March 31, 2015 by carrievijil

Kunming: Visiting the Stone Forest

March 29, 2015

We have just finished our 3 day visit to Kunming. Although it was a short trip, we had a great time. We stayed in a hostel which turned out to be (mostly) great. The room was nice and big, they had an outside seating area with plenty of tables/chairs, and they had a ping pong table. Hayden has decided that he loves ping pong. We had a hard time getting him away from the table to go see the area. The only bad thing about the place was the limited wifi and the fact that we only had hot water one of the nights.

Ping Pong!

The first day that we were in Kunming, we stated local to the hostel and just spent some time getting the lay of the land. We were pretty excited that there was an awesome bakery just a few doors down from us so we ended up going there each morning. They also had ice cream with chocolate waffle cones!! (We may have gone there a night or two). For our full day, we took the bus out to the Stone Forest…it was amazing. We had seen pictures and thought it would be cool, but the pictures don’t do it justice. It’s a huge area with Limestone rock formations that have been eroded into pillars over the past 250 million years. There are pathways wind all through the different rock formations, so you can see lots of different areas.

Top of the Stone Forest

Stone Forest

In the middle of the park, they had an area where you could dress up in the local clothing and have your picture taken. It was too cute to resist paying that 10 Yuan (about $1.50) to let him dress up and get some pictures. Of course, they try to sell you the clothes after…Hayden wanted to buy them, but I’m not about to carry them along with us for the rest of the trip!

Local clothing

That night, we were hanging out in hostel and met a great family from Shanghai. The parents were both teachers at the English school and they had two kids just about Hayden’s age. Hayden and the kids sat and played with Pokémon cards while the parents all talked about traveling. They have lived all over the world, so they gave us some tips on Egypt and several other places.

Next, we are heading to Guilin to see the Li River and the Reed Flute Caves, they should be pretty cool!

March 30, 2015 by carrievijil

Pandas in Chengdu

What I Saw: I saw lots of Giant Pandas in their cages eating bamboo. The pandas were all different ages and I saw Red Pandas too.

My Favorite Part of the Day: My favorite part of the day was watching the baby pandas eat bamboo.

What I Learned Today: I learned that baby pandas get black stripes when they are 1 month old. They open their eyes when they are 6 weeks old. They crawl when they are 3 months old. At 1 year old, they start eating bamboo.

March 27, 2015 by carrievijil

A Week in Chengdu: Pandas, Prayer, and Pizza

March 26, 2015 We are just departing Chengdu after spending a week hanging out in and around the city. We ended up coming into Chengdu a day early and we were glad to have the extra time to relax. After so many cities where we had jam-packed itineraries, we only had a few things scheduled here. First, of course, was to see the Pandas. Chengdu has one of the best Panda research centers in the world and it was near the top of the list of things we wanted to see in China. It certainly did not disappoint. The pandas were so cute and there were a ton of them. The research center has about 80 pandas at the facility that vary in age from less than a year old to older adults. It is located a little outside of the city in a very nicely kept up park with natural surroundings for the pandas. We found out that Chengdu is actually known as the birthplace of the pandas (they are naturally from the region and there are still some here in the wild). We had read that it was important to be there in the morning at feeding time when they are the most active. We were very glad that we got there early because just about every panda was out and about. Here are a bunch of pictures of them.

Playing in the tree

Tug of war over some bamboo

Giant Panda

Playing in the tree

Giant Pandas

The best part about the research center is that there are no “fences” around the pandas. The areas are built with natural barriers so that you can’t even tell that they are inside of enclosures and you get a great view of them. They have lots of trees, play areas, and pools in their houses. We spent a couple of hours just walking around looking at them. In addition to the Giant Pandas, they have Red Pandas. They were also very fun to watch. In the nursery, they are allowed to just walk around between fences, one was about 2 feet away from Hayden at one point!

