Stick a Chopstick in me, I'm Done!

Back safe and mostly sound from my 6 weeks in Asia. Since my last update, I fell in love with Hong Kong, and wanted to kill both myself and everyone else in all of Beijing. This was by far the most difficult trip I've taken, with the combined language barrier, food situation, solo travel for the majority of the trip, and little to no planning for most of the places. In total I made it to 15 cities in 7 countries, all in all a success. Immediately upon coming back I started talking about where to go next. There are friends in Spain, Germany and Portugal. An upcoming Christmas trip/African safari. A friend with an open invitation to Seattle where I'm long overdue for a visit. While contemplating what the next step should be, an acquaintance from my weekly trivia night drunkenly asked me what I'm running away from. I (much less intoxicatedly) tried to explain that I'm not running away from anything, that I'm trying to see the world when I'm in a situation that allows it. As many of my friends and family ask, what are my plans for the future? What do I want out of life? I continue to insist that I'm very content in this situation - everyone is different, and to live a little bit unconventionally doesn't make me wrong, it just makes me have different goals in life. But the fact that the questions I get daily are 'are you looking for a job?' 'When are you going to have kids, you're 31 now?!' and 'How are you going to settle down if you're never here' - it makes me wonder if I really am the crazy one. Is it so wrong that I get my thrills out of exploring a country where I don't understand the language? That hiking for days on end makes me smile more than the thought of making a seating chart or changing a diaper? The older I get, the more sure I am of my decisions, but the more conversations I'm forced to have that occur in this fashion. But the more defiant it makes me too, because there are more adventures to come. Running away or flying home...

But now, some more info on China....

I arrived in Hong Kong and had one of those moments where I knew when I got off the plane I was going to love it there.  The airport had a Starbucks, people spoke English, and there was a bus (with wifi!) that took me right into Kowloon, up the block from my hotel.  Hong Kong was a really easy city to navigate.  There are two sides, Hong Kong Island and Kowloon.  I had no idea where to stay, but it turns out it didn't really matter because there's so much to do on both sides, and they're really easy to get back and forth from by a short train or ferry ride.  My first day I wandered around, taking in the sights.  Hong Kong isn't like the rest of mainland China, which I was to soon find out for definite.  It felt like an Asian version of New York, but in Disneyland, if that makes sense.  People were cordial but mostly ignored you.  Signs were in both Mandarin and English so it was easy to navigate. Maps were easy to follow.  I went to the Asian version of Hollywood's Avenue of the Stars, which was hysterical because people were jumping up and down and screaming when they found the handprints of 'celebrities' whose names all sounded the same.  Flashes went off left and right, which isn't out of the ordinary compared to anywhere else that you find Asian tourists, peace signs and all.  I passed by the HK Cultural Center, and discovered that Swan Lake was playing a 3 day stint, just the 3 days I was there.  I've always wanted to see a ballet, but in New York it's so expensive, and no one ever really wants to go.  I never thought I'd like the ballet, with my inability to sit still and concentrate on any one thing for more than 20 minutes.  But the ballet was fascinating!  I didn't really know the premise of the story, I just watched the ballerinas jumping around the stage, but I got lost in the music and had an amazing time.  

Everything in Hong Kong was exciting - there was an energy in the air that was impossible not to feel.  I took a night cruise of the harbor, where 40+ buildings perform a laser light show synchronized to music.  The night market went on for kilometers, full of objects with more practical uses than the heinous elephant pants in Thailand or artwork that I could never get home in one piece in Cambodia.  I had really held back on buying much my whole trip - the main bad part about backpacking - but here I couldn't resist picking up a dancing Gangam Style doll for my dad when the market lady saw me, eyes lit up and she screamed "you! you like gangam style!" and proceeded to hit the buttons on every single doll on the table - some replicas of Psy and others random animals like chickens, which simultaneously Irish Jigged across the table and had me laughing so hard I was prepared to carry this thing around the airport if I couldn't fit it in my bag!!

