The following are in the order in which we visited each country.

Hong Kong

Macau

China (Guangzhou)

Vietnam (Motorbike license plate)

Cambodia

Thailand (Bangkok)

South Korea (Seoul)

Japan (Nara)

Indonesia

Singapore

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I am going to keep writing to a minimum in this post because I don’t want to take away from the awesomeness of the pictures.  Enjoy!

Note:  These pictures are arranged chronologically, with the first picture taken at the beginning of our trip and the last picture being the latest.

This picture was taken at a park where they apparently hired the Wicked Witch of the West to translate for them.

Damn, I had my danger all ready.

Dear Hiker. Oops, you’re gonna have to walk the 6 miles back to where you started.  Sorry.  Love, the Great Wall.

This one is a repeat from a previous post, but I still can’t get enough of it.

Sprinkled soup… crab in soup… omelette… what??

The Japanese use a very accurate metric system.  It’s called “Terrible”.

“Axe murderers, please find business elsewhere.”

“It puts the lotion in the basket….”

They must have hired a really good English speaking lawyer to translate this.

… And the Japanese REALLY appreciate the heart.

I hate to say it, but the Koreans might be on to something here.  I am going to go back to the states and start calling tampons “crampons” and it will spread like wildfire.

You would think they could have had a 5 year old proofread this sign.

Hello Take-Out Coffee, my name is Sharon.

The international consultant for TGI Friday’s needs to be fired.

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Let me introduce myself; my name is Kenna, but for this blog’s sake you can call me MuLan. I am proudly the first and hopefully the most entertaining guest blogger on Jason and Sharon’s site. I met J and S in Sanya, China with my boyfriend Matthew whom I am traveling China with. We then met up months later to walk the Great Wall in Beijing and get in fights with Swedish boys at night clubs. Matthew and I started off as students of the intense language called Mandarin Chinese and part-time teachers of English for ages 4-17 years old in Guangdong province. Together we have visited well over 15 cities, 6 provinces throughout the country, met hundreds of friends, and met thousands of Chinese people including a handful of minority groups like Bai, Naxi and Tibetan all in about 8 months time. Before you read this, keep in mind, I really do LOVE China.

Top 10 things I HATE about China

1. Traffic- At any time of the day you can stand still and listen to the parade of non-stop horn honking.  They want you to know they’re Chinese, that they have a car, and that they know how to run you over. Also, there’s nothing like having a death wish by walking on the SIDEWALK as cars drive next to you… on the sidewalk!  Here’s a smooth transition into running people over: I watched a man lay partially dead (unsure if he was alive) in the middle of the street with his motorcycle on top of him while his 7 year old granddaughter was crying over his body. The best part?  The people on the street gawked and did nothing. The bus I was on drove around his body and kept going.

2. Self serving- Other than doing nothing to help a dying stranger, the Chinese can be some of the sweetest, caring people you have ever met. For strangers, however, common courtesy does not exist. When you have been holding your pee for 2 hours, you make a snap decision and choose a bathroom stall. You claim your stall when you realize you have picked the one with the girl puking who will not exit for the next half hour. You can’t move because if the door swings open some old Chinese lady will plow in. This ends with you storming out to find another bathroom.

3. Bathrooms- Speaking of the W.C., have you ever tried the Chinese squat toilet? It is a perfected technique that I will never master: both feet flat on the floor, knees bent while keeping yourself propped upright to avoid butt slapping the nasty toilet mop in the corner.  (Toilet paper, soap, or paper towels are not included in Chinese bathrooms, by the way). I may have been flexible enough to do this at age 10, but for now I will stick with my one toe pointed, one foot flat squat. These, however, are better than the country stalls where its trough style. Hungry yet? I’m sure you will be after the water flows under you and you can observe your neighbor’s mid-afternoon snack float down stream, while hitting your knees against the urine stained “stall” with no door. I could write a long novel on Chinese toilets, but I won’t.

4. Garbage/Pollution/Smoking, Smoking, and more Smoking- Whether you’re breathing in burning garbage while you sleep, looking at garbage in piles along the road, next to restaurants, behind houses, or watching children dump their wrappers on the streets, garbage is everywhere! Also, EVERYONE smokes. I heard that cigarettes here have toxicity levels much higher than Western cigarettes and it sure feels like it. I have cut at least year off my life with second hand smoke in China. I rode a bus on a 10 hour trip, 6 men chain smoking in front of me, windows up. I speak in broken Chinese and point out the “No Smoking” sign and he laughs and puts his cigarette out in understanding. That lasted about 5 minutes before he lit up his next one. I never win.

