Beijing and Seoul- the final stretch!

Hello Everyone,

This is going to be our last post as we are getting home tomorrow. It's hard to believe how fast these two months have gone and harder to believe how much we have actually seen and done.

Over the past two weeks we have been to Beijing and Seoul both of which have been great. Beijing was chock full of cool things to see, eat and do from Tianamen Square to the Forbidden City to the Great Wall of China. Tianamen Square is the largest public square in the world and it's hard to miss the enormous picture of Mao looking down at you from the entrance. Behind the square is the forbidden citywhich is filled with palaces that were mostly originally built in the 15th century and rebuilt multiple times due to several fires since then. It was an impressive area.

The Great Wall was the most impressive sight in Beijing and definitely lives up to its name. We lucked out by going to a less popular part of the Wall and pretty much had it all to ourselves, which in a country of a billion people is a pretty rare occurence. We hiked up and down the wall winding over and around the surrounding mist covered mountains. It was beautiful.

We also hit up a market filled with food stalls with several things fried and on sticks. It sounds like the state fair, but there was much stranger food. We were brave enough to eat a few of the more bizarre foods specifically starfish, seahorse, and scorpion as well as candied fruits and assorted dumplings. Eat your heart out Andrew Zimmern.

There is no better way to end a long trip than seeing some good friends and Seoul provided just that. Nathaniel and Wolfish have both been incredible guides here. They have not only shown us multiple cool neighborhoods and sights but have also given a thorough gastronomic tour of Korean cuisine.

We also met up with my (Gabe's) friend, Rudy, who is from Seoul and showed us around downtown Seoul. We checked out a hip bar south of the River and then headed over to a Noribong (karaoke bar) after. It was an enjoyable night.

The next day we took a tour to the DMZ or the demilitarized zone between north and south Korea, which is monitored by the UN. It's the point designated for negotiations between the two countries since the start of the armistice of the Korean War. It's an important part of both history and current affairs. Although it was a semi-intense trip, seeing the DMZ was an incredible cultural experience. We stood in North Korea for all of 10 seconds!

Yesterday, we experienced a completely different sort of Korean culture and hit up a Jimjabong or bath house. The bath house was three floors with multiple different types of steam rooms, saunas, and hot tubs. There were cold rooms at 10 degrees celsius  to sweltering rooms reaching up to 110 degrees celsius and everything in between several with different themes. Our favorite was the room filled with pine and smelled like camp but at 70 degrees Celsius. The bath house was incredibly relaxing and none of us have ever had a shvitz quite like it.

Anyways, that's about all for now. We should be back in the land of 10,000 lakes tomorrow afternoon. I hope you all enjoyed reading our blogs.

Signing off for the last time,
The Wolf Pack

Dressing up in Seoul.

The Great Wall!

Making a silk comforter.

The toilet in our hotel room had a control panel. We had to be careful of the eject button.

The Forbidden City.

The Wolf Pack with Nate, Wolfish, and Rudy.

North Korea as seen from South Korea.

They wanted a picture with us not the other way around.

Noribong!

The Bird's nest and Water Cube from the '08 Olympics.

Peking Duck in Beijing. Mmmmmmm.

Scorpions taste like potato chips.

Soooo Spicy.

Starfish.

Starfish Mustache.

The Wolf Pack plus South Korean Soldier.

So. Many. Stairs.

The Long Corridor.

Pics from Hong Kong, Xi'an, and Shanghai!

Sorry there were no new pictures from our last post, but these should hopefully appease everyone. Enjoy!

Danny Hood versus the robotic archer.

Dim Sum!!!!

Hot Springs in Xi'an.

Crab cake bought with Gabe's winnings.

Roxanne at Karaoke right before they came in to turn our volume down.

Michael at the Hot Springs.

Our Asian haircuts.

Look what we found.

The metro gets a little crowded.

Feesh and Lip as terracotta warriors.

Pit A of the terracotta warriors.

Eating plaster at Muslim restaurant.

The Hong Kong skyline at the peak.

Dim Sum Delight-Aka CHINA!

Hello Readers,

So we have three cities to cover in this post: Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Xi'an. The past two plus weeks have been great and we have gotten a good taste of three very different areas of China. We are off to Beijing tomorrow, then Seoul, and then home.

Hong Kong is one of the more westernized cities we have visited since beginning our trip, but it is an incredible place and it was refreshing to be in a more developed area. Thank you to everyone who gave us tips for HK, especially the Rosensteins for the novel they made for us about the city. We were very grateful for the advice and it was incredibly helpful.

