THE HONEYMOONERS

After a grueling 24 hour travel day from Bangkok to Shanghai, which including boarding a plane at 2am only to be taken off the plane for reasons still unknown to us, and not reboarding until close to 9am, sleeping on the airport chairs, then taking a 45min cab to the train station, then dealing with the most chaotic, intense train infrastructure where we ended up getting on a local train from Hangzhau to Shanghai which took nearly 4 hours (when the train we shoulda got on takes only 2 hrs). we finally arrived at The Bund Hotel in Shanghai. Despite all the horror travel, when we finally got to see family (The Herlings), it was all worth it.

We spent about 10 days in China splitting our time between Shanghai and Beijing. For sake of comparision, Shanghai is akin to Manhattan with its sharp architecture, skyscrapers, financial districts, and pockets of areas similar to SoHo, Upper East Side, Midtown, etc. And Beijing is akin to Washington D.C., rich in culture and politics, where you can feel the Communist overtures and the rooted traditions that embody a city with thousands of years of history.

In Shanghai, we hung out with Amanda's sister Tracey and her fiance Raj, who came to China before traveling onto India to meet some of Raj's family. And we also spent quality time with Pat and Brad, Amanda's parents. We got to have lunch from the 60th floor of a 90 floor hotel/condo property overlooking the famous Pearl Tower. We went to a really cool aquarium in the Shanghai Aquarium that included taking escalators and moving walkways while fully surrounded by tanks of aquatic life, which species are noticeably different from the U.S. fish. We also went to the Shanghai Museum, Old Town, which houses the oldest garden in China and has a shopping district embedded within it, an acrobatics show where Raj was selected to get up on stage and participate, and walked and ate several times up and down Nanjing Road, which is Shanghai's Fifth Avenue. Because Brad (Amanda's Dad) was teaching during the days, we didn't get to hang out with him until after school, but we greatly enjoyed the Happy Hours on the 22nd floor of our hotel as well as the nightly dinners, and of course having a local of sorts to show us around.

In Beijing, the family escapades were reduced to a team of Amanda, Pat and me. We all stayed in one room (with two beds) at a nice hotel on Beijing's main thoroughfare, Wangfujing Street. Each day was an adventure and action-packed. One day, we took a guided tour to the Ming Tombs (where many of the Ming emperors are buried sometimes as deep as 80 feet with a family room, bathroom, kitchen, their jewels, etc) and to the Great Wall of China, which was quite impressive to see although the Disney-type electric car ride to the top as well as the ridiculous amount of people made it somewhat unauthentic. Massive nonetheless. The next day we went to the newly opened Beijing Planetarium, which was so fun and different. We watched two unbelievable shows including a 4D show, An Ode to Life, which took you from the Big Bang Theory, thru the dinosaur age, the underworld, the caveman, human existence, etc. One of us (you guess who) left after 5 minutes because she was too scared by the periodic bursts of air or water that were shot at you and the tickling of your ankles and slight dropping of the chair at certain times throughout the show. Later that day, we hurried thru the Forbidden City/Tianaman Square, which also is quite impressive in its history being that it is a 200-acre compound protected by a moat on all sides and constructed nearly 500 years ago. It is where the emperors and their families lived, most notably the Ming and Qing dynasties, but Mao never lived there. Actually, I think I heard that he never even stepped foot there. And aside from some bargain shopping and driving past where the Olympics will be held in 2008, we also saw Mission Impossible III (in English) in the basement of a huge vertical mall that is newly buily and looks like an office building. Lastly, we witnessed first hand a street lined with food vendors selling the nastiest stuff on a stick - scorpion, starfish, snake, DOG, beetles, frog, and TESTICLES.

All in all, our travels throughout China were memorable, but would not have been quite as fun had we not had family there with us. Although it is ignorant to generalize nearly 2 billion people, we did experience and witness some of the stereotypes of the people and culture in China. Despite the one-child law still in effect, the country is overcrowded and the people are pushy, rude, do not believe in lines or courtesy or manners or etiquette. They repeatedly spit nasty loogeys on the street, cut you off, push you and dismiss your language and inquiries. Although many of these traits and personalities may be misinterpreted, we can only report what we experienced and with that, i'm not sure we need to go back to China anytime soon.

Click here to check out some of the pics