Philippines

Yes we went to the Philippines...

Here is the view from our room in Batad, a small town/village we visited. These are rice terraces built between 2-3 thousand years ago. We only spent one night there because we were on the run the whole trip.

We started in Manilla, the capital. It is another big dirty city which we really didn’t care to see the sights of, so we focused our trip on places we could go from there and still make it back for our return flight. The first day there we walked around a little ate dinner and we saw a tricycle that had my name stitched on it. We didn’t get any good pictures of the tricycles because we forgot. They are either a bicycle or a motorcycle with a covered side car. These are the worst transportation Dora and I have taken so far, very small and bumpy. I tried to take a picture of the tricycle with my name on it but my camera was dead. We took an over night bus the first night so we were carrying our stuff with us everywhere. Believe it or not we each only had our school bags since we knew we would be carrying it all most of the time, so we packed extra light. The night bus was not a good time, we might have gotten about 1.5 hours of sleep the whole night, and that isn’t even all at one time. The bus stopped every 2 hours and they turned the lights on and people would rush in the bus to try and sell us different things to eat, most of which we couldn’t recognize. Finally morning came and we made it to Banaue. The town is north of Manila and in the mountains. The weather was very mild, some people from Manila head north to get out of the hot muggy weather in the summer. So it is 7 am and we get off the bus in a daze and all kinds of people are waiting for us and trying to take us here and there, and stay at their place or eat somewhere. So we go with a guy in his teens who has a tricycle and takes us to a restaurant for breakfast. We set off for a long tricycle ride to the trail to Batad and make the hike around 9 am. It was about 2.5 hours up and down the mountain hiking with our backpacks, but it was the only way to get there. Banauae and Batad both have rice terraces and we wanted to see both of them. Here is another view of the terraces in Batad, they used stones and stacked them like a retaining wall.

We took a break when we got to Batad, took off our backpacks, settled into our room, and ate some lunch. We didn’t rest too long because we were afraid we wouldn’t get going again. We took off to explore the village the terraces and find a waterfall that we had heard about. The waterfall was only supposed to be a 45 min hike but we took our time and we just made it back in time before the sun went down. Here is the waterfall, below, the water was cold but refreshing after hiking all day.


It cooled off nicely that night so it was great for sleeping that was one of our few good nights of sleep. The next day we woke up early for breakfast, and we paid our bill for the three meals a few beers and the room it was only $13 total for me and Dora. I would probably stay there for a week if I had time. Back over the mountain and through the jungle to Banauae. We got to a V in the path and there was a guy running/jumping down giant stairs with a 90 lb bag of cement and he told us to go up the stairs because it is a shortcut. We thought we would try it since on the way down we took the long way. That was the hardest part of all the hiking we did. The sun was really hot and the steps were probably between 1.5 and 2.5 feet tall because they were going straight up. After our hike we took another tricycle ride to eat and to go to the viewing point for the Banauae rice terraces. These ones are supposedly the eighth wonder of the world.




Another night bus took us back to Manila and another to the ferry. We spent the next day on the beach to recover from all of the hiking. Here is a shot of the beach, it is White Beach in Puerto Galeria.


We went a little further north to see a the Taal Volcano. It is a volcano in the middle of a lake which is in a prehistoric crater.

It is the smallest volcano in the Philippines but one of the most active in the world. We hiked to the top and got to look in the middle. Not really what I expected, there was another lake.


The water was bubbling near the shore.

If you look closley at this picture you can see steam coming from the ground. It was a little scary to walk past, the rocks were hot too.

We had to put a picture of these, Jeepney's is what they called them. We spent about 2 hours in one of these to get back to Manila.

Thailand

Bangkok-
We flew in and found a cheap place to stay that we had looked at on the internet. It was 700 Baht a night ($17.50) and we thought we were getting a great deal. That evening we told a tuk-tuk driver to take us to a pier so we could walk around and get dinner somewhere. Ok the tuk-tuk is a modified scooter with a covered bench in the back for a maximum of 3 passengers and that is squished. The tuk-tuk was our main mode of transportation when we were in Bangkok and up north in Chiang Mai. They were fun because we could bargain with them and they could get through traffic faster than taxi's because they don't obey lines on the road or any traffic laws. Back to the first one we took, we had a map and everything we pointed and there was English and Thai on the map so he could read where we pointed. He said yes I know when we pointed to where we wanted to go. When we got there it was a seafood restaurant and I didn’t see the pier anywhere. We ate there and when we were trying to plan what we were going to do the rest of the night we asked the server where we were on the map. We went the opposite way that we asked the driver to take us. After that we were suspicious of the tuk-tuk drivers. We decided that they must make a commission on bringing tourists to specific overpriced “Thai seafood restaurants” because they were always asking if we were hungry and if we wanted Thai food or seafood. That was the last time we ate at one of those places. Oh and I almost forgot our server, he/she was a transvestite.

