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[ The Yucatan Pennensula and Chichen Itza] |
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***All photos were taken by my brother***
[ I kept a record/diary of what I did in Mexico, So most of my posts are going to be copied directly from there. ]
[ Enjoy!]
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[11.26.06]
The Jetlag seems to have worn off and a hectic morning was replaced with a calm night.
Woke up @ 4am this morning to rush into the car and make way to the airport. we had just made it onto the plane, and then had just made it onto the next. The flight seemed longer than 3.5 hours, but that might be because there was no break in between flights. As soon as we got off, we got our bags, went through customs, ect.
A travel guy at the information booth promised us a good deal on a trip to Chichen Itza, so we'll see how that turns out. I was alittle worried at first about Mexico, since the information booth warned us about being taken advantage of for being foreigners, but really, it's no worse than China and it's no big deal. xD
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[ That night we didn't really get to walk around too much at all. But Our hotel was huge, so it was nice to walk on the beach and poke around.]
[This is the view of our hotel from the dock. It's a beautiful spot. You might notice how high the water is and how far up it goes onto the beach... naturally it's not supposed to be up that high, but the hurricane made it irregular.]
[ We probably had the nicest beach out of all the other hotels. and the color of the water is phenominal.]
[ The next couple days consisted of just aimlessly wandering around Cancun, buying a shirt at the Hard Rock Cafe, and having a Turkey Quesadilla for Thanksgiving.] xd
[ Cancun looks very much like any other beach side city in America. It was a nice place, but evidence of the hurricane Katrina was everywhere. Some hotels were only half standing, and a lot of greenery was completely uprooted and missing as a cause.]
[ This was a young mother who I bought some nice woven bracelets from.] <3
[ On the 24th, we got ready for our 3 hour bus ride to Chichen Itza! With stops in Mayan cities on the way there.]
[ On the bus ride there, we met Luis, who we all called Luigi, for some reason.]
[ He was a funny guy, who told us a great deal about the mayan civilization. We had english and spanish speakers together on the tour, so Luigi was slipping back and forth from Spanish to English so fast that it was hard to catch what he was saying sometimes.] xd
[ The ride went into the jungle, and even when we were an hour inland, Katrina's remains were still visible. We took a bathroom and stretching break at a nice hotel that was on the outskirts of our next destination.]
[But the big deal wasn't the hotel itself, as much as the tourist attraction they had on the property:]
[ amazing huh? ] biggrin
[ This was a type of underground pool that the people at the hotel got to swim in! You had to take a shower first, so as not to contaminate the pool, but that didn't stop anybody at all! There were even fish in there! We stayed around a bit to watch the people having fun, before going back to the bus.]
[ The next stop before chichen Itza, was dinner in a Mayan town! These Mayans, (who are relatives of their ancentral Mayans who made Chichen Itza) liked trying to live a traditional lifestyle.]
[ After poking around a little bit, we all went inside for dinner, and the waiters and waitresses danced for us!]
[ Finally we were on our way to Chichen Itza.]
[We walked throiugh alittle bit of jungle to get there, but it was Right There! The ruins!]
[This is the sun temple. It was very big and beautiful, but we weren't allowed to climb it. If you stand at a certain spot before the pyrimid and clap, then it echos all the way up to the top and sort of radiates around the area. ] biggrin
Neraby was an arena where there were games held during the ancient times. The losers were sacrificed, if I remember correctly.]
[This is the astronomy tower. Yes, Ancient Mayans are well known for their calender and star documentations.] :]
[Afterwards, I drained the battery on my iPod on the looooong bus home. Most of us slept.]
[ The next day consisted of swimming and ping-pong, so it's not like I have any pictures of that.] xd
[ Well, That's all for this story. Cancun was a nice little relaxation spot.]
[Until next time]
Adios
 .husbife · Sat May 05, 2007 @ 01:14am · 0 Comments |
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[ China Firsthand and American Comparisons] Part 2 |
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[Part 2! ]
[ Part 1 is here]
[ ***All photos were taken by my brother***]
[And so starts part two...]
