Last day in Beijing

A special thank you to Melissa for helping me manage the blog while we were in China. We were surprised that both Blogger and YouTube (so much for chop stick instructional videos) are blocked in China.

We woke up at 6:00am. We knew we wanted to visit the Temple of Heaven and the Forbidden City. Our plan was to get to the Temple of Heaven at 8:00am. We had to pack everything before we left since we needed to check out of our hotel at 12:00pm and go to the airport.

For breakfast we once again went to McDonald’s. We thought about eating an Asian style breakfast but it would take too long. So we walked to McDonalds that was a block from our hotel. Unlike our last visit, the girl at the counter did not speak any English. Ordering was more interesting this time. They have a picture menu with numbers so we held up the number of fingers to correspond to what we wanted. Coffee or juice? We pointed to the orange juice machine behind her. For here or to go? She pointed to a tray or gestured with her fingers walking away. To go please. It was really quite the experience. Yesterday, thanks to a little English, our order went smoothly. Today we ended up with 3 meals instead of just the 2 we ordered. Fortunately they were the two we wanted, we just got one of them twice. Who knows what happened, but that’s okay. We split the second order of hotcakes.

Our hotel got us a taxi to the Temple of Heaven. The Temple of Heaven was built in 1420 and is the largest building for religious worship in China. It has 270 acres. It is like a park with temples. When we got there we saw people scanning passes to get in. Apparently you can get a membership. Many people come here every day to exercise and play games in the park. We had to buy tickets for the day. It was amazing to see how many Chinese people were there doing exercise. Its like a gym membership for the Chinese except it is outside in the cold. Some were doing tai chi with asian style fans, swords, or paddles. Many people were playing hacky sack, badminton, or paddle ball. Large groups were exercising, singing, or dancing together too. In other parts of the park, people were playing music instruments while others were playing cards. We saw many different things while we were there. It was quite amazing and one of our highlights from Beijing. The hackey sack they use there has feathers on it. Brian got one for me – it was purple so I could not resist. Since we were clearly out of place (we rarely saw anyone who was not asian in the park) we were mobbed by people trying to sell us stuff near the shops in the park.








I was playing with the hackey sack while at the temple gardens and many locals were laughing at me. I am not good at it but it was fun. Some older guy even came up to me and tried to give me lessons. There was the language barrier but he showed me how he can do it. It was cute. Brian and I played for a few minutes by ourselves, although less skillfully than the locals.

It was cold this morning (27 degrees Fahrenheit according to the computer when we left our room). There was frost on the ground when we arrived in the park, but hundreds of Chinese people were still there undeterred. Brian and I really stand out. We rarely see someone who does not appear to be Asian. I thought that Beijing, being as big as it is, would have some non-Asian people. Really we rarely see any though. We learned from our tour guide yesterday that many Chinese visit Beijing from other parts of China. They are drawn to it due to its exposure from the Olympics. Beijing has a lot of tourism but it appears that not a high of percentage is from the United States.

We had a really good time at The Temple of Heaven. Brian states it was one of his favorite places in Beijing. We wanted to see the Forbidden City so we left the temple around 10:00am. The plan was to get a taxi to the Forbidden City. It was about 2-3 miles so we could walk, but it would just take more time that we did not have. Opportunistically, a rickshaw driver came up to us and volunteered to take us to the Forbidden City. He spoke some English. We knew that this was a bad idea but thought we would try it. Brian had read that Rickshaws tend to be bad news in Vietnam, but we had not heard anything good or bad in China. For future reference: they too are bad.

The traffic in Beijing is insane. There are cars everywhere. Pedestrians never really have the right away. At the crosswalk, when pedestrians have a green light cars still continue to turn and almost hit you (right on red is legal without stopping, so cars are constantly driving through pedestrians as they cross). Cars never stay in one lane very long. They change lanes without a signal constantly. They use the horn to notify cars and people they are there. Passing is common too. Yesterday we passed a car by driving on the wrong side of the road. Meanwhile that same car was simultaneously being passed by another car that was meanwhile using the side of the road to pass. Although we were on a road meant for two cars with one going in each direction, there were 3 cars all going the same direction in parallel. It was interesting. Horns are always blowing. So it was probably not the safest choice to take a rickshaw driver but we went for it anyways.

