Took by a Tuk-Tuk

October 17th--Today was our day to get out and do the major things that Bangkok has to offer. We left the apartment and caught a taxi to take us to Central Pier. Either the taxi driver didn't know where Central Pier was or he didn't understand us because he didn't drop us off at the pier. It is so hot and humid in Bangkok right now that when we get lost, it is hard to concentrate on how to get to where we need to go. Luckily though, the taxi didn't drop us off very far from the pier. Our plan was to see Bangkok's Riverside sites. So, we started by hopping on the Chao Phraya Tourist Boat that makes many stops along the river. As we approached our stop, on the left, we saw the Wat Arun, The Temple of Dawn. It was a beautiful temple to see from the river. We got of at Tha Tien to go visit Wat Po. We made the short walk to Wat Po, but not without having our smellers seriously tested. I'm pretty sure I've never smelt anything worse than walking through the market filled with fishy stuff. I say fishy stuff because I don't know what all the stuff was...I didn't stop long enough. But, we quickly escaped the smell and were standing at the Wat Po. Wat in Thai means Temple. The Wat Po is also known as the Temple of the Reclining Buddha. We pretty much went straight to see this enormous Buddha measuring more than 140 feet long. The statue is brick, covered with layers of plaster and gold leaf. The feet are inlaid with mother of pearl. From the Wat Po, we started our walk to the Grand Palace which was only a block away (although a very long block). However, it was a very hot and humid walk to say the least. When we arrived at one of the entrances to the Grand Palace that was for Thai citizens only, we were greeted by a guy that clearly looked like he worked at the palace. He informed us that the palace was only open from 2-4 today and it was about 11:30 at this time. I immediately walked away to stand in the shade to try to comprehend all of this while Mike spoke with this guy. Mike then came over to me and showed me on a map a couple of other temples we could visit until the Grand Palace opened. The guy had a tuk tuk driver waiting to take us to these places and then bring us back. We were told it would only be 20 Bhat (less than $1) for all of this, and we didn't have to pay until we arrived back at the Grand Palace. So, we thought why not...and we climbed into the tuk tuk. The first thing out of Mike's mouth was "I feel like this is a scam, but can't figure out how yet." We were first taken to Wat Intrarawiharn. This is a temple with a giant Buddha standing over 100 feet tall. The lady driver told us to take our time and that she would be waiting for us. Before going inside the temple, we got some drinks and chips to tide us over since it was lunch time. When we got out of the Wat Intrarawiharn, the tuk tuk driver was waiting for us. We climbed into tuk tuk and she told us that she had to go to the toilet. Behind the tuk tuk was a man sitting at a table. He started talking to us...asking us where we were from, etc. He quickly informed us that it was National Gas Holiday today and that tuk tuk rides are so cheap because they get free gas. I was the only one talking to this man at this point, asking him all kinds of questions. As we pulled away, Mike said "Now I remember what the scam is and it's this thing with the free gas." The driver pulled a couple of blocks away before pulling over and telling us she was going to take us shopping. She was telling us all kinds of stuff like "I get free gas" and "just for 5 minutes". When we told her to take us to the Golden Mount Temple (which is where we were told she would take us ), she told us it didn't open until 1:00 and it was 12:30. Mike kept saying "No, no shopping. Two kids, no shopping." She started driving again, very frustrated and talking on her cell phone. She only drove a couple of more blocks before pulling over at a temple and saying "Golden Mount. I'll wait for you here." When we got out of the tuk tuk, we immediately knew we weren't at the Golden Mount and turned around to see our tuk tuk driver speed off. We walked around for a minute just trying to figure out where we were before finally finding a group of Police officers. They were able to point out on our map where we were. Luckily we were not too far from the Grand Palace, so we stood at the curb to hail a cab. Once inside the cab, we came to the conclusion that the Grand Palace was probably open and was never closed today. When we arrived back at the Grand Palace, it was as open as it could be. We were a little angry that at this point in our travels we fell for this scam, but at the end of the day, we got to ride in a tuk tuk for free, see another Wat and we didn't fall for the shopping scam. What they do around here is get you in their tuk tuks, drive you around for a while to see a couple of temples before taking you to a shopping area that is outside of town. The driver goes into the shop to get their gas card and then leaves you at the area. Unfortunately, I'm sure a lot of tourist fall for it. Anyway, back at the Grand Palace...we get our tickets to enter and go inside. The Grand Palace houses not only the royal residence and throne halls, but also a number of government offices. We were first directed to the Wat Phra Kaew, Temple of the Emerald Buddha. It was spectacular to go inside this temple and see a beautiful emerald Buddha way up top. It was definitely not the size of the Buddha's we had seen in the past, but was impressive nonetheless by it's color. This temple is one of the most revered by Thai people. We left the temple cloisters and moved into the grounds of the Grand Palace. If it weren't for the golden rooftops, we would think we were in Italy. The buildings have a Western look to them with columns. We stopped off for some ice cream before exiting the Grand Palace. We hailed a taxi and got in. The taxi driver was trying to charge us 200 Baht and Mike just kept saying "Meter" until finally he started the meter. Halfway through our taxi ride back to the apartment, Mike asked to see the map. At this point, we felt like everyone was out to scam us so he wanted to make sure that we weren't going in circles, but the driver took us directly to the apartment and it cost us much less than 200 Baht. When we got back to the apartment, we went swimming and then ate dinner again poolside. Even though we got scammed (which in the end makes for a good story), we had a great day in Bangkok.

and the world's our oyster!