5. Human/Animal Rights- Walking along the streets of LiJiang looking at billboards of dogs, I smile thinking I miss my lab. The next day I watch a video at a hostel and a man shows me dead dogs sitting on top of cages of live dogs, while a man in the background is blow torching a dog for dinner. My happy billboards are of restaurants. I play with a little girl along a boardwalk and lean over to see the river, but instead I see a bloated dead dog. It must have been too old for cooking. Animals here are used for a utilitarian purpose only. But you have to have human rights before you can have animal rights, which leads to my next topic.

6. Government- Let me tell you a story about the day we TRIED to buy tickets for J and S, and ourselves to go to Beijing. Spring Festival is the Christmas of China. As you may have guessed with over 1 billion people in this country, traveling can be hard!  After a failed attempt on Day 1 (after getting in line at 5:50am), Day 2 had us waking up at 4am. There are others sleeping on cardboard in line, so we are confident as we stand in the cold. Right before 6am, people push and try to cut in line because they “know the workers”, but not today. Today I stand my ground!  When 6am arrives, 10 people walk right up to the front to buy their tickets (keep in mind you can only buy the tickets 10 days in advance, and all stations sell them at 6am including over the phone). Five minutes later they yell out “No more tickets for Beijing for the 11th!” At this point I am ready to scream, and I did. Maybe because it was 6am and it was the second day in a row I had been up early, maybe it was because our friends were depending on us, or maybe I just had it with China and its corruption. I screamed in my broken Chinese and the man calling the shots looked at me in total shock. Not only do they ever see white people in this smaller city, but a girl, who is blonde, who is speaking Chinese, and who is loosing face in front of hundreds of people. I got 2 tickets to Beijing. Hmph!

7. Being White- Being white in China is a rarity. You are stared at everywhere you go. It can be both wonderful and annoying. A downside to being white is that you must have money. Anything you want to buy is doubled in price when you are white. Bartering helps if you speak the language, but if you tell them you’re a broke student they just laugh. Silly white girl, you are rich! If you go to China, the only sentence you need to learn is “TaiGuiLe” which means “too expensive!!!!”

8. Being Vegetarian- One of the first things I learned in Chinese was to say “I don’t eat meat”. The Chinese don’t understand this because to them, meat is a sign of wealth (see being white) so as you can guess it is a major confusion with the Chinese. We order eggplant, and we get eggplant with beef instead of pork.  EVERYTHING has meat in it. We have only gotten sick off of tofu but have watched many friends experience days of agony off of eating meat. They don’t refrigerate meat, it hangs in warm markets for days, and there are no regulations on meat of any kind. Join the veggie club.

9. Inconvenience- A quote I decided to coin when I first arrived in China was “China, not for your convenience”.  A foreign business woman who had to delay her pizza shop from opening by 3 months coined “TIC” which means This Is China. In other words ‘things like this always happen in China, what the hell do you expect?’ I waited in line at the bank for 4 hours only for them to tell me my name is too long and I can’t open an account. The next day I went to a different bank and waited for 2 hours for them to tell me they ran out of banking cards… Ran out of banking cards!?!?!

10. Naivety- This part is more or less exclusive to the students on the campus Matthew and I were living on. They have no respect for any religion. They were raised after the cultural revolution and they find religion silly. They also find make-believe to be pointless. Children don’t believe in fantasy or dreams, just reality.  They also believe that money is everything. They can only grasp that happiness is associated with being rich and nothing else. They are also paranoid. They have been brainwashed into thinking that traveling is bad (you can thank their government for that) because everywhere is so dangerous. I was told by several students that they would never travel to America in fear that they would be shot and killed. I am told on a daily basis don’t go here it’s dangerous, don’t stay out past dark it’s dangerous, don’t cross the street it’s dangerous (this one I am gonna have to agree with…) but I want to see and do things. I feel sorry for the Chinese students who deprive themselves of experience due to fear.

All in all I actually can come up with quite a few more then 10 things I hate about China, but check back soon for the top 10 things I LOVE about China.