My days in Hong Kong are kind of a blur - I packed so much in but I'll try to hit all of the highlights.
Lantau Island is home to the Big Buddha, one of the tallest buddha structures in Asia.  I'm more accustomed to seeing giant statues of Jesus on hilltops (Rio, Cochabamba...) so it was interesting to see a different figure after climbing and taking cable cars up through the clouds.  There were a ton of hiking trails up top that I sadly didn't know about ahead of time, and would have loved to go had I been dressed properly or had more than 3 sips of water left in my bottle.  Lantau Island was also home to, none other than Hong Kong Disney!!!  Having grown up going to Disney in Orlando nearly every year for probably the first 16 years of my life, I was ecstatic to see Mickey speaking Mandarin.  Much to my surprise, Mickey does NOT speak Mandarin.  I had the best day at Disney, had a strange emotional experience at the fireworks that I won't get into that had me crying, with strange Asian families looking at me rather strangely, but I was so happy to be there, in that moment, not caring about anything but how fortunate I was to be able to be in Disneyworld, a place so close to home in my memories but as far away from home as I've ever been.  I treated myself to an early birthday present by checking out of my traumatically tiny 'hotel' on Kowloon Island, and staying in the Disneyland hotel.  I've always wanted to stay on a Disney property, and even though it was 5x more expensive than the hotels in town and I had no job to come back to, it was the best night's sleep I had the whole trip.  

I was so sad to leave Hong Kong, but excited to go to Beijing and see the Great Wall, one of the 7 Wonders of the World that I've always wanted to make it to.  Since Hong Kong is officially China but not REALLY China, I didn't feel right about checking it off that I'd been there, without going to Beijing or Shanghai.  In hindsight, I wish I wouldn't have cared so much, because I ended this whole trip in the worst place in the world.
I won't use this blog to rant and rave about just how awful Beijing was, or how I will never in my life go to Lucky Star again for wonton soup, but I HATED Beijing.

The Great Wall was cool.  I'll give it that.  Here's a photo of me in the 3.2 minutes I had fun in China.  I won't mention the 3 hours I had to spend touring the Forbidden City when all I wanted to do was sit on the emperor's throne, take 4 pictures and move on.  I won't mention the Jade Factory tour they threw me on, or the Tea factory tour, or the 'special Emperor' tour where they tried to get me to spend $800 on AUTHENTIC emperor artifacts.  I won't mention how I asked to go to the less touristy part of the wall, the part you get to toboggan down, but they took me to Badaling, otherwise known as the Great Wall of Tourists, where I snuck off to find what I thought was a tobaggan but was really a slide that brought you down to the OTHER side of the Great Wall, not where my group was, and then I had to pay triple and beg in my non-existent Mandarin to go back up where you're not supposed to go, so that I wouldn't be stranded 2 hours outside of Beijing where not a single person seems to speak English.

Other things I probably shouldn't mention about Beijing, for those of you who have the slightest interest in going there.
-Pandas aren't real.  If they are, they will not be found at the Giant Panda exhibit at the Beijing Zoo.  For an extra fee, you can go to the exhibit to see 2 pandas, one of which I couldn't find and the other that I'm pretty sure was dead.  But better than the elephant exhibit, where at the entrance was simply a pile oh elephant bones. Hi, we don't feed our animals at this zoo.
But really, we don't feed anyone ever, unless you're looking for cockroaches or starfish.
No, I'm not kidding. Chinese people are sick and this is what they eat!

I desperately tried to find a restaurant with an English menu, which was impossible the first night and I would up at a McDonald's.  I knew not eating soy would be a problem, but to not be able to read the menu, I would never have thought.  EVERYWHERE ELSE in Asia, people spoke English. Isn't it the universal language? Not here.
But on night 2, when I found English menus, I wished I hadn't, because they contained lovely delicacies like pig blood, cow udder, testicles, and a million other things that made me think I was on some sick Chinese version of Candid Camera Fear Factor Survivor rolled into one.  Annnnd night 2 I ate at a Sizzler.  Somehow despite not eating their food I managed to still get sick, and spent my third day crying in my hotel, praying I felt better for my 9 million hour journey home the next day (I felt better the second I got out of that godawful country).

But the worst part of all of it? I couldn't even post snarky statuses on Facebook, because FACEBOOK IS BANNED IN CHINA.  Which I completely forgot about until after 2 days of the same statuses reloading I realized that I was cut off from the world.  Instagram shockingly worked, and when I posted a picture of the 'no drug trafficking' sign in my hotel and captioned it #chinayourekllingme, I was pretty sure Mao's nephews were going to come and arrest me, I'd overstay my 72 hour visa free entry and be forced to spend eternity in this miserable, swine-flu filled country.  Luckily, I made it to the airport (5 hours early I might add, that's how much I didn't want to be in Beijing) and made it home safe and sound! 

I'm hoping since I didn't have time to cover each country individually that I'll come back to revisit them in the next few weeks, so stay tuned :)