Before we got in, the driver stated it would be 3 yuan. We thought that was really cheap but whatever (a taxi would have been 12-15 yuan which is only around $2 in USD). So we are riding in a cart that is basically being towed by a moped bike on our way to the Forbidden City. I was wondering where he is taking us but the direction seemed to be right so we are hoping for the best. People are everywhere so I feel safe but just knew this is probably not going to end well. He stops and points to a direction and states it is over there. I get out and take pictures while Brian pays the guy. Well now he says it is 300 yuan (this is about $44 in USD for a mere 6 minute ride - to put it in perspective, the half hour taxi ride from the airport only cost 75 yaun or about $11 in USD). Remember, a taxi would have only cost 15 yaun tops (that’s what we paid for the shorter trip from our hotel to the temple of heaven) so this is crazy. Brian and the guy argue for a while and finally we decided to give him 20 yuan and we ran off. He would not take the money and kept saying he wanted 300. Brian just left it on his seat and left. We did not know if he was going to come after us (he seemed pretty angry) so we walked quickly to get away from him and crossed a busy street to get to the other side. But remember we still stand out pretty well. Luckily he did not come after us, but the whole situation was really annoying!

We were still about a half-mile from the Forbidden City. We did not exactly know where we were so we asked some locals by showing them a piece of paper with the Forbidden City written out in Mandarin (I got this from the hotel this morning). They would point and we would walk in that direction. Finally we got there. Unfortunately it was after 10:30am and we needed to get back to the hotel by 12:00pm to check out and go to the airport. We decided not to go inside of the Forbidden City since we would have to wait in line for tickets and would not have much time inside. We peaked inside by the entrance and it did not look much different than the view from the outside or what we had already seen at the temple of heaven and the summer palace. We walked around and took pictures from the outside. Then we walked around downtown by our hotel on our way back.

Our hotel arranged for us to get a taxi to the airport. Beijing built a new terminal for the Olympics. That is terminal 3: the international terminal. It is larger than all the terminals at London Heathrow airport together. Terminal 3 is very nice. It is large with glass all around. The ceiling is really high too. It is beautiful.

We went to check into Air China. This has been my biggest stress of the trip. We were the first to check in. (We realized later our flight has been changed to leave at 4:30pm instead of3:00pm). We have our three bags that need to be checked. For non-regional flights like this, you are only allowed 1 bag per person that weighs 20 kilograms. Since we had 3 bags, they weighed them together and found out how much over the weight limit they were (2 bags * 20 kg = 40 kg max) and then charged us for it. The cost ended up being $350 USD! I’m so annoyed! It is crazy! They don’t care that we came from the United States (most airlines if you show proof of international travel from the states you can check 2 bags a piece instead of just 1). I was told different things from different people when I called Air China before we left. They used some calculation (120 yaun per kilo over). Since we were 20 kilos over (together all 3 bags weighed 60 kg), this cost us 2400 yaun or $350. It is just really annoying since that is really the price of another ticket (perhaps we should have bought another seat to have empty next to us since it would have gotten a free bag)! We tried arguing with them since someone I talked to on the phone suggested it would be half that price, but no one spoke enough English to get anywhere. Although we were able to buy 3 full breakfast meals at McDonalds for $7.60 (52 yaun) it costs us $350 (2400 yaun) to send an extra bag. It’s crazy.

So we are now at the airport waiting for our flight. Terminal 3 has plugs in the ground so I could plug in our laptop and type this out. The plan is to post this once we get to our hotel tonight. We are supposed to have internet included at our hotel. Hopefully that is true. Brian and I are not sure that we are seated together on the plane. I have seat J and he has seat L. Who knows. I will be glad to arrive to Singapore. I hope there are no restrictions to blog access in Singapore. Hopefully they don’t censor internet access like China.

We have arrived safety to Singapore. More on that later.

Touring Beijing

Touring Beijing



Last night I really wanted to update the blog so I was writing a quickly as possible. We were really tired and all I wanted to do was post my blog then go to bed. Once I wrote last nights blog post and Brian got the pictures ready we went online to post it. That is when we realized China censors Google’s Blogger website. All access to it or any blogs on it are blocked. It simply says the site is unavailable when you try to view it. I was not prepared for that!



