China

View from The Bund area.

The MV Explorer arrived to Shanghai on February 3^rd. The port is located in the Huangpu River, between Pudong, where the famous Pearl Tower and Shanghai World Financial Center are, and The Bund Area. The view from the ship was very nice, although the sky was grey and we cannot tell anymore what were clouds and what was smog and pollution. I met with Emma, Frida and Anmarie and we decided to walk around all day. We started walking to Nanjing Road Pedestrian Walkway that is full of tall, modern buildings; went to People’s Square and saw the Shanghai Museum; and then went to Yuyuan Garden. The garden has Chinese old-style houses that are shops and restaurants and a small, greenish lake. It is small but very pretty and I could really feel the Chinese culture with all the decorations and people in the street drinking with a straw something inside big dumplings. Some SASers told us to go to an “amazing” restaurant, so we went there and ordered 8 pieces of pork dumplings each. They were served very hot, on wooden bowls, and they were good, but I am not a big fan of pork. On our way back to the ship we walked by The Bund Area and we saw the Pudong neighborhood illuminated, still with the sky grey as always in Shanghai. We walked a lot that day but the weather was good and we had a great time. On the ship, we joined a field program going to ERA acrobatic show. It was very impressive; the acts were very good. Our favorite act was the one with girls riding bicycles using only hands and doing all kinds of weird things, and finishing the act with eight girls all riding one same bike. That was really nice.

Pork Dumplings

Pork Bun and Bubble Tea

Xiantiandi

The next day I was all day long with Nicol. We had hot tea at a coffee shop near the hostel and walked to Xiantiandi, which has some nice restaurants and is a major commercial area. Then we went to a bus stop and a guy helped us figure out which bus to take and told us that it was 2Yuans each, 0.25USD. We went to a restaurant and shared some sweet pork buns with, chicken, and bubble tea, and it was just good. Then we walked for hours looking for the market we wanted to go and asking locals for directions using a map. Some of them spoke a little bit of English and were very helpful, but we were having a hard time finding the market because everyone we asked pointed us in different directions. The place has mostly art galleries, and all the shops are very small and crowded but it was beautiful in a certain way. Then we took the subway to Nanjing Road. To get our tickets there was only one line and when it was our turn we had no idea what we were doing. A lot of people were waiting behind us and we just kept pushing buttons and putting small bills into the machine. We ended up buying 5 Yuan tickets that fortunately worked perfectly, and we went to a “fake market.”

We were short of time and it was hard to find a taxi to get back to the ship, but we did. We picked up our things to go to the airport and we took a taxi to Longyang Road Station. We pointed the place we wanted to go to the taxi driver and just hoped he understood and would take us to the right place, and he did. So we took Maglev (Magnetic Levitation train). The ticket was 70Yuan each, and the ride was 8 minutes long from the station to the airport. The train travels at 300 km/hour, and it does not feel like it is going that fast. At the airport we ran to the counter and we were lucky because Juan and David were there already so we did not have to make the line but just checked in with them. David had some trouble with his reservation so we waited for him and then run like crazy foreigners through all the gates (about 30 gates) until we got to ours. We were the only ones running. The flight was delayed but we finally made it to Wada hostel, in Guilin, Guangxi Region, that night. Shanghai is a huge city and there is way too many people in the streets. The air is horrible; by the end of the day my throat was hurting due to breathing such bad air. In contrast to Japan, where the air is not too bad, Chinese people do not wear facemasks. Supposedly, breathing Shanghai’s air for one day is as bad as smoking one pack of cigarettes.

Stop going up Dashijie Terraces

On February 5^th we booked a tour through the hostel to the rice terraces (230Yuan=38USD). The hostel rented a van for us and took us to Dashijie Rice Terraces, located in Longsheng County, two and a half hours away from Guilin. The terraced fields were built along the slope of the mountain around 650 years ago. It is also called The Dragon’s Backbone because the rice terraces resemble the dragon’s scales, while the summit of the mountain range looks like the backbone of the dragon.

Cable Car

Once we got there we hiked up the mountain. We walked through Ping’ An Zhuang Village, where Zhuang ethnic group people live (one of the 56 Chinese ethnic groups). Zhuang population is estimated to be at 18 million people around China, and it is the largest minority group. They have their own language and about 55% of the people are bilingual in Zhuang and Chinese. We were the only tourists so it was great. Villagers were doing their own things and we were just walking around enjoying the scenery. At the top we got some drinks and sat down to enjoy the view of Nine Dragons and Five Tigers for more than an hour. For our way back, we decided to take the cable car, which had a beautiful view and was 30Y. Down, we went to a restaurant and ate local fried rice, steamed rice and Juan ordered a frog, which was very spicy and was mostly bones instead of meat. Then we headed back to Guilin and we went out to visit the Moon and Sun pagodas and to walk through the street markets. Juan bough a really strange fried animal that was probably a squid, and they said it tasted good. We also bought some paintings and souvenirs.

