Please, Welcome

So food in China is extremely hit or miss. I have had the best and worst meals of my life here. The big shit here is skewers. Everywhere you go they are grilling all sorts of internal organs and meats on skewers. We went to a place last night, here in Xi'an, and the guy pan fried them chinese style instead of grilling. When I say chinese style I mean there is more grease than humanly possible. Just about everything you get in this country is greasy as hell! So I can't stop thinking of the scene in Rush Hour where Chris Tucker orders from the Chinese food cart. "Man, I don't want any of this greasy ass shit. I want some good food!" It is extremely true.

I have also love how Chinese people take pictures. They stand in front of the camera in a perfect line with there arms to their sides and they stare at the camera with no smile. VERY communistic, Mao would be proud.

So I am in Xi'an now, which is the old capitol of the Qing Dynasty. You might know Xi'an from the Teracotta Warriors, they are about an hour outside of the city. We went to them today and, as many fellow travelers have said, they are very overrated. Most of it is just piles of sand and the signs on the wall remind you that they are still excavating, neato! They don't mind charging 90 yuan for it either, which is about 13 bucks. Very expensive for this part of the world. Actually, in whole, the Chinese love to rip you off at the touristy sites. Luckily I got in on the student price, yay for Chinese people's lack of reading english cards. The main highlight of today was buying my very own little Teracotta Warrior. Hopefully the little fella can make it home with all his extremities intact.

thailand/china

Nihao,

So as usual I haven't updated much but finding an available comp in china ain't easy. So last I left you I was on Kho Phi Phi. We went from there to Kho Samui, not very interesting. Then we went to the infamous Kho Phangan, home of the Full Moon Party. Unfortunatly our timing was off but we still made it to the Half Moon Party, which is supposed to be just as good. We spent the day chilling with a couple cool swedish girls and an english girl. We all went to the half moon party that night with crazy black light paintings all over ourselves and it was crazy. Lots of bucket of joys everywhere, which is a bucket filled with coke, red bull (the 100 times stronger thai original version) and really cheap thai rum that tastes like shit. That combination gets you very drunk very fast. The party was amazing for the hour it went on. At around 12:30 the music stopped and one of our friends said she saw 2 soldiers up at the DJ booth with AK47s to the DJs head. We were then forcefully asked to leave and that's the end of that.

Next stop was Kho Tao, where I got my PADI SCUBA certification :D :D. Highlight of that island was the awesome diving, jumping in a boat trying to chase down a whale shark with no luck, and hoping on a motorbike with a crazy dutch driver, hanging on for dear life. He must have put the thai bikers to shame, which is not a small feat.

Next stop was the super massive Bangkok. Highlights include a plethora of girl boys, fake watches, faker shirts and nice suits. My brother and I both ordered suits from a place that is very famous, the guy made suits for all sorts of famous Americans, including John Kerry. It looks super pimp. We also went up to Chang Mai and my brother went on a trek in the jungle. Unfortunatly I hurt my foot prior so I instead took a thai cooking class and made some bomb curry and pad thai. So if anyone wants some good thai food back home, Chez Dan might be the place to be ;)

We are now in China, which is VERY interesting. Chinese food has its ups and downs, mostly downs though. Although I have come to love the dumplings here. Top highlight of Beijing was definatly the Great Wall and Summer Palace. The forbidden city was not very good since every single hall looks the same, a giant room with a single chair in the center where the king would wait for guests, change his clothes, wait upon being transported to his throne, or think. Seriously, he had a seperate building for all of those things. We also went to a night market that made you wonder if you can ever eat again. The worst part was this thing called stinky tofu, and stinky is a very mild description. My gag reflex was tested constantly. They also sold scorpion, silk worm, dog and seahorse. The dog was definatly that last thing I would ever eat, although I heard the scorpion was pretty good.

Oh yes, the biggest highlight about China is that the people can't get enough of westerners. Everywhere I go they stop me and want to take pictures of me. Then you get the people that are too embarassed to ask so they try to slyly take your picture without you realizing but it's pretty damn obvious. I have started to ask to take a picture with my camera every time they ask me to take a picture. Best instance was an old man that wanted a picture. Then him and his wife. Then him, his wife and his kids. Then him, his wife, his kids and the tour guide. Before you knew it there were 30+ asians in the pictures, crazy.

We are now in Qingdao, which is famous for the brewery of Tsingtao beer, which is where we went today. Very good beer and apparently they make a stout that you can't seem to find even in China but it was freaking good. After the brewery we went to a hot pot restaurant for the worst meal of our lives. A dutch guy we came with decided to get something the resembled a seafood/penis. We are still wondering what it was but damn that was disgusting. A good ol' ice cream had to wash it all down.

Until next time, hopefully not so long this time.