Sad Emily

Hey Guys,

So I'm officially sitting in the Hong Kong airport waiting to board my flight. I'm super sad! You know how sometimes people, after being away for 3 months would want to go home.... they're ready..... I"M NOT!!! I want to stay, I don't wanna leave...i LOVE it here!

I'm planning on updating the blog with a bunch of pictures and some writing, the reason I haven't very much for the last month was because I was in thailand without my computer...just me, the water, some friends and scuba diving!!! So i will update with pictures and explanations (lord knows some of them need it) within the next few days! In the meantime.... This is a picture of where I want to live/ plan on moving to!



Is that not paradise? I did my scuba diving there, which i'll tell you all about later...but absolutely fell in love....

Long overdue

So I know I have a lot of catching up to do...but let me tell you... I am in Thailand and LOVING IT! I have been here for about 2.5 weeks or so and i just LOVE IT. I fell in love so hard that I abandonned my destination of Cambodia and Vietnam to spend more time here.

I'll catch you all up on it soon, and upload some pictures tomorrow so that it's not all writing you're staring at... but if you're curious... look up Koh Toa, Thailand. I did my scuba diving course and everything.... that is to come... I promise...but now.. i'm going to get some fresh pinapple and sit by the water some more with my book :)

ME

So far so good...

I know I owe you the rest of the trip to china but I'm just uber excited!!! So I arrived at the airport which is beyond reasonably HUGE! Not only did I get my flight fine (I was slightly worried cause I didn't buy a return ticket which is a no no) but they let me on after I showed them my flight to Vancouver from hong kong. Anyways the flight was/is full so they bumped me to business class... What perfect timing for my first time flying non- economy and what a great way to start my backpacking alone!

Ok I'm writing this on my itouch so I'll keep it short but I'll still be updating so stay posted :)

Guilin continued

So after all of that adventure... we booked a toor to more caves and to climb up a waterfall. It was a blast.... caves are caves.. i think i'm done seeing caves.... but the water fall was fun. We climbed up (it wasn't overly difficult) and then hiked part way down, and ziplined down. It was a lot of fun.

Having said that, I don't have TOO many pictures 'cause we were a) in caves and b) climbing up a waterfall...it's not easy to pull out a camera at that point. So instead i'll move onto the next day.

Sunday we booked a tour to the rice terrace fields. It was AMAZING!!! They drive you up to this cool village where we saw a show about the village's culture. The women in the village are only allowed to cut their hair once their entire life when they are 18. So they all have hair that drags on the ground but they tie it up in a knot on their head. Different styles mean different things like single, married, married with kids.



Then they drove us up higher up a hill that you thought could not go any higher, and you get to this cool little village in the middle of nowhere in the mountains. It's beautiful.



That night we headed to Yangshou which is one of my most favorite places. I'll include pics of yangshou in future blog entries...

Guilin, Day Two....

OK this is the traffic I was talking about in my last blog post, actually this is really LIGHT traffic, but kind of shows the chaos....


This was me at the caves the day before (see last blog post...) anyways, read on...

I won't write too much 'cause i'm tired and wanna go to bed soon, and put on a movie and veg... but still wanted to get the second day of my trip posted. So for day two Chels and I planned to go on this tour to the "famous" caves and this really cool park where we climbed a waterfall, and ziplined down. It was great, but caves are caves. We went through a bunch of caves in the park the day before, so it was just..... more caves. BUT the little town that has kind of created around the tourist attraction outside the caves, was SUPER cool. The people were great, and i bought mandrin oranges from the locals like they were going out of style, because they were soooooo good. So here are a few pics from day two :)






A couple great women selling oranges!



The boats to the caves....



ME getting ready to out to dinner.... and the next picture... the BEST dinner EVER!!! It was soooo good!!!!



All in all it was a great day... and again I have so many pictures, but I can't put them all up :-(.... oh well... you'll just have to suffer! Muah Ha Ha Ha Ha Haaaaaaa.... tee hee.. no but there are some amazing pictures... such photo opportunities here... I LOVE IT and had an amazing trip. OK.... the rest of the trip will be written about later... :-)

OK lets play catch up (again)....

So last friday Chelsey and I headed out to mainland China to Guilin..... We decided that to get there we would take the over night bus (11 hours) to the city centre, and have a few full days to spend traveling around.

To talk about it being a small world, if you read my last blog post (or a couple before that) you would have seen a picture of me and some guy that we met from New Jersey. As we were waiting at the bust station in ShenZhen we were asked a question by another girl, ended up, she was traveling with the Billy kid.


Me with my bag heading to the bus station from the train station!

OK anyways, so our trip was from hong kong, on the mtr, to shenzhen, then to the bus station and an overnight bus. Let me tell you, I thought I was in the Harry Potter Movie. I'll include a picture of the bus, it was AWESOME! There were little beds, and the driving.... well let me say this - the driving in the harry potter movie was about 300x BETTER than what we went through. At one point, about 3am I woke up and looked out the window. We were, no word of a lie, about 4 or 5 inches from the TRUCK next to us, and on top of that, we were SWERVING. How we were swerving, or where we were swerving to on the road is beyond me, but we were!!!! I thought it might be better to roll over and go back to sleep, so I did.


My Harry Potter bus adventure!

We got to Guilin, and got to the hotel (GREAT location...right by one of the rivers, and right by the center of town too). We ended up crashing and sleeping for a couple hours then heading out. We wandered around, went to a HUGE park, saw pandas, and wild monkeys,


Breakfast VERY early, after a LONG trip, do not judge my appearance!

We had a great time and went out for dinner that night, and wandered around. The thing about Guilin, is there really are NO rules to the road. It is pretty much done on a chain-of-food set of rules. Buses are highest, then trucks, cars, motorcycles, scooters, bikes and pedestrians. If someone is higher than you on the chain of command, they will NOT get out of your way.... there are no lights, or if there are they're not something to trust. the scooters go on the sidewalk and get mad at pedestrians in their way. There was a scooter going down the "wrong way" of the street, and was honking their horn at the bikes and the bikers had to get out of HIS way. It's hilarious.


A guy who just had such a great face - but this is unedited, and untouched!

Ok i'm going to put a bunch of pics in, and then i'll continue my next day in a new post :).


Two kids playing....

There are TONS of other pictures, but i won't make you guys look through 'em all, YET... not until i get back into Canada :)