So before we went to bed we asked Melissa to help us with this problem. We woke up early to meet our tour guide John. We ran to McDonald’s for breakfast since we did not have a lot of time this morning and wanted something quick, simple, and predictable. John was waiting for us at 8:00am. We went to The Great Wall at Mutianyu (pronounced Moo-tay-you). Brian asked John how to speak some Mandarin. He has learned hello (nay-how) and thank you (she-she). He now says it to all the locals. John also explained how “ma” can mean 4 different things depending on how it is pronounced (including “mom” and “horse”). We got to the wall at 9:15am. In the city of Beijing, it is extremely hazy. Visibility is well under a mile in the city. So we were unsure how well we were going to be able to see The Great Wall. Once we arrived, we were pleasantly surprised. It was a clear cool day. Highs were probably in the 40’s. There was some snow and ice on parts of the wall that were shaded, but it was not snowing today. Visibility was reasonable. Once you get out of the city, the smog disappears. Getting out of the city made us realize how bad the smog really is. It is everywhere downtown and is particularly bad now as we heard because there is little wind. It makes our eyes feel very dry. When you first encounter it, you notice a smell that is similar to smoke but different. After exposure for a few minutes, you don’t notice the smell anymore but the haze and limited visibility is a constant reminder. John took us to the ticket counter and we paid admission for The Great Wall and the cable car for a ride to the wall.



Once we got to The Great Wall it was amazing. It was everything we thought and more. There were not any people around us at this time since we got there so early. So we got to take all of the pictures we were planning on taking. One picture that was important for us involved us wearing our Cavs gear. So we both wore our Cavs’s jerseys under our coats. When we wanted a Cavs picture, we just took off our coats. It was chilly but climbing up and down all the steps made us hot. At one point, we climbed 420 stairs at once in a part of the wall that went straight up hill. The view was great. We spent 2 ½ hours on the wall.



After The Great Wall, we went to the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace was a summer retreat for the emperors. We walked around there for about 2 hours. It was neat to see the temples. The temples colors were bright and beautiful.


(note: this is part of the palace)


(again part of palace)


(again part of palace)



Then we went to the Olympic village. We saw a dragon hotel, water cube and of course the Bird’s nest. It was exciting to see them. The Olympics were so much fun to watch on TV and now to be there was great. In the Olympic village, we went to a teahouse. We learned about different types of teas and how to drink tea. At the teahouse, you are supposed to slurp your tea. It was fun. The last stop was to a silk factory. We learned how silk is made.







John dropped us off back at our hotel around 5pm. We asked him to recommend a restaurant near our hotel. He recommended Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant. Beijing is famous for their roast duck so we had to try it. It was quite the experience. We ordered a roasted duck to split. We also ordered pancakes (more like mini tortillas) and soy sauce with scallions. We also learned an important lesson. Unlike at home, knowing how to use chopsticks is essential. Back at home, any time we have eaten at an Asian restaurant we did not see the point in learning how to use chopsticks. Now we realize that we really should have learned. For dinner tonight, chopsticks is all we had to use! That made it interesting in itself. Lets say, I’m really not good at using them. The duck was good. It is not my type of food but I can see how some people would love it.





After our dinner, we went to street market to try some other crazy foods. Guess what Brian convinced me to try: fried scorpion! Really! It was not as bad as I thought it would be. It was crunchy and salty. Then I got a fruit kabob glazed in sugar syrup (candied or caramelized fruit). It featured strawberries and kiwi. The kiwi was really good.



We are back in our hotel now packing to leave tomorrow. We are planning on leaving our hotel early to visit the Temple of Heaven and the Forbidden City on our own. Then come back to the hotel to check out by 1200. Then we head off to the airport for our flight to Singapore. We are staying at Crown Plaza Hotel in Beijing. I really like the hotel. We have a nice clean room and the location has been perfect for us.

- Posted by the American Translator
On a side note, it is a complete pain in the butt to download all of these pictures and place them properly in the blog. I better see some shot/sake glasses when they get home.