So in Bangkok there was a lot to see but we didn't really make it a priority to see it all. It was temples, temples and more temples. Above is the picture of our favorite temple it was called the marble temple. If you look at the picture, all of the white is marble, it was interesting to see. Enough with the temples, the second night we met up with some more exchange students from our university in Hong Kong who were also enjoying their break in Thailand. Our first stop was a Thai-boxing match. There were like 7 or 8 matches and we missed the first 3 or so. It was like kick boxing a lot different than regular boxing. It wasn’t bloody or out of control, the boxers all seemed to be good sports and respectful when they won or lost.

We joined the group of four other exchange students for the next few days to take a trip north to Chiang Mai and the surrounding area. This was a beautiful place to go. Right when we got to Chiang Mai we stopped at a tour agency that was recommended by the lonely planet. We booked a tour that included hiking through the countryside/jungle, sleeping in a village, elephant riding, and bamboo rafting. It was two days and one night and we left 3 hours after we booked it. We had English speaking guide who grew up in the Chang Mai area, he was full of information. On our hike he pointed out different plants, insects, and other interesting things that we would never have seen if he wasn’t there. Below is a picture of us on the hike through the country side. One of the plants that he showed us closed when you touched it, it was pretty interesting.

We learned that the people farming the land where we were walking were an immigrant tribe from Burma (Myanmar). They kept loosing wars with other tribes in their homeland so they came to Thailand. The Thai government hasn’t given them citizenship yet but they are on the way. They receive a lot of help from the government in learning how to farm and they are educating the younger generation in schools. It was really interesting to interact with the people in the village. When we got to the village we walked around and there were kids running everywhere playing so we played too. That night we stayed in a bamboo hut like all of the other houses in the village. It wasn’t so comfortable but it was easy to fall asleep after hiking all day. The next day we woke up and were eating breakfast and elephants showed up at our doorstep. The plan was to hike for about an hour and then meet with the elephants, but the elephants were busy later shooting a movie, so we got to ride them after we were done with breakfast.

We rode the elephants through the countryside and jungle crossing little streams and mud pits. Below is a picture of the other 4 exchange students that we were on the trip with. The elephants came fully equipped with a driver and everything, but about half way the drivers asked us if we wanted to switch seats and we could sit on the elephant’s neck. I tried it, Dora didn’t really want to. It was a really weird feeling sitting on such a big animal. For a while I was sitting too far back so I was on it’s shoulders which was a bad place to be since they moved a lot with each step. I thought I was going to fall off a few times. The elephants were a lot of fun one of the highlights of the trip.

We did the elephants, more hiking, bamboo rafting, stopped at a cave and an elephant dung paper factory. Well not really a factory but just a place that goes out and collects elephant dung and makes paper out of it. Everyone else bought some dung paper and was surprised when Dora and I didn’t have any. Not a souvenir we really wanted. Well we got back to Chiang Mai city just in time for the Sunday market. We went shopping and when we were done we all got half hour Thai foot massages. They were 60 Baht each, that is a dollar fifty US!!! I don’t think Dora really liked it.

After that night we were back to Bangkok. The other four were going back 5 days earlier than me and Dora, and were flying out of Bangkok. There is a fancy hotel in Bangkok called the Oriental; the cheapest room is $350 US. We didn’t stay there but we heard that they have a great buffet. We all put our nicest clothes that we brought on and ate all night long. There was all kinds of food from sushi to steak and lobster, and of course tons of desert.

Here is a picture of one of the tuk-tuk’s, it only has three wheels, and the power of a mopeds. We were a group of six so to get around all together we “took two tuk-tuk’s”, also one of out favorite phrases. The drivers would usually end up racing and one of the drivers we had did wheelies when we would go from being stopped at the lights. That was always unexpected fun when traveling from one place to another. Well it was scary, but fun at the same time when we actually made it to where we wanted to go.

Here is a good enough representation of Khao San road in Bangkok. It is the “backpacker’s haven”. It is tons of westerners backpacking, traveling, and staying in dirty cheap rooms. The picture was from Monday, which is kind of like Sunday for us where most things are closed, so the vendors usually on the street aren’t there. The sides of the street are usually packed with knock off t-shirts, sunglasses, clothes, jewelry…all kinds of really cheap stuff.

