion and a cookbook with all of the recipes the school offered including 4 other curries, papaya salad, vegetable stir fry, and other classic Thai dishes! I'm so excited to come home and cook with my new authentic Thai cook book!

Strait from cooking school, all 9 people from our cooking class went to the famous Chiang Mai night market called the Night Bazaar. We spent about 3 hours there and only got through about half of the entire market! I bought some knockoff Birkenstocks ($7.20), a pair of traditional baggy Thai pants ($4.80), a ring made by the longneck Karen tribe women ($9.60), as well as a few presents for my family! I'm really going to miss these prices when I get back to the states! We ended our first day in Chiang Mai by having a couple beers at our hostels lounge with all the other travels, an absolutely perfect day!

Day two in Chiang Mai was "Adventure Day". Charly and I signed up for a treetop zip lining course! We were picked up at 7:30am from our hostel and driven an hour outside Chiang Mai to the zip line location up in the mountains. When we got there we found out that the only people doing the course were Charly and I and a Chinese couple from Florida ( It was fun to be able to speak a little Chinese with them for the first time since coming to Thailand!). Since it was ony 4 or us we were able to move so say through the course and not have to wait around like people normally have to during the same course because the average group size during busy season is usually 12. There were 22 zip line, a few of them were "honeymoon lines" so Charly and I held hands on them ha ha, hangin bridges, and 3 different abseils. On the abseils we were hooked in on our back and we just jump and fall Mission Impossible style down from the top to the bottom platforms rangin from 10m to 40m high! It was an awesome adventure! And free we finished we got a free t-shirt and a lunch made by the local people!

In the afternoon Charly, Natasha, Alex and I went to get a traditional Thai massage! But it wouldn't be an adventure if it were purely a Thai massage, instead we chose to go to a women's correctional facility where as part of their rehabilitation 6 months before their release date, they offer tradition Thai massages! Seems strange but let me tell you, it was the best massage that I've ever had! There was a part of the massage where I truly went into a clear headed meditative state because it was so relaxing! And one of the best parts is that it cost us 270 baht for a 90 minute massage... $8.75 in US dollars! Which means not only did I just receive an amazing massage but I can afford to get one every day for the remainder of my trip!

One Night in Bangkok

My roommate Charly, my friend Natasha, and I began our 12 day vacation in Thailand with a 3 hour delay of our flight, so instead of sitting on a plane for 5 hours we were on the plane for 8 waiting for a space to open up for us on the runway. But we arrived in Bangkok at 9:30pm and got to our hostel shortly after and sharing a cab with a woman from Spain. Our hostel was conveniently located along a very famous night street in Bangkok called Khaosan Road and we spent no time dropping our backpacks at the hostel and heading to the road!

Khaosan is a street about 3 blocks long completely closed off to cars and lined with carts of street food, vendors selling everything from henna tattoos to shirts to artwork, and bars. An interesting part of the road for me was finding out that, unlike the homogenous society of China which I've been so familiar with, Thailand has a very large population of international tourists so when we went out we were able to hangout and talk with almost everyone we met; a nice change of pace from trying to use the little Chinese I know in order I communicate with everyone. So we ended up hanging out with a girl from Canada (Alex), 2 Australian guys, and a British guy for the rest of the night.

The night was full of exploring the nightlife in Bangkok! We went to a few bars as a group, met lots of fun new people, and overall had a great night. One of the highlights wadecided a few of us decided that we were going to eat bugs! Charly and i had wanted to try them the first time we had seen the art but figured it was weird if we were to just go up and order some, so when we found out that one of the australian boys, Talus, was wanting to try them as well, it gave us the perfect excuse to go order our bizaar snack and bond with a new friend! One of the street vendors sold a wide variety of creepy crawlies and charly and I decided to share a fried giant cockroach and each have a fried silk work and fried grasshopper. The giant cockroach was way to large and the wings were hard to chew so that was quite unpleasant, but the other two were just greedy and crunchy and honestly not as bad as you'd think!