October 16th--We didn't have a set agenda for the day so after eating breakfast downstairs, we got dressed and headed out. We really wanted to just get adjusted to the area and walk around. So, we walked to the subway stop that is closest to our apartment. On the way, we saw many food vendors, clothes being sewn and flowers being washed all on the streets of Bangkok. Apparently a lot of the life of Bangkok happens on the streets. We got to the subway station and went two stops to Siam. From here, we saw more of the street action as we made our way to the Hard Rock Cafe. This is our 20th Hard Rock Cafe to visit since leaving the States and the best by far. The minute we walked in two waitresses were very attentive to the kids. They brought them temporary tattoos and the two women, Tippy and Tooly, immediately sat down and started putting them on the kids. We got all kinds of fun, free kids stuff while there along with getting to take pictures up on the music stage. The world was definitely our oyster at this Hard Rock. After leaving the Hard Rock, the rain started blowing in so we quickly headed back to our apartment. We spent the rest of the afternoon resting, watching the Disney Channel and then swimming after the rain passed. The pool here is very nice with a bar/food area. By the time we were finished up swimming, it was time for dinner so we ordered dinner out by the pool. It was a fun evening of just hanging out outside. There is also a glassed in game room right by the pool where the kids played and watched TV until it was time for bed.

One night in Bangkok...

October 15th--We all woke up this morning finally feeling back to normal and rested. This was a good thing since we had to get all our stuff reorganized among the 4 suitcases in order to head to the airport. We left the YMCA without a minute to spare...we checked out right at noon and caught the 12:10 Airport Express shuttle bus to Kowloon station. When we arrived at the train station, we were thrilled to find out that we could actually check-in for our flight and check our luggage as well. It was nice to get rid of the luggage here since we still had to take the 30 minute train ride to the airport. We got to the airport and went through security and immigrations fairly quickly. So, we found the Cathay Pacific lounge and were able to hang out in there until our flight. It was great because we could help ourselves to all kinds of fruit, food and drinks which were really good for us at this point. Our flight left at 3:50 for Bangkok. Once again, our plane was very nice. We are getting really spoiled to these big planes with TVs and meals. Our flight was about 2 1/2 hours and we arrived in Bangkok about 5:30 (1 hour time difference). We went through immigration, got our luggage and got in a taxi. The taxi ride was very interesting to say the least. We never feared for our life, but we are lucky we didn't kill each other during our ride. First of all, when the driver popped open the trunk, there was a huge tank (like a large gas tank) inside the trunk. We immediatly knew that all 4 of our suitcases were not going to fit in there. Mike and I just gave each other that "uh oh" look. The driver put our big suitcases in there sitting straight up and then used a bungee cord to hold the lid from flopping open, because it certainly wasn't closing. Our other 2 suitcases rode in the passenger seat while the 4 of us piled in the backseat of the taxi. It was an hour long drive with most of it in some pretty heavy traffic. Of course it was hot and humid and we were all tired from a day of travel. We were so happy to arrive at the Marriot Apartments and were greeted with some much needed lemonade. Our apartment here is really nice...it's 2 bedrooms, but the big thing is there are televisions in all bedrooms with the Disney Channel. The kids are loving it! Since it was after 7pm (8pm to our bodies), we settled in and then ordered pizza for dinner before heading to bed.

Back in Hong Kong

October 14th--Well, after a night's sleep on the train, we all woke up around 7:00 a.m. Unfortunately, that left us about 3 1/2 hours left until our train arrived at Shenzhen. The kids slept great and were feeling great. Mike and I were still not up to par at all. We had horrible headaches and being confined in a sleeper compartment did not help the situation, but we gladly arrived and quickly got off the train. We arrived about an hour later than expected so it was about 11:30 when we got off the train. It took us again about an hour to go through Immigrations in order to enter into Hong Kong. We then got on the 45 minute Subway ride back to the YMCA. We were thrilled to know that our room was ready. All we could think about was getting into the family suite, cranking the air conditioner down and resting. By the time all of this took place, it was about 2:00 so we decided to just go to the lunch buffet in the YMCA. We only had 30 minutes before it closed, but that was long enough for us to eat a light lunch trying to recover from the bug. After lunch, we headed back to the room and rested for several hours. I then took Abby to swim for about an hour while Mike and Austin did the laundry. It was about 6:00 when we all finished up so we got ready for bed. We then all piled in our bed and finished off the evening watching The Wizard of Oz.

