Shanghai on Life

Life in Thailand is still moving along as easy and as sweet as ever. We have spent the last while up north in Chiang Mai. We returned yesterday from a 3 day trek in the Thai jungle where we got to ride an elephant, swim in a waterfall a go both white water rafting and bamboo rafting! We were in a group with some Danes, a couple Austrians, a couple Australians and an English guy, plus one pretty hyper and smiley Thai guide.

The elephant ride hit a bit of a glitch when the seat which is tied to the elephant with rope kept slipping off to one side eventually ending with Jen and I still strapped in the seat but hanging off the side of the elephant, but I guess we lived to tell about it! We had a great trip, but it was nice to return to hot showers and sleeping surfaces that aren’t bamboo floors.

Before the trekking tour JP and I took a Thai cooking class for a day, which was pretty fun and mighty tasty! It was a private lessons with two teachers, plus you got to make and eat 9 different dishes – I love Thailand! We made a couple of curries, Pad Thai, spring rolls, banana blossom salad, mango and sticky rice, deepfried ice cream..the list goes on.

One night while out at a bar around the corner from our guesthouse we were sipping on some super tasy 50 baht (<2 CAD) Mojitos and this guy bring by a baby elephant that you can feed for 20 baht. The elephant could dance, accept payment (passing bills from a customer to his owner), pose for pictures, AND (get this) play the harmonica! It was too much, only in Thailand! Now, I know you shouldn’t support of enourage this kind of thing, but the elephant was playing a harmonica! So hard to resist.

Anyhoo, here’s a video Jen took of a different elephant shaking his groove thing in Ayutthaya:

and here’s a video JP took of Cody getting his sunflower seeds robbed by the feisty monkey mentioned in the previous post:

And once again, more detailed posts can be found on Cody’s blog!

Hello Everyone! Greetings from Lop Buri Thailand! The trip is going great so far. Mostly it’s very hot and very delicious. So far we’ve spent a couple of days in Bangkok in the shelter of a small neighbourhood which is essentially purpose-built for tourists. Can you say American style breakfast! Woohoo! We saw some temples, did some shopping, went on a long-tail boat tour, and ate a lot. After Bangkok we trained up to Ayutthaya, the old capital of Siam, where we rented some old bikes and saw oodles of ruins from the city’s heyday back around the 13-1700’s arena. Today we’re in Lop Buri which is famous for its adorable and mischievous monkeys. I can confirm that they are both. We MIGHT have broken the golden rule of any travel health clinic (don’t feed the monkeys)…but you know they were so cute and they were even selling monkey food at the ticket booth. Cody got half of  his bag mugged by one of the more hardcore monkeys which was both terrifying and hilarious. Some tourist were letting the monkeys climb all over them..I did not allow this. Man oh man were they ever cute though!

Anyway, that’s it for now. Check Cody’s blog for more details :D

-Amy

So this is it! Today is my last day in Shanghai. Everything is packed, about to go get some dinner with Danny Boy and I’ll be on a flight to Bangkok early tomorrow morning. The last few weeks have been pretty busy and well, pretty blog-less as well I suppose.

I had a great visit with Steph, Mom and Auntie Rabina. I guess my favourite moment had to be at Qipu Lu…a very busy shopping district in Shanghai. After having numerous taxis stolen right from under us (the Shanghainese are ruthless when it comes to queue jumping and you-were-there-first general courtesies), I told the ladies to sharpen their elbows. Before you could blink Auntie Rabina was booking it down the street shoulder-to-shoulder with a small pack of Chinese girls running for an approaching cab. She peeled them off those door handles, waved to us and jumped in – I couldn’t have been prouder! Once in the cab, the driver looked at me with a huge grin on his face, laughing and saying “foreigners! foreigners!” giving the thumbs up and even taking his hands off the wheel for a quick impression of us all running for his cab. We had an excellent visit, filled with lots of shopping, eating, site seeing, massages and maybe a few too many cocktails in the hotel room ;) .

On the 25th I said goodbye to the ladies and took the night train up to Beijing along with Sandra and her friend Melanie to meet up with Jen and Cody. We took the night train (14 hours) and that was pretty fun. We were stared at a lot, got to hear a lot of snoring and have a few wind-tunnel-esque bathroom experiences, but for the price it was a steal of a journey! In all seriousness though it really wasn’t so bad. As dutiful tourists in Beijing we hit the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, Tiananmen Square, plus the old AND new summer palace – in three days! Phew! We were happy to return to the warmer Shanghai weather and I have since shown them the what I consider the highlights (again, mostly eating, shopping and massages, with a couple of cultural things thrown in for good measure).

Peppered between visitors have been some tearful goodbyes with Simon, Sandra and Christian, not to mention loads of goodbyes to other friends who have slowly trickled out of Shanghai. Even though this is exchange round 2, I still find myself surprised at the intensity friendships can build in these short-term situations. I am missing my three Germans quite a lot and have been subjecting poor Jen and Cody to countless numbers of nostalgic had-to-be-there stories about our adventures in China. I am already obsessing over when I can make it to Germany next…tentative plans: German Karneval post graduation :D.

So tomorrow is Bangkok where Cody, Jen and I will set out on a two month adventure around South East Asia. Tentatively on the list is Thailand (not so tentative :D), Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, but we might not make it to all, or maybe even make it further depending on where the wind blows us. I can’t guarantee what’s going to happen with this little blog as I don’t know what kind of Internet access we’ll have along the way or what my laziness levels are going to be, but I would have the desire to keep posting so we’ll see what happens.

For those of you who are particularly dedicated  (or particularly worried in the case of my mama), feel free to check out Cody’s blog at codyinasia.ca…he’s a bit of a better and more regular blogger than me (at least so far!).

Hope you’re all well at home, until next time!!