Day 153 June 2, 2010

We left Xiamen today and started our first Chinese train journey to Hangzhou. We made our way to the city center with the help of the Enda's Chinese he learned on the train journey over. We then met our new couchsurfers! :)

Picture: Enda with our new train Chinese tutor friends. They thought Enda had a lot of potential. I, on the other hand, did not. Oh well.....

Day 152

We decided to wander around Xiamen University. It was our first experience with Chinese drivers and we learned very quickly that they believe cars have the right away. Pedestrians on the contrary are smaller, therefore less important.



Day 151

We spent the day on Gulangyu Island. It was great walking around and getting lost in the streets.


Day 150

Xiamen- food market. We went shopping for our lunch ingredients.




Day 149

Dragon boat racing happened to be going on while we were in the area. Today I was especially grateful that I looked Asian. Different times it can be frustrating to be spoken to in Chinese, but it's also nice to be able to blend in.

Today though, Enda, Michael, and Chantal were bombarded with people, ranging from media to middle school girls, wanting to take a picture of them or with them while I was, on the other hand, was able to sit back and watch... :)

Picture L-R: Enda, Michael, Chantal
Behind the lens: Me.




Day 148

We crashed at Michael and Chantal's place (CSers), which was great, but we had some issues with mosquitoes. Michael graciously let us borrow his mosquito racket as well as some repellent, which contained mainly snake bile . mmmm.....

Unfortunately even the snake bile didn't keep the mosquitoes away from us...



Day 147

We were welcomed by rain when we arrived in Xiamen. After being dropped off near a random hotel in the wee hours of the morning, we brainstormed as to how to get to our couchsurfers house....

We eventually did make it after walking for an hour, taking a boat, a bus, and then a little more walking... We stopped at a little restaurant along the way, and seeing that we didn't speak a lick of Chinese, we pointed to some characters on the menu and hoped for the best.

This is what I got :)



Day 146

Ah yes, how to get from point A to point B....that is the question. As soon as we left Hong Kong we felt completely handicapped. Absolutely no one spoke English. No one.

After numerous hand gestures and facial expressions we figured out how to get to the bus station and purchase our tickets.

Once we got to the station I decided to take a little snooze on the chairs, but of course, that wasn't going happen. A security guard informed me that there is no sleeping in the waiting room but then he proceeds to completely ignores the man smoking in the waiting room under the "No Smoking" sign...