Elaine & Emily - Guest Blog #6 - Seoul

Alright - Emily has just sent us their Blog update from South Korea - enjoy:

June 2nd

We arrived Seoul around 6pm. Chuck, one of Elaine’s friends who works as an English professor in the city, met us at the airport. He had thoughtfully put together information for us with Seoul maps, subway cards, a cell phone, some money, bus tickets… wonderful to be in a new country under the guidance of Chuck and have all those things out of the gate.

The bus from the airport to Anguk in northern section of Seoul took about an hour and a half. We got to see some of the city along the way and knew for certain we were no longer in China: 6-lane city streets, organized traffic, SUVs, US restaurant chains, people dressed to the nines… very urban chic. We also noticed we were no longer the towering, big-footed laowais we had been in China. Height-wise we were average or short and blended in quite nicely. Some Koreans are definitely suffering the same obesity problems that Americans are, perhaps because of the American restaurant chains, sodas and snack foods available everywhere in Seoul.

We checked into the Seoul Guest House, a 126 year-old hanok or traditional Korean style compound, and then Chuck took us to meet his friend Tak for our first Korean dinner. The food was delicious…

After dinner we walked around Insadong, an area with lots of shops, restaurants and street side vendors. After exploring for an hour or so, Chuck walked us back to our little guesthouse; we were exhausted.

We've got one more post from our blog hijackers and then we'll talk all about our weekend in Nanjing.

The old capital.

When our latest guests, Elaine and Emily, left China on Tuesday morning we didn't get a nice chance to sit back and relax. About three hours after they left we were off to the airport to fly up to Shanghai for a few days where I needed to do some work. All that's good and done, at some point Tina may write about some of the sights that she visited, and after a quick 3 hour train ride through some of the darkest storm weather we've seen in a while we've arrived in Nanjing.

Nanjing is one of those cities that we've been wanting to get up and visit almost since we moved here and we finally decided to just schedule it and have a quick weekend trip. Tina booked a great room and we have a beautiful view over the Confucius temple.
If the rain stops we'll get out and hopefully have some great photos and little stories to share. If we don't get anything good we'll point you over to Ben's Blog, and his recent post on Nanjing, especially since his China information is well above anything we could provide. We're lazy in that respect, and we know that most of our readers only want to hear about us going out for drinks....

Elaine & Emily - Guest Blogging Post #5

May 31 – Up at 7am a quick, light breakfast of toast for Emily and Elaine; nothing for Tina and Mark.... Mark, Tina, and Emily were all feeling a little under the weather.

So we leave the cold damp mountains to head back down to the Hong He (Red River) and drive through the valley towards Jianshiu and finally back to Kunming. Along the way we stopped at a Mongolian village, it was more than 750 years old and still populated with some of the Mongolian people that ended up stranded there when the Chinese drove the Mongols out of their country and back up north.

Along the way back we stopped for lunch at truck stop – Mark and Elaine were only ones eating, but it was very good with corn cakes, a local item, which were very tasty, then continuing on to Kunming airport for our flight back to Xiamen……..

We arrived back in Xiamen 7pm, happy with the dry and warm weather that greeted us. After unloading at the apartment, we stopped by temptations for wine, and then on to the Bashi night market for great food and people watching.

June 1^st - Again everyone is up first thing with a tight agenda; Tina’s great at packing it all in. We took a 90 cent taxi ride over to Xiamen University and walked around the campus. It was graduation so excited students in caps and gowns were everywhere.

Quickly followed with a quick tour of Nanputo Temple.

Then began the whirlwind of shopping and getting last minute gifts; we went Zhongshan Lu to kick-off the shopping extravaganza. We had lunch in the expat area as a little western food was needed to calm our stomach which has been a little iffy after Yunnan. We walked back through Electric City, a technology market. Then on to the tailor’s to pickup Elaine’s new wardrobe – she got some great shirts.

We ended the day by hitting Pearl World once more, then tea tasting – one of the highlights.Then an hour back massage with cupping; Amazingly, Elaine came through and now has 10 spots.

Mark was the most toxic.

Then shrimping which was fun; we caught 15 jumbo shrimp and began eating at 11pm.

Then back to the Wichmanns for packing, wine and bed at 2am.

We had a fabulous time. Tina and Mark run a 5 star B&B! On to Seoul where we plan to hijack this blog and share our stories without the Wichmanns.

