Before I get into the details of China, where we are finally settled and into classes and exploring, I think I should update you all on the wonders of Southeast Asia, a place I've fallen in love with, just from our three weeks there. Here are the highlights by country:
Thailand - Seeing Parntip in Bangkok was great. She gave me some presents for the family that I have to carry around now, including snacks she wanted me to bring back for y'all, but I will be the first to admit, keeping in line with my newest nickname that everyone here (including the students we meet along the way) has adopted: Snacks, that I have eaten all those snacks and will just have to tell you about them later. They were tastey. Bangkok is a really strange city. We saw Thai silk at the Jim Thompson house and then on our second time through Bangkok saw the side of it I had only heard about. We went to a touristy street with vendors all along the side and hundreds of foreigners wandering looking for adventure and we were offered "ping pong show" and the like (it involves ping pongs and female body parts apparently)... it was accompanied by a great noise, which I am avoiding for the rest of my life, but needless to say we turned down every offer. The best part of Thailand was our time in the north around Chiangmai, both in the city and in villages north of there. We spent three days trekking in the jungle and sleeping in little villages on bamboo floors and that was so cool. We'd met up with a Carleton grad who now lives in SE Asia doing who knows what and the adventures we experienced with Barry were absolutely amazing. It's fun to meet people along the way who show us how they live and why they love the region so much. We saw the Golden Triangle area and spent an hour in Laos across the river in the weirdest little shop I've ever seen. Chiangmai was a cool city, with a night market and a fun night out with the bartender and a waitress from the restaurant at our hotel. That was something i missed in Madrid. We were always with our group and never really branched out to local friends other than the monitores who were paid to be our friends. That's been a highlight so far.
Burma - My favorite country so far on the trip. We met up with students in a program, the Pre-Collegiate Program, run by a woman from Chicago. They are accepted into the program after their normal schooling through high school and they spend a year in it, getting them ready for a foreign university. the kids are incredible and all smarter than me by a lot. We were shown around Yangon by them and really got to see some cool things, including a "social venture" that makes and sells products at very low prices to farmers in rural areas. We were really taken care of in Burma and the people were all so incredibly nice. It's a country that no one wants to travel to because everyone thinks so many things are going on with the government and the military, but when you're there all you see is how amazing the people are and how much hope they have for making their government better and being the people to make that change. It's like going back in time to a place where everything is just real. I've never felt as much in and about a PLACE as I did in Burma. It was something I can't really describe, but being there just made me feel more than I ever have anywhere I've gone. Even being in Spain where I could communicate with anyone and could get anywhere and understood everything, I never felt anything like I did in Burma. Maybe it was that I just didn't understand everything and I knew I couldn't, so my view of the country and people and situation was just so different than it would be anywhere else. I am trying to learn Burmese this summer so that someday I will go back and be able to communicate, but I loved that country. We spent a couple days in Bagan, which was an ancient city at a time when if people died their money would go to the government, so in the ends of their life they used their fortunes to build temples. It's quite beautiful and striking. We spent the days their to recover from our excitement in Yangon and get ready for Vietnam.
Vietnam - Roy kept telling us that Vietnam would be "in your face"... I would say this is mostly true. The people are really intense and don't really care about being friendly and nice to foreigners which was a shock after being loved in Burma and Thailand, but was a nice change, too. We spent some nights in Hanoi, a great city that is very walkable and has a beautiful lake in the middle and then 500 hours on a bus to go to a village in the north for a bike ride and sleepover in the village and then to Halong Bay, which is absolutely beautiful. We took a junk out to Catba Island, in the bay, and jumped from the top of it into the ocean (6 times for me... naturally. not as good as the rocks in the Carrabassett River, but nothing can really be as good as Maine, right?). Catba Island was really cool, too. Wes and I walked out the hotel door in the first fifteen minutes, planning on going for a walk or bike ride to a beach or something, but were harassed by some men trying to rent us their motorbikes, so naturally we got one. We spent the next 4 hours, for 50,000 dong (about 3 dollars) zooming around the island. Don't worry, Mum, I was wearing a helmet and Wes had driven 4-wheelers before. We saw some Canadians climbing rocks in the middle of a farm, went to the opposite end of the island where we saw the sunset but feared running out of gas and sunlight for the ride back, met two other Carls on the way who were fun to zoom around with, and went in a cave that has a hospital used between 1963 and 1965 so people could be treated during the war. I thought when we went through a big steel door into a hospital in a cave that our guide would lock the doors and it would be like a horror movie, but luckily that didn't happen. All three of us thought we might die at a few points, but we made it out of the cave alive and our bikes weren't stolen. We met some British guys who we had seen in Hanoi a few nights before and did magic tricks with Georgie, Rob, and Tom in a little expat bar on the island for a few hours. Back in Hanoi, Vivyan and I spent the day walking around, shopping, and not buying much, but it's a really cool place with a lot of French influence.
To sum up, Southeast Asia is awesome. I am going to have to come back to see Cambodia and Laos, but at least I got a flag in every country, made some awesome friends, and got to know this group much better. I'll write more about that later, as well as where we are now, which is at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. I'm going to go eat some noodles now and get ready for another class, but tonight we're doing Karaoke down the street and I am WAY excited. Love to everyone!
No comments:
Post a Comment