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.