999,999 Total KM’s Covered (check out our Google map!)
?!@#$? Money Spent
6,720 Pictures Taken
5,416 Meters – Highest Point Visited
1,322 Mosquito Bites
230 Days on the Trip
72 Cities Visited
67 New friends on Facebook
39 Blog Entries
30 Stomach Problems (gotta love India!)
27 Long Distance Bus Rides
20 Dives
14 Train Rides
9 Flights
5.5 # Of Languages we learned how to count up to 5 in
5 Countries Visited
1 Home
-150 Lowest Point Visited
Hope you had fun following us around Asia!
You have our phone #’s, don’t be shy to give us a call!
We came to Thailand in order to vacation after this long hard journey before we came home, so we made our way as quickly as possible to the Islands!
Our vacation on the islands started with Ayal having a 39 degree fever which passed just in time for the “Full Moon Party“. A crazy party with over 5,000 people on a small strip of beach drinking from buckets of joy..
From there we moved on to some under water fun – diving! The diving was nice, but we felt that nothing we saw could compare with the underwater life at Andaman islands – so we might have to go back there one day!
So after many fruit shakes and working on Noaa’s tan we are now back in hot and humid Bangkok enjoying our last Pad Thai’s and some final shopping..
Our 2nd visit to Hong Kong only focused on one thing.. buying a laptop! and of course some jewish studies with our friendly hosts..
from there we quickly moved on by fairey to Macau.
Macau was a Portuguese colony until only about 10 years ago when the Chinese and the Portuguese came to some agreement in which Macau was returned to China. Their is still a heavy Portuguese influence in Macau – most of the locals speak Portuguese and loved speaking Spanish with Ayal which apparently looks spanish. The streets signs are all in Portuguese a little Chinese and maybe English.
Macau is China’s Las Vegas! with over 20 casinos on this small island it’s really hard to avoid going into one, or 2, or maybe even 5 !!
Most of the hotels/casinos weren’t as fancy as Las Vegas, BUT, Macau has its own MGM, Sands and Venetian (the exact replica of the one in Vegas). These are the 3 casnios we decided to donate some pocket money to (as they are all owned by jews!).. thank god we only had 24 hours in Macau before our flight to Thailand other wise we might have had to shorten our trip 😉
Many foreigners decide to settle down in Shanghai, a city which has many western characteristics.
Shanghai is known for it’s tall buildings and the “band” (the promenade which goes along the river side). Shanghai also has colonial buildings and small traditional chinese streets which reminds us that it is still a city in China. Shanghai isn’t as crowded as Beijing but it’s still a pretty hectic place! check out this video showing how pedestrians, 2 wheelers and heavy traffic run harmoniously.
In Shanghai you will find many English speaking Chinese, mainly many “friendly students” who would like to practice their English with you. A little bit of small talk which shortly after turns into an invitation to a “traditional tea show” in which after you would drink some tea you will soon find out YOU are the star of this show having to pay a ridiculous amount of money for that small cup of chai. Don’t worry, we didn’t fall for this scam, instead after learning the rules of this new game we could spot out these students and decided to invite them to OUR traditional tea show… they weren’t humored as much as we were 🙂
Shanghai has a lot of great night life to offer and has some extremely fancy bars and restaurants around down town.
This was our last stop in “mainland” china so we decided to leave with one more chinese experience.. oysters on a grill!?!
But, are they really??
Our first impression of Beijing other than the huge distances in this massive city was that Beijing is one big construction site!
Every where you go there is some thing under construction.. as we type these letters there is a tractor outside ripping apart the old road and will be replaced (before the olympics of course) by some new beautiful/biggest in the world/first ever/never seen before/chinese authentic styled new road! you may be feeling a cynical vibe, but do not be confused, that’s what everything here’s about!
Every thing has to be the best / the biggest in the world and so on.. here are a few examples:
airport terminal #3 – largest built complex in the world which covers over 986,000 sq. meters in total floor area.
forbidden city – the oldest/largest/restored palace! – did you know that??
the great wall – enough said.
you get the idea..
with our luck we were in Beijing over the workers holiday (May 1st) which makes it harder to breath not just because of the unexplained heat/dust storms/bus egzoz/general pollution but because of 1.3 billion people hitting the streets!
The Great Wall – is really great! it used to be around 6,700km long (not a typo!) and it has been estimated that somewhere in the range of 2 to 3 million Chinese died as part of the centuries-long project of building the wall.
We really enjoyed walking on the wall even though we couldn’t see farther than 100m ahead of us due to heavy mist (pollution). We’re not going to search for words to describe it, you’ll have to one day come and see it yourself.. in the mean time here are our up to 100m photos of The Great Wall:
BUT, the best part of the Great Wall (at least the small part we went to see) was the toboggan ride back down to the parking lot!!!
Ayal says – COME TO CHINA JUST FOR THIS!!!
Noaa says – Magziman!
Here’s a short clip to show you what it’s all about:
Please note, Ayal had accidental stopped recording after a small bump.. so at least you can see half of the way down 🙂
Xi`an’s a big city surrounded by a wall (beginning to sound familiar?) which happens to have a lot of green around it..