Red Pandas

The next day, we took a train to Leshan to see the biggest stone Buddha in the world…it was amazing and HUGE! It is over 220 ft tall and is carved into the side of the mountain. It is over 1,500 years old and took nearly 80 years to build. It’s amazing to think how people built things like this by hand. The park area was nice, but again…tons of steps! There were some really beautiful Buddha statutes inside of the temples, but they don’t allow pictures to be taken. 😦

Giant Buddha

Lots of stairs

After the Buddha, we kept walking through the area to a little fishing village and an old temple with a very cool bridge. We took a bicycle rickshaw to the main part of town and I have to give a ton of credit to the driver. The lady was about half my size and was wearing a dress and heals…no joke!! I thought she was just the sales person to get us into the rickshaw, but then she jumped on the bike and started peddling. I wish I had a picture of her, but I forgot to take one. We had a typical Chinese street lunch (noodles – with a Pepsi, of course), before we went back to the train station.

Bridge at the Giant Buddha

The rest of our time in Chengdu was pretty low key. We went to a local market, had lunch out in the city a few times and then had a really great pizza with garlic knots for our last lunch before we left for the train. We are now sitting on the train heading to Kunming to see the Stone Forests.

March 27, 2015 by carrievijil

Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting…

March 19, 2015

We are just finishing up a great trip to the Shaolin Temple near Dengfeng, China. On our way from Xi’an, we stopped in Luoyang because we wanted to see the Longmen Grottos. Despite Hayden still not feeling great, it was a really neat side-trip. The grottos are actually a mountain where thousands of Buddhas have been carved out of the side of the rock. They were all different sizes with the biggest being over 50 ft tall! We only spent about an hour/hour and a half here and picked up the bus to the Shaolin Temple that afternoon.

Longmen Grotto

It was an interesting trip out to the temple… we took what had to be the oldest bus still running on a 2 hour trip out to the temple. No one spoke English, so when we got there, the driver just stopped on the side of the road to let us out (we were the only ones on the bus going to the temple). We had no idea how to get to the actual temple and when we asked, he just smiled, waved and drove away. We did make it in and went straight to the hostel where we were booked. Unfortunately, it was at the back of the huge temple grounds, so we had to hike all the way through with our packs. Then, of course, it was at the top of a never-ending uphill. The hostel was pretty shabby from the outside, but the room was fine and it was right next door to where the kids in training stay, so it was cool to see them out practicing their kung fu and doing drills at night and in the morning.

Shaolin Temple

Kung Fu Training

Hayden was still not feeling great, so we went right to bed and slept until about 7:00 the next morning. When we did get up and moving, we toured the grounds, went to an awesome kung fu demonstration show, watched the kids of all ages practicing and went on a pretty good hike up into the Song Mountains. The actual temples have actually been rebuilt since their original creation almost 1,500 years ago. With all of the different battles, fighting and rebellions, many of the buildings were demolished and have just been rebuilt in the last 100 years of so. Despite that, it’s pretty cool to think that this is where martial arts was created.

Practicing Kung Fu!

Shaolin Temple

The kung fu show was amazing; they had kids of all ages doing different things. One kid (who looked about Hayden’s age) did some serious flexibility stuff. Another guy broke a metal bar over his head…seriously! A third guy (a little older), threw a needle through a pane of glass and popped a balloon that was behind it…crazy!! All of the different age groups are practicing around the grounds, so we got to see quite a bit of training. We watched the weapons classes for a while (Hayden’s favorite), then watched them do some knuckle/fingertip pushups on concrete…ouch.

Lastly, we went to see the Pagoda Forest which is where they bury the monks that have died while there. They each have a pagoda as a memorial, so it was a very cool area to see them all together.

Shaolin Pagoda Forest

Lastly, we saw a sign that said there was a suspension bridge up on the mountain that sounded cool, so we figured we would go check it out. After about an hour of hiking up the mountain, we were still not even close, so with Hayden not feeling great, we decided to turn around and head back.

Thanks to a very nice older lady, we found a bus right away to take us to the next town, Zhengzhou, which was another 2 hour bus ride. After an uneventful trip, we made it to the hotel and are getting ready to head out to Chengdu via a 12 hour high speed train ride tomorrow!

March 25, 2015 by carrievijil

Terracotta Warriors…Hayden’s Favorite Site!

March 17, 2015

Yesterday we went to see the Terracotta Warriors about 40 minutes outside of Xi’an. (Well, it SHOULD have been 40 minutes!) The day started off well…we were able to find the local bus at the train station right away, so we felt less “touristy”, (plus it saved a ton of money over the tourist buses). After that, it got a little rough when we got stuck in traffic and our 40 minute bus ride turned into an hour and a half. We did eventually get there and the place was amazing.