[ any ways, picking up from where I left off... ]
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[ The treck back down the mountain was so tiring, but we were also a bit relieved to be able to rest our feet the rest of the way back.]
[We saw this cutey on the way down the mountain. By bor couldn't resist a pic.]
[ Well, that was all for that day. Watching Chinese dramas on TV was also fun before getting ready for sleep and Qufu.]
[ Qufu was the birthplace and resting ground of Confucious. So it was a VERY holy to place to confucists. It would be the same as me visiting Jesus' grave, know what I mean?]
[ Anywho, at first galnce, Qufu seemed like an ordinary chinese town, but as we got closer to the burial site, there were a lot more trees visible, and a few markets. I bought a confucious souvenior, but not before two saleswomen fought over me as a customer.] xD
[this was the front gate inviting us in]
[ This was NOT Confucious' tomb. It's a tombstone describing Confucious' life and the significance of this memorial park at the entrance. ]
[ There was a lot of land left untouched in the middle of the town. Almost made me forget that I was still in a village and not the forest. There were multiple old tombstones among the trees, which were Confucious' relatives and ancestors.]
[ After walking on path and over thousand year old bridges for a while, we came upon a place for worship and insence lighting.]
[ The tombstones in this area were sheltered and well taken care of. ]
[ And finally we came upon Confucious and his wife's tombstones.]
[Dont ask me WHY my brother doesn't have a picture on the internet of the tomb. He's just picky about what he puts online I guess. And he didn't like that picture. Even though it's AWESOME. I guess you can always look for a pic on the internet of it...]
[ But I'll describe it for you. It was BIG!. Very tall. about 25 feet or taller. And it had dragons adorning either side of the top of it. Bit of it were broken off, unfortunatly. And it was very weathered, but many people left incense in front of it.]
[Very fascinating.]
[That night, it was time for the Overnight Train. It was a 9 hour ride to Shanghai, our final destination, so it was equiped with beds for us to sleep in overnight.]
[ I slept well. The rocking of the train had me sleeping like a baby. I thought it was soothing. My mom however was up all night from it. And from our bunk-mate's snoring.] xD!
[ That morning, we got to our hotel, and then went straight to the acrobat show! ]
[ First were these girls, who were so flexible! and did some amazing contortions!]
[ Then the plate balancing. It was so graceful and beautiful. I was in awe!]
[ There were many other performances, but the lights were out, so none of the pictures showed. The grand finale was a cage for motorcycles. I thought 3 bikes in there was AMAZNG! But no, the had to kick it up a notch! FIVE BIKERS were in this tiny sperical cage at one time! man...I gotta give props to those guys. I had a great time.]
[ Next was a bus to Suzhou, the "venice of the orent" ]
[ As you can see, it really did have a similar design to venice!]
[ There were many restaurants and houses adorned with red lanterns and many people cruising around on boats. It was pretty hot though, so there probably weren't as many people out as usual.
[ It was great ridin around in our little boat and waving to the people putting thier feet in the water. We were just simple observers to these people who lived their lives in this unusual place daily.]
[ Next was the Silk Factory!]
[ Here, we got to see how they took silkworm cocoons and unraveled them. Each little white ball there is 2 miles of silk 3x thinner than a strand of human hair.]
[ They used the silk for comforters, bedsheets, clothing, bags, ect. I got a free silk hankerchief that is super soft. Mom bought my grandma a freen bamboo print silk jacket. It's beautiful.]<3
[ The next day (at least I THINK it was the next day...?) We went to The Master of Nets' Garden.]
[ Again I don't know WHY my brother refuses to post his nice pictures of the Master Of Nets' Garden on the internet, so I can only assume that he hates how they tuned out.] =_=
[ So unfortunatley, I can only describe it to you. The Master Of Nets' Garden was about a thousand or so years old. He placed everything in his garden in a way that no matter what angle you looked at it, it was considered a beautiful perice of art. Everything was arranged just so, and it was a lovely place to walk around. Unfortunatly, since it was so hot, a lot of us had problems appreciating the beaty, because we were distracted by the stifling heat instead.] >___>;;
[Here's the only picture from the Master of Nets' Garden that I have. It's a piece that was considered art for the way the handwriting was. There were many parchments like this around the place, so I assume that Handwrting like this is very hard to do.]