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Here in South Korea it’s unfortunately just a boring Hyundai 4-door sedan. Sure, the driver drives like a maniac, but that’s no different than the US. It’s not nearly as fun and exciting as Vietnam — weaving in and out of traffic going the wrong way on the back of a motorbike. Or Thailand — going offroading sitting in the back of a truck bed with 8 other tourists. The following is primarily a picture blog showing the different taxi’s we’ve encountered by country.

One quick definiton: A tuk-tuk is the name most commonly given to these modes of transportation for hire and what I use to call a few of the following “Taxis”.

Southern China

The tuk-tuks in southern China make you feel like Robin from the old “Batman and Robin” TV show. “Holy Bill of Rights, Batman!”

Northern China – Beijing

The tuk-tuks in Beijing were slightly different. They were enclosed rather than open-air (most likely due to the cold weather). Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to ride in one, but I’d imagine there’s no chance they’re actually warm inside.

Vietnam #1

The most ubiquitious form of “taxi” is the motorbike. While walking down the street the most common thing to hear is, “moto?”. Most of the time I believe these “taxis” are simply people with motorbikes looking to make a few extra bucks.

Vietnam #2

Also in Vietnam, particularly Saigon, are the bicycle rickshaws. These are great because they drive into the traffic as if they’re indestructible tanks. But the motorbike’s actually do stop for them, it’s rather impressive.

Cambodia

Cambodia gets the most versatile award for their tuk-tuks. They’ve taken a standard motorbike, added a little hardware on the back and then simply tow a very comfortable 4 to 5 seater compartment behind them. What’s great is that the compartments seem easy to remove and then you’ve got your regular motorbike back again.

Thailand

Thailand’s interesting form of a share taxi is called a “songthaew” – I’m still not certain I know how to pronounce this correctly. Thankfully they’re also referred to as a “baht bus”. They’re simply a pickup truck with two rows of seats.

If you have any other interesting Taxi transportation methods, leave a comment, I always enjoy learning about new ways to get around town!

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Our recent trip to the Great Wall was quite lovely.  The sun was shining despite the snow on the ground, the tourists on the wall were few, and we had packed enough snacks to survive on for a week.  There had been many organized tours available for seeing the Great Wall, but being the budget travelers that we are, we decided to forgo paying the extra cost of having a group of people tagging along and wasting our flavor (aka “cramping our style”).  We, instead, organized our own personal tour of the wall that we had read about online.  It consisted of a 6.2 mile walk along the wall, starting at Jinshanling and ending at Simatai (for those of you who also want to do the hike yourself).  What is usually left out in the tourist information is the amount of uphill walking that this entails.  My hamhocks (thighs) were barking (sore) like crazy towards the end!

Apparently there are some portions of the wall that are in absolute shambles.  Unfortunately, we did not cross those sections.  The areas that we hiked were generally still paved, aside from many loose and broken stones.  The scary parts involved steep downhill/uphill treks. The problem with this was the fact that I am illogically paranoid of going downhill, mainly because as I age, I become extremely scared of injuring myself while doing such things as running (I could trip on my own feet and face plant, losing all my teeth and breaking my nose).  Or riding a bike downhill (I could accidentaly ride over a branch, causing the bike to throw me forward into the road).  And walking close to the edge of a tall height (I could lose my balance by turning around, thus causing a fall to my death).  And of course walking downhill (the tread on my shoes might be too thin and I’ll either fall onto my butt or slide down, skinning my hands).  Because of these safety anomalies that I have, I am already sympathetic towards my future children.

The scenery surrounding the wall was amazing; nothing but rolling hills, rice paddies, sky, and Chinese wall.  Walking on The Great Wall, I realized that it shows you just how ridiculous the Chinese are.  Who else would build a 5,500 mile wall made of STONE and EARTH along the tops of massive hills and mountains just to keep people out?  Crazy!  I also noticed that the Wall is very narrow.  All of those “you can see the Great Wall from the moon” beliefs are absolute garbage, and it was very apparent standing on the wall that the rumor was false.  In fact, the only way the Wall would be visible from the moon is if its color were completely different from its surroundings and only if it were 70 miles wide.  The widest section of the wall is 9.1 feet.  I always thought that the rumor seemed ridiculous, but now I REALLY sense a discrepancy in that belief.

