Three little piggies! Bakery in Saigon

We arrived in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh to people who live outside of the city) after our long, bumpy crowded bus trip from Nha Trang. It was 5:30 in the morning when we arrived and we started off on foot, turning away all the moto drivers towards where we thought the hostel was. Turns out google maps isn’t the most trust worthy of sources when trying to locate a small house in a back alley , and it’s not the first time we’ve been led astray. After a short time of getting our bearings we were down the little alley off of the main strip and ringing the bell to wake up the house to let us into the hostel. This hostel is a building owned and operated by a family, and the common room is shared between the guests and the family.

The first day we spent walking around the city and avoiding a nap. We didn’t want to go to nap and risk ‘napping’ for hours on end and then not be able to sleep in the night. Saigon has a large backpackers section, just like all the other cities in Asia that we have been to so far. The restaurants and shops seem to be a little more local that in many of the cities. They are all very similar and not many of them seemed to stand out or have a flair that would draw you in. Every meal we ended up walking around for a good half hour, or more, sometimes much more trying to decide on somewhere to eat. The first day was the worst, as we were checking out the city, and walking on our way to the war remnants museum. We walked for over an hour and a half even trying to find a restaurant. We did find a Yogen Fruz, which was a rare treat that Chad couldn’t pass up!

A tank destroyed by the Cu Chi during the "American War"

We were greeted by our tour guide in the morning for our half day trip to the Cu Chi tunnels by ‘Mr. Bean’ our Vietnamese veteran tour guide. Throughout the day, he had told us that he was born in the Philippines, lived in America and moved to Vietnam after the end of conflict with the Americans. He had served under John Kerry among other famous American veterans, then he served 4 years in a Vietnamese prison after the war due to his involvement with the Americans. He wrote a book that was published in the 90’s about his experiences. Seemed like a tall story, but considering the insight and other stories that he told during the trip, they all seemed to mesh well together. However, we still haven’t been able to track him down yet through his book. He said it was called ‘Three moons in Vietnam’ or something similar, but the book we looked up under that name is written by a British woman. Go figure. Same same…but different.

Just like the sign says.. handicrafts and jobs to support those who have it tough

Then we were off to the Cu Chi tunnels, which is an area just outside of Saigon deep in American occupied territory that never succumbed during the war. They said that over 12,000 Vietnamese people died, compared to 188 Americans (just in this region, not the whole war). The people were so resilient due to the soil formations in the area. The soil is over 90% clay. This enabled them to build very strong tunnels very rapidly. American attempts to flood or burn the people out of the tunnels only served to eventually make the tunnels stronger. The tunnels are also extremely tight in some sections that only the smallest westerner would have been able to squeeze through. We were given a chance to crawl 130 meters through the tunnels at the end of the visit, and it was an incredible insight into the life of the people who lived underground for years. During the war, the Cu Chi people lived underground during the daylight hours. At night they came to the surface, tended to their farms, removed soil from the tunnels (which they threw into bomb crafters or the river to hide the evidence) and then they went back underground before the sun would rise. As the Americans were unwilling to advance or undertake combat during the night time, the Cu Chi were relatively safe to move about at night. We also saw many booby-traps and how they were designed to incapacitate an enemy. The tenacity of the people demonstrates the degree to which anyone is capable of going to protect their homeland. To the Cu Chi people, the Americans were nothing more than foreign invaders, attempting to take away their freedom.

Chad trying to fit into one of the Cu Chi tunnels outside of Saigon

That night we performed our Saigon dance around the city trying to find a spot to eat. After dinner we went out for a few drinks to some local places before stopping at the ‘crazy buffalo’ for a couple of drinks and to take in some quality people watching. It was strange though, as in the local restaurants/pubs we could get a 3 oz glass of vodka & soda for ~$0.8, but when we went to the large club, it cost $5 and had practically no booze in it. It was a high price to pay to people watch and we were soon on our way back to the hotel.
Our last day in Saigon was spent doing a little shopping, trying to find some clothes that would be more suitable for the warmer weather climates. We found a few nice things, and a few things for us to send home with our wall paintings. We were even brave enough to try to visit the city market again. This time, we stayed away from the food section and only visited the clothing/watch/jewellery area. This is the first experience we’ve had at being physically accosted. As we walked down the hallways, the people would literally reach out, grab your hand, your forearm, elbow or just about anything and try to drag you into their shop. At first it was slightly annoying, but it quickly grew to over-the-top aggravating. At the end Chad was even slapping the hands of anyone who would grab him, and pushing them away. While we were on our way to the post office, it would dribble a few drops of rain and stop. A few more drops and then nothing. This would have been a good warning to anyone who had been through a tropical shower before, but we were oblivious. A few more minutes and we were caught in a full-on downpour. It was a flash-flood style rain that didn’t seem to let up, so we hopped into a taxi and drove the rest of the way to the post-office as we didn’t have any umbrellas or rain gear with us. After we left the post office, maybe 50 minutes after the rain started, it was all over and the streets were already starting to dry up.

That night was the beginning of the 3rd annual indoor Asian games. Saigon was the host city and some of the guests at the hotel were visiting the city to take in the games. It would have been nice to see them, but we had already made up our mind to head out to the water festival in Phnom Penh. We were able to see some of the festivities though, because some of the stages and vendor stalls were right across the street from our hotel. The next morning, we were off on the bus for Cambodia!

written by  ECRadventure on October 30 from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
from the travel blog: ECRadventure's Travel Blog
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The beach in Nha Trang. Abandoned because it's low season

We arrived in Nha Trang late in the evening and headed right for our hostel, checked into our little room and headed out for a bite to eat after our long, frustrating train ride. We walked around the backpacker area of town, where our hostel was and we knew that we had arrived somewhere we would enjoy. We ended up at a little restaurant, with the same name as the one we went to in Hue, the Why not bar. Except that this bar was four times the size and filled with foreigners. Up and down the street were little shops restaurants and hostels that were geared for backpackers. We haven’t been in Asia that long, (about a month) but it was nice to be surrounded with familiar things.