Yunnan Province - Elaine & Emily Guest Blog #4

Elaine and Emily left this morning for a few days in Seoul, South Korea before heading back to their normal world in Chicago, but as we mentioned, they did leave us with a daily journal that we can use to update our blog. The following is more of what they left with us from our trip to the Yunnan Province:

May 30 – We awoke to fog but forged ahead with seeing the terraced rice fields. Our driver did a good job at getting us to clear areas where we could see the rice fields and take photos before the fog rolled in; it was amazing to watch as the fog spread over the fields.We were able to see some of the Duoyi Terrace and then drove on to a Yi minority village market. We walked around and observed all the activity; selling all varieties of fresh vegetables and meats, local people selling and buying raw tobacco and bartering for fresh poultry (one sold and alive in the bag was quite entertaining). We bought some baozi to eat as we walked the village streets.

We had lunch and returned to our hotel to rest and wait for the fog to clear. In the late afternoon, we continued the tour of rice fields and visited a Hani minority village. We had to park at the top of a hill and walked about a mile downhill into the village. These people live in “mushroom” houses and you’ll be able to see why from the photos. This was another very authentic experience…

Yunnan Province - Elaine & Emily Guest Blog #3

Wow… Sorry, we are not dead, just did not have internet access for the last three days since arriving in the Yunnan Province. It’s been amazing so far; this post will have lots of pictures so you can see where we’ve been.

On Wednesday, while still in Xiamen, we pampered ourselves again. The day started out with a Chinese hair wash, had a fabulous Chinese spicy lunch at The Two Sisters, then went for yet another “deluxe” foot massage at the Millennium. After our foot massages, we wound our way through the Bashi market alleys on our way back to Mark and Tina’s.

At around 7pm we caught a flight to Kunming, met up with our tour guide (named Wine), and drove an hour and a half to our hotel in the Stone Forrest. We collapsed upon arrival at the hotel since it around 12 midnight.

On Thursday we were up at 6am, had a traditional Chinese breakfast of rice noodles, spicy pork with green onions with sweet creamy coffee. The food was delicious, the coffee, not so much…

The best part of the morning was touring the stone forest. Wine told us that the entire park had been under water 40 million years ago. We had a bet going about how many laowais (westerners) we would see; Elaine was winning since she bet zero, and then we all lost horribly when we saw a busload of western students.
We hit the road around 1pm driving through farm country. We stopped in a little town for lunch. We sat outside with the women making pork dumplings and pumpkin biscuits. The food was phenomenal; we were the first laowais they had ever served so we felt pretty special and that we were getting an authentic experience.Then it was back on the road for another four hours. We made it to Jian Shui by late afternoon and toured the second largest Confucius temple in China, over 800 years old and 75,000 square meters – “a little bigger than our apartment,” according to Mark. We checked into our hotel, an ancient family compound with several outdoor courtyards. We got a sense for old China and enjoyed sipping wine in the courtyard after dinner.
In the morning, had a quick breakfast (coffee was much better), and hit the road. We went to Double Dragon Bridge, a stone bridge built in 1860. Emily almost walked off a ledge while taking pictures and backing up to get the best shot. What was most appealing was the farm country surrounding the bridge, with farmers working the rice, lotus flower and corn fields; and trucks loaded with stones driving through the river, which they said was also road.
We then headed to a 600 year old village built by the Zhang Chun Family. The family got wealthy off of Tin mining and built a compound for themselves and the whole village. Their wealth had clearly declined judging by the condition of the buildings. There were still people living there, seventy percent which belong to the Zhang Chun family. What was interesting about the village was that it was not “tourist clean” so we were able to get a real sense for how the people there live.We then drove on toward Xin Jie Lao-Cheng. Our favorite part of the drive was toward the end when we started to see the rice fields with men and water buffalo and women planting rice in their traditional dress. We stopped at Laohuzui Terrace (the tiger) rice fields along the way. The scenery was worth the long drive.
We drove uphill for what seemed like hours to our hotel in the clouds, Yun Ti Hotel. We went to dinner and then walked around the town square getting lots of “laowais” cries from the locals. The population here is mostly considered Chinese minority, we believe the “Yi” minority… Petite, dark with beautiful faces and smiles. The traditional wear is evident in the photos.