The Dim Sum in Hong Kong was a dream come true. We ate at a few different restaurants from grand ballroom-type halls with crystal chandeliers to hole-in-the-wall places that seat you wherever there is an open spot regardless if someone is already at the table. My favorite restaurant there was a place called Tim Ho Wan which is the cheapest 5-star Michelin-rated restaurant in the world where we got an absurd amount of food costing much less than my average Sunday at Mandarin Kitchen.

Beyond Dim Sum, Hong Kong has a ton of other attractions, too. It's a bustling, thriving, cosmopolitan city with tons of skyscrapers and high-end malls mixed with markets, huge neon signs in Chinese, but towering over everything is a massive mountain overlooking everything at the bottom of which is a huge botanical garden area with an animal menagerie. We took the Peak Tram up the mountain (an experience in itself) to see the beautiful view. Later, we walked over to the Soho area to take the ridiculously long escalator chain to the higher levels of Hong Kong. We were on an escalator for literally 20 minutes. It was quite a thrilling experience.

The next day, we took the ferry over to Kowloon across from Hong Kong Island, which, despite the plethora of American clothing and jewelry stores lining Nathan Road, felt less western than the Hong Kong side. We hit up a night market over there and ate in a little restaurant in the area ordering off pictures from the menu.

We headed over to Lantau Island, which is home to the airport, Asian Disneyland and the biggest sitting Buddha in the world. Considering we had already seen the airport and plenty of Disney stuff in our lifetime, we went to the Sitting Buddha. The Buddha was perched at the top of a mountain and we needed to schlep up a whole lot of stairs. There was a funicular up to the top, but it was a little overpriced, so we skipped it. The Buddha was absolutely amazing and when you look up at it, surrounded by white fluffy clouds, it looks like it is sitting in the sky.
Our last day, we took a ferry boat to Macau, which is the Vegas of the East. It takes in about double the gambling income of Vegas, but it is not quite the strip. Nonetheless, we all had a good time. Macau was originally a Portuguese colony and on top of having some pretty cool European-style back streets and a ruin of the just the front wall of an old church, it also has Macanese food- a fusion between Cantonese and Portuguese food. It was pretty tasty and as I was lucky to come out 1030 dollars ahead (Hong Kong Dollars) thanks to craps, I was able to order myself a full-course meal starting with crab-cake stuffed crab and ending with ox-tail braised in port wine. Michael and Feesh’s luck wasn’t quite as high, but nobody left with too much of a loss.

We landed in Shanghai the next night and although it was a large, sprawling city, it was way different from Hong Kong and there were a lot less English-speakers. On our first full day, we headed to the Bund which is a nice walkway following the main river through the city and seeing the town. We also spent a good amount getting lost in Shanghai as it was not the easiest place to navigate, however we were lucky enough to find the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum. It was a pretty sweet museum and we learned all about animals, robots, the internet, satellites, and space navigation not to mention got to compete against a robot in an archery contest and see an entire exhibit on spiders (Michael's favorite).

The next day we got together with Benjie's friends from college Kevin and Jane. Kevin is doing Ph.D. research for the University of Michigan and General Motors here in Shanghai and Jane, his girlfriend is visiting for the month. They took us all around town. First we went to the Shanghai Museum, which was filled with different cultural items from around China from ancient pieces of Jade to antique furniture to opera masks and more. We then headed over to old town where there was a cool market area filled with little shops and restaurants. We stopped at an ex-pat style bar for one of the better (and only) microbrews in Shanghai followed by a late-night dinner at a tapas-style Chinese restaurant. Although, Kevin and Jane had to leave, the wolf pack topped off the night by immersing ourselves deeper into Chinese culture. Specifically, we headed into a karaoke bar and were given our own personal room. We were having a great time especially after a few beers, a tray of strange meats, and some caramel popcorn; however during our rousing rendition of Roxanne by The Police, we were rudely interrupted by the karaoke staff, to lower our volume. I’d say all in all, it was a very successful day.
As far as eating in Shanghai, we did pretty well. I was able to try a bowl of shark fin soup, which tasted somewhat like jelly fish but was more tender served in a gravy-style soup. It was overpriced, but tasty. Shanghai is also home to Xiao Long Bao that are little dumplings with meat and soup/meat juice that explodes in your mouth. They happen to be delicious. One other noteworthy meal was when we got hot pots. We each start with our own soup base (I had the seafood and clams, Lip had the spicy Sichuan and Feesh had the mushroom) and then we cooked an assortment of meats and such in the base. It was all great from the lamb to the beef to the vast assortment of sauces for dipping.