Beijing - Posted by the American Translator

We arrived to Beijing safety. On the plane ride, we were spoiled because the seat next to Brian was empty so we had three seats. It was great. We were able to take short naps and spread out nicely. The flight was not as bad as I was imaging but having that extra seat was huge. The plane also had really nice seat video equipment and power plugs underneath the seats for laptops. It was really nice. We were also surprised that we flew East to get there and not West. Somebody was talking to the pilot after the flight and he said it depends on wind conditions, but they fly East about 70% of the time. We actually flew mainly North passing over the pole, but it was in an Eastward direction over Greenland and Europe which surprised us.



Once we landed in Beijing, I was worried about the quarantine process. Prior to getting off the plane we had to fill out a health questionnaire, which asked about H1N1 symptoms and also for your seat assignment on the plane (presumably in case somebody near you was sick, so you could be held as a precaution). It turned out to be rather easy. You just walked through a sensor station with thermal cameras. If you were not paying attention you would not even know it was scanning your temperature. There were signs in English next to the taxi stand. We got into the taxi and handed him the hotel name in Chinese and we arrived safety. Our driver did not speak any English, but he understood the map the hotel gave us in Mandarin. It was extremely hazy (as the traffic photo shows). As we neared the exit to the airport, the air inside was even cloudy. Visibility was not very good today. After checking in to our hotel around 5pm local time, we went out to explore the city.








We saw The Forbidden City (pictured above) and Tiananmen Square (pictured below). They look pretty at night. It was cold though as the temperature was just a couple of degrees above freezing and we walked outside for about 3 hours. The smog here is bad too. It is making my eyes burn. However not sleeping probably is not helping much. Two girls asked me to get a picture with them. Brian took the picture. As we expected, we do not blend in at all. We are very popular with the local merchants since they know we are visiting. I don’t really see many American looking people anywhere. It has been interesting.





On the plane, we had three meals we were decided not to really eat tonight. We are having snacks in the hotel room. However we wanted so Coke and that was difficult to find. We did not want foundation drink but a bottle. Finally we found it at a local stand. It was fun trying to communicate what we wanted and how much it was. A young girl was nearby buying something else and helped translate.

We are really tried! We need to get a good night sleep. Tomorrow we go to The Great Wall with our tour guide John.

-Until next time, The American Translator

Travel Day - Posted by the American Translator

Hi again! I was e-mailed Amy's posts for yesterday with some pictures. So here is what she had to say:

Last night I went to bed around 10:00pm and Brian went to sleep around 11:00pm. This week I have had trouble sleeping just thinking about everything for this trip but last night I slept well until 3:00am. That is when I got up. I was up before my alarm like usual.

My parents picked us up at 4:30am. That was very nice of them. It was cold and rainy this morning. Yick! We saw people standing outside of Best Buy on the way to the airport. My mom thought they were crazy but the truth is if we were not traveling today we would be outside some stores too. Once we arrived to the airport, there was snow on the cars there. Cleveland is having its first snowfall of the season today and we are flying across the world.

The check in process went fine at the airport. I had kind of checked in online but because this was an international flight with the requirement of visas it did not allow me to completely check in. At the ticket counter they verified our visas along with our passports, checked our luggage, and off we went through security. Our luggage is about 6 pounds heavier than they should be for Air China’s limit of 44 pounds but it was the best I could do. On Monday, we will deal with that. I realized that flying out at 6:00am on the Friday after Thanksgiving is a good day to fly. The airport was not crowded. Our flight was pretty empty. So far everything is going good.




Since it was snowing in Cleveland, they had to deice the plane. We had a window seat so we got to watch while they did it. It was pretty cool.




We are at Newark airport right now. We have a four-hour lay over here. We have walked around the airport and had a snack. Now I’m typing this up. Brian found me a mobile charging station so I could plug in the laptop. We do not want to use the battery if we don’t have to. Hopefully the next flight we go smoothly.

Amy and Brian's luggage never arrive!

Just kidding!

Hi everyone! This is Melissa (Brian and Amy's FAVORITE sister/sister-in-law). Amy is experiencing some technical difficulties due to China blocking all access to blogger websites. They requested that I notify you all that they have successfully arrived in China. I know, scary that they trust me with their passwords. I was specifically told by Brian to be very nice in the blog and that they should be able to update it once they get to Singapore on Monday. If something changes I will be their personal blog assistant for the duration of the trip.