The night was filled with activity and hanging out with our fellow back packing buddies and turned out to be a great "One Night In Bangkok"! And besides one minor ballroom dancing incident in which I may have lost my entire big toe nail... The night was perfect!

<--- The menu cover of the first bar we went to on Koh San Road haha!!!

熊猫!! (PANDAS!!)

This blog post is going to be short and sweet and mostly pictures because I think the pictures say more then I ever could about these adorable fluff balls of animals! On our week long trip to Chengdu our last day was spent at the Chengdu Panda Base! This facility is responsible for maintaining a safe habitat for these endangered animals as well as aiding in the reproduction of the species. The park is set up like a zoo where you can walk from one enclosure to the other and see panda after panda after panda! It was so much fun! And (for a pretty penny) I was able to hold an 8 month old baby panda! He was so cute and quite happy just sitting there on my lap for a little bit!

Before we get to the pictures here are some random facts about pandas!

• There are only around 2,000 pandas left in the wild making them endangered animals
• Once in captivity pandas lose the will to reproduce which forces researchers and habitats such as the Chengdu Panda Base to artificially inseminate the females in order to continue growing the population
• When a panda has twins, the mother will select the stronger cub to feed (because she only produces enough milk for one cub) and will leave the other to die
• 99% of a panda's diet it bamboo and can eat between 20-30 pounds of it in a single day
• Every panda that lives outside of China is being "rented" by the country it is living in. Every panda in the world is technically the property of China.
• The Chinese word for panda is pronounced "xiong mao".

Now here are some pictures of pandas!!

Emeishan

From Habitat for Humanity we drove to Emeishan (Emei Mountain) to spend a night and hike the mountain for or first fun activity of the weeklong trip!

We arrived around 3 o'clock in the afternoon and checked into the hotel. 30 minutes later we were back on the bus to go see a local Buddhist temple. The temple was a lot like the ones we have been to with the statues and all the religious relics but this temple has one unique feature unlike any of the temples I've visited; the temple had 7 separate temples, one above the other up the side of a steep mountain. So in order to explore the entirety of the temple oh have to walk through one temple, go through the back, and walk up a long staircase to the next temple and repeat the process. At the very top was the very last temple and quite clearly the most important. The temple's main room was lined wall to wall and floor to ceiling with golden statues. In the center of room was a statue of a white elephant with buddha sitting on top of it. It was different from other temples that we've seen so far in China!

Later that night we just had free time at the hotel. Part of the hotel package that our program paid for was for us to be able to visit the hot springs on our hotel's land! We all got in our swim suits and robes and headed to the hot springs right after the sun went down! It was a really big with lots of pools and bridges to the different pools all incredibly hot and felt amazing! Part of the hot springs was 4 different mini hot tub like pools that had herbal elements. The pools were banana, cocoa, menthol, and orange that didn't quite smell like how thy should but definitely different in color. All of the different pools were said to help with circulation, bacteria, and other ailments that would be cured by sitting in the pools. Mostly I found it was just relaxing because it was essentially a hot tub! The last pool we found was very interesting but I didn't get in because it cost a lot to do. There was a shallow warm pool of water that has hundreds of little fish swimming around inside. You go to the edge of the pool and stick your feet into the water and all the little fish swim up and nibble on your feet! The fish are eating the calluses on your feel so if you soak your feet and let the fish eat at the calcium deposits, you will leave the pool with soft feet, a lot like getting your feet scrubbed during a pedicure! The hot springs was really interesting as well as a wonderfully relaxing way to wrap up the day!

The next day we headed up to Emeishan! It was pretty cold and still had a fair amount of snow on the ground which made it slippery at times. To kept keep from slipping we bought these grass woven flats that we're tied onto the bottom of your shoes. The difference was night and day! The woven accessory completely worked and gave us 100% traction even on icey parts we walked on! 

The "hiking" on Emeishan was much like "hiking" Huangshan because it was all just walking up an endless staircase. It was also a little strange because all the way up the mountain were food stands and gift stores which kind of ruined the nature quality of being on a mountain. The mountain was also packed with Chinese tourists, most of which belonging to a tour group led by someone holding a flag and yelling into a megaphone, once again ruining most of the nature aspect of hiking a mountain.