The next day we woke up to a wonderful, sunny blue sky day. We walked around the city some more, checked out the beach, and planned for our next couple of days in the city. The town is small enough to walk around a lot of the main areas by foot, and the moto’s or taxi’s are cheap enough to get you where ever else you would want to go. The beach was clean with fine beige sand. However, the water was very turbid and muddy from the river that dumps into the ocean a few hundred meters from the main city beach.

After a great day on the beach and around the city, we settled in for a night of festive bevies at the Why Not Bar. We were only going to stop in for one or two, but the atmosphere was mesmerising. A coconut bucket and some double vodka soda’s (for $.60 Cdn) later, we were ready for a bit of a longer night. We met a few friends who were drinking ‘the fish tank’ literally a NHL sized Gatorade barrel filled with 4.5 bottles of liquor and mix. We sat and chatted for a few hours while it was pouring rain, monsoon style outside. We weren’t smart enough to have rain gear with us and it was quite a walk home, so, of course we had to wait for the rain to pass. When it did, the streets were flooded. In some parts it was knee deep. We talked to other backpackers who said on the way to their hostel, they actually had to swim for a section because it was too deep to wade through!

Mr. Ba, and the swim up bar!

The next day we were off to scuba diving. The Octopus diving club has a pretty nice boat and some good crew working for them. We were about an hour off the coast, around some islands. The dive was great! Warm water, our first exposure to coral. We also saw a sea snake, moray eels, many tropical fish, blue star fish and Ewa even saw a “lipstick fish”. After our two dives, we were back to the city for our trip to the ‘mud baths’. This is a spa a few km outside of the city center. When you get there, you shower, and head into a bud Jacuzzi filled with mud. The mud has the consistency of Yop and has a faint sulphur / tarsands smell to it. Then you go through a series of jet showers, and end up in a mineral bath. It was quite the experience! We met a few Canadians on the way who told us about the hectic water festival in Phnom Penh that was happening in a few days.

Sure they look cute... but they are dangerous little buggers!

Our last night was made a little better by stumbling into the lemon grass café, that had the absolute best food we’ve had in Asia so far, and it was actually one of the least expensive as well! After dinner we were off to get on the overnight bus to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). We thought that after the awesome train ride from Hue, that we’d change it up. The bus was relatively clean, but with tiny tiny beds, and their advertising about ‘state-of-the-art’ suspension system on the bus, we had a bumpy long night.

Thoughts on Nha Trang, the only thing that we found different here, or out of the normal for other Vietnamese towns was the over the top efforts to sell books, or postcards, DVD’s, cigarettes, gum, paintings or other tourist ware while you are sitting inside of a restaurant eating or drinking. Nha Trang seems to be the starting point of some hard moments of having to say no. China and Northern Vietnam also seemed to have very few beggars. There are more and more as we head South.

Hanging out on a random island just off of Nha Trang, Vietnam

The famous Thien Mu pagoda in Hue

We arrived in Hue early in the morning, the train ride took almost 12 hours. This train, the SE-1 that leaves every day from HaNoi, to Saigon is a little older and not quite as nice as the train to Sapa. Around 10 at night, just before turning out the lights to go to sleep we spotted a few cockroaches crawling on the wall beside the bed. We knew that we’d run into bugs and a lot of them in Asia, but I don’t think that we were ready for it. We ended up sleeping with the reading lights on to try to keep them at bay. When we arrived, it was still raining and we again got hosed and paid four times the price to get a cab to our hotel, we really have to learn to bargain harder. We stayed at the Sports hotel, it was on a street with a lot of Vietnamese-Western restaurants and shops to buy silk clothes and ties. After breakfast and checking in we decided to take a walk around the area. The hotel, like many of the tourist hotels makes a lot of money from selling tours and because of this, they often try a little too hard to sell you tours, train tickets, or try to arrange hotels for you in the next city. We have learned that they often over-charge by significant amounts and their smiling pushy attitude is a bit tough to take. As soon as we left the Hotel we noticed an immediate difference between Ha Noi and Hue, it was almost quiet here! The amount of traffic was pretty low, it was nice not to hear honking every 1.5 seconds when walking on the street. You mostly have to walk on the street since there are only sidewalks on certain streets, and if there are sidewalks they are usually used to park motorcycles. It’s easier just to walk on the street. We were enjoying the quiet walk until the joy of walking was extinguished by rickshaw driver after rickshaw driver asking us: Where you going? One hour, one hour”. Meaning they would drive us around the city for one hour. But we wanted to walk and had to fend them off again and again. We figured out that it was easier to walk in the opposite direction of traffic flow, because if you were walking in the same direction they would just follow you. We think they might be under the impression that if they ask you enough or pester you enough you will just give in. We didn’t. Less traffic, more harassment…if that was possible.

more from the Citadel

Cuddlin in bed. Not every day is about seeing temples!

We had dinner and a good night of conversation and bad pool (none of us are any good at playing) with some friends we met in HaNoi. The whole evening our DJ rickshaw driver was sitting in the rain outside of the restaurant we were in. We couldn’t figure out if this was just his route or if he was seriously waiting for us. Sure enough when we were leaving, he runs up to us and we had to say no no…and he looked sad (that may have been a ploy since he was seriously making a puppy face). On a side note, it’s not only verbal agreements that seem to be taken way too seriously, its also gestures like the good ol’ thumbs up. We were at another restaurant and this rickshaw driver kept giving us a thumbs up from outside, we thought he was being friendly…turns out that that means that we want a ride, we quickly had to say no when we were leaving. It’s a crazy world here in Vietnam.

