Endless Summer Tiny World

Well Chelsy and I made it through the night at our horrible hong kong hostel……. Barely! The bathroom smelled so bad that neither of us brushed our teeth and we waited for the airport to go to the bathroom, so it’s a good thing we headed there straight away in the morning. Next thing you knew we were landing in Bangkok, Thailand!

The weather is so nice and tropical, even hot!! We made our way to our hostel, which is really nice but very far from public transport, and no taxi would take us there so we had a nice sweaty 20 minute walk to the hostel. We had our first shower in a couple days, due to our disgusting bathroom, and then left to go meet chelsy’s Thai friend jib and her boyfriend Joe. They were both soo nice. Jib was a foreign exchange student at chelsy’s high school and Joe studied in the uk so they both speak really good English. Jib has a car, which is kind of a crazy idea to me since traffic is so bad in Bangkok, but they took is to dinner and drove us around the historical part of the
city. Dinner was so good!!! Jib and Joe ordered all kind of Thai specialties and we got to try them all and they are so tasty!! After dinner we went to the palace and drove through the town checking things out! They were both so nice and we had a great time getting a brief glimpse of the city! On Sunday they are both going to spend the day with us and take us around to all the sights!

Yesterday we needed to get sone stuff organized so we set out looking for some embassies. It turns out the Russian embassy is closed on wednesdays though- just our luck. so we ended up wandering around the city, trying different street food, looking at different little markets springing up and just checking things out. We then decided it was time to find the main tourist road and have a seat for awhile so we found an Irish bar on khao sun road (the main tourist road) and had our first full strength beer since NYC! We ended up sitting and chatting with our neighbors and had a great time. When it was finally time to get up we decided we definitely needed some food, and the great part is there is pad Thai and sober kebabs all over the street, none of it costing much more than $2 usd! After we had our dinner and walked down the street a bit we needed to head home for showers and getting some rest. It was a good day, though we didn’t really see much, it was still really cool to just see all the different street food! Today were headed off to kanachaburi, which has been made famous by the bridge over the river Kwai. Hopefully were headed to see some elephants there and swim in some waterfalls!

our last day in Yangshuo was good, we headed up to yangdi to try to go on a walk to another town on the river. There are three ferry crossings that go along with this hike. But when we asked how much it cost they told us 90 Kwai each!! That’s about $17 usd!!! To use our own legs to do most the work! The ferry crossing takes about three minutes! No way! So Chelsy and I just decided to walk along the river bank a little ways. It was really nice as it was a little warmer and this part of the river is where the picture was taken for the back of the $20 note. So it was really really pretty with lots of mountain surrounding it. We just hung out the rest of the day until our night train to Shenzhen – right outside hong kong- rich is actually a different country. This bus was an 8 hour bus ride an it was on a sleeper bus. It was kind of cool, with three rows of very narrow and shallow bunk bed type beds. And then they were almost sitting up a little so that your feet went under the people in front of you. We got a little sleep and arrived at Shenzhen at 4:30 am with no idea on how to get to hong kong. So we got on a bus someone told us would get us there but had no clue where it was even taking us so we decided to get on the metro instead as that is a little easier for us to tell where we are.

We finally figured it out and by 7:30 we were through customs and on a train into the city! When we finally got to our hostel around 9 am we were so tired and wanted to sleep but the rooms weren’t ready and apparently wouldn’t be until 1 pm. So we headed out to do some of our sight seeing. We went to the avenue of the stars, rode across the harbor in the star ferry and went to Victoria park and the statue square. We also went up to the ovservation deck of the icf 2 building. That was really high and cool. The rest of the stuff was pretty blah. We headed back to the hostel for some rest and then headed to go on the tram to the top of Victoria peak. The tram is straight up the hill! It is the coolest part of the whole thing. The top was actually a disappointment! It’s amazing but they have essentially put a shopping mall up there! So we stood in line for almost an hour to get up there and didn’t even have very good views of the harbor but could have bought a new pair of crocs or a new handbag. We met a really nice couple from Seattle and walked to the ferry with them to go get a spot for the laser show they do over the harbor each night. It was pretty cool, short and sweet- just the perfect length. We found sone dinner and have been preparing for warmer weather tonight. Our hostel is the worst one we’ve stayed at so far and is the most expensive! It is tiny, as is most accommodation in hong kong, but it’s not very clean and just kind of unpleasant in general. So you can definitely say that hong kong is not our favorite and were both happy we opted to save our money and stay in Yangshuo longer! We miss how cheap the mainland is!!!

Were off to Bangkok tomorrow! Were both super excited! And Tasia and Angie are coming to visit in 6 days so that’s going to be super fun as well!

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