The rest of the group went back to Hong Kong but Dora and I went south to the beaches of Thailand. We flew into Phuket and stayed in probably the nicest place out of all of the trip and it was the cheapest too. The city of Phuket suffered a lot of damage from the tsunami last year and I think they were still feeling the hit from the drop in tourism. The shopping and the hotel were really cheap there. They tried pretty hard to over price things. Dora was trying to buy a pair of sunglasses, some fake CK ones and they first offered 1200 Baht, which is about $30, but ended up getting them for 250 Baht ($6.25). We only stayed one night and we got on a boat to the Phi Phi islands. Here is a picture of us on the beach across the path from our bungalow. We stayed on Long Beach, on Phi Phi Don. There are two Phi Phi islands Phi Phi Don and Phi Phi Ley. There are is no development on Phi Phi Ley it is the smaller of the two and I think it is preserved as a national park or something. We took a full day boat tour that went around both of the islands and made 7-8 stops for swimming, snorkeling, and eating. It was a really good way to see all of the beaches.

This is on the tour we stopped at Maya bay which has been made famous by the movie “The Beach” with Leonardo DeCaprio. It was really nice, the water everywhere was so clear and the beach was white sand. The cliffs are all limestone everywhere on the islands.

One of our stops was on monkey bay. Yes of course there were plenty of monkeys just waiting for the tours to come by and feed them bananas. In this picture I was a little surprised when I got a little too close for a photo opportunity and the monkey wanted something in return. It grabbed my leg and scared me so I jumped up and got away from them.

Here is a picture to show how clear the water was. The snorkeling was awesome. I have never seen so many fish and living sea creatures, it was really fun.

We only stayed two nights at the Phi Phi islands, then we got on another boat to go to Krabi; A city on the mainland in the gulf of Thailand. We heard good things about it and went off of that. When we got there we did half a day of rock climbing on the limestone wall near our bungalow. Here is a picture of Dora at the top of the tallest rout we did.

I convinced our guide that I had climbed before so he let me lead climb a rout. Right after I got on the wall it started to rain. I scrambled to the top and got down before it started coming down really hard.

Here is a great shot of the sunset from Krabi.

The second day in Krabi we went on a full day sea kayaking tour. We went through some caves and mangrove forests, again a lot of nice scenery. Some of the passageways we had to duck to get under, it was fun to navigate through the rocks and the trees.

Here is the bungalow we stayed in when we were in Krabi, it was the last one on the path and there were monkeys sitting on our porch when we went to see the room.

Here is the view looking back as we were leaving the port where we stayed in Krabi. The only way to get to and from the place we stayed was by boat. There were no roads no cars and no tuk-tuk’s.

FUN FACT:

The garbage trucks in Taiwan play the same music as the ice cream trucks in Minnesota.

Ten Thousand Buddha, "The Beach", and Taiwan

Ten Thousand Buddhas

-Dora-
We visited the Ten Thousand Buddha Monastery on one of our days off. For those of you who don't know we managed to get four day weekends every week. It's pretty nice having a three day school week. Anyway the picture below is the entrance to the monastery the stairs go on for what seemed like forever and these statues are all the way up. Some of them were really strange looking.

These pictures are from the top of the hill/mountain. Some of the Buddha were just plain weird, I wish I knew a little more about it so I could understand the meaning (or if there is meaning) behind some of these statues.

"The Beach"

A friend of ours knows someone who has been in Hong Kong for a while, so she was able to take us hiking to a beach. The beach is open to the public but the only way to get there is by boat or foot. It took us about 1.5 hours to hike there and this was after a 20 minute boat ride and a 30 minute bus ride. So it was quite a trip to say the least, for a beach anyway. The hiking was through the mountains so it was pretty hard. We climbed two mountains before reaching the beach. Then we took another way to get back and there were maybe three more. It was really beautiful hiking, but a lot of work, the beach and scenery made it all worth while. The pictures don't do any of the it justice. The water was completely clear, the sand was white, and mountains surrounded it all. There was only a hand full of people there too. On the way back we took a different a way where there was a water fall, where we swam for a little while. It was a nice break from walking and we were able to wash off all the salt water.

Yes we walked across all of this!

Taiwan

So Monday the 20th was a holiday, which meant we didn't have school. So we spent the time off in Taiwan. Our flight left Thursday morning at 12:15 am and we got back to school at 4:30 on Tuesday. Just in time for our 6:30 class! There were some noticeable differences in Taiwan, first the scooters! I learned to not appreciate them while we were there. They are everywhere, the street and sidewalks. It was really frustrating sometimes because you want to walk on the sidewalk, but they are covered in scooters so you have to walk on the street. The streets are filled with speeding scooters so it’s a lose lose situation. The other major difference were the people, it seemed like everyone wanted to help us, or at least have an excuse to talk to us. Another thing, which made it very hard to get around, was the fact that on all of our maps the street names where spelled different than they were on the actual street sign. So we had to match the sound of the street name, it wasn’t as easy as it sounds.