[ ...It also must be very hard to read.] xD
[ And then Finally, FINALLY! We got to explore Shanghai! ]
[ This was 'The Bund', a very famous spot in Shanghai, where there are many companies and malls surrounding the waters. It was a beautiful place. There weren't many homeless people, to my surprise. and the few that were didn't beg for money, they just requested that they could have your water bottle if you were done with it.]
[The museum was our next stop.]
[ Here is the outside of the museum( the building with the lions outfront). It is about 3-4 stories, since it doesn't cover a lot of ground area. It's very modern and chic.] <3
[ This is the inside. It's far to large to get a proper picture, but I think this gives the odea of the architecture inside a little.]
[ Some boys watching over the balcany. I did this a lot of the time too.] xD
[It's fun to people-watch from higher up.]
[ A few of the artifacts that we got pictures of. I don't think that cameras were allowed, but we got a few anyways.]
[ These artifacts were so OLD. there were some things here from Before Christ! That's BC, people! It also showed progressivly how styles changed. They had examples of masks, clothing, scrolls, stamps, etc. It was great. I reccomend it, deffinatly.]
[ Next was the Bazzaar! ]
[ This picture was on the way there. Yeah... Bikes are huge in China.]
[ This was the outside of the bizzaar while walking in. It was a crowded and fun place! It was like a shopping area. With the smaller shops you could haggle a sale's price, but in the larger stores, the items had fixed prices and tags, but it was still reasonable and pretty cheap.]
[ We started walking through shops to get to other shops. This was was huge! There were many little alleys off the beaten path, were shops and noodle stands were set up.]
[ And of course, they had weird souvenier-type stuff for foreigners and tourists.]
[ After lunch with the tour group, My mom, My brother, and I all decided to search Shanghai by ourselves. We don't know any chinese except 'hello' and 'thank you', but we thought it would be fun anyways! Jonna, A girl my age who was also on the tour, wanted to come with us, so we all got into the taxi to go to a few malls. ]
[...okay, reccomendation. If you are going to use a taxi in china, be prepared to hold your breathe and pray that you don't crash. Taxi drivers are like stunt drivers. lol]
[ We walked around a little bit going from mall to mall. It was great being able to walk the streets like a normal pedestrian! ]
[ This was the electronics mall. 4 stories of electronics!]
[ The fact that there are so many shops squeezed into one was convenient, since if you didn't like the price of something at one shop, you could go to another selling the same thing on a different floor!]
[ Mom decided to buy a PSP for the flight back home.]
[ We decided to go into a few more malls. Some off them were ultra-chic, and were charging about $100 dollars a shirt.]
[ But we went to a smaller one that had a restaurant inside. It had Bruce Lee outside of the entrance, so Jonna and I couldn't resist to strike a pose beneath the legend!] xd
[ This was our last dinner together as a tour group, and then we would have to leave shanghai for a flight to beijing, to catch another flight home.]
[ It was bitter sweet and I don't even remember if the food was delicious or not. But we had a fun time.]
[ uh...Driver? We're ready to leave now...] xd
[ We got to enjoy the night scene of Shanghai as we returned to our hotel. It really is magnificent at night.]
[ I wish I had more pictures to show, but that's it.]
[ Later we had a 7 hour delay (that's 22 hours stuck on the airplane) before finally getting home.]
[ China was a great experience. I have a new appreciation of the culture and would love to return someday... maybe go to Hong Kong next time.] whee
[ Until then, thanks for reading my tavelog. I hope you enjoyed it and plan on visiting China someday!]
[ China : End ]
[ Goodbye!]
[Zai Jian! ]
[再见!]
.husbife · Fri May 04, 2007 @ 04:02am · 1 Comments |
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