My favorite part of making our way to the top of the mountain came at about the half way mark when the monkeys came out to play! As we entered an area of the mountain we began seeing monkeys everywhere! These were not tiny little adorable monkeys like Abu from Aladin, these monkeys were 40 pounds, hairy, and hungry! They also had zero fear of all the tourists, probably because they knew they would win that fight. Everyone was feeding the monkeys food but the monkeys were quite greedy and took much more then they were given. A tourist pulled a mini cake out of a big package to give to the money, the monkey snuck over and took the entire package from the tourist. My friend Mal gave a price of corn to a monkey, the money reached into her bag to swipe her Gatorade and proceeded to bite the bottom of the bottle and shotgun the Gatorade! They were so fun to watch though! When we were hanging out in one area we spotted a momma monkey with a brand new baby clinging to her stomach while she ran around! We also saw about 4 baby monkeys all playing together and I made the comment "Ahh I wish a money would come play with me!"... Be careful what you wish for! Not even a full minutes passed and I felt a little hand on my shoulder, I turned around and one of the babies was standing on the railing leaning on me for a second and then it jumped directly on my shoulder! He was so cute but I couldn't hide my fear that he was just going to get angry and rip my face off with those sharp teeth of theirs! But he just sat on my shoulder hanging out, he even started playing with my hair and preening me at one point! It seemed like he would never leave so I eventually had to basically push him off and back onto the fence! And now on my white hat I was wearing, I have a muddy handprint of a baby monkey from when he was playing with my head! 

Unfortunately we did have to leave the monkey's and continue to the top of the mountain but we had to take a gondola to get there. We arrived at the top and that's where we learned that on the top of the mountain was a very famous temple and golden statue! The statue was over 60 meters high, bright gold, and was surrounded by elephants! We got to the top but unfortunately there was heavy fog on the top of the mountain and we couldn't even see to the top of the golden figure (but I'll add a photo of what the whole thing looks like!). But the inside of the golden figure had a beautiful relic of Buddha and many offerings surrounding it. Behind the golden statue was the temple with 3 Buddhas. The temple and statue were so impressive because of their grand presentation and the fact that they were massive structures located on the top of a huge mountain! Such a unique experience and an awesome day trip!

Habitat for Humanity

My program in China puts together a weeklong trip for us! There are the business student, the global context students, and the advanced Chinese students and each program has their own weeklong trip. The global context students went to Xi'an, the dances Chinese program went to Yunan, and my business program went to Chengdu in the Sichuan Province!

We left Shanghai and flew 3 hours west to Chengdu to begin our week long adventure! The first part of our weekend long trip was spending 3 days going to a Mayan village outside the city of Chengdu and do Habitat for Humanity! 


The village undertook a lot of loss when the massive earthquake hit the Sichuan Province last year and many of the villager's homes were destroyed as a result. Currently there is construction preparing the land to build new homes for those families affected, but since the physical reconstruction is not ready to begin. Besides playing with local children who lived our attention, we did a number of jobs to help the villagers and make a difference

One job we did was working with the village farmers in their vegetable gardens using hoes to turn over the soil to keep it from drying up. If the soil drying then it becomes useless for planting so you have to pull up lower layers of dirt with moisture still in it to the top, it's really hard work and the night after doing that my back was definitely sore!