The Citadel and the rain..

Our horrible train on the ride to Nha Trang

The train ride to Nha Trang was definitely an experience! We were sitting in a car with 62 other people. We got seats instead of the sleeper car because are travelling by day and they are cheaper. In most of Asia you can get a whole range of tickets depending on what you want. There are the hard seats which are cheap and uncomfortable, the soft seats with AC which is what we got- a softer chair that reclines. Then there are the hard sleepers which have 6 beds in a berth and the soft sleepers which are 4 beds in a berth. There is also a “tourist” car which is a bit better than the soft sleepers and more expensive. Right from the get go we in for a new experience. Getting on the train everyone was pushing and shoving, we are wearing our huge backpacks and people are trying to get passed us in the tiny hallway. As soon as the train started there was a cart that came along selling some sort of dish we saw later it was rice out of a not so clean bucket, that they topped off with a hard boiled egg. Then came the soup cart, where soup was ladled out of a huge metal canister into plastic cups, also unidentifiable. They also come around with to go meals, meat and rice, vegetables and a chicken leg for 20 000 dong, not so bad, that’s 1.30$. The people get right comfortable on the train, they take their flip flops off and put their feet up, literally wherever there is space, be it on a table in front of them, the window, the next seat in front of them…wherever. At least the spitting isn’t as bad in Vietnam as it was in China but now we’ve discovered that vomiting is really not a faux pas. At one of the stops people got off the train to buy snacks. Chad got off in search of some bananas and Ewa stayed behind to watch the bags. Looking out the window she saw two people (not at the same time) just bending over and vomiting on the tracks. Apparently if you gotta hurl there’s no reason to do it behind a building or something or in the bathroom, nope right in front of the train. At least they used bottled water to wash it off the cement. We realize that sometimes you can’t help but vomit, it’s not a thing you can control, it was more about the fact that it seems that that was the place to do it. The people weren’t really shy about. First the kids with a hole in the pants, now this! It’s a bit strange for us.

We wanted to ask everyone for some feedback regarding the blog. We are writing about our experiences because it’s a nice way for everyone to experience it with us in a way and it is also a good way for us to record our experiences. We want to know if there is something you would like to hear more about I.e. cultural differences, our observations about the country and people. Sometimes we tend to write much about what we did and little reflection on how we feel about it. Send us an email if you want to hear more about something, or maybe less about other things, we don’t have jobs so it’s nice to have some things to do. We hope everyone is enjoying the blog!

written by  ECRadventure on October 22 from Hue, Vietnam
from the travel blog: ECRadventure's Travel Blog
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Us getting suckered in the first few hours in Hanoi. We really really overpaid for those bananas!

Hanoi! S.E. Asia, we’ve arrived! We landed at the airport, made it through customs without any hassles and even passed the medical thermo-imaging camera. Turns out neither of us has a fever, although there is a chance we’re simply immune to it all and we’re passively spreading it around the world with us. As we came out of the security gates, we looked face to face with our first welcoming party of the trip. He didn’t have a fresh fruit basket, but there was a new car with good AC waiting for us. Once we had finally gotten money from the ATM (the fourth ATM we found would finally give us some money) we were on our way. As it was 03:30 in the morning when we arrived in Hanoi, we were off straight to bed and didn’t wake up until late in the morning. However, before we could go to sleep we suffered our first of many times that we were ripped off in Hanoi. Through a series of miscommunications with the night clerk and the taxi driver, and errors on our part (we blame the lack of sleep) we ended up leaving the check in desk of our hotel with much less money in our pockets than we should have.

After waking up and sorting out the previous nights’ debacle with the hotel’s night clerk (we got back all the money owed to us), we were on our way! Our first interaction with the street vendors was to be suckered into getting our pictures taken holding a traditional basket(s) and wearing a hat. Afterwards we ‘bought’ some bananas that we didn’t want for a supremely over inflated price. We took a few minutes inside a café to reorient ourselves and get our game plan together to ensure we weren’t taken advantage of so easily again. The rest of the first day in Hanoi was spent getting a feel for Vietnam and the city. We walked around the lake in the old quarter, around the many small side streets, all of which are flooded with motorcycles, bicycles and cars, not to mention the thousands of people. The people in Vietnam drive like maniacs, far more crazy than anywhere we have seen yet. Mysteriously they manage while being crazy to avoid actually hitting each other (usually anyways). We managed to stop into many of the travel agencies to ask about the tours they offered and tried to get a feel for the best prices and best options. In Hanoi, and apparently throughout S.E. Asia, there are literally backpacker districts that are filled with hotels, hostels, travel agencies and other tourist services. Almost every shop operates as a travel agency, even if their main business is as a restaurant. Although there are so many of them, you think the prices would be quite cheap, but it seems that they also work in unison to keep the prices as high as possible. The prices in these areas, while cheap compared to Canadian or European prices are still extremely high compared to the price a local would pay outside of the tourist area. That night, we managed to find ourselves in the middle of the National day celebrations. It was the 55th anniversary of the communist party in Vietnam. With Hanoi being the capital, there were many celebrations that were going on and the streets were even more crowded than on a normal day. We watched some of the festivities, but as it was in China, no foreigners were allowed in the main square so we watched from a big screen TV a few blocks away. While we were standing waiting for the ceremony to start we were approached by a man who claimed to be with the media. He took our picture, asked our names and asked us to write a statement about our feelings for the ceremony and Vietnam in general. It was our first time to be interviewed on our trip! We tried to take a picture of his credentials, but he wouldn’t let us take any photos of him. But, as he walked away, we made sure to snap a few pictures anyways.