Our friends Matt and McKenna told us of a friend of theirs who had actually walked the entire distance of the wall, all 5,500 miles of it.  Judging from how intense the minute portion of the wall was that we hiked (about 6 miles), this seemed like the craziest thing- and it was.  Apparently he had to take hospital breaks and had to rest for months at a time in between his hiking stints.  He also lost so much weight by the end that his bones were poking out of his face…  On second thought, maybe this can be my ‘Bikini Body by Summer’ plan.

To see our wonderful pictures of our day at The Great Wall, take a look at our Gallery!  As we stood on the wall, it was hard to imagine anybody taking a bad picture of the beautiful scenery.  Somehow we managed to take MANY bad pictures, so we only posted the decent ones for your sake.  You’re welcome.

Great Wall Quote of the Day: “I just farted and it smells like hash browns.” (Courtesy of Matt)

Note: All facts about The Great Wall were found on Wikipedia, our favorite site that makes us wonder what we ever did without it.

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After falling peacefully asleep, we were waken by two unnecessarily loud train servants yelling at us in Chinese.  We figured they wanted us to stop being American and go back to our meat infested “seats” where we belonged.  Unfortunately, Matt and McKenna (our travel buddies that we initially met in Sanya, China and traveled to Beijing with) were poked and prodded like cattle to their seats.  They ended up in a packed car, not too dissimilar from a baggage car, where they were locked in with the rest as if they were planning a train massacre.  It must have been their blonde hair.

Beijing on Chinese New Year 2010 did not look like the same Beijing on Chinese New Year 2010 that we had envisioned in our minds before we arrived.  We were preparing for jam packed subway stations, people pushing and shoving, oceans of black hair on the streets, and crazy Chinese shenanigans on every street corner.  We learned that the pushing and shoving was just a Chinese thing to do all year round, and to our surprise the subways were fairly empty and there were no street parades with stereotypical dragons and fish lanterns as far as the eye could see.  Instead, it was a normal, clean and cold city.  How boring!

On the contrary, we had quite the New Years’ Eve.  The day before NYE, we were going about our daily business around town when I noted that in order to experience the “real” Chinese New Year, all we had to do was become best friends with a Chinese local that day and they would inevitably invite us to a NYE party and we would eat Chinese food and drink and be merry.  Easy enough, right?  Less than an hour later, we went to a supermarket and proceeded to befriend a Chinese local who quoted Mitch Hedberg and invited us to a NYE dumpling party where we would drink and eat Chinese food.

That night we were served ten different homemade dishes of Chinese food at a nice apartment and met some really friendly people.  Then we went outside to watch a serious amount of fireworks, some of which epitomized the sarcastic phrase that we coined, “Asians are #1 with safety”, as children lit fireworks and threw them at us.

We ultimately found a bar with fairly cheap drinks and danced the night away.  I also learned that no Chinese DJ will ever play anything that I request.  The first time, I requested a specific song to which they said something to me in Chinese, then never played it.  Then I requested a specific song by Michael Jackson, to which they said something to me in Chinese and held up one finger, then never played it.  The third time I requested “ANYTHING by Michael Jackson.  Just play Michael Jackson.  Any song of his.  A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G”, to which they nodded in acknowledgement, then never played it.

Nonetheless, the six of us foreigners ended up getting inebriated enough to either: A. black out while dancing, B. get into a fight, C. throw up in a taxi cab (one of the guys we were with, not us), or D. get back to our hostel in a safe and boring manner (us).  It was a fun night to be had by all.

Chinese New Year consists of fireworks for about two weeks straight, which to me was nothing less than annoying.  The first few days were exciting!  You could see fireworks during the day and can easily find them in the sky at night wherever you were.  Then after NYE, they kept going.  Then they lasted even longer than you thought.  And then they really didn’t stop.  And then you found out that they didn’t stop until February 28^th and it was only February 20^th.

Our general Chinese New Year experience was one to remember.  Most of this can be attributed to the fact that we were with our friends and were no longer two lonely losers who had no friends (Thailand was the exception to this).  Also, one of the most amazing experiences of my life happened on this trip to Beijing; hiking the Great Wall of China.  Stay tuned for my next post on the Great Wall that proved breathtakingly beautiful and made my legs so sore the next day that I walked like a constipated centaur.

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Happy New Year! This reflection on China comes from Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam where we enjoyed ourselves last night with lots of beer and locals in the park.