Juan with the Squid

Li RiverFebruary 6^th. We woke up early to go to the Reed Flute Cave (110Yuan=19USD). It was very big but it was full of fancy colorful lights, which make the cave much less natural and more artificial. Then we had booked a bamboo raft tour through the hostel (220Yuan=36USD). A bus took us to the port and the four of us rode the bamboo raft boat along the Li River for one hour from Guilin to close to Yangshuo. We got off the raft one time to take pictures of the beautiful scenery and I bought the pictures they took of me. The whole ride was absolutely beautiful, even though it was really cold. There are hundreds of mountains, all similar and of similar height. What is sad is that the water is very dark, dirty and contaminated, as are most of the rivers in China. The sky was foggy and grey, not sunny at all. However the fog made me feel in a mystic place. It felt like the mountains in the distance were fading or disappearing. It was a very unique and interesting view. When the ride finished, we took a bus that went through a lot of villages until we got to Yangshuo. Yangshuo is a big crowded town with a lot of stores. The bus took us to a place where the Windows XP screensaver photo was taken and to the Yulong River, where we rode real bamboo rafts, not motorized. First we saw how a villager fishes using two big black birds that are tied by their necks. There are only five villagers left that know how to fish this way. Then we rode smaller bamboo rafts in pairs and went down the river to the Dragon’s Bridge. This river was the only one we saw in China with clear water and it was a very fun ride because the guys that were paddling the boats were talking to each other and splashing water on us. Finally, we rode a water buffalo and then took the bus again to Yangshuo, stopping at the scenery where the back of the 20 Yuan bill picture was taken; and then went back to Guilin.

Pesca con pájaros Cormoranes

Li River

Windows XP Screensaver

Small Bamboo Rafts

At night we went out again, but this time we decided to go to a good restaurant. I was not feeling very good so we wanted to eat safe food. The restaurant was super good and not expensive so we ordered a lot of dishes with dumplings (fried, steamed, big, small, etc.), pork, duck, fried rice… but I could only eat steamed rice with orange juice.  Walking around we ended up at the Night Market we wanted to visit. Locals did not speak any English and we did not understand any Chinese. But we were good bargainers and bought things very cheaply. Sometimes sellers had pen and paper and we started making offers by writing down the numbers. It was quite an experience. David and Juan had a great time sitting down with an artist that was selling paints and bought some drinks for everyone. More people came to talk to us (even though no one understood each other’s language) and both David and Juan ended up buying huge paintings.

Night Market

On February 7^th we took a taxi to the Guilin airport and we took a flight to Shenzhen. In Shenzhen we took the bus (20Yuan each) to the border with Hong Kong and then we walked through the immigration process. Getting out of China was easy; lines were very long for Chinese but very short for foreigners. The problem was the entrance to Hong Kong. David, Juan and Nicol passed through without any problem but I was retained for an hour, and I had no idea what was going on. I had to wait in a room with about 60 more people of different nationalities until a lady called my name and asked me questions about what I was doing in Hong Kong. I had to show her my SAS ID card and the Hong Kong greensheet (SAS give us at every port) with information about the program and the ship. Ten minutes later they finally let me go. We exchanged currency, from Yuan to HK Dollars, and took the metro for 40 HKD each (less than 6USD) to the ship. We walked to the port that was located at the Ocean Terminal, which is a big, crowded mall, very fancy. There was a lot of people everywhere because they were preparing for the Lunar (Chinese) New Year on February 18^th. Later I went out with Nicol to walk around by the pier, passing by the museum of art and the Avenue of Stars. I was still feeling sick so I went back to the ship early. I guess I got food poisoning in China but I never knew why because no one else got sick, and I clearly did not drink any tap water. I was very happy to be back on the ship after three days of visiting a lot of places, walking a lot, trying to communicate with Chinese people, bargaining, and absorbing all the Chinese culture.