The last main attraction we saw in Shanghai was also probably the coolest. We went to the Shanghai Circus World to see a Chinese Acrobatic show. Although we had seen a few of the acts from Cirque de Soleil shows, they continued to blow our minds with various feats of acrobatics. From huge jumps, flips, and contortionist all the way to motorcycles defying gravity in a huge metal sphere; it was an amazing show.

Xi'an is a truly interesting place with some truly amazing things to see. For those who don't know, Xi'an is home to the terra-cotta warriors so often talked about on the Discovery, Travel and History channel. The warriors were found by accident by a local farmer trying to dig a well in 1974, little did he know he was uncovering one of the biggest archaelogical finds ever. They have excavated about 60 pits of the estimated 600 possible pits around the tomb of Emperor Qin Shihuan who was the first unifier of China around 200 b.c.e. He's kind of a big deal. He started building his underground mausoleum when he was 14 years old and it only took 38 years and 700,000 lives to build it, but who's counting. Protecting his tomb are the massive pits filled with terra-cotta warriors. In the main pit, there are an estimated 6,000 warriors of different ranks. The truly amazing thing is that each soldier is unique with distinct body shapes, facial expressions, hairstyles and armor. They believe each warrior was based off of a real warrior that was in the emperor's army.

The other site we stopped at was the Huaqing Hot Springs. The park was literally a real life incarnation of all those jade statues and paintings in Chinese restaurants depicting small mountain villages. There were a handful of big Chinese style buildings with various bathing pools inside interspersed around a few beautiful small ponds, wood bridges, and winding stone paths around and climbing up the mountain. It was exactly how I had pictured China before coming here and I am happy to have finally seen it in real life.
That's all for now. Thanks for reading. Unfortunately, China does not allow Blogger in addition to Facebook, so we cannot get any pictures uploaded. We will try to get some up when we get to Seoul. All apologies.

Until next time,
The Wolf Pack

Foot-Note: As aforementioned, blogger is blocked by the great firewall of China, however, because this is being published by one of the wives stateside from the good ol' U.S. of A-I have decided to include the top 5 photos from the great Asian endevours of the Wolf Pack.

PS-the Wolf Pack returns stateside in 14 days (I mean...who's counting anways?)

Enjoy,
Mariya

5: Top Chefs!

4: Fabuuuulous

3: New Best Friend

Runner up

2: Young Grasshoppa

....and the winner is....

...Drum Roll please...

1: HOOKERS!

The end of Southeast Asia.

Dear readers,

Sorry it has taken us so long to update the blog. We haven't had much internet availability, but get ready because this post is going to be a doozy. We are currently in Hong Kong (post coming late), but since we last posted we have been to 3 other cities: Chiang Mai and Bangkok in Thailand and Siem Reap in Cambodia. I'll try to keep this concise, but no promises.

To start, Chiang Mai was great. Although Luang Prabang was beautiful and all over amazing, Chiang Mai was a great transition into Thailand. Chiang Mai's main attraction is their proximity to one of Thailand's national park and the availability of trekking and eco-tourism into the nearby rainforest. We took a day trip out to the forest through a program called Flight of the Gibbons where we went ziplining through the canopy layer of the trees. Lucky for us, we also got a glimpse of a gibbon chilling out in the trees while we were hiking from one platform to the next.

Chiang Mai also has huge weekend markets and fortunately we were able to catch the Sunday Market. There were all sorts of crafts, goods, and foods for sale and Michael and I took full advantage of the opportunity to try some new cuisines. In other words, we ate bugs. For those interested, the bees were like puffs and seemed to pop in our mouths- delicious, the grasshoppers were crispy like chips and had sort of a teriyaki/soy flavor, and the larvae tasted somewhat fishy. All in all, they weren't bad, however Feesh was too scared to try any insects, no matter how hard Gabe and Michael tried to pressure me (Danny).

After Chiang Mai, we took a very pleasurable overnight train south to Bangkok. Despite the smog, smut and prostitutes that line the streets, Bangkok has some beautiful things to see. The first site we saw was the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew which was absolutely amazing. The Grand Palace is the former royal residence and is filled with structures ranging from completely golden to covered in various reflective stained glass mosaics each accompanied by their own giant stone guards and buddha sculptures. The wat (monastery/temple) is home to the Emerald Buddha, which is in fact made of Jade and has moved all over Thailand through wars and changes in leadership. The Emerald Buddha was smaller than I imagined it, but it is a very important symbol within Thai history and culture. The coolest thing we saw here has to be Wat Pho where the world's largest lying Buddha sleeps. The Buddha is 46 meters long (just short of a half a football field) and 15 meters high. The Buddha is all golden except for the soles of his feet, which are black and covered with lines of mother of pearl.