Another job we did was pulling weeds in the vegetable gardens with some of the women in the village, which was fun because it gave us the opportunity to speak with some of the locals for part of the day. One interesting thing happened when pulling weeds with a local woman that made an impression on me. While we took a water break from weeding one of my friends and I sat out in the sun. The local woman came up to us instructing us (in Chinese) that we needed to hurry and get back in the greenhouse area, which is covered. We asked her why we needed to drink our water inside and she told us that it was because we were going to get tan/dark by sitting out in the sun and being dark is ugly! In china being very light skinned is considered beautiful while dark skin is frowned up and some people even act slightly racist against those with dark complexions. They even sell cremes and lotions that have whitening elements in them to make skin lighter. The reasoning behind it can be found in other countries too, like India, where dark skin is perceived I be a lower class since they are the workers who have to work all day in the sun making them dark as opposed to the wealthy who have the luxury of sitting inside all day and having light skin because the sun never has to touch them. This symbol of beauty tends to be seen in cultures where there are larger class separation or a stone caste system influence. But even though I know this is a common practice, it was still interesting to see it put in practice.

Our last job we did was transport a huge pile of bricks from one location to another to be used for construction in one of the new homes. All the bricks were originally the bricks used to build one of the villager's homes that need up being destroyed in the earthquake. Some of the bricks were salvaged from the wreckage and will be used to build that family's new home! We met the grandmother of the family who will be using the bricks to make their new home and she was so grateful for us being there and helping us! She brought us an entire grocery sack filled with fresh oranges that we could have for a snack, obviously this woman is very poor and we realized this was so much to take from her so we accepted a few oranges to take with us and said she should keep the rest for herself but she refused and insisted on us taking the oranges. It was such a sweet and very meaningful gesture of her gratitude. She also had a puppy and about 30 baby chicks at her makeshift current home and invited us over to play with the animals! She was such a sweet woman! As we're all the villagers we met. We got the chance to sit down with a family from the village and they were very friendly and, although shy, loved being able to talk to us about their lives and their families.

The village that we worked in for Habitat was gorgeous! The scenery is very mountainous and for as far as the eye can see is covered in bright yellow flowers called oil flowers. With a beautiful stream running across one side of the village and a bamboo forest going up the other side, the location was breathtaking! Every day the villagers would make us a delicious meal and we got to play games with the local children. It was a really fun way to spend the breaks each day we worked on the project. We also got the chance to hike up a path through the bamboo forest and up to the top of the mountain. We found out that the hike was a major part of the Silk Road and was one of the most well traveled routes! It was cool being able to hike alone an area that has so much of China's history surrounding it!

And by the end of the Habitat for Humanity part of our weeklong trip I go a certificate awarded to me for my work in the village! It was such a unique experience to be able to volunteer and make a difference in such a foreign place. It truly makes you appreciate what you have and humbles you when you meet the kindest people with the greatest appreciation for the time and effort you put into making their lives a little bit easier! 

Suzhou!

Tired of the hustle and bustle of the city, myself and three of my girlfriends in the dorm (Charly, Mal, and Andrea) packed up and made our way to Suzhou! Suzhou is a famous water town in China located close to Shanghai. It's nickname is "Venice of the East" because of all the canals that the city is built around. The location in proximity to Shanghai and the promise of some gorgeous site seeing made it an easy decision to travel there!

 It takes about an hour and a half or so to drive to Suzhou but we instead took a train, which turned out to be the bullet train! So instead it took exactly 22 minutes and we had arrived at our destination! Before we left I had booked us 4 beds in a 6-person dorm style room at a random hostel. I went for the cheapest option in the beat area so we ended up paying around $3.75 per person per night. The hostel we stayed at was amazing! It was along a canal and located in the heart of a famous night market street with great shops and awesome places to eat!

We arrived later Friday night so just spent the night having dinner in our hostel's restaurant/bar and planning our weekend's excursions! Thanks to "Lonely Planet: China" we had a full weekend's worth of activities in mind!

 

Friday morning we were up at 7am ready to start our day! Our first stop was to the Humble Administrator's Garden (pictures are above), a short one mile walk away from our hostel! The garden was very large and modeled after the traditional style of gardens that China is so famous for. We meandered for most of morning around ponds, through pagodas, along rows of bonsai trees, and across

stone bridges enjoying the beauty of the gardens while also trying to avoid getting too close to the numerous Chinese tour group that occasionally flooded an area o the garden ruining the tranquility with those ever so powerful loudspeakers.