Before arriving in China, I had been thinking about a certain question; what does Communism look like? Additionally, what is it like for Chinese people living in communism? Will it be obviously different than the capitalistic places I’ve visited and lived?

This post answers these questions with my observations of visiting China for 30 days. I’ve also done a little research into what exactly is Communist about China.

I think it’s important to start with what I thought Communism would look like.

The utopian Communist society, in my mind, would consist of everyone having the same amount of “stuff”. Same house, same food, same car, socialized health care, etc. However, in reality, it always seemed that people would instead be motivated to do as little work as possible. In this utopian scenario, if you worked 100 hours a week or sat on the couch all day long, you would end up with the same lifestyle. Other than “for the good of the community”, there was no real motivation to work hard.

With these two very opposite scenarios in my head, I was excited to see exactly what China looked like.

Sharon and I only spent 30 days in China, but from this limited exposure we found that China seems as capitalist as they come. There are extremely wealthy people that drive Bentley and Aston Martin cars and live in large mansions, and there are people that sleep in tunnels underneath the street. People don’t live in similar government issued housing nor do they eat government issued meals.

The notion that in a Communist society people would not be hard working certainly did not prove true either. Chinese people seem as hard-working as they come. In each city we visited, shops were open at the crack of dawn, closed well into the night (a lot open 24 hours), and were open 7-days a week. Not only were shops open at all times of the day, it was very often the same people working during all hours of the day.

However, there were a couple “Communist” aspects that we did notice.

• They block a lot of popular social websites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube in order to regulate any potential criticisms about the government.
• People in China litter a lot. One explanation given for this was the fact that littering creates jobs and that is why they do it. I found that to be an interesting thought, perhaps similar to how in Oregon it’s against the law to pump your own gas.

Being unsatisfied with my anecdotal observations I decided to do some research to find out what exactly makes China communist?

My research was by no means exhaustive, but the general consensus seems to be that China is, in effect, a Capitalist society. This wasn’t always the case though. Many reforms began to occur beginning in the late 1970′s such as ending collectivized agriculture, liberalizing pricing, developing a stock market, and opening the economy to foreign trade and investment. The government went from a centrally planned system to a more market-oriented economy¹. It seems that the primary item that still remains Communist is simply the name the government keeps for itself.

The few things I came across that one might classify as being “Communist” were:

• Despite China’s massive size and the fact that it spans several time zones, it has only 1 time zone for the entire country. The entire country is on Beijing time.
• The Chinese exchange rate for a long time was pegged directly to the US Dollar. In 2007, they changed this to a basket of currencies, but the currency is not changed by market forces and instead is regulated by the government.
• As mentioned previously, many websites are blocked by the Chinese government. They reportedly have over 30,000 people monitoring what’s published on the web as well as monitoring the activity of individuals within their country. Criticisms of the Chinese government are typically erased in a matter of minutes on some of their most popular websites.²
• No substantial political opposition exists. The two primary parties, “the China Democratic Party” and “the Falungong spiritual movement” are not political opponents in the way the American Republican and Democratic parties are, for example.¹

With my research now complete, the question I am now wondering is why does China even call itself Communist? Perhaps a topic for another post…but probably not.

Final Note: Much of this information is anecdotal based on my observations while in China for only 30 days. By no means am I an expert. For the research section, it was primarily done on Wikipedia and therefore could be completely wrong.

1 – Source: CIA World Factbook
2 – Source: Wikipedia

Photo Credit (2nd): Loungerie

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One thing I do very well as a traveler is observe the way people dress in different countries.  There is nothing more entertaining for me than to examine the area for interesting fashion choices; by interesting, I mean a woman doing manual labor in clear stripper heels or a man wearing a shirt that says “I touch nature”, and everything in between.

Given the cities that we have visited so far (within Hong Kong, China and Vietnam), if I were to sum up the women’s clothing in one sentence, it would have to be this: If clothing from the 1990’s had a fling with children’s clothing, their love child would be exactly what women wear in Asia in the year 2009.

Now although this may come off as derogatory towards Asia, it is not meant to be.  These are just a silly American’s observations about something different. I’m sure if a woman who had grown up in Vietnam booked airline tickets to the States and saw what we wear in America, they would also have many things to contrast.  I can say that one thing they would most definitely comment on is how American women dress like hoochie mamas.  The reason I know this is because they seem to think I am the mayor of Hoochietown.  Sometimes I am a recipient of the Asian Stank Eye (ASE, as I will coin from now on) when I go out in public in a simple tank top.

