The Great Wall

I think the Great Wall was a highlight of the trip for all of us. We had a really hot day, but we took the advice of one of Dave's friends from work and drove a little further to the "less touristy" spot on the wall. It was a great decision, because it wasn't crowded and we had a great views. We took the cable car up to the wall and rather than taking the cable car back down, we decided to walk down. That was a great choice because we just happened to end up walking through the Chinese Rock Museum. It was a beautifully landscaped walk down through gardens and waterfalls and the boys even discovered a cave with water falls and really interesting rock formations, etc. It was a great surprise and made it a wonderful trip to the wall for sure.

On our last day, we toured the Lama Temple and saw the Guiness Book of Records tallest Budda in the World which was carved from a single Sandlewood tree and took 3 years to transport it to it's current location. After that we hit the Pearl World Market for some "high quality replicas" as the Chinese sales people call them. It really is a whole different world.

It was an AWESOME trip!!! We saw and did things that we will remember for the rest of our lives. It was a great experience for the boys to see how people in other parts of the world live and hopfully not take what we have for granted. It's always fun to go.....but it's also WONDERFUL to be home. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the adventure.

Beijing, China

Last Friday night, we took an overnight train from Xi'an to Beijing. I have to say, when we arrived at the train station, I was a little worried about our choice, but the train was clean and we had two full cabins (6 beds for us and 2 beds for our luggage!!!) and it turned out just fine.

On our first day in Beijing, we toured the Summer Palace which was the summer home for the Emperors from the various Chinese Dynasties. Very neat. We took a Dragon Boat back from the Palace to the parking lot which was also really fun. Since it was a Saturday, and the Chinese schools are on summer break, things were really crowded, but we got to see the highlights for sure.

That afternoon, we took a Rickshaw ride and tour of a traditional Chinese neighborhood and house called a Hutong. The particular house we toured belonged to a "rich" woman because she and her family lived in this Hutong by themselves and didn't have to share it with multiple other families. Inside her home there were pictures of her and her husband infront the US Capital building in DC and on the strip in Las Vegas. Our tour guide informed us that traveling from China is VERY expensive so these pictures further confirmed this family was very well off. I have to say is was incredible to see how minimal her house was for someone considered to be rich. They had about 4 small rooms and everything was very old and basic. Nothing fancy or luxury by any stretch of the imagination. It really puts things in perspective for sure.

The next day we toured Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. I don't think anyone else had quite the same reaction that I did, but I have to admit it was AWESOME actually being in Tianamen Square. After seeing it on TV for all these years, and all the world events that have happened there, it was almost sureal to actually be there in person! We tried to google the tank incident from the 80's while we were at the hotel in China (so we could remind ourselves about the details and tell the boys the whole story). I guess it shouldn't be a big surprise, but it's blocked. You can't find any info on that in China. Facebook is blocked too. Very interesting.

The Forbidden City was the palace home of the Emperors of the various Dynasties. Anyone else was forbidden to enter. It's also the place where the movie; "The Last Emperor" was filmed. I'll need to watch that movie again now that we've been there. It was incredibly crowded on Sunday when we had our tour. It would have been nice to have a bit more time and less crowds so we could have asked more questions and the kids could have got a better look into the various buildings, etc. but we definitely got the basic idea of the place. This was also where we had our "15 mins of fame". While we were waiting for our tour guide to purchase the tickets for us, we had various Asian groups come up to us and ask to take a picture with us. Erik and Adam had already had a few photo requests during various parts of the trip. But outside the Forbidden City, we probably had 10 or 15 groups come up and request photos in a 20 min time period. I think once the first group asked, other people started thinking we must be "famous" or important in some manner so it started the trend. Very Funny!

The next day was the Temple of Heaven and the Tea Room for tasting. Even the boys enjoyed the tea tasting and if the tea actually does everything they say it does for you, I'll be drinking it EVERYDAY!!!