Yangshuo bug

October 13th--Well....Mike and I woke up this morning sick with some type of stomach bug. Neither one of us slept well with stomach cramps, but luckily Mike was feeling better than me. So, he took the kids to eat breakfast and came back with some medicine for me. I debated taking it for a while because I didn't know what it was. It was a small bottle full of what looks like BB pellets. I was supposed to take half of the bottle with room temperature water. I finally decided to take it because I felt that bad. Come to find out it was an all-natural herbal medicine. Mike and the kids returned with news that we could have one of the 2 rooms for the day. So, after resting for a little while, we moved all our stuff in the room the kids had stayed in. Their room had 2 twin size beds in it so we all piled into the beds and watched a movie. It helped that it was raining outside so that the kids weren't wanting to go outside to play. By early afternoon, Abby was starting to not feel so good. At about 4:00, Austin asked to go eat so Mike took him to do so. While they were gone, it became official that Abby was sick. So, at this point everyone was taking the natural herb medicine. Around 6:30 and still feeling bad, we all packed up and headed to the front desk to check out. There was a driver there waiting to take us to the train station. So, off we went with him...only to be disappointed that we were getting in a rickety old taxi. Our vehicle the other day from the train station had been a nice, air conditioned van. This had to be the absolute worst taxi ride we've had so far and it certainly didn't help that we were sick. First of all, it was dark and raining outside. Second of all, the driver didn't take the tollway /expressway, he instead took the curvy, dark back roads. Third of all and most important, he drove like a crazy person. He passed cars to our right as a car was coming towards us while driving really fast. I said many prayers and thought to myself "Why am I afraid to fly? I'm more safe in a plane than I am in this taxi right now". Mike says it took 276 Lord's Prayers to get from Yangshuo to the train station. Once we arrived at the train station, the kids were sound asleep in the back seat and the taxi driver wanted to drop us off across the street (in the rain) so that he didn't have to pay to pull into the train station. Mike and him were having a language barrier about getting him to pull up to the station until finally Mike yelled "I DON'T CARE. JUST DRIVE." And he did so...almost to the point that he drove up on the curb of the train station. We quickly got out of the taxi and headed into the station where we found a really nice waiting area. We made spots for the kids to lay down on the benches and they both went back to sleep. It took all Mike and I had not to fall asleep too at this point. Luckily, we made it to 9:00 when we were able to board our train. The kids immediately crawled into their beds and went back to sleep. Mike and I were not far behind them before we were fast asleep too.

Chinese Paradise

October 12th--Wow! I think we have found paradise in China. It's just amazing to know that a place like this exists in the smog and chaos of China. We had a great night of sleep with a very dark room and wonderful air conditioner. After waking up and enjoying the view from the balcony, we headed down to eat breakfast outside by the river. After stuffing ourselves full, we decided to start the day with a bike ride. This time Abby wanted to ride the tandem bike so her and Mike were on that one. Austin and I rode the same bike as yesterday with him in the seat on the back. We rode about 30 minutes to an area where they have the bamboo rafts. As we rode up to this area, we were immediately approached by many locals to buy flowers and water guns. Mike finally gave in to the flower head pieces for Abby and me. They were actually pretty fun to wear while floating down the river. We purchased our tickets for the rafts and were escorted to our rafts. Our bikes were even loaded onto the rafts. The rafts are only for 2 people so we had to separate. Abby and I were on one together and Austin and Mike were on the other. But, it didn't feel like we were that far apart because we all floated down the river side by side. It was such a peaceful and surreal feeling just relaxing down the river. We definitely found our most unique spot to purchase a drink...it was from a lady on a bamboo raft in the middle of the river. The ride was a little over an hour and filled with some excitement when we approach short drop offs that we had to go over. I mean it was definitely no waterfall, but I guess what you would call a mini one. Along the ride, both kids enjoyed putting their feet in the water and catching river grass up out of the water. About halfway down the river, a nice lady handed Austin her water gun. I guess she had exceeded its use. So, the kids enjoyed playing with it the rest of the way. We were dropped back off right at the Mountain Retreat and at this point, it was lunch time. We settled in on the bamboo tables to order lunch. We had a quick lunch before leaving at 2:00 for the Silver Cave. It was about a 30 minute drive to the cave, but it was definitely not a boring 30 minutes. I do believe this one goes down as one of the most interesting things we've seen so far...along the side of the rode was a man walking totally naked. We came up behind him, but I had to turn around as if I didn't know what I was going to see from the front of him. Wow! All four of us were in shock and our driver never acted like it phased him at all. All I could think was "I guess that's normal around here. In the States, you'd be arrested." Shortly after our nudity experience, we arrived at the Silver Cave. It took a couple of minutes for our driver to get a hold of someone to take us into the cave, but once he did, we climbed the stairs up to the entrance and went inside. There were parts of the cave that were just like any other cave, but the middle part was unbelievable. There was a section that had a reflecting pool in it. The reflection in the pool made the cave look like it went down forever. It is hard to describe and the pictures don't do it justice, but it was amazing to see. It took us about an hour to go through the cave and we were back in the car heading back to our hotel. We got back a little after 4:00 and still had some time before dinner. So, we hopped back onto bikes and just went exploring this time. Abby and I were on the tandem bike this time. She was the tour guide and directed us down some rodes that we hadn't been down. It was about a 30 minute ride before we went back for showers. After showers, we went to dinner and then off to see a show called "Impression, Sanjie Liu". The process was a little crazy. First we got into a rickety van with a wild driver. The van bounced all over the ride while passing cars left and right. But, we arrived safely and were escorted to the ticket area. We definitely had a language barrier with our driver and couldn't understand what was going on. Finally, we figured out that we were being thrown into a tour group where we would get our tickets. Some random lady finally gave us our tickets to the show and off we went. At first we were trying to keep up with this tour group, but then realized that we had our seat assignments and were back to being on our own, which we like. We found our seats easily and apparently only Mike and I had seats so the kids had to sit in our laps. The show is set in a riverside amphitheater with the Li River and karst hills as the backdrop. The show was about an hour long and a mix of floodlights, singing and processions with over 200 bamboo rafts in the water at once. It was very impressive. It was on such a grand scale, it reminded you of a Disney production. After the show, we made it back to our driver for our return ride home.