Halong bay!

Kayaking on Halong bay

Our beach bungalo in Halong bay

The northern mountains and rice paddies around Sapa

Local women from around Sapa, northern vietnam

This time we were off to Cuc Phoung national park, which is the oldest national park in Vietnam. We thought that we would be on a group tour, but it turned out that this time we were on a tour with only the two of us, and a personal driver and a guide. Pulling out of the city we couldn’t help but feel a little out of place having our own private tour. Even though our money goes a long way in S.E. Asia, it still doesn’t seem right to have as much buying power from our money as we do. The national park is a little over two hours by car outside the city so we were able to catch up on our sleep on the way. On the road through the national park, to the location where we would hike it was only a small narrow one-lane road and the driver seemed to be travelling little fast for the hills and curves, but we assumed that he knew exactly what he was doing. Chad was about to ask if it was only a one-way road, when out from around one of the corners came a very large pink tourist bus. We both skidded so a halt on the edges of the road, only a little more than a foot away from the bus. From that moment on, the driver was a lot more careful. Our trek through the national park was another great hike. It was ~8km of old growth forest with some great climbs and beautiful scenery. We saw a lot of butterflies, spiders and some interesting insects. We were only able to see a couple of small birds and no other animals of any kind. The guide told us that to see them you would have to do the two day trek and stay the night in the national park as most of the animals do not come out until after dark. For a lot of the trek we had to keep a slower pace, or stop frequently to let the guide catch up. He was suffering from a bit of a cold and had a harder time than we did on the hike and he kept apologizing to us for being slow. After the hike we went to the endangered primate rescue center. Normally the center does not allow tourist groups to enter, but as we were a small group, our guide had arranged for us to have a quick visit. The center was the main reason why we went on this tour, and we were a little disappointed that it was so short. However, our disappointment was due to our expectations of the center and not for the work that they are trying to accomplish. They are breeding primates (~ 25 species of monkeys, gibbons and other primates) and then reintroducing them into semi-wild habitats, and eventually release them back into the forests of Vietnam and other surrounding countries. It is a long process for them to breed groups of primates large enough to reintroduce them into the wild with any chance of surviving. We left from the primate center and began the long drive back to Hanoi and along the way we ran into a large, insanely hectic traffic jam as many people were returning to the city for the new work week.

Our jungle walk through Cuc Phuong national park

A few thoughts on Vietnam so far:
-It seems strange, but when any restaurant or hotel does good, there are a bunch of others that spring up within a few hundred meters, who also copy the name and the general description of the original. We experienced this, where we were told to go to the Hanoi 1 restaurant. We tried two of them, and then found out that the original, that was supposed to be the best, simply shut the doors because of the impostors. The two we tried were alright, but not great, that’s for sure!
- Just about everyone is out to get money from you. They are more than willing to get you to partake in their scams, or simply try their best to charge you more than you ’should’ pay. This goes for the hotels, taxis, shop keepers, everyone. Generally we have decided that we’re going to pay more than we should, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as these people have it much worse off than we do, we’re just going to try to limit the extravagance of being ripped off.
- For some reason everyone keeps their doors open, all the time. Many people can be seen setting up their beds in the common area of their store, with a half dozen kids jumping on the mattress.
-Despite everyone who is trying to rip you off, they are always smiling at you and are so very friendly.
- It seems that everyone with a motor bike assumes you want a ride somewhere. They are often the people who try the hardest to get you to ‘buy’ their services for a trip.

written by  ECRadventure on October 18 from Hanoi, Vietnam
from the travel blog: ECRadventure's Travel Blog
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The Grand Hyatt and the Jin Mao Tower

Getting ready for our big night on the town with Clement!

The next day was relaxed, trying to recuperate from the neck pain and getting to know the area around our hostel. It was still pouring rain outside, so we didn’t venture too far. We managed to find a grocery store and a little black market. We loaded up on a few DVD’s from the black market (they were only 1.25$) and some fresh fruit and veggies from the grocery store. The store was a Carrefour, which is a large French multinational. It had two levels and was very much like a Real Canadian superstore back home, or one of those Wal-Mart super centers. We shouldn’t have been surprised as Shanghai is a very modern city. In some ways it is more modern and advanced than cities in N. America, but there is still a sharp contrast between the rich and the poor, even more than you would see in a city of N. America. Anyways, this store gave us a chance to stock up on some of the toiletries that had dwindled over the past months and to get more of our pre-trip diet back into us. Raw food is a great change from all the prepared food from restaurants we had been eating at for the past weeks. It seems that most of Asia will not have kitchens in the hostels like they do in Europe. I suppose with food and going out to eat being so cheap, many people wouldn’t see the necessity for kitchens in a hostel.

People! People everywhere, downtown Shanghai

Singapore skyline

The skyline was a little obscured in pollution, but it was amazing to see the skyscrapers that dominated the view. Shanghai is full of buildings stretching for the heavens and at night, until 11pm, most of them are lit up in a dazzling show of lights and colors. There isn’t anything quite like it that we have seen yet!

One of the Shanghai markets...with the huge skyscraper in the background.

Spicy, spicy Szechewan food

The next day we decided to check out the Shanghai museum. We got up a bit late, as we’ve been doing lately, maybe a combination of being worn out, a bit under the weather and just revelling in being able to sleep in, by the time we got to the museum it was close to 1 pm. The line was a bit long and it was super humid and hot, many of the Chinese people were shielding themselves from the sun with umbrellas, hats, sunglasses and sometimes all of the above. We’ve noticed that Chinese women really strive to have pale white skin, we figure that that is why they shield themselves from the sun so much. The amount of commercials that are on TV and in magazines about skin whitening creams and procedures is insane.