We also headed over to Soi Cowboy, which is one of the many sleazy roads in Bangkok, but we thought we should check out at least one. Walking down the street was ridiculous. Every bar seemed to filled with an assortment of Thai hookers, old white men and lady boys. I don't know what Thailand's obsession with lady boys is, but they are everywhere and tend to say horribly uncomfortable things when you walk past them. However, the funniest cat called to us was around 4 in the afternoon when a hooker yelled "me love you long time." I didn't think this was ever said outside a joke, but I guess it had to come from somewhere.

The next day we took a bus ride to the border and crossed into Cambodia heading towards Siem Reap. Siem Reap, meaning Siam defeated, is home to the world's largest religious structure, Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat is a huge temple built in the 12th century and is surrounded by a huge moat. It is hard to describe it in detail, but hopefully the pictures below will help. There are several temples nearby, the most notably being within Angkor Thom specifically Bayon and Ta Prohm. The temple of Bayon is filled with towers with faces of the king Jayavarman VII carved into four sides of each and Ta Prohm is literally something out of an Indiana Jones movie with giant trees wrapping their roots around the ruins of the temple. The temples are sort of spread out so we hired a tuk-tuk (pretty much a cart/truck sort of thing with no windows attached to a motorcycle) for the day. Lucky for us, we found a very nice driver who happened to be named Mr. Bona. Needless to say, we knew he was a good match from the start. Aside from the temples, Siem Reap has a great bar scene as well and there is an entire street appropriately named “pub street” filled with tons of very chill bars all promoting 50 cent draft beers, along with massage parlors offering an hour massage for 2 dollars. Cambodia also has their own type of barbecue that we obviously had to try. Lucky for us, they served some new meats we had never tried before specifically snake and kangaroo (Feesh partook). The kangaroo was kind of beef-like and the snake had a similar texture to alligator but was slightly chewier. We really enjoyed Siem Reap, but it was finally time to head back to Bangkok in time to catch our flight to Hong Kong.

In Bangkok part 2, we stayed in the backpacker area around Khao San road, which was a very cool area and seemingly less sleazy than the area where our 4 star hotel located before. We even stopped by the Chabad house, which happened to be right down the street from our guest house. We had one full day before our flight, so we took a trip to the Dusit Zoo where we saw all sorts of cool animals mostly indigenous to the Southeast Asia region. It’s always pretty sweet to check out a zoo in another climate because all their normal animals would be exotic if shown in the States. Additionally, we checked one of the huge malls they have here and we happened across a stand selling squid eggs. I didn’t even know squids laid eggs, but we ate them anyways. It tasted similar to squid but a little eggier. No surprises. Other than that, a delicious plate of Pad Thai cost about 1.5 dollars so needless to say that was consumed on a regular basis.

Although this is the end of our time in Southeast Asia, we are very excited to start the second half of our journey through China and Korea.

Until next time,
The Wolf Pack

Angkor Wat, the biggest religious complex in the world.

"Anxiety shortens life"

Asian Cartman

Our assorted meats: Snake, Crocodile, Kangaroo, and Ostrich.

Eating bees.

Eating young grasshopa

Wat Chedi Luang in Chiang Mai.

Zip line company

Gabe defiling a lion

Gabe is a gibbon

The best picture yet!

Hot Dog!

Tuk Tuk Efficiency

Angkor Wat

Michael and Danny on the honeymoon zip line

Soi Cowboy

Purchasing the bugs

Doing something spiritual

Fun at the Bangkok Zoo.

Mr. Bona!!

Pillars with faces in 4 directions at Angkor Thom in Siem Reap.

At the Grand Palace in Bangkok. Note the Rubik's cube hats.

Come on, just eat one! All the cool kids are eating bugs.

They need these in Madison

This guy is made of wax. We stared at him for a few minutes before realizing this.

Roughing it

The largest lying budda in the world

Linga power!

Nature fights back

Tuk Tuk Waterfall?

Vesuvian man

Ronald Mcdonald does a Wai.

We went to Chabad in Bangkok!

A gibbon!

Good to forgive, the best to forget

Gabe ziplining.

Thanks for reading. We are currently in Hong Kong and leave in 2 days for Shanghai.  Stay tuned until the next post! Same Bat Time! Same Bat Channel!