Hong Kong

I had the field lab for my Global Environmental Politics class and we took a ferry at the harbor. We left the crowded areas of HK and went out to the mountains. Our lecturer was Douglas Woodring, founder of the NGO Ocean Recovery Alliance. He is from the US but is working in HK with projects with the ocean, especially with marine debris and plastic issues. During our ferry ride we counted garbage (tiny, small, medium and large) and not surprisingly there was a lot. The problem in HK is that the trash comes from China, same thing as its polluted air. It is almost as bad as China’s. Woodring told us a lot about his NGO, the Plasticity Forum that is held every year and was started in Rio de Janeiro, and an app called Global Alert that is going to be released soon. It is similar to Google maps and people can upload photos of landfills and garbage from any cities. He mentioned he is doing projects with some Latin American countries too.

Juanse :)

We had lunch at an island, in rounded tables sharing lots of different dishes like fish, shrimp and oysters. Then we listened to Woodring for an hour or so and on our ride back to the harbor I talked to him and asked him about Colombia. He said he went to Bogota last year and he liked working with people there; they are very receptive. I asked him if they agreed to work on anything and he said they accepted to use the Global Alert app. He gave me his card and I think I will email him some time soon; he is a very smart guy and he knows a lot about what he is doing. It was a very educational and interesting lab although instead of just counting trash we could have picked it up.

At the harbor I got to see my friend from Colombia, Juanse. It was very nice to see him after more than a year and in the other side of the world. We don’t know where or when we will meet again but it probably will be in another random country; or at least that would be nice.

Night Light Show form the Ship

The MV Explorer left HK at 8pm. At that time there was a “light show” in the harbor but it was a little underwhelming. There were some random lights coming from different skyscrapers but there were only one or two lights at a time and they were slow and the same green color. The view was spectacular though. The previous night had been too foggy so the view was not too good but that night we got to see all the night lights from Hong Kong. It was an unforgettable view.

Vietnam

Three days is not enough time for such a great country

Wednesday February 11^th. We arrived at Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), also called Saigon, which is not the capital but is the largest city in Vietnam and is located in the South. I was going to stay a very short time in there so I tried to make the most of it. We had to wait longer before debarking the ship because apparently the people going to Cambodia were not supposed to travel independently in Vietnam because they needed our passports to help us get the Cambodian visas; but we managed to get our passports on time. With Vladislav, a friend from Switzerland, we left the ship and started walking around the city. We went to a market called Trang Market where we bought some shirts and elephant pants. And then we went to a café and drank Guava juice, which was green (I had never seen green guava juice before, it is always pink in Colombia) and was good but of course nothing can compare to our juice back home.

The weather was really hot and it was a sunny day. Wandering around was very nice, and crossing the streets was an adventure, although it was not nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be. Sometimes there were no pedestrian crossings, or streetlights, but it was always possible to cross the street. Five million motorcycles in only HCMC! Every time we crossed I felt that no one had any intention of hitting us, in contrast with Shanghai. In Shanghai it was extremely scary to cross the streets. Cars would cross on red lights, as well as motorcycles and bikes, and they would not stop even if pedestrians were very close to them. HCMC was totally different. Motorcycles always slightly slowed down, and passed behind us or far in front of us. I felt safe. One absolutely crazy thing were the roundabouts! Motorcycles and a couple of cars coming in and out from every street and somehow everything worked out perfectly. They all slow down and manage to get in, even the cars. Honking the horn is very common too but it is a way of telling others that they are crossing, or changing lines. It seemed like the ones that are in the front are able to do whatever they want to, while the ones that are in the back are the ones that have to be ready to slow down and move if another motorcycle cuts them off. But I was really impressed how everything works out and is not extremely hard to walk around.

We took a cab to the airport. The ride was supposed to be 20 minutes long but ended up being 40 minutes long. Luckily we had enough time. When we got to the airport, we were looking for the line we had to be in and a guy called us and told us to go to a shorter line, and while standing there another guy told us to go to an even shorter line, so we ended up in a three people line to do the check in. They were very helpful and nice, and I think it was just because we were tourists. Because of the Lunar (Chinese) New Year, Têt, was coming, a lot of people were traveling. When we got to the gate I ate some fresh spring rolls with herbs and a strange peanut/soy sauce, which were good. The flight was a little delayed but we finally made it to Hanoi, the capital, that night.

Unfortunately we did not have time to visit Hanoi. The night we arrived, someone from the Hanoi Backpackers Hostel we were going to stay at was waiting for us, and even though he did not speak English he was very nice. The hotel was far away, and on our way there the driver was in the wrong (left) side of the road for about 10 minutes, since no one was coming from the other side there was no problem, until he finally made a left turn. The hostel is located in downtown and there was a lot of nightlife going on; locals and tourists sitting outside eating and drinking. Our hostel was big and packed with backpackers from all around the world. The weather was much colder than in HCMC, it was around 20ºC.