Chinese scroll from the national museum

Going down? From the restaurant on the Grand Hyatt

Since the day was half gone when we woke up we did nothing but go and get more cheap dvds and stayed in bed all day long watching movies, it was great. Since we were off to Vietnam soon we decided that the next day, our last day would be spent stocking up on some English books. We managed to find the bookstore with the biggest English book selection (which wasn’t that big but at least had some variety). We walked around more just checking out the city and then headed to the airport to catch our flight which was departing at 10.20pm. The Pudong airport is an hour away from Shanghai and we got a shuttle from our hostel. We were at the airport about 3 hours before the flight and just sat around waiting so that we could check in. The airport is huge! Biggest airport we’ve been in yet, and all bright shiny and new! As we were about to check into our flight (we're already at the airport at this time) and Ewa asks, ‘what is today?’ Well, it's the 6th. Hmmm, well our visa for Vietnam doesn't allow entry into the country until the 8th. Oh cr@p! So, a frantic hour of trying to call embassies, airlines, hotels, and other such places, we managed to change our flight, book a place to stay for the night, for the next two nights in Shanghai, change our hotel arrangements in Hanoi. We now had a flight booked for the 9th and a couple more days to relax in Shanghai.

Some things we noticed in Shanghai but also in China in general is that going to out to eat seems a bit different than back home. People go out to eat as a necessity, they don’t have time and it’s easier. They rarely talk when eating dinner, it’s more like a fast sit down, eat as much as you can, talk as little as possible and get out. The restaurant only gives you one menu per table vs. for each person. We’re not sure why this is, but it takes much longer for us to order because Ewa can never decide what to have and then Chad is just sitting there waiting for the menu, two menus is always much quicker. Another thing is the variety of potato chip flavours, if anyone has ever been to German for example they have beer flavoured chips. Here in China the flavours were: Shrimp, Cucumber, Kiwi, shish kabob, BBQ Chicken, BBQ Beef, and dumpling just to name a few. Ewa’s favourite snack here was Japanese crispy spicy seaweed squares, they were delicious!
The next couple of days we managed to waste away in fine fashion. A trip to a few markets, an attempt to work out a little, eat healthy and get some sleep. Nothing spectacular occurred, but Ewa did manage to get her feet wet with attempting to bargain and to get over the impulse to run when the store owners come hassling. This will probably prove to be more helpful than we realize as we tread deeper into S.E. Asia!

Buddha statue in the Chinese national museum

written by  ECRadventure on October 9 from Shanghai, China
from the travel blog: ECRadventure's Travel Blog
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The Gate of Heavenly Peace at Tiananmen Square

Finally we're in Asia! It's so refreshing to be out of Europe and into the land of unknown. We got into Beijing at 5:30am, welcomed by a nice fog...I mean smog. You couldn't even see 30 feet in front of you. We caught a cab to our hostel after bargaining with the cab driver for a few minutes, at first he said 200 to get to our hostels and we said 100, he said no. Ok, we walked on...he ran after us and said ok ok. This is the funny thing about China, you have to be comfortable with the fact that you will get ripped off. When we got to the hostel the owner Joe said that really we should have paid 20 ha! Oh well, there were three of us, (we brought along Clement to our hostel), so it's not that bad.

Kitties! Lots of kitties at the Chinese box in Beijing

At the summer palace, on a wonderfully clear day

Eating the river!

We continued on through the square into the Forbidden City. The complex is truly amazing to see. It’s like the Louvre in so far as there are too many things to see inside within the space of one or two days. We spent over three hours walking around trying to take it all in. The three hours was just long enough to walk through, and make a few detours into the side buildings off of the main temples. The Forbidden City began construction in 1406, and it was estimated that over 1 million Chinese were working on it during the 14 years it took to complete. There are many rooms and display cases filled with artefacts and various relics.

After our wandering around the city we headed back to the hostel to freshen up before our night out on the town to see the kung-fu show! As it turned out the show was amazing, filled with crazy stunts and great acrobatics. There were even a set of three kids (probably around 6 years old) who did a half back flip, landing on their head, swinging their feet to continue the motion, and completing another half flip again to land on their feet. They would do several of these in a row. It almost didn’t seem real some of the things that they were able to do. However, despite the show being great, it was overcast the people who organized our night out. We paid the hostel 280 Yuan each for the show, which included the transportation and the VIP tickets. We were picked up by the mini-van and the lady who arranged the tickets. We stopped once to pick up more guests. Once we arrived at the show, Ewa asked her for a suggestion for a place to eat after the show. WELL, they would take us to some place. They tried a lobster fancy looking place, but we said we just wanted typical Chinese. So, we went across the street and had a pretty decent meal. But, we didn’t eat alone. We were joined by the lady and another Chinese man, who was picked up at the second stop. After the meal, when the bill came, they told us it was 55 Yuan, and after we paid, and everyone walked out, we realized that we paid for them to have supper. Strange, but as it was only about $9 Can, we didn’t object too much. When we arrived at the show, Ewa was taken by the Chinese man and they went into the theatre. I was held back by the lady for about 5 minutes, which at the time we didn’t know why. Then, we played musical chairs, as directed by our two Chinese hosts, moving between 4 sets of seats. First in the “VIP” area, only to be kicked out, and subsequently kicked out of other areas, before settling in our assigned seats in the back right corner of the theatre. Definitely not VIP seating. The best part is that there were only 3 tickets, but there were 4 of us. SO, the Chinese lady ended up on the lap of the Chinese guy. After it was all said and done, (and we managed to observe a few things, them cuddling a little more than strangers would, people talking about ticket prices) we came to the realization that we over charged about 800% for the tickets, and we paid for these two to have a double date out on the town for free. We weren’t even mad, just amazed! After our little run-around we were off to the hostel again for an early night as we had to be on the bus at 05:50 the next morning for our long drive out to the great wall!!

