China Commentary from Thailand

Alright - I've made it to Thailand in one piece!

During our last couple of days in China, the weather was not at it's best but we attempted to see the remainder of the main tourist sites. On Wednesday, Ash slept in so Les and I walked south over to the Temple of Heaven where the Emperor used to go to pray for good harvests and whatnot. The grounds were twice the size of the Forbidden city, so we ended up wandering around in the park like area for awhile before finding the actual buildings. At least we ran across plenty of entertainment in groups of people doing Tai Chi, dancing around with paddles, and even singing in random spots. The group of buildings didn't seem incredibly impressive. The main Hall was of course closed for renovations and supposedly it's built without any nails, just a bunch of supporting pillars or somesuch. Took a break for lunch and then all 3 of us found our way to the Silk Market which basically a 4 story mall thats been converted to a marketplace. As soon as you step through the door you're surrounded by vendors selling Northface, all sorts of pearls, jade, watches, silk, fabrics, basically anything you can think of. It was way to easy to kill a few hours there since it was looking ominous outside. Both Ash and Les ended up getting fitted for suits! Hilarious, but now that they did it, I'm considering it for while I'm in Thailand. Not too much more excitement that day since it started to rain later on.

Thursday morning we made ourselves get up and head out to the Summer Palace which is quite a distance away from central Beijing. It was sprinkling off and on, but the palace and grounds were interesting. In the center is a huge lake and around are buildings used by Dowager Empress Cixi and her son or nephew who was emperor until she put him on house arrest there. If it had been a nicer day the place definitely would have been great for just hanging out and enjoying a picnic, but as it was we headed back to the silk market so they could have there last fitting for the suits. Then quickly to the hostel for lunch and before I knew it I was in a taxi to the airport. There in plenty of time and found there was no departure tax so attempted to spend the rest of my Chinese money before boarding the 4.5 hr flight to Thailand.

So before we get off the subject of China - a few random comments:

Driving - the place is ridiculously insane. No traffic laws at all as far as we could see. Basically just drive wherever/however you want. The problem is compounded by non coordinated traffic signals. True example: in a bus at an intersection, we had a green light to turn right, the cars on our left had a green light to go straight, and the bikes and pedestrians had a green light to go straight as well. This amounts to inching the vehicle forward, between bicycles and then merging with oncoming traffic.... Boston driving is tame in comparison.

Spitting - all the time everywhere. you walk down the street and here this big howcking sound and its just grandma spitting off to the side.

Toilets - apparently it's ancient chinese tradition to have squat toilets, so even in pretty nice places you'll have maybe one western style at most. At the Forbidden City, I used a restroom and found out that the 4star bathrooms have squat toilets with motion detectors! fancy!

personal space - or rather lack there of. Makes sense probably since there are 1.5 billion people in the country. Still very hard to get used to the constant push/shove/people walking between you if there was a space wide enough. The thing is you push and shove back and ellicit no reaction since it's normal.

Barbar shops - haircut = prostitutes on hand... just so you know ;)


So arrived in Thailand on Thursday night and was met by 2 guys whose names I can't really say. We waited for 3 others on later flights. Hannah - from NY goes to Lafayette University in PA. Dough - from PA goes to Evergreen University in Oregan. Travis - from N. California goes to school on the west coast but the name of the school escapes me. Spent most of Friday wandering the area around Chulalongkorn University, apparently the most famous Uni in Thailand. Tons of shopping centers and Siam square is full of vendors selling all sorts of things. Met Wendy and Matt in the afternoon who were in Malaysia visiting Wendy's family and who go to school in Texas. Elliott got in that evening from a week in Chaing Mai in the N part of Thailand; he's from South Dakota and goes to Nebraska. Still one more guy who has been here for a couple of days but none of us have run into him yet. We're all on the same floor of one of the university buildings. Pretty nice place to live - rooms with air con, our own bathrooms, a balcony, a tv that gets BBC as its one english channel. So this morning I'm wandering around a bit more before we have our official welcome meeting at 2pm and are then taken to the weekend markets. Tomorrow they're taking us to see some of the main Bangkok sites and on Monday work starts!! Hot and humid here, but I think I'm almost to the getting used to it point.