Hanoi & Hue

After Sapa we headed South to Hanoi. We spent 3 days exploring the capital and planning the rest of Vietnam. A typhoon unexpectedly hit the second day and we decided to cancel our plans of Halong Bay and use the exra time to see Hue and later the beach towns of Nha Trang and Mui Ne.





And you thought Toronto rush hour was bad! This is 24/7 in Hanoi (and throughout the cities of S.E.A. it seems) -->.

<--In case you forgot what we look like. (In front of the oldest pagoda in Hanoi.)


We went to the water puppet theater in Hanoi, highly recommended by friends and worth seeing. The puppets were controlled from behind a screen and the show was both entertaining and unique. -->

We spent one day in Hue, the old capital. We drove around the forbidden palace, saw the army doing drills and some old war relics.
<-- A typical intersection. Don't stop! Keep moving! (No lights, no signs, lots of honking, no road rage?!)

We're now in Hoi An, but not for much longer. After a 3 day spending spree on new work wardrobes we are leaving tonight for Nha Trang... beach town. Hoi An is great, we've rented bikes, been at the beach, and did I mention the clothes? We both got suits, pants, shirts, coats and I got a couple skirts and a dress all custom made, tailored to fit. I'm not usually too keen on the classy stuff but this was the deal of a life time! We'll be posting some pictures of the last few days and our upcoming adventures shortly!

Sapa, Vietnam

<-- The french-colonized, mountain-side town of Sapa.

After a long night-bus ride we walked across the border from China to Vietnam. Our first stop was Sapa, a small town up in the mountains in Northern Vietnam. It was absolutely beautiful and exceeded all expectations. We stayed in a hotel built into the side of the mountain and our room had an unobstructed, magnificent view of the surrounding beauty.


<- Not a bad view for breakfast, eh?
We took a motorbike out (in typical MacCuaig-Roberts style) to explore the countryside. First trip, we went up, up, up, and froze, froze, froze. The second time we went into the valleys an loved the waterfalls and being able to see the local villagers harvesting their rice crops.
<-- Where's Waldo?... I mean Mark... does that boy ever get around!
^-- Tiered rice fields.
<-- Some H'Mong kids working hard to 'beat' the rice off the stalks. They gather it in bunches and whack it off the side of the bin numerous times until they are satisfied all the rice is off.
A local boy using the wind to clean the newly harvested rice. They stand on a platform, slowly pouring out the rice into a collection bin and the wind carries the debris and dirt away.--^




No those aren't mini smoke stacks. The rice collectors burn the stalks of the rice plants after they've beaten all the rice off of them. This makes for quite the smokey valley during harvest season. -->

Sapa was also great for a bit of shopping. The H'Mong people, a hill tribe, would come into town selling their goodies, and boy did I love it. They were, however, a little overbearing at times, swarming and fighting for your attention in what we now realize is the traditional Vietnamese way to handle us foreigners. Mark was able to miss all this shopping as he was laid up in bed with a fever for a couple days.

Mount Emei (Emeishan)

After visiting the Giant Buddha, we hopped on a bus to Emei. We arrived in a nice, small mountain town and planned our following day's hike up the mountain. After an early rise (5:30 am), we were walking the trails well ahead of the masses that would come several hours later.

We had an amazing hike up the beautiful trails alongside the rivers and waterfalls, and apart from a few run-ins with some crazy, attacking, mountain monkeys, had a very peaceful and rewarding hike. We climbed for several hours with hardly anyone else around us but on our way back down, we ran into thousands of Chinese tourists snapping photos and clogging up the narrow pathways. We were super happy that we had an early start and were able to enjoy all of the wonderful scenes on our own.

Despite being near freezing cold, Michael decided that it was due time for a swim. "There's just something about waterfalls and pools of clear water that makes me want to swim." Michael -->

















Can you find Mark? (It's like 'Where's Waldo' but in China and with Mark instead of Waldo!) -->




<-- These are the crazy monkeys who wouldn't let us pass. We were told to show them rocks and sticks to scare them off but when Allison tried to threaten them with her stick, the boldest one took hold of it and she got scared and let him have it. Meanwhile, the others were busy jumping on Michael's legs. Mark escaped unscathed. "I'm not sure if i'm shaky beacause of all the walking, or from those damn crazy monkeys!" Allison

Xi'an to Chengdu to Leshan

We've had many more adventures since we were last able to post. We left fabulous Beijing Sept. 9th after a couple more days of exploring the city, visiting the Forbidden Palace, and then headed on another sleeper train to Xi'an, home of the Terracotta Warriors.
<-- This picture is of the very busy entrance to the Forbidden Palace, overwhelming at first but very interesting as we got into the smaller back alleys.
The warriors were the main reason we wanted to get to Xi'an and they were well worth it. They were made as a result of Emperor Qin Shi Huag's desire to be buried with the protection of a giant army to serve him. He had the same belief as the Ancient Eygptians, that what you were buried with could be used in the afterlife. That was around 100 BC and they were only discovered in 1979, when a farmer was digging a well. Since then, most of the soldiers have been uncovered and a museum has been built around the site. The whole of Qin's tomb was several acres big, we drove 10 minutes by bus from the site of where his body was to where the soldiers were found. It was amazing to see the life-sized figures that had been made by slaves so long ago and have been deemed the archeological find of the century.