Hiking the great wall from Jinshanling

The creepy crawlers at the Wangfujing night market

The next day we decided to check out a different type of market - the silk market. The silk market is a building 6 stories high filled with vendors selling anything you can imagine, clothing, bags, watches, jewellery, sunglasses, electronics, souvenirs etc. The vendors are incredibly pushy, we have never experienced anything like this. They are constantly yelling at you “Hey Mista”, “Lady you want bag…good bag” but all at once, 10 different people are accosting you as you are walking down a narrow row of vendors. Luckily we were there only for fun and really weren’t looking to buy anything so it was funny. They grab your hand and wont let go, leading you to their stall, they joke, they yell, some of them will even steal the hat off your head to try to get you to come to their stall. If you want to buy anything here, you have to be prepared to barter, and barter hard. You ask them how much they will give you a hugely inflated price, so you counter with about 10% of what they want, because they are ripping you off. Sometimes just walking away from the stall after you touch or look at something is enough for the vendor to drop their price by 80%. We bought a couple of things and were out of there, walking out onto a quiet back alley we walked in silence enjoying that no one was yelling at us anymore.

We started feeling sore from yesterdays great wall extravaganza and decided to go for a massage. Clement was going anyway so we went along with him to the Dragon Fly. The place was very nice, candles, aroma therapy and not too expensive. We enjoyed our well deserved treat, an hour oil massage. After the massage we spent the night at the hostel having a few drinks and enjoying our little peaceful space in Beijing. The atmosphere at the hostel was always great. A good mix of people, and well arranged to allow for people to hang out, have some beers, relax watching TV or on the free internet. That night with the crowd, Chad was finally feeling talkative and settled into a few hours of debate with the other backpackers and found himself crawling into bed in the wee hours of the morning. Our last day in Beijing was pretty lax, we relaxed in the morning and went for another massage at the dragonfly, this time a two hour massage. The first hour was a Chinese massage and then another hour of head and shoulder massage. Chad really enjoyed his massage, Ewa on the other hand has a less than perfect one: the masseuse was way to hard and then the funniest part was during the head massage he actually fell asleep haha not once but about 4 times at different parts of the massage, oh well. We went back to the hostel, had some dinner and went catch our train which was leaving at 9:20 pm to Shanghai. It was a bit sad to leave the Chinese Box and everyone we met there, it was an awesome place. The owner Joe even gave us Chinese charms we could put on our backpacks, so sweet. We were really wondering what the trains would be like in China. We booked a soft sleeper, 4 berth cabin and when we got there we were pleasantly surprised at how great it was. They even had a western style toilet and on the other side of the train the normal squatter, which was awesome because Ewa was really wondering how you would successfully pee on a moving train using a squatter. Shouldn’t have worried! The train was pretty new, it didn’t smell, the bathrooms were clean and nice, the cabins and beds were comfortable. Each bed even had a flat screen TV. The train we took wasn’t even the fast luxury ‘Z’ class trains, but it was by far the best train we’ve been on yet! Chinese trains are a very pleasant surprise indeed!

Random shot of the pollution in Beijing

Only 11 hours on our mid-range Chinese train and we would be in Shanghai!!

Us with Clement in Beijing

written by  ECRadventure on September 28 from Beijing, China
from the travel blog: ECRadventure's Travel Blog
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Novosibirsk train station

As the train leaves Moscow, we wave goodbye to Natalia and Kostya and set up our cozy 2 person cabin. We quickly made a friend, Clement from France. We have a couple beers and had a great first night sleep. The thought of spending 7 days on the train seems scary at first, what are we going to do the whole time? We had a TV in our cabin…which did not work. Luckily we brought a lot of books to keep our time occupied. We also had to change our sleep schedule to try to get shift ourselves the 5 hours ahead, which wasn't the easiest thing to do, but we managed. On the first leg of the train ride, we had most of the wagon to our selves. It was only at Irkutsk, where a large group of other people had booked on for the second half of the train ride, that the train filled up. Despite this the train stayed quite clean and the toilet was never dirty, nor did we have to wait very long for it to be free (that is other than the 15 minutes on either side of each stop, where the train attendants lock the bathroom doors).

Our compartment and our home for the next 7 days

We had so much food with us, that it seemed like we over did it a bit, but we prepared well just in case. We even boiled enough eggs for 2 breakfasts so that was taken care of. The train has a hot water boiler in each wagon, so that you can have coffee and tea whenever you want. We also brought a lot of cup of soup and instant mash potatoes so we wouldn’t go hungry. Dinners were a fancy affair in the restaurant car. We were hoping that the restaurant car would be an old school car, decorated in traditional Russian themes, however, the car must have been modernized in the past few years, as there were only a few touches of typical Russian decoration remaining. The restaurant car switched to a Chinese car at the boarder, but it, like the Russian car was only minimally decorated in Chinese styles. The food was a little expensive on the train (about $15-$20 Cdn per meal), and it was a bit cheaper on the Chinese side.

Ewa having some supper on the train!

More of Siberia... and SNOW

Lake Baikal

Random scenery somewhere in Siberia

The train, clean and shiny and new... well clean and shiny on the outside.

written by  ECRadventure on September 22 from Novosibirsk, Russia
from the travel blog: ECRadventure's Travel Blog
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The family!