Terracotta Warriors

Hayden has been wanted to see the Terracotta Warriors ever since we first saw them in Epcot. He has been reading about them and has learned all about them, so this was definitely a highlight for him. They have the actual pits open where they are still digging up the warriors now. It was really neat to see all stages of the work from some pits that were still covered to pieces laying all over the ground to half put together statues all the way to the completed (and even some have been repainted) warriors. It’s really amazing to think that these were built so long ago and completely by hand.

Terracotta Warriors

No two warriors are the same. They were each individually carved by farmers/craftsmen/slaves in the local area. So far, more than 8,000 statues have been recovered. They have a very nice museum set up along with three of the pits (which are huge) where you can see the ongoing excavation. We ended up spending most of the day here and didn’t leave until about 3:00.

Terracotta Warriors

We had a bit of drama at the end of the trip. We knew we needed to use the restroom before we got back on the bus (in case it was another 90 minute bus ride), so we were on the lookout for a bathroom. Right near the buses, there was a “toilet” sign, so we stopped in really quick. Much like all of the other public toilets in the country, it was a disgusting squat toilet. (I really hate these for so many reasons.) When we finished, we were standing outside Purelling up our hands when an old lady came over and started yelling something at us. We figured out that she was telling us that we needed to pay her for the bathroom. We had read about areas where people would sit outside and tell foreigners that they needed to pay for the bathrooms and that it was a total scam and that you should not give them money (especially if the bathroom clearly said “toilet” in English with no mention of money). Out of principle, we refused to give the lady money and she grabbed on to me with a death grip and would not let us leave! Luckily, after about 5 minutes of arguing with the women (her in Chinese, us in English), a guy came over (who was a local) and told her to leave us alone. I’ll tell you what, that old lady was strong and probably could have taken me down!!

We did make it back to the hotel that night and after a good night’s sleep, spent the day today just walking around the city. We went to the top of the City Wall which would have been much nicer if it had been a clear day. Our excitement for the day was a Tuk Tuk ride where we saw our lives flash before our eyes at least 5 times. We spent most of the 15 minute ride either going the wrong way against traffic, sliding between cars with about an inch of space or barreling down the sidewalk honking at pedestrians. It was quite an experience!

March 25, 2015 by carrievijil

Finishing Beijing and Heading to Xi’an

March 14, 2015 For our final day in Beijing, we went to visit the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. We thought that we were being smart by waiting until a weekday to visit, but we were completely wrong! The government started their annual session on Tuesday, so the security was crazy. We had to stand in line for about 30 minutes just to get to the outskirts of Tiananmen Square where we discovered that the actual Square was closed and the military were doing some exercises in there. After that, we had to wait in another giant line to get to the Forbidden City (normally it’s just a matter of going through an underpass). Half way through the line we realized we were in the “no bag” line, but I had my purse. Of course it wasn’t written in English so we had no idea. Luckily, they took pity on us (probably because of the blank look on our faces and the fact that we were obviously tourists) and let us through anyway. The funniest part was that we had told Hayden to follow what the person in front of him did and to do the same thing…they had to put their arms up and go through to be wanded. When Hayden came through with his arms up, the security guard thought it was pretty funny and started laughing and just waved us all through. Inside of the city was pretty cool. We were a little disappointed because we thought that the Summer Palace and some of the other places we had already seen were impressive. We had saved the Forbidden City partly because we thought it would be one of the really neat places, so I guess we just had our expectations a little high.

Forbidden City

Tiananmen Square

Forbidden City

After that, we walked around for a while before heading back to the hotel to pack and get ready for our train to Xi’an the next day. We got to the train station to leave for Xi’an at about 5:00 pm, but our train didn’t leave until 8:00 pm…lots of extra time, but better safe than sorry. We had a soft sleeper car that we thought should be pretty comfortable…it wasn’t. Hayden and I managed to sleep, but Adam was up about all night with the bumps and rattling around. It’s a little weird because you reserve the room by bed, not by room, so since there are only 3 of us, we ended up with a stranger in the room with us. She seemed nice enough (she didn’t speak any English, so we couldn’t really communicate), but she got off in the middle of the night, so we had the room to ourselves after that.