<-- The detail on the warriors was incredible, to think these were made by slaves over 2000 years ago!

Xi'an was also a great place for late night kebabs and street markets. Our hostel was very central and though we were only there for 2 days we had plenty of time to enjoy the old capital.

From Xi'an we headed on a 17hr overnight hard-seater train to Chengdu. The train was about as much fun as you could imagine. Though we were spared of the babies peeing at our feet, as we heard from other travellers, it was still a full night of lights on, straight backed seats, loud-mouthed food sellers, smoking men in the aisles and little sleep (especially for Mark).


Chengdu was excellent. We started off by visiting a Panda breeding base the morning of our first full day. As it was feeding time, the Pandas were wide awake, active, and not too concerned with their human spectators. There were so many it was hard to keep moving along. It was definetly a memory to last a lifetime.

<-- These were the most relaxed eaters we have ever witnessed. Serious couch-potato like tendencies.


<-- A new born Panda. They are all born prematurely and sometimes the mom kills them because she doesn't know what it is so the breeding center incubates them for the first little while.
<-- The Red Panda, a kind of fox/raccoon little guy.
<-- This was taken at the Sichuan Opera in Chengdu. We didn't understand a word, but made up our own convincing story line and enjoyed the music, singing and especially the costumes.








<-- Us and our packs, not bad for 9 weeks eh???





We left Chengdu this morning to visit Leshan, known for it's Big Buddha, measuring 192ft, that was built in 713. It seems that every city in Asia boasts the biggest Buddha as a number one attraction, and we have seen our share, but this one definitely takes the cake. We took a bus to Leshan and then a ferry along the river to see the Buddha that is carved into the mountain side. It took almost 90 years to complete and was the project of a Buddhist monk who's goal was to calm the violent rivers that converged at this mountain. It's amazing to experience these glimpses into the past. The history in this country is unbelievable and hard to even grasp.
<-- In case you can't figure it out, this is the big dude. If you look closely you can see all the tiny people walking down on the left and some right in front. HUGE!
<-- Up close and personal.


Tomorrow we're off to hike up Mt. Emei (we're staying at the base tonight) and then onto Kunming, our last stop before we enter Vietnam.

Beijing - Part 1

We're now on full day number 2 in Beijing and loving every second of it, we've had nothing but beautiful, sunny days. Beijing is a 2000+ year old city with a population of over 13 million so you can begin to imagine where we are. Beijing is also getting ready for its 2008 olympics so is extra crazy. Where Taiwan had scooters, Beijing has bikes and when we thought driving in Taiwan was nuts we were not even close to describing the insanity of Beijing streets. Luckily there are many 'Hutongs', which are small alley-like side streets that hold traditional chinese homes. Yesterday we explored the Hutongs as well as main streets by renting bicycles from our hostel. We also went to the Temple of Heaven, where we were able to experiment with a curved 'echo wall' and the voice projecting center stone of an ancient platform. Very neat stuff. Later we passed Tiananmen square and drove past the Forbidden city which we are going to explore further tomorrow. After a drive in the park, where we saw many old dudes hanging out playing games, we went up a hill to a viewing tower and looked out over the forbidden city for the sunset and a couple $2 Yuan beers ($.30 CND!!!).

Today... WOW... we went to the GREAT wall of China. It was a 3 hr ride both ways and well worth it to get a spot on the wall that was very authentic and peaceful. We hiked an hour up to the wall and then 4 hours across for a total of 9kms. The wall marks the border between China and Mongolia and the view to both sides was nothing but undisturbed nature at its very best, mountains and forests stretching to the horizon. It was one of those memories that will definitely last a lifetime and is even better because of the work we had to put into it to get the breathtaking results. We had to climb and clamber down a series of super steep steps and ramps the most of which are originals that are more than 420 years old. We did pass a section that has been restored in the past 20 years so it was really nice to get a mix of both. At the end of the hike I (Allison) opted to take a rip-cord across the river in front of the wall, what a way to end the day! Pictures will never do it justice but we've tried and will post a whole bunch.

** having problems uploading more pictures... stay tuned...

The Great Wall

We drove 3hrs from Beijing to a small farming town and then hiked up this hill to the wall.






Check out all those steps! This is from the newer section of the wall, only about 20 yrs old.
This is part of the original wall over 420 yrs old!
A well deserved rest.
You can see how instead of steps they used to just have steep inclines, it was very crumbly at points and was almost harder going down than up!
Group shot!
Looking toward the steep climb to the next tower.
Tired and Happy.

Looking back on the 23 towers we hiked.

YAY!
WEEEEEEEEEE!!!