Our train ride from St. Petersburg to Moscow was quite nice and well deserved after the troubles we had getting the tickets, we even got two little packages with food for the ride, like an airplane meal. We arrived at 10 pm and were greeted by Ewa’s cousin Natalia and her father Kola (Ewa’s uncle). They were waiting on the platform with big smiles and flowers when the train got in and took us to one of Natalia’s apartments where we would be staying for the week. It was very close from the train station and smack in the middle of Moscow which is a good thing because the traffic even at night can get pretty bad. They took us to the apartment and there on the table was a welcoming present for Chad - his shoes had arrived from Kolo! Thank you again to everyone involved in the recovery! We really appreciate all the help.

Inside the Kremlin

Some nice stiff branches to whip yourself pure again!

Kola at the Banya

On Wednesday we were in for a treat; Natalia organized a Kremlin tour for us through her work. We arrived just in time because we got lost a little bit. When we got to the right entrance of the Kremlin we didn’t have tickets because they were waiting for us a the ticket office but since the Kremlin is where the Russian governments headquarters are you have to go through security and Chad had a backpack which obviously is not allowed inside. Find the coat check - hmm ok. So we are now running around outside of the Kremlin trying to find a coat check. There are no signs, there is nothing that looks remotely like a coat check. We see a woman running towards us. She asks if we are the people for the Kremlin tour from the bank (Natalia booked it through her work), yes we say totally out of breath. We explained what had happened and she took us to the coat check and whisked us back to the Kremlin, past the big line that had now formed and motioned us to go through. The guards asked her who we were and why we are jumping the line and she said : “they are guests of the museum!” Then she got us past all of the lines inside and provided us with an English speaking guide and disappeared.

The Saviour on spilled blood

One of Ewa's Grandpa's medals.

Moscow metro

Natalia and Kostia on our last night in Moscow

The winter palace in St. Petersburg.

We have arrived in Russia! Chad’s first time and Ewa’s second time. We were expecting to step off the plane to AK-47 armed police and a stiff set of questions at the customs office. However, there were only a few lazy looking officials on the tarmac, and we cruised through customs with hardly a flinch. We even managed to get a bargain on our bus ride from the airport, having only paid 50% of the cost we were supposed to. From the get-go we were fitting in fine! It took us a long time to find the hostel, and we even had the help of a kind Russian gentleman who tried to help us find the hostel. We gave him the address and showed him our map and he proceeded to walk with us for about 5 min and then point is in the direction of the hostel. After he left, we thought a little more and figured out he was pointing us in the wrong direction, but nonetheless he was very helpful. The hostel was practically empty the entire time that we were there, so we had a room to ourselves and the kitchen was always free. The hostel even had one of those new fancy spa showers with a ‘rain’ showerhead from on the top of the shower at a height of over 7 feet! Top this off with somehow only having to pay about 60% of our original quoted price for the rooms, even after a surcharge was added to the price for a fee to register us in the city.

The Saviour on Spilled blood by night.

Almost all of the sites that we visited can be seen with a short description on a website we found after leaving St. Petersburg. It is www.saint-petersburg.com/virtual-tour I would highly recommend sifting through the website, it’s a short glimpse at this wonderful city.

The second day in the city we were up and off to the Hermitage museum. This museum is housed in the former residential house of the Tsar’s. Now the palace has a huge collection of artefacts, sculptures, paintings and many other items. We spent nearly 5 hours wandering the halls of the Hermitage. The museum is certainly impressive. Compared to other major museums that we have visited, the Hermitage was practically empty. It could be the time of the year, or that perhaps Russia does not receive as many visitors as some of the other European cities. You are also allowed to take pictures all over the museum. Well, not so much allowed as the people who are in the rooms guarding the items really don’t care. You are supposed to pay to take pictures, but we soon found the gaps in the system and were snapping away. Also, the museum houses two treasure rooms, which you have to pay extra to visit. We were careful to never carry much money with us on the street, and to not carry excess credit cards when we weren’t planning on spending much money. SO, we didn’t have enough money to pay for the visit and as it turns out we didn’t have enough time or energy to see them on this day anyways. We did return on our last day in St. Petersburg to see the treasure rooms, but you are required to pay the full admission price and the price for the treasure rooms. So, rather than forking out again for the full tour, and the treasure rooms, we decided to wander more in the city. That night we tried to buy our tickets to Moscow. However, we learned our first lesson in ensuring to carry more money, or an ATM card as the ticket counters did not accept credit cards. There was an ATM there, but of course we didn’t have our card and we were only 600 rubles short (~22 dollars Cdn!) So after a few frustrating hours of trying to communicate and to buy tickets, we went home discouraged but with a plan for the morning.

The Peter and Paul fortress in St. Petersburg.

The hassle at the ticket office slowed us down just enough so that we ended up being late for our walking tour. We thought that maybe if we hurry we could catch the tour wandering away from the meeting place. We found a group of young people and tried to catch up to them, for a few blocks we were on their tail and then when we got to them we realized that a) they are all speaking Russian and b) they were hammered and so not our walking tour at all. With the prospect of a guided walking tour of the city out of the picture, Chad pulled out the map, scoured for the sights and planned a walking tour of his own. For the next 5 hours, we walked around the city, trying to catch the major sights. We zigzagged North-South across Nevsky Prospect, moving from the far East side of downtown (at the Shestakovo cathedral) until we hit the Neva river on the West side of the town. We managed to take in almost all of the significant buildings within walking distance and we didn’t let the rain bother us one bit. We stumbled along the way into an amazing market that was selling fresh goods of all kinds imaginable. Fruits, vegetables, meat, seafood, honey and so much more. The market was one of the cleanest and freshest we have seen in any city around the world so far. It was also the first place Chad has had to experience “The Handshake”. While looking longingly at one of the food stalls, a vendor approached Chad and said “My friend” grabbed his hand and guided him closer. The trick is, he wouldn’t let go. Chad almost had to wrestle him to the ground in order to get away. The one encounter has been enough to remind us of the warnings that Chad’s best friend Dave gave us about ‘friendly’ vendors and the never ending handshake!