-The official American Blog translator

P.s - Since I know you were all hoping to see pictures I thought a candid shot of Gemi in her pink snuggie would be just as interesting.

Thanksgiving

We went to Melissa and Jonathan's (my sister and brother in law) house for Thanksgiving dinner. It was nice to see our family. The food was excellent! Melissa likes to decorate. This was the dinner table. The plates have turkeys on them. Isn't it beautiful? Her walls even match everything.

Brian and I wanted to bring some movies with us to watch on our computer on some of our sea days. We have six seas days. Since we were at Melissa and Jonathan's house, we thought we would look at their movie collection. It was unbelievable! They have every movie you would ever want. They have to have at least 150 movies! (On a side note, I think we own maybe 15 movies. We do not buy movies. I feel once I see the movie once I don't need to see it again but that is just me). So the movies we are going to bring with us are: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Mr Books, Baby Mama, Definitely, maybe, Good Luck Chuck, Dejavu, Eagle Eye, My Best Friends Girl, and Rundown. Any thoughts on which movie we should watch first?


We are now at home finishing everything up. In 12 hours, we will be at the airport waiting for our first flight. So many emotions right now. We don't know what to expect but it should be an adventure. I know I will be glad once we arrive to Beijing and get to our hotel!

We leave tomorrow!

I cannot believe today is Thanksgiving. I have to so much to be thankful for. I have a wonderful family and many friends. I’m also blessed to be able to do what I love which is traveling the world. We have this great opportunity to see Asia and I’m excited about it.

We leave tomorrow. I’m dreading the flight but looking forward to everything else. I checked in the morning on http://www.continental.com. This is not the flight that we have seats in different rows. I still wanted to see how continental’s check in process online works. So I can hopefully get better seats on the way home. We have flown continental many times but also with several other airlines and each of their check in process is a little different. I got us the emergency row to Newark. It is not that we really needed it for that flight but just to see if it was possible. That is good to know for our flight back home. Some airlines only allow you get to the emergency exit at the airport. The Beijing flight emergency row was full. Our flight to Beijing is not too full at this time. Hopefully it will stay that way so maybe we will have an extra seat empty next to us. It’s probably just wishful thinking but worth a try.

Our flight is at 6:25am tomorrow morning. Then we have a 4 ½ hour layover in Newark. We wanted to ensure we arrived to Newark in plenty of time for our connection to Beijing. When we went to Rome several years ago, they cancelled our flight from Cleveland to Cincinnati therefore we missed our connection in Cincinnati to Rome. We flew out the next day, but missed a day in Rome. We did not want this to happen again. There is another Cleveland flight to Newark tomorrow morning at 9:30 am which would still give us enough time for our Beijing flight so hopefully if something went wrong with the 6:30am flight we could somehow get onto the 9:30am flight. I’m always thinking about the worse case scenarios. I just like to be prepared for the what ifs.

I’m still not too happy about Air China’s luggage policy. The carry on bags need to weigh less than 11 pounds. That is hard to do! We are still working on that. Continental carry on bags have to be less than 40 pounds. That is quite the difference! Oh well, see what happens.

We are also starting to take Airborne. Airborne is supposed to help your immune system with vitamins and minerals. I have been trying to drink the supplement for the past hour and half and I still have not finished it. But I will! We don’t want to get sick from the airplane so we are trying it. I’m usually not into the vitamins but it is worth a try. We definitely do not want to get sick and end up in quarantine.

We are going to spend today with our family. My sister in law is having Thanksgiving dinner at her house today so I need to get ready to go. I’m happy that it is not at my house! Tonight will be a busy night for Brian and I as we finish everything up. Oh my, we leave tomorrow!

Final preparations

Today I was lucky enough to get the day off. I spent it packing and getting everything ready. The house is clean and most everything is packed! Yea!

The weather has been so nice in Cleveland, we have not needed to wear our winter coats yet. However we will need to bring them to Beijing so I washed them to have them all ready. I did a lot of laundry today. We are planning on bring our coats with us on the plane since we have issues with our weight limit with Air China. I finished packing all of our clothes today. All three of our suitcases are now packed.