We stayed in Taipei for two full days. The first day we spent visiting the Confucius Temple and Danshui (or something like that). The temple was nice, but they are beginning to all look the same. In Danshui, which is on the river in the north, we had dinner by the water and walked along the shore line. It was weird because all along the road they had carnival games. Like the ones where you through a dart at a board filled with balloons or a ring toss. We didn't play any, but it was fun to see.

On Friday we hiked a little through a park (the pictures below) and in the evening we went to a hot spring. It was a public hot spring so we were able to talk to some people there. The place had five difference pools of spring water. Three hot ones divided by burning hot, really hot, and hot. Neither Nathaniel nor I could even put our feet in the burning one; I guess this is the actual temperature directly from the ground. They let the water run from this one to the really hot one and so forth. The other two pools were ones to cool off in. We forgot to take pictures of the place.

On Saturday we took the train from Taipei to Hualien, which was about 3 hours. In Hualien we went to Toroko Gorge National Park. Because our train didn't get in until about 2:30 we didn't make it to the Gorge until 4:00. I don't know why we thought it would still be possible to hike 10 km, but we thought we'd try anyway. So when we got there we figured out that hiking just wasn't going to be possible and there were no taxis or buses. But we got lucky because some people overheard what was going on and actually offered to personally give us a tour. It was two brothers (in their mid 30's) and there dad. They were really nice and asked us where and when we wanted to stop, they told us about the places, and asked if we wanted them to talk pictures of us! It was really strange how nice they were. They didn't have the best English though, so it was kind of hard to talk sometimes. But after we were done there they told us they would take us to dinner, so we had some traditional Taiwan food at the port in Haulien. The dinner was noodles (big suprise) with some stuff on it (don't know what it was and don't really want to know), some sashimi (tuna and some white fish it was really good), and some soup with meatballs (not good) in it. After that they brought us back to our hotel, but not before asking if they could pick us up later in the evening to show us around town. It was a really nice offer, but after spending a few hours with them we were exhausted. So we said goodbye to them, and they were surprisingly disappointed. Below are some pictures of the Gorge, it was mountains of marble with a river running through it. It was very beautiful.

On Sunday we took the train to Kuashiong, the second largest city in Taiwan. Because it was a holiday they had fireworks and some things going on in the evening. So we walked around a little and then saw the fireworks that went off above the Love River. The next day wasn't really too productive since everything was closed. But we walked along a river in the city and waited for our train.

Big Buddha

-Dora-

Here are some more pictures from around campus. Most of them are views from the walk between our dorms to the academic building on campus. There is even a little blue sky in some of the pictures which has been rare; I think it is normally hot with overcast. The humidity has been around 90% most days, you always feel sticky when you're outside.

The pictures below are from the beach that is about a five minute bus ride from campus. The water wasn't very clear, but the scenery was beautiful. There are beaches all around Hong Kong, some better than others.

We also walked along the Avenue of Stars again in the evening. From this area you get a great view of the city and all of the big buildings. At 8:00 every night they city puts on a laser light show. They have many of the major buildings participate in this show. Basically they have lasers on the tops of the buildings and colorful lights covering them. When the show starts they introduce off of the participating buildings. It was really funny because they did it like a sports line up. After they announce the building it would flash all its lights! We could get any really good pictures but the link below takes you to the tourist website that gives you a better idea of what it’s like.

http://www.tourism.gov.hk/symphony/

We also visited the Big Buddha and the Po Lin Monastery. It is a 34 meter high Bronze Buddha, which sits on the top of a plateau on one of the surrounding islands.

Just another day in Paradise...

-Nathaniel-
Just so everyone doesn't forget what campus is like here is the view from my room is above. There is only one academic building and it is gigantic. Below is a picture of part of it. This building also has two banks the bookstore a convenience store two different food court type places, and that is just what I have found so far.

We made it further off campus and multiple trips to the shopping center in the last couple of days. Dora and I are now equipped with Hong Kong cell phones. We bought the cheapest used phones and SIM cards with prepaid minutes we both paid less than 60 dollars for the phones and 333 min. Below is a shot of Dora when we got off the subway in Mong Kok. This place was crazy. It is like you would see in a movie and think that it couldn't possibly be that crowded and all of the neon lights on the signs flashing, it was stressful even to just look around. It was like walking with a sea of people.