Sleeper Train

In Xi’an, we have done several things around the city. We went to the Steele Museum which was very cool. They had the original 13 books that were written by Chinese scholars (including Confucius) all written out on huge tablets…it was very impressive.

Stele Museum

“books”

We did a dinner show that was neat, but totally over-priced. The reviews were very good on Trip Advisor, but we were totally scammed by the tour agency in the hotel, so we were not happy with it. Long story short, they sold us the “Dumpling Dinner and Show” but when we got our tickets from the driver when we arrived, they were just for the show, not the dinner. I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that it was a language barrier issue, but we’re about 90% sure it was a total scam because of the way they back-tracked when we showed them the tickets and told them what happened. Luckily, the maître de took pity on us (obviously seeing what had happened) and let us go to the dinner anyway.

Tang Dynasty Show

We also went to the Muslim Quarter and the Great Mosque. Holy cow, do they have some great street food down there! It is crazy cheap and SO GOOD! We’ve eaten some of the best meat skewers, roasted potatoes, beef sandwiches, and this honey peanut brittle that is amazing. The best part is that with the exchange rate, we spend about $6.00 for all of us to eat a full meal!

Street Food!

Food Inspections? Nope

Muslim Quarter

Next up is the Terracotta Warriors and visiting the City Wall. Hayden is PUMPED for the warriors…they are half the reason he wanted to come to China in the first place.

March 25, 2015 by carrievijil

Conquering the Great Wall

March 11, 2015

Definitely deserving of a blog post all its own…we went to the Great Wall of China today. It was pretty awesome. Certainly the highlight for us so far. We took the train to the Badaling section of the wall. This is a very well preserved section that has been kept up to keep its original look. I guess that makes it a little less authentic, but we were still impressed. Standing at the top is pretty amazing to see the wall as far across the mountains as you can see and to think that it was built basically by hand all those years ago. We decided that we certainly wouldn’t want to be the ones to do the building.

The day started off a little rocky when the train we planned to take was not running, so we had to wait about two hours at the train station for the next train. It was a bit of a wait, but since the tickets were only $1.00 each, we definitely couldn’t complain. We got up to the Badaling section after passing a few other sections first…some were well kept, other crumbling. It was cool to see both types of sections. The little “town” (mostly souvenir stands) was pretty cool and we had some really good sweet fried bread for a snack before we got started.

The actual wall is HUGE and STEEP!!! We started out walking up the South side and it was so steep…we were pretty sure our legs were going to give out. After we made it to the top (over 300 steps and tons of inclines), we took some pictures, bought Hayden a super-touristy “I Climbed the Great Wall” medal, then headed back down. At the bottom, Hayden announced that he wasn’t tired yet and wanted to walk up the North side too. Since we probably won’t get another chance to come back, we decided to suck it up and keep climbing.

A total of 724 stairs up later, we were at the top of the other side and it was just as cool.

We only stayed at the top here for a few minutes because we wanted to make it back for the 3:00 train. We made it back with 5 minutes to spare and got back to the hotel by about 5:30. We are all ready to pass out and I’m pretty sure that both Adam and I will be unable to walk tomorrow!

March 25, 2015 by carrievijil

Sightseeing in Beijing

March 10, 2015

After taking the bullet train from Shanghai on Sunday, we are now in Beijing! Right out of the gate, the best part about Beijing is that there is much more English than there was in Shanghai. We made it through the train station and got a cab with no problem at all and we were at the hotel in only about 20 minutes. I have to say, I am so impressed with the cleanliness of the cities. There is hardly a piece of trash anywhere. The streets are clean, the subways are completely free of trash and everything is in good working order. I’m sure it has to do with everything being government run, but there are plenty of police and other public officials around to keep things orderly. The lines for the trains/subways are organized, people don’t push/shove to get in front and Hayden has almost always been offered a seat on the subway (it’s a good spot for a quick nap).