We had booked a tour to Ha Long Bay through the hostel and the next day we ate breakfast at the hotel and were ready to leave by 7am, along with 60 more people. There were nine more SASers. We rode a bus for two and a half hours to Hai Phong, then we took a ferry to Cat Ba Island. On the island we took a bus that took us to the other side of the island and there we took another ferry to go to the hostel’s private island, Castaways Island. From Cat Ba we could see the water was not very clean but very brown, eventually it got dark greenish, which is the color that gives Ha Long Bay its essence. The island is manmade, is a huge beautiful rock and the hostel consists of ten bungalows.

We had lunch at the hostel and then took the cruise around Ha Long Bay. The boat took us around the whole bay for almost three hours. We saw the floating villages where all the houses are connected. Many of them have dogs, and some have boats. I know there are also several boats that visit some villages and some tours spend the night at the boat or at a village. The whole time the view was spectacular. The villages are very colorful, the huge rocks looked ke they were floating, the green water, the sunset, everything was gorgeous. Around 5pm the boat stopped and we had the opportunity to jump off the boat into the water. We jumped from the second floor, which was probably five meters high. What an awesome experience. The weather was cold, and the water was very cold too. When I got to the water it felt a little different, it felt like the water was very salty. I immediately climbed the ladder to get to the boat again and went to the second floor to jump once more. By that time, the sun was hiding before the rocks and the view was very beautiful.

We went back to the island, had dinner, took a shower and talked for a long time. It was cold, but we sat down in the sand, next to the water, and enjoyed the extremely dark and calm night. The place had loud music all night long until I do not know what time. Most of the people that were there were from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and such. Most of them travel to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, and some make it to Malaysia and/or Indonesia. It is common that they rent bikes or motorcycles and go all the way through Vietnam.

The next morning I woke up by 6. Very few people were awake and it was very tranquil. When Vlad woke up we went kayaking for a while. Amazing view as usual, but, unfortunately, it was sad to see some trash in the water. Because our flight back to HCMC was at 2pm, we had to cut our trip short and go to the airport on our own. First we had to take a speed boat to Cat Ba Island. We had been told we would have to pay for it, but exactly at the time we needed to catch the boat, a boat bringing food to the hostel arrived so they took us back for free. At the island, we took a motorcycle that costs 1,000 Vietnamese Dong (about $0.05USD). The ride was very interesting. 

They gave us hamlets right away. I could tell that the driver was very careful and probably more careful with me for being a woman. We had to go uphill and downhill, but he was not going fast. At the hotel we took a bus to go to the other side of the island and then took a boat to Hai Phong. On that ride, we did not know how much it was and when he told us what we thought was 150,000 Dong per person, we paid him with Dong and USD. He came back two minutes later and gave us our money back, without speaking any English he apparently was telling us not to worry about paying for the ride. We finally took a cab to the airport and we arrived ahead of time. Cabs in Vietnam are usually nice big cars, and they use taximeter so we did not have to worry about negotiating the fare beforehand. The only worry was to explain accurately where we wanted to go.

We made it safely back to HCMC in the afternoon and we took a cab straight back to the market. There were a lot of SAS people so we met with some girls and went to have dinner. We went looking for a good restaurant recommended by lonely planet guides and SAS and we found it on the way to the Notre Dame Cathedral. It was a huge restaurant and on the sides people were cooking all

the dishes, like if it were a show. Most of us had different kinds of Pho and spring rolls, and then we shared fruits and a really good dessert that consisted of grilled bananas wrapped in rice flour and topped with coconut cream and peanuts. It was absolutely delicious. Finally we went to the cathedral where we took a cab back to the ship. We fit seven people on it and we were comfortable. On our way to the ship we saw the imperial palace, the opera theater, and of course hundreds of motorcycles, people on the street, and light decorations for the Têt.

I was there for only three days but I enjoyed a lot. Back on the ship I listened to other people’s experiences and everyone had a great time there. It has been the favorite country for a lot of students and had I spent couple more days there it would have been my favorite too. I want to go back, rent a bike and go everywhere, including the Mekong Delta, Hoi An, Nha Trang, and much more. Even though it is not the cleanest country, most people would have a great time in this country and I highly recommend it.