That same night we stopped for some sushi at this Japanese restaurant. It was a small place and you could easily walk by it and not know it was there but inside it was very nice, and really good sushi. It was surprisingly cheap too! Dora and I both ate for $20 US. I Took a picture of the outside so I could remember it if we ever wondered by it again we could stop in.

After sushi we went walking some more. We made it to the pier there was a nice walk way where people were looking over to downtown. It is an amazing view of the city, you can really see how big it is. I wish my pictures were better, but I don't have a tripod, so the night shots don’t turn out so well.


I guess I forgot to mention that we met up with a few other exchange students. We have met so many new people from all over the world. It has been fun to meet so many people that have all kinds of different experiences with traveling and even every day life. Dora's roommate is from France (pink shirt) and we met some other people from Canada. Below is a shot of us hanging out at the pier, and another blurry picture of the lights of the downtown buildings.



The subway system is really nice here it is fast and very clean, it doesn’t even smell bad! I was just amazed at how long the trains are, there are always a lot of people on the subway, last night it was Sunday and we rode the subway right before it closed and it was still packed. There are certain interchange stations that the whole train will either fill up completely or empty completely, it is a very effective transportation system.

After I took the picture all of the locals were laughing at me, and I am sure saying that it was stupid to take a picture of the subway. Oh well. I heard the suicide rate is high in Asia, and many times people would jump in front of the subway trains. At all of the stations the tracks are behind a full length glass wall with doors that open with the train car doors. I tried to take a picture to show the two sets of doors to get on the subway.


We went downtown and wandered around all day. I don't have a whole lot to say about all of these pictures and they might not be too exciting for many people but I like weird looking buildings so I took a few pictures of the interesting looking ones. A lot of the designs seem like they were trying to make the most difficult structure possible and still have it stand.








This one just plain ol' looks like a bad idea.

Again for dinner we stopped for sushi. This place wasn't quite as nice but it was still good. It was the first time I had been to a place where there were guys in the middle of the bar making the sushi and they would send it around a track so we could grab whatever we wanted when it came around. It was fun to see all of the different things.


A few more full days of vacation before school starts, then we are limited to our 3 day weekends and whenever we get our homework done early.

We made it!!

-Nathaniel-
We got to campus around midnight on the 24th. To avoid confusion we took a taxi from the ariport, which was on a different island. We had to take two toll bridges to get to campus. Once we got to campus we had to split up when two different security guards showed us to our rooms. The housing managers let us in our rooms, but wouldn't give us the keys until we paid for the whole semester in the morning when the office opened. The building managers don't speak much English. It is funny because they run out of the office and to grab any student sitting around to translate. The students speak pretty good English. Of course we forgot to bring sheets so we ended up sleeping on the bare mattress for the first night.

The first morning we woke up around 5am or so ready to go. We went for a walk to see if we could find our way around campus with out getting too lost. Little did we know that we would be walking around the whole rest of the day trying to get registered, food, money, and our main goal sheets. The cafeteria was a little intimidating not knowing the process, but we have almost figured that out. We have to order and pay at one counter then they give us a ticket to give to a different counter where they make our food. We have been eating noodles and assorted buns/pastries. I don't think we have spent more than 3 US dollars on a meal for the both of us. We took our first bus trip after looking all through campus to find sheets. We went to this huge shopping center area not far from campus. It took at least 2 hours of walking around and asking people to find a department store. By the time we found sheets we were both exhausted. We finished unpacking, making the beds and we crashed a little after 6pm.

Our mission for Friday (today) was to get the internet working in the rooms. There is wireless around campus which is easier to log on to. I think we have figured out how to get the internet in the rooms now. Enough talking, here are some pictures we have taken so far.

-Dora-
View from my dorm room. It's been overcast the first two days, hopefully it clears up soon. It's been pretty hot and muggy.

-Nathaniel-
Here are some other pictures from around campus.

This is the main walk way through the center of campus we walked this around 10 times the first day. The walkway goes from the big entrance all the way down to the shore. It goes down a cliff so there are 3 elevators and a set of escalators on the way. The elevators go only from floor 10-11 to the ground; there are no stops on the intermediate floors.

They are doing repairs everywhere, and the scaffolding is made out of bamboo and plastic ties. Dora did the structural analysis and she says it is safe. I don't trust it, it looks pretty rickety.

If you have seen campus from Google earth you might recognize the track. The outdoor pool has water warmer than the air temp. Today there was open swim from 7:30am-9:30pm with a break for lunch. The hours might change for school, I don't know.

Until next time...

Hong Kong - Fall 2005

Nathaniel and Dora

Exchange - Hong Kong University of Science and Technology