Xi'an, China - Terra Cotta Warriors

On Aug 5th we left our "home sweet condo" in Singapore and headed for Xi'an, China. We had some flight delays that were less than ideal, but we got there with no real problems. I was a little bit worried about changing plans in Guangzhou, but it turns out that happens to be the 3rd largest city in China (12M people) so we had no problems. Our tour guide Jackie was waiting for us when we arrived at baggage claim and all went smoothly.

The next day we set out to see the Terra Cotta Warriors. As even the Chinese people say, "Beijing has a couple hundred years of history, Xi'an has a couple thousand years of history." It was truly fascinating. We took a TON of pictures. The detail and the craftsman ship on these warriors is amazing. Some of the kneeling down warriors were found almost in tact. That's incredible as well. Apparently two famers were out digging for a well during the 1970's and happened to dig up a head of one of the warriors. When the archiologists came, they eventually discovered 3 full "pits" of warriors. Some pits haven't been fully dug up yet, and I actually think that was good because it helped us understand how the whole thing was built. We were all so impressed that we bought the tour book AND one of the farmers that made the original discovery was there, and he signed our book. Really neat!!!

After the warriors, we headed to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. There is an acient Chinese story regarding why it's called that, but it's too much to write, so I'll leave that one for your googling pleasure. Buddist monks still live / pray here and we learned about the threshold step that kepts the bad spirits out. The higher the threshold, the more important the building and/or it's residents. All the dynasty buildings we toured had these high thresholds. In acient times, the women stepped over with their right foot first and the men stepped over with their left foot first. The neatest thing about the Pagoda is that it's slightly slanted - on purpose. Again, amazing for 100's of years ago, and that it's still standing!

Next we toured the Xi'an City Wall, complete with the moat and the drum tower (for telling time during the night) and the bell tower (for telling time during the day). The windows are were the guards would look out and be ready to shoot arrows at any approaching enemies. The boys thought that sounded like a fun job....

After a great day in Xi'an, it was off to the train station (which was NOT a highlight of the trip but we won't focus on that....) to catch our overnight train to Beijing!

Singapore East Coast

Ok. Let me first start by saying we're home!!! We made it safely back to Corvallis on Wednesday. It was a trip of a life time but even still it feels good to be home!
And I started this blogging task so now I'm gonna finish it....

On our last weekend in Singapore, we went over to the east coast of the island. It was a beautiful sunny day (as you can see from the pix) and since we were at the coast, we had a nice breeze. So it was warm, but pretty comfortable. We walked along the beach and breaker walls and then we rented bikes. Bicycles built for two to be exact. I'm not quite sure why we didn't get a photo of us on the bikes. It was probably because we were so focused on not getting anyone injured. The camera wasn't a high priority at the time. The boys were AMAZED that they were riding a bike without a helmet (they just don't have them there - and FYI they don't have seatbelts in Thailand either....).

We stopped for a bit and watched the wind surfing race. We also saw the wake board / water ski lagoon. There's a cable / pully system hanging above this lagoon and in the water is a series of ramps and jumps. The riders grab onto the cable handle as it comes past the starting point and off they go. No boats are involved. it's all done with cables and motors. Some of the guys were really good at the jumps, etc. It was really neat to watch!

That night we finally had the authentic Singapore Chili Crab for dinner with some folks from my work. This is THE famos dish from Singapore. They cook the crab in a tomato / red chili sauce and then serve it swimming in the sauce. It comes with fried bread balls for dipping in the sauce and we all enjoyed it. I loved the crab, Dave and Kevin liked the bread dipping and Erik & Adam liked the food but loved playing with the crab claws the most. I think the claws even made it home in our luggage. Another great weekend for sure!!!

We enjoyed the Chili Crab so much, that we went out again on one of our last nights in Singapore with friends from work for more chili crab. I even got the recipe. We'll have to see how it turns out at home! Then we had one last dinner of Sesame Nan and Prada at the local Indian Restaurant and we're off to China..... Singapore was GREAT!!! We all would go back when ever we had the chance - and Erik is ready to be adopted by a Singapore family!!!