You might have noticed that I am very fond of lists.  Lists can illustrate my point much better than writing an essay about it, so here is my list of the most common fashion gems I have seen so far:

1. Bejeweled, bedazzled, rhinestoned, colorful scrunchies and hair clips. Women here LOVE their hair pieces.  If you walk down any street in China there will be multiple women pushing carts full of gawdy hair pieces and wonderfully 80’s scrunchies for sale.  Scrunchies here are the equivalent of regular hairties in America-EVERYONE wears them.  Also, do you remember those colorful hairties that you wore in elementary school that had the little plastic dice, hello kitty, flowers, jewels, or beads at the ends?  Yeah, they’re all around here as well.
2. Heels double as dress shoes as well as athletic gear. The best is seeing women wearing skirts and stilettos while riding their bicycles and hiking in caves.
3. “Engrish” phrases on t-shirts are a great way to pass the time and get a good laugh.  “Engrish” is the loving term that was coined for “Asian English” in which the phrases or words from an Asian language get lost in translation to English, so the end result is an often hilarious sentence.  For a good time, visit Engrish.Com.
4. Pajamas. Many women go about their daily business or sell their products in public wearing matching pajama sets.  During the day.  Why?  And by why, I mean why can’t I do that in America?
5. Mickey Mouse. You’ll find him on a lot of clothing, at least in China.  It doesn’t stop at Mickey Mouse, either.  Many strange cartoon characters live on jackets and shirts of children and adults alike.
6. Socks with EVERYTHING.  My personal favorite.  Women wear socks with heels, open toed boots, sandals, you name it.  And by “socks”, I mean anything from ankle-high pantyhose to regular white athletic socks.  I’ve even seen women wearing open-toed heels with ankle-high pantyhose pulled over their pants…  It’s wonderful.

The more places we visit, the more I begin to notice how different people dress in certain areas.  What will be interesting, however, is to see how people dress here in Southeast Asia during the summer.  Unfortunately I will not be here during the summer to experience the agonizing, tropical, wet, excruciatingly muggy heat.  The hoochie mama clothes have got to come out sometime, right?

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My friends and family will agree that I am big on health and fitness. While working full time and pursuing my MBA at night, I still made it to the gym 6 to 7 times a week. I took vitamins daily and brought sandwiches to work. I prefer healthy home cooking, where I know what ingredients went into the dish, to restaurants any day of the week. One of my major travel concerns was eating healthy and exercising. In this post I provide an update on eating healthy and our exercise habits after 6 weeks of being on the road and offer a few tips & tricks as well.

Our finding: it is certainly possible to stay healthy; however it’s definitely not easy. Personally, I have not done “traditional” exercise nearly as often as I thought I would (going on a run or lifting weights, etc). During the last 6 weeks, I’ve gone on only a handful of runs and swims. Days which are pegged as “relaxing” days, in which we watch TV, catch up on things on our computers are typically the days I’ve tried to get in a run or a swim. Other than that, I’ve pretty much relied on the fact that when we leave the hostel, all we typically do is walk.

I have a pedometer, which I typically use to track how far I’ve run, but I have also started using it to track how many steps per day we walk. A healthy recommendation is to get in 10,000 steps a day. 10,000 steps is a very light walking day for us. We average closer to 20,000 and have logged over 30,000 steps on occasion. Judging from the way our pants still fit us, this amount of walking has certainly been enough to keep us in good shape, weight wise. Lifting weights is a different story.

My initial plan was to try and do push-ups and sit-ups every few days. Again, I’ve been slacking on this. However, China was an interesting place for working out. We saw hardly any traditional workout gyms, but they have numerous outdoor workout parks. They are free to use and, I assume, developed by the local government. They have pull-up bars and dip bars at a minimum, but some of the nicer ones also have elliptical machines (see picture), back rowing machines, sit-up benches and a lot of other equipment. There are no weights to pull on or off. They’re made of metal and remind me of children’s outdoor playing equipment. I’ve used the equipment a few times, with great success–it’s great that they have these so widely available. It’s no 24-hour fitness, but you can’t beat the price of free.