We got a little spoiled in Shanghai since they upgraded us to a suite, so the regular room here in Beijing seemed a little cramped. J Despite the smaller room, Hayden thinks this place is awesome because in order to get to the bathtub, you need to walk through the shower…seems pretty weird to us, but it cracks him up to be sitting in the tub and the shower at the same time. We fell asleep by about 6:30 pm the first night (again!), so we were up at the crack of dawn. We decided to take advantage of the early start and get moving first thing in the morning.

We had planned to visit the Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven and the Forbidden City. We hit our first roadblock when we discovered that the Forbidden City is closed on Mondays…oops. It actually turned out to be fine because the Summer Palace was HUGE, beautiful, and we spent more than 4 hours there! It was an extremely large complex of buildings, gardens, and TONS of stairs. The buildings were beautiful and the pictures don’t do them justice.

Hayden and I had a great time climbing the stairs. The top of the palace was at the top of the mountain. Once we got to the top, Hayden and I decided that we wanted to go back and count the stairs, so we went all the way down, then back up again. (Adam waited at the top…lazy bum). In total, there were 288 stairs on one path and 356 on the other. After looking around at the top of the mountain for a while, we went down the other side to check out the area. Unfortunetly, in order to get back to the gate, we had to go all the way back up and then down AGAIN. We figure that Hayden and I must have done at least 1,000 steps…we certainly got our cardio for the day! Here are some more cool pictures from the palace.

After we left the Summer Palace, we went to the Temple of Heaven. Laugh at me if you want, but I liked that this is the building that Disney modeled the “China Pavilion” at Epcot after. 🙂 It was also a very cool complex. Lots of different temples that all had different significance. The Temple of Good Harvest was impressive, the paintings and carvings inside of the temples in amazing. For some reason, Hayden continues to be a bit of a spectacle…we have had at least 5 different people/groups ask for pictures with him and several other people stop to say hi to him and tell him how handsome he is. He’s pretty sure that he’s famous in China, but doesn’t know why. We explained to him that it’s probably unusual for people to see Americans, especially kids out and about. We have seen quite a few other tourists, but they are pretty much in groups and just shuttle from one tour bus to another, we don’t see many other white people (or Hispanics) in the subways.

Hayden got to choose Tuesday’s activity, so we went to the Water Cube in the Olympic Park. They turned the aquatic center into a huge indoor water park…it was pretty fun. There were several big slides, a bunch of kids slides, a wave pool, a lazy river and a big hot tub (although it wasn’t really that hot). We had a good time relaxing and after about 4 hours in the water (it was nice and warm), then we decided to head back to the hotel early to catch up on Hayden’s homework and to start planning our trip to the Great Wall tomorrow.

I’m definitely starting to think that we need to work more “relax” days into the itinerary, but it’s really hard when there is so much to see and we know that we probably won’t get the chance to come back again.

March 25, 2015 by carrievijil

Kung Fu at the Shaolin Temple

What I Saw:

At the Shaolin Temple, I learned the history of Kung Fu. I saw a very cool demonstration. We saw the kids practicing their Kung Fu.

My Favorite Part of the Day:

My favorite part of the day was seeing the Kung Fu show. They had volunteers and they were funny.

What I Learned Today:

The Pagoda Forest is where they buried the monks when they die. The Shaolin Temple is considered the cradle of Kung Fu. The Shaolin Temple is the Temple of Buddha. The Shaolin Temple was built on the seven peaks of the Song Mountains.

March 25, 2015 by carrievijil

Terracotta Warriors in Xi’an

What I Saw:

I saw the Terracotta Warriors and the different types of warriors.

My Favorite Part of the Day:

My favorite part of the day was learning about the different types of warriors.

What I Learned Today:

I learned that the Terracotta Warriors are more than 2,000 years old. A farmer was diffing a well on March 29, 1974 and he found a clay head. He asked archeologists to find the rest of the body and instead of the body, they found more of the warriors. They have found 8,000 already but they are still finding more.

Vijil Family World Tour

Our Amazing Family Adventure

Author: carrievijil

Kunming: Visiting the Stone Forest

Pandas in Chengdu

A Week in Chengdu: Pandas, Prayer, and Pizza

Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting…

Terracotta Warriors…Hayden’s Favorite Site!

Finishing Beijing and Heading to Xi’an

Conquering the Great Wall

Sightseeing in Beijing

Kung Fu at the Shaolin Temple

Terracotta Warriors in Xi’an