Our first impression of Russia is that the country is not as different from many other places we have visited. Many of the stereotypes portrayed by American movies either did not exist or are at least, not true of St. Petersburg in the modern era. There is a unique culture and unique customs, but the people live and behave in very similar ways to many other Eastern European people. Also, Russian accents, or the ones we have heard do not sound like how North America stereotypes them at all. Many people speak at least a little English, the people are generally nice and helpful, but not all. One interesting thing is that there are two sets of prices. There is a Russian price and a tourist price for entrance to all museums and for tickets to concerts / plays. This is a carry-over from the Communist Era, where it was a belief that the government helps to provide for the people of the country. The “true cost” is to be paid by foreigners, but the cost to be paid by citizens of the country is subsidized by the government. Although most things in St. Petersburg cost on-par with Europe, there are several things that are still unreasonably cheap. Metro tickets, vodka and cigarettes are all very cheap by comparison. A half litre of vodka is only $3 Canadian, a trip on the metro is less around $0.8 and a pack of cigarettes is only about $1.5 (all in Cdn dollars).

Inside the Saviour on Spilled blood

After our last walking trip we were off on the train to go and meet up with Ewa’s family Natalia and Kola in Moscow!

written by  ECRadventure on September 11 from Saint Petersburg, Russia
from the travel blog: ECRadventure's Travel Blog
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Swedish flag..

We arrived in Stockholm after a short one and a half hour trip with Ryan air from Krakow. We got a steal of a deal too! 260 Zlotes for the both of us and our bags, that’s about 100 dollars Canadian. There was a small mix up when we dropped off our baggage; Ewa got the luggage tracking tag for someone else’s bag as the ticket agents were using the same printer for both a flight to Bergamo as well as Stockholm. We noticed about 2 minutes after getting the tags (because duh you should look at them!) and went back to the ticket agent where he very politely reassured us that yes they noticed as well and already changed the ticket on the bag and are now reprinting the portion that the passenger gets…yes of course it will get there, no worries, all is good in the Ryan Air world, we never loose luggage ever compared to other airlines. As we were on the flight Ewa read the statistics ( she never liked statistics class..) and Ryan Air (according to them) only have a 0.36% of lost baggage…well good for you Ryan Air. Not bitter, not bitter. You all can guess as to what happened when we got off the flight, Ewa did not get her bag. The big metal gates to the squeaky baggage belt came crashing down ending all hope that maybe just maybe it would appear. What did appear though was a nice Italian suitcase, with Ewa’s name on the luggage tag, go figure. Maybe it’s because we have been talking badly about Italy that this happened; noted, don’t piss off the Italians. Karma decided that if we didn’t like Italy so much then maybe Ewa’s bag should go there and when it returns we will have acquired maybe not a love for Italy but at least an appreciation, who knows, the world works in mysterious ways. After spending an hour trying to fill out the lost baggage report, we finally left the airport to meet up with Chad’s friend Chris back from the U of Calgary Engineering days.

Chris and Camilla and us in Stockholm

But we learned some valuable lessons from this experience. 1. Put a TAG on your bag with your name on it and while you’re at it, a phone number would be good too 2. If you will be travelling for a long time maybe it would be a good idea to document the things you have in your bag, in case you need to make a claim with your travel insurance people 3. You should also take pictures of the things you have in your pack because how are you going to prove to your insurance people that you actually owned this stuff if you don’t have receipts for all of these things? Huh? How? 4. The insurance policy you have probably has a lot of ‘small print’ that makes making a claim or getting any sort of reimbursements next to impossible, kind of like trying to talk to someone real from Ryan Air about where the hell your bag is.

Thankfully one day before we were to leave for St. Petersburg the Stockholm airport called at 8am and informed us that they found the bag! Yipeee! When Chris asked what happened to it, they of course didn’t know. Where was it? Not sure. Apparently it showed up in the middle of the night. Yippee!!
Of course we did not spend the whole time on the phone or shopping, we had a very nice weekend with Chris and Camilla, the newly engaged couple!

More of the view from just down the street from Chris's house

A few other things to note about Stockholm, the metro has excellent electric trains that are smooth and quiet. The engineer in Chad was pleasantly surprised and ranks these trains in the top 2 his ever ridden on. Not all Swedish are blond and tall (apparently those are the Finns that have migrated). However a great many of them are. The Swedish love their food in tubes or tube like encasements. Salmon paste, rice porridge, chili, sausage, many more things than you would expect can be found in a tube in Sweden. Ewa’s momma loves the kaviar tube you can get from Ikea ;)

The first night we were treated to a Swedish dinner by Chris and Camilla, and we wet to bed relatively early after the long emotional day. Thursday night, after a day wandering around the city we were off to a night out at the movies and for dinner on the town. On Friday we were able to meet up with Chad’s friend Hanna, who had spent a year in Canada in Innisfail on a high school exchange. That same day we met up with Ewa’s friend Agata, from Warsaw, now living in Stockholm. Although it was a short visit on both accounts, it was great to catch up and spend a few moments with each other. That night we ordered some take-out and just stayed in and chatted. We also found out that one of the movies Chad and Chris and some other engineer friends made is actually on the internet, Ewa thinks everyone should check it out! Pretty impressive! Just google UofC Mech engg 2003 video on Google video..tee hee.

The Vasa

Stockholm coast line