As for eating healthy, this has been as difficult as I had assumed going in. We typically eat fruit for breakfast, which is a lot better than waking up and eating greasy noodles. As for lunch and dinner though, we eat out every meal. Some meals are healthier than others, but on the whole, meals in China were typically greasy, even vegetables. As we settle down in South Korea, we’ll begin cooking again for ourselves and eating out much less. Until then, we’ll make sure to keep our step count up.

Lastly, some of my learned tips for trying to stay healthy while on the road:

1. Start off the day right with a healthy breakfast – It helps set the tone for the rest of the day. We make sure to have plenty of fruit every morning.
2. Stretching, Push-Ups and Sit-Ups are another great way to start the day. The best success I’ve had so far with exercising is when I start the day off with a circuit of a stretching, push-ups, then sit-ups. Then starting off again with a different stretch and repeating 3 to 4 times.
3. Look for different activities throughout the day to get a quick “set” in. We were in an amphitheater a few days ago and it turned out to be a great place for dips & incline push-ups. You run the risk of looking silly, but I actually got a thumbs up from a local, it was a nice feeling.
4. Wear a pedometer and make sure to hit 10,000 steps a day. It’s not difficult to walk 10,000 steps a day and there’s no better way to ensure you’re active enough than measuring how you’re doing.

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1. The Great Adventure of Lunch in Haikou
2. I want to PUMP…you up!
3. China: A Love/Hate Relationship, Part 1

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Note: This is the second installation of “Dog Meat and Old Ladies“.   Previously, we took a Li River Cruise on a bamboo raft into Yangshuo and visited the Fido meat market…

On a more pleasant note, we rented bikes in Yangshuo and had a great time riding out of the city and into the more rural areas. We ended up going to a park called Moon Hill. As we rode up to the front of the park, we were approached by a group of older Chinese women who spoke decent, but broken English. They were offering us “admission” into the park for 5 Kwai instead of the 15 Kwai that the park would charge us. Seemed like a good deal, so we took them up on their offer. We started walking up the road and following the lady, thinking “okay, this seems legit”, until the woman disappeared into a hole in the wall and motioned for us to follow. “What the hell” seemed to be the thought consensus at that point in time as we looked at each other and could only laugh. We followed her into the forest on a tiny path. Jason slipped, the lady kept telling us to be quiet, and the only thing running through my mind was whether or not the jail cell that this path leads to has a free egg breakfast. We finally come up onto the legit path up to Moon Hill (you know, the real path that would have cost us 15 Kwai) and we thank the smugglers for their help and then head up the steps.

The oldest lady of the group (she is 70+ years old) ended up following us up the entire 800 steps up Moon Hill and kept up with our 26 year old pace. In her prime I bet she would have killed me in a walk-off. She also fanned us the entire way up with a shabby Mickey Mouse fan. At the top, she was so excited to show us a journal that had been given to her by a traveler- it had been inscribed by hundreds of tourists who left messages for future tourists who encounter this awesome woman. She then proceeded to sell us ridiculously expensive soda.

Our last active day in Yangshuo included an awesome cooking class! This was SO much fun. There ended up being three other people in the class, and we chose to cook Braised Eggplant in chili and garlic sauce, Beer Fish (it is a local specialty and we actually used a ton of beer to cook it) and pork dumplings. They took us to the market, bought the food for dinner, and then we cooked it while enjoying some tasty beer and good company. It was a great and relaxing way to complete our last night in Yangshuo.

Random Thought of the Day: Getting used to the crazy streets in China took a little while, but I think we adapted fairly easily. That being said, we were NOT prepared for the even crazier streets of Vietnam. Crazier in the sense that there are MANY more motorbikes on the roads here than in China and the smaller intersections have absolutely no traffic signs. It’s basically a free-for-all. You learn that the only way across the street is to find a tiny break in between the motorbikes, hold your breath, walk slowly forward whilst dodging the bikes, and pray that the Vietnamese guy speeding towards you isn’t having a bad day. It was not until a fellow American traveler saw us crossing the street yesterday that we realized that we had become experienced street crossers. His words were “You guys have big balls”. It was such a touching moment.

Possibly Related posts:

1. Dog Meat and Old Ladies (Part 1)
2. Our First Surfing Expedition in Sanya, China
3. HONG KONG: The City of Escalators

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