Yangshuo

October 11th - After a good night's sleep (at least as good as you can get on a train), we arrived in Guilin around 7:30am. We were about an hour later than we were scheduled to arrive. When we exited the train station, it was a little chaotic and we were looking for a taxi. All of a sudden, a guy with "Michael" on a sign approaches us and says he is our driver. We didn't realize it, but the hotel had sent a driver to pick us up. This was definitely a welcome bonus. What was really helpful, was that he spoke decent English and so was able to help us find the ticket office and book our return train ticket back to Hong Kong. After purchasing our ticket, we loaded up for the drive to the hotel. Our hotel is in Yangshuo, which is about an hour from the train station in Guilin. It was an easy drive with a lot of beautiful scenery on the way. We arrived at the hotel and were immediately impressed. We are staying at the Yangshuo Mountain Retreat. It is outside the town and set right on the Yulong He river. It is beautiful and peaceful. We were greeted at the front desk and offered some fresh juice. We found a bamboo picnic table outside overlooking the river and sat down. They brought us fresh squeezed orange juice and a breakfast menu. We were glad to see the menu because it had been a long time since McDonald's the night before and we were hungry. We were excited to see both the items and the prices. They had great breakfast choices for very cheap. So we all ordered breakfast and continued to enjoy the beautiful scenery. After eating all our breakfast, they came to let us know that our rooms were ready. We had figured since it was still only about 10:00 in the morning, that we would not have a room until later in the afternoon. But again, we were excited to have a room. So we went to our rooms to drop off our stuff and clean up a little. Our rooms were great. We had two adjoining rooms. Each had bamboo furniture and huge picture windows with balconies overlooking the river. That just added to our enjoyment of the hotel. After unloading our stuff, we headed back down to the reception to plan out our day. We decided to start with a bike ride around the area. The hotel has bikes with kids seats to use. So we loaded up and headed out. Abby and I were on one bike and Amy and Austin were on the other. I handed Abby the camera and told her to take lots of pictures. The bike ride was unbelievable. We rode through areas that felt like we were in a copy of National Geographic. The area was very rural and we passed women washing clothes in the river. We saw lots of beautiful, natural sites with great views of the karst hills and endless rice patties. After our bike ride, we returned to the hotel. We then decided to go into the town of Yangshuo to have lunch and explore the town. We were dropped off at the main shopping street. Of course, there was a KFC right where we were dropped off, so the kids were set on KFC for lunch. That was fine with Amy and I because we weren't that hungry and were looking forward to another great meal back at the hotel tonight. After lunch, we walked the streets of Yangshuo. Unfortunately, since we had already been in Beijing and done all our "China" shopping, we found the constant pushing to buy something a little annoying. Plus, we were a little tired. We walked through the town for a while before finally finding a nice cafe and sitting down for some snacks. After our snacks, we headed back to the hotel. We got cleaned up and headed down for dinner. We again sat outside and enjoyed a great local dinner. Amy and I shared a dish of local beer fish that was awesome. After dinner it was to bed for everyone given our previous nights sleep on the train.