Air China weight limit for checked bags are only 44 pounds. For carry on bags, it is only 11 pounds. Right now our suitcases weigh: 34lb, 44.6 lb and 43.8 lb. So it will be close like usual but right now at least I am close to it. The 34lb bag is our garment bag with all of our formal clothes in it. It is hard to make that much heavier since it folds onto itself. We will still have to pay extra for that third bag but I definitely could not pack everything in two bags.

Also on Princess's website there are pictures of our ship. Our ship is currently dry docked since it is getting renamed and going through some renovations. We will be on the first cruise under its new name Ocean Princess. You can check out the pictures at:

http://www.princess.com/oceandrydock/index.html

We still need to pack our carry on bags. Brian usually takes care of most of that. That is because the carry ons are mostly our electronics: computer, cameras, kindles, etc. Brian is now learning how to use the Kindle. I have had mine for about two months but he has not used it. It is really neat. His mom let him borrow hers so we will each have our own Kindle. It is really nice since we will not have to pack a bunch of large books just two Kindles. To learn about a Kindle check out:

http://www.Amazon.com/Kindle

One more day of work then vacation starts! We still have some final preparations but everything seems to be coming together.

Money and packing

I went to the bank this evening and picked up our foreign currency. We decided to exchange some money here so we don't have to worry about it once we get there. We got some China Yuan, Japan Yen, Singapore dollar, and Thailand Baht. I have heard that Vietnam accepts the US dollar most everywhere therefore we did not get any Vietnamese money. Also we decided against exchanging for Hong Kong dollar or New Taiwan dollar at this time.


Also I started putting my piles of clothes and things into bags tonight. I am more concerned with weight than anything else. I could wait before actually packing but I may have to leave a few more things at home. Hopefully I will not go over our weight limit for our Air China flight.

This is what our spare bedroom looked like before I started places things in suitcases tonight. What a mess!

The countdown begins

This morning Brian and I were looking at our blog. We were checking to make sure that the map worked and so did the weather. While we are traveling, you will be able to see where we are on the map and the weather thanks to Brian. Then we saw the countdown, 4 days before we leave. Panic set it for a moment. 4 days! Really 4 days! Oh no!

I think we (or I should say I) have had the least amount of time planning this trip then any of our other trips. However Brian states it has been about the same amount of time for Australia. It just seems like this trip has snuck up on us very quickly. Having Thanksgiving right before we leave is not helping things much. Obviously we want to spend Thanksgiving with our family, so we feel everything needs to be done on Wednesday. I don’t know if that will really happen but that is what we are hoping for. Oh the stress is building.


I'm stress about the long flight. I'm really stress about us sitting in the middle seats on the way home in totally different rows! We still have not received an upgrade from Princess. Bummed about that too. I know our trip is going to be awesome but it is the traveling part that is really a pain.

I have most of our clothes packed. Well kind of packed. They are all laid out on our guest bedroom. I have not actually packed the suitcases yet but will either today or tomorrow to get a weight estimate. I’m really trying to pack light but I’m attached to many of my clothes so of coarse I want them to go. I think I’m going to do well with packing shoes. I’m only bringing 5 pairs! One pair I will be wearing and another pair are flip flops so they don’t really count so I’m only really packing 3 pairs. I’m using women logic here. Men – I’m sorry if you don’t understand my thinking here. Everyone who knows me should be very impressed.

Brian and I are going shopping today to get all the final little things we need to buy before we go like batteries, toothbrushes, etc. The biggest issue will be food. We will want to bring more food than we really should. Food takes up room in our carry on, room we really do not have to spare so we will have to be careful with that.

More updates soon.

Issue with our returning flight

I spoke to soon about loving Continental Airlines. I logged into their website last night to check how full our flights were. They are almost full. Then I realized we don’t have seat assignments for our returning flight from Shanghai to Newark. Since the flight is almost full, that is a big problem. So I called Continental Airlines, and they gave us seat assignments but not next to each other and in the middle of two other people. I am so upset about this!