One we'd thoroughly explored the area we went directly next door to the Suzhou History Museum. Apparently tour groups do not frequent the local museums because I found the Suzhou History Museum even more peaceful than the garden, but then again, maybe that's just the nerd in me. The museum had lots of modern works of art done by local artists of the Suzhou scenery, silk paintings done in the traditional ways of a few different dynasties, and (my personal favorite) ancient artifacts organized by the age periods. My favorite discovery was a ceramic pot from 7,000bc. Standing there looking at a pot that is 9,000 years old is such a surreal concept to try and grasp! As my roommate Charly so eloquently put it "This pot makes it seem like Jesus and I could have been buddies!". There was also very impressive displays of traditional Chinese ceramics and jade carvings that were really interesting to see! 

From the museum we went to a Buddhist temple a little further in Suzhou than our hostel was. A pleasant surprise was that cabs, once outside of Shanghai, are incredibly affordable! We only paid about half the price we would have had to pay in Shanghai to go the same distance! When our affordable can ride was over and the driver told us we were at the temple we walked towards where he said the entrance was without seeing a typical temple entrance that we're used to. Instead it was just a big door half cracked open, we stepped inside and it looked like a typical Buddhist courtyard so we continued walking into the main temple area. It was very still and calm, not touristy in the least, which was a nice change of pace from temples we had encountered on many occasions. We arrived just in time to watch and "ahh" at the Buddhist monks' closing day chants. It's a very moving experience even when you aren't as familiar with Buddhism or understand the meaning of the chants. As we walked out of the temple we decided to stop at the area where you burn incense and pray to the gods, even though we are not Buddhist we took a moment to pray to whatever we believed, a calming and happy reflection of our lives and the loved ones in it. Shortly after the calming ceremony of contemplation, we became embarrassed and felt dumb when realizing that we had technically "snuck" into the temple through the side gate and had bypassed the 25 kaui entrance free required for that temple... Oops! 

After returning home to our hostel we all took a short nap; a full day of activities will wear a person out! When we awoke we decided to walk along the market street that was literally out our hostel's front door, shop a little, and find a place for dinner. A pleasant way to end a busy day!

Saturday morning and up again at 7am! Breakfast in our hostel's bar/ restaurant just like the day before and we're off on another round of exploration of this city called Suzhou! We went to the Blue Wave Pavilion first thinking that we would be there for an hour maybe two. Turns out that the pavilion was massive with so much to see and do that we stayed for 4 1/2 hours! There was a giant coy pond that stood still between the two temples, an eight story pagoda 1,000 years old, lots of land and walking areas with waterfalls and Chinese styled gazebos, and an ancient city wall. The ancient city wall had two massive entrances (one by land and one by water) guarded off by draw bridges that were used hundreds of years ago to keep the city's enemies from being able to enter, very similar to the types of walls seen in Medieval movies to protect the king and queen's castle. We got off the wall and ended up taking a wooden boat ride through a small part of the river that went through the gate's entrance. Our boat rower was an older woman who sang us beautiful Chinese songs, which are traditionally sang on boats, it was such a cool river cruise! We ended our time at the pavilion by walking up the 1,000-year-old pagoda! Unfortunately, unaware to us when we began climbing) we were only able to climb to the third story before the stairs were blocked off. Apparently climbing all the way to the top of an 8 story 1,000-year-old pagoda is not aloud, but the views even from the third story were spectacular and you could look over the entire property! 

 

Since we spent so much time in the pavilion, by the time we walked out and back onto the streets of Suzhou we were starving! So instead of going to a restaurant we managed to swipe a table at one of the local bakeries! I'm not quite sure I've mentioned the bakeries in China in my blog posts but let me tell you, they are INCREDIBLE! It makes me wish we had more of them in Colorado! They have desserts, pizza like things, sandwiches, break with eggs bakes in the center, and so much more! For lunch on this particular day I decided to get a pizza-bread-thing resembling Hawaiian pizza with pineapple and ham, a long doughy bread stick with a drizzle of what they called "cheese" (the Chinese don't eat the same cheese as the states, but this was a close second in comparison), and to wash it down got a tiramisu latte! We were quite happy with our random smorgasbord of bread for lunch!