Xi`an has a rich history since it used to be the capital of China before Beijing and is one of China’s main tourist attractions thanks to the “Terracota Army”! – which happens to be the reason we came here as well 🙂
The “Terracota Army” is actually a tomb of Shi Huang Di the First Emperor of China. This was over 3,000 years ago but only discovered around 30 years ago! Shi Huang Di went to war and united all the dynasties in China during that time.
Anyways, this emperor believed that when he dies he will move on to the next world and decided to bury along with him an army of over 8,000 soldiers to protect him in the next world!!
The terracota figures are pretty big – 184–197cm. The different sizes and shapes refer to the rank of the soldier, biggest being the general and next the commanders.. they’re very impressive!
The most western city in China (geographic wise, not culture wise!!) …
In this FAR west city you will barely find any Chinese but mainly Uighur people and some immigrants from Pakistan / Tajikistan / Kazakhstan / Kyrgystan and some other Stan countries.. as they like to call it here, Indistan (India).. 😉
There aren’t many attractions in the city, it’s really enough just to walk around and watch the people.. it’s as if we left China and visited a different country! The children here come up to you and beg you to take a picture of them and for nothing in return!! just to see what they look like on the digital camera.. as oppose to Nepal where the kids would ask for School Pen/Money/Chocolate/GIVE ME!!!
You can find any crafts men you can think of – and all hand made “old school” style.. from horse shoes to batters..
We had a very interesting experience at the “Pakistan Cafe” right near our hotel. We – Pablo and his Woman (no speaking with woman, so she doesn’t need a name) came from Argentina on that day as apparently the people eating there had a serious problem with USA and ISRAEL – the source of all the problems in the world!! Once we explained that the weird language we were speaking among ourselves was spanish we got a lovely welcome and had a great time. we even bumped into a few of them on the street later and got hugged (Ayal ofcourse).. amazing how prejudice people can be..
We even drove all the way to the border with Pakistan to see “Karakul lake” in the Karakorem range (K2 – 2nd highest mountain in the world) and there we met Anadin and his wife Phiyzura who let us stay in their mud house which is heated by camel shit.. quite an experience. we smelt bad for the next 2 days!!!
We weren’t very lucky with cheap air fare’s this time and had to take a train back to “Main China” .. so we had a 3 night 4 day journey in trains… quite an experience.. don’t do it! especially not if it snows in the destination you’ve planned on going to and your train gets canceled!!
And on this happy note, we would like to wish you all a HAPPY PESACH!!
The 2nd lowest place in the earth at around -150m (we thought it’s
funny they take pride in being the 2nd lowest.. with out even knowing
where the lowest is)
Turpan is a small city known for it’s vineyards – no grapes this time
of year.. only very good raisins. “Come back in september” every one
told us every where we went..
We hired a car along with 2 danish girls and drove to the sites around the city.
We saw ruins of an old city, the ancient water system called “Karez”
which is basically an underground tunnel from the mountains to the
desert cities which was dug in order to avoid evaporation in the
desert.. what makes this system special is the fact that they dug MANY
MANY wells (150km’s worth) and then connected them all underground..
only with a shovel!
We also saw some buddah caves which were defaced (the buddah’s) by the
muslims, sorry, no pics allowed by the muslim guard…
At the end of the day we stayed at a local family’s house in a small
village called “Tuyoq”. They fed us dinner and breakfast and layed
down rugs on the floor for us to sleep on. Before going to sleep we
worked around “town” and met Parida and her friend which invited us to their house for bread and tea and to meet their family. They really
liked our digital camera so we let Parida take some pics with it – a
genius move – this is the only way you can get photos of muslim women
and their babies.. they would never let us take their picture. When we
got back to the city we developed some photos and sent them to Sami’s
,her brother, school since they don’t even have a mailing address for
their home!! Who knows, these maybe their only family photos since we
didn’t see any while we were there..
From Turpan we took a 27 hour bus ride to the far west – Kashgar. This
hell ride is highly unrecommended, we won’t go into details.. but you
can imagine – smoke, lack of air, some more smoking, change of bus at
5 am.. maybe we will go into some detail 😉
Xinjiang province used to be named Turkeystan – probably because the
main minority living here (the Uighurs) are decedents of turkish
traders.
This all ended about 60 years ago when China (surprisingly) took over
this area and named it “Xinjiang”. This area shares a border with 7
countries and is rich with oil.
The first thing you notice when you walk out of the airport is the
different faces of these people. The majority of the people here are
muslims which look eastern european more than chinese. it’s really as
if we left china and moved to a different country: all the signs are
in what seems like arabic but what is actually their native language,
the food is completely different – these people love bread! some thing
that is very difficult to find in china. they have tabun like bakeries
all over which supply hot fresh bread around the clock. it’s really
hard to miss the smoke of the shishlik/shishkabbab’s on the many
grills all over town. They don’t eat pork or any other squid like
stuff which makes life a lot easier..
Urumqi is the province’s capital and is highly influenced by the
chinese, and that is because there is a large percentage of Chinese
living here.
Not much to do in the city itself but to walk in the market/bazaar’s
or go to the history museum which explains about 10 out of about 40
minorities living in this province.. another thing you can do is watch
a chinese school out of our guest house window and see what modern
communism looks like!
We also took a day trip to heavenly lake which is located on mountains
surrounding Urumqi and the Taklamakan desert.. the lake was frozen!
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