We have never sat apart on a flight. Plus flying for 15+ hours, I don’t want both of us to be in the middle seat in different rows! I was on the phone with continental for 45 minutes and basically they say there is nothing they can do and they don’t care. I truly believe there had to be a computer glitch because when I buy airfare, I always assign us the seats we want. Now we don’t have any seats assignments, that is crazy. This has never happen before and we fly a lot.

I asked about first class since they said there were seats available. The cost of an upgrade is an extra $10,000 per person. That is insane! I am hoping somehow we will be able to sit next to each other but I really don’t know. I am not happy with Continental right now.

My stress level for this trip has been the highest of any of our other trips. I think it is because Asia is so different than any of the other places we have gone. I had to get maps with Chinese to hand to taxi drivers. The language barrier is going to be huge. Not sure how we are going to eat. We are not usually too adventurous of eaters but we understand we should leave our comfort zone and try new things. The issue of China quarantining people at the airport stresses me out. At least H1N1 cases are down. We are doing a lot of traveling during this trip. We are leaving the cruise ship for several nights. Hopefully everything works out with our 3 day tour in Vietnam. It should be a lot of fun but right now it seems really stressful.

Our itinerary of what we want to do has been finalized. We have decided against going to Suzhou while in Shanghai. All the other cities had already been decided on. This weekend I need to pack! Also need to go shopping for some food to bring with us. We leave in less than a week!

Getting Ready

We leave in about a week! Oh my! I have finalized our plans for Taipei today. We were going to tour with one of Brian's friends who is from Taipei but unfortunately he is not able to be there while we are there. So I have been trying to figure out what we should do. We considered taking a train by ourselves from Keelung into Taipei and touring on our own. I think it can be done but it would be nice to be on a tour to learn more about the culture. Therefore we booked at tour with ALIDO Travel. We will be seeing Martyrs’ Shrine, Palace Museum, handicraft center, Confucius Temple, Pao An Temple, Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall,Taipei 101 Building.

The other city that I needed to finalize was Shanghai. We consider going to a town Suzhou. Suzhou looks like Venice with many canals. Venice is one of my favorite cities in the world so that is why I wanted to go. However if we did that we would need to go directly from the cruise ship. That has its challenges because it is hard to know when we will get off the ship. Plus it will be winter there so it could be cold and rainy. Shanghai is a large city with many things to do. So we think we will plan on staying in Shanghai and if we decide to go to Suzhou we will figure that out once we get there.

We are going to be on Princess cruise line for most of this trip. (We fly to Beijing and tour on own before flying to Singapore to start this cruise). We have never sailed Princess before. We love Royal Caribbean and Celebrity cruise lines. We have been on NCL and Carnival however we did not like them as much as Royal Caribbean and Celebrity. I'm interested to see how this cruise works out. We have never been on a small ship before. We usually love large cruise ships. The bigger the better. This cruise we will on the Ocean Princess. It is going through renovation right now to be renamed. We will be on the first cruise under its new name Ocean Princess. It use to be called Tahitian Princess. It is a small ship with only about 600 passengers. We currently have a window room. It is not in the best location on the ship but that is all they had. I am hoping for an upgrade. Many people on cruisecritic have received an upgrade however we have not yet. Most people book trips via travel agent but we don't. I book everything myself. Travel agents seem to be able to give people upgrades easier than people who book independently. I don’t understand that system but it appears that is how it is. Hopefully I'm wrong and Princess will be nice and give us an upgrade too!

I'm going to start packing. We are planning on bringing 3 large suitcases with 2 carry on bags. We are flying Continental airlines to Beijing. I love Continental airlines! Of all the airlines we have flown with, Continental is my favorite. We don't have any issues with our luggage limit with them. However we are flying Air China from Beijing to Singapore. We are only allowed to bring two suitcases total. The other suitcase we will need to pay extra for. Originally I was quoted $350 USD for that one suitcase but I was now quoted $150. We have even considered shipping that one suitcase to our hotel in Singapore but that would be around $500. So we will just have to pay the extra. The problem is we are going from winter climate to summer climate then back to winter. Plus we will have all of our formalwear for the cruise. So I cannot fit everything into two suitcases. Hopefully I will some how be able to pack light for me though. :)

More updates on final planning to come. I plan to update my blog daily while traveling in Asia. This should be quite the interesting trip!