It began to rain that afternoon so, knowing we ha lots to do that night, we went back to the hostel for another well-deserved naptime. For dinner we headed to a popular shopping street to find a particular restaurant and experience a traditional Suzhou style meal... But like many of our plans, this one ended by the restaurant owner looking at us with a frown saying "mei you, mei you!" or "don't have, don't have!", so with no available tables for us we proceeded to the next best thing, Dairy Queen. With my dinner of a large Oreo blizzard in hand, we departed to our first evening activity, a cruise around the main river of Suzhou! The cruise was an hour long showing us many beautiful areas around the river that were lit up at night in beautiful colors! There was a traditional Chinese singer who provided entertainment for half of the trip as well! The final destination was a large pagoda on the river's edge lit from top to bottom with lights illuminating its massive size and beautiful shape! 

Back on dry land we took a cab to our final destination, a hole in the wall teahouse with live music playing nightly. The teahouse only had four tables and lucky for us we managed to secure a spot at the only one open. The tea ceremony in china is very interesting! We had our own personal "tea guide" who conducted our ceremony. She first made a pot of tea, filled up each tea cup, then picked up each cup pouring the tea over the top of the teapot, only to refill the cups again and passing them around for us to do a cheers with our first cup of tea. She was with us the entire time always making sure our cups were filled with wonderful green tea! She was learning English and we are learning Chinese so lots of our conversation was going through words and phrases with her and us helping here with the same in English! The live music at the tea ceremony was all traditional Chinese instruments and songs and we got the chance (for a small fee) to request songs for the artist to play! The tea ceremony was a very traditional part of the Chinese culture that we were finally able to experience and in such a personal and comfortable setting.

7am came once again and we all ventured out for our final morning in Suzhou. We went to another beautiful garden with the theme of "harmony between man and nature". There were small Chinese gazebos, stairs, and other man-made features but because of the garden's purpose, they had been so well incorporated into the natural surroundings that they fit perfectly into the tranquil environment. My favorite moment was when a Chinese man came up to us with his 3 or 4-year-old daughter and said something to her in Chinese and she began to sing the ABC's! It was so cute!

When we left the garden we walked down the street and happened upon an 800-year-old Confucian temple! There were a few statues of Confucius, lots of bells and gongs, and bonsai trees around the temple but the coolest part was what was waiting just beyond the back gates of the temple's grounds. Out the back was a street market where vendors had laid out blankets and set truckers out on the blankets for sale! We were the only foreigners in the area so we knew they would try and take advantage of us so our bargaining skills had to be top notch! My favorite moment of bargaining that's happened to me since coming to China occurred within ten minutes of entering that market. I saw a teapot that I really liked and went to ask the vendor how much it was me: "duo shiou qian?" vendor: "liu bai Kaui!" me: "600 Kaui?!" that's almost $100 in US terms. I told him I would pay 80 kaui and only got him down to 400 until I moved onto the next vendor who did the same for his teapot that I liked but went to 300 kaui. Neither prices I was willing to pay so began to walk away when I got stopped from vendor #1 saying he would sell his for 300 also, which prompted vendor #2 to run over saying he would go down to 275, then a third vendor came up with one of his teapots saying he would sell it for 250! Before I knew it I had at least 7 vendors surrounding me all fighting among each other continuing to lower their price so they would be lower then the previous vendor and therefore hoping I would buy THEIR teapot, all while I sat their quietly watching them compete for my business. Finally ever one of the vendors was down to 80 kaui, my original asking price, and I decided to take advantage of the situation and demand that now I wanted the pot for 50 kuai instead which (reluctantly) they all agreed too. So I ended up choosing the very first pot that I found and paying only 50 kaui from the original 600, which is $7.92 down from $95.02. 

And with that final price of excitement and victory, we headed back to the train station to return to our fast pace, populated city of Shanghai with some great stories and memories of our travels to Suzhou!